Working
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4, N
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January
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January
2015
2015

UN REPORT DETAILS ABYSMAL U.S.
RECORD OF ABUSE
At Home and Abroad, UN Report Details Abysmal US Record of Abuse
Torture, indefinite detention, excessive force, and systematic discrimination and
mistreatment have become part of the nation’s modern legacy
By Jon Queally
n official report by the United
Nations Committee Against Torture released November 28, 2014,
found that the United States has a long way
to go if it wants to actually earn its claimed
position as a leader in the world on human
rights.
Following a lengthy review of recent
and current practices regarding torture,
imprisonment, policing, immigration policies, and the overall legacy of the Bush and
Obama administration’s execution of the
so-called ‘War on Terror,’ the committee
report (pdf) found the U.S. government in
gross violation when it comes to protecting
basic principles of the Convention Against
Torture, which the U.S. ratified in 1994, as
well as other international treaties.
This was the first full review of the U.S.
human rights record by the UN body since
2006 and the release of the report follows a two-day hearing in Geneva earlier
this month in which representatives of the
Obama administration offered testimony
and answered questions to the review
panel. The report’s findings do not reflect
well on the U.S., a nation that continues to
tout itself as a leader on such issues despite
the enormous amount of criticism aimed
at policies of torture and indefinite detention implemented in the years following
September 11, 2001, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that followed, and the
global military campaign taking place on

A

several continents and numerous countries
that continues to this day.
In addition to calling for full accountability for the worst torture practices that happened during the Bush administration, the
panel also demanded the Obama administration end the continued harsh treatment of
foreign detainees at its offshore prison at
Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba. As
Reuters notes, the panel’s report criticized
what it called a continued U.S. failure to
fully investigate allegations of torture and
ill-treatment of terrorism suspects held in
U.S. custody abroad, “evidenced by the
limited number of criminal prosecutions
and convictions”.
According to the report:
The Committee expresses its grave concern over the extraordinary rendition, secret detention and interrogation program
operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) between 2001 and 2008,
which involved numerous hum an rights
violations, including torture, ill - treatment and enforced disappearance of persons suspected of involvement in terrorism
- related crimes. While noting the content
and scope of Presidential E.O. 13491, the
Committee regrets the scant information
provided by the State party with regard to
the now shuttered network of secret detention facilities, which formed part of the
high - value detainee program publicly referred to by President Bush on 6 September
2006. It also regrets the lack of information

provided on the practices of extraordinary
rendition and enforced disappearance; and,
on the extent of the CIA’s abusive interrogation techniques used on suspected terrorists, such as waterboarding.
As The Guardian reports: Many of the
harshest criticisms are reserved for the
Bush administration’s excesses between
2001 and 2009. But the committee is critical of how the current US government has
failed, in its view, to clean up the mess that
was created in the wake of 9/11.
In particular, it wants to see the US acknowledge torture as a specific criminal offence at the federal level, thereby removing
possible loopholes in the law. It also urges

CONTENTS
UN Abuse Report .....................1
Protests in Israeli Prisons ........2
PA And The Constitution ..........3
CDCR's New Con Game .........4
Guest Editorial .........................5
Materialism v. Idealism.............6
A Woodfox, 42 Years in Seg. ...6
On Trial for Protesting ..............7
Prison Neo-Slavery ..................9

the US Senate select committee on intelligence to publish as quickly as possible its
report into the CIA’s historic detention and
interrogation program that has been caught
up in political wrangling for months.
“The Obama administration needs to
match its rhetoric with actions by supporting full accountability for torture,” said
Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s human rights program, in response to the report. “As a start, that means allowing the
release of the Senate’s torture report summary without redactions that would defeat
report’s primary purpose, which is to expose the full extent of government abuse.
It also means ensuring a top-to-bottom
criminal investigation of the torture that
occurred.”
The report says that though the U.S. has
tough anti-torture statutes on the books, it
has not gone far enough in some areas to
guarantee that no loopholes exist and has
done far too little to allow redress for violations that have already occurred. In terms
of recommendations, panel’s report “calls
for the declassification of torture evidence,
in particular Guantanamo detainees’ accounts of torture” and said the U.S. “should
ensure that all victims of torture are able to
access a remedy and obtain redress, wherever acts of torture occurred and regardless
of the nationality of the perpetrator or the
victim. “
In addition to criticizing other policies
related to military engagement abroad, the
committee slammed the U.S. for many of
its domestic policies, including prolonged
solitary confinement of those in prison;
charges of “prolonged suffering” for those
exposed to “botched” state executions;
heavy-handed and discriminatory policing
practices in the nation’s cities; the treatment of juveniles in the criminal justice
system; and serious problems with its immigration enforcement policies.
As protests related to the shooting death
of Michael Brown by a police officer in
Ferguson, Missouri continue this week, the
UN panel specifically referred to the “frequent and recurrent police shootings or fatal pursuits of unarmed black individuals.”
Speaking with reporters, panel member
Alessio Bruni said, “We recommend that
all instances of police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement officers are investigated promptly, effectively
and impartially by an independent mechanism.”
“This report – along with the voices of
Americans protesting around the country
2

this week – is a wake-up call for police
who think they can act with impunity,” said
ACLU’s Dakwar. “It’s time for systemic
policing reforms and effective oversight
that make sure law enforcement agencies
treat all citizens with equal respect and
hold officers accountable when they cross
the line.” ●

