Monthly Archives: August 2016

Hunger-Strike Launched by 22 Mothers in Deportation Jail

From It’s Going Down

The following is an open letter of demand to Jeh Johnson written by 22 mothers detained at Berks Family Residential Center:

The reason for this letter of demands is to make it known to you that since Monday August 8th we have started an “INDEFINITE HUNGER STRIKE.”

The Immigration Department has made a public announcement stating that in family detention center parents and children are detained no longer than 20 days.

WE WANT TO DISPROVE THIS INFORMATION!!

We are 22 mothers who are detained at Berks Family Residential Center, being mothers who have been from 270 days to 365 days in detention with children ages 2 to 16 years old, depriving them of having a normal life, knowing that we have prior traumas from our countries, risking our own lives and that of our children on the way until we arrived here, having family and friends who would be responsible for us and who are waiting for us with open arms and that immigration refuses to let us out. Continue reading →

Q&A with the Free Alabama Movement

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Answers by Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun (Melvin Ray) Founder- Free Alabama Movement

TNS: When and why was the Free Alabama Movement started?

F.A.M. was started in August 2013. At that time, there were many issues plaguing the lives of the people who were incarcerated in Alabama’s prison, and it had become obvious to many of us that we would have to become directly involved in providing solutions to those problems. There were ( and still are) inhumane conditions; there is little investment in education and rehabilitation; the courts were not resolving legitimate complaints concerning wrongful convictions and sentences or inhumane conditions and treatment; the parole board and other agencies were all complicit in the operation of mass incarceration, and we had come to accept the fact that the so- called ” civil and human rights organizations either were not coming to the rescue or they, too, were exploiting mass incarceration for personal gain. F.A.M. was formed out of necessity for survival against what we know as genocide.

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ALERT! Donaldson Alabama Call In

On Thursday August 11, 2016 a group of prisoners at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility segregation unit have declared a hunger strike due to unsanitary conditions , 24 hour lock downs, use of excessive force, in addition to, retaliation for refusal to sign papers for an undocumented Behavioral Modification Program.

These men are in need of your support. Please call Warden Bolling at (205) 436-3681 and demand these issues be addressed immediately.

Staten Island Against Racism and Police Brutality (SIARAPB) September 9 Endorsement

We are Staten Islanders who were shocked, saddened, angered, and ultimately moved to action by the NYPD’s harassment and murder of Eric Garner which took place on July 17th, 2014, and the subsequent miscarriage of justice when one of his murderers, Daniel Pantaleo, received a non-indictment in December of that year. Staten Island Against Racism and Police Brutality (Siarapb) subsequently formed as a diverse multi-racial and multi-ethnic group of students, faculty, and members of the community on the eve of the non-indictment that had had enough with the harassment, murder and impunity of the NYPD, and the larger patterns of police brutality, mass incarceration, and Stop & Frisk, Broken Windows, and Quality of Life policing which disproportionately targets people and communities of color here in Staten Island and across the United States.

As we write this, we are coming up on two years of justice denied, as Eric’s children are deprived of their father, while the officer that killed him walks free. It has also been two years of justice misplaced, as his friend, Ramsey Orta, who filmed and released the video of Eric’s murder, continues to be subjected to a prosecutorial witch hunt for challenging the authority of the NYPD. Two years later we are still calling for justice to be brought to the parties responsible for Eric Garner’s death and for greater accountability from our justice system.
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Peace Action of Staten Island (PASI) September 9 Endorsement

Peace Action of Staten Island (PASI) is a grassroots organization dedicated to promoting the nonviolent resolution of conflict, the abolition of nuclear weapons, and the promotion of culture based on human rights and economy rooted in human needs. To us, violence, and in particular state-sanctioned violence, is not simply the act of war and expanding militarization. It also encompasses degradation of our environment, policing which criminalizes, harasses, humiliates, and brutalizes communities and people of color through the bogus War on Drugs, and the deprivation of freedom through surveillance and imprisonment. It is also the economic exclusion of exploitative wages and wage theft, which are exacerbated within prisons and prevent people from meeting their basic needs.

It is a tragic fact that our country has chosen to value corporate interests over the well-being of its residents. That it supports the profitability of privately-run prison industries over the ability of individuals, both incarcerated and within low-income communities, to make a fair living and fully participate in society. That it willingly undercuts the lives of millions of people in order to drive corporate profits through a system of forced uncompensated or barely-compensated labor. Continue reading →

FBI Attacks Bay View, and Black Media Appreciation Night is Less Than a Month Away

[This is a letter from Bay View, the San Fransisco National Black Newspaper.]

FBI attack – First, I want to apologize for agreeing to the KGO-ABC7 interview last week on an FBI Black August bulletin. I agreed in a phone call that came when I had just sent the August paper to the printer after pulling an all-nighter. My judgment was lousy and the interview was appalling. A white woman – a cackling witch, as one fan described me – should not be the face of a Black paper. Here’s the report for those with the stomach to watch.

The threat to the Bay View is, however, very real. While the FBI has sent out all points bulletins warning of danger to police and prison guards in previous Black Augusts – last year’s predicting trouble in Baltimore – this year’s bulletin criminalizes Black August. It reminded me of J. Edgar Hoover’s 1968 FBI bulletin naming the Black Panthers as the greatest threat to U.S. security.

Black August, observed both inside prison and out, is a month of fasting, studying and deep thought in commemoration of fallen freedom fighters, initially Jonathan Jackson, 17, who died in the Marin Courthouse Slave Rebellion on Aug. 7, 1970, trying to rescue his big brother, George Jackson, who was assassinated on the San Quentin yard on Aug. 21, 1971. Continue reading →

On Non-violence, Part 1

Source: Anarchy Live

Every time you see some major action being planned by prisoners, they always state that it is a “peaceful” and “non-violent” action.

I think this is because a lot of Black prisoners who are basically behind a majority of these actions come from an Islamic/Black cultural nationalist background and it seems as if they look at the Civil Rights Movement as a model and frame of reference as opposed to the Black Liberation Movement, to which most claim to be heirs. They think it’s safer and can get more participation and good propaganda to induce those who adamantly oppose violence to get on board.

I bring this up because a few ‘rades on the outside has brought it up recently and it’s constantly being debated by prisoners at Holman. It’s a debate that will keep rearing its head.

Continue reading →

Call-in for Comrades Held in Segregation at Holman

From Anarchy Live

On August 1, 2016, following rebellion in one of the dorms, the riot squad attacked individuals at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, placing multiple individuals in segregation. In violation of Department of Corrections policy, the prisoners have not received a 72-hour investigation notice of the reason for their being placed in segregation, and have not had their personal property returned. The comrades have had to go without shoes, clothing, deodorant, and toothbrushes, and have not had access to their addresses and phone numbers.

Call Warden Mitchell and demand that those put in segregation after the recent riot be released and have their property returned.

Phone number: 251-368-8173

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Why We’re About to See the Largest Prison Strike in History

From Raw Story

On September 9, a series of coordinated work stoppages and hunger strikes will take place at prisons across the country. Organized by a coalition of prisoner rights, labor, and racial justice groups, the strikes will include prisoners from at least 20 states—making this the largest effort to organize incarcerated people in US history.

The actions will represent a powerful, long-awaited blow against the status quo in what has become the most incarcerated nation on earth. A challenge to mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex in general, the strikes will focus specifically on the widespread exploitation of incarcerated workers—what the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) describes as “a call to action against slavery in America.”

Continue reading →