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March
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2015

WOMEN IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
By Victoria Law
ictoria Woodrich had had enough.
On November 11, 2014, six weeks
before her 36th birthday, she tied
a sock around her neck; she tied the other
end to the top of her bed structure. By the
time staff found her at 3:30 that afternoon,
she was dead.
Woodrich, known as Shortybang to her
friends, had been in prison for more than
a decade and at Illinois’ Logan Correctional Center since its 2013 conversion to
a women’s prison. Earlier that month, she
was placed in the prison’s segregation unit,
where women are locked in their cells nearly 24 hours a day.
“She kept telling me she wanted to die,”
recalled Nicole Natschke, who was in segregation during that time. “She told me
that everyone would be better off without
her.” Three days later, the woman awoke to
screaming. That was when she learned that

V

CONTENTS
Women in Solitary ....................1
Israeli Prison Closed ................3
US, More Jails Than Colleges .4
Police Kill 70 Times More.........4
Quote Box ................................5
Letters ......................................6
International Politics. ................7
Prisoner Free Speech Lawsuit .8
Poetry: Cuba Si, Jersey No......9

Woodrich had hung herself.
Most prison officials eschew the term
“solitary confinement” these days. They
use other names for the units in which people are isolated to their cells nearly all day.
In California, it’s usually the “administrative segregation unit” or “security housing
unit”; in New York state and in the federal
system, it’s the Special Housing Unit (or
SHU). In Logan prison, the unit is known
as the “segregation wing.”
Regardless of the name, women in these
units spend 22 to 24 hours in their cells.
They are allowed out of their cells for
showers up to three times each week and
for one hour of exercise and recreation per
day inside a different cage outdoors. This
isolation exacerbates any existing mental
health problems and, even for those without preexisting conditions, can cause severe psychological and emotional trauma.
Dr. Craig Haney, widely considered an
expert on the effects of isolation on mental health, rattled off a list of the effects of
solitary confinement in his 2012 testimony
before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee,
including significantly increased negative
attitudes and affect, irritability, anger, aggression and even rage; chronic insomnia,
free floating anxiety, fear of impending
emotional breakdowns, a loss of control,
and panic attacks; severe and even paralyzing discomfort around other people,
social withdrawal, and extreme paranoia;
hypersensitivity to external stimuli (such
as noise, light, smells), various kinds of
cognitive dysfunction, such as an inability
to concentrate or remember, and ruminations in which they fixate on trivial things
intensely and over long periods of time; a
sense of hopelessness and deep depression;
and signs and symptoms of psychosis, in-

cluding visual and auditory hallucinations.
Haney is not alone in his findings. Not
only do others in the mental health field
agree, but directors of various state prison
systems have also come to recognize solitary’s harmful effects. But, despite the increasing attention being paid to solitary in
men’s prisons - from the 2013 mass prison
hunger strike in California to prison commissioners experiencing the isolation firsthand and condemning the practice - far less
attention has been paid to the practice in
women’s prisons.
“You Have Lost Your Freedom in
Ways You've Never Thought of”
“Solitary confinement traumatized me
far more than being in prison did. And
prison traumatized me,” Evie Litwok told
Truthout. Litwok, who was released from
prison on August 19, 2014, is still affected
by her stay in solitary. “You have lost your
freedom in a way you never have thought
of,” she said. “Your nerves are shot. You
feel more edgy.”
Evie Litwok spent seven weeks in the
SHU, which she describes as a prisonwithin-a-prison at the Federal Correctional
Institution in Tallahassee, Florida. There,
she was confined to her cell nearly 24 hours
each day. For one hour each morning, she
was also allowed to leave her cell to exercise in another cage. To do so, she was
chained, handcuffed and walked to the recreation cage outside, which she described
as “probably never having been cleaned.”
After one hour, she was handcuffed,
chained and escorted back to her cell.
She was allowed to shower three times
each week; each shower lasted less than
10 minutes. Other days, she had to improvise in her cell. “I would strip naked and

pour water over myself,” she recalled. Like
many of the other women in the SHU, Litwok was double-celled and so had to do
so in front of her bunkmate. She was also
exposed to the eyes of any guard or staff
member who walked by her cell door, since
prison policy prohibits covering the small
window on the door at any time.
What landed Litwok in solitary? Publicizing the death of a woman named Miriam
Hernandez. According to Litwok, Hernandez had been complaining of excruciating
stomach pain. Medical staff dismissed her
complaints, telling her, “You’re fat. You
need to walk on the track. You need to
drink water.” Hernandez died two weeks
later when her gallbladder burst.
People incarcerated in the federal prison
system have access to CorrLinks, a limited
version of email. Litwok emailed the details of Hernandez’s death to a friend, who
posted it on her website, Ex-Offender Nation. Within an hour of the story’s posting,
Litwok was handcuffed, strip searched and
sent to the SHU.
There’s little quiet in the SHU, Litwok
explained. All day, women screamed, “Get
me out of here! Get me the fuck out of
here!” The screaming was always worse at
night.
Women who were on medication sometimes received a fraction of their prescription after being placed in the SHU. Litwok
recalls that her cellmate was one of those
women. “She was freaking out,” she said.
“It was clear that she couldn’t take it. She
kept asking, ‘Why am I here? I’m not