ESCALATING
PROTESTS INSIDE
ISRAELI PRISONS
New statement from
Palestinian prisoners
By samidoun
he following statement was released
on 29 November by the Prison
Branch of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine and reflects the organizing of prisoners from all Palestinian
political parties inside Israeli occupation
prisons, including the organizing of PFLP
prisoners. The Campaign to Free Ahmad
Sa’adat distributed the statement below.
Samidoun will announce and participate
participate in international solidarity actions with the prisoners’ struggle as news
and actions develop:
At the time when the occupation is continuing its onslaught against our people everywhere, escalating the attack and violations and racist hatred in everywhere, this
attack is becoming more violent and ugly
against the prisoners’ movement. Here,
there are not even the barest elements of
parity in the balance of power, which falls
decisively in favor of the enemy, as conditions become more difficult and cruel and
the occupier escalates its policies that aim
to undermine our determination, will and
revolutionary humanity through a series
of measures impacting all aspects of prisoners’ lives inside the occupation prisons.
These policies include denial of family visits, limitations and prohibitions on deposits
of money to the prison “canteen” (commissary) accounts, eliminating almost all television stations except two Hebrew channels
and 1 Arabic channel, as well as arbitrary
transfer and a recent increased escalation
of solitary confinement and isolation. This
comes on top of restrictions on movement
within prison sections and continuation of
the deliberate policy of medical neglect,
denying sick prisoners visits with specialist
physicians under various pretexts, and the
violent night raids and invasions of prison-

T

ers rooms under the pretext of inspection
and searches for contraband. These socalled searches aim to uproot all stability
in the lives of prisoners and make it clear to
prisoners that they are being targeted on a
daily basis. All of these raids only emphasize the steadfastness of the prisoners and
their insistence on their will for life and
freedom, which is truly what these raids are
attempting to confiscate.
In light of the escalation of these attacks,
backed by the political decision of the
right-wing extremist Zionist government,
and after all efforts have failed to end these
attacks, which have been escalating since
12 June 2014, the prisoners’ movement has
held a series of meetings in various prisons
about the current situation, which have issued several specific demands and which
have decided to begin the implementation of a program of steps of protest with
increasing escalation and rejection of the
policy and procedures of the prison administration, in order to pressure the prison authority to implement these demands. These
protest steps will begin on 1 December
2014 and will continue until the desired
goals are accomplished.
Prisoners’ specific demands:
Restore the situation to what it was prior
to 15 June 2014
Cancel all denials of family visits, restore
the removed television channels, cancel all
prohibitions on canteen deposits, and restore conditions of life in general. Resume
visits to prisoners from the Gaza Strip with
equality with prisoners from the West Bank
End all of the recent punitive practices,
including lengthy delays between family visits, prohibitions on assembly and
movement within sections, the escalation
of isolation and solitary confinement, frequent transfers by “Bosta” and address all
matters relating to this issue, which inflicts
significant suffering on prisoners while being transferred between prisons or taken to
court
Improve the treatment of prisoners suffering from medical conditions and provide
the necessary medications to prisoners suffering from disease
End administrative detention without
charge or trial
Announced schedule of protests to
achieve these demands:
1 December 2014, Monday - Sending a message to the director of the
prison to discuss this issue
2 December 2014, Tuesday - Oneday hunger strike in all prisons
Rock!

9 December 2014, Tuesday - Oneday hunger strike in all prisons
10 December 2014, Wednesday Afternoon protest in the prisons
16 December 2014, Tuesday - One
day hunger strike in all prisons
18 December 2014, Thursday - Boycotting the prison administration and
striking by sections
23 December 2014, Tuesday - One
day hunger strike in all prisons
25 December 2014, Thursday - Boycotting the prison administration and
striking and protesting in sections
26 December 2014, Friday - Strikes
and protests in all prisons, announcing
the beginning of mass civil disobedience
This program will escalate in protest
steps in order to build up pressure on the
prison administration to support our struggle and achieve our just demands. The jailer, sooner or later, will be subject to the will
and the victory of the prisoners!
Glory to the martyrs and victory to the
revolution. ●
The Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine branch in Israeli jails.

GUANTANAMO
FORCE-FEEDING
IS ILLEGAL, SAYS
UN BODY

A

United Nations panel has said that
the force-feeding of hunger-striking detainees at Guantanamo Bay is
a violation of the UN Convention Against
Torture.
The report, released today by the UN
Committee Against Torture, said that the
practise “constitutes ill-treatment”, and
called on the US to halt it. The Committee also noted that “detainees’ lawyers have
argued in court that force feedings are allegedly administered in an unnecessarily
brutal and painful manner” - an apparent
reference to US litigation brought by international human rights NGO Reprieve
on behalf of cleared Syrian detainee Abu
Wa’el Dhiab.
As part of those legal proceedings, the
Obama Administration has until Tuesday
(December 2) to appeal a recent court order to release over ten hours of classified
footage showing the force-feeding of Mr
Dhiab.
Volume 4, Number 1

Commenting, Cori Crider, Strategic Director at Reprieve and Mr Dhiab’s attorney,
said: “The UN is entirely right – abuse at
Guantánamo is still happening on Obama’s
watch, and I’ve seen the force-feeding
footage to prove it. This assessment could
not be more timely – the Obama administration has until next week to either face up
to a court order to release these force-feeding videos, or to file an appeal, in hopes of
covering up the evidence. The right course
is clear – the American public has a right
to see what’s being done in their name.
Obama should release the tapes without
delay, and end these abuses once and for
all.” ●

mates early, prisons would lose an important labor pool.
Prisoners’ lawyers countered that the
corrections department could hire public
employees to do the work.
The judges also have not resolved a dispute over the state’s refusal to permit inmates with past sex offenses to earn the
same sentence reductions now given to
other second-strike felons.
California was first ordered to make
these changes in February, when federal
judges also agreed to give the state an additional two years to meet court-ordered
population caps.
The state has been meeting periodic
benchmarks set by the judges, but was
also supposed to be making other changes
that would produce a long-term, “durable”
population reduction.

