Alabama Inmates on Strike, Say They Will "No Longer Contribute to Our Own Oppression" [Archive]

blindpig

05-16-2016, 02:45 PM

INCARCERATED WORKERS TAKE THE LEAD: PRISON STRUGGLES IN THE UNITED STATES 2008-2016
MAY 5, 2016 TYLER ZEE

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The Houston Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (I.W.O.C.) would like to dedicate this pamphlet to the memory of Jesus Manuel Galindo, a detainee at the Reeves County Detention Complex in Pecos, Texas. His death was not in vain.

Introduction

The following summary was completed on the heels of the Texas work stoppage, a mass strike taking place in April of this year, but the idea for it came out of discussions two years prior after a series of hunger and labor strikes spread across the US. These strikes occurred in both private and public facilities – in prisons that housed primarily US-born workers and also detention centers responsible for the incarceration of undocumented workers and even families.

We are writing this for you–our fellow workers locked down and forgotten by mainstream society–and for us, since we know our own struggles against the bosses and the State on the outside are inseparably tied together with your struggles. Living in the country with the largest prison population in the world, many of us have family, friends, and comrades who are already incarcerated. We know that where you are is where we are all headed unless we organize and fight back.

In the last eight years we have seen a multitude of struggles: from hunger strikes to riots, from work stoppages in individual units to mass strikes across several prisons, from hostile gangs forming truces and challenging racial divisions to immigrant mothers (incarcerated with their children) refusing their meals and duties. As we will explain here, Texas, and the South generally, has been virtually at the forefront of every prison struggle in the last decade.

The mass strike that occurred among seven facilities in Texas in April 2016 is a benchmark in the development of a prison movement that we have identified as beginning in 2014, but with significant struggles occurring in fits and starts since 2008 beginning with the riot in Pecos, Texas. Most of the events documented here took place without each prison knowing about other prisons’ actions or prior events, representing one of the logistical and organizational challenges of this movement, but where awareness of other actions did exist, it created a wildfire of activity and a continuum of struggle that is not always present. Our hope is that by sharing this summary of the series of prison struggles that have occurred in the last eight years, you will be as inspired as we are to continue the fight and, in the short-term, prepare for a nationwide prison general strike on September 9, 2016[2].

“Motin,” the Opening Shot

He would sing love songs to his worrying mother over the phone to calm her nerves. She knew Jesus was epileptic. In fact, she was so concerned that she called the warden, but was reassured by prison officials that her son would be well taken care of in the Special Housing Unit (SHU).

They called it “la celda de castigo,” the cell of punishment. It was standard practice for inmates who complained about the lack of medical aid to be placed there. Jesus complained. And instead of getting the attention that was promised to his mother, he was locked up in a dungeon and forgotten. He had legitimate cause for concern and wrote in a letter to his family that he was worried he would not get the epilepsy treatment he needed, putting him at grave risk. The phone call never came and it was only when Jesus’ mother called to check on her son was she told that Jesus had died.

He was dead long enough that when they finally checked on him, his body was stiff and purple.

Jesus Manuel Galindo was refused medical treatment due to his epilepsy and left to die, and while this might have been a typical occurrence at any detention center, what wasn’t typical was the response. The Pecos Insurrection, or “Motin[3],” as it was called by its participants, was the second revolt in a matter of weeks. The insurrection took place from December 2008 to January 2009 at the Reeves County Detention Complex, which is owned by the GEO Group. Several hundred detainees responded to Jesus’ death by executing a daring takeover of the facility, setting it ablaze and inflicting over $20 million worth of damage[4].

“By midafternoon, members of the FBI, Texas Rangers, DPS and the Odessa Police Department arrived at the prison. As the crisis negotiators quickly found out, the riot had not been prompted by gang infighting, racial tensions or a spontaneous outburst of violence. The men incarcerated at the Pecos prison are considered ‘low-security’; most are serving relatively short sentences for immigration violations or drug offenses.”

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Detainees take control of Reeves County Detention Complex in Pecos, TX, Jan. 2009

The rebellion brought together workers of many nationalities and races, and created a detainee delegation composed of Venezolanos, Nigerians, Cubanos, and Mexicanos who negotiated for changes in food, healthcare, and legal resources at the facility[5].

The opening shot of the prison movement was powerful, and although little was said about in the media, there can be no doubt that it will remain a reference point for the State on the weakness of its rule and the humanity of those it holds in bondage.

“Crips, Bloods, Mexicans Together”: 2010-2013

Two years later, in December 2010, a tenfold-unit mass strike, the largest prison strike in US history[6], rocked Georgia as thousands of incarcerated workers refused to leave their cells in protest of unpaid labor (the standard in Georgia). Inmates of all kinds – black, white, and Latino, crips and bloods, Muslims, and Aryans[7] – were able to coordinate with each other across units using contraband cellphones. Among the facilities that participated in the strike were Augusta, Baldwin, Calhoun, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Rogers, Smith, Telfair, Valdosta, and Ware. Collectively, they demanded wages for their work, while also putting forward demands concerning education, communication with family, meals, parole, and ending solitary confinement. However, the strike was brutally repressed by the Department of Corrections (DOC) using lockdowns, beatings, and transferring the leadership of the strike which resulted in a decrease of activity for the next year.

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Georgia incarcerated workers on strike, Dec. 2010

In June 2012, activity in Georgia found new life with a hunger strike at Jackson State Prison. Jackson was the same facility that once housed Troy Davis, an innocent black man put to death by the State, which resulted in thousands of protesters in the streets. This is where the leaders of the mass strike were transferred and, along with dozens of other inmates, held a hunger strike.[8] Significantly, a group of students and activists in the free world, many of which had taken part in the Troy Davis demonstrations, organized actions on the outside including clogging up DOC phone lines and marching on the DOC offices in Atlanta. The strike lasted 44 days and saw many men on the verge of death and as they faced retaliation by prison officials and their goons. A delegation of nearly 100 supporters traveled to Forsyth to meet with Commissioner Brian Owens to pressure him into granting the strikers demands but he refused to see them. The strike was defeated but the legacy of December 2010 lives on as incarcerated workers continue to organize under the banner of United Nations Against the Machine.[9] The most important variable was the convergence of militant actions on the outside by supporters, adding new weight to and raising the stakes for prisoners’ activity.

Organizing across race and gang affiliation would find expression again in perhaps the largest hunger strike in recorded history which took place in July of 2013, at the Pelican Bay State Prison, the only supermax facility in California[10]. The hunger strike was organized by an unlikely alliance of gang leadership, which was comprised of the Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerilla Family, the Mexican Mafia, and Nuestra Familia and involved 30,000 participants. Ironically, if it weren’t for the SHU, this strike might have never happened, but because the gangs’ leaders were all housed there, they began to communicate and even discuss radical political literature explaining their conditions. Some of that literature included the Bible.

“[Sitawa] Jamaa [leader of the BGF] thought his fellow inmates might need some concrete encouragement. His private fast the previous fall had lasted 33 days, and he believed he could have gone longer. Soon after last summer’s strike began, the four leaders were moved from the SHU to a unit called Administrative Segregation, and Jamaa, entering the unit, started to holler, “Forty days and 40 nights! Forty days and 40 nights!” If prisoners can be counted upon to know any literature, it is the literature of suffering that in the Bible precedes redemption. Jamaa had chosen his slogan with intent: They were Moses in the desert. At night, Jamaa would drop on his knees, put his mouth to the crack between the door and the floor, and yell: “Forty days and 40 nights!” Soon, new hunger strikers arriving in AdSeg were shouting the slogan as they were hustled in. It was then that Jamaa began to believe their movement had some possibility, some momentum.”

There is some question as to how voluntary this strike was and it is possible that at least some of its participation was due to compulsion from the gang leadership. Whatever the case may be, 30,000 men realized their collective power that they could continue to wield for themselves. As a result of their activity, the State of California moved thousands of incarcerated out of solitary confinement, effectively ending its use.

Galindo Lives: Immigrants Strike Back Again at GEO Group, 2014

On March 11, 2014, only nine months following the hunger strike at Pelican Bay, and likely without any knowledge of its existence, a massive hunger strike was declared at Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington involving all 1200 of its detainees. Like the Reeves Complex in Pecos, Northwest is also run by the GEO Group. Hundreds of supporters rallied in front of the NWDC complex followed by a series of actions involving more than 500 protesters, including one at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, calling for their divestment from GEO Group stock holdings. The hunger strike carried on for a total of 56 days. Following this two-month-long effort were two more abortive strikes in August and November.

Word of the initial Tacoma strike spread from its Pacific Northwest origins to the Gulf Coast and the border as detainees held at Joe Corley Detention Center in Conroe, Texas (another GEO enterprise) also refused their meals.

“Inspired by the Tacoma strike, inmates at the Joe Corley Facility decided to carry out their own hunger strike in Conroe. Initial reports were that a larger group had started the strike but that the group had become smaller by the time they released a demand letter through a lawyer. Similar to the strikers in Tacoma, Joe Corley inmates demanded improved conditions of the detention center, better quality of food, outdoor privileges, and better visitation arrangements. But unlike Tacoma, they demanded something quite different: the abolition of deportation and detention.”

In fact, they refused to leave their cells in what amounted to a de facto labor strike that brought the maintenance of the facility to a standstill. Additionally, like the Jackson, Georgia hunger strike two years prior, a group of immigrant activists in the free world met with key organizers of the hunger strike to coordinate actions on the inside of Corley in concert with actions on the outside against liable political targets – in this case, Sheriff Adrian Garcia[11]. Garcia was an ardent supporter of 287g, or “Secure Communities”, which allows police to coordinate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and effectively turning cops into border agents. The activists stormed the Sheriff’s office with 100 in tow delivering the demands of the strikers. While plans for a second strike were made, they did not materialize due to the transfer or deportation of its strike leadership. But while Corley officially stomped the flames of resistance, they unwittingly spread its embers as its participants carrying the lessons of the Corley strike with them in their hearts.

At nearly every stage of struggle, a new leap is made in tactics, breadth, militancy, organization, and consciousness. The hunger strike wave of 2014 is has important implications: it is the first identifiable strike wave, where one strike inspired another; strikes occurred at facilities owned by the same master, the GEO Group, which has important strategic implications; and finally, the demand became one for abolition of deportation instead of its reform.

Free Alabama Movement and the Industrial Workers of the World

While detention centers are being rocked by immigrants holding hunger and labor strikes, a labor strike was called for in advance by the Free Alabama Movement, or F.A.M.[12] The first strike, in January of 2014, began with two facilities, St. Clair and Holman, and grew to include two more units[13]. One of its leaders, Melvin Ray, learned about the Georgia mass strike in 2010 and was inspired to organize a similar effort in his home state.[14] There was little attention given to the January strike but it was organized, like its Georgia predecessor, against unpaid labor as Melvin said the State of Alabama was “running a slave empire” and “incarcerating people for free labor.” Sadly, the second strike in April was preempted by prison authorities and although it never took off, it nevertheless resulted in a relationship with the Industrial Workers of the World[15], a radical union with a history of organizing on the margins of society. The IWOC, an IWW committee, emerged from the interactions with F.A.M. organizers.

Melvin was interviewed in December 2015 about current efforts at organizing and networking with other prisons:

“At the forefront of our Movement is networking with prisoners around the country and expanding the freedom movement against mass incarceration and prison slavery. To date, we have linked up with UNAM (United Nations Against the Machine) who are the prisoners in Georgia that organized the shutdown in 2010, we helped the prisoners in Mississippi to form the Free Mississippi Movement United, The New Underground Movement (brothers in the California prison system), brothers in the Kansas prison system and Iman Siddique Hasan of the Lucasville 5 in Ohio’s prison system.”[16]

Back in Georgia two months later in June, this time at an immigrant detention center in Lumpkin, hundreds of detainees went on hunger strike tossing their food, known to be contaminated and rotten, into the garbage.[17] This was a blip in the media and information around it is wanting.

The Era of Riots, 2015–present

The year 2015 had some important developments worth noting and shows that all tactics are still on the table whether they are hunger strikes, labor strikes, or riots, but it was this latter form that predominated.

The new year was touched off with a riot at the Willacy County Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas near the Mexican border. Just like the “Motin” in Pecos, the riots were a response to inadequate housing and medical conditions. Willacy, run by the corporation MTC, was an overcrowded tent facility and was declared “uninhabitable” by the time the detainees were done burning it down and compelling their transfer to alternative units.[18] Also like Pecos, there were no reported fights among the detainees; they stood united against MTC, the guards, and the police with a bravery like no other. The politics of this riot were implied in its destruction. Detention centers and prisons should not exist, and to this day Willacy exists only in history.

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Smoke emanating from the now non-existent Willacy Detention Center in Raymondville, TX, Feb. 2015

In April of that year there were two back-to-back hunger strikes that took place in another GEO Group facility[19], this time a family detention center reserved for immigrants in Karnes City, Texas. A group of mothers incarcerated with their children not only refused their meals but also the voluntary duties that came with a $3/day wage.[20]

A planned labor stoppage turned into a riot at a state prison in Tecumseh, Nebraska the following month, after prison officials received a demand letter backed with the promise to strike.[21] An informal committee at Tecumseh came together to draw up a set of demands and present them to prison staff. If the demands were not met, the following day the work would stop. The day of the demand delivery several dozen committee members and supporters congregated in the main compound area and were ordered by prison staff to disperse. When the demands were handed over, the guards became aggressive and began to pepper spray the group and several started fighting back. An incarcerated member of the IWW who took part in the resistance wrote a reflection on the events:

“The group stood as one and began marching around the compound. Inmates inside the housing units joined in at this time. Staff ran for cover, locking everyone out of their housing units. The group of inmates marching on the compound tried to break into the gym to let out inmates who had been locked in.”[22]

Eventually, the authorities retook control but the news of this strike was reprinted in the Industrial Worker (the I.W.W. press) and shared with other incarcerated workers across the country who will no doubt find inspiration from this brave standoff.

Another hunger strike was organized in Arizona in June[23] and included 200 detainees at Eloy Detention Center owned by Corrections Corporation of America who owns multiple detention centers in Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Tennessee, Colorado, among other states[24]. The strike came together after guards brutally beat and placed in solitary confinement José de Jesús Deniz-Sahagún who later died of his injuries.

“At 9:45 a.m., the men sat down in the recreation yard and declared a hunger strike over what they call brutal and inhumane conditions, according to grassroots justice organization Puente Arizona. Protesters stood outside the detention facility all day Saturday, holding signs to show their solidarity with the strikers.

“The group said it is demanding improved conditions, access to legal resources and court hearings and an independent investigation into two recent deaths after what it calls ‘guard abuse.’

“The detainees also say they want an end to exploitation of their work and ‘no more criminalization, detention and deportations.’”[25][26]

Here again the militant call for the end of detention and deportation supersedes demands for reform.

All was quiet for the remainder of 2015, when in March of 2016, a violent episode transpired back in Alabama at the Holman unit. This time, instead of striking, prisoners were burning the place down.[27] The initial context was the arrival of the new warden, Carter F. Davenport, who formerly ran the St. Clair unit. During his tenure there, he oversaw a 200 percent spike in violence in a facility that had a record for the lowest incidences in violence. This is partly due to his cutting of popular programming. He is known for personally taking part in the violent abuse of prisoners. Now he was given a taste of his own medicine.

“‘Two inmates got in a fight, and 30 minutes later, the C.O. comes in yelling, disrespecting everyone, tearing a bunch of guys’ shit up, guys that got nothing to do with it,’ Poetik told The Daily Beast. An ‘elder’ inmate, a long-timer who has built a rapport with staff, stepped in to calm things down, Poetik said.

“‘The officer did not wanna hear that shit, and he started yelling and cussing at him, and that’s when the stabbing started.’

“Poetik said Warden Davenport ‘came down with the same attitude, cussing this guy out—so then it was no more talking, and he got stabbed.’”

Early in the morning on March 12, prisoners took over dorm “C” and began destroying their cages with fires and destruction. They organized their efforts through contraband phones, just as in Georgia in 2010, and took videos of their wrath.[28] Prisoners held Holman for nearly four hours before the authorities regained control. The following weekend F.A.M. members sent a list of demands to Alabama D.O.C. for “immediate federal assistance” and a repeal to repeat offender laws among others.

Texas Work Stoppage of 2016

Finally, we reach the most recent and one of the most advanced episodes in the last eight years of prison resistance; a mass strike organized by IWW members on the inside. Starting on April 4th and then spreading, incarcerated workers in seven units, including Lynaugh in Fort Stockton, Mountain View in Gatesville, Polunksy in Livingston, Roach in Childress, Robertson in Abilene, Torres in Hondo, and Wynne in Hunstville refused to be called out for work.[29]

At the Robertson unit, an inside report was received from an IWW delegate that the authorities tried to preempt the strike by going on lockdown on the evening of April 3rd. But on the morning of the 5th, when calling out prisoners to work, with the exception of the trustees, the workers refused. This was the first unit-wide lockdown in eight years and it put a lot of pressure on the staff to carry out tasks done by incarcerated workers. The prison officials attempted to divide the unit by rewarding the strikebreakers with fresh clothes, meals, and commissary, while the strikers were given tasteless and non-nutritional “johnnies,” soy beef loaf and PBJs. The unit went off lockdown on the 22nd and most returned to work, but not before costing the unit three weeks worth of lost labor time.[30]

The incarcerated IWW group in the Robertson unit, with the conclusion of the work stoppage, are currently regrouping, drawing on tactical and organizational lessons, and carrying out a slowdown of work in preparation for a nationwide general strike set to happen on September 9th, the 45th anniversary of the Attica Uprising of 1971.

Conclusion

The Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), or “Wobblies”, has a more than century-long reputation of organizing the working class as it exists in every skin or body, nationality, skill-level, and industry. It was the first union organized by immigrants, blacks, women, unskilled workers, prisoners, and everyone else who the official mainstream labor organizations refused to organize and often sold out. Instead of relying on the law, the courts, and politicians, all of which are complicit in the mass incarceration of our class, we use our own collective and direct action, experience, and organization to not only fight for immediate demands, for an long-term improvement in conditions for ourselves. Our vision is for a world without a wage system, without prisons, and without capitalism and a division of labor which stamps us as specific types of workers with a specific values that alienates us from our own humanity.

The I.W.O.C. is a committee of the I.W.W. that emerged following the Alabama strike in 2014. The I.W.O.C. “functions as a liaison for prisoners to organize each other, unionize, and build solid bridges between prisoners on the inside and fellow workers on the outside.”[31] We are small but dedicated, and our impact is larger than our numbers. We are not paid staff members. We are workers, who, when not organizing on the job, must organize in our off-hours.

In Houston, as well as in Austin and Dallas, we are a liaison for prisoners in the state of Texas and we have a history of organizing with prisoners and detainees. We and our broader networks intervened directly in the Joe Corley strike, helped coordinate with striking detainees for inside action, and mobilized our own networks to act as pressure points on the outside. We stood against ICE raids and the detention of undocumented fellow workers, and we marched directly on the Harris County jail. We are ready to stand today and to whatever we can to ensure that you are not alone.

You are in there for us, we are out here for you.

For more information contact us at:

Houston I.W.O.C., PO Box 540662, Houston, TX 77254

houston@iww.org

http://unityandstruggle.org/2016/05/05/incarcerated-workers-take-the-lead-prison-struggles-in-the-united-states-2008-2016-3/

Powerful quote from twitter poster Donnie Diggins:

As a Northern transplant to Texas and the South, I say there's nowhere I'd rather be, no place in the US with more revolutionary conditions.

blindpig

05-21-2016, 02:01 PM

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT calls for federal investigation into allegations of Human Rights violations at Holman Prison
Posted on May 8, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT
After receiving numerous phone calls from family members and photographs from conditions inside Holman prison, FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT and other representatives are calling for federal authorities and Human Rights attorneys to investigate allegations of Human Rights violations taking place at Holman to punish peaceful protests.

Reports indicate that officers are leaving dorms in filth, not taking out trash, leaving showers and soiled laundry unclean, in efforts to punish peaceful demonstrations.

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The men in Holman prison also allege that officers are violating their Human Rights by serving inadequate meals and attempting to use starvation tactics in violation of Federal and International law and treatise against Torture through food.

Basic nutritional calories and food portions are not being met.

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The men confined at Holman prison are asking supporters to contact the Human Rights Watch, all media, and Human Rights attorneys and request that they come to the prison and begin taking complaints. Living conditions include leaky ceiling with Black mole and other harmful conditions in the showers that are causing infections.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/

More images and contact info at link.(I gotta run.)

Dhalgren

05-21-2016, 02:17 PM

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT calls for federal investigation into allegations of Human Rights violations at Holman Prison

First step, I suppose. The "New Jim Crow", in many ways, is worse than the old. This is as bad a treatment of political prisoners as anywhere on earth - worse than most. "America was never great."

Dhalgren

05-25-2016, 02:53 PM

Prisoners’ Voices Blocked and Censorship in U.S. Prisons

by Jaan Laaman

“Sometimes a prisoner has all his or her phone or email communications arbitrarily shut off for months.”

The United States is often called the country of prisons because we are five percent of the world’s population, but the U.S. holds 25 percent of all the prisoners in the world. Recently we have heard talk from the White House and Congress about the need to reduce this huge prison population, which is costing the taxpayers billions.

Occasionally you might hear a prisoner’s voice on some media platform, usually a Human Rights or community outlet. These present words are written by Jaan Laaman. I am a long held political prisoner presently locked up in the U.S. Penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona. Let me be very clear, prisoners have a hard time getting our words and thoughts out from behind America’s many, many prison walls. While prisoners do have a legal right to express their thoughts and report on issues and abuses, actually getting your words out is often very hard or impossible.

All incoming and outgoing prisoner communication, postal mail, phone calls and some restricted email services that some prison systems allow, are all opened and monitored. This is authorized by regulations and law. Further censorship and outright blocking of communications and publications, also routinely occurs in prisons throughout this country.

Letters, magazines and books critical of government policies and wars are often not delivered, even if official policy states that prisoners are allowed these materials. Sometimes a prisoner has all his or her phone or email communications arbitrarily shut off for months. While an official appeal channel is usually available, these are biased at best and could easily be labeled a kangaroo court process. Communications would be shut down for months, even if the prisoner ultimately wins appeal and has his or her communications restored.

Censoring, restricting and flat out blocking communications, especially of political prisoners, is a harsh and dangerous reality going on now, in prisons all across this country. My own voice, which has previously been heard on radio and in print over many years, has been almost totally cut off since February. No official explanation has been given, other than, that prison authorities do not like my commentaries and essays. Freedom of speech---Freedom of expression, for America’s prisoners is a constant struggle!

These words are from Jaan Laaman and I hope I can, once again, speak more directly to you in the future.

Jaan Laaman was sentenced to 53 years in prison while a member of the United Freedom Front. He can be contacted – if the authorities allow – at Jaan Laaman (10372-016), P.O. Box 24550, Tucson, AZ 85734.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/prisoners_voices_silenced_blocked

Dhalgren

06-19-2016, 09:49 AM

ALA. D.O.C. DEVISES VIOLENT PLAN TO SECURE FUNDING FOR NEW PRISONS: HUNGER STRIKE UNDER WAY AT DONALDSON, CF

Commissioner Jeff Dunn and the ADOC have resorted to state-sanctioned violence in efforts to contain the Movement for Human and Civil Rights that is being led by the men incarcerated in Alabama prisons.

In response to the violence that was provoked at Holman prison on March 11, 2016, by former warden Carter Davenport that lead to his forced resignation after he was also stabbed, the ADOC transferred five (5) men ( Antonio Spencer, Amir Davis, Kevin Eldridge, and two others ) from Holman prison in Atmore, Alabama to Donaldson CF in Bessemer, Al. Donaldson CF serves as the headquarters for the CERT Team for ADOC.

Upon entry to the back-gate receiving area at Donaldson CF, one by one, all five of these men were taken into a secluded area and then brutally beaten while handcuffed. These assaults was lead by Officer Gunn, while several supervisors and other officers either stood by and watched or participated in the assault. At least two of the assault victims, Amir Davis and Kevin Eldridge, reported that during the beatings they were stomped in their testicles and told that this was being done so they wouldn’t ever have children. All of these assaults have been verified through medical files, statements, and eyewitness accounts. Several officers were suspended and/or remain under investigation, yet not a single officer has been fired or charged with any crime.

There are lawsuits currently pending against multiple officers at Donaldson CF for excessive force, rape, planting evidence and creating false documents, and more. This violence, including the stomping of testicles is a routine state-sanctioned and preferred tactic at Donaldson CF. Commissioner Dunn is sanctioning this violence at Donaldson in efforts to silence the internal complaints about the Civil and Human rights violation that are taking place on a day to day basis in Alabama prisons, which are being made by the many people incarcerated in Alabama prisons, including those who are a part of Free Alabama Movement.

“DONALDSON RESORTS “HOT BAY” SO-CALLED BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION DORMS TO IMPOSE PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL OPPRESSION “

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/0422161432a1.jpg?w=562
Statement of K. Aldridge

The excessive levels of correctional officers abusing their authority, officer beatings and beatings deaths, and use of chemical agents and excessive for force is already documented in a 2012 class-action lawsuit settlement against Donaldson CF. Sammie Duncan is one of the people who was also beaten and stomped in his testicles at Donaldson prison in the past. The sadistic nature of his beating required him to have one of his testicles removed after it was stomped from his body during the attack by officers. Others, like Mr. Agee (first name not known) , was beaten to death by Donaldson correctional officers.

Beginning on Friday, June 10, 2016, Donaldson CF started psychological oppression and provocation tactics by implementing a “hot bay” behavior modification dorm. Commissioner Dunn started their latest “hot bay” by transferring men from St. Clair CF at the beginning of Summer. All of these men were taken from general population at St. Clair prison and then placed into this program without any form of due process. No paperwork was served explaining why they were being placed in the dorm or how long they would be there. All of their personal property was taken away, including legal work, canteen supplies, and personal mail, etc.

Additionally, they are behind denied access to visitation, religious services, recreation, and social services. In fact, some of these men have disciplinary free files for several years, yet they are being forcibly placed in this restrictive dorm. Several of the men who arrived from St. Clair report being assaulted handcuffed. Many of these men had received incentive packages while at St. Clair, only to arrive at Donaldson prison where it was then all taken away from them without explanation.

“HOT BAY” OCCUPANTS ORGANIZE HUNGER STRIKES TO PROTEST DUE PROCESS DEPRAVATIONS AND INHUMAN TREATMENT

On Thursday, June 16, 2016, all of the residents assigned to X dorm launch hunger strike to protest conditions. The hunger strike is in response to the Civil and Human rights violations, DEPRAVATIONS, inhumane conditions that include 24 hour lockdown in scorching hot two-man cells, a denial of basic hygiene and cleaning supplies, and the continued police assaults that kept taking place upon new arrivals from St. Clair.

One officer,(Godson) has assaulted at least three people who were transferred to Donaldson from St. Clair or Holman prison, Zach Wilson, XaBrian, Jeremy Taylor, and during these incidents several witnesses heard the officer making statements like, ” You are with that Free Alabama Movement. Fuck Free Alabama Movement.”

BIBB CO. “HOT BAY” RIOTS, REBELLION, AND DESTRUCTION PROVE THE THESE TYPE OF LIVING ENVIRONMENTS DON’T WORK AND ARE WASTE OF TAX DOLLARS

As many Alabama citizens know, the use of “hot bay” behavior modification dorms in Alabama have already proven themselves to be tinder boxes. Bibb Co CF has already had a major disturbances in their hot bay dorms and several minor ones in less than a year. The first one, in July 2015 resulted in an entire dorm being destroyed. These type of dorms have always had problems and always will have problems.

Yet, in spite of the clear examples that these types oppressive living environments always end in mayhem, Commissioner Dunn presses forward with the plans to install a “hot bay” dorm at Donaldson CF. These dorms, which seem to place lives in danger, appear to be being used by the ADOC to create more headlines and violent conditions that so that the 1.5 billion dollar plan for new prisons can be revived.
While the material costs of the prison building plan is known, the question that remains opens is, what will be the final human cost and how many more lives and property will be lost in pursuit of more prisoners in Alabama with a plan that has already been proven to not work ?

Times have changed around the country with respect to mass incarceration, and a conscious awakening to the reality that “INCARCERATED LIVES MATTER “, is taking place. The time for change is NOW !!

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog

blindpig

06-19-2016, 11:55 AM

The prison population of the US is the only set of people(a considerable one too) in this country who are not bribed in any way whatsoever, not even with unhealthy calories and 24/7 'screen'.

We were wondering where 'bottom' is, well, there ya are. And so, necessity make an appearance.

Dhalgren

06-27-2016, 10:28 PM

HUNGER STRIKE UPDATE

Posted on June 27, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

One of the hunger striking members, LaQuientia McDuffie, 282760, is experiencing extreme distress. He had been removed from the ” behavior modification” dorm and placed into solitary confinement in W-38. McDuffie is 24 year old young man and we believe that both of his parents are deceased. If anyone can assist us in this matter to help protect his human rights from further violations, please email is your contact info.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog

Dhalgren

06-27-2016, 10:34 PM

Posted on June 27, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

The experiment with the “behavior modification” dorm at Donaldson CF in Alabama continues. Hearkening back to the Tuskegee Experiment and other forms of medical torture that have taken place in Alabama against predominately African Americans, the Alabama prison system is again violating basic civil and human rights in the name of corrections by conducting a “behavior modification” experimental program and using over 80% African American men, including many who don’t have any behavior problems.

Over the past two weeks, the Alabama Department of Corrections has been going to other lower level prisons around the State and snatching up African American men and transferring them to Donaldson CF and placing them into a new experimental program called the “behavior modification” program. The first problem is, most — if not all — of these African American men came from general population at other prisons with no behavior records warranting their transfer.

Once in this program, all of their rights and privileges are curtailed. Among the most egregious violations has been the denial of showers for six consecutive days and counting, no personal or legal property, denial of all mail, books, and reading material, no visitation with family, and no paperwork or written explanation explaining why they are being placed into a “behavior modification” program; all while housed two to a cell.

Many of these men have such exemplary records that they qualified for an incentive package at their former prison, only to arrive at Donaldson to have their packages taken from them. In order to qualify for an incentive package, one must have 6 months disciplinary free records for non-violent rules violations and 1 year disciplinary free for violent disciplinary. Some of these men have multiple years of disciplinary free records, while others have never have any prior violent records.

They are forced to eat, sleep, defecate, and urinate with another person in the cell at all times. These cells don’t have a table to eat on, and if one or the other cellmates is defecating when a meal is being served, both of their trays are passed into the cell anyway. And, because they are being denied recreation time, they are locked down 24 hours every day in a two-man cell. Also of note is that the ADOC elected to start this experimental program in the heat of the Summer.

Again, the majority of these men, came from the general population at other prisons. Most of them have disciplinary free files, yet they are being placed into a behavior modification program. Some of them have level 4 custody for a medium security prison, yet they were transferred to a level 6 maximum security prison, which is the highest level prison in Alabama, and placed on total lockdown.

In fact, these men were placed into this experimental program before a S.O.P. manual was complete on how this program would be ran or what the criteria would be to place someone in this program.

If the majority of these African American men don’t have any disciplinary records to justify their placement into this program, and all of them came from general population at other lower level prisons and have lower custody classification status, why are they being placed into this experimental “behavior modification” program? The answer seems quite simple: because this racist experimental programs was designed to be tested on and carried out disproportionately against African American men.

This is the same model that was used in the Georgia prison system.

The Georgia Department of Corrections hired a retired military officer to run their prison system, and he began a “behavior modification ” program that employs these same enhanced torture tactics that were first tested and used by the US military in Abu Gharib prison in Iraq. Alabama has now followed suit by hiring a retired military officer to run the Alabama Department of Corrections, and the new Commissioner is now implementing the exact same “behavior modification” program in Alabama. Georgia tested their program on mostly African American men also.

Please help us bring awareness to this racist and illegal experimental program at Donaldson CF and protest against its continuous by doing the following:

1) Join our media campaign to help expose this program and the fact that African Amwrican men in Alabama prisons are being targeted and placed into an experimental psychological torture “behavior program” even though the vast majority of them don’t have any behavior citations.

2) Contact Commissioner Jeff Dunn, Sen. Cam Ward, Governor Robert Bentley and the Civil Rights Division of the US Dept of Justice, and file a complaint and demand to know why this experimental program is being carried out exclusively against African American men.

3) Join FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT, MOTHERS AND FAMILIES, THE ORDINARY PEOPLE SOCIETY, and IWOC as we plan to organize protests at Donaldson CF against this racist and illegal experimental program.

4) Contact the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners and file a complaint against any medical/psychology professional for engaging in experimental psychological practices and mental torture against African American men incarcerated at Donaldson prison.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/alabama-prison-carrying-our-racist-psychological-experimental-program-at-donaldson-prison-predominately-against-african-american-men/

Dhalgren

07-12-2016, 09:20 AM

Another Man Dead In Alabama Prison

Update in relations to the Alabama department of Corrections, at the Elmore facility in Elmore county. A white middle aged man was found collapsed inside of DORM A-1 just a few moments ago . The officer that eventually responded was Co1 Scroggins failed to administer CPR . The man was unresponsive and had turned blue. The shift leader Sgt. Richardson was called to the scene and he responded nonchalantly, taking his time, and without being prepared with an emergency CPR to attempt a life saving maneuver in which each Correctional officer has training in. Officer Wood pushed the unresponsive inmate slowly to the back gate of Elmore where the inmate has to be taken to another facility in order to receive medical attention. WHY IS THAT?BECAUSE THERE IS NO MEDICAL PERSONNEL AT ELMORE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY.THIS ALONE IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!!note the man died and now Elmore is in lock down due to the administration. Please CONTACT media and state representatives about this. I’ll update with the man’s name!

Confirmation in inmates name…a one, Walter Lemons, confirmed also he died during being taken from the dorm to the back gate of Elmore, and no CPR administered, nor any other attempt to save his life.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog

Dhalgren

07-25-2016, 04:45 PM

THREE- PART PLAN OF ACTION

Posted on July 25, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Free Alabama Movement is planning activities around our Three-Point Plan of Action for the remainder of 2016. We will be promoting this plan in conjunction with preparations for the September 9 Attica Anniversary Protest events around the country.

The three points derive from some of the main issues that are contributing factors to mass incarceration and the Industrialized Prison Complex that promotes neo-slavery in America. In Alabama, we are seeking action on these three issues:

1) Excessive overcrowding and the need for an immediate mass release. Alabama’s prison population must be reduced down to design capacity ;

2) Revisions and fundamental changes to Alabama’s habitual felony offender act;

3) Establishing “automatic” or mandatory parole criteria that will remove discretion from the parole board in parole decisions for qualified individuals.

It is essential to the effective implementation of these objectives the we step up our organizing and activism, esp. around the State of Alabama. This will include participation in the FREEDOM TOUR 2016 protests that are being scheduled and lead by Mothers And F.A.M.ilies, Inc., as well as the event being scheduled in Dothan, Alabama on August 27, 2016, by The Ordinary People Society.

The FREEDOM TOUR 2016 will be conducting protests statewide and conducting at least one demonstration at EVERY prison in the state of Alabama, to organize and then mobilize families and to bring awareness to the problems plaguing the Alabama prison system and the solution to these problems.

Join us today in this struggle for freedom and justice mobilize Alabama and join the National Freedom Movement to End Mass Incarceration and Prison Slavery.

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/fb_img_1460495921033.jpg?w=562

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Dhalgren

08-15-2016, 10:05 AM

FECES AND RAW SEWAGE POURS FROM ALABAMA’S DRAPER PRISON

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/wp-1471151103736.png?w=562

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/wp-1471151112236.jpg?w=562

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog

Dhalgren

08-15-2016, 10:09 AM

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/wp-1471210948504.png

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blindpig

08-19-2016, 11:56 AM

IWW GENERAL DEFENSE COMMITTEE BAIL FUND

Organized by: Central Secretary-Treasurer

https://www.crowdrise.com/media/large/IWOCSept9-57b3c7e949de7.png?57b72b70d73a1

THE STORY:

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World has been working with prisoners and groups from across the United States organizing a Nationally Coordinated Prisoner Workstoppage for September 9, 2016. In anticipation of state reprisals against our members on the inside and outside, the IWW General Defense Committee is expanding it bail fund to assist those fighting to end prisoner slavery.

Please donate and share this page!!!

IWOC National Prison Strike September 2016 event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/585509798294138/

Announcement of Nationally Coordinated Prisoner Workstoppage for Sept 9, 2016: https://iwoc.noblogs.org/post/2016/04/01/announcement-of-nationally-coordinated-prisoner-workstoppage-for-sept-9-2016/

https://www.crowdrise.com/iww-general-defense-committee-bail-fund1/fundraiser/GDCSteeringCommittee

blindpig

08-29-2016, 09:30 AM

National Prisoners Strike on Anniversary of Attica Rebellion

Left Voice in support of the National Prisoner’s September 9th Strike on the anniversary of the Attica rebellion.

http://www.facebook.com/828d1cb6-0b18-4912-8aec-36d35e540cbb

https://www.facebook.com/LeftVoice.org/videos/vb.1640918766144198/1814384638797609/?type=2&theater

Go to link for video.

Dhalgren

08-30-2016, 09:50 AM

Juvenile Justice: How 6 black children were set up for failure in Gadsden, Ala
by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

On March 24, 1988, six black (6) teens (Roland Martin, Fred Brown, Steve Stewart, Melvin Ray, Archie Hamlet, and Curtis Richardson) were arrested in the early morning hours after an attempted burglary of a department store in Gadsden, Alabama.

After being arrested, the youth were all taken to a police station where they were interrogated by several officers (all white) for several hours. By the time the interrogations ended, well after 3:00 am, the youth were charged collectively with over 30 counts (approx. 5 to 6 counts each ) for many other unsolved burglaries in Gadsden. These children did not have any attorney present during these interrogations and no attempt was made to contact any of their parents until after the interrogations had ended.

Some parents were reached, some weren't.

Later that same morning, these 6 children were taken before a judge for a "probable cause hearing." None of the parents attended this impromptu hearing. And, none of the youth were represented by counsel. Somehow, with no opportunity to be heard, without any counsel, and with little to no evidence beyond the word of the police officers, the judge allowed for probable cause to be stipulated to for all 6 youth. [1]
It is not known who the court allowed to stipulate to anything in behalf of the Gadsden 6 youth, but the record clearly shows that this is what occurred. We know that children could not stipulate to probable cause or anything else for themselves, and we know that no lawyers were appointed in the case until weeks later, in April, so the stipulation was not made by an attorney.

As a result of this stipulation, all 6 children were ordered to be detained in detention facilities pending further proceedings.

The next event to take place in these proceedings took place on April 6, 1988, when attorney J.B. Lofton was appointed. [2]

This appointment of counsel came after these children had already been before a judge and after the court had already authorized custody to be taken from the parents.
Finally, with counsel now appointed, the judge set a hearing for April 28, 1988, and for the first time, issued notice and summons' to the parents. [3]
However, on April 27, 1988, just one day before the hearing was scheduled, the prosecutor filed a motion to transfer all of the cases of the children to the circuit court for prosecution as adults (for all non-violent property offenses). The juvenile judge granted prosecutor's motion that same day that it was filed !!! [4]

Without a hearing, without a lawyer being present, and without any of the children or their parents being present. In fact, apparently no one but the judge and the prosecutor ( the same two parties from the March 24 probable cause "stipulation" hearing) were even aware that such motion had even been filed. In fact, proof that the attorney did not perform any services throughout these proceedings can be gleamed from the fact that his declaration for fees was voided right after it was filed. [5]

In the end, these children suffered convictions in adult court for offenses that they never had legal representation on at critical stages of the proceedings , namely, during the interrogations and initial arrest, at the probable cause hearing when someone was allowed to stipulate to probable cause in behalf of the children, and when judge granted the prosecutor's motion to transfer the cases to adult court. Of course, all of this was/is illegal.

All or most of these children suffered collateral consequences as a result of the actions taken in the juvenile court, including having these illegal prior convictions used against them both in and out of court, including two of whom who have had these illegal non- violent prior convictions used to enhance future sentences to Life Without Parole under Alabama's Habitual Felony Offender Act.

We are asking that you support the Gadsden 6 as they fight for Juvenile Justice in Alabama.

WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS ALABAMA

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/author/sankofa4fam/

Dhalgren

08-31-2016, 01:50 PM

A new site associated with associated with The Free Alabama Movement and the anti-prison slavery movement/pro incarcerated rights movement.

New Underground Railroad Movement

https://newundergroundrailroadmovement.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/nurm-logo-jhd-2.jpg?w=1080&h=826

About

The New Underground Railroad Movement is a grassroots inside-outside organization that recognizes that the institutionalization of mass incarceration is the greatest civil rights and social issue we are faced with today.

The New Underground Railroad Movement is dedicated to shutting down the “prison industrial complex” through tactical, organizational and grassroots work strikes, boycotts and class conscious empowerment.

Contact the New Underground Railroad Movement Director-Coordinator Mr. Anthony Robinson Jr.:

Mr. Anthony Robinson Jr.,
P.O. Box 55185,
Stockton, CA 95205

Twitter: @NewURMovement

https://newundergroundrailroadmovement.wordpress.com

Right now they have articles written last year, but will be adding new ones.

Dhalgren

09-01-2016, 09:59 AM

Dhalgren

09-01-2016, 10:02 AM

Man convicted of manslaughter stabs inmate to death at Elmore Correctional Facility

By Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
Email the author
on August 30, 2016 at 11:22 PM, updated August 31, 2016 at 8:21 AM
Alabama Department of Corrections

The Elmore Correctional Facility is on lockdown after an inmate was fatally stabbed on Tuesday, Alabama Department of Corrections said.

http://image.al.com/home/bama-media/width155/img/news_montgomery_impact/photo/21018959-small.jpg
Davieon Cortez Williams (aka, "Manny").

Davieon Cortez Williams, 24, received multiple stab wounds during a fight with inmate Jonathan Gladney, 41, at 4:30 p.m. Williams was transported to the facility's infirmary, where he was pronounced dead 26 minutes later. Williams was serving a 5-year sentence for a second-degree rape charge in Chambers County.

http://image.al.com/home/bama-media/width155/img/news_montgomery_impact/photo/21018964-small.jpg
Jonathan Gladney

Gladney, who is serving a life sentence for a 2006 manslaughter conviction in Barbour County, was detained.

Officials said the facility will remain on lockdown until the investigation is complete.

http://www.al.com/news/montgomery/index.ssf/2016/08/man_convicted_of_manslaughter.html

When Will The Alabama Media Start Questioning The Narrative

Posted on September 1, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

http://www.al.com/news/montgomery/index.ssf/2016/08/man_convicted_of_manslaughter.html
First of all, I want to correct this article and say that we were only on lockdown for a couple of hours. Security is still just as lax as the afternoon it occurred.
His name in here was Manny. He and the other inmate had gotten into an altercation earlier that morning. The prison knew about this altercation and got the two inmates to sign a living agreement stating that they would not harm one or the other again. the prison then placed both inmates back into the same dorm that they were living in before this occurred.
So what do you expect? The guy murdered Manny in his sleep. Because he could. Because the Department of Corruption let him by placing both of these guys back in the same dorm after they had already fought. Manny’s blood is on their hands. And so is anyone who refuses to do nothing about the overcrowding our prison system faces.

(My underlining - Dhal)

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/author/sankofa4fam/

Dhalgren

09-01-2016, 04:42 PM

OFFICER SERIOUSLY STABBED AT HOLMAN PRISON

Posted on September 1, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Police stabbed in the kitchen at Holman. He was transported to hospital but doesn’t look like he will make it.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/officer-seriously-stabbed-at-holman-prison/

This will probably be bad for the inmates there. The guards retaliate.

blindpig

09-01-2016, 05:00 PM

Dhalgren

09-01-2016, 05:54 PM

Collective punishment, and it will be approved every step up the command chain. Could be an 'Attica' shaping up.

Well, the "authorities" have left no alternative for these men and women. The prisoners have to fight back - and when they do, the pigs will kill as many as they can. Might be worse than Attica.

Dhalgren

09-06-2016, 07:10 PM

Malik Washington

Posted on September 6, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

From: Keith ‘Malik’ Washington – Spokesperson for – End Prison Slavery in Texas!

Peace and Blessings sisters and brothers! I hope this communication finds all of you doing well! Within the next few weeks many Free World Folks will be wondering why all these prisoners are refusing to work. I’d like you to read this message on any Radio Station that will allow you – focusing hard on the large metropolis cities of Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso, Texas. If someone could post the message on you tube via social media that will help a lot.

Message: – Radio/Internet etc.

Peace and Blessings to all – my name is:
Keith ‘Malik’ Washington. I am one of the key spokespersons for the End Prison Slavery in Texas Movement. I am from Houston, Texas, specifically the 3rd Ward. There are many Prison Authorities and Law Enforcement Officials who will attempt to characterize our movement as violent.
I have never endorsed or promoted violence in this Movement simply because it plays right into the hands of the individuals and Agencies who oppress us.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, F.B.I., D.H.S., and numerous Federal and State Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agencies are fully equipped to deal with violence.
However as prisoners finally become visible in the media we must use this opportunity to convey our thoughts and demands in an intelligent, pragmatic, and respectful manner.
What scares T.D.C.J. about this movement is not the violence – it is the prospect of two things:
1.) The threat of losing money from having to stop or slow operations of the numerous Texas Correctional Industry Factories which generate millions of Dollars.
2.) Being exposed in the main-stream media as an Agency which exploits, oppresses, and abuses human beings in their care.
On top of being a spokesperson for our movement I am also a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. Before I leave you I want to briefly state our Demands:
1.) On a National Level we want Presidential Candidates Hillary Clinton or Jill Stein to craft Legislation that will Abolish Prison Slavery by Amending the 13th Amendment.
2.) In Texas we want the Following:
A.) Good Time & Work Time credits which actually reduce our prison terms – All of us, not some!
B.) An Oversight Committee for T.D.C.J.
C.) Right to an Attorney on Habeas Filings
D.) Abolish the $100 Medical Co-pay System
E.) Humane Living Conditions & Treatment

There are no Racial issues we have – it is well understood that there are Black, White, Latino – Asian and Arab human beings who SUFFER inside Texas Prisons.
We are pleading with the World to hear our cries for Freedom and Humane Conditions. I leave you all as I came in Peace.
In Solidarity – Malik

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/author/sankofa4fam/

Dhalgren

09-06-2016, 07:14 PM

FREEDOM TOUR 2016 Donaldson CF

Posted on September 6, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Support Free Alabama Movement and the Freedom Tour 2016 as we engage in more protests against #blackgenocide and #endprisonslavery2016.

We will be in Dothan on September 7 and Donaldson on September 10th. Confirm your attendance on FB.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1187755704599243/?ti=cl

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/author/sankofa4fam/

blindpig

09-08-2016, 09:24 AM

This Week May See the Largest Prison Strike in US History
Across 24 states, inmates are sick of poisoned water, solitary confinement, and forced labor.
By John WashingtonTwitterYESTERDAY 11:03 AM

https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/prison_labor_rtr_img.jpg
Prison inmates lay water pipe on a work project outside Oak Glen Conservation Fire Camp #35 in Yucaipa, California. (Reuters / Lucy Nicholson)

This September 9, we may witness the largest prison strike in US history. Potentially thousands of inmates across both state and federal prisons in as many as 24 states plan to engage in a coordinated strike and protest in an attempt to bring attention to the daily injustice of their lives. The strikers are calling for an end to “slave-like” working conditions, illegal reprisals, and inhumane living conditions.

Planned for the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison uprising, the actions of September 9 will shed light on the often decrepit conditions suffered by the 2.4 million people in what is the largest carceral system in the world. They will also mark a new point in the fight against mass incarceration, and likely stand as a harbinger for further actions and strikes to come. Malik Washington, an inmate in the H. H. Coffield Unit in Texas and the chief spokesperson for the End Prison Slavery in Texas movement, wrote to me in a letter: “Prisoners in Amerikan prisons are sick and tired of being degraded, dehumanized, and exploited.”

BUILDING A MOVEMENT BEHIND BARS
The September action didn’t come out of nowhere. Siddique Abdullah Hasan, an inmate in Ohio State Penitentiary and a member of the Free Ohio Movement, describes it as just the latest part of “an ongoing resistance movement” that has seen increasing numbers of work strikes, hunger strikes, and protests hitting prisons across the country in the past decade. Back in 2010, inmates in at least six different state prisons in Georgia staged a labor strike, protesting prison conditions and lack of remuneration for their forced labor.

In 2013, in perhaps the most widely reported prison action in recent years, up to 30,000 inmates engaged in a hunger strike across California’s state facilities, forcing the hand of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to reform long-term solitary confinement policies, releasing as many as 2,000 prisoners to the general prison population in 2015. So far, 2016 has brought a wave of new strikes, starting with inmates in seven Texas state prisons striking in April. Alabama inmates engaged in a work strike and protest in May, and since then there have been work strikes and hunger strikes in Mississippi, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania.

Due to the number of facilities involved in September’s strike, the list of grievances, as well as the list of demands, is long, and varies both state-to-state and prison-to-prison. In Texas one of the common complaints is the deadly heat, with most facilities lacking air-conditioning, and heat indexes reportedly rising into the 150s Fahrenheit in some units. Inmates in Wisconsin and Ohio are protesting the excessive use of solitary confinement.

Facilities in Texas, Alabama and elsewhere regularly serve rotten food to inmates (a video posted on YouTube by members of the group Free Alabama Movement (FAM) show revolting “hamburger patties” that were green with mold). In prisons across the country, including in Texas, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Colorado, drinking water has been found to be contaminated with arsenic or other poisonous chemicals.

But there is one issue that has driven the energy behind September’s actions more than any other: Prison labor. Across the US, there are nearly 900,000 inmates who currently work in prisons. In states such as Colorado and Arizona, inmates earn as little as little as a few cents per hour for their work. In Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas, incarcerated people are forced to work for free.

Across the US, there are nearly 900,000 inmates who currently work in prisons.
The general public has little idea of the scope of prison labor, considering how pervasive it is. Most prisons force inmates to perform the basic facility maintenance—mopping floors, cutting grass, cooking, or washing clothes—that keep prisons running. Inmate author and long-time prisoner rights activist Rashid Johnson describes the entire Texas Prison system as dependent upon “its prisoner labor, with the prisoners literally performing every job short of running the cell blocks.” A number of states and federally run prisons also use inmate labor to manufacture marketable goods and services. Some of this labor is outsourced by private corporations, including Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Victoria’s Secret, Nordstrom’s, and AT&T Wireless, to name a few recognizable brand names.

When prison labor is paid, the compensation varies from federal to state to private prisons, rising rarely as high as $4.73 an hour, still far below minimum wages. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) which was passed in 1938 to establish minimum wage guarantees, doesn’t necessarily apply to inmates. Through a terminological sleight of hand, those running the prison work programs claim that inmates are not technically employees, and thus they don’t have to treat them by federal labor standards. Inmates, however, often feel that they aren’t treated by any standards at all. “Everyday we are being subjected to Third World living conditions,” Norris Hicks, an inmate in the Coffield Unit in Texas, wrote to me.

PRISONERS’ RIGHTS
Many assume that forced labor has had no place in America’s economic system since slavery was abolished at the end of the Civil War. But the 13th Amendment, which constitutionally outlawed slavery in 1865 (though some states didn’t ratify the amendment until much later, with Mississippi holding out until 2013), provides for some glaring exceptions, which have been exploited to varying degrees in the century and a half since its passing.

According to the amendment, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” In effect, the “punishment clause,” which sits between the two commas, opens the door for what many see as the continuation of slavery. “In Texas we are given a choice,” Malik Washington writes, “either work for free or suffer harsh disciplinary sanctions.” When inmates today claim that they are forced into slave labor, it is not to equate their conditions with antebellum chattel slavery—but to avoid the fraught term altogether would be to dismiss the lived experience and profound suffering of tens of thousands of inmates in the US prison system.

“In Texas we are given a choice, either work for free or suffer harsh disciplinary sanctions.”
Following the adoption of the 13th Amendment , southern states quickly set about implementing prison labor programs, such as convict leasing, in which, according to Patrice A. Fulcher, “a large number of Africans [were] working for the benefit of wealthy Southerners for free.” As Robert Perkinson writes in his book Texas Tough, while Jim Crow laws “outlined a legal framework for black subjugation, the criminal justice system put muscle behind it.” Between 1865 and 1868, the Texas prison population, Perkinson describes, almost quadrupled, with the private leasing of Texas inmates opening “the door for any ‘company or individual’ to hire convicts for railroad construction, mining, iron smelting, or irrigation.” This surge in incarceration rates was explicitly racist and unprecedented—that is, until the War on Drugs caused the US prison population to explode over the past 40 years.

WHEN ‘GOOD TIME’ MEANS MORE HARD TIME
Instead of earning money for their labor, most Texas inmates earn “good time” or “work time” credits. These credits accrue depending on the total number of days you spend in prison (also known as “flat time”) without committing violations, as well as the number of days you work. You can earn 20 good time days and 15 work time days for every month you spend in jail, which can ostensibly lead to earlier parole hearings. Inmates convicted of aggravated felonies, however, can’t earn either good time or work time, and yet they are still forced to work without compensation. Norris Hicks described getting involved in the group End Prison Slavery in Texas when he realized that “thousands of prisoners had time-sheets showing that they had completed more than 100 percent of their time.”

Felix Tijerina, who is incarcerated in Texas for an aggravated felony, told me that his nearly 20 years of working has amounted to nothing. Tijerina has spent almost two decades toiling in a garment factory, where he has sewn medical scrubs and has trained fellow inmates, and even new managers. He described consistent harassment by guards, who “talk smack” to inmates, or yell at them to “get the fuck back to work” if they linger on breaks.

To have a chance to eat breakfast before work, which begins at 4:15 am, Tijerina has to wake up at 2:45 in the morning. (Another inmate, Eric Bergstrom, told me breakfast in his unit, Estelle, started at 1 am). Tijerina also told me that officers have a habit of writing bogus cases against inmates, which can result in them getting removed from their cells (their “homes,” as he referred to them) and being put in the more dangerous and populous dorms. Even when inmates are sick, he told me, they are refused medical attention and forced to work. Bergstrom, meanwhile, wrote about riding what he called a slave wagon out to the fields in the mornings to pick cotton at gunpoint. “It’s slavery,” Tijerina said. “There’s no two ways about it.”

Jessica Spencer, the wife of Texas inmate Lawrence Spencer, told me that her husband’s monthly report shows that he has completed 180 percent of his good time, and yet he was denied parole this February. His work conditions are, he tells his wife, “horrible.” He says he sometimes spends all day digging stumps out of the ground, without lunch or sufficient water breaks. Spencer participated in the April strike in Texas, when he and other members of his “hoe-squad” sat down instead of taking up their tools. He claims they were handcuffed, written up, and the entire unit was placed on lockdown for two weeks. He wasn’t afforded a shower once in that stretch, he says, and for 14 days he and other inmates were only given two meager sack-lunches each day.

The same day that Spencer and his hoe-squad sat down on the job, Felix Tijerina and around 150 other inmates in the garment factory refused to sew. Their demands were simple: either get paid or get their work credits applied to their parole dates. Citing their First Amendment rights, they also voiced concerns of abuse, being falsely written up, and lack of medical care. As the 150 inmates sat around “kicking back and drinking coffee,” he, as one of the leaders, was handcuffed and accused of inciting a riot. “There was no riot,” he told me.

To eat breakfast before work, which begins at 4:15 AM, Felix Tijerina has to wake up at 2:45 in the morning.
Bergstrom, meanwhile, says he was beaten in the knees by the unit’s warden, Tony O’Hare, and was similarly accused of “inciting a riot.” All of Bergstrom’s property, including his “religious materials, stamps, paper, pen, legal work, food, and fan” were then confiscated, and his wife and daughter have since been barred from visiting or contacting him in any way. (The Texas Department of Criminal Justice denies that there were any work stoppages or incidents in any of the units claiming to have gone on strike.)

Kinetic Justice Amun, an inmate in Alabama and one of the founders of FAM, has experienced firsthand the system’s wrath: He has been in solitary confinement for nearly three years, let outside sometimes for only a few hours every week. Prison is “not about rehabilitation,” Amun told me. “It’s not about crime and punishment. It’s about money. What Alabama is doing is not about corrections. It’s about creating a market of people.”

ORGANIZING INMATE LABOR
Organizing within prisons is notoriously difficult, and organizing across facilities even more so. In the lead up to September’s action, a number of groups have been coordinating with inmates, including numerous chapters of the Anarchist Black Cross and Free State Movements, the International Workers of the World (IWW), and their Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC).

The inmate-led FAM has spearheaded the agitation behind the strike—last year they were first to send out a call to action, Let the Crops Rot in the Fields, which set the emphatically political tone for the September action. FAM even drafted a comprehensive Freedom Bill, model legislation that calls for a sharp reduction in Alabama’s incarceration rate, as well as an end to unpaid labor: “Be it ENACTED,” the bill states, “that no citizen or laborer in the State of Alabama shall be required to work any job in this State without compensation of less that the prevailing minimum wage in Alabama.”

In May the IWW officially signed onto a call from FAM and the Free Virginia Movement to endorse the Nationally Coordinated Prisoner Work Stoppage on September 9. IWOC’s list of priorities is topped by calls for inmates to join the Incarcerated Workers Industrial Union #613, which, according to their Web site, is “the largest prisoner’s union in labor history.” (Prison unions, like minimum wages for prison labor, exist in a legal gray area: the right of inmates to meet as a union or collectively bargain was effectively rejected by the Supreme Court in 1977, when the justices deferred to prison officials’ safety concerns.) Their goal is to assist prisoners in challenging not only forced prison labor and the abominable conditions inside prisons, but “the system itself: break[ing] cycles of criminalization, exploitation, and the state sponsored divisions of our working class.”

While FAM is working closely with IWOC, FAM spokesperson Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow told me that FAM had a more radical stance, in that it did “not want to unionize prison labor, but to abolish it.”

HOPE AND PUNISHMENT
“The costs of organizing are high,” Robert Perkinson told me. The prisoners who strike on September 9 will face serious, and likely violent, consequences. Already, prison authorities are working to quash the action. Siddique Abdullah Hasan, one of Ohio’s lead organizers, was placed in administrative segregation (a form of solitary confinement) on August 9, after prison officials alleged that Hasan made a threat against the security of the prison—charges Hasan denied. After 9 days in “Ag-Seg,” he was found not guilty, released, yet still given a 30-day restriction on his phone privileges, until September 17.

But today’s courage to organize inside prisons is inspired, in part, by the increased race consciousness and organizing momentum outside of prisons. Greg Curry, an inmate in Ohio State Penitentiary, said, “Just as the Black Lives Matter Movement are saying to the cops and to society we ain’t having this no more.… It’s a new day. We’re saying that as prisoners it’s a new day. Just because we’re in prison we’re not going to accept this anymore. We’re fighting for our basic human rights.”

“Just because we’re in prison we’re not going to accept this anymore. We’re fighting for our basic human rights.”
According to Perkinson, prison uprisings tend to “erupt at moments of hope.” Inmates today may be sensing a shift, a flicker of hope, in the national conversation about criminal justice—new and increasingly piercing critiques of the Drug War, of the system of mass incarceration, of the use of private prisons, of police brutality—and want to take advantage of the momentum to push for change inside prisons. Due to the extreme conditions—refusing to work, refusing to eat, or even letting the crops rot in the fields—strikes and protests can be, as Perkinson explained, “the only way prisoners have to assert their independence or humanity.”

Norris Hicks wrote to me: “I have been at trying to change things in the system since I came in 28 years ago.” This September, by sitting down at their work, or by refusing to leave their cells, inmates across the country will be taking concrete steps towards that change.

https://www.thenation.com/article/this-week-may-see-the-largest-prison-strike-in-us-history/

As they say, this is getting legs. As well it should, past time. What with the de-centralization of industry this enormous prison population, and let's not forget their loved ones on the outside, is perhaps the largest 'ready' pool of radicalization in the country, and the bosses know it. The hammer will come down hard, but mass action over numerous locations might be a serious crisis for the slave drivers.

'Kinetic Justice', whadda fine revolutionary name, don't wanna fuck with him.

Dhalgren

09-08-2016, 11:22 AM

“It’s slavery,” Tijerina said. “There’s no two ways about it.”

“It’s not about crime and punishment. It’s about money. What Alabama is doing is not about corrections. It’s about creating a market of people.”

As they say, this is getting legs. As well it should, past time. What with the de-centralization of industry this enormous prison population, and let's not forget their loved ones on the outside, is perhaps the largest 'ready' pool of radicalization in the country, and the bosses know it. The hammer will come down hard, but mass action over numerous locations might be a serious crisis for the slave drivers.

'Kinetic Justice', whadda fine revolutionary name, don't wanna fuck with him.

Jesus, I wish we had a real Communist Party. There needs to be organized cadres at the prison gate, demanding an end to this inhuman shit. KKE would be all over this from the beginning. Someone, somewhere has to bring the fist.

blindpig

09-08-2016, 11:52 AM

Jesus, I wish we had a real Communist Party. There needs to be organized cadres at the prison gate, demanding an end to this inhuman shit. KKE would be all over this from the beginning. Someone, somewhere has to bring the fist.

Well, first CPUSA wouldn't be able to man more than a handful of picket sites...it's a goddamn shame.

WTF we gotta do to get the ball rolling? These false starts and aborted projects only disappoint and demoralize. We have talked of the absolute necessity of having our theoretical ducks in a row and there is no denying that. But we need some sort of action to inform and excite too. We see too clearly how the bosses have worked to emasculate BLM, izzat three street organizers in Ferguson who have turned up shot to death in burning cars now? While that DeRay character hogs up the air time... I look for Rakhmetov in the mirror but only see an old halfwit.

blindpig

09-08-2016, 02:32 PM

https://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org/files/2014/05/header1.jpg

Announcement of Nationally Coordinated Prisoner Workstoppage for Sept 9, 2016

Prisoners from across the United States have just released this call to action for a nationally coordinated prisoner workstoppage against prison slavery to take place on September 9th, 2016.

Get it as a zine PDF. En Espanol or mailroom friendly

This is a Call to Action Against Slavery in America

In one voice, rising from the cells of long term solitary confinement, echoed in the dormitories and cell blocks from Virginia to Oregon, we prisoners across the United States vow to finally end slavery in 2016.

On September 9th of 1971 prisoners took over and shut down Attica, New York State’s most notorious prison. On September 9th of 2016, we will begin an action to shut down prisons all across this country. We will not only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it ourselves by ceasing to be slaves.

In the 1970s the US prison system was crumbling. In Walpole, San Quentin, Soledad, Angola and many other prisons, people were standing up, fighting and taking ownership of their lives and bodies back from the plantation prisons. For the last six years we have remembered and renewed that struggle. In the interim, the prisoner population has ballooned and technologies of control and confinement have developed into the most sophisticated and repressive in world history. The prisons have become more dependent on slavery and torture to maintain their stability.

Prisoners are forced to work for little or no pay. That is slavery. The 13th amendment to the US constitution maintains a legal exception for continued slavery in US prisons. It states “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” Overseers watch over our every move, and if we do not perform our appointed tasks to their liking, we are punished. They may have replaced the whip with pepper spray, but many of the other torments remain: isolation, restraint positions, stripping off our clothes and investigating our bodies as though we are animals.

Slavery is alive and well in the prison system, but by the end of this year, it won’t be anymore. This is a call to end slavery in America. This call goes directly to the slaves themselves. We are not making demands or requests of our captors, we are calling ourselves to action. To every prisoner in every state and federal institution across this land, we call on you to stop being a slave, to let the crops rot in the plantation fields, to go on strike and cease reproducing the institutions of your confinement.

This is a call for a nation-wide prisoner work stoppage to end prison slavery, starting on September 9th, 2016. They cannot run these facilities without us.

Non-violent protests, work stoppages, hunger strikes and other refusals to participate in prison routines and needs have increased in recent years. The 2010 Georgia prison strike, the massive rolling California hunger strikes, the Free Alabama Movement’s 2014 work stoppage, have gathered the most attention, but they are far from the only demonstrations of prisoner power. Large, sometimes effective hunger strikes have broken out at Ohio State Penitentiary, at Menard Correctional in Illinois, at Red Onion in Virginia as well as many other prisons. The burgeoning resistance movement is diverse and interconnected, including immigrant detention centers, women’s prisons and juvenile facilities. Last fall, women prisoners at Yuba County Jail in California joined a hunger strike initiated by women held in immigrant detention centers in California, Colorado and Texas.

Prisoners all across the country regularly engage in myriad demonstrations of power on the inside. They have most often done so with convict solidarity, building coalitions across race lines and gang lines to confront the common oppressor.

Forty-five years after Attica, the waves of change are returning to America’s prisons. This September we hope to coordinate and generalize these protests, to build them into a single tidal shift that the American prison system cannot ignore or withstand. We hope to end prison slavery by making it impossible, by refusing to be slaves any longer.

To achieve this goal, we need support from people on the outside. A prison is an easy-lockdown environment, a place of control and confinement where repression is built into every stone wall and chain link, every gesture and routine. When we stand up to these authorities, they come down on us, and the only protection we have is solidarity from the outside. Mass incarceration, whether in private or state-run facilities is a scheme where slave catchers patrol our neighborhoods and monitor our lives. It requires mass criminalization. Our tribulations on the inside are a tool used to control our families and communities on the outside. Certain Americans live every day under not only the threat of extra-judicial execution—as protests surrounding the deaths of Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and so many others have drawn long overdue attention to—but also under the threat of capture, of being thrown into these plantations, shackled and forced to work.

Our protest against prison slavery is a protest against the school to prison pipeline, a protest against police terror, a protest against post-release controls. When we abolish slavery, they’ll lose much of their incentive to lock up our children, they’ll stop building traps to pull back those who they’ve released. When we remove the economic motive and grease of our forced labor from the US prison system, the entire structure of courts and police, of control and slave-catching must shift to accommodate us as humans, rather than slaves.

Prison impacts everyone, when we stand up and refuse on September 9th, 2016, we need to know our friends, families and allies on the outside will have our backs. This spring and summer will be seasons of organizing, of spreading the word, building the networks of solidarity and showing that we’re serious and what we’re capable of.

Step up, stand up, and join us.
Against prison slavery.
For liberation of all.

Find more information, updates and organizing materials and opportunities at the following websites:

-SupportPrisonerResistance.net

-FreeAlabamaMovement.com

-IWOC.noblogs.org

blindpig

09-08-2016, 04:28 PM

Stand in Solidarity with Prisoners Striking for Human Rights
A multi-state prison strike has been organized to address a number of prison injustices, such as toxic work conditions, extreme heat, insufficient access to healthcare and contaminated drinking/bathing water. The strike begins on the 45th anniversary of the 1971 Attica uprising. Related Petitions:
> Summer Heat Serves Texas Prisoners an Early Death Sentence
> Contaminated Water Causes Cancer in Prison
> Prisoners Forced to Work in Toxic, Hazardous Conditions
> End Legal Slavery in U.S. Prisons
RootsAction.org stands in solidarity with Prison Radio, the Prison Ecology Project, and thousands of incarcerated men and women.

Click below to sign this petition now:

I stand in solidarity with the thousands of incarcerated men and women who, beginning on September 9, 2016, will take a stand against civil and environmental injustices in their respective prisons by going on strike.

http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12454

Sign petition at link.

blindpig

09-09-2016, 08:38 AM

Inmates Are Planning The Largest Prison Strike in US History
On September 9th, prisoners across the country are standing up against forced labor and squalid living conditions

by Sofie Louise Dam

https://thenib.com/inmates-are-planning-the-largest-prison-strike-in-us-history?utm_campaign=web-share-links&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Graphic heavy, go to link.

Remember Attica!

blindpig

09-09-2016, 09:48 AM

US prisoners are going on strike to protest a massive forced labor system

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/ap_090804049881-e1473371677975.jpg?w=1600
Some call prison labor the "modern chain gang." (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

WRITTEN BY

Hanna Kozlowska
4 hours ago
On Friday (Sept. 9) prison inmates across the US will participate in what organizers are touting as the “largest prison strike in history,” stopping work in protest of what many call a modern version of slavery.
The protest, organized across 24 states, is spearheaded by the inmate-led Free Alabama Movement (FAM) and coordinated by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), a branch of an international labor union. Its manifesto, published online by “prisoners across the United States,” reads:
This is a call to end slavery in America…To every prisoner in every state and federal institution across this land, we call on you to stop being a slave, to let the crops rot in the plantation fields, to go on strike and cease reproducing the institutions of your confinement.
The strike will be held on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison revolt, when prisoners took control of a maximum-security correctional facility near Buffalo, New York, demanding better conditions and an end to their brutal treatment.
Today, nearly 900,000 US prisoners work while incarcerated. The Bureau of Prisons, which oversees all federal inmates requires that all prisoners (barring medical reasons) work. State prisoners are in the same boat; according to Eric Fink, a professor at Elon Law school, in all or nearly all US states prisoners must work. If they refuse, they can be punished with solitary confinement, revoking visitation, or other measures.
Inmates receive very little pay for their labor—in federal prisons it ranges from $0.12 to $0.40 an hour. In some states, like Texas, those held at state prisons receive zero compensation. The majority of inmates work on prison maintenance and upkeep—cleaning, cooking, etc.—but approximately 80,000 do work for the outside world. Sometimes these jobs are the result of government contracts; other times, prisoners end up doing work for private companies such as Victoria’s Secret, Whole Foods or Walmart.
Unlike other American workers, these prisoners are not protected by labor laws. They don’t have access to worker’s compensation, they get payed well below the minimum wage, and they cannot effectively form unions. Courts have ruled that because the relationship between prisons and inmates is not that of an employer and a worker, inmates don’t get these labor protections.
According to The Nation, there is a faction among the organizers that would rather see prison labor abolished, but IWOC is pushing for inmates to unionize. “Prisoners are the most exploited labor class in this country,” says Azzurra Crispino, spokesperson for the organization.
The moral case to let prisoners unionize and have the protections given to civilian workers is straightforward: forcing people to work is inhumane, as are the ridiculously low wages and often the labor conditions themselves.
The economic case is much more complex. Prisons argue that paying inmates a minimum wage would bankrupt them—in fact, Alex Friedmann, an editor for Prison Legal News told The American Prospect that the criminal justice system would collapse without exploiting inmates. But prisons don’t exist in a bubble, their effects ripple across society. While economists have argued that prison labor in general has little potential to significantly add to the GDP, there are longer-term and broader effects to consider.
Higher wages can help not only inmates, but their dependents in the outside world, who might avoid ending up on welfare having greater support. Cheap inmate labor may save money for prisons or corporations, but meaningful, decently-paid employment and job training could reduce recidivism and future crime. Ultimately, it’s the taxpayers who pay for most of the criminal justice system, and that means they are subsidizing cheap labor for big corporations instead of investing in reducing crime in the future.
In addition to putting pressure on individual institutions, strike organizers are hoping to raise awareness among the public.
“Nothing is preventing employers from paying prisoners a decent wage and offering benefits and after 300 years it’s pretty clear it isn’t going to happen on its own. No more than slavery was ended in this country because slave owners got enlightened,” said Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News and prisoner rights advocate. “Alas, there is no General Sherman coming to rescue and liberate America’s prison slaves.”

http://qz.com/777415/an-unprecedented-prison-strike-hopes-to-change-the-fate-of-the-900000-americans-trapped-in-an-exploitative-labor-system/

blindpig

09-09-2016, 10:22 AM

#Attica45 ‏@jaybeware 36m36 minutes ago
Here are the 15 practical proposals created by Attica prisoners, today 40 prisons are striking for many of the same.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cr6pB-mUAAE0Ltd.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cr6pCqhVIAAq9Mc.jpg

from twitter

blindpig

09-09-2016, 11:02 AM

The Economics of the American Prison System
Thierry Godard MAR 23, 2016

https://dr5dymrsxhdzh.cloudfront.net/blog/images/a11090/2013/06/prison-main.jpg

Written by: Brian Kincade

The American prison system is massive. So massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations. What is perhaps most unsettling about this fun fact is that it is the American taxpayer who foots the bill and is increasingly padding the pockets of publicly traded corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group. Combined both companies generated over $2.53 billion in revenue in 2012, and represent more than half of the private prison business. So what exactly makes the business of incarcerating Americans so lucrative?

The American Prison System

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The Economics of the American Prison System

Most of it has to do with the way the American legal system works and how it has changed over the last 40 years. In the 1970’s, lawmakers were dealing with a nationwide rash of drug-use and crime. By declaring a nation-wide war on drugs in 1971, President Richard Nixon set a precedent for hard-line policies towards drug-related crime.
New York governor Nelson Rockefeller followed suit declaring “For drug pushing, life sentence, no parole, no probation.” His policies once put into action promised 15 years to life in prison for drug users and dealers. His policies catalyzed the growth of a colossal corrections system that currently houses an estimated 2.2 million inmates.

The runaway growth of US corrections did not come overnight, and did not come from the government alone. Since the 1970’s federal and state correction agencies have consistently struggled to meet the increased demands brought on by the US Department of Justice and strict drug laws.
In 1982, three Texas businessmen, Tom Beasley, John Ferguson, and Don Hutto saw an opportunity in the shortcomings of the Texas corrections system’s inability to deal with this influx of incarcerations. They devised and executed a plan to secure the first government contract to design, build, and operate a corrections facility from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Texas Department of Justice.

