#LivingMonumentsToJimCrow

This op-ed essay was first published in The Advocate on Friday, July 24th.

Time to Restore Justice for Louisianans Convicted by Split Juries
by Mercedes Montagnes and Jamila Johnson

As the nation moves to remove the monuments to racism throughout the South, consider the largest monument of all: hundreds of people locked inside prisons throughout Louisiana without the unanimous consent of a jury.

One of Louisiana’s Jim Crow laws allowed nonunanimous juries to disenfranchise black jurors. The practice was codified at an 1898 constitutional convention with the explicit purpose “to establish the supremacy of the white race in the state.”

Kush-I: "Rastafari Prisoners Persecuted at Angola"

Comrade Malik (Keith Washington) and Kush-I (Robert T. Smith) at USP Pollock

NOTE: This article was originally published in the San Francisco Bay View and has been re-published here with permission of the publisher and the author.
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Rastafari Prisoners Persecuted at Angola

by Robert T. Smith (aka Kush-I) – San Francisco Bay View 7/5/20

In the Old Testament Scriptures, the God in the prophet Daniel’s vision had wooly hair: “And the hair of his head was like pure wool.” (Daniel 7:9) In the book of Revelation in the New Testament, the God in John’s vision also had wooly hair. “His head and hair were … like wool.” (Revelation 1:14)

The evil trick perpetrated and perpetuated by white supremacist forces historically has been to instill a feeling of inferiority in people of other races by denigrating their physical traits while exalting whiteness. This process and practice continue to permeate and corrupt the social systems of the United States and, in truth, the entire globe. 

The crusade to suppress Rastafari religious exercise stems from the fact that the root of this religion sprang from rich and potent Black soil that spiritually nurtures all nations. ONE LOVE.

Podcast: "IDOC Watch Panel: Four Voices for Liberation"

I wouldn't normally blog when I'm at a loss for words, but I just listened to a podcast posted on the internet by The Final Straw Radio (a weekly anarchist radio show). The podcast features four strong voices: Kwame Shakur of the Stolen Lives Movement, Sheila, who is a mother, grandmother, and advocate of incarcerated people, Lorenzo Stone-Bey of IDOC Watch, and Zolo Agona Azania who is formerly of the Black Liberation Army, and is a three-time survivor of death row.

The IDOC Watch website says:

“The Indiana Department of Correction Watch (IDOC Watch) exists to be in solidarity with prisoners. This means we correspond with and and foster camaraderie with people who are incarcerated in Indiana, expose abusive conditions and treatment, and fight policies and initiatives that further isolate, marginalize, and harm prisoners. We seek to uplift prisoners’ voices and struggles and educate the masses about prisons, generally, as well as specific issues we are fighting.”

No matter how you found my blog in the first place or why you keep returning, if you do, I urge you to listen to this podcast -- carefully and more than once. Its message is powerful. Its truth runs deep. And its pertinence to the struggle for liberation on any front is unmistakably relevant to all of us, no matter where we live our lives.
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NOTE: The graphic above is a photo of a work of art by Keith Perelli of New Orleans. Its title is "Broken" but it clearly captures the undeniable resilience of Black people who have and do resist and outlast the onslaught of social brutality that has been brought against Black men, women, and children for the past five hundred years.Audio Pla

Malik Washington: "Why I Fight So Hard For Our People!"

“The hypocrisy of American fascism forces it to conceal its attack on political offenders by the legal fiction of conspiracy laws and highly sophisticated frame-ups. The masses must be taught to understand the true function of prisons. Why do they exist in such numbers? What is the real underlying economic motive of crime and the official definition of types of offenders or victims? The people must learn that when one “offends” the totalitarian state it is patently not an offense against the people of that state, but an assault upon the privilege of the privileged few.” ~ George L. Jackson, from Blood in my Eye, p.107

Revolutionary greetings, comrades!

As I stare out of my window here at the United States Penitentiary in Pollock, Louisiana, I find myself in a pensive and reflective mood. I see razor wire as well as concertina fencing immediately outside my window. I see the prison yard, the grass, the gun tower and far off in the distance I see trees. I see a flag on a pole, it is the “stars and stripes”. This flag does not represent freedom to me, it represents oppression, abuse, social control and it represents the hateful legacy of slavery.