FEDERAL JUDGES
ORDER CALI TO
EXPAND PRISON
PENNSYLVANIA
RELEASES
AND THE
n November 14, 2014, Federal
judges on Friday ordered Califor- CONSTITUTION

O

nia to launch a new parole program
that could free more prisoners early, ruling
the state had failed to fully implement an
order last February intended to reduce unconstitutional crowding.
The judges, for a second time, ordered
that all nonviolent second-strike offenders
be eligible for parole after serving half their
sentence. They told corrections officials to
submit new plans for that parole process by
Dec. 1, and to implement them beginning
January.
“The record contains no evidence that
defendants cannot implement the required
parole process by that date, 11 months after
they agreed to do so ‘promptly,’” the judges wrote in Friday’s order.
Corrections department spokeswoman
Deborah Hoffman said the agency would
comply with the order.
But the federal judicial panel did not take
action on other steps it had ordered California to take last February. Those include increasing the sentence reductions minimumcustody inmates can earn for good behavior
and participation in rehabilitation and education programs.
Most of those prisoners now work as
groundskeepers, janitors and in prison
kitchens, with wages that range from 8
cents to 37 cents per hour. Lawyers for Attorney General Kamala Harris had argued
in court that if forced to release these in-

By Mumia Abu-Jamal
ecently, there’s been much comment about the Constitution.
What are we talking about?
Well, not only is there a U.S. Constitution that allegedly covers the nation, but
every state has a constitution as well.
Article VI establishes what’s called the
Supremacy Clause, where every state is
bound by the U.S. Constitution, usually as
decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Pennsylvania’s Constitution, Art. I; Sect.
7 addresses Free Speech.
A part of it reads thus:
The free communication of thoughts and
opinions is one of the invaluable rights of
man, and every citizen may freely speak,
write and print on any subject….
Under the Freedom of Speech clause of
the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the 6th Article of the U.S. Constitution, how can the state’s legislators pass,
and politicians sign, the recent law described as the “Muzzle Mumia” act?
Answer: They can’t - at least not constitutionally.
In order to do so, they had to knowingly
and willingly violate both the U.S. and PA
Constitutions, and their very oaths of office.
This they did.
If you’ve looked down on your politicians before, this will only increase your

R

3

disgust and contempt.
Clearly, the political class are but whores,
who sell their tongues to the highest bidder,
and their oaths are as empty as dry, withered husks.
They don’t really believe in their own
constitution.
Why, pray tell, should you? ●

CDCR’S NEW
CON GAME TO
UNDERMINE OUR
CLASS ACTION
SUIT
By Randall ‘Sondai’ Ellis
n order to successfully advance in each
step of CDCR’s newly enacted Step
Down Program (SDP), prisoners are
expected to fill out and complete a series
of thought policing or brainwashing workbooks. One such workbook is entitled “The
Con Game” and purports to elucidate for
the prisoner via “self-directed journaling”
the ways in which he either consciously or
unconsciously is a con artist and criminal.
However, empirical evidence irrefutably
proves that the true con artists and criminals are CDCR, the Department Review
Board (DRB), Office of Correctional Safety (OCS), Institutional Gang Investigations
(IGI), Office of Administrative Law (OAL)
and the Classification Staff Representative
(CSR) – and the con game they’re running
is the SDP, replete with such old cons as
“Three Card Monty,” “Smoke and Mirrors,” “The Bait and Switch,” word games
and manipulation.
So let’s look at it. It appears that the court
has issued CDCR yet another “save.” It has
effectively permitted CDCR to undermine
the class action lawsuit filed in Ashker v.
Brown et al., CV-05796-CW, challenging
the use of long term solitary confinement
and the lack of any meaningful periodic
review of our status towards release from
said confinement, as was mandated – but
never enforced by a court – in Toussaint v.
McCarthy, 801 F.2d 1080, 1098-1101(9th
Cir. 1986).
Following the suspension of the hunger
strikes, CDCR issued a series of memorandums that it said would effectively move
it away from the current status-based punitive system to a more behavioral based
individual account¬ability system, where
a man would be punished based on his in-

I

4

dividual actions and not based on this current “he said she said” game. That game
has evolved into a mechanism whereby the
so-called investigators fabricate so-called
evidence of gang activity and association
and membership and is based on things like
“your name was discovered on a roster in
another validated prisoner’s property” or
whatever comes to their imagination.
The court, seeming to support the prisoners’ position in Ashker v. Brown, denied
CDC’s motion to dismiss the suit saying
that “CDCR may be violating prisoners’
con¬stitutional rights by confining them to
the SHU indefinitely and without offering
them a meaningful way out.”
True to its form, CDCR released a few
hostages from the SHU and set in motion
a pilot program that it touted as a change
to the current policy. It sold this policy to
the Legislature in a series of hearings and
informed the prison population via a series
of memorandums.
CDCR claimed to be initiating case-bycase (CBC) reviews of every prisoner assigned to the SHU, beginning with those
with the lengthiest validation dates, ‘60s,
‘70s, ‘80s etc.
In the meantime CDCR began playing
“Three Card Monty.” It claimed that as
part of these reviews, the DRB would look
back four years for evidence of “gang activity” to determine one’s placement within
a given step in the so-called Step Down
Program (SDP). The CCPOA, the guards’
union, threw a fit, filing a motion to intervene in the case. It claimed that CDCR was
putting guards in danger if they released
these guys.
As the process evolved, the court hinted
that the new pilot program wasn’t a cure for
the prisoners’ claims because it was only
a pilot program, so CDCR moved to make
the program permanent by enacting a rule
change with the OAL. At the same time,
CDCR set up a sanctioned “punishment
facility” at Tehachapi, where the program
is so dysfunctional, so disrespectful, so degrading, it is said to be even worse than the
torturous conditions that spawned the hunger strikes at Pelican Bay!
Here, the DRB selects who it will subject to additional punishment by pl¬acing
him in either Step 3 or 4 under the guise of
there being some sort of recent gang activity uncovered by the IGI or OCS – “smoke
and mirrors.”
In a subsequent ruling, the Ashker court
ruled to certify the case as a class action
and said that anyone confined to the SHU at

