Under Lock & Key

Welcome to the revolution! This is Alien tappin in with a response to ULK 87 article “How To Get Grievances Heard In Arkansas.”

I actually did many years in the Arizona Department of Corrections. The last six of those years was spent in the max (Brickeys/Cummins), cuz I ‘bucked’ on em repeatedly. I’ve personally been through years of what this Arkansas prisoner is describing. I filed hundreds of grievances and they always responded with a denial of allegations and found the grievance without merit, as this Arkansas prisoner said. I’ve also had similar experiences with the disciplining hearings, with disciplinary hearing officers, like ‘no-socks’, cutting the hearing camera off on me mid hearing and automatically finding me guilty, etc. For the longest time I held yards/showers down, barricaded cells with spears, stabbed people, flooded toilets, busted sprinklers, slipped cuff and attacked pigs to get justice, but I learned several things towards the end of my set that helped a lot.

So when you – this Arkansas prisoner – ask what to do I decided to give you a few answers in the long/short term; it’s inspiring to see fellow Arkansas comrades goin’ down the same path as me, while “fighting and spreading the word” in chains.

Okay, so in the short-term, request the prisoner’s self-help litigation manual (4th edition) from the law library, they usually keep several torn-up copies of them on hand, go to the exhaustion of remedies section and pull up the case law at the bottom of the pages to “shepherdize”. In 2016, while I was at Brickeys, Prison Legal News sent me a free copy of their magazine and it had a case in there from the Supreme Court that says that when a remedy (grievance) is unavailable, then it is a “dead-end” process and doesn’t have to be exhausted.

What I’m getting at is that there are certain circumstances (such as when you’re being retaliated against as a result of exhausting your remedies) that enable you to file the 42 U.S.C. §1983 lawsuit, without completing the grievance process. You just gotta explain to the courts in the §1983 complaint package why you had “no available remedy to exhaust”, which sucks, cuz then you gotta survive a “summary judgement motion” – it’s not easy either – once you file the lawsuit. The Arkansas pigs are aware of this, which is why they don’t mind not signing grievances or doin’ anything about your grievances once signed. Plus they’re aware that the chances of them gettin’ sued are low. Successfully sue them a couple times and watch their attitude adjust. I personally went through this and didn’t get to finish the lawsuits cuz the pigs where I am now trashed all my files.

Don’t just take my word for it though. Study into the case law on grievance exhaustion and go from there (there’s no way to cover all the case law inside of one article). If you don’t know how to shepherdize cases, the book I told you about will instruct you on all that. On the bright side it’ll give you something to do in the max. Get in the law library, cuz while grievances don’t work in Arkansas, lawsuits do.

In the long term, I plan on collaborating with MIM(Prisons) to get a campaign going against the PLRA (Prison Litigation Reform Act §1997) – we’ll call it the “PLRA campaign”. The PLRA is what demands that prisoners exhaust all available remedies, prior to filing any Bivens/42 U.S.C. §1983 lawsuits (Bivens are filed against the federal government, while §1983 is for the state/local level). According to the 1st Amendment of the U.$. Constitution we have the right to “petition the government for redress of grievances.” And according to the 14th Amendment of the U.$. Constitution we have a right to equal protection. The PLRA violates both the 1st and 14th Amendments and I intend to organize a class action challenging the constitutionality of the PLRA, through the PLRA campaign.

1. In theory, our ability to “petition the government for redress of grievances” is life-threatening and often injurious, cuz we’re forced to exhaust dangerous grievances, prior to filing §1983’s. The fact is that prisoners can and do get killed and fucked off – injured – for filing grievances nation-wide. Filing grievances is dangerous in an infinite amount of ways. They can’t legally force us to participate in a grievance process that’s going to get us stabbed in the neck or jumped on by fuck-boys, who are often in collaboration with the pigs. We are unable to petition the government if doin’ so is going to get us hurt in any kind of way. We can prove in a trial that it’s common knowledge that guards, nation-wide, are capable of silencing and do silence prisoner litigants’ petitions through retaliation which intimidates many prisoners from initiating grievances or lawsuits. The feds spent decades tryin’ to take down the five Italian mafia families, in part for silencing litigants, so why not help us take down the pigs’ PLRA, which is essentially a technical loophole that they use to evade justice or trials and silence litigants with mafia-like tactics.

