USP-Tucson: Supporting Women's Rights is not Terroristic.

 4StruggleMag is a classic prisoner rights zine put out by and for North American political prisoners and friends. One of the resources they link to is this great Legal Solidarity Handbook.  They also put out alerts about the abusive conditions of confinement being experienced by prisoners due to their political views, as in the case of anti-imperial prisoner Jaan Laaman.

Jaan is currently buried in solitary confinement in a federal facility in Tucson, Arizona for expressing solidarity with women and his grief over the loss of a friend of all things.

Especially if you're in Arizona, please email the regional director, as noted below, and urge her not to punish Jaan further.  The  BOP needs to know there are people bearing witness to how they treat our elders - and really,  those Communication Management Units need to be banned (that's where they'll dump me, too, no doubt, if they ever get the chance...).
 

to support prisoners in Arizona and fight the police state:

 tucson anarchist black cross     phoenix anarchist black cross

----------from 4strugglemag-------

Take action now! Political prisoner Jaan Laaman still in segregation, threatened with transfer to CMU

June 26, 2017

by 4struggle

Dear Friends,

As of today, Monday, June 26, 2017, Jaan K. Laaman, long-time anti-imperialist political prisoner, is still locked down in segregation (minimum of 23 hours locked down in a 6×9’ cell).  Jaan has been in “segregation” for three months simply for issuing two statements, a clear violation of free speech and human rights. He is being threatened with transfer to a Communication Management Unit (CMU) or Special Management Unit; punishments that are not appropriate for a prisoner of Jaan’s age, and would be a violation for practicing free speech.

After a prison hearing on May 4, 2017, Jaan was found to not have violated prison regulations regarding “misuse of mail,” but was found to have violated prison regulations concerning “misuse of  the telephone,” for speaking on the phone to a friend and conveying his support of the “Day Without a Woman Strike” (International Women’s Day, March 8, 2017), and his feelings about the death of his friend, Attorney Lynne Stewart. Jaan was sanctioned by losing 10 days good time credit and by loss of the telephone for 6 months (in addition to the loss of email access which was imposed without a hearing one year ago). Jaan is currently appealing this ruling. Meanwhile, Jaan is still in “segregation,” and still being threatened with transfer to a CMU.

CMUs are prison units designed to isolate and segregate prisoners. People locked up in the CMUs are completely banned from any physical contact with visiting family members and friends, and other types of communication are also severely limited, including interactions with non-CMU prisoners and phone calls with friends and family members. For more info see: https://ccrjustice.org/home/get-involved/tools-resources/fact-sheets-and-faqs/cmus-federal-prison-system-s-experiment

How you can support Jaan:

Write/call/email the Bureau of Prisons Regional Director and ask her not to transfer Jaan to a Communication Management Unit.

Please remind her that Jaan is an elder prisoner, and you are concerned about his health in segregation and you would be concerned about his safety if he is moved to a Communication Management Unit.

Mary M. Mitchell, Regional Director

BOP Regional Office

7338 Shoreline Dr

Stockton, CA 95219

Regional email:   wxro/execassistant@bop.gov

Send a message through the Bureau of Prison (BOP) website here: https://www.bop.gov/inmates/concerns.jsp

– Select ‘USP Tucson’

– Send a message that includes his name and number: ‘Jaan Laaman #10372-016’

Please be polite but firm in your letters and send the responses you get to jaanlaaman@gmail.com

 

Write to Jaan and let him know he’s in our hearts and on our minds.

Jaan has no access to news and access to phone calls. It’s important we send him some letters right now. Send him articles, so that he gets some world news and messages of solidarity and support. Let the jailers see that Jaan has support from the community and cannot just be left in segregation or silenced.

Jaan Karl Laaman #10372-016

USP Tucson

P.O. Box 24550

Tucson, AZ 85734

Background Information

Jaan is imprisoned at United States Penitentiary (USP) Tucson in Arizona, and is one of the last two remaining Ohio-7 political prisoners still locked up. The Ohio-7 were convicted in 1986 of direct actions to protest U.S. support for the white-supremacist apartheid regime in South Africa, illegal U.S. attacks on Nicaragua, and repression against advocates for Puerto Rican self-determination.

Jaan was placed into solitary confinement because of two short messages: one in support of the “Day Without a Woman Strike” (International Women’s Day, March 8, 2017) which was printed in the NYC Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) update, and his “Farewell Thoughts to My Friend, Lynne Stewart” which was broadcast on Prison Radio. Lynne Stewart, revolutionary peoples’ lawyer passed away on March 8, 2017. When the NYC ABC magazine arrived by mail to the prison, Jaan was promptly placed in solitary confinement. Prison officials charged Jaan with “threatening the security of the prison” because of these First Amendment protected statements. 

No one should be punished for exercising their First Amendment Rights. The United States District Court in Pennsylvania recently ruled in a case involving efforts to censure Mumia Abu-Jamal:  “A past criminal offense does not extinguish a person’s constitutional right to free expression. The First Amendment does not disappear at the prison gate.”

Pattern of Increasing Repression

Being placed in segregation is the latest act of repression by the prison administration, following increasing actions against Jaan. Over a year ago, the prison shut down Jaan’s access to email, and they have been censoring him in various ways since then, including withholding his mail and limiting access to his lawyer. 

Jaan was placed in segregation on his birthday and has been there ever since. There is a growing consensus as to the psychological harm caused by solitary confinement. In 2011 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture concluded that solitary confinement for more than 15 days constitutes torture and can cause irreversible harmful psychological effects.

Jaan previously wrote about the increasing censorship he has been facing, here. Jaan has been writing reflections about global events since he was first captured in 1984, so this level of censorship is certainly something new and different.

This update was written by friends of Jaan Laaman.  

jaanlaaman@gmail.com

Facebook: Free Jaan Laaman

Twitter: @4StruggleMag

To Be Free: Nina, Marilyn, and Perryville Women's Resistance.

One of the best professors I've ever had, documentary producer HLT Quan, turned me on to Nina Simone during my course with her on Social Movements at Arizona State University a few years ago. Dr. Quan probably doesn't realize it, but she has a lot to do with me embracing prison abolition. I ended up dropping out of school to take all this on, in fact...

Anyway, this tune is to honor the women of Arizona's Perryville prison in Goodyear who have been resisting coercion and abuse of late, and fighting back by speaking out. That not only goes for those prisoners assigned to the Martori Farms work crew, but those who are contesting the poor medical care, writing letters to legislators about conditions, helping other women file grievances, and resisting in a host of other ways - some much more subtle, like teaching another woman to read.

Now, the prisoners can't watch this video, but imagine that just for a few minutes you can commandeer a guard station and the prison communications system. Lock yourselves in, pop open all the cells, crank out a soulful tune, and dance...that would almost be worth the price one would undoubtedly have to pay, once they broke in and took you down for it.

That's just a fantasy to enjoy, women, not advice.

I often play Nina in remembrance of poet and former political prisoner Marilyn Buck - known as "the only white member of the Black Revolutionary Army". She was sentenced to 80 years for armed car robberies she carried out to fund liberation movements, as well as for the 1979 escape of Assata Shakur from a New Jersey prison. Marilyn and her comrades (see the Resistance Conspiracy) were also prosecuted for the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Senate building.

During her incarceration, Marilyn was known for her continued outspoken criticism of the US government and the prison industrial complex and her advocacy on behalf of other prisoners in addition to her art and poetry. Branded as one of the most infamous women "terrorists" of the 20th century, even after 15 years in federal custody Marilyn was considered such a threat that she was thrown into the hole and forbidden to even contact her attorney for two weeks after the attacks of 911, while they investigated any possible connection she had to them.

Because of that - and the officer and guards killed in the Brinks robberies - I never would have expected the feds to release her on parole. Never. What a blessing that they did. Marilyn developed an extremely aggressive cancer and was paroled on compassionate grounds last summer, two weeks before she died. She was always more free, however - even in prison - than most Americans who go through their lives as sheep.

Take some time to check out Marilyn's work...start with the Wild Poppies CD at Freedom Archives. Here's the title piece...

Wild Poppies

Marilyn Buck

[This poem is read on the CD by Marilyn Buck. ]

I remember red poppies, wild behind the school house
I didn’t want to be there, but I loved to watch the poppies

I used to sit in the window of my room, sketching charcoal trees
what happened to those magnolia trees, to that girl?