2

charged with anything.’ “
Litwok was able to flag down the psychologist, who gave the woman the proper
dosage for that one night. But the following day the medications were gone, and the
woman’s freak-out resumed. Two months
later, Litwok’s cellmate, who had been
placed in SHU “under investigation,” was
released without charge. She was not the
only one in the SHU whose charges were
ultimately dropped.
“I was with 60 women in the SHU,” Litwok recalled. Most were awaiting the outcome of an investigation and hearing. “Everyone who was charged had their charges
dropped or reduced,” she stated. She remembered women accused of bringing in
contraband. After spending four months in
isolation, their charges were dropped. Another woman spent eight months after she
cursed about a correctional officer within
his hearing, and was charged with threatening the officer. The charges were ultimately
dropped.
In solitary, women must depend on prison staff to bring them necessities. Litwok
remembers the humiliation of having to
beg for toilet paper. In Illinois, Natschke
reported that officers frequently refused to
hand out sanitary pads until women staged
a disturbance. “I went two days with no
pads,” she said. “There were several other
women who also needed pads. The officers
ignored us or would tell us that there aren’t
any.” The women had to stage individual
protests: “One woman ended up flooding
her cell. I held my chuckhole open so I

could see a lieutenant. Other women were
banging on their doors.”
They received their necessary pads, but
each was also issued a misconduct ticket,
which prevents them from having their
segregation time reduced. “If we didn’t do
that, we would’ve still been sitting on the
toilet,” noted Natschke, whose solitary sentence will not end until August 3, 2015.
Cellmates in Segregation: Enabling
Human Interaction or a Result of
Overcrowding?
Prison administrators have pointed out
that some people in segregation are allowed cellmates and thus are not “solitary.”
In Logan, for instance, prison watchdog
group the John Howard Association found
that 92 of the 99 women in segregation
shared cells with one other person (a term
known as double-celling). In California’s
women’s prisons, only two of the 158
women in Administrative Segregation and
four of the 78 women in the Security Housing Unit were in cells alone; the others are
double-celled. But advocates, including
people who have spent time in these units,
say that this double-celling is more about
prison overcrowding than ensuring human
interaction.
As of October 2014, for instance, the
California Institution for Women, originally designed to hold 1,100 people, housed
1,799; the Central California Women’s Facility, originally designed for 1,895, housed
3,676. In Illinois, Logan, with a rated capacity of 1,106, currently holds 1,950 people.
Having a cellmate, however, does little
to ameliorate the effects of prolonged confinement. “When the lights close, you’re in
this small space,” Litwok explained. “You
can’t turn on the TV; you can’t listen to the
radio; you can’t read a book.” Four months
later, she still has difficulty falling asleep.
When she does, she has nightmares. “I have
a darkness that I never had, a cloud that sits
over my head. And you can’t fix that,” she
said. “I wonder if I’ll ever be relaxed.”
Protective or Punitive?
When 20-year-old Donna Hylton was
first arrested and sent to Rikers Island, New
York City’s island jail, she was placed in
protective custody (solitary confinement).
“It was horrible!” she told Truthout. “I was
isolated. For a long time, I didn’t see anyone. I got taken to court by myself or, if I
was on the bus with anyone else, they’d put
me in the caged part by myself.” The isolation was ostensibly to protect her because
Rock!

of her high-profile case in the kidnapping
and murder of a real estate broker.
But the lack of human contact soon resulted in nightmares, which resulted in
medical staff prescribing psychotropic
medications. “I didn’t know what it was,”
Hylton explained. “They told me I had to
take it or I’d get in trouble. I didn’t want to
get in trouble, so I took it.”
After six months, she was taken off protective custody and allowed into general
population. A few months later, after returning from court, she was told that staff
had found a straight razor among her possessions. She was sentenced to 45 days in
solitary and sent back to the same unit, this
time as punishment. “I was in the same
unit, same corridor. It was no different.”
The only difference was the label explaining her placement.
Report Sexual Abuse? Go to Seg.
Although the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act prohibits sexual contact between
staff and the people they guard, prison
administrators frequently use the threat of
solitary to dissuade women from reporting
staff abuse. Donna Hylton knows this firsthand. She recalled one particular sergeant
who tried to coerce her into having sex. She
tried to report his behavior to the administration.
“They told me, ‘If you keep making
these allegations, we’re going to send you
to SHU,’” she remembered. The lieutenant
told her that, without evidence, they would
not believe her accusations.
In response, Hylton snapped, “The next
time he pulls out his dick, I’m going to bite
it off and bring you the evidence.”
Recalling the conversation, Hylton said,
“I sat on the floor of the administration
building and screamed it out,” she recalled.
The sergeant stopped his behavior, but
found a way to punish Hylton for speaking out.
A few months later, Hylton was involved
in an altercation with another sergeant. She
had recently learned that her daughter had
been assaulted, and Hylton had been traveling two hours back and forth between Bedford Hills and the New York City court system to press charges against the assailant.
“I had marijuana and a five dollar bill on
me,” she recalled. An officer noticed and
placed his hands to begin a search. “I had
been molested as a girl,” she explained.
“I didn’t realize he was going to search
me. All I knew was that he put his hands
on me.” Hylton pushed him, leading to
Volume 4, Number 3