The whole “deliberate indifference” standard that applies to 8th Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment) lawsuits wouldn’t apply in a 1st Amendment claim. We’d be arguing that the PLRA exhaustion requirement is “abridgement”, which doesn’t necessarily have to be deliberately indifferent.

2. The PLRA violates the 14th Amendment cuz the prison class can’t seek redress for mental injuries without there being a physical injury, and the non-prisoner class can seek redress for mental injuries even if there isn’t any physical injuries involved, which is unequal protection. Shutting the doors of the courts in prisoners’ faces so that we can’t seek redress for mental injuries doesn’t allow us equal access to the courts, which also violates the 1st Amendment. An injury is an injury. Take it from me, a severely mentally ill prisoner, when I say that many mental injuries are just as bad, if not worse than, physical injuries. Suffering from mental injuries is also a “grievance” that we should be able to “petition the government for redress” for, under the 1st Amendment. We have to ask ourselves what the aim of the PLRA is when it comes to barring us from the courts for redress of mental or psychological grievances? I think that the answer to the question is obvious and speaks volumes.

How would the prison system look without the PLRA? The PLRA is an obstacle standing in our way of combating the number one form of psychological torture of the Amerikan nation’s prison system – control units. And this is due to the fact that we can’t sue anyone for the mental injuries involved with doing hole time if it doesn’t cause physical injuries, and doing hole time, by itself, doesn’t cause physical injuries. If we can successfully take down the PLRA, then we can sue to receive compensation when we suffer mental injuries as a result of doing long-term hole or max time, without there being any physical injuries. If they have to compensate prisoners every time somebody suffers a mental injury as a result of living long-term in control units, they may lean more towards changing living conditions in the hole (such as giving one access to books, radios, phones, jobs, fixing temperature issues, etc.), flat out abolishing the control units, or reducing length of control unit sentences.

Anything mentally injurious going on inside of the prison that is simply for revenge-based punishments and not for security purposes could then lead to mass amounts of compensation. The compensation will deter psychological torture and amplify mental-health treatments.

The last aspect of taking down the PLRA is that prisoners would no longer have to exhaust remedies in order to file Bivens/§1983s. If we can end the PLRA in the long term, then this would end the grievance campaign altogether.

With that I’ll close. I hope my response was helpful.

Welcome to the Revolution! This is Alien tappin in with a response to the ULK 83 article titled, ‘Materialist Analysis of the Stop Snitching Slogan: Stop Collaborating!’ In this article 3 questions were asked and I’ll try to answer them, with an article of my own:

• We ask our imprisoned lumpen readers, can snitching really be stopped without independent power from the oppressor?
• What would it mean to be loyal to “your people” or “your folks”?
• Can the principle of anti-snitching be applied to the enemy who it is designed to protect fellow oppressed nations or lumpen from in the first place?

Lumpen as Aspiring Oppressors

First off, I’m not gonna sugar coat shit. We must identify the ‘oppressed’ and the ‘oppressor’, with a concrete analysis, which can get confusing; because the two groups are united under the flag of the 2nd Beast and because the oppressed lumpen in the United $tates of Amerika are struggling to ‘transform themselves’ into the oppressors, so when they look in the mirror their reflections often resemble the opposite; in a political, spiritual, psychological, geographical and sexual essence. Keep in mind that, subjectively and objectively, the U.$. lumpen are in a figurative yacht compared to the canoes of the proletariat and peasants of the Third World, as seen in their past and present conditions. They also sail on entirely different waters, figuratively speaking.

However, neither ship has an arsenal of cannon balls, as does the oppressive Imperial Navy, which is a similarity. The problem is that the U.$. lumpen are trying to arm themselves with cannons inside their yachts, as a means of initiating the Imperial Navy and are aspiring to become oppressors themselves, not as a means of internationally ending oppression/exploitation – it’s the Amerikan nightmare. They are a spitting image of their culture. They want to grow up and get spanked by porn stars, like Donald Trump, with herds of piggy banks to save the day like captain-save-a-rate. The majority of them worship Amerikan Idols, not because they have to, but because that’s what they strive, with blood, sweat and tears, to become.

