4strugglemag

Issue 5--Fall 2005

Police State, Solitary Confinement, Resistance

Our founding editor, Jaan Laaman, is stepping back for a bit, and has nominated the very capable Bill Dunne to take over for him. Please join us in welcoming Bill, and in thanking him for all of his work on this issue.

We continue to take a hard look at the growing police state in America and its human rights abuses, including the solitary confinement of prisoners. As always we welcome your feedback and contributions, by mail, email, or on our discussion board at www.4strugglemag.org/board.

Next issue: We all know what we're against... but what are we for? What kind of society are we envisioning as an alternative to corporate capitalism and the police state? How will we get there? Send your submissions now!

Table of Contents

Jericho Callout for Millions More March
Art by Ali Shakka
The Police State: War at Home by Bill Dunne
While the Citizenry Sleeps by Ronald Del Raine
Prisons: An Instrument of Submission to Imperialism from Prison Art Newsletter
Martial Law in Nepal from Socialism and Liberation
Basque Prisoners Protest for Political Status from Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!
Airport “Security” and the Police State by Sara Falconer
Some Effects of Long-term Lock-down Facilities by Sundiata Acoli
The Psychological Effects of Long-Term Imprisonment by Herman Bell
Whither the Law? by Ed Mead
Shut Down Control Units Wherever They Exist! by Gary Watson
Glee Club by Todd "Hyung-Rae" Tarselli
U.S. Police World: The War Elsewhere by Bill Dunne
Hands Off Assata!
i believe in living by Assata Shakur
David Gilbert on Lynne Stewart
National Conference of Black Lawyers Statement Regarding the Conviction of Lynne Stewart
On Political Prisoners by Michael Africa
A Letter by Waste
U.S. Police State Attacks the Freedom It Cannot Provide by Antonio Guerrero
The 'Feminization of Poverty': Women's Poverty Sows the Seeds of Struggle from Socialism and Liberation
ALL Power to ALL the People by Rashid
History of Black August Concept by Doc Holiday et al.
Fundamentals of Marxism: What is Imperialism? from Socialism and Liberation
Marxist Materialism versus Idealism from Prison Art Newsletter
Your Government Can't Protect You... but It Can Get You Killed
California Grand Juries Lock Up Witnesses
FBI "Threat Assessments" of Prisoners
March on the White House! September 24
International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War
Heartcheck
Tell Your Story! by Robin Darbyshire
Art by Lucky

New additions:
An Open Letter from a Political Prisoner by Veronza Bowers Jr.
Twenty First Century Political Prisoner: Real and Potential by Russell Shoatz
30 Years Ago: Empire Still! by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Jericho Callout for Millions More March

An Invitation to Join
JERICHO AMNESTY MOVEMENT for U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS

MILLIONS MORE MARCH CONTINGENT AND ACTION WEEKEND

October 14-17, 2005 Washington, DC

The Jericho Movement for Amnesty & Freedom for All Political Prisoners in the U.S.

Herman B. Ferguson and Efia Nwangaza, National Co-Chairs

The Millions More March (MMM-10th) call to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March this October 14-16, in Washington, DC, is an opportunity for the Jericho Movement for Amnesty and Recognition for U.S. Political Prisoners, Prisoners of War and Exiles (The Jericho Movement, political prisoners) and other progressive and revolutionary forces to consolidate our efforts. It is a chance to launch a public education and recruitment campaign on behalf of U.S. political prisoners (PP). Many of them are survivors of COINTELPRO and have served sentences longer than did Nelson Mandela for his and the ANC's activities against South African apartheid.

The Jericho Movement for Amnesty and Recognition for Political Prisoners, Prisoners of War and Exiles (hereafter, political prisoners) grew out of the historic Jericho '98 March on Washington for political prisoners. They were jointly sponsored by the PGRNA and the New Afrikan Liberation Front (NALF) for the release of our captured freedom fighters. It was the brainchild of political prisoner Jalil Muntaqim and designed to serve as the official U.S. political prisoners' voice.

Jalil Muntaqim borrowed the idea from the annual Provisional Government Republic of New Africa's (PGRNA) Jericho March, sponsored over 10 years ago on New Afrikan Nation Day (NAND). The PGRNA's last march, 1993, was held in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. To start, Jalil called former political prisoners Safiyah Bukhari and Herman Ferguson. Together, they agreed to organize a nationwide march. It was called the Jericho '98 March and took place at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 27th 1998 to coincide with NAND.

In honor of the eightieth anniversary of the birth of Malcolm X and in anticipation of the 10th anniversary of the '98 Jericho March on Washington, the JERICHO MOVEMENT FOR AMNESTY AND RECOGNITION OF U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS calls for the revival and expansion of the broad coalition which launched that historic '98 march. The formation will be called the JERICHO AMNESTY MOVEMENT for U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS MILLIONS MORE CONTINGENT (The Contingent). The goal is to bring a focused political prisoner presence to the Millions More March.

In addition to participation in official activities, The Contingent will launch a weekend long public education and cultural blitz for full recognition and amnesty of all U.S. political prisoners. This effort has begun with movement wide polling and is expected to continue following the MMM-10th to strengthen current efforts to free U.S. political prisoners and lay the foundation for the 10th anniversary of the Jericho '98 March. The JERICHO MOVEMNT (JM) and the Contingent will take care to incorporate and cooperate with, as much as practical, other efforts to create a political prisoners’ voice for the MMM-10th. The JERICHO MOVEMENT supports the Millions More March and seeks representation on its planning body and presentation of the political prisoners' joint statement from the event podium.

The JERICHO MOVEMENT proposes the following Points of Unity:

-REHUMANIZE, DECRIMINALIZE, AMNESTIZE, PROTECT U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS, PRISONERS OF WAR, AND EXILES

-GAIN RECOGNITION OF THE EXISTENCE OF U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS, PRISONERS OF WAR, AND EXILES

-WIN AMNESTY & FREEDOM FOR U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS, PRISONERS OF WAR, AND EXILES

-BUILD U.S. AMNESTY MOVEMENT, JERICHO MARCH 10th ANNIVERSARY

-DEMAND CONGRESS IMPANEL COINTELPRO TRUTH COMMISSION, CHURCH COMMITTEE-LIKE PANEL, WITH REMEDIES AND RESTITUTION TO TARGETED COMMUNITIES, ORGANIZATIONS, AND INDIVIDUALS

-REPEAL THE PATRIOT ACT

Organizations joining the Contingent are asked to do the following:

-When proposing additional demands, include a relevant quote from political prisoners and legendary black and/or other revolutionary leaders to be used in educational literature.

-Publicize the Contingent's slogans, along with organizational demands.

-Commit to educate and mobilize their constituency around the Contingent, its slogans, and its organizational demands. The modification of the Contingent's slogans and demands shall be by 3/4 votes.

The Contingent structure will include a national Steering Committee of a voting representative from each Jericho Chapter and persons chosen and assigned as liaisons by national and local participating organizations, groups, and formations. Representatives are expected to participate in monthly conference calls and in person meetings as the Committee deems necessary. Daily governance and implementation are to be conducted by Jericho Movement Co-Chairs and regional representatives chosen by each region. To be a member of the Contingent, an organization must 1] be a current member of the Jericho Movement, 2] have participated in the '98 Jericho March on Washington, or 3] be invited by or apply to the Jericho Movement. Other qualifications may be determined by the Steering Committee. Endorsements are broadly sought.

WE MUST BRING THEM HOME NOW, IT IS OUR DUTY!

www. THEJERICHICHOMOVEMENT.COM BOX 340084 JAMAICA, NY 11434

Art

by Ali Shakka

Ali Shakka (s/n Bennie Hayes) #825298
Polunsky Prison
3872 FM 350 South
Livingston TX 77351 USA

The Police State: War at Home

by Bill Dunne

Class war rumbles across the social, political, and economic landscapes. The working class is under unprecedented attack as wages and benefits and services and security are cut, cut, cut in the name of competitiveness and despite a purportedly booming economy. The middle class is being squeezed into a thin buffer between the privations of the proletariat and the opulent excesses of the ruling class. And that tiny ruling class is using the daughters and sons of this majority it victimizes as cannon fodder in imperialist wars of aggression to extend its power to exploit and oppress. Such impoverishment and abuse is a recipe for discontent and the attendant unrest. Hence, along with redistributing wealth and power upwards, the ruling class is reconfiguring the land of the free into a state of the police where agencies of repression hold sway.

The growth and expansion of the various elements of the police state cover a lot of ground. Examples of its broad growth are legion: the U.S. assumption of the role of world police through imperialist wars, corporate imperialism that impoverishes multitudes, and neo-imperialist support of repressive and genocidal regimes; enforcement of corporate fascism’s agenda of a weak, divided, poor and dependent working class through reductions of social services such as health care, education, housing assistance, and more; the expansion of police powers with tactics like the USA “patriot” act and fear mongering; the proliferation of police and prisons in an era of declining crime under the rubric of “homeland” security; the increased use of police power to intimidate and control dissent with infiltration of above-ground organizations, “sneak and peek” warrantless searches, and the caging of protesters with mobile barriers; police agencies fomenting division and distrust by pursuing, arresting and vilifying “foreigners” and other minorities as potential “terrorists” or sympathizers. There are many more equally obvious and more subtle examples of the apparatus of repression’s tentacles working their way into the fabric of society.

Examples of more specific atrocities are also widespread. Individually and as types they illustrate the rise and roughshod ride of the police state. Police have rounded up possibly thousands –we still don’t know how many– of people for no more than being or “looking” middle eastern. There is Guantanamo. The apparatus of repression has mounted many show prosecutions of purported “terrorism” charges, only to have them fall apart or result in only minor convictions for petty offences like being intimidated enough to lie to the FBI--or for nothing, as in false admissions of minor guilt out of fear of an obscene sentence. Police shootings of civilians are a regular feature in the media-- always justified, of course, never systemic or evidence of the metastacizing license given to the agencies of repression. Prisoners are abused and killed with virtual impunity. Torture is being legitimized from the highest levels of the “justice” department, and the courts are being packed with right-wing judges likely to defer to executive power and support that trend. “Extraordinary rendition” to torture friendly and accommodating regimes is developing its own airline. The murder and torture of Iraqi and Afghani prisoners by military agents of imperialism is routinely legitimized and/or dismissed as no big deal. Many of those agents will bring that training and attitude to employment in the domestic apparatus of repression, whose enemy is us. And every control unit prison—indeed, every new prison in an era of downsizing schools and hospitals—is an atrocity. Et cetera. Et cetera. Ad nauseam. Each such situation or incident is an indictment in itself; together, they are additional indictments.

Examples that this expansion of police powers into an ever more draconian police state is not accidental but deliberate preparation by the ruling class for its intended new world order can also be discerned through the smoke and mirrors. They, too, warrant consideration. Why does the ruling class now feel it needs yet more control—and control by force rather than by consent borne of a human social contract?

Economic competition among the capitalist elites is sharpening. Irresistably large pools of capital are no longer concentrated solely in the western imperial capital cities. In order to compete—meaning maintain bloated profits for the few—the ruling class must drive down the cost of labor. And that is not only in direct pay and benefits; it also includes the costs of social services paid for by taxes and of regulations like those protecting the environment, consumers, health, and safety.

Then there is the near-future prospect of inter-imperialist oil and resource wars. The middle east is surrounded by oil-thirsty nascent superpowers: the European Union, China, and India. The U.S. is half a world away, albeit militarily superior—at least for now. The ruling classes in all the imperialist and proto-imperialist areas need to prepare their populations for the privations of war, convince their proletariats that distant class brethren and sistren are the enemy, and insure themselves an iron fist of domestic control.