Pelican Bay for 10 continuous years could
adequately represent the class and anyone
placed into the new SDP could not represent the class! So CDCR began relocating
the named plaintiffs to the new punishment
facility Step 3, though one or two went directly to the general population.
And wouldn’t you know it, the DRB has
changed its focus. It is no longer reviewing
those with the lengthiest validation dates.
They are now focusing their reviews on
those who have been confined to the SHU
at Pelican Bay the longest.
So anyone who left here for whatever
reason – out to court, transferred for medical treatment or sent to another SHU for a
brief period, as experienced by myself – is
not viewed as having been held hostage
in Pelican Bay for 10 continuous years.
Many of us were transferred to Corcoran
SHU back in ‘99-‘00 as part of the first con
game, the active/inactive reviews.
Now all of a sudden our DRB reviews
will be scheduled according to the date
they deem you were “returned” to the
PBSP SHU. So one can end up being in
the SHU 30 to 40 years, as in my and other
prisoners’ cases, as long as he’s transferred
to another SHU before he reaches the now
requisite 10-year continuous mark – “word
games and manipulation.”
This effectively undermines the entire
case, and CDCR is taking the “save” it’s
been given by now “bait and switching” its
stated procedure of reviewing the hostages
by length of validation, to those by length
of placement in the Pelican Bay SHU. They
didn’t even bother to issue a memo for this
latest arbitrary policy shift, proving their
nefarious if not criminal intent.
This is nothing but a con game, a scheme
to buy time so that they can conspire to ensure that they keep this place full of hostages. After all, they have a 10-year window to torture their next victims to death,
or worse, at “the punishment facility.”
This con game must be viewed for what it
really is, an ongoing and contin¬uing conspiracy designed to keep as many hostages
in the SHU as possible, while the guards
sit back and collect exorbitant pensions in
the name of safety and security. Who said
crime doesn’t pay?
In closing, Ashker v. Brown should be
amended to make a claim for damages
we suffered as a result of being subjected
to these unconstitutional practices, which
have resulted in irreparable injury to their
victims.
Release the hostages! ●
Rock!

GUEST EDITORIAL
WHY PRISONERS NEED REVOLUTIONARY POLITICAL EDUCATION
By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
have seen it asked often by prisoner
subscribers to Rock and other publications edited or published by Ed Mead.
“Why do prisoners need a political education, and why in revolutionary politics in
particular?”
I’d like to confront the question from
several angles.
Politics concerns organizing and governing social activity. It therefore relates to
every social member’s activities, whether
they be a citizen or a subject. Laws are the
rules by which societies are governed and
the powers of government are regulated.
Laws and government put us in prison,
and demonstrably without an understanding of them we leave ourselves open to the
whims and abuses of those who pretend to
act under authority of law. So, to understand politics is to understand the forces
that govern us, but to understand revolutionary politics is to understand our power
to bring about fundamental changes to the
established system and how to bring those
changes about. Political education therefore serves to acquaint us with the power
and potential of the opposition and also
ourselves. As Sun Tzu said, “When you understand the enemy and yourself you can
fight 100 battles without fear of loss.”
Ignorance of politics also renders one to
enslavement. And, as I will show, we are
slaves—literally. But first a clear example
and analogy can be taken from Amerika’s
old plantation slave system, where it was
against the law to teach slaves to read. In
this way they were kept ignorant of the
methods by which they were governed and
their central role in the economic system.
That is, they were kept politically ignorant.
In this way the slavers could trick the enslaved to believe the slaves needed the slavers and their oppressive system to survive,
when the opposite was actually the case.
Because the slaves were the primary producers, builders, cooks, and maintainers of
the plantation system and its wealth, without whom the slavers (who also monopolized government) would be the ones unable to survive and would have no wealth
or power. In fact the slave system without
slaves would cease to exist. So political
understanding made all the difference between enslavement and freedom and the

I

Volume 4, Number 1

very ability to maintain the system of slavery. And so it is with us prisoners, and is
why prison officials go to great lengths to
suppress revolutionary political consciousness and literature.
As a result, how easily we are conditioned to and are the source of forging the
chains that bind us. Across Amerika, we
keep the prisons that bind us operating. We
repair and maintain them, and their equipment and vehicles. Often we actually build
the prisons, as has been the case here in
Texas where I’m confined. We install security enhancements, weld, construct, etc.
We grow, harvest, prepare and serve the
food that both we and the prison officials
eat, we make or repair the clothing, bedding, and guard uniforms, etc. And we give
up billions of dollars in free or grossly underpaid labor, and stolen funds in interest
and paying for obscenely overpriced phone
rates and goods purchased from the prison
or jail commissaries, etc. We’re slaves. All
of us. Black. White. Brown. Red. So all the
old silly divisions based on skin color are
rendered obsolete by today’s penal slavery.
And speaking of race, those classifications and divisions were also politically
created. The very concept of race was invented in Virginia beginning in 1682 by
laws passed in response to slave revolts involving Afrikan, European, and Indigenous
slaves who frequently united in fighting
their enslavers. One revolt (Bacon’s Rebellion) actually succeeded in overthrowing
the Virginia colonial government, putting
its governor to flight and burning down the
capitol (in 1676).

