Under Lock & Key

For our Peace Issue, MIM(Prisons) had solicited a number of allies who are doing work for peace among the lumpen on the streets. Though the Peace Issue is done, our pages remain open to those who are doing such work, as we want to build as many connections as we can between what is going on in the streets and behind prison walls. This article will make some of those connections in a mostly historical way. Similar stories can be told about the largest street organizations based in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and beyond. And as we’ll see, the use of prisons to isolate the peace makers is having a very real impact on efforts in oppressed communities.

Chicago

The Chicago story could start in the late 1960’s with Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, who was shot in his sleep by the FBI for attempting to unite street and youth organizations under a revolutionary banner of the original “rainbow coalition.” While some legacies of that work remain, COINTELPRO was quite effective in preventing thousands of lumpen youth from joining the anti-imperialist United Front. During the same period, other street organizations were joining a coalition with city and business leaders in Chicago. The Conservative Vice Lords (CVL) were one of these groups who became a significant force for building Black businesses and serving the lumpen youth of the community. Despite their turn from petty crime and street fighting to a positive community organization, their attempts to work with the pigs and the business establishment failed again and again. Eventually their leaders were targeted for frame ups and put in prison like the revolutionary Panthers, despite a program that never attempted anything but integration into mainstream capitalist society. Their differences with the Panthers seemed to be based on misunderstandings of the Panther strategy (1), which others have suggested were a result of COINTELPRO misinformation campaigns.

In the end the CVL leadership saw that the next generation was coming up looking to undo everything they had built. And sure enough the streets of Chicago succumbed to more violence and chemical warfare following the destruction of the Panthers and efforts like those of CVL. The next generation produced Larry Hoover who also came around from the criminal mentality to create institutions like “Save the Children,” support legal Black business development and register thousands of people to vote. After being imprisoned, Hoover’s Gangster Disciples (GDs) hosted perhaps the largest peace summit in u$ lumpen history in Chicago in 1993. After his 13th parole denial Hoover released a statement in which he said things such as:

Drugs are our enemy, destroying many of us with the lure of profit, more of us with addiction, and still more with the crime that results; we must join our voices with those across the land, of whites and blacks, churchgoers and convicts, gays and straights - all who share the purpose of taking the profit out of drugs and ending the slaughter made easy by guns. (2)

And this was not just talk, as the GD’s had demonstrated their ability to achieve such goals. The biggest immediate threat to the imperialist establishment that the lumpen can make is to end the meaningless destruction of oppressed youth life while destroying the profits from chemical warfare thru imperialist-run drug cartels. The state responded by sending Hoover to the federal supermax prison ADX in Colorado for conspiracy charges to deal drugs.

New York

In New York City the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation is a well-documented (if not always accurately) example of the modern repression of progressive mass organizations of lumpen youth. With constant targeting by police, most of the local leadership ended up in prison. The main architect behind the Nation’s growth in New York, King Blood, has spent 12 years in complete isolation. King Tone, who was the popular spokespersyn for the Nation in NYC during their politicization in the mid-1990’s has also been in prison since those tumultuous years. Their pro-Puerto Rican community organizing made them greater targets than they had been as a street gang engaged in criminal activities. Statements like,

“We are not AMERICAN, we are one of 22 million Puerto Ricans who are victims of Americanism… We are Revolutionary Nationalists but we are remembered as proletarian internationalists, heroic fighters in the struggle against oppression and imperialism.” (3)

led one pig to state,

There’s no way we’re gonna let a bunch of gang-bangers think they’re the Panthers or the Young Lords.

As more Kings & Queens went to prison, they took their goals with them and began to build educational programs and promote peace within the new gang units that were popping up at the time. MIM’s Free Books to Prisoners Program helped comrades in New Jersey build a library of thousands of books where Kings were not just teaching other Kings, but also members of the United Blood Nation and others to read. UBN, like the New York ALKQN, was formed within the New York prison system. And like King Blood, one of UBN’s co-founders, is in a control unit for his organizing, just recently getting his sentence there extended to 2021 by the NYSDOCS; greatly limiting his contact with the outside world. He reports that extensive COINTELPRO tactics were used against them in conjunction with the ALKQN.

Today the ALKQN is clear that none of its senior leadership is involved in any illegal activities and the leadership continues to define it as an organization for the betterment of the community and the self-determination of oppressed nations. As with all of the mass organizations discussed here, whose popularity has exploded, often beyond the influence of its founders, there are many who claim the flags that play into government efforts to dirty their names.

Los Angeles

Perhaps the most well-known peace effort came in Los Angeles around the time of the Rodney King verdicts and the uprising that followed. The state responded swiftly when Bloods & Crips came together in the streets. Not to mention that the unity in action also included a majority of Mexicans and a significant proportion of white participants.

As discussed in the article We Want Peace! They want Security. the unity of the oppressed is a response to the unity of the oppressor against them. Therefore, when the Panthers were destroyed, the Crips came up from a history of Black street organizations that formed to protect themselves from white violence. Eventually, other Black groups united under the Blood flag to protect themselves from the Crips.

When these groups came together for peace in the early ’90’s, once again we saw the targeting of leaders of the oppressed by the state. Just to mention some of the most high profile attacks, Crip leader Sanyika Shakur (aka Monster) who had taken up Black Nationalism was sent to a Security Housing Unit (SHU). Imprisoned Black Liberation fighter Mutulu Shakur had worked from a distance to develop the Thug Life code promoted at the peace meetings by his step-son Tupac. Federal Bureau of Prisons papers document that Mutulu Shakur was moved to the original control unit in Marion because he was effectively organizing young Black prisoners. The warden of Lewisburg, in recommending his transfer, wrote the following: “I firmly believe Shakur needs the controls of Marion, as he appears to manipulate the entire system. This shrewd behavior coupled with his outside contacts and influence over the younger Black element will have adverse affects on the mission.” (4) Mutulu continues to be isolated in the newer federal supermax prison, ADX, while Tupac was assassinated following his work around the peace treaty.

Over a decade later, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent Tookie Williams to be executed because he had dedicated his books to leaders in the Black Liberation struggle. A Crip co-founder, Tookie spent many years in prison writing children’s books to counter the anti-people activities of street organizations, while drafting up peace protocol for those who were involved in the gang wars. He was a shining example of rehabilitation (no thanks to the state), which the CDCR added to its name and allegedly to its mission around the same time.

The state’s success led to the bloodiest years the California ghettos, barrios and prisons have seen. Those who could do something to stop all the violence were part of the first large scale experimentation in long-term isolated captivity of humyn beings (or were dead). In this context, the leadership became more concentrated within the prison system, where the state had already begun dividing the system up along the lines of Blacks, whites, northern and southern Mexicans. These became the battle lines for the years of “race wars” that continue to this day.

One of the most violent battles took place in Pelican Bay State Prison in 2001. Prisoners responded by calling on leaders representing each group, who were being held in SHU, to negotiate a truce. (5) This truce seemed to be on the road to success when the CDCR’s Institutional Gang Investigation unit intervened, along with others in the department, to carry out a negative propaganda campaign, similar to what has happened every time prisoners have tried to come together in peace. (see We Want Peace! They want Security.)

As one prisoner explained what happened,

I have yet to hear of any of this, however, I did hear about the 2001 attempted peace treaty. Which of course was purposely sabotaged by CDC. The very last thing these bastards (CDC) wants is peace amongst the races here in prison. It is not in the material interest of the white middle class who work for CDC to have this violence come to an end. Any time an institution goes on lock down, prison officials automatically get what’s called “Hazard Pay” which doubles their pay. So for every violent incident they (CDC) can provoke, they stand to profit from it.

And it’s not only the CDC that stands to profit. Other outside organizations are also profiting from what the CDC has created. Organizations such as the Sheriffs department and other police agencies, which of course are staffed with middle class white amerikans. Every time an incident from in here spills out into our occupied communities, it is these organizations that come in and lock up everyone in sight, not to mention harass, beat and even murder us.

According to those involved in the 2001 peace talks, the failure stemmed from a lack of community support. This allowed the pigs to spread the rumors and squash the organizing efforts. This is why it is crucial to develop links between the peace efforts on the street and behind bars.

Only with growing mass support, inside and outside prisons, will the CDCR agree to allow for a peace process. That is why MIM(Prisons) is promoting the petition initiated in 2006 to restart the process. (6) As one veteran leader of the California prison movement said in an interview regarding the Pelican Bay Peace Summit,

A peace accord, or a peace summit itself. If that’s real. Then I wanna bet it’s real in a sense that both your politically motivated SHU prisoners and your regular gang member- motivated prisoners have both come to the realization that they are both doomed to hell! No matter how many differences exist between them, that they are united in the fact that they are doomed prisoners. And that’s the only way that they’re going to get that condemnation off of them, is if they join forces to change the policies that allows them to live in the naked abyss. And that means that they would have to work together. And in order to work together they would first have to arrange a successful peace summit. So that they could combine forces. Now I kinda think that that’s a natural course of events. That they would come to that conclusion, whether they wanted to or not, the conditions are gonna force them to come to those conclusions.

…I know that a peace summit has to be a prelude to something more significant. And that something more significant has to be what we always fought for, you know what I’m saying, the humyn rights of all prisoners in general, regardless of what clique or what race they’re from.