Toward that end, these ruling classes are also fomenting jingoism, using the police state apparatus to create false national identities. That will make it okay to convert turf boundaries into prison walls—but only for poor and working people, not for capitalists and their swag. It also makes it okay to wage war on people who are only so “other” as to be from somewhere else. Divide and rule.

Books could be—and should be—written analysing these and other reasons the police state is lately rampant, the atrocities it is inflicting on we, the people, and the implications thereof. There is not always a clearly visible jackbooted thug. There are a lot of little (and big!) Eichmanns and their masters who prefer to remain behind the scenes and leave the jackboots and trampling to henchpeople. And there are countless consequences of the conversion to cop country besides the shootings, imprisonments, beatings, warrantless searches, arbitrary stops, and other jackbootery. Rising poverty, increasing homelessness, decreasing education, diminishing health care, growing insecurity each covers a host of ills directly traceable to the police state or the reasons for its present rapid infestation of the human landscape.

4strugglemag aims to pull the covers concealing at least some of these consequences that lie beneath the shiny badges and snazzy uniforms of the ruling class’s police armies of occupation.

The future holds promise!

Bill Dunne # 10916-086
P.O. Box 019001
Atwater CA 95301

While the Citizenry Sleeps

by Ronald Del Raine

After Shrub was elected again, the headline in a London newspaper read, “How can 48 million Americans be so dumb?” The word “asleep” might be substituted for “dumb”, as most of the citizenry has been lulled asleep as to the real deal, the facts, the truth. The right-wing propaganda machine—using age-old and brand-new techniques, replete with buzz words such as “freedom”, “voting”, and “democracy”—has people in a state of somnabulism. Even with the plethora of information available, millions of our fellow citizens believe the U.S. is exporting freedom and democracy around the world. When someone does tell the truth, such as Ward Churchill, a firestorm of protest erupts, diminishing the volume of these wake-up calls. But the information pulling the curtain on Bush and Company is still there, a bad dream from which those who slumber cannot awake.

Even before the now openly messianic policy of preemption, of “U.S. Uber Alles”, the U.S. rampaged throughout the world, murdering, pillaging, invading, occupying, and manipulating the internal affairs of smaller countries from Albania to Zimbabwe. In the 1970s, the Canadian anarchist journal “Kick It Over” printed a list of such countries as compiled by Gary Moffat. Many more have been added to the list since. Long before 9/11, Russel J. Bruemer, CIA Counsel, advised that “force may be used under the doctrine of anticipatory self-defense to attack terrorist targets”, and Special Operations Forces were licensed to kill as if they were at war” And Federal District Court Judge Abraham Sofaer—who did, as I recall, a stint as State Department Counsel—stated that U.S forces could go anywhere in the world to apprehend an individual and if someone was shot or killed, the U.S. was not to be held responsible.

Gunboat diplomacy-type military force, however, as with the draconian use of police force, was recognized as costly and not efficient—a last resort. With a properly anesthetized and slumbering populace—be it domestic or foreign—force is not necessary. The unconscious police themselves!

Some of the more sophisticated tactics required for this neo-imperialism were detailed on “Democracy Now” on 31/DEC/04, and partially repeated on 16/FEB/05, in an interview of John Perkins by Amy Goodman. Perkins discussed his book “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”—which he was given half a million dollars not to publish but published anyway after 9/11. He elaborated how he was recruited, tested and financed by the National Security Agency while young to become one of what Ward Churchill has aptly characterized as “little Eichmanns” for the “clean hands” work in setting up genocidal economies to fatten neo-imperialists. After going to Ecuador under cover of the Peace Corps, he joined a large financial services multinational corporation, where he later became chief economist and could practice his piracy free of government oversight.

Perkins related how the U.S. became the first world-wide economic empire through its corporations and the techniques they used to achieve this hegemony. Essentially, the World Bank makes huge loans to underdeveloped countries after Perkins and his ilk inflate the economic projections and then use the money to build frequently inappropriate and always dependent infrastructure projects. When the countries can’t repay the loans (usually the case), more oil (or whatever) and/or other concessions are usually demanded at deflated prices to “service” the debt. Further “restructuring” of the debtors’ economies and “austerity measures” are also demanded by the IMF (International Monetary Fund).

Accession to these demands puts economic and even political control into the hands of global capital and throws millions into poverty. Only if the economic hitmen fail in these goals are what Perkins describes as “the jackals”—CIA and paramilitary thugs—brought in to foment the requisite change with violence and destabilization. And only if THEY fail is the imperial military sent in to impose confirmity with wholesale slaughter and destruction. But force is still always the threat on which this manipulated empire of capital is founded. And it is that which makes the whole scam so visible it should be beyond ignoring—or sleeping through.

As an example of this process, Perkins related how he had met with General Omar Torrijos of Panama in his economic hitman role. Torrijos had initiated a series of populist projects that ran counter to IMF and U.S. desires, and pushed through a treaty that would cede control of the Panama Canal to Panama by 2000—something that infuriated the right. Torrijos also expressed interest in a new, sea-level canal, capable of handling the bigger modern ships.

Perkins tried to persuade Torrijos not to allow the Japanese to build a new canal. But Torrijos bridled and told Perkins that Panama was a sovereign country and would not concede to the demands of Bechtel, nor then Secretary of War (Defense is the euphemism now used) Caspar Weinberger (Cap the Knife), nor then Secretary of State George Schultz. Shortly thereafter, in 1981, Torrijos was killed in a mysterious plane crash. Suspicion fell heavily on the jackals.

Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos is another example of the same dynamic” He also wouldn’t agree with U.S. economic demands. As with Torrijos, this worried the corporations because such defiance would set a bad precedent. Enter the jackals. Roldos was also killed in a suspicious plane crash, also in 1981.

Realizing Vietnam was lost even to the third degree of intervention (even the (even the hegemons are not omnipotent), U.S. plutocrats sought to secure Indonesia, a much larger prize. Using neo-imperialist techniques, economic projections were falsified to justify huge loans, which were then used for infrastructure projects, including building an electrical system. The economy then had to be opened to foreign investment and control in order to exploit labour and resources so at least interest on the debt could be paid. To make this possible, the former lead economist was fired when he wouldn’t lie in his reports. Perkins was brought in with instructions on how the reports were to be manipulated, which he fulfilled. Without the conditions the economic machinations set up, it is unlikely the suppport or wherewithal for Suharto’s murderous rise to power would have been available. (I know former CIA Jackal Ed Wilson who was there when Suharto staged his coup d’état. He said the bay of Jakarta was literally red with blood, so many people were butchered.)

Other examples are legion. Premier Mussadegh of Iran, an ardent nationalist who nationalized the Iranian oil industry, was overthrown and replaced with the U.S. puppet Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in a national upheaval orchestrated by Jackal Kermit Roosevelt of the CIA in 1953. In 1954, a constortium of American, British, Dutch, and French oil companies was allowed to operate Iran’s oil facilities. In late 1960, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, a Soviet educated nationalist instrumental in the expulsion of Belgian imperialism from the Congo, was deposed and arrested and later murdered, allegedly while trying to escape, a chain of events in which CIA Jackal Frank Carlucci was implicated. Carlucci was later implicated in the suppression of the revolutionary movement in Brazil of which Carlos Marighela was a leader and was later expelled from Portugal for working against the leftist government that took power in 1974. He later became a U.S. Secretary of War (Defense) and a director, along with George Bush the First, of the Carlyle Group, a multinational conglomerate at the center of the military industrial complex. Chile. Nicaragua. Grenada. Lebanon. Kosovo. Palestine. The list alone would require a book.

The latest in this line of infamy is, of course, Iraq. The neo-imperial hitman tactics that were successful with the Saudis, keeping the House of Saud in power and the U.S. in control of Saudi Arabian oil, were rebuffed by Saddam Hussein. The jackals were sent in, but Hussein had so many doubles and such a security force that they couldn’t kill him. Even a limited version of the third degree in 1991 didn’t persuade him to accede to the first. The results can be found in the daily newspapers—by anyone, and none of them are less than atrocious.

All that is only the tip of the iceberg of aggression the U.S., headquarters of global imperial capital, has unleashed around the world. So why, with all this information out there, don’t the slumbering supporters of this administration wake up? The domestic counterparts of these global atrocities may not be quite so blatant and are spun much harder by the ruling class’s media. But that is another article. What makes people think that George the Second and the interests he represents have any more feeling for residents of South Boston, Appalachia, East or South Central LA—or anyone not a member of their elit—than they do for residents of Baghdad? Because they’re Americans? What a hoot! Perhaps when the chains are wrapped around some of the snoozing citizenry they might awaken—but by then it will be too late.

Ronald Del Raine #85462-132
P.O. Box 019001
Atwater CA 95301 USA

Prisons: An Instrument of Submission to Imperialism

from Prison Art Newlsetter, August 2005

Introduction: The history of prisons, which means punishment by being incarcerated, goes way back to the formation of classes, and the split of society into oppressor and oppressed. Clearly punishment through imprisonment, aims to strike at the individual’s dignity. However, the main aspect of it has always been directed against those dissenting against the system. In every historical period, the rulers have used imprisonment as a tool to induce capitulation towards the outspoken representatives and leaders of the oppressed classes.

Even though in time some prison policies and procedures may have under gone change, what has not changed is the fact that it is mainly used as a scheme to force the capitulation of those that wage struggle against the exploiting system in order to crush and silence the people’s resistance to oppression.

Today as the imperialist powers and their puppets intensify their wars of aggression committing heinous acts of barbarity, genocide, massacres and torture against the masses of people aiming to force their surrender, prisons continue to be the main place used to suppress the dissidents and those that challenge the system of oppression and plunder.

For years the imperialist powers have used isolation-cell system of the punishment. IN many countries this has become normal practice regarding political dissidents. The general practice of such a ruthless system of punishment was first developed and advanced in imperialist countries and then exported to countries which directly or indirectly are dependent on imperialism. Today such ill-treatments of political prisoners are a daily practice in the dependent countries, aiming to erase the political identity and force the subjugation of the militants and dissidents.

The methods or schemes that are being practiced today are a product of sophisticated laboratory experiments and combined experiences of the imperialist powers and reactionaries in ways of breaking down the human will and the resistance to oppression and injustice by an individual.

Concept: While all over the world the imperialist wars of aggression led by US imperialism is increasing, the struggle for social and national liberation is also intensifying. The exploited peoples and the masses are advancing the struggle against imperialism and the reactionary rulers in their own countries.

· It is a fact that the ruling classes for centuries have used intimidation, disappearances, torture and execution, and other methods to exploit and oppress the people and to suppress their struggles.

· It is also a fact that the most effective places for this kind of oppression are the prisons where torture and the worst form of ill treatment and abuse are practiced in the most brutal way. From the chains of the middle age towers to the punishment of the quarry- (the so-called stone-break workers) prisoners, to the underground chain gangs till today’s most “modern” and sophisticated cells the prisons have been an important weapon for the ruling class. We can recount many cases of torture and describe the condition sin prisons, but the following just indicates some of the worst cases.

· Turkey and Turkey-Kurdistan has a long history of resistance in the prisons. It is one of the ‘clashing points’ between political state power and the political prisoner’s. Since many years in Turkey the issue of isolation or solidarity confinement has been stated, the resistance in the prisons in Turkey and Turkey-Kurdistan has a long tradition. Until today many prisoners have lost their lives in the F-type cells. Now with new laws like one type uniform, obligatory work the state tries to create a new wave of attack.

