“Mental Health Units” in Prison Are Solitary Confinement by Another Name, Activists Say

Christian Hill has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and major depressive disorder. In the New York State prison system, this classifies him as having a serious mental illness and confers a “1-S” designation upon him.

Under the newly implemented HALT Solitary Confinement Act, people with this mental health designation cannot be punished by being placed in the Special Housing Unit, or SHU, where they would spend at least 17 days alone in their cells. Instead, Hill and others with this designation must be sent to a Residential Mental Health Unit, a prison unit for incarcerated people with serious mental health needs. Jointly operated by the state’s prison agency and its office of mental health, these units are supposed to be therapeutic rather than punitive.

But despite its therapeutic intention, Hill still spends 20 hours in his cell on weekdays and 24 hours on weekends and holidays. For one hour each day, a door at the back of his cell is opened remotely, allowing him to go into a fenced-off pen adjoining his cell for recreation. “I do a lot of sleeping out of boredom,” Hill wrote in a letter from his Residential Mental Health Unit to Truthout.

Hill says he’s being punished because of his mental health needs. According to a new report, he’s one of hundreds who are punished despite the state’s laws designed to protect them.

Residential Mental Health Units Appear No Better Than Solitary

In April 2022, Hill spent four days in the Intermediate Care Program, a nonpunitive residential mental health treatment unit at Sullivan Correctional Facility. On the fourth day, he was feeling suicidal and asked officers to contact mental health staff so that he could be placed on suicide watch.

This was not the first time that Hill had expressed suicidal ideation during his 10 years in prison. “This was one of over 300 times I have been in need of or placed on suicide watch,” he wrote, adding that two of his suicide attempts had nearly succeeded. Because of this history, his requests to be placed on suicide watch are usually taken seriously.

This time, however, Hill said that officers told him, “Go fuck yourself.”

Hill repeatedly requested mental health staff, but said that officers continued to ignore his requests, eventually telling him to kill himself. Only after Hill threw water out of his cell was he taken to suicide watch, where he was stripped of all his clothing and belongings and placed under 24-hour observation for four days.

After those four days, staff charged him with several rule violations: assault on staff, violent conduct, engaging in an unhygienic act, threats, creating disturbance and interference with an employee. He was sentenced to 180 days in the SHU. But because of his mental health classification, he is serving his SHU sentence in a Residential Mental Health Unit instead, which offers several hours of programming, including 20 hours of group therapy each week, individual counseling once every 30 days, and a medication review every 90 days.

Prison officials also punished him with 180 days’ loss of access to commissary, packages and phone calls. This means that, during his time in the Residential Mental Health Unit, he cannot order items from the prison’s commissary (the prison store), receive packages from loved ones, or use the phone.

Just before he was transferred from Sullivan to the Residential Mental Health Unit at Marcy Correctional Facility, he says he was assaulted during the pre-transfer strip search. When he arrived at Marcy, he was placed in the Residential Mental Health Unit there and charged, separately, with an additional six rule violations, including assault on staff, violent conduct, threats, creating a disturbance and interfering with an employee.

He was sentenced to an additional 365 days in isolation on those charges and an additional 365 days’ loss of commissary, packages, phone calls and tablet use, which would have allowed him to utilize the prison’s e-messaging system to communicate with loved ones and advocates. For the next 545 days, he can only communicate by writing letters.

In 2008, four years before Hill entered prison, New York passed the SHU Exclusion Law, limiting solitary for people with serious mental illness. Under the Act, people who have been diagnosed with serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and/or active suicidality, can only be placed in the SHU for up to 30 days if they have broken a prison rule.

After those 30 days, prison officials must divert them to a Residential Mental Health Unit. In these units, separate from the rest of the prison population, people must receive four hours of structured therapeutic programming and mental health treatment five days a week, and disciplinary sanctions for acts such as refusing medication and self-harm are prohibited. The 2008 law also prohibited punishing people in these units with additional isolation except if their conduct “poses a significant and unreasonable risk to the safety of [incarcerated persons] or staff, or to the security of the facility.”

But, according to a new report by the HALT Solitary and the Mental Health Alternatives to Solitary Confinement campaigns, isolating people as punishment happens fairly frequently. Residential Mental Health Units “essentially have failed to provide an effective and humane therapeutic environment for a large percentage of its residents,” charges the report, entitled “Punishment of People with Serious Mental Illness in New York State Prisons.”

Reviewing data from January 2017 through May 2019, the report concludes that New York’s state prison system and its Office of Mental Health have not been following the law’s limits on punishment.

“Although these units are supposed to be therapeutic, they are frequently punitive,” said Jennifer Parish, who is director of criminal justice advocacy at the Urban Justice Center and a founding member of the Mental Health Alternatives to Solitary Confinement campaign. She noted that she has heard frequent complaints from people who have cycled through the SHU and various Residential Mental Health Units and many, she said, “felt they were treated worse than people in the SHU. This is not how this is supposed to work.”

Hill agrees. He notes that, under the HALT Solitary Act, if he were in typical solitary confinement (i.e., the SHU), he would be allowed his personal property, including his radio, fan, calculator, lamp, hot pot for cooking and prison-issued tablet on which he can send e-messages to family members. But in the Residential Mental Health Unit, he has none of these to help him pass the hours that he spends alone inside his cell.