The story we see over and over again is that state attacks on lumpen organizations are superficial as long as the organization is engaged in activities murdering and poisoning their own people. It is only when these groups begin to help their communities that they are crushed by the state.

COINTELPRO continues its misinformation campaigns against lumpen organizations today and historically through the mainstream media like National Geographic and BET who have jumped on the sensationalized gang life bandwagon. They pretend to investigate both sides of the story while painting all of these organizations as evil. Part of this is a continued campaign against the Black Panthers almost four decades after they were effectively neutralized. Organizers today need to be prepared for the attacks by representatives of the State who claim they want peace, but in reality only want peaceful submission to imperialist profit.

notes:
(1) Dawley, David. A Nation of Lords: The Autobiography of the Vice Lords. Waveland Press, 1993. 2nd edition (orig. 1973).
On p.112, the Vice Lords claim that the Panthers tried to convince all of the street organizations to go on a rampage burning the city down. This would have been contrary to the consistent line and strategy of Fred Hampton and Huey Newton. The Vice Lords do admit to breaking up underground organizing in response to the assassination of MLK as part of their partnership with Chicago business interests. Yet, still the establishment never came thru with their end of the deal of providing loans and other business development support.
(2) Hayden, Tom. Street Wars. The New Press, 2004. p. 284.
(3) Brotherton, David C. & Luis Barrios. The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation. Columbia University Press, 2004. p. 298.
(4) http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~kastor/walking-steel-95/ws-florence.html
(5) Support Pelican Bay Peace Process
(6) for more info on this campaign and petition click here

The main purpose of issue 7 of Under Lock & Key is to show who wants peace and who does not. We will also focus on our long-held line that prisoners accomplish nothing by lashing out and fighting each other or prison staff. Every prison that censors this newsletter is acknowledging that peace among prisoners is contrary to their goal of so-called “security,” further substantiating our thesis presented below.

Time has proved . . . that blind deference to correctional officials does no real service to them. Judicial concern with procedural regularity has a direct bearing upon the maintenance of institutional order; the orderly care with which decisions are made by the prison authority is intimately related to the level of respect with which prisoners regard that authority.

There is nothing more corrosive to the fabric of a public institution such as a prison than a feeling among those whom it contains that they are being treated unfairly.” Palmigiano v. Baxter, 487 F.2d 1280, 1283 (CA1 1973). As THE CHIEF JUSTICE noted in Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. at 408 U. S. 484, “fair treatment . . . will enhance the chance of rehabilitation by avoiding reactions to arbitrariness.
-dissenting opinion from Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539 (1974)

Our track record speaks for itself. At least dozens of prisoners and former prisoners have given up lives that once included physical attacks on cops, and often fights with other people as well, after taking up the anti-imperialist struggle through MIM. Unfortunately, our data is a little skewed since we can only speak for prisoners who we are in contact with. It is up to an ambitious researcher to demonstrate statistically that those involved in anti-imperialism are less violent than those who aren’t (or more so as the prison mail rooms across the country claim is the case).

In the meantime, there are plenty of studies showing how all sorts of educational and family programs help reduce violence and anti-social behavior. (1) Unfortunately, in a system focused on punishment and ostracizing groups of people, these programs are used to manipulate rather than rehabilitate. U$ prisons that do offer these programs do so in an effort to tempt prisoners with a carrot. By taking this individualist approach they are not actually investing in peace or progress. When priorities change and a prisoner loses his job or can no longer see his loved one, then there is no longer the incentive to be peaceful. In contrast, a dedication to the struggle for a world without oppression cannot be taken away by future prison administrators.

Facts:

1. In decades of work the Maoist Internationalist Movement has never broken bourgeois laws. In years of work, neither has MIM(Prisons).

2. Members of MIM and members of MIM(Prisons) have always been forbidden from breaking the law.

3. MIM literature has never promoted breaking the law or taking up arms against the united states government, or any local government or organization, for that matter.

4. Every issue of Under Lock & Key, the newsletter of MIM(Prisons), encourages prisoners to obey the laws and to avoid physical conflicts.

5. Anecdotal experience provides evidence of a pattern of reduced violence among prisoners who become involved in MIM-led educational programs and/or organizational campaigns.
   

Despite the facts listed above, our programs and materials are routinely denied to prisoners all across the united $tates. In late 2007, we launched our website where we have since recorded 509 incidents of censorship. Most of those are censoring MIM(Prisons). Of them, 11 cite “STG” or “Security Threat Group”, 34 cite “security” in general, 14 cite a threat of “violence,” and 26 cite our threat to the “law” as the reason they are censored. In addition, 164 took place in California, where all MIM mail was banned because it allegedly “advocates seizing public power through armed struggle and overturning prison administrations ‘by stripping them of control.’” (2) While the recent legal struggles of one comrade in California brought to light a document overturning this ban, it continues to be applied in many of the prisons where MIM(Prisons) used to have a large readership. Most of the rest of the incidents of censorship fall into the various categories of “unacceptable”, “disallowed”, “unauthorized”, “refused” or there was just no reason given whatsoever.

Security Threat Group (STG) is the buzz word developed in the 1990’s to apply to a range of street and political organizations. Many so-called “correctional professionals” claim MIM(Prisons) is an STG. But exactly what are we a threat to the security of? Copying the language of precedent setting case law, it is often phrased as being “detrimental to the security, good order, or discipline of the institution or […] it might facilitate criminal activity.”) The problem with the phrasing in this court decision is that many prisons interpret that to mean that if you tell prisoners to file complaints, write the press, join organizations or build lawsuits in response to torture, physical abuse, lack of medical care, censorship, etc. then you are threatening the “good order or discipline of the institution.” (THORNBURGH v. ABBOTT, 490 U.S. 401 (1989)

Reviews of this and other case law demonstrate that under capitalism in amerika, prisoners actually do have rights and the above interpretation is a violation of them. The real meaning of this law should be to allow prison administrators to censor materials that promote real and immediate threats to safety and security, such as plans to attack someone else in the prison or to smuggle in weapons. The most recent case condemning prisoncrats for preventing prisoners from receiving materials that promote legal resistance was just last year when a comrade in Wisconsin won his suit in federal court. (3)

In some cases the prison administration has interpreted the law the same way we do, but still claims we violate it by posing an immediate threat to safety and security. The California ban letter cited above is one example of this. In these cases we also disagree to the point of getting the bourgeois courts involved.

The October 2006 memo from CDCR Director Scott Kernan banning MIM publications (supposedly not all our mail) has completely inaccurate statements in it, such as the one quoted above. If it were possible to demonstrate that MIM promoted violence in prisons or breaking the law without lying, one of the state lawyers would have done it by now. Their favorite defense in many states is to hide behind prison walls, rather than lie like Scott Kernan did. That is why state officials need to be publicly accountable in any society claiming democracy in any form.

From the CO’s up to the director, they play the text book role of the bureaucrat attempting to defend their corrupt institution, and by proxy their own lucrative jobs. We admit to being a threat to the jobs of corrupt officials and abusive institutions, as any conscious and active citizen should be.

In this issue you’ll read stories of foiled peace plans, violent set-ups and hazard pay for CO’s. The various unions representing so-called peace officers are some of the strongest in the country and their main leverage tool is persynal safety. They say, “we’re putting our lives at stake to protect your shit, you better pay us good.” Hence the built in motivation for more violence, more riots, more “validated” gang members and more maximum security and supermax prisons. It all means more money in their pockets.

More generally, amerikans as a whole benefit from their positions of power over the oppressed. Middle class amerikan citizens benefit from being members of the group of people who can be cops or get similar jobs as oppressors in the criminal injustice system, and they benefit from the services the cops provide in maintaining lines between social groups. So it is not just an individualist motivation for higher pay, it is also a national consciousness that is necessary to create the us vs. them mentality necessary to run prisons the way they do in the united $tates. One example of this consciousness came up during the Giuliani reign of terror in New York City in the 1990s, when the New York Times reported that most white residents were comfortable with the police behavior they saw, while nine out of ten Blacks felt that “the police often engaged in brutality against blacks.” (4)

These national lines of us vs. them were created by the white settlers and is deep in that history of land grab and slave trading. Over time this forces the oppressed to see the world in a similarly divided way, leaving the oppressors with two choices: they can turn around and use it as a justification for their own brutality, or they can de-escalate the contradiction. Our analysis of imperialism and the principal contradiction predicts that amerikans cannot de-escalate the contradiction, and so far we’ve been proven right. And that is why u$ prisons have become a perversely violent microcosm of amerikan society.

While we believe that in general cops and CO’s have a vested interest in opposing our efforts to promote peace, we are also acting in United Front with those employed by the vast u$ criminal justice system who are more interested in making it home to their family each night than getting hazard pay and new high tech toys to play with. This is unlikely in places like California where history has already demonstrated what happens to prison staff who speak against these interests. On a related note, MIM(Prisons) does not threaten people’s lives, berate people into suicide, or carry out assassinations.

Many prison staff claim MIM(Prisons) is a threat because we encourage prisoners to organize. We look to history again, and help quell those fears by taking a look at two of the greatest examples of prisoners organizing themselves. In the Attica rebellion in 1971, no CO’s were killed until the National Guard came in and shot 11 employees dead, along with 29 prisoners. Up until that point the prisoners of Attica had organized a democratically run society within the prison walls, including such things as their own food and medical services, while negotiating with the state on behalf of all prisoners. Guards were given superior treatment the whole time.