I woke up here in Pollock, Louisiana thinking of Angola 3 member Herman Wallace. I remember the day he died. I was listening to Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, and she played a recording of Comrade Herman describing the garden that he and his comrades were preparing behind the house he was planning to move into.

Once the state of Louisiana finally granted Comrade Herman release, he was on his last leg, the cancer had literally eaten him alive. When I heard the voice of Herman Wallace, with the anticipation of freedom and the hope of seeing a brighter day, I cried. I cried because I was angry, sad, and frustrated.

Louisiana had absolutely no love, compassion, or care for the Angola 3. What they had for them was racial hatred and decades of abuse. Comrade Robert King and Comrade Albert Woodfox made it out alive. Herman wasn’t so lucky.

The Universal and Unending Question

I spent most of yesterday trying to scale a small mountain of mail that had piled up in the month of December while I closed out my next-to-the-last semester I will ever teach full-time and organized the production and mailing of the first newsletter for the Louisiana Network for Criminal Justice Transformation. There were issues inside and outside the walls that had to be addressed during the month, of course, but overall, the mail still sat and then piled up, along with emails, especially after the newsletter went into Angola.

Some of the mail contained submissions for a theater production on solitary confinement we're going to put together to be performed on our campus in the spring. Essays, discussions, and poems were acknowledged and filed for later compilation and development of the project, but occasionally I would just have to read one. Which is how I came across the poem I'm publishing today. It reminds each of us -- no matter where we are, no matter what we have been through or what we may have to face in this coming new year -- that we continually evolve and have the option to consider who we are and who we want to be.

Jailhouse Lawyers Speak: "General Open Membership" for Prisoners

Revolutionary greetings to all freedom fighters and supporters for prisoners human rights:

On a southern plantation (prison) Jailhouse Lawyers Speak was founded in 2015 amongst a group of Jailhouse Lawyers who were already in unity as a cadre based upon the studies of George L. Jackson. This original group of comrades make up the current central committee.

Today, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS) is a national collective of imprisoned persons who fight for human rights, by providing other prisoners with access to legal education, resources, and assistance.

Our focus is on challenging laws that are dehumanizing prisoners and educating prisoners about these laws. We aim to educate and engage the public at large about prisoners human rights violations. We seek to achieve this “by any means necessary.”

We are freedom fighters that believe the current model of how this society addresses people that has fallen short (according to this society’s own terms), and must therefore be dismantled.

This can only be done by prisoners speaking out. Prisoners must use our own voice and organizing skills to connect with the world for change.

The Louisiana Network for Criminal Justice Transformation

A year ago, I named a P.O. Box the "Louisiana Network for Criminal Justice Transformation." By April, a handful of supporters had caught the vision and, together with a jailhouse lawyer inside Angola, we began to organize our ideas and our dreams to provide case management services for incarcerated citizens in Louisiana. Friday, we mailed out our first newsletter to 164 men inside the walls and about 50 of their loved ones outside. This week, we will email a pdf of the newsletter to the media and to organizations and individuals who support the principle of prison abolition on one level or another. We are now reaching out to the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women of Louisiana and, quite frankly, the LA-NCJT is building at such a pace, I spend a good bit of time these days feeling as though I'm being dragged by the foot through my own life.

We're simultaneously working on a website, a closed Facebook chat room, a closed sub-reddit marketplace, and a Twitter account to serve, support, and inspire the families and friends of those inside the walls in Louisiana. We're putting together an Advisory Board. And I have officially announced to the University that I will step down from my full-time position there on July 31, 2020, to dedicate myself to LA-NCJT till the wheels fall off.

In the newsletter, we publish (among other things) "A Vision of Prison Abolition," saying:

Our perspective is not that efforts to reform the criminal justice system in the United States should be abandoned, but rather that the cultural and practical mindset that has plagued law “enforcement” and “correctional” systems for two hundred years in this country is such that we are being prevented from advancing as a civilized society. We believe that an entirely new approach must focus on the individual and collective effects of the root causes of “crime,” including such factors as poverty, White Supremacy, income inequality, and routine discrimination against the poor, People of Color, women, members of the LGBTQ community, immigrants, addicts, and the mentally ill. Populations that are vulnerable to abuse at the hands of our society’s decision-makers and those who have the Power-to-Define should be allowed to benefit from what society has to offer, as well.