Adding Hundreds of Days in Isolation

In the 1974 case Wolf v. McDonnell, the United States Supreme Court ruled that people in prison have the right to due process under the 14th Amendment — even for hearings involving internal prison rules violations. That same right applies to those in the Residential Mental Health Units, but according to the report, 94 percent of the 1,925 disciplinary hearings held between 2017 and mid-2019 resulted in guilty findings — and the vast majority of people were punished with additional time in isolation. The report also found that the most frequent sanction was for disobeying a direct order (15.2 percent), followed by creating a disturbance (12 percent) and interfering with staff (10 percent).

Both charges are vague and can encompass behaviors such as shouting or yelling, noted Tyrell Muhammad, a senior advocate at the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit that monitors New York’s prisons. The charges can also encompass actions such as watching staff extract a cellmate despite orders to face the wall, or yelling for staff when someone attempts suicide, explained Muhammad, who spent 27 years in New York State prisons, including seven in the SHU.

“The above are actual incidents that I have experienced and was given disciplinary tickets and a Tier III for,” he said, referring to the highest-level infraction for prison rule violations that carries the most severe penalties. “Many would believe that if one is charged with these types of infractions that [it] is serious to the point where violence was used, [but that] is very rare. These infractions are a form of retaliation. It is usually because someone witness[ed] something and these disciplinary tickets are a way of intimidation.” He and other advocates have noted that staff make the decision on what actions constitute creating a disturbance or interfering with staff.

In contrast, the report found that fewer than 4 percent of people in Residential Mental Health Units were charged with assault on staff, and fewer than 1 percent were charged with assault on another incarcerated person.

Despite the lack of severity of the charges, hundreds have been punished with additional isolation. According to the report, of the 399 people in a Residential Mental Health Unit during that time, 99 percent were punished with solitary confinement. Eight-five percent were sentenced to six months or more of additional isolation time. Their total amount of time in isolation came out to more than 823 years with an average of 753 days (or more than two years) for each person.

In addition to the punitive nature of being confined to their cells for 20 to 24 hours each day, most people in these units are handcuffed when they are escorted to therapy and counseling and, once at their destination, shackled to the floor with leg irons. If they remain free of misbehavior reports or infractions known as “negative informational reports” for 120 days, they are allowed to leave their cells without handcuffs and attend programs without being shackled. They are also moved to a cell with a television mounted on the wall, allowing them to watch TV to break up the monotony. But, Hill says, staff members at the Residential Mental Health Unit frequently write negative informational reports, which do not require a hearing or allow an incarcerated person to defend themselves against allegations of negative behavior. Instead, they must begin their 120 days again.

The report also charges that people in these units — who are primarily Black and Latinx people with serious mental health needs — have been punished at much higher rates than others in the prison system and frequently because of behavior caused by their underlying mental health conditions.

Over 80 percent in the Residential Mental Health Units were Black and/or Latinx. Black and Latinx people make up 72 percent of those incarcerated in New York State prisons and 37 percent in the state at large.

In contrast, white people, such as Hill, comprised 14.5 percent of people in Residential Mental Health Units compared to 24 percent in all New York prisons and nearly 62 percent of the state at large. They also made up nearly 26 percent of people in the Intermediate Care Program, the nonpunitive mental health unit (or, as the report notes, 77 percent higher than white people in the more punitive Residential Mental Health Units.)

Jack Beck, the report’s author and a member of the HALT Solitary campaign, noted that people sent to the nonpunitive Intermediate Care Program and to the Residential Mental Health Unit have the same serious mental health classifications. “There’s tremendous racial bias in the disciplinary system — and in the whole [Department of Corrections],” he said.

Punitive Residential Reentry Units

In 2021, 13 years after the passage of the SHU Exclusion Act, New York’s legislature passed the HALT Solitary Confinement Act, limiting solitary confinement to no more than 15 consecutive days (or 20 days within a 60-day time period).

The law went into effect on March 31, 2022. It required the creation of Residential Reentry Units where people sentenced to more than 15 days in SHU will be transferred on Day 16. According to the Department of Corrections and Community Services, these units too are meant to “be therapeutic and trauma-informed and aim to address individual treatment, rehabilitation needs, and underlying causes of problematic behavior.”

People who have serious mental illnesses are not placed in SHU at all and, like Hill, are sent directly to a Residential Mental Health Unit, where they still spend at least 20 hours each day alone in their cells.

Now, Parish, Beck, and other advocates are concerned that these new Residential Reentry Units will replicate the problem of alternatives that are still punitive rather than therapeutic. “This is a cautionary message,” Beck said of the report and its findings. “If you’re going to have people in these treatment units but you’re going to constantly discipline them, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t change behavior. It’s totally ineffective.”

The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision did not respond to Truthout’s queries about these units or its policy regarding suicidal ideation.

The report concludes that the ongoing punitive approach to imprisoned people with mental health needs, even in units designated for these more vulnerable populations, “indicate that prison is not an appropriate environment for people with mental health needs.”