· There are the pictures of the base in Guantanamo how Afghan prisoners are being treated, the photos which showed the situation in the Abu Garib prison in Iraq under occupation and still we always hear about other prisons in that area where people have been tortured and even killed.

· In Nepal, while the people are waging an intense struggle for national and social liberation against the Monarchist regime and some of the Maoist leaders have been arrested by the Indian government without giving any kind of legal justification or explanation.

· The only news about the situation of the captive leaders of Nepal’s revolutionary movement in the Indian prisons comes from democratic people.

· On August 15th, 2004, thousands of Palestinian prisoners went on hunger strike in the prisons of the Zionist state of Israel, demanding their basic rights.

· Not only in countries that depend on imperialism, but also in industrial advanced countries the cell-isolation is/has been practiced. Until today, against the RAF prisoners in Germany, the IRA prisoners in Ireland, the ETA prisoners in Spain, BASK in France, the Red Brigades in Italy and in the US against the BLA and the Black Panther Party, these isolation methods were used.

· Recently the lawyer of the Cuban five, Leonard Weinglass stated that his clients have been tortured in the different prisons in the US, where they are being held captive.

The need for unity: Of course we can continue to recount the numerous examples of human rights abuse and torture and ill treatment of political prisoners by the imperialist powers and other reactionaries across the world.

However, clearly there is a need to focus attention on the plight of the political prisoners on an international level.

The ILPS is an international anti-imperialist coalition of over 350 mass organizations from 40 countries considers its duty and is in a favorable position to address the need to unify and concentrate attention on such an important question. During the Second International Assembly of the ILPS held in November 2004, a decision was taken to hold an international symposium on the issue of political prisoners. It was held in Istanbul/Turkey on the first weekend of June 2005. Renowned intellectuals, democratic mass organizations, associations for family and friends of political prisoners will be invited to join together to address some of the main aspects of the issues relating to the conditions and struggles of the political prisoners. Delegations representing associations and organizations were invited from all over the world to join and participate as speakers or as resource persons in the symposium or to join us simply as observers.

For more information, contact ILPS Turkey-section, ilpsturkiye@yahoo.com

Martial Law in Nepal

by Nati Carrera

from Socialism and Liberation, April 2005

In Nepal, the continued insurgency led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) triggered a backlash from monarchist-led military forces. In an outright coup, King Gyanedra announced the suspension of parliament on Feb. 1, rolling back fundamental democratic rights. There has been a virtual media black out: All non-governmental communication with the outside world has been cut indefinitely.

Nepalese government troops unleashed a wave of terror following the coup. A March 8 report in the British Newspaper Telegraph described “700 homes burnt and 30 people lynched” in counterinsurgency campaigns.

The crisis was precipitated by a general strike, called by the insurgency, which brought much of the country outside of Katmandu to a virtual standstill. To suppress popular support for the insurgency, the military detained or put under house arrest leaders of all the major political parties and trade unions.

The military crackdown, however, has not stopped the rebels from operating. In a daring March 6 attack on government buildings in the Southwestern Sandhikharka district, rebels torched thirteen government buildings. This attack came on the heels of government statements that, despite King Gyanendra’s martial law, a clear roadmap to peace and democracy had been established.

Basque Prisoners Protest for Political Status

by Paul Mallon

from Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No. 185. June/July 2005
www.revolutionarycommunistgroup.com/frfi/185/

On 16 March, all 720 Basque political prisoners began a hunger strike in an effort to win political status. There are currently more Basque political prisoners than at any time since the Franco dictatorship, and they are spread over 82 different prisons, the majority in Spain, but some in France and elsewhere. This repression is aimed at crushing the resistance of those who fight for Basque self-determination.

The Basque nationalist coalition Batasuna was banned by the Spanish state in August 2002 – all Batasuna activity is proscribed and members face prosecution as ‘supporters of terrorism’. This campaign of state repression involves the dispersal of prisoners across Spain and France far away from their home and relatives.

The hunger strike was launched by the Basque Political Prisoners’ Group (EPPK), and followed a series of protests since the turn of the year. In January prisoners associated with the EPPK began holding a series of sit-in protests. Following the increasingly repressive response by the prison authorities to these protests, the Basque political prisoners initiated their hunger strike to highlight their conditions.

The hunger strike ended after 12 days on 27 March with the prisoners stating that their struggle had moved into a new phase. The hunger strike itself endured severe media censorship here in Britain and internationally with few news agencies covering any information on the prisoners’ struggle.

Iñigo Makazaga was among those prisoners who took part in the hunger strike; he is the only Basque political prisoner in Britain and has been incarcerated in Belmarsh prison for over four years often in solitary confinement, pending extradition to Spain on fabricated evidence. His solicitor has warned that if extradited he would be likely to face torture in Spanish prisons. Iñigo’s ‘crime’ has been his support of the Basque right to self-determination as an activist in the Basque student movement and a member of Batasuna.

Write to Iñigo Makazaga, FF7630, HMP Belmarsh, Western Way, Thamesmead London SE28 0EB.

Protest at Iñigo’s continued detention and mistreatment to Home Secretary Charles Clarke, Home Secretary, Peel Building, Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF

Airport “Security” and the Police State

by Sara Falconer

My joy of traveling is tinged these days with a growing sense of unease. Too often I find myself stuck in lines for hours, waiting while airport staff subject my fellow travelers to increasingly absurd security measures. They stand, awkward, bewildered and shoeless as white-gloved hands run across their bodies. I, a blue-eyed white girl, pass through easily each time, while those whose skin is even slightly darker are taken aside for more invasive searches.

Do people complain in these lines? Sure, about how long it takes, about how inconvenient it is. You won’t hear anyone asking if our rights are being protected, or if these measures actually make us safer in any tangible way. And don’t grumble too loudly—questioning the procedure or refusing any part of it is interpreted as “suspicious” behavior and results in more rigorous searching.

I didn’t fly much pre-September 11, so it’s difficult to imagine a system that didn’t involve military personnel with automatic weapons and German shepherds. But squint just a little and you can almost see a future in which these checkpoints and security screenings will creep out of the airport and into the streets.

In May, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced that it plans to use new X-ray machines that penetrate clothing to generate images of naked bodies—and any concealed drugs or weapons. “Backscatter” technology, which bounces low-radiation X-rays off a person’s skin to produce photo-realistic computer images, is already being tested at London’s Heathrow airport, and by U.S. customs agents to scan travelers suspected of carrying drugs.

The $100,000, fridge-sized devices are cause for controversy among groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who call the process a “virtual strip.” Although the TSA refuses to disclose the location of the machines, they will begin using them to screen passengers at selected airports this year.

Although the technology is new, the motivation behind it is not: we are being asked to relinquish our civil rights in the name of security. The ACLU has been outspoken against rights infringements since new “anti-terrorism” transportation legislation was introduced in October 2001. In a letter to Congress, they outlined three key guidelines for evaluating the “Secure Transportation for America Act” and the “Aviation Security Act II:

First, any new security proposals must be genuinely effective, rather than creating a false sense of security. Second, security measures should be implemented in a non-discriminatory manner. Travelers should not be subjected to intrusive searches or questioning based on race, ethnic origin or religion. Finally, if a security measure is determined to be genuinely effective, the government should work to ensure that implementation of it minimizes its cost to our fundamental freedoms, including the rights to travel, due process, privacy and equality.

One of the ACLU’s main concerns is the use of biometrics—various technologies that use pattern recognition of fingerprints, hands, faces, voices and eyes to identify individuals in a database. Biometrics are being touted as a more accurate and efficient means of screening airport staff and passengers. And this is no science fiction scenario; U.S. visitors from countries other than Canada and Mexico are fingerprinted and photographed upon entry as the Bush administration pushes for the wider implementation of what it calls “biometric passports.”

In a 2003 speech to the Transportation Research Board (TRB), PrivacyActivism staff counsel Linda Ackerman addressed the practical, legal and ethical aspects of biometrics and airport security:

There are a number of problems with biometric identifying technologies right out front:

• they all present enrollment problems—that is, getting the control sample into the database. It’s especially problematic to enroll the bad guys you want to screen against
• the systems can be fooled—some of them very easily
• the databases in which any bioidentifiers are stored are always vulnerable
• they raise questions about how many constitutional rights we can be required to give up, or are willing to give up, to get on a plane

In other words… biometric security implementations, fall critically short of solving the problem of identifying bad actors, and they create new problems, and, in my view, the social costs of becoming a surveillance society that banks ever more personal information about its citizens are prohibitive.

She is especially critical of the backscatter devices, which she dismisses as “porno security”:

I find it surreal that such a system was ever tested at all. Whatever problems this system solves, they’re nothing compared to the problems it creates—including public outrage and what seems to me a clear violation of whatever is left of 4th amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure—of an image of your naked body, which was stored and later shown on TV when the story was reported.

As Ackerman points out, the false sense of security created by biometric technologies means that lower-tech, less invasive procedures will be overlooked. Worse, the initially limited use of these technologies paves the way for their acceptance in wider society.

This move towards “total surveillance” at any cost is nothing less than the expansion of a police state in America. Every freedom sacrificed “for our own protection”—privacy, freedom of thought, speech and association, the ability to move about freely and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure—is another step closer to this reality.

As always, prisoners are on the front lines of these human rights struggles. Strip searches are all too often used not to ensure “security,” but to harass, intimidate and punish inmates. If such abuses remain unchallenged, should we be surprised that these tactics are being turned against the citizens of the police state?

Ackerman, Linda. “Biometrics and airport security.” Speech at the Transportation Research Board Panel on Personal Security in Washington, D.C. PrivacyActivism. 13 January 2003 .

American Civil Liberties Union. “Letter to the House on Anti-Terrorism Aviation Security Bills.” ACLU. October 2001 .

Fellner, Jamie. “Prison Abuse: How Different are U.S. Prisons?” Human Rights Watch. .

Phillips, Amy. “Prison Abuse is No New Scandal.” etalkinghead. 20 May 2004. .

Tully, Andrew. “U.S.: Rights Group Challenges Airline Security Effort.” GlobalSecurity.org. 7 April 2004 .

Turse, Nicholas. “The Homeland Security State.” AlterNet. 1 February 2005 .

“Visitors to be Scanned Naked at U.S. Airports.” Flat Rock. 18 May 2005 .

Some Effects of Long-term Lock-down Facilities

by Sundiata Acoli

Long-term Lock-down Facilities usually come in two forms: Lock-down Units and Lock-Down Prisons.

A Lock-down Unit is basically a hi-security housing unit for specified prisoners within a prison that also has other, regular housing units for its general-population prisoners.

Most prisons have two forms of Lock-down Units, one for short-term detentions and another for Long-term Lock-downs. “The Hole”, formally called a Disciplinary Segregation Unit, is normally used for short-term detentions of 30 to 90 days or so. The CU, or Control Unit, is usually used for long-term detentions of years and decades.

A Lock-down Prison is one in which each and all of its housing units are high-security Lock-down Units. It contains no regular housing units nor does it have an open or general population where prisoners circulate freely. Typical Lock-down Prisons are USP (U.S. Penitentiary) Marion, IL, and the ADX (Administrative Maximum) at Florence, CO. Both are federal prisons and both are Long-term Lock-down Prisons.