Contract in hand, the trio was given 90 days to open a detention center for undocumented aliens. As their January 28 deadline neared, Hutto, Ferguson, and Beasley had no facility, no staff and their experiment seemed doomed to fail.

On New Year’s Eve, 1983, Beasley decided to get crafty, “Well, we’ll just go to Houston and find a place,” he reportedly told Ferguson. Incredulous, Ferguson replied, “Tom, you’re crazy. There’s no possible way. This is New Year’s Day. There is no possible way we can find a place today.” Beasley simply responded, “We have to.”

The three men immediately got on a plane and began their search. After a litany of rejections they came upon the Olympic Motel at 1am on New Year’s Day and immediately began negotiations that lasted for three days.

After hiring the motel owner’s family and promising to return the motel to its original condition, the group was in business. They then converted all of the motel rooms to secure cells, procured secure transportation and opened shop on January 28, 1983 when 87 inmates were brought in. Hutto, Ferguson and Beasley formed Corrections Corporation of America, the largest prison private prison network in the United States.

With the precedent it set with the first private detention center, CCA changed the face of US corrections for good. The private sector came to be seen as a quick-fix to the problem of overcrowded, understaffed public prisons. Today, privatized prisons make up over 10% of the corrections market—turning over $7.4 billion per year.

The American Prison Business
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The average cost of incarcerating an American prisoner varies from state to state. Some states, like Indiana have managed to keep prices low at around $14,000 per inmate. While states like New York pay around $60,000 to keep its citizens behind bars. The costs of running the American prison system is expensive and has become increasingly so despite public opposition.

According to a 2012 Vera Institute of Justice study, the number of those incarcerated has increased by over 700% over the last four decades. The cost to the taxpayer? $39 billion.

Where is all of this money going? The Vera institute study contends that many corrections-related costs, such as employee benefits and taxes, pension contributions, retiree health care contributions, legal judgments and claims are deemed central administrative costs.

Moreover, many states fund inmate services—such as hospital care in 8 states, and education and training in 12 states—outside of their corrections departments. It’s a nice accounting trick but this amounts to a $5.4 billion gap between the reported corrections budgets of the 40 states examined by the study—$33.5 billion—and the actual cost to taxpayer of $39 billion.

The ideology behind this peculiar industry is that private companies, forced to compete with state government prices and one another for contracts, can provide correctional services more efficiently than the government itself can. Moreover, these private companies offer a correctional solution that prevents the government from having to sink capital into the brick-and-mortar of new prisons and other long term costs such as pensions, salaries, and health-care for new prison staff.

Private prisons like CCA not only provide states and the federal government with lower “per-diem” costs, but they also provide a means for them to balance their budgets by buying off and refurbishing state-owned prisons.

The best corrections corporation in America

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CCA operates the fifth largest prison system, public or private, in the system in the US. Under its control include 51 owned-and-operated facilities in 16 states and contracted management of 18 more state-owned facilities in 7 states. This network allows CCA to maintain a 44% stake in the $7.4 billion private corrections market for a market cap of $3.53 billion. All of this equates to a massively profitable operation for CCA who recorded $1.64 billion in revenue, $883.1 million of which came from state governments in 2012.

Studies mostly agree that privatized prisons save money on the balance sheet—with short run savings averaging about 19.25% and long run savings averaging about 28.82%. In fact, many states have statutes that require a certain percentage of savings—Florida 7%, Texas 10%, Kentucky 10%, Mississippi 10% –in contracts with private corrections providers. On paper, private corrections facilities are almost always more efficient than public ones. CCA reports savings of 68-74% vs. various government agencies for 1000 new beds added. Astonishingly, CCA was able to generate these savings while also recording a 29.6% operating margin of $17.53 per man, per day in 2012. Are private prisons really that much more efficient or are we missing something?

Let’s break this down further. In 2012 CCA received $59.14 in revenue per compensated man-day from the government. Of this $59.14, CCA committed $41.61 to operating expenses per man-day. This effectively means CCA commits $41.61 to each prisoner each day. According to CCA’s SEC filings 65% of these operating expenses, or $27.05 goes to employee salaries and benefits. This leaves $14.56 per man-day for the combined costs of food, medical care, and contracted drug rehabilitation and education programs.

Considering that this is the area private prisons choose to cut costs, it is little wonder they come with hidden costs unaccounted for by their reported savings. For instance, a study on recidivism performed in Oklahoma between 1997 and 2008 showed that prisoners released from private prisons had almost a 4% higher rate of recidivism (returning to prison). This means, that for every 1000 prisoners released, private prisons have the additional annual cost to the Oklahoma taxpayer of $554,010 (based on average annual cost per inmate). If you extrapolate this recidivism gap to a state like New Jersey that spends more per prisoner, the hidden cost of releasing 1000 inmates jumps to $1,645,950.

Private problems become public issues

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In recent years, private prisons have also come under fire for failing to successfully fulfill their contracts. In 2010 alone, US private prisons were the subject of four major scandals. An Arizona prison operated by the Management and Training Corporation allowed three inmates—two convicted of murder and one convicted of attempted murder—to escape. Before being captured the escapees murdered a couple in New Mexico. The family filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against MTC and the state of Arizona.
In 2010, a nationally released video showed an inmate at the Idaho Correctional Center thrown to the ground, beaten, and kicked. ICC guards made no attempt to intervene, and were later charged with “routinely failing to protect inmates” and deliberately exposing inmates to “prison gangs and violent culture.” In Kentucky, a sex scandal involving female prisoners and guards forced a CCA prison to relocate several hundred women 377 miles away to a state-run prison. Also in 2010, the GEO group was forced to reach a $2.9 million settlement to provide up to $400 to inmates at six facilities for illegal and unnecessary strip searches.

Incidents such as these occur frequently and the money doled out by private prisons, and the government in lawsuits, retributions, and relocation are is not reflected in the per-diem costs cited by private companies to highlight savings. When one considers the $156,800,000 net income of a company like CCA, it becomes easy to understand why such incidents occur. Operators of private prisons are given a sum in government contract. It is their duty to then carry out the terms and provide the conditions specified in the contract.

As it turns out the best way to turn a profit from this sum is to strive for the absolute minimum requirements that these contracts allow. By slashing costs related to crucial aspects of operating facilities such as training and hiring of personnel and maintaining safe facilities companies like CCA turn a greater profit for their shareholders and create more enticing cost-reduction statistics to draw in more government contracts.

Furthermore, the statistics used to measure the success of all prisons in cutting costs—usually total taxpayer cost per inmate—are generally considered to be unreliable in assessing real cost. These same statistics are often used to validate private contracting of corrections operations. In today’s fiscally anxious political climate, government officials and private prison employees are hyper-aware of the impact of these statistics on measuring success of budget slashing strategies. They are often incentivized to bring down these numbers and employ several strategies that skew cost statistics to make them more palatable to the taxpayer.

The Vera Institute study identifies several factors that tend to these alter cost-per-prisoner numbers. The first is overcrowding of prisons. By overcrowding prisons and allowing the inmate population to exceed the capacity of a facility, the price-per-inmate figure of that facility is driven downward at the cost of safety, reliability, and increased recidivism. States and private prisons with greater incarceration of low-level offenders will also report lower per-prisoner costs though their total cost to the tax payer is actually greater.

Low-level offenders can be placed in minimum and medium security prisons which require fewer staff, and generally have much lower incarceration costs. Therefore, by incarcerating a greater number of persons who commit less-serious offenses, corrections systems can present themselves as more efficient despite the increase in total cost they create. Finally, state corrections systems often reimburse local jails to house state-sentenced offenders. These costs are often set by statute and not updated in accordance with rising costs.

The cost of corrections to the American taxpayer
https://dr5dymrsxhdzh.cloudfront.net/blog/images/a11090/2013/06/prison-cca-america.jpg

So what does all of this mean for American citizens. Let’s take a look at Joe Taxpayer from Arizona to see what it costs to run and maintain American prisons. Joe is a pretty average guy, a single man making a living in Scottsdale. The state of Arizona allocates just over 10% of its budget to corrections each year in the name of public safety. Joe, who works as a middle school principal, brings home $75,000 a year and pays $2,309 annually in state taxes.

Some simple math reveals that Joe pays $230.90 every year towards the incarceration, monitoring and rehabilitation of prisoners. Now, 13% (and growing) of Arizona’s prisoners are housed and managed by private corrections facilities. If Arizona is spending equally on private and public prisoners Joe is giving $30 every year to private corporations to house prisoners.

If we account for the savings offered by Arizona prisons, reconciling the -1.0% of medium security prisons and 8.0% savings to 7.0% for the sake of simplicity, Joe forks over a final sum somewhere around $28 for the services of private prisons every year out of his state taxes alone. Joe Taxpayer is not pleased.
The business of prisons is deeply intertwined with a number of issues ranging from accounting shady accounting practices, to recidivism and other hidden social costs. However it is difficult to discern whether private prisons are a better use of taxpayer dollars especially if they serve government interests ahead of civil liberties and transparency.

What is abundantly clear is that prisons system is a lucrative business for those uniquely positioned to service the growing needs of the federal and state judicial systems.
Related Article: The Economics of Electronic Dance Music Festivals
Written by: Brian Kincade
Sources: CCA, Vera Institute of Justice, The Nation, AFSC, CJR, University of Chicago Crime Lab, Barclays Capital, NPR, AFSC
Photo Credit: CCA.com, The New York Times, KQED.org

https://smartasset.com/insights/the-economics-of-the-american-prison-system

Capitalism leaves no rock unturned in the hunt for profit.

blindpig

09-09-2016, 12:06 PM

Hundreds of inmates riot at Florida prison

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/tb3c2f/picture100769937/ALTERNATES/FREE_960/Slide06
An inmate uprising Wednesday night at Holmes Correctional Institution left several dorms damaged. Inmates trashed the dorms at Holmes Correctional Institution
Wednesday night and into the wee hours. During the uprising at Holmes Correctional Institution, inmates broke through the ceiling and crawled around, looking for an exit. A look at the damage at Holmes Correctional Institution after Wednesday’s uprising. An inmate uprising Wednesday night at Holmes Correctional Institution left several dorms damaged.

An inmate uprising Wednesday night at Holmes Correctional Institution left several dorms damaged.
BY JULIE K. BROWN
jbrown@MiamiHerald.com

Holmes Correctional Institution Riot - 5PM
WJHG - Panama City, FL

A nationwide prison strike planned Friday has Florida’s jails and state prisons on high alert through the weekend, bracing for possible upheavals by inmates protesting what they say is inhumane and violent treatment.

Already, a revolt at Holmes Correctional in Florida’s Panhandle on Wednesday night, involving more than 400 inmates, caused damage to nearly every dorm during an uprising that lasted into the early morning. No one was seriously injured, but the department is concerned that the disturbance might be a harbinger of what’s to come.

Florida’s prison system, the third-largest in the country, has been dangerously understaffed for nearly a year, and several sieges have occurred in recent weeks. To further exacerbate tensions, many inmates have been in forced confinement in their dorms, allowed out only to eat because there isn’t even enough staff to guard them during outside recreation.

Over the past two years, the Miami Herald has published a series of stories documenting the brutal or unexplained deaths of inmates in Florida prisons, a record number of use-of-force incidents and corruption by guards and top officers.

In recent weeks, the department has had disturbances at Jackson Correctional, Gulf Correctional, Franklin Correctional and Okaloosa CI. All of them, like Holmes, are located in Region 1, in the Panhandle. And a corrections officer was stabbed during a melee at Columbia CI in April.

“It’s very hot in those dorms and when you can’t get any rec, the inmates start causing problems,’’ said a veteran corrections officer at Holmes, who would not allow his name to be used for fear of reprisals.

The loosely organized national strike, a grassroots effort, comes on the 45th anniversary of the prison riots at Attica, the 1971 prison siege near Buffalo, New York, considered the largest prison rebellion in U.S. history. Over 40 people died when inmates took control of the facility for four days, protesting racism, officer beatings, rancid food, no rehabilitation programs and forced labor.

Phillip A. Ruiz, an organizer for the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, one of the groups spearheading the Friday demonstrations, said conditions in America’s prisons aren’t that different from those at Attica 45 years ago.

“They are participating in work stoppages, hunger strikes and sit-ins in protest of long-term isolation, inadequate healthcare, overcrowding, violent attacks and slave labor,’’ said Ruiz, whose committee is part of the Industrial Workers of the World, an international labor union whose membership peaked a century ago.

Ruiz said organizers are emphasizing that the protests will be nonviolent. Florida corrections officers have nevertheless been briefed and are prepared to work all weekend in case there are uprisings.

Of the disturbances in Florida, the riot at Holmes involved the most inmates so far — more than 400 of the 1,100 men incarcerated there — and was spread across the compound.

Officers interviewed by the Herald said that Wednesday’s rebellion began in B Dorm about 6 p.m. One officer, stationed in a control center (called “the bubble”), was in charge of nearly 150 inmates. The prisoners put blankets and sheets over the windows of the bubble then proceeded to smash cameras, ransack the dorm and then began tearing away the ceiling and crawling in the attic, possibly trying to escape.

Officers from five other prisons were called in, as well as special RRTs (Rapid Response Teams) trained to handle riots. Though some officers were armed, no shots were fired, sources said.

“We would get one dorm under control and then it would start in another dorm. It was every dorm, as if it was planned,” the Holmes officer said.

It took until 4 a.m. to bring the compound under control, he said. Officers were able to restrain many inmates after setting off canisters of chemicals, making it hard for the prisoners to breathe, the officer said.

The compound in Bonifay, a town of just more than 4,000 that is bisected by Interstate 10, was still on lockdown Thursday, according to a statement released by FDC shortly after noon. One inmate was injured but no corrections officers were hurt, the statement said.

The department did not say when the uprising happened, what precipitated it, how long it took to bring it under control or how much damage occurred.

Photographs leaked to the Herald show damage to ceilings, floors, beds, walls, cameras and doors. The inmates were transported to other prisons, FDC said.

“The department is currently accessing the facility for any damages that have resulted and have transported all the involved inmates to other locations. Additional information will be made available following a comprehensive after-action review and investigation,” FDC’s statement concluded.

The riot is the latest in a series of disturbances that have plagued the agency since January. Many institutions are at minimum staffing levels because of a shortage of corrections officers statewide.

The staff at Holmes, like many Florida prisons, has an abundance of young, inexperienced officers who have had little training.

“These officers are 19, 20, 21, some of them still live at home. They put them in charge of dorms for 12 hours a day with professional convicts, all by themselves,” said the officer. “I’m not a worrier but when you walk into those dorms you don’t know what you have or what they are going to do.”

Kim Schultz, president of the union representing the department’s officers, called the situation “extremely dangerous.” Florida’s state corrections officers are some of the lowest paid in the country, and they haven’t had pay raises in more than eight years, she said.

“This has resulted in high turnover and inexperienced officers who are not equipped to deal with prison riots,” she said.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article100618707.html

blindpig

09-09-2016, 02:16 PM

Holman SHUTDOWN
Leave a reply
From contact inside: “12:01 Sept 9th, all inmates at Holman Prison refused to report to their prison jobs without incident. With the rising of the sun came an eerie silence as the men at Holman laid on their racks reading or sleeping. Officers are performing all tasks.”

https://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org/post/2016/09/09/holman-shutdown/

Dhalgren

09-10-2016, 03:38 PM

Steppling on US Prisoner Strike

http://youtu.be/DneVzj_v4Lc

blindpig

09-12-2016, 12:08 PM

mask
Rebellion and Reprisals
the prisoner issue

rebellion and reprisals
how outside support can impact the outcome of prison struggles.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/issue-assets/assets/assets/000/002/216/original/14233712_10157362229380142_720330036_o.jpg?1473263265

On September 9, prisoners in more than seventeen US states are planning a nationally coordinated work stoppage and protest, according to the Incarcerated Workers' Organizing Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWOC). IWOC also counts 35 states where numerous captives are aware of the strike and the growing mobilization of outside support. On the date of this writing, that outside support involves events or actions in over fifty cities across the country.
It is likely the strike will kick off in only some of these places, but once it does, it could spread to correctional facilities across the country. We might not know what will happen, but one thing is for sure: prison authorities are paying close attention, and have been especially busy punishing prisoner leaders. Siddique Abdullah Hasan, one of the most public spokespeople for the strike, has been framed in a fake islamophobic suicide bomb plot. Melvin Ray, Kinetik Justice, and Dhati Khalid of the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) have been sent to solitary, assaulted and otherwise under constant attack by the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC). Cesar DeLeon and LaRon McKinley-Bey of the Dying to Live hunger strike in Wisconsin are currently subject to a force-feeding regimen.
If the rebellions continue and expand past September 9, so will the retaliation. In fact, if this will be anything like previous prison uprisings in the US, we can assume that the response will be quite violent, maybe even deadly. But from past historic prison uprisings, we can also learn that the role outside supporters decide to play and are able to play has a significant impact on the outcome.
Narratives of Past Struggles

The September 9 protest is scheduled for the 45th anniversary of America’s most famous prison uprising at Attica prison in New York. On that day, over two thousand prisoners took control of Attica for four days. They held 42 staff members hostage and went to great lengths to negotiate a peaceful resolution before the state sent in the national guard to violently suppress the uprising and regain control of the facility.
During the Attica prison riot, journalists were allowed unto the occupied yard to interview prisoners. This meant that the governor and prison officials were forced to answer questions about not only the events of the takeover, but also about conditions in the prison and the prisoner’s claims of abuse and torture. Notably, Attica occurred at the height of anti-prison struggle. It happened a few weeks after George Jackson was killed, in the middle of Angela Davis’ trial and defense. It was followed by strong prisoner self-defense and self-determination actions in Angola, Walpole, and Walla Walla. During this time, prisoner struggles were not secret things happening on the invisible edges of our society, and people were in active revolt against all the institutions of white supremacy and social control.
After the national guard went in and started shooting, the state tried to pursue charges against the surviving prisoners. But those prosecutions went nowhere because huge protests erupted across New York and around the nation in response. These protests eventually broke the silence of a medical examiner who destroyed the prosecution’s case by publicly admitting that all but three of the deaths were caused by bullets, while none of the prisoners had guns. This admission fueled further protests until Governor Carey issued a blanket amnesty in 1976.
Four years later, another major prisoner uprising took place, with disastrous results. This time the New Mexico State Penitentiary was controlled by prisoners for only 36 hours, but during that time 33 prisoners died and hundreds were injured. Negotiations failed, but the state retook the prison without the kind of slaughter that occurred in Attica. After the uprising, only a few prisoners were prosecuted, and the longest sentence was nine years.
In Santa Fe, the media and public atmospheres were far from sympathetic with the rioting prisoners. By 1980, the Reagan-era backlash was well underway, including the war on drugs and the mass incarceration boom. The coverage of the event was grisly and highly sensationalized. Most of the deaths occurred in the protective custody wing, where rebelling prisoners got hold of acetylene torches and used them to cut into cells, and then tortured and killed the snitches, queers, and sex offenders inside.
One explanation for the comparatively light sentences and low number of prosecutions in Santa Fe was that the NMSP administration was under a lot of scrutiny. According to researcher Mark Colvin, the years leading up to the riot saw steadily degrading conditions and security concerns, including 36 escapes. Because of this, when the prosecution cases went to trial, defense attorney William Summers was able to argue that the prison officials must share responsibility for what happened.
Standing in stark contrast to both Attica and the Santa Fe Uprising is the 1993 Lucasville Uprising at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF). Over forty people were indicted after Lucasville, five were sentenced to death, and more than a dozen others are serving long sentences or life bids. As described by Staughton Lynd in his Statement for the Re-examining Lucasville Conference in 2012, Lucasville involved fewer deaths but far worse outcomes for the prisoners than either Attica or Santa Fe. At 11 days, it is the longest uprising in which people died, and it is also one of the few that ended with a negotiated surrender. So why was the state able to place so much harsher penalties on the Lucasville rebels than any other uprising?
The key difference between Lucasville and these other uprisings was that the government was able to control public awareness and sympathies which allowed them to hand down punishments against targets of their choice. By 1993 Bill Clinton and other “third way” democrat strategists had swallowed the tough-on-crime rhetoric of the Reagan years, forming a spectrum-wide bipartisan hatred and dehumanization of prisoners. Lucasville shared the media stage with the Waco Texas massacre, and the State of Ohio aggressively and successfully silenced the prisoner’s voices during the uprising. There was no outside support. In fact the community of southern Ohio was looking for revenge. Petitions advocating summary executions for anyone the state fingered were circulated and signed.
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) and the special prosecutors exploited this environment to win their cases and expand their prisons. They sensationalized the riot, forced defense lawyers off cases, recruited and trained snitches and arranged the trials to put black prisoners in front of racist white juries in Scioto county, and white prisoners before black judges and Anti-Racist Action protesters in Columbus.
One could argue that they were able to do this because, unlike Attica or Santa Fe, the prisoners killed a hostage guard, named Robert Vallandingham, but the story is not that simple. First, Vallandingham was killed under desperate circumstances, after authorities had shut off electricity and water and surrounded the prison with national guard troops. Secondly, he was most likely killed by one group of prisoners, who later cooperated with the state to escape punishment. Vallandingham died while George Skatzes was on the phone with the authorities, literally begging them to negotiate a surrender rather than storming in like Attica or Waco, but he is awaiting execution while Anthony Lavelle, the man believed to be actually responsible for the killing walks free, because he snitched and made up lies against the other prisoners.
Attica, Santa Fe, and Lucasville are three of the biggest and bloodiest prison uprisings in US history. No one wants to see something like this happen in 2016, but even as examples of the worst case scenario, their lessons apply to any prison struggle. In summary, each of these historic uprisings led to very different outcomes for the prisoners, and those outcomes were largely determined by the support and protest movements on the outside. In Attica, the prisoners killed one guard and were initially indicted for the deaths of other guards, but because of the protests they were granted general amnesty. In Santa Fe, prisoners took 10 guards hostage severely beat and sexually assaulted them, along with hundreds of prisoners, but only a few were convicted and the harshest sentence among them was 9 years. In Lucasville, by contrast, one guard was killed under complicated circumstances, which arguably led to a surrender and less loss of life than an Attica style raid, but the state indicted and charged the people who negotiated that surrender.
We can see the significance outside support has played in recent protests as well. In December of 2010, prisoners in Georgia set a new high-water mark for prisoner resistance by staging a state-wide shutdown and work stoppage. During the resistance, outside supporters and alternative media organizations like the Black Agenda Report were able to get the story into mainstream media, and exposed violence of guards who attacked and disappeared leaders.
In part thanks to this, word of the protest got out, and inspired three survivors of the Lucasville Uprising, including Siddique Abdullah Hasan, to stage an ambitious hunger strike against solitary confinement in January of 2011. This action resulted in a rare success, significantly expanding the prisoners’ access to rec time, legal resources, phone and visitation, which they then used to increase their organizing capacity and win further communication access.
The hunger strike in turn helped inspire hunger strikes in Pelican Bay, California and Menard, Illinois. The protests in Pelican Bay had such robust outside support that it generalized to include 30,000 prisoners. It also got the support of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which helped prisoners win a lawsuit limiting the use of solitary confinement to ten years.
In 2014, the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) entered the national spotlight with a work stoppage to rival Georgia’s, but thanks to the media attention given to Georgia and California, they were able to go much more public with their efforts, eventually inspiring the Free Mississippi, Free Virginia, and Free Ohio Movements. Expanding communication and outside support allowed Siddique Abdullah Hasan to connect with FAM, starting conversations that grew to include prisoners and supporters elsewhere, eventually producing the call to action for September 9.
This narrative outlines only one trajectory of the growing anti-prison protest movement. It is the story I am most familiar with, because it includes prisoners I’ve talked and organized with. Other writers have highlighted stories that start with immigrant detention centers in Texas. There are trajectories focusing on queer and trans prisoner resistance, like Ed Mead of the George Jackson Brigade and the Walla Walla resistance movement which published a newsletter to help coordinate California prisoners during the hunger strikes. Efforts to coordinate and expand national-level communication between and about prisoners in women’s facilities, who have been largely overlooked are underway. In all of these cases, outside support and storytelling have been and continue to be key to successful prisoner organizing.
The primary role and most important task of outside support for prison rebels is responding to repression. IWOC and others have created practical systems for shining a protecting light into the invisible corners of the carceral state and giving solidarity and strength to prisoners in struggle, but we also need to ensure that whatever happens to our comrades, their tormentors aren’t the only ones telling the story.

http://www.maskmagazine.com/the-prisoner-issue/life/rebellion-and-reprisals

blindpig

09-12-2016, 01:10 PM

Texas Activists Protest Modern-Day ‘Slavery’ in Prisons
Prison abolitionists gathered in Austin on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison riots.

While prison inmates launched a nationwide strike last Friday — the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison riots — a small but vocal group of activists gathered in Austin to support their cause.

Hundreds of inmates have joined the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), a division of the Industrial Workers of the World union and a major motivator of the strike. Inmates at 40 facilities in 24 states were expected to take part, and some Texas prisoners have been engaging in work stoppages since April.

https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/201609-prison-labor-protest-oconnell-759x385.jpg
Austin protesters, demonstrating at the same time as hundreds of incarcerated people across the country, cast unpaid prison labor as modern-day 'slavery.'
Kit O'Connell

Austin protesters, demonstrating at the same time as hundreds of incarcerated people across the country, cast unpaid prison labor as modern-day ‘slavery.’
Prisoners say they want their work to count toward time off their sentences, improved living conditions in prisons, better access to attorneys during disputes, and an end to an annual $100 copay on medical services.

“The inmates in Attica were rioting for some of the same conditions that inmates are striking for today: An end to prison slavery, human dignity, access to adequate medical care, adequate access to wages,” said Azzurra Crispino, an Austin union organizer and part of the Prison Abolition and Prisoners Solidarity group.

Organized by the Austin Anarchist Black Cross and local representatives of the IWOC, about 15 people gathered with signs, banners and bullhorns to chant outside an unassuming, tree-lined office park on the city’s south side, home to the Texas Correctional Industries (TCI) showroom. There, TCI showcases prisoner-made products available for purchase.

TCI prepared for the raucous protest by blocking the entrances to the showroom with yellow caution tape and parked vehicles as demonstrators chanted, “Prisons! Burn them down!” About a half dozen armed security guards turned away activists who attempted to deliver a list of prisoners’ demands, threatening the group and this reporter with arrest if we did not leave the premises and return to a grassy strip of public property outside the complex.

The products displayed in the showroom can be purchased by public entities like cities and hospitals, as well as public and private institutions of higher learning. TCI, which takes all of the earnings from the sales, is a for-profit corporation attached to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which brought in $88.9 million in fiscal year 2014, the last year for which data is available.

“Currently, inmates working for TCI are not paid for the work done while serving their time; the only inmates who are paid anything are the small fraction who are employed by TCI’s private sector prison industries program,” wrote Aaron Cantu, in an April 2016 analysis published by LittleSis, a government watchdog nonprofit.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice argues that working for TCI teaches prisoners “marketable job skills,” but striking Texas prisoners consider their unpaid labor to be slavery.

“The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, most people believe it ended slavery but it didn’t,” said Crispino. “It just made it legal for those who have been convicted of a crime to be made to work without pay.”

Wolf Sittler, a 33-year Austin resident and retired former probations officer and social worker who attended the protest, told the Observer he thinks prisoners should be paid fair wages.

“The way it is now, a person goes to prison and they’re not only deprived of their freedom, they’re deprived of their ability to make money to support themselves and their family,” Sittler said. “In my view, that doesn’t prepare them for life after prison.”

Kit O'Connell is a gonzo journalist and radical troublemaker from Austin. He is a staff writer at MintPress News and has also appeared in Truthout, The Establishment and Firedoglake.

https://www.texasobserver.org/austin-iwoc-protest/

Great Day! Anarchists worth more than warm spit, whodda thunk? More power to them and may they make the journey of William Z Foster.

blindpig

09-13-2016, 09:57 AM

Lockup Quotas Help For-Profit Prison Companies Keep Profits High and Prisons Full
Submitted by Brendan Fischer on September 20, 2013 - 9:26am

For-profit prison companies like Corrections Corporation of American and GEO Group are no strangers to controversy. Their business model rests on incarceration, and their profits soared throughout the 1990s and 2000s as harsh sentencing laws, the War on Drugs, and tough immigration enforcement led to a dramatic rise in detention and incarceration.

But with crime rates dropping for more than a decade and a new push for sentencing reform and cost-effective alternatives to incarceration, for-profit prison operators have found a new way to keep beds full and profits high. They call them "bed guarantees."

Majority of For-Profit Prison Contracts Include "Lockup Quotas"

http://www.prwatch.org/files/images/dollar_note_chained.jpg

A new report from In the Public Interest, a resource center on privatization and public contracting, documented for the first time that some 65 percent of contracts between for-profit prisons and state or local governments include bed guarantees or "lockup quotas." These contractual clauses require that a state keeps prisons full, usually at ninety percent, but in some cases up to a one hundred percent occupancy requirement.

If judges and law enforcement are not pushing enough people into for-profit prisons to meet the quota, taxpayers are on the hook for any unused beds.

"Private prisons have gamed the system and tied the hands of policymakers across the country to an alarming degree," says report author Shar Habibi, In the Public Interest Research and Policy Director.

The lockup quotas range between 70 percent in a California facility to 100 percent in an Arizona facility, with most contracts requiring a 90 percent occupancy. In Ohio, a 20-year deal with CCA to privately operate the Lake Erie Correctional Institution includes a 90 percent quota; cost-cutting measures in the facility have also led to significant growth in violence, gang activity, and drug use.

Given the longstanding, cozy relationships between for-profit prison companies and legislators -- developed by way of significant campaign contributions, lobbying expenditures, and participation in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) -- questions have long been raised about their role in promoting policies that put more people behind bars and create more demand for prisons. Although these companies have denied lobbying for tough on crime laws, lockup quotas can have a similar impact.

"To keep their private business model successful, [for-profit prison companies] look to the children of tomorrow as the next harvest for their shareholders," says Justin Jones, former head of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. "Society deserves better."

Lockup Quotas "Morally Reprehensible"

Bed guarantee clauses can encourage tough enforcement and sentencing policies, or, at a minimum, can help deter criminal justice reforms that reduce sentences and focus on rehabilitation rather than incarceration. And reform in this area is long overdue.

America has become the world's leader in incarceration, with around half of all prisoners in state facilities there for nonviolent crimes, and half of inmates in federal prisons serving time for drug-related offenses. And the impact of mass incarceration has been disproportionately borne by communities of color. For example, people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but have much higher rate of arrests; just 14 percent of regular drug users are black, but they represent 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses.

But the social costs of mass incarceration have little relevance for CCA or GEO shareholders or Wall Street investors.

"These lockup quotas are morally reprehensible," said Reverend Michael McBride with PICO National Network. "We have a moral charge to rehabilitate incarcerated persons, not to provide an incentive for filling up cells."

Private Contractors Paid for Services They Don't Perform

"Corrections should not be a turnkey for profit machine, and that's what we turn them into with lockup guarantees," said Jones, the former head of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

In Colorado, even though crime has dropped by a third in the past decade, a lockup quota covering three for-profit prisons has forced taxpayers to keep CCA's prisons full, even as state facilities remain empty; the state has wasted at least $2 million in taxpayer money by using CCA's prisons instead of its own.

"Where else can private contractors get paid for services they do not perform?" asks Alex Friedman, Managing Editor of Prison Legal News.

In Arizona, where three for-profit prison contracts have a 100 percent quota, reports show that the company's per-day charge for each prisoner has increased an average of 13.9 percent over the course of the contracts.

"When entering a contract to operate a prison, a private company should be required to take on some risk," ITPI's report concludes. "Private prison beds were intended to be a safety valve to address demand that exceeded public capacity. It was never intended that taxpayers would be the safety valve to ensure private prison companies' profits."

New CCA and GEO Group Rap Sheets on SourceWatch

CCA and GEO are the largest for-profit prison operators in the United States. Almost all of their profits are generated by government contracts and therefore come directly from taxpayers. Yet their facilities are failing to deliver, with increased costs, higher levels of recidivism and egregious levels of violence and even death.

The Center for Media and Democracy has created extensive corporate rap sheets on Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group on its wiki resource Sourcewatch.org. The profiles document:

Allegations of prisoner abuse, civil rights violations, violence, riots, and escapes;
Accusations of sexual abuse and juvenile mistreatment;
How cost-cutting strategies have resulted in lower wages and benefits for workers, high employee turnover, insufficient training, and under-staffing, resulting in poor oversight and poor security conditions;
The high incidence of sexual harassment, employment discrimination, or other labor violations by for-profit prison companies;
How the companies have evaded taxes and fleeced taxpayers;
How immigrant detention is a new profit center for these for-profit prison providers.
Campaign School on Crime, CrimeStrike ALECIn addition, the profiles connect the dots between CCA, GEO Group, and organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which pushed legislation to privatize prisons, and at the same time spearheaded the effort to advance harsh sentencing bills to put more people in prison for more time. ALEC was a key proponent of "three-strikes-you're-out" and "truth-in-sentencing" bills, which became law in a majority of states during the 1990s and early 2000s and helped balloon prison populations. GEO Group was an ALEC member for many years and CCA led the Criminal Justice Task Force in the late 1990s.

"Crime control" became a campaign strategy for winning elections in the 1990s -- particularly after the racially-charged "Willie Horton" ad in the 1988 presidential campaign -- and private prisons were presented as a possible solution. At a 1994 ALEC conference, for example, CCA's Robert Britton and Crime Strike's Steve Twist were part of a presentation titled "Campaign School on Crime" designed "to provide legislators with an agenda and plan to advance meaningful crime control this fall and during the coming legislative session." Also part of the "Campaign School" training were Republican pollster Frank Luntz and anti-tax activist Grover Norquist (who in more recent years has become a supporter of criminal justice reform).

"This fall, candidates who campaign on crime, frame the issue effectively, present a credible, tough-on-crime agenda, and debunk the myths and misinformation of their opponents will find an electorate ready to take back the streets from criminals and their apologists," the agenda item read.

Using "crime control" as a political strategy helped lead to America's mass incarceration boom, and high profit margins for CCA and GEO Group -- which these companies are now trying to maintain with lockup quotas.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/09/12249/lockup-quotas-help-profit-prison-companies-keep-profits-high-and-prisons-full

blindpig

09-13-2016, 10:07 AM

Here's What's Gone Down So Far in Three Days of America's Largest Prison Strikes

http://theinfluence.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/burn-picture-real.png

September 12th, 2016

“This is how struggle starts … I’m very, very encouraged … Keep going … I don’t think it can be stopped.”
—Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, co-founder of Black Autonomy Federation and original Black Panther Party member.

Summer is drawing to an end here in the South, but in the region’s prisons—and across the most incarcerated nation on earth—things are just starting to heat up.

Friday (September 9), marked the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising. It also saw the launch of a coordinated series of nationwide work stoppages and hunger strikes by incarcerated Americans, the largest of its kind in history.

Organizers (and, as a formerly incarcerated person, I am one of them) currently estimate that incarcerated workers at over 40 facilities in at least 24 states are participating. Since prison administrations’ knee-jerk response to these actions is to lock down the facilities—and since, as I predicted when I previewed these actions in The Influence last month, mainstream media coverage is muted—it’s difficult to gauge precisely how widespread the strikes are, where exactly inmates are striking, and how successful they’ve been.

But reports have trickled in from around the country, and through networks of organizers, media reports and communications from incarcerated people, we’ve worked to keep track.

A Spreading Wave of Resistance

One of the earliest came from Holman State Prison in Atmore, Alabama. Alabama has been a hotbed of prison organizing since at least 2014, when the Free Alabama Movement (FAM), inspired by the 2010 Georgia prison strikes, began to crystallize. Growing out of a class for jailhouse lawyers, FAM has become one of the leading voices in national discussions of prison reform and abolition.

Holman inmates reported at noon on September 9:

“…all inmates at Holman Prison refused to report to their prison jobs without incident. With the rising of the sun came an eerie silence as the men at Holman laid on their racks reading or sleeping. Officers are performing all tasks.”
At publication time, Holman’s officers are still performing those tasks, with no signs of change.

Prior to the official strike kickoff, inmates at Holmes Correctional Institution, in the Florida panhandle, led an uprising that forced the facility to be shut down. Over 400 inmates participated in that rebellion, which the prison administration has linked to the national strikes.

As the list of facilities involved expands, the South continues to lead the way. Prisoners in multiple Alabama prisons, at least two other Florida prisons, Fluvanna women’s prison in Virginia, and prisoners in North Carolina and South Carolina* (see the South Carolina prisoners’ demands below) all engaged in various forms of resistance. Most Georgia prisoners don’t work on Fridays, but some on-the-ground reports indicate that they plan to join the actions when their work week begins today (September 12).

But the South does not stand alone. Over 400 prisoners at Kinross Correctional Facility, Michigan held a protest on the prison yard and caused property damage to the prison, prompting officials to transfer 150 of them to other facilities. Clallam Bay Correctional Center in Washington State is reportedly on lockdown after actions there.

Many women prisoners are involved: Those held at Central California Women’s Prison, a women’s prison in Nebraska, at Lincoln (Nebraska) Correctional Center, a women’s prison in Kansas, and at Merced Jail, California have either refused to work, are on hunger strike, and/or have led uprisings in their facilities.

It’s significant that so much of the resistance is focused on women’s facilities (although this certainly isn’t without precedent: The 1974 Bedford Hills and 1975 North Carolina Correctional Institute for Women[1] uprisings are two of the most significant events in US prison history). Women, especially young women of color, make up the fastest-growing corrections population. The history of resistance in US women’s prisons continues to rapidly unfold, even if the media pays it little attention.

Resistance hasn’t been limited to state prisons. Detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been holding a hunger strike. And detainees at Stewart Detention Center, an immigration detention center in southwest Georgia—controversially operated by the notorious Corrections Corporation of America—which has seen multiple incidents of resistance in recent years, also went on hunger strike over the weekend.

Support and Solidarity on the Outside

The actions haven’t been limited to jails and prisons. Friends, family and supporters of incarcerated people took to the streets across the country to express solidarity and support for the strikes.

Atlanta, Arizona, Portland, Lucasville (Ohio), Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, St. Louis, New York, Providence, Richmond, Durham, Austin, Denver, Los Angeles and dozens of other large and small US cities have seen protestors, sometimes numbering into the hundreds, take to the streets or picket prisons.

In Atlanta, where I live, about 50 people disrupted business Friday at Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Aramark—companies that have exploited incarcerated labor—during street protests. According to witnesses, police responded by trying to run over protesters and dousing protesters, bystanders, and each other with pepper spray.

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Police arrest a protestor in Atlanta on Friday. All photos: Jeremy Galloway

On Saturday, protesters from as far away as Atlanta and Athens, Georgia met with members of Mothers and FAMilies (of FAM) to stage a solidarity protest outside the gates of Donaldson Correctional Facility in central Alabama.

Solidarity also came from outside the US—including Quebec, and from as far away as Greece, where prisoners offered a salute to their US counterparts, and Serbia. Such a broad display of unity and support across prison walls is unprecedented.

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Slavery Is Alive and Well in the US

Strike organizers in different cities and states have expressed a broad range of goals, some immediate and some longer-term, but one theme ties the actions together: an end to prison slavery.

FAM organizers point out that:

“The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution continues to permit slavery to exist in this country “as Punishment of crime, whereof the person has been duly convicted,” and the institution and enterprise of slavery was legally transferred to the State government’s prison systems.” (Read the full text of the 13th amendment here.)
What constitutes a “crime” is, of course, a political decision—and one often taken deliberately to the detriment of certain populations, as the history of the War on Drugs perfectly demonstrates.

The modern prison system has been built on the ashes of chattel slavery, first through the convict leasing system, then the notorious “chain gangs”—which lasted through the 1950s—up to modern mass incarceration.

As long as slavery is protected by the US Constitution, poor people and people of color will continue to find themselves victims of a harsh system that exploits free and cheap labor for the benefit of the state, corporations and the ruling class.

Today, the signs of oppression and institutional violence are inescapable. Reports of police killing unarmed people of color have become commonplace, so much so that only the most outrageous cases gain national attention. Many of us barely bat an eye at the non-stop stream of stories about people behind bars being physically or sexually abused by guards and being forced to live and work in deplorable conditions, often without access to basic medical care or adequate food.

We also live in a time of resistance which our country hasn’t seen in well over a generation, if ever. People who are directly impacted by modern mass incarceration, our nation’s draconian drug policies, police violence, laws which are intended to protect but end up criminalizing sex workers by police violence, are not only demanding change, they’re making it themselves.

That, perhaps more than anything else, sets these modern social movements apart from liberation struggles of the past.

At the actions in Atlanta on Friday, a police captain, as soon as he appeared on the scene, asked protesters, “Who are the leaders?” Our group didn’t miss a beat, responding that we’re all leaders. The system doesn’t know how to respond to a movement without leaders to intimidate, harass, or even assassinate. In fact, the tone of the police changed dramatically after that, with officers allowing us to march in the streets to our final stop at Aramark, one of the biggest prison contractors in the country.

Where Will We Stand Once the Smoke Settles?

Whether the current, growing wave of strikes will result in an end to prison slavery remains to be seen. Right now, events are unfolding so fast it’s difficult to keep pace. But one thing is certain: Like Attica before it, 9/9/2016 opened a new chapter in US prison history.

Where this goes will be up to the people on the inside putting what little freedom they have on the line, and those of us on the outside fighting for their voices be heard.

These strikes are the result of years of planning by people on both sides of the prison walls and follow on the heels of dozens of smaller strikes and uprisings* (see a partial list below) that have swept through the prison system in the last six years.

Many of us carry the scars of having lived through the largest prison system in world history for years, even decades, after we’re released—if we’re released at all. Which is why solidarity is vital.

It’s easy to turn a blind eye to the struggles of people society has branded “criminals” when we haven’t walked in their shoes. Hell, it’s even tempting for those of us who have served time to turn our backs and forget about our incarcerated neighbors once we leave those jail and prison cells.

But incarcerated people are our neighbors today—odds are there’s a county jail, probably even a state detention facility, in your backyard—and most incarcerated people will be released one day.

Slavery is alive and well in the modern US. The wheels to undo it are in motion at this very moment. How will we respond when they ask where we were while they screamed out for compassion, support, and solidarity? On which side of history will we wake up tomorrow?

Now, perhaps more than ever before in our lives, it’s time to ask ourselves such questions.

The prison strikes are sponsored and supported by a broad coalition, including Free Alabama Movement, the Formerly Incarcerated, Convicted People, and Families Movement, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) of the Industrial Workers of the World, The Ordinary People Society, various Anarchist Black Cross Federation local chapters, the National Lawyers Guild, It’s Going Down, along with many other organizations and individuals.

For updates on what actions are taking place and which facilities are currently on lockdown, visit the IWOC Facebook page.

This site also has a link to a document with regularly updated information on the actions.

* South Carolina Prisoners’ Demands:

In representation of those in South Carolina not working or refusing to work on Sept 9, 2016—

OUR DEMANDS:

We want free labor to be ended in South Carolina. We want to be fairly compensated for our labor. This can be done by reinstituting state pay for general labor, and labor wages for private industry jobs
SCDC stop removing mental health patients from treatment programs back to general population units for disciplinary infractions
SCDC allow lifers to advance through the classification system to lower custody prisons like all others. Particularly to minimum security prisons. We also demand they not be removed for one minor disciplinary infraction
The SC parole board decisions be more grounded in scientific analysis. Rather then emotions.
SCDC reinstitute GED educational classes for all that want to obtain a GED. This includes hiring GED instructors. We also demand meaningful re/habilitation programs be instituted for all that desire to help. This include more meaningful treatment and re entry programs that will accommodate the number of prisoners that are requesting such
SCDC end excessive canteen and visitation vendor machine prices
SCDC end the practice of in camera video doctor visits for medical and mental health concerns.
The State of SC end the truth in sentencing warehousing law and the habitual sentencing of life sentences
Published by SJ, Founder of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak

** There’s been a continuous stream of hunger strikes, work stoppages, and other resistance across US prisons since the 2010 prison strikes at multiple Georgia prisons and the 2013 statewide hunger strikes in California.

“Let the crops rot in the field” has been one rallying cry (it originated in the FAM manifesto).

Here’s a summary of some of the incidents from recent months (compiled by the website It’s Going Down):

Mid-July: Hunger strike breaks out at Ely State Prison in Nevada. Call-in campaign organized in solidarity.
Late July: Hunger strike breaks out at Lucasville Prison. Call-in campaign organized in soliarity.
Late July: Hunger strikes at Waupun grow in Wisconsin.
Early August: Two rebellions break out in Indiana jails.
8/2: March and rally in support of prison strike in Durham, NC.
8/2: Holman prison errupts in a riot again as a dorm is taken.
8/10: Noise demonstration organized in support of prison strike in Atlanta.
8/10: Noise demonstration organized in Durham, NC in support of prison strike.
8/10: Freeway demonstration organized in Houston, TX.
8/12: Call-in campaign organized for Holman prisoners involved in latest riot.
8/13: Mobilization in Milwaukee, WI in support of Dying to Live hunger-strike.
8/14: Phone zap organized in solidarity with Dying to Live hunger-strike in Wisconsin.
8/24: Noise demonstration in Atlanta, GA
8/26-28: Bend the Bars Conference. Midwestern Convergence in support of prisoner struggles. More info here, Columbus, OH
8/27: March and demonstration in connection with Bend the Bars Conference, Columbus, OH
8/27: Incarcerated Lives Matter protest outside of Donaldson Correctional Facility. Organized by Mothers and Familes (MAF), and part of wider tour, Bessemer, AL
August 27th: Bike ride to Sing Sing prison, New York

Jeremy Galloway is harm reduction coordinator at Families for Sensible Drug Policy, program director at Southeast Harm Reduction Project, co-founder of Georgia Overdose Prevention, and a state-certified peer recovery specialist. He lives in Atlanta. He writes and speaks regionally about drug policy reform, harm reduction, his experiences, and the importance of including the voices of directly impacted people in policy decisions.

Jeremy Galloway

http://theinfluence.org/heres-whats-gone-down-so-far-in-three-days-of-americas-largest-prison-strikes/

blindpig

09-13-2016, 12:56 PM

La Riva: We support the courageous inmates in the nationwide prison strike

By Liberation StaffSep 12, 2016

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“We support the courageous inmates participating in the nationwide prison strike.They are organizing themselves for better conditions and an end to slave labor under extremely difficult conditions behind bars,” said presidential candidate Gloria La Riva.

Inmates held in dozens of prisons in at least 24 states across the U.S. began their strike on the 45th anniversary of the historic Attica Rebellion. The strike is being coordinated by inmates in the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee and the Free Alabama Movement.

La Riva continued: “The striking inmates are demanding an end to the practice of forced labor in prisons, where inmates are made to work for little or no pay, often for the profit of private corporations.

“Our socialist electoral campaign demands an immediate end to the use of torture in prisons including solitary confinement and the death penalty, the release of all political prisoners and the dismantling of the racist prison-industrial complex and its replacement with a humane system emphasizing the rehabilitation and human rights of inmates.

“This strike is the latest in a series of recent actions by inmates organized from within the prison system itself. This burgeoning movement must be supported by a movement in the streets mobilized in support of the rights of inmates and against the institutions that deny them their basic human rights. We call on all of our supporters to support this strike.”

https://www.liberationnews.org/we-support-the-courageous-inmates-in-the-nationwide-prison-strike/

blindpig

09-13-2016, 02:30 PM

Inmates refuse orders and take control in new Florida prison uprising

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/vacom7/picture101560467/ALTERNATES/FREE_960/prison

An inmate uprising Wednesday night at Holmes Correctional Institution left several dorms damaged. The prison secretary said despite the disturbances, operations have returned to normal. An inmate uprising Wednesday night at Holmes Correctional Institution left several dorms damaged. The prison secretary said despite the disturbances, operations have returned to normal.

The prison secretary said despite the disturbances, operations have returned to normal. Miami Herald File

BY JULIE K. BROWN
jbrown@miamiherald.com

Florida’s state prisons have resumed “normal” operations despite a disturbance Monday night at Columbia Correctional, the fifth inmate uprising in less than a week, officials said.

About 40 inmates engaged in civil disobedience by refusing officers’ orders and taking control of at least one dorm Monday evening. Prison spokeswoman Michelle Glady said there were no injuries and the incident was brought under control quickly.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/tosdam/picture101069722/ALTERNATES/FREE_320/Slide06
An inmate uprising Wednesday night at Holmes Correctional Institution left several dorms damaged.

Columbia — one of the state’s most violent prisons — remained on lockdown Tuesday. Gang violence has festered in the prison, located in Lake City, in North Central Florida. A corrections officer was stabbed in April.

Since Thursday, inmates have caused trouble at four other prisons, all in the state’s Panhandle: Gulf Annex Correctional, Mayo Correctional and Jackson Correctional. The most serious melee was at Holmes Correctional, where 400 inmates destroyed several dorms on Thursday.

Julie Jones, secretary for the Florida Department of Corrections, said the disturbances were “quickly and effectively’’ addressed, and she praised her staff and corrections officers for their response.

It’s not clear whether Florida inmates were part of a series of protests planned around the country on Friday, the 45th anniversary of the riots at Attica prison in New York. FDC officials said, that while each disturbance is still under investigation, Florida prisoners have not issued any demands or indicated that their disobedience has any purpose.

But the turmoil comes at a time when prisons remain at critical staffing levels, with officers working long hours of overtime to cover shifts. Jones has acknowledged that the facilities are dangerously understaffed and that they narrowly avoided a major riot in January at Franklin Correctional in Carrabelle, also in the Panhandle.

One of the problems generated by the critical staffing levels is that it forces inmates to remain in confined areas with little or no recreation or access to programs. Florida’s prisons are not air conditioned and, as a result, the idleness has led to aggravation among both inmates and staff.

Inmates involved in any fracas have been moved to other prisons, thereby splitting up gangs and cliques. Jones said the department deployed multiple Rapid Response Teams from other prisons to boost staffing at unsettled facilities.

But union leaders say that leaves inmates at other prisons with even less supervision.

“These riots will continue to increase in frequency, increasing the likelihood that our corrections officers will be injured, said Kimberly Schultz, president of Teamsters 2011, the union representing FDC’s officers.

She said that have assaulted 30 officers since April and that one prison, Franklin, has had three inmate riots this year alone.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/special-reports/florida-prisons/article101560472.html

"Order has been maintained!"

...if not scared they're certainly worried.

blindpig

09-16-2016, 03:28 PM

‘IT’S ALL BY FORCE’: FORMERLY INCARCERATED PEOPLE SPEAK OUT ON PRISON REFORM

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Children gather around a sculpture of a fist at the FICPFM conference in Oakland. Photo by Victoria Nam. Children gather around a sculpture of a fist at the FICPFM conference in Oakland. Photo by Victoria Nam.

“This is the first time in history, I believe, that there’s been such a gathering of formerly incarcerated leaders from across the country,” Glenn Martin said at the national conference for the Formerly Incarcerated, Convicted People, And Families Movement (FICPFM) in Oakland, California.

Martin is a formerly incarcerated person and the founder of JustLeadershipUSA, a prominent criminal justice reform organization whose mission is to cut the United States prison population in half by 2030 and reduce crime.

He’s also a member of the FICPFM leadership council, alongside Dorsey Nunn, whose organization, Legal Services For Prisoners With Children, and its grassroots project, All Of Us Or None, organized the event.

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All Of Us Or None Code of Conduct at the FICPFM conference in Oakland, California. Photo by Victoria Nam.

Their organizations, and many others represented by those gathered at the FICPFM conference on September 9, are led by and consist of formerly incarcerated people and their family members. They work to empower these individuals to drive policy reform, and it’s undeniable that they’ve had great success so far.

Many of these activists are responsible for the Ban the Box campaign, which gained attention and support from the public and lawmakers. They were involved in the settlement agreement, which ordered the end of longterm indefinite solitary confinement in California, multiple jail reforms in New York City, and other efforts to spotlight the challenges of life during and after incarceration.

As the FICPFM website notes, gatherings of this kind are not new, but many have “largely unraveled, failed or otherwise erupted into factional battles and infighting.” This was because they were directed or guided by foundations and national advocacy organizations.

The meetings lacked the involvement and direction of formerly incarcerated people. They didn’t have the right “spaces and processes for such a convening to occur,” where people could “gather and work out critical questions, debates, contradictions and problems necessary to generate a stronger foundation to build upon.”

FICPFM declares that such gatherings should be organized by formerly-incarcerated people, with “ample space to work to resolve questions, problems, and issues that have divided us in the past.”

Five years ago, FICPFM members met for the first time in Selma, Alabama. They walked backwards over the Edmund Pettis Bridge, to “mark a restoration of the historic Civil Rights Movement, a movement that lost its way under the rhetoric of drugs and crime that invested heavily into a gulag of cages to theoretically make community problems go away.” A year later, they ratified a 14-Point Platform in Watts, California, which includes demands for the right to vote, community investment over prison construction, and an end to mass incarceration.

“In 2016, we see an American culture that has had enough of mass incarceration,” members declared. “These voices come from both political parties and from no party. This frustration is present in rural white America as well as concentrated urban communities of color.”

“Ultimately, a small group of insulated people have been providing ‘solutions’ for us that they would never provide for their own families,” they added. “Although 6 million of us cannot vote, many millions more can. Our families, friends, and allies combine with us for the largest single-issue population in America—an issue that these politicians will strain, yet again, to ignore this election season.”

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FICPFM members gather on stage during the opening plenary. Photo by Victoria Nam.

Bringing The Movement Together

Glenn Martin said it was a “significant amount of work to pull together the resources to make [the conference] happen.”

“The question was, how do we take full advantage of having so many people representing so many different states in one space, particularly in terms of creating a shared agenda for the work moving forward, and especially in light of the upcoming shift in the administration?” he said.

Around 500 people gathered in the conference halls of the Hilton Hotel by the Oakland Airport. Throughout the weekend, the mood alternated between a jubilant reunion of friends, colleagues, and fellow travelers, and a somber gathering of advocates aware of the challenges still before them.

A platform evaluation process helped FICPFM leaders gather data on the movement’s demographics and needs. Attendees gathered in intimate break-out sessions, tackling the constellation of issues facing their community such as barriers to employment, housing, education, and voting. A “Justice Fair” on the last day gave the many advocacy groups the opportunity to set up tables and spread the word about their work.

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A model prison unit at the FICPFM conference in Oakland. Photo by Victoria Nam.

A few feet away, a model supermax unit loomed in the parking lot in stark contrast to the closely manicured hotel grounds and architecture. Inside, a small prison cell and model visitation room were constructed to show the space and conditions in which prisoners are made to live. Attendees—some of whom shared that they or a loved one had spent years in similar cells—walked around the exhibit while whispering to each other and taking pictures.

Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason took the stage on the first morning for a panel with Glenn Martin about the White House’s efforts on behalf of formerly incarcerated people. She discussed new initiatives from the Department of Justice, such as those to help expunge and seal criminal records, which she said had bipartisan support.

When it came time for Mason to take questions from the audience, she was confronted with serious issues that rarely garner appropriate media attention.

Attendees asked if the administration would prohibit private prison companies from holding government contracts for community corrections and post-release programs. They asked whether the administration would end the “brutality on the border,” referring to the administration’s policy of detaining immigrants, and in some cases their families, in private prisons. They asked if the White House had plans to extend more fellowships to help people leaving prison.

Mason generally responded to each question by celebrating the efforts of those assembled, noting the progress they’ve made with the administration. She urged them to continue fighting while claiming the DOJ had limited resources—at one point reminding the audience that more money for re-entry fellowships would mean less money for “other programs.” But she pledged to bring their concerns back to the White House nonetheless.

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Glenn Martin speaks to the audience before interviewing DOJ AAG Karol Mason on the morning of the first day of the FICPFM conference in Oakland. Photo by Victoria Nam.

Every Intricate Detail Of Incarceration

“As formerly incarcerated or the family members of the incarcerated, we think of every single intricate detail that is included in incarceration,” Dolores Canales said.

Canales is the founder of California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement, a group that was instrumental in possibly the largest prisoner hunger strike ever in 2013. She became involved in advocacy after her son, a prisoner at the Pelican Bay State Prison in California, launched his hunger strike in 2011.

“You know, those that maybe were not personally affected, that haven’t sat in a prison cell for a month or even ten years, might not think how would this change affect me because sometimes we even see where they are striving for change, but it turns out its actually making the situation more difficult for those inside,” Canales said.

Canales was imprisoned for 20 years, beginning at age eighteen. Like her son, she has spent time in solitary confinement.

“So when you have somebody that has been personally affected because they sat in a prison for 30 years, they’re going to know how this all plays out in the long run. They’re going to know how the wording is so important, that it’s worded a specific way so that it’s not turned around by corrections. If the wording is not detailed,” Canales explained, “then it’s open for corrections to use it as they please. There are a lot of things that are involved in this.”

Vicki Smothers, president and co-founder of Free At Last, provided the example of the impact of incarceration on parents and their children as an issue that needs better representation in reform discussions.

“Women and children are not included in the conversation, as far as women being able to have their children with them while they’re incarcerated,” she said, “because it’s a possibility to have programs like that.”

Smothers specializes in women’s recovery from addiction. In addition to her work at Free At Last, she is a co-founder of the East Palo Alto AIDS Task Force.

“[The government] took the money away and now the government is talking about how they want to be inclusive of women who are incarcerated, so they can talk to the principals of the schools. [Incarcerated parents] would be able to keep up with what their kids are doing. But that’s not keeping up with what your kids are doing because you’re not physically being with your child,” she argued.

She suggested efforts to support incarcerated parents have been well-intentioned but often misguided because they ignore the circumstances from which these people and their families come. “If your family doesn’t have the money to pay for the food for your child to come and stay with you anyway, you’re not going to be able to do it, because the department of corrections demands that you pay for their food and most people don’t have money for food.”

“I have a granddaughter that’s incarcerated right now, and I have her child, and I’m trying to figure out the school system ’cause I’m old,” Smothers shared.

“She’s my great granddaughter, so I’m trying to figure out how to keep her in the school that she’s in, because it’s a really good school. I’m trying to figure out how to keep her mind going straight, ’cause she can’t see her mom, who she’s been with for seven years of her life and never been apart from her.”

Smothers said she struggles to figure out “how to keep her from acting out and doing things that she does, cause she doesn’t understand that. She doesn’t understand prison.”

“If you ask any woman that’s ever been incarcerated that had children or has children and has lost their children, it’s something that doesn’t impact her for one moment. It impacts her for a lifetime,” she said.

“Build a place for that instead of building more prisons. Build a place for women with their children,” Smothers said. “Instead of sentencing people, they need to be trying to rehabilitate them.”

Hamdiya Cooks-Abdullah speaks about women in the movement. Photo by Victoria Nam.
Hamdiya Cooks-Abdullah speaks about women in the movement. Photo by Victoria Nam.

It’s All By Force

Five Mualimm-ak was sentenced to 33 years to life in prison for drug offenses in his early twenties. He served twelve years, five of them in solitary confinement, before most of his convictions were overturned. He became an advocate while living in a homeless shelter after his release from prison in 2012.

Mualimm-ak’s work was instrumental in bringing change to Rikers Island and federal solitary confinement policy. He is a founding member of the New York City Jails Action Coalition and the co-founder and director of Incarcerated Nation Corp. As a formerly incarcerated person who suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Mualimm-ak represents inmates with mental illness on the city’s behavioral task force.

“What you have to understand is the system, let’s be real, they don’t want solutions because it’s not a broken system,” Mualimm-ak said. “I disagree with everyone here, I actually think the system works perfectly fine. The alignment isn’t toward what it’s supposed to do so that means we have to do it by force.”

Mualimm-ak said that he and other formerly incarcerated leaders realized they needed to band together and create a network. “If it was one massive network you have to deal with this one network rather than playing with different people in different areas.”

In New York City, Mualimm-ak said he and others have had some of the movement’s best success in the country, where they have been working for years to raise consciousness about inhumane conditions on Rikers Island. At first, city officials believed “nothing was happening there,” he said.

“There are more educational institutions in New York than anywhere on the planet,” he said, “so we started going into schools and having their students go in, and then the students would write a report.”

Later, Mualimm-ak said organizers realized there was a public comment period, where people could weigh in on the conditions in the city’s jails. “So we kicked open the door for that,” he said, and they were able to submit hundreds of comments from all over the city.

By flooding Mayor Bill De Blasio’s administration with the perspectives of those directly impacted by the city’s criminal justice system, Mualimm-ak said it got to a point where the administration was forced to investigate. Yet he believes most media outlets reported the developments as though Commissioner Ponte and Mayor De Blasio were arriving at these conclusions on their own.

“No, we had to sue them for that,” he said. “We had to fight for that.”

“Be honest. [De Blasio] is a New Yorker, but he’s a Park Slope New Yorker. Different world, tale of two cities. And like Glenn [Martin] says, you live in that other city, where privileged people walk over homeless people on their way to the train,” Mualimm-ak said.

“We have to let you recognize that the majority of the city is poor. The majority of these people [in jail] are mentally ill. So the behavioral task force is one of the things that we did by force, and that was because we had lawsuits and other commitments like that. With the city, it’s all force, all force. Nothing would be moving without us.”

“[De Blasio] wants to be reelected now, and he wants to say, ‘Yeah, we’re doing this, we’re doing great.’ No, we’re not. It’s really we’re making you do it ’cause you got 100-something lawsuits.”

“I got arrested and beat up by officers at my own book signing,” Mualimm-ak said, recalling an incident in New York City following an event for Hell Is A Very Small Place. He and Joseph “Jazz” Hayden were leaving the event when they saw NYPD officers harassing a homeless person.

Hayden filmed the police and was arrested. Mualimm-ak protested Hayden’s arrest and was arrested as well.

“So there’s no defense for a person directly impacted,” he said, “even if you’re working for the mayor, even if you’re the head of the task force, even if you’re making up the laws. So it is by force. And I believe he is just trying to get re-elected and look good doing the work, but all the work that he’s looking good doing is because we’ve made him do it.”

Mualimm-ak feels he has a different relationship with President Obama, who he said invited him into the process to end juvenile solitary confinement in federal prisons.

“Obama I do believe differently, I’m just going to be honest, because I mean this person — the White House asked me to organize two years ago the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for Rikers Island and the hearing, and I set that up. So they’re actually saying, ‘Give us the tools.'”

“I didn’t respect it at that time,” he said, “but then they gave me the petition [to end juvenile solitary confinement] based off of that evidence. It’s a back and forth thing.”

But he acknowledged that the movement’s efforts have not been entirely without setbacks. He noted bipartisan criminal justice reform proposals include funding for reentry services run by Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group—the same private prison companies the administration has backed away from in recent months.

Mualimm-ak said, “This is a system where the system creates other rules to knock down your chances of what you’ve done.”

“It looks like progression when you look at the time, no disrespect, I love [White House advisor Ari] Schwartz and all them, ’cause they’re doing great work. It looks good, but it’s not really happening. It’s done by force.”

“Those previously incarcerated did that—remember it was a collective of INC, Solitary Watch, NYCLU, and the Innocence Project that produced the panel. You had Piper [Kerman], you had people who were exonerated—that’s what forced them to do it.”

“Without those cases, without those directly impacted people saying, ‘my case is an example ’cause I’m giving you permission and I’m going to be the voice of it,'” Mualimm-ak said, “then that would have never happened ’cause there are no viable candidates to prove it. So it’s all by force. It’s all by force.”

https://shadowproof.com/2016/09/15/force-formerly-incarcerated-people-speak-prison-reform/

Dhalgren

09-17-2016, 02:10 AM

EMERGENCY ALERT: F.A.M. PRESS RELEASE FOR HOLMAN PRISON

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
SERIOUS HUMANITARIAN CRISES AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS DEVELOPING AT HOLMAN PRISON

Contact Information:
National Representative
Pas. Kenneth S. Glasgow
The Ordinary People's Society
334.791.2433
or

freealabamamovement@Gmail.com
FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Atmore, Alabama. September 16, 2016

A serious humanitarian crises is developing at Holman prison as correctional officers continue to walk off of the job amid concerns about safety and apathy from Warden Terry Raybon and the office of ADOC Commissioner Jefferson S Dunn, as violence, including deadly stabbings and assaults continue to mount.

Several officers expressed dismay and fear after learning that two of their fellow officers, Officer Brian Ezell and another officer, reported to Warden Raybon that they had knives drawn on them and their lives threatened, and that neither Warden Raybon, nor Commissioners Jeff Dunn and Grantt Culliver would take any action to ensure their safety. Both of these officers then quit.
Several other officers have also quit in the past three weeks after witnessing a stabbing of a fellow officer in the temple and who had remained hospitalized with life threatening injuries until he was pronounced dead earlier today. This after a former warden, Carter Davenport, was stabbed in March amidst back-to-back riots and other violence at Holman.

Now, after seeing Warden Raybon release appx 20 people from segregation on September 13, 2016, most of whom were all in segregation for violent incidents (only to see several stabbing take place, including one critically injured and another losing an eye), a total of eight more officers have either quit or turned in their two week notices. Officers are expressing concern that the Commissioners of the ADOC are intentionally exacerbating violence at the expense of human life in efforts to push forward their plan to extort the public for 1.5 billion to build new prisons in next years Legislative Session.

Officers have begun to express support for the Non-Violent stance of FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT and their efforts to expose corruption, violence and other issues plaguing Holman and other Alabama prisons, and have went so far as to make repeated requests to Warden Raybon for the release of F.A.M. co-founder and organizer Kinetik Justice from solitary confinement, because officers now feel that he is being wrongfully detained and because he has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to conduct peaceful demonstrations at Holman prison to bring attention to issues within the ADOC and Holman prison.

We are asking that everyone call Commissioner Dunn and Warden Raybon and demand that they post daily reports of the staffing levels and incidents of violence taking place at Holman as a matter of public safety.

We are further requesting assistance in finding a Human Rights attorney and human rights observers to report to Holman immediately, as the level of violence is skyrocketing, and the men at Holman are left in a virtual war zone to fend for themselves, while officers continue to walk off the job in what is already the most understaffed prison in America. Officers are so afraid to enter the dorms that routine security functions like conducting counts are being done by the incarcerated men themselves, and video footage attesting to this fact are widely available online and across social media.

Family members of those incarcerated at Holman are requested to call Commissioner Dunn and Culliver continuously, and demand that their loved ones be immediately removed from Holman, as there are insufficient officers to secure the prison.

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Warden Terry Raybon
Holman Correctional Facility
251-368-8173
Commissioner Jefferson Dunn
Commissioner Grantt Culliver
334-353-3883 (switchboard operator)

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog

What about the Southern Poverty Law Center or those university students and professors who work to get wrongfully convicted prisoners released? This tactic isn't just to force money into prison building funds, this is punishment for the prisoners who when out on strike and are speaking out.

I wonder what the warden promised the murderers and psychopaths that he released onto the general population?

chlams

09-17-2016, 09:24 AM

The true cost of the American gulag: $1 trillion a year

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/09/16/cost-s16.html

Dhalgren

09-17-2016, 11:53 AM

WORLD WIDE SUPPORT FOR OUR MOVEMENT

Posted on September 16, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

When Free Alabama Movement began planning to end prison slavery a couple of years ago, their emphasis was on shaming McDonald’s, which uses prison slave labor extensively. This graffiti appeared in Barcelona, Spain.

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/wp-1474044681667.jpg?w=562

U.S. Embassy protests occurred in England, Australia, Sweden and Germany. From Oregon to Florida and in between, companies profiting off prison were targeted by outside protesters, including Bank of America, McDonalds, Aramark, AT&T and Starbucks. In Lansing, Michigan, protesters blocked a downtown intersection for hours with a large U-Haul truck. In New York City and Durham, North Carolina, they blocked freeways. In Portland, Oregon, protesters disrupted an AT&T and McDonalds, both corporations which use prison labor, as well as held a noise demonstration outside a local jail; then they shut down traffic. There were arrests in Oakland, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Nashville, Tennessee; and Atlanta, Georgia. Most were quickly released, but at least three protesters in Georgia are facing multiple felonies.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpres...subscribe-blog

This may just become a much larger problem for the bosses than they thought. Momentum.

blindpig

09-17-2016, 01:24 PM

Dhalgren

09-18-2016, 10:21 AM

A THREAT TO VIOLENCE

Posted on September 18, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

For almost 3 years, I’ve sat here and watch the ADOC meticulously create an environment of hostility and chaos. They have not only been painting a picture, but coloring the perception of society. — INCARCERATED MEN ARE ANIMALS AND MUST BE WORKED OR CAGED. SO WE CAN’T LET THEM GO, WE MUST BUILD BIGGER CAGES.$1.5 BILLION IS A SMALL PRICE TO PAY IN COMPARISON TO RELEASING THEM BACK INTO SOCIETY.
However, the people of Alabama were sick and tired of the rhetoric. So the ADOC had to prove their point-in Blood. THE HOLMAN PROJECT was implemented- A period of a mass influx of drugs, abandoning of #403 Regulations, withdrawal of security from Dormitories and encouragement to “get you something to protect yourself”.
For the past 6 months, I’ve witnessed a deliberate releasing from Segregation of mortal enemies, assault victims with unknown enemies, mental patients, sociopathic homosexual predators and anyone else that wanted to go to population. Yet, they have adamantly refused to even discuss or consider releasing me (KINETIK). To this day- 33 months- I have been declared “A THREAT TO THE SECURITY OF THE ADOC” and sentenced to INDEFINITE SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.

But once you understand the Motive, Intent and Purpose of THE HOLMAN PROJECT, then it becomes clear why using Non Violent and Peaceful means to highlight and exposed the inhumanities being suffered by the men here at Holman warranted me being labeled a threat to the ADOC— For clarity sake and lack of a better word, I’M FUCKIN UP THEIR PLANS WITH ALL THE NON -VIOLENT PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATIONS. AS THEY NEED VIOLENCE NOT RESOLUTIONS.

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/20160905081021.jpg?w=562

Now it all adds up and makes sense, I’m not violent enough for THE HOLMAN PROJECT.

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Dhalgren

09-18-2016, 10:24 AM

THE HOLMAN PROJECT… UPDATE

Posted on September 17, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

ATT::: THE HOLMAN PROJECT HAS RESULTED IN THE DEATH OF A CORRECTIONAL OFFICER

Alabama Corrections Officer dies of injuries – FOX10 News | WALAhttp://www.fox10tv.com/story/33115450/alabama-corrections-officer-dies-of-injuries– shared by UC Mini

WHO IS NEXT?? COULD IT BE YOUR LOVED ONE?? WILL YOU SIT BACK AND WAIT OR WILL YOU JOIN FAM IN CALLING FOR A TASK FORCE TO END THEHOLMAN PROJECT ???

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Dhalgren

09-20-2016, 12:35 AM

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT STEPS UP

Posted on September 19, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

On Saturday September 17, 2016, the men at HOLMAN CF held the 1st UNIVERSAL PEACE & UNITY SUMMIT in which it was established that there would be a “NO STAND OFF POLICY”. All street organizations (Bloods, Crips, Growth n Development and SB’s) have vowed to respect the policy for the sake of all men housed at Holman. Since then there has been No Violence.

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT has taken on the responsibility to provided protection for one another and to resolve all disagreements-as the ADOC has abandoned their duty and responsibility.

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/photogrid_1459910617987.jpg?w=880

So if you have a loved one at Holman prison, you should be demanding answers from Commissioner Jeff Dunn and his staff.

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Dhalgren

09-20-2016, 12:39 AM

Posted on September 19, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

ADOC CORRECTIONAL OFFICERS BREAK RANK WITH COMMISSIONER DUNN, SPEAK OUT AGAINST PRISON CONDITIONS
Correctional officers at Holman Prison have staged a mutiny on the battleship and are beginning to speak out publicly about the humanitarian crisis that F.A.M. first reported two days ago.

[Corrections Officers Quietly Speak-Out on Unsafe Prison Conditions Following CO Death] is good, have a look at it! http://wkrg.com/2016/09/18/corrections-officers-quietly-speak-out-on-unsafe-prison-conditions-following-co-death/

Federal authorities visited Holman prison today, as Commissioner Dunn and Grantt Culliver remain silent on the mounting death toll in ADOC.
Additional deaths are also being reported at Elmore prison in Montgomery:
“Kelsey Davis | Montgomery Advertiser

5 days ago

Three inmate homicides at Elmore County Correctional Facility in the past 18 months should signal a crisis within Alabama’s overcrowded prison system, a reform advocate said.

From 2010 to 2014, one inmate homicide occurred at Elmore, despite a relatively stagnant occupancy rate at about 196 percent. The recent Elmore deaths account for one-third of all Alabama Department of Corrections inmate homicides in the past 18 months.

“That should be setting off alarm bells that the (ADOC) is a system in crisis at all levels, and needs to be treated as such,” said Charlotte Morrison, an attorney with the Equal Justice Initiative.

[Elmore prison sees spike in homicides] is good, have a look at it! http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2016/09/14/elmore-prison-sees-spike-homicides/90066832/

Yet, the Commissioner and his lieutenants are chasing dollars in Montgomery for new “houses of horror”, instead of taking action to save lives within ADOC.
Free Alabama Movement leaders continue to be targeted and retaliated against for speaking out and exposing the crisis. . . while the death toll continues to climb.