Before this there was no such thing as
race as we know it, and all colors of people
were enslaved. In fact the divide and rule
scheme of inventing race and using it to elevate one sector of an exploited population
as ‘superior’ to the other and using that to
manipulate it to repress and police the other
super-exploited sector, proved so effective
in stabilizing the colonial plantation’s slave
system it was exported everywhere that
the European monarchs and church pow-

ers sought to establish dominance and steal
the natural resources and native wealth of
peoples’ outside of Europe (who were by
and large easily classifiable as non-white).
And it still works and is applied today. Ignorance of these designs is what allows us
to continually fall victim to them as both
proponents, counter-proponents, and victims, and this is what has made it such an
effective tactic of subjugation. While those
in power are constantly denouncing racism,
we see everywhere it is fueled, appealed to,
and incited by them—especially the prison
officials—openly and subliminally, and
every effort is made to counter grassroots
struggles to deconstruct racial divisions
and privilege.
Finally, let’s look at Ed. No one can deny
the role he played in the historical California prisoner hunger strikes or his impact
on efforts to end racial hostilities. I’ve followed his years of agitating through his
publications and editorials against the racial and group divisions and conflicts that
the California pigs’ consciously instigated,
facilitated, and in turn used to justify abusing Cali prisoners and imposing the literal
torture of long term segregation. And finally, key comrades among them woke up and
spoke up—the rest is history … but history
still in the making.
Ed has sacrificed a lot of time, funds, and
so on in keeping the struggle alive for us
and with us. Now in case its escaped anyone’s notice, revolutionary political consciousness is what drives Ed to do what he
does, even into his senior years and while
struggling with life-threatening illness.
Think on that. No political consciousness,
no Ed. No Ed, none of these newsletters
and editorials and none of the outcomes
mentioned above. Also, no Ed and there’d
be no Prison Legal News, which he cofounded—the only prisoner oriented legal
magazine. Now imagine if we had a hundred Eds, which isn’t hard to conceive of
since 95 percent of U.S. prisoners will return to society at some point. That is if we
were receiving that revolutionary political
education that some have questioned the
value of. And here’s the punch line—Ed
started out in prison just like us … Need I
say more? ●
Dare to Struggle, Dare to win!
All power to the people!
5

MARXIST MATERIALISM VS. IDEALISM

D

ialectical materialism teaches us
that the external world (matter)
is reflected by our brains through
our five senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste
and touch. What is first perceived through
the five senses is “perceptual knowledge.”
When enough perceptual knowledge has
accumulated in our brains, perceptual
knowledge leaps to “conceptual knowledge” (the formation of ideas, theories,
plans, measures, etc.); that is, from objective matter to subjective consciousness,
from existence to ideas.
We then test the “truth” of our ideas by
putting them into practice; that is, transforming subjective consciousness back into
objective matter, from ideas back into existence. Those ideas that fail to correspond
with the external material world are incorrect and untruthful, while those ideas that
do meet with success and correspond with
the external world are correct and truthful.
hat this demonstrates is that “truth” is
not an idea that exists only in our minds,
but that truth exists independently of our
minds and is found in the external world.
This also demonstrates that consciousness
development first begins with matter. Matter came first and without matter, which is
translated in our brains in the form of ideas,
there can be no consciousness. Consciousness is a product and reflection of matter,
and our brains are nothing more than highly developed matter with the ability to consciously reflect and transform the material
world around us.
pposing this truth is the philosophy and
thought of “idealism,” which turns truth
upside down on its head and falsely contends that consciousness came first, that is,
consciousness is the creator of matter. The
existence of a god who created the universe
(matter) and everything in it being the most
extreme expression of this backwards assertion. Consciousness did not and cannot
create matter because without matter consciousness cannot exist.
Though most are unaware of it, our ways
of thinking are dominated by one of two
camps, idealism or materialism, and idealism is the prevailing mode of though within
prison society. This “convenient” way of
thinking is not only incorrect because it
doesn’t correspond with the external world;
it’s self-deceiving and destructive to us as a
population. For example, we conveniently
convince ourselves that we’re warriors,
soldados, etc., and that we can do life in
6

solitary confinement. “Cause nobody can
break us,” “We know how to do our time,”
etc., etc. In part this may be true for many,
but regardless of what we conveniently
convince ourselves of, “truth” is found in
the external world and exists independently
of our minds, and the truth is, we’re still
being oppressed when we’re subjected to
a lifetime sentence of solitary confinement
behind fabricated and frivolous information, no matter what we convince ourselves
of. Once we deceive ourselves with convenient excuses in an attempt to justify our
inaction, we’re essentially laying down in
defeat and accepting our conditions. Idealism and the defeatist poison it spreads must
be discarded as a way of thinking if we are
going to improve our living condition. We
are not who we are because we convince
ourselves that’s who we are. It is our interaction with the external world and those
around us which determines who we are,
and inaction does not make us soldiers. It
makes us accomplices of the C.D.C. and
contributors to our own oppression. ●
H.L., A California Prisoner

AFTER 42 YEARS
IN SOLITARY,
WILL ALBERT
WOODFOX BE A
FREE MAN?

I

n a unanimous decision, a three-judge
panel from the Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals upheld the overturning of Albert Woodfox’s conviction. Yet he may
remain in prison–and in solitary confinement–for months or even years before his
four-decade ordeal is over.
Woodfox has been held in solitary confinement for more than 42 years for the
1972 of the murder of corrections officer
Brent Miller at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Many believe that he and
the other two members of the so-called Angola 3 were targeted for the crime, and subsequently held in isolation, not because of
the evidence but because of their involvement in the prison’s chapter of the Black
Panther Party. Woodfox is the only member of the so-called Angola 3 to remain
in prison. Robert King was freed in 2001
after 29 years in solitary after his original
conviction was overturned. Herman Wal-

lace, whose conviction had also been overturned, died last year after more than 41
years in solitary and a few days of freedom.
The Fifth Circuit, considered one of the
nation’s most conservative Federal Appeals
Courts, voted to uphold a ruling by a Federal District Court, which vacated Woodfox’s
conviction on the grounds that rounds that
there had been racial bias in the selection of
grand jury forepersons in Louisiana at the
time of his indictment. The State of Louisiana could decide to accept the Appeals
Court’s decision and free Woodfox, or release him on bail while it seeks to re-indict
him for the 1972 murder.
That scenario is highly unlikely, however, considering the past statements and actions of Louisiana Attorney General James
“Buddy” Caldwell. Caldwell has called
Woodfox, now 67 years old, “the most
dangerous man on the planet” due to his
political convictions. More recently, when
Woodfox’s conviction was overturned last
year, Caldwell immediately vowed to appeal, saying: “We feel confident that we
will again prevail at the Fifth Circuit Court
of Appeals. However, if we do not, we
are fully prepared and willing to retry this
murderer again.” Now that things have not
gone his way, Caldwell may prepare for a
retrial, while opposing bail for Woodfox.
Or the he may appeal the ruling to the full
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rather than a
three-judge panel–and from there, if things
don’t go his way, to the Supreme Court,
where the Circuit Justice is Antonin Scalia.
Caldwell asserts that the evidence against
Woodfox is “overpowering”: “There are no
flaws in our evidence and this case is very