A couple years later prisoners in Walpole were left to run the prison on their own when the guard union went on strike. They set up similar services as the prisoners in Attica, and actually increased the efficiency of the operating of the prison with the guards and bureaucrats out of the way. This shows that as early as the early 1970’s prison guards were paid high wages for doing nothing. Since then the prison population has increased 8-fold, fattening the labor aristocracy with high paying jobs along the way.

The prisoners peacefully functioning without overseers shocked the pigs, who then began to spread rumors about riots in Walpole. The riots never happened, and in fact there was an end to all violence and rape during the weeks while the prison guards were absent, and for some time to follow. This kind of rumor mongering is not unique to a particular group of mean-spirited CO’s. Rather, they were representing the inherit self-interest of this class of people. In the last 15 to 20 years in California, they have succeeded in creating a constant atmosphere of disturbance and violence. Only the minority see their self-interest in peace, because it is a threat to their jobs as a class.

Unfortunately, we can expect much violence from the oppressors before we can expect an honest assessment of what is going on in these secretive dungeons. The people want peace now. Communities that are being occupied, imprisoned and bombed want an immediate end to violence.

Huey P. Newton said it is up to the oppressor whether meeting such demands of the oppressed happens in a peaceful way or a violent way. Fanon said violence is part of the development of a humynism and new consciousness among the people. Even if Fanon is right, it takes a lot to push the masses to the point of violence as Huey pointed out. This is obvious by the many more people who have spent many more days in peaceful submission than those who have not. Violent resistance from the people will only arise as it is necessitated by those who monopolize violence through their own power.

MIM(Prisons) only engages in and promotes legal means of combating injustice. When the prison staff represses every educational and legal outlet for prisoners to redress their complaints then it is clear what kind of strategies they are promoting. In those prisons, we predict there will be violence, and they cannot blame it on us because they have kept us out. This is similar to what we say about all struggles for justice around the world. We believe violence is necessary to end injustice because history has demonstrated that the oppressor never stops oppressing any other way. We do not want or promote violence, we are merely stating our conclusion from reading history. In every case of revolutionary war, it was up to the oppressor to decide whether violence was used or not. History shows that the same has been true in the prison rights movement; the struggle for prisoner rights has only become violent when the state initiated such violence.

Notes:

4. Hayden, Tom. Street Wars. The New Press, 2005. p. 108.

I’m currently an acting lieutenant of the Hoover Crips in NC state prisons. I’ve been working towards building better relationships with rival Crip sets in prisons in hopes of bringing solidarity within my nation. I’m working towards a new concept within the Crips and I have gained a following. I’d like to overcome the stereotypes and propaganda so we as an organization with publicity utilize our image to show that liberation is gained from education. The search for truth is often unsettling and if acquiring knowledge was easy we would all have it. I’d like to see my organization help with overthrowing racism, classism, sexism, and oppression. Instead of us damaging our standing as a minority-based group we need to vow to never again serve a system content to exploit us as commodities. I’d like to see us in the struggle for civil rights and humanitarianism. It’s no easy task to bring stability from chaos but I’ve gained a following with a lot of inspiration from the Maoist Internationalist Movement to overstand the struggle is bigger than my personal issues - bigger than one particular race, creed or gender.

MIM(Prisons) adds: We applaud this comrade’s work to bring rival groups together and encourage him and others to work towards unity across any and all organizations willing to work for real peace for the people. This means not only rival Crip groups, but also other oppressed nation organizations. Any oppressed people fighting other oppressed people is a waste of energy and essentially work for the imperialists. As this comrade points out, the struggle is bigger than persynal issues.

My upbringing was a lot like others before me and those who share the same living conditions as I do now: poverty, boys home, foster homes. My mother was a junkie and my father was a junkie/womanizer. So I grew to know the “system” well before I could understand it. Well as time moved on I became more rebellious by the minute. But I did not know why I was so rebellious to begin with. My crimes landed me in the belly of the beast.

Before I go any further I must explain my past affiliation. I used to be a Crip. As most young men with no family no structure at home, I was infatuated with the bling, money, females, drugs, guns and colors. But doesn’t Crip stand for Community Revolution In Progress? But here we are shootin’ things and people up, robbing and selling drugs. All within the confines of our community. Crips are without question the most numerous group in Texas state prison. How can this be so? Well I continued my affiliation until 3 years ago due to the fact that this and similar questions kept nagging at me.

Well now I am currently a member of our prison chapter of the BPP. I believe myself to be a realist. So I understand the reality of the 6 years that I face. So in essence it’s not about me anymore. It’s about the people. That is why a LK comrade directed me to you.

MIM(Prisons) responds: As we work to push the Peace Issue of Under Lock & Key, this letter is useful as an example of what we are trying to enable. This prisoner is at a transitional stage that is common among our comrades who have gone thru the process of developing political consciousness that begins with asking the simple questions of ‘What am I doing?’. The system pushes the rebellious attitude he talks about in his youth into certain outlets that involve self-destruction of oppressed communities. Prison is the typical end of that path.

Now some will point out that if this comrade was never sent to prison he would have never turned around. In fact, we often hear from prisoners themselves that prison gave them the time to think and ask questions. And it is true, that struggle forces people to overcome adversity, and in the process they will grow. But that does not make u$ prisons a positive force on the lives of the oppressed. It is a negative force that the oppressed succeed in spite of, not because of. Programs run by MIM(Prisons) would be examples of positive forces that help people take this path. Because if we are real, there are more people who come out of the system mentally damaged, hooked on drugs, full of hatred and rage, physically handicapped, etc. We must organize the few who make it out stronger now, so that we can all become stronger, more productive members of society in the future.

It is no secret why youth join street organizations. What’s a little less well known is the government’s role in getting these organizations involved in the international drug trade and other serious criminal activities. They need these orgs to act as agents of the state to keep the oppressed communities in place because the oppressors themselves can only do so much to occupy these communities as outsiders. To the extent that the state has been successful in this strategy, conscious comrades will find it necessary to leave these organizations for ones that serve the community.

So the lesson to take from letters like this is that the oppressed want liberation and purposeful lives, not that the prison system can kick some people into shape. The current system wastes humyn lives and potential. It is up to the oppressed to build institutions to counter that trend. Work with MIM(Prisons) to take up this important work.

I have been accused of this gang allegation but actually it is the prison guards at the prison, especially ISU and IGI, who are a gang, always oppressing and beating people up at their desire. I’m not sure if you have heard about how ISU operates at this place. In an attempt to catch prisoners off guard when they’re about to search for contraband, they rush into buildings and go straight to specific cells with huge pepper spray canisters on hand. When they reach their target they first start emptying out their canisters at the occupants inside, then ask questions later.

Now, when they do these raids they’re not supposed to enter the cells, but wait until the prisoners themselves put their hands out through the food port to be handcuffed or get down prone on the floor. Then they can open the door and pull them out. (They are not supposed to even use their pepper spray cans unless somebody’s safety is at risk or in immediate danger but they do it anyway.) This is a CDC policy throughout California’s prison system but it’s not what they do at this prison.

Right here they just barge in and after beating down the prisoners and cuffing them up, they literally drag them out of the cell. Also, while they’re restraining them, they always yell out loud for everybody to hear “stay down, quit resisting!” when they’re not resisting, in an effort to excuse their excessive use of force.

Later on you can hear them bragging about their abusive actions or making fun of how the prisoners were screaming. Needless to say, at the time they file their reports they always omit the part where they barge into the cells and beat down the prisoners. This is exactly what happened to me and my cell mate at the time back in December 2007, but when I filed a formal complaint against ISU they shot me down saying I took too long, that I only had 15 days to file.

The fact is, I did take longer than 15 days. It was several months actually. However, the appeals coordinator has the discretion to accept a late filing on a showing of good cause. When I explained my reasons (fear of retaliation, among other things) they simply responded that my appeal had been reviewed by the chief deputy warden in accord with AB05/03, and further suggested that I “research this in the law library” knowing full well that prisoners in ASU do not have law library access unless they have a court ordered deadline. Just another form of oppression by higher ups…who is actually the gang in this picture?

But they want to cover up their wrongful acts by locking us away indefinitely, in spirit breaking lockup units until we parole, die or become snitches. The worst part of all is that the so-called gang allegation doesn’t even have to be proven at all. All they need is “some evidence,” under their own standards, which they often fabricate. Or like in my case, use someone else’s on somebody they want to get rid of for any reason. It’s a convenient tactic they have been using for many years and since it has given them results, it doesn’t seem like they will be changing their ways any time soon.

UFD stands for the Ujamaa Field Dynasty. This article describes more of what it’s all about. MIM(Prisons) solicited contributions for this Peace Issue of ULK from many comrades both in prison and out. We are aware of many efforts to make peace and take on the real correctional tasks that none of the capitalist run “DOC”s seem capable of or interested in. UFD stands out among these projects as it is explicitly part of the anti-imperialist United Front. This is so important, because ultimately we know there can be no peace without an end to oppression and injustice. We also know that capitalism only benefits the worlds minority, most of whom live in the imperialist countries. All the job training programs in the world can’t change the fact that capitalism requires a concentration of capital that sucks every resource it can from the majority of the world.