Its first recommendation exhorts the state to stop incarcerating people with mental health needs. Instead, it urges legislators and policy makers to expand and enhance community-based mental health care, diversion programs, crisis response, and alternatives to incarceration.

source: https://truthout.org/articles/mental-health-units-in-prison-are-solitary-by-another-name-activists-say/

After almost 50 years, former Black Panther Sundiata Acoli to be released from prison

Sundiata Acoli, a former Black Panther member who was convicted of murder in 1974 and has been denied parole multiple times, will now be released from prison. The New Jersey supreme court has granted parole to Acoli, ruling that he was no longer a threat to the public.

85-year-old Acoli has been serving a life sentence for the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper during a shootout in which Assata Shakur, the self-exiled aunt of Tupac Shakur, was also arrested. Shakur escaped in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum. Acoli had been eligible for parole since 1992 but had been denied so many times.

In the 1970s when the Black liberation fighters’ struggle was at its peak in the United States, it gave birth to militant groups like Philadelphia-based MOVE founded by John Africa in 1972 and the Black Panther Party founded in late October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The Black Panthers’ militant wing was called the Black Liberation Army.

Acoli, a member of the Black Liberation Army, was on May 2, 1973, driving just after midnight when a state trooper, James Harper, stopped him for a “defective taillight”. Acoli was then in the vehicle with two others — Assata Shakur and Zayd Malik Shakur — who were also members of the Black Liberation Army. Harper was joined by another trooper, Werner Foerster, at the scene. Foerster then found an ammunition magazine for an automatic pistol on Acoli. A shootout ensued; Foerster died in the process and Harper was wounded.

Assata Shakur was arrested while Zayd Malik Shakur was found dead near the car. Acoli fled but was caught some hours later. Acoli and Assata Shakur were convicted of the murder of Foerster in separate trials. Acoli said he did not remember what happened as he passed out after being hit by a bullet. In 1974, Acoli was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Acoli became eligible for parole in 1992 but was not allowed to take part in his own parole hearing.

All in all, he has been denied parole eight times. His lawyer, Bruce Afran, said each time he is denied, the reason given is the same — “he hasn’t done enough psychological counseling; he doesn’t fully admit to his crime, or he hasn’t adequately apologized for it,” according to the Post. In 2014, a state appellate panel ruled that Acoli should be released, citing good behavior since 1996. The state Attorney General’s office however contested and the case was sent back to the board. Again, it denied Acoli’s request. Acoli started appealing that decision.

After being repeatedly denied parole, New Jersey’s Supreme Court has now voted 3-2 to overturn a parole board ruling, according to BBC. Acoli’s prison record has been “exemplary”, the judges said, adding that he had completed 120 courses while in prison, received positive evaluations from prison officials, and participated in counseling. The parole board had “lost sight that its mission largely was to determine the man Acoli had become”, the judges said.

Activists now hope that Acoli’s release would bring attention to other elderly members of the Black Panthers who are still imprisoned in the U.S

SOURCE: https://face2faceafrica.com/article/after-almost-50-years-former-black-panther-sundiata-acoli-to-be-released-from-prison?

Products Sold by Companies using Prison Labour

Other side of the walls! Several months ago, i received this powerful copy of a hand-written graphic from a young incarcerated brother. Please take a good read, act in truth and with justice and share with others. Amen. Asé. – Photo: Baba Jahahara

#WE TOO

by  Shaka Shakur

#WE TOO

If there can be no peace without justice, then there can never be peace while the US Prison Gulag exists.

“Prison Lives Matter as Black Lives Matter!!!”

“There shall neither be slavery nor involuntary servitude unless duly convicted of a crime.” — 13th Amendment of U.S. Constitution

We as prisoners held captive in one of the united states many modern day plantations wish to stand in solidarity with our people as they protest the systemic racism and genocide perpetrated by the united states security forces and kriminal (in)justice system.

As our people march and protest in righteous anger and rage throughout the country, we not only want to add our voices in unity, we also want to say, We Too!

We Too! Are often murdered/lynched in the streets by the u.s. security forces and throughout its prison system, and it’s ruled a suicide or natural causes.

We Too! Are often lynched in the biased and racist courtrooms throughout amerika as we are railroaded into the Prison Industrial Complex.

We Too! Are systematically harvested from our communities and families and fed into the Prison Industrial Complex in the interest of big business, privatization and social control.

We Too! Are often the first to be sentenced to death, either literally or figuratively through a slow death of an outrageous amount of years.

We Too! Are the victim of racist attacks and beatings while unarmed or handcuffed behind our back by racist guards or strike teams and its covered up.

We Too! Are subjected to white supremacist gangs and militias hiding in plain sight behind badges, in prison guard uniforms and as prison administrators.

We too! Are subjected to the planting of evidence, the filing of false reports/charges and thereby extending our sentences without any checks and balances or oversight.

We Too! Are subjected to decades in solitary confinement without due process or penological justification.

We Too! Are the first to be denied parole or clemency for decades, no matter how many programs we have completed and in spite of meeting the criteria.

We Too! Are denied preventable health care and allowed to die and suffer due to official Indifference.

We Too! In the midst of a pandemic that is sweeping the country and ravishing the prison system, are also being denied C-19 testing.

We Too! Are being denied serious consideration for early release or pardons based on the color of our skin, what city or community we come from or based on our politics or religious beliefs.

We Too! Are here and feel your pain, because your pain is our pain and we stand united and in solidarity with you because Prison Lives Matter as Black Lives Matter!!!

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE WHO FIGHT FOR IT!!!