The defining feature of a Lock-down Unit or Prison is that you are usually locked in your cell for 23 hours or more each day. This brings you into unavoidable direct and constant contact with guards whom you are totally dependent on for everything – from food and clothing to toothpaste and toilet paper – and who have total control over everything you need. The frequent contact with guards makes the likelihood of clashes higher and their absolute-control status makes the clashes more intense. As a result, Long-term Units (LTLU) generally inflicts serious physical and psychological damage upon their prisoners.

Physical Damage

The physical damage done by LTLUs is more noticeable because you can actually see, with the naked eye, the result of its injuries: scars from wounds, burn marks from mace, missing teeth or eyes, crooked fingers, walking limps, trick knees or elbows, separated shoulders and other injuries that flow from assaults by guards, fights with other prisoners, or sometimes even the self-inflicted razor-blade cuts of psychologically disturbed prisoners.

Other visible results are facial tics or twitches, bald patches in the scalp where hair has fallen out due to long-term intense stress; also skin rashes from mites in contaminated mattresses and/or the yellow jaundiced eyes of those infected with Hepatitis contracted from overflowing toilets that flood feces throughout the crowded unit.

Prisoners recently released from LTLUs are easily identifiable by their pale, ashy skin caused by lack of sunlight and skin lotion; also by their heavy hair dandruff due to lack of shampoo and hair dressing.

Less visible physical injuries are the bad backs caused by physical assaults or by years of confinement in strip-cells that lack chairs to sit in or by sleeping on iron or concrete beds or bunks with weak springs that curve the spine. Other such injuries are poor eyesight due to dim cell lighting or nearsightedness from years of close confinement with little opportunity to focus the eyes beyond the cell walls; chronic hoarseness due to the constant need to shout above the high noise level or from smoking loose or harsh pipe tobacco rolled in notebook paper or whatever other paper available; loss of voice volume from lack of speaking for long periods; hard of hearing due to the constant high noise level that echoes throughout the closed unit; flat feet from years of being forced to wear only shower shoes or deck-tennis shoes; ill-health from lack of fresh air, sunshine and fresh exercise in a crowded, unsanitary environment that breeds and spreads contagious diseases; infertility due to sleeping on fireproof asbestos-laced mattress covers; and other yet-to-surface maladies due to the many Lock-down Units and Prisons that are located on lands that were previously toxic dumps.

Psychological Damage

The psychological damage done by LTLUs is often less noticeable than the physical damage because most of the psychological injuries are internal: to the mind and psyche. An exception is those LTLU prisoners who were forced to take psychotropic drugs (Thorazine, Prolixin, Haldol, etc.) while confined there. Their easily detected symptoms are the vacant stares, tendencies to drift into trances, short attention spans, inabilities to focus at length, shuffling gaits, slurred speech, foam at the corners of the mouth, general muscle weaknesses, and tendencies to tire easily.

The psychological damage is harder to detect in those not medicated. Often the prisoner him/herself is not fully aware of the damage done; the LTLU experience being similar to someone injured during a fight. The adrenalin flow often keeps them from feeling or noticing the injuries until the fight is over; then the aches, pains and, awareness of injury set in.

Although the psychological damage is harder to detect because of the absence of physical scars, some indicators of the damage are the temporary difficulty the released prisoner has in adjusting to normal prison routines that require being on time, remembering and keeping appointments, talking with strangers, keeping one’s voice loud enough to be heard in normal conversations, holding normal conversations with members of the opposite sex, shaking off feelings of tension or confusion when confronting new but ordinary situations, and ridding oneself of the insomnia, if one turned into a night-owl in LTLU, that comes from having to suddenly revert to a daytime schedule. Frequently, one finds that his or her temper is shorter than usual, paranoia is higher, dislike for authority figures is stronger and s/he temporarily engages in daydreaming and diversion fantasies more than previously.

Also some psychological damages are difficult to distinguish from the normal or accelerated effects of aging that bring on a noticeable loss of short and/or long-term memory that makes it difficult at times to recall names, people, time, place, and circumstances. Some damages are subtle, others are more pronounced. Some prisoners are totally destroyed by LTLUs while others survive, and some even thrive in LTLUs.

Those who survive or thrive are usually those who use the seclusion of LTLU, despite its constant all-around chaos, to strengthen and develop themselves (and others) in areas they are deficient through reading, writing (essays and letters), studying, and researching new topics or increasing their knowledge in familiar ones: politics, history, culture, law, martial and military arts, meditation, spirituality, religion; learning new hobbies in arts and crafts, chess, learning new lifestyles, new eating habits, and engaging in regular exercise and athletics to keep the body, mind, and spirit as fit as possible under the circumstances.

In a nutshell, whether one emerges stronger or weaker, LTLUs inflict serious physical and psychological damages on their occupants and no one escapes unscathed from their effects.

Sundiata Acoli (C. Squire) #39794-066
P.O. Box 3000
USP Allenwood
White Deer PA 17887 USA

The Psychological Effects of Long-Term Imprisonment

by Herman Bell

Loneliness is a prominent fixture in a long-termer’s life. S/he wakes with it and beds with it. It can lead to mental depression that is marked by sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration, to a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, to feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes to suicidal tendencies. In such a state the will is fragile: Your hair might come out in clumps. You might pick at your skin, at your nose, or at both. Your lack of hygiene may cause noses to flair, people to talk about you, and even to avoid you. Another prominent feature of prison life is tension, which is so rife that it is worn like an extra layer of skin. Anger is yet another feature: an unpaid debt, a slight – real or imagined – a look, an unguarded word and it flares-up like a volcanic eruption. A person could well take a life or lose his or her own, or wear some hideous, disfiguring scar because of it.

I write this not as a critique of the practice of imprisoning human beings, which I believe is an unacceptable form of punishment, but as a commentary on my observations and experiences in prison. Years ago I read a behavioral science report that said to confine a person in prison beyond five years is potentially damaging to his or her mental health. I knew this pig would not fly. Given the stiff prison sentences meted out to the poor and people of color in america, a five-year stretch is like doing a day. A twenty-five-to-life sentence is more like the norm than the extreme. When judges sentence people, they have no discretionary sentencing power. For the most part they read from a legislated script. (Not to say they would be more lenient. In some cases judges rely on a legal-proviso called “enhanced sentencing” and add even more time to the sentence imposed.) The scale of american justice tilts toward political and corporate interests rather than toward social justice or rehabilitative ones.

Getting out of prison is far more difficult than getting in. From the streets to detention centers, to the courts, and finally to prison. Your rights, or what you imagined them to be, were unquestioned. Now everything is different. Even your family, friends, children, wives, girlfriends, former employers and the like are different. The noblest intention may have inspired you to commit your crime. You may have not even committed a crime or think yourself undeserving of the sentence imposed. It matters not. You are here now, alone, behind bars, and you may be here for the rest of your life.

As I think about the psychological effects of long-term imprisonment, I can only think of it in terms of day-to-day existence. Some days are better than others; none are ever great. In truth, I hate writing about prison. I hate reading or seeing movies about prison. Yet people need to know what goes on in them. Many prisoners and people on the outside fail to discern the political and economic interests that prisons serve. Unfortunately, the economics of prison will not be part of this discussion. While some prisoners see prison as a way of life, people on the streets see it as a necessary evil. But in the main, as regards prison, education, and health care in particular, the nation’s citizenry has grown woefully lax in its civic duty. And as regard to administrations, the current one has embarked on a unilateralist doctrine coupled with a misguided foreign policy that has embroiled the nation in an unjustified war, which depletes precious economic resources and lets pressing domestic needs go unfulfilled. Our nation, as well as our uniformed young men and women who stand in harms way, deserve better. We all get in trouble and suffer when we fail to fulfill our duties and responsibilities.

I have been in prison 31 years. I am not sentenced to “life without parole”, yet I can be here for life. Denied parole at my first parole hearing, I reappear in ’06. If I am denied then, I reappear every two years after that until I am released on parole or by death. How does one grapple with a predicament like that and still feel optimistic? It is as much a physical blow as a psychological one. I cannot think about it. I cannot feel it. I can only “keep it moving.”

I am keenly aware of my time spent in this menagerie, aware of each step I take and of having to decide what to do next. Through the years I have witnessed behavior reminiscent of my youth: the bully, the posse – both inmates and guards – the strong preying on the weak. I have known days when depression sagged my spirits, days when men gave themselves to violent acts against their fellow man, days when the law of the jungle superceded all others. Days that I considered a success because I made it through the day.

Often I have found myself having to choose between what I believe to be right as opposed to what is expedient. The choice taken defines who I am and what I think of myself. Because the conditions of confinement take everything else, all we have in here is our self-respect and “good word.” To lose one is to lose the other. Life in jail is comprised of one decision-making episode after another, some large, some small. In this confusing, intricate network of pathways, the choices we take, what we decide to do in each one, leaves a lasting impression on the psyche. And the individual is compelled to choose how he will live his life in here (or someone will do it for him). Fence straddling is a non-option.

Locked behind gates and cars too numerous to count, the contact we have with the outside world sustains our sanity. Visits from family members and the occasional attorney provide a respite from the tedium. As our visitors provide mental snapshots of life on the outside, people you know – an ex-wife, an old girlfriend, an ailing relative, your son or daughter – we live in the moment with them. A visit is like a dream and when it’s over your wonder if it ever happened. But the “life-giving” force inside you affirms that the smiles, the tears, the holding of hands, the style of dress, and the perfume were real. You hate to see your people go and they hate having to go. But the portal connecting one reality to another remains open only for a short while. Then suddenly, like ripples from a stone cast into water, they disappear as though they never were.

When my cell door suddenly unlocks and guards stand in front of it, hands sheathed in rubber gloves, ordering me to step-out for a cell search, crashing waves, instead of ripples, rush over me. The search is routine they tell me; it’s never routine to me, regardless the number of recurrences. My private space is violated each time I go through this. It transforms me into a non-person, as if I were an object, to be lifted-up and set aside, during the search, and the disconnect magically vanishes when I am allowed back inside.

We prisoners are “trained” to be obedient to authority and “conditioned” to obey it. “Trained,” which suggests, “however long it takes to achieve the desired mental state,” bears more of a sinister connotation than does “conditioned”. The “training” process is fixed in the management of prison operations: “Hands on the wall and don’t move until ordered to do so,”; “I order you to ...”; “For violating rule # ..., I hereby sentence you to segregation ... with loss of phone and commissary privileges.” The “conditioning” process presents itself through prison operations: that is, through rules, enforcement of rules, giving and withholding of privileges and the like. With everything else remaining equal, the jail runs itself. Authority and obedience to it plays big in jail. In absence of one’s liberty, obedience or non-compliance to authority is the main bone of contention inside of prison – how much do you concede to authority weighed against how much it demands of you.

Because of its violent and coercive nature, authority, in prison, is tolerated at best. A prisoner soon recognizes that a certain look from a guard, hand gesture, facial expression, jangle of keys, and the like are a language that is as coercive as a verbal order. The prisoner even learns the unspoken “I’ll get you later look.” In this light, how much you concede to authority, weighed against its demands, is no small deliberation in the mind of a prisoner. Depending on the choice s/he makes, a slow methodical “weeding-out” process beings. At this point a prisoner affirms or gains some sense of who s/he really is as a person. At that point, whatever part of himself of him/herself s/he wishes to hold onto, s/he has to fight to keep it.