Q. How would you describe UFD, what is its purpose?

A. I describe UFD as it states in our code, “…a counter-gang of ex-gangbangers, ex-hustlers, ex-prisoners and prisoners, and youth committed to collectively raising up each other to become conscious and prosperous New Afrikans.” Our purpose is stated in our mission, “[t]o serve as a positive and constructive alternative to gangs street and prison life, especially for our youth, who we focus on bringing into our movement through UFD, and to build a brotherhood and sisterhood through which our ndugu can improve themselves and their circumstances while making a better life for themselves and their families.”

Q. How does UFD relate to lumpen organizations (LOs), commonly known as gangs, and how do these LOs relate to UFD considering that UFD’s purpose seems to seek to undermine them?

A. Look, UFD isn’t in competition with any LO. Unlike some of them who fall victim to the divide and conquer tactics of the Establishment, we don’t view other oppressed people as enemies just because they rock different colors. Plus, we have a law that states, “Avoid conflicts with others and dead beef: before they get physical…” For the most part, the LOs our ndugu are around have been cool toward us. We don’t actively try to recruit their members, but nor do we hide our purpose. Those who choose us, we accept them. Those who don’t, we work to teach and help them.

Q. But part of your code says “UFD is devoted to leading others away from gang …life…” Don’t you think certain elements within an LO may take that as meaning you’re after their members?

A. Maybe, if they don’t understand our meaning. To lead one away from gang life doesn’t have to mean we seek to coax them out of their affiliation. By UFD doing right, we set an example for the LOs to follow as a whole. If our only means to lead one away from gang life is to get them to leave their affiliation, then we’re ignoring our greater purpose – to serve the people. As much as we disagree with some of the bullshit LOs get caught up in, they’re still oppressed like us.

Q. What efforts can UFD make to bring peace between LOs?

A. Once we’ve established ourselves as a positive and constructive force here to stay, and ourselves avoid the trap of warring with LOs, we’ll garner a certain respect in the prisons and on the streets. At that time we can counsel LOs to consider the damage they do to themselves by warring among themselves. Through UFD’s success, we get to show them their potential strength in doing better.

Q. Do you honestly think it’s possible they’ll hear you?

A. UFD takes political direction from the New Afrikan Maoist Party being that the Party politically leads the New Afrikan Liberation Movement. Our parent organization, the New Afrikan Ujamaa Dynasty, is a part of this movement. We tend to agree with the Party’s assessment that, until there is a revolutionary change within urban subculture that is dominated by the colonial/criminal mentality of which George Jackson spoke, LOs will themselves not fundamentally change. But UFD can play a significant role in decreasing the conflict between LOs by first being a good example and second, by educating those who’ll listen to us.

Q. When will that revolutionary change take place?

A. Hard to say, UFD is poised to lend its hand when the time is upon us. For now we’ve focused on doing all we can to help our ndugu change and better themselves and do what they can to uplift their families which in turn empowers our communities.

Q. How can interested youth join up with UFD?

A. Either by hollering at one of our ndugu authorized to bring them home or by contacting our executive assistant Taraji Vuma at New Afrikan Ujamaa Dynasty, PO Box 40799, San Francisco, CA 94140.

Q. How does UFD deal with the repression of its incarcerated members?

A. NYSDOCS [New York State Department of Correctional Services] has charged a couple of our ndugu with possessing unauthorized organizational materials. This is bullshit because UFD isn’t an unauthorized inmate group and the ndugu charged weren’t accused of using our literature to recruit other inmates to an unauthorized inmate chapter of UFD. We have a federal lawsuit in against NYSDOCS over this issue. They’ve been repressing members and supporters of the different NALM-affiliated organizations like ours since at least 2004.

Q. If UFD isn’t an unauthorized group, then why does NYSDOCS discipline its members for possessing its literature?

A. Because NYSDOCS is reactionary like any other state bureaucracy. It seeks to protect its existence. UFD represents more of a threat to NYSDOCS not because we advocate violence or disobedience (which we don’t), but because we have the potential to do what NYSDOCS can’t do effectively: correct the behavior of our incarcerated ndugu. Could you imagine the public relations nightmare for them? Some obscure, fraternal group comes along, recruits prisoners in large numbers who actually reform themselves. Hell no! There are other implications involving the exposure of corruption and abuse only an organized group can expose. The less common identity and unity prisoners have, the easier it is to abuse them and cover it up. Just having a growing number of prisoners who join an outside organization not subjected to NYSDOCS control, even if its prison members aren’t organizing among themselves without permission, is a threat to prisoncrats’ cover-up abilities. So, prisoncrats will do all in their power to discourage prisoners from joining up.

Q. Would you say this affects the ability to bring peace among LOs?

A. Definitely. NYSDOCS officially doesn’t recognize gangs. Stupid, because they exist. Humans are social beings, we clique up for the bad or good. As steel sharpens steel and people sharpen people, so too groups sharpen groups. In other words, if you suppress positive and constructive groups, you destroy the very thing that can encourage groups on the wrong path to choose a better one. The positive and constructive groups NYSDOCS does approve are kept so isolated and ineffectual that they might as well not exist at all.

Q. What message do you stress to your UFD ndugu?

A. Do better, be better, and know better and push and challenge each other to do the same. The establishment, law enforcement and prison officials in particular, along with even some regular folks, will call us a gang just because some of us are ex-lumpens (that is, used-to-be gang bangers, hustlers, etc.) and some of us are in prison. Many have come before us claiming how positive they were only to fall right into the trap of the colonial/criminal mentality. This always seems to happen. In our case, it CANNOT! Though we must accept the bad with the good and recognize that none of us can be perfect, we need to be more good than bad, suppressing the bad at every turn. We need to break old habits that aren’t productive and learn new habits. If not, we will fail and become just another group hanging onto a banner, doing nothing productive, and deceiving ourselves that we rule or are almighty while under the foot of law enforcement and prisoncrats. This is absurd! And I’m not prone to embracing too much absurdity, though I fall short, too. But this is why we’re together. Each one help one! We have a better chance at succeeding together than alone.

Q. Any final words?

A. Yeah. To my UFDeez, many will doubt you, some will hate you, but we must earn the respect of all by living up to our ideology and laws. To do this we must have faith in ourselves, in each other, and in our leadership. Be strong and resolute. Love the people and they’ll love you. UFDeez, Dynasty Forever!!

I have had enough of being denoted a nigger or nigga or whatever the hell they wish to call my people. No more of the racial backward politics, the hands that rock the cradle of oppression!

Even as a fellow Afrikan brotha sits in the White House, which is, let us not forget, stained by the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors who were forced to build it, Amerikkka remains the nasty, hateful, oppressive, greedy, unconscious government that it always has been. There has been no real change for my people, the disenfranchised of the nations of people who constantly fall at the hands of imperialism. All that has changed is the man who holds the whip. My brothers and sisters, did not some of our own brothers enslave us on this land? Whip and shackle us?

I encourage the brothers of the motherland to learn who they are, their true origins and essence. Come on into the movement of Maoism, only then can we find a proper vehicle through which to attain assistance for true freedom in this land. I believe in the cause of justice and freedom, of the principles of love, truth and peace, and in socialism we can pave the road to a form of communism that would allow us all to accomplish our primary objective which is, and let this be clear to all, liberation from this damn government.

I’ve noticed that there has not been one Wisconsin captive’s writing published, and I would like to change that. Not only change that but also get more Wisconsin prisoners involved in the movement.

Revolutionary greetings, comrades. I consider myself to be a conscious brother. I’m also a realist. I can’t help but notice that prisoners are writing in, complaining about issues that are minute. And/or of no interest to Us that are dedicated to and about the struggle (total liberation of Our people mentally, spiritually, and physically).

Take for instance the problem with censorship. True, it’s a problem that needs attention. However, complaining over magazines such as Vibe, XXL, and King is ludicrous. These publications don’t give a damn about these concentration camps we’re housed in. As long as that capitalistic business receives our $12.99 they are straight. Let’s support those that support us such as MIM(Prisons).

Also comrades, we’re all held in an institution that breeds injustice. We’re all aware of this fact. OK, let’s start fighting this beast with the resources we have. Educate yourself with the law. Know how to attack the grievance system that’s a part of this corrupt system. We have to have comrades on the outside that are willing to harass these slave-holders and let them know that you have family/friends that care and are wiling to fight until justice is done. Without that we’re on our own and must unite and fight until justice is done. We must want for our brothers/sisters what we want for ourselves.

Texas is one of the worst states to do time in. We have no phones, don’t get paid a red cent to work, and we damn near make everything that’s sold in the commissary. However that can’t break the spirit of a warrior who is dedicated to uplifting my people.

The time is now to unite.

MIM Responds: This comrade is right to assert that the publishers of Vibe, XXL, and King probably only care about their dollar. We’ve tried communicating with Harris Publications a number of times about the racist censorship of their magazines in amerikan prisons but have still received no response. MIM(Prisons) is against all censorship in prison and would align with the publishers of magazines like XXL, if they were interested. So far they haven’t been, but we will still uphold these as examples of the racist censorship policies in u$ prisons.

Check this out, there are a lot of issues of excessive force jumping off here at this spot with this renegade white Sgt named Deno. He has been dumping whole cans of pepper spray on prisoners when pulling them out of their cells. He then takes them to the mop closet and beats them up.

Guys are writing Prisoner Legal Services about these incidents but no internal investigations are being done by these people. They only send longass questionnaires and after all is said and done their response is always the same “we find no cause to investigate your complaint any further.” Nobody comes to see these guys physically all busted up and stitched up.