I went off to college, escaped my father’s thunderstorms
Berkeley. Rebellion. Exhilaration!

the Vietnam war, Black Power, Che took me to Chicago
midnight lights under Wacker Dr. Uptown. South Side. Slapped
by self-determination for taking Freedom Wall photos
without asking

on to California, driving at 3:00 in the morning in the mountains,
I got it: what self-determination means
A daunting task for a young white woman, I was humbled

practice is concrete … harder than crystal-dream concepts

San Francisco, on the front steps at Fulton St.
smoking reefer, drinking “bitterdog” with Black Panthers and white
hippie radicals, talking about when the revolution comes

the revolution did not come. Fred Bennett was missing
we learned he’d been found: ashes, bones, a wedding ring
but later there was Assata’s freedom smile

then I was captured, locked into a cell of sewer water
spirit deflated. I survived, carried on, glad to be
like a weed, a wild red poppy,
rooted in life

And this was one of Marilyn's last published essays, printed by Critical Resistance's paper, "The Abolitionist" (W2010):

Alternatives While Waiting: Self-Reliance
by Marilyn Buck

A community’s people, with their creative energy and labour, are the greatest resource it has, but an increasing number, mostly young, are MIA, in graves or prisons, into which so many rush obliviously when they act out Hollywood-constructed desires, images, and stereotypes to “make it” in the midst of still-white supremacist and hierarchical America. Far too many have embraced the 30 years of culturally-contrived amnesia that has mis-educated them to believe in the very system that exiles them to the cages. Valuable human beings – community residents, who could have and should have been the teachers, nurses, doctors, mechanics, public servants, and builders of their communities are disappeared.

Among the disappeared and exiled, many haven’t been formally educated or taught to read well, having dropped out or been driven out of the faltering California school systems, weakened both by funding and a general disregard for and animosity towards the children of the working and underemployed classes, particularly when Black, Latino, or Asian. There are a few, if any, educational or rehabilitation-geared programs within prisons. On a recent KPFA radio program, a freed elder pointed out that many of California’s prisons are on lock-down at any given time, meaning that the few programs that do exist, however reluctantly and apathetically, do not function much of the time.

In the prison charnel houses, forgetfulness or oblivion settles like quicklime on the spirit, intelligence and bodies of exiled and illegalized young people. A sense of responsibility to the community is replaced with rage, and beneath any posturing, despair, self-mutilation, and suicide.

Alternatives? To re-imagine communities with the resources to educate children, to provide work with sufficient income, to get drugs and the weapons of collective suicide out, to make the streets safe again for children, elders and the young women and men. This is similar to the 10-point program the old Black Panther Party called for, a program that in slightly different manifestations is still understood world-wide as necessary for community and nations’ health and well-being for peace and justice.

It’s never too later to learn, to get educated or develop the social or political conscience necessary to challenge the systematic social genocide of our communities. No one has to stay lost; no one is not subject to change. The question is: will you change yourself, have a hand in your destiny and development, or will you accept the changes forced at you by the prison systems’ dog-eat-dog programming that wants you to become a gladiator and a puppet?

There are many who are looking for ways to break such a decimating cycle. Meanwhile, what? The prisoner’s alternative is not to wait for alternatives and social change from the outside, but to begin a process of reconstruction on the inside.

To be a builder, or to be a demolisher, those are the choices. It’s easy to demolish, to destroy. You can be a one-man or a 100-man wrecking crew, but to build you have to become a bricklayer, willing to dig foundations, willing to take care of your neighbourhood and work with others. It means being humble and giving back because when you left you took a whole lot of human and community potential with you. It means learning what you need to know. Find a teacher, no matter whether they wear your colours, are your colour, or are low on the ladder of that peculiar prison concept of “respect.” (Prison culture doesn’t really give any prisoner true respect, or better-said, dignity; the man is still pulling the strings.) If you can’t earn a skill you want where you are (like being a doctor or an environmental engineer), learn all you can about the world. Learn about other societies; learn about communities’ fight for self-reliance and self-determination. Learn Spanish, or English, or Chinese. Or history. The more you study about the world, the better able you will be to see where you are and can go in the world. Choose to be on the side of the people who are not the greedy rulers and bosses.

Of course it’s easier to succumb to the haters who want to decimate your community, and to hang with those who participate in the suicide of their own communities through ignorance and individualism. Reignite your creativity and imagination that you may have put aside when you were 14 or that was discouraged in school. There is enough war from without, end the wars from within. Nothing can be build during a civil war, and certainly nothing can be defended from the war from without, without skills, knowledge and dignity of connection to and love for your community. Become a warrior for reconstruction.

Set a premium on education. No one can ever take it from you. Ultimately, knowledge and skills are more valuable than gold and SUVs, or anything you may have possessed for a few brief moments in life, before prison became your home with its prolonged lesson in absence.

Kantar: The Ballad of Alvaro Luna Hernandez

Excellent guest post today from Max Kantar (originally published at Counterpunch): Max is a Michigan-based independent writer and the Midwest representative for the Committee to Free Alvaro Luna Hernandez. For more information on Alvaro's case, visit www.freealvaro.net. Max can be reached at maxkantar@gmail.com.

Tucson Unified School District HQ
May 3, 2011.

--------------------

May 16, 2011

Without Fear

The Ballad of Alvaro Luna Hernandez

By MAX B. KANTAR

"I will never surrender my pride and dignity nor allow the system to 'cut my tongue' and I will always, without fear, speak out against these war crimes and crimes against humanity, no matter if I spend the rest of my life in a prison cage, and draw my last brea

th of air laying down in this steel bed surrounded by razor-wire fences and cages, and its prison policies that are designed to destroy one's humanity…."

—Alvaro Luna Hernandez, October 18, 2010, Hughes Unit Prison, Gatesville, Texas.

Locked in solitary confinement in a tiny cage inside one of the most notorious control units in the Texas state prison system, Alvaro Luna Hernandez is immersed in a stack of old law texts, his eyes glancing back and forth between court transcripts and a thick legal book every few moments. The streaks of gray in his full, and otherwise dark, beard betray his age in spite of his healthy, powerful frame as he reaches towards the ledge of the sink for a lone Styrofoam cup to take a sip of the stale, lukewarm commissary-bought coffee he drinks every morning, when he can afford it.

Just fifteen months shy of 60 years old, Alvaro has a remarkable amount of energy and routinely gets more work done before noon than most attorneys do in an entire day. Today he's putting together the documents to get a new trial on a writ of habeas corpus proceeding for another prisoner who is both indigent and illiterate and feels he has been wrongly imprisoned. After that, it's on to the cases of two other inmates Alvaro is helping out who are each facing several decades behind bars if their appeals fall through before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin. Other prisoners know to go to Alvaro for legal help; he has a well-known reputation throughout the state—indeed nationwide, as highlighted in the recent book Jailhouse Lawyers (City Lights: 2009) by Mumia Abu-Jamal—as a tenacious and effective "jailhouse lawyer" who has filed and won no small number of civil rights suits over the past four decades.

* * *

Alvaro Luna Hernandez is a political prisoner of the State of Texas and the U.S. government. He is nearly 15 years into a 50 year prison sentence for an "aggravated assault" conviction stemming from a July 1996 incident in which he disarmed a Brewster County Sheriff attempting to shoot him. Alvaro vehemently denies the charge that he assaulted the Sheriff. To Mexican-Americans in the cities, slums, plains, deserts, and prison cages of the Southwest, he is a civil rights hero, a Chicano freedom fighter true to his barrio roots and eternally fearless in the face of injustice. For years, he has been internationally recognized by amnesty movements and human rights lawyers and experts as a U.S. political prisoner, yet inside the United States, the name Alvaro Luna Hernandez remains largely elusive on the lips of progressives and social justice advocates.

* * *

A high-school dropout with no formal education, Alvaro hasn't always been such a capable, and indeed, brilliant, litigator. It was during the late 1970s that he transformed himself from a rebellious, zoot suit-wearing "pachuco" hustler in his youth into a prominent leader in the struggle for racial justice and human rights in the Southwest United States. While serving hard time for a crime he didn't commit, Alvaro educated himself about Chicano history, the prison system, and revolutionary political theory. He founded and headed up prisoners' study groups designed to rehabilitate and politicize other inmates.

With Alvaro in the lead, a powerful prison reform movement swept across Texas' criminal justice system and through the state's federal courthouses in the late 1970s and early '80s. Alvaro diligently studied the law and used his newly found skills to file an impressive array of constitutional and civil rights lawsuits against Texas police, judges, and prison officials. He and other prisoners utilized hunger strikes, work stoppages, yard takeovers, and federal civil rights lawsuits in a concerted effort to compel the brutal Texas prison machine to respect the human rights of its exploding prison population, made up almost entirely of poor men of color. Along with a handful of other prisoner-plaintiffs, Alvaro won a landmark federal civil rights lawsuit against the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) after a trial that lasted 159 days in 1978 and '79 (Ruiz v. Estelle). The court ruled, in a scathing denunciation of the widespread abuse of inmates by the prison system, that the practices of the TDC constituted "cruel and unusual punishment," and ordered a number of substantial reforms.