an altercation where other staff members
wrestled her to the ground and handcuffed
her. The sergeant whose sexual advances
she had tried to report joined in, ultimately
charging her with possession of money and
assault on staff. She was sent to the Special
Housing Unit.
In the SHU, women were allowed one
hour of recreation time out of their cell each
day. As in the federal system and many
other state systems, recreation consists of
spending time in a cage outside. “There’s a
stone table with stone slabs you can sit on,”
Hylton described. “It’s a little bigger than
your average-sized bathroom. It has razor
wire over the top of the rec yard. There’s
also a gun tower.” Showers lasted five minutes. “By the time you take off your robe,
they’ve turned off the water,” she recalled.
She remembered women screaming day
in and day out. People tried to kill themselves and sometimes succeeded. “The
isolation can break you down mentally,
emotionally,” she explained. “It was torturous.” Mental health check-ups consisted of
a mental health staffer asking her, through
the food slot in her door, “You okay? Do
you want to talk?” There was no privacy to
talk one-on-one with either mental health
or medical staff.
“We Need to Eliminate Solitary for
Everybody”
From inside her solitary cell, Natschke
has been trying to speak out. “I want to
help make prisons better, so I don’t mind
people knowing what I’m going through,”
she wrote.
Out of prison, both Litwok and Hylton
have become outspoken advocates against
solitary confinement. On December 19,
2014, four months after her release from
prison, Litwok testified about her SHU experience before the New York City Board
of Corrections, which establishes and monitors minimum standards in the city’s jails.
The board was hearing testimony about a
proposal to build a $14.8 million, 250-bed
“Enhanced Supervision Housing Unit” on
Rikers Island to isolate people deemed to
be violent or threats to security.
“I am the face of someone who is considered a security risk,” the 62-year-old
testified.
Hylton also testified, recounting her experience in solitary and urging the board to
consider adding positive programming to
Rikers, such as the college programs AIDS
Counseling and Education and Family
Violence, addressing abuse and violence,

which she had helped create at Bedford
Hills.
At its January 13, 2015, meeting, the
board approved the proposal to build the
Enhanced Supervision Housing Unit, with
amendments excluding people age 21 and
younger and setting 30-day duration limits.
Litwok, who attended the three-hour hearing, was appalled. But she’s resolved to
keep fighting.
“We should be eliminating prison for
most people,” Litwok said, “but we need to
eliminate solitary for everybody.”
http://truth-out.org/news/item/28570women-in-solitary-confinement. ●

ISRAELI RAMON
PRISON CLOSED
AS DETAINEES
NEARLY FROZE
TO DEATH
By Saed Bannoura
he Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs
stated that the Israeli Prison Authority closed, on Sunday January 11, the
Ramon Prison due to the extreme cold
weather, especially after the rain flooded all
sections and cells. It stated that several the
detainees nearly froze to death, and became
unable to move their limbs due to the cold
in their cells.

T

...several the detainees
nearly froze to death, and
became unable to move
their limbs due to the
cold.
“Their suffering escalated after the Prison Administration refused to allow their
families to provide them with winter clothing and sheets," the Commission reported,
“They have no heating in their rooms,
while the freezing temperatures are even
depriving the detainees from sleeping.”
The commission said thousands of political prisoners, in various Israeli prisoners,
detention and interrogation centers, are
exposed to extreme cold as temperatures
continue to drop due to the current snowstorm in Palestine. The Commission stated
that more than 6500 Palestinians, including
at least 250 children, are currently held by
Israeli Prison ........... Continued on page 8
3