Committee For Freedom C.F.F.

Shaka Shakur #1996207

K.M.C.C
P.O. Box 860 Oakwood, Va 24631

 

 

source: #WE TOO 

Rashid Johnson: ‘Prison has always served a particular political function’

Remarks were given April 24 at the “U.S. Empire vs. Political Prisoners” webinar teach-in sponsored by Mobilization4Mumia and held in honor of the 66th birthday of political prisoner and revolutionary Mumia Abu-Jamal, incarcerated for 39 years by the U.S. state. Kevin Rashid Johnson, currently incarcerated in the Pendleton Correctional Facility in Indiana, is a member of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.  

By Kevin Rashid Johnson

I’d like to extend my revolutionary salute to Mumia on his birthday. And I think that we do need to continue to fight for his freedom after decades of unlawful and political imprisonment. And to sum up quickly, from the dungeons of feudal Europe to the razor-wire plantations of today’s capitalist America, prison has always served a particular political function. Containing, suppressing and discouraging people of color, the poor and the people from resisting the oppressive conditions imposed upon us by our class enemies.

In fact, alongside the police and military, the role of prisons is an essential aspect of the ruling-class nation’s exercise of state power. So it’s neither accidental, nor the product of devious conspiracy, that prisons in capitalist society are targeted at specific demographics and poor people. It is therefore the central component of the struggle against class and racial oppression that all of us unite and struggle against in prisons as they exist and operate in capitalist society.

This is especially important and relevant in this era of the global COVID-19 pandemic where prisons present the particular danger of the spread of this pandemic and the greater danger to the lives of those in prison, who are particularly vulnerable to this virus. So not only must we up the ante in the fight against the injustice of mass incarceration, we must also develop new alliances and methods of struggle, seizure and exercise of power by the masses in the face of these new challenges that the establishment has proven utterly incompetent and incapable of protecting anyone from.

And with that, I will conclude with these words: Dare to struggle, dare to win. And we should fight for all power to all the people.

source: https://www.workers.org/2020/05/48698/

Angola State Prison: A Short History

Angola State Prison.
Courtesy Louisiana State Department of Corrections

Angola State Prison was located on land that was originally an 8,000-acre plantation in West Feliciana Parish, in a remote region of Louisiana. The nearest town was 30 miles away. The plantation was named Angola, after the homeland of its former slaves. It traced its origins as a prison back to 1880, when inmates were housed in the old slave quarters and worked on the plantation. In those years, a private firm ran the state penitentiary. After news reports of brutality against inmates, the state of Louisiana took control of Angola in 1901.

Throughout the ensuing decades, Angola State Prison faced numerous problems thanks to its geography and administration. The penitentiary was bounded on three sides by the Mississippi River. In 1902, 1912, and 1922, floods destroyed the crops—a key source of funding for the penitentiary’s operating costs. During the Great Depression, the prison facilities fell into poor shape after its budget was cut severely. Conditions became so bad that 31 inmates sliced their Achilles tendons to publicize their objections to hard labor and brutality. In the 1950s, a new governor fulfilled his campaign promise to clean up Angola, renovate the old buildings, and add new camps—as the prison buildings were called.

In the 1960s, Angola once more fell on hard times and was christened “the bloodiest prison in the South” because of the high rate of inmate assaults. Again, the penitentiary saw major renovations, improvement in medical care, and other upgrades. By the 1990s, the prison was accredited by the American Correctional Association, a recognition of its adherence to national standards for jails. In 1999, the US Army Corps of Engineers began a four-phase project to improve the nearby levees at a cost of $26 million.

By 2008, Angola State Prison had grown to 18,000 acres—the size of Manhattan. It was a maximum-security prison with an inmate population that was almost completely African-American, while the officers who oversaw them were entirely white. The officers were known as “Freemen,” not guards.

Angola Rodeo.
Courtesy Louisiana State Department of Corrections

Angola had numerous enterprises: corn, cotton, soybean, and wheat crops; a license tag plant; printing services; a mattress factory (including suicide prevention mattresses); and a herd of 1,600 cattle. Since 1965, the prison had held a professional rodeo to entertain its inmates, employees, and the general public. Inmates participated in all but one of the events. A portion of the proceeds went toward the Louisiana State Penitentiary Inmate Welfare Fund, which paid for inmate educational and recreational supplies.

One could call Angola a company town. Anyone who worked at the prison lived in one of the hundreds of homes on prison property. The best behaved inmates—called “house boys” by the wardens—wore white uniforms, performed the landscaping work, and cooked and cleaned the houses, all at no cost to the residents. Other inmates who demonstrated good conduct worked in the fields.

The prison and its employees were part of a tight-knit community, one that Sullivan would find difficult to pry open for leads.

source:http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/caseconsortium/casestudies/54/casestudy/www/layout/case_id_54_id_547.html

REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE WITH THE NU-AFRIKAN BLACK PANTHER PARTY (NABPP): AN INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN “RASHID” JOHNSON

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is Minister of Defense for the New Afrikan Black Panther Party. He carries out his duties while imprisoned in the US. This interview originally appeared on his website.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE HISTORY OF REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLES ABOUT THE TRANSITION FROM BOURGEOIS FORMS OF SECURITY AND POLICING TO PROLETARIAN FORMS OF STATE SECURITY

As a class question, we must of course begin with distinguishing between bourgeois and proletarian forms of state power. The state is nothing but the organization of the armed force of one class over its rival class(es). The bourgeoisie, as a tiny oppressor class that exploits or marginalizes all other classes to its own benefit, organizes its institutions of state power (military, police, prisons), that exist outside and above all other classes, to enforce and preserve its dominance and rule over everyone else.