"Unfortunately," Alvaro says, "most of these 'reforms' were merely cosmetic….Despite these 'prisoner victories' in reforming the system, the federal-nation-state will only go so far because in Texas, the super profits of the state policy of mass incarceration has replaced oil, cotton, and cattle [as the biggest industry in the state]."

Alvaro's principled work to rehabilitate prisoners and enforce human rights standards in Texas prisons earned him the disdain and contempt of prison officials who locked him in administrative segregation, forcing Alvaro to spend almost the entire decade of the 1980s in solitary confinement as part of a campaign of repression aimed at political prisoners and jailhouse lawyers who threatened to expose abuses in U.S. prisons—including torture, killings, and beatings at the hands, or directions, of prison guards and administrators—and unite inmates under a banner of revolutionary change.

* * *

In March 1991, one year after he was moved out of solitary and back into the general prison population, Alvaro was freed from prison, having served over 15 years, after an investigative journalist for the Houston Post, Paul Harasim, uncovered a gross pattern of systematic prosecutorial misconduct and abuse (which included paying off the lead witness and suppressing physical evidence) in the murder case in which Alvaro was wrongfully convicted, narrowly escaping the electric chair. Certainly no bleeding heart liberal, Harasim nonetheless told readers that "What I learned about the prosecutorial behavior in the trial of Alvaro Hernandez in West Texas made my stomach turn….I wonder if I can support state sanctioned executions any longer."

Settling in Houston with his wife following his release, Alvaro wasted no time throwing himself into community organizing and political activism. He founded, and became National Executive Director of, the National Movement of La Raza, a civil and human rights group dedicated to empowering Mexican-Americans and struggling for social justice. Alvaro also helped organize and form committees to support the families of prisoners and bring about "truces" between Chicano street gangs in Pasadena, Texas following a number of tragic shootings. Spearheading the campaign to stop the execution of Mexican national, Ricardo Aldape Guerra, Alvaro founded and headed up Guerra's defense committee. Following years of tireless campaigning and legal battles, his frame-up conviction for killing a Houston cop in 1982 was overturned and Guerra was freed from Texas' Death Row in 1997.

Alvaro's impassioned and successful activism in the Houston area earned him international recognition. In the spring of 1993, serving as a delegate for an NGO, Alvaro addressed the United Nations General Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, criticizing the U.S. government for its record of human rights abuses of political prisoners and Mexicans in the Southwest. Alvaro's delegation was headed by Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her courageous human rights activism during the U.S.-backed genocide against Mayan peasants in Guatemala during the 1980s. Upon returning from Europe, Alvaro was invited to speak on national television in connection with the Ricardo Aldape Guerra defense case and began hosting Houston-area radio talk shows tospread a message of racial equality and Chicano empowerment. In the following years, Alvaro worked to inspire and educate young people across the United States, speaking not only at universities and conferences, but also at elementary and high schools, lecturing on an array of social and political issues ranging from human rights and grassroots activism, to American history, the criminal justice system, and the death penalty.

* * *

Following his divorce in August 1995, Alvaro moved back to his hometown of Alpine, Texas, located just 80 miles from the Mexican border. In spite of the fact that Alvaro had virtually zero interactions or confrontations with police in the five and a half years that he lived in Houston, almost immediately the local police forces in Alpine were all over him—arbitrary searches day and night, K-9 drug dogs, and frequent "traffic violation" vehicle stops resulting in no citations.

The police hatred of Alvaro in West Texas, especially in Alpine, is fierce, both personal and political, and decades old. Alvaro has always refused to submit to police authority and abuse; sort of like a rebellious slave in the spirit of Fredrick Douglas, but more like a modern-day Gregorio Cortez. When he was 17 he smashed up some police squad cars as well as the personal vehicle of a racist Sheriff following a police confrontation, a stunt which landed him three years in prison. Years later, in 1976 following an escape from county jail—at which he was awaiting transfer to state prison for the wrongful murder conviction—and subsequent shootout with law enforcement, Alvaro was taken to a windowless "conference room" in the jail where he was beaten within an inch of his life by several on-duty police officers. The cops took turns beating and stomping their handcuffed captive, causing him to lose consciousness, his face, eyes, and lips swollen and bloodied beyond recognition, his scalp ripped open with blood pouring from his head onto the cold concrete floor. Once the police were finished, they dragged a bloodied and unconscious Alvaro across the jail and threw him in a cell, leaving him for dead. The near fatal beating meted out to Alvaro resulted in federal criminal civil rights indictments of Pecos County Chief Deputy Sheriff Mike Hill and Deputy Sheriff Bill Mabe, culminating in misdemeanor convictions and probation for the officers. For his part, Alvaro was awarded substantial monetary compensation for damages following a civil suit. The convictions of the officers, however mild, ultimately destroyed their careers as policemen, thus earning Alvaro a special animosity in local law enforcement circles for daring to fight back against police on their own terms, both in the streets and in the courts.

Alvaro's persistent defiance against oppression has always stemmed from a deep-rooted thirst for the freedom so cruelly denied to him and millions of other Chicanos in the Southwest United States since the colonization and annexation of the Mexican territories north of the Rio Grande following what is commonly known as the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-1848). In a very real sense, the rural West Texas community of Alpine is like a microcosm of race-relations in the region. Like all of Alpine's Chicano residents, Alvaro grew up on the south side of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks which served as the de facto racial dividing line between Mexican-Americans and whites. Much like the Jim Crow South at the time, the parallel social universe of rural West Texas manifested harsh economic and political means of control to ensure the subordinate position of Mexicans in an Anglo-dominated society. The town's Mexican population was largely impoverished, locked into a near-permanent state of economic subservience to white business interests while the gross disparity in social services and infrastructure served as a very visible reminder of the prevailing racial hierarchy, not only in Alpine, but in the American Southwest in general.

The Alpine police and the Brewster County Sheriff's office were, of course, all white and patrolled the Chicano barrio south of the tracks daily and nightly with a brutality usually reserved only for the town's "meskins."

"People were scared of them," Alvaro writes in a letter from his prison cell, recalling how as a young boy he would go looking for his father or grandfather in the local bars, the Sheriff would often barge in, gun on his hip, to intimidate, arrest, and humiliate Chicano men and elders simply as a means of letting them know "who was boss."

Whether at the pool hall or walking the streets, Chicano youth were routinely singled out for arbitrary beatings and harassment by the cops. Alvaro was a tough kid, a self-proclaimed "vato loco" and product of the "pachuco" subculture. He was often getting into trouble for drinking beer or fighting, and had many violent confrontations with police as a teenager. Once at a high school football game some policemen were trying to arrest another Mexican kid and started beating the young man; Alvaro intervened to stop the assault and the cops turned their attention, and rage, to him, beating and pistol whipping young Alvaro as a hostile crowd gathered around, throwing garbage at the officers. The police busted open his skull, requiring several stitches, but not before taking him to jail, charging Alvaro with "assault on a peace officer." Alvaro's run-ins withthe police landed him, at the age of 15, in a juvenile prison run by the Texas Youth Council (TYC) for a year. The juvenile detention centers in Texas had reputations for being extremely brutal and abusive—so much so that the Texas Youth Council was ultimately shut down by federal courts in 1983 following over a decade of lawsuits.

* * *

Just months after getting released from the custody of the TYC, something happened that would change Alvaro's life forever. It was June 12, 1968. Alvaro was hanging out with his best friend, Ervay Ramos. The two buddies were cruising around Alpine in Ervay's brother's car when red police lights started flashing in the rear view mirror. Ervay was, like Alvaro, 16 years old, but didn't have a valid driver's license. He sped off and the police car gave chase. Fishtailing through a back alley with the wail of the siren growing louder in the distance, Ervay quickly stopped and told Alvaro to jump out of the car. He drove off and struck a nearby fence next to the football practice fields and landed in a ditch. With the cop car getting closer, Ramos jumped out of the car and ran down the alleyway hoping to escape. Alvaro was just feet away and saw with his own eyes what transpired next.

"The police car, driven by Bud Powers, a well-known cop with a reputation in the barrio for being racist and brutal, pulled up and stopped [behind] the Ramos car," Alvaro vividly recalls. "[Powers] stepped outside, pulled his revolver and shot the fleeing Ramos in the back with his .357 magnum pistol killing him instantly."

The murder of Ervay Ramos was one of a number of similar killings of Chicano youth by police in the Southwest at the time. Officer Bud Powers received a proverbial slap on the wrist—five years' probation—and never served a day in jail. The killing of Ervay Ramos was cited by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in their 1970 report to the President entitled "Mexican Americans and the Administration of Justice in the Southwest" as one of several examples of what the Commission referred to as a pattern of "serious police brutality" and "widespread discrimination" suffered by Mexican-Americans at the hands of law enforcement officers and the U.S. judicial system in the Southwest United States.