We believe that this is practical and even necessary if we are to stop endlessly treating symptoms and begin the process of freeing ourselves so we can support others in freeing themselves from the brutality of a system the bedrock of which has been the foundational principle holding that money is more important than life. Consequently, we seek to make connections and create relationships with current and formerly incarcerated citizens, their loved ones, and others in the community who share our desire to transform the criminal justice system to reflect a consummate and intractable commitment to human rights. We do not consider it adequate to hold this commitment as a standard to which we aspire. Rather, we make the claim that all humans have an inalienable right to expect and, as necessary, to demand their dignity.

Toward that end, we offer our services to meet the needs of incarcerated citizens and their loved ones – in whatever ways we are realistically able – to increase their conscious awareness of the implications of their own humanity. The strength and energy of the indefatigable human spirit continually astound us as individuals – apparently hopeless and broken of will – rise to meet their challenges without fear or hesitation on the basis of the tiniest flicker of connection. We have seen the smallest specific encouragement turn the tide of despair, unleashing a human being prepared to exercise their personal agency by participating in their own fight for freedom – no matter where their body resides. Interventions as small as an email, a letter, a piece of information, or an invitation to participate in a collective effort can engage a heart that truly believed it had no reason to live.

The coming year should be interesting. If you want to follow our progress, you may contact us at:

Louisiana Network for Criminal Justice Transformation

P.O. Box 2701, Hammond, LA 70404

If you can help to cover the cost of this edition of the newsletter, please visit our GoFundMe account at https://www.gofundme.com/f/send-a-newsletter-to-incarcerated-citizens. Thanks.

South Carolina Prisoners, Stay Strong! ~ Part 2

In 1971, when I first started haunting the doors of the prisons of this country, it didn't take long for me to hear about solitary confinement and the extraordinary ways it was sometimes being used. Unrest was rippling across America like a swarm of rabid locusts and the Powers-That-Be at the top of the prison food chain were dealing with "criminals" the likes of which they were unaccustomed. There were still bank robbers, of course, but sometimes now, they were committing their crimes to bankroll a group protesting the Vietnam War or police brutality. And the Black Panther Party had offices in 68 cities serving thousands of members. Folks at the top were worried -- and even scared. And not without reason.

Alcatraz had been closed eight years before with the prisoners showing up at Marion Federal Pen in southern Illinois, a new kind of prison for prisoners deemed "incorrigible" or "sociopathic" (both of which terms we knew meant "won't bow to authority"). As members of the Black Panthers and other politically-conscious groups hit the tiers, though, it became quickly apparent that this new breed of incarcerated citizens were not only dangerous because they would punch a guard where it hurts the most, but because they were smarter than the guards and even, in most cases, smarter than the wardens. They had read Mao and Marx and Lenin, as well as books by prisoner intellectuals like George Jackson. They held political education reading groups inside that quickly caught on like wildfire. They organized groups of resisters and modeled how solidarity between the groups would make it possible to fight the authorities instead of each other. It was a new and exhilarating era.

Then Attica upped the ante and it was on.

Angola Prisoners Refuse To Be Slaves

Ten days ago, on May 8th -- the same day a work stoppage occurred just last year -- thirty-eight men in a working cell block at Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana refused to go to the fields for their work assignment. The men were loaded on a bus immediately and sent to Camp Jaguar, where prisoners are placed in extended lockdown 23-hours per day. To make room for the ones coming in, thirty-eight men who had been housed in Camp Jaguar for punitive reasons were sent to replace the missing workers so the fieldwork could continue as planned. Apparently, this is the new Standard Operating Procedure for such occurrences.

The administration and staff at Angola are heavily populated by second and third generation prisoncrats, not a few of which represent members of extended families whose professional and economic well-being have been built on the backs of the 6,300 incarcerated citizens they presently ride herd on. A goodly number even live on the prison property itself, raising families in the shadows of the gun towers. Guards are called "freemen" (as opposed to "slaves," one must assume). And their future security seems to be assured since the numbers at Angola have risen 1200 since 2010.

