4strugglemag

By JULIAN ICHIM

Give us a little background about yourself and your role in the Craigavon Two Campaign.

I’m Packy Carty, a former Irish Republican Prisoner. I was held for nine months in Maghaberry interned by remand; the state released me never once showing a shred of evidence to back up their claims. During my time in Maghaberry I became friends with Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton now better known as the Craigavon 2. I had followed their case closely and became intimately aware of the case against them first hand while incarcerated with them. It seemed there was nothing linking either men to the charges they were facing and all the POWs expected the case to be thrown out at trial. Unfortunately they were both sentenced to life by a non jury diplock court.

Who are the Craigavon Two and why are they in jail?

Brendan and John Paul are two Irish Republicans from Craigavon in County Armagh, John Paul Wootton has a love of Irish music and enjoys reading books on socialism, and has taken to studying economics while in jail. Brendan McConville is a fluent Irish speaker who teaches the native language to other prisoners, he has learned the guitar and enjoys making handy crafts. He was once elected as a councillor for the Craigavon area; soft spoken he enjoys debating and reading. In 2009 the CIRA killed a member of the PSNI in a sniper attack in Craigavon. In the aftermath both Brendan and John Paul where taken from their homes interrogated for 16 days, charged with murder and remanded to Maghaberry Jail.

Tell us a little bit about their trial and evidence used against them.

The trial took place in a highly charged atmosphere where the politicians and media were demanding retribution. At the same time prominent Irish Republican Colin Duffy was being tried for the IRA killing of two British Soldiers in Antrim and the case against him was also sinister. The case against the Craigavon 2 centred around four strands of so-called evidence: the brown jacket DNA, the brown jacket residue, Witness M and a British Army MI5 tracking device. When Brendan and John Paul where taken for interrogation by the PSNI, they seized Wootton’s car, and in the car they found a brown jacket with a number of DNA profiles, one of which belonged to Brendan McConville; also on the jacket was a firearms type residue. It was proved beyond doubt that the residue did not come from an AK 47, which was the weapon used in the shooting. The amount of DNA on the brown jacket could have been innocently placed by a sneeze or a slight touch. Brendan McConville and John Paul Wootton were friends and Brendan had been in the car before. Yet the crown prosecution were trying to say that the coat belonged to McConville and was used in the shooting, even though the forensics disproved this theory. Eleven months after the shooting and after Brendan and John Paul had been through the newspapers and media, a man known only as witness M phoned the PSNI in the middle of the night while drunk and said he could identify those involved in the shooting. Despite being a vulnerable person this man became the key part of the prosecution case. He said he had seen Brendan near the scene if the shooting that night; it later transpired in court that his eyewitness testimony was clinically impossible, as he was severely short sighted and lied openly in court about his eyesight. It emerged that on the night of the shooting the British Army, most probably at the behest of MI5, were tracking Wootton’s car using a covert device. When the device was examined after Wootton’s car was seized, half of the data was purposely deleted, yet despite this destruction of evidence the device was accepted as evidence in the court. The remainder of the data said that 15 minutes following the shooting, Wootton’s car left a nearby housing estate. The state claimed that he was a getaway driver for the gunmen, but all this showed was 15 minutes after the shooting John Paul was casually driving through the area where he lived. Despite these loose and in no way incriminating strands of so-called evidence, the single judge sitting in a non jury court found both men guilty of the killing and sentenced them to life. It was then member of both the men’s families and friends began writing to people for help. Everyone including senior lawyers who had followed the case believed it had been a serious miscarriage of justice. Meanwhile the media vilified both men as evil killers. The Justice For the Craigavon 2 group was formed and attracted the support of high-profile lawyers and justice campaigners most notably the most iconic miscarriage of justice victim Gerry Conlon of the Guildford Four (see the Daniel Day Lewis movie In the Name of the Father.) The group began lobbying and raising awareness through local media Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

What was discovered during the appeal?

It was announced that the appeal into the conviction would be held that April, so the group secured the promise from a number of human rights groups and from prominent individuals that they would attend as independent observers. The first day of the appeal in April opened to shocking revelations: a new defense witness who could discredit witness M’s account was arrested by the PSNI prior to the appeal starting in an effort to pressure the witness into retracting his evidence. It was openly called sabotage by the defense council, and the court suspended the appeal for 6 months to investigate the claims. During the summer at a human rights convention, lawyers who represented the Craigavon 2 said they feared arrest and feared for their colleagues’ lives due to the case. The appeal started again in October and ran for two weeks. It was a white wash for the prosecution start to finish; headlines from the appeal included no evidence to link the men to the killing as the full extent of the corrupt conspiracy was aired to a court that included human rights activists and Irish TDs as observers. To everyone there including myself, it was just unbelievable how this concoction was being used to keep two men interned for life. The support throughout the appeal was amazing: slogans on high rise flats in Belfast and a massive banner on the Black Mountain was seen by tens of thousands The last day of the appeal, a senior PSNI member came across as abusive and intimidating while highly unbelievable as he tried to say the new defense witness had been intimidated into making his statements by a lawyer and an IRA gun man. It was outlandish stuff. The three appeal court judges have reserved their judgment on the appeal and 6 months since it ended, there is still no sign of a decision in the case; it could take up to a year.

What can the international community do to support the Craigavon 2? The Justice For the Craigavon 2 group welcomes all acts of solidarity. All we ask is you send us the pics of your acts so we can publicize them. We would also encourage people to write to Brendan and John Paul in Maghaberry Jail and help raise their morale. View all the info about the men and their plight at justiceforthecraigavontwo.com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @craigavon2 #JFTC2 www.facebook.com/JFTC2.

nycabc.wordpress.com

After twenty months of imprisonment, antifascist political prisoner John Tucker is free. John is the second of the Tinley Park Five to be released and he has written a thank you letter to his supporters. The letter reads:
“These past 20 months have been an ordeal to say the least. From court drama to safety issues to just the woes of incarceration itself, this has been a trying process. Yet, even within the darkness of a cell, cut off from the world, some light could still be seen.  Your letters, donations, and noisy solidarity were things of beauty to eyes forced to view the despair of a broken system day after day and eyes that could not help but watch as any glimmer of hope faded from so many youths as they were dehumanized by the tortuous conditions in which they were forced to dwell. Your zines brought much needed and often obscured information into a citadel of ignorance and fear, your books lifted the weight of monotonous oppression, and your donations aided in the welfare of so many with nothing but the state to care for them. A parcel of food here or some cosmetics there so often mean the difference between another night spent hungry or unclean and a good night’s rest, and never doubt the weight of one’s spirit in a time of need. Sadness, loneliness, and a lack of basic human needs often crush that vital spark necessary for a meaningful, productive life and sadly press those “corrected” into a self-defeating cycle of unchecked violence or harsh drug use.

For so much I am thankful for the supporters, but of greatest importance was the solidarity. Your constant stream of letters and cards not only kept myself sane, but also gave tangible, physical proof of solidarity, which revealed the tremendous weight of the conviction of people from the real world who likewise are willing to make a stand against the far too often accepted evils of the world, to an incarcerated populace who had often not heard of such people before. The attention brought by the constant stream of mail peaked curiosity and drove many to question what was going on. This in turn lead to discussions, which in turn lead to some longer discussions that I hope have made a difference in at least a few lives over the course of my stint of incarceration.

Now that I am free, I am no less thankful for everything I have received from our amazing support network, which is in itself a testament to the will of a people willing to sacrifice to make a change. A support network populated by good-hearted, noble people who have often suffered first hand under the weight of unchecked and unopposed malice. Thank you once again for everything you have done and continue to do; you are indeed an amazing people.

In Solidarity, 
John Tucker”

While John is now out of prison, he undoubtedly needs the kind of support that those nearest to him can provide. At the same time, three of the Tinley Park Five remain imprisoned. Please take this time to write to them. Their addresses are:

Cody Sutherlin

#M34021

Robinson Correctional Center

13423 East 1150th Avenue

Robinson, IL 62454

Dylan Sutherlin

#M34022

Centralia Correctional Center

Post Office Box 7711

Centralia, IL 62801

Jason Sutherlin

#M34023

East Moline Correctional Center

100 Hillcrest Road

East Moline, IL 61244

BY WILL POTTER

greenisthenewred.com

Jerry Koch spent eight months in jail in New York City for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury. But a district court judge has ruled that imprisonment only strengthened the anarchist’s resolve, and the court had no choice but to release him.

As I reported previously for VICE, Koch, 24, was subpoenaed before a grand jury investigating the 2008 explosion outside a military recruitment center in Times Square. The blast damaged only the front door of the center and injured no one, but the FBI began a “terrorism” investigation of local anarchists.

Koch is not accused of this crime—or any other crime. Prosecutors told his lawyers that they think he was at a bar in 2008 or 2009, after the bombing, and that someone else at the bar knew about another person who was involved. Koch was subpoenaed to a grand jury in 2009—when he was only 19—and publicly stated that he did not know anything about it and would not cooperate.

On May 21, he appeared before the grand jury again. And again, he refused to testify.

Grand juries are secretive proceedings that have historically been used to investigate, harass, and disrupt radical social movements. If you refuse to testify about your political beliefs, or others, you can be imprisoned for the duration of the grand jury.

The purpose of this imprisonment, under the law, is to “coerce” the prisoner into testifying. Koch’s attorney, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, submitted what is known as a Grumbles motion that argued he would not, under any circumstances, cooperate.

It was a lengthy back-and-forth, but eventually judge John F. Keenan of Federal District Court in Manhattan agreed.

In a ruling full of snarky and petty insults against Koch and other anarchists, Keenan concedes that, “…Koch has chosen to remain in contempt—indeed, he promises continued and endless contempt.”

Keenan notes Koch’s deteriorating physical and mental health, and flippantly says that “…Koch will only derive increasing grim self-satisfaction from his position. The more unstable he gets, the more he will be presented as a martyr and perceive himself as such. Koch has already decided that this type of notoriety is more valuable than his health and freedom….”

Keenan was most swayed by 17 letters of support from family, friends and academics about Koch’s beliefs, and also his public statements about his intentions (as an aside, it was wonderful to hear that the VICE article was included in this).

At one point, Koch was on 24-hour solitary lockdown in the SHU [Special Housing Unit – ed.]. He was not allowed to shower, or given any reading material. He was never told why he received such harsh treatment, but his transfer to the SHU coincided with a protest by his supporters, and staff at MCC confirmed that to him personally. A staff psychologist at the jail told Koch, “They are treating you like an inmate of 10 South [the Terrorism Unit].”

None of this swayed Koch, though.

In a declaration to the court, filed last year, Koch said:

“I want so badly to spend Christmas with my mother, in a place where I can move freely and sleep in peace. But the idea that I hold the keys to my cell is hollow. I know that cooperating with the Grand Jury will only increase my suffering. It will disappoint and alienate my community. It will undermine everything I believe in, and all I have sacrificed for.”

Similar statements were made by anarchists in the Pacific Northwest, who were also jailed for refusing to testify before a grand jury. Eventually they were released, and the judge cited the “strength of their convictions.”

Koch said in a statementthat “I’ve lost more during my incarceration that I ever thought possible.” But he refused to be swayed by fear and intimidation; as Judge Keenan was forced to acknowledge, “Koch is governed by different incentives.”

On Sunday, January 5, two groups of people threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the offices of the Ministry of Communications and Transport and at the vehicles of a Nissan dealership in Mexico City.

The same night, Carlos, Fallon, and Amélie were arrested in downtown Mexico City for these attacks. Initially detained by the Ministry of Public Safety for the Federal District (Mexico City), their case was shortly thereafter transferred to the federal jurisdiction.

On January 9, the comrades were placed under arraigo, a special investigative measure, based on allegations from the Prosecutor’s Office of federal crimes, including terrorism, sabotage, organized crime and damage to public property. The arraigo allows the Prosecutor’s Office to hold any suspects up to 40 days pending investigation without appearing before a judge and without formal indictment.

At the end of the arraigo, Amélie and Fallon were transferred to the Centre de Réadaptacion Santa Martha, a women’s prison where they are still detained, and Carlos was transferred to Oriente, a men’s prison. Both are state-level prisons.

On February 20, the comrades appeared before a judge. In light of a lack of evidence, the federal charges for which the arraigo was granted were not pursued. Amélie, Fallon and Carlos are now facing breach of peace and damage to property while acting as a group. The comrades appealed the charges and are currently faced with the possibility that Nissan will accept a restitution of $10 000 for the damages to their property. This would mean that Carlos, Amélie and Fallon would be able to get bail for the charge of breaching the peace. The bail amount is not known at this point.

If Nissan refuses the restitution offer, the judge then has 15 days to decide whether to release the three accused or not. If the judge refuses, they will stay in prison until their trial, which could take between six months and a year.

All three are in good spirits and have released letters from prison. To contribute financially to support efforts, make donations online via CLAC: http://www.clac-montreal.net/mx#_1

Write a cheque to: Convergence des lutes anti-capitalists (PLEASE INDICATE MEXICO IN THE SUBJECT LINE) and send to:

CLAC-Montréal c/o QPIRG Concordia

1455 de Maisonneuve O

Montréal, Quebec H3G 1M8

At this time, Carlos is unable to receive letters.

To write to Amélie and Fallon:

Centro Feminil de Reinsercion social Santa Martha Acatitla

Amélie Trudeau / Fallon Rouiller

Calzada Ermita
Iztapalapa No 4037

Colonia Santa Martha Acatitla

Delagation Iztalpalapa

C.P. 09560

Letter from Carlos López Marín

A big hug to all comrades!

It has been very heartwarming to receive all of the gestures of support from the outside for us three anarchist prisoners. We remain strong and firm despite the stupid accusations against us and the intimidation (they tell us we will spend a lot of time in prison) that seek to smother our identities. They will not succeed, because we are strong in our conviction.

Today they took us downstairs to plead, hoping that we would plead either innocent or guilty. At this point I want to make something clear: personally I do not accept either position. Guilty? Innocent? That would be to give legitimacy to the stupid laws of the State, which I do not recognize its authority. After all, the State and its laws only exist to produce and regulate privilege, injustice, exploitation and domination.

I heard about something that made me sick…that they are trying to link us with the YoSoy132 movement, PosMeSalto and the like. I will not accept this in any way. I will not recognize a movement that is organized in a hierarchical institutionalized way. No way!

I spit hate to the prison system, I really do not know if there are people who are convinced in “reintegration”, as they say, that while in jail people are domesticated and when they get out they live a quiet life, in harmony with people and flowers around them. I look around and can only see one thing: KIDNAPPING, yes, when someone is deprived of his or her liberty it is called kidnapping. They try through their prisons to stomp out the will of those who fight for a new world and call anyone who rebels violent, dangerous to society and terrorists.

The State is the only terrorist, because it is the principal producer of violence, has the monopoly over weaponry, does the torturing and violates our natural rights. It is the system of domination that harasses us on a daily basis through our miserable wages, when any worker is seen not as a human, but as a money-generating machine. It forces us against nature in order to build shopping malls, it violates us with its TV programming designed to mold our thoughts.

AI FERRI CORTI AGAINST ALL FORMS OF DOMINATION

Letter from Amélie

On the evening of January 5, I was arrested with my comrades Fallon and Carlos for allegedly attacking the office of the Federal Secretary of Communications and Transportation of Mexico, and also a Nissan dealership. Windows were broken and Molotov cocktails were thrown inside the ministry (according to what the evidence says) and inside the new cars of the dealership. Damages are evaluated at more than 70 000 pesos at the ministry and 100 000 pesos at Nissan.

Indeed, I’m an anarchist and live in Montreal, Canada. I was traveling in Mexico, and now my trip is being prolonged some time. After being arrested, they locked us up for 96 hours and then transferred us at the Federal Centre of Arraigo—without having seen a judge. We were held captive for 40 days. In a cell, 23 hours per day, a cigarette a day, smoked in 10 minutes; 3 meals per day, but with only 10 minutes to eat each time, without talking; not allowed to have a pencil; 9 minutes of phone per day… In short, it was a long wait, and there was nothing more than Mexican “telenovelas” playing on TV all day. Luckily, our friends sent us some books! Thanks, I don’t know how I could have survived without.

On day 40, the General Prosecutor of the Republic (PGR—federal) transferred our files to the PGJ (state police) because they have no evidence to charge us with a federal crime. Thus, since February 17, Fallon and I are at “Santa Martha” State penitentiary for women in Mexico City, where we were transferred, and Carlos is at “Oriente” State penitentiary for men 20 minutes from us. Here, it’s a micro-society surrounded by cement and barbed-wire, but where you can do as you wish inside.

At the moment of writing this text, it’s 7:30 am. I’m in the yard and I’m looking at the sun rising behind the watchtower occupying the scenery. Actually, I almost feel like I’m in the yard of an apartment block when i look at the building with clothes hanging from windows without bars. There’s plenty of pigeons, garbage cans, yellowed grass, and barbed-wire. There’s also plenty of people with their own stories.

Prisons are necessary for maintaining social peace, as are cops. It is the domination and control that permits this sickening world to persist. Prison means fear, the unknown, shame, solitude, isolation. Society is the domestication of individuals into “good citizens.” Thus, my strength as individual takes root in the refusal of fear being a limit in my life. For sure I’m afraid, like everyone, of many things, but my desires for freedom are stronger. Fear is often constructed, and is deconstructed when we face it. What’s important is to see further, beyond the boundaries and borders, beyond the walls, mountains, rivers and oceans.

I don’t know how long I’m here for, but I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m confident that outside the struggle goes on, and people meet, love each other, hate each other, live, dammit. In fact, I’m not comfortable with people focusing on our case without engaging their own struggles in their own contexts. I believe that the best solidarity is built in the sharing of individual and collective strengths. The worst thing for me would be that nothing goes on outside while we’re held captive, but I know my friends continue despite the difficulties we must face. My reality as an anarchist in prison is a fact among others with which we have to adapt. The most difficult is often to maintain and protect bonds of trust with comrades whom we have affinity with, for long-term thinking. When it is possible, unimaginable possibilities emerge.

In that sense, my ideas and analyses remain the same as outside. That’s why I don’t feel like changing my discourse to get people’s support. I greatly appreciate the efforts of solidarity that have been done till now, although I distance myself from certain initiatives that have been taken in solidarity with us. In Montreal: during a demo that took place in front of the Mexican consulate, the speech denounced torture and human rights violations by the Mexican State. The UN was mentioned in a reformist and progressive tone. Honestly, I appreciate that many people feel concerned with our case, but I refuse to use that illusory reformist discourse. As I see it, injustice, torture and human rights violations are integral parts of the world as it is. Rights are regulated by the State and are suspended at any moment as needed. Furthermore, it promotes democratic ideology (rights for citizens), the biggest of illusions. And most of all, to support our ideas with references to instances of power like the UN cannot build a strong anti-authoritarian struggle. It’s not by trying to influence public opinion with reformist discourse that we will build strong foundations for a struggle impossible to recuperate.

I must say I honestly have nothing to do with student and worker unions, and that even in the “syndicalisme de combat” [transl. combat unionism] very fashionable back home, in Montreal. Those organizations are formal and bureaucratic. They reproduce “direct democracy.” Those are the same structures I want to destroy, which impose distance between individuals and the way they relate to the world and to the living. Formality, bureaucracy, law and institutionalization transform the relationship between people. They immobilize the constant possibilities of transformation, exactly as political parties do. They try to organize and lead the “formless masses.”

Therefore, there is an obvious contradiction: we’ve received support from student associations in Quebec. For my part, I have no problems with accepting money that will without doubt help us out of prison. But I must say that these organizations have nothing revolutionary about them. They’re rotten to the core. They’re based on Maoist organizational structures and are totally formal, with their politician’s procedural code. This language is incomprehensible. Charismatic speakers manipulate the votes of the masses by expressing what the majority wants to hear rather than speaking from the heart. Crowds of 100,000 people march like zombies, sing and repeat the same reformist slogans and then return home, to their daily routine.

In the situation in which I find myself, waiting for my sentence or my release, to express openly that I am an anarchist can put me in a precarious situation. I chose to do so anyway. Many times, I felt the need to communicate with other anarchists who have experienced similar situations. When confronting State repression, there are several ways to react. I think that using a moderate discourse provides privileges, such as getting out of jail faster, obtaining financing or social acceptance. But I think as long as the words and deeds will be moderate, it will be difficult to spread insurrectional and anti-authoritarian practices. That is why it is important to communicate my ideas openly and knowingly.

I do not know how long I will be locked up here, but one thing is certain: it will not be for a lifetime. I am fortunate to have great friends and comrades in struggles, and I do not feel alone. The strength and courage are found first in oneself. There is a universe of possibilities, here as elsewhere. All forms of domination are to be fought, those that create the structures and institutions as much as those that interfere in our relationships. There is no heaven or perfect world. Freedom is the permanent movement and conflict, in confrontation with the world of images, symbols and appearances. Freedom is the destruction of the structures of domination over our lives. In Mexico, Montreal, France, Vancouver, United States, Spain, Greece, Chile, Egypt, Belgium, Italy, Germany, England, Holland, I greet my friends and comrades of struggle. For total freedom, I wish for links to be forged in the struggle.

In solidarity with Carlos “Chivo” and Fallon.

With love, down with all the prison walls.

Amélie

Letter from Fallon 

I want to begin this letter with a huge hug for all the compxs who are on the run, all those who are fighting for their liberty, and all those who are locked up and for whom this world of domination is trying to quell their rage. There is no cell, no wall, no authority to whom I give enough power to quiet my rage and my desire for liberty.

I’ve had these feelings since I was a little one and now, in my heart and my head, they are stronger than ever, and there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think of you guys, my friends. I can imagine, and they tell me as well, that the situation outside is very precarious. This doesn’t surprise me, as us deciding to be in conflict comes with repression. It isn’t simple, it isn’t easy, and there are many emotions that are all mixed up, but the specific emotion that we all have in common is our force; individually and collectively. No one can cage this feeling—neither a prison nor a border. Friends, I am thinking of you all with much love, especially Marc, who is locked up in a prison in Kingston, and I’m thinking of the compxs from the Che who were tortured by the Comite Cerezo, of the cumbia ballerina, and of Tripa, Amélie and Carlos. Let’s stay strong, regardless of the distance!

I feel a little weird writing a letter without any specific destination, I have the feeling that I’m writing to a galaxy that seems a little bit far away. I want to say one thing: I want to be clear that I am not writing this letter to retain support or to portray myself as the victim. My intention is to use the pen and paper to communicate with friends, and to share analysis.

I think that the situation of being imprisoned is a very special opportunity to get away from the “fetishisation” of prison and to make it a reality in a contextual manner. Today, I am writing this letter from Santa Marta, but who knows what is next.

When we were arrested, January 5, 2014, to me, it was a bit of a joke. With the seven cop cars blocking the street, it felt a bit like a scene from a play, and from this moment onwards, this feeling never left.