For a black prisoner, his or her choice is like the Sword of Damocles suspended over his/her head by a hair. The historic enslavement of blacks in america and their maltreatment by white slaveholders is well documented, though much of it still remains to be told. When Lincoln freed u.s. slaves, vestiges of the slave system remained firmly in place, and blacks remained subordinate to white authority. And while the intervening years and subsequent battles won black civil rights victories, some would argue that the more things would seem to change for blacks, the more they remain the same. For blacks, taking this history into account – arrested by white police, prosecuted by white prosecutors, sentenced by white judges, and confined in american jails and overseen by white guards and administrators – how much to concede to authority weighed against its demands is no small consideration indeed. This very construct evokes strong imagery of overseer and slave on the plantation and its psychological underpinnings.

Against this backdrop are people inside u.s. prisons who have fought long and hard against american social and economic injustice. They are political prisoners (pps) whose spirit is cast in the tradition of Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and Malcolm-X, to name a few. In some quarters they are called Freedom Fighters. They display cat-like independence in prison, which is taboo in an environment that cultivates dependence and insecurity. Therefore special treatment for them is foreordained. They are imprisoned not for social crimes – robbery, murder for hire, extortion, drug sales, and the like – but for fighting racist, unjust laws and insensitive social and economic policies that ignore the needs of the poor, disenfranchised, and marginalized.

Already sentenced to the maximum allowable time and severely penalized for prison rule violations, the pp as well as everyone else is damaged by the prison experience. And the longer they are in, subjected to years and years of unremitting anguish, the deeper the scars and, hopefully, the stronger the resolve ... .

Herman Bell #79C0262
P.O. Box 338
Eastern Correctional Facility
Napanoch NY 12458-0338 USA

Whither the Law?

by Ed Mead

I first became involved in prisoner oriented litigation in the early 1960s; indeed, I received my first legal-related infraction at the U.S. Prison at Lompoc, California, in 1963, for “illegal procedure in writing a writ” (my crime was to assist another prisoner with his post conviction relief petition). In those days there was something called the “hands off doctrine,” which essentially held that prisoners have no rights the federal courts are bound to respect—that they are literally slaves of the state. After all, the courts reasoned, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. constitution legitimizes this condition of slavery. With the advent of a growing prisoner rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, that old reasoning slowly changed.

While today we have not totally gone back to the hands off doctrine, we’ve now got pretty much the same thing. Now they say while prisoners do have due process rights, the needs of the state, however frivolous they may be, trumps those rights—meaning of course that prisoners have no rights at all.

A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court has recently dashed the hopes of those who look to the courts as an avenue of salvation from the ever-increasing levels of deprivation and repression being visited prisoners. In the case of Wilkinson, Director, Ohio DOC, et al. v. Charles Austin et al., No. 04-495, decided June 13, 2005, the high court noted that “In the OSP [a Supermax or SHU facility] almost every aspect of an inmate's life is controlled and monitored. Incarceration there is synonymous with extreme isolation. Opportunities for visitation are rare and are always conducted through glass walls. Inmates are deprived of almost any environmental or sensory stimuli and of almost all human contact. Placement at OSP is for an indefinite period, limited only by an inmate's sentence. Inmates otherwise eligible for parole lose their eligibility while incarcerated at OSP.” The court went on to note that: “For an inmate placed in OSP, almost all human contact is prohibited, even to the point that conversation is not permitted from cell to cell; his cell's light may be dimmed, but is on for 24 hours; and he may exercise only one hour per day in a small indoor room.” Moreover, such placement is reviewed only once per year. Yet when all is said and done, the court held “that courts must give substantial deference to prison management decisions before mandating additional expenditures for elaborate procedural safeguards when correctional officials conclude that a prisoner has engaged in disruptive behavior.” So how much process is due before locking someone up in one of these dungeons for an indefinite period? According to the court the answer is an “informal, nonadversary procedure….”

As mentioned earlier, there was a time when the rights of prisoners could be extended through use of the judicial system. As can be seen by Wilkinson, and the numerous cases just like it, those days are all but over. The courts can from time-to-time still be used for the occasional defensive struggle, such as stopping censorship our newsletters, but to expect any significant advances to be made as a result of litigation (such as shutting down the SHUs) is an exercise in futility—we are merely throwing wadded up paper balls at them. I would suggest that the task of today’s advanced prisoner support activists is not litigation, but organization.

Which brings us to the question of how relevant is the legal front in today’s struggle for the rights of prisoners? The 13th Amendment banned slavery except for those convicted of a crime. In other words, slavery still exists for some 2.3 million Americans. Worse, there are countless millions more who have been disenfranchised (a modern Jim Crow) as a result of their status as previously convicted persons. While the issue of prisoner enfranchisement (right to vote) is pending appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, in a lawsuit filed by political prisoner Anthony Jalil Bottom, the outcome of that litigation will most likely turn on a political rather than legal rationale. If formerly incarcerated individuals had been permitted to vote in Florida’s 2000 presidential election George W. Bush would have never been president. Democrats know this.

From California to Florida there is a push by liberals to enfranchise ex-felons. This has nothing to do with their love of prisoners, and everything to do with their love of the Democratic Party. Even the New York Times has editorialized on the need to give ex-felons and, shudder, prisoners the right to vote. They understand that, for the most part, prisoners will not be voting for pro-lock ‘em up; pro-death penalty, anti-parole Republicans. So here comes the vote, not from the courts, but from bourgeois politicians. Oh, the courts may hand down the ruling, but it will be the existing political climate that caused it to happen. In the late 1960s and early 1970s it was the prisoners that created the climate for judicially mandated reform and the expansion of prisoner rights. Today, sadly, it is the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie that is providing the necessary impetus.

So before too long the vote will come, at least to ex-convicts and very possibly to those still on the inside. And in time, lots of time, the 13th Amendment may be modified to abolish slavery once and for all. But that’s a story for another day. Today we need to talk about how we can use our small amount of influence to insure that this vote thing does not unfold in a manner that is antithetical to prisoner interests. The Democratic Party will try to get the vote to felons using the absentee ballot, thus dispersing the impact of their ballot over the entire state. But prisoners are counted in the census for the county in which they are confined, and those counties receive funds from the state on the basis of that count. The prisoner vote should be concentrated in the respective county where the prison is located, not scattered by absentee ballots. Since most prisons are located in remote areas, with such a condensed voting block prisoners will be able to have local politicians catering to their legitimate needs—visiting, vocational facilities, etc.

What does voting have to do with shutting down the nation’s Security Housing Units? The path to closing the SHUs is the same as that needed to organize around are the right to vote (winning the franchise for prisoners) and the final abolition of slavery in the United States. Conjugal visits, wages, and myriad other issues can be raised at the same time, but the guiding star should be the elimination of the pro-slavery segment of the 13th amendment. It is through organizing around these issues that the strength necessary to shut down the SHUs can be built. We are not going to accomplish this goal through lobbying or litigation, but only through organizing—both inside and out.

Why not organize only around the SHU? Because only by involving the general population and their families in the larger struggle for change can the necessary strength be developed. And neither the general population nor their families are going to go down for the SHU alone. My friends and I (we called ourselves the Walla Walla Brothers) once shut down a SHU. It was called the Intensive Management Unit (IMU) at Walla Walla. Some day I will write the whole story, but for the sake of brevity let me just say that through ongoing work we were able to get the general population to engage in a 47-day work strike, the longest in state history, which resulted in our release from the IMU and the transformation of the IMU from a hole to a privileged housing unit. The population had 14 demands, the first of which was to rectify the IMU. So it can be done, but not by focusing on just the SHU.

Every human being has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Rightly or wrongly, prisoners have lost their right to liberty, but their inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness remains. While we all stand for the abolition of prisons, a goal that in this writer’s opinion will require a radical transformation of existing class relations, there are a number of intermediate steps that can be taken while on the road to that goal. If we keep these basic human rights and our class bearings in mind we will not get lost in the twists and turns on that road.

Shut Down Control Units Wherever They Exist!

by Gary Watson

In speaking of Delaware’s infamous segregation unit, commonly known as the Security Housing Unit (SHU), immediately images of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Attica Prisons come to mind. Such images arise similarly in speaking of every other prison with a SHU or control unit throughout fascist Amerikkka and abroad. Daily, prisoners in control units are subjected to mistreatment, suffering, brutal beatings, tear gas and mace, state sponsored terrorism, strip cells, and confinement to small cells 23-24 hours a day. They are fed a diet of cold, measly meals, psychological abuse, death threats, oppression, repression, depression, and insanity. These conditions breed emotional breakdowns, self-mutilation, and suicide attempts (occasionally successful).

Thus it is my hope that you—the people, the public—will not only become well informed about these instruments of torture, but also enraged, inspired, and poised to join with others who are just as furious and ready to ACT using whatever means are available to CLOSE DOWN these torture chambers that serve only to isolate, warehouse, and destroy.

Inside Delaware’s SHU, as an example, there are no educational or vocational programs, no jobs (except one tier man job that pays only $9.60 per month), and no religious services. Nor is there access to typewriters, computers, or the law library (except occasionally via a written request). Medical care is poor or none at all. Indoor/outdoor recreational facilities are inadequate. The designated area consists of five small, empty cages strongly resembling dog kennels or some other animal confinement. Prisoners are strictly forbidden to interact with one another. Other than the pigs/guards, there is not human contact. Only one or two ten minute phone calls are allowed per month, and only one or two forty-five minute visits. All visits are through a plexiglass window. No brooms, mops, or buckets are available for prisoners to clean their cells. Etc. Etc. Whenever a prisoner is taken from the cell, he is forced to undergo a bondage ritual in which he ends up handcuffed in the back or front, chained, and shackled. This degradation is inflicted during visits with friends and loved ones even though they are through a plexiglass barrier.

This character of Delaware’s SHU is shared, with local variations, in SHUs and control units across the country and around the world. To merely denounce SHUs and Control Unit Prisons will not suffice if out aim is to shut them down. We must do more than just speak out against these monstrosities. We have to communicate and coordinate, work diligently and vigorously to assure that we are effective and taken seriously. Verbal denunciation by itself will at best rattle some nerves or perhaps even achieve some cosmetic changes. At its worst, however, verbal denunciation alone will get us laughed at, dismissed, and ignored. Unless our protests are supported by ACTION, the chances of ending this inhumane policy of locking people up and throwing away the key will be slim to none. This is about a system that is ineptly formulated, incompetently administered, and now out of control. In addition to brutalizing prisoners, this system lowers the humanity of the people who operate it and oversee it and the citizens who condone it.

The system also breeds dishonesty. For instance, the Delaware Department of Correction in general, and Delaware Correctional Center’s administration in particular, have become well known for their cleverness and treachery in falsifying, covering up, and deceiving both the media and the public about conditions and practices in the SHU. They thus paint a false picture on which to maintain support for continuing the SHU operation in which the state has already invested millions and for which the prison authorities will get millions more. Wasting this money on such a demonstrably counterproductive use hurts the public, and doing so on these false pretenses insults it.

Society should be just as concerned with shutting down control units as those it keeps in them. This is especially true considering the Patriot Act, the “war on terrorism”, and the ever-rising police state amerikka. The powers the police have assumed under them are a clear indication of the erosion and infringement of basic consitutional, civil, and human rights. Many of the attitudes that allow the police state to treat the public as an enemy to be controlled at any cost can be traced to the treatment of “crime” and prisoners. Fewer rights and more repression means that everyone is closer to an SHU or control unit cell than they may think.