Prisoners who have been at Angola for decades have told me that the administration is working hard to suppress organizing activities inside the prison, but that there is more such activity now than there ever has been and it appears to be slowly but surely building. One prisoner suggested that this could be at least partly because "these new young guys coming in have no regard for rules. They're not built for work, so you definitely can't slave 'em. They won't have it."

Asked what might help to address this issue, the prisoner suggested giving them incentives: "More money, more training, more education -- so they can help their families as well as themselves. Putting them into the fields picking cotton in the hot sun just gives them plenty of time to think about how the 13th Amendment of the Constitution actually legalizes using incarcerated citizens as slaves."

Reports from prisoners also suggest that overuse of solitary confinement, health care that amounts to torture, desperately inadequate mental health care (often exacerbated by long-term solitary confinement), and excessive force by guards has created a hostile environment that results in an increasing level of prisoner-to-prisoner violence. Mainstream media rarely are allowed to hear about it, they say. But one prisoner reported this morning that fifteen incarcerated citizens at Angola have been stabbed in the past three weeks alone. "One paranoid schizophrenic prisoner stabbed five people in one day," he said.

Hopelessness haunts the institution that uses solitary confinement at four times the national average and is well known to have kept Albert Woodfox in solitary confinement for forty-three years because of his Black Panther activism in the 1970s. Before he re-entered the free world in 2016, Woodfox forced the Louisiana DOC to sign an agreement not to use solitary confinement punitively in the future, but as he's noted since his release, an agreement and the follow-through are far from the same thing.

Use of the "life without parole" option also creates hopelessness for many at Angola, since Louisiana uses that option at four times the national rate, as well, with the current tally being 5000 incarcerated citizens, many of whom would have been eligible for parole in most other Southern states. This increases their sense that there's nothing to live for and no reason to care about consequences for crimes committed inside the institution. It also increases the likelihood of suicide attempts. "One guy went out to the field this spring and tried to hang himself on the fence," reported a prisoner. "If the other guys hadn't brought him down, he would have died out there."

Decarcerate Louisiana, a movement that's been trying to organize the prisoners in Louisiana for nearly twenty years, has been severely hampered by the lack of public support for the human rights of the state's incarcerated citizens. Members say they've been inspired by the Free Alabama Movement in the past year. Still, members hit the national news a year ago when word of a work stoppage at Angola on May 8th, 2018, leaked to the outside world. And it now appears that at least some of those inside still remember, are still committed, and are waiting for the rest of us to get on board.

Dear Warden Stewart

[In solidarity with Robert Earl Council AKA Kinetik Justice, the Free Alabama Movement, F.A.M. Queen Team, Unheard Voices OTCJ, T.O.P.S., and Fight Toxic Prisons, I answered the Call for Action by issuing this email to the warden at Holman "Correctional" Facility this afternoon. If I have not heard from Warden Cynthia Stewart by noon Monday, I will re-send the email every day until Kinetik Justice is released from solitary confinement. Needless to say, I signed the actual email with my real name.]


Dear Warden Stewart:

It is my understanding that Robert Earl Council #181418 was brought to your institution on February 28th and was subsequently placed in solitary confinement without cause, apparently in retaliation for his role in leading a peaceful work strike in 2014. As a result of this indefensible action on your part, I have now understood that Mr. Council has been forced to initiate an official hunger strike (refusing all food and liquids) in protest, and will remain on such until justice is met and he is placed back in a population where he can participate in all programs afforded to his peers and others of his class.  

From what I can gather, every day that goes by seems to prove that what Alabama needs is not more, bigger, and more expensive prisons, but rather administrators who are professionally capable of meeting the constitutionally-mandated and regulated responsibilities of their positions while preparing incarcerated citizens for their eventual release. Overcrowding, grossly inadequate staffing, and the overuse of random and brutal force against prisoners appear to run rampant in the Alabama DOC. Worse, any attempts to draw attention to such routine and unconstitutional practices result in the kind of retaliatory action such as you have now taken against Mr. Council since his arrival in your custody.

In any case, last week’s publicly reported descent of 300 “officers” on St Clair Correctional Facility (at what I can only imagine to be an incredible level of expenditure to the taxpayers of Alabama), followed so closely by your placing Mr. Council in solitary confinement without cause concerns me for his physical and emotional well-being. I am expecting you to release him into the general population immediately. I will continue to check on Mr. Council until this action is taken.