Everybody has their role. I remember this moment, at 2 or 3 in the morning, when we were transported from the PGJ to the scientific centre for tests. We were 3, in 3 different cars, with 2 cops on either side of us, and with a minimum of 10 cop cars with their lights flashing in the deserted streets of DF, and with the scientists who were still almost asleep when we arrived at the centre. It was such a show; CSI Miami in Mexico.

And the Arraigo Centre, ouf!

This was the most theatrical thing I’ve lived through in my whole life. When we got there, the street had been closed off for our arrival. The men with their soap-opera muscles and machine guns were outside in the street, as well as inside the car with us. I couldn’t stop laughing—laughing at their authority that I don’t even have the smallest amount of respect for, laughing at the way they take themselves so seriously. “Ken and Barbie” with federal police uniforms. And the prisoners, who don’t have names but instead have the good luck of having a colour. Mine was orange. The worst was that the girls in my cell were taking on the roles of submission, of fear, and of authority between each other, so seriously, as if they were in an audition for a Hollywood movie.

Sorry to the people who think that I’m making everything seem absurd, but, this is the way it is! A joke, the playing of a role. And here, in Santa Marta, there are many neighbourhoods from A to H, there is a ‘park’, apartments, and neighbours. There is a corner store, sex workers, drugs everywhere; there are people who reproduce the gender roles of ‘girls and boys’, and there are also tons of babies. There is a school, a doctor, a court. There are studies to classify us in Santa

Marta, there is corruption, formal and informal power, schedules, and many emotions, many histories, lots of time to share together, rage, and definitely lots of cigarettes and coffee to share. If it isn’t already clear (here my Spanish fails me a bit), but now, Santa Marta is my new city, ‘A’ is my new neighbourhood, 107 is my new apartment, and Amélie, my neighbour. For me, this is clearer than any theory.

And so, I end my letter.

A note:

First, I wrote this in Spanish* because, it’s sometimes easier. So, I also want to give a big thanks to all those who do the translation, I will try to translate other letters into Français and English.

This is the first letter I’ve written in a long time because in the Arraigo Centre it was very difficult; pens, like everything else, were prohibited! For me, it was important to write this letter with a touch of humour and sarcasm, not because I want to minimise the impact that prisons can have on people, but to minimise the impact prison can have on me. What I tried to express, in simple Spanish (I hope to one day master it; I also hope it’s understandable), is that since my imprisonment, the elements that have had the most impact on me have been the game of roles and city-prison, prison-city. I won’t lie to you—it isn’t always easy, we are surrounded by barbed wire, but there is one thing I am certain of and it’s that freedom starts in our heads, regardless of where we find ourselves. In mine right now, there’s a lot of rage, a lot of force, and yes, despite everything, there is more freedom than ever.

Thanks to the friends who came to visit! To those who took our collect calls. To those who are organizing, despite the tensions. To those who nurture the fire and who attack this rotten society. RAGE AND ANARCHY!! (A)

And solidarity with Marc, the compxs from the Che, Tripa, the witch cumbia dancer, Amélie and Carlos.

Fa

Santa Marta, Mexico, March 14, 2014

And Happy March 15! (A)

* The letter was originally written in a combination of French and Spanish.

BY LILIA AND PETER

slingshot.tao.ca

Marie Mason is an earth and animal liberation prisoner serving a 22-year sentence in a Fort Worth, Texas federal prison. Marie pleaded guilty in 2009 to 13 counts of property destruction, with targets such as GMO research labs, boats owned by a mink farmer, logging equipment and environmentally destructive housing developments, among others. No one was injured in any of the actions.

Marie also has many years of above-ground activism under her belt. She is well known for her work as an Earth First! and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizer, and as a musician, writer and artist.

Marie is recognized as a Green Scare prisoner due to the application of a federal terrorism enhancement provision to ensure a long prison term, and for the FBI to boast of another successful “terrorism” prosecution. She is, unfortunately, not alone in this fact, however the lengthy sentence does make her case particularly startling.

“It is obvious the government is trying to send a message,” Marie told London’s Guardian newspaper, “to have a chilling effect, not only on my action, which, of course, transgressed the laws, but also on 30 years of above-ground actions in the environmental rights spheres.”

Due to the length of the sentence imposed on Marie, her case is well known world-wide within the environmental, anarchist and animal rights movements from which she receives broad support. Indian environmental and anti-globalization activist, Vandana Shiva, says of Marie in a widely viewed online video, “I think it is criminal that she is being treated like a criminal. That is why we need a movement; both for the rights of nature, and the rights of the defenders of nature so that they can get along with their work to protect this beautiful planet and our common freedoms.”

After serving two and a half years in a Minnesota minimum security prison close to family and friends with no rule violations, Marie was suddenly transferred to the Carswell Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth. There she is housed in a special restrictive unit known as the Administration Unit. She never received any explanation for why she was moved. The gymnasium-sized unit houses up to 20 prisoners, but this space has been cut in half due to a recently constructed new wall; a restricted unit inside a restricted unit.

Many of the women in Marie’s unit suffer from untreated, debilitating mental health issues that are manifested in violent behavior, self-mutilation, screams and sobs throughout the night, and unpredictable actions. The constant barrage of cries and pleas from people in emotional pain constitutes psychological torture. There is no rest or calm in her unit.

Marie and the other prisoners are only allowed to exercise for one hour a day in a small, fenced-in, concrete, outdoor area topped by double-coiled razor wire. There is no room to run or engage in physical activity. Her unit is frequently under lock down, where prisoners are confined to their cells. Friends who have visited Marie report that she and the other women in her unit physically look like they are severely lacking in access to sunlight. Most prisoners know why they have been transferred to this unit—mostly for excessive rule violations—and what they need to do to get out of it. But Marie has been given no indication of why she is there or what she can do to be moved back into the general prison population.

When singer/songwriter David Rovics recently visited her and asked why she thought she had been moved, Marie simply stated: “They’re scared of me.” David says, “Marie is a humble person, not one to brag, but what she says is clearly a statement of the obvious. There is no other explanation.”

In the face of this ongoing unjust treatment, Marie’s support network has instigated a campaign to have her moved out of the restrictive unit and back into general population in a prison closer to her family and friends. The “Move Marie” campaign is working to place public pressure on the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The long-term goal of the campaigners is to overturn or reduce her unjust sentence.

October 21 was a national call-in day with supporters across the U.S. phoning the BOP headquarters in Washington asking for Marie to be moved. Just a few days later, on October 25, supporters all over the world held “Move Marie” events for an international day of solidarity. Community gatherings were held across the U.S., Australia, and Europe where people learned about Marie’s situation, wrote letters and signed postcards that were sent to the BOP. Supporters are still being encouraged to write letters asking for her transfer. They can be sent to:

Charles E. Samuels, Jr.

Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons

320 First St., NW

Washington, DC 20534

The “Move Marie” campaign has been receiving increased attention with media outlets like Huffington Post publishing a feature on it. One of Marie’s lawyers, Susan Tipograph, was interviewed on the HuffPost Live online TV channel. Tipograph has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the FBI seeking documents relating to Marie’s move, but to date has only received newspaper clippings relating to Marie’s above-ground actions.

We need a huge amount of public pressure to get the BOP to listen to our concerns about the inhumane conditions in which Marie and her fellow prisoners are being held. Please add your name to the swelling number of supporters who are asking for Marie and her cellblock mates to be moved out of Carswell. As Tipograph stated in her HuffPost Live interview, “I think by any standard, the conditions under which she is being held are unconscionable, and are a violation not only of human rights, but of the rights of prisoners in this country to be held in decent and humane conditions.”

Go to SupportMarieMason.org for more information, updated information about Marie, current updates on her legal status, and to join her listserv and find out how you and your community can help bring justice to Marie and the other Carswell prisoners.

BY WILL POTTER

greenisthenewred.com

A fugitive Earth Liberation Front activist has been sentenced to five years in prison and, in a bizarre twist, ordered to read Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book.

Rebecca Rubin was wanted for a decade in connection to crimes by the clandestine ELF, which destroyed property. Her co-defendants have been sentenced to prison as terrorists, and even housed in a secretive prison facility called a Communications Management Unit. Despite knowing that her sentence would likely be severe, Rubin turned herself in for punishment.

Her heavy sentence should be expected, especially considering that Rubin has—unlike many of her co-defendants—refused to “name names” or cooperate in the investigate of environmental groups in any way.

However, in an especially paternalistic and retributive move, Judge Ann Aiken also ordered Rubin to read Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. 

The message, of course, is that Rubin needs to learn the right way to social change. And Judge Aiken is the one to teach her.

This isn’t the first time Aiken has used the bench to preach her superficial view of social change. Rubin’s co-defendant, Jonathan Paul, was sentenced to read Three Cups of Tea. 

As I wrote in Green Is the New Red, Aiken repeatedly pulled stunts like this, and was frustrated when the defendants didn’t play along.

Here’s an excerpt of when two defendants were sentenced, and they refused to compromise their beliefs:

What upsets friends and family more than anything is when Aiken says Block and Zacher are not well read. “For many of us old people, we read books,” she says. “I wonder if people read. . . .” the last word or two in her thought gets lost in the grumbling, whispering and shifting on the wooden benches. Friends who were unfazed when prosecutors described the arsons nearly become incensed when the judge questions their erudition.

“Really at this moment I don’t understand who you are, what you are, your belief system,” she says. “I don’t think you even really understand what life is about.”

Block and Zacher stare ahead.

“I didn’t hear anyone say they’re sorry,” she says. “I didn’t hear anyone apologize. I didn’t hear anyone say they would work to pay restitution.” Aiken pauses and glares at the defendants. One last chance. One last chance to condemn sabotage and embrace compact fluorescent light bulbs. Pregnant pause. “You could have stood up right now and addressed these things, but I noticed no one is moving.”

More silence, as tense as the seconds of quiet delay between a lightning flash and the thunderclap.

These “eco-terrorism” sentences aren’t just about punishment, they are about sending a message to the broader environmental movement. The defendants have been expected to not only apologize for their crimes, but apologize for their entire belief system. Apparently, they need to replace it with the sanitized moralizing of pop best-sellers.

So, as Natasha Lennard noted at Salon: “One hopes that Rubin’s supporters send her ample countervailing reading supplies, too.”

Her current mailing address is:

Rebecca Rubin

#770288

Multnomah County Inverness Jail

11540 NE Inverness Drive

Portland, OR 97220

BY MIRIAM XIOMARA PADILLA AND SU DOCEKAL

Freedom Socialist Party

An unprecedented hunger strike by 750 of the 1,200 detainees in Tacoma’s Northwest Detention Center started during breakfast on March 7. The strikers’ demands for an end to deportations and inhumane conditions in the privately owned prison has made national headlines and drawn broad community support. On March 17, the strike spread to the Joe Corley Detention Center in Conroe, Texas. Both jails are run by the GEO Group, Inc., this country’s second largest for-profit prison corporation.

The Tacoma hunger strike was inspired by a dozen undocumented Washington State residents and supporters who locked themselves together at the entrance of the detention center on Feb. 24. The #Not1More activists sat down in front of a bus to block it from transporting detainees to the airport to be deported, a strategy modeled on similar recent actions by undocumented protesters in Chicago, Phoenix and Atlanta.

Daily demonstrations have been held at the Tacoma facility since the strike began and on Tuesday, March 11 over 200 people rallied in solidarity with the hunger strikers and their families. They chanted and made lots of noise to let those inside know that they had support outside.

At a March 19 press conference in front of the Tacoma detention center, Maru Mora Villalpando of #Not1More began by saying, “Obama can stop the deportations, but he has chosen not to.” She introduced several family members of the hunger strikers, who explained that their family members were taking this action to expose the abuses in the detention center and to stop the deportations.

One of the strike leaders, Jose Moreno, who had just been released, spoke on behalf of those inside, saying that mistreatment by officials, as well as poor food and medical care, are among the abuses the strikers are protesting.

Sandy Restrepo, an attorney with La Colectiva Legal del Pueblo, has been visiting the strikers regularly and reported that 13 detainees remain on hunger strike. Ramon Mendoza Pascual and Jesus Gaspar Navarro are in medical isolation, while the remaining 11 are in general population.

The GEO Group, which reaps enormous profits from its prisons and detention centers, has a long history of unjust treatment. In 2008 at its Reeves County Detention Center in Texas, Jesus Manuel Galindo died at 32 after suffering an epileptic seizure in solitary confinement. Galindo was thrown into “the hole” after he complained about his medical care.

The GEO Group is also politically active in promoting laws that will keep its for-profit prisons full. The corporation took part in the task force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which pushed bills for “truth-in-sentencing” that reduce paroles and “three strikes” legislation that increases life sentences.

Across the country, undocumented immigrants, especially women, youth and detainees, are putting their bodies on the line to demand an end to endless deportations. It is a dramatic change from the go-slow “comprehensive immigration reform” (CIR) strategy promoted by immigration reform organizations closely tied to the Democratic Party.

The Dignity Campaign, which is endorsed by dozens of grassroots organizations, including the Freedom Socialist Party, called the CIR strategy a “deal with the devil” in a March 2014 statement:

“The CIR trade-off—giving up immigrants’ civil and labor rights to get legalization—has always been an unworkable strategy for immigration reform. The CIR bills serve the interests of employers. Whether they’re looking for farm workers, construction workers or high-tech workers, the corporate objective is to ensure that wages go down as workers compete for insecure jobs.

“While CIR languished in Congress, community and labor activists, mostly young, have refused to wait or compromise, and instead have organized on the ground to win rights and equality.”

The hunger strikers in Washington and Texas provide stirring leadership for this new wave of militant activism. At the March 19 press conference, strikers Pascual and Navarro sent encouraging taped messages to the hunger strikers in Conroe, Texas. “We’re not doing anything wrong, we’re demanding our rights. You should keep going forward, and not yield,” said Navarro, followed by Pascual who added, “Don’t be afraid, we must keep going, so that we are heard and so that we can be free.”

How You Can Help

Sign the online petition to support the hunger strikers at the Northwest Detention Center: socialism.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1df2f51e18d817919a1845ecf&id=2d38686a96&e=c8821f1142.

Send donations to La Colectiva Legal del Pueblo so that they can help detainees and their families communicate with each other. Mail checks to 645 SW 153rd Street, Suite C3 Burien, WA 98166. Email: info@colectivalegal.org.

Participate in the National Day of Action against deportations being planned across the country for April 5. There will be a rally at the Tacoma detention center that day from noon to 5pm. Anyone interested in carpooling from Seattle, please contact the Freedom Socialist Party at FSPseattle@mindspring.com. Learn more about the national campaign at notonemoredeportation.com.

Join the #Not1More protests in front of the Northwest Detention Center that take place every day from noon to 5pm leading up to the April 5 rally.

Miriam Xiomara Padilla is a high school student and a leader in the Campaign to Free Nestora Salgado in Seattle. Su Docekal is an immigrant rights activist and organizer for the Seattle branch of the Freedom Socialist Party.

notorontog20extradition.wordpress.com

Kevin Chianella

February 13: Kevin pleaded guilty to 16 charges (originally facing 53 counts) and will do 24 months in a penitentiary, the only G20 prisoner to be sentenced to such a place. Kevin did not receive any restitution because of his financial circumstances. He is currently at Metro West but will likely be transported to a federal facility in the near future.

Kevin Chianella

Joyceville Institution

Highway 15, Post Office Box 880

Kingston, Ontario

K7L 4X9, Canada

Joel Bitar

February 13: Joel pleaded guilty to 12 counts of mischief over $5000 (originally facing 26 counts) and will do 20 months in a provincial jail. Joel also did not receive any restitution because of his financial circumstances.

Joel Bitar

Central North Correctional Centre

1501 Fuller Avenue

Penetanguishene, Ontario

L9M 2H4, Canada

Richard Morano

February 3: Richard pleaded guilty to 6 counts (originally facing 14) and received 7 months in jail plus $3,000 in restitution and is banned from Toronto during his two-year probation. Morano was ordered to pay Staff Sgt. Queen $1,000 in restitution and $500 each to CIBC, Tim Hortons, American Apparel and All Leather. The Crown attorney originally asked for 12 to 15 months.

Richard Morano

Toronto West Detention Center

111 Disco Road, Box 4950

Rexdale, Ontario

M9W 5L6, Canada

Joel’s Blog: What’s it like? 

supportjoel.com

Folks have been asking me what it’s like being in jail and I’ve been wondering how to go about describing it. It’s a much different experience than I imagined it would be. In my last piece, I said that this place is awful, however that was more in reference to the physical environment. I think Alex Hundert described this jail most accurately when he called it a human warehouse because the buildings we are housed in are literally constructed in the style of warehouses. Picture high ceilings, rafters, an overhead speaker, and constant echoing. When I arrived it felt like I was walking into a Home Depot.

Socially, I’m finding jail quite stimulating and, in a weird way, satisfying. The other day one of my fellow prisoners had me laughing so hard, tears ran down my face. I was preparing for a lonely, depressing experience filled with sorrow and sadness. It’s quite the contrary. The jailhouse camaraderie creates a thriving, rich social environment that you won’t find in many other places.

In her blog, Mandy Hiscocks wrote that jail made her feel diminished as a human being. There are the rare moments where I experience that. For example, when I’m strip-searched and have to get naked, lift my sack, bend over, spread my cheeks, and cough. The last time it happened to me, the corrections officer performing the search made an off-handed comment to a colleague that “it’s pretty gross” to have to stare at another man’s private parts. When you are paid well enough, I guess such a thing becomes less objectionable.

The majority of time, however, I feel pretty good. My experience is unique because I’ve had charges hanging over my head like a dark cloud for four years. I feel a sense of relief being in here. Each day is one day closer to putting this episode behind me. Instead of looking at my sentence as a punishment, I see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform an anthropological/sociological experiment into the nature of authoritarian systems that exist outside of mainstream consciousness. I’m studying this place all the time, much like an outside observer, while simultaneously allowing myself to be an active participant in the experience. In here, I feel like I can be myself and other inmates understand and respect me for what I’ve done and who I am. It’s a much different feeling than the loneliness and alienation I feel living in a capitalist society where insane ideas have become legitimized and normalized.

Please don’t take this post as encouragement to come to jail or prison. I would not choose to be here under any circumstance and would much rather be home with my family. I feel myself longing for freedom all the time, but while I’m here I need to make the best of it. Part of me might even be trying to convince myself that things are good as some sort of defense mechanism but, hey, it’s been a month and it’s worked for me thus far.

BY SUSIE DAY

truth-out.org

A small hearing March 4, 2014, in an obscure courtroom at the Circuit Court for Baltimore City ended with the release of former Black Panther Marshall Edward Conway, who has spent nearly 44 of his 67 years in maximum security prisons. Eddie, as he is known to his thousands of supporters, entered the courtroom wearing a Department of Corrections sweatshirt, in handcuffs and leg chains, and walked out of the courthouse about an hour later in civilian clothes to greet a host of family, supporters and old friends:

“I am filled with a lot of different emotions after nearly 44 years in prison. I want to thank my family, my friends, my lawyers and my supporters; many have suffered along with me.”

Despite Eddie Conway’s insistence on his innocence, it took years for Conway and his attorneys to find a way to overturn his conviction. Finally, in May 2012, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Unger v. State that a Maryland jury, to comply with due process as stated in the U.S. Constitution, must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that someone charged with a crime is guilty before that jury can convict the defendant. What made this decision momentous for many people in prison, including Conway, is that it applied retroactively.

Robert Boyle and Phillip G. Dantes, attorneys for Conway, filed a motion on his behalf based on this ruling, arguing that the judge in Conway’s trial had not properly instructed the jury that this “beyond a reasonable doubt” proviso was mandatory for conviction. Based on this motion, they negotiated an agreement whereby Conway would be re-sentenced to time served and be released from prison. In exchange, Conway and his lawyers agreed not to litigate his case based on the Unger ruling.

As he walked away from the courthouse, Boyle said: “It’s a big day for black political prisoners that one of them has finally gotten out. I feel that [the late mayor of Jackson, Mississippi] Chokwe Lumumba was speaking into the judge’s ear, to urge him to let this happen.”

Scores of former Black Panthers are serving virtual life sentences in prison, largely the result of the 1977 Church Committee Senate hearings and the efforts of J. Edgar Hoover, who ordered his FBI in the 1960s and 1970s to target the Black Panther Party. The first Panther chapter was started in 1966 in Oakland, California, but by the time a chapter was formed in Baltimore in 1968, the FBI had had ample time to insert more than its usual share of informants into the fledgling organization. The FBI, moreover, often worked in league with various municipal police departments. As Conway wrote in his political memoir, “The alleged murder of police officers would soon take the place of the mythological rape of white women as the basis for the legal lynching of black men.”

On the night of April 21, 1970, two Baltimore police officers, Donald Sager and Stanley Sierakowski, were shot as they responded to a domestic disturbance call. Sierakowski was wounded seriously and Sager died of his wounds. Two members of the Black Panther Party, Jack Ivory Johnson and Jackie Powell, were apprehended close to the scene soon after the shooting. Other police officers spotted a third African-American man and chased him for several blocks as the man fired back at them, finally escaping. A police officer later testified that the man he chased and who shot at him as he fled was Marshall Eddie Conway, a prominent Panther activist in the community.

“There was a de facto war being waged between the police and the black community,” Robert Boyle explained. “Eddie Conway was a well-known person in the Baltimore Black Panthers. If it wasn’t Eddie, it was going to be someone else from the Party.”

The day after the shooting, Conway was arrested at work in the Baltimore post office.

Mr. Conway’s trial, complex and tumultuous, lasted several months. Jack Johnson had, at one point during police interrogations, named Powell and Conway as the shooters but later refused to testify to this in court, saying that police had beaten him until he told this story. Conway chose not to attend much of his trial, protesting the fact that he had been given a court-appointed attorney in lieu of his choice, William Kunstler, who needed more time before he could join this case.

Adding to the mix was a jailhouse informant, Charles Reynolds, who was not charged in the case but testified that the Baltimore Panther Party required aspiring members to shoot a police officer and that Paul Coates—now head of the Black Classics Press—had ordered Conway to carry out the shooting. However, Coates refuted this in court, testifying that Eddie was, in fact, already a party member, higher in party rank than himself. Despite, or possibly because of these and many more complications, a jury finally convicted all three men of the murder of Sager. Conway was sentenced to life without parole.

Powell died in prison in the 1980s. Johnson was released in 2009, having served his full term after he was re-sentenced. But Conway served until Tuesday in various Maryland prisons, an “exemplary prisoner.”

While continuing to maintain his innocence, Conway identified himself as a political prisoner. During his decades of incarceration, he earned three college degrees and organized a literacy program. He has also started other human rights groups, such as Friend of a Friend, which is affiliated with the American Friends Service Committee and helps young men, often gang members, resolve conflicts. Because 78 percent of the Maryland prison population is African-American, Friend of a Friend also teaches these young men about their heritage and culture.