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Dhalgren

09-20-2016, 09:28 AM

WE’RE FREEDOM FIGHTERS

Posted on September 20, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/20160614041223.jpg?w=562

“We’re Freedom Fighters”: The Story of the Nationwide Prison Labor Strikehttp://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37644-we-re-freedom-fighters-the-story-of-the-nationwide-prison-labor-strike-

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/20160418181922.jpg?w=562

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/20160913090837.jpg?w=562

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Dhalgren

09-20-2016, 09:36 AM

Posted on September 20, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/20160920060915.jpg?w=562

https://theintercept.com/2016/09/16/former-prisoners-are-leading-the-fight-against-mass-incarceration/

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/20160920060626.jpg?w=562

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/wp-image-144232506jpg.jpeg?w=880

http://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/wp-image-144232506jpg.jpeg?w=880

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/wp-1474370038270.jpeg?w=562

Contact Information:
National Representative
Pas. Kenneth S. Glasgow
The Ordinary People’s Society
334.791.2433
or
Freealabamamovement@gmail.com

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Not so big on the "god" thing, but none of my business and one step at a time. I hope he is a good leader/spokesperson for FAM.

Dhalgren

09-22-2016, 09:57 AM

Untitled

Posted on September 21, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/wp-1474488011233.jpg?w=562
Soldiers wanted, sign up, and stand up here!

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Dhalgren

09-22-2016, 10:01 AM

Posted on September 21, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Our latest updates as we know, with more info expected in the coming days and weeks.

As of 9/21 we have tracked 46 prisons and jails that experienced some kind of disruption between September 8 and 21st. This total includes both lockdowns reported by officials (some of whom deny that the lockdown was protest related) and reports of protests from prisoners and supporters (some of which did not lead to lockdowns or full strikes).

Of these, 31 facilities experienced a lock-down, suspension or full strike for at least 24 hours. Those 31 facilities house approximately 57,000 people. That is a guess at the minimum number of prisoners affected by the nationally coordinated strike.

There is likely much more going on behind the prison gates that we do not yet know about. We receive new information on a daily basis. In some places the strike lasted a day or a weekend, but in some, it seems to be going strong 12 days in.

—

Phone: (614) 704-4699

LucasvilleAmnesty.org
InsurgentTheatre.org

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Dhalgren

09-22-2016, 10:03 AM

Letting voices from inside the concrete jungle be heard

Posted on September 21, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/screenshot_2016-09-21-16-22-32.png?w=562

Follow and friend on Facebook

Dhalgren

09-22-2016, 10:08 AM

Forty-five years after the protests at Attica, there is overwhelming evidence that the U.S. has learned little about prison reform and done even less to make things better.

http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2016/09/13/attica-s-lessons-went-unlearned-our-prisons-are-stiil-a-disgrace/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/49126897.cached.jpg

Heather Ann Thompson
09.13.16 3:15 PM ET

Forty-five years ago today, on Sept. 13, 1971, nearly 1,300 men were waking up in the yard of the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York, eager to begin another long day of negotiations with state officials. After first failing to get help by writing to their state senators and pleading with the commissioner of corrections, these men had begun a protest against inhumane treatment four days earlier. On this rainy, damp morning, they were now hoping that they could finalize the list of improvements to the prison they had been negotiating, as well as secure a promise of no retaliation, so that they could bring their protest to a peaceful end.

Suddenly, however, the men looked up in horror to see a helicopter rising over the walls of the prison. Within minutes, it began blanketing the yard with a thick cloud of toxic tear gas. Then, as men began choking, gagging, and falling to the ground blinded by this noxious powder that now covered their skin and filled their lungs, a phalanx of nearly 600 heavily armed and gas-masked state police rushed into the prison and began shooting these men down. Then, over the next weeks and months, behind the closed doors of Attica, these men were brutally tortured.

Today, Sept. 13, 2016, hundreds of people who live behind bars are once again in jeopardy because, on this 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising of 1971, they too just launched a series of human-rights protests as well as work stoppages. Like those prisoners in upstate New York more than four decades ago, prisoners from Florida to Michigan have erupted because they too endure terrible overcrowding, insufficient food, too much time locked in solitary confinement, terrible medical care, and even bruises, broken bones, and, yes, death at the hands of abusive guards.

Their mistreatment is well documented. White guards in one Florida prison, for example, recently forced a black prisoner into a chair, and while choking, kicking and punching him, they screamed “Let’s beat this n——- and teach him a lesson.” What had he done? He had dropped a cookie on the floor. In another Florida correctional facility just a few years earlier, prisoner Darren Rainey died after officers punished him by forcing him to stand in a scalding 180-degree shower for two hours. In Michigan’s prisons, juveniles and women prisoners have been raped by correctional staff, suffered medical abuse and neglect, and have been forced to eat rotten and rat-ridden food.

And yet, just as it was overlooked in 1971, this inhumane treatment has been utterly ignored by prison authorities as well as by the politicians who have the power to do something to stop it. And so prisoners are once again protesting.

But because prisoners have exploded in frustration this week—from the 400 men at Florida’s Holmes Correctional Institution that erupted on September 8 this week, to the 400 men who exploded at Michigan’s Kinross Correctional Facility, to the hundreds more who have called for strikes within prisons in Alabama, Texas, Virginia, and the Carolinas—they, like the prisoners at Attica 45 years ago, are likely now facing brutal retaliation for having dared to act up and to speak out.

It is past time for politicians to address the abominable conditions that exist in our nation’s thousands of prisons and jails. This country now has more than 7 million Americans under some form of correctional supervision, and nearly 2 million citizens locked up in these overcrowded, abusive, and inhumane facilities. These people may be serving a sentence, but they are still human beings, and they are crying out for help.

Back in 1971 when the prisoners at Attica protested—when they were begging for help from state officials—they ended up being shot, tortured, and traumatized. And because the nation ignored the problem then, and indeed made it much, much worse, prisons are once again erupting. This time we can’t respond with even more abuse. This time we must all listen, and act.

Heather Ann Thompson is a historian at the University of Michigan who writes about prisons and prison policy. Her most recent book is Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy (Pantheon, 2016).

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/13/attica-s-lessons-went-unlearned-our-prisons-are-stiil-a-disgrace.html

Dhalgren

09-22-2016, 10:11 AM

STOP PLAYIN’ WITH THE CONCEPT

Posted on September 22, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/received_1180965778600247001.jpeg?w=562

by KINETIK JUSTICE AMUN
Its time to put the radical rhetoric aside and get to a concrete and definitive plan of action. A plan of action that sets out the methods and means necessary to accomplish our mission. And make no mistake about it, this is a Mission. September 9th was only a step- a GIGANTIC STEP, but only a step on our ROAD TO REDEMPTION, RECONCILIATION AND ULTIMATELY OUR FREEDOM.

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT IS COMMITTED TO THE PROCESS AND DUG IN FOR THE LONG HAUL.

SLAVERY MUST DIE AND THE 151 YEAR LIE…

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/20160908171830.jpeg?w=562

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Dhalgren

09-25-2016, 10:38 AM

Holman Update

Posted on September 25, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Bitter sweet to see all the Officers at Holman Shutdown on the Administration, none came to work both shifts today_9-24-16 and COMM. CULIVER, WARDEN PETERSON, WARDEN STEWART, SGT FRANKLIN, LT. MCKENZIE AND CO WILSON served dinner in Segment, 4 hours late. Culliver actually passed out all 200 trays.IT WAS SWEET But then the Hall Runners came out and picked the trays up for them, so they could go do other things. THAT WAS BITTER AS HELL. Now approx. 20 Riot Team Officers just arrived. I’ll let you know if this part is bitter or sweet because they are gonna have to shower us. DAMN

Dhalgren

09-25-2016, 10:41 AM

Posted on September 25, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

http://youtu.be/TxO33wuRB8U

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I feel very unsure about the AFL-CIO. I think that the prisoner movement needs all the support it can get, BUT it does not need to be sidetracked into a bourgeois corral. We will see.

blindpig

09-26-2016, 12:43 PM

a tweet from #Attica45

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CtSLLrGUsAEQLGB.jpg

Goddamn I love it when supervisors and other suckfish gotta break a sweat.

Edit: Audio message from Kinetic Justice:

https://iwoc.noblogs.org/voice_004/

Kid of the Black Hole

09-26-2016, 01:23 PM

This is heating up. Culliver serving trays :)

Dhalgren

09-26-2016, 11:02 PM

PRESS RELEASE: Inhumane Conditions in Alabama Prisons Leads to Strikes by Incarcerated Men and Now Guards

Posted on September 26, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

URGENT EMERGENCY ALERT: As Incarcerated Men Strike for Rights, Guards Follow: Officers Stage Historic Work Strike at Holman Prison

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT PRESS RELEASE CONCERNING HOLMAN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

CONTACT INFORMATION:

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Mothers and F.A.M.ilies

P.O. BOX 186

New Market, Al

35761

256.203.4371

https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/_mKMjjkbWXDycfmGsuUP5ZJCXqzMwGPQXtNou4VgCy93lGzMoUu51gN5Ku-dunq0DJOKtadYmDU95mzuERqmsH0130wUgor3jakVDG4ALSpv71FcfKR6XATxi5_0avvWkQ=s0-d-e1-ft#https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/wp-1474818603410.jpg

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blindpig

09-27-2016, 10:11 AM

#Arabs4BlackPower Releases Movement for Black Lives Solidarity Statement
#Arabs4BlackPower is “committed to Black liberation and grounded in the necessity of shared struggle among oppressed & Indigenous peoples globally.”

Kirsten West Savali
BY: KIRSTEN WEST SAVALI
Posted: September 26, 2016

http://www.theroot.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ddpalestine.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=640
The Dream Defenders in downtown Nazareth, Israel, in January 2015
COURTESY OF MAY ALHASSEN

Arabs for Black Power—a circle of organizers from the United States and Arabic-speaking regions—has released a statement in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives.

The Movement for Black Lives, or M4BL, is raising global consciousness about state-sanctioned and state-perpetuated violence against people of color in the United States, as well as actively working to dismantle the institutional and systemic oppression that makes these extrajudicial killings just another day in North America.

M4BL also stands in solidarity with indigenous and Latinx communities, as well as oppressed and marginalized people around the world. This is why scholar May Alhassen, one of the organizers of the Arabs for Black Power statement, says that fostering an even deeper connection between black Americans and Arabic-speaking communities is critical.

“The statement is also translated into Arabic, as our intended aim is to structure a conversation between black Americans and the Arab diasporas,” says Alhassen, who, along with the Dream Defenders, coordinated a trip to Palestine last year to connect the movement in the United States to the illegal occupation of Palestine.

[video at link]

“As a response to the Movement for Black Lives’ August release of Vision for Black Lives, this expression of ‘with-ness’ continues to be urgently imperative, especially in light of the recent egregious police killings of Keith Lamont Scott, Terence Crutcher and 13-year-old Tyre King, and Charlotte, N.C.’s righteous resistance,” Alhassen continued. “We see you. We hear you. We stand with you. Our statement closes with a solemn commitment and enduring promise.”

Palestinian organizer Suhad Khatib spearheaded the project to write this statement in close partnership with Palestinian organizer and scholar Yamila Shannan.

Read the #Arabs4BlackPower statement below:

We, the undersigned artists, academics, mothers, fathers, students, refugees, and community organizers with ties to Arabic*-speaking regions, declare our unwavering solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL). We fully and wholeheartedly endorse the policy demands put forth by the US*-based Movement for Black Lives platform and its transnationalist vision for Black power, freedom and justice. We join you in reiterating the necessity of shared struggle and collective liberation of all oppressed and indigenous people globally. For liberation to be real and genuine, we all need to get free.

The current iteration of the movement to end the war and genocide against Black people in the US is rooted in centuries of the Black freedom struggle. As we commemorate the month of Black August and its history of radical resistance, we as #Arabs4BlackPower commit to amplifying the rebellions of Black and indigenous people in the settler*-colonies of the Americas; and to joining in the fight against white supremacy, patriarchy, and hyper*-militarized late capitalism.

Once again, Black people in the US are defending themselves from the violence inscribed in the Americas’ settler colonialist regimes built on the backs of Indigenous, Black, and Brown people through the expropriation of indigenous lands, genocide, and slavery. Once again, Black freedom fighters are refusing colonial and imperial narratives that uphold white supremacy and are continuing to craft a language rooted in the struggle for justice. Once again, Black liberation movements are challenging systems of criminalization that dehumanize, incarcerate, and assassinate Indigenous, Black, and Brown people—systems that simultaneously transcend and reinforce national boundaries through border-control complexes to terrorize people around the world under the umbrella of the global “war on terror.” And once again, Black organizers in the US have put forth a vision to continue imagining and transforming these systems within and across borders.

The U.S. empire violently exerts control over Indigenous, Black, and Brown communities internally and around the globe. People in predominantly Arabic*-speaking regions experience empire in locally specific material forms: bombings, drone strikes, forced disappearances, checkpoints, carceral wars, forced migration, indigenous displacement, starvation, the theft of natural resources, apartheid, and more. The geography of ‘Ferguson to Palestine’ is integral to #Arabs4BlackPower charting the structural connections, albeit different manifestations, inscribed by the US-*led “war on terror.” It connects anti*-Blackness as well as anti*-Muslim and anti*Arab racism in the US with global imperial wars in the rest of the world.

http://www.theroot.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/arabs-for-black-power.jpeg?w=325
Arabs for Black Power.
LEILA ABDELRAZAQ

The “war on terror” rests on regional geopolitical alliances forged for the sole purpose of maintaining and furthering imperial and Zionist hegemony. It is situated within a genealogy of colonial legacies that have structured power in Arabic*speaking regions along the lines of gender, religion, ethnicity, skin color, language, and sexual orientation, to name a few. With these genealogies in mind, those of us struggling to rid all communities of the Maghreb and the Mashreq* from militarization and neoliberalism must center the lived experiences and aspirations of women, Black Arabs, Nubians, Imazighen, Kurds, Armenians, migrant workers, refugees, gender*-nonconforming individuals, queers, and others. We pledge to work against marginalization within our communities in all its forms and to continue examining the language we use as we continue dismantling colonial legacies. We must refuse and erase national boundaries created to divide us**—building with the oppressed from Palestine to Western Sahara, from Yemen to Syria, from Algeria to Sudan, from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond, as we come together in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives.

In pledging to resist and overcome, we as #Arabs4BlackPower unequivocally support the M4BL platform for reparations, invest*-divest, economic justice, community control and political power. We recognize, as did many before us, that only through joint struggle will we dismantle the distinct yet intersecting systems that both oppress Black and Indigenous people in the settler colonies of the Americas and institutionalize a war of terror from within US boundaries to the Mashreq, Maghreb, and beyond. To this end, we commit ourselves to combating anti*-Blackness wherever we find it in our communities—both within the boundaries of the US as immigrant*-settlers complicit in white supremacy, as well as in Arabic*speaking regions where socio*-historically distinct forms of discrimination against Black Arabs intersect with other forms of marginalization along the lines of gender, religion, ethnicity, skin color, language, and sexual orientation to name a few.

From Ferguson to Palestine: we will work for liberation. To everyone building towards the Movement for Black Lives:

We see you. We hear you. We stand with you.

**Maghreb and Mashreq are locally referenced geographies within predominantly Arabic speaking regions spanning from the Maghreb (Western Africa) to the Mashreq (Eastern Africa and Western Asia).

In Joint Struggle,
Signatories

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/09/arabs4blackpower-releases-movement-for-black-lives-solidarity-statement/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialshare

blindpig

09-27-2016, 10:24 AM

on September 26, 2016 at 8:56 PM, updated September 26, 2016 at 9:42 PM
The Department of Corrections said Monday that a number of guards at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore failed to report to work on Saturday.

Bob Horton, a spokesman for the department, emailed a statement to AL.com that confirmed reports by inmate advocacy groups that a strike took place at the prison over the weekend.

But it stopped short of giving credence to the groups' claims that guards were still on strike Monday.

"Some correctional officers assigned to William C. Holman Correctional Facility did not report for the third shift on Saturday," Horton said. "As a result, officers from other correctional facilities augmented Holman's security staff. Prison officials have not reported further incidents."

The failure by the correctional officers to report to work Saturday comes on the heels of two weeks of strikes by inmate laborers across the country. The striking prisoners are protesting what they describe as inhumane living conditions and unfair employment practices in prisons.

The Free Alabama Movement (FAM) issued a statement Saturday about the strike.

"Last night at Holman prison an emergency situation developed as ALL of the officers assigned to the second shift waged a historic work strike for the first time in the history of the Alabama Department of Corrections," the group wrote.

The statement went on to claim that a Department of Corrections (DOC) official "was dispatched to the prison," and that he brought in supervisors from another correctional facility "just to be able to serve meals."

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee issued a tweet Monday morning that was cited by Buzzfeed News and followed up on FAM's statement.

"The guards are refusing to work," the tweet said. "THE GUARDS. ARE. REFUSING. TO. WORK. AT. HOLMAN."

Prisoners at Holman went on strike for 24 hours earlier this month, the DOC confirmed, while advocacy groups say the strike was much broader.

The DOC did not respond to detailed questions about why the guards did not report to work or why they chose to do so.

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/09/department_of_corrections_conf.html

Dhalgren

09-27-2016, 11:47 AM

The authorities are reeling - which makes them extremely dangerous.

blindpig

09-27-2016, 07:35 PM

The authorities are reeling - which makes them extremely dangerous.

Here ya go...

Corrections officer arrested while reporting to work at Holman Correctional Facility
Monday, September 26th 2016, 3:42 pm EDT
Tuesday, September 27th 2016, 3:37 pm EDT
By Beth Shelburne, AnchorCONNECT

http://wbrc.images.worldnow.com/images/11971331_G.jpg
DeJuan Rudolph. (Source: ADOC)
DeJuan Rudolph. (Source: ADOC)
ATMORE, AL (WBRC) -
A corrections officer from Holman Correctional Facility has been arrested, according to an employee with the Escambia County Sheriff's Office.

Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) spokesperson Bob Horton confirms that officer DeJuan Rudolph was arrested at the prison Sunday. County jail officials say he was brought to the jail around 8 p.m.

Ruldolph was reporting to work at the time of his arrest, Horton said.

Horton says Rudolph had controlled substances, cellphones and other contraband in his possession when he was arrested.

Rudolph is facing six charges including drug trafficking of cocaine, drug trafficking of a synthetic substance, using office position for personal gain and possession of a controlled substance. No bond has been set until Rudolph goes before a judge.

This information was confirmed by an employee at the Escambia County Jail, which WBRC contacted after receiving a tip about the arrest.

Horton says Rudolph is no longer an ADOC employee and had worked for them since December 2015.

http://www.wbrc.com//story/33219791/corrections-officer-arrested-while-reporting-to-work-at-holman-correctional-facility#.V-r-h_fTvCQ.twitter

Five will get ya ten that this guy was a leader or prominent in the guard lay out last weekend.

Dhalgren

09-27-2016, 09:53 PM

KINETIK ON AL JAZEERA

Posted on September 27, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Kinetic Justice appeared on The Stream, Al Jazeera: The labour rights fight in US prisons, Sept. 26, 2016

http://youtu.be/3RjCqn_F9ck

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/kinetik-on-aljazeera-sept2016.jpg?w=600&h=410
Picture of Kinetic on Al Jazeera
Kinetic on Al Jazeera, Sept 26, 2016

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Dhalgren

09-27-2016, 09:56 PM

Posted on September 27, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Just recently officers from Elmore correctional facility and other prisons had to go to Holman correctional facility in Atmore Alabama to cover duty so Holman officers could attend officer Kenneth Bettis’ funeral. Upon return to their own facilities these officers face testimony that they actually see where the Free Alabama movement (Fam), and UNHEARD VOICES are coming from. “Officers are now speaking out”, said one Elmore correctional officer. He also said “I see why!”

This officer also went on to explain his thoughts to the recent stabbing of officer Bettis and how from what he heard and witnessed to be hard to believe that it happened the way Alabama Department of Corrections public relations painted the picture.

I myself hope more officers realize that it is important they also speak up now. Time will tell. via UNHEARD VOICES!

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Dhalgren

09-27-2016, 10:16 PM

Alabama prison guards went on strike, Department of Corrections confirms | AL.com

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Jeremy Gray | jgray@al.com

Connor Sheets | csheets@al.com By Connor Sheets | csheets@al.com
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on September 26, 2016 at 8:56 PM, updated September 27, 2016 at 3:42 PM

The Department of Corrections said Monday that a number of guards at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore failed to report to work on Saturday.

Bob Horton, a spokesman for the department, emailed a statement to AL.com that seemingly confirmed reports by inmate advocacy groups that a strike took place at the prison over the weekend.

But it stopped short of giving credence to the groups' claims that guards were still on strike Monday.

"Some correctional officers assigned to William C. Holman Correctional Facility did not report for the third shift on Saturday," Horton said. "As a result, officers from other correctional facilities augmented Holman's security staff. Prison officials have not reported further incidents."

Horton sent out a new statement Tuesday afternoon stating that the reports of a strike by Holman corrections officers were "erroneous" and that the DOC only confirmed that they missed work.

"Prison officials are acknowledging that nine officers did not report for the facility's third shift on Saturday. In response, and as standing operating procedure, officers from other ADOC facilities were assigned to the shift to augment the security staff," the statement said.

"Authorities say most officers assigned to the facility's third shift reported to work the following day. At no time did the officers state that they were participating in a strike, nor did they express any demands or grievances."

Horton went on to explain that the "unofficial reports" of a strike by corrections officers "came from inmate advocate groups and not from department officials."

The failure by the correctional officers to report to work Saturday comes on the heels of two weeks of strikes by inmate laborers across the country. The striking prisoners are protesting what they describe as inhumane living conditions and unfair employment practices in prisons.

The Free Alabama Movement (FAM) issued a statement Saturday about the strike.

"Last night at Holman prison an emergency situation developed as ALL of the officers assigned to the second shift waged a historic work strike for the first time in the history of the Alabama Department of Corrections," the group wrote.

The statement went on to claim that a Department of Corrections (DOC) official "was dispatched to the prison," and that he brought in supervisors from another correctional facility "just to be able to serve meals."

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee issued a tweet Monday morning that was cited by Buzzfeed News and followed up on FAM's statement.

"The guards are refusing to work," the tweet said. "THE GUARDS. ARE. REFUSING. TO. WORK. AT. HOLMAN."

Prisoners at Holman went on strike for 24 hours earlier this month, the DOC confirmed, while advocacy groups say the strike was far broader.

This story was updated at 3:40 p.m. Tuesday to include new comments from Department of Corrections spokesman Bob Horton.

Dhalgren

09-28-2016, 10:29 AM

LET’S BE REAL

Posted on September 28, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Lets be real with ourselves and our children. History books are filled with lies about who did what and why. The information age has brought to light a lot of those lies. However, just exposing the falsehoods and half truths is not good enough, we must correct them through direct action.
The biggest and most pressing one is in regards to the Institution of Slavery.

For over 150 years, we have promoted a lie- “The 13th Amendment ABOLISHED SLAVERY”.
The 13th Amendment, in layman's terms, took control of Slavery from the Southern Planters and Codified it for the Government to regulate it. The Government/State became the de facto “MASSA”

Now all the State had to do is create a sham criminal justice system and Slavery could continue to thrive on- and thats exactly what it has done- thrive on under the guise of the criminal justice system.

All this has been verified and documented, therefore, the question begs — ARE WE A NATION OF ENSLAVERS? OR ARE WE, AS A NATION, PREPARED TO BECOME ABOLITIONIST?
And just striking the exception/criminal punishment clause will not be enough. The entire Amendment and its historical underpinnings must be identified, exposed and uprooted. This way we not only Abolish Slavery, but we correct the White Supremacist narrative. No longer will we promote the lie that in 1865 the UNITED STATES abolished Slavery and began Reconciliation with its former “Chattel Slaves”

Today, 2016, is the time to END SLAVERY under all forms and names-be it Convict Leasing, Feudalism, Prison Labor, etc.- and create an Amendment with NO EXCEPTION.

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blindpig

09-30-2016, 07:58 AM

“Alabama Guards Stage Work Strike Months After Prisoner Uprising at Overcrowded Holman Facility”
POSTED ON 2016-09-29
BY QUEMELA
POSTED IN BLOG TALK, CIVIL RIGHTS, UNITED STATES
Democracy Now

Prison officials in Alabama have confirmed a group of correction officers refused to report for the evening shift Saturday at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. The apparent work strike comes as guards have been walking off the job amid safety concerns and overcrowding throughout the summer. Prisoners say there are stabbings on a regular basis, and call the facility “The Slaughterhouse.” We speak to incarcerated organizer Kinetik Justice and Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, founder and national president of The Ordinary People Society.

http://youtu.be/7VtCkn6Im5E

https://bgtvmediaonline.com/2016/09/29/alabama-guards-stage-work-strike-months-after-prisoner-uprising-at-overcrowded-holman-facility/

blindpig

09-30-2016, 09:48 AM

WHY WOMEN JOINED—AND DIDN’T JOIN—ONE OF THE LARGEST PRISON STRIKES IN US HISTORY

29 SEP 2016

https://shadowproof.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Pregnant-Prisoner-National-Crittenton-750x453.png
A pregnant prisoner in a bare cell with a simple bed. The inmate's head is turned away from the camera, so only her hair is visible. (National Crittenton Foundation) A pregnant prisoner in a bare cell with a simple bed. The inmate's head is turned away from the camera, so only her hair is visible. (National Crittenton Foundation)
13
The number of incarcerated women participating in a national prison strike launched on September 9 may be very small compared to the number of incarcerated men, however, their actions have been no less significant.

“I would like you and supporters to know that there was a symbolic protest at Washington Correctional Center for Women in Gig Harbor on September 9,” an anonymous prison staff member wrote in a message published by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.

“Three women refused to go to work in the prison library. The emergency response team was dispatched and the women were taken to Segregation. At their hearing last week, they were given 20 days in [segregation], and are facing reclassification and probably the loss of their jobs.”

“In my opinion, this was a peaceful, non-violent expression of their opinions meant to draw attention to the issue of prison labor, and the response was much more disruptive than the event itself,” the staff member wrote. “The library has been closed since September 9. According to [department of corrections], this was the only action in the entire state of Washington.”

The women in Washington are not alone in their protest. There have been conflicting reports of a work stoppage at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California, where Warden Deborah Johnson retired this past August after allegations that women were sexually abused. Prisoners also alleged guards allowed them to fight, used excessive force against them, and retaliated against those who lodged complaints.

Women at the Fluvanna Correctional Center For Women in Troy, Virginia, also reportedly engaged in a work stoppage. That facility was recently the subject of a class action lawsuit regarding inmate healthcare, which the facility contracted out to the controversial private health provider Corizon Health Services.

“We are treated like we are meaningless, like we have no worth,” said Colorado inmate TW. (TW and other women prisoners spoke to Shadowproof under the condition of anonymity to share their views on resistance behind bars.)

“No matter what our crime was or how long ago it was, we are all treated like crap. It doesn’t matter what you accomplish, how respectful you are, or how much you’ve changed; you’re still a number,” TW said.

“The challenge of speaking out is being stuck in here. In here, I have no voice. I want my voice to be heard. I want things to change even if it doesn’t benefit me, if it can help someone else it would still mean the world of difference to us all.”

When asked why it’s still important for her to speak out, TW said, “A closed mouth doesn’t get fed. One person alone can make a difference, even if it’s so small—it’s a start.”

“We are dehumanized, and we have such little medical and mental health care,” said prisoner JF. “If I don’t speak out, no one will.”

“These are already pretty broken women,” JF continued. “They come here to get better, to heal, and to become a ‘productive’ member of society, yet we are treated just as bad as though we [are] not humans.”

“We are oppressed and they think we are not strong enough to speak up for ourselves. They demand we do what they tell us to do; right, wrong, or indifferent,” JF said.

“I’ve seen girls, who have needed medical help badly, be ignored,” AN said. “I’ve seen correctional officers take advantage of the position of power they hold over women. With case managers, I’ve seen bias and racism from correctional officers towards inmates; it’s disgusting.”

“People need to know that our needs aren’t being met and that the Department of Corrections is not helping to correct people,” AN added. “I’m never coming back to this place, but I pray things change because it’s an endless cycle.”

A recent report on incarcerated women from the Vera Institute Of Justice found, “Once incarcerated, women must grapple with systems designed primarily for men. As a result, many leave jail with diminished prospects for physical and behavioral health recovery, as well as greater parental stress and financial instability.”

Incarcerated women often suffer from a history of trauma and abuse and many times end up in prison because of an addiction, mental illness, or for defending themselves from an attacker. They are sexually assaulted at higher rates, particularly by prison guards.

Aside from suffering the inhumane conditions common to most American jails and prisons, incarcerated women face some challenges that male prisoners do not. For instance, they often struggle to receive feminine hygiene products. Incarcerated pregnant women suffer from inadequate medical care. There have been reports of pregnant prisoners being shackled during doctors visits and while in labor, even in states where such practices are illegal. Incarcerated mothers struggle to stay in contact with and in custody of their children, who face their own hardships as they try to learn and live while their parent is behind bars.

Many of these women were incarcerated as young girls in the juvenile detention system. One study found incarcerated girls may experience “maltreatment, sexual abuse, inadequate education, and lack of appropriate mental and physical healthcare, all of which can negatively affect their development.” This was particularly the case for girls of color and those held in higher-security facilities.

Colleen Hackett is a formerly incarcerated person who works with women prisoners in two Colorado facilities. She is the editor of a magazine for incarcerated women and trans women, Unstoppable Publications. The magazine [PDF] provides these prisoners with a platform to share news between prisons, as well as artwork, poetry, and commentary on other issues of interest to this population.

Hackett said she expected some women would demonstrate solidarity with the labor protests individually and on a smaller scale, perhaps by refusing some meals or engaging in a brief hunger strike. She said prison labor and living conditions are just as brutal for women as they are for men, and the pay is equally as dismal. But she suggested that larger work stoppages on the scale of which some male facilities have engaged can be more challenging to organize in women’s facilities.

This is not to say incarcerated women are submissive or adverse to struggle. Before this month’s coordinated strikes began, for example, incarcerated mothers in US immigration detention centers went on hunger strike to protest their mistreatment and demand their release. But past traumas and experiences common to incarcerated women can make it difficult for many women to be in a place, where they have the confidence to engage in resistance.

“Some of the things we’re learning about women and trans women is that they have experienced disproportionate amount of violence on the streets or in their homes growing up before they even reach prison,” she explained. “This is also true for the male population, but the rates are much higher for women and trans women.”

“As a result,” Hackett said, “the patriarchal violence and trans-misogynistic violence that is enacted upon them causes disproportionate reports of mental health issues, trauma” and other problems. This is complicated by the fact that women and trans prisoners experience violence from other prisoners or guards regularly, and in the case of trans prisoners, they are often dealing with all of this while in protective custody or solitary confinement.

“Trans women are especially susceptible to sexual assault by other prisoners, as well as guards,” she noted.

All of these factors help make incarcerated women reluctant to engage in more overt acts of resistance.

Hackett highlighted the example of women who leave the facility for work, such as contracted farm laborers, and are subject to strip searches upon their return. “For women in particular, that can be re-traumatizing, and also it is often done inappropriately,” she said.

“I’ve heard reports of guards telling them to lift their labia, which was a recent issue in Colorado,” she said, referring to the effort to stop the Colorado Department of Corrections from conducting the invasive searches. “And there’s still reports of them violating that.”

When asked why more women’s facilities may not have joined the September 9 strikes, Hackett first reiterated her praise and support for the action. But she said the call put out by organizers didn’t speak to the “lived realities of women and trans women who are incarcerated.”

“I think that there are more issues that [women] are worried about on top of prison slavery that need to be addressed in the call-out and in the way we communicate to fem prisoners on the inside,” she said. She suggested linking prison slavery to patriarchal violence in order to link the work stoppages to womens’ and trans womens’ lives.

“There’s a belief among some women prisoners that they’re just not capable of doing what men do,” Hackett said. “The myth is that men all have each others’ backs, no matter what, but women are backstabbing.”

Hackett argued there is a tendency to focus on militant resistance in prisons and “that we underestimate the resistance that is happening in women’s prisons and jails.”

“There’s a lot of mutual aid and communities of resistance that are built among women,” she said, “especially those who are coping with past trauma or ongoing sexual or physical abuse. They provide each other support. That’s in essence an act of resistance.”

She noted, “When push comes to shove and there is a direct assault on their community,” incarcerated women speak out. She pointed to Colorado as an example, where women at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility objected to being forced to lift their labia during searches, Hackett said, “A whole bunch of women prisoners wrote to lawyers and their families and to the press saying this is what’s going on and they were able to get the ACLU involved and successfully win a lawsuit.”

Hackett also said there should be an acknowledgement of the consequences of reprisal women prisoners might face for their resistance. She noted that around two thirds of incarcerated women have children under the age of 18, and that “it’s really hard to lose connection to your family when you feel like thats all you got.”

One incarcerated woman suggested to Hackett that if they take action, they should get people on the outside to talk to their families, and “tell them this is us using our voice and standing up for our rights and speaking up against the power structure.” This would help families understand their action and possibly support them, “instead of their families [saying] ‘Ugh, she’s acting up again, she’s being a fool.'”

“If we can sort of put that political framework out there to their families,” she said, “they might be more understanding.”

“I think that when we communicate to prisoners on the inside, whether they be women or trans women, we have to sort of meet them where they’re at,” Hackett concluded. “If they’re still coping with any trauma or abuse, we’ve got to say, ‘What exactly do you need? And are you able to move into a mode where you’re resisting and pushing back against violence?'”

https://shadowproof.com/2016/09/29/incarcerated-women-speak-out-about-prison-strike/

Dhalgren

10-01-2016, 11:20 AM

https://videos.files.wordpress.com/kjLV9eWL/wp-1475293764780_dvd.mp4

(This video was made on a cellphone. For some reason I can't get it to embed)
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"Effectively abandoned." What are the "authorities" playing at? You can't have a thousand prisoners, locked-up, with no attendants. Are they trying to get these men killed? That's what will happen.

Dhalgren

10-01-2016, 11:24 AM

Dhalgren

10-01-2016, 11:29 AM

Posted on October 1, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Prison Activist Support Coalition, and immediate action campaign on behalf of the Free Alabama Movement. A mass prisoner strike wave is coming in state and federal prisons all over the country.We need to build a national activist movement against prison slavery, but in support of the Free Alabama Movement, we propose the following immediate action campaign:

1. We need to create a “Free Alabama” speakers’ tour to send activists all over Alabama to spread the message about the conditions in Alabama’s prison system. This is the first step to a regional and national campaign, but we need to win the people in Alabama over, and not just activist organizations or so-called leaders.

2. We need to have a series of mass meetings in Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, Mobile and other major cities in Alabama to expose the conditions in Alabama state prisons, to target communities of color especially, as well as all those opposed to structural racism represented by this system.

3. We need to call for a mass international email campaign about conditions in Alabama prisons.

4. Contact university and legal groups about filing a series of class action lawsuits against conditions in Alabama prisons.

5. Go to the United Nations Human Rights Council with a human rights complaint about Alabama prisons being a violation of international human rights covenants.

6. A national protest march in Montgomery against Alabama state prison slavery, as well as continuing picket lines at the Alabama Department of Corrections.

7. Southern Regional [or national] Prison Activist Conference, about not only conditions in Alabama, but all over the country.

8. An Emergency Response Network to be able to respond in support of prison strikes in Alabama or anywhere in the country, and prevent mass repression by prison officials.

9. We need to recruit students, youth, and community activists as volunteers from all over the country.

10. We need to have a massive fundraising campaign on GoFundMe to obtain the funds to make this happen. We should create a joint fundraising committee to handle the funds and make an accounting of all funds raised.

###This is a Proposal from the Black Autonomy Prison Federation and the Ida B. Wells Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality

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blindpig

10-01-2016, 12:04 PM

Posted on October 1, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Only 7 cars in the HOLMAN parking lot, only 3 officers for Death Row and Segregation, Officer just confirmed that it’s over, as all CO’s are quitting this coming week ~”We’re tired of them playing games with y’all and our lives. It doesn’t make any sense. You be safe Lil Brother.”

Well they told me they had something planned, now I see what it is.

The Administration has effectively ran their workforce off. Smh

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This has got to have the bosses shitting bricks. I've known some jail guards and most of the don't seem to be so bad(though the cops I've know on the business level seem mostly OK too but it's a whole 'nother world when you're on the wrong end of their billy club.). Undoubtedly racist, sadistic assholes are in the mix but a lot of these folks just want a job that pays a little above minimum wage. Which doesn't absolve them one bit when they are 'performing their duty' to 'keep order', however savage and inhumane. So good for them and I hope they can find better jobs.

What if they have a jail but no jailers?

Dhalgren

10-01-2016, 01:04 PM

What if they have a jail but no jailers?

The inmates would do a better job of managing the prisons than the sadistic asshole wardens the state seems always to hire.

blindpig

10-01-2016, 04:10 PM

Long past time....

http://www.npr.org/2016/10/01/496196007/prisoners-organize-countrywide-strike-to-demand-better-working-living-conditions

I'll listen to it while I'm cooking dinner though npr's treatment might spoil my appetite.

Dhalgren

10-03-2016, 09:47 AM

THEY DID IT… ALL OF THEM DIDN’T SHOW UP

Posted on October 3, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

At shift change tonight, On October 2, 2016, NONE OF THE REGULAR SHIFT reported to work at HOLMAN CF and a handful of CERT TEAM OFFICERS are manning their post. However, there isn’t enough to adequately run the Facility, as no Officers are in the SEGREGATION UNIT to do Showers nor have they did Pill Call. ITS OFFICIAL, that true to their word, the entire shift has walked out on the Administration.

Maybe now they will RELEASE the people that are eligible to be RELEASED and CLOSE THIS HELLHOLE DOWN.

Can you imagine the look on BENTLEY , WARD, DUNN AND CULLIVERS FACE ?

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Bentley is a gutless piece of shit. I expect him to call out the National Guard. The system needs to be shut down and a new apparatus needs to be constructed. But look instead for Bentley to start killing people...

Dhalgren

10-03-2016, 09:50 AM

Posted on October 3, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/wp-1475478470487.jpeg?w=562

The William C. Holman Correctional Facility was constructed in 1968 and 1969. The facility was officially open in December, 1969, at a cost of five million dollars.
The first prisoner was received on December 15, 1969. The Holman Correctional Facility houses Death Row inmates and is the only facility in the state that carries out executions.
The present population of Holman C. F. consists of minimum through closed custody inmates, including life without parole and Death Row inmates.
The living quarters have a total capacity of 998 available beds. There are 630 population beds with Housing Units A-D having a capacity of 114 each and Housing Unit E with a capacity of 174.

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/wp-1475478741994.jpeg?w=562

There are 7 infirmary beds. There are 200 segregation unit beds and Death Row has a capacity of 194 for a total of 1031 beds.

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/wp-1475478657272.jpeg?w=562

Holman is located ten miles north of Atmore, Alabama, just east of Highway 21 on Ross Road. The perimeter of the security compound is surrounded by two fences. The inner fence is taut wire fence with the outer fence being chain link. The compound has six towers and two perimeter vehicles, which operate twenty four hours a day.

(WHATTTTTT?)

During the hours of darkness, the perimeter is fully lighted. Thecountryside in the vicinity of Holman prison is farm and timberland. The main crops are cotton and peanuts.
Located directly behind the facility within the security compound is an industrial area consisting of a Tag Plant where all of the State’s motor vehicle tags are manufactured and a Sewing Factory which makes sheets and pillow cases that are distributed to other state prisons.

In 1991 a new Administrative building was built onto the front of the main prison within the security compound to provide needed Administrative Offices.
In the latter part of 1995, the entire kitchen and dining area was remodeled and updated. In 2000 a newly constructed, 200 bed single cell segregation unit was put online. *In 2007 the housing units in general population were remodeled with single beds and an updated bath room area.

—–

*The 2007 renovation was the result of a 4 day Work and Hunger Strike, which included all men in HOLMAN prison. (Kinetik Justice was the Spokesperson for the Prisoners during the negotiations and was ultimately “declared a threat to security “and when, then Warden Grant Culliver attempted to place Kinetik in Solitary Confinement Indefinitely, Attorney Tiffany Johnson Cole intervened and Kinetik was transferred to St. Clair C. F. )

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Dhalgren

10-03-2016, 10:06 AM

October 2, 2016

Despite scant media coverage, the largest prison strike in history is entering its third week. Retaliation is rampant, both against the organizers in prison and against the Bay View for spreading the word. The Free Alabama Movement that started the prison-strikes-to-end-slavery campaign is defeating a violent divide-and-conquer scheme to turn prisoner against prisoner with a Peace Summit, reminiscent of the Agreement to End Hostilities in California, which this month is entering its fifth year of keeping the peace.

by Free Alabama Movement

http://i0.wp.com/sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Holman-Prison-rebellion-masked-prisoner-031116-by-prisoners.jpg?zoom=2&resize=300%2C381
This was the face of Holman Prison during the heavily reported uprising last March. Now, the Free Alabama Movement’s peaceful but powerful campaign of prison strikes to end prison slavery is getting very little media coverage. – Photo: frame from prisoners’ video

Written Sept. 25, 2016 – The Sept. 17, 2016, Peace Summit held at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama, has been a success thus far. Tensions and violence were at a never-seen-before high.

Men in the prison overwhelmed with the increased violence cried out for a stop to the violence in the wake of a correctional officer’s death at the hands of a 25-year-old inmate. The violence and tensions have escalated astronomically due to outrageous administrative policies being implemented on prisoners throughout the state of Alabama as well as the rest of the country.

The warehousing of prisoners, forced labor with little to no pay made legit by way of the 13th Amendment, amongst other issues, are the root causes of the hopelessness and the anger resulting in the misplaced aggression and violence.

The men went from dorm to dorm throughout the institution calling for peace and a cease to the violence. They explained that no one in here is alone in their frustrations. That violence amongst ourselves is not the answer.

It went across well with the officers who have increasingly found themselves at odds with prisoners over administrative policies that they did not implement and have no power to change.

These men transformed the spirit of the prison – going from multiple stabbings daily to almost zero acts of violence following the peace summit. Hearts were touched and the seeds of a new culture of nonviolence amongst prisoners was planted.

The Sept. 17, 2016, Peace Summit held at Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama, has been a success thus far.

As one participant in the peace summit stated: “We effect zero change by perpetuating violence amongst us. We have to fight these laws and bring light into this dark place if we expect anyone to hear us and empathize with our cause enough to aid and assist us.

“We are not enemies. These COs have no power to change laws or effect change on the senseless administrative policies. They are not the real enemy. The laws have us oppressed.

If we behave like men of integrity and dignity, only then can we begin to demand the respect due to men of integrity and dignity. If we can change ourselves and build men of character in a system that lacks the desire to correct or edify, then together as men we can dismantle this system of involuntary servitude – slavery – utilizing the collective power of right.”

These men transformed the spirit of the prison – going from multiple stabbings daily to almost zero acts of violence following the peace summit. Hearts were touched and the seeds of a new culture of nonviolence amongst prisoners was planted.

Kinetic Justice of Free Alabama Movement reports on Democracy Now!

These are excerpts from the Sept. 28 broadcast of Democracy Now, an hour-long news show carried on 1,411 television and radio stations around the country and hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan González. The segment is headlined “Alabama Guards Stage Work Strike Months After Prisoner Uprising at Overcrowded Holman Facility.”

Juan González: We begin today’s show in Alabama, where prison officials have confirmed a group of correction officers refused to report for the evening shift Saturday at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. The apparent work strike comes as guards have been walking off the job amid safety concerns and overcrowding throughout the summer.

Prisoners say there are stabbings on a regular basis, and call the facility “The Slaughterhouse.” A guard stabbed by a prisoner earlier this month died last week. The warden was stabbed in March.

This is incarcerated organizer Kinetik Justice speaking from inside the Holman prison on Saturday. Listen closely.

Kinetik Justice: It’s official. At 6:00, no officers came to work. None … Right now, the commissioner is passing out trays. Warden Peterson is pulling the cart. Deputy Commissioner Culliver passed me my tray. Every cell, he’s passing out the tray. I can’t believe it. To my black sliding shoes, brown knitted pants, white tweed shirt with the collar bust open, sweating at the temples, it’s real. No officers came to work. They completely bucked on the administration. No more will they be pawns in the game.

Juan González: The events at Holman come as the largest prison work strike in U.S. history has entered its third week. Organizers report that as of last week at least 20 prisons in 11 states continued to be involved in the protest, including in Alabama, California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington.

The events at Holman come as the largest prison work strike in U.S. history has entered its third week.

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee says at one point about 20,000 prisoners were on strike. With the protest has come punishment, however. Several facilities were put on lockdown, with prisoners kept in their cells and denied phone access both before and during the strike. Organizers were also put in solitary confinement. …

Kinetik Justice: … Earlier in this year at St. Clair Correctional Facility, the violence was out of control. Officers were being assaulted. Inmates were being stabbed every day. There were several lawsuits filed about it at St. Clair Correctional Facility. What they did is they sent all of the people who were incarcerated at St. Clair they deemed to be problems to Holman. In over a process of maybe 45 days, they sent maybe 50 to 60 people here.

In March, they had an uprising. [See “Uprising at Holman Prison in Alabama” and related Bay View stories.] The warden was stabbed, and another officer was stabbed eight times. After that, they had another uprising maybe two days later. And about a month after that, we had the May Day work strike. And that lasted for 10 days.

Immediately after that, this administration handpicked every person in this prison that they felt was influential, that was moving in the direction of the movement, and they transferred them to other institutions, while simultaneously, in the segregation unit, releasing, you know, those people who had already had assaults and stabbing cases, and they brought in others.

And they pulled the officers back and told them to step back out of the dorms, and they allowed them to sit there and stab each other up, rob each other and, you know, just a whole bunch of foolishness.

And it began to get out of control, to the point where, you know, officers were being threatened. And they were reporting this to the administration that they were being threatened, and the administration was brushing them off like it wasn’t nothing.

In March, they had an uprising. The warden was stabbed, and another officer was stabbed eight times. After that, they had another uprising maybe two days later. And about a month after that, we had the May Day work strike. And that lasted for 10 days.

So they realized that after this spilled over and Officer Bettis was killed, that they realized that their lives was in danger just as much as these people who are incarcerated here. And on Saturday, they all came together in order to force this administration to live and work in the environment that they had created for these officers, to give them a taste of their own medicine, so to speak. …

As the situation at Holman is [now], most of the security is being provided by the street organizations. In affiliation with Free Alabama Movement, we had a Peace Summit, and we agreed that the administration was not going to protect us or, you know, make sure that the elderly were being protected and so forth.

In affiliation with Free Alabama Movement, we had a Peace Summit.

So we took it upon ourselves to try to instill some type of discipline within our own structures to maintain some type of order, until we could get some help from society in the form of creating a task force to do a fact-finding mission to come up in here, to get someone like an advocate like Pastor Glasgow, an attorney like Bryan Stevenson, Sen. Vivian Figures, Sen. Hank Sanders and some reporters to actually come up in here and tell the Department of Corrections to let us see your transfer logs, let us see your segregation release logs, let us see the body charts, let us see the officer sign-in logs – let us see documentation that proves that it is what you say it is, in contrast to what you say the propaganda of the Free Alabama Movement says it is.

Juan González: Well, you mentioned Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, who’s also joining us from Montgomery. He’s the founder and national president of The Ordinary People Society. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Pastor Glasgow. Can you tell us about the situation of the prisoners in Alabama right now, what you’re seeing, as a member of a faith-based group, about the responsibility of those on the outside?

http://i0.wp.com/sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Holman-Prison-protest-called-by-FAM-End-Prison-Slavery-over-prison-sign-040916.jpg?zoom=2&resize=400%2C274
On April 9, 2016, supporters holding a rally outside Holman Prison to draw attention to Free Alabama Movement’s campaign to end prison slavery placed a banner on top of the sign identifying “W.C. Holman Correctional Facility.”

Pastor Kenneth Glasgow: Thank you for having me. And what we’re seeing is that the prisoners – first of all, they did a yeoman’s job. We want to give them all the credit and all the applause we can. They have overcame religious barriers, racial barriers, geographical barriers, and also they have overcame incarceration barriers.

And by overcoming those barriers, Free Alabama Movement and Kinetik Justice, that you have on now, they were able to organize, lead and initiate this prison strike over 24 states in 40 to 50 different prisons.

What they have done is made us on the outside, who are organizers and advocates, we have to step up, because they have proven to us that, you know, we didn’t look at, even ourselves, being the formerly incarcerated persons – we didn’t look at prison slavery and prison labor. Now, since this prison strike has happened, we on the outside are looking at who we’re going to target, who we’re going to boycott next.

Whole Foods has already put out a media blitz last year, and we’re checking on it right now to make sure that they’re not still using prison labor. We’re looking at Starbucks. We’re looking at McDonald’s. We’re looking at Victoria’s Secret. We’re looking at all the different industries and companies.

And what’s happening inside the prisons right now is that there – whenever a people comes up – Bryan Stevenson said it best: Whenever we deal with the proximity of the situation, those who are incarcerated are looking at the fact that people that have paid taxes for them to be rehabilitated, for them to be educated, for them to be trained, in order to come out into society – because 98 percent of the people in prison are coming out, 98 percent, and in order for them to come out and be able to be productive citizens, they need to have these skills and education and all.

Free Alabama Movement and Kinetik Justice were able to organize, lead and initiate this prison strike over 24 states in 40 to 50 different prisons.

What they’re looking at is that they’re just being housed. Their families are being exploited by Alabama Department of Corrections and departments of corrections in all of the different states, because their families are sending them money for commissary, sending them money for them to use the phone. And yet, the taxpayers are paying anywhere from $31,000 to $80,000 per year, depending on what state you’re in, for them to get this rehabilitation and education, and they’re not getting it.

What they’re getting is being used for free prison labor. And, you know, so most of the industries and companies that own the high-level national media, that’s supporting and paying them off, got us believing that they’re outsourcing jobs, they’re outsourcing their products, outsourcing the manufacturing, and that’s why we have an unemployment rate. But actually, they’re not outsourcing; they’re insourcing.

So what those brothers and sisters are doing inside the prison is something that we all need to look at and look at our society and say, “Wait a minute. We’re still producing slavery and still producing slaves. We’re still producing indentured servitude,” and look at the 13th Amendment and change it.

I think what they are doing is very, very necessary. And what they’re doing, in a very, very peaceful way, shows us that our departments of corrections, in no matter what state you’re in, need to be revamped, revisited and relooked at, holistically.

What those brothers and sisters are doing inside the prison is something that we all need to look at and look at our society and say, “Wait a minute. We’re still producing slavery and still producing slaves. We’re still producing indentured servitude,” and look at the 13th Amendment and change it.

Amy Goodman: Kinetik Justice, inside Holman, what does a prison work strike look like? What are people refusing to do? You’re in solitary confinement, so – is that right? So you wouldn’t be working?

Kinetik Justice: That’s absolutely correct. I am in solitary confinement, and, no, I’m not working.

But what a work strike looks like in prison is that, usually, around 12:30, 12:45 at night, they send for the kitchen workers, those who will prepare the breakfast meal. And when those people don’t report to work, they initiate a prison lockdown to do an investigation to see what’s going on.

Nine times out of 10, they already have advanced knowledge that there’s going to be a work strike, so they come around to confirm that there is a work strike, no one wants to go to work, no one is being forced not to go to work, etc. Once that happens, the warden is dispatched here, and maybe then allocating officers in the kitchen to prepare these meals.

And in the morning time, you know, the prison is locked down, because the officers are trying to feed over 600, 700 people. And it’s not something that they’re usually doing, so this is a kind of awkward and frustrating process for them.

When work call comes in the morning for the tag plant, the industry, no one reports. And that day begins just like that, with the officers on a lockdown. The officers are struggling to provide the basic necessities, such as preparing meals and trying to get the medical list done and get the sick call and so forth done.

So, it’s a slow process throughout the day for the officers as well as for the men incarcerated, because we’re forced to be in dormitories with 115 people all day long, and, you know, that can get taxing, because, you know, due to overcrowding, you’re already dealing with tensions and frustration.

So, throughout a work strike, leadership is really required, because you have to try to keep a balance inside these dormitories to keep violence from erupting, because one sign of violence inside these dormitories, the administration will use that as an excuse to bring in a CERT team and try to assert violence, or they’re trying to say that we’re having a riot or, you know, something outside of the character of what we’re actually doing on the work strike.

Contact Free Alabama Movement via National Representative Pastor Kenneth S. Glasgow of The Ordinary People’s Society, 334-791-2433 or Freealabamamovement@gmail.com.

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/28/alabama_guards_stage_work_strike_months

http://sfbayview.com/2016/10/free-alabama-movement-peace-summit-turns-chaos-into-community/

blindpig

10-03-2016, 01:24 PM

The Largest Prison Strike in History Is Being Ignored By Major Media
September 26, 2016 8:07 am by Ivan Stamenkovic

http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/507440e869bedd8452000008-900-675/china-prison.jpg?maxX=400&maxY=299

Did You Know We Are Having the Largest Prison Strike in History? Probably Not, Because Most of the Media Have Ignored It
The prison strike didn’t merit a single mention in NYT, Washington Post, NPR, CNN or MSNBC.

Thousands of prisoners in over 24 states began a labor strike on September 9, the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, to demand better conditions and healthcare, the right to unionize and what one organizing group calls an “end to slavery in America.” But one would hardly know it watching major U.S. media, which has mostly ignored the largest prison labor strike in history. One week on, the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, ABC News, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, and NPR have not covered the prison strikes at all.

In the same time period since the strike began, CNN has run stories on Clinton’s “body double,” the New York Times ran a piece on women getting buzzcuts and ABC News had an “exclusive trailer” for its parent corporation Disney’s upcoming film. There was certainly enough airtime and column inches to mention that workers had coordinated a national strike of unprecedented scale, but for these outlets the coverage has been nonexistent.

A handful of national outlets have covered the strike: The Nation, City Lab,Engadget, Money Watch, Buzzfeed, and as of Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, but every other major publication, network news and cable network has thus far been silent.

When we spoke by phone, Azzurra Crispino, media co-chair of Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, one of the strike organizers, was hesitant to be too hard on the press out of hope the strikes would lose coverage in the future. But after some prompting, the four-year prison abolitionist veteran listed a few measured grievances at the media. Her most consistent theme was that to the extent the strikes were being covered, the focus was on spectacle over substance, and in doing so the media was making nonviolent resistance all but impossible.

“I’m a pacifist, I would like to see the strikes remain nonviolent,” Crispino told AlterNet. “Yet in terms of the mainstream press coverage when there’s blood on the ground the prisons have to fill out reports that guards were hurt so then they can’t deny strikes occurred,” she said in reference to the stonewalling of prison officials. The few reporters Crispino had spoken to said most prison spokespeople denied any strikes were taking place. “Between prisoners and TDCJ [Texas Department of Criminal Justice], who do you think reporters are going to believe?” she asked.

The power asymmetry and the media’s default position of siding with government officials over those seen as criminals creates just one more barrier to coverage. At its core, coverage of the prison strikes, as with any protest action, has an inherently perverse incentive structure that puts a premium on acts of violence and property damage and overlooks non-telegenic peaceful activity, such as hunger strikes and labor stoppages.

This dynamic was seen in the Standing Rock incident on September 3, when private security sicced dogs on Native American activists protesting an oil pipeline, and pictures of injured protesters went viral on social media. At the time, only Democracy Now, a relatively small left-wing news show, and AP and UPI filed original reports on the incident. Days after what the media called “clashes,” articles appeared with far greater frequency, including in major outlets like New York Times, CNN and NBC.

This warped incentive structure is even more pronounced in prisons, which are by definition cut off from society. The only time anyone bothers to notice prisons is when demonstrably violent action takes place.

?

“Which of the strikes are getting the most attention? Florida because they’re violent,” Crispino says, in reference to the September 7 uprising at Homes Correctional facility in the Florida panhandle. “They can’t deny in Florida because prisoners are setting things on fire and there’s been so much structural damage they can’t deny strikes are occurring.”

A similar dynamic is at work when prisoners are in solitary confinement or engage in body mutilation or destruction of property, often by flooding their cells or covering them with feces or blood. Similarly, Crispino contends, each time the media ignores peaceful activities, it tips the scales further in the direction of fires, property damage and rioting.

But this reason doesn’t fully explain the lack of mainstream coverage. A few outlets, as noted, have covered the strike to the extent they could, especially in the buildup to the protest, so it’s not as if there wasn’t enough information to compile a story.

One possible reason is that some of corporate media’s biggest advertisers use prison labor, so the disincentive to shine a light on the problem is high. AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Eli Lilly, GEICO, McDonald’s, and Walmart all use prison labor and all are sponsors of corporate media so much we can recite their commercials by heart. One corporation that uses prison labor, Verizon, even owns major media outlets Yahoo and Huffington Post.

Russia Today, a Moscow-funded media outlet, was the only cable news network to speak with Crispino, and to the best of her knowledge, the only one to cover the strikes. When Donald Trump appeared on RT last week, there was a frenzy of outrage by mainstream pundits, with some questioning why Trump would give credence to “Russian government-controlled propaganda.” RT’s position has always been that it covers stories the mainstream press doesn’t, and while some may see this as a cynical marketing ploy, in the case of the prison strikes it also happens to be true.

Another issue for IWOC is that all the coverage thus far, even in sympathetic outlets, has ignored their broader political aims, which is prison abolition, not reform.

“The IWOC is an abolitionist organization,” Crispino said. “Abolition is pretty much completely ignored. It’s interesting because people ask questions about that and they ask what would you do instead, but no one wants to hear that and they never write about it.” That the media is allergic to ideology, to having deeper discussions about our society’s core axioms and why the U.S. has 25% of the world’s prison population but 5% of the total population, is perhaps too knotty for a 800-word writeup but for those working in the trenches it can be frustrating.

As the strike enters its second week, perhaps major media outlets and cable news will take a cue from activist media and the Wall Street Journal (whose report is worth reading) and shine a light, if only briefly, on the largest prison strike in history. If not, Crispino feels other tactics will eventually become more commonplace.

“I almost want to say, the mainstream media is complicit if there’s violence. The message they are sending to striking workers is, we will only give you coverage if things turn ugly.”

( Article by: Danny F. Quest; from: We Are Change )

http://countercurrentnews.com/2016/09/largest-prison-strike-history-ignored-major-media/#

Dhalgren

10-03-2016, 05:29 PM

This is key:

One possible reason is that some of corporate media’s biggest advertisers use prison labor, so the disincentive to shine a light on the problem is high. AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Eli Lilly, GEICO, McDonald’s, and Walmart all use prison labor and all are sponsors of corporate media so much we can recite their commercials by heart. One corporation that uses prison labor, Verizon, even owns major media outlets Yahoo and Huffington Post.

“I almost want to say, the mainstream media is complicit if there’s violence. The message they are sending to striking workers is, we will only give you coverage if things turn ugly.”

Don't "almost" say, SAY IT! The orchestrated silence of the media is "the smoking gun" of media/government/corporate collusion. It simply can no longer be denied - a nationwide prisoner strike going on for a month or more and not one national media outlet covers it at all? Black folks ought to vote for the first candidate that mentions the prison strikes and the forced labor and the inhuman treatment and the substandard living conditions and the substandard working conditions for the officers - even the sadistic asshole ones. RT may be "gleefully" reporting this American shame, but at least they report it.

blindpig

10-04-2016, 08:51 AM

This is key:

Don't "almost" say, SAY IT! The orchestrated silence of the media is "the smoking gun" of media/government/corporate collusion. It simply can no longer be denied - a nationwide prisoner strike going on for a month or more and not one national media outlet covers it at all? Black folks ought to vote for the first candidate that mentions the prison strikes and the forced labor and the inhuman treatment and the substandard living conditions and the substandard working conditions for the officers - even the sadistic asshole ones. RT may be "gleefully" reporting this American shame, but at least they report it.

If I'm not mistaken that would be La Riva/PSL, pretty sure they've brought it up. Wtf, I'd probably vote for them were they on SC ballot.

This is the biggest thing happening of late, representing a significant portion of the populace, defiantly radical, which needs all possible support.

It is a line in the sand and where one stands on this defines whose side yer on.

blindpig

10-06-2016, 12:49 PM

Meanwhile, back in the boardroom...

DOJ’s Private Prison Phase-Out a Challenge for Prison REITs

Investment ViewPoint National
OCT 05 2016
By Reed Valutas, Associate Analyst, Commercial Real Estate Finance, Moody's Investors Service: The DOJ and DHS plans to stop using privately owned prisons create substantial uncertainty for prison REITs.

Recent announcements by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regarding the use of privately owned prisons by the federal government are credit negative for private prison real estate investment trusts (REITs). These actions create substantial uncertainty about the future cash flows of prison REITs.

On Aug. 18, 2016, the DOJ announced plans to phase out its use of privately operated prisons. Subsequent to this announcement, on Aug. 29, 2016, the DHS announced it will evaluate whether its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit should reduce and ultimately end its use of privately owned and operated immigrant detention centers.

Although the DOJ and DHS announcements do not affect contracts between private prison operators and other federal agencies and state governments, there is widespread political debate over the future of government contracts with private prison operators. The political debate centers around the social impact of large-scale incarceration and the financial burden of housing burgeoning prison populations. The active management of prison facilities by private prison companies—in particular, the management of prisoners—is a particularly contentious issue among prison reform advocates, politicians and unions.

While management contracts with privately operated U.S. prison facilities are at risk as political pressures mount, the industry could transform itself by selling or leasing, rather than operating, some of its owned facilities. As a result, private prison operators might over time earn less revenue from actively managing prison facilities or they could be eliminated completely from active management of federal and, potentially, state prisons. The elimination of private prison management would appear a more practical solution than the elimination of passive private prison ownership.

In our view, however, the use of private prison facilities remains necessary. The obsolescence of existing prison facilities, prison overcrowding and the relative dearth of prisoner sentencing reductions provide a cushion against a declining prison population.

© Moody’s Investors Service, Inc. and/or its affiliates. Reprinted with permission. All Rights Reserved. The full terms and conditions applicable to this article are available at the following link: https://www.moodys.com/Pages/globaldisclaimer.aspx

https://www.cpexecutive.com/post/dojs-private-prison-phase-out-poses-challenges-for-prison-reits/

Eichmanns, the lot of them, and guess where they're going, come the day?

blindpig

10-06-2016, 02:07 PM

US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO OPEN STATEWIDE INVESTIGATION INTO ALABAMA PRISONS
Posted on October 6, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCES STATEWIDE INVESTIGATION INTO

CONDITIONS IN ALABAMA’S PRISONS FOR MEN

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced today that it has opened a statewide investigation into the conditions in Alabama’s prisons for men. The investigation will focus on whether prisoners are adequately protected from physical harm and sexual abuse at the hands of other prisoners; whether prisoners are adequately protected from use of excessive force and staff sexual abuse by correctional officers; and whether the prisons provide sanitary, secure and safe living conditions.

“The Constitution requires that prisons provide humane conditions of confinement,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “We hope to work cooperatively with the state of Alabama in conducting our inquiry and ensuring that the state’s facilities keep prisoners safe from harm.”

“Our obligation is to protect the civil rights of all citizens, including those who are incarcerated,” said U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance of the Northern District of Alabama. “This investigation provides us with an opportunity to work collaboratively with the state of Alabama to assess current conditions and ensure constitutionally sufficient conditions exist for all prisoners.”

“The vulnerability of a prisoner makes it even more important that basic hygiene and safe accommodations are afforded the inmates,” said U.S. Attorney George L. Beck Jr. of the Middle District of Alabama.

“I am very pleased to have my office join the Northern and Middle Districts of Alabama as well as the Civil Rights Division in opening an investigation into the Alabama prison system,” said U.S. Attorney Kenyen R. Brown of the Southern District of Alabama. “All citizens, even those who are incarcerated, should expect sanitary conditions of habitation that are free of physical harm and sexual abuse.”

The department has not reached any conclusions regarding the allegations in this matter. The investigation will be conducted under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA). Under CRIPA, the department has the authority to investigate violations of prisoners’ constitutional rights that result from a “pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of such rights.” The department has conducted CRIPA investigations of many correctional systems, and where violations have been found, the resulting settlement agreements have led to important reforms.

The Civil Rights Division’s Special Litigation Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Northern, Middle and Southern Districts of Alabama are conducting this investigation. Individuals with relevant information are encouraged to contact the department via phone at (205) 244-2001 or by email at usaaln.civilrights@usdoj.gov.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/us-justice-department-to-open-statewide-investigation-into-alabama-prisons/

Dhalgren

10-06-2016, 04:47 PM

In our view, however, the use of private prison facilities remains necessary. The obsolescence of existing prison facilities, prison overcrowding and the relative dearth of prisoner sentencing reductions provide a cushion against a declining prison population.

© Moody’s Investors Service, Inc

And who gives a fuck what Moody's view is? "(P)rivate prison facilities remains necessary"? Necessary for whom? And how and why "necessary?

Dhalgren

10-06-2016, 04:50 PM

The Civil Rights Division’s Special Litigation Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices

Oh yeah, let's get Obama's 'Justice' Dept. in on this! The only thing this might do (and I stress "might") is bring some media attention. But the media will spin this into the grave. I am not seeing this as a "good" for the inmates.

blindpig

10-06-2016, 05:07 PM

Oh yeah, let's get Obama's 'Justice' Dept. in on this! The only thing this might do (and I stress "might") is bring some media attention. But the media will spin this into the grave. I am not seeing this as a "good" for the inmates.

Only reason there is an investigation is cause a guard was killed, so we can see the direction this will go. Still, visibility might be a plus.

Dhalgren

10-07-2016, 11:16 AM

Is The corruption in the Alabama Department of Corrections on the verge of being exposed?

This morning after breaking news from the Department of Justice in Washington that there will be an investigation in relations to the civil rights violations of thousands of incarcerated men and women, Robert Bentley, commissioner Jeffery Dunn, Grantt Gulliver, and so many more involved sweat bullets.

During yesterday's breaking news inmates across the state in facility dorms, and TV day rooms you could hear a pen drop. At the conclusion of the news you heard sighs of relief, sniffles and a few sobs, but big smiles grew as a sign of victory in a battle fought.

Convicts and officers across the state are now starting to see hope and anticipating the soon to come investigation and expecting results and positive change for the first time in the history of Alabama.

Today two of the most listened to voices sit in solitary confinement for starting this movement in Alabama. A movement that has grown and spread throughout this nation. These men were placed in solitary for exercising there 1st amendment rights of freedom of speech, and now are huge threats to the Alabama Department of Corrections in exposing the injustices.

The convicts and many correctional officers of Alabama are now calling upon the leaders of Alabama to release these political prisoners from solitary confinement at Holman prison and Donaldson prison.(Melvin Ray, and Robert Earl Council).

This morning the prison activist groups Free Alabama Movement and UNHEARD VOICES chant we won't be silenced, we will be heard!

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/author/freealabamamovement/

This is to be feared. All the Feds have to do is say "investigation!" and everyone starts celebrating and high-fiving. Bentley is a heartless criminal, an emotionless sociopath. He could give two shits about any kind of "Justice" Dept. "investigation". He and Obama are both watching the clock till their final terms in office are done - neither one loses a hard-on over this issue. Black men being mistreated? Black male prison inmates complaining about something - anything? Right. All the ruling class will be converting to gold and moving to Columbia...

Dhalgren

10-07-2016, 10:12 PM

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT RESPONDS TO DOJ INVESTIGATION

Posted on October 7, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT (F.A.M.) RESPONDS TO NEW D.O.J. INVESTIGATION: CALLS FOR TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2016
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact info:
Mother’s and F.A.M.ilies

P.O. BOX 186

New Market, Al 35761
freealabamamovement@gmail.com

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT (F.A.M.) is pleased with the news that the U.S. Department of Justice (D.O.J.) will be conducting a statewide investigation into the issues of abuse, violence and safe, secure and sanitary conditions in Alabama’s men’s prisons, even though we believe that the women’s prison should also be revisited. We would like to emphasize that we are looking for an open, transparent and inclusive investigation that will keep the public updated, informed and INVOLVED throughout this process. Alabama prisons are unique in that they are the most overcrowded, underfunded, and understaffed prisons in America. Therefore, any solutions to the existing problems will need to be unique and require “outside-of-the-box” thinking as well.

We would also like to see accountability result from this investigation. In 2014, the U.S. D.O.J. released a report on its year long investigation at Tutwiler. In this report, D.O.J. investigators found that the civil rights of these women had been violated for over a 20-year period, and that at least one-third of all of the correctional staff at Tutwiler had engaged in some form of sexual misconduct with the women incarcerated there. Yet, despite these conclusive findings, which included child births and unauthorized abortions by complicit medical staff, not a single person was prosecuted for the violation of a single federal crime.
Some of the questions we have to ask are, what is the purpose of this investigation? Are there federal criminal or civil statutes available where A.D.O.C. officials can be prosecuted and required to pay damages as a result of this investigation if they are found guilty of wrongdoing? Will the D.O.J. prosecute any findings of corruption? Will federal charges be brought against officers who are found to be using excessive force? In instances of death, will negligent D.O.C. officials be prosecuted?
Other questions that have to be asked are, in the ultimate finding of unsanitary and unsafe conditions, what are the proposed solutions? Will the D.O.J. seek to alleviate overcrowding through release programs or more prisons? Will the people incarcerated have a voice and seat at the table towards fashioning solutions (as was done in California in the Askher settlement)? Will family members be allowed to be part of the investigation? Will there be briefing sessions for the public? Will there be on-site inspections where family members, interested organizations and the media will be allowed to attend? Will the investigation into sanitation include water testing, since officers at most prisons are warned to not drink it under any circumstance?

When speaking of transparency, will the D.O.J. move for policy changes that will afford the media open access to Alabama prisons? Finally, will public organizations be factored into the role of oversight and implementation of solutions, such as educational and rehab programs?
We cannot just go into an investigation without some clear understanding of what a solution will look like. We have learned from Tutwiler and all of the frivolous lawsuits filed by Southern Poverty Law Center and Southern Center For Human Rights, that oversight is just as important as the settlement itself, and oversight can not be left to the A.D.O.C. under any circumstance.

Governor Bentley has stated that he welcomes the investigation and looks forward to working with the D.O.J. Well, why should the federal government have to come in and investigate matters that fall within his responsibility? If Governor Bentley does not have a Commissioner’s Office that is capable of assessing the rising violence, murders, drugs overdoses, etc. and understands that those issues need investigating and solving, then what is the purpose of having investigators on taxpayer payrolls?
Governor Bentley is looking for a political bailout; he ignored dead bodies and waited for federal intervention so that he can maintain his “tough on crime” stance, while “blaming” the federal government for the needed and costly changes to Alabama’s prison system. But now that the ‘feds’ are here, F.A.M. and the family members of those incarcerated have an opportunity to seek real changes if, indeed, that is what the D.O.J. is here for.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog

blindpig

10-10-2016, 07:55 AM

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CuXMUkoUkAQ5vRQ.jpg:large

yessirree, that'll teach 'em....

blindpig

10-11-2016, 12:20 PM

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--PaGHUxHu--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/dfxiiwknwav4jioy4pe3.jpg

Last month, hundreds of prisoners at Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan joined the ongoing, nationwide prison strike. In response, armed officers with the Michigan Department of Corrections were summoned to Kinross from across the state to storm the overcrowded housing units and detain nearly 250 inmates identified as ringleaders of the protest.

According to the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee—an effort by Industrial Workers of the World, an international labor union, to help incarcerated workers organize—Kinross remained on lockdown for nearly two weeks, from September 10 to the morning of September 22. “About 150 prisoners accused of being instigators were transferred to other facilities, where an unknown number were charged with inciting a riot and punished with isolation,” IWOC said in a statement. “In violation of MDOC policy, guards destroyed the property of the accused prisoners and encouraged other prisoners to steal their personal food.”

The strike began on Friday, September 9, when workers from the kitchen, laundry, maintenance, and yard work units refused to report to their assignments. According to activists and one inmate’s family member, prison officials responded by ordering that inmates’ meals be restricted. “Usually they get hot food for each meal,” Evelyn Williams, a family member of a prisoner, told Jezebel. But on that Friday, inmates were given a single peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, and a dry turkey sandwich for dinner. “The food service unit was instructed not to feed them, as punishment,” Williams said.

The next morning, between 400 and 500 inmates marched through the prison yard, issuing a list of demands and asking for a meeting with the warden. Duncan Tarr, a spokesman for Michigan Prison Abolition (a local activist group), provided Jezebel with a copy of those demands:

1. Change in visitation room procedure.

2. The phone rates are too high.

3. The food quality and quantity are both insufficient.

4. Living conditions are too cramped: The units were built to house 4 prisoners; they are currently housing 8.

5. There are no programs to help prisoners re-enter.

6. The way the yard is run.

7. Bleach for clothes is unavailable.

8. MP3 players available to prisoners are really low quality. They break very easily and cannot be fixed. This causes prisoners to lose forever the songs that they purchased.

9. There’s not enough room in the law library. The room fits only about 20 people. The prison population of Kinross is right around 1,400.

10. There’s not enough room in the visiting room: This means that sometimes visitors get turned away.

11. Inmates aren’t allowed to transfer out. To apply for a transfer you have to go two years without getting a ticket. Correctional Officers hand out false tickets to punish prisoners for bogus reasons.