I feel it only fair to inform you that my blog on race relations and the criminal justice system has had more than 1,067,000 hits in nearly 200 countries. And I fully intend to publish a full accounting of this matter before nightfall.

Sincerely,

Changeseeker

CALL FOR ACTION!

The following Press Release has been issued by the Free Alabama Movement, F.A.M. Queen Team, Unheard Voices OTCJ, and T.O.P.S.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 7th, 2019

Robert Earl Council, AIS # 181418, is once again being held in solitary confinement at Holman Correctional Facility after the major Shakedown at St Clair correctional facility on February 28th 2019.

Council was inside his population cell at St. Clair Correctional Facility around 2 a.m. Thursday morning, when a platoon of ADOC CERT team members, and local law enforcement SWAT team members, entered his cell placing him in zip tie handcuffs and immediately escorted him to an waiting bus to be transported back to Holman Correctional Center.

Later that day Council arrived at Holman Correctional Facility and all too familiar scenery. Council was placed in Holman Correctional Facility solitary housing unit (SHU) once again, after spending 54 months in solitary for leading a peaceful work strike at Holman Correctional Facility in the summer of 2014.

He was finally released from solitary in late 2018 at Donaldson Correctional Facility after Attorney at Law David Gespass filed a Habeas Corpus on the behalf of council in the courts, challenging ADOC’s unconstitutional practice of holding of him in solitary confinement for 54 months without just cause. ADOC released Council right before a set court hearing on the Habeas Corpus in August last year, making the case moot. (See Robert E Council vs. Warden Bolling Cv. – 2017-101 filed in the Bessemer division of Jefferson County state of Alabama.)

These are strictly retaliatory actions in anticipation of a state-wide protest to stop the construction of new prisons over education and rehabilitation.

In response to being housed for no reason in solitary confinement, Robert Earl Council notified Warden Cynthia Stewart, at 3 a.m. on March 7th 2019 that he is now on an official hunger strike (refusing all food and liquids) in protest of the retaliatory actions taken against him, and will remain on such until justice is met and he is placed back in a population where he can participate in all programs afforded to his peers and others of his class.

If the demand to return Robert Earl Council back to population is not met by the Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeffery Dunn by March 15, 2019 a protest will convene at Holman Correctional Facility on March 26,2019.

Contact information for interviews on the above press release is as follows:

Unheardvoices78@gmail.com

David Gespass, Attorney-at-Law:  205-323-5966

Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow:  334-791-2433,  kennethglasgow@gmail.com

Rest in Power, George Jackson

“Right now, we are in a peak cycle. There’s tremendous energy out there, directed against the state. It’s not all focused, but it’s there, and it’s building. Maybe this will be sufficient to accomplish what we must accomplish over the fairly short run. We’ll see, and we can certainly hope that this is the case. But perhaps not. We must be prepared to wage a long struggle. If this is the case then we’ll probably see a different cycle, one in which the revolutionary energy of the people seems to have dispersed, run out of steam. But – and this is important- such cycles are deceptive. Things appear to be at low ebb, but actually what’s happening is a period of regroupment, a period in which we step back and learn from the mistakes made during the preceding cycle.” ~ George Jackson
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NOTE: The graphic above was done by artist and social justice warrior Kevin "Rashid" Johnson More of his work can be seen here.

Aretha Franklin: "I Say a Little Prayer for You"

I was in my mid-20s when I had my first conversation with a man who had just gotten out of prison (San Quentin) about the inside organizing incarcerated people were trying to do. It was 1970. I was in San Francisco. The BPP was visible. And I was about the work of finding my place in it all. Within six months, I had joined a prison abolition collective and within a year, I had dedicated my life to that cause.

I met the fathers of both of my children (the one who was murdered while he was the shotcaller for a gang in Ft. Lauderdale and the one who is the Vice President of Engineering for a multi-national media company) while they were incarcerated. And my last "relationship" was with a man who had just come out after doing 28 years flat. But my commitment to the incarcerated men, women, and children of this country is not rooted in a personal "relationship." It is rooted in a lifetime commitment to the principle that NO human being deserves or is best served by incarceration in prisons such as exist in their current form.