So it was no accident that, in the courtroom and outside the courthouse, several young men whose lives had been changed were waiting to welcome Conway to the outside world. “He helped me when I was incarcerated at 15 years old,” said DJ, one of the kids who met Eddie in prison. The Friend of a Friend program helped him a lot; DJ said he owes who he is now to Conway. “Eddie took a chance on me, and changed my life.”

Also there to hug Conway for the first time in some 43 years was his old friend Coates.

Ronald Conway, Eddie’s son, blinking back tears, talked about how his father had held back from getting to know Ronald’s two sons because he didn’t want them to see him in prison; and now, they all had a chance to really be together.

Boyle said: “I am absolutely thrilled for Eddie. Finally, what we wanted has happened: to see this innocent man out of jail.”

BY VICTORIA LAW

truth-out.org

Imagine your grandparents and great grandparents in shackles or dying behind bars. By 2030, the prison population age 55 and over is predicted to be 4,400 percent more than what it was in 1981. Some state and federal prison systems look at alternatives.

The recent release of 74-year-old Lynne Stewart has made headlines. Stewart, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, was granted compassionate release December 31, 2013, after a protracted struggle by Stewart and supporters across the country. Stewart, whose cancer has spread to her lungs, lymph system and bones, will spend her remaining months with her family in Brooklyn.

But what about the aging and infirm people incarcerated nationwide who lack Stewart’s fame and support? The United States has some 125,000 prisoners age 55 and older, quadruple the number in 1995. Various human rights groups, including the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and the Vera Institute of Justice have issued warnings about the increased numbers of aging, elderly and incapacitated behind bars. In response to these increases, several states, such as Kansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, are in the process of building hospice and geriatric units within their prison systems.

But what other solutions are there?

“If the Risk is Low, Let Them Go”

In New York, advocates—including formerly incarcerated people—have launched the Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) campaign. More than 9,200 people (nearly 17 percent) imprisoned in New York are 50 or older. While the state’s prison population dropped this past decade—from 71,466 in 2000 to 56,315 in 2011—the number of people 50 and older has increased by 64 percent. Lead organizer Mujahid Farid knows the obstacles facing people seeking parole. Farid was arrested in 1978 and sentenced to 15 years to life for an attempted murder. By the time he was eligible for parole in 1993, he had earned four college degrees as well as certificates for numerous other programs. None of these accomplishments mattered. He was denied parole based on his 1978 conviction. Farid appeared before the parole board ten times over the next 18 years before he was granted parole in 2011.

“I realized it wasn’t personal,” he told Truthout. “They’re not looking at your personal development. They’re simply looking at your conviction.” After his release, Farid met with advocates, including other formerly incarcerated people, to discuss how to overcome the hurdle within the parole system. Out of these discussions came RAPP.  Under the slogan, “If the risk is low, let them go,” RAPP mobilizes to change the routine in which parole and compassionate release are denied to those who have spent decades in New York’s state prisons.

Laura Whitehorn spent 14 years in the federal prison system. “I’ve had friends who have died in prison,” she told Truthout. “It’s heartbreaking.” Because the federal Bureau of Prisons is under no obligation to house prisoners close to their communities, family members often are unable to see dying loved ones incarcerated across the country. Those able to make the journey have limited visiting—and always with an armed guard in the room. “Kids need to be pat-searched to visit their parents and grandparents,” Whitehorn remembered.

Farid and Whitehorn note that, in New York state, releasing many aging prisoners does not require new legislation. A 2011 executive law directed the parole board to begin using risk-assessment tools when making decisions, but the Division of Parole did not post new regulationscomplying with the law until December 18, 2013. “The risk of committing a new crime is about 5 percent for older people, compared with an overall recidivism rate of nearly 40 percent,” Farid stated. “If the parole board followed the law, many of the men and women would safely be released, saving millions of dollars a year in unnecessary medical and custodial costs.”

One of RAPP’s first initiatives has been a public education campaign. “A lot of activities going on with parole are so outrageous, but [parole board members] get away with it because the public doesn’t know,” Farid said. RAPP volunteers have visited churches and community boards. The response has been positive. The Queens Federation of Churches has agreed to support RAPP’s campaign. Churchgoers have attended RAPP’s monthly meetings and invited RAPP volunteers to theirs. Whitehorn approached her local community board, which has a committee on aging. “I thought they’d say, ‘Oh, no! Not another thing to take on!’ But they jumped at it,” she recalled. Another time, she spoke about RAPP at a panel on the Affordable Care Act at a geriatric home. People flocked to her table to sign RAPP’s petition to the parole board. Whitehorn distinctly remembers one woman with a cane, who told her, “I don’t like the idea of people like me being in prison.”

The California Elderly and Elderly Lifer Alternative Custody Program

In California, Jane Dorotik has been pushing for an elderly alternative custody program. Inside its prison system, prisoners age 55 or older increased by more than 500 percent between 1990 and 2009. According to Human Rights Watch, that number is projected to increase to 15 percent of California’s prison population by 2019.

In 2012, having seen the effects of keeping aging people in prison, Dorotik, who has been incarcerated since 2001, drafted a proposal for an elderly and elderly lifer alternative custody program. Dorotik notes that lifers (those serving life sentences) now represent one-fifth of the state’s prison. She also notes that many, particularly those in the women’s prison population, have been sentenced for a single action committed many years ago and that lifers have an 18 percent chance of being granted parole.

Unlike RAPP, Dorotik is not pushing for parole. Instead, she is advocating that people 55 or older be released under supervision, including ankle monitoring. They remain under the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and can be returned to prison at any time. Dorotik proposes a pilot program at the California Institute for Women, where she is housed, for those age 55 and older. In addition to age, women must:

– Have been incarcerated for at least 7 years or 50 percent of their sentence (whichever is greater).

– Have no previous history of felony convictions.

– Have had no serious disciplinary actions against them in the last five years.

– And have secured placement in the community.

Dorotik notes that nearly 140 people at CIW are over 55 years of age. Each costs $138,000 per year to keep behind bars. The vast majority of these “Golden Girls” meet the above criteria.

But it is not just the financial cost that concerns Dorotik. She has seen the human cost of keeping the aging people imprisoned. In 2006, Dorotik wrote an open letter to state legislators urging them to expand the use of compassionate release. “Compassionate release is an available alternative to dying alone and isolated behind prison walls,” she wrote, “but it is almost never granted by the CDCR bureaucracy.” She pointed to the (then-recent) death of 63-year-old Annie Castiglione, who had been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. “She was a model prisoner and spent her years behind bars helping others. She died the other evening alone and overlooked in the prison’s skilled nursing facility.”

“Take a moment now and remind yourself how it must feel to die alone,” Dorotik urged. “In fact, take only slightly more than a moment—take 93 seconds of silence. That is one second for every day Annie waited hoping compassionate release might be granted.”

More recently, Dorotik has described other women languishing behind bars in their 70s and 80s. Seventy-one-year-old Doris, for example, recently spent 61 days in administrative segregation (a punitive form of solitary confinement) after an officer found an additional two to three rolls of toilet paper in her cell. “As Doris got up to placate the yelling [correctional officer], she may have touched the CO’s arm. After all,” Dorotik reflected, “balance at age 71 is sometimes a problem. All the women in the hallway verified there was no ‘assault,’ and the CO continued to search for excess toilet paper for another ten cells and half an hour before alleging the assault.” When he did, Doris was sent to segregation. An assault charge was placed on her record.

That assault charge now eliminates any chance that Doris may have had when appearing before the parole board, increasing the chance that Doris may die behind bars. Dorotik also recounted the story of Helen, another Golden Girl whom the parole board refused to release. Sentenced to life for transporting money for her son, Helen spent the last years of her life with failing kidneys. “She was taken out twice a week for dialysis treatment, hands and feet shackled, a guard on each side of her.” When Helen, at age 85, appeared before the parole board, the board deemed her a risk to public safety because she “didn’t have firm enough employment plans.” The following year, at age 86, Helen died alone and unnoticed in prison.

Unlike RAPP’s efforts, Dorotik’s Alternative Custody Program will require new legislation. She has reached out to and been working with advocacy groups such as Californians United for a Responsible Budget, JusticeNow and Legal Services for Prisoners with Children to push her proposal. Advocates from these groups have met with California legislators, including Senator Carol Liu, who drafted California’s first Alternative Custody Program.

How Connecticut is Addressing its Aging Prison Population

Currently and formerly incarcerated people and prisoner rights advocates are not the only ones pushing for releasing elderly people in prison. As of January 6, 2014, Connecticut’s Department of Correction (DOC), which is responsible for its local jails and state prisons, held 387 people ages 60 and over. “Many have cognitive impairments,” described Dr. Kathleen Maurer, DOC’s director of health services, at the Health Behind Bars conference in October 2013. Some require round-the-clock care.

Instead of building assisted-living or nursing homes within its prison system, Connecticut lawmakers passed legislation in 2012 allowing the DOC commissioner the discretion to release the severely incapacitated for “palliative and end-of-life” care. Faced with the challenge of where to place people whose lengthy sentences had eroded family ties, the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC) and Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) partnered to contract with a privately run home specifically for their populations. The result was 60West—a 90-bed nursing home in Rocky Hill, a city south of Hartford.

Although 60West accepts patients only from DOC and DHMAS, Maurer is quick to point out that 60West is not a prison. “It’s not run by DOC,” she emphasized during her presentation at the October 2013 Health Behind Bars conference. “A parole officer supervises the people [released from] DOC, but there are no correctional officers. It’s run exactly like any other nursing home in the state.”

To qualify for release into 60West, an incarcerated person must meet one of these criteria:

– Be at the end of his or her sentence with no other option for housing or care.

– Have a prognosis of six months or less.

– Have served half of his/her sentence and have a terminal or incapacitating illness.

Each person also must pass several assessments, including a medical evaluation and a criminogenic risk assessment, including a review of the need for a nursing-home level of care with the expectation of requiring long-term placement; a review of historical factors requiring placement at 60West; and the ability to be safely managed in a nursing home. The DOC commissioner makes the final decision on release. “Once they leave the facility, they’re not prisoners. They’re residents of the nursing home,” Maurer said.

In addition to allowing people to live their last months or years outside of prison, 60West has enabled the state to transfer the cost of care from DOC to Medicaid. “Eighty to 90 percent of our incarcerated population would be Medicaid-eligible,” Maurer stated. However, because jails and prisons are required to provide medical care, incarcerated people are not eligible for Medicaid coverage unless they undergo treatment in an outside medical facility for 24 hours or longer.

Beginning in April 2010, Connecticut extended Medicaid benefits under the Medicaid for Low-Income Adults (LIA) program. “Eligibility for LIA was 56 percent of the federal poverty level and there was no asset test,” Mary Mason, the DMHAS public relations manager, explained in an email to Truthout. “Since April 2010, many individuals being discharged from prison were able to access expedited LIA eligibility. This allowed Connecticut to receive 50 percent reimbursement for services that had previously been 100 percent state funded.”

Given that the patients at 60West are no longer incarcerated, Connecticut is able to apply Medicaid funding to their care. “The level of care being provided by DOC in infirmaries can be more appropriately and less expensively provided in a nursing home setting,” Mason pointed out. Since its opening in spring 2013, 30 people have been released from Connecticut’s prison system to live their last days at 60West. There are currently ten patients who had been DOC prisoners at 60West. Despite concerns of Rocky Hill locals, Maurer added, there have been no incidents.

“By 2030, the prison population aged 55 and over is predicted to be 4,400 percent more than what it was in 1981,” Laura Whitehorn pointed out. “Everyone should picture their grandparents and great grandparents. Now imagine them in shackles. Imagine them handcuffed to their walkers. Imagine them dying behind bars.”

Media Release: Russell Maroon Shoatz Released from Solitary Confinement

First time in general population in more than 22 years

February 20, 2014, Pittsburgh — Russell Maroon Shoatz was released from solitary confinement into the general prison population at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Graterford this morning, ending more than 22 consecutive years in solitary confinement. The news was confirmed by Maroon during a legal call with an attorney from the Abolitionist Law Center.

Maroon’s son, Russell Shoatz III, said, “We are very excited that this day has finally come. My father being released from solitary confinement is proof of the power of people organizing against injustice, and the importance of building strong coalitions. I especially want to thank all of those who have supported the collective struggle to end my father’s solitary confinement, including my siblings and members of the Shoatz family, the Human Rights Coalition, Abolitionist Law Center, Scientific Soul Sessions, the entire legal team, UN Special Rapporteur Juan Mendez, the five Nobel Peace Laureates, the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, along with the dozens of other organizations and thousands of individuals who have participated in this effort.”

The move comes after Maroon, who turned 70 years old in August 2013, was transferred to three different Pennsylvania prisons in the past nine months. It marks the first time that Shoatz has been in the general prison population in the state of Pennsylvania since 1983, when he was placed in solitary confinement due to his work with the Pennsylvania Association of Lifers to abolish life-without-parole sentences. For a 17-month period between 1989 and 1991, Maroon was held in the general prison population at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas.

Maroon brought suit in May 2013 on the grounds that he has been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and that prison officials have deprived him of his procedural and substantive due process rights for keeping him in solitary confinement without meaningful review and on insufficient grounds. He is represented by Reed Smith attorneys Rick Etter and Stefanie L. Burt; Bret Grote and Dustin McDaniel of the Abolitionist Law Center; Daniel Kovalik of the United Steelworkers; and retired Reed Smith partner, Hal Engel.

On Monday, January 27, United States District Magistrate for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Cynthia Reed Eddy, issued a decision denying defendants’ motion to dismiss in the case of Shoatz v. Wetzel. The ruling allowed Russell Maroon Shoatz to move forward with the legal challenge to his more than 22 consecutive years in solitary confinement.

The campaign to release Shoatz from solitary confinement has also been gathering increasing international attention, including the support of five Nobel Peace Prize Laureates: Jose Ramos-Horta of East Timor, Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Jody Williams from the United States, and Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina. Several U.S. civil and human rights organizations endorsed his release from isolation, as well as growing number of clergy. In March 2013, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Juan Mendez, called on the government “to cease the prolonged isolation of Mr. Shoat[z].”

Abolitionist Law Center Executive Director, Bret Grote, said, “My talk with Maroon today was very moving. There are no words to adequately convey the significance of his release to the general population for him and his family. This is a significant victory for a growing people’s movement against solitary confinement and the human rights violations inherent in mass incarceration. If we continue to work hard and support one another in this movement, these victories could very well become a habit.”

The Abolitionist Law Center would also like to thank all our donors for your support, without which this victory would not be possible. The fight continues, both on behalf of Maroon and the many other prisoners being subjected to inhumane conditions. Please consider adding to your support by donating to our current fundraiser, so we can continue to press for justice in the Pennsylvania prison system.

BY SUSIE DAY

truth-out.org

Dequi Kioni-Sadiki, who married former Black Panther Sekou Odinga over the phone and in a prison visiting room, talks to Truthout about love, bus rides and the conditions that prisoners—and their loved ones—have to negotiate.

On New Year’s Day, Lynne Stewart, the radical defense attorney sentenced to 10 years in prison, was flown from a federal prison in Texas, where she would have died alone of cancer, to her family, friends and competent health care in New York City. Lynne’s husband, Ralph Poynter, had worked for years with thousands of supporters for Lynne’s “compassionate release.”

Watching Democracy Now’s video coverage of Lynne’s New York arrival, I caught a glimpse of my friend Dequi Kioni-Sadiki in the crowd waiting for Lynne. Dequi is a schoolteacher and grandmother in her early 50s who is married to a former Black Panther serving time upstate. There, at La Guardia airport, was Dequi. And she was sobbing.

Dequi met her husband, Sekou Odinga, a few years ago, in the course of her activist work, visiting prisoners in New York State. Dequi and Sekou fell in love and were married almost three years ago.

You think something is wrong with Dequi for getting involved with a prisoner? Then please think the same of me. Twenty-five years ago, I went to the DC Jail to interview a political prisoner named Laura Whitehorn—and we fell in love. Like Sekou, Laura was facing decades in prison; like Sekou, she was not charged with killing anyone. But Laura and I were lucky; after 14 years, she was released. Sekou will not come up for parole until 2033. So I knew why Dequi was crying. And why we need to listen to her.

Susie Day for Truthout: How did you feel, on your way to the airport to see Lynne Stewart?

Dequi Kioni-Sadiki: Absolute joy. I thought, “Yes, she does not have to die behind those walls!” It wasn’t until I got there and was waiting for Lynne to leave the plane that a wave of new emotion came over me. I thought about how many other people are not being released. So it was joy mixed with bittersweet.

Why bittersweet?

Because it made me think, of course, about Sekou and his 32 years in a prison cage. I wanted—not at the expense of anyone else—but I so wished that that could be him, that could be us, celebrating his return to family and community and loved ones. Him walking through those prison gates.

How did you and Sekou meet? When did you realize you had feelings for one another?

When I came to New York in the early ’90s, I met the Black Panther Collective, folks who were original members of the Black Panther Party, who were still activists. In addition to studying and doing community work, one of their things was visiting political prisoners.

I didn’t meet Sekou until shortly after he maxed out his federal time in 2009 and was transferred to New York prison. I went to visit him like I would any other political prisoner. I remember sitting there talking to Sekou the first time, and thinking there was something very special, unique, human, humane, gentle, easy, funny, sweet, thoughtful and caring in our conversation.

I’ve always kept prison visits strictly about the political work. I’ve been careful about what I say and my manners, and I try never to give anyone on the inside a wrong impression. But I started getting phone calls from Sekou, and I began looking forward to them. We would be in the middle of a conversation—you get that half-an-hour cut-off message – and I’d be, “Oh, we can’t go now. Call me back.” We just started enjoying each other’s company and writing letters and talking more and more.

I was the first to say something. I told him that I was writing him a letter, different than any letter he’d gotten from me. So I wrote him about this evolution of my love for him.

He was really relieved. He said he’d felt that way too from the first time he saw me, but he wasn’t going to say anything. He told me, “I was giving you hints, but you weren’t picking up,” and I said, “Well, I’m a little slow.”

Once he realized it was OK to express how he felt, it just grew. Finally, he asked to marry me. He said I didn’t have to say yes right then, but that he would continue to ask me.

What was your wedding like? You had more than one, right?

New York State prisoners have to get permission to marry someone. That took awhile. I got a letter from Sekou’s facility saying, based on his high-profile status, there were investigations and that a decision would be forthcoming.

Originally, we wanted to marry in March. It didn’t come through. Then I wanted to do it on my birthday, June 6. We ended up getting married on the phone first, on June 17, which is Sekou’s birthday. Sekou’s a Muslim, so you have to make a contract about your expectations, so there’s no surprises.

I’m not a Muslim, but I remember getting a call from the imam who asked questions like, “Are you marrying him of your own free will?” to make sure the contract was observed. And he ended up marrying us, believe it or not, on the telephone.

This, to me—even in the absence of us being able to be physically together—meant so much. Because, one, having an imam preside, even on the phone, meant more to Sekou than a state marriage; and, two, it was his birthday. Sekou doesn’t pay attention to birthdays, but I said, “Well, now you have to pay attention because it’s our anniversary.”

We didn’t get the marriage certificate signed until July 14th. So our anniversary is June 17, but the state looks at it as July 14.

On July 14, 2011, you went to the prison, stood together in the same room, and were married?

Yes. My friend Pam stood in with me, and Sekou’s son. There was a woman guard who asked me questions—she wanted to make sure that I knew how much time Sekou had, what he was in for, that kind of stuff.

I’d had one of my sister artists make the most beautiful dress for me. It was from Nigerian fabric, in my favorite color, red. Sekou wanted to give me something, so I said the best gift you could give is to write what you feel and want for our being together. So he wrote me something and I wrote him something. And we shared that. I had him put my ring on my finger.

After the ceremony on the 14th, did you two get to spend time together?

No. It was just a regular visiting-room visit, over at 3pm. We sat across a counter like we normally do. I left with Pam and Sekou’s son, and Sekou went back to his cell.

Have you been together alone, in a trailer visit?

No. Right now, our application for the trailers is in court. They denied our request on the grounds that his having trailer access would undermine prison security. We have to fight to be with one another, just like we had to fight to get married.

What is it like to visit your husband?

In the prison where Sekou is now, you can’t go outdoors. There’s a big visiting room with a counter that runs the length of the room. Our knees don’t touch because the counter is between us, and we’re sitting across from each other.

Can you hold hands?

Yeah. They don’t say anything about that. But you are only allowed to embrace each other when you come in and when you leave, and you can’t do any prolonged kissing. This has been a growing process for me, ’cause I’m not one for public displays of affection. But I can only kiss Sekou in public, and I can never kiss him the way I would like to. They would say that’s too long.

How do you travel upstate to visit Sekou?

I take a charter prison-visit bus. It’s grueling, because if I want to visit him on Saturday morning, I have to get on the bus at 9:30 Friday night. Then Saturday night, I don’t get home until 10 or 11 o’clock. Sekou’s prison is the first stop. That’s usually about 5, 5:30am—so there are people riding even further. They start processing the visitors at 8:30.

So if you get there at 5am, you have to sit around until 8:30?

Yeah. You sign a list when you first get there. They have something called a “hospitality trailer,” where women can go to the bathroom and change their clothes, and they’re offered stuff like English muffins, cereal. You should see it. The first time I went by bus I thought, “Why are people making such a mad dash to get into this so-called hospitality trailer?”

They’re rushing to sign that list! They call you to visit in numerical order. People want to be up high on the list, so that at 8:30, when they start calling visitors, you go right in, or at least begin emptying your pockets, getting searched—you know, the processing part. When it gets really crowded, they cut visits short. This happened to me once, and it was awful. You take a 24-hour journey, and you don’t even get the six hours, which is already not enough time.

If you’re lucky, then your visit starts around 8:30 AM and lasts until 3 PM?

Yes. When I’m getting ready for the bus, I’m a mixture of excited and hesitant ’cause I also hate this. I’m thinking about how uncomfortable I’m going to be on the bus, because I have arthritis. I’m praying that it won’t be crowded so I’ll have a seat to myself. But I’m also looking forward to seeing Sekou because I’ve missed him.

I go on Friday nights because I like the driver. He’s old school. He says a prayer; he’s friendly; he doesn’t treat people like they’re prison families. This bus is not as bad as others because the driver doesn’t play the music that is just noise to me. It’s never rowdy because he sets a positive tone. It’s as comfortable as it can be, sitting in a chair straight upright all night.

How much does this cost?

Fifty-five dollars, round trip. The whole prison experience is expensive because I try to go twice a month, and that’s $110. That doesn’t include, say, $20 for the vending machines—you have to eat—and taking the photos.

Sekou will turn 70 this year. How’s his health?