* * *

So when Alvaro moved back to Alpine in 1995 with political struggle and courtroom justice for his slain childhood friend on his mind, he was met with considerable police opposition. He was working as a freelance paralegal for attorneys throughout the state when Alpine community members began approaching him for help regarding police brutality and other injustices in town. They had seen Alvaro on television when he was in Houston, working against the death penalty and police oppression. They knew about his impressive record of civil rights activism and how he had litigated a number of successful federal and state civil rights lawsuits against Texas police, judges, and prison officials. Moreover, citizens sought out Alvaro for help because, in addition to being a prominent public critic of racial and social inequalities in Alpine, it was well known—both by the general public, as well as by law enforcement—that he was working on re-opening the 1968 Ervay Ramos murder case with the intention of bringing his killer, policeman Bud Powers, into federal court on murder charges.

The response of the Alpine police to all of this was to organize and carry out a sophisticated campaign, in the spirit of the F.B.I.'s "counter intelligence program" (COINTELPRO) of the 1960s and '70s, of surveillance, harassment, and repression against Alvaro. They hired a local heroin addict, Mary Valencia, to work as a police informant, ransacking his legal files and personal belongings while working as a maid at the motel he was staying at. Police followed him around, subjecting him to unjustified searches and harassment.

Worse yet, the police convinced the father-in-law of an Alpine Police Sergeant—a man who was known around Alpine as a local town drunk—to falsely accuse Alvaro of armed robbery—a ridiculous frame-up charge which Alvaro ultimately ended up getting dismissed in court while acting as his own attorney. In the meantime, however, Alvaro bonded out of jail by selling his car to the bail bondsman, but just weeks later the bondsman "withdrew" from the bond, unbeknownst to Alvaro at the time.

* * *

On July 18, 1996 Sheriff Jack McDaniel showed up on Alvaro's doorstep looking to re-arrest him. Brewster County's new sheriff was far from an anonymous cop just "doing his job." McDaniel had been cited in a victorious civil rights lawsuit filed by Alvaro against then-Sheriff Jim Skinner a few years back. Moreover, it was no secret around town that Alvaro was investigating Sheriff McDaniel for corruption and embezzlement of funds from the county treasury—funds that Alvaro alleged were being used at McDaniel's private ranch in West Alpine. Coupled with his work on re-opening the Ramos case and his long history of resistance to local police power, Alvaro argues that the prerogative of the cops was clear: "The police all knew what I was up to and they were determined to stop me at all costs."

When questioned on the legality of the arrest—for which no warrant was presented—an enraged McDaniel pulled his gun on Alvaro. Fearing quite literally for his life, Alvaro disarmed the Sheriff in self-defense before he could shoot, told McDaniel to leave, and then fled the scene. Nobody was injured. For three days Alvaro was able to evade law enforcement in the rugged countryside of Brewster County during the course of what was one of the most massive manhunts in recent West Texas history. Following a shootout with police at his mother's house, Alvaro was captured and charged with two counts of aggravated assault; one for allegedly pointing the gun at Sheriff McDaniel after disarming him, and another count for allegedly shooting an officer, Curtis Hines, in the hand during the shootout.

At the trial, witnesses testified that Alvaro never pointed the gun at McDaniel. McDaniel accused Alvaro of pointing the gun at his chest—threatening him with a deadly weapon—but Alvaro swears this is a lie. In a live interview on local television on July 18th following the confrontation at Alvaro's house, McDaniel told viewers that Alvaro had only disarmed him and neither threatened nor shot him.

"Days later," Alvaro explains, "when the Sheriff met with the District Attorney he changed his story to say that I had not only disarmed him but had pointed the gun at him—the difference between a minor misdemeanor and a first degree felony offense." The videotape was ultimately kept out of court proceedings; Alvaro's lawyer Tony Chavez is rumored to have potentially struck a backdoor deal with the prosecution. At the time, Chavez was under investigation himself for drug trafficking and was facing many years in prison under a plethora of forthcoming RICO charges. In fact, just months after Alvaro's trial, Chavez immediately took a plea bargain and was sent to federal prison for 30 months and disbarred from the practice of law.

Throughout the trial numerous witnesses, including former law enforcement officers, also testified to the intense, longstanding police hatred of Alvaro. Alvaro was found not guilty on the second count of shooting Officer Hines in the hand (it was determined that Hines was hit by a ricocheting police bullet). Despite considerable public protest, however, the nearly-all-white jury found Alvaro guilty of "aggravated assault" for allegedly pointing the gun at McDaniel's chest—an accusation which Alvaro vociferously and consistently denies to this day.

Alvaro Luna Hernandez was sentenced to 50 years in state prison in the summer of 1997. He will not be officially "eligible" for parole until 2021.

* * *

Though his appeals have all been exhausted, options still remain within the legal system to bring about Alvaro's release. The KOSA TV videotape interview with McDaniel may still exist, and a full review of federal, state, and local files pertaining to Alvaro, and his ex-lawyer Chavez, is likely to shed light on Alvaro's conviction and political imprisonment. Obtaining the pro bono assistance of one or more bright legal minds to help pursue other existing, and very promising, legal avenues to reenter the courts continues to be a top priority and a potential source of hope.

There is one thing, however, that remains clear and undisputed: absent a substantial popular mobilization and grassroots campaign pushing for his freedom, Alvaro faces a virtual life sentence of incarceration in the brutal control units of Texas' state prisons. Yet in the meantime, although buried deep beneath the razor-wire fences, uncounted tons of cold steel, and the rows of soul-destroying concrete cages of Hughes Unit Prison, Alvaro Luna Hernandez remains among America's most fearless political prisoners, incessantly struggling for freedom, locked up but never defeated.

Max Kantar is a Michigan-based independent writer and the Midwest representative for the Committee to Free Alvaro Luna Hernandez. For more information on Alvaro's case, visit www.freealvaro.net. Max can be reached at maxkantar@gmail.com.

Charges dismissed against the Arpaio 5.

Been battling dental oppression lately which derailed me early into Garyn and Claire's trial today, so I missed the grand finale, personally, and haven't seen much of a write up yet from others. As court was getting underway this AM - the prosecution having rested yesterday on the conflicting testimony of several cops - the defense was busy working on photographs and videos they had to submit into evidence. (If you ever need that for your own trial, bring a back-up machine - they don't have prompt service if their own projector or other equipment fails). The judge heard "Rule 20" motions from both defense attorneys. Rule 20 states the following:

Rule 20. Judgment of Acquittal

a. Before Verdict. On motion of a defendant or on its own initiative, the court shall enter a judgment of acquittal of one or more offenses charged in an indictment, information or complaint after the evidence on either side is closed, if there is no substantial evidence to warrant a conviction. In an aggravation hearing, after the evidence on either side is closed, on a motion of a defendant or on its own initiative, the court shall enter a judgment that an aggravating circumstance was not proven if there is no substantial evidence to warrant the allegation. The court's decision on a defendant's motion shall not be reserved, but shall be made with all possible speed.

b. After Verdict. A motion for judgment of acquittal made before verdict may be renewed by a defendant within 10 days after the verdict was returned.

The defense put up their first witness, a photographer who was present at the rally on January 16, 2010. They adjourned for lunch to research a few things, then reconvened and the judge dismissed charges due to lack of evidence that the state could obtain a conviction on any count if they proceeded. In other words, we ended up with a fair and honest judge, this time, and the cops who could have so easily compared their stories and lied to make for a better case, didn't. Maybe they were all satisfied with the jail time they nailed Grace with in her plea bargain.

I had to leave before lunch, but it's my understanding that the charges are all dismissed with prejudice, meaning that the state can't turn around and charge Claire or Garyn again. YAY!!! Way to hang in there, you two.

I learned a lot from the cops about riot control procedures during this trial, and about their own vulnerabilities when it comes to making arrests that can actually be prosecuted. The cops couldn't even identify each other in the march, much less individual protestors. They were disoriented and confused when the pepper spray hit, even the ones in gas maks. Their testimony was conflicting, except that all indicated pepper spray was deployed, it was a chaotic atmosphere, it was hard to hear and see, and no one identified themselves as police to Garyn or Claire until after they were in custody.

Garyn was arrested on the word and gesture of a cop whose glimpse of a similarly-dressed bottle-thrower was immediately obscured by pepper spray; an officer who couldn't even identify him as the thrower in the aftermath. He was handed off to several other officers for detention, arrest, and booking, such that it sounds as if the booking officer never even heard the integrity of the direct testimony of the witness. That was how the cops were organized out there to function, too - the front line would hand suspects out to the arrest team with a brief synopsis of what happened, then fall back in line, not follow through with the booking themselves - not really even know who was doing it, apparently.