"It should never be easy for them to destroy
us" by Kevin "Rashid" Johnson

Rock!

strong,” he said last year. These statements
belie the fact that much of the evidence that
led to Wallace and Woodfox’s conviction
has since been called into question. In particular, the primary eyewitness was shown
to have been bribed by prison officials into
making statements against the two men.
Solitary Watch’s James Ridgeway first
wrote about the Woodfox case in 2009 in
Mother Jones, providing a comprehensive
history and analysis, as well as an account
of the conditions in which Woodfox has
lived for four decades.
Woodfox’s conditions of confinement
have if anything deteriorated in the last five
years: He was moved from Angola to David Wade Correctional Center in north central Louisiana, where, according to a separate lawsuit, he faces multiple daily strip
searches and visual body cavity searches.
Woodfox, along with Robert King and the
estate of Herman Wallace, is also plaintiff
in a major federal lawsuit challenging his
decades in solitary on First, Eighth, and
Fourteenth Amendment grounds. That suit
may finally come to trial next year. ●
http://solitarywatch.com/2014/11/20/
after-42-years-in-solitary-confinementwill-the-angola-3s-albert-woodfox-be-afree-man

ON TRIAL FOR
PROTESTING
CONDITIONS IN
SOLITARY
By Victoria Law
re people in prison allowed to stand
up for their rights? Or does all organized resistance to inhumane
prison conditions amount to rioting? Five
men—Andre Jacobs, Carrington Keys,
Anthony Locke, Duane Peters and Derrick Stanley—will stand trial in a case that
may determine how Pennsylvania’s justice
system answer that question. The trial was
scheduled to begin today, but the court issued a continuance until February 17.
All five had been held at the Restricted
Housing Unit (RHU) at SCI-Dallas, a prison in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. In
the RHU, men are locked into their cell for
nearly 24 hours a day. People can be sent to
the RHU for violating prison rules, including various nonviolent infractions. Shandre
Delaney recalls that her son, Carrington
Keys, was originally placed in the RHU for

A

Volume 4, Number 1

90 days in 2001 when he got into a fight
with another prisoner. “He kept being written up for things like covering his light
because the lights are on all night or for
verbal assault for talking back to a guard,”
she told Solitary Watch. These write-ups
extended his stay in the RHU. Keys spent
most of his twenties in the RHU. He was
briefly released in 2009 but was sent back
to the RHU later that year on charges of
having contraband. He attributes his return
to solitary confinement to the numerous
grievances, lawsuits,
and criminal complaints he filed against
prison staff.
Like Keys, Derrick Stanley was originally sent to the RHU for a few months.
“When I was in the chow hall in general
population, the guard would give us three
to five minutes to eat. When those three to
five minutes was up, I told him, ‘I would
like to finish my food.’ He let me finish my
food, but then sent me to the hole,” he explained. There, Stanley accumulated writeup after write-up for other actions, such as
attempting to cover his light or for talking
back to the guards. He spent a year in the
RHU.
“If you’ve ever been inside a dog pound,
you see individual dogs in individual cages,” he described. “In this particular unit
[the Restricted Housing Unit at Pennsylvania’s SCI-Dallas], it’s like being a dog
locked in a cage. The dogs depend on humans for food, water, and to be let out. We
depend on the COs. It’s like your life is in
their hands.”
Stanley said that staff utilized their positions of power to commit extreme abuses.
He is not the only person to charge staff at
SCI Dallas with human rights violations In
2009, Human Rights Coalition-Fed Up! began an investigation into conditions at SCI
Dallas. Through letters from people inside,
interviews with family members, institutional paperwork, affidavits and civil litigation documents, the group compiled Institutional Cruelty, a 93-page report detailing
“the cruelty, illegality, suffering, racism,
violence, and despair that constitute the reality inhabited by inmates at SCI Dallas.”
According to the report, cells are filthy
and the water from the sink is often brown.
Other complaints included failure to provide physical and mental health care, deprivation of water, and routine physical
violence. Stanley recalls more than one
instance in which staff notified him of a
visit from his mother and sister. Staff handcuffed and shackled him. Then, instead of

taking him to the visiting room, he said he
was “knocked out and thrown back in my
cell.” When his mother and sister did actually visit, driving six hours for a one-hour
visit, staff told them that Stanley had refused the visit. They did not notify Stanley,
who found out later from his mother.
Prisoners also reported that staff spit or
put other bodily fluids in their food. In addition, staff frequently refused to feed a person by passing his cell as they handed out
food trays (a practice known as “burning
them for their trays”). Many men charged
that staff prevented them from accessing
the grievance box to complain about practices. Those who did manage to file grievances found that their complaints fell on
deaf ears. “I put so many grievances in,”
Stanley told Solitary Watch. “They turned
a blind eye to all of them.”
In at least one instance, according to
Stanley, staff encouraged a man to commit
suicide. “He was always yelling, ‘I’m a kill
myself! I’m a kill myself!’ Stanley said of
fellow prisoner Matthew Bullock. Instead
of seeking mental health treatment for him,
Stanley recalled hearing the guards egging
the man on. “Kill yourself! Go ahead and
kill yourself!” The guards moved Bullock
from a cell with a camera to one without
a camera, where he hanged himself. Seven
other prisoners independently reported the
guards’ actions, including the man’s transfer to a different cell, to the Human Rights
Coalition, which included these testimonies in their report. Although his was the
only death labeled a suicide, Bullock was
one of thirteen people who died that year
in SCI-Dallas.
On April 29, 2010, Isaac Sanchez, then
age twenty, noticed that staff had not given the man in the adjoining cell, Anthony
Kelly, a food tray. Like Sanchez, Kelly had
participated in HRC’s investigation, detailing verbal abuse, lack of water and assaults by multiple staff on one person. “I
said, ‘My neighbor’s not getting fed. That’s
not policy,’” Sanchez told Solitary Watch.
“The officer said, and excuse my language,
‘Fuck him and fuck you’ and started burning me for my tray.” Sanchez and the officer had a verbal argument, with Sanchez
locked behind his cell door and the officer
in the hallway. Then, Sanchez reported, the
water to his cell was turned off, leaving him
unable to use the sink or flush the toilet.
“From time to time, the sink water would
explode [out of the faucet] and water would
get all over my property, my bed, and ev7