Thankfully, good. Except the winters so far north are brutal. These people invented cruelty. They put the phones outside. So when Sekou wants to call me, he has to come outside, even if it’s minus 10. Yesterday, he called and he had his scarf wrapped around his face because it was so cold. And if you go outside, you don’t get to go back inside until they say.

There are so many unfinished conversations between us. Like, when he calls, I’ll forget to tell him something. I can’t ever call him back and say, “Baby, I forgot to tell you….” Then maybe he’ll call tomorrow, or the next day—and I’ve forgot by that time. We used to spend hours on the telephone before. We don’t now, because they’ve restricted the phones to 15-minute calls. He can’t call every day, because if he misses the call-out, that means he’s in his cell for 24 hours.

Can you allow yourself to imagine what it would be like if Sekou were outside with you?

Believe it or not, I do, all the time. I imagine us walking down the street. I’m in a park and imagine sitting on a bench with him. I’m home, and I see him sitting on the living room couch. I imagine traveling with him. I do allow myself to dream those things in my sleep and in my waking moments. That’s one thing the prison system can’t take away.

It makes me see how much time people waste on things that don’t really matter. How we look at people every day, and we don’t really see them. I don’t look at Sekou every day. But I see him. Every day.

How is this changing you?

I thought I knew about prison when I was doing prisoner-support work, but being married to Sekou, I know things on a much deeper level. The conditions these prisoners endure—not because Sekou or the others complain—but just being more intimately connected to him now, I see all they and their families have experienced. The sacrifices they’ve made during 30- and 40-year imprisonments. It is unfathomable.

No human being deserves what these people are forced to endure. But it’s invisible. Nobody sees what happens to families when a loved one is in prison. With over two million people in prison, imagine the pain felt by tens of millions of family members outside.

I speak publicly, and there’s so much shame and stigma attached to loving someone in prison. Women will often come to me after I’ve spoken and say quietly, “I have a fiancé in prison.” Or a son or boyfriend. There’s a whole community of women who take the bus together; it’s quite known that that’s what we’re doing. But people don’t want that to be seen by the rest of the world. And that contributes to the invisibility around black women’s lives.

I think that if people can look at me and say, “Damn. She can talk about these things freely—maybe I shouldn’t be ashamed.” Because we have nothing to be ashamed of; we just don’t get a chance to tell our stories. And if we don’t tell our stories, then we’re not healing.

How do people respond when you say you’ve married a prisoner?

Actually, they don’t say too much to me; I think they say things to other people. [Laughs] Cause people don’t want to hurt my feelings. But it’s come back to me, “She’s so intelligent, does she know what she’s getting into?”

I’ve also met people who say, “Oh, you’re Sekou’s wife. Cool!” I’m like, “No, I’m still me.” I’ve lived long enough and I’ve had enough relationships, and one of the things I had to tell Sekou when we started talking was, “I am not a groupie. I am not enamored with the history of the Black Panther Party.”

People mean well. They say, “He’s a lucky man.” But I’m a lucky woman. I discovered the love of my life. I had no idea I would find that person behind the wall. But it’s a journey. Sekou is not in prison because he was trying to get rich or harm his community for his own benefit. He’s there because he dreamed of a better world.

The thing that helps me is that I know I love him and I feel so soothed and comforted and protected by his love. I’ve never loved a man like I love him. And I guess I’m like Ralph, when he kept fighting for Lynne Stewart’s release. I believe that Sekou’s going to come home. The alternative is just not worth considering.

BY THE PEAK

guelphpeak.org

Mandy has lived in Guelph since 1994 when she started her undergrad at the university, where she started to get involved in political activism and organizing. After graduating, she spent many years working on campus and is currently the Volunteer Coordinator at OPIRG-Guelph, a social and environmental activist centre at the university. She has been part of many different actions and campaigns, many of which have landed her in court, some of which have landed her in the hospital and one of which landed her in jail. They have also been her main source of purpose, accomplishment and friendships over the last 15 years. Mandy turns 40 years old in a few months. Since the ’90s, she has watched most people she worked with grow up, burn out or fade away, which gives her all the more respect for those who have stuck around.

How have your politics and your approaches to organizing changed as you’ve gotten older?

I used to be really dogmatic. At first I was dead set on non-violent civil disobedience and I wouldn’t hear from anyone who argued otherwise. And then during the anti-globalization movement, when I had my first real run-ins with scary riot cops, I realized that that wouldn’t work, that we’d be slaughtered. So I became really dogmatic about militancy and economic damage and direct action. Now I believe in a diversity of tactics, and that we need to be flexible. I’m a lot more willing to work with a wider range of people and organizations, I’m a lot more interested in what they have to say. Part of that is that I’m less idealistic than I was. I used to think that with enough information people would care, and once they cared they would obviously fight. Now I know there will always be fewer of us than we need, that most people won’t step up, and so we have to be more strategic in using the little we’ve got and we can’t be discounting the people whose politics aren’t exactly the same as ours.

What are some obstacles you encounter when you work with people of a younger generation? How do they treat you? What are some of the tensions?

I sometimes distrust younger people in the sense that I don’t know if they’ll be around five years from now. You know that old ’60s hippie saying, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty”? Well, sometimes I think it’s more like, “Don’t trust anyone under thirty.” So many people see activism as a phase, or a hobby, and then go on to get fancy jobs, a house and a car, and have families and all that. It’s disappointing, every time. It’s hard for me to commit to people if I don’t know that they’re committed as well. I do acknowledge that that’s harsh, that people’s early twenties are a time when they’re figuring things out and experimenting and so on. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that after ten years of it, it takes its toll.

This is definitely not to diss anyone in my community, regardless of their age. People are amazing organizers, and have stood in solidarity with me through a lot lately. It’s just that in the back of my head there’s always this nagging feeling that they could be gone any day.

There’s also this nagging feeling that people are setting themselves up more than I ever did, when I assumed none of us really did that. I didn’t think people were saving money, or thinking of a career, or considering buying houses, or any of that. But more and more I see people are doing those things and it terrifies me, because I feel like I didn’t get the memo, you know, that even though we’re radicals, and some of us are anarchists, we should still be looking out for number one. One concrete thing that I miss is working with other cities, which was a much more common model during the anti-globalization movement. It has fallen out of favour, and it’s kind of looked down on by the younger crowd. Things are more insular now, we tend to organize inwards more than outwards and I don’t think it’s as effective. It’s just one of the ways that things change as we get older—the things we worked so hard at and put so much energy into are cast aside. That can be hard at times.

I should say that I’m very grateful and honoured to still be accepted by a group of people ten to fifteen years younger than me. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do the kind of organizing that interests me in this town, and then I’d be the one having to make the choice of, “Do I stay and do less than I could, or do I leave for a place that has older radicals in it?” I know people my age in many cities, I could go to any of them and be accepted there, but I don’t want to leave Guelph. I made a commitment to Guelph a long time ago. So I’m glad I can still work with people here.

Why do you think it’s so hard for so many of us to organize outside of our peer group?

I should start by saying that everything I talk about from here on in will be based in my experience of organizing in communities of mostly white, student and/or middle-ish class people, usually between the ages of twenty and thirty. That is what I know, and that’s what I’m talking about. I can’t speak about other communities, and nothing I say in this interview is meant to include them.

Part of the problem is that people aren’t rooted in a geographical community. People move around, people really value freedom of movement. It’s a good thing in a lot of ways but it means that we didn’t grow up around our neighbours, we don’t have family ties in the community, we have little history with or commitment to the people around us, and there’s no long-term attachment to the land base. So we tend to gravitate towards people who are like us, who enjoy the same things and have the same politics, who use similar tactics. It’s easier. It’s also more fun—I mean, if you’re going to organize in your spare time you’re giving up opportunities to hang out with friends. So if you organize with your friends, you’re feeding two birds with one hand so to speak. The downside of combining organizing with friends with the ability to move easily is that people’s personal shit, their arguments with and disappointments in each other, can often mean that they just walk away. They stay in town but leave the movement or stay in the movement and leave town. There’s no real impetus to do the hard work of staying where we are, sorting out our differences and carrying on.

Even when there’s no conflict, people often get bored or don’t feel challenged and so they move to find a better organizing scene, one that’s more exciting or appears to have more potential. I can’t count the number of people who’ve picked up and moved to Toronto or Montréal because it’s cooler, there are more people to work with, people are more radical or more experienced or whatever. My life in Guelph has been marked by saying goodbye to a succession of amazing organizers. It takes its toll on a community.

I’m certainly not saying that moving is always a bad thing. Sometimes a move is what allows someone to start organizing, because it’s a move to a community of people they can identify with. A lot of my frustration with it stems from my privilege of not having to move in order to find a group of people I’m comfortable with. Moving from straight white rural Ontario to Toronto, for example, probably opens up a whole world of political organizing to a lot of queer people, or people of colour. But still, that’s a community based on common identity, which is a different beast than a community rooted in a place. Sometimes I let myself imagine if all the amazing organizers from Guelph who are now doing great work in cities around the world had stayed here. We needed those people to have stayed here. We reinvent the wheel all the time in this town because there are so few people who remember the organizing of the ’90s, let alone anything that happened before then.

Why do you think people leave the movement?

There are all kinds of reasons people move away from organizing. Burnout and too many defeats are a couple of reasons. But I wonder about those sometimes. Most movements are far more repressed than ours, and the consequences of resisting are so much harsher for other people than for us. As for defeats, it’s always been that way. Change has always come at a huge cost, people have had to pick themselves up time and time again before winning anything. I think we really do need to suck it up a bit. It’s not a popular opinion in this day and age of self-care, and I get a lot of flak for it, but there you go.

Careers and jobs are a huge reason people leave. Lots of people are in school right now to be lawyers, nurses, social workers; a few years ago it was teacher’s college. Organizers who pursue these careers often continue to be part of the movement. There are lawyers who take on political cases pro bono—the Movement Defence Committee is a group of movement lawyers who do workshops and legal support for activists. But a lawyer, obviously, has far less time to contribute to actual organizing. And they are constrained to a certain extent by professional codes of conduct. I have friends who are lawyers, and can see how torn some of them are between their career and the organizing work they used to be part of. It’s not easy. I have so much respect for the few of them who don’t get pulled all the way out of the movement and into regular lawyerland. I think that often people go into a certain profession thinking it’s the best way to make change while actually supporting themselves, and then learn the limitations when it’s too late. This is a common complaint of my teacher friends—that there they are, with a bunch of youth who are at the age where their political opinions are forming, but the curriculum is so packed and the classes so big that there’s no time to really talk about things. I think a lot of people get a career with really good intentions of using it to support the movement, but end up realizing that it’s not what they thought it would be.

Sometimes people don’t leave so much as drift away without meaning to or even necessarily realizing it. I worry sometimes that this is happening to me. I was lucky to land myself a job that I could live with politically speaking, as well as live off of, financially speaking. It’s hard to juggle having a good, mostly ethical job with continuing to organize outside of it, especially when your job is similar to the work you’d be doing for free (meetings, events, posters, campaigns, and so on). There was a time that I was (or at least tried to be) part of every single project and every campaign going. I barely slept. And then a few years ago I realized that I actually did very little organizing outside of work and that I’d hardly even noticed the shift. Suddenly all of the energy I used to put into unpaid work was going to my job.

Kids are another big reason people drop out, or are forced out of the movement. I’m not a fan of radicals having kids—for one thing, they can be used against us. A threat to someone’s child is a pretty common way to get them to snitch, for example. I also don’t buy the “breeding the revolution” theory that’s quite popular these days—the one that says that we have to have more children so there will be more good people/more fighters/more people who will resist. The fact is there is absolutely no way to know how a kid will turn out, especially because we place so much value on independence and people fulfilling their dreams and being whoever they want to be, and we constantly stress that we’ll love our kids no matter their choices in life. Finally, in North American society, it’s almost certain that any person does more harm than good to the planet and to people in the global south, no matter how amazing their politics are or how well they put them into action. It’s just the way we live, the way we’re forced to live. I can’t remember who said it, but I once heard the expression, “At the end of your life, make sure you’ve done more good than harm.” If we really take everything into account, very few of us are doing that, and very few of our kids will either.

Don’t get me wrong, I love kids. I have nieces and nephews, and lots of friends’ kids in my life. It feels like such a sacrifice to never have had any of my own to care for. But we make a lot of sacrifices for the movement, and this is just one of them. People need to decide, I think. We can’t breed a revolution and raise kids who feel that their parents will support anything they do. We can’t really resist, we can’t put our shit on the line, and still live up to the standard of parenthood that has been set for us.

Still, people will continue to have kids, and so it’s up to all of us to figure out ways to make sure they’re still included if they want to be. As a movement, we’re not good at that. Our meetings are at bad times, they’re not fun for kids, we don’t include the kids in our decision-making and we don’t usually talk about issues that are important to them or their parents. This is also true for youth, and elderly people, and people affected by (dis)abilism. Our organizing is centred on and structured around the interests, availability and capacity of a very small slice of the population.

Why do we even want these things that tear us away from the struggle? The career, the house, the kids?

The sad fact is that we are far more mainstream then we like to believe. We like to think we’re counter-culture or have a better system or whatever, but when it comes down to it we often end up doing what everyone else does: we couple up, we want kids, having those kids tends to lead us to a single family home with a lot of stuff, even without kids many of us choose to buy cars and homes, and we want a good job that will allow us to be comfortable. These are the same things that most people want, be they liberal or conservative or apolitical. The personal property and nuclear family-based system really does suck us in, much as we like to say we’re different. It’s a powerful beast, and we’ve been indoctrinated into it from childhood. There are a few people I know who resist this. They’re in their 40s. They have jobs but they keep organizing. They have kids but they still take risks. They live in collective houses with those kids. They are a great example of how we could live—but I know from conversations I’ve had with them that it’s really hard. Society has been designed to push people into a very specific way of life and to punish those of us who want to do something else.

How do you think we should be going about developing an intergenerational struggle?

The tension between continuing to be part of the movement or dropping out often has to do with personal security. A lot of us have more to lose by being involved than by not being involved. One thing I think about a lot lately is the fact that I have no money saved for if I live beyond the time in my life when I’m able to work. I don’t own a house. I don’t want to participate in capitalism, I don’t want to invest money and make it grow (read: steal from others or wreck the planet). But who’s going to take care of me? I chose the movement, I chose to live by my principles, I chose to organize and stand in solidarity with the Earth and the people my peers and my lifestyle are screwing over. I wouldn’t change that for anything. But it’s come at a pretty significant personal loss—and I’m one of the lucky ones! I have good health and a decent job that keeps me fed, clothed and housed. The fact is that I’m fighting to topple capitalism, but until it falls it has a huge hold on my ability to survive, and while I benefit from the movement in a lot of ways, personal security and a rosy future are definitely not among them.

The way that a lot of people drop out of the movement when they start to have more to lose speaks to our privilege. In a lot of communities, it’s very different—the struggle is a matter of survival, because so much has been lost already. Recently I was at a talk by a couple of people from the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society. They spoke of inspiration, of carrying on, of never giving up…whereas we speak so often of burnout and self-care and ways to keep the movement sustainable. One of the speakers talked about his kids. “I’m doing this for them. I don’t want them to have to go through what I went through.” He had been to jail, he had faced live ammunition from the RCMP. And now he’s away from home on a months-long speaking tour. Similarly on an recent episode of Democracy Now!, a woman from Bahrain was being interviewed. She had faced harsh consequences for protesting the government there, and her young daughter would wake up at night worried that she would be taken to jail. She said the same thing: “I’m doing this for her.” A lot of people in the very white, very privileged community I organize in might say this is irresponsible, that once you have kids you can’t go around doing that stuff any more. But in my opinion, it’s precisely those of us that have the privilege to choose to walk away from the struggle that have the responsibility not to.

At the same time, it’s hard to ask people to give up their health, their security, the well-being of their loved ones, for a struggle that is full of so much failure and disappointment. It’s also hard to ask them to not put their families first. I’m reading a book right now of interviews with the children of republican and loyalist fighters in Northern Ireland. Those people who died or spent a lot of time in jail probably thought they were doing it all for their kids too…but so far in the book very few of those kids recognize or appreciate that. Overwhelmingly, they are angry and bitter that their parent cared more for the struggle than for them. They talk about the poverty and the pain their mothers and family were thrown into, and how hard it was growing up the child of someone who wasn’t around. And they certainly have very little sympathy for the struggle—in fact, in most cases there’s outright hostility towards it.

If we had a more collective way of raising kids, the impact of a parent who’s often out at meetings or who ends up serving some time would be less severe and maybe kids wouldn’t reject the movement because of how it hurt them. If we had a system in place to take care of people who can’t find work because they refuse to sell out their principles, people wouldn’t constantly be moving to Toronto to find paid work they can justify doing. We should have a way to ensure that our sick or elderly will be taken care of when they can’t care for themselves—that we won’t forget them, in the same way we don’t forget our folks in jail. If we had this kind of mutual aid in place, then maybe people would feel less afraid of giving all of their time, resources and energy to something beyond their own personal lives. And we could have a real movement, one that people could have kids and grow old in, one in which people don’t have to default to the mainstream life of savings and mortgages and career paths…because what we would have instead would be so much better than all that.

BY ANTHONY RAYSON, South Chicago ABC

A friend of ours, Marty Conlisk, moved to Sacramento a couple of years ago or so to live with his sweetheart, Laura. Thanks for hosting us, folks. Awesome! Marty used to be the videographer forLabor Beat, here in Chicago. He would come back to town to visit his kids and pop in for a visit. He said he would arrange for a prisoner art show in Sacramento, once he got with the art community there. That sounded cool, but a lot of people say they will do a lot of things and basically, hardly anyone ever follows through with much of anything. Marty proved to be for real!

I had done a show at Multi Kulti, an activist gallery, and organized a roundtable discussion the next day with several Chicago prisoner support groups. M K took the initiative to photograph the many pieces of artwork. In fact, two ‘rads came down to my house and filmed my complete collection and put it all on a disk, which I sent to Marty. He ran it by Colin Swift, who with his wife, Lauren, run Lilac Neuron Media.

It is hard not to be enthralled with this stunning artwork. It is another thing altogether to one, interest a gallery for an actual showing and two, figure out a way to pay for it to happen. Colin & Co. figured out how to do both! He contacted Matt Brown, who readily agreed to host the show at his gallery, Exhibit S, which is located at the downtown mall in Sacramento. Next, Colin put together a terrific kickstarter video weaving samples of the artwork with a strong pitch he made, spliced with comments I had said, during a video skype we did earlier.

We met our fundraising goal of $1,800, so my comrade, Mike Ploski, and myself could fly out there and put on the show and have money to print, promote and otherwise pay for what needed to be done. Special thanks goes out to Twitch from Central Texas ABC who popped for $500, basically ensuring that the show would actually happen.

Others pitched in to help us, most especiallythe ‘rads from Sacramento Prisoner Support, Jenny, Petey and Lynne. Beer and wine and cheese were supplemented by hearty fare from Sacramento Food Not Bombs. A three-piece jazz combo, which Marty dubbed “Hotsky to Trotsky” mellowed out the show with their jams. It created a serene sort of brainstorming! The show ran from January 11 to 26.

The room itself was maybe 25 feet by 25 feet with a separate wall about 15 feet long. A three-foot wide swath of black surrounded the white walls, basically at eye level. This is where we placed the artwork, in two or three levels, artistically placed, with each artist having their own area. Some artwork was anonymous and they had their own section. Several pieces from Cali death row prisoners were donated by attorney Dennis Cusick.

Peter Werbe from the excellent, long-standing anarchist journal Fifth Estate responded by offering for exhibit 4 wonderful paintings by Marie Mason, the witch-hunted green activist given 22 years by this incarceration-mad government. She also had a little table of literature about her case. This included a bundle of the latestFifth Estate.

Marie Mason #04672-061

FMC Carswell – FMC

P. O. Box 27137

Fort Wayne, TX 76127

Fifth Estate

P. O. Box 201016
Ferndale, MI 48220

We had a massive table with dozens of different zines, with a whole section of literature from Cali prisoners. I put a comprehensive, 64-paged zine together, entitledREASON 4 OUTRAGE, which fleshed out the stories of these prisoner writers and artists, along with my address, many quotes and other goodies. Sacramento Prisoner Support had a table, too.

In another room nearby, two video projectors flashed shots of the artwork on opposite walls at different intervals. This allowed you to see the artwork on the big screen. With so much detail in these intricate drawings, this was very helpful, indeed! It was a multimedia extravaganza! Zines were sold at $1 per ounce and artwork, both original and print, was also available for cheap sale.

During opening night, several people spoke, including Colin, Marty, Jenny, Mike and myself. A special treat was the appearance of Eugene Dey, a former three-strikes prisoner, who I had not heard from in a decade. He had written insightfully about the three-strike insanity that I had crafted into zines. He has since done terrific work, helping other recently released folks get situated. He spoke, too! It was like seeing a long-lost Brother!

I did radio interviews, such as Sacramento’s KKHI Community Happenings show and podcasts (Which Side and American Dream Interviews) along with an enormous amount of outreach, both during the kickstarter campaign and leading up to the show, which has continued. This type of painstaking networking pans out later, as personal and working relationships are forged, whether you ever even meet face-to-face. Solidarity and mutual aid are vitally needed and enthusiastically welcomed. The local free weekly,Sacramento News and Review printed a well-worded paragraph about the upcoming show. Folks started coming by during the two days we set up the show. They were stoked and went back to tell their peeps! Posters were put up around town. We were very clear about it. I was impressed by the fearlessness and focused effort from the art community and everybody around for going to bat for this “dangerous” type of show. Minor hassles were sloughed off. On with the show!

Prisoners from all over the country stepped up their game and sent artwork and statements that we read at the show, along with some letters. For this terrific artwork is a form of mutual aid, along with the wonderful writing, research and comradeship our incarcerated Brothers and Sisters are able and willing to provide. They often pay a horrific price for their courageous, insightful and seminal work to help us write and enliventhese awesome publications that form the heart of this free school anarchist-driven educationalproject we have given ourselves the responsibility to actualize. It is really true. These relationships we have built with these people are often stronger than the ones we have with our own family members.

It means the world to them to have their work published and read by fellow prisoners, far and wide—and to be included in the struggle on the “outs.” In fact, my main goal with all this was to help energize people into doing more involved support work with prisoners, get their work known in wider circles and ratchet up the struggle. For the prison struggle is ground zero, here in this incarceration-crazy country, and the strongest thinkers and doers are also, all too often, the most locked-down and oppressed. This is where hard work gets done!

So, that is what we did and from this show, more such shows will happen. I have been invited to present at theFifth Annual Law & Disorder Conference to be held from May 9 to 11 in Portland, OR. I am pitching such shows at other venues, such as the upcomingAllied Media Conference in Detroit in June. Sacramento Prisoner Support will do a show in June, as well. Art and lit are like peanut butter and jelly—good alone, but great together!