THE U.S. HAS
MORE JAILS
THAN COLLEGES
By Christopher Ingraham,
The Washington Post
here were 2.3 million prisoners in
the U.S. as of the 2010 Census. It’s
often been remarked that our national incarceration rate of 707 adults per
every 100,000 residents is the highest in
the world, by a huge margin.
We tend to focus less on where we’re
putting all those people. But the 2010
Census tallied the location of every adult
and juvenile prisoner in the United States.
If we were to put them all on a map, this is
what they would look like:
[Map omitted by Ed]
The map shows the raw number of prisoners in each U.S. county as of the 2010
Census. Much of the discussion of regional
prison population only centers around inmates in our 1,800 state and federal correctional facilities. But at any given time,
hundreds of thousands more individuals
are locked up in the nation’s 3,200 local
and county jails. This map includes these
individuals as well.
To put these figures in context, we have
slightly more jails and prisons in the U.S.
-- 5,000 plus -- than we do degree-granting
colleges and universities. In many parts of
America, particularly the South, there are
more people living in prisons than on college campuses.
As you can see in the map, states differ
in the extent to which they spread their correctional populations out geographically.
Florida, Arizona and California stand out
as states with sizeable corrections populations in just about every county. States
in the midwest, on the other hand, tend
to have concentrated populations in just a
handful of counties. Prisons tend to leave
an unmistakeable mark on the landscape,
as artist Josh Begley has documented.
Because of the mix of state, federal and
local correctional facilities in each county,
it doesn’t make sense to express these numbers as a rate -- X prisoners per Y number
of adults. The presence of a federal or state
facility in a given county will greatly inflate
that county’s prisoner count relative to the
general population. And in many instances,
large correctional facilities are located in
sparsely populated regions, like Northern
New York. In some of these counties, prisons account for 10, 20 or 30 percent of the

T

4

total population.
In recent years criminal justice reform
has risen to prominence in the national
conversation, with both Democrats and
Republicans looking for ways to dial back
the incarceration-focused policies of the
‘80s and ‘90s. This map shows one reason
why the issue is gaining traction: prisoners
are literally every where you look in the
U.S. Nearly 85 percent of U.S. counties are
home to some number of incarcerated individuals. Localities spend tens of thousands
of dollars per prisoner each year -- and often much more than that -- to house, feed
and provide them with medical care. Most
counties would doubtless prefer to spend
this money elsewhere. ●

POLICE IN THE US
KILL CITIZENS AT
OVER 70 TIMES
THE RATE OF
OTHER FIRSTWORLD NATIONS
By Matt Agorist,
n case you’ve been under a rock lately,
it is becoming quite clear that police in
the US can and will kill people, even
unarmed people, even on video, and do so
with impunity. The tallying methods, or
rather lack thereof, used by both the FBI
and individual police departments to count
the amount of people killed by police, have
been shown to be staggeringly inaccurate.
However, this inability of the government
to count the number of people it kills, has
been met with multiple alternative means
of calculating just how deadly the state actually is.
One of these citizen run databases, is the
website www.killedbypolice.com. The site
is basically a spreadsheet that lists every
person killed
by cops in the
years
2013
and 2014. In
addition
to
naming those
killed, it also
provides
a
link to media
reports
for
each of the
killings, age,
sex and race if

I

available.
Do not mistake this as saying that those
who were killed were innocent. However, when we look at violent crime in this
country, we can see that it is at an all time
low. While violence among citizens has
dropped, violence against citizens carried
out by police has been rising sharply. When
we look at citizens killed by police over the
last two years, deaths have increased 44
percent in this short time; 763 people were
killing by police in 2013. As a comparison,
the total number of US troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, in 2014 was 58. Fewer
soldiers were killed in war than citizens
back home in “the land of the free” in 2014,
by a large margin.
So why is that? Is this some natural tendency of police in “free societies” to kill
their citizens more, in an effort to maintain
this freedom? Hardly, and hardly is the US
a free country.
According to the 2014 Legatum Prosperity Index released in November, in the
measure of personal freedom, the United
States has fallen from 9th place in 2010 to
21st worldwide—behind such countries as
Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany,
Uruguay and Costa Rica. Other such rankings systems show the US as low as 46.
Let’s look at our immediate neighbors to
the north, Canada. The total number of citizens killed by law enforcement officers in
the year 2014, was 14; that is 78 times less
people than the US. If we look at the United Kingdom, 1 person was killed by police
in 2014 and 0 in 2013. English police reportedly fired guns a total of three times in
all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities.
From 2010 through 2014, there were four
fatal police shootings in England, which
has a population of about 52 million. By
contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent the size of England’s, had
26 fatal police shootings in that same time
period. China, whose population is 4 and
1/2 times the size of the United States, re-

Rock!