The myth that made Claire an accomplice to Garyn's non-act of resisting arrest - supposedly chaining herself by the neck to his body in an attempt to obstruct police - was repeated by every cop that testified about her yesterday, but no one had any evidence of such a chain or leash, no did any of them see Claire wearing anything resembling a collar. The only possible explanation for this phenomena seems to be that Claire's purse strap got caught on Garyn somehow and when the police tried to take him town, they dragged her down on top of him, kicking and screaming with no idea of what was happening. It's a wonder no one got seriously hurt.

It was also clear from police testimony that they were expecting "trouble" from the anarchists by the time the marchers reached the site where the pepper spray was deployed - it sounds like they were trying to provoke it along the route. I saw photos and heard testimony myself that cops were punching people in the black bloc crowd before any bottles were thrown.

That all said, I think Stephen Lemons and the Phoenix New Times owe the Arpaio 5 a big apology for convicting them before trial last year, and not showing up to see how the real thing turned out.

Ohio Hunger Striker Victory; Executions still loom.

The SF Bay View does excellent coverage of both California's and the nation's issues related to political prisoners, conditions of confinement, mass incarceration, racial profiling, police brutality, etc., and will be following the Lucasville hunger strikers at the OSP - go straight there for your news. They often publish letters from prisoners across the country as well, so if you know any prisoners with something to say about the conditions of confinement where they are, turn them on to the SF Bay View.

Spacebookers, please hit the strikers' solidarity site and join. These guys still have a hard road ahead.

Also, a reminder that it ain't over yet in Georgia, either. The Black Agenda Report has been providing the best coverage of issues there, and is overall a great publication coming from the Black Left.

Finally, for those of you interested in supporting Arizona's prisoners and challenging the conditions of confinement here, contact me (see side column) or drop into the Conspire Art Collective at 901 N. 5th St, Phoenix (NE corner of 5th. St & Garfield) for a prisoner support group on Thursdays at 5:00pm. Look for me in red high tops and a cowboy hat. My cell is 480-580-6807 if you can't find me or just want to know more. The weekly meeting of the Phoenix Anarchist Coalition follows at 7:30pm.

---------------------------------------

A great rally, a great victory for the Lucasville hunger strikers

San Francisco Bay View

January 15, 2011 @ 8:23 pm

by Denis O’Hearn

Jan. 15, 4:33 p.m. – I have a short report on today’s rally at the Ohio State Penitentiary in support of the three men on hunger strike. But first, I can now report to you the wonderful news that all three have resumed eating because they achieved a victory. The prison authorities have provided, in writing, a set of conditions that virtually meets the demands set out by Bomani Shakur in his letter to Warden Bobby, provided below.

^[1]

Ohio State Penitentiary

The hunger strikers send you all thanks for your support and state that they couldn’t have won their demands without support from people from around the world. But they add to their statement the following: This time they were fighting about their conditions of confinement, but now they begin the fight for their lives.

They were wrongfully convicted of complicity in 1993 murders in Lucasville prison and have faced retribution because they refused to provide snitch testimony against others who actually committed those murders. Now, because of Ohio’s – and other states’ – application of the death penalty, they still face execution at a future date. Ohio is today exceeded only by Texas in its enthusiasm for applying the death penalty. We need to take some of this energy that was created around the hunger strike to help these men fight for their lives.

So, we may celebrate a great victory for now. Common sense has prevailed in a dark place where there appeared to be no light. But watch this space ^[2]for further news on their ongoing campaign.

I hope to share a copy of the Ohio prison authorities’ written statement that ended this hunger strike in a short time.

As Bomani has told me many times, “It ain’t over …”

Jan. 15, 4:40 p.m. – The rally at OSP was attended by a large crowd, including many members of the families of the hunger strikers, despite the freezing weather. Family members met with the hunger strikers this morning and they reported that they were in high spirits on ending their hunger strike and winning their demands, but that they now had to turn their attention to their death sentences.

Statements of support came from all over the world and a small delegation of relatives, along with Alice Lynd, went to the prison and left a copy of our open letter for Warden David Bobby ^[3], signed by more than 1,200 people including prominent people from Ohio and around the world. Warden Bobby was not there, but a designated representative received the letter on his behalf with a promise that he would read it.

The crowd then proceeded to a church hall in downtown Youngstown for refreshments and some celebration over the good news. The organizers, especially Sharon Danann and Alice and Staughton Lynd, want to thank everyone who supported these men for their contribution to this victory.

Our thoughts are with Bomani, Hasan, Jason and Namir, and we will remain at their sides.

Denis O’Hearn is professor of sociology at Binghamton University SUNY. His book, “Nothing But an Unfinished Song,” is a biography of the Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands. This story first appeared on the Facebook page “In Solidarity with the Lucasville Uprising Prisoners on Hunger Strike ^[2].” Contact Denis O’Hearn through Facebook, at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1533483976&v=wall ^[4].

Letter from Keith LaMar (Bomani Shakur) to Warden Bobby of Ohio State Penitentiary

by Keith LaMar

^[5]

Bomani Shakur

Jan. 3 – I’m writing to inform you that I am henceforth on a hunger strike. After 12 years of what can only be described as a double penalty, I am respectfully requesting that you cease this tortuous predicament that I am in. As a death-sentenced prisoner, I should be allowed the very same privileges as other similarly sentenced prisoners, and this is all I am asking, nothing more or less. Therefore, in spite of what your personal feelings are, I hereby appeal to your sense of professionalism and ask that you seriously consider the following demands:

1. Full recreation privileges.
2. Full commissary privileges.
3. Full access to Access SecurePac catalog.
4. Semi-contact visits.
5. Access to computer database so that I can assist in the furtherance of my appeals.

These things are presently being offered to all death-sentenced prisoners and, again, I hereby respectfully request that I be granted the same. As you know, my appeals are fast approaching resolution, moving me closer and closer to a day of reckoning. Please allow me the opportunity to pursue whatever my end will be with the same level of dignity and respect that other similarly situated prisoners enjoy. You have this within your power to permit, and I ask that instead of abusing your power that you use it justly, and soon.

Bomani Shakur can be reached by writing to Keith LaMar, 317-117, P.O. Box 1436, Youngstown OH 44501. Addresses for the other Lucasville prisoners are:

• Jason Robb, 308-919, P.O. Box 1436, Youngstown OH 44501
• Siddique Abdullah Hasan, R 130-559, P.O. Box 1436, Youngstown OH 44501
• James Were, 173-245, P.O. Box 1436, Youngstown OH 44501; refer to him by his preferred name, Namir Abdul Mateen.

Global solidarity with Ohio hunger strikers grows.

Hey all - tune into this SUPERMAX/death row hunger strike in Ohio. Check out the links at the bottom of the article for more. I'll follow this post with one about the rally. Here's the background post.

The letter that's been circulating (below) is being printed and given to OSP warden David Bobby, but nothing would stop readers from reprinting the letter or writing one with their own sentiments and sending it to the attention of:

Warden David Bobby, Ohio State Penitentiary;
Director Gary Mohr, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction; and
Chief William A. Eleby, Bureau of Classification, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation at:

Ohio State Penitentiary
878 Coitsville-Hubbard Road
Youngstown, Ohio 44505

Fax (330) 743-0841

You can also call and express your concern/support for the hunger strikers:

(330) 743-0700;

Email for General Inquiries

JoAnn.King@odrc.state.oh.us

-------------------------------

Lucasville hunger strikers’ support rally outside Ohio State Penitentiary on MLK’s birthday Saturday, Jan. 15, 1 p.m.

San Francisco Bay View

January 14, 2011 @ 7:26 pm

Delegation to present Warden David Bobby’s representative with letter of support for the hunger strikers with hundreds of signatures

by Sharon Danann, Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network

^[1]

This is the Ohio State Penitentiary, where supporters of the Lucasville prisoners on hunger strike will rally tomorrow, Saturday, Jan. 15, on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday

Three inmates on death row at Ohio State Penitentiary have been on hunger strike since Monday, Jan.3, to protest the conditions of their confinement. All three prisoners received death sentences following the rebellion in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, and have been held at the highest security level, Level 5, since they were transferred to OSP In 1998.

The hunger strikers, Keith LaMar, Siddique Abdullah Hasan (Carlos Sanders) and Jason Robb are simply asking that they be treated like other death row prisoners. A fourth prisoner, Namir Abdul Mateen (James Were), may join the hunger strike as his health permits. Other prisoners at OSP may go on hunger strike on Jan. 15 to show their support for the hunger strike in progress.

Robb has pointed out that other prisoners from the Lucasville disturbance have been transferred out of OSP or have had their security levels reduced so that they are not suffering the extreme restrictions of Level 5. In the words of LaMar, also known by his chosen name, Bomani Hondo Shakur:

“We have undergone penalty on top of penalty, kept from fully participating in our appeals, from touching our friends and families, denied adequate medical treatment, and so many other things that are too numerous to name. In a word, we have been tortured. And, yes, I’m aware that the word ‘tortured’ is a strong word to use, but I know of no other word that more adequately describes what we have been through. We have been put through hell.”