This Sgt Deno messed up this one guy’s eyes so bad with dumping too much pepper spray this guy’s vision is permanently altered. He is presently seeing an eye doctor. He has been prescribed medication for his eyes but it’s been 3 weeks and counting and this nursing staff still haven’t given it to him.

Let me tell you how these pigs run this system. We are locked down 23 hours a day, no programs, this prison holds about 1,800 prisoners, 60% are white, 35% Black and the rest “hispanic.” Racism is really bad here, some pigs are really racist. Every time something happens at another unit we will get locked down and punished for it.

Recently they came to my cell and conducted a shakedown. I was the first to cuff and get ready for the shakedown, but my celly refused. After about 5 or 6 minutes he decided to cuff up. They came in and found an empty trash bag with beer residue in it, so they took my TV and wrote me and my celly up. My celly admitted that that was his. Well about 3 weeks ago they did the shakedown and found something that my celly flushed down the toilet. They wrote him up and they dropped him to a level one.

I’m on level 2, and I’m coming up for parole in 2 months. I don’t have control over what another prisoner is doing. I’ve been trying to move to another cell but they refuse to move me. What I’m getting at is that they punished me for something my celly did. They do that to make me and my celly kill each other. They do it like that a lot, and most of the time prisoners do stab each other.

Sometimes these pigs pay or tell other prisoners to beat each other up. Just a while back a couple prisoners got into it with these pigs. They beat them up and put them in a cell with a rival gang to get them stabbed. Their own Lt brought in dope and got busted. And if you say something bad to the pigs they will go tell a lie about you to other prisoners. Just another way the police control things.

United Struggle from Within is potentially the most potent prisoner’s organization. USW is intended to take the vanguard position in the overall prison liberation movement, by tackling the multiple battles which we face as prisoners in this injustice system. Such battles are, but not limited to: instituting the national minimum wage to prisoners, fighting censorship, fighting the isolation cell-blocks which are a form of psychological warfare, doing away with the capitalist “death penalty,” promoting peace between street-organizations and guiding these sisters and brothers to a more purposeful meaning of existence (operation), obtaining proper educational programs and courses to enable the prisoner to make a successful re-entry back into society.

Many more can be stated, as our USW movement has a lot of work to tend to. Which ultimately comes to the doing away with the capitalist-imperialist injustice system – without the causes of crime and recidivism what’s the use of having this major system of confinement?

Yes, the program of USW is intended to impact the individual’s life and community to the point we decrease the drug/alcohol use and abuse, recidivism, violent crime and youth crime. The penal system hasn’t tackled these problems of the people, so the people must tend to these issues. I must admit, I am grateful to be a part of such a movement and organization.

As I take up the struggle in Ohio and in forming a committee of the USW (where we will study socialism, organizational tactics, law, and past socialist movements in history), I have been met with many obstacles ranging from prison officials to even comrades of our struggle. One of the main obstacles that weighs heavy on my mind and heart is the barriers we have amongst us (prisoners, proletariat at large….). I’m trying to penetrate the walls of ignorance that pervade the prison system and the community.

This police state (Amerikkka) has given birth to a criminal culture/prison culture. USW must battle for the minds of potential revolutionaries. Our battle also goes against gangsterism, gang-banging, race-hate, and illiteracy. Bringing together opposite street organizations and race/culture oriented groups to the round table in a common striving for self-determination, liberation, and protection is a feat we USW comrades are instructed to accomplish. Bringing peace and a mutual understanding through organizational cooperation and aid is a prioritized objective of USW.

We all face the same problems coming from disenfranchised and socioeconomic oppressed communities, enduring the turmoil of being snatched away from our families and thrown into cages, stripped of our dignity and denied the adequate opportunity to reconstruct our lives in a proper way with education and assistance. Hence, we must educate ourselves. We must organize ourselves in cells/collectives that go beyond the prison fence and wires by establishing ourselves in the communities we come from and work together for the common good of each member. Our common goal is to get back to society. The system won’t provide us with the essentials to ensure our success so we must provide it ourselves. But, our course of action should be in a peaceful mode. And, as we engage and advance we must recognize and respect those who strive in the same way.

Oppresion en el SMU de Pennsylvania esta a lo más alto que nunca. Aquí es donde los peores de los peores son mandados, pero no es ninguna forma de rehabilitación, en vez es para que sean abusados. Muchos de nuestros hermanos fuertes están haciendo abusados fisica y mentalmente en un atento de quebrar y de acabar con su espirito guerillero. Nota: los oppresores temen a lo que no pueden controlar.

Es dicho que todos de nosotros que tenemos la abilidad mental para organizar la mayoría y estructrar cualquier tipo de movimiento para el mejoramiento de nuestra gente “necesitamos” ser encerrados.

El abuso en SCI Camp Hill corre muy adentro, hasta el punto en donde los debiles serán quebrados. El otro día un hermano (recien llegado) se abrió su propia cabeza en un atento para que lo cambien se lo llevaron al medico por 3 dias y lo regresaron para tras al SMU. Yo personalmente he visto mucho abuso. Yo soy considerado por la oficina central y bajo el Security Threat Group como un Blood de Nueva York de alto riesgo, y con eso me quitan mi literatura, correo, fotos y material legal (todo lo consideran “gang related”).

No podemos comprar jabón, desodorante, pasta ni loción de la cantina aunque tengamos feria en nuestra cuenta. Cada vez que pidemos copias de estas reglas nos dicen que no podemos tener eso en el SMU. Todo es considerado un riesgo a la seguridad de este campamento de concentración.

Cualquier otro lugar me ha dejado tener Notas de MIM menos aquí los oficiales no obedecen sus propias reglas y lo toman en sus manos para determinar que podemos o no tener. Yo he escrito un grievance sobre esto y un numero de violaciones aquí incluyendo riesgo de salud y estoy planiando meter un Class Action lawsuit con otros camaradas. Nuestra meta es para que cierren este lugar.

Estamos ahorita trabajando con un numero de organizationes que nos han ayudado mucho, yo escribo para que todos sepan lo serio de esta situación. Los oficiales nos golpean aunque tengamos esposas y estemos amarrados. Esto no es rehabilitación en ninguna manera pero es oppresión a lo peor! Pero de todas maneras nos mantendrémos fuerte y concentrados en cerrando este pinche lugar!!

I recently read MIM Theory 12 “Environment, Society and Revolution” and I got to say it was very educational. Being in prison “the environment” is not something prisoners discuss too often, much less study, debate or develop into a correct line so to be able to read the polemics, MIM’s line on environment as well as the cops line, and how the comrades over in the Philippines put their theory into practice in struggling for the environment in a revolutionary way was a great help in getting me to understand not only how to fight environmental destruction but how to do so in a Maoist way.

What I have learned in the years of working with MIM and developing my line is all oppression whether it be patriarchy, environmental destruction which poisons the people, racism, fascism in Amerika, class oppression, etc. can all be tied together into one root cause. In order to find a solution or eradicate a problem you need to make a scientific analysis and find the root cause. What is causing these symptoms all comes back to imperialism. Imperialism is the root cause of all oppression whether that oppression is here in the U.S. or internationally. So rather than taking on individual issues in mass organizations and work for reform to alter these circumstances it is more logical to pull the whole weed out by the roots and truly solve the problem.

So as I read this MT12 thought of what environmental destruction does to prisoners here in Amerika. A historical materialist view will show that prisoners especially in Amerika get the uncut version of imperial fascism, we are given the worse processed foods, often times that which U.S. consumers would refuse to purchase, the worst water (any prisoner whose been through California’s Tracy prison remembers the brown water coming out of the faucets) that anywhere else is U.S. society would be tagged for health hazards. The pollution and waste involved in building the many prisons that house the 2+ million prisoners in Amerika is all environmental destruction that is caused like any injustice in U.S. society by capitalism. The root cause is capitalism that puts profits in command and the people’s interest comes last if at all.

The main thing that I learned from this MT12 was of the overwhelming toxic dump sites in and around oppressed nations areas. I wonder how much media attention and public outcry would occur had the city announced a new toxic dumpsite to be opened in Belair or the Malibu hills? Yet we hardly hear a murmur from the media when toxic dumps spring up in areas where the oppressed nations swell. Third World countries have become the imperialist dump site. I watched a news program around a month ago about how petty bourgeois here in the U.S. were setting up these scam “recycle” centers for computers and “e-trash.” These “recycle” centers would turn around and ship off this toxic junk to Third World nations and turn a profit, even though there’s supposed laws prohibiting this toxic dumping (for Petty Bourgeois and small time entrepreneurs) it is still continued with a nod and a wink. The bourgeois, big business, transnational corporations etc. are a whole different story. They continue to dump toxins on the Third World nations with only encouragement from imperialist economists.

The document written by the Communist Party of the Philippines “on the issue of the environment in the world and in the Philippines” was an excellent example of how to deal with environmental destruction caused by capitalism, I learned a lot from this article. One of the things I learned was how a lot of the so-called “environmentalist groups” here in the U.S. or in other imperialist countries work to pass laws to “protect the environment” and stop things like logging or toxic dumping, but these so-called “green activists” are only acting in a chauvinistic way. I always looked at them as they were protecting the environment but their protection of the environment stopped at their backyard. These laws would stop these big businesses and transnational corporations from destruction in imperialist countries so these companies would simply go to Third World countries to conduct their dirty business.