The commitment I made in 1971 when I stared into the night sky and invited the Universe to use me to serve the incarcerated of this world has burned in me ever since. In nearly five decades, it has never gone away. And no matter where I was geographically, what job I was performing, or what was going on in any other area of my life, the work to be of service to the incarcerated and their families has always been present. It sometimes compromised the "professional" reputation I built. It sometimes got in the way of my being a "good mother." And it sometimes put me in incredibly dramatic situations. But it never went away.

I'm not a "Christian." And I don't assume the presence of a "God" per se. But I believe in an energy that we can tap into (whether we mean to or not). I believe that energy can drive us to be bigger than we are and accomplish more than one person can accomplish. I believe hope is prayer. And I believe that working for the greater good can produce powerful results. So even though I don't get on my knees or beg some ole White guy in the clouds to bring down the walls, I know in my soul that walls do come down.

So today, in honor of Aretha Franklin, who passed to the other side this week, I offer this video of her performing, "I Say a Little Prayer for You" dedicated to all those who are incarcerated. You are not forgotten. And I am not the only one out here who cares.

Call For Action by IDOC Watch

IDOC Watch has issued a call for action on behalf of co-founder and Chairman of the New Afrikan Liberation Collective Kwame Shakur (Michael Joyner), presently incarcerated at Pendleton (Indiana) Correctional Facility. IDOC Watch has received word that Chairman Shakur has been attacked by Pendleton staff for the second time recently. It is thought that he may have sustained serious injury to the head.

IDOC Watch writes:

The assault comes shortly after Shakur was dismissed from a medical examination after insisting he be treated for an auto-immune condition caused by a TB outbreak in Pendleton. It also follows the most recent assault on him during a punitive shake down in retaliation for his political activity. 

Pendleton has made Kwame Shakur a primary target in their suppression of inmate struggle and if they are not stopped, the violence against Shakur will only escalate. Pendleton was most recently in the news for the arrest of three corrections officers caught on tape severely beating an unarmed inmate. Warden Dushan Zatecky assured the public that their arrest was proof of Pendleton's commitment to inmate safety. Yet assaults on inmates, of which Kwame Shakur is just the most recent is a constant occurrence at Pendleton. 

PLEASE CALL: 
Indiana Department of Corrections Commissioner Robert E. Carter at 317-232-5711. Press 0 for operator and ask for the Commissioner; then leave a message if no one answers. Ask for the commissioner, but if you are routed to a secretary, leave a message.

SCRIPT:
"I am calling because I am concerned about the safety of Michael Joyner #149677 of Pendleton Correctional Facility. Yesterday, he was assaulted by staff and likely has a severe injury to the head. I would like to know his whereabouts and request an investigation into the incident."

You do not have to say more than that and you do not have to give any information about yourself. Expect lies and dodges. The point is to make them aware that they are being watched and that Chairman Shakur has supporters on the outside.

Interestingly enough, the town of Pendleton has a long history of White Supremacist violence. According to Wikipedia, in 1824, three White men massacred a group of Seneca and Miami Natives. And in 1843, Frederick Douglass and two other men were brutally attacked by what Douglass called "mobocrats" when they visited Pendleton in response to an invitation to speak to the townspeople. Douglass was knocked unconscious, beaten while he was on the ground, and suffered a broken right hand that never properly healed. Realistically though, I guess any town that has less than 5000 residents -- 97% of which have been socialized to believe they're "White" and probably most of whom work at one of the three (count 'em, three) prisons -- may not have come too far.

Will California’s Governor Block Parole For Soledad Brother John Clutchette?

BREAKING: John Clutchette was released on parole from a California prison on Wednesday, June 6th. As he re-entered society, Mr. Clutchette had a few words for his supporters.

On January 12, 2018, the California Board of Parole Hearings granted parole to an elderly inmate named John Clutchette. However, supporters of parole for Clutchette are concerned that California Governor Jerry Brown will reverse the Board's decision, and Clutchette will not be released.

Supporters have a reason to be concerned. After all, this is exactly what happened in 2016 when Clutchette was similarly granted parole by the Board but Governor Brown chose to reverse the Board's ruling.