An “Open Letter” has been circulating and has collected more than 1,200 signatures (see below). In the sampling of the first 100 names, it can be seen that the prisoners have support from Ohio, many other states and all across the globe, among them many prominent citizens. After the participants in the rally have had the opportunity to add their names to the list, a delegation of friends and family members of the hunger strikers will proceed to OSP to present the signed letter to Warden David Bobby’s designated representative. Youngstown attorney Staughton Lynd is available to answer questions about the “Open Letter” at (330) 652-9635.

Supporters are driving in from other states and from several Ohio cities to participate in the rally at the gates of OSP. Family members of the hunger strikers will be in attendance. Messages of solidarity will be read that are coming in from across the country and around the world. In particular, people in Ireland are remembering the tragic deaths of 10 prisoners who went on hunger strike thirty years ago and are sending words of understanding and support.

The location for Saturday’s event is 878 Coitsville-Hubbard Rd., Youngstown, Ohio. The rally and press conference is a joint effort of the Youngstown-based prisoner-advocacy organization, LOOP (Loved Ones Of Prisoners), the Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network and the Cleveland chapter of the New Black Panther Party.

Contact Sharon Danann and the Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network at (216) 571-2518 lucasvillefreedom@gmail.com ^[2].

---------------------------------------------

Open letter to Ohio prison officials on behalf of the Lucasville prisoners on hunger strike

To: Warden David Bobby, Ohio State Penitentiary; Director Gary Mohr, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction; and Chief William A. Eleby, Bureau of Classification, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation

We the undersigned call for an end to isolated “supermax” imprisonment in Ohio State Penitentiary. We are especially concerned about the cases of Siddique Abdullah Hasan (Carlos Sanders), Bomani Shakur (Keith LaMar), Jason Robb and Namir Abdul Mateen (James Were), who are on hunger strike in protest against their conditions of confinement. We understand that they have taken this course of action out of total frustration with their hopeless situation at OSP (Ohio State Penitentiary).

These men have been kept in isolation continuously since they were sentenced to death for their alleged roles in the 11-day rebellion at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (SOCF) in Lucasville, Ohio, in April 1993. Hasan and Robb were two of the three men who negotiated a peaceful surrender in that rebellion and their actions undoubtedly saved lives.

Throughout their more than 17 years of solitary confinement, these four men have been subjected to harsher conditions than the more than 150 other men sentenced to death in Ohio. The conditions under which they are confined prevent them from ever being in the same space as another prisoner. Judge James Gwin of federal district court noted with amazement during the trial of the prisoners’ class action, Austin v. Wilkinson, that death-sentenced prisoners at the highest security level in the Ohio State Penitentiary wanted to be returned to Death Row!

The four have suffered Level 5 top security isolation since OSP was opened in 1998. This essentially means that they live in 23-hour lockup in a hermetically sealed environment where they have almost no contact with other living beings – human, animal or plant. When released from their cells for short periods of “recreation,” they continue to be isolated from others. During occasional visits, a wall of bullet-proof glass separates them from their visitors. They remain shackled, despite the fact that they could do no harm in these secure spaces. A few booths away, condemned men from death row sit in cubicles where a small hole is cut from the security glass between them and their visitors. They can hold their mother’s hand. With a little effort, they can kiss a niece or a grandchild. They do not have to shout to hold a conversation.

Hasan, LaMar, Robb and Were experience annual “security reviews,” but their outcome is predetermined. The prison authorities have told them, in writing:

“You were admitted to OSP in May of 1998. We are of the opinion that your placement offense is so severe that you should remain at the OSP permanently or for many years regardless of your behavior while confined at the OSP.”

The lack of a meaningful review violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Keeping men in supermax isolation for long periods clearly violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Moreover, the emphasized words above directly violate the explicit instruction of the Supreme Court of the United States in Wilkinson v. Austin.

These men are being held in solitary confinement permanently, until they are put to death by Ohio or their convictions reversed. This is not simply long-term solitary confinement, but in essence permanent solitary confinement.

Other prisoners sentenced to death for alleged crimes comparable to or worse than those for which Hasan, LaMar, Robb and Were were found guilty have been moved off of Level 5 – to Death Row, to Level 4 at OSP and out of OSP entirely. One of the four Lucasville defendants asks, “Must I have a mental breakdown in order to get off Level 5?”

We demand that the Ohio prison authorities remove these four men from Level 5 “supermax” security and that they end the cruel practice of long-term isolated confinement.

Signed by:

Jules Lobel, Vice President, Center for Constitutional Rights, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh

Christine Link, Executive Director, ACLU of Ohio

Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

David Goldberger, Professor Emeritus of Law, Ohio State University

Barbara Ehrenreich, author, academic, activist

Mike Ferner, National President, Veterans for Peace

Immanuel Wallerstein, academic and writer

Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Coimbra, Distinguished Legal Scholar, University of Wisconsin

Edward S. Herman, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Professor Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez, Director, Dr. James Dale Ethics Center, Youngstown State University

Andrej Grubacic, author and lecturer at San Francisco Art Institute

Peter Linebaugh, historian, University of Toledo, Ohio

Michael Albert, founder, Znet

Professor Thomas Mathiesen, KROM, The Norwegian Association for Penal Reform, Oslo, Norway

Jana Schroeder, Former Director, American Friends Service Committee Ohio Criminal Justice Program

Jesse Lemisch, Professor of History Emeritus, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

Denis O’Hearn, Professor of Sociology, Binghamton University, SUNY

Ellen Kitchens, CURE-Ohio, Inc.

Christian G. De Vito, Associazione Liberarsi, Italy

Lorry Swain, migrant rights activist, Ohio

Robert W. McChesney, Gutgsell Endowed Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign

Jason Jaffery, Development Director, ACLU of Ohio Foundation

Kathie Izor, Colorado CURE Board

Raj Patel, author and scholar

Katherine Soltis, Chair, Cleveland Coalition Against the Death Penalty

Ioanna Drosou, Greek Initiative for Prisoners’ Rights

Immanuel Ness, CUNY, Editor, Working USA

Ron Keine, Assistant Director, Witness to Innocence

Carlos Ivan Ramos, Ph.D., Executive Director, Hispanic UMADAOP, Cleveland

Michael Parenti, author and scholar

Veronica Dahlberg, Board Member, ACLU Cleveland Chapter

Professor Phil Scraton, Law School, Queens University, Belfast

Sam Bahour, Management Consultant, West Bank, Palestine

Bob Fitrakis, Editor, Free Press, Columbus, Ohio

Faye Harrison, Southern Human Rights Organizers’ Network

Reverend Dorsey R. Stebbins, Cincinnati, Ohio

Herbert P. Bix, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, SUNY, Binghamton

John Polanski, ordained minister, Mineral Ridge, Ohio

Judith Stanger, retired teacher, Boardman, Ohio

James Gilligan, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Law, New York University

James E. Ray, ordained minister, Poland, Ohio

Marcus Rediker, Historian, University of Pittsburgh

John Stoffer, Elder of Presbyterian Church, Salem, Ohio

Kathleen McGarry, attorney, New Mexico

Mary Ann Meaker, Ohioans to Stop Executions

Paulette F Dauteuil, The Jericho Movement for PP’s/POW

Sarah L. Duncan, retired teacher, Vienna, Ohio

Fr. Joseph E. Mulligan, S.J., Nicaragua

Jim Jordan, assistant for autistic children, Vienna, Ohio

Joe Lombardo, co-coordinator, United National Antiwar Committee, UNAC

Andrew Lee Feight, Associate Professor of History, Shawnee State University

Jane Stoffer, retired drug counselor, Salem, Ohio

Margaret J Plews, Arizona Prison Watch

Peter Rachleff, Professor of History, Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota

Lynn Thompson Bryant, Presbyterian pastor, Akron, Ohio

And more than 1,100 others.

Related Posts

• Lucasville prison uprising leaders go on hunger strike ^[3]
• Hunger strike of the Lucasville uprising prisoners starting Monday, Jan. 3 ^[4]
• Prisoners’ hunger strike enters second week ^[5]
• On hunger strike to be on death row ^[6]
• A great rally, a great victory for the Lucasville hunger strikers ^[7]

All my friends have FBI files: Policing prisoner support networks.

This heads up to prisoner support networks came today by way of the Freedom Archives' Political Prisoner Newsletter. I lost track of all the watch lists my friends and I should be on by now, but this might be an added motive behind anyone feeling particularly surveilled, harassed, or abusively prosecuted. Apparently if the feds really have it in for the prisoner we correspond with (like Marilyn Buck, whom one likely cop left me a disturbing comment about recently) - they'll just send the local and state police after us, wherever we may be in the world.