What got me even angrier is I thought how here in the U.S. the majority of people get their living needs from the corner supermarket or have one of the many water companies deliver clean water jugs to their doorsteps or simply turn on their faucet whereas the people in the Third World countries often live off their local forests, grow their own vegetables in the soil and drink and catch the fish they eat in their rivers and lakes so the environmental destruction unleashed on the Third World people really is genocide on the people of Third World countries!

The most important environmental policy adopted by the CPP was their 25 year ban on logging for export. The comrades of the regional committees would enforce their many policies in the areas they controlled. Their actions had more impact then any kind of “green activists” collection of signatures or the voting in of “environmentally friendly” politicians in the U.$. When a people get down to the root problem of anything, only then can a true remedy be found, otherwise only the surface is scratched, imperialism is proven to infect all levels of society from the homeless, to trees, to prisoners; any form of oppression can be linked to imperialism.

I am writing about this unfair Wisconsin DOC racist system and how they are confining prisoners to “Super Max” solitary but dressing it up, saying it’s a maximum security prison. See, the oppressor has found a way to use this maximum security prison, which was really supermax, by changed the name when people started protesting about the conditions of the people who they were holding.

Supermax was supposed to be for the worst of the worst, but by this system not having enough so-called “worst of the worst” prisoners to fill 600 and something beds, they had to do something to keep this prison running and generating revenue for their community. So they started sending any prisoner who receives 180 days in segregation or more to Supermax. They did that for a little while until the outside got wind of it, then the head people tried to change it up, by changing the name and making half of it a maximum prison and the other half a program prison, but all of it is still run like a supermax prison.

When supermax was running, a person had to be screened by the psychologist to see if they are stable enough to be placed there, and now they are using the same methods for the people they are sending to that same prison which is supposed to be a maximum prison now.

My question is, why are people being screened to see if they are fit to be placed in another maximum prison? Whereas, when a prisoner is being transferred to any other max prison they are not being screened, it’s just when one is being transferred to this prison that they are screened.

This institution does not have all of the same privileges as the other maximum prisons in Wisconsin, which shows this institution is not run like other max’s. Therefore, prisoners are being held there illegally because there are stipulations that a prisoner being confined in administrative confinement should only be held up to 7 years. No, by this not really being a max, but being run like a supermax, prisoners are not really in general population, but are in administrative confinement with a few more privileges.

Did you know that there are still thousands of non-violent men and women serving 25-years-to-life sentences in California’s prison system? It’s the only State that warehouses criminals for crimes like joyriding, petty theft, attempted burglary, receiving stolen property, making criminal threats, and petty drug possession.

These prisoners receive no type of work time or good time credits. But someone who commits murder does receive these credits and is eligible for parole in 17 years. A non-violent three-strike prisoner does not receive good time, work time behavior credits, and must serve the full 25 years before he or she is considered eligible for parole.

California continues to have enormous budget deficits, and a prison system that is extremely overcrowded, and draining State funds that would normally be used for education. However, the legislators continue to portray non-violent three strike prisoners as dangerous criminals who deserve to serve a life sentence for crimes that would have ordinarily carried 6 months to one year county jail sentences.

Most of these prisoners have already served over half their 25-to-life sentences, and are up in age. They will surely need the medical services that the Federal Receiver is asking for in order to bring the California Prison System into compliance with Constitutional requirements.

The majority of these offenders have never killed, molested, raped or committed violent acts against anyone. Most are drug abusers who have committed petty drug-related offenses, that with proper drug and alcohol treatment, could become productive tax paying citizens, instead of tax burdens.

California is being fleeced by politicians who want to build more prisons and continue warehousing non-violent three strike prisoners, all the while knowing that the expense of such a policy grows exponentially each and every year.

The California Prison System should not be allowed to continue draining the state’s assets for political gain, while breaking the back of the state’s education and other human resource organization and institutions.

Education and treatment, not prisons are the best investments for California’s tax dollars.

MIM(Prisons) adds: At a time when California is facing a serious budget crisis and mandates to cut back the prison population it continues to deny prisoners access to even the basic educational material that MIM(Prisons) provides. It is not only the three-strikers who face significant injustice, it is the entire injustice system that needs to be overthrown.

Noble salutations comrades! I have been a recipient of your prison newsletter for several months now. In January I was transferred from the South Central Correctional Center in Licking Missouri to Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron Missouri. I have been in administrative segregation (Ad-Seg) since November of 2007. In Feb of 2008 a classification hearing was held (unscheduled) and it was then recommended by the housing unit staff of one house at SCCC that I be placed on “mandated single cell confinement,” a status with no end. This hearing was held but twenty four hours after I filed paper work through inmate grievance procedure of the functional unit manager of my unit for staff familiarity and personal conflicts. The day following this unscheduled hearing, I filed again on this DOC employee for retaliation which is plain to see. All of my grievances and appeals were denied and have now been exhausted, my situation remains the same although I am in a different correctional center.

SOP 21-1.2 Administrative Segregation, page 2 states the following: Assignment of an offender to a single cell within an administrative segregation unit [is] for documented safety and security reasons, i.e. offenders who are considered an immediate or long term danger to other offenders that would be celled with that offender based on extremely violent, aggressive, threatening actions towards others, which may include murder/manslaughter, sexual assault/rape, assault with serious physical injury, sexually active HIV positive offender. This offender is not to be celled with other offenders.

Page 8 of the same SOP 21-1.2 states:
Mandated single cell assignment:
1. The administrative segregation committee will evaluate offenders for single cell confinement at the time of the hearing. All offenders who are considered an immediate/long-term danger to harm a cellmate as explained in definition II.E of this procedure should be assigned to a single cell in administrative segregation.

2. Offenders who have recently assaulted/harmed a cellmate or other offenders who staff believe are a continuous threat to other offenders if housed in a cell with them, should be submitted to the deputy division director, who, in consultation with the division director will approve/disapprove these actions. Offenders who have been approved for mandated single cell assignment will require approval from the deputy division director prior to removal from this status.

Upon my arrival to this institution I asked the classification staff if I would now be removed from the mandated status. I was informed by the head of the committee that no one gets removed from this status once placed on it. All staff present for this made noises that I “have life without in the hole,” as I’m serving two consecutive life sentences, one of which is without parole.

I have been denied my right to due process. I have quoted their policies and procedures in all my filings. Every action I have taken has been within and following all guidelines. No justice has been given.

I have written several prisoner rights advocates and contacted numerous attorneys offices, all futile.

This is not just a solitary issue concerning just one prisoner. Missouri has prisoners that have been on this status up to ten years (that I know of). Some have had no violations in several years yet remain caged 24/7 like some rabid, volatile beast.

Many of us have no one to reach out to for aid and assistance. More than one is being held for past acts or political reasons while others committing the same or worse acts are given a year with a cellmate in ad-seg then released back to general population.

The South Central Correctional Center hands out this status as though it were candy to any prisoner who staff seem to have personal issues with. And it continues because we have no one to assist us.

In July 2008, the St. Louis City Police Department, under the leadership of Joe Mowka, Chief of Police, initiated a program to reduce the city’s homicide rate. The city at this time had 89 homicides, on pace to reach the highest total in 13 years. As of November 23, 2008, there have been a total of 161 homicides.

The police department says that since its program of “saturation” patrols (as they began to call the increased police presence), 123 arrests were made in one week with the help of U.S. Marshals. Yet the crime rate hasn’t gone down and murders are still happening at an alarming rate.

It is my contention that more police in the neighborhood isn’t going to change a damn thing. More police, more brutality. more police, more poor Blacks on their way to jail, penitentiary, probation and parole.

Of course, everyone has a right to be safe in their home, on the street and in their neighborhood. But if no social, educational and employment opportunities are being made available, it doesn’t matter how many mobile command units sit on the street corners, crime is gonna continue unabated. If you change the social conditions that caused the social ills, then there would be no need for more police. People will not behave according to truly human standards until they live under truly human conditions.

The people need power to determine the destiny of their own communities. The masses needs access to more educational and employment opportunities, not the penitentiary and graveyard!

Power to the people who don’t fear real freedom!

Dear MIM,

I was the person in your article in ULK # 5 page 9. I was beaten for no other reason than the color of my skin! The pigs tried to pay me off with a television, in order to keep quiet. I’ve filed a grievance with the facility, but they all work with each other. I wrote to the Inspector General of New York, no help. I need a civil rights attorney to represent me, most attorneys in this area are friends of the officers responsible for my injuries: black eye, lost tooth, fractured rib cage, back cuts and welts.

MIM(Prisons) adds: Unfortunately there are not enough lawyers out there willing to take on cases like this. We are adding this to the campaigns page of our website because we are getting a lot of interest in this incident. But this is not unusual. Anyone who can offer assistance can contact this comrade through MIM(Prisons) by mail or email.

I am living in segregation on a plantation in Limon, Colorado. A month ago I wrote a comprehensive and detailed letter to the American “Corruptional” Association asking how they could give a score of a hundred percent to a prison that denies a third of its population (self included) pillows, trash cans, trash bags, mattresses that are thicker than a piece of cardboard, jobs, and other items.