corded 12 killings by law enforcement officers in 2014.
Let that sink in. Law enforcement in
the US killed 92 times more people than
a country with nearly 1.4 billion people. It
doesn’t stop there. From 2013-2014, German police killed absolutely no one. In the
entire history of Iceland police, they have
only killed 1 person ever. After exhausting
all non-lethal methods to detain an armed
man barricaded in his house who actually
shot 2 police officers, police were forced to
take the 59-year-old man’s life. The country of Iceland grieved for weeks after having to resort to violence.
So why are police in the US so much
more likely to kill than all of these other
first world countries? To better understand
the multi-dimensional answer to that question, we can start by looking at the prison
population of the US. America imprisons
almost twenty five percent of all people imprisoned in the world, although containing
only about 5% of the worlds population, an
extremely disproportionate share of people
imprisoned globally. The U.S. houses 2.3
million inmates, while China, a country
with four times the population of the U.S.,
is a distant second with 1.6 million prisoners.
The war on drugs coupled with the
military industrial state created by the US
playing police of the world, has created a
deadly combination. A constant pursuit of
new weaponry by the military has paved
the way for the hand-me-down cycle of
military gear to police departments. The
idea was that if the U.S. wanted its police
to act like drug warriors, it should equip
them like warriors, which it has—to the
tune of around $4.3 billion in equipment,
according to a report by the American Civil
Liberties Union.
The time for peaceful resistance is now
and more and more people are beginning to
understand this. Even retired police chiefs
of large cities are watching from the sidelines with anxiety as they see their once,
only slightly corrupt cities, turn into occupied militarized zones, ready to pounce
on the first instance of civil opposition. The
most recent of former police chiefs coming to terms with the horrid consequences
of their actions is Norm Stamper, former
chief of the Seattle Police. Stamper was recently on the Colbert Report and Stephen
Colbert asked him what happened during
the infamous Seattle WTO protests in 1999
under his leadership. “Well we gassed nonthreatening, non-violent protesters,” reVolume 4, Number 3

plied the former Chief of police for Seattle
Washington.
Of course while Norm Stamper was a
cop, he didn’t realize that his actions, no
matter how “justified” by the state, would
be contributing to a hellish future police
state. Stamper, like myself a 4 year veteran
of the USMC, and most of those who serve,
or have served the state in some way, are unable to think outside of the paradigm while
simultaneously supporting it. Because
Stamper is out of the paradigm, he can see
clearer now. According to his website, he
wants to: End the Drug War… Drive Bigotry and Brutality Out of the Criminal Justice
System… Honor the Constitution… Build
Respect for Cops…, etc. So far, Stamper
has been quite outspoken against the police state of which he was once complicit
in creating. In order to affect change more
people like Stamper need to come out. If
half of the officers that contacted the Free
Thought Project spoke publicly about their
concerns, we’d be in a much better place.
Unfortunately when officers do speak
out against their own department they are
met with horrid backlash from their peers.
Most recently an officer in Texas contacted us, who wanted to help prevent brutality and corruption. When we told him
that speaking out and refusing to enforce
immoral laws is how to change things, he
replied by stating that he does refuse to
arrest people for marijuana possession,
but that he “fear(s) the repercussions by
speaking out, simply because I do need a
paycheck.” The overwhelming majority of
police brutality cases stem from the war
on drugs. When so many people are tasked
with finding and prosecuting those in possession of a substance deemed illegal, the
interactions become more frequent and less
cordial. If we end that, we get the state out
of the private lives of most individuals.
This will only serve to lessen the scope of
police harassment, in turn lessening the instance of brutality and killings.
The Free Thought Project is currently
planning a world wide day of peaceful resistance to #End the Drug War. We are also
starting a Go Fund Me campaign to help
support whistleblower police officers. With
enough ‘good cops’ coming out against
corruption in their departments, this would
help to speed up the awakening process
for Americans who still support the police
state. We’ve seen the change that one or
two good cops can effect, imagine 100.
The time for peaceful action is now. ●
http://thefreethoughtproject.com

Quote Box
"What we think, or what we know, or
what we believe is, in the end, of little
consequence. The only consequence is
what we do."
John Ruskin
"It's not who you are on the inside but
what you do that defines you!"
Darius Shah
"When you invite people to think, you
are inviting revolution"
Ivana Gabara
"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
"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 Lease - 1890
"Enemies are necessary for the
wheels of the U.S. military machine to
turn."
John Stockwell, US Marine Corps
"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)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved
than those who falsely believe they are
free."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
5