12. The wages for prison work are too low. Laundry workers make $20 a month.
Two deputy wardens met with the demonstrators, agreeing to address their grievances or bring them to the legislature. The prisoners also asked that they not be subject to retaliation for their peaceful protest. “This was a ruse used by the prison authorities to dispel the protest,” Tarr wrote in an email. “The warden’s trick to disperse the protest made it easier for the inmates to be targeted.”

“These guys think everything is fine,” Williams told Jezebel, recounting what her family member on the inside told her. “But as soon as the warden closed the door, tactical officers burst in.” Shortly after the deputy wardens assured the striking prisoners that their demands were heard, about 100 officers in emergency response teams, armed with shotguns and pepper guns, tore through the facility, zip-tying inmates and throwing them out into the yard, where they were allegedly forced to lie, in the rain, for five to six hours.

As the assault began, other inmates, elsewhere in prison, attempted to barricade themselves in their units: several fires were set, IWOC said in its statement, and at least one window was broken. A number of sinks and surveillance cameras were also damaged. “It could have been settled,” one inmate told the Detroit Free Press last week. “When the officers came in, they caused chaos,” he continued. “It sparked the flame...[and] started the wildfire.”

A spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections, Chris Gautz, told Jezebel that 147 inmates identified as “instigators” were detained that night, as well as about 100 more over the next few days of the lockdown. Gautz disputed the idea that the introduction of armed officers had escalated tensions. “Even a peaceful protest can be dangerous,” he said. “They violated the rules—the prisoners knew that.” He added: “Things would not have been broken if they hadn’t broken them.” The so-called instigators are being transferred to higher-level security facilities.

The first demand on the Kinross demonstrators’ list pertained to visiting room procedure—specifically, the provision that allows inmates to touch their visitors:

Physical contact between prisoners and visitors is prohibited except for one kiss and one embrace between a prisoner and each of his/her visitors at the beginning and end of each visit and when a picture is being taken. Additionally, a prisoner and his/her visitor are permitted to have their arms around the shoulders of one another and may hold hands.
But visitors have not been allowed to sit next to inmates or put their arms around each other in a long time, Evelyn Williams said. “Visitors were caught smuggling contraband,” Gautz confirmed. “They are permitted [to hold hands], but it doesn’t say it’s guaranteed or that it’s a right.” He also confirmed that this was on the demonstrators’ list of demands.

“It’s like they’re doing everything they can to break down the family unit,” Williams said. “We’re supposed to be rehabilitating these people, but then they take away anything that makes them human.”

http://jezebel.com/michigan-prison-labor-strikers-release-their-demands-1787634300

'4533 Industrial Park Drive' sez it all....Kudos to the Wobblies, doing what CPUSA oughta be doing but is too busy trying to elect a war criminal.

blindpig

10-11-2016, 03:33 PM

http://youtu.be/66bEV0ZbDyY

Published on Oct 11, 2016
For-Profit Prisons have ruined lives, wasted millions in tax dollars, and haven't made us any safer. But it doesn't end there. Now that mass incarceration is being threatened by a wakening public, the parasites are moving on to capitalize on the "treatment" process after prison. This is the Treatment Industrial Complex.
SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/BNF-YouTube

Capitalism sure is dynamic, ain't it? Not to mention soul-less, shameless, remorseless......

blindpig

10-13-2016, 11:49 AM

IWW_IWOC ‏@IWW_IWOC 34m34 minutes ago
URGENT:
@for_kinetic aka Kinetik Justice has been moved to Kilby, known as the "bully unit" of AL
@FREEALAMOVEMENT #prisonstrike

This could be really bad.

Dhalgren

10-13-2016, 05:17 PM

This could be really bad.

It was the "go-to" move of the racist, antihuman government of Alabama. I am surprised the state troopers haven't gone in and just started killing - that may come next. Bentley is on his last term, he is facing charges of "impropriety" and fraud with a female staffer, and he is looking around for something to deflect his troubles and save his sorry, worthless ass. I am worried for the inmates.

blindpig

10-14-2016, 10:41 AM

Leader of Historic US Prison Strike Transferred to 'Bully Camp'

http://www.telesurtv.net/__export/1476415823654/sites/telesur/img/news/2016/10/13/us_alabama_prison.jpg_1718483346.jpg
Alabama prison inmates crush limestone rocks with a sledgehammer outside the Limestone Correctional Facility. | Photo: Reuters

Published 13 October 2016 (11 hours 13 minutes ago)

The inmate, who goes by Kinetik Justice, helped organize ongoing strikes in Alabama that drew the attention of the department of justice last week.
A U.S. inmate who helped organize the historic prison strike launched last month was transferred from an Alabama prison, where he was being held in solitary confinement, to a maximum security “bully camp.”

Robert Earl Council, who goes by Kinetik Justice, had been held in solitary confinement for over two years in retaliation for organizing fellow inmates. The group he co-founded, the Free Alabama Movement, released a statement Thursday claiming that he was transferred Wednesday “after being harassed and threatened” by officials from the Alabama Department of Corrections “to silence the movement.”

“Kilby is our bully camp,” said an unnamed prisoner to Shadowproof, a press organization that exposes government abuses. “That’s where inmates go who they deem to be problems that they have to iron out with brutality. You understand what I’m saying? When they send you to Kilby, that’s where they break your arms and break your legs.”

Kinetik Justice was taken to the Kilby Correctional Facility, which hosted Alabama’s electric chair until it was moved to Holman, where he was previously held. The department of justice announced last week that it will investigate conditions in Alabama prisons as well as protection from sexual and physical assault.

Guards joined in the strike at Holman, many of them demanding Kinetik Justice’s release. Before the guards’ action, the prison retaliated against strikers by releasing individuals from solitary confinement “in order to foment violence and break the strike," said Azzurra Crispino, media co-chair at the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee—which helped organize the strike—to teleSUR. One inmate was later stabbed in the eye and one guard was killed.

The guards on strike were replaced with riot squads, said the inmate to Shadowproof.

Members of the Free Alabama Movement and Unheard Voices, also fighting against the Alabama prison system, said in the statement that, “these actions can only make Kinetic’s voice that much louder, and we expected such a move.”

The prison strike, which began on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison riot on Sept. 9, 1971, is said to be the largest coordinated strike against prison labor in U.S. history. Almost one million prisoners in the U.S. work for pennies an hour, and in some cases nothing, for a variety of multinationals and face harsh repercussions for refusing to work.

"We know that slavery is legal in America," said a Holman inmate, quoted in a IWOC tweet. "Anything that is legal has the right to be functional."

Participating inmates faced retaliation in various forms, from physical abuse to restricted visitations, some of which are continuing.

Charles Lee Johnson, who was held at Kinross prison in Michigan, died Wednesday of unknown causes after medical staff showed up 15 minutes late, tweeted the IWOC. Other inmates had complained about inadequate care, and the IWOC cited inmates who were suspicious of the cause of death.

Shortly before his death, a rebellion was repressed with dozens of armed officers and pepper spray.

After actions last month, Crispino told teleSUR that a riot team “dragged men seen as instigators out of showers and beds” and locked them out in the yard, hands tied, for five or six hours in the rain. Some had tear gas sprayed directly in their eyes in retaliation for organizing the strike.

Last week, Siddique Hasan, an inmate at the Ohio State Penitentiary facing the death penalty for helping organize an uprising in 1993, was denied phone and email communication for two months after giving a 15-minute interview for NPR

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Leader-of-Historic-US-Prison-Strike-Transferred-to-Bully-Camp-20161013-0031.html

Video at link

Damn, didn't see this on CBS......

Making small rocks out of big ones ain't no good use of human labor and can only be seen as punitive. Kinetik is gonna get a lot worse than that, they'll do all they can to break him, and if that don't work they might kill him.

blindpig

10-14-2016, 04:24 PM

At Least 24,000 Inmates Have Staged Coordinated Protests in the Past Month. Why Have You Not Heard of Their Actions?
Hunger strikes, labor strikes and other actions have hit at least 29 prisons in at least 12 states.
By John WashingtonTwitterTODAY 2:40 PM

https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/prison_strike_ap_img.jpg
Protesters block the street outside McDonalds's in downtown Portland, Oregon during a nationwide day of action against prison slavery. (AP Photo / Sipa)

Since September 9, inmates in at least 29 prisons (maybe as many as 50) have staged labor strikes, hunger strikes, and various kinds of protests. The actions took place in at least 12 states and involved at least 24,000 inmates (and potentially many more). Taken together, the past month has seen one of the largest, if not the largest, prison protest in US history. Organized across facilities and states and planned for the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, the actions have disrupted incarceration-as-usual across the country. And yet few people outside inmate solidarity networks have heard anything about it.
The national awareness gap boils down to the particular nature of prison strikes, and how inmates remain largely at the mercy of prison guards and officials, even when it comes to getting the word out about their protests. Many of the actions that outside organizers have been reporting to the media remain unconfirmed: Public awareness can lag months, years, and sometimes decades behind events and conditions inside prisons. Public information officers can stonewall journalists, and prison officials sometimes deny actions, despite strong evidence that they have occurred, within their facilities. That’s why The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, and CNN, among others, have all failed to cover the actions.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the extent of the strikes, and of the retaliation occurring behind bars. But strikes and actions did happen, and in many cases are ongoing.

WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR
Even before the actions were scheduled to kick off on September 9, organizers in multiple prisons were transferred, put in solitary confinement, or had their privileges restricted. In South Carolina, in the weeks leading up to the strike, officers took preemptive measures to “isolate, transfer, [and] place in solitary” inmate organizers, according to Dee (a pseudonym), a jailhouse lawyer and an inmate in Perry Correctional Institute. Jason Walker, an inmate in Clements unit in Texas, wrote to me, “They just trying to cover their asses in case that strike really does happen. So in other words, it’s pre-damage control.” Walker later wrote: “At 3:00AM 9-5-16 they put the prison system on lockdown.”

On September 7, at least 400 inmates in Florida’s Holmes Correctional staged an uprising, followed by strikes, protests, and uprisings in at least four other Florida facilities in subsequent days. Inmates refused orders, refused to work, took over dorms and cellblocks, and damaged buildings. Riot squads attempted to subdue the uprising with canisters of gas. According to reports from the Miami Herald, understaffing, excessive heat, and incidences of violence have plagued Florida’s prisons for years. Kimberly Schultz, president of Teamsters 2011, the union representing Florida’s correctional officers, expected that “These riots will continue to increase in frequency.”
In Michigan the day after prisoners went on strike in conjunction with the nationwide work stoppage on September 9, according to Evelyn Williams, the fiance of Anthony Bates, an inmate in Kinross Correctional Facility, striking inmates who were marching peacefully in the yard, after discussing their demands with the warden, were accosted by a tactical team with “guns, rifles, tear gas, and shields.” Approximately 150 inmates were handcuffed with zip ties and left out in the rain for five or six hours. Some were also allegedly tear-gassed in the face. As reported in The Detroit Free Press, prison officials initially tried to downplay the loss of control and extent of the damage, and there are still disputing narratives, but what is clear is that “inmates set at least one fire, smashed numerous windows… and left at least one unit temporarily unlivable.” It was the first time in over 35 years that the state sent armed officers into the prison to regain control.

In Wisconsin, inmates in Waupun Correctional Institution, who were already on hunger strikes by September 9, in protest of long-term solitary confinement, were bolstered by the national strikes, according to IWOC organizer Ben Turk. Some of the inmates were being force-fed through a nasal tube prior to and continuing after September 9. At least fifteen inmates in Waupun were continuing their hunger strike as of September 23, according to an inmate letter.

In Texas, one of the states where past strikes have received the most attention, multiple prisons went on lockdown on or before September 9, though officials denied that there was strike activity. One family member, however, reported that in response to a September 9 strike in the Allred Unit, “Guards in riot gear showed up and blasted tear gas and physically restrained and assaulted several inmates.” I spoke with the wife of one Texas inmate who told me that her husband had planned to participate in a September 9 strike in the Michael unit, which, as of October 2, was on lockdown due to “shortage of staff,” according to a receptionist at the prison. In Coffield unit, another of the lead national organizers, Malik Washington, was placed in long-term solitary confinement on September 15. Washington writes: “This step was taken in response to my peaceful organizing of prisoners for the September 9 National Prison Work Stoppage.” Another lead inmate organizer, Jason Walker, in Clements unit, wrote to me that his unit went on lockdown on Labor Day, and remained locked down until, at least, September 19. He drew a picture of his breakfast, which, he said, was typical during a lockdown and inadequately portioned. “Nobody deserves to get fed like this,” he wrote. In Alabama, last May, inmates accused prison officials of “bird feeding,” giving them, during a lockdown, a purposefully low-calorie diet of non-nutritional and sometimes disgusting food.

https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Clements-food-tray_img.jpg
An inmate’s drawing of the meager food given to inmates at William P. Clements Unit in Texas.
In California, around 100 inmates in Merced County Jail went on hunger strike on September 9. Inmates in Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara County Jail planned to join the hunger strike on October 1.

In South Carolina, there were repeated moments of tension throughout the month. At least one inmate died in the state’s McCormick facility after an inmate-on-inmate stabbing, prompting what one inmate called an “active rebellion.” The prison reportedly went on lockdown. (Officials didn’t return my calls for a statement).

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On September 29 in North Carolina, four prison officials were attacked by inmates. It is unclear if these uprisings were related to organizing around September 9, but incidences of violence in the Carolinas seem to be on the rise. Dee, the jailhouse lawyer in South Carolina’s Perry Correctional Institution, told me, “There is much more collective unity among the prisoners” after September 9. Another inmate in South Carolina said that “The spirit of Attica is in the air.”

In Alabama, where the movement for the September 9 action began, inmates in Holman Correctional Facility shut down the prison for at least a day. According to inmate organizer Kinetik Justice, even prison guards joined the strike on Saturday, September 24, to protest unsafe conditions at the facility. (Officer Kenneth Bettis was stabbed by an inmate at the facility on September 1, and died from his injuries on September 16). The day after the guards joined the strike, on September 25, Justice said, there was an “emergency situation… and the warden was wheeling the meal cart to serve the prisoners dinner.” Justice, as well as outside organizers from the Free Alabama Movement (FAM), told me that though the work strike has ended, protests continue, and tension in Holman remains high.

Although the Alabama Department of Corrections officials denied that guards joined the strike—confirming only that at least 9 guards did not report for their shifts September 24—Justice told me that almost no guards were working at the prison that day, and “that the violence was beginning to erupt again.”

Justice said: “They [the guards] won’t go in the dormitory [anymore]” where inmates are confined. There have been reports of multiple inmate-on-inmate stabbings in Holman, and, according to Justice, “Authorities have no control of a maximum security prison.” According to Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, spokesperson for FAM, at least two of the striking officers he spoke with cited understaffing as connected to the death of officer Bettis. Glasgow also told me that striking guards “agree with the inmates [that] Admin is creating a hostile environment.”

When Bettis was stabbed, according to Justice, he was the only officer in charge of approximately 230 men in the dining hall. In the last three months, according to Justice, over twenty corrections officers have quit their jobs. Holman has seen three different wardens in the past ten months; the previous warden, Carter F. Davenport, was stabbed by an inmate in March and retired shortly afterwards—FAM had been calling for him to step down since April. ADOC officials confirmed that Holman is understaffed. On October 2 there were more reports that officers were once again striking. According to ADOC spokesperson Bob Horton, six officers did not report to work, but “There was no strike.”

Perhaps one of the few things preventing Holman from descending into total chaos is that leaders of FAM and other prison organizations, including prison gangs, convened an inmate Peace Summit last month to take control of prison security, which was being neglected by the guards. One of the participants in the Peace Summit said, addressing fellow inmates: “We are not enemies. These COs have no power to change laws or effect change on the senseless administrative policies. They are not the real enemy. The laws have us oppressed.”

On October 6, likely in response to the strikes, the Justice Department announced it will be conducting an investigation into the conditions of prisons in Alabama, citing the constitutional requirement that prisons “provide humane conditions of confinement,” and that “All citizens, even those who are incarcerated, should expect sanitary conditions of habitation that are free of physical harm and sexual abuse.”

WORKING TO SUSTAIN THE MOVEMENT
There were reports of other protests, uprisings, labor strikes and hunger strikes in multiple other states, but details and confirmation are still lacking. Outside of prisons, actions organized by FAM, IWOC, Anarchist Black Cross groups and other allied organizations, took place in dozens of states. There are already calls for renewed strikes and protests inside prisons from October 15 to October 22, as well as a planned “Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March” in Washington, DC, for August of 2017.

Siddique Abdullah Hasan, an inmate in Ohio State Penitentiary, summed up to me the inmate organizing efforts in an email: “We understand that [this] movement is a protracted struggle and it’s going to take more than one national demonstration to break the back of the prison-industrial complex, a powerful and oppressive system. Nevertheless, our ultimate goals are to abolish prison slavery, mass incarceration, super economic exploitation of prisoners and their families, and end police brutality in poor and minority communities.”

Though inmates in multiple states are protesting a range of injustices, they have found common ground against what they see as a brutal, retaliatory, racist system of criminal justice and mass incarceration. Continued inmate organizing could incite further federal investigations into—as well as increasing public attention of—America’s prison system, which is the largest in the world. After the uprising in the Attica prison, in 1971, it has taken decades for the truth of what happened within the prison’s walls to make the light of day—as this year’s publication of Heather Ann Thompson’s book, Blood in the Water, shows. Hopefully, the public’s understanding of today’s conditions and the protest movement behind prison bars won’t lag so far behind.

https://www.thenation.com/article/at-least-24000-inmates-have-staged-coordinated-protests-in-the-past-month-why-have-you-not-heard-of-their-actions/

Past time that somebody picked up this story, but who reads The Nation besides a bunch of liberals who might wring their hands a little then go vote for that 'super-predator' person. It ain't 'real' until it's multiply repeated on TV.

NPR previewing a piece that sounds like they're gonna twist this thing into a guard safety issue. Up against the wall, Corey.

blindpig

10-14-2016, 04:37 PM

Taxpayer Money Used to Promote Private Prisons: Report

http://www.telesurtv.net/__export/1466267314231/sites/telesur/img/news/2016/06/18/report_us_prisons_have_5_times_more_blacks_than_whites.jpg_1718483346.jpg
Inmates at the state prison in San Quentin, California, United States. | Photo: Reuters
Published 14 October 2016

A new report called for reforms to prevent private prison companies from using taxpayer money to grow their businesses.
Private prison companies in the United States, whose revenue comes in the form of government contracts and public money, are spending millions to lobby politicians and expand the role of private prisons, claims a new report from In the Public Interest published Wednesday.

According to the report entitled “Buying Influence,” private prison companies seek to influence public policy with respect to prisons via three avenues: campaign contributions, lobbying, and influence through professional corrections associations.

“Whether advocating for legislation that benefits their business models, making campaign contributions to candidates, or seeking new contracts, private prison companies’ government-relations arms aim to expand the role the companies play in America’s criminal justice system,” reads the report.

The report is the latest from In the Public Interest’s Programs Not Profits campaign, which seeks to replace the use of private prisons in the U.S.

In the view of the report's authors, the profit-seeking motive of private prisons “create environments that are counterproductive to rehabilitation.”

“Corrections companies have a track record of human rights abuses. In an effort to maximize profits, private prison companies and the companies that provide other corrections services like health care and food cut corners, creating environments that are more violent and counterproductive to rehabilitation,” claims In the Public Interest in its report.

The report further claims that, by virtue of the fact that private prison companies receive their income from government contracts, “taxpayers in effect pay for these companies to grow their businesses.”

In the 2014 election cycle, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group — the two largest private prison companies in the U.S. — spent at least $5.9 million on lobbying and campaign contributions. That same cycle, 14 out of 17 of politicians supported by either company won their races.

Meanwhile, in 2015, “CCA hired 102 lobbyists in 25 states and GEO Group hired 79 lobbyists in 15 states,” winning them even greater influence among decision makers.

The report calls for government to prohibit contractors from making campaign contributions; public disclosure of contracts, both those won and lost; and public oversight of prison companies involvement with corrections associations.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Taxpayer-Money-Used-to-Promote-Private-Prisons-Report-20161014-0003.html

video at link

blindpig

10-15-2016, 12:06 PM

Officials debated message on Kinross prison disturbance
Paul Egan , Detroit Free Press 11:14 p.m. EDT October 15, 2016

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/836b9eb6cddf95a34571d09e27dd1b0b24d55b32/c=110-0-2451-1760&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/2016/10/14/DetroitFreePress/DetroitFreePress/636120579742431446-Kinross-sign-2.jpg
(Photo: Michigan Department of Corrections)
LANSING — Records obtained under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act show prison officials debated the wording of a controversial news release they issued about a Sept. 10 disturbance at Kinross Correctional Facility, which began with prisoners “marching peacefully,” and in one near-final draft described damage to the Upper Peninsula prison as “minimal.”

In reality, damage included at least one fire, smashed windows and sinks, busted-out walls, damage to telephones and other communications equipment, trashed files and graffiti, the records show. One unit was left unlivable for several days. Though nobody was injured, more than 100 emergency response team officers, armed with shotguns and pepper spray guns, stormed the housing units and zip-tied the wrists of nearly all of the more than 1,200 inmates.

The department's public disclosures about the incident sparked an internal controversy, with corrections officers saying it was Michigan's first prison riot since 1981, and that officials temporarily lost control of the facility; while prison managers insist there was no loss of control and the disturbance should not be described as a riot.

E-mails obtained by the Free Press show there was an internal debate about the contents of a news release the Corrections Department sent out at about 10:40 p.m. on Sept. 10, after calm was restored.

“Does the tone of this match what we had to do tonight?” asked Corrections Department legislative liaison Kyle Kaminski, after the draft news release was circulated among top prison officials.

“I think we need to be clear that these are not sympathetic characters and their actions are not something that should be viewed as anything other than destructive and dangerous for staff and other prisoners.”

Corrections Department Director Heidi Washington said she “didn’t want to get into specifics” in the news release. “This has been ongoing for over 12 hours and (the news media) haven’t picked up (on) it yet,” she said in an e-mail to prison spokesman Chris Gautz, after Kaminski’s e-mail was sent to her.

“I don’t want to send a flare up now that makes a huge public issue.”

After some back and forth, the news release went out much as it was drafted, with one significant revision from Washington: “Just remove the word minimal," to describe the damage, "and then it is good to go," she told Gautz.

Gautz on Friday pegged the Kinross damage estimate at $77,000 and said it might have been higher except officials were able to salvage fixtures from a nearby prison to replace some of those that were damaged.

When the release was sent out, details were still emerging, Gautz said. When he drafted the release describing damage as "minimal," he had only seen photos of one smashed window and some damaged sinks, he said. Washington was apparently privy to more up-to-date information when she suggested the late change, he said.

As for the news release starting with about 400 inmates holding a peaceful march early in the day, Gautz said he wanted to get something released to the news media as quickly as possible and it was easiest to do that by describing events chronologically. He said it was better to give too little information and add to it later than to give too much information and risk some of it being factually incorrect.

Also, though the department attempts to block prisoner access to TV and other media reports about such instances, there's always a risk a report could slip through and "they see prisoners doing something at one facility ... and having everybody try to mimic that."

Inmates have told the Free Press prisoners returned to their housing units after the yard demonstration and vandalism didn't start until armed emergency response team officials entered the housing units to try to remove identified ringleaders to move them to higher-security prisons. Department managers have confirmed that, though corrections officers say the housing units remained unruly prior to the raid.

"My understanding is that the destruction was after the squads came in," Washington said in one Sept. 10 e-mail.

Kaminski said in an e-mail the news release should make that clear.

"I don't think we want to have it reported the other way (damage first, then our action) because it will make it seem like we are lying to defend our actions," Kaminski wrote.

"Our actions were entirely justifiable and in response certain prisoners caused damage, which is never justified."

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/10/14/kinross-prison-disturbance/92051472/

**************************************************************************

Kinross inmate: Raid with pepper spray sparked vandalism
Paul Egan , Detroit Free Press 12:10 a.m. EDT October 4, 2016

LANSING — An inmate at Kinross Correctional Facility says hundreds of prisoners had returned to their housing units and were peaceful on Sept. 10 until more than 100 officers, armed with shotguns and firing pepper spray, stormed the units and triggered anger and acts of vandalism.

“It could have been settled,” Kinross inmate Anthony Bates, who is serving 35-70 years for assault with intent to murder, told the Free Press in a telephone interview.

“When the officers came in, they caused chaos,” said Bates, 39, imprisoned for convictions arising from a 1996 incident in Wayne County. “It sparked the flame … (and) started a wildfire.”

Nobody was injured in the incident, which the corrections officers union has described as a riot, but Corrections Department spokesman Chris Gautz said did not rise to that level. Both the administration and the Michigan Corrections Organization union agree inmates set at least one fire, smashed numerous windows — one with a clothes dryer thrown through it — destroyed sinks, other fixtures and inmate files, and left at least one unit temporarily unlivable. Both also agree it was a serious incident that could have turned out much worse.

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Anthony Bates (Photo: Michigan Department of Corrections)

Gautz said the vandalism erupted after inmates returned to their housing units following a peaceful yard demonstration. The trouble started, he said, as regular Kinross corrections officers — who do not carry guns — were pulled out of the housing units and armed emergency response team officers were sent in to round up about 50 inmates identified as ringleaders of the protest, so they could be moved to higher-security prisons.

Gautz agreed there was no vandalism until the emergency response teams entered the prison. But, he pointed out that the activation of armed Emergency Response Team officers inside Kinross can't justify inmates damaging the facility, near Kincheloe, in the Upper Peninsula.

“The damage would have all been avoided if a small number of prisoners hadn’t decided to break things,” Gautz said.

“Any attempt to blame anyone other than the prisoners themselves for their own destructive behavior should not be taken seriously."

Inmates, many of whom had not showed up to their prison jobs on Sept. 9 as part of a national prison protest, had a list of grievances that included prison wages, food and access to a system by which the governor can commute prisoners' sentences.

Tom Tylutki, president of the Michigan Corrections Organization, has disputed that inmates were peaceful after they returned to their housing units following the demonstration in the yard. Based on what officers who were on the scene told him, he said inmates were moving from one housing unit to another, which is against the rules, and remained so unruly that the few corrections officers left in the housing units until the ERTs arrived had reason to be concerned about potential violence.

Bates’ story that the housing units were peaceful and inmates thought their grievances were being investigated until armed officers poured into the facility is corroborated in letters written by two other inmates, which were provided to the Free Press by friends or relatives who asked that the inmates not be identified. One of the letters described threats from inmate leaders directed at prisoners who didn’t want to participate in work stoppages and the yard demonstration that preceded the vandalism.

In his interview, Bates and the other inmates in the letters they wrote also were consistent in saying inmates who were not identified as ringleaders and may not have even participated in the yard demonstration were left in the yard for several hours, in rain and cool temperatures, with their wrists zip tied behind their backs and unable to use a bathroom, while armed officers worked their way through the prison unit by unit.

The prisoners' accounts don't justify the vandalism, but they do raise questions about whether the damage could have been avoided through a less-confrontational approach to rounding up the suspected ringleaders.

Bates said prison wages of 74 cents to $3.34 per day, which haven't been increased in many years, are too low to pay for toiletries and other items that prisoners need to purchase.

Bates, who wouldn't say whether he participated in the demonstration in the yard, said it's possible some inmates were threatened with reprisals from other inmates if they refused to participate.

Gautz said officers and the ERTs responded "in a professional and responsible manner that reflected the training they received for handling such incidents," and "it is unacceptable for prisoners or others to try to rest blame for the damage done to housing units on the actions of our officers, who did a great job bringing this incident to a close without harm to prisoners or personnel."

Gautz said "all prisoners were taken outside their units until it was safe for them to return inside," after which "they were allowed to use the bathroom and they were given a hot meal."

http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/10/04/kinross-inmate-raid-pepper-spray-sparked-vandalism/91469310/

blindpig

10-15-2016, 03:31 PM

In Race for Millennials, It’s Time to Speed Up
Liz Spayd

THE PUBLIC EDITOR OCT. 14, 2016

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/10/15/opinion/15pubedWeb/15pubedWeb-master768.jpg
Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Vice entered the nightly news business this week, delivering a rebel-style newscast on HBO with no anchor, no ads and none of the predictable tics and tricks of the broadcast old guard. The show is aimed at the very market segment that The New York Times is feverishly trying to reach — millennials.

Vice News Tonight still has that rumpled, pre-release feel to it, but one particular segment caught my attention: it was about what Vice called a prison strike across 12 states that is affecting 24,000 prisoners who refuse to eat or work.

This is one of those stories that has gained traction at digital-only sites like the Marshall Project and The Intercept but not much from mainstream news organizations. The Times ran one modest Associated Press story on October 4 but nothing else.

Several readers of The Times wonder why more hasn’t been done. Here’s one: “Over the past several weeks I have read news reports about a number of prison strikes happening in prisons across the country that began on the anniversary of the Attica uprising,” Richard Barber of Brooklyn wrote in an email to the public editor’s office. “In one Alabama prison there are reports of prison guards joining the strike themselves one weekend. Now the DoJ is investigating the Alabama prison. Doesn’t the Times have a responsibility to cover a national story like this?”

Prompted by Barber’s email, I looked at the coverage elsewhere and discovered what seemed like a pretty compelling story, so I asked the national editor, Marc Lacey, for an answer.

The story is difficult to tackle on a short timeline, he said, mainly because reporters can’t simply enter federal prisons where the action is taking place. And while prisoner advocacy groups maintain that there is a nationwide strike, it’s an assertion that is hard to verify.

That said, Lacey assured me that his staff is digging in: two reporters are dedicated to the story and should be producing a deep look at the subject in the coming weeks. “I know it must be frustrating for readers but we are taking it seriously,” he said.

It’s reassuring that The Times has an ambitious plan in place, but the paper could also have offered a quick-turn effort to size up the issue in the current news cycle. One doesn’t preclude the other, a point that Lacey acknowledged.

Vice News Tonight, for example, built its segment around a convicted murderer sentenced to life in an Alabama federal prison where the strikes are said to have begun. He spoke to viewers by way of a contraband cellphone with a camera. It took us right inside a jail cell in that gritty manner Vice is famous for. The Marshall Project, whose sole focus is criminal justice, delivered a smart, informative Q. and A. replete with documents and court filings. It said what we know and what we don’t.

Like everyone else, The Times competes in an ecosystem vastly different from just five years ago. Sites like Vice, BuzzFeed, Vox and The Intercept have exploded in the past five years, as has social media as a source of high-speed news.

For all that has changed at The Times, its deliberate approach to the prison story shows why the paper can’t seem to shake its reputation for thinking that something isn’t news until it says so, as if the world is just waiting for it to weigh in.

That may have been true at one point, but the pace is no longer set by a building in Times Square.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/opinion/prison-strikes-vice-news-public-editor-liz-spayd.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Unfuckingbelievable.

Looks like the 'bumbling empire' scam has found a new application.

Dhalgren

10-18-2016, 10:13 AM

The Next Step for Free Alabama Movement: Legal Clinic Network

Posted on October 7, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

THE NEXT STEP FOR FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT (F.A.M)

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
-13th Amendment, US Constitution

There are several fronts that F.A.M. is currently working on to continue the fight against mass incarceration and prison slavery. With the growth and continued exposure of F.A.M. also comes the need to organize more soundly on a structural and foundational level. In this respect, we are working to structure our legal department and Legal Clinic Network:

STAFF ATTORNEY

1) We need to recruit a volunteer to serve in the capacity of a staff attorney and to develop a fundraising plan to provide compensation when available. This office will help to advise F.A.M. on legal issues and represent F.A.M. in legal matters.

LEGAL CLINIC NETWORK

2) We would like to structure a F.A.M. Legal Clinic Network.

We already have a commitment from several law students, one attorney, and we are exploring opportunities with a law professor and another attorney that we are already in contact with. We anticipate the Legal Clinic Network to start out working in the following capacity:

ASSISTANCE WITH CRIMINAL CASES

a) Handling at least one criminal conviction and/or civil suit per year. In addition, we would like to build a network of volunteers composed of law students, paralegals and researchers to assist with legal research, editing and typing, copying, and filing and collecting public records.

FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES

b) Filing litigation concerning First Amendment rights as they relate to the right of people incarcerated to peacefully assembly in protest of ongoing civil and human rights violations, and to establish and declare free speech zones at Alabama prisons for Freeworld supporters without interference from state officials when conducting demonstrations or protesting on prison grounds.

(i) First Amendment peaceful assembly rights will also address state retaliation for non-violent and peaceful activity inside of prison, and establish precedent that will be backed by TRO’s to prevent arbitrary detention in solitary confinement and retaliation by prison officials for the exercise of constitutionally protected rights. In California, several recent decisions were issued stating that people in prison could not be punished for hunger strikes because this activity was not violent and did not pose a threat to security.

(ii) First Amendment free speech zones will declare the rights of the public to access public prison facilities and to communicate with visitors on visitation days at these prisons and pass out information concerning public safety, mass incarceration, and civil and human rights issues taking place in Alabama prisons.

THE BLUEPRINT TO STEP 4 ORGANIZING AT THE PRISONS

Posted on April 2, 2015 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

“THE BLUEPRINT TO STEP 4 ORGANIZING AT THE PRISONS”

We are getting close F.A.M.ily. Thanks to Bob Witanek and his friends in NJ with Decarcerate The Garden State, we have so insight into developing a blueprint for our Step 4 INITIATIVE.

http://decarceratenj.blogspot.in/2015/03/in-response-to-south-woods-authorities.html

http://decarceratenj.blogspot.in/2015/03/decarcerate-garden-state-to-challenge.html

http://decarceratenj.blogspot.in/2015/03/south-woods-prison-outreach-to-visitors.html

WOMEN’S AND CHILDREN’S RIGHTS

3) The Legal Clinic Network will address the violations of women’s rights at Tutwiler as outlined in the U.S. Dept of Justice report in January 2014, and seek compensation and assistance for all children who were born as a result of these sex crimes.

Justice Department Releases Findings Showing That the Alabama Department of Corrections Fails to Protect Prisoners from Sexual Abuse and Sexual Harassment at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women

Today the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced its letter of findings determining that prison officials at the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) and the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women (Tutwiler) violate women prisoners’ constitutional rights by failing to take reasonable steps to protect them from harm due to sexual abuse and sexual harassment caused by correctional staff. Specifically, the Justice Department found that prison officials have long been on notice of the risks to women prisoners and have chosen to ignore them. The findings also included a notice that the investigation will be expanded to examine allegations of additional constitutional violations.

The department found that women prisoners at Tutwiler live in a toxic environment with repeated and open sexual behavior. The conduct to which women are exposed includes: officers forcing women to engage in sexual acts with officers in exchange for basic sanitary supplies; male officers openly watching women shower or use the toilet; a staff facilitated “strip show”; a constant barrage of sexually offensive language; punishment of prisoners who report improper conduct; and encouraging improper sexual contact between prisoners. The sexual abuse and harassment is grossly underreported due to insufficient staffing and supervision, inadequate policies and procedures, a heightened fear of retaliation and an inadequate investigative process.

“Our investigation has revealed serious systemic operational deficiencies at Tutwiler that have exposed women prisoners to harm and serious risk of harm from staff-on-prisoner sexual abuse and sexual harassment,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Jocelyn Samuels for the Civil Rights Division. “These problems have been festering for years, and are well known to Alabama prison officials. Remedying these deficiencies is critical to ensuring constitutionally protected treatment of women prisoners at Tutwiler and will promote public safety.”

The department’s comprehensive investigation involved an in-depth review and analysis of documents, including policies and procedures, incident reports, investigative reports, orientation materials and staff training materials. The department also interviewed prison officials and administrative and security staff, as well as current and former women prisoners.

The expanded investigation will examine allegations of excessive use of force, constitutionally inadequate conditions of confinement, constitutionally inadequate medical and mental health care and discriminatory treatment based on national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity. The department’s decision to expand its investigation of conditions at Tutwiler stemmed from the department’s review of information suggesting that the systemic deficiencies at Tutwiler that facilitated staff sexual misconduct may also lead to constitutionally inadequate conditions of confinement.

“The department stands ready to work with the state of Alabama on solving the problems at Tutwiler,” said U.S. Attorney George L. Beck Jr. for the Middle District of Alabama. “The report has identified a very serious and troubling situation at the facility. Action needs to be taken immediately. I am certain that Commissioner Thomas and the governor’s office will continue to cooperate in eradicating these deplorable conditions.”

The department commends Commissioner Kim Thomas and his staff for the cooperation they have shown, and for their receptivity to concerns raised, and looks forward to continuing to work with ADOC and Tutwiler officials in a collaborative manner on the expanded investigation and to resolve the existing findings expeditiously and under mutually agreeable terms.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-releases-findings-showing-alabama-department-corrections-fails-protect

For more information on the Civil Rights Division, please visit www.justice.gov/crt

LABOR RIGHTS

4) The Legal Clinic Network would also like to build a network of labor attorneys and experts to address labor issues within the prisons.

Contact:

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT
P.O. BOX 186
New Market, AL 35761
Freealabamamovement@ Gmail.com

Dhalgren

10-18-2016, 10:23 AM

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
-13th Amendment, US Constitution

I have talked to dozens of people about this issue, everyone of them has "been okay" with forced labor. Some of those I spoke with don't even care if the work is inhumane: "Prison isn't supposed to be fun." is the basic response. Others simply say that convicted criminals ought to have to work for their upkeep; they seem to think that labor, even hard labor, is part of "corrections". The only time that any of them (and it is only a very few) have any objections is when they "discover" that the labor is for the benefit of private corporations. Only when they find out that McDonald's, Walmart, Starbucks, Kmart and Hardees are the ones working these prisoners for literal slave-wages do they have any "concerns". We not only live in the Belly Of The Beast, we live in The Heart Of Darkness...

blindpig

10-18-2016, 11:10 AM

I have talked to dozens of people about this issue, everyone of them has "been okay" with forced labor. Some of those I spoke with don't even care if the work is inhumane: "Prison isn't supposed to be fun." is the basic response. Others simply say that convicted criminals ought to have to work for their upkeep; they seem to think that labor, even hard labor, is part of "corrections". The only time that any of them (and it is only a very few) have any objections is when they "discover" that the labor is for the benefit of private corporations. Only when they find out that McDonald's, Walmart, Starbucks, Kmart and Hardees are the ones working these prisoners for literal slave-wages do they have any "concerns". We not only live in the Belly Of The Beast, we live in The Heart Of Darkness...

It is ingrained in the culture, it seems, ruling class ideas reinforced by Christianity, especially Calvinism. The number of folks around here who advocate a return to the chain gang, even black folks, is disturbing. As though being deprived of one's freedom, often for acts of surpassing triviality, isn't punishment enough. Especially when they blow this 'rehabilitation' smoke at ya. Sure it happens, but is the exception to the rule. Disturbing indeed, how some working class folks wish to exact vengeance for the bourgeois.

Just as 'anything but communism' so 'anything but solidarity', and it ain't no accident, but no conspiracy either, rather an ad hoc series of efforts in a variety of fields(electoral politics, education, commercial advertising, news & entertainment and government propaganda) which while not or hardy coordinated all tend towards jelling ruling class ideas in the minds of the working class. Only the contradictions inherent in the relation of those ideas to their living reality can change this and capitalist society caters to the 'pain' by providing a suite of opiates, literal, metaphorical and metaphysical. But the necessities of accumulation and flat out hubris will have them cheapen their efforts at this and 'Let them eat cake' will be heard in the halls of power. Then ruthless criticism will then gain ears and we gotta hold the fort and sharpen our swords for that day.

(Sorry for the military metaphors but this is class war after all.)

Dhalgren

10-18-2016, 02:08 PM

(Sorry for the military metaphors but this is class war after all.)

All war is class war.

blindpig

10-18-2016, 10:55 PM

Two Inmates Have Died Amid National Prison Strike
Prisoners have died in two facilities where inmates are participating in a national prison strike, in what organizers say were preventable deaths.

posted on Oct. 18, 2016, at 5:31 p.m.
Cora Lewis
Cora Lewis
BuzzFeed News Reporter

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Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters

Prisoners have died in two facilities where inmates are participating in a national prison strike, in what organizers say were preventable deaths caused by inadequate staffing.
At Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan, where 400 inmates took part in a protest last month, an inmate named Charles Lee Johnson died on October 10 in an incident being investigated by local police.
“Mr. Johnson asked for medical attention, but even after he became unresponsive medical staff did not arrive for approximately 15 minutes,” activists with advocacy group Michigan Prison Abolition wrote in an email to press, citing information from the family member of a fellow inmate.
Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz told local media that staff at Kinross “raced in and began rendering aid” within minutes of Johnson’s bunkmates reporting the man appeared to have a medical issue.
Striking prisoners at Kinross have since added inadequate medical care to their list of grievances and corresponding demands.
BuzzFeed News reporter Cora Lewis is looking for more information on prison conditions and the prison strike. You can reach her at cora.lewis@buzzfeed.com

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-10/18/16/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane03/sub-buzz-18756-1476821958-15.jpg?resize=625:415&no-auto
Farroukhi / Via Flickr: farrokhi

At Holman Correctional Facility, in Atmore, Alabama, Robert Deangelo Carter committed suicide on October 9, according to organizers with the Free Alabama Movement, a prison advocacy group that helped plan the national strike. The coroner’s office in Escambia County, Alabama confirmed the death to BuzzFeed News.
Carter was being held in solitary confinement. Kinetik Justice, a lead organizer of the national prison strike and former prisoner in Holman, was housed in a cell next to Carter at the time of his death. He has since been transferred to Kilby Correctional Facility, in what organizers say is retaliation for his role in helping to plan the strike and for communicating with media.
Kinetik tweeted and released audio after the incident via a contraband cellphone.

Follow
FREEDOM FOR KINETIK @for_kinetic
WE SCREAMED, WE KICKED, WE BANGED BUT NO ONE EVER CAME- in spite of telling the CERT TEAM4 times- He just HANGED.
1:13 AM - 10 Oct 2016
12 12 Retweets 4 4 likes

Robert Horton, Public Information Officer for the Alabama Department of Corrections, did not respond to a request for comment.
Organizers and former Alabama corrections officers who spoke with BuzzFeed News said that Carter’s death was partly a result of dangerous under-staffing at the facility. If the facility were properly staffed, they said, Carter would have received proper medication and adequate medical checks that could have prevented his death.
Following the strike by prisoners on September 9 and in the following weeks, more than a half dozen corrections officers repeatedly failed to appear for work shifts at Holman. Others have quit, organizers say.
“The prisoners are running that facility, make no mistake,” said one former Alabama corrections officer, who had worked at a different facility before quitting this month, speaking to BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced an investigation into conditions at men’s prisons in Alabama, including Holman. Last summer, the Associated Press reported that suicide and disease claim more death row inmates in Alabama than the death penalty itself.
“They have chronic and acute under-staffing,” said Lisa Graybill, Deputy Legal Director for Criminal Justice Reform at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC is currently litigating a putative class action lawsuit on behalf of all inmates in Alabama Department of Corrections custody, alleging the denial of medical and mental healthcare.
“They literally don’t have enough correctional officers to maintain facilities that are safe for inmates or guards,” she told BuzzFeed News. “Prisoner advocates and constitutional rights litigators have known for a long time that Alabama’s prison system has been teetering on the brink of total collapse.”

Handout / Reuters
Carter, who was 26 years old, was serving a sentence of life plus 20 years for murder and theft. At the time of his sentencing, the Assistant District Attorney for the case said a capital murder charge was amended to a lesser charge in part because of “potential mental health issues and some factual issues.”
Patrick Tuten, then Carter’s attorney, told local media at the time that his client had had a difficult childhood and been on his own for most of his life.
“He was severely abused by his mother when he was 3 and 4, she forced his hands on the stove and burned them several times,” Tuten said. “He’s been in foster care since he was 4-years-old… Other than the attorneys in this case, he has not ever had anyone advocate for him.”
Cora Lewis is a business reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. Lewis reports on labor.
Contact Cora Lewis at cora.lewis@buzzfeed.com.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/coralewis/two-inmates-have-died-amid-national-prison-strike?utm_term=.apKgBrO3X#.pjX8keVbN

buzzfeed?

Dhalgren

10-19-2016, 10:33 AM

buzzfeed?

As ridiculous as it sounds, "Buzzfeed" is the only "news organization" that will cover this "non-story". I ask people what they think about the prison strike and nine outa ten don't know what I'm talking about. The tenth one "heard about it"...

blindpig

10-19-2016, 01:03 PM

As ridiculous as it sounds, "Buzzfeed" is the only "news organization" that will cover this "non-story". I ask people what they think about the prison strike and nine outa ten don't know what I'm talking about. The tenth one "heard about it"...

Well, it hurts like hell to say this but, 'respect'. ('Limited time offer', not valid for any other of their crap.)

meanwhile, back on Wall St:

Corrections Corp Of America (NYSE:CXW) Agrees On Revised Contract With ICE
By Andy Parker - October 19, 2016

http://marketexclusive-summit.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Corrections-Corp-Of-America.jpg

Corrections Corp Of America (NYSE:CXW)’s contract with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been amended. The move comes after recent media reports portrayed the contract as controversial. One of the issues raised about the contract was that Corrections Corp was being paid as though its facility was 100% leased, yet the industry standard is that payment to private prisons is tied to occupancy of the facility.

The facility whose contract has been amended is the South Texas Family Center in Dilley, which has a bed capacity of 2,400.

Contract period extended as rate reduced

The revised agreement extends the duration of the contract through 2021. However, the payment rate has been clipped as ICE will not pay a lower monthly rate for the use of Corrections Corp’s prison facility.

The parties can terminate the contract upon issuing a 60-day notice.

Uncertainty removed

ICE is extending the prison facility contract with Corrections Corp at a time when the southwest border is struggling with an increase in the number of illegal immigrant families. Last month, the volume of immigrant families detained at the border reportedly rose more than 80% on a year-over-year basis.

Perhaps that explains why ICE decided to extend the contract with the prison operator despite the Department of Justice announcing that it would end the use of private prisons.

The controversy that surrounded the earlier contract that ICE had with Corrections Corp concerning in the Dilley facility provoked the DoJ into saying it would begin to phase out the practice of using private prison facilities.

The Department of Homeland Security also recently asked ICE to start reviewing its use of private prisons.

In the meantime, the surge of illegal immigrant families pouring into the U.S. at the southern border should be robust business for prison contractors.

Earnings expectations

Corrections Corp is expecting to post EPS of $0.47 to $0.48 for 3Q16. For the year, the prisons operator is looking for EPS in the band of $1.78 to $1.81.

Corrections Corp posted EPS of $0.69 on revenue of $463.3 million. The results beat the consensus estimates.

http://marketexclusive.com/corrections-corp-america-nysecxw-agrees-revised-contract-ice/34369/

blindpig

10-19-2016, 01:07 PM

Former Miss. State Senator Pleads Guilty to Bribery
By The Associated Press Tuesday, October 18, 2016 12:42 p.m. CDT Upvote0
#JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A former state senator pleaded guilty in Mississippi's prison contract bribery scandal Tuesday, becoming the sixth person to admit to guilt in the investigation centering on former Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps.

#Irb Benjamin of Madison pleaded guilty to one count of bribery before U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate in Jackson.

#Benjamin faces up to 10 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. Prosecutors also want him to forfeit money he gained. He remains free until sentencing on $10,000 bail.

#Indicted in August 2015, Benjamin faced one count of honest services wire fraud and two counts of bribery. If he had been convicted of all three, he could have faced up to 40 years in prison and up to $750,000 in fines.

#Benjamin admitted in court that he gave Epps bribes and kickbacks in exchange for the state selecting his company, Mississippi Correctional Management, to provide drug and alcohol treatment services to inmates at state work centers in Alcorn and Simpson counties. The company collected about $774,000, according to court documents.

#He also admitted paying Epps to help the company obtain consulting contracts worth $862,000 overall from three counties: Alcorn, Washington and Chickasaw.

#All three counties built regional jails, which had to be certified by the American Correctional Association before being paid to house state inmates. Benjamin was supposed to help those counties get and keep that certification, according to the indictment.

ADVERTISING

#Though Benjamin lived about 200 miles away, he was paid as warden of the jail in his native Alcorn County until he resigned in November 2014, according to court documents. He lived there while a state senator from 1980 to 1992, later moving to suburban Jackson.

#Court papers say Benjamin made regular cash payments of $1,000 to $2,000 to Epps beginning in 2010, in exchange for Epps' influence. It states that for three months in 2014, Benjamin was getting $2,000 a month from the company and passing on $600 to Epps. By that time, Epps was already cooperating with prosecutors, taping some conversations with people allegedly bribing him, records show.

#Epps faces up to 23 years after pleading guilty to money laundering and filing false tax returns related to $1.47 million in bribes prosecutors say he took. He is forfeiting $1.7 million in assets. Cecil McCrory, a former state House member, pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering conspiracy and faces up to 20 years. He's also forfeiting $1.7 million in assets. Their sentencing has been delayed.

#The following also have pleaded guilty:

#— Mark Longoria, the head of a Texas company that sold specimen cups to the prison system, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy over bribes paid to Epps out of consulting fees that Longoria's company paid McCrory.

#— Sam Waggoner, a prison phone consultant, pleaded guilty to bribing Epps.

#— Robert Simmons, a Harrison County political operative, pleaded guilty to passing bribes from a prison medical contractor to Harrison County Supervisor William Martin.

#Martin killed himself in 2015, hours before he was due in court on bribery charges.

http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2016/oct/18/former-miss-state-senator-pleads-guilty-bribery/

Mebbe we'll get lucky and more of these assholes will kill themselves.

Dhalgren

10-19-2016, 01:33 PM

Mebbe we'll get lucky and more of these assholes will kill themselves.

What? And do the first right thing they've ever done in their lives? I guess there always has to be a "first"...

Dhalgren

10-20-2016, 04:33 PM

“News break”: Another Alabama Department of Corrections officer stabbed moments ago.
by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

October 20,2016, 2:51 PM CDST

Just moments ago a confidential source inside Holman prison in Atmore Alabama where officer Kenneth Bettis lost his life, another officer was rushed to the hospital from multiple stab wounds.

At this time there are no details and administration of Holman refuse to answer questions.

CERT TEAM members were at the institution and were of no help in preventing another senseless stabbing.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/author/freealabamamovement/

The state government of Alabama is operated by sheer stupidity - conservative Democrats and Republicans, alike. There is not enough common gumption among the whole lot of them to furnish the amount necessary shit one's pants. This is going to be used as an excuse to murder scores of inmates - with the simpering approval of the kept-in-the-dark citizens and the colluding liberals.

Dhalgren

10-22-2016, 10:48 AM

Alabama Prisons Flow With Blood as State Leaders Sacrifice More Bodies in Pursuit of 1.5 billion for More Prisons
by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

>>PRESS STATEMENT: FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT<<
UPDATE: Another officer-related stabbing at Holman
ROBERT WASHINGTON was tied up and then beaten by CERT Team officers at Holman Prison.
https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/Y-fyO9RAzv0-2_tL-xLJN5JKf7bEYryQ0lDZNWmqMKqnurs7ZkHgh19aMdLRgxckOBx7m03YsEkM-wxD960CZfIxZmZI6mFULZ6qhgKs8d4yDggVh9SNP6vT8unmlD8kJDL9FVcM6A=s0-d-e1-ft#http://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/wp-1477081128911.jpg?w=480

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OCTOBER 21, 2016
Contact:
Mother's and F.A.M.ilies

P.O. BOX 186

New Market, Al 35761
freealabamamovement@gmail.com

Holman Prison, Atmore, Ala. As the culture of violence in Alabama's prison system continues to spiral out of control, yet another provocation has resulted in another day of violence at Holman prison. Holman prison is experiencing major staff shortages as a result of officers joining and supporting the non-violent work strikes being lead by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT.

In response to the work strikes and quitting of their jobs by correctional officers , the ADOC Commissioners responded by dispatching CERT Team staff and officers from other prisons to fill staffing positions. These CERT Team officers are notorious for, and have a well documented history of violent beatings, sexual harassment, and excessive force. (See FAM YouTube channel for videos.)

http://youtu.be/Mh_o75B6w2U

Just last month, CERT officers beat Cleveland Cunningham , the man who has been charged in the death of another correctional officer, leaving him with an unexplained broken arm and broken leg. This after-the-fact beating was administered after it was widely reported to the news media by ADOC that Mr. Cunningham was taken into custody without incident. The same brutality was meted out in March on five men transferred from Holman in March after a riot had taken place. All five men were taken to W.E. Donaldson prison, where they were taken one at a time in handcuffs, shackles, and belly chains into a guard shack and severely beaten and sexually assaulted. This matter was investigated by the Commissioner's Officer, but not a single officer was disciplined.

In response to the escalating violence at Holman prison, various factions, including street organizations and religious communities formed a peace summit last month that was called for by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT and its co-founder Robert E. Council, also known as Kinetik Justice. The peace accord proved effective and provided a temporary stop to violence, while organizers sought more permanent solutions, including a request for more educational and rehabilitation programs. The response from Warden Raybon was that he did not care about any truce and that he was going to stop the violence with his own methods. The peace accord dissolved and aggression tactics by the warden were implemented in furtherance of a plan that has been described by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT co-founder Kinetik Justice as "THE HOLMAN PROJECT."

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Warden Raybon oversees the "Holman Project " that has lead to over 50 stabbings and several deaths."

Kinetik Justice described this Holman Project, and many officers agreed, as wardens and commissioners in collusion and deliberately creating conditions that lead to violence in efforts to push their plan for 1.5 billion dollars to build new prisons. One example that Kinetik Justice gave was when Warden Raybon released over 20 offenders from segregation units at one time who were all in segregation for violent incidents. Immediately upon this release, over 8 stabbings took place in less than 72 hours. Not long after these incidents, officers began openly supporting FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT's non-violent stance and started giving media interviews calling out Commissioner's and Wardens over the violence, poor leadership, inhumane living and working conditions, overcrowding, and lack of educational and rehabilitation opportunities, while focusing exclusively on new prison construction.

Kinetik Justice has since paid the price for organizing this peace summit and exposing the Holman Project, as he was transferred to Kirby Prison last week to prevent disrupting the 1.5 billion dollar prison construction plan. The Commissioners and the politicians need violence in the prisons so that they can spread their campaign of fear to the pybluc and sell their 1.5 billion dollar extortion plan for more prisons.

In a move that further served to escalate tension, Warden Raybon put out a memo effective October 1, 2016, wherein he directed officers to direct their attention to minor infractions like haircuts and shaves, in the midst of an unprecedented scale of violence. Officers were instructed to begin confronting people on these minor infractions, and it was this aggressive, confrontational policy that lead to yet another officer-related stabbing today.

The crisis in ADOC is not going away. Despite rising violence for over 3 consecutive years, ADOC officials have not added any new educational or rehabilitation programs. In fact, the root of this current stream of violence can be traced back to 2009 when former warden Carter Davenport was installed as warden at St. Clair. Davenport's first action as warden was to remove the Convicts Against Violence Educational and Mentoring program, which, at the time, had made St. Clair prison one of the least violent prisons with the most Freeworld support and sponsorships in the State of Alabama. One year later, under the leadership of Davenport, St. Clair was one of the most violent prisons in the State. By 2013, St. Clair prison was one of the most violent in the nation. At one point, both head wardens at St. Clair, Davenport and Eric Evans, had multiple prior assaults and misconduct reports against them in their personnel files. (See report by Casey Toner, https://t.co/QPKsimvV59). After Davenport was transferred to Holman prison, in less than 90 days the prison experienced two riots and Davenport was forced to resign after being stabbed.

The trail of violence has spread to multiple prisons, with disruptions, stabbings and violent deaths all on the rise. Bibb Co, Elmore, Ventress and just this week, Draper have all experienced excessive violence. Instead of adding programs for an idle population that has Alabama prisons filled to over 200% capacity, ADOC has removed GED and other programs, and replaced them with nothing. While the politicians and commissioners position themselves to extort 1.5 billion from taxpayers, the men and women on the ground continue to pay a heavy toll in blood.

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT is calling for a return of the Convicts Against Violence Educational and Mentoring program as part of their Education, Rehabilitation, and Re-Entry Preparedness program. These programs are self-funded and didn't cost taxpayers one dime. Thus, there was no room for fraud or stealing funds and so these programs were removed and replaced with programs that clearly are not working and that exist only on paper.

Robbing taxpayers to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars for building new prisons is not the answer to the problems that are plaguing Alabama's prisons today. When there is a culture of violence that has ran this deep and for this long, the root of these problems have to be traced to the ever present factors, which then have to be removed. This starts at the top where policies and decisions are being made. In two neighboring states, Florida and Mississippi we see similar problems, yet Alabama has a different response. In Mississippi, we see corrupt prison officials going to jail. In Florida, we see corrupt officers being fired. In Alabama, we see no response at all. Instead of building new prisons, it appears time to build a new commissioner's office in Alabama, and create a culture of education and rehabilitation, while putting an end to the perpetrators of the "culture of violence."

FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT | October 21, 2016 at 8:38 pm

blindpig

10-22-2016, 11:19 AM

Prisons Are Erupting and Why It Matters
On the 45th anniversary of the Attica debacle, U.S. inmates staged a coordinated protest over work and living conditions, but they were ignored or silenced.

http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2016/10/21/prison-rioting-is-real-and-getting-worse/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/49235823.cached.jpg

HEATHER ANN THOMPSON
10.21.16 1:00 AM ET

Gov. Snyder’s office called in special services/police and people were ordered into the yard to stand in the rain for hours with improperly fixed extremely tight handcuffs and guns pointed; rooms were searched, property thrown everywhere and ultimately many things were lost/broken. This began on Saturday, moved into Sunday, and by Monday approximately 350 people had been transferred out.
—Account from Michigan’s Kinross Correctional Facility
Toward the end of August, reports began swirling in the media that on the anniversary of the Attica prison uprising of 1971—Sept. 9—one of the largest prisoner strikes in American history was about to occur. Most journalists ignored this as the fantasy of activists. But some in the media did take the reports seriously, even though they found it extremely difficult to get any information out of state officials that would indicate whether prisons were indeed erupting.

Anyone who knows anything about the history of prison rebellions knows that these public institutions are fully closed to the public and, therefore, to learn anything about what is happening behind the walls or in the cages inside of those walls is almost impossible.
In 1971, when nearly 1300 men erupted in one of the most famous of all American prison protests—that which took place at the Attica State Correctional Facility when those men came together to protest their inhumane living conditions and forced labor—the public was also in the dark until those men insisted on bringing the media in. And then, in the wake of the state’s bloody retaking of that prison, the nation only came to know of the horrors happening inside because citizens kept demanding access and prisoners kept trying to get their stories told. And the stories they told were horrific indeed—massive reprisals, wounded men with no medical care, and outright torture. It would take almost four decades for the survivors of this terrible retaking to force the state to release the documents that fully corroborated prisoner claims of abusive retribution and hostage claims that the state had mistreated them as well.
Public prisons in the U.S. are even more closed to the public today than they were back in 1971. And they are even more inhumane. Today prisoners are again forced to labor for no, or very little, pay, even though they must have money to acquire their basic needs in prison. Today prisoners are placed in solitary confinement more frequently and for longer time than they ever have been, even though medical professionals the world over are in complete accord that this is a form of torture. Today prisons are much more overcrowded than they were as well, even though this makes things less safe for corrections officers and prisoners alike. Today prisoners are still being fed spoiled and maggot-ridden food, even though they are human beings.
And so, prisoners today are indeed erupting in prisons across the nation and many did begin their protests on the anniversary of the Attica uprising of 1971. Prisoners in scores of prisons in the U.S.—from Alabama to Florida to California to Ohio to Michigan—have initiated protests. And while state officials have tried to deny that these uprisings have happened, prisoners and corrections officers alike have made clear that the officials haven’t been telling the truth.
Stories coming from prisoners and corrections officers in Michigan’s Kinross Correctional Facility, for example, make clear not only that this nation is experiencing prison protests, but more important, that we should all be paying close attention to what exactly is happening right now behind bars.

http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2016/10/21/prison-rioting-is-real-and-getting-worse/jcr:content/body/inlineimage.img.800.jpg/49234197.cached.jpg
Sheriff deputies march, with riot gear, in formation at the San Diego County Jail on Wednesday, January 22, 2014 in San Diego, CA. The Obama administration, in its effort to curtail severe penalties in low-level drug cases, is taking the unprecedented step of encouraging defense lawyers to suggest inmates whom the president might let out of prison early.\
PHOTO BY SANDY HUFFAKER/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Kinross, like countless other penal facilities across the country, is overcrowded and the men held inside have been trying to bring attention to the inhumane conditions they live under for a long time now. But this facility, again like so many others, is far, far away from where most of the prisoner families live as well as far from the media’s gaze. People on the outside can’t see the “spoiled food, severe overcrowding, indifference to inmate grievances” that the men inside have been enduring. They don’t know the extent of the gang problem plaguing the prison, and how desperately prisoners have been asking for help, because prison management manipulates its own data—for example at Kinross, assaults on prisoners are written up as “mutual fights” in order to make things seem better, less predatory, to legislators in the state capitol.
Seeing that just asking for more humane treatment got them nowhere, the men in Kinross planned a work stoppage for Friday, Sept. 9—according to someone on the inside, “a peaceful demonstration” was planned (“wherein no prisoner would work for two days”) to bring attention to the conditions inside. This was the 45th anniversary of the historic Attica prison uprising and this mattered. As another put it, “this place went off on Friday (Sept. 9) it started with a complete work-stoppage. Pretty much everyone agreed to not work.” As another prisoner there explained further, “Friday starts off with no one going to work, no kitchen, yard crew, recreation, school, nothing.”
And this protest was still going the next morning. On Saturday about 50 men entered the yard and refused to go to their jobs. By mid-day they had been joined by nearly 500 other men. State officials, according to a Kinross prisoner were “yelling over the PA that the yard is closed and to return to your unit, blah, blah, blah. [But] more people just kept coming out of their units and walk[ed] in in circles on the inside track.”
Some lower level wardens came out to try to talk the men down. As one prisoner described this exchange, however, “the 2 top issues are the prisoner pay and the chow hall. Neither one of which any administrators are at all willing to change for the better for any of us. We have quite clearly been told, ‘Go fuck yourself’ when it comes to getting a living wage.”
Meanwhile, just as had happened at Attica four decades earlier, while appearing to negotiate in good faith, prison administrators were calling up law enforcement from across the state to retake this prison by force.
Sensing that negotiations were being thwarted, by 3:30 p.m., Kinross was in chaos. According to one prisoner inside, “the looks on [the COs] faces said it all. I saw true fear for the first time from all of them... Everyone was just coming-and-going into whatever unit they wanted to.” The prisoners were also terrified—especially when the COs left their posts en masse. And, just as it happened at Attica 45 years earlier, that fear led prisoners to add one more critically important demand: that the state agree not to retaliate against them physically or administratively.

Ultimately, though, that demand was ignored at Kinross just as it had been at Attica. After prison officials insisted that negotiations would only continue if the prisoners went back to their housing units, the inmates complied. But this was but a manipulation. As one prisoner has reported, “So, we all go back inside and just wait for 4 hours… What was going on was the greatest deception ever (as usual). The whole time that the Warden was [seeming to agree] to the demands… the rest of the Administration was calling up the [Emergency Response] Teams from around the state and planning a retribution.”
Soon waiting turned to fear-fueled frustration in the housing blocks. As a prisoner witness describes it, “These guys went full on Hurricane Katrina and Ferguson. They smashed the officers’ computer and desk, started breaking all the windows in the lobby and dayrooms.”
At first management sent corrections officers into the housing units to try to restore some order. But this was a stalling tactic, a prelude for a much more aggressive response by police then on their way to Kinross. When these law enforcement officials arrived, the COs were ordered to leave the housing units and the prisoners in Kinross were then in serious jeopardy. Within minutes more than 100 men from a heavily armed SWAT-like emergency response team surged into each of the housing units and proceeded to beat, pepper spray, and shackle the men inside. As one prisoner recently wrote in a letter to the outside, “The team starts running onto the compound fully armed. I knew that I wasn’t seeing things then I seen mini-14s and shotguns.” According to other reports, the police then “fired pepper guns during the disturbance… some inmates tried to block the doors to their units with large objects. But… the fact those doors all opened outward made those efforts ineffective.”
What then happened was terrifying. As one man has explained it, “At 9:30 p.m. SWAT entered my housing facility took control, ordered everyone on our bunks. Every single person complied. At 10:00 p.m., after a half hour of compliance and silence, they deployed pepper spray and tear gas in that unit without provocation. I don’t understand why they’d use it a half hour after they had full compliance and control.”
And this from another prisoner: “They come full blast and start the machine gun pepper balls flying everywhere. Good lord, it’s Wednesday and I am still crying and coughing… the flash-bang gas canister went into the back bathroom and then they took their stand with the shields and all. You can’t fight Goliath with a fucking lollypop, right? Yeah, we all get flex cuffed and sent to the gym with d-unit. The rest of the units are scattered on the basketball courts and grass throughout the facility. After about one hour in those damn flex cuffs your hand and arms go completely numb… when we were flex cuffed and in the gym, the rest of the compound was in the pouring rain outside on the ground for 10 hours.”
And that is the last word I received out of Kinross. Almost a month ago now. We know that hundreds of prisoners were taken out of Kinross, but it isn’t clear where they were taken. We know that the remaining men were placed on lockdown, but we have little information on how they were then treated. We should be concerned. Consider that in Alabama’s Holman Correctional Facility the corrections officers launched their own protest—they refused to come to work—because post-protest conditions are so volatile and dangerous. And then there are today’s news stories. The first tells us that an Ohio prisoner, Siddique Hasan, who dared to speak on NPR’s radio show On Point about the men’s protest there on Sept. 9, has just been placed in solitary confinement. The second is that one of Kinross’s prisoners, the third one in the last month, just died in custody.
We have the right to know what is happening inside of Kinross. Indeed, it is our civic duty to demand access to America’s prisons—those erupting and every other one as well. These are our institutions, and the people working in them as well as caged in them are human beings—they are our brothers, sisters, parents, and children—and we should demand full transparency in the criminal justice system on their behalf. Why? Because history shows us that unless we have open access to our nation’s penal institutions, unimaginable horrors can take place in them.
Just ask the men—prisoners and hostages alike—who somehow managed to survive the retaking of the Attica State Correctional Facility back in 1971. The police who came in to retake that facility shot 39 men to death, and they shot a total of 128 men so severely that they were forever maimed. And then they tortured the prisoner survivors of this retaking for days, weeks, and months. As Attica’s history makes clear, we must not only sit up and take notice when America’s prisoners stand together as one to protest their conditions of confinement—to be treated as human beings—but we must also shine the brightest light possible on prisons where they protested the instant state officials bring them back under their control. Our prisons are public, and we, the public, not only have a right to know what happens in them, it is our responsibility to find out.
Heather Ann Thompson is a historian at the University of Michigan who writes on prisons and prison conditions and she is the author of the first comprehensive history of the Attica prison protest, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Pantheon, 2016).

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/21/prison-rioting-is-real-and-getting-worse.html?via=desktop&source=twitter

blindpig

10-24-2016, 09:59 AM

PRISON OFFICIALS BLOCK MAIL AND VISITATION IN ATTEMPT TO STIFLE PRISON ORGANIZING

21OCT 2016
Brian Sonenstein BRIAN SONENSTEIN

https://shadowproof.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/eosp-750x439.jpg
Eastern Oregon State Penitentiary. Photo by Sam Beebe. Eastern Oregon State Penitentiary. Photo by Sam Beebe.
38
Prisoners participating in a strike against slave labor at facilities in Texas, South Carolina, Oregon, and other states are speaking out after authorities allegedly blocked members of the media from visiting with them and rejected mail from supporters and media organizations containing news from the outside.

In Texas, Keith “Malik” Washington wrote a letter stating that on October 5, he was transferred from the Coffield Unit to the Telford Unit. At Coffield, he said he became “the target of a coordinated effort by the state of Texas to retaliate against me for organizing a campaign that seeks to end prison slavery.”

“There are elements and individuals within the Texas criminal justice system that don’t want to acknowledge the humanity of prisoners,” he wrote. “The slave plantation mentality is deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of the oppressor and the oppressed.”

He explained Telford has a solitary confinement unit and he was “sent to this control unit in order to be neutralized.” He said the state’s social media ban is used to “punish me when my friends or supporters post any kind of information about me.”

The revised prison rules allow for prisoners to be punished with extra work duties if they or their supporters use social media on their behalf. They can also be placed in isolation.

“It is crucially important that you continue to share with the world what is happening to me and to so many other imprisoned freedom fighters who are trapped inside American prisons. This attempt to silence prisoner voices and the voices of our free-world supporters is a gross violation of the U.S. Constitution.”

Malik wrote that Raven Rakia, an independent journalist who covers criminal justice and incarceration, traveled to Texas but was denied an interview with him. He said he tried to place Rakia, other journalists, and some friends on his visitation list but prison officials “denied receiving any updated visitation forms from me.”

“Sisters and brothers, I cannot fight these people without your help,” he said, asking the public to call officials at the Telford Unit at 903-628-3171 to demand he be allowed visitation from media correspondents, friends, and lawyers.

Malik asked journalists and lawyers to try to visit and make contact with him “so that I can relay to the public how Texas has framed me and isolated me.” Such attempts and their written rejections could be used to launch legal complaints and put pressure on administrations to allow visitations.

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) is using “phone zaps,” or targeted phone calls highlighting the plights of specific prisoners, to mobilize outside support to place such pressure on prison officials when there is retaliation.

“The phone zap is a tool to organize repression response for inside organizers (prisoners) who are suffering retaliation for their organizing efforts,” said IWOC spokesperson Azzurra Crispino. “It is important because it is the only way we can keep inside organizers (prisoners) safe.”

“When guards and prison officials know that the outside world is watching, they are far less likely to brutalize prisoners. It’s like shining a light in a room where there are cockroaches – they scurry to get out of the way.”

She said anyone can participate in the phone zap or write letters to prisoners, which have a similar affect. “We have tried to make it as easy as possible for people to participate. If you have suggestions on how to make it even better, please let us know! You can always email us at iwoc@riseup.net.”

Meanwhile, three prisoners organizing against slavery in South Carolina were reportedly transferred to other facilities on the morning of October 19. The prisoners are members of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS), which provides other prisoners with legal aid.

“These members were moved from Turbeville Correctional and split up,” a member of JLS told Shadowproof. “One was sent to Lieber Correctional, one of the worst prisons in the state. These prisoners were suspected to have fermented the environment that caused a disturbance there a few weeks back.”

The JLS member said prisoners had been filing legal complaints and are known by officials at the facility to represent JLS. They said no disciplinary charges were filed against the members for their organizing, and that they are not in isolation but in general population at other prisons.

When asked if the prisoners planned to continue their resistance, the JLS member said, “They’re JLS, our resistance is always on going.”

Joshua “Zero” Cartrette wrote a letter published by It’s Going Down from Oregon’s Deer Ridge Correctional Institution, where he said prison officials confiscated mail related to the strike before it even began.

Zero said he was written a disciplinary report because he believes prison monitors read his mail, in which he made “incriminating statements” about the strike to supporters. He also believes another prisoner outted him to officials.

The letter comes after he spent about two weeks in solitary confinement. At the time of his writing, he said officials had “only just now [given him] a pen.”

“This in itself is a sign of how much more they fear us when we stop fighting with our fists and start fighting with our truths,” he said.

Zero shared he would soon be transferred to a maximum security facility, Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, where he will “stick out what will undoubtedly be a very long time in solitary confinement.”

“Last time all this happened, I did 18 months, which after organizing a packet/program strike in the SHU, turned into 24 months,” he said. “So… I don’t know what their decision is going to be this time.”

He also described the prison’s response upon learning of prisoners plans to strike on September 9.

Initially, they gestapo’d 5 people on the first night when they arrested me as well. 5 people from between three different cell-blocks. Then the second day a few more people came down. Each in our own isolation cell. But we could yell back and forth to each other. We sat for about four days with no word as to what was going on, and then they started pulling us all out one-by-one for interrogations.

The only thing they really had on anyone was me and one other person and even the other person wasn’t near as implicit as I was, so over the course of the interrogations and so, since I was already decidedly fucked, we were able to get a few people off the hook completely. And then three others just got unauthorized organization in the third degree and they’ll be getting out of the [hole] tomorrow. One other guy got an unauthorized organization in the first degree and he’ll be doing at least a few months at whatever maximum facility they send him to, and myself. I got found guilty of unauthorized ORG in the first, and “Disturbance” (Conspiracy), so I’ll be doing probably six months in a max, and then the committee will decide whether or not I get extended into long-term. for about 2 1/2 years– And for the same shit– it’s pretty likely I’ll go back. But we’ll see.

Zero said he was upset because this prison is close to family, and he recently had the chance to see his daughter, sister, mother, and stepfather. Other prisons in the state are too far away for them to visit.

“I knew this was bound to happen at some point, and ultimately my purpose inside these walls is not to be complacent and comfortable. But to go where the work is. But still, it happens when you least expect it and it’s never a good feeling to be hauled out of bed in the middle of the night, cuffed, and without a word tossed into a cold cell. A different cold cell, I guess,” he wrote.

An editor of San Francisco Bay View, a national Black newspaper that covers the struggles of California prisoners, shared the publication’s experiences with various prisons rejecting issues of their newspaper.