With Colorado DOC it is all about greed. Prisons do not exist in this state to provide rehabilitation to “offenders,” but instead exist to provide a lucrative and easy lifestyle for employees of the system at all levels. We as prisoners are merely an inconvenience and are treated as such. And at a time when corporate Amerika is cutting back and doing away with pensions and insurance, Colorado DOC just received an additional $64 million for the new fiscal budget, and additionally is getting 1,630 new employees. The prison budget is fast approaching $1 billion annually for a state of roughly 5 million inhabitants. Meanwhile, we are having things like real beef, fresh vegetables, and other essential items taken from the menu, which they hardly follow anyway, and we get laundry back that has not been washed with any amount of detergent. In addition there are no trash cans, trash bags, pillows, new mattresses, or even chairs or stools for the wall mounted desks. I am currently writing sideways on a TV shelf.

Shortly after sending the letter to the ACA I got a horrific shakedown that the guard says was “ordered by admin” in which they found a broken razor in the trash that had arrived broken in the package. Then based upon finding this “dangerous weapon” four thugs came and arrested me while I was in the middle of typing a letter to my attorney in the law library. Now I have been in here 15 days and have not seen any paperwork or charges, but I have been told repeatedly that they exist. Now what do I do? I have never once been to seg here at this hell hole and I have successfully completed two terms of probation for minor offenses during my two years here.

I have never once had a charge for assaulting a staff member or inmate, nor have I ever been charged or even accused of having dangerous contraband, drugs, or weapons. But now due to a broken razor I am too dangerous to be in general population.

It is not uncommon to have wardens making six figures and lower levels of admin making $85 to $95k per year plus all the goodies. If I were a taxpayer in this state I would be outraged.

Our mail is illegally searched, copied and/or read all the time without probable cause or justification (legal mail included). Currently, the two items that you sent me have been sent to the alleged “reading committee” due to what is more often than not, the uneducated, unsophisticated mailroom staff’s inability to figure out what they are looking at. However, I do expect to receive these copies that I was really looking forward to, in about a month.

In your November issues of ULK5 I read the article written by a Texas prisoner “Segregation in Texas” and am appalled by his ignorance as far as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) aka “Texas Department of Criminals” is concerned.

I myself am an ex-gang member, and I got into the GRAD program (without snitching), and do you know why? After 23 years of being a gang member in the prison system, I saw how the oppressors were using me to oppress others. By using me and other gang members, the oppressors in uniform do not get dirty while we get our time jacked-up or may even receive death for doing what the man in uniform wanted me to do. Not only that, but it gives the imperialists an excuse to build more control units for the idiots that are doing their dirty work.

Now I’ll tell you about the Texas Department of Criminals. We prisoners in GRAD chose to call our gang affiliation history. Since then we have been labeled snitches (by TDCJ employees), by the same people who advertise how the prison system wants to help us rehabilitate. TDCJ employees know what goes on between prisoners because gang members have a habit of bragging, so when we denounce our gang affiliation the Gang Investigator (GI) tells you everything he knows about ranks and members all around the prison. At times the GI knows more than gang members. After being placed in the GRAD program, the same TDCJ staff go and instigate trouble between gang members and ex-gang members. That keeps the fuel on the fire and keeps prisoners at each others throats. Then TDCJ goes to the tax payer and asks for millions in tax dollars to build more control units.

December 4, 2008 and December 6, 2008, the thieves in the Governor’s administration and TDCJ asked for a total of $506 million for the renovation of the prison hospital, for the medical contractors, and for walk-in metal detectors, wand detectors, surveillance cameras and x-ray machines. For the latter, the Texas department of criminals executive director is seeking an immediate $33 million. It is their own employees who bring in the contraband, but in the newspaper prisoners are the criminals.

Those of us who step back away from our gang membership are punished by the prisons. We face denial of meals (since I’ve been in GRAD I have been denied food 7 times). If we don’t bark or beg for our meals we don’t get fed. By law we should be allowed to recreate 1 hour daily, five days a week, but we are lucky if we get 1 hour a week. We get our water turned off by TDCJ employees just to try to get us to go off, and if we go off we have to go through the process all over again. We get verbal threats by staff. We get one or maybe two clean towels a week. We get old sheets that are cut in half. We don’t get soap, tooth powder, grievance forms, or medical attention. We get strip searched by female guards, and if you are like me fighting the system, your mail is given to other prisoners or is denied.

The wing where I am housed is the only wing in the whole unit that is constantly freezing so that staff refuse to work this wing. We have to wear a t-shirt, jumpsuit and jacket in our cells during the winter. The air vents are so loud that you think you are standing next to a train (this is psychological torture). In the summer time the heat is turned on which makes you feel as if you are standing in the middle of the desert.

For 23 years I worked to please the oppressors by abusing the weak, oppressing others, and that is why I decided not to allow these people to tell me to do their dirty work while they sit back and earn money while I rot in these human warehouses.

Right now I am in a struggle with the medical department because they refuse to treat my illness. I am hypoglycemic and my blood sugar drops. Without the proper medication or diet I will lose my vision, which is happening slowly but surely. The way the grievance committee (kangaroo committee) puts it, I have to go into a coma so they can treat me. If more prisoners stood together as we used to in the 70s and early 80s, others would not have to go through these kinds of treatments. While we continue to fight each other they are building more control units. While we continue to fight each other we are forgetting the real purpose.

MIM(Prisons) adds: This issue of Under Lock and Key carries strong messages about the need for prisoners to stop fighting one another. We know that programs like the Texas GRAD system are used in many states to turn prisoners against each other by forcing them to snitch or be punished. But we also know that prisoners are turned against each other even before they enter these types of programs, fomenting conflicts between rival groups, and using prisoners to carry out violence against other prisoners in exchange for small favors. It is up to each prisoner to figure out how to best use the system to break away from the senseless violence and coming together with other prisoners to put their energy into the anti-imperialist struggle for peace.

I’ve spent my whole life being angry and confused with law enforcement, the U.$., and just people in general. In my confusion I’ve taken my anger out on the pigs these past fourteen years, with many assaults on officers, attempting to disarm an officer, anything to rebel against this system of lies everybody has fully embraced and accepted.

I’ll admit for a while there I was beginning to believe I was the problem: not having pride in the Amerikan troops in Iraq like the rest. Hating these pigs for giving my father the raw deal over and over. My whole life witnessing my family deteriorate by losing touch with each other because most all of us are felons. Never being able to fight back because there’s not enough money to fight these charges, paying fines eternally.

I want to thank all the comrades who put the word out about your beliefs and platform because my blinders are off because of all your hard work. You see I’m currently in Utah’s UNITA One facility. It is Supermax solitary, or intensive management unit (the hole), for just plain anger related incidents. I came to prison this time for attempting to disarm a pig. I figured I’d take one of them fuckers out at least, and my life would seem worthwhile or my family would feel the utter hate I have for these people who have destroyed everything I hold dear through their constant harassments.

I’m 26 years old, just eight months ago I wrote to the Maoist Prison cell, seeking reading materials to pass the time. These past eight months I’ve become almost drunk on all these misconceptions. I’ve been exposed to the truth. I feel anger still, but it’s not at those small town pigs, it’s at the imperialist pigs who run the U.$.

Now there’s a whole bigger picture and I want to contribute to the struggle. I see now it’s like they wanted me to go off so they could just brush me aside and either kill me or place me in a cell. I feel the rightness when I read Mao’s words and see the total wrongness in this system, in these CO’s eyes as they torture us, force medicate us. I was very close to just succumbing to these offers of medications. Like I said I thought it was me who was wrong, seeing Amerika as evil. My struggle brought me here though, and I’m happy for that because my mind’s just been seeking the rhyme and reason and my back’s been strengthened enough to put my weight behind just such a cause.

I smile now at these COs when they toss my cell or write me up. I laugh at these psychiatrists when they tell me I need medication. I feel pity the same way a person feels pity on a weaker boxer in a title bout. For these pigs, they’ll lose.

So for now I’ll continue my study and contribute all I’m able to the fight with hopes of gaining enough wisdom to spread the message to a lost soul like I was someday. I’m literally the only prisoner in my section (the hole) who is not all zoned out on medications. I was very close to being unable to even struggle with anything but my own medicated thoughts - out of despair I came close to just getting on medication. Yet my drugs is in my exercise knowing there’s many years ahead to fight a just cause. My drug’s in the look on these guards faces when a grievance causes loss of jobs, positions and face. I live now in a torture chamber, the lowest possible position (except death row three sections down) a man can be in. But I see myself rising to the most high position possible: comrade in a struggle to bring true justice to the world’s population.

I am here in Allred Unit in Texas. I was reading a friend’s Under Lock and Key paper and it caught my eye when I was looking at the article about segregation in Texas. I can’t believe it, but it’s all true the way security threat group classification works in Texas prisons.

I’m here in Seg at Allred. It started back in San Antonio Texas. I went to court for my charge and the DA was talking about me being a suspected gang member, which I am not at all. My case was not strong so I took a 3 year sentence. I got to the prison and the Security Threat Group label is waiting for me like a hawk. They start asking me all these things about my past. I told them I am not part of anything. They said it’s on my travel card from court. I did all I could to make them understand the card is wrong. But they pulled me out in front of the other prisoners and so the prisoners started thinking I am somebody. So my only chance was to ask for help.