Before I give a thumbnail sketch of the prisoners involved, I also want to mention that Colin had the foresight to have the opening night show and artwork videotaped. His wife, Lauren, edited it all into a powerful DVD that captures the fullness of this artwork and literature.

Also, Lynne Perry hand-printed (in chalk) the names and addresses of the prisoner artists on the wall, next to their work. She also wrote out statements about the prisons in any bare spots available, which made the showing very complete. Matt Brown said it was the most attended show ever at his gallery! People identify with the real deal.

Now, I have worked closely with conscious prisoner writers and talented artists for the last

16 years, published their work and, mostly, gotten it back into the eager hands of their fellow captives. It is a mutual effort to educate and empower people—on the inside, first and foremost, but also for those on the “outs.” I am retired from my wage-slave job, so I can do more outreach with this material to people in “minimal” security. After the response from theMulti Kulti show, where hundreds of mostly Polish people really got off on the artwork (it is located in a Polish neighborhood in Chicago), I realized that combining artwork with literature was the way to go. People are captivated by the artwork and are thus more likely to pick up a zine and learn the “brutal truth” and, hopefully, get involved. So, hereare some words about these amazing artists and writers.
The most extensive collection was created by Todd (Hyung-Rae) Tarselli. He had a whole wall to himself, including several mind-searing originals. We have collaborated on several projects of his work, some of which we did not even present at this show, so extensive is his archive of achievement. He generously donated all this work, including original oil paintings of Assata Shakur and Marilyn Buck! He is a protege of the great Russell Maroon Shoatz. His work has graced many a publication.

Todd (Hyung-Rae) Tarselli

BY-8025

175 Progress Drive

Waynesburg, PA 15370
Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is the most powerful political artist in the world! Perhaps equally important is his contributions as a revolutionary writer and strategist. He is the Minister of Defense for the New Afrikan Black Panther Party—Prison Chapter. We presented a small sample of his art and several of his writings I had crafted into zines. He has been menaced and whisked away from Virginia to Oregon and now Texas. He is a modern-day George Jackson and people deserve to learn from his life and his brilliant art and analysis.

Kevin Johnson

#1859887

Clements Unit

9601 Spur 591

Amarillo, TX 79107
California prisoner artist, Richard G. Hall, Jr., was also well-represented at the show. His caricature,Vern, is an ongoing one-frame comic that really captures the injustice, pathos and outrageous problems young Black males must deal with to tortuously navigate this racist, classist system. His work and his wisdom are spreading and, I think, he will soon be paroled!

Richard G. Hall, Jr.

#C-07278

P. O. Box 689, YW-343-up

Soledad, CA 93960-0689
Another prolific Cali artist (and writer) is Jose Heladio Villarreal. His focus is on the Aztlan people—those whose traditional home is Northern Mexico, which is now part of the U.S. Southwest due to imperialist expansion. Who are the real “illegals?” His work is very colorful and he writes about the Mexican struggle here in the United States. He was also one of the hunger strikers in the strikes that exploded through the Cali gulags into other states!
Jose Heladio Villarreal

#H84098

Pelican Bay State Prison – SHU – C111 – 106

Crescent City, CA 95532
Joey Torrey, ex-boxer who penned a memorable saga of his life (Bamboozled), is also a high-quality artist with a wide range, from portraits to nature scenes to dreams. He had an impressive collection. He is finally being paroled after 35-plus years! Help him get back on his feet in the alleged “real world.”

Joey Torrey

#C47554, BIO – 150

Mule Creek State Prison

P. O. Box 409040

Ione, CA 95640

The new Joey Torrey book is available on:prisonsfoundation.org

Another terrific artist is Larry Pendleton. He did a lot of artwork for his comrade, Coyote Sheff. Coyote has since been released. They teamed up for some truly sought-after zines. Coyote ran the only real prisoner ABC (Anarchist Black Cross) while incarcerated. Their influence on other prisoners spans the whole of the country.

Larry Pendleton

#33524

Ely State Prison, P. O. Box 1989

Ely, Nevada 89301-1989
Others I would like to mention are Sean Swain, the brilliant anarchist writer and talented artist, who languishes in the super max hellhole in Ohio. Throughout his dreadful, life-long ordeal, he still has a surprising sense of humor and overflowing originality and militancy. His writings are legend!

Sean Swain

#243205

Ohio State Prison

878 Coitsville-Hubbard Road

Youngstown, OH 44505
Another real hip artist is Brandon Begay, an anarchist Native prisoner in Arizona. He has a punk band called The Violence. He drawsfantastic comic book type zines as well as excellent, useful artwork, bringing home basic anarchist beliefs. The cover on my 2013 catalog features his work, both on the cover and the back page. (The first six months, Rashid drew the cover.) Brandon goes by the name Bran Scam.

Brandon Begay

#83195-008

USP – Tucson

P. O. Box 24550

Tucson, AZ 85734
There are many other artists and writers I would like to mention, but I will leave you with one—Mutope Duguma. He was one of the Pelican Bay Strike leaders, who I had worked on zines with for years. I had hoped to visit with him while I was in Cali, but they did not send the approval until I was already back home in Chicagoland. I covered the strike and his situation in the 64-paged zine about the show, which is available from my distro, along with hundreds of other zines and copies of all this artwork.

Support these dedicated and brilliant prisoners. Write to them directly or to me and ask for a comprehensive catalog, sample zines, etc. We are not going to stop doing this—pouring forth with the modern-day literature of revolt! It is up to you to add your talents and interests into the mix. Get proactive and check out this awesome stuff!

Mutope Duguma

s/n James Crawford D05996

D2 – 107 up

Pelican Bay State Prison – SHU

P. O. Box 7500

Crescent City, CA 95532

They’re in there for us, we’re out here for them!

Chicago ABC Zine Distro

P. O. Box 721

Homewood, IL 60430

BY PABLO VIVANCO

basicsnews.ca

1. The students marches are from the right-wing of the student movement.

Unlike in places like Chile, there is no single or united student movement in Venezuela. Not only are student groups highly decentralized, but they are also divided along political lines.

Another unique feature of the student groups identifying with the opposition is that they do not organize around accessible or free education (since education has been made accessible to the sector of society that was previously excluded, resulting in an increase of 1,809,432post-secondary students from 1999 to 2014).

The most recent opposition student demonstrations began in the western city of Tachira near the Colombian border. On the third day of student demonstrations about insecurity on the campus, the State Governor’s house was attacked and four people were subsequently arrested (two of whom were not students). These arrests led to student demonstrations in other cities—all of these demonstrations were not shut down by police—which led to the February 12 demonstration, where three people died.

On February 12, however, it is important to know that there were thousands of Bolivarian students and youth marching for ‘El Dia de la Juventud’ (Youth Day), on the other side of Caracas. When speaking about the “student movement” the logical question that has to follow is, “Which one?”

2. Most have died due to violence and sabotage of far right “protesters.”

Number games with deaths of people is unpleasant. However, given how much of the coverage around the violence has been presented as direct state violence against peaceful protests, an account of how the violence has played out is necessary.

Of the now 13 deaths directly resulting from the protests, at least 5 of the deaths have occurred at the barricades erected by the protesters at different sites, including motorcyclists who have been decapitated by barbed-wire booby-traps set up.

Other deaths include the murder of Juan Montoya, a leader of the leftist Tupamaros and the assassination of Arturo Alexis Martinez, the brother of a socialist National Assembly member who was shot from a balcony sniper as he cleared debris from the blockades.

Three opposition protesters have been killed, including former beauty contestant Genesis Carmona who other protesters and ballistics reports indicate was shot from behind—that is, by other protesters. Jimmy Vargas, age 34, died when he accidentally fell from his building as confirmed in a video from CNN. His mother blames the government and Maduro. Bassil Dacosta, another student opposition protester, was shot on February 12.

A total of nine members of the Venezuelan security forces are under arrest, including three officials from the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional (SEBIN) under investigation in relation to the deaths of Dacosta and Montoya. Three other arrested police officers, two from Chacao and one from Merida (with each city claiming one of the dead), are members of police forces under the command of opposition mayors.

The head of the SEBIN was sacked after February 12 for failing to comply with the specific order from President Maduro to not send SEBIN into the streets on that day.

Some 30 others have died from not receiving adequate medical attention due to the blockades.

All of these deaths are tragic. But even these deaths need to be put into perspective. The vast majority of the deaths are not attributable to agents of Bolivarian government and there is no impunity for those who may be responsible for the deaths or abuse of people.

3. There has been massive media manipulation.

When the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce, Catholic Church, Military High Command and trade union center organized their coup back in 2002, there was no Facebook or Twitter. The media in Venezuela, at this point, was completely in private hands except for the state-owned VTV (which the opposition stormed during the coup and whose signal they closed down). To justify the coup, the private media manipulated images and footage of street demonstrations to suggest that the government and its supporters had killed unarmed protesters (sound familiar?). It was through informal networks and word of mouth—what people in Venezuela call radio bemba—that people found out about the coup and organized against it.

Today, with the advances in democratizing media (through the hundreds of community-run TV and radio stations) and holding private media accountable, the traditional media does not have a monopoly over information. New and social media, however, has demonstrated its power to influence the perspectives of what is happening in Venezuela, especially outside of Venezuela. More than this, it has shown the extent to which events and realities can be distorted.

A recent article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) highlights this issue. The article calls into question the accuracy and credibility of an article written by Francisco Toro, editor of opposition web site Caracas Chronicles, where the article titled “The Game Changed Last Night” was published. The article claims that there were paramilitary-style incursions into wealthy neighborhoods of Caracas with motorcyclists “shooting at anyone who seemed like he might be protesting.” This article was shared half a million times, including among many leftists and progressives despite the dubious authorship and questionable information. Toro’s defense for publishing unverified rumors: “I am not a reporter.”

This is but one of the countless exaggerated, manipulated and uncorroborated tweets, YouTube videos and other postings—even showing images of police brutality in other countries—that are circulating in order to demonize the government and its supporters. This is not a coincidence, but rather version 2.0 of the 2002 media coup.

The propaganda campaign has been relentless, and unfortunately effective.

4. There has been an active campaign to sabotage the Venezuelan economy.

Much has been made and said about the causes of these demonstrations and the real challenges Venezuelans face.

There is no doubt that there are real and legitimate grievances and issues concerning crime and access to goods. However, what has been missing from this narrative are the initiatives from the government and social movements to address these and, perhaps more importantly, the contributions of Venezuela’s opposition to creating and exacerbating these problems.

Inflation is often cited as a problem in Venezuela, reaching 56 percent this January. However, inflation is not a new feature in this oil-exporting country. The inflation rate in Venezuela has averaged 26.78 percent between 1973 and 2014, reaching an all-time high of 115.18 percent in September of 1996. Inflation was lower than 18 percent as recently as December of 2012, so inflation is not the cause of scarcity or economic grievances that have been cited.

Indeed, there is scarcity in certain parts of Venezuela. And by scarcity, this means that things are hard to come by in stores. Why is this? The answer is that this scarcity is a deliberate campaign by producers, transporters and vendors to hoard and withhold goods, in collusion with speculators, price gougers and others shipping things to sell for dollars across the Colombian border. Proof? In the first half of 2013, at least 40,000 tons of food has been found hidden in various locations. Later in that year, several large chains such as Daka were fined and ordered to lower their prices for marking up prices by as much as 1,200 percent on goods and electronics.

The Venezuelan government has looked to tackle this problem, but there has been resistance to their measures. The Institute for the Defence of People in Access to Goods and Services (INDEPABIS) has responded to the thousands of tips and complaints about hoarding and price-gouging, heading up massive investigations of merchants resulting in arrests, fines, price-redressing as well as the recovery of hoarded goods. However, the political opposition has opposed the government measures including price controls and actions to go after this type of abuse and economic sabotage, calling it a plan for “anarchy.” In addition, two people armed with grenades tried to assassinate INDEPABIS President Eduardo Saman.

On the streets, these protests also coincided with the implementation of a new national law for controlling prices. Not to mention that in various places, such as Carabobo and Zulia, protesters have burned trucks stacked with food (produced from the state operated PDVAL) headed for subsidized markets in working-class neighborhoods.

This form of economic sabotage mirrors the campaign against Salvador Allende’s government in Chile, where hoarding was rampant and transportation of goods hampered by a strike and violent attacks from the organized fascist outfit, Patria y Libertad. Goods remained scarce until the day after the coup on September 11, 1973.

5. Crime is a regional problem and the opposition does not pose solutions.

So this brings us to crime. It is true that insecurity, especially in working-class neighborhoods, is an issue of concern to Venezuelans. Crime, and especially gun crime, have been historic problems in Venezuela. But what accounts for the rise in crime, especially gun crime?

The proliferation of heavy artillery and guns in Venezuela, accompanying the drug trade, is massive. Despite concentrated government efforts to combat drug cartels moving cocaine through the country (ranking fourth in the world in seizures), most accounts recognize that drug trafficking is still prolific. Connected with this are unregistered firearms, with estimates ranging from 1,100,000 to 2,700,000, although this is likely much higher. This is of course a regional problem, with identical problems in similar statistics in Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico. In Venezuela, however, there is an added political motive to at least one important player in the crime and insecurity—paramilitaries from the Colombian conflict.

There are an estimated 4.5 million Colombians residing in Venezuela. The vast majority of these people have immigrated beginning in the 1990s and especially in the early 2000s, escaping the violence of the Colombian conflict and looking for “cheaper” living conditions. The Venezuelan government began a regularization program in 2004.

During this same period, Colombia was “demobilizing” paramilitaries linked to mass murders and drug trafficking. Some of these paramilitaries have gone into Venezuela within the wave of Colombians to continue their previous activities. Paramilitary groups have been caught in Venezuela on numerous occasions and have assassinated pro-government activists in rural areas as well as in urban centers.

The problem of crime is not a national problem, but a complex regional problem that is inextricably related to drug trafficking.

So what is the opposition asking for to deal with crime? Opposition mayors and governors have in certain cases, such as in the rich municipality of Chacao where much of the rioting in Caracas is taking place, refused to fold their historically corrupt and brutal police forces and accept the centralized, Policia Nacional Bolivariana (who are provided with extensive training including in sociology and dealing with and relating to the community and peoples they service). So they are not asking for more police.

Instead, the only discernible call is for the disarmament of the “colectivos”—armed, independent political organizations from militant, working-class neighborhoods. Despite being characterized by the opposition as government-sponsored paramilitaries, they pre-date the Chavez government and are known to sharply guard their autonomy from it. Moreover, these self-financed organizations are predominantly political in nature, running community programs, media and even beautification projects. Not only are these groups the first line of defense against a coup (as they were in 2002), but they are also on the front lines against crime. In the 23 de enero neighborhood, for example, these groups came to an agreement with the municipal government to have police removed and operate their own neighborhood watch. Crime in this neighborhood is handled effectively, if somewhat severely.

The opposition’s lack of a clear vision for tackling crime betrays their disingenuousness.

6. The claims of “state repression” and “media censorship” are, at best, exaggerated.

Beyond the fact that the majority of those hurt or killed from the recent violence are victims of the protests, the issue of state repression is something people invariably question when they see an opposition leader jailed or military deployed.

Leopoldo Lopez, the wealthy, Harvard-educated former mayor of Chacao was arrested following his promoting the escalation of street demonstrations against the government to generate “La Salida” (The Exit). This led to three deaths on February 12 and at least seven since. Lopez—who during his time in office was sanctioned for influence-peddling, embezzlement of funds, and illegal fund transfers—took active part in the 2002 coup and led mobs searching for and assaulting Chavista ministers. Prior to his arrest, government officials revealed to Lopez’s family that there was a plan afoot to assassinate him, and acted to prevent this from happening (a fact that Lopez’s wife confirmed on CNN).

Aside from Lopez, who was particularly brazen in his calls for the streets to take down the government, some 50 others are being held directly in connection with violence causing serious injury, such as the SEBIN officers in question around the murders of Bassil Dacosta and Juan Montoya, as well as a driver who ran someone over trying to avoid a protester barricade.

Importantly, it must be acknowledged that in Tachira and other places, students blocked roads and protested without any government or police interference and it was not until the official residence of the governor of Tachira was attacked that any arrests were made. These arrests were the apparent catalysts that set off student demonstrations that escalated violence in Tachira and other cities.

So then, what about the control and clampdown of media? Despite claims to the contrary, the total broadcasters of the state have a tremendously low share of the market—only 5 percent. Opposition newspapers and websites operate without restriction, and as evidenced by the extent of falsified posts circulating over social media, these continue to operate freely. A morbid testament to this reality is a tweet sent by former General Vivas, instructing people to set up “nylon rope or galvanized wire at 1.20 meters height in the streets” to “neutralize the hordes.” At least two have died from such traps.

This violence also occurs less than a year after the violence following the 2013 presidential elections. Having narrowly lost the elections, opposition candidate Henrique Capriles called for people to go out and “discharge their rage,” leading to the deaths of seven pro-government activists and another 61 injured. In addition, violent opposition demonstrators burned several of the Barrio Adentro medical clinics, offices of the national telephone company, subsidized super markets, social housing and other social property. When we talk about context, there needs to be an acknowledgment that this—the assassinations and attempts on leaders (not just Chavez), the oil strike, the 2002 coup and the countless massacres and mass repressions under the previous regime—is the context.

Put into context, the Venezuelan government’s response to this level of reactionary street violence has been quite restrained and balanced by any standard, and would certainly not be tolerated in any part of North America by governments like Canada, the U.S. or Mexico. But the Bolivarian government understands that the opposition and its international backers are looking for just such a pretext to step up their campaigns.

7. Overall, the opposition has demonstrated itself to be uninterested in democracy and dialogue, and has never conceded the government.

Over the last 15 years, 19 electoral events have taken place in Venezuela, 18 of which have been won by Chavismo. There are close to 40,000 communal councils, democratic and participatory citizen-initiated and -run bodies, that can basically administer their neighborhood. If Venezuelans think an elected official—any elected official, from the bottom to the very top—is failing at their job, they can initiate a recall referendum vote. This was most spectacularly carried out against Hugo Chavez in 2004 (who won the referendum handily with 58 percent of votes in his favor). So how can Venezuela’s democratic credentials be questioned? Why are the characterization of the government as “autocratic” and “totalitarian” still so common?

Because the opposition says so.

The political opposition, which has not been able to win a presidential election since 1998, has cried “fraud” after virtually every election in spite of testimony of international monitors to the contrary, and they have held all kinds of other posts through the same elections they decry. Capriles, for example, is still governor of Miranda even while refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of Venezuela’s electoral system.

This is the same opposition whose leading members organized and carried out the massacres that paved the way for their short-lived 2002 coup. This is the same opposition that took part in the coup that abolished the constitution, the national assembly, the judiciary, the ombuds, etc. At the time, Capriles was the mayor of Baruta in Caracas and Lopez the mayor of Chacao in Caracas. They both took active parts in the coup, including leading roving mobs looking for Chavista ministers and also participating in aggressions against the Cuban Embassy. Maria Corina Machado, a leader of the opposition, was a signatory to the Carmona decree, which abolished the rule of law under the junta created by the 2002 coup.

This is also the same opposition that was government for 40 years prior to the election of Chavez—governments that were responsible for countless human rights violations and massacres. Under the Punto Fijo Pact, three parties agreed to a corporatist “power-sharing” agreement. Many of the opposition players descend from these three parties. Antonio Ledezma, for example, another major opposition leader and mayor of the Greater Caracas area, was a deputy of the National Assembly during the Caracazo massacre of 1989 that claimed 3,000 lives, and was also governor of Caracas in 1992 when police were sent in to kill 200 prisoners in the Retén de Catia jail to quell a prison riot. These are the “democrats” in Venezuela. These are the defenders of “human rights” we are being presented with in the media here in North America.

This is an opposition that openly receives at least US $40 million per year from the United States to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution.

This is the also the opposition that has refused talks with Maduro.

This is an opposition that has never conceded that they are, in fact, the opposition. This is an opposition that has simply refused to acknowledge that the majority of Venezuelans have opted to not have them in power. This is an opposition that has never let go of their entitlement, their privilege, their scorn for the poorer, darker majority that they saw reflected in Chavez and now Maduro—a former bus driver.

8. Fascism and imperialism are very present threats to Venezuela.

As much as it would be great to characterize the current situation as a small group of privileged extremists against a 99 percent, that is not the situation. While the opposition is undoubtedly under right-wing leadership and there is no—this bears repeating—no left or revolutionary tendency within the political opposition, there is a mass of people that have been won over to the political opposition.

More importantly, there is a section of the masses within the opposition that has demonstrated its willingness to use lethal violence to achieve its political ends.

Undoubtedly there are sincere elements within the ranks of the opposition and students who may be frustrated, disillusioned or simply duped by the haranguing about “cubanization.” But there also also those who have been burning primary schools, supply trucks, public transportation, public institutions; blocking ambulances; and setting up booby traps to kill and maim.

These are reactionary activities with reactionary ends. Fascism does not simply involve a state oppressing people, but has historically implicated mobilization of a mass of people and using a section of that mass as a violent shock troop. This was true of Germany, as in Italy, as in Spain. In closer proximity to Venezuela, it was also true of Chile. The Colombian paramilitaries, who have been actively killing trade unionists, campesino organizers and anything “communist” since the 1980s, are also an example of this and a player in this conflict.

It is simply not tenable to allow this activity and these groups to operate, to terrorize a population. Given the numerous avenues and channels for Venezuelans to organize themselves, replace politicians, run their spaces and communities outside of bourgeois institutions, violence against institutions of the people is unacceptable.

This is where imperialism fits in. Violence is being fomented in order to illicit a disproportionate and violent response from government or its supporters—a response that would justify a possible intervention of some sort. So far that has not happened.

However, as events in Syria and Libya show, coupled with revelations yesterday of a captured, foreign mercenary in Aragua with plans to set off car bombs, the threat that cries of state “violence” will be used to justify foreign intervention is real.

9. The majority of people still support the Bolivarian process and government—and we should side with them.

Forget about whether Venezuela’s economy is still capitalist, or whether its government is socialist or communist. The fact is that the majority of Venezuelan people still support it and the institutions of government.

Just this past December 2013, the Socialist Party and its allies won 76 percent of mayoralties. Just this week, the private consultancy firm Hinterlaces confirmed that 71 percent of the country feels that Venezuela’s political future should be decided through the constitutional electoral process. Only 29 percent support the government’s forced “exit” through street actions.

Perhaps more importantly, it is still evident on the streets and communities of Venezuela, where hundreds of thousands of oil workers, women, pensioners, youth, motorcyclists, community activists, peasants and other sectors have taken to the streets in separate marches across the country demanding peace and respect for their will.

From Jaan Laaman, anti-imperialist political prisoner, held by the USA state

I greet and salute all of you attending this 11th International Symposium in Amsterdam. I also salute and send my solidarity to your organizations and especially to the political prisoners held in your countries.