What use is it for the lumpen of the oppressed nations to wrestle power away from the oppressors only to use that power to restore, or intensify imperialism? Chances of success is less than a gamble, with these people steering the ship, it’s a guaranteed loss, because they only understand bourgeois revolution, not a communist endgame. In a materialist sense, the lumpen have never demonstrated, throughout history, any success in establishing socialism. The lumpen have always failed as a vanguard for very specific reasons, because they are a root of imperialism. And if you don’t uproot the entire plant, from the roots up, then the weeds resurrect, inside of the garden, and we find ourselves in the same situation. It’s a rookie mistake to paint an idealistic picture of the lumpen dictating to the rest of the world; not only that, it would be revisionism for the lumpen to jump the proletariat’s place, as dictators.

The lumpen of the oppressed nations often as not tend to feed into the weed of imperialism, by cheer leading for and supporting the pigsty with its state and federal criminal injustice system. What I’m trying to say is that, even if the oppressed nations establish independent power from the oppressor, they are likely to keep the same police system in place, or worse. So, not only will snitching not ‘really be stopped without independent power from the oppressor,’ snitching will not stop even with independent power from the oppressor. There’s no telling what the lumpen will do, if they get cannon for their yacht, but the way that it looks from my hypothetical perspective is that the lumpen are likely to use cannons to hunt down, loot, rape and sink the canoes of the Third World proletariat, who aspire to eliminate imperialism. Yachts, canoes and the Imperialist Navy represent the material forces keeping each group afloat. Cannons represents an ability to commit piracy, to dominate and sink other ships.

The Other Side

People need to wake up and realize that the reason why the oppressed/exploited have historically been opposed to the oppressors (the pigs, badge-less pigs, rodents of all varieties, who serve the pigs for many flavors of cheese/slop, and reptilian serpents of the Illusionati) is because they were common enemies who openly oppressed along all three strands of oppression (nation, class, and gender). The fucked up part that’s got all of the oppressed clawing at each others’ throats is that the slick ass enemies are disguising themselves as friends and acting out delusional charades to convince the oppressed masses into believing that the united snakes of pigtropolis are friends and not infiltrators.

On to the next aspect of the contradiction; silence versus full disclosure. To this day, the oppressed lumpen do not truly uphold and adhere to a code of silence in a solid, revolutionary way. Originally, the code of silence was meant to bolster organizational unity and loyalty amongst the communities, so that our oppressed nations could grow, struggle and develop internally. Making moves in silence is a powerful organizational strategy and tactic, when applied correctly.

Codes of silence are meant to shield allies, who we are loyal to, from incrimination. They are not to shield enemies, who are not loyal to us, from incrimination. Why would we show loyalty to the enemy? Showing loyalty to the enemy is showing disloyalty to your allies. The problem is that we’ve got snakes and such trying to silently ride with the enemy and apply codes of silence to them, in their defense.

With that said, it’s one thing to disseminate information to the enemy to get should-be allies targeted, but it’s on a whole other level when somebody, who’s claiming to be anti-pig, decides to put in actual work in collaboration with the pigs. The collaborators even go so far as to let these pigs into their L.O.’s, so that they’re official gang members who get to transform at will and exercise their ability to set you up on fraudulent disciplinary reports to get you stuck in maximum security prisons. To get away with murder and police brutality, with manipulating sex-starved prisoners into weird ass situations, with false jacket allies, etc. Cooperating and coordinating with pigs on these types of levels is against the code and should be serious violations for all L.O.’s involved.

In my experience, these L.O.’s typically police the prisons and streets more so than the actual pigs, with detective investigations full of incriminating ass pig-questions and their violent enforcing of childish rules, laws, codes, etc. Different names for the same shit. The key word is enforce. When they enforce laws, that makes them law enforcers. Their game of dress-up comes with the same biased and prejudiced judgments that lead to sentences which are much more oppressive than the pigs prisons and jails. These sick mfer’s are liable to force innocent people into physical and sexual torture chambers, where they do fucking weirdo shit to em, on an intense level that happens in prisons. They use coded lingo like pigs, they wear uniforms and badges like pigs they hide behind numbers for protection like pigs and they get paid to do evil ass shit like pigs.

It sucks if I hurt anybody’s soft, mushee-gushee, sensitive ass feelings, but I’m not going to refrain from speaking the truth in criticism.

Our Tasks

What I’m wondering is why do we even maintain a code of silence towards any of these piggly-wiggly ass L.O.’s, when they ride with the enemy against us on a regular basis?