Not only do the prisoncrats think I am a gang member, but now these other guys think I’m a member or ex-member so my problems got worse. Some of the prisoners planned to take me out so my only chance was to tell the prison administrators that my life is in danger. When I told them this I got segregation under investigation. They transfered me to another unit. When I got to the new unit I told them I can’t go to population so they told me I will stay in pre-hearing detention and wait for the prison to make a decision. They finally shipped me to an ex-gang member unit and then transfered me to population. I got jumped and beat up real bad. Then they told me that if I don’t tell the prison that I’m an active gang member they will leave me where I am. To protect myself I have to claim something I am not. If I claim I am a gang member I can go to Seg.

I’m writing in support of the Montana prisoner article detailing corrupt medical services and canteen schemes for profit. I’ve been a prisoner here in the Montana prison system since 2001. Over the years I’ve seen many changes, most for the worst. The biggest and the one that truly makes me sick, is the total collapse of prisoner unity in our prison system.

There’s a scary trend of new prisoners entering here. It’s all about submissive cooperation with prison officials. Making deals with the man (snitching, confidential informants) to secure favors from prison administrators (extra privileges, early release). Also a bad case of “Good ol Day” or “Back in the Day” syndrome. Unfortunately most people just talk, bitch or complain. Old timers are not standing up to teach the youngster how to carry himself within the walls.

I agree the medical services/canteen corruption in this system is out of control, but we have no one to blame but ourselves because we allowed the prison to take ultimate control. So now brother, I call unto those with heart to stand up and take back what’s ours.

This is not a call of ignorance or senseless violence, but of sound, wise, educated resistance that benefits everyone here. In other words, prisoner unity, not division.

I’m in solitary and they have strict magazine/newspaper rules, meaning no magazines/newspapers and just this last week they said no books. I’m grieving them on the books and all the returns using this case law: Prison Legal News v. Lehman 397 5.30 692 (9th Cir. 2005) - prisons may not prohibit prisoners from receiving non-subscription mail and catalogs, Sonnels v. McKee, 290 F.30 965 (9th Cir 2002) - prisons may not ban gift publications for which prisoner has not paid, and Morrison v. Hall, 261 F.3d 896 (9th Cir. 2001) - prisons may not ban receipt of subscription publications sent by bulk, third or fourth class mail. I’ve tried writing to the mailroom and explaining the way they’ve been in the wrong, nicely. But it seems there’s no other way but to grieve and most likely prosecute.

It’s not just mail and books I’ve been grieving and this might be why they have been holding/denying my mail. I’ve grieved mental health all the way to level three and also medical for deliberate indifference. They have mentally ill prisoners over here in solitary who regularly get peppersprayed, stun gunned, thrown around, thrown on strip cell, and even end up killing themselves. The C/O’s kick their doors every count, waking them up. Calling them names, egging them on. Sgt. Feikert commented just last week as they zipped up Mark in his body bag, “No big loss, this scumbag did us a favor, we need the bedspace.”

I read a piece by Emile Capouya called, “Laying Down the Gun,” that says this about C/Os, “The policeman’s… training… [is] directed to a single object… making the system safe for the powerful. The deformation of character he suffers may be greater or less than that of the ‘other’ born losers he is paid to keep in line, but I imagine it must be substantial.” And I can see it in their faces. They’re in the belly of this beast called prison even though they go home to sleep. I’ve been locked up for six years, but against my will. They drive their sorry selves here each day.

But isn’t the key in the general strike? If that was awakened again I believe it could work. It’s not about violence, is it? I don’t know but like I told these other organizations, if you could have talked to me one year ago I wouldn’t have been able to tell you there’s 2.3 million people caged in the U.$. of A’s prison industrial complex. In my mind I knew something wasn’t right and I literally saw no better way than to take a couple cops with me, hence my disarming an officer charge. But now I have something larger and more pressing to put my weight behind. I just hope others like myself see the truth before it’s too late for them.

MIM(Prisons) says: We also spend a lot of time explaining to prison mailrooms and administrators when they are breaking their own rules and laws. But often they will not address the misdeeds and it is then necessary to prosecute in the courts, as this comrade explains. Unfortunately, this is usually the case, as years of reporting in Under Lock & Key have documented. Like the quote in this letter implies, this is only to be expected from those who are trained to serve the interests of the state. While oppression of certain groups serves the state, so does a semblance of bourgeois democratic rights. That is why we can usually count on the courts to give us a more fair shake than the pigs will. Such battles are necessary survival tactics for the oppressed and for the movement.

The author, like many who write us, is someone who used to think killing cops was the only way to defend himself from the attacks he faced. Prison staff abuse and disregard the lives of prisoners regularly as he describes. Lives are at stake in the amerikan prison environment, both prisoners and cops. Yet official policy institutionalizes violence by encouraging a culture of punishment while often denying any administrative recourse for those who are being abused. In many of these same facilities, even outside parties such as MIM(Prisons) have no recourse with these state employees, nominally servants of the people, when they violate our guaranteed rights by preventing us from communicating and associating with others.

MIM(Prisons) works with comrades like this to find a real solution to these problems because fist fights and stabbings are not the answer to abuse in prisons. We hope that the prison administration will recognize this and begin treating prisoners like humyn beings. Studies have shown that the u$ prison system inherently breeds abuse, while history demonstrates that only a socialist prison system that puts the interests of the world’s people first can provide a viable alternative where those who have committed real crimes are restored and not victimized. So it is important that we use long legal battles to build outside pressure and oversight on what is going on inside u$ concentration camps today, in order to bring this contradiction of capitalist society to the forefront while building a broader anti-imperialist united front.

Here in Utah the lower your classification number the higher risk you are. For example, level 5 prisoners have gate passes and can work in the community or get home visits. Level 4 and 3 prisoners are housed in general population, level 2s are housed in one of two different control units here at the Utah State Prison, depending on if they are considered STG or not, and level ones are housed in a single man cell, with no commissary privileges other than hygiene or writing materials. If you are a level one and in the hole, then you come out three times a week for a fifteen minute shower. You’re walked on a dog leash, cuffed and shackled with a spit mask placed over your face by two pigs.

I’ve been a level one prisoner before and I am grateful for the learning experience. I can tell you first hand that this injustice system is designed to break your mind, body and soul. The best way to combat this system is to first educate ourselves and one another. Unity is essential to our survival and our rise out from under the oppression!

I would like to give thanks to MIM for all the work y’all do to educate the masses. I can go on for days about the conditions of control units and how some of us rise above and how others fall for the okeydoke. Please send me more literature whenever possible.

MIM(Prisons) responds: Locking down the fighters against injustice as so-called “high risk” prisoners is one strategy used by prisons across the country to fight prisoners’ attempts to organize. It is true that prisoners are given privileges for closing their eyes and ignoring the injustice and brutality of prison. And those who rise above and take up the anti-imperialist fight are given control unit housing.

big money deals
involving big wheels
backed by the law
leave you in awe

But you didn’t know
that by chasing the gold
they trampled the rights
for which America fights

State prisons abound
and still breaking ground
across this great land
to feed the demand

The feds are right there
getting their share
partners in crime
without doing time

Then there are prison for profit
who would have thought it
not me and you
it’s sad but it’s true

Justice for sale
will only fail
to deal with crime
but hey…it’s your dime

Esta institución aqui es una de las más sobre-controladas en la que anteriormente estado. Uno no puede recibir, libros, revistas, cartas-postales, el periódico, recortes de periódico ni de revista, nisiquiera tienen materiales educativos. Tampoco no puede recibir el correo que venga con xeroxes, ni cualquier otra clase de correo que sea copiada con tinta jet, no copias o fotocopias de la internet, tampoco que le sobre traiga un poco de perfume, lapiz labal o que lleve las palabras de “espero me escribas pronto”, ni las inisiales XOXO (que son beso) o las iniciales SWAK (por sus siglas en ingles) sellada con un beso.

Aquí no hemos ningún aceso a la librería legal o a ningún material legal. Yo he recibido correo legal que anteriormente fuese abierto fuera de mi presencia, además me lo han negado mi correo legal porque la información contenida que era de como poder peliarle al systema, que es una ley de un caso que te enseña de los derechos constitucionales para los prisioneros, que es del centro de derechos constitucionales - una companía de abogados de la ley en Nueva York. En el tambiín contenía el libro llamado “The Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook” (un manual que le enseña como a un abogado aunque este encarcelado) cuando los contenidos de este libro fueron vistos, el sobre en el que venía fue sellado de nuevo y regresado.

Todo esto lo estado documentando y agurdando, también escribí una queja de derechos civiles contra el reclusorio Aramak (a un miembro de la Prison Industrial Complex) y tres otros oficiales, pero no he podido meteria, porque me niegan sacarle las copias requiridas por la ley. También me niegan obtener la copia del movimiento monitario de mi cuenta de prisionero que es reqirida por la ley para poder meter mi queja o demanda en “forma pauperis.”

Ademas les estaba ayudando y aconsejando a otros diferentes reclusos, a como poder meter una demanda. Yo los tenía metiendo las quejas para cumplir con lo requirido por la “prison litigation reform act.” Que es usar todos los remedios administrativos antes de llevar estas quejas a corte, pero la administratción se ha enterado de lo que estoy asiendo y se niegan a responder las quejas, las cuales son las mismas tres que coinciden a las cuales quiero llevar a corte. Se niegan a respondelas porque saben que sin la preveva de que uno cumplio con el poseso de usar todos sus remedios administrativos, uno no puede llevar estos problemas a la corte.