erything.” Then, staff came to Sanchez’s
cell door and told him to pack his property
and be ready to move. Sanchez recalled
seeing twelve other correctional officers in
the hall and, fearing for his safety, refused
to move.
“The lieutenant told me, ‘You gonna
come out of the cell or we gonna take you
out,’” he recalled. “I told him I wasn’t going to leave my neighbor.”
Sanchez reported that he was then
sprayed with pepper spray, beaten and
tasered. He said staff cut his clothes away
with a box-cutter and took him to a section of the law library where they cuffed
him into a chair by his wrists and ankles.
Sanchez recalled looking at the window
and noticing it was dark out. “Then the sun
came out and I knew that the hours had
passed,” he said. Staff checked on him every two to four hours and, although a nurse
was supposed to slip her finger beneath his
wrist restraint to check his pulse, he was
restrained so tightly that her finger was unable to fit.
Sanchez estimates that he was restrained
in the chair for twenty to thirty hours. Then
he was taken out and placed in an empty
cell with no mattress, clothing or water for
about 72 hours.
Others in the RHU attempted to do
something about Sanchez’s beating. In
Pennsylvania’s RHU, when a person covers the window to his cell, a supervising officer is called to his cell to ensure that he is
not self-harming. In the past, people in the
RHU have used this tactic to call in higherups to complain about guard brutality. That
day, six men—Derrick Stanley, Carrington
Keys, Anthony Kelly, Duane Peters, Andre
Jacobs and Anthony Locke—covered the
windows of their cell doors after Sanchez
was beaten and taken to the restraint chair.
“That was our last resort. We didn’t think
they [the captain or superior] was going to
help, but what can you do? You’re locked
in the cell,” explained Stanley.
No supervising officer appeared. Instead,
the men say, they were pepper sprayed and
beaten. “I lay on the ground, my face on the
floor, put my hands behind my back [when
the guards came into the cell],” Stanley recalled.” I lay on the ground in the submissive position and they kicked me in the face
so much that I had to get stitches. I couldn’t
even cry, I was in so much pain. They tasered me in the groin over and over.”
Stanley says that staff cut his clothes
away with a box-cutter, then cuffed him.
“They took me asshole-naked in hand8

cuffs and shackles all around the range
in front of two hundred to three hundred
men,” Stanley recalled. “I was still leaking
blood.” Then, he said, he was placed in a
cage that he described as “littler than a dog
cage.” That night, he could hear others being beaten. “All you heard was the beating.
You could hear the impact and the force,”
he described, rapping out a simulation of
the sounds that night. “You kept hearing,
‘Stop resisting!’ and ‘I’m not resisting!’”
Delaney said that her son was similarly brutalized. Keys managed to send his
mother a letter the next day. “By the time
you receive this, make some calls to the
prison,” he had written. “They [staff] are
on a rampage.” When Delaney called, Keys
had already been transferred to SCI Frackville. She called Frackville and spoke to the
counselor, who assured her that her son was
fine. After being transferred again, this time
to SCI Camp Hill outside Harrisburg, Keys
was placed in a stepdown program and, after spending a decade in solitary confinement, was allowed into general population.
For his participation in the April 29th protest, he was issued a misconduct ticket for
refusing to obey an order but was allowed
to remain in general population.
Stanley too was transferred the day after
the beating to SCI Mahanoy, where he was
kept locked down for several months and,
like Keys and the other men, issued a misconduct ticket for refusing to obey an order.
On February 7, 2012, Stanley was released
from prison after 22 years behind bars. He
moved to New Jersey, moved into his own
house, and enrolled in a community college
to begin studying to be a paralegal. “I started studying law so I could fight them,” he
recalled. But now he faces the prospect of
being returned to prison for another seven
years.
Months after their protest, the state filed
charges against the six men, accusing them
of riot and intent to prevent or coerce an official act. If convicted, each faces an addi-