To seize and exercise state power the proletariat, as the social majority, must in turn arm itself and its class allies to enforce its own power over the bourgeoisie.

Which brings us to the substance of your question concerning what lessons we’ve learned about transitioning from bourgeois state power (the capitalist state) to proletarian state power (the socialist state). In any event it won’t be and has never been a ‘peaceful’ process, simply because the bourgeoisie will never relinquish its power without the most violent resistance; which is the very reason it maintains its armed forces.

Well, we’ve had both urban and rural models of such transition. Russia was the first urban model (although subsumed in a rural society), China was the first successful rural one. There were many other attempts, but few succeeded however.

What proved necessary in the successful cases is foremost there must be a vanguard party organized under the ideological and political line of the revolutionary proletariat. This party must work to educate and organize the masses to recognize the need, and actively take up the struggle, to seize power from the bourgeoisie.

In the urban context, (especially in the advanced capitalist countries), where the bourgeoisie’s armed forces are entrenched, this requires a protracted political approach focused on educating and organizing the masses and creating institutions of dual and alternative collective political and economic power, with armed struggle prepared for but projected into the distant future (likely as civil war).

But in the rural context, where revolutionary forces have room to maneuver because the bourgeoisie’s armed forces are much less concentrated, the masses may resort to relatively immediate armed struggle, with political work operating to keep the masses and the armed forces educated and organized, and revolutionary politics in command of the armed struggle. This was Mao Tse-tung’s contribution to revolutionary armed struggle called Peoples War, and with its mobile armed mass base areas these forces operated like a state on wheels.

But the advances of technology since the 1970s, have seen conditions change that require a reassessing of the earlier methods of revolutionary struggle and transition of state power.

The rural populations (peasantry) of the underdeveloped world who are best suited to Mao’s PW model have been shrinking, as agrobusiness has been steadily pushing them off the land and into urban areas as permanent unemployables and lumpen proletarians, where they must survive by any means possible. Then too, with their traditional role as manual laborers being increasingly replaced by machines, the proletariat in the capitalist countries in also shrinking, and they too are pushed into a mass of permanent unemployables and lumpen.

So the only class, or sub-class, whose numbers are on the rise today are this bulk of marginalized largely urban people who don’t factor into the traditional roles of past struggles, with one exception. That being the struggle waged here in US the urban centers under the leadership of the original BPP, which designated itself a lumpen vanguard party. As such the BPP brought something entirely new and decisive to the table.

As the BPP’s theoretical leader, Huey P. Newton explained this changing social economic reality and accurately predicted their present development in his 1970 theory of “Revolutionary Intercommunalism,” and met the challenge of creating the type of party formation suited to meeting the new challenges of educating and organizing this growing social force for revolutionary struggle.

The BPP was able to create a model for developing institutions of dual and alternative political and economic power through its Serve the People programs creating the basis for transition of power to the marginalized under a revolutionary intercommunalist model instead of the traditional national socialist model.

The challenge in this situation where such work has been met with the most violent repression by bourgeois state forces is developing effective security forces right under their noses to protect the masses and their programs.

This is the work we in the NABPP are building on and seek to advance.

WHAT HAS YOUR EXPERIENCE OF BEING A HYPER-SURVEILLED, INCARCERATED REVOLUTIONARY TAUGHT YOU THAT IS BROADLY APPLICABLE TO THE SECURE PRACTICE OF REVOLUTIONARIES IN GENERAL

For one, the masses are our best and only real protection against repression. So in all the work we do, we must rely on and actively seek and win the support of the people, which is the basic Maoist method of doing political work and is what the imperialists themselves admit makes it the most effective and feared model of revolutionary struggle.

I’ve also learned that a lot of very important work fails because many people just don’t attempt it, due to policing themselves. Many fear pig repression and think any work that is effective must necessarily be done hidden out of sight, fearing as they do being seen by the state.

Essentially, they don’t know how to do aboveground work, and don’t recognize the importance of it, especially in these advanced countries. They think for work to be ‘revolutionary’ it must be underground and focused on armed struggle. And even those who do political work they stifle it by using an underground style which largely isolates them from the masses.

I think Huey P. Newton summed it up aptly when he stated,

“Many would-be revolutionaries work under the fallacious notion that the vanguard party should be a secret organization which the power structure knows nothing about, and that the masses know nothing about except for occasional letters that come their homes in the night. Underground parties cannot distribute leaflets announcing an underground meeting. Such contradictions and inconsistencies are not recognized by these so-called revolutionaries. They are, in fact, afraid of the very danger they are asking the people to confront. These so-called revolutionaries want the people to say what they themselves are afraid to say, to do what they themselves are afraid to do. That kind of revolutionary is a coward and a hypocrite. A true revolutionary realizes if he is sincere, death is imminent. The things he is saying and doing are extremely dangerous. Without this … realization, it is pointless to proceed as a revolutionary.