The struggle for Freedom, Justice, National Liberation, Revolutionary transformation, Human Rights and the defense and survival of our planet, has and will continue to create political prisoners. As long as we fight for the freedom and liberation our people and our planet so truly need, some of us will end up in the prisons of the imperialist and other repressive states that subjugate our people and destroy our resources.

As in many other oppressive states, here in the USA, the headquarters of western imperialism, we have freedom fighters, activists and revolutionaries who have been in captivity, as political prisoners, for well over 30 years. People like Sundiata Acoli, Leonard Peltier, Mumia abu Jamal, Oscar López, Tom Manning and many others have been held for decades. Just this past year, a group of young anti-racist activists, The Tinley Park 5, were imprisoned for their political work. The USA state continues its repressive assaults within the United States, even as it spreads its imperialist wars and attacks across the globe.

Political prisoners in the U.S. likewise continue to resist and connect to the freedom struggle worldwide. A major voice of U.S. political prisoners is http://www.4strugglemag.org. 2014 is the tenth year that 4strugglemag has been in existence, putting out three issues most years. 4struggle is primarily an e-magazine, but we also produce a professionally printed hard copy that goes out to prisoners and other subscribers. 4struggle comes from the hearts and minds of U.S. political prisoners and friends. While it focuses on the analyses, opinions and struggles of U.S. political prisoners, we cover revolutionary issues worldwide. Just this past year, 4strugglemag expanded its format and now an entire section is news and information produced by the Jericho Movement. The Jericho Movement is the principle U.S. organization that fights for the rights and freedom of political prisoners held by the USA state.

4struggle welcomes information about, and words from, our fellow political prisoners in other countries and regions. Check out 4strugglemag—issue 23 is out now. You are welcome to send us information about the issues and realities of political prisoners in your country. International solidarity is a strong and important force.

I wish much immediate success to all of you and the work of this Symposium. I also hope we continue our contacts, solidarity and joint efforts for the survival and freedom of revolutionary political prisoners worldwide.

There are about 100 political prisoners in various prisons across the United States. These women and men are listed and recognized as political prisoners by numerous human rights, legal defense and progressive/socialist organizations. These people all come from the Civil Rights/Black Power/New African Liberation struggles, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, Indigenous Peoples survival struggles, Chicano/Mexicano Movements, anti-imperialist/anti-war movements, anti-racist/anti-fascist struggles, the Women’s Movement, social and economic justice struggles, and especially in the past several years, from the Environmental/Animal Rights movement. They are Black, white, Latino and Native American. Most of these political prisoners have been in captivity since the 1970s and 80s. Some were convicted on totally fabricated charges, others for nebulous political conspiracies or for acts of resistance. All received huge sentences for their political beliefs or actions in support of these beliefs.

Additionally, there are many thousands of revolutionary-minded, politically conscious prisoners in U.S. jails. These are people who became more politically aware and active once they landed in prison. A lot of these prisoners also get singled out for extra harsh and restrictive treatment like the political prisoners. Since 9/11, the U.S. has also imprisoned thousands of Arab and Muslim visitors to this country, as well as some Islamic citizens and residents.

The U.S. government likes to deny that it holds political prisoners. The harsh punitive conditions of confinement, often in special “control unit type” prisons, that political prisoners face day-in, day-out, decade after decade, exposes and refutes this government myth. Not only does America hold political prisoners, but they are being held under longer sentences than any kind of prisoners, anywhere in the world! Despite this, these women and men remain committed to their communities, movements and principles. As best they can, through their voices and very lives, they continue to uphold the politics of justice, equality and liberation, especially for the poor and working-class people throughout the world. Political prisoners in the United States want and need your awareness and support.

The following organizations do support work for political prisoners in the U.S.:

The Jericho Movement

thejerichomovement.com

P.O. Box 650

New York, NY 
10009

USA

Partisan Defense Committee

partisandefense.org

P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station

New York, NY 
10013

USA

Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) Federation

abcf.net

P.O. Box 11223

Whittier, CA
 80603

USA

BY PIRU UMOJA

I want to first apologize for my long and unforeseen absence in communication. The struggle has not departed me. In fact, the struggle to overcome oppression has intensified.

My brothers and sisters, my temporary absence has been occupied in the ongoing fight with our oppressive judicial system. Recently, I received “material” evidence establishing my innocence. Such evidence was intentionally withheld by overzealous prosecutors in Brooklyn, NY; under the guise that said information that is favorable to my defense was miraculously misplaced. (How convenient for the prosecutor!) The great oppressor chooses to continue fighting without a care in the world other than to keep an innocent person incarcerated from family and friends. So, again my brothers and sisters, I apologize for my absence.

Now, upon reviewing the latest 4SM issue 22: Spring 2013, I was elated by some articles and unfortunately truly disturbed by quite a few articles. I will be addressing quite a few matters within this missive.

1. Our beloved sister and komrade Lynne Stewart will continue to be held dear to my heart. My sister, you will remain within my thoughts. You are indeed loved, my sister. Though I have no access to internet or email, I promise you, my sister, that I will write to the white house personally (let’s hope it makes it there) as well as encourage others to do the same. You will never be forgotten, my beloved sister. I pray that upon you reading my words, they bring some form of upliftment within you, letting you know that despite these unfortunate circumstances, the fight for liberation has not been given up on. Stay strong, my sister. In solidarity. You’re loved dearly.

2. Our beloved brothers Seth Hayes and Sundiata Acoli. You’ve both become pivotal figures within the history of combating oppression. You’ve both endured hardships beyond measure, that one can only begin to envision before cringing. You’ve both paved the way for us young souljahs. To not acknowledge either of you historical figures still standing firm and combating oppression under your circumstances would be a slap to the face; you’ve both sacrificed in the combat of transforming a harsher yesterday into a better today for us young souljahs and souljah’ettes to make a greater tomorrow. You both are truly loved and the fight for liberation will never end until an end has come to oppression.

3. The “No Justice When Women Fight Back” article by Victoria Law was very powerful and piercing. I am very familiar with Patreese Johnson’s and her friends’ case. Though already incarcerated, I followed her ordeal via newspapers. As for our beloved sister Marissa Alexander. My sister, how troubling. Your ordeal has touched me. Now not only were you failed and denied the protection you so much needed, but so were your children, by a system that ultimately preys on and seeks to weaken the strong and, of course, our strong women. You are truly thought of, my sister. Despite my incarceration, I pray that my words touch you and continue to strengthen you, knowing you are not fighting this struggle alone. It truly disturbs me at how flawed the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida is. Raising such a defense that is supported by surmountable evidence isn’t privileged to young black women or minority individuals (how convenient for the oppressor); yet on July 13, 2013, the same state allowed a jury to return a verdict of not guilty in the matter of George Zimmerman in which an unarmed 17-year-old black kid was murdered. This oppressive judicial system is designed to restrict us of our soul. Failure is not an option, my sister, and thus far, you’re a winner because you’ve chosen to keep fighting for your liberation and that’s the importance of a revolutionary. Because, in order to overthrow the oppressor or any entity occupied by the oppressor, we must first overthrow ourselves and engulf ourselves with the ideals of change for progress. My sister, sadly many presume strength to be in numbers. You, my sister, among so many of our beloved sisters (e.g., Harriet Tubman, Lolita Lebrón, Marilyn Buck, Assata Shakur, Amelia Weston, Inez García, Patreese Johnson, Rosa Parks, Elaine Brown, Silvia Baraldini, et al.), are the epitome of strength. You’ve all encountered individual hardships that at times were beyond measure. The struggle you’ve all endured individually coupled with the ability to not lay down on your back content, but rather exhibit the courage of a warriorette to stand and fight back without compromise is none other than strength. I commend you, my sister. As a brother to you in struggle, my sister, your struggle is my struggle. The fight can’t and never will be over until oppression is over. All praises are due to your first husband, Lincoln Alexander, and your sister Helena Jenkins for supporting you throughout such an unfortunate ordeal that at times tend to break an already weakened individual spirit to fight. In solidarity. You are loved sincerely, my sister.

4. Brother Rashid Johnson. Your ordeal was very troublesome indeed to learn. My brother, through your extensive knowledge and understanding of these agents provocateur, never forget as Komrade Jaan Laaman stated: “Our eating partners/circle should be close people who we have trust and some history with.”

Death was recently at your front door to end your fight against oppression. You survived such an ordeal for a reason, as the great oppressor stood around “waiting, wanting and watched” for you to succumb to such an unfortunate encounter. You’ve prevailed such an ordeal and marveled others while the great oppressor sought your ultimate demise. Allow such an unfortunate encounter to become the eye opener you may have needed to prevent you from becoming gullible to those who present themselves to be a mirror of you in their on-going pursuit to capture your trust only to bring about your unfortunate demise.

This goes for all my brothers and sisters in struggle. Scrutinize those who eagerly seek to embrace you without research. As sad as it is, this is what caused the unfortunate and untimely physical death of our brothers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. An informant for the police who infiltrated the Black Panthers and excelled unnoticed thereafter, becoming brother Fred Hampton’s bodyguard, gave police a complete layout of brother Fred’s apartment, including the room where he’d be resting with his beautiful wife who was pregnant with Fred Hampton, Jr.

Brother Rashid, as well as my other beloved brothers and sisters in this ongoing fight for liberation, don’t allow yourself to become the victim of tactics orchestrated by the great oppressor, yet employed by those who seek to embrace you in hopes of causing your demise. This is something to think about, brothers and sisters.

Brother Rashid, it’s a warming pleasure to learn that you’re back and also healthy. We want you to stay healthy. Keeping the grass cut low will give you the advantage to see these agents provocateur coming a mile away. Real talk!

Now, as we all know or shall know at least, this is the Revolutionary Month of Black August (the month I was born, August 13, 1979).

August 21, 1831 is the day many who had yet to learn he existed soon gravitated to his cause. His battle was not for just himself, but rather, for the liberty of the oppressed. Oppression was not ignored by our beloved brother, who is known as Nat Turner. His uprising was in Virginia, where racism was of great worry to the weak and oppressed. In spirit, Nat Turner is to live on and never be forgotten.

August 7, 1970. Physical age, he was still a child. In spirit and commitment, he was a man, which led him to being named “manchild.” Our beloved brother Jonathan Jackson engulfed himself with the much-needed energy to seek an end to oppression. Though the spirit of resistance against oppression already existed within him, he had not yet understood the purpose of his existence until communicating with his oldest brother. Jonathan Jackson did not hesitate in seeking to liberate brothers William Christmas, James McClain and Ruchell Magee, known as the Soledad Brothers (his brother wasn’t present, though he was a Soledad Brother as well), from Marin County Courthouse, where he was gunned down ultimately, not for himself, but more so, for the liberation of the people who would have made the ultimate sacrifice for him without hesitation. He learned that in struggle, his life was no longer his, but rather the People’s, who he stood up for diligently despite his early and untimely return to the essence physically. In spirit, Komrade Jonathan Jackson lives on.

August 21, 1971. Exactly 140 years from the date of the Nat Turner Virginia uprising. Our beloved brother and Komrade George Jackson was brutally gunned down by overzealous prison guards in their oppressive attempt to eliminate the souljahs who failed to compromise their principles and morals for personal gratification. This atrocity was felt and troubled so many lives everywhere, which ultimately led to many other uprisings, namely the Attica uprising from September 9, 1971 to September 13, 1971. The call was clear. We either fight the oppressor to end oppression or we succumb to the oppressor and continue to be oppressed.

The many uprisings to purge oppression cannot be ignored. Though we may be in a different era in which our youth are easily led astray from productive growth, it is the duty of “us” who know the struggle and its ramifications to teach the youth and keep them from going astray, landing in the pitfalls of the great oppressor. We are still subjected to the conditions of oppression and, to overcome such oppressive conditions, we must stand firm within our belief system and fight to end oppression, not fight to end each other over verbal nonsense that can be resolved diplomatically or a color that will still exist long after we are gone. Let’s get it together, brothers and sisters. Because this struggle is real. There’s nothing fake about this ongoing fight to end struggle and undue hardships and burdens.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution in values.” This statement is so imperative in order to birth a better tomorrow for our youth.

August is so monumental in history. The revolutionary history of August thus far dates back to August 16, 1768.

Never forget, brothers and sisters, the aim is to win. Refusing to speak up or sitting down doing nothing will never make us winners. To win, we must stand up, rise up to the occasion, stand firm in our beliefs and never succumb.

Salutes to all my brothers and sisters who are fighting to end oppression the way you know how to fight. I applaud my politically intelligent revolutionary unit and black liberators overcoming our oppression sincerely.

I look forward to hearing from anyone who seeks to build and destroy. I have no access to the internet or email services. My contact is as follows:

Piru Umoja

Din#06A1269

Attica Correctional Facility, PO Box 149

Attica, New York  14011-0149

To be a Cloud

BY GAREN ZAKARIAN

I’d like to be a cloud

formless, unexpected

I’d like to think like clouds

sudden and clear

I’d like to feel like clouds,

pure, weightless and needed

come and go

and disappear

I’d like to breathe like clouds

way up there, above

beneath and in-between

I’d like to be

Just be

The Gray Wall

BY GAREN ZAKARIAN

Cold gray wall of gray cold cell

Mute cohabitant and witness

Gray chronicle of my spells and prayers

Stoic ignorant companion

Can’t get rid of him

Covering my face to forget

the unjust suffering of those that came before

I’d like to peel back the layers

uncover all those songs and chantings

that have echoed from your surface.

Your ignorance plays racquetball

with my persistent pleas

Your indifference and muteness squeeze my skull

like water does below three meters to a diver

But a diver has a choice – and I do not.

I bury my fingernails deep into the layers

in search of what’s been there

beneath the gray, before my time

What other colors   How many   When

The cold gray wall in a gray cold cell

The monument to memories unknown

to books unwritten, to stories untold

What a waste you are, gray prison wall.

Garen Zakarian is an Armenian, with family in both the U.S. and his homeland. He has been in federal prison for over 19 years.

Editor’s note: Garen Zakarian writes some interesting and thoughtful poetry, but primarily he is a painter, an accomplished artist. Three areas in which his work is particularly noteworthy are his portraiture, abstract art and work as a colorist. You can see a wide array of his work by going to zakarianart.com. Zakarian, or Zak as he is known to many people, is a friend of political prisoners and 4SM. He has contributed some of his work to progressive and revolutionary projects.

Revolutionary Night

BY RICHARD “ALBIZU” ROMERO

Young soldier

Accept your Destiny

And let us ride into the night

And if fate wills that we fall

Then for the cause we give our life

Raise your regal brow

And with honor and dignity let us stand

Take up arms against the whirlwind

For Freedom, Equality, and Justice we demand

Revolutionaries never die

Our soul is an eternal flame

And gunfire salvos erupt the silent night

To do away our chains

Vengeance will be our victory

As we march below insurgent stars

And the world will tremble at our roar

Vanguard of the oppressed near and far

Stand up young soldier

And for the Revolution let us fight

And in death we shall find eternal life

In our revolutionary night.

This poem was written for all my Puerto Rican brothers and sisters who have yet made the commitment to fight for the liberation of our beloved nation from yankee domination; in hopes that one day their eyes will be opened and the inexhaustible pride of the Borikua will compel their feet to march. It was also written in the memory of our late beloved leader Don Filiberto Ojeda Ríos and so many other of our fearless and patriotic kin who have committed the ultimate sacrifice of offering their lives for the nation, such as the great brothers Oscar López Rivera and Norberto Gonzalez Claudio. The sacrifices were not in vain. ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!

Prison Visit

BY MARIE MASON

Prison is

Hushed and heavy

Like water near the Ocean’s floor,

Then loud and bitter,

Like fractious storms lashing the sky

Everything cement and nerves

And too many years gone by…

The heart requires a place to rest

From all its maddened wanderings

The raft of the Medusa tossed

And trembling in the sea.

Or just this table here

And you across from me,

A sunlit sail

And I this aching castaway.

I cannot touch you – it is not allowed.

Our eyes hold

Hanging onto words

Until a hand falls upon the back

The narrow hall, the clanking keys

The door, the cell

And under.

Greetings, interested readers, friends, fellow activists and revolutionaries, welcome to #23, the Fall Issue of 4SM.  With this issue, let me warmly welcome Ward Churchill, the internationally known author and activist as a regular columnist with 4SM.  Be sure to check out Ward’s first column, “Lynne Stewart and the Perversion of Compassionate Release.”

Let me also welcome the Jericho Freedom Movement for Political Prisoners.  Beginning with this issue, a Jericho newsletter is now included in the pages of 4SM.

As always, this edition has a lot of information and many other thoughtful articles.  I invite you to check out my essay on “Decline of Empire?”.  Also, I suggest you study the George Jackson political prisoners coalition statement.  We always invite your feedback and dialogue on all of the words in 4SM.

This will be our final edition for this year.  Beginning in 2014, we will again publish 3 issues a year and #24 will be out in early March.
With the upcoming Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s holidays, let me send positive revolutionary “Red Season’s Greetings” to all of you, your families and close people.

Freedom Is A Constant Struggle!
Jaan Laaman, editor

See the table of contents here

Thanks for your support. You don’t know how much it means for us and all the prisoners currently in jail to know that initiative like yours exist and spread the truth about the current Irish situation.

The situation in Maghaberry jail is still as it was. The Loyalist Prisoners Officer Association is still refusing to work the 2011 agreement, backed up by the administration and the British puppets in Stormont. The POWs are still fighting to have the end of the forced strip searches, the controlled movement and to achieve the full implementation of the 2011 agreement. Once again your support is appreciated and gives strength to the prisoners in their struggle in resisting the criminalisation policy and their ultimate goal to be recognized as political prisoners.

We send our support to all political prisoners over the 5 continents and would be glad to implement a collaboration with the ABC on the question of political prisoners over the world.

We invite the ABC, and any groups wishing to lend support or to find out more about the current situation to contact us directly through email: 32csminternational@gmail.com.

_______________

In regards to David Gilbert:

Combating Sexism, Homophobia and Transphobia. Issue 21: Fall 2012.

Greetings Comrades! How are you doing? I’m okay! First off I live an “Alternative Lifestyle” myself. This is who I am. But in society I was “never” judged by people (I was respected by all). When I became locked up boy this is another story. Nobody has the right to judge another human being because of his or her Gender, Sexuality, Race, etc. We have battled and still are today with this issue here in America.

This is a very good topic. I was told this is “The Land of the Free.” So on that note I’m satisfied. Being incarcerated I’ve had Correctional Officers plus inmates call me names like Whitney Houston, NeNe Leakes (two black female celebrities), faggot, punk and the list goes on.

My attitude toward it is Oh! They don’t know me. I know who I am and I know what I’ve been through in this life of mine.
How can I get mad at a FOOL.

They simply don’t know any better.

Another thing I want to (address) is if a man wants to be with the same-sex in a relationship, and women too, who is to say they’re wrong?

I believe whoever you choose to be with, if they make you happy and treat you right, go for it! “It’s your prerogative.” I have never in here or free outside in society imposed my sexuality on anyone!

Sexuality doesn’t define me. It’s a part of me. This is where mankind gets it twisted. I will never ever apologize for something that makes me HAPPY. One thing (we) know for sure, we got one life to live so people live it to the “Fullest.”

Regardless of what others think, say and do. We live in a society now where Folks are bitter with themselves and they want others to feel this way. It’s called misery loves company. But we as people of an Alternative Lifestyle must always remain strong and never lose focus.

I demand respect and I won’t settle for anything less. Living any type of Lifestyle is only (human nature). I don’t use or like those labels Homosexual, Bisexual, Heterosexual, etc.

Those are just names the people in the World try to place on (us). It’s a form of stereotype to me. I’m a person who lives an Alternative Lifestyle Pointblank!

And if you don’t like it, or refuse to accept it, stay out of my way.

If I change for someone or something I’m not being myself and that won’t ever happen.

So to ALL PEOPLE “in general” just live your *LIFE* (End Of Discussion).

Living through the Struggle.

True,
Activist Derrick

__________________
Elaborating on what Ms. Veronica Hernandez has mentioned about her being tried as an adult at the age of 17. (Editor’s note: in issue 21)

My name is Gadget. I am from Massachusetts and am currently serving a second degree murder sentence that I received at the age of 17. I was tried as an adult when I was 16 years old. Due to the recent change of law back in October 1996, now, as young adults tried as “youthful offenders” there are some new laws that have taken place that will protect us from being unjustly tried and sentenced. There can’t be a mandatory sentence of life given to you unless you are given the opportunity to show the judge your whole background, on how you were raised, from father, mother, siblings, relationships. Basically, the a & b process that was done before you actually face the judge as an adult you will be getting if you are to be found guilty. (Hopefully, you don’t go through that process.) But that is the process. Just recently there was a study done, as you mentioned, on the development of the mind of a juvenile,which the judge has to take under consideration. If you feel that your lawyer is not meeting his or her expectations, you have the right to fire that lawyer. Words of the wise: “lawyers are as good as YOU make them.” It’s bad enough that you have your life at the hands of an unknown person. And to just let him or her blow smoke up your ass… and not want to do anything is another. Fight and continue. I have been in prison since I was 16 years old, now 30 years old. I have seen my youth come and go all because I put my life in my trial lawyer’s hands that did not give a simple care for my human life even though evidence showed my innocence. So continue to fight.
Editor’s note: The issue of children and young people getting huge sentences is horrible and violates international standards and law. Anyone who knows of legal resources for such cases could send it to 4sm and we will put it out. Good to see the fighting spirit from Gadget and the strong convicts from Mass—Remember, Freedom Is A Constant Struggle!

_______________

Revolutionary Greetings!

I was fortunate some time ago to read an issue of 4Struggle, and I was very much intrigued by the revolutionary message it conveyed in it; in fact, the first issue I recall reading is the issue which had the Comrade Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt on the cover in recognition of his return to the essence.

Your magazine is a powerful tool which can be used inside these concentration camps to raise the awareness of those of us held captive regarding the ills plaguing us as an oppressed people. I would love to subscribe to your magazine, and utilize it to agitate the static state of the masses who presently are asleep to the realities confronting us. Once agitated, I can then focus on educating and mobilizing us to change our conditions. As stated, your magazine will assist in this arduous yet indispensable process.

Free Jalil Muntaquim, Herman Bell and all Prisoners of War/Political Prisoners. Tutashinda! (We Will Prevail!)

In Solidarity,
Moshe Cinque (Canty s/n) aka
Moshe Cinque Taharga Olngbala San Kofa Owusu
#99A6830
Upstate Correctional Facility309 Bare Hill Road
PO Box 2001
Malone, NY 12953

______________

A Society of Political Prisoners!!!

By JOHN WILSON III (AKA JANAKA)

As the seasons come and go, different people add new vibrations to an already melanic planet.

Like the beauty of a garden where there is a variety of flowers. The flowers cannot be overshadowed by a single rose. It is simply a beautiful rose within a beautiful array of flowers.