Rock Solid
A forum for expression, shaping and
sharing modes of tactical political engagement as well as contributing to the marketplace of ideas, the Rock newsletter has long
provided an invaluable service in the 21st
century struggle for the human rights of
prisoners. Given this undeniable fact, it is
difficult to reconcile that same fact with the
persistent accounts of prisoners’ lackluster
support for the Rock itself.
In instances like this old chichés are often true: Nothing worth having ever comes
easy. So, it bears noting, as a reminder, that
there is a battle going on right now. A battle
not just to legally define what would constitute acceptable forms and lengths of solitary confinement—for, by the way, nothing
more than departmentally perceived social
status—but, more broadly speaking, to
also develop or suppress (depending upon
where you stand) a strong prisoner movement that will effectively challenge those
that seek to continue benefitting from and
expanding the market of mass incarceration will into this century.
While efforts and sacrifices made over
the last several years have certainly allowed
us to elevate some of our grievances over
the Department’s most egregious inhuman
practices to the heights of state, national,
and international public condemnation.
Such short term successes will by no means
be enough to win the day. It must be firmly
grasped that the opposition is playing the
long game, one in which sustainability
of their market is the primary objective,
which is closely followed by their need for
expansion. Consider the inter-generational
implications of that for you and your loved
ones. Power and greed at an institutional
level has historically depended on the marginalized’s inability to remain engaged for
very long—and understandably so.
Amid the gravity of real life, where tragic and unforgiving circumstances rear their
ugly faces with multi-sensory-cinema-like
force, we continuously encounter the daily
challenge of navigating the transition between the sanctuary of artificial (or pretend) life and reality. This universal human
experience is compounded in the prison
context, and it is impossible to describe, in
technical terms, an exact formula for successfully striking such transitional stasis.
6

It is, however, entirely possible to describe
what will emerge if the need for this crucial
balance is not acknowledged and satisfied
within our struggle—or any other life goals
for that matter—namely, our opponent’s
success.
There is something to be said about any
human being willing to effectively engage
in the realm of reality, who makes the critical connections needed to fully and accurately grasp the totality of his or her circumstances, who identifies the most viable,
creative and effective methods of engagement, and who ultimately makes no excuse
and musters the determination and grit to
move forward according to this process.
Over the roads and days of the past several
years, we’ve seen numerous shining examples of this particular human spirit (33,000
at its apex), and every one of those examples is deserving of a tremendous amount
of respect.
While there is still much to be done,
we take this opportunity to contribute to
the work and effort that will help see this
movement through. First, enclosed you
will find 275 first class stamps, which constitute a collective donation by everyone
here at PBSP “A” facility. Second, we have
also enclosed a copy of a proposed activity
group which we have presented to the warden for approval. We ask that you publish
this copy in order to provide others with a
workable idea on the question of how to
give life and application to the Agreement
to End All Hostilities within their specific
social environment.
We remain Rock solid, focused and forward looking.
Jesse Perez, PBSP
[Ed’s Comments: Thank you for an insightful letter, for your ongoing support for
the Rock, and a special thanks to the comrades of “A” facility at PBSP for the 275
stamps. Unfortunately, I am unable to print
the Proposed Activity Group documents
here. By the time I added the signatories
to the document it would be too lengthy to
include in the newsletter.
What we are talking about is an organizational document setting out membership
criteria, structure, frequency of meetings,
CDOC sponsor, etc. Anyone wanting a
copy of this document should send me a
SASE and a stamp (the stamp is for printing the document, and the SASE for getting
it mailed to you).
I have only one issue with the organiza-

tional proposal, and it’s a tactical one. Over the years of my
incarceration I’ve asked prison
administrators to sanction many
prison groups. A few examples
are the Prisoners’ User Group
(PUG)1 in Washington State, the
Committee to Safeguard Prisoners’ Rights (CSPR) at the Arizona Prison Complex at Florence,
and Men Against Sexism (MAS)
at Walla Walla.
Each of the above requests to the administration for recognition of a group were
granted and the organizations were legally
formed. But that was then, and this is now.
Have things changed?
While efforts to form administration
sanctioned groups can be made, it should
be understood that any such CDCR sanctioned organization would be very limited
in terms of what it can accomplish. A prisoners’ union, on the other hand, recognizes that meaningful progress will require
peaceful, protracted struggle. A union is
not something CDCR will recognize until
political realities force them to do so. It is
at this point that the courts too will recognize our human right to organize--when it's
a fact.]

LETTERS

LETTERS

In a four paged letter this comrade explains how the DRB had messed him over,
and how his appeal of the process was successful. Since the letter was too long to
print here, I’ll only touch on a conversation
he had with CDCR’s Director of the Division of Prisons, Ms. Suzan Hubbard.
The author of the letter quotes her as
saying “that CDCR is in the process of formulating a new list of banned publications,
in relation to the new policy that bans obscene publications, which had been put on
hold so that the new STG/SDP regulations
could be promulgated into law.” Ms. Hubbard then went on to assure me “that none
of George Jackson’s books, etc. will be on
the list of banned publications, as CDCR
has now determined that the content of
George Jackson’s books do not threaten
prison security.” This conversation might
be of value to others who have been validated, in part, on having George's name in
your property.
–Tashiri Askari
1. We successfully struggled to have personal computers and printers in our cells if paid for at our expense. PUG was our users’ group, through which outside computer enthusiasts would come in and meet
with us prisoners.