“If these impostors would investigate the history of revolution they would see that the vanguard group always starts out aboveground and is driven underground by the oppressor.”

DO YOU SEE IT AS A VULNERABILITY TO HAVE OUR LEADERS ORGANIZING FROM PRISON? SOME COMRADES REFUSE TO ENGAGE IN PARTY/MASS ORGANIZATIONAL WORK IF IT IS CONDUCTED FROM PRISON. DON’T WE SACRIFICE OUR BEST LEADERSHIP IF WE DON’T WORK DIRECTLY/ORGANIZATIONALLY WITH OUR INCARCERATED LEADERS?

It can be a disadvantage, because it slows down development. But it is also an advantage, and our party is an example of this.

Historically, most revolutionary parties began on the outside and ended up targeted with repression, which included imprisonment of its cadre and supporters — fear of repression served as a deterrent for many would be revolutionaries as it was intended to do. For the NABPP, we developed in exactly the opposite direction. We began inside the prisons and are now transitioning to the outside.

Our cadre are getting out and hitting the ground going directly to work for the people. Look at our HQ in Newark, NJ where our chairman got out and has in less than a year led in developing a number of community STP programs, organizing mass protests that have shut down a prison construction project, given publicity and support to the people facing a crisis with lead in the water systems, etc.

So unlike the hothouse flower we’re already used to and steeled against state repression. The threat of prison doesn’t shake us — we’ve been there and done that. Like Huey asked, “Prison Where is Thy Victory?,” and John Sinclair of the original White Panther Party said, “prison ain’t shit to be afraid of.” And it was Malcolm X who was himself transformed into the great leader that he was inside prison who called prisons, “universities of the oppressed.”

All of my own work has been done from behind prison walls, and I have the state’s own reports and reactions of kicking me out of multiple state prison systems to attest to the value of what I’ve been able to contribute.

So, I think that, yes, some of our best leadership is definitely behind these walls.

Consider too that some of our best leaders developed inside prison: Malcolm X, George Jackson and Atiba Shanna aka James Yaki Sayles, for example. Which is something our party has factored into its strategy from day one. We’ve recognized the prisons to be potential revolutionary universities. Since our founding the NABPP has actively advanced the strategy of “transforming the prisons into schools of liberation,” of converting the lumpen (criminal) mentality into a revolutionary mentality.

In fact we can’t overlook remolding prisoners, because if we don’t, the enemy will appeal to and use them as forces of reaction against the revolutionary forces. Lenin, Mao and especially Frantz Fanon and the original BPP recognized this. What’s more, with the opposition’s ongoing strategy of mass imprisonment, massive numbers of our people have been swept up in these modern concentration camps. We must reach them with the politics of liberation. They are in fact a large part of our Party’s mass base.

HOW DO YOU VET LEADERSHIP AND CADRE? ON WHAT CRITERIA TO YOU MAKE YOUR JUDGEMENT? ORGANIZATIONALLY AND PERSONALLY.

Ideally this is determined by their ideological and political development and practice. But we expect and give space for people to make mistakes, although we also expect them to improve as they go. So we must be patient but also observe closely the correlation between their stated principles and their practice.

HOW SHOULD UNDERGROUND WORK RELATE TO ABOVEGROUND? HOW CAN THE MASSES IDENTIFY WITH THE WORK OF UNDERGROUND REVOLUTIONARIES WITHOUT COMPROMISING THE SECURITY OF THE CLANDESTINE NETWORK?

Underground work serves different purposes and needs. One of which being to protect political cadre and train cadre to replace the fallen. Also to create a protective network and infrastructure for political workers forced to go to ground in the face of violent repression.

In whatever case the aboveground forces should actively educate the masses on the role, function and purpose of underground actions while ensuring that the clandestine forces consist of the most disciplined and politically grounded people. It must also be understood that these elements do not replace the masses in their role as the forces that must seize power.

IN YOUR ASSESSMENT, HAS THE BALANCE OF FORCES BETWEEN THE POLICE AND THE POTENTIAL OF REVOLUTIONARY MASS ACTION FUNDAMENTALLY SHIFTED OVER THE PAST 5 DECADES? HOW DOES THIS AFFECT OUR ABILITY TO FORM ORGANS OF POLITICAL POWER AMONG THE MASSES?

What shifted, but I don’t think is generally recognized by many, is the PW theory is today too simplistic. Today we must organize and create base areas under the nose of the bourgeoisie with the growing concentration of marginalized people in impoverished urban settings. As I noted earlier the traditional mass base of rural peasants who feature in the PW strategy is shrinking. And Maoist forces in rural areas have been pushed to the furthest margins of those areas unable to expand.

There is little opportunity for New Democratic revolution in these countries, which calls for alliances with the native national bourgeoisie who are now being rendered obsolete by the rise and normalization of neocolonialism and virtual elimination of nation states.