The problem SHUs and control units represent is not a black-white problem, nor a Latino or Asian problem. It is not about one religion against another or whose politics are more credible. Rather, it is a human problem that calls upon all of humanity to change the course of history, to bridge the divide and secure a culture that will enable future generations to live lives of real peace, democracy, and freedom.

All power to the people!

Gary Watson #098990
Unit SHU17
Delarare Correctional Center
1181 Paddock Road
Smyrna DE 19977 USA

Glee Club

by Todd "Hyung-Rae" Tarselli

U.S. Police World: The War Elsewhere

by Bill Dunne

Not satisfied with making its overtly occupied territory a police state and imprisoning its subjects on political charges, the U.S. ruling class is reaching around the world to kidnap people into its vast gulag archipelago. Hundreds of citizens of other countries who have never been to the U.S. are or have been kept in the extra legal prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. U.S. authorities have disappeared many more—no one knows how many—into their global gulag via extraordinary rendition. Yet others are being selectively extradited to face U.S. extra special “justice” regarding real or imagined crimes against some U.S. interest that cannot be prosecuted in the victims’ home countries. Two of the latest such extradites—and two of the newest political prisoners of the U.S. empire—are Ricardo Palmera and Nayibe Rojas Valderama.

Juvenal Ovidio Ricardo Palmera Pineda, also known as Simón Trinidad, was extradited from Columbia to the U.S. on 31 December 2004. He was arrested in January of 2004 in Ecuador, where he had gone for a meeting with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to discuss the abuse of political prisoners in Columbia. Palmera, a political leader in the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Columbia (FARC), was returned to Columbia, where he had been active in the revolutionary movement for more than two decades. The U.S. claimed it had the right to try Palmera on drug trafficking and terrorism charges. Right-wing Columbian President Alvaro Uribe acceded to the U.S. demand for extradition, in violation of his country’s constitution, which forbids extradition for political prosecutions.

Nayibe Rojas Valderama, also known as Omaira Rojas Cabrera, was extradited from Columbia to the U.S. on 9 March 2005. She is also a high-ranking, long-time member of the FARC. She, too, was extradited on a U.S. claim that it has the right to prosecute her. In her case, U.S. officials alleged a drug trafficking conspiracy to put a veneer of legality on a political attack. Since the supposed conspiracy, with no allegation that any part of it was done outside Columbian territory, should have been prosecuted in Columbia, Uribe also violated Columbia’s constitution in extraditing Rojas Valderama.

Palmera and Valderama were indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia. Each has already been forced to make an initial appearance before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The case is being prosecuted in the District of Columbia by the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section of the Criminal Division of the Department of “Justice” with help from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. But Palmera has said this about that: “The Columbian government believed they could dampen my revolutionary zeal with extradition, but this will never happen.”

The indictment against Palmera claims that he and another FARC leader controlled, directed, and managed money for alleged FARC drug trafficking. It also charges Palmera with kidnapping three American “defense contractors,” who remain in FARC custody, whose plane crashed in the Columbian jungle in 2003, and the murder of two other people on the plane. And it charges him with providing material support to terrorists, which the U.S. has branded FARC freedom fighters. The indictment against Rojas Valderama charges her and another ranking member of the FARC, Jose Benito Cabrera Cuevas, also known as Fabian Ramirez, with several counts of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute cocaine and to import it into the U.S. The indictments also seek the forfeiture of FARC assets. Perhaps the U.S. will seek forfeiture of all of Columbia when FARC wins.

Both Palmera and Rojas Valderma vehemently deny the charges. According to the St. Paul (MN) Pioneer Press of 9 January 2005, even Palmera’s critics say the drug charges were trumped up. Nor was he the commander of the area in which the Americans were captured. The case against Rojas Valderama is similarly unsubstantial. And these facts are beyond the lack of U.S. jurisdiction or legitimacy to prosecute either of these political prisoners.

The intent of the charges is clearly to criminalize the revolutionary movement in Columbia and to further isolate that movement by intimidating its supporters with similar terrorism charges and forfeitures. That movement is fighting to overthrow a rapacious capitalist regime in which the vast majority of people live in grinding poverty, a tiny minority live in opulent excess, and an authoritarian military and right wing death squads are employed to keep it that way. Unionists are killed with impunity, people are routinely disappeared, and human rights abuses are legion. The charges against Palmera and Rojas Valderama are designed to undermine the connection of resistance to this oppression to its victims, the people.

Against this oppressive and exploitive system, FARC revolutionaries, including Palmera and Rojas Valderama, have struggled for decades, accepting lives of hard word, privation, and constant risk to move forward the cause of their people. The reactionary Uribe and U.S. governments and their oil company and other corporate masters cannot countenance such popular struggle or the social versus corporate freedom it envisions. Since the same reactionary masters and their agencies of repression are also waging the same class war around the world, including right here, the struggle of the Columbian people—and FARC and Palmera and Rojas Valderama—is our struggle, too.

Free Ricardo Palmera!
Free Nayibe Rojas Valderama!
Free all political prisoners!

Hands Off Assata!

On May 2, 2005, the United States Justice Department announced it was raising its bounty of $100,000 for the capture of Sister Assata Shakur to $1,000,000. For over two decades, Sister Assata has been living as a political exile in the Republic of Cuba. This is part of a long campaign to capture or kill Sister Assata since her escape in 1979, and part of the historical assault against the Black Liberation Movement.

The aim of the FBI's attack on Assata is to eliminate the domestic resistance of the Black Liberation movement, undermine the sovereignty of Cuba and Venezuela and set the stage for the possible invasion of these two nations. The FBI escalation at this time is also meant to divert attention from Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Cuban terrorist wanted by Venezuela on charges of blowing up a Cuban airliner, who recently came to the United States seeking political asylum. We must defend Assata, our right to resist, and the sovereign rights of Cuba and Venezuela!

Assata Shakur, born Joanne Deborah Byron in July 16, 1947, in Wilmington, North Carolina, grew up in the segregated South. When she was a college student in New York she decided to participate in the freedom movement of people of African descent against racism and white supremacy. Her thirst to do something for her people led her to the Black Panther Party (BPP) in New York City. She participated in a program teaching Black youth their culture and history and other service programs of the BPP. In 1969, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover labeled the BPP “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Through its counter-intelligence program, COINTELPRO, the FBI and other police agencies waged a low-intensity war on the BPP and other Black freedom organizations. Activists were assassinated, incarcerated and forced into exile. When New York Panthers came under attack Assata went into hiding and joined the underground movement called the Black Liberation Army (BLA). She became one of the major targets of the United States government.

On May 2, 1973, Assata and two other Panthers forced underground, Zayd Shakur and Sundiata Acoli, were stopped by New Jersey highway patrolmen on the New Jersey Turnpike. At the stop a shoot out ensued and Zayd Shakur and one of the highway patrolmen, Werner Foerster, were killed. In spite of the fact she had not fired a weapon and was paralyzed through the entire gun battle, she was convicted by an all-white jury in Middlesex County, New Jersey and sentenced to life plus sixty-five years for the death of Zayd Shakur and the highway patrolman. Sundiata was also convicted and given a sentence of life plus sixty-five years. After years of being incarcerated in male facilities or prison units on November 2, 1979, Assata, with the aid of the BLA and white friends of the Black Liberation Movement, was liberated from prison. In 1984, she was given political asylum in Cuba.

The recent bounty placed on her head is only a continuation of a pursuit to re-capture her for over two decades. Since her escape twenty-six years ago, the FBI has committed an agent to her re-capture. The placing of Assata on the domestic terrorist list only confirms the fears of the black liberation movement and human rights activists concerning George Bush's “war on terrorism.” “The war on terrorism” is a means for the right-wing in the United States to eliminate its political enemies. Through vehicles like the Patriot Act, the “war on terrorism” gives justification for abuses of a modern day COINTELPRO.

In the 1950s, during the Cold war, the FBI started COINTELPRO. As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum, black activists like Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Williams, Ella Baker, and Bayard Rustin became the primary targets of COINTELPRO. When the federal government did not respond to the demands of the nonviolent movement and also did not protect activists and black communities from the violence of segregationists, many activists moved toward black power and armed resistance to get human rights and freedom. Fearful of the assertive black power movement, the United States government used programs like COINTELPRO to destroy the black movement.

Instead of seeking reconciliation of political conflict, the attempt to re-capture Assata only exacerbates political and racial conflict in the United States and internationally. In other countries around the world, including South Africa, Turkey, Morocco, Ukraine, Peru, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Ghana, Belgium, governments have established a review of the abuses of their police agencies against opposition movements in their countries as a gesture towards reconciliation. The United States has never sought reconciliation with the targets of COINTELPRO. The pursuit of Assata promotes more conflict in that rather than choosing an alternative dispute mechanism it chooses to continue the criminalization of the black liberation movement. Moreover, it encourages the mercenary invasion of a sovereign nation, the Republic of Cuba, and encourages global conflict. We oppose the sending of mercenaries and bounty hunters to apprehend Sister Assata Shakur. The United States government must acknowledge its abuses and grant amnesty to political prisoners and exiles.

As supporters of Human rights, we call for:

1) The end of the pursuit of Assata Shakur by immediately removing her name from the domestic terrorist list and repealing the bounty placed on her head.
2) The rejection of mercenary attacks on the sovereign nation of Cuba
3) The de-criminalization of the Black Liberation movement, particularly given the political nature of the conflict of the 1960s and 70s, and the abuses of COINTELPRO.
4) Congress to impanel an independent Truth Commission as an alternative dispute mechanism, to finish the mission of the Church Committee and of the cases of political prisoners and exiles, including Assata Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, Mutulu Shakur, Sekou Odinga, Kamau Sadiki and Marilyn Buck.
5) That the United States Congress implement remedies and restitution for the communities, organizations and individuals who were targeted and whose human rights were violated due to COINTELPRO.
6) The repeal of the Patriot Act.

Organized by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Jericho Amnesty Movement, Hands Off Assata Campaign, the Prisoners of Consciousness Committee, the Black Radical Congress, the ANSWER-SF Coalition, and the National Committee to Free the Cuban 5 . For more information contact MXGM at (510) 220-1100 or MXGMOakland@hotmail.com. Also visit www.handsoffassata.org.

i believe in living

by Assata Shakur

i believe in living.
i believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
i believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs;
And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
i believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
i believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.

i believe in life.
And i have seen the death parade
march through the torso of the earth,
sculpting mud bodies in its path
i have seen the destruction of the daylight
and seen bloodthirsty maggots
prayed to and saluted

i have seen the kind become the blind
and the blind become the bind
in one easy lesson.
i have walked on cut grass.
i have eaten crow and blunder bread
and breathed the stench of indifference

i have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if i know anything at all,
it's that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.

i believe in living
i believe in birth.
i believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.

And i believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home to port.

David Gilbert on Lynne Stewart

from http://www.lynnestewart.org/

[Radical human rights attorney Lynne Stewart has been falsely accused of helping terrorists. Now convicted, she faces 30 years in prison. On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, she was arrested and agents searched her Manhattan office for documents. She was arraigned before Manhattan federal Judge John Koetl. This is an obvious attempt by the U.S. government to silence dissent, curtail vigorous defense lawyers, and install fear in those who would fight against the U.S. government's racism, seek to help Arabs and Muslims being prosecuted for free speech and defend the rights of all oppressed people.]