To orchestrate the roses or any of the flowers (in any way at all) offsets the natural vibration of the garden. Even though it may be pretty to look at, it has been altered.

Melanic people (all People of Color) have been altered, are placed into a position where their natural vibrations are offset. They cannot blossom, or reach their full potential! For the benefit of the Ruling Class, the Minority has been orchestrated to appear a certain way!
This political operation was designed to kill the growth and development of the flowers of this planet. Leaving behind a society of political prisoners.

“If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness…”

– Victor Hugo

May the struggle continue to rise.

_______________

My name is Shamgod. I’m a prisoner of racism. But a defender of the poor. I have been reading your magazine for some time. I also ask that you review and discuss an urban revolutionary book that speaks to the young’s trials in the streets.

If we are to give struggle meaning, it’s most imperative we channel our info in a way that challenges those who will create tomorrow.
Attached is a poem for you to publish.

Prison Guard

Every time I see you, the thoughts you produce are so sad. Unlike everyone else that searches for freedom in this world, you have intentionally used life options to chain change in future and brutally exploit lessons of the past.

While the design unknown to you is to keep us both stuck or dead before our human anger or state money don’t last.

Have you not realized the abnormality in your job is a difficult psyche task? Yet in the scope of the patriot subject, turn keys are associated with cheap mercenary trash.

Keep your head up high prisoners. This is just a reality check to make you laugh.

Shamgod J. Thompson

Salute to the prisoners standing up in California.

Shamgod Thompson
01B0848 12 A1 9
Five Points Correctional Facility
State Route 96, PO Box 119
Romulus, New York 14541

_________________

My name is Kijana Tashiri Askari, a New Afrikan Black Political Prisoner, based upon my New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist (N.A.R.N.) political beliefs and activities within these slave kamps (prisons).

I am also a class representative of the Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement (PBHRM).

Comrades, as we get ready to embark upon our next phase of peacefully protesting and resisting the torturous and inhumane conditions of solitary confinement that we’ve been subjugated to for the past 10 to 40 plus years!!

In struggle,
Kijana Tashiri Askari
[Ed. Note: See hunger strike updates, page ___]

___________________

4Strugglemag…

To all Black/Brown/Red/(Poor Whites), men and women in prison, in jail, around the world today. When there are decisions being made for you, without your being aware of it, you become political! If the government deems it best you remain illiterate, for their overall good, you become political! Strategically placed drugs, guns, liquor stores, in our communities. We become political! Glamorizing these things on TV, in movies and music. Subliminal tricks that affect our overall view on life, the way we deal with and solve personal problems! All these horrible things and so much more make us all political prisoners! Denies us our human rights to freewill! To choose our destiny without influence or distraction! Being consciously blind to these tricks is not fair. It makes us keep asking ourselves what’s wrong, looking for an answer that we can never find. Only when we wake up to the understanding that we all are political prisoners, will we see change! We have been fighting for change for so long! And we’re still fighting for change! Let’s try something new! And demand freedom! Fight for freedom! Even if it means learning their tricks and using them to better us! This is what is meant by “any means necessary!”

I am John Wilson III. I came across your mag this week and really did enjoy reading it. I am a seg inmate, almost 10 years now in this small cell. Over 20 years in prison. For a man with little education I love to read and write and study. I’ve written some articles on this topic…A Society of Political Prisoners..and thought I’d share my opinion, and this lil poem. You’re welcome to do what you want with it if you can understand it. I encourage you all to keep the fight alive!

Power to the oppressed!

Mr. John Wilson III
Coffield #682430
2661 FM 2054
Tenn. Colony, TX 75884

______________

Greetings!

Enclosed you will find my most recent poem titled “Transcendance.”

I’ve been learning to become more socially conscious through the work of 4Struggle Magazine. Thank you for teaching me the truths that the mainstream media purposely ignores. I share the mag with other brothers on the tier and we often find ourselves engaged in the critical thinking it provides…much love.

Revolutionary Speed,
Gilbert Bao

Transcendance
Metamorphasizing in a concrete capsule of time
constantly moving forward yet left behind
Am I the wind or am I the sail
does it even matter … or wasted energies to no avail
The opportunity of unity expands my mind
beyond the egocentric predicament of space and time
Forces of the ancient ascend from my roots
engaging the darkness in beret and boots
Cosmic warrior transcends the ashe
persevering through dimensions of a broken past
Always remembering to never forget
deconstructing the illusion is time well spent
A flickering flame illuminates my path
persistence…patience…endurance like algorithms in math
In the trench of consciousness I reflect
challenging contradictions to resurrect cause and effect
Immersed in the strengths the elements manifest
the copal smoke dances to balance unrest
Elevated frequencies stream from the glyphs
shaping the plane of social consciousness
Realm beyond the web of fate
provoking beams of thought..can you relate

Gilbert Bao #P-77497
CTF North WB #328
PO Box 705
Soledad, CA 93960

The National Jericho Movement condemns and denounces the government’s designation of our Sister Assata Shakur as a terrorist, and we demand that the $2 million bounty on her be rescinded. We also celebrate and applaud the anti-imperialist stance that Cuba has taken in providing her with a home during her exile from the United States! Moreover, we recognize the fact that an attack on Assata Shakur is an attack on people of African descent around the world! We recognize the fact that Assata Shakur like many other political prisoners and prisoners of war are victims of an illegal FBI counterintelligence operation known as COINTELPRO, NEWKILL and other acronyms which are used to wage low-level intense war and counterinsurgency war against the Black Panther Party (BPP), the Black Liberation Army (BLA), the American Indian Movement (AIM) and other political organizations and individuals who took a stance against capitalist-imperialist wars of aggression.

The United States government refuses to recognize those who struggled against racism and injustice and who are now imprisoned as political prisoners and prisoners of war, preferring to label them as common criminals, we in the Jericho Amnesty Movement do fully recognize them as political prisoners and prisoners of war and whose treatment is to be governed as specified under the laws of the Geneva Convention and of the United Nations, and international Non-government political organizations fully recognized by other sovereign nations. Show your support for Assata by joining others in a National Day of Vigilance and Action November 2, demanding that Assata be removed from the Governments Terrorist List (the list itself is a disgrace to international law by serving as a hit list) and the State of New Jersey’s bounty be rescinded.

–Abdul Jabbar Caliph Baltimore Jericho

Zimmerman Verdict, Classic White Supremacy

In addition to working with a coalition in support of Assata Shakur, Jericho joins the condemnation of the verdict in the Zimmerman Trial
The authorities who refused to make an arrest in the homicide of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, from his fatal shooting on February 26, 2012 although they knew the identity of the shooter—to the not guilty verdict in the Zimmerman trial, dramatize the principle the right-of-whiteness bias in American law. Like the Trayvon Martin case, the refusal of authorities (for decades) to bring to justice the killers of teenager Emmett Louis Till, slain August 28, 1955, in a brutal lynching, were only one of a number the parallels in these murders. Both Martin and Till were victims of crimes against the African American community in the United States and crimes against humanity. Both stand as metaphors for white supremacist profiling of black youth in order to accomplish the ultimate objective of racial domination achieved for much of the country’s history by terrorizing the black community with the threat of and samples of racial cleansing or genocide. (Buster, 2012; Alcindor, 2012).

Till and Martin were each killed during the course of a visit to a local store, and were unarmed during the entire encounter with their assailants’. Both were visitors to the cities where they were killed–away from their home towns, and each had broken with racial code—Till whistled at or spoke to a white woman and Martin defended himself against a white man. On another level, was the initial refusal of the justice apparatus in these cases, to apply official protocol to apprehend and charge the suspected killers. Perhaps as sinister as the slayings themselves was the reaction of the justice community. That both slayings were perpetrated by self-styled “vigilantes” who shrouded racist-violent and murderous inclinations under the pretense of wanting to protect others (a white woman and the entire white community which Zimmerman patrolled, respectively) is chillingly scripted—since these excuses for white violences are intended to ignite white fears of black insurrection and black crime. In both cases, the hesitancy of authorities to bring to justice the killers of these two young black people harkens back to slave laws and black codes which made it highly improbable that whites would be arrested, charged, or convicted of killing blacks (such acts were not regarded as crimes against persons but rather as property destruction). America has, historically speaking, turned a blind eye to acts of violence by whites against citizens of color. And studies of bias in sentencing in capital cases prove that the tendency of the legal system today is still to punish most harshly blacks committing crimes against whites. White racial violence continues to occur up to the present, and today serves the same function to galvanize white solidarity, to strengthen white supremacist legal precedent, and to terrorize African Americans without repercussions for the perpetrators. This system of terror exists as a reservoir of white power whenever the structure of white privilege is challenged. (Major, 1971) Now that African Americans are considered expendable to the wider U.S. economy—except as consumers—mass incarceration and genocide of black people seems the American final solution. The Not Guilty verdict in the trial of Martin’s killer, Zimmerman is intended to reassure whites that their priviliges remain in force and underscores that African Americans “Have no rights that a white man is bound to respect” (Sup. Court Justice Taney, 1896).

In addition to demanding Obama, and Holder call for a civil suit against Zimmerman, Jericho’s position is that Zimmerman should have been tried for 1st degree murder. But, the State here was working with the defense, from the very beginning. The picking of the jury signaled it was a show trial, to appease the masses. To appear as though justice was being waged when in fact a façade was being acted out on the world stage. Several facts point this out, one the picking of the jury, five white women, the segment of the U.S. population who have been targeted with intense fear propaganda about black men. ; two, allowing the defense to put on a character witness, a young white woman, mother of an infant, who testified that Zimmerman came to her rescue as she clutched her baby while some unknown person tried to break into her house. While never did the prosecutor bring out the fact that George, had been arrested for assault and battery of a police officer? That having been called to the premises where a party was occurring, identifying himself police, Zimmerman replied, “I don’t care who you are”. He was arrested found guilty and had to attend anger management classes. But just like that night at the party, he didn’t care what anyone said, he was doing what he wanted to do. He was told “not to get out of the car” Everything hinges on the fact that Zimmerman got out of the car after the dispatcher told him not to get out of the vehicle. What he did after that was with “intent” his intent to kill young Martin, (premeditation can occur moments before the act). The bottom line is that Trayvon was being chased for 4 minutes, running for his life, and finally standing his ground in self-defense. Although he was in pursuit of the un-armed youth, Zimmerman argued that he was standing his ground. That this irrational explanation of why he attacked and killed the youth was accepted by the jury is inexcusable. Zimmerman’s racism and/or paranoia of black people were exhibited previously, when he called the police complaining of “young black punks” on the premises 17/18 times. Stereotypes Zimmerman holds of black people are what led him to physically attack and gun down Martin, whom he did not know. The not guilty verdict issued by the jury in the Zimmerman trial affirms the right of white men to kill any black person who resists their will to stop, detain, assault, or murder them. This is slave law in full force and those who support the ruling in the Zimmerman trial are upholding the core white supremacist tradition, as coded in the legal system. Jericho condemns the verdict and demands Zimmerman be charged with murder, if not also for contributing to a pattern of attempted genocide against African Americans, and for violating Trayvon Martin’s Human and Civil Rights.

Jericho Members Tekla Ali Johnson and Kazi Toure contributed to this report.

In addition to supporting the call for “Hands off Assata” and justice in the Trayvon Martin Case and Zimmerman trial, Jericho Initiatives include: a Jericho prison medical initiative, support of the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike, general Education, condemnation of mass incarceration of African Americans and Muslims, and closing Gitmo. Please support your local Jericho Chapter and encourage your family and friends to join Jericho. If you are a Jericho Member, or a comrade inside, you can submit your writing and commentary to our ktoure@verizon.net our column editor at Jericho…..Kazi can also be reached @ 857-204-0072. (please keep all entries to 500 words). thejerichomovement.com.

By WARD CHURCHILL

The clock is ticking. Several months ago, people’s attorney Lynne Stewart, currently serving a 10-year federal sentence for the supposed “material support to terrorism” she rendered by properly representing an unpopular islamist client, was diagnosed as suffering from terminal cancer. Since then, her condition has steadily deteriorated, and at this point the prognosis is that she has at most 14-16 months remaining. In accordance with the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 which provides for the “compassionate release” of prisoners facing exactly such situations—especially those who are both elderly and pose no demonstrable threat to society—Stewart has requested that she be sent home.

On September 6, she received notice that warden Jody Upton of the federal medical center at Carswell (Texas), where Stewart is now confined, had duly submitted her recommendation for an expeditious release to Bureau of Prisons director Charles E. Samuels, Jr. Since Stewart will be 74 on October 8, has never been convicted of or otherwise tied to any violent act, and is afflicted with a cancer-induced collapse of her immune system requiring her isolation from the general prison population under continuous intensive care, this one should’ve been a no-brainer. Yet, as of October 1, Samuels has maintained a conspicuous silence on the matter.

As many readers are undoubtedly aware, it’s the second time ’round the block on this score. On April 26, Stewart was notified that Warden Upton had submitted a recommendation to Samuels that she be granted a compassionate release at the earliest possible date. The recommendation was seconded by J.A. Keller, director of the BoP’s south central regional office while, at the behest of former attorney general Ramsey Clark, the federal probation office in Stewart’s home town of New York conducted an expedited review of her plan for post-release domicile, treatment at Sloan-Kettering Hospital, etc., and approved it. Samuels of its approval at about the same time he received the others’ recommendations. After that… Silence.

Finally, on June 24, Samuels denied Stewart’s request, ostensibly because her medical condition was improving and, in any case, since her life expectancy was greater than 12 months, she was ineligible for release under BoP guidelines. Both claims were spurious. The closest anything said by the doctors at Carswell came to indicating that Stewart’s health was “improving” was an observation that she seemed to be responding well to a particular chemotherapy regime and that it should therefore be continued (thus slowing the rate at which her cancer was killing her). As to the “less-than-a-year-to-live standard,” there’s nothing, either in the 1984 Act or in the Justice Department’s directives implementing it, specifying a 12-month threshold for eligibility. In other words, Samuels was invoking no authority other than his own in denying Stewart’s request.

Her attorneys quickly appealed the decision to New York federal district judge John Koettl, who’d presided at Stewart’s trial—and who, as will be discussed below, carries considerable baggage as a result—and a hearing was conducted on August 8. The upshot was that Koettl, while purporting personal outrage at the denial, professed to be powerless to alter the situation: “If I order her release, I’ll be breaking the law” (i.e., the 1984 Act, which constrains judges from granting compassionate release without being petitioned to do so by the BoP). Setting aside the obvious question of why, assuming he actually believed what he said in this regard, Koettl opted to waste everyone’s time and energy—to say nothing of raising false hopes among Stewart and her loved ones—by scheduling a hearing at all, perhaps some good may still have come of the whole charade: Koettl at least pronounced himself ready to sign an order for Stewart’s release immediately upon receipt of the requisite paperwork from the BoP.

Enter now the DoJ, which has been having its own problems with the inordinately low proportion of requests for compassionate release by plainly qualified prisoners approved by the bureau—an average of only two dozen per year for the past 30 years—a performance that has increasingly generated negative attention in today’s budget environment (incarcerating aged, sick prisoners is incredibly expensive on a per capita basis, even under the abysmal conditions prevailing in most U.S. penal institutions). Apparently, there’s been some serious backroom arm-twisting going on because, among other things, the magic number triggering eligibility for compassionate release in the BoP guidelines was lately—and rather suddenly—changed from 12 months life-expectancy to 18 months.

Stewart’s prognosis places her well within the newly-revised range. Hence, her renewed request. Yet, as was noted at the outset, the clock is ticking—as it has been for the past five months—and there’s no more indication that director Samuels is prepared to approve Stewart’s release than there ever was. The situation underscores an unstated but nonetheless uniform and longstanding policy of U.S. officials—and not only those in the BoP—to make “deterrent examples” of political prisoners, a posture that translates in part into an extreme reluctance to grant them early release under any circumstances, no matter how dire.

In this connection, the concept of “compassion” is even more alien to Those In Charge than it’s been with respect to the general prison population, a reality eloquently witnessed in the recent example of Marilyn Buck, diagnosed with terminal uterine cancer in November 2009, but not granted release from Carswell until July 15, 2010, with barely enough time to make it home to Brooklyn before dying on August 3. Such grotesquely vindictive official behavior was plainly grounded in the fact that Buck, who was 62 when she died, and who had already spent 33 years in prison—including a lengthy stint in the BoP’s now-defunct underground control unit for women at Lexington, Kentucky, during the late-80s—as the result of her engagement in explicitly political activities, consistently refused to recant her core values and beliefs.

There is no mistaking the message: A tremendous price can and will be extracted by the BoP and its counterparts from prisoners, especially political prisoners, deemed “guilty” of maintaining their personal integrity/fundamental human dignity behind the walls. It’s unquestionable that Lynne Stewart fits the description perfectly and it’s therefore impossible to avoid the conclusion that her ongoing incarceration as her life ebbs away constitutes a politically-motivated form of cruel and unusual punishment, in essence a crime against humanity. It must be understood as such, responded to accordingly, and the same principle applied in the cases of a number of other “politicals” held in U.S. prisons after decades of time served and despite their advanced ages and steadily-deteriorating health/increasing degrees of infirmity.

Here, Leonard Peltier, Ruchelle Magee, Chip Fitzgerald, Hugo Pinell, Mondo we Langa, Ed Poindexter, Jalil Muntaqim, Herman Bell, Sundiata Acoli, Sekou Odinga, Marshall Eddie Conway, Seth Hayes, Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, Maroon Shoats, Mutulu Shakur, the Move 9, Oscar López Rivera, Bill Dunne, Veronza Bowers, Jaan Laaman, Tom Manning, Judy Clark, and David Gilbert all spring readily mind, and that’s to list but a few. In any system of justice remotely worthy of the name, each of these prisoners, and many others, would long since have been released on compassionate or other grounds. Witness the fact that even in Germany—a country seldom cited as an exemplar of humanitarianism—every surviving member of the Red Army Faction has been returned to the street.

That the U.S. adamantly refuses to follow suit speaks volumes.

Punctuating this grim reality, is another: While the BoP and collaborating agencies have effectively nullified the very idea of compassionate release in “the land of the free,” stonewalling its application in cases such as Stewart’s—where even the trial judge took time during her original sentencing to commend her lifetime of unstinting public service—those same entities have been simultaneously employing the relevant criteria, albeit under or as supplements to other rubrics, to release mafiosi and other such bona fide miscreants. A recent example is that of Ray Ruggiero, a capo in New York’s Genovese crime family, who was a heavy in the organization’s south Florida operations from 1994 until he pled guilty in 2007 to playing the key role in a RICO conspiracy involving extortion, loan sharking, money laundering, and substantial violence.

In February 2012, Miami federal district judge James Cohn, responding to arguments from the DoJ and a BoP petition, ordered Ruggiero’s immediate release after he’d served less than half his already much-reduced sentence. The DoJ/BoP position was not only that the mobster had “earned” an early exit by “cooperating with the government” and providing unspecified but “substantial” assistance to the DoJ in pursuing other mafia cases, but also that he was deserving because he was by then 78 years old, suffered from a heart condition and diabetes, and had already been confined for several years in prisons a considerable distance from home, making it difficult for his family to visit him.

A still more recent example is that of Joe Massino, former boss of the Bonanno crime family, who faced the death penalty on instruction of then-attorney general John Ashcroft and was in any event sentenced to a double-life term in federal prison upon being convicted of heading up a vast and routinely lethal RICO conspiracy in 2004. In July 2013, New York federal district judge Nicholas Garaufis ordered Massino’s release after he’d served a little over 10 years. Like Cohn, Garaufis was responding to arguments from the DoJ, accompanied by a BoP petition, to the effect that Massino’s testimony against other mafia notables—unprecedented for a mobster of his high station—had been a major breakthrough in the DoJ’s ostensible “war on organized crime,” and that he’d thus earned a get out of jail card. However, as in the Ruggiero case, it was also argued that compassion was warranted since the 70-year-old Massino was suffering “serious health problems” that would “almost certainly limit his longevity significantly.”

Not uncommonly, such things never even reach the point of requiring BoP participation. A classic example is that of Greg Scarpa, a truly vicious thug prominent in the Columbo crime family and nicknamed “The Grim Reaper” by his gangland cohorts. After entering a guilty plea in 1986 to a charge of largescale credit card fraud (i.e., racketeering), an offense carrying a penalty of seven years plus a quarter-million dollar fine, he was sentenced by New York federal district judge I. Leo Glasser to a mere five years probation plus $10,000, walking out of court a free man. Scarpa was spared imprisonment at the request of the FBI, another subpart of the DoJ, citing the fact that Scarpa had been diagnosed with AIDS and, so claimed the bureau, had only a few months to live. In light of the fact that Scarpa was at the time secretly classified as a “top echelon mob informant,” there’s a distinct possibility that the FBI knowingly misrepresented his condition. Be that as it may, he not only lived for another six years, but remained homicidally active during most of them.

Before pleading guilty again in May 1993, this time to three murders and conspiracy to commit several others—the evidence indicates that his career body count was at least 26, and may well have exceeded fifty—Scarpa conducted the “Third Columbo War,” through which he sought to take control of the family. Setting aside the question of whether his FBI handler, senior agent Lin DeVecchio, was directly complicit in several of Scarpa’s murders—à la the notorious case of John Connolly, mob boss Whitey Bulger’s handler in Boston—it was by then clear that not only had its “star informant” never provided the FBI with anything resembling reliable “intelligence,” he may well have been playing the bureau to facilitate false convictions against gangland adversaries (in at least two instances, there is evidence that bogus information provided by Scarpa led to guilty verdicts against his opponents for murders that he himself committed).

Even then, the FBI and DoJ conducted themselves in a manner best described as serving Scarpa’s interests, leaving uncontested a renewal of his claim that since his AIDS infection left him little time to live putting him behind bars would be inhumane. Although Scarpa faced an all but automatic life sentence, New York federal district judge John B. Weinstein responded by reducing it to 10 years—making The Grim Reaper eligible for parole in only 34 months—an astonishingly lenient penalty, also unchallenged by the DoJ. It’s hardly a stretch to adduce that a principle akin to compassionate release was once again involved, a priori, in the relatively gentle treatment accorded Scarpa. Unfortunately for him, however, the prognosis he recited was in this instance accurate; Scarpa died of AIDS-related maladies in the federal medical center at Rochester, Minnesota, in June 1994, having served less than 14 months.
The courts’ and the DoJ’s comportment in the Scarpa cases may be usefully compared to that of both the department and the judge in Stewart’s. First off, following her February 2005 conviction, sentencing had to be delayed for nearly eighteen months while Stewart was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, so all parties were fully aware of her illness. In the interim, she requested that, in view of her age, history of cancer and more general health problems, the judge exercise his discretion in sentencing, afforded him by the U.S. supreme court in U.S. v. Booker (2005), to simply forego prison time in favor of a noncustodial penalty. For its part, the DoJ, in stark contrast to its stance regarding professional hoodlum cum serial killer Greg Scarpa in 1986, and again in 2003, argued that she should be sentenced to serve a term of 30 years, not only “to punish [her] for her actions” in defending a politically unpopular client, but “as a deterrent to other lawyers” inclined to follow her defiantly principled example.