***

BOOKS BY KEVIN “RASHID” JOHNSON:

PANTHER VISION

Panther Vision: Essential Party Writings and Art of Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, Minister of Defense New Afrikan Black Panther Party

“The original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense challenged the prevailing socio-political and economic relationship between the government and Black people. The New Afrikan Black Panther Party is building on that foundation, and Rashid’s writings embrace the need for a national organization in place of that which had been destroyed by COINTELPRO and racist repression. We can only hope this book reaches many, and serves to herald and light a means for the next generation of revolutionaries to succeed in building a mass and popular movement.” –Jalil Muntaqim, Prisoner of War

Available from leftwingbooks.net, AK Press, and Amazon

DEFYING THE TOMB

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin ‘Rashid’ Johnson
With Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoats, Tom Big Warrior & Sundiata Acoli

PLEASE NOTE THAT DEFYING THE TOMB IS NOW AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON AS AN EBOOK

“Your mission (should you decide to accept it) is to buy multiple copies of this book, read it carefully, and then get it into the hands of as many prisoners as possible. I am aware of no prisoner-written book more important than this one, at least not since George Jackson s Blood In My Eye. Revolutionaries and those considering the path of progress will find Kevin Rashid Johnson s Defying The Tomb an important contribution to their political development.” –Ed Mead, former political prisoner, George Jackson Brigade

Available from leftwingbooks.net, AK Press, and Amazon

WRITE RASHID

Rashid has been transferred out of state yet again, this time to Indiana. He is currently being held at:

Kevin Johnson
D.O.C. No. 264847
G-20-2C
Pendleton Correctional Facility
4490 W. Reformatory Road
Pendleton, IN 46064

The weaponization of suboxone strips: An evolving tactic in the ‘perpetual battle’ for control in Amerika’s prisons

With the advent of the opioid and opiate crisis in America, suboxone in the form of sublingual film, i.e. “strips,” has apparently become one of the tactical weapons used by prison administrators to maintain control inside prisons across the country.

by Rand W. Gould

“They call us walkin’ corpses, unholy living dead / They wanna lock us up, in this [American] hell” – Misfits, “London Dungeon”

With the advent of the opioid and opiate crisis in America, suboxone in the form of sublingual film, i.e. “strips,” has apparently become one of the tactical weapons used by prison administrators to maintain control inside prisons across the country. Albeit a hidden one, as suboxone is officially considered contraband; therefore, its possession and/or use in prison is illegal.

Nevertheless, many prison administrators appear to have turned a blind eye towards the flood of contraband suboxone strips smuggled into their prisons, as a tactic of situational control. They make a show of trying to stop it by instituting more restrictive mail and visitation policies, but it is only for show, as they know over 80 percent of all contraband smuggled into prisons, including suboxone strips, is smuggled in by their employees. See Rand W. Gould, “New Mail Policy in Michigan Prisons,” San Francisco Bay View, January 2018, 3 (also at www.freerandgould.com); and Akers v McGinnis, 352F3d 1030 (6th Cir. 2003).

The somewhat subtle use of pharmaceuticals, suboxone strips in particular, as a tactic to control prisoners, constitutes what “might be called the political technology of the body” in the prison administrators’ “perpetual battle” for domination within prisons, as well as part of the “machinery of power.”

Prison administrators have long known how effective the tactic of pharmaceutical straitjackets can be in controlling prisoners. At the very least, they’ve known this since the states started closing mental health hospitals, i.e. insane asylums, in the early 1960s, while filling prisons with their former patients.

At any given prison in Michigan, nearly half the population is legally medicated and, currently, a substantial percentage is illegally “self-medicated” via suboxone strips and/or other illegal drugs smuggled into its state prisons. This does not appear to be an accident.

The somewhat subtle use of pharmaceuticals, suboxone strips in particular, as a tactic to control prisoners, constitutes what “might be called the political technology of the body” in the prison administrators’ “perpetual battle” for domination within prisons, as well as part of the “machinery of power.” See Michel Foucault, “Discipline and Punish,” translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 26 & 183.

This “political anatomy” is applied as a tactic in the battle, or war, to produce “docile bodies.” Ibid, 138 (internal quotes omitted). And it is a war, “a continuation of politics by other means,” which “cannot for a single minute be separated from politics.” See Karl Von Clausewitz, “On War” (1833) and Mao Zedong, “Lecture” (1938), respectively. As Detroit’s Fredy Perlman put it: “Politics … [is] the cancer.” See “Letters of Insurgents” (1976), 196.

For a long time, the primary weapon of the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC), like many other state DOCs, for controlling prisoners was television (TV). It was an especially effective tactic, when combined with drugs like tobacco (legal), marijuana and heroin (illegal), producing a relatively docile prisoner population.

So effective, in fact, that in 1998-1999, when then-governor John Engler threatened to remove TVs from state prisons as a form of further punishment, the MDOC employees union went all out to successfully stop him. It seems the guards were not willing to deal with less distracted, more conscious, less docile prisoners that would have resulted if TVs were removed. With legal tobacco long gone from Michigan prisons, and marijuana, heroin, meth, etc. harder to smuggle in, suboxone strips have become, whether intentionally or by default, a primary weapon for the production of docile and easily controlled prisoners.

Suboxone is the trade name for the combination drug formulation of buprenorphine and naloxone. See Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/buprenorphine/naloxone. Aside from its ease of smuggling into prisons, and pharmaceutical corporation profits, this writer does not know why it’s manufactured in the form of sublingual film, or strips. It is, however, flooding into prisons all over the country in such large quantities that it constitutes an epidemic of epic proportions, which needs to be stopped.