“On the front page of our September paper is a story headlined, ‘Sept. 9: Strike against prison slavery, strike against white supremacy,’ that scared prison administrator all over the country out of their wits,” Mary Ratcliff told Shadowproof. “According to official notices we’ve received and appealed, that September issue has now been banned in the entire states of Pennsylvania and Texas, in four major California prisons, and in Menard Prison in Illinois.”

“Prisoners in many other prisons around the country and their families are calling and writing to say they haven’t received their September papers. We encourage them to insist on rejection notices, so both the Bay View and the prisoner subscribers can appeal the decision.”

Ratcliff shared a message from Malcolme Morgan at the California City Correctional Facility. Morgan “sent his ‘notification of disapproval so everybody can see how much master fears a revolt.'”

“He’s well aware that the current nationwide prison strikes are for the purpose of finally abolishing slavery in the U.S. by striking the punishment clause from the 13th Amendment,” she said. “Pointing out that enslaved people in centuries past found ways to communicate, he writes: ‘(W)e convicts already know about the nationwide work strike that California City Correctional Facility does not want us to read about.'”

In Alabama—one of the epicenters of the strike—the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) continues to use social media to broadcast events at state prisons that are not given attention in the press. On October 12, they reported there was a major early-morning search for contraband at Elmore Correctional Facility.

FAM noted two murders at one of Elmore’s worst dorms, A2, and said that before that day, “Department of Corrections administration at Elmore has shown no interest in stopping the violence at this facility. Matter of fact their neglect, and actions of ignoring the violence is overwhelming.”

“However now the leaders of ADOC take action in cleaning up, why? It’s obvious from the fact that Regional director Cheryl Price making an appearance during the major “shakedown”,(which has not occurred before today) that the leaders in Montgomery, Alabama are feeling the heat from the Department of Justice announcing their investigation.”

FAM said it was “obvious that the leaders in Alabama are making a desperate attempt to cover themselves from years of neglect.”

Another shakedown took place at Elmore the following day, October 13, according to FAM. On October 14, they reported, “At approximately 8:44, two officers at Elmore Correctional Facility confront an inmate outside a dorm. An altercation between the inmate and officers transpire leading Capitan McGee to call a code for assistance.”

“Once the code was called all officers left there post to respond. In the mean time another incident occurs inside one of the now un-manned dormitories. The unsupervised incident resulted in more unnecessary blood shed caused by a stabbing inside one of the dorms recently searched by ADOC employees earlier this week.”

“Alabama Department of Corrections has rules and regulations that require that at all times an officer is to man a post, even during codes for assistance. However, Elmore correctional facility has been notorious for ignoring and cutting corners of these rules and regulations. ”

While barriers to communication with prisoners and the reluctance of prison officials to discuss these actions make it difficult to gauge the strike’s health and momentum, the prisoners’ demands received greater recognition in the mainstream press. Professional football players Yves Batoba and Kenny Stills of the Miami Dolphins tweeted a compilation of stories from the strike.

“It’s unreal… those corporations who profit from prisons also have major influence on media content,” Stills said.

https://shadowproof.com/2016/10/21/prison-officials-block-mail-visitation-attempt-stifle-prison-organizing/

blindpig

10-24-2016, 12:40 PM

500 prisoners moved out after ‘disturbance’ at state’s Goldsboro facility
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/vik45a/picture110101967/ALTERNATES/FREE_960/stock_handcuffs

BY RON GALLAGHER
rgallagher@newsobserver.com

About 500 prisoners were moved early Monday from the state's Neuse Correctional Institution because of damage caused during an inmate disturbance Sunday afternoon and evening, state public safety officials said.

The prisoners were taken to other state prisons, Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Pamela Walker said.

Fires set during the incident damaged a supply building and a building used to process new prisoners coming into the state system through the minimum-security facility, officials said.

Four dormitory buildings at the 800-inmate facility were damaged, officials said.

The state’s Prison Emergency Response Team, which pulls correction officers from other facilities to one where there is a problem, went into the prison. Officials also had help from Goldsboro police, the State Highway Patrol, Wayne County and Johnston County sheriff’s deputies and area firefighters, Walker said.

Walker said a “small group” of prisoners started what officials described as a “disturbance” about 4:30 p.m. She said officials declared the situation under control about 8:15 p.m.

The state did not disclose whether it knew why the incident began and whether any prisoners face charges for it.

The evacuation left 288 prisoners at the facility, the state said.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article110101972.html

blindpig

10-27-2016, 01:28 PM

Blood flows in Alabama prisons as state leaders sacrifice more bodies in pursuit of $1.5 billion for more prisons
October 26, 2016

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Robert Washington was tied up and then “subdued” by CERT Team officers at Holman Prison. These pictures were taken of him before and after his beating.
by Free Alabama Movement

Holman Prison, Atmore, Ala. – As the culture of violence in Alabama’s prison system continues to spiral out of control, yet another provocation has resulted in another day of violence at Holman Prison. Holman is experiencing major staff shortages as a result of officers joining and supporting the non-violent work strikes being led by Free Alabama Movement.

In response to the work strikes and correctional officers quitting their jobs, the ADOC commissioners responded by dispatching CERT Team staff and officers from other prisons to fill staffing positions. These CERT Team officers are notorious for, and have a well documented history of violent beatings, sexual harassment and excessive force.

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http://youtu.be/Mh_o75B6w2U

Just last month, CERT officers beat Cleveland Cunningham, the man who has been charged in the death of another correctional officer, leaving him with an unexplained broken arm and broken leg. This after-the-fact beating was administered after it was widely reported to the news media by ADOC that Mr. Cunningham was taken into custody without incident.

The same brutality was meted out in March on five men transferred from Holman after a riot had taken place. All five men were taken to W.E. Donaldson Prison, where they were taken one at a time in handcuffs, shackles and belly chains into a guard shack and severely beaten and sexually assaulted. This matter was investigated by the Commissioner’s Officer, but not a single officer was disciplined.

All five men were taken to W.E. Donaldson Prison, where they were taken one at a time in handcuffs, shackles and belly chains into a guard shack and severely beaten and sexually assaulted. This matter was investigated by the Commissioner’s Officer, but not a single officer was disciplined.

In response to the escalating violence at Holman Prison, various factions, including street organizations and religious communities, formed a peace summit last month that was called for by Free Alabama Movement and its co-founder Robert E. Council, also known as Kinetik Justice. The peace accord proved effective and provided a temporary stop to violence, while organizers sought more permanent solutions, including a request for more educational and rehabilitation programs.

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Warden Raybon oversees the “Holman Project” that has led to over 50 stabbings and several deaths.

The response from Warden Raybon was that he did not care about any truce and that he was going to stop the violence with his own methods. The peace accord dissolved and aggression tactics by the warden were implemented in furtherance of a plan that has been described by Free Alabama Movement co-founder Kinetik Justice as “The Holman Project.”

Kinetik Justice described this Holman Project, and many officers agreed, as wardens and commissioners in collusion deliberately creating conditions that lead to violence in efforts to push their plan for $1.5 billion to build new prisons. One example that Kinetik Justice gave was when Warden Raybon released over 20 offenders from segregation units at one time who were all in segregation for violent incidents.

Kinetik Justice described this Holman Project, and many officers agreed, as wardens and commissioners in collusion deliberately creating conditions that lead to violence in efforts to push their plan for $1.5 billion to build new prisons.

Immediately upon this release, over eight stabbings took place in less than 72 hours. Not long after these incidents, officers began openly supporting Free Alabama Movement’s non-violent stance and started giving media interviews calling out commissioners and wardens over the violence, poor leadership, inhumane living and working conditions, overcrowding, and lack of educational and rehabilitation opportunities, while focusing exclusively on new prison construction.

Kinetik Justice has since paid the price for organizing this peace summit and exposing the Holman Project, as he was transferred to prevent disrupting the $1.5 billion prison construction plan. The commissioners and the politicians need violence in the prisons so that they can spread their campaign of fear to the public and sell their $1.5 billion extortion plan for more prisons.

Kinetik Justice has since paid the price for organizing this peace summit and exposing the Holman Project, as he was transferred to the dreaded Limestone Prison. The commissioners and the politicians need violence in the prisons so that they can spread their campaign of fear to the public.

In a move that further served to escalate tension, Warden Raybon put out a memo effective Oct. 1, 2016, wherein he directed officers to direct their attention to minor infractions like haircuts and shaves, in the midst of an unprecedented scale of violence. Officers were instructed to begin confronting people on these minor infractions, and it was this aggressive, confrontational policy that lead to yet another officer-related stabbing on Oct. 21.

The crisis in ADOC is not going away. Despite rising violence for over three consecutive years, ADOC officials have not added any new educational or rehabilitation programs. In fact, the root of this current stream of violence can be traced back to 2009 when former warden, Carter Davenport, was installed as warden at St. Clair.

Davenport’s first action as warden was to remove the Convicts Against Violence Educational and Mentoring program, which, at the time, had made St. Clair prison one of the least violent prisons with the most free world support and sponsorships in the state of Alabama. One year later, under the leadership of Davenport, St. Clair was one of the most violent prisons in the state.

By 2013, St. Clair prison was one of the most violent in the nation. At one point, both head wardens at St. Clair, Davenport and Eric Evans, had multiple prior assaults and misconduct reports against them in their personnel files. (See report by Casey Toner, “Prison secrets: AL.com investigation finds prison bosses have little to fear from breaking the rules.”)

Davenport’s first action as warden was to remove the Convicts Against Violence Educational and Mentoring program, which, at the time, had made St. Clair prison one of the least violent prisons with the most free world support and sponsorships in the state of Alabama. By 2013, St. Clair prison was one of the most violent in the nation.

After Davenport was transferred to Holman Prison, in less than 90 days the prison experienced two riots and Davenport was forced to resign after being stabbed.

The trail of violence has spread to multiple prisons, with disruptions, stabbings and violent deaths all on the rise. Bibb Co, Elmore, Ventress and, just this week, Draper have all experienced excessive violence.

Instead of adding programs for an idle population that has Alabama prisons filled to over 200 percent capacity, ADOC has removed GED and other programs and replaced them with nothing. While the politicians and commissioners position themselves to extort $1.5 billion from taxpayers, the men and women on the ground continue to pay a heavy toll in blood.

ADOC has removed GED and other programs and replaced them with nothing. While the politicians and commissioners position themselves to extort $1.5 billion from taxpayers, the men and women on the ground continue to pay a heavy toll in blood.

Free Alabama Movement is calling for a return of the Convicts Against Violence Educational and Mentoring program as part of their Education, Rehabilitation, and Re-Entry Preparedness program. These programs are self-funded and didn’t cost taxpayers one dime. Thus, there was no room for fraud or stealing funds. Yet these programs were removed and replaced with programs that clearly are not working and that exist only on paper.

Robbing taxpayers to the tune of $1.5 billion for building new prisons is not the answer to the problems that are plaguing Alabama’s prisons today. When there is a culture of violence that has ran this deep and for this long, the roots of these problems have to be traced to the ever present factors, which then have to be removed.

This starts at the top, where policies and decisions are being made. In two neighboring states, Florida and Mississippi, we see similar problems, yet Alabama has a different response.

In Mississippi, we see corrupt prison officials going to jail. In Florida, we see corrupt officers being fired. In Alabama, we see no response at all.

In Mississippi, we see corrupt prison officials going to jail. In Florida, we see corrupt officers being fired. In Alabama, we see no response at all.

Instead of building new prisons, it appears time to build a new commissioner’s office in Alabama and create a culture of education and rehabilitation, while putting an end to the perpetrators of the “culture of violence.”

Contact the Free Alabama Movement through Mothers and FAMilies, P.O. Box 186, New Market, AL 35761 or freealabamamovement@gmail.com.

Retaliation against one of the largest voices in Alabama’s prisons

by Free Alabama Movement

kinetic-justice-amun-graphicRobert Earl Council, known as Kinetic Justice, was transferred from Holman Prison earlier this month as a strategic move by the ADOC administration in Montgomery, Alabama. It’s believed that this move was purposely implemented to stop the momentum in the Free Alabama Movement.

On Oct. 21, 2016, Robert Earl Council engaged in a hunger strike at Limestone Correctional Facility protesting the retaliatory actions against him for leading the nationwide movement against mass incarceration. On Oct. 26, it was reported that Warden Christopher Gordy at Limestone ordered the water supply to Robert Earl Council shut off as well.

On Oct. 21, 2016, Robert Earl Council, aka Kinetic Justice, engaged in a hunger strike protesting the retaliation against him for leading the nationwide movement against mass incarceration. On Oct. 26, the fifth day of his hunger strike, Warden Christopher Gordy at Limestone ordered the water supply to Robert Earl shut off.

It’s plain to see that the leaders of Alabama will do nothing short of retaliating against those who expose the injustices that have remained hidden for decades. However, it is also plain that these men like Robert Earl Council will do nothing less than continue to shed light on the reality of Alabama’s darkest kept secrets.

Robert Earl Council your voice is heard! FREE ROBERT EARL COUNCIL!

Kinetic Justice remains on hunger strike within the dungeon of Limestone Correctional Facility

Today, within the walls at Limestone Correctional Facility, Robert Earl Council remains on protest against the retaliatory actions taken against him for speaking out on the inhumane injustices that plagues our state.

We have come to know Robert Earl as “Kinetic Justice,” which seems to be a fitting name from the looks of how things have taken off across the nation. Webster defines the adjective “kinetic” as an energy “of or relating to the movement of physical objects.”

There’s no question that the momentum is still going regardless of the fact the administration continues to attempt to break the spirit of the movement.

Contact the Free Alabama Movement through Unheard Voices, at https://www.facebook.com/unheard.voices.79. These stories first appeared on the Free Alabama Movement’s main website, https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/.

http://sfbayview.com/2016/10/blood-flows-in-alabama-prisons-as-state-leaders-sacrifice-more-bodies-in-pursuit-of-1-5-billion-for-more-prisons/

blindpig

10-27-2016, 01:31 PM

What could go wrong?

California counties look to private firm to run new state psychiatric hospital
Annie Gilbertson 5 hours ago

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A statewide consortium of county mental health officials is planning to create California's first privately-run state mental health hospital. It says it's the fastest way to address the persistent shortage of beds for the state’s most dangerously and severely mentally ill.

But critics of prison privatization worry care will worsen, pointing to past problems with the contractor, Correct Care Recovery Solutions, a spinoff of the private prison giant GEO Group.

The proposed facility would serve around 250 civilly-committed patients - those hospitalized because they're deemed a danger to themselves or others. That would allow the current network of state hospitals to continue to house people who are charged with crimes but found mentally incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity.

"The state hospitals are jammed and are very difficult to get people in," said Wayne Clark, director of the California Mental Health Services Authority, the consortium of California county mental health agencies.

In June, the list of people waiting to get in reached a five-year high of 700. On average, patients found incompetent to stand trial waited two months to get a hospital bed, but some can wait several months.

Many are waiting in county jails, predominately in Los Angeles County, where they are entitled to basic mental health care, but long-term psychiatric treatment can be delayed.

Civilly-committed patients are housed in local psychiatric hospitals, which can charge between $600 to $1,300 a day in Los Angeles County.

Even when patients do get transferred to state facilities, counties still have to pay for their care. The state bills about $650 per patient, per day. That added up to more than $55 million in 2015 for Los Angeles county alone.

Cutting corners?

County mental health leaders predict Correct Care will cut their annual costs by as much as 10 percent.

The project comes as the federal government begins to turn away from the private corrections industry. Safety concerns led the Justice Department to announce in August a plan to stop using private firms to run federal prisons and, days later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it would consider moving away from private immigrant detention centers.

Still, many state and local governments are attracted to the private market's promise to drive down costs. That worries critics.

"They are securing these contracts by promising to treat the most people at the lowest cost," said Cate Graziani, a community organizer at Grassroots Leadership, a group critical of privatization. "And what this results in is a dangerous practice of cutting corners, especially staff. And this is where we see incidents of abuse, neglect and death."

Graziani points to South Florida State Hospital as an example. The facility was one of the first state mental health hospitals in the U.S. to be privatized. It was managed by a division of GEO Group until 2014, when Correct Care Solutions bought the unit.

In 2011, Florida’s Department of Children and Families, which oversees adult protective services, launched an investigation into the facility after three patient deaths that year.

In one case, a heavily-medicated man was found dead in a bathtub. The water was so hot, staff reported, the patient’s skin sloughed off his body.

Florida investigators determined Correct Care staff was fixing the problems, yet adult protective services continued to find abuse and neglect at the hospital. Between 2011 and 2015, investigators verified 19 claims that staff abused, neglected or poorly supervised those in their care, records show.

In one case, a technician reacted to a patient spitting in her face by throwing him to the ground, bruising his legs, arms and chin.

"The bruises are from [the technician], she did them all," the patient told staff.

Another staffer drove a patient to a nearby hospital for medical care and parked the car on the 8th floor of the garage. The patient ran and jumped from the roof to his death.

Nothing "excessive or unusual"

Graziani said Correct Care has a history of understaffing, leaving patients vulnerable.

Correct Care did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but the South Florida State Hospital investigation found staffing levels were adequate. In official communications, company executives have emphasized the "quality and safety" of their patient care.

"CCS hospitals and treatment centers provide care for some of the most complex patient challenges in the medical profession," Correct Care Division President Marta Prado said in a 2015 press release.

"Our nurses, doctors, mental health professionals and caregivers work tirelessly 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide best-in-class care," she said.

When asked about Correct Care’s problems in Florida, Clark stressed that his agency undertook due diligence before selecting Correct Care for the project in California.

"I don’t recall all the detail of the concerns that were raised," he said. "We know this happens in this industry so we didn’t think it was anything excessive or unusual."

He also said Correct Care was the only one of three bidders with experience running a state hospital.

The Mental Health Services Authority would have ongoing "on-site monitoring of care for [Correct Care's] clients," ensuring the firm appropriately staffed the hospital and complied with other federal, state and local regulations, said Mary Marx, clinical district chief for the L.A. County Department of Mental Health.

Correct Care provides higher quality services than California’s public psychiatric hospitals, Clark said.

Problems at state-run hospitals

Patients have injured themselves, other patients and staff at California’s publicly-run hospitals. About 3,500 patient-against-patient assaults were recorded statewide in 2014, according to the latest available records.

Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk admits the largest percentage of civil commitments, the type that would be transferred to Correct Care’s facility. It’s had its share of problems.

California Department of Public Health investigators found at least 55 deficiencies at Metropolitan from 2011-2015 related to a patient’s "right to be free from harm, including unnecessary or excessive physical restraint, isolation, medication, abuse, or neglect."

Staff corrected each of the deficiencies immediately upon learning of them, said Ralph Montano, spokesman for the Department of State Hospitals.

"The safety of our patients and staff is our highest priority," he said in a statement. "However, we are dealing with patients with severe mental illnesses, many of whom are forensically committed following serious acts of violence."

Stephanie Clendenin, deputy director of the California Department of State Hospitals, said her agency has also been working to address the waitlist, which has existed for more than a decade.

The state has added 300 beds in the last three years to alleviate the backlog, Clendenin said, but "the referrals continue to increase beyond what was anticipated."

The squeeze at the state level is putting pressure on local officials.

"Demand is huge," Marx said.

Some experts suggest rising homelessness is a contributing factor; some say its drug abuse, which can exacerbate mental illness. Others point to prison depopulation or suggest the criminal justice system is getting better at identifying the mentally disabled.

The long wait for a bed

A jury found Harold Turner’s daughter, who has paranoid schizophrenia, not guilty by reason of insanity in 2009. She attacked a family member and was charged with premeditated attempted murder. He withheld her name to protect her privacy.

Turner, who is now director of programs at a local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, welcomed the idea of his daughter serving a stint in a state hospital. He recalled thinking that perhaps she could finally get the intensive therapy she needed.

But more than 1,000 people were in line for a bed that summer.

"I’m like, how is there not a bed there?" he recalled thinking. She waited in jail three months.

Another patient, Rodney Bock, a farmer and father of four, hanged himself in a jail cell in Sutter County, north of Sacramento, in 2010 – 10 days after a court committed him to a state hospital. An ACLU lawsuit faulted jail staff for not following suicide prevention protocols.

The Mental Health Services Authority hopes to start transferring patients to a Correct Care facility as soon as 2018. But first, officials will need to find a location for the new hospital.

In one scenario, the consortium would find an abandoned government building – such as an unused juvenile detention center – which Correct Care would pay to renovate.

Clark said another reason the consortium wants to set up a privately-run facility is counties’ desire to have greater control over the patients they commit.

"From our perspective, we weren’t really getting the kind of service we thought was best for our patients," Clark said. "Nothing against the state hospitals, but it just wasn’t working that well. We thought we’d try something different."

blindpig

10-27-2016, 04:27 PM

28 Days in Chains
In this federal prison, inmates have a choice: live with a violent cellmate or end up in shackles.

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ANGIE WANG FOR NPR
By CHRISTIE THOMPSON and JOSEPH SHAPIRO
O n Feb. 3, 2011, corrections officers at Lewisburg federal penitentiary in rural Pennsylvania arrived outside Sebastian Richardson’s cell door. With them was a man looking agitated and rocking back and forth. He stared down at Richardson, who at 4 feet, 11 inches was nicknamed “Bam Bam.” Reported and published in collaboration with NPR.The man, officers told Richardson, was his new cellmate. The two would spend nearly 24 hours a day celled together in a concrete room smaller than a parking space.

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Sebastian Richardson in an undated photo.

Richardson, 51, didn’t know his new cellmate’s name, only that he also went by a nickname: "The Prophet." He had a habit of screaming songs or shouting the spelling of words for hours, as though competing in his own private spelling bee. There were also rumors that he had assaulted more than 20 previous “cellies.”“He’s Lewisburg’s weapon,” said former Lewisburg inmate Deangelo Moore. “If he like you, he like you. But if he don’t, he’s your worst enemy.”“Every cellie he get he always end up fighting,” said Lenelle Gray, another former Lewisburg inmate. “He was just crazy.”So when officers told Richardson to cuff up and step aside to make room for his new cellmate, he refused.Richardson later claimed in a LAWSUIT1 that the guards took The Prophet away and then returned 30 minutes later with reinforcements. They moved him to a laundry area to be stripped, searched, and put in paper clothes. Richardson yelped in pain as they then placed him in hand and ankle cuffs, clicking them tighter until they cut into his wrists and Achilles tendon. A chain, locked high on his chest in a practice known among staff as “T-rexing,” forced his arms into an awkwardly high bend and made it hard to breathe. Officers then walked him, haltingly, to a cell where another man was being held in identical shackles.
LAWSUIT 1
The details of Richardson's story are laid out in a lawsuit he filed against the Bureau of Prisons and the agency's response to that lawsuit — and are reinforced by Richardson's letters from prison and interviews with former inmates.
According to inmates' lawyers, Lewisburg staffers, and more than 40 current and former prisoners — who made similar claims in lawsuits, court testimonies, government audits, or letters and interviews with The Marshall Project and NPR — restraints are used as punishment at Lewisburg, often for those who refuse their cell assignments. Inmates have no say over who shares their cell, even if guards place them with someone who has a violent history, is from a rival gang, or is suffering from a severe mental illness. If they try to refuse a cellmate out of fear, as Richardson said he did, they are locked into metal “ambulatory restraints” for hours or days until they relent. Seven prisoners said that they were threatened with or subjected to a punishment far more painful than ambulatory restraints, a form of punishment that at other prisons is used as a short-term last resort for uncontrollable inmates. It is known as “four-pointing” and consists of having each limb cuffed to a corner of a concrete slab or bed frame.Richardson was freezing in the new cell. He claimed that guards left the window open when they locked him in. His paper uniform was no match for the Pennsylvania winter air. It didn’t help that the uniform was soaked with urine; in restraints, he wasn’t able to pull his pants down to use the toilet. Richardson’s cuffs also made the top bunk an impossible reach. So when the other prisoner would take the bottom bed, Richardson did the only thing he could: He would curl up on the concrete floor.Guards came every two hours to check on him. Richardson said they ignored his complaints: his swelling hands, his soiled clothes, his cut ankles. Instead they reiterated his options — be locked in a tiny cell with a violent man or cope with the restraints.Richardson remained cuffed for 28 days.

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Lewisburg, a federal prison in Pennsylvania. CHRISTOPHER SADOWSKI/SPLASH NEWS, VIA NEWSCOM

The Special Management Unit where Richardson was housed was created in 2009 for “dangerously violent, confrontational, defiant, antagonistic inmates,” according to the federal Bureau of Prisons. Richardson, serving a 35-year sentence for drug trafficking, was transferred there in March 2010 for assaulting a corrections officer; in his telling, he was intervening in a fight between a guard and another inmate. The aim of the SMU is to increase safety at other federal prisons by culling their most problematic inmates and putting them through a three-step rehabilitation program (if an inmate breaks a rule or gets into a fight, he may have to repeat a step). Prisoners are assigned a series of workbooks and journal entries to be completed in-cell on topics like “The Con Game,” the “criminal lifestyle,” and anger management. BOP lectures play over inmates’ radios, instructing them on everything from diversity to parenting.At Lewisburg, the vast majority of those inmates are in “double-cell” solitary, housed with another prisoner in cells as small as 6 feet by 10 feet for nearly 24 hours a day. The cells were originally built for just one person, but officials doubled up the SMU inmates in order to teach them to “successfully coexist,” according to the prisoner handbook. It also helped alleviate overcrowding — high-security federal prisons are overstuffed by more than 50 percent.As a result, prisoners in the SMU share excessively tight cells; between the bunks, sink, toilet, desk, and the roommate, there is barely room to stand. “When I use the toilet, his feet are on my knees,” said Moore, the former Lewisburg inmate. Inmates get a brief reprieve from the closetlike conditions every week for medical care, three showers, and five hours in a “recreation cage.”

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Inside a double cell in the Special Management Unit at Lewisburg. Two inmates share this space for nearly 24 hours a day. TONI BYRD

Double-cell solitary is a common practice in federal prisons, where more than 80 percent of the nearly 11,000 inmates in restricted housing have a cellmate. But Lewisburg has the added danger of housing some of the bureau’s most volatile prisoners. “I’ve gone to as many as three, four cell fights in a day, a lot more than you would at any other institution,” said a current SMU corrections officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job. Guards in SWAT gear are often seen running down the tier with pepper balls and handcuffs to break up brawling cellmates, including the prisoner who was found kicking a roommate lying in the fetal position, the prisoner who tore off half of his cellmate's ear, and the inmate who slashed his cellmate with a razor blade. According to incident reports obtained by The Marshall Project and NPR, officers responded to 228 in-cell fights and assaults with restraints or pepper spray in 2014 and 2015. At least 19 inmates were treated for injuries such as a collapsed lung, a broken rib, multiple stab wounds, and head injuries. Since the SMU opened, there have been more than 800 recorded inmate-on-inmate assaults — a rate six times higher than all federal prisons. And in that time, at least four inmates have been killed by their cellmates.In August, the Bureau of Prisons announced changes to the SMU in response to recommendations made by the Department of Justice. The new policy limited the length of the rehabilitation program to 12 months and ensured that prisoners who failed to advance on schedule cannot be held in the SMU for longer than two years. Prisoners are also supposed to receive more thorough mental health screenings before and during their time in the unit. But the conditions that inmates are held in, and the practice of using restraints against them, remain unchanged. At other facilities, if an inmate objects to his cellmate out of concern for his safety, he may be given a disciplinary notice for disobeying orders, be held in a cell by himself while officers investigate his complaints, or be ignored altogether. Restraints of any kind are meant to be used briefly and as a last alternative. “The inmate who refuses to cell with someone ordinarily receives an incident report for ‘Refusing A Program Assignment,’ which is a moderate severity infraction,” wrote Jack T. Donson, a former Bureau of Prisons official and current correctional consultant, in an email. “Restraints should not be applied simply because they refuse a cellmate.”

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A view of the penitentiary from above. Several of the buildings in the foreground comprise the SMU. GOOGLE EARTH

The procedures in the SMU leave inmates with few, difficult options: They can verbally refuse their cellmate and risk being restrained. Or they can live with someone they fear, risking attack. Some resort to throwing the first punch, in plain view of guards, knowing that the officers will have to separate them — a strategy that often lands them in restraints, too. Incident reports show that at least 48 men attacked their cellmate directly in front of officers in 2014 and 2015. “I’ve been practicing for almost 30 years, and my clients tell me Lewisburg is the worst place they’ve ever been,” said assistant federal public defender D. Toni Byrd, who has represented several Lewisburg defendants and sits on the board of the Lewisburg Prison Project, a prisoners’ rights nonprofit. “If you did to your dog what they do to men here, you would be arrested.”The BOP declined multiple interview requests for this story. In response to detailed questions about The Marshall Project and NPR’s findings, spokesman Justin Long said he could not comment on pending lawsuits. “The Bureau ensures inmates in its custody are treated fairly and with dignity,” Long wrote in an email. “Allegations of mistreatment are thoroughly investigated and appropriate action is taken if such allegations are proven true.” Long noted that the SMUs are “non-punitive” units meant for inmates with a history of violence. In February 2014, former Lewisburg inmate Royce Brown, who was sentenced to 20 years on drug and gun possession charges, said he had been housed with a “gunner” — someone who masturbates when a woman walks down the tier. During the 18 days they lived together, tension and frustration mounted. “We were stuck looking at each other waiting for it to pop,” Brown said. “It was torture just being in the cell with him.”Brown said that one morning, his cellmate told him, “We can’t live in the cell together no more. I’m gonna make ‘em gas us.” Brown asked to be moved, but guards ignored his requests. Brown knew the protocol: If he attacked his cellmate in front of corrections officers, they would be forced to remove him. “I [hit] him a few times and I put him on the ground,” Brown said. “Now they have to separate us.” Surveillance footage shows more than 30 officers ran down the tier as some shot pepper spray and pepper balls into Brown’s cell to break up the fight. Brown stuck his hands out of the slot to be cuffed and was removed by guards wearing gas masks and blue and black sweatshirts that read “The Big House.”

(Video at link)
Royce Brown, a former Lewisburg inmate, was placed in ambulatory and four-point restraints in 2014. CELINA FANG FOR THE MARSHALL PROJECT

“I tried to deal with this the right way,” Brown told an officer as staff bound his limbs, tears and mucus dripping from his face. “Lieutenant, I tried to get you to talk to me.”As guards chained his hands, ankles, and chest, Brown yelled out in pain. “God damn these are tight. I can’t even breathe.” Brown remained restrained for more than 24 hours after hitting his cellmate, one of several times he was shackled at Lewisburg. A year and a half after coming home, he still has scars on his wrists and stomach.T he Lewisburg Prison Project, which has a two-person staff, received 962 letters from Lewisburg prisoners in 2015 and makes regular visits to the penitentiary. They often hear the same complaint. “You are placed in a cell with shackles so tight, I’ve seen probably 30 guys at Lewisburg months later who have open wounds,” said Dave Sprout, a paralegal at the project who is in charge of inmate visits and correspondence. “Many guys can’t eat, they can’t use the bathroom.”At least two men have filed lawsuits alleging that they were forced to drink from the toilet when they could not operate the sink in their restraints. Another Lewisburg inmate filed a lawsuit claiming that the ambulatory restraints were so tight he passed out and still suffers from nerve damage in his hands. He was restrained, he said, for trying to avoid a dangerous cell assignment. A 2014 independent audit of solitary in federal prisons, commissioned by the Bureau of Prisons, noted that a “significant percentage” of Lewisburg inmates they interviewed complained about the overuse and harsh application of restraints. “The high number of reported incidents … suggests the need for further investigation,” auditors wrote. In their response, BOP officials did not comment on that aspect of the audit.Then in November 2015, the D.C. Corrections Information Council, a city government agency that inspects facilities where Washington, D.C. prisoners are housed (the district has no prisons of its own), concluded that the SMU was in violation of federal use-of-force policies. Seventeen D.C. inmates said officers abused restraints, with several recounting how they had been held for days at a time in chains that caused nerve damage in their hands and feet.One prisoner showed investigators his scars and said his three days in restraints was “the most agonizing experience of my life.” Another told investigators that he was held in restraints for refusing a cellmate, and was “forced to defecate and urinate in his pants because the restraints were so tight he could not remove [the pants].”The Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that all of the allegations were investigated, and none were substantiated. But some staffers don’t deny that the prison relies on restraints. “If you allow inmates to dictate the terms under which they get a cellie, then you’re not in control,” the Lewisburg guard said. “[Officers] don’t think twice about putting someone in restraints if they’re insubordinate or if they’re not being compliant with the rules,” said Marc Marchioli, who worked as a physician assistant at Lewisburg from October 2012 to May 2014. “You have to remember these guys are dangerous people. If they don’t cuff up, it’s considered a direct threat.” Marchioli said that officers applied restraints correctly — but that inmates caused their own injuries when they tried to move. “The more they wiggle, the more damage they end up doing.” L ast year was a particularly violent one at Lewisburg. In August 2015, Jimmy Barker, serving a 13-year sentence for fraud, died after a fight with his cellmate. BOP documents obtained by The Marshall Project and NPR show that Barker had been in a psychiatric hospital three times and attempted suicide twice, but that a Lewisburg psychologist found no evidence of serious mental illness before placing him in a double cell with another inmate. Then in October, Gerardo Arche-Felix was killed by his cellmate. Arche-Felix, 57, was serving a five-year sentence for attempted entry after deportation and had been at Lewisburg since April 2014. He had tried to cross the border in 2012 to rejoin his family in Utah after being sent to Mexico two years earlier. He was also a diagnosed schizophrenic and said he had not been given his medication for much of his time in Lewisburg. Prison documents show that psychology staff in the SMU repeatedly found Arche-Felix to have “no significant mental health issues,” though he had previously been under an involuntary treatment order in a Utah state prison and was forced to take antipsychotic drugs. Without medication, Arche-Felix could be erratic, agitated, and paranoid. “It’s been more than a month I don’t take my meds,” he wrote in a letter to his daughter, Jana Oman, in September 2014. “I need my meds or I’ll lose my mind.” “It was hell. You could hear it in his voice every time he spoke on the phone or read a letter,” Oman said. “Little by little, he was just falling apart.”

https://d1n0c1ufntxbvh.cloudfront.net/photo/3bb35d88/17070/1140x/
Jana Oman, left, with her father, Gerardo Arche-Felix, in January 2010, four years before he landed in the SMU. COURTESY OF THE ARCHE FAMILY

Because of his mental health problems and slight, 5-foot-8-inch frame, Arche-Felix was especially vulnerable to attacks from other prisoners. “My cellmate went crazy on me and started to beat me up while I was asleep. He is younger and taller and stronger than me,” he wrote in November 2014. He often ended up in restraints, according to his family, for his erratic behavior. “He told my aunt that he would be handcuffed on his ankles and around his wrists and they would be chained together,” Oman said. “He’d be like that for days.” Arche-Felix’s sister, Kiana Arche, said her brother grew more afraid the longer he spent in the SMU. At Lewisburg, his options were to accept the cellmates he desperately feared or end up shackled in a cell. One day he called his sister and told her, “‘Call this nurse and please tell her they need to move me from here,’” she recounted. “‘This not right. I’m so scared. I’m not supposed to be here.’” Oman received a call the morning of October 14, 2015, from the prison chaplain, who told her that her father was dead. Days later, she read in the newspaper that his death was a suspected homicide. Prosecutors have since confirmed they are investigating his cellmate for murder. On Arche-Felix's death certificate, his cause of death reads "strangulation by ligature." A fter seven days in restraints, Sebastian Richardson remained determined. He would not be put in the same small cell with The Prophet or any other violent prisoner. So officers tried something else. A team of guards took Richardson to a room, painted floor to ceiling in pink, a shade designed to soothe aggressive behavior. In the center of the room was a bed frame topped with a thin pad. As is protocol, guards laid Richardson on the bed and bound each limb to one of its corners. Because he was so short, the restraints were even more painful because his arms and legs had to stretch farther to reach each post. Officers then draped a paper blanket over him before leaving the room and locking the door. He was left to stay in the pink room, splayed and immobile. Richardson screamed out in pain as he was being chained down. He claimed one officer again opened the window before leaving the room, as other prisoners have accused guards of doing. His requests for water and a bathroom break were ignored, leaving him shivering in his soiled paper uniform. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed that Richardson was four-pointed but denied his description of the conditions. They claimed he was placed in more severe restraints for threatening to assault staff. Richardson was pinned down for a total of eight hours. He was then put back into ambulatory restraints for three more weeks. He said he was uncuffed only once, to take a shower. “They placed the restraints on me so tight ... my hands had puffed up. Each finger looked like the Valasic [sic] pickles ... not the smaller ones, the medium size,” he later wrote to Dave Sprout of the Lewisburg Prison Project about restraints at Lewisburg. “My wrists were so swollen the cuffs were stuck in them.”

https://d1n0c1ufntxbvh.cloudfront.net/photo/3ebd1946/17074/1140x/
Royce Brown being four-pointed in January 2014. COURTESY OF ROYCE BROWN

On March 2, 2011, almost a month after he’d been cuffed, Richardson agreed to live with any cellmate they gave him. At one point, he was housed with someone he said had not been given his psychiatric medication. The inmate stayed up all night talking to himself. After that cellmate was moved, Richardson claimed that officers tried to get him to live with someone who had stabbed him on the rec yard of another facility. Richardson refused and ended up in restraints again. This time, he was held in shackles for 16 days, one of which was spent four-pointed. Richardson claimed this cycle continued several more times during his two-and-a-half years in the SMU. “It is my desire to get through this violating, unstable, dangerous environment, but not at the cost of jeopardizing my safety and life,” Richardson wrote in a letter to Sprout. “[They] said they will keep putting me in 4-points until I go where they put me.” In December 2011, the Lewisburg Prison Project and the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, a legal aid organization, filed a federal lawsuit over the prison’s use of restraints, with Sebastian Richardson as the lead plaintiff. The case is ongoing. In response to the suit, Bureau of Prisons officials denied that Lewisburg staff are placing inmates in restraints as punishment. The bureau also objected to the claim that restraints are applied in a way that injures or prevents prisoners from eating, drinking, or using the toilet. “Inmates in ambulatory restraints are able to take care of basic human needs without staff intervention,” they wrote. A kind of relief came to Richardson in September 2012, when he was transferred out of Lewisburg to the supermax prison in Florence, Colo., the highest-security prison in the country. There, inmates are locked down in a single cell for almost 24 hours a day. Though Florence has been called “America’s Toughest Prison,” for many in Lewisburg’s SMU, it’s seen as an escape. At Florence, they can live alone, free from the constant threat of violence. As Richardson wrote in a letter to Sprout, “anywhere is a better place to be.”

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/10/26/28-days-in-chains?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share-tools&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=post-top#.4x01LabIk

Guess npr had to say something as this story becomes unavoidable but it is telling that this story is keyed upon 'inmate on inmate' violence. Nothing about the bulls and the usual 'mistakes' & 'blunders' from the administration. Nothing about prison slavery. Nothing about the revolt. This is distraction.

Dhalgren

10-28-2016, 09:57 AM

blindpig

10-28-2016, 10:17 AM

Inmate Labor Organizer on Hunger Strike After Being Moved to One of Alabama's 'Most Notorious' Prisons

Brendan O'Connor
Yesterday 4:39pmFiled to: KINETIC JUSTICE

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--hVczq3J6--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/x5bq48qilftlptjqp1zh.jpg

On Friday, Robert Earl Council, a.k.a. Kinetic Justice, a leader in the national prison labor movement, who is currently incarcerated in Alabama, was transferred from Holman Correctional Facility—just one day before he was scheduled to meet with an advocate from the Southern Poverty Law Center. He has since been transferred again, and is currently on a hunger strike.

According to Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, founder of The Ordinary People Society and a spokesman for the Free Alabama Movement, Council was transferred out of Holman Correctional a day before he was set to meet with SPLC policy strategist Monique Gillum, Glasgow said, who was investigating the suicide of Robert Deangelo Carter. The SPLC declined to comment on the scheduled meeting, but did confirm that they were investigating Carter’s death. “We’re looking into it,” Maria Morris, SPLC managing attorney, told Jezebel. “We’re also looking into the conditions in segregation units at Holman—and elsewhere—that allow for suicides like this to happen.”

Inmate Commits Suicide at Alabama Correctional Facility Just Days after DOJ Opens Investigation into State Prisons

Earlier this month, Robert Deangelo Carter, serving a life sentence for a fatal 2010 stabbing,…
Read more
While Morris declined to comment on whether SPLC had planned to meet with Council on Saturday, she did note that it wouldn’t be the first time Alabama DOC moved an inmate at the last minute: “We have had instances where we have appointments that were scheduled and we find out the day before or the day of that the inmate has been moved or even released.”

The 42-year-old inmate began his hunger strike on Friday, after being moved from Holman to Kilby Correctional overnight. “Since then he has been transferred to Limestone Corrections, one of the most notorious prisons for isolation in the state of Alabama,” Glasgow wrote in a text message to Jezebel. “Other inmates have joined in the Hunger Strike and have vowed not to eat also until they move Kinetic Justice back to Holman or St. Claire.”

Limestone has a capacity of 1,628 but housed 2,228—or, nearly 137 percent of capacity—as of March 2016, according to court filings in a federal lawsuit the SPLC is bringing against the Alabama Department of Corrections, charging that the department neglected prisoners’ medical and mental health needs in a number of facilities around the state. As of April 2014, 257 inmates at Limestone were on the mental health caseload, and 190 of those were on psychiatric medications. At the time, however, Limestone did not have a psychiatrist.

Council was convicted of murder committed in the course of a robbery in 1995. He is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole. In recent years, he has risen to prominence as a leader in the inmate labor movement, organizing a 10-day strike last spring as well as helping to coordinate the national strike that began in September. “These strikes are our method for challenging mass incarceration,” he told Democracy Now! in May, speaking by a contraband cellphone from solitary confinement. “The prison system is a continuation of the slave system.”

Asked to explain why Council had been moved twice in a week, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections, Bob Horton, wrote in an email that the department “does not publicly disclose the reason for moving inmates for security reasons.” Asked whether Council is on a hunger strike, he replied: “He’s made that statement to prison officials.”

Horton elaborated in a later email:

Prison officials confirm the inmate has declared a hunger strike. The Alabama Department of Corrections does not publicly disclose the reason for moving inmates for security concerns as mentioned in initial response.

Media are inquiring about the inmate’s water supply. Limestone Correctional Facility reports the inmate’s cell has water.

Medical staff at Limestone has conducted an initial assessment of the inmate’s condition. The inmate will be weighed daily, his food intake monitored, and proper medical care will be provided as needed.
“The inmate states his reason for the hunger strike is over concern for his safety,” Horton added later.

The Department of Justice announced a statewide investigation of Alabama’s prisons earlier this month.

http://jezebel.com/inmate-labor-organizer-on-hunger-strike-after-being-mov-1788291725?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Jezebel_twitter

Dhalgren

10-28-2016, 10:38 AM

Is our thinking pattern distorted?

by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/JKzWuPEKE-9DigdmnDX-U_hcbwE-kHH_6ldsbYCLFScjYVrn9I8b2jIcmepzIaTy97Al9lGZLhFLFT9tzgOsSlQD1H1ma4R231uc5QRvkUYsyh9sMl4sZRQ7Fal7Ac-wN51ygympRmIzmmFrriYK-rkqJ4OH=s0-d-e1-ft#http://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/screenshot_2016-10-27-16-43-51.png?w=480

(Top row depicts pictures of unsanitary conditions inside of Alabama's prisons, bottom pic depicts unsanitary conditions relating to animal rights.)

October 27,2016

The question above arose as I was pondering the fact that more people are prosecuted annually for animal cruelty across the nation than those that participate in human cruelty within our prison systems.

I ask the question " Is our thinking pattern distorted ?" People today seem it more fitting to prosecute and educate for animal cruelty more so than acts against fellow humans. To me this raises my curiosity as to how can we become so sadistic.

The way people have become so easily swayed to seeing these men and women in our penal system as less than animals baffles me. We have de-humanized many individuals that will one day return to our neighborhoods and be expected to be civilized, and better than when they entered our prisons. This is a perfect example of distorted thinking, and why the recidivism rate in our nation is over 76%.

Maybe there's more truth to the saying "A dog is man's best friend". I think it's time we reevaluate and correct our thinking pattern.

Unheard Voices O.T.C.J. Swift Justice

The question in the title is addressed to the society, at large, but it could also be addressed to F.A.M., as well. Prisoners in this bourgeois nation, above all others, should know the status of prisoners in this bourgeois nation. Nine out of ten "people on the street" would pick dogs over prisoners for humane treatment (and when you get to the ruling class it is 100%). You must begin where you must begin, but George Jackson waded through this swamp over fifty years ago. It is an unbearable shame that these inmates do not know George Jackson; and many might not accept him if they knew. The idea that so many working class people (on both sides of the bars) can think only in terms of current bourgeois possibilities is heartbreaking. The US ruling class will never - never - reduce the number of prisons, will never abolish prison labor, will never end capital punishment, will never acquiesce to any prisoner demands. All this does not mean that prison revolt organizers should stop fighting and agitating for better facilities, more humane treatment, abolishment of slave labor, and the restoration of human dignity to all prisoners. But it does mean that the scope and aim of organization should be broadened. Think what would have been the case had George Jackson had the communications capacity that Kinetik Justice has had. Think what would be the situation now if there was a real communist party working with the inmates in the struggle for humanity inside the prisons. The fact that the communist party isn't all over this fight is a damning condemnation of the moribund corpse of the former party. The struggle has to be made, the prisoners are fighting for their lives and the struggle must be seen in the broader context of class war. It is the class analysis that is lacking - there is the background shadow of class, but it has not been brought out into the light.

blindpig

10-29-2016, 08:11 AM

Corrections czar says SC prisoners not participating in nationwide protests

http://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/w7899t/picture111126602/ALTERNATES/FREE_960/LC_Instutution_0086
South Carolina’s prison czars says no state inmates have participated in strikes or protests despite repeated reports that they have. Tim Dominick tdominick@thestate.com
BY CYNTHIA ROLDÁN
croldan@thestate.com

South Carolina’s prison chief says state prisoners have not participated in protests held in more than a dozen states despite repeated reports by several news organizations that strikes have taken place.

Perry Correctional Institution in Anderson County was named in a Los Angeles Times article that published Friday, as one of South Carolina’s prisons where inmates participated in a strike during the past month.

Several outlets have reported the strikes are inspired by the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison riot in New York in 1971. Prisoners took staffers hostage and demanded better living conditions during that riot that ended with more that three dozen dead.

But Department of Corrections Chief Bryan Stirling stressed Friday no strike or protest has taken place.

“There have been no strikes at the Perry furniture plant, and we have had no reports of strikes in the South Carolina correctional system,” Stirling said.

Perry is a high-security facility in Pelzer touted as a “working prison” by its warden, Larry Cartledge. .

http://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article111126607.html

First they ignore you.......

Perry was famous 20 years ago for a helicopter borne jail break.

blindpig

10-31-2016, 08:58 AM

Why US inmates launched a nationwide strike
By Max Blau and Emanuella Grinberg, CNN
Updated 11:38 PM ET, Sun October 30, 2016

It's a system that's neither benefiting us nor the citizens outside."
South Carolina inmate Harold Sasa

Last month, on the 45th anniversary of the infamous Attica Prison uprising, tens of thousands of US inmates launched a nationwide protest that continues today, according to advocates who helped organize the effort.

The inmates' grievances are as varied as the states they came from: Pennies for labor in South Carolina, racial discrimination in California, excessive force in Michigan. However, they share an overarching goal: End legalized slavery inside American correctional facilities.
Jails and prisons don't have to be luxurious -- or comfortable, for that matter -- but the US Supreme Court has said they're not supposed to be dangerous or dehumanizing. Yet the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, while banning slavery, allows prisoners to work for little to no pay, in what inmate advocates say crosses the limits of human decency, amounting to modern-day servitude.
"I used to think, 'Nah, that ain't America, that's China and Cuba,' " South Carolina inmate Harold Sasa told CNN from a contraband phone. "It's a system that's neither benefiting us nor the citizens outside."

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/161028133959-us-prison-labor-super-169.jpg

Even the American Correctional Association, the country's largest trade organization for prisons and jails, this year passed a resolution urging the repeal of the amendment's "exclusion clause," which allows for such labor. It has also called on prison work programs to "aspire" to offer wages based on inmate productivity. But many corrections officials say there's nothing punitive about withholding wages from inmates. Often, the funds are used to offset operating costs or pay off inmates' court-ordered restitution while providing them with job training.
Since September 9, the Incarcerated Workers' Organizing Committee, a prisoner rights advocacy group, estimates as many as 50,000 inmates have taken part in coordinated strikes planned through social media on cell phones and snail mail across nearly two-dozen states. That number is impossible to independently verify. Some individual inmates are still protesting, IWOC said.

Officials in Texas and South Carolina denied to CNN that any protests took place. But criminal justice advocates said the scale makes it the largest and most significant inmate strike in American history.
"The fact that this was happening simultaneously in a number of states suggests a degree of planning and sophistication and community support that we haven't seen in recent years," said David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project.
So many inmates risking discipline, solitary confinement or an extended sentence to protest their conditions speaks to the demand for change inside corrections facilities, he said. CNN interviewed three prisoners in different states, along with activists, who all believe US prisons need drastic reforms.

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Forced labor in South Carolina

The clock struck 3 a.m. as Sasa's cell door unlocked. It wouldn't be long before the father of three had to go to work making wooden shelves. Exhausted, the Georgia native decided to continue watching television, letting the glow of the screen color his face.
He refused to leave.
Recalling that day, Sasa spoke with CNN after IWOC helped facilitate the interview from outside prison. The 36-year-old inmate, who has more than a decade left in his sentence, provided CNN with an alias out of fear of retribution from guards.
Since 2009, Sasa has served time in a South Carolina prison for reckless vehicular homicide. Two of those seven years, he sat in solitary confinement for an altercation with a guard. During that time, he obtained a copy of prison activist George Jackson's book "Soledad Brother." The 1971 death of the Black Panther Party member, who was shot dead by prison guards, partially prompted the Attica riots.
"It awoke me," Sasa said.
Sasa said Jackson's teachings inspired him to join Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a group that focuses on providing inmates with free legal resources. Members recently demanded a wide range of reforms such as lowering "excessive" vending machine prices and re-establishing GED classes in all prisons. Above all, they want fair compensation for labor.

The US Constitution's 13th Amendment still allows for slavery and involuntary servitude if it's used as punishment for a crime. According to the Marshall Project, federal work programs pay up to $1.15 an hour while wages at state prisons average 20 cents an hour. In some state prisons, including Texas, inmates don't see a dime.
"Part of the core mission of the agency is to promote a positive change in their behavior and prepare them for re-entry into society," Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said. "We believe having a job is critical to their long-term success. While inmates are not paid, they can acquire marketable job skills which could lead to meaningful employment upon their release."

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/30/us/us-prisoner-strike/index.html#
Director Ava DuVernay on '13th,' a documentary about race and slavery in the US criminal justice system. 01:53
In South Carolina, depending on the job and an inmate's circumstances, up to 90% of a wage may go toward costs of incarceration, such as housing, food, health care and incidentals, or restitution and child support. In one voluntary work program, instead of wages, officials say inmates receive "valuable skills that can be used for re-entry" by manufacturing furniture for schools and offices and road signs that are sold to state entities and nonprofits.
To change that, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak wants a constitutional amendment passed to overhaul the 13th Amendment. Sasa believes the amendment is the "primary cause of inhumane treatment" for South Carolina inmates. That's why he and more than 200 other inmates participated in a prison labor strike on September 9.
South Carolina corrections officials deny any work stoppages occurred, spokeswoman Ashleigh Messervy said. But Sasa said the stoppages lasted more than three weeks. They ended only after Jailhouse Lawyers Speak called off the action, realizing they'd get no further with their demands and would need to develop a different strategy.
Even amid this failure, Sasa sees signs of progress: Some prisoners have individually continued protests, now aware of the push for prisoners' rights.

Discrimination in California

Richard Castillo never imagined spending most of his adult life behind bars, much less lobbying for better inmate treatment. But multiple crimes meant multiple sentences for the Merced, California, native.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/161026054726-richard-castillo-2-medium-plus-169.jpg
Inmate Richard Castillo

In 2013, California police again arrested him for allegedly violating parole. After a judge set his bail at $650,000 due to alleged gang affiliations, he has remained in Merced County Jail awaiting trial.
According to Castillo, guards have assigned Hispanics uniforms with different colors -- green-and-white for suspected Norteño gang members, blue-and-white for the Sureños -- as opposed to other prisoners provided with orange jumpsuits. Those uniforms are not just a problem in prison, but can also sway a judge's decision in a courtroom, he said.
That's why Castillo, 33, participated in a hunger strike on September 9 with at least 150 other inmates at two corrections facilities in Merced County. His wife, local prison rights organizer Victoria Castillo, joined him on a hunger strike for 10 days in solidarity.
Castillo said inmates stopped their hunger strike after guards pledged to fulfill some of their other requests, including improving the quality of food and housing conditions. However, he said, officials broke that promise, which prompted additional prisoners to resume the hunger strike.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/161026132231-01-inmate-strikes-mule-creek-state-prison-super-169.jpg
Inmates at Mule Creek State Prison, which was not affected by strikes, sleep in the gym because of overcrowding.

Captain Greg Sullivan of the Merced County Sheriff's Department disputed that inmates went on a "true" hunger strike, noting some ate from the commissary or received food during visits to the infirmary. He defended the different colored uniforms as necessary for identifying and separating rival gang members who might clash. In all, the jail uses seven different colored uniforms as necessary to identify gang members, those with special needs, women and inmate workers, among other populations, he said.

Poor living conditions in Michigan

Kinross Correctional Facility inmate Anthony Bates suspects most people see him as a lost cause.
Bad man. Broken. Beyond repair.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/161026054856-anthony-bates-medium-plus-169.jpg
Inmate Anthony Bates

The 39-year-old Detroit native is serving up to 70 years for assault with intent to murder, a conviction his fiancé said he's trying to overturn. Bates believes inmates are entitled to livable conditions. That's hardly a guarantee, he said, at the prison in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Prisoners like Bates are paid anywhere from 75 cents to $3.73 a day based on the type of job and skill level, amounting to about $10 million in annual wages, Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz said.
On September 9, like elsewhere, most inmates at Kinross stopped working to protest, Bates said. The next day, when guards refused to serve them their hot meal, feeding them cheese sandwiches instead, upward of 500 inmates staged a peaceful demonstration in the prison yard, Bates said.
They gave the warden a list of demands that included improvements to the quality of food and health care, which is paid for by the state. In response, the warden pledged to address some concerns in his power, Bates said.
After inmates initially dispersed in a peaceful manner, Bates said prison guards stormed the jail with long guns, tear gas and pepper spray. They removed about 200 protesters before proceeding to tie them up with zip ties and shook down their bunks. Inmates also set at least one fire and vandalized the facility, a police union told the Detroit Free Press.
"It wouldn't have turned violent if they responded differently," Bates said. "They were just snatching up prisoners even though some guys didn't break anything."
Other stories about prisons
• What's going on with US prison reform?
• The pison system is failing America
• Why Ramen is the new currency in prison
• Drones are flying contraband into prison
• How to cut crime and save money

Disputing Bates' account, Gautz said about 40 inmates participated in the work stoppage. He said most were kitchen employees who had threatened other inmates to partake in the protest. Therefore, inmates were ultimately responsible for the lack of hot meals.
During the prison yard protest, some inmates tried to escape and others vandalized prison property, Gautz added. They were among 250 inmates rounded up, along with other work stoppage organizers, during the raids where zip ties were used to control inmates. In his view, most inmates did not support the protests or work stoppages. Overall, he said, inmates have open lines of communication with wardens and the administration. He blamed outsiders for pushing inmates to strike.
Since the crackdown on protesters, Bates said no inmates have resumed strikes, a sign to him that retribution was an effective deterrent.
"They just voiced their opinion," Bates said. "They were punished for that. That was cruel."
From marginalized to mainstream
The US prison strikes have dissipated in the last six weeks. In that time, some prisoners witnessed slow change in their conditions. At least two inmates have died since the strikes started.
At William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, an inmate serving time for murder killed himself on October 9 while in solitary confinement, officials said. Charlie Anderson, an inmate at Kinross, Bates' prison, died on October 10 after medical personnel failed to provide immediate care, advocates with Michigan Prison Abolition said in an email to media outlets. Gautz said staff administered aid but could not save his life.

Holman inmate Kinetik Justice-Amun, whose given name is Robert Earl Council, began a hunger strike last Friday to protest what he considers mistreatment from prison officials, IWOC said. Having played a key role in organizing the movement, advocates say prison officials transferred him to a facility known for harsher conditions bas a form of retaliation. An Alabama corrections spokesman declined to provide a reason for the transfer.
At Holman, where inmates were among the first to strike, nearly a dozen prison guards held a solidarity strike over safety conditions after a guard was fatally stabbed inside the overcrowded facility. The US Department of Justice announced on October 6 that it will soon investigate the state's prison system.
"Our obligation is to protect the civil rights of all citizens, including those who are incarcerated," Joyce White Vance, US attorney of the Northern District of Alabama, recently said.
Moving forward, prisoners are planning another set of strikes as activists on the outside prepare to stage boycotts of companies that use prison labor. They've declined to discuss specifics except for a prisoner rights march set for August 2017.
Austin Community College professor Azzurra Crispino, a spokeswoman for IWOC, said inmates at different prisons have different goals. However, Crispino said they remain united in overhauling the American prison system, abolishing slavery once and for all.
"We're bringing this conversation to the mainstream," Crispino said. "People often say, that's not practical, there's no point in talking about it. Now we say the words 'prison' and 'abolition' together, and people don't laugh."

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/30/us/us-prisoner-strike/index.html

That CNN found it necessary to cover this story after months of ignoring it speaks to the necessity of persistence, of the inmates and of those who have been relentless in keeping this visible. Never thought I'd be thanking Buzzfeed but there ya go...We shall see if this is a token piece or whether they run with it and that will depend upon continued ruthless criticism.

blindpig

10-31-2016, 01:07 PM

URGENT: Violent Attack Against F.A.M. Member Mr. James Ware at Donaldson CF
Posted on October 30, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

On Saturday night at Donaldson CF, FAM Member James Ware was attacked by corrections officers after being removed to an isolated area of the prison in an obviously planned attack. Mr. Ware was placed into the “hot bay” dorm , which is an isolated and restricted part of the prison where assaults have been frequent.

FAM first reported on the “hot bay” dorms, also called Behavior Modification Program, when a rebellion took place at Bibb Co. prison over inhumane treatment and abuse by staff. These programs have had multiple rebellions at every prison that they are located, included G.K.Fountain. FAM leader James Pleasant, also known as Dhati Khalid, was transferred from St. Clair CF to Donaldson and then placed in this “hot bay, where he was also assaulted, sprayed with chemical agents, and subject to other deprivations. The hot bay dorm at Donaldson has drew the ire and criticism from officers as well, and many incidents, especially the spraying of chemical agents goes on weekly; many incidents are not even reported.

Mr. Ware has been moved to another area of solitary confinement and is being denied a phone call to communicate with his family. Please assist Mother’s and F.A.M.ilies by contacting Commissioner Jefferson Dunn at Commissioner Jefferson S. Dunn at 334.353.3883 and Warden Leon Billing at 205.436.3681, and demand that Mr. Ware be afforded a phone call to insure that he is safe and receiving proper medical treatment.

Sincerely,

Mother’s and F.A.M.ilies

Please update us on your phone calls by posting to our FB group

https://m.facebook.com/groups/1054185174702322?ref=bookmarks#!/groups/1054185174702322?view=info&refid=18&ref=bookmarks

Or, by emailing us at:
Mothersandfamilies3@Gmail.com

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/urgent-violent-attack-against-f-a-m-member-mr-james-ware-at-donaldson-cf/

blindpig

10-31-2016, 01:18 PM

Resolution Supporting the Abolition of Prisons - pdf

https://www.nlg.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Resolution-Supporting-the-Abolition-of-Prisons-REV.pdf

If the bosses do this it will only be because they've figured a way to control us all just as closely. Still, it ain't no small change that people are even talk about this.

Dhalgren

11-01-2016, 10:34 AM

CONFINED CITIZEN’S ALERT: HOLMAN CF

by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Dara Folden

****Attention Confined Citizens Alert****

Confined Citizen Deatwan Lasted #285632 housed at Holman Correctional Facility was brutally attacked for refusing to occupy a segregation cell once occupied by Robert Carter who recently committed suicide on October 9, 2016.

When Laster refused to enter the cell he was attacked and sprayed with a chemical agent known as Saber Red that severely burns the eyes and skin. Laster pleaded with the Riot Team to take him to the infirmary however his request were ignored. This type of force is a violation of his 8th Amendment, Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

Please show your support by calling Holman Correctional Facility at:

(251) 368-8173 to demand immediate treatment and relocation to another cell for Laster.

The prisoners are on their own. There is no viable national organization that will champion their cause. The authorities will continue to kill, maim, and terrorize individual inmates thus extinguishing the resistance while keeping low enough profiles to avoid "national news". Also, the bulls will pick their moments to brutalize the offending inmates so as to give themselves cover for their brutality. "He was resisting", "he attacked an officer or another inmate", etc. The corrupt officials will also step-up their use of other inmates to brutalize those in resistance - "another stabbing in the yard", an "inmate found hanged", "an industrial accident".

"I used to think, 'Nah, that ain't America, that's China and Cuba,' " South Carolina inmate Harold Sasa told CNN from a contraband phone. "It's a system that's neither benefiting us nor the citizens outside."

Since 2009, Sasa has served time in a South Carolina prison for reckless vehicular homicide. Two of those seven years, he sat in solitary confinement for an altercation with a guard. During that time, he obtained a copy of prison activist George Jackson's book "Soledad Brother." The 1971 death of the Black Panther Party member, who was shot dead by prison guards, partially prompted the Attica riots.
"It awoke me," Sasa said.

Step by step, but if folks wouldn't mind breaking into a run, it would be better. These workers need nationwide organized support - we need a communist party.

blindpig

11-09-2016, 04:50 PM

Private prison stocks are soaring after Donald Trump's election

Bob Bryan

7h

http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/57b783f3db5ce92a088b7ede-915/8904432591_607176e047_b.jpg
Forsaken Fotos/flickr

CXW Corrections America
20.31 6.12 (+43.10 %)

Disclaimer More CXW on Markets INSIDER »

GEO GEO Group REIT
28.96 5.08 (+21.30 %)

Disclaimer More GEO on Markets INSIDER »

Stocks of private prison companies are soaring the morning after the election of Donald Trump as the next US president.

Corrections Corporations of America was up close to 40% as of 9:49 a.m. ET.

GEO Group, another prison provider, was up around 20%.

President Barack Obama and the Department of Justice announced in August that the federal government would stop using private facilities.

Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic opponent, supported those measures as well.

"The for-profit prison industry (CXW, GEO) were likely to face negative headlines and persistent contract uncertainty under a Clinton White House, but we expect a Trump administration to be more supportive given its focus on immigration and crime," Compass Point said in a note.

http://www.businessinsider.com/private-prison-stocks-are-soaring-after-donald-trumps-election-2016-11

blindpig

11-11-2016, 02:46 PM

How to Support the U.S. Prison Strike
A guide to resistance on both sides of the wall.

ISABELLE NASTASIA 11/10/2016
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About Rookie

Rookie is an online magazine and book series for teenagers. Each month, a different editorial theme drives the writing, photography, and artwork that we publish. Learn more about us here, and find out how to submit your work here!

11/10/2016 Jasmyn Burke

I first learned about the national prison strike at an event I attended at a small DIY space in Brooklyn several months ago. I was handed a stack of zines and told to “take one and pass.” The small, folded piece of paper was faded as if it had been photocopied hundreds of times. It felt like a precious artifact.

For 10 years, I’ve been involved in different kinds of anti-racist organizing. Most recently, this looks like supporting and corresponding with people behind bars, scheming up ways to fundraise for legal support or to fill the commissary accounts of people who are in prison. Flipping through this tiny zine, I quickly learned that people behind bars in facilities across the country were planning the largest prisoner labor strike in United States history. I thought back to everything I’d read about the history of the prison system, everything people on the inside had written me about, all the things that brought me to that point. I felt a surge run through me, This is huge.

There’s so much I could say about prisons in the United States, most of it would have been said at least once before. For instance, there are more black men in prison in the U.S. today than there were enslaved in the year 1850. According to The New Orleans Times-Picayune, the state of Louisiana puts more people in prison than most countries.

Many scholars and activists have chronicled how we got here as a nation, most recently, the Netflix documentary 13th directed by Ava Duvernay. In her book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander attributes the massive growth of the prison system to the racist policies of war on drugs of the 1980s, the era of “mass incarceration.” However, longtime activist Angela Davis and other prison abolitionists have really driven home that that the roots of the prison system go back much further. They point out that the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—the amendment celebrated for abolishing slavery following the Civil War—actually allows for individuals to be treated as slaves if they are convicted of a crime. Douglas A. Blackmon, author of Slavery By Another Name, details how the amendment was a crucial part of incentivizing the growth of the prison system during the Reconstruction era with things like convict leasing—a practice where state facilities would literally lease (yes, like leasing a car) prisoner labor to private companies.

While there is a long and oppressive history of slavery and prisons, there has been an even longer history of organizing and resistance against domination, exploitation, control, and otherwise messed up systems. One of the best-known acts of rebellion inside U.S. prisons is the Attica uprising of 1971, when nearly 1,000 prisoners seized control of the upstate New York facility. They made dozens of demands including fair visitation hours and “safe transport to a non-imperialist country.” However, the prisoners faced horrifying brutality at the hands of guards and police. There have been many other less well-known but equally important uprisings: The Bedford Hills Correctional Facility riot was led by people caged in the women’s prison who, in 1974, demanded humane treatment and conditions. In addition, for many years, queer and trans people caged at Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama have organized themselves into self-defense groups, started fires, broken out of cells, fought with guards, and much more. Disruption inside of prisons has reached an all-time high, as the largest prisoner strike in US history launched in September 2016.

On September 9, prisoners kicked off a national work strike calling for the end of prison slavery in the U.S. targeting prison administrators, lawmakers, and corporations that benefit from the exploitation of prisoner labor. The strike was announced and planned by prisoners in Alabama under the umbrella of an organization called Free Alabama Movement, with help from friends outside of the prison system. Their called to action was entitled “Let the Crops Rot in the Field,” which is that very same little photocopied zine I was passed all those months ago.

As we’ve mentioned here before, more than five million Americans under the age of 18 have a parent who is incarcerated, so, this very well may be something that many of you reading are experiencing. Because we’re constantly being told that prisons exist to protect us from “criminals” who deserve to be locked up, and because we rarely get to hear anything outside of this narrative, I think it’s important to highlight the many ways that people have and are resisting behind bars. And because many people I love have been incarcerated or institutionalized against their will, I also think it’s important to mention that there is a rich history of family members of people who are in prison organizing against the existence of prisons, pushing for the abolition of prisons and further, for liberation.

Whether you have lots of time on your hands, or maybe just a couple hours here and there, here are some ways to support the national prisoner strike.

http://www.rookiemag.com/2016/11/support-the-us-prison-strike/

This is excellent and should be distributed widely.

Dhalgren

11-11-2016, 03:09 PM

This is excellent and should be distributed widely.

Excellent find!

blindpig

11-12-2016, 12:00 PM

For Abolition: Prisons and Police Are More Than Brutality, They're State Terror
Saturday, 12 November 2016 00:00
By Frank Castro, The Hampton Institute

http://www.truth-out.org/images/Images_2016_11/2016_1112prison.jpg
(Photo: Jobs For Felons Hub; Edited: LW / TO)

In his speech "Terrorism: Theirs and Ours," now deceased Professor Eqbal Ahmad elucidated five types of terrorism: state, religious, mafia, pathological, and political terror of the private group. Of these types, the focus in mainstream political discourse and media has almost always centered itself on discussion of just one: "political terror of the private group" -- organizations like al -- Qaida, the Taliban, and ISIS. But as Ahmad (and Ben Norton) pointed out, this is "the least important in terms of cost to human lives and human property." Rarely discussed is state terror, which has the highest cost in terms of human lives and property. According to Norton, Professor Ahmad estimated that the disparity of "people killed by state terror versus those killed by individual acts of terror is, conservatively, 100,000 to one."

Undoubtedly, the professor's observations were meant to provide insight into the material costs of global militarism, where millions, if not billions, have found themselves caught in -- between or on the receiving end of state domination. While this may invoke imagery of American drones scalping the Middle East and North Africa for resources, its aircraft carriers patrolling international waters, or even thousands of refugees huddled into camps outside cities under siege, these are only instances of the United States' most visible crimes. They are the sites of its most demonstrative, and yet least diffuse, violence. In the turmoil and spectacle of US foreign policy, often other forms of state terror remain relatively unknown, their intersections with overarching structures of oppression obscured beneath overt cruelty.

But Professor Ahmad's analysis of state violence can be applied directly to operations within state borders as much as it can be applied internationally. Militarism outside America, paired with its domestic institutions of terror, ought to be viewed inseparably as two sides of the same coin. Here, imperial power compliments prisons and policing as institutions for producing obedient, governable subjects, both locally and globally. It does so in a variety of ways: By supplying local police departments with an ever -- escalating arsenal of repression, by constantly reconstructing the context for social control, and by extending white supremacy and colonial rule into the 21st century. Combined, governments like the United States' have been responsible for far more terror than any private group, possibly, in history.

Our task is to understand and to decide what we are going to do about it.

Bigger Than Police

Though widely used, "police brutality" is an isolated term. In some ways, and for many people, it obscures the more encompassing descriptor of state terror. Criticizing police is not necessarily an indictment of America's entire patriarchal, white, and capitalist power structure, but rather it pinpoints only that structure's enforcers. It compartmentalizes state violence and creates a focal point that, perhaps, is more comfortable since it feels manageable, more capable of bringing in line with a vision of the world that is not so painful that we can move through it without feeling its weight. On the other hand, "state terror" drafts far more questions into our hearts, the answers to which would indict everything about the world in which we live. And like Pandora's Box, once you see you can never again claim ignorance.

Police are meant to enforce the law. Butlaw in any society reflects the values and prejudices of the empowered class, and therefore provides a measure of control to its benefactors. Crimes in Western society have ranged from atheism to murder, homosexuality to bribery, miscegenation to sedition. The intent of bourgeois law has been to uphold a specific moral code inline with a patriarchal, white, and capitalist status quo. And though criminal acts are committed by all sorts of people, the overwhelming number arrested, convicted, and imprisoned are poor, Black, Brown, Native, and/or LGBTQIA. They are disproportionately imprisoned not because they are "criminal" and white, upper class people are not, but because they have been made "targets of "law enforcement" and are discriminated against by police, by courts, and within prisons."

We have long known that police have been, first and foremost, aninstitution of terror erected to control the political and economic potential of the labor class in the North and slaves in the South. In the Carolinas in particular, slave patrols modeled the evolution of its police force by providing a form of organized deterrence to potential runaways and slave revolts. Yet a critique of police alone is insufficient if it does not dislodge the entire edifice which mandates its existence. Our analysis must include a broader view of state violence which challenges its moral and ideological underpinnings, and which excavates its techniques of power from the imperial to the interpersonal. After the death of TT Saffore, a Black, trans woman from Chicago, organizerspublished a statement that captures the scope necessary to reimagine a world without police:

"State violence is more than just police shootings. It is the police and prison systems themselves. It is the criminalizing of sex work, of the survivors of abuse. It is a legal order which treats Black, trans, and cis women who defend their lives as insolent, in need of punishment. It is homelessness. It is the calculated impoverishing of Black communities. It is the closing of public schools and mental health clinics, the slashing of HIV prevention and other healthcare services, while militarization devours the lion's share of public funds. It is gentrification. It is the poisoning of natural resources. It is all the structures -- including the police and prison systems -- which uphold and depend on violent masculinity, reinforcing the disposability of women and femmes, of trans and [gender nonconforming] communities, of the earth itself."

From Battlefield to Battlefield

War profiteering has a formulaic pattern. No conflict? No problem. The Pentagon will just create one andenrich a tiny minority (remember the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had " weapons of mass destruction "). The pattern continues by pointing out the devastation of war, then, like a revolving door, it uses the conflict it stirs as justification for more. This is how the United States has been embroiled in the Middle East for the better part of 50 years, how it armed and supported Osama bin Laden as a " freedom fighter " against the Soviets only to later have cultivated the forefathers of al -- Qaida and ISIS. Meanwhile, weapons manufacturers have steadily supplied arsenals to the battlefield, and like any capitalist enterprise, it requires new markets -- and new battlefields -- to survive.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon introduced the ultimate market to arms manufacturers. The "War on Drugs" provided increased federal funding to local police departments. But more importantly, in 1990 Congress enacted theNational Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which enabled the Secretary of Defense to "transfer to Federal and State agencies personal property of the Department of Defense, including small arms and ammunition, that the Secretary determines is -- (A) suitable for use by such agencies in counter -- drug activities; and (B) excess to the needs of the Department of Defense." Section 1208 states further, under the "Conditions for Transfer," that any property transferred must be "drawn from existing stocks," meaning any purchased surplus can be offloaded to local police agencies with little to no obstruction.