tional seven years in prison. Carrington
Keys has also been charged with aggravated assault.
In late 2010, Anthony Kelly finished his
prison sentence but, instead of being released, he was sent to the Luzerne County
jail where he was told he would be kept until the trial. In 2011, he pled guilty to the
rioting charge. He was released on parole
in August 2011.
Nearly four and a half years after their
protest, the five other men will return to
Luzerne County to stand trial starting on
Monday, November 10th. The Luzerne
County court system, based in the city of
Wilkes-Barre, is no stranger to controversy.
In 2013, two judges were found to have taken more than two million dollars in bribes
from the owner of Pennsylvania Child Care
and Western Pennsylvania Child Care, private youth prisons. In a scandal that became known as “Kids for Cash,” the judges
had sentenced over 4000 youth to these facilities between 2003 and 2008.
But Delaney and Keys remain optimistic. “Because his case is so bogus, I think
he’s very hopeful that he will be successful,” Delaney told Solitary Watch.
“It was no riot,” Stanley insisted. “All
I did was cover up my door—a peaceful
covering up my door. I was locked in an
individual cell.”
“They’re being persecuted because
they’re whistleblowers, not because they
did anything wrong,” Delaney said at
a press conference in Philadelphia two
weeks before the trial. “They had the audacity to stand up for themselves—and for
other prisoners. When they went to prison,
they lost their right to live in a free society. They didn’t lose their human rights and
they didn’t lose their civil rights.”
Delaney sees her son’s and the other
men’s actions as part of the movement
of prisoners standing up against unprovoked violence and other abuses, including the 2010 work strikes in over a dozen
Georgia prisons and the wave of mass
hunger strikes in prisons across California. “They’re standing up for their human
rights,” she said.
Days before the trial, Stanley doesn’t
regret his actions. “I feel good because I
fought. Not just for me, but for other people even that dead guy.” Thinking about the
four-and-a-half years between the incident
and now, he would tell others in similar
situations, “There is hope. Never give up.
There are people who care. Because of that,
that’s what kept me strong.” ●
Rock!

THE U.S. PRISON
INDUSTRY
–‘NEO-SLAVERY’
A Book Review

[Book Review: Slaves of the State: Black
Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the
Penitentiary, by Dennis Childs {University
of Minnesota Press: forthcoming spring,
2015}]
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
sk any historian, activist or scholar
about the origins of the American
prison system and they’ll confidently reply the Walnut Street Jail, nineteenth century, Philadelphia.
One scholar, literature professor, Dennis
Childs, will say, “No, That’s not it.”
And when you ask him for more, he’ll
tell you that prisons began in America alright, but it wasn’t in Philadelphia. It began
as slave ships, sailing prisons for Africans,
chained for days, weeks, months on end,
in their rancid stifling holds, en-route to
Philadelphia, Rhode Island, Rio de Janeiro,
Havana, Jamaica, Charleston and beyond.
What sparked Childs’ thinking was an article he read years ago as a graduate student
by scholar/activist Dr. Angela Davis, entitled “Racialized Punishment and Prison
Abolition”, in which she noted that “[T]he
institution of slavery, “[was} “itself a form
of incarceration.”
That powerful insight has moved Prof.
Childs to pen a book, Slaves of the State:
Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang
to the Penitentiary, in which he examines
the deep roots and startling continuities

A

Caution by Michael Russell

Volume 4, Number 1

between these two repressive institutions
– and why they remain so popular in the
[white] American mind.
For slavery, like the Prison Industrial
Complex, was a monstrously lucrative
business. He illustrates how names have
changed over time, but deep, abiding realities and relationships remain.
A prison, he argues, is a slave ship run
aground, and prisoners? “Neo-slaves.”
He devotes much of his text to Angola in
Louisiana.
The name itself is of an ancient African
kingdom, from whence millions of Blacks
were captured centuries ago.
Today, one of the biggest prisons in
America (Angola), a former mass plantation during the slavery era, looks an awful
lot like one today. Chains, shackles, whips,
rifles and repression, where thousands of
dark men labor on land under an unremitting sun.
Childs has written a deeply moving and
intricately researched book, which weaves
novels and memory, the past and the present, ancient artifacts and modern tools of
repression, to reveal an unwelcome truth
about modern-day America, and the biggest prison system on earth.
Childs shows us how the past isn’t really
past at all. ●

70 DETAINEES TO
HOLD HUNGER
STRIKE
By Saed Bannoura
he Palestinian Prisoner Society
(PPS) has reported that seventy detainees, held in a number of Israeli
prisons and detention centers, have decided
to hold an open-ended hunger strike, starting December 10th.
The PPS said the detainees decided to
start their strike in solidarity with detainee
Nahar as-Sa’ady, who began his hunger
strike on November 20, demanding an end
to his solitary confinement, and allowing
him family visits.
It added that the detainees are also demanding the Prison Administration to end
the solitary confinement of dozens of detainees, and to release all ailing detainees.
The Palestinian Detainees Committee
said Sa’ady is now totally isolated from the
outside world, and is placed in a very small,
cold cell, that is not fit for human use. ●
http://www.imemc.org/article/69952

T

Quote Box
"When the people liberate their own
minds and take a hard clear look at
what the 1% is doing and what the 99%
should be doing, then serious stuff begins to happen."
Michael Parenti
"He that would make his own liberty
secure, must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty,
he establishes a precedent that will reach
to himself."
Thomas Paine
"Every step toward the goal of justice
requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate
concern of dedicated individuals."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Make men wise, and by that very
operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no
usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion."
William Godwin, (1756-1836)
"The right to utter one's thoughts and
opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all
rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the
right which they first of all strike down"
Frederick Douglass
"Hope...is the companion of power,
and the mother of success; for who so
hopes has within him the gift of miracles. "
Samuel Smiles
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen
but by him who resists it."
John Hay - (1838-1905)
"Wall Street owns the country...Our
laws are the output of a system which
clothes rascals in robes and honesty in
rags. The [political] parties lie to us and
the political speakers mislead us...Money rules."
Mary Elizabeth Leasetor
"Everyone thinks of changing the
world, but no one thinks of changing
himself."
Leo Tolstoy

9

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On Jailhouse Lawyers
“…jailhouse lawyers often unwittingly serve the interests of the state
by propagating the illusion of ‘justice’
and ‘equity’ in a system devoted to
neither.” They create “illusions of legal options as pathways to both individual and collective liberation.”
Mumia Abu-Jamal,
JAILHOUSE LAWYERS: Prisoners
Defending Prisoners v. The U.S.A.

Message Box
“You stand with the belligerent, the
surly, and the badly behaved until bad
behavior is recognized for the language
it is: The vocabulary of the deeply
wounded and of those whose burdens
are more than they can bear.”
Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart

Ed Mead, Publisher
Rock Newsletter
P.O. Box 47439
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