An epidemic, in part, due to the various state DOCs’ perpetual budget crunch, while engaging in the “perpetual battle” to control prisoners. In Michigan, this has resulted in guards’ jobs being reduced from decent paying positions with a good pension and job security to just another low-wage, dead-end job not much better than those at Amazon or Wal-Mart.

Consequently, many MDOC employees are willing to risk losing their jobs to make the extra money smuggling suboxone strips and other contraband into prisons, which is easy to do as evidenced by the fact that over 80 percent of all contraband in prisons comes in via employees.

It is an epidemic that MDOC, apparently, is doing little or nothing to stop. Prisoners repeatedly found guilty for possession or use of suboxone strips are rarely, if ever, denied parole for such misconduct. MDOC employees are rarely, if ever, prosecuted. At least it appears there are proportionally very few prosecutions in concern of the suboxone flooding into Michigan prisons.

As such, one can only conclude the epidemic of suboxone use in Michigan prisons, and those across the country, is no accident, and like the “opioid crisis” outside these fences, is a deliberate tactic to render a potentially revolutionary population docile and easily controlled.

People numbed by painkillers, or desperately searching for them to stay numb, are unlikely to become activists, let alone revolutionary fighters, in the “perpetual” global war waged on the poor and working class by the masters – the Scum-in-charge of Kleptocracy (SICK) – in order to maintain their positions of power and control, while spreading their SICKness, the disease of capitalism and civilization, to every corner of the world.

The solution to this Gordian Knot is simply a case of cutting off the chains of this SICKness, whether it be suboxone or another drug, by picking up a sword and using it, as Ursula K. LeGuin put it in “spell”:

“An unknotting. A disbraidment. A great magic. What is magic?

“I release me.”

A good, and necessary, first step. The second would be to make the manufacture and sale of suboxone strips illegal across the country and the world. Especially if we want more prisoners to wake up, get off their bunks, and join the battle for the abolition of prisons!

Send our brother some love and light: Rand W. Gould, C-187131, Central Michigan Correctional Facility, 320 N Hubbard St., St. Louis, MI 48880. Visit his website at http://www.freerandgould.com.

source: https://sfbayview.com/2020/02/the-weaponization-of-suboxone-strips-an-evolving-tactic-in-the-perpetual-battle-for-control-in-americas-prisons/

Prison Radio Commentaries

Violence and Hipocrisy: As American as Apple Pie
(5:02)
Dontie Mitchell

Trump in Triumph: New Wrongs Rise
(2:06)
Mumia Abu-Jamal

The Truth and Nothing But the Truth
(3:33)
Omar Askia Ali

Solitary Confinement
(5:48)
Khalfani Malik Khaldun

Chuck Africa Goes Home 
(1:37)
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mike
Born On The Move
(5:02)
Mike Africa Jr.

Delbert Africa, Free!
(2:51)
Mumia Abu-Jamal

More Clemency
(3:06)
Dontie Mitchell

The Trump Trials
(1:52)
Mumia Abu-Jamal

Sister Marpessa, A Griot Passes
(2:49)
Mumia Abu-Jamal

A Question of Leadership
(3:17)
Dontie Mitchell

Homage to Howard (for Howard Zinn Book Fair)
(2:08)
Mumia Abu-Jamal

Change is Coming
(2:37)
Omar Askia Ali

So the Public Will Never Know
(3:57)
Dontie Mitchell

Message for Cleveland
(0:44)
Mumia Abu-Jamal

The Truth is More Insidious and Treacherous
(2:16)
Dontie Mitchell

Leonard Peltier’s Statement read
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
(5:46)

When Impeachment Isn’t Enough
(1:48)
Mumia Abu-Jamal

An Open Letter to CA Governor asking for the release of Romaine ‘Chip’ Fitzgerald

By Michelle Alexander and Danny Glover

 

We are writing in support of Mr. Romaine Fitzgerald’s (B-27527) petition for release. He is now 70 years old and has been incarcerated for over 50 years.  He has demonstrated deep remorse for his actions and is no longer the person that he was a half a century ago. In the interest of justice, I entreat you to grant his release.

I am fully aware of the serious nature of Romaine’s offenses, committed in 1969 when he was still a teenager. As a result of important medical advances, the world knows far more today about the functioning of the teenage brain than it did fifty years ago. Numerous studies have proven that the teenage brain is not mature, is prone to unreasonable risk-taking and lacks the ability to engage in substantive forethought. These facts are borne out by the disproportionate number of young people who comprise the bulk of the world’s jail and prison populations.

It is also important to acknowledge the reality of our nation’s history. The 1960s represent one of the most tumultuous eras of our national development. Most observers would agree that the racial progress that resulted from that decade’s upheavals represent welcome additions to our vibrant democracy. It is unfortunate, indeed lamentable, that some young people who sought to contribute to positive social change engaged in activities that we all agree were both unwise and harmful. While Romaine can be counted among these well-meaning but misguided youths, nothing is gained by keeping him locked in a cage as an elderly man.

Scores of other prisoners convicted of the same offense as Romaine during the same period (circa 1969) have since been paroled. There is no logical, justifiable, or legal reason to continue to incarcerate Romaine, an elderly stroke victim who often requires the use of a wheelchair. I implore you to do justice in this case by granting Romaine’s release.

Michelle Alexander

Danny Glover

_____________________________________

Sign the Petition HERE!

For More Information about Chip