The consequences of which have been far reaching. Today, municipal police departments serve as a release valve for the overflow of military grade weapons produced by arms manufacturers. Amended versions of the NDAA have provided local law enforcement agencies with armored personnel vehicles, grenade launchers, high -- caliber assault rifles, and an ever -- escalating stockpile of combat -- ready equipment. It is not just weapons either. Imperial war has imported the ideology of military combat, blurring the distinction between the "Rule of Law" and the "Rules of Engagement," and brought it to bear upon the intimate details of everyday life. We have seen an escalation of military -- styled "special ops" teams within police agencies, the dismantling of the 4th amendment, and heightened advocacy for complete submission to the state in the name of national security, no matter how intrusive.

But no matter what manifestation state violence takes, as physician Gabor Maté accuratelyobserved, it is never waged against inanimate objects, it is waged against people. In the case of the "War on Drugs," "we are warring on the most abused and vulnerable segments of the population," an observation that remains true internationally as well. If there were no wars waged against the most vulnerable of the planet, none to constantly supply with arms to subjugate the poor, it stands likely that there would be drastically less weapons to be wielded against the addicted and destitute in our streets.

Expanding State Terror

As New York State prisoner David Gilbert noted, there is simply no way the "War on Drugs" was a "well -- intentioned mistake" with Prohibition having proven such an abysmal failure. Rather, he writes, it "was conceived to mobilize the US public behind greatly increased police powers, used to cripple and contain the Black and Latinx communities, and exploited to expand the state's repressive power." Gilbert's poignant observations notwithstanding, the "War on Drugs" did not mark the first time US government used drugs as an instrument to develop state dominance. It has been done many times before. In " Drug Wars," Professor Curtis Marez demonstrates how the United States has historically wielded the drug trade not to end it, but to channel its flow in order to enhance imperial power:

"The use of drug traffic to support the state is evident in a number of ways. First, the United States has supported drug traffic to finance imperial wars. US participation in the cocaine trade as a means for funding rightwing military proxies such as the Contras could be viewed as the refinement and expansion of the strategies first deployed during the Vietnam War, in which the United States promoted heroin trade in order to support anti -- communist Hmong forces in Laos. Second, at the same time as it fostered drug traffic internationally, the state used the "drug problem" as an excuse for the criminalization and suppression of domestic dissent… And finally, the United States has indirectly promoted drug consumption as a method for controlling people of color… Drugs have been deployed, in other words, as weapons of counterinsurgency that aimed to dissipate or sedate oppositional energies."

The techniques of wielding the drug trade have roots closer than Vietnam or Central America. They rest in US attempts to disrupt and destroy indigeneity, first with alcohol through the 1800s, but more recently through substances such as peyote. By prohibiting or restricting access to drugs, government creates the pretext for selective enforcement and criminalization, and ultimately generates substantial leverage for social control. Marez reveals the circularity of this process, noting that "criminalization generates the very forms of criminality it is supposedly mean to prevent, which in turn provides new opportunities for further criminalization." In other words, "the law does not work simply through the prohibition of crime" but also through a "production of criminality" placed principally upon minorities.

Political prisoner Leonard Peltier once wrote, "When you grow up Indian, you don't have to become a criminal, you already are a criminal." Through the drug trade, US government has effectively marketed the policing and imprisonment of minorities as the key to public safety, and therefore marked them as targets of state terror. This unearths how Native men can be incarcerated atfour times the rate of white men, how Native women can be incarcerated atsix times the rate of white women. It demonstrates how the flooding of crack cocaine into Black communities during the '70s correlated with a sharp increase in minimum sentencing laws that helped put 1.7 million Black people under some form of correctional control. It reveals how native Hawaiians, who represent just 20 percent of the state's population, can comprise 40 percent of the its incarcerated.

It also explains, in part, how America's imprisoned population exploded to 2.4 million since the start of Nixon's "War on Drugs" -- an increase of 700% . But mass incarceration, like most drug policy, has little to do with safety and everything to do with the maintenance and expansion of state power. With the exception of capital punishment, the ability to revoke a person's freedom, to condemn one to a lifetime in a cage, is the ultimate exercise of state violence. To visit Michel Foucault's seminal text Discipline and Punish, "There can be no doubt that the exercise of the [state] in the punishment of crime is one of the essential parts of the administration of justice. […] The right to punish… is an aspect of the [state's] right to make war on [its] enemies: to punish belongs to 'that absolute power of life and death.'"

As we have seen, however, when "crime" is engineered around selective enforcement it is constructed to control the political and economic aspirations, and the very bodies, of the oppressed. Indeed, of minorities and the poor it fashions enemies of the state with the intent to exercise terror. From the origins of police, to the school -- to -- prison -- pipeline, to the vast network of US incarceration, this has been the enduring legacy of the American judicial system -- not safety, and certainly not justice. For the legal system which reigns over the poor, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised has not been of their own design, but was created entirely by a white, patriarchal upper class that is incapable of expressing anything but malcontent for those whom struggle against it.

Follow the Money

Answering a nation -- wide call to stop prison slavery, September 9, 2016 marked the beginning of the largest prison strike in US history. According toPopular Resistance, an estimated "72,000 incarcerated workers in 22 states refused to provide their labor to profit the prison industrial complex." One of the first of its kind, the nationally coordinated effort has targeted combating what many workers identify as slave -- like labor conditions. The US Constitution's Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, at least partially, but it left a loophole for people convicted of crimes. This means that prison workers can legally be paid little to nothing for their labor. Prison administrators, in response, have attempted to break the strike by shutting -- off access and communication to the outside world.

Private prisons have morphed into a multi -- billion dollar industry since the "War on Drug" started. The companies reaping the largest profits from America's prison industry are Geo Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), operating upwards of a 170 incarceration facilities with juvenile and undocumented detention centers included. Earlier this yearthe Guardian reported that "CCA made revenues of $1.79bn in 2015, up from $1.65bn in 2014," while "Geo Group made revenues of $1.84bn, a 9% increase on the previous year." How the private prison industry continues to increase profits can be explained in one of two ways: Increasing the incarcerated workforce (meaning jail more people) or squeezing existing laborers for more production.For many years it has pursued both.

Of course, it is not just private prisons that incentivize incarceration. There is an entire supporting cast dedicated to its proliferation as well: The aerospace industry and arms manufacturers (which supply drug enforcement planes, helicopters, drones, armored vehicles, weapons, ammunition, and surveillance technology), chemical companies (which produce the poisons often used to sedate and execute prisoners, as well as the tear gas used in prison strikes and protests), the bail bonds industry (which finance the ability or inability for a person to await trial in or out of jail), US banks (which launder billions of dollars for drug cartels and finance the prison industry), and of course numerous politicians (which accept money from these industries in exchange for pushing favorable legislation).

The end result is a sprawling cornucopia of state violence supported at every level of America's social structure -- and which relies principally on police for enforcement. After all, we should never forget that every single person convicted for a violent or a non -- violent crime, every single person wrongly convicted, every single person corralled for simply being different or standing up for justice, every single person unable to navigate poverty, homelessness, or addiction, who is placed in a cage to work in servitude or slavery, was put there by a cop. It follows that if ever we are to mobilize to dismantle mass incarceration, it must also be a movement to extract the final breath from policing itself, and to abolish for all time every manifestation of state terror.

Towards Abolition

In the struggle for freedom, an abolitionist framework is indispensable. It enables us to identify the correlations between the imperial, the police, and the prison, and to say the name of its intersections aloud. Doing so illuminates how separate deployments of state terror scaffold each other: how, like a relay race that never stops, each cannot begin or end with itself but must always recruit and pass on power. It also teaches us how to better build and sustain the communities necessary to fight back, and how to generate movements that do not create silos of resistance but identify fulcrums to dismantle oppression for the benefit of all. AsDan Berger wrote, abolition "pushes us to think and act better than the systems that confine, cage, and kill," and it "names a past as well as a future: it reminds us… that structures of violence have a beginning and can therefore have an ending."

Because the edifice of state violence rests atop a myriad of oppressions, accepting that any effort to uproot the entanglements of its power centers on confronting dangerously racist, gendered, and classist hierarchies is the first step towards abolition. It recognizes that battles will be waged both within ourselves, as we attempt to deconstruct everything we once believed about policing and incarceration, and in the world around us as we confront state institutions with our minds, our energy, and our bodies. And though our task is enormous, we cannot let the daunting reality of our ambition swallow us. If ever we feel lonely, it is not a testament to our inability to impact the world, it is a testament to the need for connection. The place where we realize our fullest capacity to generate change is in communion with each other.

In 1974, Ursula K. Le Guinreminded us that collective strength is the only path towards freedom: "The individual cannot bargain with the State," she said. "The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself." When we understand the magnitude of state terror, we must remember that we are not meant to suddenly feel inspired to challenge it alone. There is an unavoidable degree of loneliness and helplessness embedded within its realization. And refusing to confront these feelings is part of how the system functions to subvert resistance, by substituting isolation and alienation for opportunities to collectively learn, live, and fight for freedom in ways we may have never dreamed possible. But we must always reserve room in our hearts to build bridges -- too many depend on us for it.

Inthe words of prisoners themselves:

"We need support from people on the outside. A prison is an easy -- lockdown environment, a place of control and confinement where repression is built into every stone wall and chain link, every gesture and routine. When we stand up to these authorities, they come down on us, and the only protection we have is solidarity from the outside. Mass incarceration, whether in private or state -- run facilities is a scheme where slave catchers patrol our neighborhoods and monitor our lives. It requires mass criminalization. Our tribulations on the inside are a tool used to control our families and communities on the outside. Certain Americans live every day under not only the threat of extra -- judicial execution… but also under the threat of capture, of being thrown into these plantations, shackled and forced to work."
Abolition, then, is the only answer to a system whose currency is terror.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38322-for-abolition-prisons-and-police-are-more-than-brutality-they-re-state-terror

TBF

11-18-2016, 01:56 PM

Jacobin weighs in -

Rattling the Cages

This fall’s prison strikes are a model of how to both survive and challenge an authoritarian, racist order.
by Dan Berger 11/18/2016

n September 9, an estimated twenty-four thousand people in twenty-nine prisons across twelve states launched a national strike. The Free Alabama Movement (FAM), the prisoner organization that announced the strike last spring, called for an “action against slavery in America.” Pointing to the Thirteenth Amendment, which allows slavery as “punishment for a crime,” the organizers “vow[ed] to finally end slavery in 2016.”

Even before it began, proponents were labeling it the biggest prison strike in American history. Yet the action’s exact scope remains unclear: communication is inherently limited, and prisons routinely suppress or misreport protest activity. A number of prisons took preemptive measures to prevent protests before September 9.

Supporters claim that anywhere between twenty thousand and seventy thousand people have participated in the strike, but the accuracy of these figures is difficult to determine. After two months, the major strike action seems to have dissipated, but some facilities remain on alert.

Numbers aside, the mass action shows that a bold spirit of resistance has once again jolted the American prison landscape. For more than five years now, prison and immigrant detention center officials have had to contend with sustained disruption.

In December 2010, prisoners in Georgia staged a statewide work stoppage. Seven months later, California prisoners began the first of three hunger strikes protesting long-term solitary confinement. At its height in 2013, thirty thousand incarcerated people throughout the state joined in support of the leadership collective’s five demands. The strike yielded a legal settlement that has removed almost all California prisoners from long-term isolation. It also produced a historic statement calling for multiracial unity that would deprive the state of its most brutal governing strategy: manufactured racial conflict among prisoners. FAM itself went on strike in January 2014, then followed it up with a more chaotic uprising last March ...

More here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/prison-strike-slavery-attica-racism-incarceration/

blindpig

11-18-2016, 04:04 PM

Dhalgren

11-18-2016, 08:56 PM

Lite treatment, see thread above. No mention of abolition, the endgame. And captivity does not define slavery, appropriated labor does. No mention of Kinetic Justice either, very good chance he will be murdered by authorities or suborned inmate.

Jacobin is essentially Democratic Socialist and therefore ineffective and a misdirection from revolution.

Completely agree. Punishment for "crimes" does not automatically entail slavery - many Americans think that it does, they are wrong. Keeping the topic on appropriated labor is key and is how this started with Free Alabama Movement.

Kid of the Black Hole

11-21-2016, 02:00 PM

Completely agree. Punishment for "crimes" does not automatically entail slavery - many Americans think that it does, they are wrong

There's a certain depravity there, no? Centuries of race baiting take their toll..

Keeping the topic on appropriated labor is key and is how this started with Free Alabama Movement.

Yes. It is appropriate to discuss this in terms of the New Plantation emerging out of the shadow of the failed Reconstruction 150 years ago.

Dhalgren

11-21-2016, 02:08 PM

There's a certain depravity there, no? Centuries of race baiting take their toll..

Yes. It is appropriate to discuss this in terms of the New Plantation emerging out of the shadow of the failed Reconstruction 150 years ago.

Just the visual of it is so striking as to be surreal. Fat white men with shotguns overseeing the forced labor of half naked black men - and in a state like Alabama, no less. "Depravity"? It beggars the imagination.

Kid of the Black Hole

11-21-2016, 06:15 PM

Just the visual of it is so striking as to be surreal. Fat white men with shotguns overseeing the forced labor of half naked black men - and in a state like Alabama, no less. "Depravity"? It beggars the imagination.

The fact that it is tolerated so readily I meant

Dhalgren

11-21-2016, 08:17 PM

The fact that it is tolerated so readily I meant

It isn't even "tolerated", really, it is simply accepted as 'the way things are'. I try to talk to people about the abuse of prisoners and I get a shrug and a "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time." I can find almost no one who hasn't got family inside or been there themselves that give any kind of shit about the treatment of prisoners. I don't know what to call it.

blindpig

11-22-2016, 08:14 PM

No natural light, no healthy food, detained immigrants in Alabama face harsh conditions

http://image.al.com/home/bama-media/width620/img/news_impact/photo/21576738-mmmain.jpg
A detainee looks out over the common area at the Etowah County Jail Tuesday, December 4, 2012 in Gadsden, Ala(Eric Schultz / eschultz@al.com) (Eric Schultz)

By Amy Yurkanin | ayurkanin@al.com
on November 22, 2016 at 12:36 PM, updated November 22, 2016 at 2:44 PM

The Etowah County Detention Center holds about 300 undocumented immigrants in conditions that lack natural light, healthy food or regular medical care, according to a report released Monday by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The report focuses on immigrant detention facilities across the South, where asylum-seekers face long odds in court and difficult conditions behind bars while awaiting immigration proceedings. Researchers, who interviewed hundreds of detainees and scoured reams of documents, found widespread allegations of inadequate medical care, poor legal services, abusive treatment and contaminated food.

"The South has kind of been a black hole for detention," said Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "A lot of immigrants who are arrested on the West Coast and the East Coast end up shipped to the South."

Often, they are held in facilities far from families and legal resources for immigrants, Graybill said. The number of immigration attorneys is much lower in Gadsden than New York City, she said. Attorneys and immigrant advocates have long heard that conditions are harsher in Southern facilities, so Graybill's organization partnered with the National Lawyers Guild and Adelante Alabama Worker Center on the expansive investigation.

In some cases, conditions in the facilities might have contributed to the deaths of immigrant detainees. Immigrant advocates in Alabama point to the case of Teka Gulema, an Ethiopian national held at Etowah since 2012 who contracted an infection that left him paralyzed from the neck down. He died in January 2016, soon after he was officially released from ICE custody but after he slipped into a coma, according to the report. Because his death occurred outside ICE custody, it did not trigger an investigation.

Etowah County officials charge federal authorities $45 a day to hold immigrants awaiting trial and deportation – less than any other detention facility in the country and far below the national average of $164 per day. As a result, the county jail has become a destination for immigrants stuck in the system for years at a time.

Jessica Vosburgh, director of Adelante Alabama Worker Center, said the Etowah County Detention Center has come under fire several times in the past, and almost lost its contract with federal authorities about six years ago. The latest report includes several allegations that have come up in the past, documented in interviews with almost 70 detainees. Poor conditions inside the facility are driven in part by the low reimbursement rate from the government, Vosburgh said.

"Certainly, when you're paying that low per detainee per day, you're going to get very poor services and conditions," she said.

The report follows the election of President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Any effort to increase deportations will require expansion of detention facilities, raising concerns about the conditions in private prisons and county jails that hold thousands of immigrants awaiting hearings or deportation.

According to the report, detention centers in the South hold one out of six immigrant detainees. Immigration courts in the region rarely provide legal counsel to detainees facing deportation. Unlike criminal defendants, who are entitled to legal representation in court, detainees held for the civil violation of immigration laws are not entitled to attorneys who can help navigate the complicated immigration system.

Detainees in the Etowah County Detention Center spend the longest time on average in detention, often longer than a year. The facility has no outdoor recreation area, so men kept in confinement can go for long periods without exposure to fresh air and sunshine, according to the report.

The facility also provides little access to legal information, according to the report, and detainees often spend months waiting for information about immigration proceedings that drag on for years. In one case, researchers interviewed a detainee who claimed to be an American citizen from Puerto Rico who has been held for three years.

Officials from Etowah County have not yet returned calls seeking comment, but in the past, they have said the facility has passed all inspections by federal authorities.

Researchers focused on Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, two detention centers in Georgia, two in Florida and one in Louisiana. Three of the facilities are privately-run prisons and three, including Etowah, are county facilities under contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Graybill said researchers originally hoped the research might convince officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to stop relying so heavily on private prisons and contract facilities. She said the system gives private prison companies and county governments incentives to skimp on services to generate greater profits. The U.S. Department of Justice announced earlier this year that it would stop using private prisons to house federal inmates.

"There's no need for this incredible amount of people to be detained," Graybill said. "There are plenty of alternatives to detention that are incredibly less expensive."

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/11/no_natural_light_no_healthy_fo.html

Dhalgren

11-22-2016, 09:28 PM

blindpig

12-02-2016, 07:19 PM

Prison Reform: Health Care in Alabama's Prisons
By ALEX AUBUCHON • 9 HOURS AGO

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wual/files/styles/medium/public/201612/Segregation.jpg
A segregation cell at an Alabama state prison
SPLC

Alabama’s prison system has been in the news a lot this year, and not for good reasons. Violence, inmate riots, allegations of mismanagement and corruption and a failed prison building plan in the state legislature have all pointed out plenty of problems.

The Alabama Public Radio news team has spent the past several months examining what happens as people go into the state’s prison system and what happens when they come out.

Today, APR’s Alex AuBuchon looks at the quality of prison health care in Alabama and examines a large federal lawsuit challenging whether inmates receive the minimum care guaranteed in the Constitution.

Listen Listening...6:43
“It hurts. He was my best friend…”

Eryka Fykes is talking about her father Phillip Anderson. She’s his youngest daughter. Anderson was arrested in Tuscaloosa in early February last year. Prosecutors say he missed a child support hearing. A week later, he was dead.

“We went down thinking he was fine, because the chief told us he was fine.”

That’s Kimberly Coats, Anderson’s sister.

“And we went to the hospital, and that’s when the doctors’ told us he had passed away.”

Coats says jail officials didn’t call her to say there was trouble. Anderson’s fellow inmates saw him unconscious, took his cell phone, and called the family.

"His screams were not only ignored and rejected, he was belittled. He was called a faker and a malingerer."

Attorney David Schoen is representing the Anderson family in a lawsuit. He alleges the staff at the Tuscaloosa County Jail sat and watched Anderson as he screamed in pain from a bleeding ulcer. When he finally received medical attention, it was too late.

Anderson is not alone in Alabama.

“Guys have died in lockup, beating on their door. Seriously.”

Abdullah Mumin now lives in Tuscaloosa. He spent 28 years in Alabama prisons across the state.

“You have guys trying to get this guard's attention in this cubicle, trying to get him to see what's up, and they up in there laughing or playing on their phone, and you die in your cell because this guard didn't want to open their door or because he felt you was making noise, you was keeping up a fuss. But you was only trying to get somebody there because you was dealing with an issue.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program are among the groups suing the Alabama Department of Corrections over inmate health care. Richard Cohen of the SPLC says he wants specific things…

“First: Ensure that people who are behind bars get a basic level of care, as the Supreme Court says that they must. Second, we hope that our lawsuit encourages the state to continue to reduce its unconscionably high levels of incarceration.”

Cohen says the overcrowding in Alabama’s prisons is one of the main reasons behind the inadequate care for inmates.

“As a result, prisoners are dying, prisoners with serious mental health problems are killing themselves... The state has an obligation to provide a basic minimum of care, and that's what it's not doing.”

Jefferson Dunn is the Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections. He agrees that overcrowding is a major issue when it comes to providing medical care.

“The medical facilities, the clinics were designed for a system to hold about 13,800 inmates, and right now we’ve got 24,000 inmates in that system. So the physical facilities to provide medical care are not adequate. So that creates challenges.”

But Dunn says he thinks the care they provide is adequate.

“We have a requirement, and it’s one that we take very, very seriously, to address and meet the medical needs of our inmates. We handle the entire gamut that you can imagine, from very routine all the way up to some of the most serious medical trauma, emergency… And this particular population, as a group, tends not to be as healthy as an average population that’s not within the system… So yes, I do think they are receiving adequate medical care.”

Alongside the lawsuit, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report in June 2014 titled Cruel Confinement. It details their investigation into the medical and mental health offerings in Alabama’s state prisons.

Maria Morris is the lead prosecutor on the case for the SPLC. She says one of the most striking things from the report was the way the Alabama Department of Corrections has handled infectious disease outbreaks.

“There is no one responsible for infection control in most facilities, and one of the things we see as a result is an extraordinarily high level of tuberculosis...”

Morris says one tuberculosis outbreak lasted for five years.

“They had an outbreak of tuberculosis at Donaldson in 2010. And you can track strains of tuberculosis, and the outbreak that occurred in 2010 at Donaldson was still going on at different prisons in 2015, which means that they were unable to eradicate that particular outbreak of tuberculosis. And that's an extraordinarily long time for any outbreak to last in a prison system.”

Morris is referring to the Donaldson Correctional Facility just west of Birmingham. Alabama DOC Commissioner Dunn says there are protocols in place to keep infections from spreading.

“We have the ability to either restrict the movement of various populations or even to, to use prison terminology, to lock down a facility and kind of quarantine it if we had to, to make sure there’s not any additional spread of an infectious disease.”

But Morris says it’s extremely common – and it’s not just obvious culprits like tuberculosis.

“Large numbers of outbreaks of other things like scabies. There was a point a couple of years ago when one third of the population of the Ventress facility had scabies. And just a month before that was determined; ADOC had been saying 'No, no, no one has scabies. Everybody just has a rash.'”

Caring for mentally ill inmates is another key element of the lawsuit and another sore spot in Alabama’s prisons. ADOC Commissioner Dunn says it’s a major priority.

“We have a very strong focus on mental health care. We have an entire staff of mental health professionals, from counselors all the way up to psychiatrists. We do residential treatment in a couple of our facilities.”

But Maria Morris says it’s a lack of mental health staff that leads to most of the problems with care.

“At St. Clair, where there are usually between 6 and 9 men on involuntary medications – which is a pretty serious thing to do to someone, to say 'You're so severely mentally ill that we're going to medicate you against your wishes.' – They don't have a psychiatrist on staff there. They have only a certified registered nurse practitioner.”

Because there are so few mental health professionals on staff with the Department of Corrections, the caseloads get overwhelming. Morris says it’s the patients who suffer.

“Some of them have caseloads of over 200 people. And they all, as a result, the counseling that they provide is really much more of a check-in. It's 5 or 10 minutes a month for people who have schizophrenia, saying 'How are you doing? Are you doing OK on your meds? Everything good? OK.' And that's really pretty much it. As one of our clients likes to say, 'It's just Hi and Goodbye.'”

But former prisoner Abdullah Mumin says you may not even get that.

“They're in lockup. So that means that, for them to see a psychiatrist, they got to have an appointment scheduled, so they gonna handcuff and shackle you and take you up here to the front office to have a sit-down and talk. But sometimes they don't even do that. They're lying. They will send you the paperwork as if you had this interview, letting you know that this is what you've improved, blah blah blah, so it's notated, saying that you've seen the psychiatrist for the month. But you never did.”

The lack of staff prompted U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson to grant class action status to the mental health portion of the lawsuit. Thompson says mental health professionals knew and communicated a need for additional staff to provide adequate care. But the Department of Corrections refused to provide funding, saying they didn’t have the resources.

Thompson says that constitutes “deliberate indifference.” Morris says that means conditions for mentally ill inmates are bleak.

“Particularly at Donaldson, we got a lot of reports from people that they get a group counseling session maybe once every two weeks or so. They almost never get pulled out of their cell for individual one-on-one counseling. They don't get to go outside. They're just sitting in a cell, and they're not getting any mental health treatment, or minimal mental health treatment. And they're just in those cells for months or years. And that's not going to make them any healthier.”

When asked to comment directly on the case, DOC Commissioner Dunn declined.

“We don’t comment on ongoing litigation. The judicial process needs to work itself out, and we just want to be as respectful of that process as we can as we work out these issues.”

The health and mental health portions of the case will go to trial on December 5. But one facet of the case has already been decided. Judge Thompson issued his final approval in September to an agreement between the Alabama Department of Corrections and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program to change the way disabled inmates are housed and treated in state prisons.

“So, for example, if you say ‘How many people who use a wheelchair are in DOC custody?’ We allege they didn’t know that answer.”

J. Patrick Hackney is the legal director for the program. He says in the past, the Alabama Department of Corrections didn’t have a method to identify or quantify disabled inmates.

“And so one of the provisions of the settlement agreement sets out mechanisms whereby they can, they have a process by which they identify folks with disabilities, and then as they transfer from facility to facility, that information is shared between facilities so that the person can get the services that they need.”

Hackney says that makes a big difference in the quality of life of disabled inmates.

“Everybody at the first prison they were at may have known they had a hearing impairment, known not to come up from behind the guy, or he can’t hear you when you’re standing behind him talking to him. And when you’re moved to another prison, it’s like you’ve got to go through that whole process again and there’s no information shared between facilities.”

Under the agreement, the Alabama Department of Corrections will have nearly 3 years to make their dorms and other prison facilities more accessible to inmates with disabilities. They’ll also be redesigning classes and rehabilitation programs to allow disabled inmates to participate.

But, as Hackney says,

“This is a huge case. I mean, all three parts of it are a really large case.”

It’s unclear how Judge Thompson will rule in terms of health and mental health care in Alabama’s prisons. One thing’s for sure, though. If you find yourself in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections, it might be a good idea not to get sick.

http://apr.org/post/prison-reform-health-care-alabamas-prisons#stream/0

blindpig

12-03-2016, 12:37 PM

FOR A WORLD WITHOUT POLICE

Atlanta Meeting Notes: 11/21
A World Without Police December 1, 2016
Below are the minutes from our November 21 public meeting in Atlanta. The next Atlanta meeting will be held on December 5 at 6PM, at Big House. The event page is on Facebook. Hope to see lots of you there. At the bottom there is also a list of further upcoming events.

A World Without Police Meeting. Atlanta.11/21

75 people in attendance

Intro:
Why are you here? Some people upset about election of Trump. Some went to anti-Trump rally week prior and met each other. Some first time in political meeting.

How would you describe Trump in one word? Bigot, fascist, scared shitless, misogynist, American.

Trump as emblematic of this system: oppression, homophobia, etc. It’s not just about Trump though. We’re here because a moment helped us realize that we can’t let this shit stand. They have a lot of power, but we have more numbers and that’s powerful. Fuck Trump, but I’m thankful we’re all here.

How did we feel at rally? Powerful, connected, unified.
The anti-Trump rally was a success. There were about 1000-2000 people. Started at 6, marched at 7, roamed all over city. Cops tried to choke it out and stop people but it kept going. People say “protesting doesn’t get you anywhere” but those feelings of power are important. We took the streets and it couldn’t have happened if people didn’t show out.

Agenda Read Aloud:
1. What is A World Without Police?
2. Ideas for working groups.
3. Group breakouts.
4. Report backs from group breakouts.
5. Announcements for next meeting and other events.

1. What is A World Without Police?
A network of police abolitionists nationally and now local in Atlanta, trying to put out a police abolitionist poll. Cameras on cops and other reform ideas have their limit: they don’t stop cops from killing people. There are endless videos of cops killing people, and the cameras haven’t stopped it. Trying to reform an institution that feeds off of class oppression, white supremacy, transphobia isn’t going to work because the roll of the cops is to oppress us. The cops were slavecatchers originally. Rich white folks didn’t want to bring slaves back, so they hired poor white people to be slavecatchers. This the basis. We don’t reform slavecatchers. We’re not going to suddenly abolish police, but we can begin to dismantle structures to allow us to relate to each other in different ways. We’re trying to figure out how to fight together.

Question: There are people with malicious intent. How do you protect people against malicious intent? Answer: People commit harms out of need often. Our point of relation is mediated through capitalism. It’s not the intrisic desire of people to cause harm to others; instead, it’s the issue of protection of property and the state– upholding current system. This is what police are for. For example, drug crimes. Also, other nonviolent crimes: people are imprisoned for weed, and the prisons are violent and you learn violence through trauma in prison. The police and prison system breeds violence. Even as a system preventing crime, it isn’t effective. Also, we need conflict mediation and intervention skills to protect each other against sexual violence, domestic abuse, other interpersonal violence.

2. Ideas for working groups:
Action-– Rally like last Friday; protesting/picketting groups; boycotting; disrupting “coffee with cops”; sit-ins; disruption of police infastructure, for example the occupation of the 4th Precinct in Minneapolis; stop people from becoming cops; disrupt recruitment efforts;
Self-defense and security-– registry of law offices doing progressive work for immigrants, trans issues, etc– people with power who can help us and others; find facists and keep a list to disrupt their actions, etc; find out local right wing leaders trying to do anti-abortion stuff, etc, so we can more effectively counter what they’re doing; communication, like outreach; communication between groups; projections of things like “Fuck Trump”; banner drops; vandalism with political message; street theatre; getting our internal shit straight (don’t put photos on facebook, etc); physical self defense training; finding material needs that we can help meet and partnering with groups that do that; a self defense; organizing CopWatch crews; ICE watch– intervening when immigration raids happen; preparing and collecting resources for bond and bail if people get targeted by police; training for street medics; training for street tactics during protests; actually resisting immigration raids; creating sanctuary spaces/sanctuary platform– making Atlanta a sanctuary–creating space we want to live in;
Education/Skills training/propaganda-– set up shop outside and have like impromtu teach-ins and stuff; know your rights trainings; conflict mediation trainings at same time as don’t call the cops campaign; stickers to put over bad messages; supporting cultural arm of movement that raises awareness; not just reaching out to our friends, but trying to politicize those most affected by these policies; reach out to poor less educated white people to educate them about how they’re being used in class war to oppress others; finding grassroots ways to raise funds to support action; continuing these discussions with ongoing events; reaching out to college campuses and teaching them what they can do in their communities; growing online resources; need to educate high school students– sit in at Northsprings HS– people didn’t understand what we were sitting for; coalition building with other groups; bring your POC friends;
Small group breakouts to discuss actions, self-defense, education, etc. (30 minutes in small groups)
Report backs from smaller groups:

3. Group breakouts.

4. Group report backs:

ACTION:
– Projections: budgeting to get a projector to perform mass projections during sporting events/movies/or on building downtown. Succinct message that is both politically accessible without being politically neutral. Providing link to website.
– Disrupting events: Researching events to disrupt and getting a militant action training scheduled for all of us so we can be prepared to disrupt.
– J20 action: Collaborate organizing with other ATL networks to provide transportation to DC. BUT locally, shut stuff down on J20.

EDUCATION/ PROPAGANDA/ SKILLS TRAINING:
There were multiple ideas going around. December 3rd event where you can bash Trump pinata at MJQ.
Somebody has access to free printing and supplies. Get with them if you need it.
This group is continuing to make plans next meeting.

SELF DEFENSE and SECURITY:
Workshop for unarmed self-defense and cyber security. Going to send out email.
Intentional space for work against ICE. Going to send out email.
Reminder from crewL We say dangerous things sometimes when we’re in spaces like this, and there might be people who are against us, so be careful what you say and what you text.
Download SIGNAL! Or Semaphor for texting/email or Riseup for email or ProtonMail to encrypt email.

5. Announcements

Next meeting: December 5th at 6 pm at Big House. Facebook

http://aworldwithoutpolice.org/2016/12/01/atlanta-meeting-notes-1121/

blindpig

12-05-2016, 01:24 PM

SPLC lawyers went to trial today to force the state of Alabama to provide constitutionally required mental health care to prisoners living in the nation’s most overcrowded prison system.

The opening arguments today kick off the first trial in the SPLC’s broader suit, filed in federal court in 2014, alleging that the mental health and medical needs of prisoners with serious – even life-threatening conditions – are routinely ignored.

This phase of the trial is expected to last eight weeks. A separate trial on the medical issues is expected next year.

The suit describes how the lack of care from the cash-strapped, under-staffed system amounts to “deliberate indifference” by the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) – a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson granted class action status to the mental health portion of the lawsuit in late November, meaning that court rulings in this phase of the case will apply to all prisoners in the system.

“Alabama’s failure to provide mental health care to the people it incarcerates puts lives at risk,” said SPLC Senior Staff Attorney Maria Morris. “This lack of treatment is inhumane and unconstitutional. No one in an Alabama prison was sentenced to this kind suffering.”

The SPLC’s investigation found severe problems throughout the prison system. Facilities where mentally ill prisoners are housed have been left to decay. The system is understaffed and uses outdated psychotropic drugs. Some prisoners with mental health problems are placed in solitary confinement and all but forgotten. Nonmedical treatment for the mentally ill is virtually non-existent.

Dr. Craig Haney, a prison expert retained by the SPLC, toured the St. Clair Correctional Facility and described the conditions in his report: “I saw prisoners living in barren ‘Suicide Watch Cells’ who had been kept there for months on end, and a prisoner residing in complete darkness, lying on an office floor in a room labeled ‘Mental Health’ and urinating in a plastic bucket.”

Dr. Kathryn Burns, a mental health expert who submitted a report on behalf of the plaintiffs in July 2016, is expected to testify on Dec. 12. Burns visited nine Alabama prisons, where she inspected crisis watch cells, observed segregation and conducted interviews. She found that the failure to provide adequate staffing levels “does not appear to be in dispute,” even by the private, for-profit company entrusted with prisoners’ mental health care, MHM Correctional Services.

When the judge certified the lawsuit as a class action last month, he noted that health practitioners have recognized that mental health care is lacking in the prison system.

“When prison mental health administrators know and communicate that they need more staff to provide appropriate care for prisoners, and the Commissioner refuses to provide funding for this staff, not in any exercise of medical judgment but because he does not have the money this suffices to establish deliberate indifference and – in conjunction with a showing that this creates a substantial risk of serious harm– to establish an Eighth Amendment violation,” Thompson wrote.

The lack of resources has led to disastrous consequences.

Joshua Dunn, a named plaintiff, was never placed on the mental health care staff’s caseload despite cutting himself on his forearm with a razor on five different occasions and asking for mental health treatment after each episode, according to the SPLC’s complaint. After each suicide attempt, the only time Dunn saw a mental health professional was on the third day of each of his stints on suicide watch. The staffer simply asked if he was still suicidal.

Another prisoner “cut herself with a razor blade she found in the suicide watch cell,” according to the SPLC’s amended complaint. Still other prisoners have been placed in segregation – despite its harmful effects on mental health patients – for as long as seven years.

Burns, the mental health expert, described the toll the prison system’s failures has taken on prisoners: “In sum, the deficiencies in ADOC … deny prisoners care for their serious mental illness leading to needless pain, suffering, self-injury, suicide and punishment for symptoms of untreated mental illness.”

The solution, according to Morris of the SPLC, is to reduce Alabama’s swollen prison population, caused by harsh sentencing policies that have given the state the third highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the country.

“Even many deeply conservative states are reducing their prison populations, making it more feasible to provide incarcerated people with the quality of care that is required under our Constitution,” she said. “Alabama must do the same.”

Earlier this year, the SPLC settled a portion of the lawsuit regarding violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In that settlement, the ADOC committed to provide services and fair treatment to incarcerated people with disabilities.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. The SPLC’s co-counsel include the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program; Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC; and Zarzaur, Mujumdar and Debrosse.

https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/12/05/splc-begins-trial-behalf-alabama-prisoners-mental-health-needs

blindpig

12-08-2016, 12:49 PM

FILED 10:00 p.m.
12.07.2016

Federal Official Urges Probe of ‘Abuse’ on Private Prisoner Transport

It is the latest call for an investigation of the for-profit extradition industry.
By ELI HAGER and ALYSIA SANTO

A federal transportation regulator has urged the Justice Department to investigate accusations of “human rights violations” on privately run vans that carry tens of thousands of prisoners across long distances every year. Deb Miller, vice chairman of the Surface Transportation Board, made her comments last month, echoing calls from lawmakers this summer for a probe of Prisoner Transportation Services, the nation’s largest private extradition company, and others in the field. The company was highlighted in a Marshall Project investigation that revealed a pattern of deaths and abuse in the industry. “The problems of prisoner abuse, sexual assault, and medical neglect by Prisoner Transportation Services, LLC… are very concerning,” Miller wrote in a comment appended to the board’s Nov. 10 decision to grant approval for PTS to merge with its largest competitor, U.S. Corrections.Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the House Judiciary Committee in July — shortly after The Marshall Project story was published — that her office would review apparent lapses in federal oversight of prisoner transport companies. A spokesman for the Justice Department said recently the agency is still working on a report.

https://d1n0c1ufntxbvh.cloudfront.net/photo/79c79b62/17744/1140x/
Joel Brasfield, President and General Counsel of Prisoner Transportation Services, in Nashville, in 2016. JOE BUGLEWICZ FOR THE MARSHALL PROJECT

The merger between PTS and U.S. Corrections had been put on hold on Aug. 9 after the Human Rights Defense Center, a nonprofit prisoner advocacy group, filed an objection to the deal, arguing that both companies have a history of prisoner abuse. Those concerns, however, were deemed to be outside of the Surface Transportation Board’s purview, which is focused narrowly on the economic impact of a merger.For-profit extradition companies transport suspects, fugitives, and others with open arrest warrants across state lines to where they are wanted. Many of these prisoners are first held in a local jail, sometimes for weeks, before they are picked up for the transport.The companies are governed by a 2000 federal law commonly known as Jeanna’s Act, which sets out some broad standards for treatment of prisoners. But the legislation has only been enforced one time in the 16 years since, despite at least 60 prisoner escapes, 50 crashes, 14 alleged instances of sexual assault, and 16 deaths on these vans during that time, The Marshall Project investigation found. The story prompted some changes at PTS, which is based in Tennessee and has contracts with state corrections departments and hundreds of local law enforcement agencies. At least four prisoners have died aboard PTS vans since 2012. PTS officials declined to comment on the deaths. In a recent interview at the company headquarters, Alan Sielbeck, the chief owner of PTS, and its new president, Joel Brasfield, said six of their 29 vans have been outfitted with cameras, although the software for recording and saving footage has not yet been installed. They said they hoped it would be available soon and the entire fleet would have cameras within 12 months.

https://d1n0c1ufntxbvh.cloudfront.net/photo/2e341ab7/17743/1140x/
The updated front holding compartment in a Prisoner Transportation Services van. The compartment no longer contains a metal door that isolates a single seat. JOE BUGLEWICZ FOR THE MARSHALL PROJECT

When asked how the video will be used, the officials said it would be too costly to record and preserve all of it for more than a few weeks. Simply having the devices in the fleet would influence guards and inmates to behave better, they said. In addition, PTS officials said they have increased their staffing to 80 guards from about 35 so each of them can have more time off. Instead of getting only 12 hours to rest in between every 36 hours of driving, they will now have 24-hour breaks every two days — although that schedule depends on finding a jail along the way that is willing to take the inmates overnight.To prevent further deadly emergencies during transit, Sielbeck and Brasfield said they have prioritized the position of “medical verification” officer to obtain advance information from jails about medical problems of inmates picked up by PTS. If an inmate has a severe diagnosis, he or she can be escorted on a commercial flight instead of a days-long trip in one of the vans. PTS said it does not yet have enough data to determine whether air transports have become more common.“We’re kind of a slave to that holding agency,” Brasfield said. He said jails can withhold medical information either intentionally or unintentionally.Meanwhile, classroom training for guards has been upped to two weeks from from three days, including lessons on what to do if an inmate is in distress. Seatbelts have also been installed in six of the vans, although Brasfield acknowledged they may be removed because “the industry has gone back and forth” about whether the straps and buckles can be used as weapons or to pick locks.Florida Rep. Ted Deutch, who questioned Lynch about the federal government’s role in monitoring prisoner transportation companies, called PTS’s efforts encouraging but said he plans to continue advocating for oversight of the industry. “We need to stay on this and make sure things are carried out effectively,” Deutch said. “We’re going to share this information with Justice and hope that it spurs action,” he added, noting that the department’s upcoming report will allow him to “determine whether additional legislative action is necessary.”Despite emphasizing the improvements, PTS officials defended their business model.

https://d1n0c1ufntxbvh.cloudfront.net/photo/f8e8026d/17742/1140x/
Alan Sielbeck, an entrepreneur, is a main shareholder of Prisoner Transportation Services. JOE BUGLEWICZ FOR THE MARSHALL PROJECT

Sielbeck, who described himself as “a self-avowed capitalist,” said there’s no clear alternative to for-profit prisoner transport. “The government can do it different but very seldom does the government do it better,” he said, referring to the U.S. Marshals and local sheriffs.Asked about claims of abuse and neglect that have been made by inmates, Sielbeck said, “The transported community can take stories and embellish them.”Sielbeck and Brasfield also pointed out that PTS is more compliant with federal regulations than some of its mom-and-pop competitors, which use minivans not covered by the same passenger carrier rules. They suggested they might even advocate more scrutiny of the industry and demand that states put more safety requirements in their contracts with these companies.But when pressed on whether PTS would actually demand such higher standards, the officials said they do not have a large budget for lobbying and would only share their ideas about how to better regulate the industry if contacted by the government. They added that they believed chances of that happening under the incoming Trump administration are slim.
ORIGINALLY FILED Wednesday, December 7, 2016 at 10:00 p.m. ET

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/12/07/federal-official-urges-probe-of-abuse-on-private-prisoner-transport?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_source=opening-statement&utm_term=newsletter-20161208-652#.ku2Lf5Eub

blindpig

12-09-2016, 02:50 PM

Willacy County files lawsuit against private prison company, claims negligence caused riot
BY CBS 4 NEWS THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8TH 2016

http://static-17.sinclairstoryline.com/resources/media/f5236398-4421-4856-bf98-9cabfd7773b2-large16x9_f523639844214856bf989cabfd7773b2Raymondville_P2.jpg?1481224031149
Poor conditions overcrowding at the prison, though, sparked a protest on Feb. 20, 2015 — and eventually a riot that destroyed the prison complex.

Willacy County filed a lawsuit against Utah-based Management and Training Corp. on Wednesday, claiming the private prison company kept inmates in deplorable conditions — sparking a riot that destroyed the Willacy County Correctional Center and cost the cash-strapped county millions.

Commonly called the "tent city," the Willacy County Correctional Center held approximately 2,000 inmates on immigration-related charges.

Willacy County partnered with Management and Training Corp., borrowing money to building the prison. In exchange, the company paid Willacy County. The more inmates at the prison, the more Management and Training Corp. paid the county.

Poor conditions and overcrowding, though, sparked a protest on Feb. 20, 2015 — and eventually a riot that destroyed the prison complex. The prison closed, fired employees and stopped paying the county.

According to the lawsuit:

MTC failed to properly oversee, manage, and repair the Prison and turned a blind eye to the enormous problems that plagued the Prison from its inception.
Problems with flooding toilets, water seeping underneath the property, rodents, and lack of access to basic inmate services plagued the facility on MTC’s watch. MTC allowed the abysmal conditions to continue without taking any action of notifying the County of or attempting to rectify the problems with the Prison. Further, MTC failed to address the issue of prison overcrowding, presumably because MTC was paid an additional per diem for inmates beyond the 90 percent capacity threshold. Two hundred inmates slept in each housing pod, there was insufficient room between beds, and new inmates were forced to stay in solitary confinement because of overcrowding.
Tensions ran high due to MTC’s mismanagement of the Prison and its conditions, and inmates routinely protested, including refusing to return to the tents until the toilets were fixed. In each of the 200 inmate housing pods, a single correctional officer was posted for the duration of an eight-hour shift. The unacceptable conditions caused by MTC’s mismanagement and failure to take corrective actions led to a prison riot on February 20, 2015. Ultimately, the Prison was forced to close and declared “uninhabitable” by the BOP due to MTC’s failure to meet its most basic contractual obligations. All 400 employees of the Prison lost their jobs.
Had MTC done its job and properly managed the Prison pursuant to its duties set forth in the Restated Contract, the County could have taken remedial action immediately to help rectify the problems, prevent the riot, and keep the Prison in business.
Instead, MTC routinely failed to alert the County as to the problems at the Prison and did nothing to correct or repair them. Accordingly, MTC should be held liable for its total dereliction of its management duties at the Prison. MTC had the duty to run and operate the Prison, but MTC breached its duties and mismanaged the operation, causing the County tens of millions of dollars in damages.
The county wants Management and Training Corp. to pay damages, punitive damages and legal bills.

Asked about the lawsuit, Management and Training Corp. released a statement:

While we can't discuss specific allegations, we can say that MTC has always addressed any structural, maintenance and other issues in a timely manner. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) monitored MTC's operation on a daily basis and did frequent comprehensive audits to make sure the facility was safe and clean and that it met all federal BOP standards. The facility was also accredited by the American Correctional Association and the Joint Commission, which accredits healthcare organizations throughout the country.
An attorney for Willacy County couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

http://valleycentral.com/news/local/willacy-county-files-lawsuit-against-private-prison-company-after-february-2015-riot

Dhalgren

12-09-2016, 03:07 PM

Alabama Prison Purgatory and the Billion Dollar Fraud to Build More Prisons

Posted on December 9, 2016 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT
Prison Watch Network Dedicated to gathering documentation directly from prisoners, from media and other sources about prisons and prisoners’ human rights..
Category Archives: Alabama Shame on Alabama
Posted on June 7, 2016 byinternationalprisonwatch
By an Alabama inmate*
2015-2016
This is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
That is what the following that you are about to read is and will be. You may not like it, and you probably won’t, you may even doubt it or disregard it, but it will still be the truth, and not what your elected officials and appointed do-boys want you to believe, and yet have been reportedly telling you the public for years. If you doubt because of who or where I presently am, I can prove every word that’s said and that makes me dangerous to these liars.
I have been incarcerated here in the Alabama Department of Corruption (ADOC) since November, 1989, almost 26 straight years, for Theft of Property 1st degree, from Mobile County (I was passing through). I have not been out since that arrest, nor have I been pardoned, I have been denied repeatedly, yet I have only had 5 disciplinary infractions in all these years. I am well educated, and I have completed every so-called program the ADOC allows me to participate in. I am a practitioner of Native American Spirituality and believe deeply in the existence we as humans share, and yes there is a creator.
I am also guilty of the charged Alabama crime. I am sorry it happened and I have paid dearly for it. I have put this before you to let you know this will be based on facts, the truth, and be honestly given to you so you’ll know how your politicians are and have lied to you.
What you are about to be informed about is what the true reality is, no cover-up, no misinformation being thrown at you to scare you into reacting and doing (voting) on what your politicians are trying to get you to do. Just the true honest facts.
Fact 1
This wondrous cure-all Prison Reform Bill [SB67], that has been talked about for the last 15 years, that your legislature just passed, well here is the real scoop on it:
– It does not do anything to relieve the worst overcrowded prison system in these United States. They are telling the public it fixes the problem. They have lied to you! Why?
There is nothing in the whole Bill SB67 that relieves or releases, or even helps release anyone who now makes up this prison overcrowding problem. Nor would it help anyone who has done 20+ years inside here with a chance or any way out of here. Here is why:
First, they never tell you the public the exact real prison population. It is always between 28,000 or 33,000 whenever they state the prison population figures.
Second, if a prison system is designed to hold less than 14,000 inmates, and the actual population is one of these 28,000 to 33,000 figures, how can a prison system only be 185 to 190% capacity when the figures say it’s actual number is twice the designated capacity? The true figures don’t lie, but the politicians tell you only what they want you to hear, and yet Sen. Cam Ward went before Congress on July 15, 2014, and stated the prison population was “192%,” but he doesn’t tell you the public that. You’re not really supposed to know, so they hide the real truth. Doesn’t it make you wonder what else they hide from you?
The Prison Bill has the Parole Board hiring 100 new parole officers, for who? Not anybody in here, but to drop the caseload of the already hired Parole Board officers, yet only 3 out of 10 people are granted parole. Those parole figures have steadily declined since 2008.
Also, they keep talking about the Federal government coming in and taking over the prison system. The Federal government doesn’t want to take over, it has 48 other states that have overcrowding problems to worry about. Alabama is just the worst.
If the Alabama politicians don’t fix the problems they themselves have helped create, then they can let the Feds take over, and sit back and say “We told you (Alabama) they would take over,” and they don’t have to worry about being voted out of their easy jobs by looking like they are easy on crime or couldn’t fix what their own have created.
Did you know that Governor Bentley’s January 14, 2014 State of the State address said not one word about fixing the prison problem? You should read it.
Fact 2
Sen. Ward and new Commissioner Dunn have both stated that 4500 inmates will be released within the next 5 years.
How?
They don’t tell you that.
Why?
Because that money will be released through normal ADOC or Parole operations. This does not drop the overcrowded population in any way. There are that many prisoners awaiting to come from county jails and the streets new. Yet, they also tell you the Prison Reform Bill will expand the prison system by up to 2000 more beds. Where are they gonna be put?
But it is interesting that neither 4500 released inmates nor the 2000 bed expansion was in the revised Bill the Governor signed.
What are you telling the public these lies for?
Again, there is nothing in this miraculous Bill that releases the overcrowding.
And Mr. Commissioner Dunn: the Federal Courts have already struck down the stacking of beds three (3) high. They stopped that at W.E. Donaldson and St. Clair. Making it even more overcrowded and dangerous is not the solution. There is already enough violence in here now, how much more will you create and how many more inmates will one guard have to oversee, or how many more stabbings and deaths will you allow?
And yes, a lot of these needless stabbings and inmate deaths are on those politicians’ hands for creating this mess in here. But they won’t take credit for that, will they? They tell you whatever they want you to believe, but it’s not reality. Nothing changes and what is bad gets worse.
For the last 15 years that I know of, every year it’s been the same: “The prison system is broke, we need more money.” Again more money is given, yet the system doesn’t get fixed, it gets worse. Yet these politicians keep saying the same old song and dance, but you keep re-electing these same showmen. They took $500 million from you to fix problems, and now they can’t repay it. Where did that money go? The same problems still exist, yet they will think up something new the following year. But that’s okay, you’ll never know about it.
Makes me wonder who the true criminals are: the ones who take your money by telling you whatever they want to -or what you want to hear, or us who are actually incarcerated, and who have to live in the mess they have created?
Maybe those elected officials should spend some time in here, I bet they’d change their tunes. But like Don Seigleman who got caught in the cookie jar, he is in a nice federal retirement home prison.
Fact 3
Some of us (a lot actually) have lived in here 20+ years and have lived through the ADOC’s bragging about feeding all its inmates three (3) times a day on less than $1.00 (one dollar) (in the 1980s and ’90s).
Well, guess what? Now most of us that have lived through that are sick. I am 61 years old and my health and that of a lot of older inmates is failing and an awful lot are dying in here.
We do not get fresh vegetables or fruit (one apple, one orange a month). Our meat patties are made by the ADOC and are full of meat byproducts. The veggies come out of cans gotten from the lowest bidders. They are not the same quality you buy at the grocery store. And they are usually over- or undercooked and not seasoned at all. The cooking is done by inmates who would rather steal it to sell, than take pride or time to prepare it. Almost all who are forced to work in the kitchens don’t want or care to be there anyway. So why should they care what the food tastes like?
We do not get salt or pepper. Yet if you read an ADOC menu it makes it sound like we eat at a four (4) star restaurant, and your tax dollars at work. Why would you have multiple dieticians working in Montgomery on a menu that almost never changes? It has only changed 3 or 4 times in the last 20 years, and these multiple dieticians are getting paid very good money for basically doing nothing.
Your tax dollars at work.
Or take the “ADOC family plan.” There are so many family members working in the ADOC, like one family member working in the laundry and two in the kitchen. Even some akin to each other work the same shifts. There are husbands and wives working the same shifts at some prisons, yet they are not supposed to be doing that. But the ADOC does what it wants.
You should see how much wasted food goes out of here because no one will eat it. The cats in here won’t even eat these meat patties they give us, they are that bad.
After all these years of having to eat these meals to survive in here, the quality and quantity we are fed has destroyed a lot of our health. The ADOC’s medical costs have soared because of it. There’s all kinds of newspaper articles to look it up, or better just ask the commissioners. They are constantly complaining about health costs to the media. Well again, they have helped cause these rising health costs by these unhealthy meals they feed us in here, year after year.
Do you know how the health inspectors do spot-checks on restaurants you go to? Not in here, they know days ahead of time when they’ll make their spot-checks for inspection. And it will be clean and pretty, but yet there will be roaches and rats still running around. And within a day of the inspection they look like they usually do: unclean tables (metal), black knots so thick you can’t even see the trays with food on them. Who cleans these? Inmates who don’t want to work but are forced to. What would you expect of 1200 men, locked up and who do not want to work (for very low wages) or even care about something that “belongs to the state”? But these state inspectors work for…the state. Go figure.
Fact 4
This new Commissioner Dunn has said if the Legislature cuts his budget he’ll have to close 2 prisons. Wake up out there: where would he move 2000 inmates to? He certainly cannot release them and he won’t. There is no place to move that many inmates to. So he is already sounding like a politician. And here’s an ex-military officer coming in to run a prison system that’s 20+ years behind the times, and way behind the other state prison systems.
Commissioner Dunn took office on April 1st 2015, and he is yet to even visit the first prison he’s deciding over. How can you lead when you haven’t even seen what you are leading and the true picture of how messed up it is? Are you, Commissioner Dunn, relying on what some staff member who has had an easy cushy job for years tells you what you want to know? Are you even going to talk to us who have been here longer than your officers, about the real issues inside here? Oh yeah, we don’t know anything or matter to you. Kim Thomas didn’t listen either, that makes us in here wonder why he ran away and went to work for Governor Bentley’s legal team: was he bailing out before it really got bad? What’s the deal on that?
But here is reality: one officer being responsible for two (2) cell blocks that hold over 200 people each for 8 hours (Draper), and here one officer over 240 or 188 inmates, and now according to the June 12, 2015 news article that they have changed the projected Red Eagle prison, and will close Ventress and Draper, and say that 5000 inmates have to be moved. Well, another lie! Between the two prisons there are only about 2600 at most. Another score tactic to be used on you, the public.
And now here’s another State Finance Director, Bill Newton, telling you in this June 12th article that the ADOC is going to have to close two prisons. What does he have to do with ADOC? Is he just trying to make it sound good, and cause panic? It’s a lie and they can and will not do it. They have been threatening to close a prison for years (so they say) and have not, and can’t do it. Alabama, are you listening to these lies?
I live in a 240 men dorm (warehouse). My bed is 39 inches from someone on each side of me, and 21 inches from the bed that makes up the isle behind my head, from the mattress, which is 1 ½ inches thick; one steel bed frame (not springs) to the bed directly above me is 27 inches, When I sit on the edge of this bed, my neck hits the steel frame above me. I have one blanket, two sheets, no pillow, and I had better take care of those sheets, because I won’t get any more (I’ve had one set for six years). I have a laundry bag and a bed box that is 31 ½ x 25 x 6 inches, or 3 square feet of storage space. That’s it to hold anything I have after 24 years in here. It’s about the size of one of your chest of drawers. And you’ll still have more space. That’s my home, subject to be searched anytime 24/7, to be torn up or destroyed and anything taken as contraband by any ADOC employee wanting to do it. For any reason or no reason at all.
And it’s hot: not air-conditioned, only a few ceiling fans. The air-conditioning is for the ADOC or medical units. Nowhere else. Not for the inmates. And the temperatures go up into the high 90s and more. It’s not a nice environment to live in or sleep in, and to prove my point: on June 13th 2015 there was one officer over 188 inmates and he got stabbed for taking a phone. This put all the other staff on panic. Just another day in the ADOC.
Fact 5
The ADOC budget is $400 million dollars plus, yet here in one of Alabama’s oldest prisons which is falling apart the maintenance budget is only $60.000 a year. That is to fix all the maintenance problems. When it rains, the dorm I live in has a mini flood from the water coming in, and this is every time it rains, and yet the ADOC paid $20 million in overtime salaries to its employees, for one year. What other company or state agency pays that kind of money for overtime?
In 2009, the overtime salaries for the ADOC went like this:
A C.O.I. officer made $28 and change. A sergeant $32 and change, a lieutenant $38 and change, and a captain $42 and change, and every weekend a captain would sit in a tower for 8 hours and get paid $42 an hour. All overtime, and I think it’s the same now in 2015, but you pay that, Alabama.
And in here I get one (1) roll of toilet paper and one (1) bar of soap a week. I get 3 sets of clothes: 3 shirts, 3 pants, and that’s supposed to last a year, with one of those sets being for visitation. I get no other type hygiene products except for shaving cream and a disposable razor. We must be clean shaved at all times. If you need anything else you buy it or do without.
Fact 6
The Alabama courts have nowhere to send mental health prisoners. The State has closed its main mental health facilities, so guess where the State through its judges are sending these individuals? They have flooded the prison system with the mental health patients.
It’s not a pretty sight in here seeing the problems and situations these guys face. They need more help than these officers are willing or trained to give them, or are even equipped to handle. There has been a mental health lawsuit filed against the State by the Southern Poverty Law Center on this issue, yet it remains unresolved. And yet, the infamous Senator Ward told a congressional subcommittee on July 15, 2014, that 56,2% of Alabama prisoners have mental health problems [see page 8 ofhttp://media.al.com/news_impact/other/Read%20what%20Ward%20told%20the%20panel.pdf ]. And yet I have seen first hand these same mental patients stopped, beat up, attacked, robbed of their possessions, and made to stand up all day in an enclosed shower stall, as punishment for their actions, this being done by inmates and prison guards. They truly need help.
But Senator Ward went all the way to Washington to talk about an Alabama prison problem. Why did he spend the taxpayers’ money to discuss an Alabama problem with some other people who can’t fix the Alabama problem? Was he grandstanding? Or being a typical politician?
Did you know Senator Ward submitted the Bill to repeal the Kirby Law, which actually helped some inmates sentenced to Life Without Parole or Life get their sentences reduced? (See this article by Lee Hedgepeth, in the Alabama Political Reporter on Senator Ward’s SB84, Jan. 25 [13], 2014). This was the only law that these inmates could use to get actual help from the court system for errors that had been made on their sentences. Sounds like Senator Ward doesn’t like inmates or inmates getting help.
Is that, Sen. Ward, why this Prison Reform Bill you pushed through does absolutely nothing to ease the real problems? What the public doesn’t know is you have pushed through this Bill that actually raises and increases sentences to further fill the system, yet this Bill you kept saying will save Alabama money and ease the worst crowded prison system in America does neither. No one has eased the present problem. It’s still here. This SB67 isn’t even a good band aid to slow it down. You’ve shoved more responsibility on a Parole Board and the ADOC to manage things they can’t manage now.
People, do not believe me, read the Bill, then you’ll understand. They talk the talk, and yet it’s always the same, just different words and promises or quick fixes that actually change nothing in here, the words just fool you, the ones who pay for their unfulfilled promises.
Senator Ward must want to be Governor. It seems like you always want to be seen or heard. Hey Senator, even I, a lowly inmate, can tell you how to truly ease overcrowding in just a couple of very simple ways. You make it seem like it’s a major problem. You don’t want to ease this moneymaker, just tell the public the truth, and how about that DUI problem, Senator Ward?
Fact 7
We inmates are simply being warehoused. I know the public isn’t really concerned with inmate comfort, but as they continue to pack us into these few facilities and not truly letting anyone out, we have become a cash cow for the ADOC through the tax payers and the Federal Funds that the State gets for prisoners that they also do not tell the public about (which is in the millions of dollars).
So the more they keep in here, the more money comes into Alabama, its a fact, at $42.50 a fay (Senator Ward’s figure before Congress). For every inmate in the ADOC you add it up, and with some of us being in here 20+ years (on property crimes) and then parole and probation violators that are kept for 5+ years or more, for simple technical violations like moving without permission or failed drug tests, who are yet not let back out for long periods of time… Don’t get me wrong, some of these other inmates that have done 20+ years need and should be in here.
But long sentences and life sentences back in the 1970s could be served in 7 to 10 years, then paroled, then it went to 15 years at one time in Alabama. Now according to this 3-member Parole Board, they told my family and several others, that in Alabama a Life sentence means a Life sentence. Even if an inmate was not sentenced to Life Without Parole, and yet I know an inmate who was paroled in 4 years on a Life sentence. So who truly makes the rules or the law, the Parole Board? If someone with a Life sentence can’t be paroled (for a property offense, like mine) or the Parole Board won’t parole someone who is eligible, how does someone get out, and help ease the overcrowding that is happening in Alabama? He (she) doesn’t, he has become part of the warehousing and money machine and will probably die in here (my biggest fear).
These politicians have no solution to ease overcrowded prisons. Well, to name but one:
Set a cap on how long someone must actually serve on a life sentence. Other States already have done so, it carries from 15 years to 25, 30 years for others. After that many years of being locked up, shouldn’t someone be able to be released for nonviolent property crimes? There are a lot of them in here, including myself.
There is no such thing as rehabilitation in the Alabama prison system. There is not! There are no life skills programs for the majority who need it, only for a very select few, which the ADOC wants to showboat or deceive the public with for more money. The ones chosen have little time to serve and haven’t been locked up for any prolonged time either. Your tax money at work. It may help a few but it ignores the many. If you do not try to rehabilitate yourself, the State won’t and doesn’t care: if you do or don’t, it’s all money in their bank so why should they care?
Let me give you some of the parole figures given at a meeting of citizens in Birmingham, which come from the Council of State Government Justice Center (CSG). They said Alabama has some of the highest crime rates in the country. Total crime is 8th highest, violent crime 14th, and property crime 7th compared to all other states, for the years 2008-2012 [see also these figures.]
The actual Alabama Parole figure are for 2008: 43%, 2009: 41%, 2010: 40%, 2011: 31%, 2012: 29%, 2013: 30%. If you’ll notice the figures that made parole have steadily declined. Why? What happened that so many were denied parole? Alabama is 4th in the country in adult incarceration (CSG), yet the Parole Board has kept more and more from being released, again: why?
More prisoners, more money? Shouldn’t somebody explain this steady decline in paroles? I bet no one will, ’cause they don’t care. Yet the prison population in 2008 was 29,959, and then in 2013 it rose to 32,467, and they keep telling the public that the prison is only at 190%. And yet 2,266 more inmates have come into the prison system since 2008, than have gone out. Can you guess where they put them?
Fact 8
The ADOC has sold off all their moneymaking industries, the farms, farm equipment, horses, cattle, hogs, catfish ponds, and now there is nothing for inmates to do. No way to work off stress or be kept occupied, or to learn any type of responsibility, or work-ethic. A few go to trade school (more money into the system), a few get GED’s, but the larger majority of ADOC inmates do nothing, except, lay around, shoot the breeze, about all the things they want someone to believe. They talk about the crimes they did or are going to do, only differently, so they don’t get caught, gangbang, get tattooed, or do drugs. Yet these are the revolving-door ‘non-violent’ inmates who are always being released.
Do you know that a study was done on 100 violent inmates and 100 non-violent inmates who were released. Here is the result: 85% of the [so-called] non-violent offenders came back, yet only 2% of the ‘violent’ offenders returned. Are you listening? Gives you something to think about, doesn’t it? ADOC job security, and lots of money for the State to get.
I’ve watched these non-violent inmates come and go, some as many as 3 or 4 times with new sentences and still get back out, with almost no actual time spent incarcerated. When some of us old-timers try to teach or show these newbies (short-timers) how to think or act differently to change their lives and stay out, we’re laughed at or told we don’t know what’s going on. It’s amazing they’re doing life on the installment plan, and don’t even realize it.
But I guess when half your neighborhood is in here, it’s just like being at home, and easier to plan the next great caper. The courts give all these short split sentences and know they’ll only be here for a little while, so why should they do any work or try to change in here, or even get on education? Some never get out of bed, just up all night, and no responsibilities. They don’t care, nor does the ADOC.
The less the ADOC officers have to do, the better they like it. And they tell us so. Free easy money, and all the overtime they want… don’t believe me, but check out the July 7/8, 2014Tuscaloosa News article, which states: 20 million in overtime paid to prisons. This was done in 2013. This article appeared in every State newspaper. Quick, join up, corrections is hiring. There’s a 21-year-old who just worked 50 hours overtime, at $28.00 an hour. Good money.
But, you should also be aware that some ADOC personnel, not all, have stolen from inmates, took illegal cellphones and then sold them back to whom they were taken from or to other inmates. For a $19.95 flip phone it costs upwards of $300.00 without a charger, for the smartphones it’s $350-600, without chargers. I’ve seen guards charge toll fees to transport contraband from the kitchen to cell blocs (St. Clair) or let inmates steal what they want as long as the kitchen officers get their cut; take an inmate’s personal property and call it ‘contraband,’ even religious items; take legal paperwork and personal legal books (at Fountain) to hinder legal work, and deliberately take and the destroy sacred religious articles, that inmates are actually allowed to have, then tell them “You don’t like it? Sue me, we’ve got plenty of lawyers” (St. Clair). But you, tax payers, pay for this. This has happened and still happens. A guard walks into a kitchen during chow call, takes a small brown paper bag, fills it with cookies made for the inmates, then walks around eating these same cookies in front of all in the chow hall, an inmate confronts him, then writes a complaint on him, and the inmate gets punished and locked up in segregation, and the officers laugh about it (St. Clair). And they keep saying Tutwiler is a bad place. But nobody wants to know about any of this.
You follow the rules they (ADOC) have set out and nobody cares or does anything. You complain or cause trouble by having someone on the outside complain, then you (the inmate) are going to end up in segregation or at worst stabbed up or beat up by this officer’s homeboy who is a locked up inmate or inmates, it happens in here, but no one cares. There are stabbings or killings happening in here pretty often but the outside is very seldom ever told. And I ask: Hello, are you listening or do you even care?
Welcome to the ADOC and reality. I know you the public have your own lives and problems, but hey you’re paying for this stuff with your tax dollars. Your State governments and State agencies are not telling you the truth about what you should know about. But the only thing that I have been able to come up with these 20+ years is, the Legislature keeps shifting the burdens on to the next ones, and the next one keeps passing it on down the line. The State Legislature that you vote for does not fix the very problem they have helped create. Yet they cry wolf and say whatever they need to say to get more of your money, for their self-caused problems. And you continue to pay!
Hey Alabama, are you that blind, non-hearing, or do you just not want to get involved? Well you re involved, because what you keep failing to acknowledge is these locked-up individuals in here, will get out some day, and they will be changed, angry, unskilled to cope with modern society, and desperate. What will you do when you release someone society has passed by with new technologies, new laws that make it harder on the ones released and you give him $10.00 to get started on? Could you do it?
Hey Alabama, your prison system is a mess and it is only getting worse, because you keep changing the commissioner at the top trying to change the system or fix the problem, yet all the rest of the top stay the same. So what’s gonna change? Nothing! You have to change the people causing the problem to make things change. The ADOC will never change, because it’s going to keep doing what it always has, and the people of Alabama will keep on paying for it, because the ADOC is not accountable or answerable for anything it does, or any amount of money you supply it to spend.
But Alabama, you should want to know. And you should want to know how you’re being lied to. Do you? Prove it.
Alabama, life has changed as I knew it 25 years ago. Cell phones have been invented, Ipods, even MP3-players have come and have now mostly gone. But I have done what I can to change me. I used what was offered. But then I am from a different generation.
What does the future hold? I have no idea. But your taxpayers will foot the bill for it. You will continue to pay for your politicians, and they’ll get rich. They still won’t tell you the truth, ’cause it’s like what Jack Nicholson said in “A Few Good Men,” “The Truth, you can’t handle the Truth.” I do give you more credit, but time will tell, how long you keep accepting the loss of your hard-earned money. For your politicians’ failures, and when the ‘mass accident’ that’s waiting to happen in here, happens, they’ll come crying and screaming for you to give more money to fix their continued failure. As Senator Ward said in 2012, cited in a Jan. 7th, 2014 article: “The whole system is a ticking time bomb…”
It has already actually started, these last 3 years with all the inmate killings and assaults or other acts of violence within these fences. This is even on Correctional officers. The mini-riot at St. Clair. The incidents at Holman, and all the ones you don’t know about most of all. Because they won’t tell you about that unless it fits their agenda’s.
An ADOC officer stated to me that, “If this place was a dog pound in here, the way it is ran and the conditions it’s in, someone would be in jail for it.” It’s amazing that a dog pound is in better shape than a prison system. Even their own ADOC employees know it. But they won’t let you know that.
I promised the Truth, well did you truly want it? ‘Cause that’s what you’ve been given.
The ADOC do not want us writing or letting those on the outside world to know about what it’s really like, or what goes on in here. Out of sight, out of accountability, the beatings, stabbings, the real violence, the race-related problems [unreadable], and how the keepers of the gates are not all they are supposed to be. You should check out how many have been charged and convicted for stealing our Social Security numbers and ID’s and selling them. Yet the ADOC doesn’t even tell us about this going on, we find out from newspapers. They have stolen mine and filled false Income Tax on me twice… And I knew nothing about it. [see: here (Justice Department website) and here for example]
One final word, for those of us who do get out, will you be there to help or to turn your backs on us, as your judges, district attorneys, legislators, and so-called defense attorneys all have when we enter the system, when we have been abused, dehumanized, stripped of any pride or ambitions, and yet trying to have a little dignity in the face of adversity?
Like ex-Supreme Court Judge Sue Bell Cobb said in her own editorial from 2014, WWJD? Reform Alabama’s horrible criminal sentencing laws. What would Jesus do, Alabama, about these packed prisons and horrible criminal sentencing laws?
Alabama, don’t let them keep telling you only what they want you to know. Ask questions, or in the end you’ll be paying a lot more of your money on taxes for things you do not want or need.
Thanks for listening, Alabama, I only hope you truly are.
Now for a quick update:
The ADOC has stopped serving its inmates eggs of any kind, and hasn’t for a few months now. ADOC is also not giving adequate substitutes calorie-wise, if at all, to make up for its loss of food that makes up our daily diets. They have taken away pancakes, oranges, apples (we only got them once a month). No type of fresh produce of any kind. Yet their prison budget was fully funded and they have still cut down on the portions they feed us. Why?
They are telling us here at Atmore that before or shortly after the New Year (2016) they are going to put 250 more inmates into an already overcrowded unit (1250 inmates). And we’re wondering where these extra beds will go!
So Alabama, are you listening? I’m still wondering why Cam Ward keeps talking about the millions that are going to be saved by the ADOC (Nov. 6, 2015)…. How is this Bill you passed saving any money, when you had to have 26 million to fund it and will have to keep funding it? You are not saving anything. Quit telling the people of Alabama fairy tales. Oh, I forgot you’re a politician, you’re good at that. But what about your DUI, do you want to tell us more about that? I didn’t think so.
Well Alabama, you’ve been told, will you continue to let business be as usual? Your money, your future neighbors are in here. Are you just going to let the time bomb explode? These killings, stabbings, semi-riot situations happening all over the state, but do they tell you the truth or even let you know it?
It’s your choice and really your responsibility, and as Judge Sue Bell Cobb said: “Alabama what would Jesus do?”
Shame on Alabama!
The author of this pamphlet
And all Alabama inmates
Dec. 2015
Finished typing and editing on June 2016
We’ve made this article anonymous, because we do not want to cause the author any repercussions for expressing his opinion.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog*

blindpig

12-13-2016, 11:05 AM

Chief psychiatrist for Ohio prisons says care lacking in Alabama

http://image.al.com/home/bama-media/width620/img/news_birmingham_impact/photo/21691602-mmmain.jpg
Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore County is shown in September 2013. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)
Print Email Mike Cason | mcason@al.com By Mike Cason | mcason@al.com
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on December 12, 2016 at 11:49 AM, updated December 12, 2016 at 5:45 PM
The chief psychiatrist for the Ohio prison system said the Alabama prison system fails to spot mental illness in many inmates and lacks the staff to effectively treat those who are diagnosed.

Dr. Kathryn Burns testified that the number of inmates identified as mentally ill in Alabama - about 14 percent of all prisoners - indicates that many who need treatment are being missed.

Burns said about 25 to 30 percent of male prisoners are generally on mental health caseloads in other prison systems. She said the numbers are generally higher for female inmates.

"The prevalence rates suggest that people are being missed," Burns testified.

Burns testified that treatment plans for mentally ill inmates are not updated frequently enough when a crisis or self-injury indicates changes are needed.

She said some inmates who hurt themselves are not added to the mental health caseload.

Today is the sixth day of the non-jury trial in U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson's courtroom.

Inmates, backed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy program and others, claim in the class-action lawsuit that the failure to provide mental health care in state prisons violates the Eighth Amendment.

The Department of Corrections disputes the allegations. The DOC provides mental health care through a contractor, MHM Services.

MHM's chief psychiatrist in Alabama testified last week and defended the level of care.

The trial, which started Dec. 5, is expected to last about eight weeks.