Rock!

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
“But let us be absolutely clear, ‘Hands Up
Don’t Shoot’ is a passive plea for mercy,
and at best a neurotic concept perpetuated
by the misguided belief that We too are
Americans.”
—Jalil A. Muntaqim
By Ed Mead
s I’ve previously pointed out, I
have no love for Russia’s President Putin. While the US is the Big
Brother capitalist nation, Russia is the little
sister capitalist country. I’m against capitalism in all its forms. That said, being a
former prisoner and subjected to myriad
cruelties, I am for and will defend concepts
such as equality, fairness, and meaningful
justice.
As an example of what’s fair let’s look
at Yugoslavia’s treatment under then
President Clinton. That nation was essentially bombed into the stone age, and then
Kosovo was carved away and annexed by
the puppets of U.S. imperialism. The US
bombed a nation that had done it no harm,
and then carved off a chunk of it (Kosovo).
The US had no previous historical relationship with Kosovo at all. It was full of reactionary Muslim fundamentalist, that’s who
we were helping to have their own nation.
It was the US and NATO that were behind
the aggression against Yugoslavia and the
ripping of Kosovo from that nation.
Today the US and NATO spent five billion dollars to overthrow the democratically elected government of the Ukraine, a
nation that was once a part of the Soviet
Union. Before the putsch and installation
of a reactionary billionaire as president
of the Ukraine, there were demonstrators
out in the streets of Kiev protesting the

A

elected government. What you were not
told is that those demonstrators were paid
what amounts to a month worth of wages
to show up at the demos.
It is in this context that we look at the
US and NATO meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, a state that has a
long history with Russia. So as you know,
the proto-Nazis (the Ukraine largely sided
with the Nazis during WW II) took power
in Kiev. The eastern part of the country
objected to the overthrow of their elected
government and started fighting back. As
this was happening the Russians took the
Crimea (was invited in by the people of
Crimea, after a vote in which 97 percent of
the ballots favored their becoming a part of
Russia).

...nobody being charged for
these murders by torture?
If you tortured someone to
death it would be aggravated first degree murder.
Today few people in the US remember
Kosovo, instead there is widespread outrage in US and NATO circles that Russia
would “annex” the Crimea—an area essential to Russian defense. In response to this
route to US machinations in the area, US
and NATO are crying Russian aggression.
Russian aggression, really? Secretary of
State James Baker promised Russia that if
they removed their 24 divisions from East
Germany, the US and NATO “would not
move one inch eastward.” I’ve previously
listed some of the nations that fell into US
and NATO hands since then. As author Peter Hitchens noted, “Since 1989, Moscow,
the supposed aggressor, has - without fight-

ing or losing a war - peacefully ceded control over roughly 180 million people, and
roughly 700,000 square miles of valuable
territory.”
Most Americans would probably agree
that when real enemies actually do threaten the US, we have a right to defend ourselves. But, as Philip Giraldi points out,
“where are the enemies that justify Congress spending nearly as much as the rest
of the world combined on weapons and
soldiers?” China’s defense budget is 65
billion. That’s a lot of money in anyone’s
book. The US “defense” budget has a base
of 700 billion dollars, with billions more in
supplemental expenditures for places like
Iraq, Afghanistan, and other wars of convenience (like Libya, Somalia, Yemen, etc).
The corporate media chorus willfully
ignores that U.S. actions, not Islam, fuel
jihadism. And with those lies Obama adds
another, “where ever we have been involved over the last several years, I think
the outcome has been better because of
American leadership.” Tell that to the
Libyans, Yemenis, the Somalians, or any
number of other nations the US attacking
or waging war against.1
The US government has spent US$1.6
trillion dollars on war since the September
11, 2001 attacks, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service
(most reports put the amount at over two
trillion). If we use the government’s figures, it means U.S. taxpayers have shelled
out roughly $337 million a day for the last
13 years. Are we any safer? As noted in the
last issue of Rock, in 2013 there were just
under 10,000 terrorist attacks that killed
17,958 people, including large numbers of
women and children. If every day we gave
337 terrorists a million bucks for the next
13 years, terrorism would be over.
Notwithstanding what George W. Bush
and Dan Rather of CBS news had to say
about the cause of terrorism (they said they
are terrorist because they are jealous of us).
Nope. People, surprisingly, don’t strap on
suicide vests and blow themselves up be1. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian
warned that the situa on in Libya was “no more and
no less... the resurgence of a terrorist sanctuary”
that was dangerously close to Europe. Oh, and what
about the hated Colonel Ghaddafi? Come to find out
the United Na ons Human Rights Council was about
to vote on a report that affirmed and praised Libya
and Colonel Ghaddafi for their human rights record.
The report said that the Ghaddafi government protected “not only poli cal rights, but also economic,
educa onal, social and cultural rights,” and praised
it for the na on’s treatment of religious minori es,
and the “human rights training” received by security
forces. Yes, yet another example of America’s great
world leadership.