Judge Koettl plainly saw through the DoJ’s various contentions regarding Stewart’s character and the magnitude of her “offenses.” Indeed, as was mentioned earlier, while pronouncing sentence on October 16, 2006, he made a point of noting her sustained “public service, not only to her clients, but to the nation.” Nonetheless, unlike Judge Glasser in the 1986 Scarpa case, Koettl was unwilling to accept Stewart’s medical condition—age was not a factor in Scarpa’s sentencing, since he was only 58 at the time—as a basis upon which to order probation rather than imprisonment. Instead, despite the fact that she’d already been disbarred and thus, unlike Scarpa, could hardly have been expected to resume the activities underlying her conviction, Koettl sentenced her to a term of 28 months.
Were that not bad enough, when Stewart appealed her conviction to the. 2nd circuit court, a three-judge panel including John M. Walker, Jr., ultra-right-wing cousin of George W. Bush, was selected to rule on it. The result was that in November 2009, Stewart’s conviction was upheld on all counts, but—citing, among other things, the bravado embodied in statements she’d made outside the courthouse after her initial sentencing—the panel sent the case back to Koettl with instructions that he immediately cancel her bail and recalculate her sentence. While he could have simply reiterated his original conclusion in the matter, or even responded by changing it for the better—both options were within his discretion, although exercising it would undoubtedly been a career-ender—Koettl capitulated and, on July 15, 2010, more than quadrupled Stewart’s original term of confinement, ordering that she serve “120 months.”
In other words, although their health issues were arguably comparable, because she was insufficiently contrite in her public utterances, Koettl increased Stewart’s sentence to precisely the same level—10 years—that Judge Weinstein had in 2003 compassionately reduced confessed multiple murderer Greg Scarpa’s. And, while it argued vociferously throughout the process that Stewart’s punishment should be far harsher than that ultimately allotted by Koettl, the DoJ took no such position with regard to the “love tap” dispensed to Scarpa by Weinstein.

Under such circumstances, one hardly knows what to say, other than that maybe we’ve been taking the wrong track. All things considered, especially the effects of Stewart’s rapidly-advancing cancer, perhaps we should shift our emphasis from supporting her request for compassionate release to demanding that Koettl grant her an early out as a reward for losing a substantial amount of weight. After all, it worked for mob enforcer Richard Bondi, who was granted a sentence reduction on that basis by New York federal district judge Fred Block in 2007. Admittedly, my attempt at humor in this connection is both feeble and deeply bitter, yet one learns through long and equally bitter experience that, in struggles such as ours, there is far more strength and clarity to be gained from sarcasm than from tears (no matter how necessary they may be from time to time), and this brings us to the bottom line of all that has been said herein.

Compassionate release, even in the terms set forth in the relevant federal statutes, is not something that must be “earned” by way of a prisoner’s becoming a snitch, otherwise providing “services” to the government, or demonstrably abandoning his or her sense of self-respect. It’s an elemental human entitlement which the government has no moral, ethical, or legal prerogative to arbitrarily deny and for which it has no right to exact a price. As things stand, the U.S. government has and continues to pursue a diametrically opposing policy wherein mafiosi and other such tangible public menaces are blatantly privileged over those adjudged guilty of holding and acting upon dissident political views. Transforming this ugly reality will require not only that we muster the strength to carry the struggle forward, but to clearly understand and explain the true nature of what we confront, thereby drawing others into the fray. Hopefully, the examples and contextualization offered above will be of utility in this regard.

Postscript: Word has just arrived that a federal district judge in Baton Rouge has finally ordered the immediate release of Herman Wallace, one of the political prisoners mentioned in this article, from the Louisiana state prison at Angola. Wallace, a former Black Panther and one of the Angola 3, is in the final phase of liver cancer and, like Marilyn Buck when she was cut loose, is expected to live no more than a few days. Tellingly, Judge Brian Jackson did not order the release on the basis of compassion. Rather, he ruled that Wallace’s constitutional rights were violated by the state during his 1974 prosecution for involvement in the killing of a guard, and overturned the resulting verdict. Presumably, given the flagrantly prejudicial process to which Wallace was subjected, this conclusion could have been reached by the federal courts at any point over the past four decades. Instead, he was left to rot in Angola, spending a staggering 41 years in solitary confinement, until he was quite literally at death’s door (and Louisiana is officially protesting his release even now). Such is the current quality of justice and mercy in the United States.

Editor’s Note: See our tribute to Herman Wallace later in the issue.

tinleyparkfive.wordpress.com, j.mp/alexstuck

Alex Stuck of the Tinley Park 5 was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for attacking and stopping an organizing luncheon of white supremacists. The meeting of white nationalists and neo-Nazis took place in Tinley Park, Illinois, USA in May 2012.

With good time, Alex will be getting out in late October or early November. Alex has enjoyed many letters, correspondences and book and commissary donations from his supporters during his time in captivity (y’all have helped to make his time much more tolerable!), but prisoner support does not end when our comrades are released; transitioning out of prison can be a difficult time for former prisoners.

Having felonies on one’s record creates barriers to housing and employment. Many things about their lives and communities may have changed during their time inside, so extra effort is required to provide support and build solidarity to avoid isolation and undue financial hardship. Please help us create a gracious homecoming and a smooth re-entry for Alex.

Through halfway houses, supervised release, parole or probation, there is usually state supervision beyond the initial sentence. Also, prison is traumatic. And of course there is the stigma of being a former prisoner that affects nearly every aspect of one’s life. All of this adds up to the less obvious, but equally necessary, support needed when our loved ones come home. Donate to your ability and show an anti-fascist comrade how we welcome folks home.

Here is the website that was created for folks to donate to Alex Stuck’s Release Fund online: wepay.com/donations/alex-stuck-prison-release-fund. If for whatever reason you would rather donate to Alex offline, please go ahead and make the check out to Alex Stuck, then mail the check to:

Sacramento Prisoner Support
PO Box 163126
Sacramento, CA 95816

BY NATO 5 DEFENSE COMMITTEE

nato5support.wordpress.com

On May 16, 2012, Chicago cops raided an apartment in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago in an all-too-common attempt to scare people away from the imminent protests against the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) summit. With guns drawn, the cops arrested 11 people in or around the apartment and quickly disappeared them into the bowels of the extensive network of detention facilities in Cook County, Illinois, USA.

After a few days, a few things started becoming clear: two of the arrested “activists” were actually undercover Chicago cops who had targeted the real activists for arrest, six of them were illegally held and released at the last possible minute before court action could be taken to force their release, and three had been slapped with trumped-up, politically motivated terrorism charges for allegedly creating Molotov cocktails. These three—Brent Betterly, Brian Jacob Church, Jared Chase—became known as the NATO 3.

These activists were ultimately charged with 11 felony counts: material support for terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism, possession of an incendiary device (four counts), conspiracy to commit arson, solicitation to commit arson, attempt arson, and unlawful use of a weapon (two counts). The terrorism charges are part of the Illinois state version of the USA Patriot Act, which was passed shortly after 9/11. The prosecutors initially argued that this alleged conspiracy began with the start of the Occupy movement, but later amended their story to say they were mostly considering events, actions and discussions that allegedly took place once the defendants arrived in Chicago.

The NATO 3 are scheduled to go to trial on January 6, 2014. They face up to 40 years in prison each and, as they are being held on $1.5 million bond each, they have been incarcerated since their arrests. Their defense attorneys, many of whom are involved in the People’s Law Office or National Lawyers Guild—Chicago, have been challenging their charges and bond situation since they were first arrested, but the judge has consistently sided with the prosecution on important pre-trial motions.

The pre-trial proceedings show what the government has clearly been banking on since they first started cooking up this case: the draconian anti-terrorism laws on the books in Illinois give the State the ability to pursue outlandish, politically motivated charges to punish people for resisting the ravages of capitalism at home and abroad.

BY NATO 5 DEFENSE COMMITTEE

nato5support.wordpress.com

After two months of call-in and letter-writing campaigns to his office, Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) Director Godinez has reduced Mark Neiweem’s punishment for possessing anarchist symbols and literature to one month revoked good time. Mark will now be released on December 12, 2013.

As a reminder, Mark was moved to solitary confinement in July and later charged with two serious disciplinary violations:

Gang or Unauthorized Organization Activity, for his possession of “unauthorized” anarchist symbols and friendship with another anarchist in the prison.

Dangerous Written Material, for his possession of “unauthorized” anarchist literature.

After a hearing with an internal adjustment committee, the disciplinary action taken against Mark for these offenses included six months in solitary confinement and three months good time revoked, pushing his release date into 2014. Although this was significantly better than initially expected, we continued to pressure IDOC to release Mark on time.

Now this vindictive punishment for Mark’s political beliefs has once again been reduced, thanks in large part to public support and pressure to hold state officials accountable for his treatment while in their custody.

This victory would not have been possible without Mark’s legal team, who did so much more than simply represent him; everyone who called or wrote to Director Godinez and Governor Quinn to demand accountability; and countless people worldwide who sent letters and photos to Mark to keep his spirit strong.

Mark’s ordeal is not over, although it is a relief to have an end in sight. We have resumed preparations to welcome him back after his release and, more importantly, he is once again making concrete plans for his future after prison.

However, he is still in solitary confinement for another 10 weeks. He is still isolated even further behind a solid steel door with a feeding box, so he does not even have contact with the guards who feed him. He does not get enough to eat. His laundry recently went “missing” and he has struggled to have it replaced; meanwhile, the nights are getting very cold.

We cannot allow our support to diminish in wake of this victory—we must persist in our efforts to keep him strong and connected through this final phase of his incarceration. Please continue sending him letters and postcards. He has also requested photos, zines, essays, and news articles (preferably positive ones). All of the above should be printed on regular computer paper with no staples, stickers, or tape.

Prisoners have gone on work strikes at federal prisons in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan. They are striking against the Offender Accountability Initiative, which includes, amongst other things, drastic pay cuts.

Prisoner Peter Collins wrote an injunction for the “Offender Accountability Initiative,” which was to have been sent out on September 26, 2013 from Bath Prison. The staff at Bath Prison said they did not have any Express Post envelopes, so it ended up not being sent out until October 2, 2013. However, Peter does not know if it really has left the prison. It should be noted that Peter’s mail (even his legal mail) has been “lost” numerous times over his incarceration and even as recently as this year.

Additionally, the vice chairman of the Inmate Committee, Tuffy Chiang, and peer counselor Mason Jenkins were both transferred out of Bath Prison to Collins Bay Prison. The prison administration at Bath Prison has accused the two men of intimidating prisoners to participate in the work strike. This is false. The two men went around the prison speaking to prisoners stating that if there are men inside who want to work, let them. They reiterated on numerous occasions that this work strike is to be a peaceful protest, which it is. They wrote up a notice to the staff, which was given to a CSC staff person, that CSC would be responsible for cleaning the tables in the dining room, not the prisoners. The staff member who received this notice got angry. It was shortly after this that the two men were shipped out to Collins Bay.

According to an article in the CBC dated October 3: “Inmates were off the job in Ontario at Bath, Collins Bay, Fenbrook and Warkworth Institutions. Today, inmates at the Atlantic Institution, Donnacona Institution in Quebec and at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary in Prince Albert, also stayed away from work.” CFF (Centre federal de formation/FTC Federal Training Centre), a now multi-level prison, was the federal prison that was on strike in Laval, Quebec. This was confirmed by a volunteer in Quebec, but not mentioned in the CBC article.

Updates will come as soon as prisoners’ rights activists are made aware of them. What can you do?

Send out solidarity messages to Tuffy and Mason. How? Calls from Home, part of Kingston’s
CPR (Canadian Prison Radio), has a toll-free message line where you can leave a short message of solidarity for Tuffy and Mason and all the men in the region who are on work strike. The number is: 1-800.440.5219. To leave messages for the men at CFF/FTC in Laval, leave messages on CKUT’s listener comment line at: 514.448.4041 ext. 2547. We hope to find a way to send messages of solidarity to prisoners in the Saskatchewan and New Brunswick regions soon.

BY SOLIDARITY WITH STEVE

solidaritywithsteve.noblogs.org

It saddens us to announce that the grand jury investigation has received a six-month extension and will most likely conclude on March 4, 2014. During the past six months, there has been little news as to the current status or extent of the investigation and subsequent repression. The only news has been what has already been stated, the grand jury will continue.

Steve is still struggling against the grand jury. He is adjusting to life in a new city surrounded by good friends who are both inspiring and supportive. However, in the past week, Steve has been experiencing multiple instances of police harassment; harassment to the degree he has not experienced before.

About two weeks ago at one in the morning, while walking to the corner store, Steve was approached by two local police officers who screamed his name and threw him against their car and into the backseat. After several minutes of questions and insults, in which Steve remained silent, the car drove with Steve out of the parking lot. The drive lasted an hour while the two cops continued to insult and harass Steve. The harassment and verbal abuse was both common insults and questions around his forced exile outside of the United States. The cops went as far as to insult him, stating that they would beat him and leave him out where no one could find him. Eventually, the police stopped the car in an industrial park on the outskirts of the city. They then removed Steve from the car and stole his cellphone, jacket, shoes, and emptied his wallet of personal items and money. The cops then left him there. Thankfully, Steve was able to contact friends who later came and took him back home.

Unfortunately, only a few days after that incident, the cops returned to harass him. Steve was riding his bike home from a friend’s house when he realized he was being followed by a cop car. The cops in the car began to shout his name and ask him to “go for another walk.” Steve ignored them but the cops continued on his trail. Eventually, the cops chose to drive onto the bicycle path and follow behind Steve. At this point, Steve was able to cross through another area and escape his harassers. Again, Steve’s friends were able to retrieve him and take him safely back home.

Four days later, Steve was targeted again. While walking to the store near his house, Steve was stopped by two police officers and placed in the back of a patrol car. He was brought to a parking lot a half hour away and was kept in the back of the car for three hours until an unknown man, identifying himself as a detective, came into the parking lot and talked to Steve. The man told Steve that though he does have current legal status in the country he is residing in, the FBI is currently working to have that status revoked. The man also told Steve that if he does not return to the United States and testify before the Grand Jury, his life will become a living hell and that the FBI does not deal well when they do not get what they want. He suggested that Steve make contact with the FBI agents who want to talk to him but said the decision to do that is ultimately up to him. After the man left, Steve was dropped off in a mall parking lot on the outskirts of the city. He was able to have friends pick him up and take him back home again.

This recent harassment has led to Steve feeling more concerned about his already precarious situation. Although he does have legal status, he does not feel stable in his situation and is currently seeking counsel from immigration lawyers. At this point, he is entirely uncertain of whether or not he will be able to stay in his new city, or whether he once again must leave and travel somewhere new.

Steve has been been very grateful and appreciative of the donations offered thus far and continues to do whatever he can to supplement his income where he currently is. However, with the upcoming potential of legal and/or relocation costs, Steve’s economic situation has only become more unstable and stressful with this recent wave of intense harassment.

We ask that you donate whatever you can to help Steve. Please support Steve and the rejection of the grand jury investigation against anarchists. Take a moment of your time and resources to show your solidarity with Steve and let him know he is never alone!

A brief rundown:

In late July of 2012, our friend Steve received a phone call from a man identifying himself as a FBI agent. He was told that a subpoena had been issued for him to appear before a federal Grand Jury investigating the vandalism of the Kenzo Nakamura Court of Appeals. This phone call happened in conjunction with three other people being served subpoenas in Olympia and Portland, as well as house raids in Portland. Although Steve is a known anarchist in the Northwest, who has been subjected to state harassment before, up until this moment he has not been served or indicated as a suspect of the ongoing Grand Jury investigation targeting anarchists.

His life has been severely impacted by the course of events. He has made the choice to leave his former life behind in order to resist the Grand Jury on his own terms. This means that Steve has gone without face-to-face contact with his family, friends, and loved ones for many months.
The investigation and subsequent repression is still very much alive even though former prisoners Maddy, Matt and Kteeo are now out of prison. The potential for criminal indictments remains a real possibility. Also, the effects of imprisonment and future threats of going back to prison, which could happen if any of the three are charged with criminal contempt, are not something that ends once one has left the prison walls behind.

BY JERRY KOCH

jerryresists.net

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who has supported me in so many ways these past three months. It has been a hell of a ride thus far, full of sudden transfers and inexplicable delays. In the face of all that, I’m doing all right, although I’d like to see the sun more and truly miss the color green. I miss my friends and my loved ones, and I’m looking forward to the day when I can finally rejoin you all in the land of the living. But I am holding strong. I do not know how much longer the State plans to keep me separated from my family and friends, but I will not bend.

Compared to the vast majority in this prison, I’m lucky. I’m not facing the very real possibility of spending the rest of my life in this place, as so many of the men in my unit are. I am really fortunate to have such strong support on the outside. The solidarity everyone has shown is helping me through this and constantly reaffirms my resolve.

The Federal Grand Jury that put me here is only the most recent facet of an assault on those who wish to be free of state surveillance and intimidation. This legal onslaught has already targeted and claimed the freedom of many anarchists, but we will keep fighting. I will keep fighting. My politics, principles and ethics stand in direct opposition with this legal tool that is used to further enable the government in its assault on anarchists, and I will not lend it any legitimacy, nor will I comply in any way.

Thank you again to everyone for your truly beautiful acts of support. Your letters especially are helping me get through this, and I look forward to talking with many of you soon, on this side of the bars and beyond.

Last, please take the next few minutes to write someone who is locked up—believe me, it will make their day.

GERALD KOCH #68631-054
MCC NEW YORK
METROPOLITAN CORRECTIONAL CENTER
150 PARK ROW
NEW YORK, NY 10007

BOP not liable for retaliation against activist Daniel McGowan

BY PRESS@CCRJUSTICE.ORG

Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) released the following statement in response to the dismissal of the claims in a federal lawsuit that plaintiff Daniel McGowan was placed in highly restrictive Communications Management Units while in federal prison in retaliation for protected First Amendment activity. The other claims in the case, Aref v. Holder, continue.

“We are deeply disappointed by the court’s dismissal of Daniel McGowan’s claims against the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Mr. McGowan was designated, and then re-designated, to the Communications Management Units (CMU) in blatant retaliation for his political speech and activities. At the CMUs, he had severely restricted access to telephone calls and social visits—including a total ban on contact visits with his loved ones. Once he had been released to a halfway house, the BOP once again retaliated against Mr. McGowan, unconstitutionally placing him in federal custody days after he published [a] blog piece about the CMUs on the Huffington Post. While our claims challenging broad due process violations at the CMUs will proceed, Aref v. Holder also sought accountability for these acts of retaliation against protected First Amendment activity. Now, the court has held that, while non-prisoners may sue under these circumstances, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) bars Mr. McGowan’s damages claims because he was not subjected to physical harm. CCR condemns the second class system of justice created by the PLRA, which places unjust hurdles between prisoners and redress for constitutional violations. We will continue to vigorously pursue our case against the BOP.”

movemarie.com

In 2009, environmental activist and community organizer Marie Mason was sentenced to almost 22 years in prison for the arson of an office which housed genetically modified organism (GMO) research and for the destruction of logging equipment. Marie is now serving the longest sentence of any activist in the US for environmental direct action. Her sentence is part of a larger crackdown by the state on environmental activists, which has come to be known as the Green Scare. The Green Scare, much like the Red Scare and COINTELPRO, targets people for their politics. The government’s use of tactics such as entrapment, the spread of disinformation by paid informants, media smear campaigns, trumped up charges and harsh prison sentences are all too familiar to folks who know their history.

Marie’s persecution has continued throughout her sentence. Without notice or cause, Marie was transferred from the low security FCI Waseca Prison to the notorious FMC Carswell. Over a thousand miles from friends and family, Marie is cut off from the general prison population in a special isolation unit known for its frequent lockdowns and added restrictions on communication.
Marie was unjustly moved to this restrictive unit for what appears to be completely punitive reasons—even though her disciplinary record since her incarceration is spotless and she poses no danger or threat to the prison or other inmates. Marie has, in fact, worked hard to make the lives of other inmates better since her time in prison.

Marie should not be in this unit at FMC Carswell. No one should be in this unit at FMC Carswell.
We are launching a campaign to Move Marie out of FMC Carswell to a medium security prison closer to family and friends. This campaign will also highlight the continued attacks on the environmental movement, the appalling conditions in FMC Carswell and other high security prisons, and the use of isolation and long-term solitary confinement against prisoners.

We are calling on fellow environmentalists, radical parents, prison abolitionists, labor organizers, opponents of GMOs, musicians, artists and other rabble rousers to join us as we kick this campaign into high gear. This will be a time to put pressure on the Bureau of Prisons and to take part in creative actions across the world, amplifying the campaign to Move Marie and to Free Marie and All Political Prisoners.

You can help by participating on October 25! Joining the Free Marie Campaign is a simple commitment to serve as a point person in the campaign. It can be as simple as serving as a contact in your local area for organizing events and coordinating actions.

We will send out action alerts, event announcements and updates on October 25 to keep you in the loop. Sign up for the Move Marie announcement list: lists.interactivist.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/supportmariemason. Follow Support Marie Mason on Facebook and on @FreeMarieMason on Twitter. Organizers: join the Campaign by emailing us at movemarie@riseup.net and organize an event below.

Organize an event! Organize a phone tree to flood the BOP on the 21st with calls demanding Marie’s transfer. Organize a letter writing party (we can help with the materials). Screen a relevant film, such as If a Tree Falls, or the show Orange is the New Black. Host a vegan dinner to fundraise. Put on a benefit show or letter writing event. Anything else creative that helps contribute to the campaign! Contact us at movemarie@riseup.net and we will help you link up with others in your city to help you act on October 25.

We will be producing short films, launching a legal campaign, developing outreach materials, and more—all of which costs money. The more we get from donations, the less time we need to spend fundraising to pay for these important pieces and the more time we spend working on
getting Marie out of Carswell. We need your talent! We especially need the help of musicians,
artists, graphic designers, web developers and lawyers/paralegals.

Spread the word! Use the hashtag #MoveMarie on social media. The more people who know about Marie and this campaign, the more successful we will be. Tell your friends and family about her case. Distribute Move Marie materials (we will even mail them to you free of charge).
Send Marie your support! Leave a comment on her blog and we will mail that out to her: betweenthebars.org/blogs/6642/marie-mason. Send her a postcard, letter, comic strip, interesting article, story from a campaign you are involved in, a cute anecdote about your kids, whatever! Include all the information below:

Marie Mason #04672-061
FMC Carswell
Federal Medical Center
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TX 76127