Burns, an expert witness for the plaintiffs, visited nine Alabama prisons, interviewed 77 prisoners, spoke briefly with 25 others and reviewed mental health records and logs.

Much of her testimony today mirrored a 68-page report she submitted to the court in July.

Burns, questioned by SPLC attorney Maria Morris, said the prisons have too few psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, psychologists, licensed counselors and registered nurses.

Burns said it appeared that many counseling sessions amounted only to quick check-ins because counselors have caseloads that are too large.

"There just isn't enough time in the day to conduct individual counseling on a regular basis with that many people," Burns said.

Burns also testified that it's a concern that prison counselors are not required to be licensed.

Burns said the system relies too heavily on licensed practical nurses, who have less training than registered nurses.

Burns said she based her opinions on her experience, standards of the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, and other factors.

Burns testified that she had been involved in prison mental health litigation in a number of states, including a previous case in Alabama.

The state entered a settlement agreement in 2000 in that case, Bradley v. Haley, according to her report.

That agreement required the DOC to hire more psychiatrists and psychologists than is provided under its current contract with MHM even though it applied to a smaller population of inmates and male inmates only.

The current contract calls for more licensed practical nurses and more counselors than the agreement in 2000.

Burns broke down her written report into four opinions:

MHM does not have enough people working in prisons overall and not enough with professional credentials. A shortage of corrections officers hinders treatment because officers are not available to escort inmates to appointments or supervise clinical activities.
The process of identifying serious mental illness is inadequate so many are not diagnosed. Others who are diagnosed receive only psychotropic medication, not the comprehensive care they need.
The residential treatment units and stabilization units, for the most seriously mentally ill, are underused. Inmates housed there don't get enough time talking to counselors. Prisoners whose illness is untreated or undertreated are often placed in segregation as a punishment for behaviors caused by their illness.
Quality assurance and contract oversight are lacking.
Burns is being paid $350 an hour for her work, as well as $100 an hour for travel time.

Burns is expected to be on the stand again on Tuesday. Lawyers for the Department of Corrections have not yet had a chance to question her.

Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn is scheduled to testify on Wednesday.

Edited at 2:11 p.m. to correct wording in first sentence, changing "who are going undiagnosed" to "who are diagnosed." Edited at 5:14 p.m. to add more information from Burns' report.

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2016/12/chief_psychiatrist_for_ohio_pr.html

blindpig

12-13-2016, 02:16 PM

KINETIK JUSTICE OF FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT BRUTALLY ATTACKED; CALL IN TO RELOCATE HIM December 10, 2016

Submitted to It’s Going Down

Last Friday December 2, 2016 Free Alabama Movement Robert Earl Council “Kinetik Justice” was brutally attacked, while handcuffed, by two officers, Dozier and Shoulders at Limestone Correctional Facility while being escorted to the shower. He was pushed to the floor by one officer and was physically attacked while handcuffed on the floor. Afterwards the second officer pulled the first officer off and sprayed Kinetik Justice with mace and returned to his cell. It is not known as of this date if medical treatment was administered for his injuries.

A use of force is excessive and violates the Eighth Amendment when it is not applied in an effort to maintain or restore discipline but is used to maliciously and sadistically cause harm. Where a prison official is responsible for unnecessary abuses and harm.

Kinetik has expressed to us that he wants the wider movement to know that his life is in danger and calls upon all us to make some noise for him. We must demand that he be relocated due to his continued fear for his life, safety, and repeated harm inflicted by guards.

Here is a script for call ins:

“I am calling to demand that you release Robert Early Council from solitary confinement and move him out of Limestone Correctional Facility immediately. He was brutally beaten on December 2nd and continues to fear for his life.”

Limestone Correctional Facility
28779 Nick Davis Road
Harvest, AL 35749
(256) 233-4600
Warden Christopher Gordy

Commissioner
Jefferson Dunn

Associate Commissioner
Grant Culliver

Alabama Department of Corrections
301 South Ripley Street
P.O. Box 301501
Montgomery, Alabama 36130-1501
webmaster@doc.alabama.gov
(334) 353-3883

Governor Robert Bentley
600 Dexter Avenue
Montgomery, AL 36130
(334) 242-7100

Department of Justice
(205) 244-2001
ussaln.civilrights@usdoj.gov

DONATE TO HELP US GROW AND EXPAND!

https://itsgoingdown.org/kinetik-justice-free-alabama-movement-brutally-attacked-call-relocate/

blindpig

12-27-2016, 02:16 PM

Instruments of Torture: The Torture Chair
DECEMBER 26, 2016 / MATTYSTARDUST
by Sehu Kessa Saa Tabansi

Power to the people!

Since this is the holiday season of consumer shopping frenzies and enlarged corporate profiteering I thought that it would only be fitting to offer a present of my own to the millions of workers out there that rarely get a glance inside the US Torture Centers first hand to see the American torture devices right off the assembly line.

https://blackaugustcollective.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/photo1.png
Photo #1

This is an exclusive expose to the masses that read Workers World Newspaper. Illustrated in Photo #1 is the clever marketing publicity photo of just one of many designs of numerous companies in the US pushing this sanitized, sterilized version of the so-called “Compliance Chair.” This product’s original design purpose was for immobilization and secure transportation of a human being to a vehicle or a close destination within the bureaus of corrections and other judicial centers. In the photo the machine may not appear too threatening. At a quick glance or to the inexperienced public it would be easy not to see the enormous pain inflicted by this sadistic device.

It is this monstrous machine that prison plantations nationwide have co-opted and adopted into a torture device where human beings are strapped in for eight to fourteen or more hours of severe pain.

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Photo #2

Straight from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections we have for you laborers and readers of Workers World Newspaper Photo #2, which is a picture of this torturous mechanical device as it is used absent the inviting display used by companies to market this device.

This device is used throughout every prison plantation in Pennsylvania, on men, women and children. What you are seeing at the top of the image are called “shoulder straps” which bend the shoulders backwards on a decline. In the middle of this barbaric torture chair are the waist restraint straps which pull the pelvis and abdomen into the chain in such a manner as to cause an arch in the spine between the shoulder blades and the lower back spinal cord.

On the sides are two hard planks of plastic with straps and no cushions. These are called the “wrist restraint straps” and they are responsible for cutting off the blood circulation to both hands. Finally, at the bottom you have your “ankle restraint straps” which, like the wrist restraint straps, also stop the bloodflow to the lower extremities.

So at this point you are seeing a torture device that cuts off blood flow to the fingers and toes. Here in Photo #3 is a more detailed look at those ankle straps. What you are seeing is tough fiber coated in plastic.

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Photo #3

When the agents of repression assemble these plastic-coated straps around the ankles there is no space left between the ankle straps and the skin, thus no blood circulation to the feet. The sorry human being that is restrained in this fashions will feel their feet swell and turn blue, green and purple, causing incredible pain for eight to fourteen hours or more.

In this close-up photo, readers can see the wrist up close and personal. What is most revealing however are the two hard plastic planks which the arms are laid into. This is a hard surface with no cushion or anything of that nature; there is nothing cozy or comfortable about this instrument of pain! The oppressors apply these straps in a deliberate manner so that they are so tight against the flesh, similar to the ankle restraints, that the poor soul’s hands can swell three times their normal size. Discoloration occurs in phases, from blue to green, then purple to black, while the fingers sting and then eventually go numb from lack of blood circulation. Further, the waist restraint straps guarantee that the victim of this torture is unable to move, often for periods of eight to 14 hours or more.

For the victim of this torture device, there can be no movement from the head to toe. The pain is so unbearable that, over the course of an eight-to-fourteen-hour confinement to the chair, the victim will travel outside their body in shock and will hallucinate. We want readers to know that on top of this prisoners are naked, and that it is not unusual for there to be cold air blowing, for the victim to be sprayed with pepper spray, and for the victim to have to sit in their own urine and feces until release.

Besides Christmas, New Years, Hannukah and Kwanzaa there is “Watch Night.” I’ve been told that this is the night that slaves knew at midnight they would be free because of the Emancipation Proclamation (so they thought). With instruments of torture, the whip has simply evolved. So I ask readers and workers, are we really free? What’s the difference between whips and straps?

https://blackaugustcollective.wordpress.com/2016/12/26/instruments-of-torture-the-torture-chair/

blindpig

12-29-2016, 01:28 PM

CALIFORNIA BLAMES INCARCERATED WORKERS FOR UNSAFE CONDITIONS AND AMPUTATIONS
Spencer Woodman
December 28 2016, 11:23 a.m.
IN SEPTEMBER, AFTER months of organizing via smuggled cellphones and outside go-betweens, prisoners across the country launched a nationwide strike to demand better working conditions at the numerous facilities that employ inmate labor for little or no pay.

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The strike, which spread to dozens of institutions in 22 states, briefly called attention to a fact about prison labor that is well-understood in America’s penal institutions but scarcely known to the general public: Inmates in America’s state prisons — who make everything from license plates to college diploma covers — are not only excluded from the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on slave labor, but also exist largely outside the reach of federal safety regulations meant to ensure that Americans are not injured or killed on the job. Excluded from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s mandate of protecting American workers, these inmates lack some of the most basic labor protections other workers take for granted.

This vacuum of oversight causes the labor performed behind prison walls to be doubly invisible because it excludes inmates from federal record-keeping rules requiring non-prison employers to report serious job-site injuries to the federal government.

Yet injury logs generated by the California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) — the agency in charge of overseeing the prison work programs in the country’s second largest prison system — provide a rare window into the varied dangers that face inmate laborers. Since 2012, inmates in California have reported more than 600 injuries while working for as little as a 35 cents an hour, according to the documents obtained by The Intercept. The logs contain a wide range of job-site harms, from fingers being smashed in steel molds or sucked under sewing machine needles to less serious maladies like carpel tunnel syndrome and other common overuse conditions.

In some severe cases, inmates’ appendages were amputated after being crushed or severed in machinery. “[The inmate’s] sleeve became caught in gear and pulled hand into assembly,” one log reads, “resulting in amputation of r. hand.”

California generally pays its some 7,000 inmate workers between 35 and 95 cents an hour for their labor, and it is unclear whether any of the inmates listed as having lost appendages while working in California prisons have yet received any compensation for the amputations. A CALPIA spokesperson told The Intercept that the state had provided each of the inmate amputees with workers’ compensation forms, but the injured prisoners could take no action to pursue their claims until released from prison. California state law prohibits inmates from receiving workers’ compensation while still incarcerated, meaning that inmates serving life without parole sentences would never be entitled to a penny of compensation even for losing limbs on the job.

A common theme running among throughout the logs is the potential for many of the injuries to have been averted. “I did not really see anything in here that wouldn’t have been preventable,” said Linda Delp, the director of University of California Los Angeles’s Labor Occupational Safety and Health program, who reviewed the injury logs. Delp said that entries in the CALPIA logs conform to patterns she has seen on non-prison worksites where there is too little training of workers or where the employees are impelled to cut corners because management is requiring too much work to be done in too little time — or both.

A variety of recurring and preventable injury-types caught Delp’s attention. For instance, repeated entries describe objects becoming lodged in inmates’ eyes while they use industrial grinders. A possible solution, according to Delp, would be to ensure that inmate workers wear appropriate safety goggles or visors and have adequate training. Many other logs involve workers losing control of unwieldy objects, which then fall on workers, causing injuries in which body parts are strained, crushed, or lacerated. A solution to this, said Delp, would be to make sure inmates have enough help lifting and maneuvering heavy objects. There are also recurring cases where workers’ fingers become stitched through under sewing machine needles, or have their hands pulled into moving parts on sanders or other machinery — all of which could be prevented by proper machine guarding mechanisms and training, Delp said.

“In looking at these,” Delp said, “there’s something going on in terms of not providing the training and equipment that they need.”

Michele Kane, a CALPIA spokesperson told The Intercept that the office reports all inmate injuries to the state’s department of labor. “They implement and enforce safety regulations over all employers in California,” Kane said, “including state agencies such as CALPIA.” In response to questions from The Intercept regarding the potential preventability of injuries, a CALPIA spokesperson assigned workers responsibility for their injuries. “In spite of training and proper safety equipment provided by CALPIA,” Kane said in a statement, “there are times when inmates violate training protocols.”

While Delp cannot say anything for certain about CALPIA management practices by reviewing the logs alone, she took notice of the agency’s tendency to blame workers for their injuries.

“I always look for how these things are described and whether individual workers are blamed for what happened,” Delp said. “What’s fairly common across different types of jobs is for management to look the other way when people are breaking the safety rules because they want them to work faster, until someone gets hurt. And then that person is blamed for not following the safety rules.”

A typical example of CALPIA’s allocation of blame appears in one of the several logs that describe an incident resulting in an inmate suffering an amputation, in this case, a finger in garment machinery at the California Men’s Colony prison in San Luis Obispo County in April 2014. “While inmate was cutting fabric, inmate removed his glove to adjust machine, and failed to put his glove back prior to operating the machine,” the log reads, adding no additional information other aside from its result: amputation of “Finger(s)/Thumb(s).”

Top photo: James Dickert, age 68, sews socks together in a prison factory at California Men’s Colony prison on December 19, 2013 in San Luis Obispo, California.

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/28/california-blames-incarcerated-workers-for-unsafe-conditions-and-amputations/

blindpig

12-30-2016, 01:53 PM

Blood and Sugar
A FORMER PRISON GUARD’S QUIXOTIC CAMPAIGN TO MAKE A HOUSTON SUBURB CONFRONT ITS HISTORY.

JANUARY 2017by MICHAEL HARDY

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Moore at the Old Imperial Farm Cemetery on December 1, 2016.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAN GOLDMAN

Driving through Sugar Land, the suburb of 90,000 half an hour southwest of Houston, you can see the signs of growth everywhere. There’s the Smart Financial Centre, a $90 million, 6,400-seat concert venue that will celebrate its grand opening this month with a stand-up set by Jerry Seinfeld. Next door is the University of Houston’s Sugar Land campus, which will soon break ground on a 150,000-square-foot classroom building. The past decade has brought a new terminal for the city’s regional airport, a $37 million stadium for the city’s Minor League Baseball team, and an outpost of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, complete with its own T. rex. In 2014 Money magazine named Sugar Land the best small city in America to find a job, noting the number of Fortune 500 companies with a major presence there.

But hidden amid this prosperity is a reminder of a forgotten past. Off U.S. 90, behind a bustling shopping center, is a small cemetery surrounded by two concentric rings of chain-link fence. Inside are several dozen crumbling headstones, inscribed with the names and prison numbers of the convicts who died working the sugar plantations that gave the city its name. Most of the convicts died young. Will Stewart, number 50201, died in 1924, at the age of 30. Fred Carson, number 29760, died in 1917, at the age of 28.

The Old Imperial Farm Cemetery has been preserved thanks largely to the efforts of one person, 57-year-old Reginald Moore, a hulking giant of a man who played left guard at Yates High School, in Houston’s Third Ward, and at what was then called the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Now living in an unincorporated area of Harris County just outside Sugar Land, Moore has spent much of the past two decades on a one-man guerrilla campaign to force city officials to commemorate the convict-leasing system that flourished here in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. “They’re trying to hide it,” Moore recently told me. “They’ve done everything they could to run me off, to keep me out of the cemetery. And they’re still fighting me.”

Moore first became interested in the subject while working a brief stint as a prison guard over thirty years ago. In 1985, during the oil bust that crippled Houston’s economy, he was laid off from his job as a longshoreman at the Houston Ship Channel. Desperate for work, he became a guard at the Jester State Prison Farm, in Richmond. It was a period of dramatic upheaval for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which was then known as the Texas Department of Corrections. Five years earlier, as a result of a lawsuit against the state by a group of prisoners, a federal district judge had ordered the TDC to reduce overcrowding, provide better medical services, and hire more black and Hispanic guards. Moore, who is black, was one of the first beneficiaries of that court order. He arrived to find a prison that seemed stuck in the nineteenth century, with mostly black convicts working the fields under the eyes of shotgun-toting white men on horseback.

“It reminded me of a plantation, the way the guards treated the inmates,” Moore recalled. “You could see and feel the oppression. Even before I learned the history, I felt it.” Moore’s arrival at what is widely referred to as the Jester Unit coincided with the beginning of the crack-cocaine epidemic, and he had a front-row seat to the effects of the war on drugs. “I saw the prison population blossom and bloom,” Moore said. “I saw guys in the community go to prison, get out, then go right back in, because if you had just a little pebble [of crack] you went to jail.”

Disturbed by what he was seeing, Moore began researching the history of the Jester Unit. He learned that it sat on land that was part of the 97,400-acre tract granted by the Mexican government to Stephen F. Austin in 1823 for his services as impresario. Like most of the Anglo settlers he brought to what was then northern Mexico, Austin was a Southerner, and he saw Texas as fertile ground for creating the kind of cotton plantations that were flourishing across the South. In his recent book Seeds of Empire, University of North Texas historian Andrew Torget writes that “the rapid movement of U.S. expatriates into northern Mexico was—more than anything—a continuation of the endless search by Americans during those years for the best cotton lands along North America’s rich Gulf Coast.” Integral to cotton farming was slavery, which Austin encouraged by granting settlers 80 acres of extra land for each slave they brought with them.

Texas would become one of the biggest cotton-producing regions in North America, but it was a different commodity—sugar—that transformed the fertile banks of the Lower Brazos. In 1838 three brothers, Matthew, Samuel, and Nathaniel Williams, started one of the first sugar plantations in Texas on property in what is now Sugar Land that had been granted to their family by Austin himself. By the 1850s, sugar was a major industry in Fort Bend, Matagorda, Wharton, and Brazoria counties, which became known as the Sugar Bowl of Texas.

Like cotton plantations, sugarcane plantations relied heavily on slave labor. Harvesting cane was even more arduous than picking cotton. Slaves worked around the clock during harvest season to cut the sugarcane, press out the cane juice, boil it down, and then pack the finished product onto trains to be shipped around the country. “Sugar work was about as bad as you can imagine,” said Sean Kelley, a historian of early American history at the University of Essex. “People got sick, they died. Women’s fertility rates plummeted. Europeans quickly discovered that you couldn’t get people to work in this voluntarily, which is why there’s a strong historical linkage between sugar and slavery.”

Then came the Civil War. The South’s defeat and the abolition of slavery plunged the Texas economy into a depression. Deprived of their labor force, most of the sugar plantations on the Lower Brazos went bankrupt. One of the few that survived was the Williams plantation, which was purchased after the war by Edward H. Cunningham and Littleberry A. Ellis, business partners and Confederate veterans.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/reporter-cane-car.jpg
Convicts unloading a cane car at the Imperial Sugar Company’s mill sometime around 1900.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE SUGAR LAND HERITAGE FOUNDATION

Cunningham and Ellis survived the abolition of slavery by finding a new source of cheap labor: the Texas prison system. Although they weren’t the first growers to use convict labor, they were the biggest: in 1878 they signed a contract with the state to lease Texas’s entire prison population. This was perfectly legal, since the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, made one very consequential exception: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (Italics added.)

In the years before the Civil War, Texas’s state prisons had held around two hundred inmates, all kept at a single facility, in Huntsville. After abolition, the prison population exploded, disproportionately with black men. Unable to house and feed all the new prisoners, the state began renting them out to private companies, who were grateful for the supply of cheap labor.

As he learned more about this history, Moore began to see a parallel between the laws that were used to unjustly incarcerate freed blacks after the Civil War and the laws that were being used in the war on drugs to incarcerate blacks. He visited library archives in Houston and Galveston to look at so-called travel cards, which prisons used to keep track of inmates after the Civil War. “I would read those travel cards, and a big proportion of the blacks were in there on cases where they should have been doing probation or paying a fine,” Moore said.

The working conditions in Cunningham and Ellis’s sugar fields were as bad or worse than they had been on the slave plantations. Mosquito-borne epidemics, frequent beatings, and a lack of medical care resulted in a 3 percent annual mortality rate. The plantation soon became notorious across the state as the “Hellhole on the Brazos.”

Between 1906 and 1908 the plantation and its sugar-processing operations were bought up by Isaac H. Kempner, of Galveston, and William T. Eldridge, of Eagle Lake, who formally incorporated as the Imperial Sugar Company. Although Eldridge had used convict labor on another farm, Kempner was opposed to the practice and began planning to transition to free labor. To attract a new labor force, the two men established a company town, Sugar Land, with worker housing, stores, and a modern hospital.

Texas’s experiment with convict leasing was coming to an end anyway. In 1910, following a series of newspaper investigations of the Texas prison system, the Legislature formally ended the practice; by 1914 all prisoners were back under the exclusive control of the state. From then on, the only entity that would benefit from the coerced labor of prisoners would be the Texas Department of Corrections.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/reporter-sugar-land-railroad.jpg
A crew repairing Sugar Land Railroad lines in 1909. (The mill can be seen in the distance.)
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE SUGAR LAND HERITAGE FOUNDATION

By 1988 the Texas economy was finally coming out of recession, allowing Moore to quit the Jester Unit and return to his longshoreman job. But his three years as a guard had made a profound impression on him, and when he retired, in the late nineties, he decided to devote himself full-time to exposing the hidden history of the Texas criminal justice system. In 2006 he founded the Texas Slave Descendants Society, which advocates for greater recognition of the state’s history of exploiting black labor. He’s focused his activism on Sugar Land because of Cunningham and Ellis’s role in pioneering the convict-lease system.

References to Sugar Land’s early history are everywhere in the city today, from the antique vat used for boiling sugarcane displayed in the courtyard of the local Marriott to streets named after Williams, Cunningham, Ellis, Kempner, and Eldridge. A dramatic sculpture of Stephen F. Austin on horseback, clutching a rifle, stands guard in front of city hall. Even the names of the city’s McMansion-packed subdivisions—Plantation Colony, Plantation Bend, First Colony—evoke a gauzy, romanticized history.

Almost totally missing from the city’s historical memory, Moore realized, is any trace of the slave and convict labor that made the area’s sugar plantations so profitable. The history on the official city website makes no mention of slavery or convict leasing. Neither does the small historical exhibition on display at the Sugar Land Heritage Foundation. (Later this year the Heritage Foundation plans to open a larger exhibition space that it says will address both subjects.) In 2009 Sugar Land commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of its official incorporation as a town by commissioning a volume from Arcadia Publishing’s popular Images of America series. The introduction celebrates a city “built by those with a tenacious spirit that seized opportunity and melded it with a commitment to quality and service to others.” Slavery is not mentioned.

Moore sees a city in denial. One of his first goals as an activist was to preserve the Old Imperial Farm Cemetery, and ten years ago he succeeded in having the small plot officially designated a Historic Texas Cemetery by the Texas Historical Commission. The commission also made him the guardian of the cemetery and gave him permission to conduct archaeological research there. In December a state historical marker was installed at the site. (Moore is not particularly happy with the language on the marker, which he says is a watered-down version of the historical record.)

Moore is not without allies. He’s received support and advice from Rice University history professors W. Caleb McDaniel and Lora Wildenthal, as well as University of Houston anthropologist Kenneth L. Brown. In 2015, Rice’s Woodson Research Center acquired Moore’s archive of historical research and mounted an exhibition about convict leasing at the university library.

“I was very interested in the stuff that Reginald had pulled together,” said Wildenthal. “Convict leasing is the missing link between slavery, which everyone knows about, and the disparate impact of the criminal justice system on African Americans today.”

Emboldened by his success, Moore lobbied city and state officials to build a memorial to convict laborers next to the cemetery. “They honor Stephen F. Austin and Cunningham and Ellis,” Moore explained to me. “Why can’t they honor the black people who built this town?” Then he increased his demands, arguing that the city needed an entire museum dedicated to slavery and convict leasing. He also began requesting official apologies for the state’s involvement in the convict-lease system. He was ignored or received polite refusals.

Sugar Land officials have grown tired of Moore’s relentless activism. “He has come to the city council and expressed his interest in the city creating a museum for the convict-lease program,” said city manager Allen Bogard. “He’s also asked for reparations from the city, slave reparations.” Some city officials have questioned Moore’s motives. “In the past, he has told us that if we contract with him [to build a memorial or museum] and if we pay him money, he would probably be a whole lot easier to get along with,” said Phil Wagner, the city’s assistant director of economic development. (Moore emphatically denies trying to extort money from the city.)

The city has declined to build a memorial or museum, although it did include a display devoted to the subject at the Houston Museum of Natural Science at Sugar Land, which is housed in a former prison barracks. The way Bogard sees it, the Sugar Land of 2017 has no connection to what happened in 1910 or the 1850s. “There’s not a single facility, road, nor improvement that exists today in the city of Sugar Land that can be traced back to either the convict-lease program or slavery,” he said.

When I mention the Imperial Sugar Company, which is now owned by a European group but maintains an office in town, Bogard again demurred. “Our history as a city begins fifty years ago. The Imperial Sugar Company, of course, played an important part in our early history. But the fact is that this area would have developed with or without the Imperial Sugar Company.”

http://www.texasmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/reporter-the-jester-unit.jpg
The Jester Unit, where Moore once worked, on December 1, 2016.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAN GOLDMAN

Just outside Sugar Land is a living memorial to the area’s history: the Jester Unit, where Moore worked in the eighties. Driving along Harlem Road in Richmond, Moore pointed out the vast fields where Texas prisoners still plant and harvest crops. Inmates in white uniforms were visible behind fences topped with razor wire. Moore also spotted the gate leading from the prison out into the fields, where he used to perform guard duty. “I watched the prisoners going out to the fields every day through that gate and coming back in.”

In recent years Texas’s prison population has dropped significantly. Five years ago, the TDCJ closed its first prison in more than a century, the Central Unit, in Sugar Land. The Jester Unit may be next; thanks to Fort Bend County’s explosive growth, the prison sits on valuable land. Several upscale subdivisions have arisen within sight of its walls.

There’s also been a national backlash to prison farms, thanks to the same kind of investigative journalism that killed off convict leasing in the early-twentieth century. Just as slavery gave way to convict leasing and convict leasing gave way to state-operated prison farms, the prison farm system now seems to be in decline. What replaces it remains to be seen.

Bogard, the Sugar Land official, sees a bright future for his city, one increasingly untethered to its regrettable past. “Thirty-four percent of our residents are foreign-born, and thirty-eight percent of them are Asian,” he told me, standing in the plaza outside city hall near the town’s much-discussed selfie statue. “We have a population that is less than ten percent African American and has never been a significant part of our recent history since we’ve existed as a city, even though we’ve had black representatives on our city council on two different occasions. So that is a part of our history . . . it’s nothing that ever comes up here, other than that occasionally we have a conversation with Reginald Moore.”

Those conversations seem likely to continue. On a Wednesday morning in October, Moore stepped to the microphone in a conference room at the Hilton Garden Inn West in Katy. Wearing a Martin Luther King Jr. T-shirt, he glared at the members of the Texas Historical Commission, who had gathered for their quarterly meeting. He began by reading an excerpt from a history of the Imperial State Prison Farm that describes convict laborers “dying like flies in the periodic epidemics of fever.”

“A lot of people would like to turn their heads [from] this—but you can’t turn your heads!” Moore told the committee, rapping the lectern loudly with his knuckles to emphasize his point. “I need your support. I need legislation. I need activism. We need to put this in Texas history books. We need a monument put up in the state capitol to those workers who brought our state out of recession when it was devastated by war. Be advocates! Because I’m tired. I’ve been doing this seventeen years.”

The commission members asked Moore a few brief questions. Then they moved on to other business.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/sugar-land-slave-convict-labor-history/

Dhalgren

12-30-2016, 01:54 PM

a parallel between the laws that were used to unjustly incarcerate freed blacks after the Civil War and the laws that were being used in the war on drugs to incarcerate blacks.

It strikes me as more than a "parallel". It looks like the same damned thing. The point is to get people of color into the prison system and then use them as slave labor. How anyone can see this as conscionable is beyond me. Where are all the politically correct social-justice warriors when it comes to modern slavery? They are silent, because "these are criminals!" Makes me fucking sick.

blindpig

12-30-2016, 03:16 PM

Prison Activist Gassed in Clements Unit Prison, Texas Law Enforcement Is Violently Out of Control
JMContact Campaign Creator
Campaign created by
Jamani Montague

https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/prison-activist-gassed-in-clements-unit-prison-texas-law-enforcement-is-violently-out-of-control

Prison Activist Gassed in Clements Unit Prison, Texas Law Enforcement Is Violently Out of Control
Sign this petition to demand that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice complies with the following:

1. Immediately provide medical attention to Kevin “Rashid” Johnson before returning him to a decontaminated cell
2. Immediately return/replace his stolen legal materials and commissary items
3. Prosecute the guards who gassed Kevin “Rashid” Johnson for neglecting post-contamination procedure
4. Protect Clements Unit guard Britta Townsend from physical and administrative retaliation
5. Stop the gassing of prisoners at Clements Unit

Why is this important?

On Wednesday, December 21, 2016, a prisoner at the Texas Clements Unit, Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, was gassed in his cell while handcuffed from behind. A letter written by Mr. Johnson to a supporter, dated December 22, 2016, reported that his gassing was “all retaliation for my involvement in exposing the foul abuses here." Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is a well known scholar and prison activist who has dedicated his efforts to exposing the civil and environmental injustices behind bars.

His most recent letter also reads:
“I'm in a gas-covered cell now. The law requires that they decontaminate a prisoner and his cell anytime they spray gas on him/her. They refused in my case. My sheets and bedding are covered in bright orange gas, underwear too, as is the cell wall." According to the supporter who received Rashid’s letter, she could smell the toxic gas as soon as she opened the envelope.

The vicious treatment of Mr. Johnson is part of a clear pattern. There is evidently a culture among prison staff that encourages such sadistic behavior. What they have done and continue to do -- both to Mr. Johnson and to thousands of other victims -- constitutes a clear violation of basic human rights.

A signed statement from prison guard Britta Townsend corroborates that Mr. Johnson was confined to a gassed cell that was not decontaminated and forced to sleep with sheets covered with the bright orange gas. According to Mr. Johnson, Ms. Townsend now fears that she will be targeted by her peers and higher ranking officers.

Demands:
1. Immediately provide medical attention to Kevin “Rashid” Johnson before returning him to a decontaminated cell
2. Immediately return/replace his stolen legal materials and commissary items
3. Prosecute the guards who gassed Kevin “Rashid” Johnson for neglecting post-contamination procedure
4. Protect Clements Unit guard Britta Townsend from physical and administrative retaliation
5. Stop the gassing of prisoners at Clements Unit

https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/prison-activist-gassed-in-clements-unit-prison-texas-law-enforcement-is-violently-out-of-control

blindpig

12-31-2016, 08:20 AM

"Cruel and unusual punishment': Texas judge orders count of heat-related prison deaths
Published time: 30 Dec, 2016 22:44
Edited time: 31 Dec, 2016 12:52

"Cruel and unusual punishment': Texas judge orders count of heat-related prison deaths

https://cdn.rt.com/files/2016.12/original/5866c9b5c46188fe608b4644.jpg
© Jenevieve Robbins / Texas Dept of Criminal Justice / Reuters

A federal judge in Texas has ordered the state to disclose the number of heat-related deaths that have occurred in its prisons since 1990. The order comes as part of federal civil rights lawsuit over the heat-related deaths of 13 inmates.
Six inmate plaintiffs in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state prison system argued that more than 1,400 inmates, many elderly and infirm, are suffering “cruel and unusual punishment,” a violation the Eighth Amendment, by not having access to air conditioning, according to the Houston Chronicle.

S District Judge Keith Ellison held a hearing on the lawsuit on Wednesday, and gave the state 30 days to comply, AP reported.

The lawsuit, which was filed in 2013, contends that 13 inmates have died of heat-related deaths since 2007, including 11 in 2011, when a heatwave brought some of the hottest temperatures on record.

Daily measurements taken by the National Weather Service show that, since the beginning of the summer in 2016, the peak heat index has averaged 104 degrees, NPR reported.

The prison’s cell blocks are poorly ventilated, steel and concrete blocks, the inmates said. To make matters worse, the Wallace Pack Unit sits on humid pasturelands between Austin and Houston.

“A lot of times it gets so hot in our dorms that we have to strip down to our boxers, and we’ll just lay on the floor because it’s a little bit cooler on the floor than it is trying to sit up in our bunks,” plaintiff Keith Cole, 62, who is serving life for murder, told NPR. “We try to stay in front of our fans. But in reality, there’s really not too much that we can really do in our living areas to alleviate the heat.”

Cole suffers from heart disease, diabetes and hypertension, and there are a lot of older prisoners like him in the prison.

“My age, with the medical conditions that I have, the medications that I am on, extreme heat can kill me,” he said. “So, it’s not a comfort issue with me. It has nothing to do with that. This is a serious medical issue.”

Autopsies reveal that, since 1998, 20 inmates have died from heatstroke or hyperthermia in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

There are probably more, inmates said, but the cause of death is often listed as heart attack.

There are 109 state prison facilities in Texas, with 30 only that are air-conditioned in all housing areas. Facilities have balked at the expense of outfitting all their prisons with air conditions, and have said that retrofitting the Pack Unit alone would cost $22 million.

https://www.rt.com/usa/372317-texas-judge-orders-prison-deaths/

Twitter screenshots at link.

blindpig

01-03-2017, 02:17 PM

Orange Crush: The Rise of Tactical Teams in Prison
Monday, January 02, 2017
By Brian Dolinar, Truthout

http://www.truth-out.org/images/images_2017_01/2017_0102orn_.jpg
A lawsuit exposes the abuses of a tactical team called the "Orange Crush" deployed in some Illinois prisons. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

Note: This article includes graphic reports of sexual violence.

Since Ferguson, there has been a public outcry over militarized police who shoot down African Americans on the streets of our cities, but less is known beyond prison walls about guards who regularly brutalize those incarcerated. In Illinois, there is a notorious band of guards called the "Orange Crush" who don orange jumpsuits, body armor and riot helmets to conceal their identity. They carry large clubs and canisters of pepper spray, which they use liberally. A recent lawsuit names a list of horrific abuses that includes strip searches, beatings and mass shakedowns of cells.

In the decades since the 1971 prison rebellion at Attica in New York, there has been a gradual build-up of these "tactical teams," also known as "tac teams" or Special Operations Response Teams (SORTs). Today, they are routinely used for anything from fights to reports of contraband. Only within the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) have they earned the infamous name of "Orange Crush." Anyone who has been incarcerated in the men's state prison system has a story about these abusive guards.

I first heard of the Orange Crush in 2005 from my pen pal Gregory Koger, then held in isolation in Pontiac, Illinois, who described them in an article he wrote:

The "tac team" is a specially equipped team of approximately 6 officers wearing body armor, helmets, gas masks, with a shield and stick (they also wear orange jumpsuits under their body armor and hence carry the nickname "Orange Crush"). If for some reason you are asked to leave your cell and you refuse to comply, the "tac team" will come to your cell, spray a cloud of pepper spray, and then rush in to subdue you, handcuff you, shackle you, and remove you from your cell.
These teams can number from half a dozen to as many as 100 officers. They perform what are described by Koger as "cell extractions." Once individuals are removed, they perform "shakedowns," or searches of all personal belongings, often confiscating property.

"Nuts to Butts"

A lawsuit against the Orange Crush was filed jointly in 2015 by Uptown People's Law Center and Loevy & Loevy, two Chicago-based firms that fight for the rights of the incarcerated. A judge recently approved the suit to move toward discovery. It is filed on behalf of Demetrius Ross, a man imprisoned at Illinois River Correctional Center, as well as others at Menard Correctional Center, Big Muddy River Correctional Center and Lawrence Correctional Center who describe similar abuses by the Orange Crush. All these prisons are located in downstate Illinois, far from Chicago where many of those incarcerated there are from. A total of 232 officers are named as defendants. The suit, based on Ross's testimony, describes a mass shakedown in April 2014 at Illinois River where 2,000 men are kept.

Ross alleges that officers dressed in orange suits entered his wing yelling loudly, making "whooping" sounds, and hitting their batons on walls, tables and doors. Two guards stood in front of each cell screaming at those inside to "get asshole naked." Once undressed, they had them exit the cell, turn around, bend over and spread their butt cheeks. The men were then asked to turn around and lift up their genitals for inspection. They used their fingers to open their mouths while guards looked for any contraband. According to Ross, some of the guards were women.

After the strip search, the men were allowed to get dressed, but told they could not put on underwear. Then they were lined up against a wall. The guards walked back and forth waving their sticks and chanting repeatedly "punish the inmate." Anyone who looked at the guards had their face slammed against the wall and were told to "put [their] fucking heads down!" The suit claims this was to protect the identity of the Orange Crush guards.

The men were marched single file into the gym in a manner the guards called "Nuts to butts." They were made to walk close together while bent over at the waist in a 90-degree angle. The guards yelled that they didn't want to see "any fucking daylight" between the men. The suit describes this line-up as humiliating and sexually abusive, "one man's genitals were in direct contact with the buttocks of the man ahead of him in line."

When Ross lifted his head, his face was slammed into the man in front of him so hard that his glasses fell off and were broken. At one point, Ross was pulled out of line, forced to the ground, choked and jabbed in the back with batons. The march to the gym was "long and painful."

The men waited in the gym without water or bathroom breaks while the Orange Crush searched through their cells. They returned to find their rooms "tossed," leaving their belongings scattered about. Some claimed their property, including legal documents, were stolen. When one person said they were going to tell Warden Greg Dossett, also named in the suit, they claim to be told he "already knew all about what was happening at the facility."

Similar shakedowns occurred at other prisons shortly after, the suit alleges. According to witnesses, in May 2014 the Orange Crush conducted one at Big Muddy, and a month later at Lawrence and Menard prisons. These actions were, the suit claims, part of a "policy or practice implemented, overseen, and encouraged by IDOC supervisors."

After Attica

In an interview with Truthout, Brian Nelson, who spent 28 years in Illinois prisons and now works at the Uptown People's Law Center, spoke about the Orange Crush, with which he was very familiar. These tactical teams, he said, were a response to the prison rebellion at Attica prison in 1971, as well as similar uprisings at Pontiac, Illinois in 1978 and the New Mexico State Penitentiary in 1980. Since then, Nelson said, there has been an "explosion of tactical teams to maintain control and go into prisons immediately."

Heather Ann Thompson, University of Michigan professor and author of the new book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Aftermath, also corresponded with Truthout. Before Attica, cell extractions happened, she wrote in an email: "They even happened the night before the rebellion which is why the men were so agitated." But in those days, officers were few in number and they were not dressed in riot gear. "Excessive physical crackdown by guards," she said, "on any perceived inmate infraction is definitely a post-Attica phenomenon."

The attorney who helped write the suit against the Orange Crush, Alan Mills, of the Uptown People's Law Center, confirmed this account. At the time of Attica when those like George Jackson and others were politicized, "prison officials relied on local police forces to put down prison rebellions." After Attica, they saw a need to create their own tactical teams. Similar to the creation of SWAT teams, there was a militarization of law enforcement that happened "both inside and outside" of prisons.

Toussaint Losier, professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst, who has been researching the Pontiac rebellion, also agreed. At that time, the trend was to "bring in the state police to crack heads, as well as the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement to conduct any sort of investigation." The Orange Crush, said Losier, "seems to be a prison-by-prison training team of those most committed within the ranks of correctional officers."

One formerly incarcerated man, Charles Davidson, who resides in Urbana, Illinois, recalled this turn from his own experience of spending many years in prison. He remembers the Orange Crush conducting strip searches and shakedowns in the early 1990s at Jacksonville Correctional Center where he was locked up. He was also in Pontiac during the 1960s and recalls, "I didn't see them there."

Taking Prisons Back From the Gangs

According to Mills, today's Orange Crush emerged out of the 1996 campaign to rid Illinois prisons of gangs like the Vice Lords and Latin Kings, which ran many illicit operations with the full cooperation of prison authorities. It followed the media story of Richard Speck, who was convicted of mass murder. While he was in Stateville Prison, a video was released that showed him performing sex acts and snorting large quantities of cocaine that had been smuggled into the prison. The video was shown on the floor of the Illinois legislature, prompting outrage. Prison authorities imposed a yearlong lockdown of maximum security prisons in the state. The plan was to "take prisons back from the gangs," said Mills. Teams of prison guards were "unleashed" upon the prison population. The Orange Crush went in to assert total control.

Now, the new lawsuit is trying to expose the Orange Crush and those who ordered the raids at four separate facilities in Spring 2014. The suit has thus far overcome a motion to dismiss by the IDOC. District Judge Staci Yandle concluded that defendants "purposely concealed their identities to evade responsibility for their actions." Finding out those responsible was "impossible" without pretrial discovery. Although the suit moves forward, its claims of sexual abuse in violation of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) were dismissed.

Discovery documents show at least half a dozen men received medical attention, and another half dozen were sent to segregation as a result of the shakedown at Illinois River.

The reason why the Orange Crush conducted the sweeps is still unclear. The IDOC produced redacted copies of the operations orders revealing no information. There's currently a legal battle over the purpose of the mass raids.

Mills said he disputes prison authorities who claim these are "necessary measures." He believes the "pendulum has swung too far. Abusing people and treating [them] as less than human is never 'necessary.'"

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38941-orange-crush-the-rise-of-tactical-teams-in-prison

Dhalgren

01-13-2017, 01:52 PM

Amid violence and frustration, number of Alabama prison guards drops 20 percent

The Associated Press

The frustrations piled up long before Jonathan Truitt ended his career as a corrections officer.

A sergeant at St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Truitt started at Holman Correctional Facility in 2008. He had been working in a sawmill and worked out with several correctional officers at a local YMCA, who mentioned the department was hiring. With the economy starting to slip into recession, it seemed like a good move. After more than three years at Holman, Truitt won a promotion to St. Clair in 2012.

The work at the prison -- notorious for its violence -- grew harder and harder. There were long shifts lasting up to 16 hours. Searches of cell blocks could yield "30 to 40 knives" in a cell block with 24 cells. The equipment COs had, Truitt said, was subpar: Pepper spray cans might be half full, and radios might lack decent batteries or chargers. Keeping order, Truitt said, became ever more difficult. Inmates, he said, were "being assaulted in every way imaginable," Truitt said in a recent interview, Contraband in the prison, he said, "is out of control."

But it was an incident at Truitt's old prison that led him to step away. In September, Officer Kenneth Bettis, an Iraq War veteran who Truitt worked with at Holman, was stabbed by an inmate; according to the Alabama Department of Corrections, the inmate attacked Bettis for denying him an extra plate of food. Bettis died of injuries two weeks later.

At that point, Truitt said, he thought about the costs to his family should he be killed in the line of duty. He resigned last month. "My original intention was, do 25 years and retire," he said. "The plans got changed real quick."

Many other corrections officers have also decided to step away. According to ADOC records, the number of officers assigned to state prisons fell from 2,042 in September 2015 to 1,627 this past September, a 20 percent drop in the workforce. Not only did that drop come on top of a long-term decline in the number of COs in the prisons -- there were 2,342 officers assigned to Alabama correctional facilities in September 2011 -- it exceeded it, a fact department officials are very aware of.

"We saw the most significant dip in one year than in the past five years," Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn said in a recent interview.

The state's prisons had just 45.6 percent of their authorized officers working in the prisons in September. Four medium-security facilities - Bibb, Easterling, Fountain/J.O. Davis and Ventress - had less than a third of their authorized officers working in the facilities.

Turnover in correction officer ranks is not unusual, but staffing issues are becoming more acute because the number of people applying to be corrections officers is falling.

"I think the public has become very aware of the conditions inside our facilities, and that gives people pause," Dunn said.

The decline in officer ranks has come amid an increase in violence.

Total year-to-date assaults went up from 1,362 reported incidents in September 2015 to 1,764 in September 2016, an increase of 29.5 percent. Reported assaults on staff_including assaults with serious injury and those involving thrown substances - increased from 465 in September 2015 to 521 in September 2016, a jump of 12 percent.

Eric Wynn, released from St. Clair on Aug. 29 after serving 10 years in various state prisons on drug charges, called the facility "extremely dangerous."

"It was like a jungle," he said. "If you weren't strong enough or didn't carry a knife, your property got taken."

At St. Clair, reported year-to-date assaults increased from 157 in September 2015 to 249 in September 2016, a 58.5 percent increase, though an ADOC intervention in the prison last spring helped reduce monthly assaults down through September.

Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, who sponsored a major prison reform bill in 2015, said "morale is at an all-time low" for corrections officers.

"It's the most dangerous law enforcement job in the state, but they're paid the least," he said.

A corrections officer trainee starts making $28,516.80 a year, compared to $35,589.60 for a state trooper trainee.

Dunn says he will include money for a pay raise in his 2018 budget request, though the department was still working on the details of proposal last month. The corrections budget -- and any adjustment in pay -- will need to be approved by the Alabama Legislature. Dunn and Gov. Robert Bentley will also renew a campaign to replace most of the state's prisons with four new facilities, which they say will improve safety for staff and inmates in the facilities.

There were high-profile outbursts of violence last year, including the murder of two inmates at Elmore County Correctional Facility, and riots at Holman where, in March, the warden was stabbed. The drop in staffing, Dunn said, plays a role.

"Could we say if one more officer or two more officers could have prevented (the riots)?" Dunn said. "I don't think we can say that definitively. But I know if we'd had 20 officers there, we'd have a different dynamic in the prison."

The loss of corrections officers has driven inmate-to-officer ratios up throughout the system. There were 11.8 inmates for every corrections officer in September 2015, according to ADOC numbers; that increased to 13.4 inmates for every corrections officer this past September. In Bibb, Easterling and Fountain correctional facilities, the ratio exceeded 20 inmates for every one corrections officer.

That means long hours for the officers who work in the facilities.

"They don't have proper equipment, (and) they work tons of overtime," said Randall McGilberry, president of the Alabama Corrections Officer Association. "If something did break out, a lot of guys would be so fatigued they wouldn't be able to respond properly." McGilberry also faulted what he described as "poor management" within the prison system.

Truitt plans to go back to college and finish a degree in education. He said he worked with good officers in the prisons and tried to help inmates "that were trying to better their lives and get out" by assisting them with GED classes or entry into trade schools.

But the violence and the lack of support, he said, finally became too much for him.

"It was just no longer worth it to stay there," he said.

Brian Lyman , Montgomery Advertiser

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/01/amid_violence_and_frustration.html

blindpig

02-02-2017, 10:14 AM

Don’t Blame Inmates for the #VaughnRebellion in Delaware, Blame the Prisons

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*TVmbzXkh7J0wL7nsnHs90A.jpeg
SWAT Teams lined up on the perimeter of the Facility. Twitter.

Early this afternoon, an inmate uprising was reported at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Facility in Smyrna, Delaware, with reports of a “hostage situation” being reported around 12:30 PM. Trending on Twitter as the #VaughnRebellion, the inmates took control of a large building in the prison complex and took five correctional officers hostage in an effort to enact their demands. One officer, injured while inmates took control of the building, was released shortly after, and the remaining officers are still being held by inmates. At the moment, police officers and SWAT teams are believed to be organizing around the perimeter of the facility, most likely in an effort to besiege and eventually re-capture the prison.

Despite initially not having an outlet to communicate their demands, calls from inside the facility were made to the local Wilmington News-Journal. The first call, received by an inmate who claimed that he himself was being held hostage, told the News-Journal that the prisoners were calling for an end to “oppression towards the inmates”, specifically citing the prison’s practice of “improper sentencing orders” and “status sheets being wrong”. Later, a full statement of demands was delineated through a second phone call to the News-Journal. This is their statement:

We’re trying to explain the reasons is for doing what we’re doing. Donald Trump. Everything that he did. All the things that he’s doing now. We know that the institution is going to change for the worse. We know the institution is going to change for the worse. We got demands that you need to pay attention to, that you need to listen to and you need to let them know. Education, we want education first and foremost. We want a rehabilitation program that works for everybody. We want the money to be allocated so we can know exactly what is going on in the prison, the budget.

It takes little to see the conditions which led to the Rebellion. Just yesterday, The Morning Call reported on the Delaware prison system’s decision to continue its serving of Nutraloaf to unruly inmates. Also known as prison loaf, Nutraloaf is an intentionally gag-inducing meal described by many as “cruel and unusual punishment”, and is just one example of the failures of the Delaware prison system. Prisons are at over 150% capacity, recidivism rates are approaching 100%, and as incarceration rates have skyrocketed, so have violent crime rates. Prisoners routinely report improper treatment, with 10% of prisoners placed in solitary confinement at any given moment. The incarceration system in Delaware is also clearly racially motivated, with 6-in-10 inmates in the state being Black despite committing far less than 60% of the crime, much less violent crime, and being an even smaller fraction of the population. As a microcosm of a national prison system that operates on much the same lines, Delaware represents the worst harms of Jim Crow’s successor, mass incarceration.

The Vaughn Rebellion comes as yet another flashpoint in the fight against mass incarceration in the United States. Anti-mass incarceration actions have become increasingly radical in the last year, culminating in the months long prison strike led by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), the largest prison strike in US history. Despite briefly becoming a campaign issue during the Democratic Presidential Primary in early 2016, the issue of mass incarceration has been largely under-covered by the US Media, even after the IWOC-led strike in late 2016. While some short-lived efforts have been made on a legislative to curb the worst harms of mass incarceration, none have gone far enough, and none have gained enough traction to pave the way towards real change.

Until reforms are made to the prison system and Delaware and nationwide, events such as the Vaughn Rebellion are the only option for a group of Americans under the oppression of mass incarceration. These prisoners are dehumanized to the point that they have no voice, to the point that even two months of non-violent strike resulted in no pathway to change. When left with no ability to fight back by other means, violence becomes the only option, and we should be on the side of the prisoners in their struggle. The description of a Facebook event in solidarity with the rebels states it most succinctly:

The 2,500 inmates at the Vaughn facility are the real and ongoing hostages — hostage to subhuman conditions.

https://medium.com/the-unbalanced/dont-blame-inmates-for-the-vaughnrebellion-in-delaware-blame-the-prisons-e18beeaa869a#.v2tte7h2d

Bravery and desperation, cause ya know that the punishment will be brutal.

blindpig

02-07-2017, 02:30 PM

THE FLEECING OF THE PRISON POPULATION
Posted on February 7, 2017 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

Repost by Don Shula in Prison Reform Movement:
This is a post from Debra Hernandez. What she is saying is so important and true.

SILENCE AND INACTION IN THE FACE OF ALL THIS INJUSTICE IS CONSENT, IS COMPLICITY.

Here she comments on the reasons behind the prison abolition movement.

I love it.
Been involved since 1978. The pendulum definitely swung way way right. I hope to see it in my lifetime.

The problem is that the Legislature and system that created the system will put up a fight due to the profiteers. I believe like in Arizona the same people who started to put this in motion in the late 80s are the exact same who are the ones who profit. Many in AZDOC administration now work in conjuction with the private prisons we have here. It continues to grow.

Actually, Arizona is in a teacher crisis. They are down thousands of teachers. Several thousand class rooms don’t have teachers that are credentialed. They have babysitters. Governor Ducey who gave his address at the beginning of the year started all about education being a priority. It is smoke and mirrors. He have condemned buildings that used to be the classrooms, next to what was supposed to be temporary.

He proposed, get this a .04% raise for teachers. What a joke. Minimum wage gets more than college educated professionals.

Now, if journalists want to uncover what’s underneath the smoke and mirrors, they would find it is criminal how our education system has been raided over the last 20 years. The politicians stole from the kids and made a crime and punishment industry that gets billions. Here in Arizona, the budget for prisons is extremely high. Like I said a couple ofbillion or more.

Now, over the years they have put the costs onto the prisoners families.

They pay $25.00 for an application to visit per adult and children who become teems then have to get a back check even if they have visited for most of their young lives. Azdoc took control through the AZ Legislature, years ago, the inmate account and made it the property of AZDOC. So, once it goes on their books it belongs to Department of Corrections. They receive the interest. They get kick backs from the telephones, the commissary . They have to buy there own clothes which are orange AZDOC uniforms. They don’t actually own them, they rent them. Doc will take them back once you are released if they are so lucky to get out. They pay electric, they pay for Doctors appointment and there are fees that have nothing to do with inmate. Those fees are expenses for other parts of the prison system, like programs for drunk drivers who are serving time. There are no programs, no incentives to learn and better themselves. They say they do but in reality that is another smoke and mirror.

WHAT I AM GETTING AT IS,

WE HAVE AN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM SET UP HERE IN ARIZONA THAT GUARANTEES THAT MORE PRIVATE PRISONS WILL BE NEEDED.

THE PROBLEM IS THE POOR SCHOOLS ARE ATTROCITIES.

THE PRISONS DON’T HAVE THE STAFFING. THEY ARE SO SHORT ON STAFF THAT WOULD BE CONSIDERED A CRISIS. REMEMBER THE LONGEST PRISON HOSTAGE SITUATION HAPPENED IN LEWIS PRISON, THE EXACT PRISON THAT MY HUSBAND AND SON ARE IN.

THEY DON’T HAVE ENOUGH FOOD TO FEED THEM THE FOOD PACKAGE LIMIT HAS GROWN OVER SEVERAL YEARS. THE AMOUNT THEY CAN BUY IN COMMISSARY ALSO HAS GONE UP.

THE FAMILIES OF THE INMATES ARE SUBSIDIZING THE MEALS, THE CLOTHES, THE DENTIST OR DOCTOR APPOINTMENTS. THEY PAY ELECTRICITY, FEES ARE PASSED ON AS WELL. WE THEN PAY OUR TAXES AND WE PAY FOR THE BILLIONS IN AZ DEPARTMENT OF THE BUDGET.

WHERE IS ALL THE MONEY GOING TO? NOT TO SCHOOLS, OR PRISONERS CARE AND NOT SECURITY OF THE PUBLIC.

I WOULD LIKE AN INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER USE THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT AND FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/the-fleecing-of-the-prison-population/

Bolding added

Dhalgren

02-07-2017, 02:55 PM

I WOULD LIKE AN INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER USE THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT AND FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL.

This is an abomination, from coast to coast. No reporter will "look into it" and no editor will run it and no corporate media will fund it. This is bottom-rock, the most extensive, methodical exploitation the "laws" will allow - no way the bourgeoisie will give this up, if for no other reason, then for their "principles". Gutless sons of bitches.

Dhalgren

02-28-2017, 11:21 AM

A Witness to Genocide: Soul-less in Alabama DOC, by S.J.

Posted on February 28, 2017 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

”I have witnessed more than my share of young men that have been sucked into the modern-day plantation. Young men that have been abandoned, forgotten, and alienated. Young men that have been discarded like the trash in our every day households.

I’ve witnessed the transformation of these young men from someone’s son, brother, grandson, father, or husband/boyfriend; to an animal!! What was once hope in their eyes turned to hate, and despair.

I’ve watched and witnessed the lives of young men drain from their eyes, and their soul when they were forced to adapt to this cruel, and violent lifestyle of the concrete jungle. I’ve watched and witnessed the lives of these young men be taken from them because the concrete jungle engulfed them and claimed their blood.

I’ve watched and witnessed these young men laugh to keep from crying for way too long.

But one thing I’ve yet to witness is, the mass majority of society see what I have witnessed!

I WAS ONCE A YOUNG MAN!”

Received via a letter from Swift Justice

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/a-witness-to-genocide-soul-less-in-alabama-doc-by-s-j/

Dhalgren

02-28-2017, 11:37 AM

WE MUST LET THE CROPS ROT IN THE FIELD IF WE AREN’T RECEIVING BENEFIT OF THE HARVEST

LET THE CROPS ROT IN THE FIELD is a proven strategy that was passed down to us from our Ancestors from the slave plantations that was used to disrupt the economics of the field. The harvest of the planter season was reaped when the crops were picked from the field and sold on the open market. When the slave master had invested all that he owned into his next crop (prison factories), the slaves would wait until just before the harvest and rebel against the slave system by ‘going on strike’ and causing the crops to rot in the field. This tactic would completely ruin the slave master’s investment.

While these crops were rotting in the field, the slave master would come down from the big house, make nice and beg the slaves to go back to work

But when that didn’t work, the slave master, just like the modern prison commissioners and wardens, would then result to threats and violence. But those determined for their freedom would resist and fight to the end.

In the end, when the crops were left to rot in the field, the slave master would sometimes lose his plantation if he had used it as collateral to secure a loan from the bank to plant. This is what happens to a prison system that is built upon the exploitation and free labor of the people incarcerated: when the laborers stop working, the free labor prison system collapses because there isn’t any revenue coming in to finance the system of 30,000 people in Alabama, 23,000 in Mississippi, 160,000 in California, or 2.5 million nationwide, who still must be fed, still must be provided medical care, still must had lights, water and basic hygiene.

These obligations and costs don’t stop, but the means to pay for them — the revenue that is produced by our labor — stops when we stop.

In 2014, Alabama has a 400 million dollar budget to run its prisons, which is paid by the sale of the products and services that are manufactured by the slave labor from the people incarcerated.

All told, Alabama is making anywhere from 2 to 3 billion dollars each year from our labor, fines, fees, canteen, phone calls, etc. while over $500,000,000,000 dollars is made nationwide off of prison slave labor.

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/let-the-crops-rot-in-the-fields/

(This is just the tail-end of a long article at Free Alabama. The whole first four/fifths of the piece is a heartfelt appeal to everyone to do all the things that liberal Americans have been taught to do: stag strikes (hunger and others), write letters, stop shopping at McDonald’s and Wendy’s, WalMart and Victoria’s Secret; don't buy Dell computers or bank at Wells Fargo, etc. The saddest thing is these actions are all that anyone CAN do that if not dedicated to class struggle. The idea that you cannot change the behavior of society by appealing to something that is counter to that society's fundamental conditions seems to escape almost everyone.
Action must be taken, but it must be couched in the struggle to end bourgeois class rule. The ruling class will not change its foundational behaviors, it must be thrown down. We should start sending copies of George Jackson's works into the prisons. Flood the bloody places with outlines for concrete action.)

blindpig

03-02-2017, 02:24 PM

Kinross Prisoners Facing Up to Two Years in the Hole for Rebellion
By Anonymous Contributor - February 28, 2017189

Overview of the Kinross Rebellion and Retaliation

On September 9th, 2016, people in at least 46 prisons took part in a national prisoner work stoppage. The occasion was the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising, and the strike was called by the Free Alabama Movement (FAM). In Michigan, prisoners abstained from work and other activities at four prisons, most famously at the Kinross Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula.

Kinross, a facility that was reopened in 2015 despite numerous health and safety violations and inadequate space, had already been the site of a chow hall boycott in the spring and several subsequent demonstrations of unity intended to put administration on notice of the prisoners’ grievances. All this was to no avail, since conditions only worsened. Block representatives who communicated grievances had their property destroyed for their trouble, and were immediately transferred out.

Kinross came into the national spotlight when news finally leaked of what unfolded in the wake of the September strike. On day two, after prison staff broke their promise of non-retaliation for the strike by withholding food, prisoners demanded an on-the-spot meeting with administrators at a massive, hours-long yard demonstration. Following negotiations and empty promises, prisoners returned to their units only to be assaulted hours later, without provocation, by an emergency response team (ERT) armed with long guns, pistols, pepper spray guns, and tear gas.

This provoked an all-out riot in several of the units, causing about $86,000 worth of property destruction; no one was injured. Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) spent another $94,000 transferring hundreds of prisoners in retaliation for the protests, and about $741,000 on personnel costs for the ERT.

The full scope of the retaliation against the prisoners who were at Kinross that day is only beginning to be comprehended. Michigan Abolition and Prisoner Solidarity (MAPS), an affinity group organizing in solidarity with prisoners against the violence of incarceration, reached out to dozens of people imprisoned at Kinross last Fall. From their responses to date, a picture of repressive and arbitrary retaliation is taking shape.

Of the approximately 250 people transferred out of Kinross and tried in kangaroo courts on identical misconduct tickets alleging “incite to riot/strike,” over 180 were found guilty and sentenced to at least one year in administrative segregation (a.k.a. “the hole”). Some are facing two or more years in the hole, and all have had their security classifications raised from level I or II (lowest security levels) to level V or VI (highest levels). Even after release from segregation to the general population, their security classifications may remain raised which could prevent them from consideration for parole.

Another feature of the retaliation is that it is collective and arbitrary; people who had nothing to do with the strike, yard protest, or riot are among those facing the most severe punishments. Kinross administrators were well aware of the planned three-day strike and met with block representatives on September 7th to declare that they would not interfere or retaliate for the strike. In fact, some staff supervisors told their prisoner employees to stay away from work during the strike. On this basis, no tickets should have been issued for the strike.

As for the yard protest on September 10th, many unit officers permitted prisoners to participate. In some cases, the guards later testified to this, while in other cases the same guards denied it. The MDOC cast a wide net when it came to retaliation; all alleged participants, no matter their level of participation, were handed the same charge. The prisoners that rebelled through self-defense and property destruction as well as those that merely attended the demonstration in the yard—and even some who did not participate in anything—face draconian repression. Throughout this ordeal there has been no meaningful due process; all appeals of the misconduct tickets and all grievances have been rejected or simply ignored.

The conditions endured by the transferred prisoners is an intensification of the uninhabitable conditions they faced at Kinross that drove them to desperation there. For roughly one month following the uprising, people were held in atrocious conditions—even by Michigan standards—at temporarily reopened facilities in Jackson and Marquette. There, they awaited hearings and transfers to other facilities. Those found guilty of misconduct were transferred to Oaks Correctional Facility or Baraga Maximum Correctional Facility where entire units were cleared out and designated for segregation of people from Kinross. They report being singled out for special mistreatment by staff as well as systematic efforts to isolate them from the outside world by denying them television and writing supplies. Two people in isolation reported that they suffer from suicidal ideation and that they are not receiving adequate mental health treatment.

Food quality and quantity was one of the grievances at Kinross and, indeed, at all Michigan prisons where private contractor Trinity Food Services has been the target of a series of coordinated food boycotts as well as prisoner lawsuits. In the hole, people report being served even worse food, not conforming to the required menus and arriving to them stone cold. People on the religious diet have probably fared the worst. One such prisoner reports losing 40 pounds in five months and went on hunger strike to protest his malnutrition.

Adding to the despair, a great deal of personal property belonging to people transferred out of Kinross was destroyed or “lost.” These items include televisions, radios, music players (and the expensive music they stored), clothing, footwear, art supplies, writing supplies, stamps, footlockers, and even legal documents. People might have spent years or decades acquiring this property on their meager wages.

There is no doubt that this group of nearly 200 people is paying a heavy price for the mass uprising at Kinross on September 10. Yet many remain steadfast and committed to solidarity with their brothers and sisters behind prison walls. Many have asked that their stories be told publicly. As Jacob Klemp put it, “Thousands of people have been negatively affected by this. And ultimately I need it to mean something.”

We agree with others who have stressed that the full consequences of the prison strike may not be understood for years to come. At this stage, two points are clear:

As long as conditions only worsen when desperate people communicate their grievances, the riots will continue.
Since none of us are free while some of us are caged, those of us outside who seek an end to the violence of incarceration in the world must continue our efforts in solidarity with those inside.
See the notes at the end of this article for information on supporting prisoners facing retaliation.

Voices of the Imprisoned

Several accounts from people formerly imprisoned at Kinross who have courageously spoken out have been published previously and should not be missed. Read Gilbert Morales’ reflections, letters from Jacob Klemp and Lamont Heard, an article from Rand Gould, and a comprehensive account from H.H. Gonzales published recently in the San Francisco Bay View. Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy, included Kinross prisoners’ testimony in a recent article reflecting on the Vaughn uprising as well as an earlier article linking Kinross with the Attica uprising. The MAPS website is under development as an archive of voices of the imprisoned in relation to the Kinross rebellion.

Below is a letter from Larry Baba X-Guy, who appears to be the first person at Kinross targeted for retaliation—in his case for purely political reasons before the strike even began, despite staff instructing other prisoners to stay away from work:

The Puritans brought the prison system to these shores in the 1500s? The people on this side of the world was doing just fine without it. Didn’t want it. But it got forced upon them/us anyway.

I marched in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s against the wrongs of this system and was brutalized by racist cops (whom I sued and won), got crosses burned on my lawn. As president of the “coalition to end police brutality and racism,” we got the whole barrage of insults, media-wise, subversive-wise, COINTELPRO frame-ups, etc….

I’m getting on in my years. I was going to sit this one (sentence) out. In 21 years I only received three tickets, accumulating good time. Then this riot happened. More out of desperation than anger, to be treated as human beings not like animals in a cage. The Bay Mirror News speaks of two peaceful demonstrations, and the third (1,400 inmates) started out the same way, until the C/Os [correctional officers] overreacted on purpose, pressed the despair button into desperate acts of defense, frustration of racist dehumanizing practices, overcrowding (eight men in a cube made for four), not allowing inmates to sit next to loved ones, only across the table from each other. [Overcrowding and oppressive visitation room rules were among prisoners’ key grievances.]

Imagine a child looking, coming to hug, and a voice on the intercom forbidding the child to do so? Child looks at Dad wondering if he’s diseased or what? And can’t touch their father? (I’ve heard MDOC changed visits back to normal after riot) and hearing racist statements like “don’t let me get the whip back out” from C/Os!

As an old vet I sensed mayhem coming, block reps would do their jobs and present a list of requests and get sent back and early in the morning get chained up and rode out, not allowed to pack their personal property (otherwise half the property comes up missing, thrown away, etc.). But block reps were glad to get away from those conditions, many inmates would refuse to lock up or sit on their bunks so they could go to level IV, that’s how bad it was. I had planned to run for block rep so I could get rode out. [The transfer process, which made it nearly impossible to get out of Kinross, was another of the prisoners’ grievances.]

But on 9/9/2016, the day of the Attica Rebellion of [1971], I was called up front and the two inspectors drilled me about my political actions in the past years before I was locked up on these so-called charges! While I was there they had C/Os going through my property and they brought news clippings of us marching and protesting. They asked about my lawyer (revolutionary lawyer Chokwe Lumumba), all this from the 80s! Anyway, they locked me up in segregation early that morning before anything happened and charged me with striking/inciting to riot!…

Solidarity with the Imprisoned

Please send messages of solidarity and support to the following people facing retaliation for the September strike and subsequent events in Michigan. Over 180 remain in the hole for the same reason, but the following have granted explicit permission to be listed publicly.

Please be very aware that these imprisoned comrades are facing a high degree of scrutiny of both incoming and outgoing mail. The following guidelines recommended by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) apply to Michigan, where letters and donations have, in a few known cases, been blocked and caused prisoners to be threatened with more retaliation.

DO NOT mention Sep 9, organizing, the strike, burning prisons, or anything like that unless they reply and ask for such information. Just receiving mail at all sends a message of support. These messages are also seen by the staff which deters further retaliation. Talking about the actions might get the mail blocked or even provoke more repression, so don’t do it.

DO tell them you’re thinking about them, that they are not alone. It can be a short note, a drawing, or a long letter describing your day and asking how they’re holding up.

Please make sure to address envelope to the legal name and address letter to name in parentheses.

Also, if it’s within your means, ask if they would like books (and what their preferences are) or monetary donations. The Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) policies for incoming mail and books should be reviewed here, beginning at section Z. Books must come directly from approved vendors listed in Attachment A at the end of the document; however, a recent requirement being selectively enforced is that the package must contain an invoice or packing slip, which rules out Amazon. Double-check that the vendor you use encloses an invoice or packing slip. Schulerbooks.com is Michigan-based and if noted that a package is going to a prison they try to ensure that it meets MDOC requirements.

Many people in the hole need funds for postage and basic hygiene items. As of February 2017, there is a new vendor for monetary donations. See this link for instructions on sending funds via money order. If you can send funds, we recommend that you do not include any message. If you write separately, we recommend that you do not mention the donation.

If you hear of problems getting funds, books, or letters through, please notify MAPS.

Larry Guy #132556 (Baba X-Guy)
Oaks Correctional Facility
1500 Caberfae Hwy
Manistee, MI 49660

Harold Gonzales #194496 (H.H. Gonzales)
Baraga Correctional Facility
13924 Wadaga Rd.
Baraga, MI 49908-9204

Gilbert Morales #186641
Baraga C.F.
13924 Wadaga Rd.
Baraga, MI 49908-9204

Richard Carter #178539 (AhJamu Baruti)
Oaks C.F.
1500 Caberfae Hwy
Manistee, MI 49660

Darrin Coats #185616
Baraga C.F.
13924 Wadaga Rd.
Baraga, MI 49908-9204

Jacob Klemp #231258
Baraga C.F.
13924 Wadaga Rd.
Baraga, MI 49908-9204

Jamarr Loyd #234363
Oaks C.F.
1500 Caberfae Hwy
Manistee, MI 49660

Timothy Schnell #516619
Baraga C.F.
13924 Wadaga Rd.
Baraga, MI 49908-9204

Cedricx Doss #243288
Oaks C.F.
1500 Caberfae Hwy
Manistee, MI 49660

Leon Echols Bey #204922
Oaks C.F.
1500 Caberfae Hwy
Manistee, MI 49660

Deon Taivon Joiner #682561
Oaks C.F.
1500 Caberfae Hwy
Manistee, MI 49660

Ronald Perdue #292317
Oaks C.F.
1500 Caberfae Hwy
Manistee, MI 49660

Michael T. Witherspoon #225422
Oaks C.F.
1500 Caberfae Hwy
Manistee, MI 49660

Jonathan Aiden #277075
Baraga C.F.
13924 Wadaga Rd.
Baraga, MI 49908-9204

Howard Lashawn Smith #358816 (Shawn)
Baraga C.F.
13924 Wadaga Rd.
Baraga, MI 49908-9204

Juivonne Littlejohn #141899
Baraga C.F.
13924 Wadaga Rd.
Baraga, MI 49908-9204

Freddy Hardrick #440921
Oaks C.F.
1500 Caberfae Hwy
Manistee, MI 49660

Matthew DeShone #686384
Oaks C.F.
1500 Caberfae Hwy
Manistee, MI 49660

https://itsgoingdown.org/kinross-prisoners-facing-two-years-hole-rebellion/

blindpig

03-06-2017, 09:40 AM

Get Involved in the Millions For Prisoners Human Rights March
Posted on February 9, 2017 by FREE ALABAMA MOVEMENT

https://freealabamamovement.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/wp-1486643027302.jpg

https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/2017/02/09/get-involved-in-the-millions-for-prisoners-human-rights-march/

blindpig

03-06-2017, 03:25 PM

When the State Investigates Itself, No One Is Accountable: Before and After the Vaughn Prison Rebellion
Sunday, March 05, 2017
By Kim Wilson, Truthout | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/images/Images_2017_03/2017_0305va_.jpg
The James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware. (Photo: trconrad2001 / Wikipedia)

I have two sons serving life sentences at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware. From everything I know about Vaughn and other Delaware prisons, it is clear to me that the rebellion that took place there this February arose in response to a system that refuses to recognize the humanity of incarcerated people, and the investigations now being contemplated seem destined to perpetuate that refusal.

On February 1, 2017, the Delaware News Journal received a call from someone inside of Vaughn. The caller claimed to be a hostage in Building C and that they were being forced to relay a list of demands to the paper. In the recording of that call, we get a glimpse into the problems plaguing the facility and some insight into why the rebellion arose in the first place. What we hear is that incarcerated people at Vaughn are asking for better treatment, including increased educational opportunities, a review of the handling of their legal paperwork and status sheets. This demand is more important and has a larger significance than is often realized. It is a demand for recognition, not only of the humanity of the people incarcerated at the facility, but also of the fact that they have long endured a situation in which they are systematically mistreated and are left with no recourse beyond complaints addressed to the same people whom they accuse of mistreating them.

The caller also made it clear that the reason for the rebellion was linked to the election of Donald Trump as president:

We're trying to explain the reasons for doing what we're doing. Donald Trump. Everything that he did. All the things that he's doing now. We know the institution is going to change for the worse. We got demands that you need to pay attention to, which you need to listen to and you need to let them [be] known. We want education first and foremost. We want a rehabilitation program that works for everybody. We want the money to be allocated so we can know exactly what is going on in the prison, the budget.
The next day, on February 2, 2017 response teams stormed Building C and brought an end to the rebellion.

In the weeks following the uprising, 17 corrections officers at Vaughn quit their jobs. We have also learned that some incarcerated people in Vaughn had called for the resignation of 17 specific corrections officers. It remains unknown if these were the same 17 officers who have resigned.

Most recently, on the morning of February 21, it was announced that Warden David Pierce has been placed on administrative leave with pay, pending the outcome of state investigations into the rebellion.

Transparency and oversight were already lacking at Vaughn in the years leading up to February 1, and to date there has been no official word about the physical condition or whereabouts of any of the 120 incarcerated people housed in Building C.

But these conditions are both an extension and an exacerbation of the silence and neglect that has made Vaughn a site of abuse for years. We have little reason to think that behind closed doors in the aftermath of this event, the 120 incarcerated people who were inside Building C on February 1 have not been the victims of retaliatory abuse.

Finally, what is clear is that, absent fundamental changes in how Vaughn operates, everything we know about what happened at Vaughn, what is happening now, and what will happen in the coming days, will depend entirely on whose voices we allow to be heard, and whose voices count.

Who Gets to Be a Victim

Incarcerated people don't get to be victims, or so the generally accepted logic goes. Yet we know that jails and prisons across the United States are full of victims.