You can’t imagine how intense it was, the hurricane that swept into us, when we were busted in the notorious Brinks case of 1981. The lost of lives is always grim; in this case a shoot-out left a Brinks guard and two policemen dead. On top of that, we were avowed revolutionaries, with an alliance of Whites and Blacks working under the leadership of a unit of the Black Liberation Army. The police organizations and media were howling for blood; every court appearance was like walking into an armed camp during open hostilities; the one word used, incessantly, to define us was “terrorists.” (Of course there was no mention of the government’s illegal and murderous campaign, COINTELPRO, that had driven nonviolent activists into underground resistance.)

With the tremendous demands on the handful of attorneys who would work with revolutionaries, we couldn’t find a lawyer willing to defend me there in the middle of that storm and penniless. Then Lynne Stewart stopped forward-- doubly courageous because at that point she had little experience in high-stakes trials. Lynne was a staunch advocate and more. Her great warmth, her down to earth intelligence, her cheerfulness in the face of adversity helped us all get through the many tensions and crises we faced during two years of legal confrontations. Lynne went on from that baptism of fire to take on some of the cases that most challenged government power--and to do a terrific job at it.

Her principles and success led to her being targeted. A decade ago, the government tried to disbar Lynne, picked her out to demand she reveal the sources of a client’s payments, using a purported “anti-drug” law that was never used against lawyers who were regular counsel for big-time drug dealers.

When Lynne took Sheik Rahman’s case, I was surprised because I strongly disagree with his politics. But when I thought about it I learned a lesson from her example: a defendant branded as a pariah deserves a vigorous defense. The government is completely disingenuous to feign indignation that Lynne went to the media; the prosecutor always has a high powered media strategy in cases like this, to create a pro-conviction jury pool and intense political pressure against any subsequent reversal on appeal. They also use isolation to break down the defendant’s will and ability to litigate effectively. The government is taking a playing field already heavily tilted in their favor and raising it virtually vertical with their gag orders and isolation.

Because she’s a peerless defender of political prisoners, Lynne Stewart is now in danger of becoming one herself. As crucial as it is that we support and defend her, its even more important to understand that she’s fighting for all of us.

David Gilbert #83-A-6158
Clinton Correctional Facility
P.O. Box 2001
Dannemora NY 12929 USA

National Conference of Black Lawyers Statement Regarding the Conviction of Lynne Stewart

Those of us who know Lynne Stewart as a lawyer of great integrity and as a zealous advocate for all of her clients, even those whose cases are considered unpopular, are saddened and outraged by the conviction returned against her on February 10, 2005. Convicted on all counts including violating the SAMS provision, a subsection of the Patriot Act, Ms. Stewart now faces decades in prison. This conviction, secured by government prosecutors who were permitted to raise the specter of Osama Bin Laden repeatedly during the trial and thereby inflame the jury, will have a chilling effect on lawyers who contemplate zealous and competent representation of clients charged with crimes of "alleged" terrorism or any other "unpopular" crime during this climate of "terrorism" hysteria.

As Lynne Stewart stated in her own words, "You can’t lock up the lawyers". NCBL understands and supports the proposition that everyone deserves and needs competent, zealous representation, and an attorney’s representation of his/her client should not be held hostage to the prospect that the attorney may later be prosecuted and convicted, in violation of the 5th, 6th and 14th Amendments to the United States constitution. Government eavesdropping on attorney/client conversations must cease immediately-as that practice can now (following the conviction of Lynne Stewart) be seen for what it truly is, a way to gain evidence against lawyers for prosecution. Otherwise, lawyers-under fear of prosecution-will simply not be willing to engage in full and complete discussions with their clients, a situation that will surely hinder the lawyer’s quality of representation.

The National Conference of Black Lawyers does not support open defiance to just and fair laws, but it firmly and uncompromisingly opposes the legal lynching of lawyers in highly politicized trials, no matter how that process may be otherwise "packaged".

The Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit should take an objective look at this case against Lynne Stewart and reverse in its entirety, this conviction.

Your letters and donations can make a difference! For more information, visit www.lynnestewart.org or write The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee:

350 Broadway, Suite 700, New York, NY 10013
212-625-9696.

On Political Prisoners

by Michael Africa

On the move!

Solitary confinement is a position that most true activists experience regardless of their location. Whether on a cell block or a street block, the life of an activist is one of isolation.

Public officials want to isolate the activist in the community in an attempt to contain them. Old acquaintances distance themselves when they realize the activist is aggressively confronting the same system they have been taught all their lives to fear and avoid. But as old friends distance themselves, new comrades emerge who also feel compelled to confront a system that has terrorized your power of purpose. These comrades, however, are always subject to be snatched away by the system.

Once these same activists are thrown in jail, the isolation tactic increases a thousand fold. All the tactics the system employed in an attempt to break the will and the spirit of the activist are applied non-stop 24/7 to the political prisoner (P.P). The authorities then figure they have the P.P exactly how they want him or her: beaten and silenced. Or so they figure.

In a further attempt to silence and contain the P.P., officials then keep some P.P.s in the holes of the worst prisons in the country. And as demonstrated by the prison guards turned soldiers and sent to Iraqs Abu Gharib terror camp, these guards have employed the same tactics on P.P.s in this country - and continue to do so today. The torture of P.P.s in this country is a continuous tool of the ghouls that run these slave camps. And the more the P.P.s stand up to these cowards, the more they are targeted and isolated.

P.P.s like Mumia Abu Jamal and the Angola 3 have been isolated in these dungeons for a quarter of a century by people who find it intolerable that people stand up and speak the truth. MOVE people have been forced into the holes for five and seven year blocks at various times during the various rigged up sentences we have been given.

The torture and isolation for the P.P. also extend to the families of P.P.s, as was demonstrated by Philadelphia officials when they targeted MOVEs home on May 13, 1985, dropping a third bomb on the house and murdering all inside: four men, two women, and five babies!!! Four of them were the children of the embattled MOVE women and men in the holes from earlier confrontations with the same Philadelphia officials and terror cop brigades that assaulted and massacred MOVE on May 13, 1985.

Being a P.P in isolation means enduring a multitude of gut wrenching experiences on a daily basis. It means watching guards that swear they will find a way to further harass you bring you your meals, your mail, come to get you for a shower where you have to completely expose yourself by coming out of your cell wearing only a towel. It is watching these same guards harass your family and friends when they come to visit you, treating them like criminals as well, in an attempt to discourage them from supporting you.

Being a P.P. in isolation is sometimes getting to see yourself in the mirror and not recognizing the changes in the reflection.

Being a P.P is watching your parents grow old as they continue to visit, less frequently until too many clendars prevent them. It is being told of your loved ones passing by people who hate you and only use the news as another tool to dig at you.

Being a P.P is watching your siblings grow more unfamiliar to you with each passing year. Watch as they struggle to carefully keep disturbing family news away from you. See them not realizing that, after decades of this treatment, you no longer feel like the brother, the son, but a kind of guest in your own family.

Being a P.P makes you feel terrified of touching things that you keep locked up in the recesses of your mind. Like the first day your young children woke up without you anywhere near. How it must have been for them to only know you through an entire lifetime of brief visits under the ever-watchful eye of people they know hate you - and because they hate you, look upon them with much suspicion.

Being a P.P. means watching your family struggle, locked into a lifetime of battles of support on your behalf. Defending you and then having to defend themselves from the corporations that exist only to try to exploit the families and friends of prisoners. The lawyers, the phone companies, the commissaries, the suppliers, all of whom jack up their prices when dealing with prisons.

Being a P.P is watching your sister (Merle Africa, one of the MOVE 9) die in a prison having spent the last twenty years of her life in a goddamn dungeon for a crime that even the mayor of the city admitted he knew she was innocent of and nevertheless would do nothing about as she died in a prison where she was sent by his courts and terrorist cops.

Being a P.P means taking all of these things and using them as motivation to keep fighting, knowing that this is exactly the kind of injustice that compelled you to want to stand against and confront the system in the first place.

All P.P.s should be supported and freed! The system only gets away with this treatment of P.P.s because the people allow it to. The silent give their permission by their silence. It is past time that all P.P.s are freed and given the same kind of support that they have always shown to the people for whom they sacrificed their lives.

On the move!

Michael Africa

Long live MOVE
Long live the revolution
Long live John Africa

Art by Rashid

A Letter

by Waste

You will never know what a letter can mean until you have been where I am and have seen what I see. I am confined to a cell (if you can call it that) 24 hours a day. I receive no calls. Often I sleep and awaken alarmed, having dreamed of the long road to implementing my beliefs in liberation of the earth, animals, and humans. I think of old family and friends (few). I hope they are not harmed by the death machine and they are free. As I come to my senses, I look out the window and still see the fences. I make it cos I know I done work that needs to be done. Throughout the whole day I await the mail call; but none for me they say…. Not a letter, a note, or even a card. When nobody writes, times really seem hard. Just a little word or two to say everything is fine and others are using direct actions. A few small words to ease my mind. Kind words, well wishes. Just acknowledgement, you are there (whoever you may be). Anything shows me, and others inside prison cells you care. You will never know what a letter can mean until you have been where I am and seen what I see.

U.S. Police State Attacks the Freedom It Cannot Provide

by Antonio Guerrero

April is here and in this central region of the United States the sun encroaches on the winter season, which is short but crude while the summers are asphyxiating. Spring is by far the best time of year in Colorado, at least in my opinion.

But rather than write about the weather, I want to share some of my reflections on the immoral and unjustified resolution the United States is preparing to present against Cuba by whatever means it can at the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

The objectives of the U.S. empire are twofold: first, to uphold justification for its policy of hostility and aggression against the Cuban people, embodied in the cruel economic blockade and by other measures and acts of aggression intended to destroy the Revolution.

The second is an attempt to void the example Cuba’s socialist project represents to the world, a project symbolizing a just and caring society that grants basic rights to all its citizens.

Increasingly less people believe and side with the U.S. empire, while every day more people admire the Cuban people and express solidarity for their cause. It is the U.S. who bears responsibility for violating these basic rights. Below I site some examples to illustrate this point.

Higher education in the United States comes at a high monetary cost. Of those students who enter and complete university studies, close to 64% finish with a financial debt averaging $17,000. Banks and private lenders profit millions of dollars off this enormous business.

In Cuba, all education is free. This year the university enrollment reached a record high of 380,000 students, who have at their disposal some 64 universities and 938 higher education centers throughout Cuban territory. Thousands of foreign students study in Cuban classrooms free of charge, including 8,400 at the Latin American School of Medicine.

At the closing of 2004, unemployment in the United States was at 5.5%. If we include the 2.5 million workers who have given up the search for work, the number increases to 7.2%. Of the unemployed, 4.7% are white and 10.7% are black, demonstrating the inherent racism in this system. Cuba has a 1.9% rate of unemployment and works to eradicate it completely based on the principle that every person is useful and can contribute to society. Once of every seven Cuban workers is a college graduate.

Some 44 million people in the United States have no health coverage. The high price of health services, many of them vital, is unaffordable for millions of people and tens of thousands die because they lack free and timely medical attention.

All medical services in Cuba are free. Not only is the per capita doctor-patient ratio one of the highest in the world, but 23,413 Cuban health professionals and technicians are currently offering their services in 66 Third World countries.

In the United States, the riches people—or 1% of the population—control more than 1/3 of the nation’s wealth. The lower class—or 80% of the population, the workers, own only 16% of the national wealth. But even more astounding, 20% of the richest control 84.4% of all wealth, while 20% of the poorest are subjected to large debts; they owe more than they own.

In Cuba, the socialist Revolution guarantees social justice. In other words, equal rights and equality in the distribution of goods and wages. For example, this year 68% of the state’s expenses were allocated to the improvement of education, health, safety, social assistance, culture, sports, sciences and technology; all for the benefit of the people, who are in power.