It all smacks of COINTELPRO and is probably legitimized under the Patriot Act.
Ironic that anyone would be so worried about our kind of "extremists" in this state - it's the ones holding office who really threaten public safety, not the Anarchists.

I shouldn't really have to say this, but no matter how "innocent" you think are, don't let anyone in uninvited without a proper warrant.

---------------------------------

From: sacprisonersupport@riseup.net
Date: Sun, September 12, 2010 4:16 am

Recently we began receiving documents in response to a FOIA request we filed with the FBI about Eric McDavid. The documents have uncovered a few alarming pieces of information, but one in particular we felt it necessary to share with the public as soon as possible. For years people have been speculating that writing political prisoners would result in a person being “put on a list.” Unfortunately, it seems that those speculations were not unfounded.

We have received perhaps hundreds of pages documenting Eric's correspondence with other people. These letters are not just kept on file ­ the Sacramento County Main Jail forwarded all of these letters to the Sacramento FBI field office, which then forwarded them to local field offices around the country (and to law enforcement internationally) to warn the FBI in other cities of a “possible environmental/ animal rights extremist” or “a possible anarchist extremist” in their community.

Originally, the FBI's communications included a statement that “Sacramento is forwarding this communication for information purposes only.” But later, they began including a much longer statement which read, in part: “this information has been determined to be of such a nature that some follow-up as to the possibility of criminal activity is warranted...” These statements were included no matter what was the content of the letter ­ often the documents include the statement that the letter was “benign in nature.”

It is unclear whether or not the FBI is still forwarding Eric's correspondence to local field offices. We have not received any documents dated after his move to a federal facility. It is also unknown whether or not all correspondence with political prisoners is treated in the same
manner. What we do know is that if a person sent Eric a letter to the Sacramento County Main Jail with their full name and address on it, the local FBI field office more than likely now has that information.

We are not sharing this information to raise alarm or spread fear. We have every intention of continuing to write political prisoners, and we urge others to do the same. That said, we hope to expose the FBI's politically motivated investigations and, unlike the FBI, we believe people have a right to know when they have been spied on. This kind of government intrusion could cause the “chilling effect” so often thrown about in conversations about 1st amendment activities. But when we give in to those fears, political prisoners are the ones who suffer. And this is exactly what the government wants.

The state is constantly trying to expand its reach by gathering information about social movements and those who participate in them. Instead of letting this new information scare us
into silence, we should use it to make informed decisions about how we support and prioritize political prisoners. This kind of repression has implications for more than just people involved in “activism.” Millions of people are incarcerated in this country. It is possible that the government uses similar tactics to investigate other communities that they actively repress. Writing our friends, family members and comrades should not be a justified excuse for investigation ­ no matter who our friends are.

If you would like to view some of these documents, you may do so at:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/09/12/18658489.php

If you would like to find out if the FBI has been collecting information
on you, here is a website that explains how to request information under
the freedom of information act.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/press/information/topic.aspx?topic=how_to_FOIA

Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org

Questions and comments may be sent to claude@freedomarchives.org

Davis: The Challenges of Prison Abolition

Celebrate the International Observation of the Anniversary of
the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade:

ABOLISH THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!!
--------------------

this is a great article from a few years back, posted in History is a Weapon, with Angela Davis making the connections between the institution of slavery and the prison industrial complex of today.

-------------------

The Challenge of Prison Abolition:

A conversation between Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodriguez

2004

History is a weapon

Angela Y. Davis teaches in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California (215 Oakes College, Santa Cruz, CA 95060), and has been actively involved in prison-related campaigns since the events that led to her own incarceration in 1970. Dylan Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor at University of California - Riverside and was involved in the formation of Critical Resistance. Rodriguez’s first book, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the Formation of the U.S. Prison Regime will be published in 2005 by the University of Minnesota Press.


Dylan: Your emergence as a radical prison activist was deeply influenced by your experience as a prisoner. Could you talk a bit about how imprisonment affected your political formation, and the impact that it had on your eventual identification as prison abolitionists?

Angela: The time I spent in jail was both an outcome of my work on prison issues and a profound influence on my subsequent trajectory as a prison activist. When I was arrested in the summer of 1970 in connection with my involvement in the campaign to free George Jackson and the Soledad Brothers, I was one of many activists who had been previously active in defense movements. In editing the anthology, If They Come in the Morning (1971) while I was in jail, Bettina Aptheker and I attempted to draw upon the organizing and legal experiences associated with a vast number of contemporary campaigns to free political prisoners. The most important lessons emanating from those campaigns, we thought, demonstrated the need to examine the overall role of the prison system, especially its class and racial character.

There was a relationship, as George Jackson had insisted, between the rising numbers of political prisoners and the imprisonment of increasing numbers of poor people of color. If prison was the state-sanctioned destination for activists such as myself, it was also used as a surrogate solution to social problems associated with poverty and racism. Although imprisonment was equated with rehabilitation in the dominant discourse at that time, it was obvious to us that its primary purpose was repression. Along with other radical activists of that era, we thus began to explore what it might mean to combine our call for the freedom of political prisoners with an embryonic call for the abolition of prisons. Of course we had not yet thought through all of the implications of such a position, but today it seems that what was viewed at that time as political naivete, the un-theorized and utopian impulses of young people trying to be revolutionary, foreshadowed what was to become, at the turn of the century, the important project of critically examining the political economy of a prison system, whose unrestrained growth urgently needs to be reversed.

Dylan: What interests me is the manner in which your trial -- and the rather widespread social movement that enveloped it, along with other political trials -- enabled a wide variety of activists to articulate a radical critique of U.S. jurisprudence and imprisonment. The strategic framing of yours and others' individual political biographies within a broader set of social and historical forces -- state violence, racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, the growth and transformation of U.S. capitalism -- disrupted the logic of the criminal justice apparatus in a fundamental way. Turning attention away from conventional notions of "crime" as isolated, individual instances of misbehavior necessitated a basic questioning of the conditions that cast "criminality" as a convenient political rationale for the warehousing of large numbers of poor, disenfranchised, and displaced black people and other people of color.

Many activists are now referring to imprisonment as a new form of slavery, refocusing attention on the historical function of the 13th Amendment in reconstructing enslavement as a punishment reserved for those "duly convicted." Yet, when we look more closely at the emergence of the prison-industrial complex, the language of enslavement fails to the extent that it relies on the category of forced labor as its basic premise. People frequently forget that the majority of imprisoned people are not workers, and that work is itself made available only as a "privilege" for the most favored prisoners.

The logic of the prison-industrial complex is closer to what you, George Jackson, and others were forecasting back then as mass containment, the effective elimination of large numbers of (poor, black) people from the realm of civil society. Yet, the current social impact of the prison-industrial complex must have been virtually unfathomable 30 years ago. One could make the argument that the growth of this massive structure has met or exceeded the most ominous forecasts of people who, at that time, could barely have imagined that at the turn of the century two million people would be encased in a prison regime that is far more sophisticated and repressive than it was at the onset of Nixon's presidency, when about 150,000 people were imprisoned nationally in decrepit, overcrowded buildings. So in a sense, your response to the first question echoes the essential truth of what was being dismissed, in your words, as the paranoid "political naivete" of young radical activists in the early 1970s. I think we might even consider the formation of prison abolitionism as a logical response to this new human warehousing strategy. In this vein, could you give a basic summary of the fundamental principles underlying the contemporary prison abolitionist movement?

Angela: First of all, I must say that I would hesitate to characterize the contemporary prison abolition movement as a homogeneous and united international effort to displace the institution of the prison. For example, the International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA), which periodically brings scholars and activists together from Europe, South America, Australia, Africa, and North America, reveals the varied nature of this movement. Dorsey Nunn, former prisoner and longtime activist, has a longer history of involvement with ICOPA than I do since he attended the conference in New Zealand three years ago. My first direct contact with ICOPA was this past May, when I attended the Toronto gathering.

Dylan: Was there anything about ICOPA that particularly impressed you?

Angela: The ICOPA conference in Toronto revealed some of the major strengths and weaknesses of the abolitionist movement. First of all, despite the rather homogenous character of their circle, they have managed to keep the notion of abolitionism alive precisely at a time when developing radical alternatives to the prison-industrial complex is becoming a necessity. That is to say, abolitionism should not now be considered an unrealizable utopian dream, but rather the only possible way to halt the further transnational development of prison industries. That ICOPA claims supporters in Europe and Latin America is an indication of what is possible. However, the racial homogeneity of ICOPA, and the related failure to incorporate an analysis of race into the theoretical framework of their version of abolitionism, is a major weakness. The conference demonstrated that while faith-based approaches to the abolition of penal systems can be quite powerful, organizing strategies must go much further. We need to develop and popularize the kinds of analyses that explain why people of color predominate in prison populations throughout the world and how this structural racism is linked to the globalization of capital.