There's a tendency to ask victims of law enforcement violence to denounce violence against law enforcement officers. This move shifts attention away from legitimate complaints made by victims of abuse inflicted by law enforcement. This includes incarcerated people who also experience abuse at the hands of corrections officers and other staff, and for whom there exists little, if any, recourse. Internal prison complaint reporting systems are likely to be overseen by the very officers inflicting the abuse on an incarcerated person. This is not a system where fairness prevails or where truth-seeking matters. "Fairness" in prison is often defined in the most narrow terms possible and it means what is fair to the officer, and "truth-seeking" in a system where law enforcement nearly automatically get the benefit of the doubt is an exercise in futility. Yet this is the situation at Vaughn, which is being overlooked because it is unpopular and politically disadvantageous to side with incarcerated people.

What is happening at Vaughn is a cover-up. It is a cover-up in the sense that the system is investigating itself, and that never leads to positive outcomes for incarcerated people. Since February 1, the focus of officials has been on addressing the safety and security concerns of corrections officers and staff as well as on identifying a cause for what led up to the rebellion. The safety and well-being of incarcerated people at Vaughn does not appear to be a priority for state officials. This is not an oversight, but it speaks to why incarcerated people at Vaughn continue to feel a deep sense of frustration because their concerns are seldom given any respect.

In an effort to give the investigation a sheen of legitimacy, two former judges have been assigned to lead the effort. By assigning this "independent" panel of judges to oversee the investigation, Delaware officials are ensuring that they are making this problem disappear. We know from what the governor has said that safety and security are his main concerns, and we can expect that any report about what led up to the situation on February 1 will address little else except these two issues.

Before and After

We know what led up to the rebellion. While the details surrounding the exact moments or plans for a rebellion may never be known, what is clear is that what happened on that day was the result of decades of unchecked abuse within the facility and a refusal by officials at Vaughn and politicians in Delaware to take seriously complaints by incarcerated people, formerly incarcerated people, their families and friends, and advocates who have been saying for years that they want the abuse to stop.

What has been written about Vaughn has failed to adequately account for or describe the conditions of incarcerated people, and this writing has also failed to put a human face to the suffering that is taking place inside of prisons.

Attempts to give a "balanced" perspective have done little except to amplify the voices of people and groups in power while simultaneously portraying incarcerated people in the most flattened, stereotypical way possible. These "balanced" takes reinforce the public's perception of incarcerated people as deserving of harsh punishment by emphasizing the voices of those in power who see any kind of negotiation with incarcerated people as a zero sum game. As long as prison officials and politicians treat incarcerated people with contempt and as long as they see them as less than human they will remain mystified by any act of rebellion no matter how small or peaceful on the part of people in prison.

I am not naive enough to believe that any investigation is going to lead to sweeping changes in policies or practices at Vaughn or any other facility in Delaware without a legal fight. I, for one, know better.

The last three weeks have reinforced for me what I have long known to be an unspoken belief among many people in our society -- that the lives of incarcerated people don't matter. They may matter to some people, but they largely don't matter to many more, including to the very people that the public entrusts with overseeing their confinement.

State Violence

Put differently, what is at stake here is how state violence is automatically thought of as legitimate while violence in the hands of the oppressed is treated as illegitimate. In prison, and in our broader society, it is understood and largely agreed upon that violence in the hands of the state (law enforcement officers represent the state), and some people is acceptable. However, everyone else is expected to march quietly and peacefully in the face of abuse and death.

Prisons are not a space where productive conversations between officers and incarcerated people take place around issues of oppression and abuse. The power dynamics between these groups makes it clear that incarcerated people are to obey orders no matter how dehumanizing or arbitrary those orders might be, and that questioning authority is not simply discouraged, it is not permitted.

To question a staff member is to paint a target on one's back. It makes one the focus of intense retaliation through a variety of mechanisms: not being allowed to make a phone call, being denied access to medical care, being arbitrarily fired from a prison job, being physically attacked by staff. Within this system, society tells incarcerated people that they deserve whatever happens to them inside of prison. There's no consideration given to the fact that removal (for some people, permanently) from their families and communities is punishment, and that confinement in prison is punishment, and that this is a severe form of punishment that is damaging to everyone involved. No, clearly this is not a consideration. This arrangement leaves the door wide open to unchecked abuse, and no one seems to be ready to interrogate this in a serious way or to push back against facile ideas of incarcerated people as deserving of abuse as an unspoken part of their legal sentences. What we have is not simply abuse in prison, but also the abuse of prison itself

People in prison have few options in the face of sustained abuse against them and violence is one of those options when nothing else is available. This is not unexpected or unexplainable violence, but resistance to the lack of accountability and transparency at Vaughn and other prisons. There are no summits, roundtable discussions, fair hearings, or healing circles when an incarcerated person is being abused. There's only what the state says, and since incarcerated people are considered property of the state (quite literally), the state can do what it wants without being held accountable.

Just Desserts

Incarcerated people don't make for sympathetic public relations, except in cases of wrongful convictions. While public attitudes toward mass incarceration have shifted slightly in recent years, this hasn't changed public attitudes much toward incarcerated people, who are still viewed by many as disposable. There is a general attitude that people in prison deserve to be there and that whatever happens to them while incarcerated is just punishment for having broken the law. This thinking informs much of the way that policy is formulated, but it also informs the attitude and actions of how incarcerated people are treated in society.

As long as society continues to regard incarcerated people as throwaways, we will continue to see officials and much of the public appear to be baffled when incarcerated people contest dehumanizing treatment. When you've stripped people of everything, of their freedom, of their identity (in prison you're a number), of their families, of their community, of their ability to make even minor decisions over their own person, and you pile on physical, mental, emotional abuse, you are planting the seeds for rebellion because you are not giving people choices that cohere with what it means to be human.

The incarcerated people at Vaughn have asked for better treatment. This is such a simple, but yet complex idea that deserves more attention than it has received. When I heard the recording of the young man saying that the men at Vaughn want better treatment, what I heard was the most basic plea to recognize the humanity of those incarcerated there, and in light of the urgency of that demand to be seen as fully human, I fail to see how politicians and prison officials can possibly deny this request.

Instead of scratching their heads over the hows and whys of what led up to the February 1 rebellion, it might be more productive for those officials to stop and listen to what the incarcerated people at Vaughn have said is the reason for it. They are screaming "treat me better," and after all of what's happened, officials are still not listening.

What is happening at Vaughn presents us with an opportunity to do better. The abusive conditions at Vaughn did not arise in a vacuum. These conditions are not products of incarcerated people's making. A starting point for an adequate, just response would be to take seriously the demands of incarcerated people.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/39713-when-the-state-investigates-itself-no-one-is-accountable-before-and-after-the-vaughn-prison-rebellion

blindpig

03-16-2017, 12:32 PM

The Abuse Goes On: The Corrupting Dynamics of Power in a Texas Prison (2017)
March 5, 2017

Character Split

It’s a truism that power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But that’s not the end of the story.

In Amerika, prisons constitute the most absolute exercise of state power. Within their confines, officials control the lives, means of survival, and quality of life of their captives, and use that power to control, manipulate, and compel submission of the prisoners to various ends.

In my 27 years of imprisonment I have witnessed that some people are more susceptible to the corrupting influences of such power than others, but none are immune.

I have found too that many people in society disbelieve how completely these environments transform and deform the characters of “normal” people when they pass through the prison gates as employees. Most seem to believe they bring with them the same morals, sense of social responsibility and consideration toward their fellow persons that they observe in society. While initially some do or may try, their “normal” character quickly breaks down and a different personality emerges. A well known experiment by psychiatrist Philip Zimbardo, conducted at Stanford University in 1973 gave powerful proof of this. In his experiment Zimbardo selected 21 normal, intelligent, and stable students to create a simulated prison in the university’s basement. Based on coin flips, half were given roles of prison guards and the other half, of prisoners. Zimbardo described the frightening results:

“At the end of only six days we had to close down our mock prison because what we saw was frightening. It was no longer apparent to us or most of the subjects where they ended and their roles began. The majority had indeed become ‘prisoners’ or ‘guards,’ no longer able to clearly differentiate between role-playing and self. There were dramatic changes in virtually every aspect of their behavior, thinking and feeling. In less than a week, the experience of imprisonment undid (temporarily) a lifetime of learning; human values were suspended, self-concepts were challenged, and the ugliest most base, pathological side of human nature surfaced. We were horrified, because we saw boys (‘guards’) treat other boys as if they were despicable animals, taking pleasure in cruelty, while other boys (‘prisoners’) became servile, dehumanized robots, who thought only of escape, of their own survival, and of their own mounting hatred of the guards.”[1]

In a similar context, U.S. courts have also recognized that, “prison guards may be more vulnerable to the corrupting influence of unchecked authority than most people.”[2] I would add that cops are no less “vulnerable,” and the routine brutality and killings that the poor and people of color suffer at their hands is the product of this. And as the late attorney Johnnie Cochran once noted, the courts have long been complicit in, condoned, and protected cops against liability for, these behaviors.[3] But in the prison context I want to examine these corrupting tendencies, some environmental factors that encourage them, and base this on some specific examples (of which my own setting affords many).

I want to do this because I’ve found that most outside people are reluctant to challenge prison abuses, including prisoners’ own loved ones. Which often results from their disbelief that officials actually behave as they do.

I’ve witnessed and heard more times than I care to remember; my peers express a lack of outside support against abuses, because those they report abuses to (and most often it’s their own loved ones), simply don’t believe them. Either they outright refuse to accept that officials do what they complained of, or they defer to the lying denials or promises to investigate and resolve the reported situation made by some official the outside person has contacted in following up on the prisoner’s complaint.

Essentially, outside folks tend to blindly trust and defer to “authority” figures, believing that those entrusted with government power exercise it responsibly and in good faith. As the Stanford prison experiment demonstrated, the reality is just the opposite.

I also want to show how easily everyday people can become violent abusers in service to oppressive power, just as common Germans did during the Nazi era.

But let’s start with some specific examples.

Persistent Abuse

On December 21, 2016, on top of having a substantial amount of my property taken, I was assaulted by guards who gassed me while I was handcuffed from behind and locked inside a cell; whereupon they refused to have me, the cell and my in-cell linen decontaminated. Several abuse reports I wrote following this included some mention of misuse of gas at the prison.[4] By referring to those articles, the reader can get a sense of the prevalent abuse of gas which has been acknowledged and strongly condemned in court proceedings and the media, without me restating it here.

But despite those exposures and their generating a bit of public stir and preparations for future possible litigations, the mistreatments continue, and by many of the same officials. As testament to the frequency of such ongoing abuses, note the close timeframe in which the three incidents described below occurred (namely February 19, 21, and 23, 2017); and in each case the abused prisoner is documented as mentally ill. All incidents described herein occurred at the Clements Unit prison in Amarillo, Texas.

The Feb. 19th incident was instigated by lieutenant Chad Perry, the very same guard who tried to murder another prisoner on July 2, 2016, by gassing him, despite the fact that he was under medical “do not gas” orders, because he suffers from a respiratory disease.[5]

On Feb. 19th, Perry, along with several other guards dressed out in body armor, went to cell E-116, which housed a prisoner named Neighbors, to take all his property, because Perry alleged he was masturbating [!?]. Not only is taking a prisoner’s property for this reason absurd and illegal, but other prisoners witnessed that Neighbors was actually only shaking a bottle. I’ve personally witnessed Perry take prisoners’ property for no reason other than their saying something cross to him, usually in response to his own unprovoked verbal abuse. In turn he’d lie saying the prisoner had some item covering his cell door, then organize a team of guards dressed out in body armor with gas, and if the unsuspecting (and understandably outraged) prisoner hesitated to cooperate in having his things taken for no reason, Perry would promptly gas and send the team in to assault the prisoner and remove him and his property from the cell by force.

In this case, however, Neighbors submitted to being handcuffed and was brought out, legs shackled, and moved to another cell two cells down. Perry then had the team of armored guards lay Neighbors on the floor in back of the cell where he could not be seen on the audio-video camera that was present and recording the incident. The leg shackles were removed. He was left in the handcuffs and the guards began backing out of the cell as he lay on the floor.

As the last guard backed out a sergeant Samuel Barrientos suddenly sprayed gas into the cell like a signal, and the group of guards ran back in yelling repeatedly, “Stop resisting,” while sounds of punches landing and slams could be heard.

The guards then backed out the cell, closed the door, removed the cuffs. and left Neighbors naked in the empty gas-contaminated cell.

Approximately five hours later Neighbors was met by the team again and sprayed in the face with gas, because be understandably didn’t want to submit to an order to be handcuffed (and possibly beaten) again. He then allowed himself to be cuffed and was placed naked on a gurney and wheeled out of the pod.

A white guard was later heard bragging to a white prisoner that Perry “took care of business,” because “Neighbors’s Black ass was talkin’ shit.”

The Feb. 21st incident was led by lieutenant Crystal Turner; the same guard who was involved in my own incident of Dec. 21st. The victim was the same Louis Johnson who was gassed on Jan. 13, 2017, and left in a gas saturated jumper which he gave me a piece of to share with others on the outside as evidence of his abuse. In fact I showed the completely saturated piece of cloth to attorneys who visited me on Jan. 25, 2017. I described Louis’s incident in a separate article.[6]

One of the attorneys, Benjamin Haile, described the occasion in a letter to another attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project thusly, “When I visited [Rashid], he showed me a piece of clothing from another prisoner he had wrapped in plastic and saved. It was shocking. It was about a 7×10 inch square, and it was deeply discolored with the dye that is added to the OC spray. This prisoner too had no access to decontaminated clothing….”

But to return to the Feb. 21st incident, Louis was at his cell front talking to Turner out the open handcuff slot on his cell door, attempting to have guards deliver his commissary order to him or return his ID card which he’d given them to place a commissary order. They were refusing to do both.

Turner and a sergeant Joe Preciado, (along with a nurse Tammy Williams), had apparently conspired to gas Louis, with Turner talking to him on the right side of the slot to distract him while Preciado crept up on the left side with a can of gas on the right side of his hip hidden out of Louis’s view.

As Louis trained his attention on Turner, Preciado ran up to the slot and suddenly sprayed Louis flush in the face. Turner then closed the slot. Williams, who was standing out of view as this occurred, then came to the cell, looked at Louis’s face and they left. The entire outside of the slot and door was covered with gas, as was the inside of the cell and Louis’s blanket and jumper. They refused his request for decontamination and decontaminated linen. Instead they blushed as several prisoners in the pod applauded and cheered, begging for an encore.

Finally, the Feb. 23rd incident was at the instigation of captain Patricia Flowers, the same guard who instigated the Dec. 21st incident with me. On Feb. 23rd while making rounds in E-pod, she proceeded to beat and kick on prisoner Michael Ryan’s cell door. In turn Ryan gave her the finger, to which she replied, “I got you.”

Flowers then had Sgt. Preciado and a team of body armored guards confront Ryan with a threat of force to take all his property. She lied, claiming he had his cell light covered. When Ryan was brought out of the cell in cuffs he stated he had a razor blade hidden in the cell and would kill himself if put back in the cell. The cell was not searched and he was put back in with nothing but his boxer shorts.

Once the cell door was closed and the audio-video camera that was present to record the situation was turned off, Preciado told Ryan, “Kill yourself,” then left. Another guard then brought him a sheet to facilitate the threatened act. Ryan used the sheet to cover his cell door window and proceeded to cut himself up.

His window was still covered over an hour later when the next shift came on, despite guards supposedly making rounds every 30 minutes to ensure the safety of each prisoner. The relieving guards, Jerry Strickert and another, discovered Ryan in his mutilated state, and eventually he was taken to another building and placed on suicide watch. Witnessing prisoners report there was blood all over the cell walls.

Several prisoners requested witness forms of the relieving sergeant King, so they could submit statements about Ryan’s treatment. King refused them stating there was no use of force on Ryan, and threatened if anyone wrote grievances about what Preciado said to Ryan, they’d receive a disciplinary case for lying.

It is noteworthy that nurse Tammy Williams is frequently present but out of view, when foul acts by guards are plotted, as she was when I was assaulted on Dec. 21st. (She is also a defendant in several pending lawsuits concerning prisoners killed at this Clements Unit prison as a result of staff abuses and medical neglect). She is married to a guard at the prison.

From Mice to Sewer Rats

As I’ve pointed out, I’ve yet to find a guard who’s proven immune to the corrupting influences of the prison environment. Especially those working in segregation, where prisoners are kept locked inside secure cells and only brought out in restraints. Thus guards are particularly safe from potential physical harm at the hands of those they abuse.

In this situation these guards feel protected from any potential consequences for their abuses, and feel empowered by having use of teams of body armored guards with gas and shields to enforce their ill will against isolated prisoners. Essentially, it’s a coward’s paradise.

Which brings me to these sorts of guards who prove most readily corruptible by the environment and similar “gunslinger” occupations. A common trait I’ve noticed in the most persistently abusive guards who like to wear their petty authority on their sleeves, is they’re obvious social misfits, and many are highly sensitive to insult and criticism. They appear socially awkward, the types who’ve never had power in their personal lives or over others beyond children perhaps. Many are small, diminutive, and not particularly attractive by conventional standards.

Joe Preciado offers such an example, as does Flowers and Turner.

Preciado once boasted to me, that of all the sergeants at the prison he has had more “uses of force and property confiscations than any other,” as though this were a measure of his worth. And by uses of force he meant not uses of force himself against anyone, nor on equal terms, but rather his involvement in (often creating) situations where he deployed gas against a defenseless prisoner or had an extraction team of five or more guards in body armor invade a prisoner’s cell after gassing him. In his mind and that of others like him, these are perceived as heroic deeds and form the basis of their “manly” posturing.

If Preciado weren’t so primed to instigate such abuses, one would find his provocative and confrontational airs outright comical. He being the last person who’d look for a fight in any environment where he had to face his opponent on equal terms.

A short pudgy fella, he’s clearly in no condition to do any direct fighting. In fact he’s been a laughing stock of the prison since one of his lower ranking colleagues blackened his eye a couple years back, when he attempted to use his rank to compel the guy to end a relationship with his estranged wife who also works at the prison.

As eager as he is to provoke altercations where he can speciously justify a gas assault on a prisoner or use an extraction team to attack a man 5-against-1, I’ve witnessed him several times take off running when he’s found himself confronted by a situation where a prisoner he’s provoked has pushed his way out of his cell past an extraction team of invading guards or tried to hit him upside the head with an object or liquid thrown from an open cuff slot.

Guards like Preciado are famous for hiding behind a team and gas, and using the inherent safety of the environment to insult and abuse prisoners while largely avoiding any consequences. In fact, Flowers, Turner and Perry all have this in common, and one can see in them an extreme sensitivity to insult or a prisoner’s refusal to defer and submit totally to them. In fact this tendency is often what prompts them to create a pretext to abuse force on them and/or take their property.

Both Flowers and Turner are diminutive and ‘unattractive’ women. And clearly find in their prison jobs, roles they could never assume in their personal lives, where they are able to insult and call down violence against, and induce the submission of any number of men who are themselves conditioned to surviving in physically aggressive environments. They clearly would not, could not, behave as they do if they did not have the safety of the environment and an armed support staff to back them up.

Chad Perry is no different. A slim white guy with little to no muscle tone, he’s quick to antagonize and set prisoners up for abuse and the taking of their property. But in a direct confrontation with those he targets he’d fail miserably. In fact this was proven back in 2011, when he unexpectedly was met by one of those he’d been abusing face-to-face.

Perry, then a low ranking guard, along with a number of his peers who enjoyed targeting prisoners, Blacks in particular, had subjected one prisoner, Dylan Carter, to repeated abuses, denied meals, taking of his property, and so on. They tried repeatedly to provoke him to allow them to confront him with an extraction team, so they could assault him under the guise of conducting a valid cell extraction on him, which they commonly do to others. But Carter wouldn’t bite.

On August 5, 2011, the tables turned. In a security glitch, (some believe Perry’s peers deliberately set him up), Carter’s cell door opened just as Perry walked unawares into the cellblock right beside the open cell. Carter admits he then stepped out of the cell in front of Perry, and slugged Perry in the face sending Perry sliding across the pod floor on his back, with blood streaming from his nose. Contrary to his typical arrogance and provocative posture under circumstances where he’d felt protected by his peers and the ‘security’ of solitary confinement, when confronted face-to-face by Carter, Perry, like most abusive guards, put up no resistance. Instead he fled to get medical help and file a disciplinary infraction against Carter for “assault.” But somehow he forgot to mention all the illegal abuses he’d subjected Carter to before that.

None Are Immune

An important detail to note is that each of these chronic abusers are ranking guards—sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. And in each of the mentioned cases they proved to be the most deplorable, because they targeted the most vulnerable of people—the mentally ill. Which to my thinking is like doing the same to a child.

Obviously, each of these individuals enters the prison environment with a particular set of deranged insecurities and a sense of meaninglessness, powerlessness, and having something to prove from unfulfilling personal lives, which they look to compensate for in the absolute power they are able to wield against us when they pass through the prison gates. An environment in which they, schizophrenic like, transform into wholly different people.

But, they are not alone in the inclination to morph into different people when they enter the prisons. In fact their peers all participate in such abuses, tacitly enabling them by going along with, and remaining silent about, them, and confirming reports to cover them up in the official records when and as instructed.

I’ve known a tiny handful of guards who’ve expressed the desire to speak out against the abuses that pervade all prisons, but they have no one to go to and if they did, they’d almost certainly face retaliation. So, they too conform and go along. In all respects, there’s a powerful drive to conform, especially when ranking officials are leading the charge and setting the terms for systemic abuse.

But as studies of the German Nazi experience have shown, while some people are predetermined to extreme violence and to abuse of power, everyday, “stable” people will also adopt the same behaviors when the environment is conducive to such behaviors. Especially in absolute environments, like U.S. prisons, where, as the Stanford experiment and the courts recognize, systemic abuse is the norm. As the Nazi experience demonstrated:

“It makes a big difference what sort of personality structure is confronted with what sort of situation [, but] we should not overestimate the significance of personal difference. As the Holocaust and the Nazi war of annihilation show, the vast majority of civilians, as well as soldiers, SS men, and police officers, behaved in discriminatory, violent, and inhumane fashion if the situation at hand seemed to encourage and promote such behavior. Only a tiny minority proved capable of humane resistance. According to the standards of the time, humane behavior was deviant, and brutality was conformist. For that reason, the entire collection of events known as the ‘Third Reich’ and the violence it produced can be seen as a gigantic experiment, showing what sane people who see themselves as good are capable of if they consider something to be appropriate, sensible, or correct. The proportion of people who were psychologically inclined toward violence, discrimination, and excess totaled, as it does in all other social contexts as well, 5 to 10 percent.

“In psychological terms, the inhabitants of the Third Reich were as normal as people in all other societies at all other times. The spectrum of perpetrators was a cross section of normal society. No specific group of people proved immune to temptation, in Gunther Anders’s phrase, of ‘inhumanity with impunity.’ The real-life experiment that was the Third Reich did not reduce the variables of personality to absolute zero. But it showed them to be of comparatively slight, indeed often negligible, importance.”[7]

The behavior of Germans during the Nazi heyday did not deviate in any substantial degree from that of Amerikans, who practiced genocide, racism, and all manner of violent extremes, which the Nazis actually only imitated, against Natives and people of Afrikan descent. So it is no wonder that such abuses are still practiced within and by its absolute institutions, and especially against disadvantaged people and people of color.

But there are likely those who’d doubt that everyday Amerikans today could behave as the Nazis did, despite what the Stanford experiment showed and the courts have recognized. One further experiment demonstrated clearly that they could and would, and as my writings demonstrate, they very well do—every day. The experiment in question was conducted by psychology professor Stanley Milgrim, who wanted to understand how common, everyday Germans could commit the atrocities they did in the concentration camps and mass exterminate others without hesitation. He intended to first test his experiment in Amerika, then to take it to Germany, where he felt the population was conditioned to the sort of obedience that his theories required for a scientific analysis. The first experiment conducted in New Haven, Connecticut, however, showed he didn’t need to go to the expense of traveling abroad. “I found so much obedience,” he said, “I hardly saw need of taking the experiment to Germany.”

The experiment put random everyday people to the test of seeing how many would, under directions of an apparent authority figure, deliver a lethal shock to another person, as they screamed in agony. All concerned were themselves shocked to find that over 60 percent of the test subjects went along as instructed. Milgrim’s findings from all his accumulated data proved conclusively, in everyday people, “the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority….” [8] This accounts for a powerful drive in these prison settings for those who might not readily commit abuses to do so under the direction of ranking guards like Flowers, Turner, Perry, and Preciado.

Also, the culture of prison guards is much like that of cops and soldiers, which induces loyalty and camaraderie that serves to unite them in a culture of abuse and a way of seeing their environment and those in it in a light very different from that of the common citizenry. This generates a sort of closed society and a shared perception within it that defies the morals of everyday people. And, like with other relationships, they assume a very different role within the prison than they would in other settings. That role being consistent with that which they are conditioned to believe is appropriate to the environment. Just as people behave very differently in relationships with their boss than they might their spouse and their children than with a customer at work. These relationships are compartmentalized and call for a different character in each. And in that one recognizes that behaviors engaged in in one relationship may seem inappropriate to others, they are inclined to keep those behaviors concealed within the circle of partners in that particular relationship.

In this regard, I have always recognized that guards, like soldiers, certainly don’t share much of what they actually do to other people in their workplace, with others in society, since they would certainly have been judged harshly and even as pathological by their social peers. So their behaviors remain confined to the circle of those who share their occupation, since only they could “understand” why they behave as they do based upon the contrived culture and the sense that they are dealing with people they’ve been conditioned to see as less than human and as enemies, namely prisoners.

Conclusion

Readers would likely doubt that they would themselves behave as the guards described herein do, or that they would go along with and conform to an environment where such abuses are the common practice. I would beg to differ, given the nature of the society in which these prisons lie, and its treatment of the mentally and socially ill as enemies and not people to be treated with compassion and in need of healing. But, moreover, a telling indication of whether you might conform is whether, as those Germans who claimed not to have known of the crimes carried out in their backyards proclaimed, if they’d have only known they would have risen up in resistance.

Well, now you know about the abuses that pervade these prisons. So, what are you going to do about it? Silence is acquiescence.

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!

http://rashidmod.com/?p=2374

blindpig

03-16-2017, 02:13 PM

ALABAMA PRISON OFFICIALS RETALIATE AGAINST PRISON STRIKE LEADER BY CUTTING WATER TO CELL

04 NOV 2016
Brian Sonenstein

https://shadowproof.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Screen-shot-2016-11-04-at-3.07.47-PM-750x402.png
Left to right: Free Alabama Movement’s James Plesant, Melvin Ray, and Robert Earl Council Left to right: Free Alabama Movement’s James Plesant, Melvin Ray, and Robert Earl Council

Advocates say prison officials at the Kilby Correctional Facility in Alabama turned off the water to Kinetik Justice Amun’s solitary cell after he initiated a hunger strike. Officials then transferred him to the Limestone Correctional Facility, which has a “behavioral modification program” known among prisoners as a “hot bay” dorm in which prisoners are forced to live in pairs in hot and squalid solitary confinement cells.

Kinetik, also known as Robert Earl Counsil, is the second leader of the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) to be transferred to Limestone. FAM is a group of incarcerated people and their families struggling to end prison slavery and shed light on inhumane conditions in Alabama’s prison system.

James Plesant, also known as Dhati Khalid, was the first leader to be transferred. Melvin Ray, also known as Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun, is the last remaining leader of FAM not to be transferred to Limestone.

According to a statement released by the Ordinary People Society, an Alabama-based human rights group for the incarcerated, Kinetik refused meals upon arrival at the Kilby Correctional Facility on October 21. Before the transfer, Kinetik spent three years housed in solitary confinement at the Holman Correctional Facility.

As previously reported by Shadowproof, Kilby is said to be a “bully camp.” When one Alabama prisoner learned of Kinetik’s transfer to Kilby, he explained the prison is where they send those that “they have to iron out with brutality.” He added, “When they send you to Kilby, that’s where they break your arms and break your legs.”

Prison officials turned off the water to Kinetik’s cell in response to his hunger strike, advocates say. “They are trying to kill him,” argued Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, founder of the Ordinary People Society and an “outside” spokesperson for FAM. The Alabama Department of Corrections did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Alabama Department of Corrections is currently facing a federal investigation into the rampant violence, overcrowding, and structural decay in its prison system. Kinetik believes his transfer was an act of retaliation by prison officials for his political activity, and that they timed the transfer to prevent him from meeting with a lawyer.

Kinetik is an outspoken advocate for the human rights of the incarcerated. Along with Dhati Khalid and Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun, Kinetik and the Free Alabama Movement were some of the people behind the call-to-action for the national prison strike against prison slave labor, which began on September 9.

Prominent human rights lawyer and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson, announced he will work with Pastor Glasgow and look into Kinetik’s case.

Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun told Shadowproof the “behavioral modification” dorm or Hot Bay like the one at Limestone is “supposed to be a volunteer program where you volunteer to go into it, but there’s no volunteer aspect. They’re just putting people in it.”

“You don’t have to have anything specific that you’ve done. They’re not serving you any paperwork, there’s not any kind of due process, and they’re getting funding from it,” he said. “So to justify funding, they have to have bodies.”

“Really what they’re doing is they’re targeting individuals,” Bennu said. He noted there is a Hot Bay program at Donaldson, where he is incarcerated. “That’s where James Plesant was originally. They framed him. They’re constantly framing and jumping on people in that Hot Bay.”

In the Hot Bay, prisoners are denied visitation, religious services, recreation, and social services, according to the Free Alabama Movement.

“[The Hot Bay] is worse than solitary confinement because they take all of your property and you have a cell mate,” Bennu said. “So the one here at Donaldson is two men to a cell. You’re in the cell with another person for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Y’all defecating with each other. Y’all urinating with each other, passing gas, burping, sleeping, waking up. Constantly, you’re in the cell with the door locked 24/7 with someone else.”

“They’re sending you up there, they’re torturing people up there. People first got exposed to the Hot Bay program from Bibb County,” Bennu recalled.

“There was a bunch of young guys in there. They tore the Hot Bay up,” he said, referring to a July 2015 riot. “They made it where you couldn’t stay in it. They had to get everyone out of there. That’s how bad they are. That’s how bad it was.”

“A lot of people think that when they say they put us in solitary confinement that it’s solitary confinement. In and of itself, that constitutes the torture. It’s not just putting me in the cell. It’s the conditions that they put me in inside of these cells,” Bennu argued.

He continued, “They put us in contaminated cells. What they do is, they have people in solitary and they be complaining about the plumbing or complaining about the lights or the ventilation or something. And they will put us in those cells.”

“They already know there are issues—there’s plumbing issues, there’s maintenance issues, and they’ll put us in these, what they call ‘black out cells’ or contaminated cells. The lights won’t work, we’ll be in the cells in the dark trying to read, ruining our eyesight. The mattress will be torn up, sleeping on top of these concrete slabs. The water will be leaking, running all over the cell. The vents and stuff are filthy. “

“It’s all of these elements that are added on, but that doesn’t show up in the paperwork, and that’s what they’ve done to people like myself. They put me in an isolated cell. I’m on what they call, ‘Walk Along Status.’ That means I cannot interact with anyone. I can’t be around another person. Same thing with Kinetik and James Plesant,” Bennu concluded.

Upon learning Kinetik was transferred to Kilby, a fellow prisoner previously told Shadowproof he hoped the move was not a “layover” that would eventually land Kinetik at Limestone. Limestone, he said, is “where they send everybody and you have to spend one year in isolation.”

“If he doesn’t reach Limestone, he’ll be okay,” the prisoner said at the time. According to the website for the Alabama Department of Corrections, Kinetik is now incarcerated at Limestone.

https://shadowproof.com/2016/11/04/alabama-prison-cut-off-water-prison-strike-leader/

blindpig

03-21-2017, 05:28 PM

Pittsburgh: Rebellion Inside and Outside Allegheny County Jail
By Anonymous Contributor - March 21, 2017154

HEALTH CONDITIONS AT THE JAIL ARE ALSO NOTORIOUSLY BAD; ELEVEN PEOPLE DIED WHILE INCARCERATED AT ACJ IN JUST 2014 AND 2015.

On March 18th, prisoners at Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania began a sit-in. Eighty prisoners took part in the action to demand more case workers, better medical services, and a legitimate grievance procedure. Last night, masked demonstrators converged on the jail in solidarity with those protesting inside and smashed windows of the jail, a security camera, and several police vehicles. The action was broken up after police arrested eleven protesters.

Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) imprisons more than 2,500 people, and its population has increased by 70% in the last two decades. ACJ has a long history of abuse and was the subject of a 2010 FBI investigation that found officials there were covering up abuse of prisoners. Health conditions at the jail are also notoriously bad; eleven people died while incarcerated at ACJ in just 2014 and 2015.

Eighty-one percent of the people being incarcerated at Allegheny County Jail haven’t been convicted of a crime and are in being incarcerated pretrial. Many of these people are being held on bail they cannot pay, meaning they are only incarcerated because they lack access to a certain amount of money.

In a monetary bail system, access to money determines whether someone will be released or detained pretrial. Someone who can’t afford bail will likely be incarcerated for the duration of their trial, which could be years. Even a few days of pretrial incarceration often means the difference between working and being fired or paying rent and being evicted. Right now, more than 450,000 people are incarcerated in US jails—most of them in pretrial detention and most of those people because they cannot pay bail. In effect, our legal system is punishing people for being poor.

MANY OF THESE PEOPLE ARE BEING HELD ON BAIL THEY CANNOT PAY, MEANING THEY ARE ONLY INCARCERATED BECAUSE THEY LACK ACCESS TO A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF MONEY.

In the past year, there has been a dramatic increase in action being taken by incarcerated people across the US, most recently at Vaughn Correctional Facility where prisoners demanding better conditions took over a wing of the prison. In August and September of 2016, 22 mothers held at an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania went on hunger strike to protest the ongoing incarceration of themselves and their children. Last September’s national prisoner strike involved at least 29 prisons in 12 states. The strike was organized by the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) with support from the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), and a wide variety of anti-prison organizations. Tens of thousands of prisoners participated in the strike, affecting facilities across the country.

Especially as Trump and Sessions push for even more criminalization of targeted communities, it essential that we pay close attention to and amplify resistance inside US jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers. Solidarity with those rising up and resisting at Allegheny County Jail.

https://itsgoingdown.org/rebellion-inside-outside-allegheny-county-jail-pittsburgh/

blindpig

03-23-2017, 10:45 AM

End prison slavery in Texas now! Part II: Class consciousness and international solidarity
March 3, 2017

by Keith ‘Malik’ Washington, chief spokesperson for the End Prison Slavery in Texas Movement and deputy chairman of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party Prison Chapter (NABPP PC), Texas Region

“Largely missing from mainstream discourse on mass incarceration is the history of slave rebellions and revolts, revolutionary internationalism and Malcolm X, COINTELPRO and the BPP. Yet it is within this history that we find the tools for combating not only mass incarceration but also the monster of institutionalized racism that created it. We must understand mass incarceration as deeply tied to the legacy of slavery. This provides the intellectual grounding for the prison abolition movement and relates to human rights struggles that call for international solidarity.” – Nyle Fort, “Insurgent Intellectual: Mumia Abu Jamal in the age of Mass Incarceration,” p.144, Socialism and Democracy, Volume 28, 2014, Issue 3

https://i0.wp.com/sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Open-the-Prison-Gates-art-by-Rashid-1116-web.jpg?w=768
“Open the Prison Gates” – Art: Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, 1859887, Clements Unit, 9601 Spur 591, Amarillo TX 79107
Revolutionary greetings, Comrades!

There’s no sense in playing games. Y’all know what this is, so let’s get straight to the business. Minister Nyle Fort starts us off with a strong quote.

I am going to expand his analysis by highlighting the historical fact that slavery in the United States was and is still directly tied to capitalism! So in order for us to combat and abolish legalized slavery in Amerika we must focus our attention on dismantling the system which has allowed this institution of modern prison slavery to proliferate.

The theory and practice of the original Black Panther Party can be applied in 2017. We must contemporize and bring everything into the here and now. There is nothing that makes the prisoncrats in Amerika more uneasy than the thought of class consciousness and class solidarity among prisoners.

What I have discovered is if you want to make any significant impacts in “the struggle,” you must find out what the oppressor loathes and fears the most and then give that to them! For instance, I discovered that Texas and numerous other departments of corrections throughout Amerika hate negative media coverage, so that is what I tried to give them.

I already knew there was going to be reactionary response to my work in Texas. I’m not going to stop! However, for us to take this thing to the next level, there must be unity among all races inside the slave kamps and gulags. Let’s reflect on the words of Malcolm X.

Class consciousness

“I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin.” – Malcolm X

Comrades, it’s not as if our sisters and brothers in Texas don’t “get it.” Texas prisoners know exactly what must be done, but most are scared as hell of the consequences.

The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee fully understands the complex challenges of educating and organizing prisoners. Many of us understand the dynamic of protracted struggle. I’m in this for the long haul. I’ve got until 2028.

Parole is an illusion in Texas, part of the deception and lies sold to the public. In Texas, parole is a tool of manipulation and coercion used to keep the “slaves” in line. For sure a few make it, but thousands never are given a chance. They languish in these hellholes with no relief in sight.

Comrades, it’s not as if our sisters and brothers in Texas don’t “get it.” Texas prisoners know exactly what must be done, but most are scared as hell of the consequences.

So, as a class, the workers of the world are being exploited and oppressed. In order for there to be a revolution, there must be an agreement among all of us on a grand scale that we will resist capitalism and imperialism.

I say to you, join the IWW (International Workers of the World) – become a member of our prisoner labor union. When we call for a collective action, get involved. Slave laborers in prison do have power – if they choose to use it.

There is a group of mainstream activists and organizations in Texas. They know about me and our movement, although I’ve not been invited to their table. To them I represent an element that the oppressor (TDCJ) despises. The stance is, “We’ll just ignore them; they are not a FACTOR.”

I say to you, join the IWW (International Workers of the World) – become a member of our prisoner labor union. When we call for a collective action, get involved. Slave laborers in prison do have power – if they choose to use it.

More accurately stated, we are not welcome to the discussion table. Jennifer Erschabek, the executive director of TIFA (Texas Inmate Families Association), sits at the negotiation table with Sen. Whitmire and Sen. Huffman of the Texas Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee. Jennifer certainly tries to represent our interests, but she misses the mark. Someone from our ranks must be in the mix. Someone with a vested interest in our freedom and success.

Intercommunalism

The motto and mantra of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party Prison Chapter is: “We seek to turn these slave pens of oppression into schoolhouses of liberation.”

The struggle to abolish prison slavery has already become a national movement. You would be hard pressed not to find a prisoner in Amerika unaware of this struggle. Our next step is to introduce our struggle to the world in order to garner international support. But the question is: Are we a world of nations or communities?

The United States of Amerika has become an empire – the U.S. won’t allow a nation to exist. Therefore, we’ve become a collection of communities. I believe Comrade Tom Watts describes it best when he says:

“Revolutionary Intercommunalism is the theoretical understanding that the world that we live in today has become globalized and the principle contradiction in the world is now between the need of the capitalist-imperialist ruling class to consolidate their global hegemony and the anarchy and chaos they are unleashing by attempting to do so, including the threat of a new world war. Revolutionary Intercommunalism recognizes that because of this globalization, independent nation states can no longer exist as such, and cannot exist except as temporarily ‘liberated territory’ besieged and undermined by the forces and agents of capitalist imperialism.”

The struggle to abolish prison slavery has already become a national movement.

In the spirit of Revolutionary Intercommunalism, which was introduced to us by Dr. Huey P. Newton, we the members of the IWOC (Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a project of IWW) have reached out to Amnesty International and said:

“We the prisoners inside the United States are human beings. We are members of the world community. We contend that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should apply to us! Help us throw off the yoke of slavery!”

This is what we are saying and this is what Amnesty International says:

“We are ordinary people from across the world standing up for humanity and human rights. Our purpose is to protect individuals wherever justice, freedom, fairness and truth are denied.”

If my understanding is correct, then we will be seeing unprecedented support for our abolition movement.

The goal of Revolutionary Intercommunalism is to overthrow capitalist imperialism and create a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The proletariat are the workers. You who cook food, mop and sweep runs, pick vegetables, plant crops, fix plumbing, press and wash clothes – you are a worker! The founding fathers of this country said it!

Now it is time to change that narrative: Amend the 13th Amendment! Abolish legal slavery!

Focusing in on the oppressor

The Prison Industrial Slave Complex in Amerika is so vast and generates billions of dollars for corporate entities in every state. Our comrades from the Free Alabama Movement made the call for a boycott of food service giant Aramark.

Sisters and brothers, Aramark purposely starves human beings! In 2007, I was released from federal prison. I was ordered to enter a halfway house in downtown Houston, Texas. Aramark had the food contract and the meals were substandard and inadequate to say the least. My experience was that the meals were paltry – serving sizes not fit for adults.

Prisoners from many states and jurisdictions have been victims of Aramark’s exploitive and deceptive business practices. Aramark spokesperson Karen Cutler claims that inmates who have complained about food quality are liars. Cutler says, “Our dedication to quality and service have made us a leader in our industry for more than 75 years.”

The Prison Industrial Slave Complex in Amerika is so vast and generates billions of dollars for corporate entities in every state. Our comrades from the Free Alabama Movement made the call for a boycott of food service giant Aramark.

Comrades, Aramark is a capitalist corporation which does not give a damn about the human beings who are mistreated, abused and starved. We have to continue this boycott and try to put them out of business – period.

In Texas, the main oppressor and exploiter of prisoners is Texas Corrections Industries, or TCI. TCI has approximately 37 factories all over the sprawling Texas prison system. It is in our interest to withdraw our Free Labor from all TCI plants, whether you are a mattress factory worker at Wynne Unit, a welder or industrial painter at Coffield, or a meat packing plant worker at Neil or Michaels Unit. The best strategy for us to get paid and fix this corrupt parole system is to shut down all the TCI factories – now!

The next culprit on our list is the prison store, commonly known as the commissary. TDCJ commissaries sell electronic appliances, shorts, t-shirts, thermals and socks, as well as a variety of junk food. TDCJ gouges prisoners’ families by marking up items 50 percent or more!

For instance, in 2009 a ramen noodle soup, by far the most popular item in Texas, was marked up by 49 percent! The wholesale price was 14 cents and the retail price 25 cents each. In 2017, that same soup is .30 cents, and times are worse for poor families in Texas who try to support an incarcerated loved one. Texas doesn’t give a damn about these prisoners or their families.

In Texas, the main oppressor and exploiter of prisoners is Texas Corrections Industries, or TCI. The next culprit on our list is the prison store, commonly known as the commissary.

As with TCI and its relationship with the corrupt Texas Board of Criminal Justice, we are seeing patterns of deceptive business practices by TDCJ and the companies that it awards contracts to in order to supply Texas prisoners with subpar and poor quality commissary items. Barbco, Keefe and even New Balance have entered into contracts with TDCJ where poor quality items are forced upon prisoners. It’s the only store in town!

Prisoner Keith M. Cole has actually taken TDCJ to civil court over what he claims to be a pervasive and systemic problem with faulty TDCJ commissary items. For example, Cole has cited tennis shoes that rip after the first wear, radio head phones that instantly suffer from power shortages on one side, and stale food items. I can testify from my own experience that TDCJ is definitely running a scam on prisoners and their families.

TDCJ commissaries made a profit of about $30 million in 2009 on gross sales of $94.9 million. I gathered most of this specific information from an article written by Matt Clarke in the November 2010 Prison Legal News on the topic of Texas prison commissaries.

It is only logical that we ask TDCJ prisoners to stage a boycott of Texas prison commissaries in May 2017! On top of higher quality items, we want healthier choices! The food in Texas prisons has become progressively worse. Looming budget cuts have forced us to rely on the commissary more and more in order to fulfill our nutritional needs.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, TCI, TDCJ and the legislators on the various criminal justice committees stopped viewing us as human beings long ago. Vietnam War veteran and activist S. Brian Willson has a wonderful quote in his memoir, “Blood on the Tracks,” which truly describes the nature of the bureaucratic oppressor in Texas and beyond.

He says: “Economic and political structures are not people, yet they are comprised of people – bureaucrats – who strive to keep their jobs. It’s important to understand that the people who make decisions and materially benefit from economic systems are generally far removed from the effects of their decisions. Within the enclosed cocoon of their work world, bureaucrats experience the people impacted by the system as nothing, more or less, than a statistic.”

It is only logical that we ask TDCJ prisoners to stage a boycott of Texas prison commissaries in May 2017!

Now I want to bring the point home so everyone understands me.

In Texas, solitary confinement is used in order to punish politicized prisoners such as myself. However, these administrative segregation units are also used to hide mentally ill prisoners and isolate so-called Security Threat Group members.

Comrade Kevin “Rashid” Johnson has assembled an impressive body of research material which clearly shows these Ad-Seg units in Texas are “incubators for psychosis.”

The Texas Board of Criminal Justice is far removed from the dark, dank, oppressive and inhumane environments Ad-Seg prisoners are forced to live in. In August 2013, the board changed the indigent correspondence rules.

Indigent prisoners went from being allowed to send out five personal letters a week to only five per month! The prisoners hurt the most were those trapped in long-term solitary (Ad-Seg). I personally know many prisoners who are suffering in this sensory deprived environment.

Writing a letter to a family member or friend, an activist or member of the clergy actually can be therapeutic to many prisoners. These connections to the “free world” have the potential of saving a life. Life can become so very meaningless and hopeless in here.

The Texas Board of Criminal Justice is far removed from the dark, dank, oppressive and inhumane environments Ad-Seg prisoners are forced to live in.

Do any of you believe the Texas Board of Criminal Justice thought about this deeply before they decided to limit isolated human beings’ access to the only “lifeline” they have? Have I made my point?

In 2016 at the H.H. Coffield Unit, we saw a spike in suicides of prisoners housed in Ad-Seg: 13 dead human beings! The Texas Board of Criminal Justice is not concerned about loss of life or quality of life. In all their decision-making, it’s all about the bottom line.

Once again I quote S. Brian Willson when he says, “(B)ureaucrats essentially repress knowledge of someone being tortured, of someone being imprisoned. The system insidiously requires this kind of denial in order to maintain itself.”

What is a revolutionary?

In order to discredit me and silence my voice, the state of Texas and the TDCJ has employed numerous tactics.

A lot of people don’t understand that I represent a new generation of revolutionaries and social justice activists. It’s not just me. It’s Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, the national spokesperson for the Free Alabama Movement, it’s the IWOC, it’s the Peoples’ Minister JR Valrey, it’s Alicia Garza, it’s Asha Bandele, Professor Alondra Nelson, Talib Kwali, Marc Lamont Hill, Wolverine Shakur, Mecca Shakur, Quanell-X, Krystal Muhammad and Robert S. Muhammad, Ph.D.

So the “oppressor class” labels us as being “angry,” “violent” or “militant,” when in reality our only crime is being passionate about protecting human beings and severing our ties to a system that continues to destroy the world. Imperialism!

For those of you who have time, I highly recommend you read Manning Marable’s “How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America.” It truly improved my understanding of the challenges we face. On page 231, Marable quotes Boggs and Boggs from their book, “Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century.”

They say: “A revolutionist does not hate the country in which the illegitimate and oppressive system continues to rule. Far less does the revolutionist hate the people of the country. On the contrary, a revolutionist loves the country and the people but hates what some people are doing to the country and the people.”

So the “oppressor class” labels us as being “angry,” “violent” or “militant,” when in reality our only crime is being passionate about protecting human beings and severing our ties to a system that continues to destroy the world. Imperialism!

Comrades, friends and allies, please know and understand that when Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, Kinetic Justice, Iman Saddique Abdullah Hasan, Heshima Denham and myself watch as our sisters and brothers at Standing Rock fight to protect land and preserve clean and safe water supplies, we are keenly aware that an imperialist, multinational corporation by the name of Energy Transfer Partners has defined itself as an enemy of the people.

Carole Seligman and Bunnie Weinstein, the editors of Socialist Viewpoint Magazine, taught me a Lakota saying, “Mitakuye oyasin,” which means, “We are all related.” And trust me, we are!

More solidarity and unity needed

Comrades, there are no easy solutions to the problems we face. The road is long and filled with many obstacles.

It is very important that I take time to acknowledge the work of our anarchist friends at The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons. The EPA is holding Volkswagen accountable for polluting the environment but for some reason the human beings in Pennsylvania and Texas being forced to drink contaminated and toxic water in state prisons don’t register on the EPA’s radar!? Without the sincere dedication of comrade Pagnioti Tsolkas, our cries for clean water supplies would be totally ignored.

The Anarchist Black Cross Federation all over the world has increased their support of our abolitionist work. Socialist and Communist scholars such as Tom Watts and Professor Victor Wallis Ph.D. have continued to provide much needed guidance, mentorship and political support. Revolutionary supporters such as Michael Novick and Karl Kerplebedeb have never abandoned us – never!

And more and more each day our European comrades are entering the struggle with us, lending cyber, material, moral and political support: Heinz Leitner of Vienna, Austria, Alina Dallat of France, Annabelle Parker of The Netherlands and Sam Rosen of the U.K.

This battle against prison slavery is an all-encompassing collective effort. We need Amnesty International to recognize our struggle.

Chairman of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party Shaka Sankofa Zulu is free! He has been hard at work rebuilding his life and laying foundations of support for the NABPP PC and our United Panther movement; it is only fitting that I end by quoting Shaka:

“Pantherism is the tool for mobilization and organization of the masses, for it articulates the desires and class aspirations of the people to be free from hunger, diseases, poor housing, racism, imperialist wars of aggression, patriarchal relations and oppression of all kinds. Pantherism is merely the politics of the have-nots who slave in the sweaty and dank factories across the Black world and live in shanty towns and slums. In short, it is the language of real life.”

Brothers and sisters, I can only make “The Call.” Dare to struggle, dare to win. All Power to the People.

Send our brother some love and light: Keith H. Washington, 1487958, Eastham Unit, 2665 Prison Rd 1, Lovelady TX 75851.

http://sfbayview.com/2017/03/end-prison-slavery-in-texas-now-part-ii-class-consciousness-and-international-solidarity/

blindpig

03-23-2017, 04:16 PM

Revolutionary Love
Fighting Prison Injustice From Both Sides of the Wall

BYSHANDRE DELANEY
MARCH 11, 2017

I identify with the movement of mothers whose children have been brutalized or murdered by police. I am very fortunate: I will see my son again, while most of these mothers remain to mourn their children. However, when I see my son, it is behind bars.

I am a mother who was forced to be a warrior for prisoners. I advocate not only for the rights of my son, but for the human and civil rights of all prisoners.

Fighting injustice is imbedded in my DNA. I am not wired to be a bystander. It is my duty to fight for those whose voices too often go unheard. Prisoners are not heard because of the way they are kept invisible from society. When I began investigating my son's experiences in prison, I could not in clear conscience turn my back. I was faced with the reality that many prisoners were experiencing the same brutality, starvation and torture.

I may be "biased." After all, I am a mother and a protector. But this mother has an arsenal of facts to prove her points about solitary confinement. I am armed with the truth: the truth of what happened to my son and what happens in solitary confinement not only in Pennsylvania, where we live, but throughout the United States.

Before the explosion of cell phone videos and social media exposing police brutality, American prisons were videotaping brutal beatings, torture and sometimes murder of unarmed prisoners. Those videos seldom surfaced or became public. Around 2011, I had the unfortunate responsibility of viewing videos of the brutal cell extraction of my son, Carrington Keys at SCI Dallas, in Dallas, Pennsylvania. I couldn't watch. In fact, I didn't watch it in its entirety until 2016. Even then, I lowered my gaze to avoid the pain.

This nightmare began in April 2010 when I received a letter from my son asking me to call and check on him because it "may get bloody." His life had been threatened by correctional officers (COs). This was shortly after my son contributed to "Institutionalized Cruelty," a report generated by Human Rights Coalition (HRC). The report detailed beatings, torture and inhumane conditions at SCI Dallas. When the report was viewed by prison officials, the names of prisoners who contributed to the report became known. Subsequently, all of their lives were threatened. A weeklong rampage of beatings began.

The Dallas 6 Incident

The Dallas 6 were among a brave group of men in the Restricted Housing Unit at SCI Dallas who contributed to the HRC report on prison conditions. The retaliation against them began not long after the report was released. The guards were beating anyone whose name was in the report. On April 28, 2010, Isaac Sanchez was tortured in a restraint chair overnight for complaining that Anthony Kelly -- one of the Dallas 6 -- had been denied food trays. After they tortured Isaac Sanchez, they promised the Dallas 6 that they would be next.

The prisoners decided to hold a peaceful protest by covering their windows. In solitary, in Pennsylvania, prisoners cover their windows to get the attention of the lieutenant, who supervises the prison guards. They don't have access to phones or visitors. Their letters to government officials had been returned to prison officials -- essentially, the state was asking prison employees to investigate themselves. Letters to the district attorney and state police were ignored. The men thought that maybe, if they could talk to the lieutenant, the guards would stop their brutal retaliation against the whistleblowers.

Instead, each man was brutally assaulted and forcibly removed from his cell by guards dressed in riot gear, using military weapons. On video, the men were tased on their genitals, excessively pepper sprayed from vents behind their cells, which is illegal, and beaten with batons and handcuffs. Once extracted from their cells, they received no medical treatment and were left bloody and covered in pepper spray for up to 12 hours. They were then evacuated to other prisons, except for Duane Peters, who was held at SCI Dallas for another five years and continuously tortured.

The courageous prisoner whistleblowers all wrote to HRC, which filed a criminal complaint with the state police. My son, a jailhouse lawyer, filed a lawsuit against the district attorney because she ignored repeated complaints about abuse. No one ever investigated any of the prisoners' allegations, not even the state police with whom HRC filed a criminal complaint. At the April 2016 trial, State Police Corporal Wilson testified that he tried to question the men and was denied by prison officials.

Four months after the HRC complaint and days after an article was published about my son's lawsuit, the district attorney, Department of Corrections and the state police charged six men with riot for covering their cell windows. In addition to the riot charge, my son was charged with six counts of assault.

At the preliminary hearing in 2010, guards claimed they were coerced into entering the cells because windows were covered. They didn't tell Magistrate Tupper that the windows were uncovered two hours before they entered the cells. The fact that they knew windows were uncovered wasn't revealed until five years later, in 2015. Nor did they show him extraction videos. Coincidentally, they fought to suppress the videos, saying they were not relevant.

The word "riot" implies serious violence being enacted upon guards. Individually celled prisoners peacefully covering their window and remaining silent do not constitute a "riot."

It took six years to bring the Dallas 6 case to trial, at an enormous cost to taxpayers, including the expense of transporting the Dallas 6 to their preliminary hearing with a sheriff helicopter hovering above a procession of cars from all over the state. Another expense was the security at each hearing. All who attend undergo a search and metal detector to enter the courthouse. Once upstairs, two guards at the courtroom door re-search court-goers, and six to eight guards inside guard everyone. We believe that these extreme security measures are aimed to deter people from attending court, because we have many supporters. As a court watcher, I've witnessed many trials and never seen this amount of security, not even at a murder trial. Not only do I believe this level of security portrays an extreme level of danger, but it also can influence the jury. A juror may see all this security and naturally assume the defendants are threatening.

On April 4, 2016, a jury trial was held for the last three of the Dallas 6. Andre Jacobs and my son Carrington Keys defended themselves, while Duane Peters was defended by attorney Michael Wiseman from Philadelphia. Wiseman also served as a standby attorney for Andre and Carrington.

The eight-day trial became an exposé on solitary confinement: how it breaks the spirit, and how there is a lack of accountability. Court reports were posted daily. The jury was deadlocked, after only a couple hours of deliberation. The men claimed victory. Months later, the district attorney dropped the riot charges, but decided to retry my son on assault charges.

Retaliation Is Standard Procedure

On March 13, 2017, my son will go to trial for assault. We believe this is retaliation for the active lawsuits he has filed, naming court officials and Department of Corrections staff. He has experienced retaliation while at SCI Retreat every time he is transported there for court. Under the watch of Superintendent Vincent Mooney and Jim McGrady, father-in-law of the District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis, legal materials have been destroyed. Personal property gets "lost," leaving him without hygiene products or underclothes. Most recently, he was placed in a psychiatric unit in a suicide-watch cell. The thought traumatized me. I had visions of what happened to Sandra Bland. It took a call alert to get him removed from danger. HRC uses a network of people to make calls to prison and government officials on behalf of prisoners whose lives are being endangered.

The history with Superintendent Mooney started at SCI Mahanoy where my son was sent upon his initial incarceration in 1999. Superintendent Mooney was a CO there at the time and his name is prominent in HRC abuse logs. When my son began studying law and helping others, he became a target for abuse by guards. After an incident with another prisoner, he was ordered to spend 90 days in solitary confinement -- yet the guards kept him in solitary for nearly 10 years. While in the "hole" he began to be starved and beaten by guards. He was denied showers, yard time, mail and visits. I was lied to by staff, who said I couldn't visit (although under the prison's rules, those in solitary can still receive visits). Sometimes he stayed in his cell even when they offered to let him out, because sometimes when they let him out, they assaulted him, even throwing him down a flight of stairs at one point.

For years, I lived in fear and had endless anxiety. I was always worried that my son would be killed inside the walls, just as men are dying on the street at the hands of police.

Working with the Human Rights Coalition became an awakening time for me. Naively, I thought the abuse of my son was isolated. However, I learned these practices are standard procedures of the Department of Corrections. I began a letter-writing campaign only to find that all letters to public and government officials were mailed back to the Department of Corrections to investigate itself. I also built a network between the prisoners, so that if one was being attacked, another could contact me and I would contact their family. This went on for years. For years, I wrote, called and faxed then Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Jeffrey Beard's office once a week or more. Beard later became Secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in California, where over 30,000 hunger strikers protested against some of the same issues the Dallas 6 were fighting.

After my son was tortured at SCI Mahanoy for many years, I wrote a letter in 2008 pleading with Beard to move him immediately before he died. Guards then put glass in my son's food. I now know this is a common occurrence: I receive letters from prisoners in solitary who describe being drugged or poisoned, and finding foreign objects in their food like metal. Shortly after my letter, Carrington was transferred to SCI Dallas. With this move, Vincent Mooney still had control over my son's life: He had moved up to become superintendent at SCI Dallas. When I heard about his promotion, I wrote a letter to Superintendent Mooney and said he knew my son was not a bad person and this should be a fresh start. Mooney actually agreed, and released my son into general population.

I was finally able to see my son. He had visibly lost a tremendous amount of weight and at 6' weighed 120 pounds. It was heartbreaking but nonetheless a joy to see him.

That joy soon faded. One day, while my son was in the prison yard, COs ransacked his cell and removed legal documents in which he was building a case against them. When Carrington complained, he was thrown back into solitary. While in the hole at SCI Dallas, he began experiencing and witnessing a much more depraved torture than ever before. This was when the seeds of the HRC report were planted. For a year, Carrington and others put their lives on the line to report the abuse and torture they experienced to HRC. They had hope that exposing the brutality and inhumanity of solitary confinement would prevent such atrocities in the future.

Solitary Is Everywhere

While in some ways the experience of the Dallas 6 is unique, in others it is disturbingly commonplace. Nationally, there are between 80,000 and 100,000 prisoners in solitary. Pennsylvania holds 2,500 prisoners in solitary. Recently, the Abolitionist Law Center in Pittsburgh was part of a team that won lawsuits for prisoners with extreme solitary times. Russell Maroon Shoats spent nearly 30 years and Arthur Cetewayo Johnson was held in solitary for nearly 37 years. Both men, now in their 70s, exercised and read books to keep themselves sane and fit. Though elderly, they were feared and considered escape risks.

What happened to my son is widely reported from prisons across the United States. For many years I was afraid I would be getting that call that no family ever wants. Such a call had to be made to John Carter's family, who was killed by guards at Pennsylvania's SCI Rockview from a brutal beating and excessive use of tear gas. Jailhouse lawyer and prison activist John Carter was retaliated against by being put on food loaf, which is a compressed loaf of vegetables and starches given to prisoners as punishment. When he complained it was time to be off the loaf, he was murdered. Because of the strong guards union, COs are rarely fired. If a guard doesn't go along with the gang mentality, he may be harassed, beaten up by other guards or set up to be attacked by prisoners. For example, Officer D. Lee Martin feared for his safety from other guards. He lost his job at SCI Camp Hill because he was so afraid, he didn't "snitch" on guards who set an inmate up to be assaulted. The system is set up to cover up and even condone abuse by guards, particularly when it comes to people in solitary confinement.

Going to Court

When my son goes to court, I am happy that he will have his say about what happened to him. On that day, it will be clear that when he and the rest of the Dallas 6 took a stand against injustice, it wasn't just for themselves but for everyone. They were taking a stand for everyone who had tired of people dying and lives being squandered due to medical neglect, guard-coerced suicides, starvation and brutal beatings. They were tired of the toxic environment -- of drinking brown water and living in stench. They risked their lives to make a statement.

Just as peaceful resistance to brutality on the streets is often considered threatening -- and even cause for a protester to be harmed -- resistance to brutality behind the walls is seen as defiance of the natural order of things. What is the price people pay when they stand up for themselves? On March 13, 2017, my son Carrington Keys will stand in court and hope that the verdict comes down on the side of justice -- for himself, and for so many others suffering at the hands of prison guards.

This article originally appeared in Truthout

https://indypendent.org/2017/03/11/revolutionary-love

Dhalgren

03-31-2017, 12:24 PM

blindpig

03-31-2017, 02:32 PM

Heard on local news yesterday that the Alabama legislature voted down a bill to increase funds for prison repair and building new prisons. A new bill, that is expected to pass, is for the transfer of state prisoners to county facilities. The beat goes on.

Ain't just.....

President Trump’s 2018 Budget Cuts $1 Billion in Prison Construction

March 29, 2017 Correctional News 2018 budget, department-of-justice, President Donald Trump, President Trump, Prison Construction, prison construction funding
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s initial 2018 budget released on March 16 shows that his “tough on crime” attitude on the campaign trail may not have translated to his new budget. While previous statements he made called for longer prison sentences on drugs, indicating an increase in incarceration policies, his proposed budget actually indicates a move toward less incarceration. With prison construction and outdated programs on the chopping block, the budget plan makes way for increased funding to fight terrorism and defense against illegal immigration.

Trump’s 2018 budget requests $27.7 billion for the Department of Justice, a $1.1 billion or about 3.8 percent decrease in funding compared to the 2017 budget. The most obvious indication of this is his $1 billion cut in federal prison construction spending due to a 14 percent decrease in the prison population since 2013. While the budget added $80 million to help with overcrowding at some facilities and $113 million to modernize outdated prisons, these amounts would no way make up for the $1 billion in overall cuts to prisons.

http://correctionalnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/web_TrumpBudget.jpg
President Trump’s 2018 budget requests $27.7 billion for the Department of Justice, a $1.1 billion or about 3.8 percent decrease in funding compared to the 2017 budget.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

While prison construction is certainly on the chopping block, so are crucial funds classified as “mandatory” such as the Crime Victims Fund and the Assets Forfeiture Fund. The budget plan will eliminate about $700 million in funding to what the administration deems “outdated programs,” including $210 million for the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, in which two-thirds of the funding reimburses four states for the cost of incarcerating illegal criminal aliens.

While both the Obama and Bush administrations have questioned funding for the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, it has always survived. Under President Trump’s plan, however, state prisons and county jails would no longer be reimbursed for incarcerating undocumented immigrants, which could be a potential loss of more than $50 million in the state of California alone, according to The Sacramento Bee.

What the budget proposal does plan to do is strengthen counterterrorism, counterintelligence and federal law enforcement activities by providing an increase of $249 million (or 3 percent) in funding to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) compared to 2017 budget. It also includes a $175 million increase in law enforcement spending to be used to target “the worst of the worst criminal organizations and drug traffickers in order to address violent crime, gun-related deaths and the opioid epidemic,” which has historically led to more aggressive policies that contribute to mass incarceration, according to Vox.

It will also amp up the defense of illegal entry into the U.S. with an increase of about $80 million (or 19 percent) compared to the 2017 budget to hire 75 additional immigration judge teams to “more efficiently adjudicate removal proceedings — bringing the total number of funded immigration judge teams to 449,” according to the budget report. IT will also enhance border security by providing 60 additional border enforcement prosecutors and 40 deputy U.S. Marshals for the apprehension, transportation and prosecution of criminal aliens.

While the details of the budget plan are still quite vague when it comes to corrections, there’s no doubt that major changes are underway.

http://correctionalnews.com/2017/03/29/president-trumps-2018-budget-cuts-1-billion-prison-construction/

Move private plantations and chemical incarceration.

blindpig

04-11-2017, 10:24 AM

LAWSUIT MAY SERVE AS TEMPLATE FOR CHALLENGING FORCED IMMIGRANT LABOR IN PRIVATE PRISONS

10 APR 2017
Jared Ware

https://shadowproof.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/7298752064_eac90a82af_k-750x500.jpg
A protester stands with a sign in front of an immigrant detention center in Aurora, Colorado, operated by the private prison company GEO Group. Photo by Justin Valas on Flickr

In March, District Court Judge John Kane granted class action certification to a lawsuit challenging slave labor practices at a private immigrant detention center in Aurora, Colorado, operated by GEO Group, Inc.

The decision, in the case known as Menocal v GEO Group, drastically increases the lawsuit’s potential implications. It will enable between 50,000-60,000 people formerly incarcerated at the GEO Group facility to seek remedy for their forced labor.

A favorable judgement or settlement from an anti-slavery class action lawsuit would be a major victory for these formerly incarcerated people and a serious financial setback for GEO Group.

Brought under anti-slavery provisions of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), the lawsuit could also be used as a basic template for other litigation challenging incarcerated slave labor. Such labor is a common feature of immigrant, juvenile, pretrial, state, and federal incarceration in the United States.

This is the first time a private prison contractor has been sued for violating the TVPA. However, it is unclear whether the TVPA can be used to challenge inmate labor in other pretrial settings or in prisons. Clearly, for prisoners with convictions, the “exception clause” to 13th Amendment to the Constitution presents a daunting obstacle.

The TVPA And The 13th Amendment

The forced labor provision of the TVPA makes it “unlawful for anyone to knowingly provide (or obtain) the labor or services of a person… (1) by means of force, threats of force, physical restraint, or threats of physical restraint to that person or another person.”

The TVPA states the labor or services of a person cannot be obtained “by means of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause the person to believe that, if the person did not perform such labor or services, that the person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint”

The lawsuit claims GEO Group forced detainees to work for $1 per day or less doing housekeeping and participating in a “Voluntary Work Program.” But the courts were not convinced by GEO Group’s arguments that this labor is voluntary because detainees are threatened with solitary confinement if they refuse to work. Attorneys for the former detainees argue this arrangement violates the TVPA.

Court documents show detainees were made to strip and wax floors, clean bathrooms, assist in the catering of GEO Group-sponsored law enforcement events, and landscape the grounds of the GEO Group facility, along with a variety of other jobs.

The lawsuit contends GEO Group “unjustly enriched” itself, paying detainees next-to-nothing for jobs that could have gone to prevailing wage employees. This exploited labor increased GEO Group’s profit margins.

Such labor conditions are not exclusive to private immigrant detention centers, but exist in public and private jails and prisons across the country as well. Last year, a national prison strike against slave labor was called by incarcerated people across the country in an attempt to undermine the system through massive work-stoppages.

Members of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS), a group of incarcerated human rights advocates and prison abolitionists, addressed the difficulty of challenging incarcerated slave labor in court.

“On a state level, we’ve had comrades in the past, from Jalil Muntaqim to a host of other comrades, who have filed lawsuits to challenge the 13th Amendment,” said James, a member of JLS who was granted anonymity to avoid retaliation. “But it was not very successful simply because they were already convicted of a crime.”

James is referring to what many call the “exception clause” of the 13th Amendment to the constitution, which reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Court opinions, including Ruffin V. Commonwealth, Draper V. Rhay, Lindsey V. Leavy, and Blass v. Weigel, have upheld that the enslavement or involuntary servitude of individuals who have been convicted of a crime is not a violation of the 13th Amendment.

“I think that this is the first time that [forced labor or slavery] has been challenged from this particular angle here,” James said, referring to the TVPA. “I applaud the attorneys that are working on this.”

“We are hoping on our end, that it definitely opens up the door for other challenges.”

Challenging Pretrial Immigrant Slave Labor

GEO Group’s attorneys argue the lawsuit could set the stage for challenging labor policies in other private facilities. They believe the judge’s decision to certify the lawsuit as a class action will ultimately force them to settle the case, because the liability will represent too significant of a financial risk.

“GEO is the sole defendant here. But its financial and legal position is dictated by its contracts with the federal government,” a GEO Group attorney told the court. “These contracts were drafted on the assumption that the sanitation policy and daily VWP (Volunteer Work Program) allowance would continue to be effective — a reasonable assumption given that both policies have withstood legal scrutiny for decades.”

There is a body of law around pretrial detention that provides for what is known as a “housekeeping exception,” enabling jail operators to utilize uncompensated inmate labor to keep the facility running.

But Andrew Free, an immigration and civil rights attorney working on behalf of the plaintiffs, argues the TVPA “makes no distinction in the text about who qualifies as a trafficker, or person who obtains labor, through force or threats of force.”

“And it makes no distinction about the types of folks who can be trafficked or, in other words, people who could be forced to work,” Free says.

GEO Group also said the court’s “novel certification” poses a “potentially catastrophic risk” for the company, as a “skeleton of this suit could potentially be re-filed against privately operated facilities across the United States.” The contractor is concerned private prison companies will be forced to defend these lawsuits, even though they firmly believe the plaintiffs have no legal claim.

They acknowledge detention facilities run by the United States government, as well as those operated by other contractors like CoreCivic, also force detainees to perform labor for little-to-no money under the threat of solitary confinement.

“GEO’s status as a government contractor puts it in the position of having to answer for what are essentially grievances against Congressional and DHS/ICE policies,” the attorneys conclude, “and to face substantial claims for monetary relief that it will be unlikely able to settle.”

While it is true that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a Housekeeping and Voluntary Work Program policy, it does not call for solitary confinement or any other punishment if detainees refuse to work. It is this threat of punishment that is being tested by the TVPA.

“Federal private prison contractors are not above the law,” Free said. “They sign a contract with the federal government that requires them to abide by federal, state, and local law. And when they violate it in the course of executing that contract, they’re still liable.”

The private prison company wants a three-judge panel from the Tenth Circuit to stop the class action from moving forward before a final decision is rendered in the case.

The Need To Challenge Incarcerated Slave Labor Elsewhere

There are examples, like McGarry v Pallito, where individuals have sued and won cases against the state for certain types of forced labor while awaiting trial. However, the 13th Amendment has failed to prohibit the enslavement of people with a criminal conviction.

Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun of the Free Alabama Movement, an organization of incarcerated people that called for the 2016 prison strike against prison slavery, notes the conditions that motivated the lawsuit are not limited to private immigrant detention centers.

“Anywhere where you see a building where people are incarcerated, those people are doing prison slave labor, because that’s the only way the jobs can get done,” he said. “That’s the only way the institution can function. And they’re bringing that point up about the ICE detention facilities, well that applies to county jails.”

“So, that means you could go and find the same class action lawsuit at all the county jails around the country, because those guys are pretrial detainees waiting to go to trial too, and they’re being required to work.”

Although certain types of unpaid labor may violate the rights of pretrial detainees, individual lawsuits don’t seem to deter the abuses of the state or private contractors. Most pretrial detainees are in detention because they cannot afford bail, let alone the legal fees to sue the state for their labor conditions.

Attorney Andrew Free argues class certification is crucial for reform efforts because it “empowers otherwise marginalized and susceptible detainees through group action to hold the corporation accountable for the way that it has made these profits.”

Free said that if people were forced to fight these cases individually, “not only would they be subject to the potential for retaliation or the potential for costly litigation against these billion dollar entities, but they also wouldn’t have a real shot at changing the way the entity does business.”

According to the ACLU, private prisons held approximately 7% of state prisoners and 18% of federal prisoners in 2015, but as of 2016, they held nearly 75% of federal immigration detainees. However, activists argue private prison companies play a broad role in shaping policy and legislation with regards to incarceration.

“With private prisons you have to remember, they fund the legislation to fill up the state prisons and they’re sitting there waiting for the overflow to pour out,” Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun said.

“These private prison companies are human traffickers, that’s the only way that you can look at it, because that’s what it is. These people are invested in human trafficking,” he said.

Ra-Sun describes companies like GEO Group as “market evaluators,” adding “they look at the immigration issue and they say ‘okay, if we lobby for tougher immigration laws and then we lobby for more red tape and bureaucracy to get these people to immigration facilities and then we can hold them there long enough, this is the potential profit that we can make.’”

He was one of the prisoners who called for the nationwide prison strike in September 2016, reaffirmed his belief in the power of work stoppages as a form of resistance.

“If all of those guys and all of those women were to stop doing anything, if they didn’t do any kind of work again, ever, how much would it cost to the GEO Group to bring in cooks, cleaners, preparers, and would they still be able to profit off it? If they would still be able to profit off of it, they don’t care.”

Sunday from Jailhouse Lawyers Speak also believes the struggle for better labor conditions among the incarcerated is the same, regardless of whether they’re immigrants, pretrial detainees, or incarcerated due to criminal conviction.

“The situation doesn’t need to be separated because our situation, the federal situation, and the private-owned prison situation is all the same.”

https://shadowproof.com/2017/04/10/lawsuit-may-serve-template-challenging-forced-immigrant-labor-private-prisons/