The government of the United States is responsible for tortures, crimes and other human rights violations which have and continue to take place in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Guantánamo Naval Base, occupied against the will of the Cuban people.

In the last 46 years of the Cuban Revolution, there have been no cases of disappearances, tortures or executions without trial.

It’s not difficult to see that the Cuban people defend freedom and human rights with dignity and heroism not only in Cuba, but throughout the world. We know from experience the price of defending the Revolution’s founding principles and the price of telling the truth even when it contradicts the empire. However, we who are true revolutionaries will never abandon our just struggle and will continue forward, remembering the precise words of Che: to imperialism, one cannot cede even the tiniest bit.

Thank you for you letter and for the encouragement it gives us to know that you are unwaveringly committed to our struggle, in this indestructible union of ideas. As our Cuban Independence Hero, Jose Marti, taught us: “TRENCHES MADE OF IDEAS ARE STRONGER THAN TRENCHES MADE OF STONE.”

Antonio Guerrero #58741-004
USP Florence
5880 State Highway 67
South Florence CO 81226 USA

The 'Feminization of Poverty': Women's Poverty Sows the Seeds of Struggle

by Anne Sadler

from Socialism and Liberation, August 2005
http://socialismandliberation.org/img/mag/v2/n6/2a.jpg

Inequality in the workplace forces women to take low-paying jobs.

More women are working jobs outside the home today than ever before. Yet, even though more women are working, they have not achieved equality with their male counterparts in wages, working conditions or benefits. Working women disproportionately suffer poverty and discrimination.

In 2003, women were about 40 percent more likely to be poor than men. Poverty in the United States is officially measured by comparing annual income with the federal poverty standard, which the government adjusts annually for inflation. Almost 60 percent of adults with an income of less than half of the poverty standard were women. In addition, Black and Latina women have a much higher poverty rate than white women—generally two to three times as high, according to U.S. Census figures.

Women of color suffer most

Poverty rates in the United States are generally higher than in other developed countries. Women, especially women of color, suffer the most.

“One recent study concluded that the United States had the highest poverty rate for female-headed households among the 22 countries studied. … This study defined poverty as an income less than 50 percent of the median income and was based on national income surveys conducted in the early 1990s.” (Reading Between the Lines: Women’s Poverty in the United States, 2003) “However, the official U.S. poverty line has not been adjusted … since it was formulated over 35 years ago,” the report continues. “If the poverty standard were adjusted to reflect the [change] in real household median income since 1967, many more women (and men) would be counted as poor.”

Over 3.5 million people are homeless each year.

The phrase “feminization of poverty” was first used in 1978 by Professor Diana Pearce to describe U.S. standard of living trends. Pearce noted then that two-thirds of the poor people in the United States were women. These trends persist today. Many of these women are actually working two or more jobs to support themselves and their families.

In the United States, women work longer hours and make less money than men. Equal pay for men and women has been enshrined in federal law since 1963. But for every dollar a man with similar education, skills and experience earns today, a working woman earns less than 76 cents—closer to 50 cents to the dollar for women of color. The average 25-year-old working woman in the United States will lose almost $500,000 due to unequal pay during her lifetime as a worker. Yet, she will pay the same for rent, food, utilities and services as her male counterpart.

Among working women earning less than $40,000 per year, up to half are without basic benefits, including secure, affordable health insurance, prescription drug coverage, pension or retirement benefits, equal pay or paid sick leave.

The impact of living in poverty includes many acute and chronic health conditions including infections, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, ulcers, migraines and depression. Poor women are more vulnerable to violence and abuse. Poverty limits women’s choices both socially and financially.

Women’s labor and capitalism

Although the phrase was coined in 1978, the feminization of poverty began with the feminization of labor under capitalism. When women began to enter the labor market in the 1700s in Europe, they didn’t take over the jobs of men at the same rate of pay. Instead, women entered mostly low-paying jobs in the service sector. Their overall status in society did not increase.

Nowadays, women make up 45 percent of the world’s workforce, yet up to 70 percent of women worldwide are living in poverty. Most work in low-skilled, low-wage jobs. They are paid less and work longer hours than men in nearly every capitalist country in the world. Women also face additional threats on the job including discrimination, sexual harassment, physical abuse and unwanted pregnancy exams.

Families worldwide are increasingly relying on women workers to support them. Thirty percent of all working women make nearly all of their family’s income, and 60 percent earn about half or more of their entire family’s income. Forty percent of working women work evenings, nights or weekend shifts, and one-third work different shifts than their spouse or partner. These percentages are even higher for women of color.

In March 2005, the UN announced that, 10 years after the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, “governments … are failing to mobilize the political will and leadership needed to carry out the commitments made to women. … As a result, many women in all regions are actually worse off now than they were 10 years ago.”

The UN report strongly criticizes countries—overwhelmingly imperialist countries—for failing to meet their pledge to revoke laws that discriminate against women. The report documents the staggering level of violence and discrimination against women condoned by governments.

Deepening class struggles

The number of women in the workforce has greatly increased in the past several decades. Workers in the United States have been most affected by this shift.

The introduction of computers and high technology under capitalism has created a sharp shift from higher to lower paid jobs. This has led to a relative reduction in the percentage of skilled workers. As a result, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of semi-skilled workers working in lower-paying jobs. This has transformed the social composition of the working class overall and ravaged workers’ living standards in the United States and throughout the world.

The objective changes to the character of the working class are superimposed on the racist and sexist structure inherent to capitalist society. While there are more women workers in the workforce, women’s rights have not improved greatly over the past thirty years. The capitalist drive for increased profits undercuts any “democratic” reforms that tend to equalize the social situation for women or other oppressed people.

At the same time, the changing character of the working class lays the basis for militant class struggle. As women play more important roles as leaders and participants in labor and community struggles, the sexist and patriarchal relations that work to divide the working class can be challenged and overcome.

The same women who today find themselves victims of the capitalist economy will tomorrow be the ones who stand as leaders in the revolutionary struggles to overturn the racist and sexist system of exploitation.

ALL Power to ALL the People

by Rashid

Kevin (Rashid) Johnson #185492
Red Onion State Prison
P.O. Box 1900
Pound VA 24279 USA

History of Black August Concept

by Doc Holiday et al.

The month of August gained special significance and importance in the Black Liberation Movement beginning with a courageous attempt by Jonathan Jackson to demand the freedom of political prisoners/prisoners of war which the Soledad Brothers’ case were the center of attention.

On August 7, 1970 Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain, and Ruchell Magee were gunned down at the Marin County Courthouse in that attempt for freedom. Ruchell Cinque Magee remains the sole survivor of that bid for liberation, he also remains a POW at Folsom prison doing life. Though this rebellion was put down by gory pigs and their agents it was internalized within the hearts and minds of the people on the outside in the larger prison as well as those in the concentration camps (prison), internalized in the same fashion as we honor other heroic African Freedom Fighters, who sacrificed their lives for the people and the liberation.

On August 21, 1971, almost exactly a year following the slave rebellion at Marin County Courthouse, George L. Jackson (older brother of Jonathan Jackson as well as one of the Soledad Brothers) whose freedom was the primary demand of the Marin rebellion, was assassinated at San Quentin prison in an alleged escape put forth by prison administration and the state to cover its conspiracy. Comrade George Jackson was a highly respected and purposely influential leader in the Revolutionary Prison Movement. Jackson was also very popular beyond prison, not only because he was a Soledad Brother, but also because of the book he authored appropriately entitled “Soledad Brother.” This book not only revealed to the public the inhumane and degrading conditions in prison, he more importantly, correctly pointed to the real cause of those effects in prison as well as in society, a decadent Capitalist system that breeds off racism and oppression.

On August 1, 1978 brother Jeffery “Khatari” Gualden, a Black Freedom Fighter and Prisoner of War, captured within the walls of San Quentin was a victim of a blatant assassination by capitalist-corporate medical politics. Khatari was another popular and influential leader in the Revolutionary Prison Movement.

An important note must be added here and that is, the Black August Concept and Movement that it is part of and helping to build is not limited to our sisters and brothers that are currently captured in the various prison Kamps throughout California. Yet without a doubt it is inclusive of these sisters and brothers and moving toward a better understanding of the nature and relationship of prison to oppressed and colonized people.

So it should be clearly understood that Black August is a reflection and commemoration of history; of those heroic partisans and leaders that realistically made it possible for us to survive and advance to our present level of liberation struggle. People such as: Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Gabril Prosser, Frederick Douglas, W.E. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Paul Roberson, Rosa Parks, M.L. King, Malcolm X, and numerous others in our more contemporary period.

The development of Black August as a revolutionary concept reflects the historical legacy of New African resistance to colonial oppression. Moreover, Black August is a political statement that condemns the efforts of the black middle class to and other liberals who cynically and opportunistically distort the historical efforts of New Africans for nationhood into state sanctioned aims of civil rights. Black August contends that in order for our people to rescue their history and culture from the genocidal effects of colonial oppression, it is necessary that New Africans have a clear perspective of themselves and their history.

Most standard history books tend to either play down or ignore New African resistance as a factor in the destruction in the slave economy. On the other hand, when one understands New Africans are still an oppressed nation, the reason for such deception becomes clear. Black August contends that not only was such resistance a factor in the destruction of the slave economy, but New African resistance to slavery continues to inspire New African resistance to national oppression. Herbert Aptheker (the author of “American Negro Slave Revolts”) recounts the personal remark of one New African involved in the civil rights struggle:

“From personal experience I can testify that American Negro Slave Revolts made a tremendous impact on those of us in the civil rights and Black Liberation movement. It was the single most effective antidote to the poisonous ideals that blacks had not a history of struggle or that such struggle took the form of non-violent protest. Understanding people like Denmark Vessey, Nat Turner, William Lloyd Garrison etc. provided us with that link to our past that few ever thought existed.”

Black August contends that from the very inception of slavery, New Africans huddled illegally to commemorate and draw strength from New African slaves who met their death resisting. Black August asserts that it is only natural for each generation of New Africans faced with the task to liberate the nation, to draw strength and encouragement from each generation of New African warriors that preceded them. It is from such a rich heritage of resistance that Black August developed, committed to continuing the legacy of resistance, vowing to respond to the destruction of colonial oppression with our George Jacksons, Malcolm X’s, and Fred Hamptons etc.

New African resistance moved decisively into the 1920s and 1930s. Evidence of this was movements like: The African Blood Brothers, The Share Croppers, The Black Bolsheviks, etc. Unduly there is an incorrect tendency to confine the discussion of African Nationalism to the well-known Garvey movement as the sole manifestation of national consciousness. The Garvey movement was the point of the emerging politics of New African resistance. In labor, national consciousness, (i.e. literature, jazz, art, etc..) in the struggle for the land, in all areas of politics, like a great explosion of previously pent-up National Consciousness took place among New Africans.

The sixties was a further example of New African resistance to national oppression. It should be emphasized here that that struggle of non-violence was at that time a strategy of illegality, of danger, of arousing New Africans to direct confrontation with the colonial oppressor. Whether it was a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter or bus station, the movement deliberately broke the colonial law.

Inevitably the anti-colonial struggle moved to a higher level, growing beyond the initial stage of non-violent civil rights protest. Non-violent civil rights strategy was tried and discarded by New Africans, who found that it was a failure, incapable of forcing an entrenched settler’s colonial regime to change.

Black August conte