Dylan: Yes, I found that the political vision of ICOPA was extraordinarily limited, especially considering its professed commitment to a more radical abolitionist analysis and program. This undoubtedly had a lot to do with the underlying racism of the organization itself, which was reflected in the language of some of the conference resolutions: "We support all transformative measures which enable us to live better in community with those we as a society find most difficult, and most consistently marginalize or exclude" (emphasis added)¹. A major figure in ICOPA even accused a small group of people of color in attendance of being "racist" when they attempted to constructively criticize the overwhelming white homogeneity of the conference and the need for creative strategies to engage communities of color in such an important political discussion. Several black student-activists I met at ICOPA told me how alienated they felt at the conference, especially when they realized that the ICOPA organizers had never attempted to contact the Toronto-based organizations with which these student-activists were working: a major black anti-police-brutality coalition, a black prisoner support organization, etc. So I certainly share your frustrations with ICOPA. At the same time, I find myself wondering how a new political formation of prison abolitionism can form in such a reactionary national and global climate. You have been involved with a variety of prison movements for the last 30 years, so maybe you can help me out. How do you think about this new political challenge within a broader historical perspective?

Angela: There are multiple histories of prison abolition. The Scandinavian scholar/activist Thomas Mathieson first published his germinal text, The Politics of Abolition, in 1974, when activist movements were calling for the disestablishment of prisons -- in the aftermath of the Attica Rebellion and prison uprisings throughout Europe. He was concerned with transforming prison reform movements into more radical movements to abolish prisons as the major institutions of punishment. There was a pattern of decarceration in the Netherlands until the mid-1980s, which seemed to establish the Dutch system as a model prison system, and the later rise in prison construction and the expansion of the incarcerated population has served to stimulate abolitionist ideas. Criminologist Willem de Haan published a book in 1990 entitled The Politics of Redress: Crime, Punishment, and Penal Abolition. One of the most interesting texts, from the point of view of U.S. activist history is Fay Honey Knopp's volume Instead of Prison: A Handbook for Prison Abolitionists, which was published in 1976, with funding from the American Friends. This handbook points out the contradictory relationship between imprisonment and an "enlightened, free society." Prison abolition, like the abolition of slavery, is a long-range goal and the handbook argues that an abolitionist approach requires an analysis of "crime" that links it with social structures, as opposed to individual pathology, as well as "anticrime" strategies that focus on the provision of social resources. Of course, there are many versions of prison abolitionism -- including those that propose to abolish punishment altogether and replace it with reconciliatory responses to criminal acts. In my opinion, the most powerful relevance of abolitionist theory and practice today resides in the fact that without a radical position vis-a-vis the rapidly expanding prison system, prison architecture, prison surveillance, and prison system corporatization, prison culture, with all its racist and totalitarian implications, will continue not only to claim ever increasing numbers of people of color, but also to shape social relations more generally in our society. Prison needs to be abolished as the dominant mode of addressing social problems that are better solved by other institutions and other means. The call for prison abolition urges us to imagine and strive for a very different social landscape.

Dylan: I think you make a subtle but important point here: prison and penal abolition imply an analysis of society that illuminates the repressive logic, as well as the fascistic historical trajectory, of the prison's growth as a social and industrial institution. Theoretically and politically, this "radical position," as you call it, introduces a new set of questions that does not necessarily advocate a pragmatic "alternative" or a concrete and immediate "solution" to what currently exists. In fact, I think this is an entirely appropriate position to assume when dealing with a policing and jurisprudence system that inherently disallows the asking of such fundamental questions as: Why are some lives considered more disposable than others under the weight of police policy and criminal law? How have we arrived at a place where killing is valorized and defended when it is organized by the state -- I'm thinking about the street lynchings of Diallo and Dorismond in New York City, the bombing of the MOVE organization in Philadelphia in 1985, the ongoing bombing of Iraqi civilians by the United States -- yet viciously avenged (by the state) when committed by isolated individuals? Why have we come to associate community safety and personal security with the degree to which the state exercises violence through policing and criminal justice? You've written elsewhere that the primary challenge for penal abolitionists in the United States is to construct a political language and theoretical discourse that disarticulates crime from punishment. In a sense, this implies a principled refusal to pander to the typically pragmatist impulse to demand absolute answers and solutions right now to a problem that has deep roots in the social formation of the United States since the 1960s. I think your open-ended conception of prison abolition also allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the prison-industrial complex as a set of institutional and political relationships that extend well beyond the walls of the prison proper. So in a sense, prison abolition is itself a broader critique of society. This brings me to the next question: What are the most crucial distinctions between the political commitments and agendas of prison reformists and those of prison abolitionists?

Angela: The seemingly unbreakable link between prison reform and prison development -- referred to by Foucault in his analysis of prison history -- has created a situation in which progress in prison reform has tended to render the prison more impermeable to change and has resulted in bigger, and what are considered "better," prisons. The most difficult question for advocates of prison abolition is how to establish a balance between reforms that are clearly necessary to safeguard the lives of prisoners and those strategies designed to promote the eventual abolition of prisons as the dominant mode of punishment. In other words, I do not think that there is a strict dividing line between reform and abolition. For example, it would be utterly absurd for a radical prison activist to refuse to support the demand for better health care inside Valley State, California's largest women's prison, under the pretext that such reforms would make the prison a more viable institution. Demands for improved health care, including protection from sexual abuse and challenges to the myriad ways in which prisons violate prisoners' human rights, can be integrated into an abolitionist context that elaborates specific decarceration strategies and helps to develop a popular discourse on the need to shift resources from punishment to education, housing, health care, and other public resources and services.

Dylan: Speaking of developing a popular discourse, the Critical Resistance gathering in September 1998 seemed to pull together an incredibly wide array of prison activists -- cultural workers, prisoner support and legal advocates, former prisoners, radical teachers, all kinds of researchers, progressive policy scholars and criminologists, and many others. Although you were quite clear in the conference's opening plenary session that the purpose of Critical Resistance was to encourage people to imagine radical strategies for a sustained prison abolition campaign, it was clear to me that only a few people took this dimension of the conference seriously. That is, it seemed convenient for people to rejoice at the unprecedented level of participation in this presumably "radical" prison activist gathering, but the level of analysis and political discussion generally failed to embrace the creative challenge of formulating new ways to link existing activism to a larger abolitionist agenda. People were generally more interested in developing an analysis of the prison-industrial complex that incorporated the local work that they were involved in, which I think is an important practical connection to make. At the same time, I think there is an inherent danger in conflating militant reform and human rights strategies with the underlying logic of anti-prison radicalism, which conceives of the ultimate eradication of the prison as a site of state violence and social repression. What is required, at least in part, is a new vernacular that enables this kind of political dream. How does prison abolition necessitate new political language, teachings, and organizing strategies? How could these strategies help to educate and organize people inside and outside the prison for abolition?

Angela: In order to imagine a world without prisons -- or at least a social landscape no longer dominated by the prison -- a new popular vocabulary will have to replace the current language, which articulates crime and punishment in such a way that we cannot think about a society without crime except as a society in which all the criminals are imprisoned. Thus, one of the first challenges is to be able to talk about the many ways in which punishment is linked to poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other modes of dominance. In the university, the emergence of the interdisciplinary field of prison studies can help to trouble the prevailing criminology discourses that shape public policy as well as popular ideas about the permanence of prisons. At the high school level, new curricula can also be developed that encourage critical thinking about the role of punishment. Community organizations can also play a role in urging people to link their demands for better schools, for example, to a reduction of prison spending.

Dylan: Your last comment suggests that we need to rupture the ideological structures embodied by the rise of the prison-industrial complex. How does prison abolition force us to rethink common assumptions about jurisprudence, in particular "criminal justice?"

Angela: Since the invention of the prison as punishment in Western society during the late 1700s, criminal justice systems have so thoroughly depended on imprisonment that we have lost the ability to imagine other ways to solve the problem of "crime." One of the interesting contributions of prison abolitionists has been to propose other paradigms of punishment or to suggest that we need to extricate ourselves from the assumption that punishment must be a necessary response to all violations of the law. Reconciliatory or restorative justice, for example, is presented by some abolitionists as an approach that has proved successful in non-Western societies -- Native American societies, for example -- and that can be tailored for use in urban contexts in cases that involve property and other offenses. The underlying idea is that in many cases, the reconciliation of offender and victim (including monetary compensation to the victim) is a much more progressive vision of justice than the social exile of the offender. This is only one example -- the point is that we will not be free to imagine other ways of addressing crime as long as we see the prison as a permanent fixture for dealing with all or most violations of the law.

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