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that, in order for the oppressed to win power and keep our feet down on the necks of those who prayed on our downfall, we’ll need an independent intelligence network of our own. So, technically we just need to redirect intelligence gathering apparatuses in our favor and win them over to our side of the fight, so as to counteract the counter-revolutionaries and others of their ilk. And by this, I mean that snitching isn’t to be stopped when we have our own independent institutions of the oppressed but that we have to look at this aspect of the contradiction in a different light. We have to call it something positive instead of a hackneyed, connotative phrase that’s been abused and distorted since its conception and use it to our advantage against our enemies, who seek to use such tactics and strategies against us. It’s impossible to support an emerging socialist government without an agency that specializes in this field of work. What I’m saying is that we need to police the police.

In the meantime, we can locate the enemy’s snitches, show em mercy and recruit em to our side without letting the enemy know. Then, we flood the imperialists with double-agents who feed the imperialists misleading or false intel. I mean, one way to look at this is that if we try to “kill all the rats/pigs,” we’d have to kill almost the entirety of every imperialist country. We can’t kill the entire world.

Oppression is a contagious disease that is transmitted through imperialist society like an opioid addiction with withdrawals and cravings. Once one contracts the disease, ey becomes desensitized, individualistic and apathetic towards society. Voluntary and involuntary participation in capitalist society is the cough that spreads this disease. This sickness has an infinite array of symptoms, but the main symptoms that pertain to this article are disloyalty, disunity and the inability to distinguish ally from enemy. The oppressed nations have maxims such as ‘it’s not about what you know, but who you know.’ The oppressed seek to make friends with the powerful oppressors as a means of rising from oppression to become oppressors themselves, and these oppressed people will turn over all kinds of incriminating info (‘what they know’) to these powerful enemies.

Successful socialist revolution is the medicine for the ailment. Under communism, there are no pigs for rats to snitch to and no pigs to police us. So if you wanna liquidate rats, pigs and serpents thus ending snitching, socialist revolution welcomes you into the rank-and-file with open arms.

The next question (one of my own) that I’ll explore is “what strands of oppression are keeping snitching and policing alive?” Oppressed nations don’t ‘keep snitching and policing alive’, per se. And from an amerikan perspective one would automatically assume that the bourgeois males of the white oppressor nations are the only ones to slam. Nevertheless, snitching existed long before capitalism-imperialism and long before white people had a nation. Despite what these ‘white power’ lunatics think, ‘power’ (snitching/policing being what ‘white’ people do with ‘power’) is colorless. Ultimately, societal oppression itself, in all three strands, is what fuels snitching/policing, because it concocts an opportunity for all government of society to incentivize oppressed people to desperately find a way out of said oppression through cooperation with the oppressors, who have the power to lift the oppressed up to their level. So if you end oppression altogether, there’s no logical reason to snitch on anyone. Those who advocate for the imperialist sources of oppression are to blame for keeping snitching and policing alive. The criminal injustice system created oppressive consequences for those who oppose their power structure and they feed scooby snacks to the mystery-gang members who assist them in targeting their enemies. Basically, it’s not the ‘strands of oppression’ that keeps snitching/policing alive, but the oppressors who create oppression that encourage people of every class, nation and gender to sell each other out.

Snitching and policing will remain if current society remains. Only under a communist society will snitching and policing end.

MIM(Prisons) responds: While these harsh critiques of lumpen organizations do not apply to all L.O.s for all time, they certainly will ring true for many. And while we look to the imprisoned lumpen in this country as one of the most oppressed groups, which has historically produced some dedicated and effective revolutionaries, it is true that they are not the proletariat. And they/we all must transform ourselves and combat the class (and often nation and gender) interests that we are born into.

As this comrade points out, L.O.s power often comes from their willingness to act outside what is normally allowed. “The ends justify the means” is one version of this. This is why Tupac and Mutulu Shakur worked together to develop the THUG LIFE code to promote among the oppressed nation lumpen via Tupac’s music. They recognized the progressive capacity of the L.O. rejection of the imperialist code, but the anti-people tendency of the L.O.s that no longer had a code of their own, or had a very reactionary one.

This comrade gets to the heart of it when ey says we need to use the tools that work to build an independent path for the oppressed towards socialism. Just as the imperialists have intelligence operations, so must we. Though our intelligence cannot mimic the pigs like so many L.O.s do that use torture, sexual abuse, and other anti-people behaviors to promote fear among the masses.

“Snitching”, or sharing information, is a tool that goes both ways. You can tell the imperialists on the revolution, or you can tell the revolutionaries about what the imperialists are up to. The real crime is collaborating with the imperialists in either direction.