Volume 4, Number 3

7

cause they are jealous of another nation.
Fact is terrorism is rooted in injustice.
We don’t need to spend trillions to defeat it.
We can keep that money for ourselves—using it for such projects as improving the nation’s infrastructure. You see, they’ve (the
so-called terrorists) told us what it takes to
end the war. They ask us to remove our bases from their lands and to stop killing them.
It’s that simple. Is it worth the trillions of
dollars, the death and maiming of tens of
thousands of Americans, or the slaughter
of 1.5 million Iraqis, and who know how
many other victims of US and NATO aggression around the globe?
But maybe things are getting better in
Iraq? Not so. 17,049 civilians have been
recorded killed in Iraq during 2014 (up to
Dec 30). This is roughly double the number recorded in 2013 (9,743), which in turn
was roughly double the number in 2012
(4,622).2
Before I leave you, let me briefly touch
on the subject of torture. Last month I reported that one person died during CIA
torture, although I said there could be even
more. This death information was contained in a small torture report released to
the public by Diane Feinstein in which that
one person killed was mentioned. Oh how
the government howled over this small release of material. Come to find out at least
39 people were killed in the "interrogation
process." You see, there is another report
on torture, this one containing 9,000 documents, that was not released to the public.
The CIA said it would be too damaging to
release the full report.
Why is nobody being charged or tried for
these murders by torture? If you tortured
someone to death it would be aggravated
first degree murder. We know there are
two justice systems in the US, one for the
rich and another for the everyone else, but
torturing 39 people to death goes a bit beyond that financial divide. The people who
committed those crimes did so as minions
of the rich—both the minions and the rich
who gave them orders must be prosecuted
(it makes no difference if the rich used
Bush or Obama to issue the actual death
orders). Death by torture is murder. Death
by drone is state sponsored terrorism. Each
is a war crime.
The good news is that the rest of the
world is finally starting to wake up. You
won't see many signs of this in the bourgeois press, but it's slowly happening. ●
2.https://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/numbers/2014

8

PRELIMINARY
INJUNCTION
FILED TO
PREVENT
“SILENCING ACT”
FROM STOPPING
PRISONERS’
SPEECH
Continuing the Fight Against
the Silencing Act, Prisoners
and Advocacy Groups Seek
Injunctive Relief to Stop
Enforcement

A

motion for a preliminary injunction
was filed today in the ongoing lawsuit, Abu-Jamal v. Kane, challenging a Pennsylvania censorship law intended to silence Mumia Abu-Jamal and others
convicted of personal injury crimes.
The Abolitionist Law Center, Amistad
Law Project, and the Roderick and Solange
MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern
University School of Law filed the preliminary injunction motion to stop enforcement
of the law. The law firms represent Mumia
Abu-Jamal, Prison Radio, Educators for
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Kerry “Shakaboona”
Marshall, Robert L. Holbrook, Donnell
Palmer, Anthony Chance, and Human
Rights Coalition in the lawsuit filed November 10, 2014 against Attorney General
Kathleen Kane and Philadelphia District
Attorney Seth Williams. The American
Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania
(ACLU) filed a similar lawsuit and preliminary injunction today.
The Silencing Act, also known as 18 P.S.
§ 11.1304, allows the Attorney General,
county District Attorneys, and victims of
personal injury crimes to bring a lawsuit in
civil court against the person convicted of
the personal injury crime to enjoin conduct
that “perpetuates the continuing effect of
the crime on the victim”. The actions that
could prompt a lawsuit include “conduct
which causes a temporary or permanent
state of mental anguish.”
“This law is unconstitutional,” said David Shapiro of MacArthur Justice Center.
“The facts are on our side and the law is
on our side. The Silencing Act targets a
huge amount of constitutionally protected
speech based on who is speaking.”

After a prerecorded commencement
speech by journalist and prisoner Mumia
Abu-Jamal was played for graduates at
Goddard College in Vermont, the Pennsylvania legislature passed and outgoing Governor Corbett signed into law the Silencing
Act on October 21st, 16 days after the commencement speech.
Abu-Jamal has spent 33 years in prison,
29 of which were in solitary confinement
on death row after being convicted at a
1982 trial that Amnesty International said
“failed to meet minimum international
standards safeguarding the fairness of legal
proceedings.”
Robert L. Holbrook, who is serving a
death by incarceration, life without parole,
sentence he received as a child, had this
to say about the law: “there are people in
prison who will stop writing, stop publishing, stop speaking out because of this law.”
“Silencing prisoners is one more way of
dehumanizing them,” said Amistad Law
Project Policy Director Nikki Grant. “We
need the voices of the marginalized to shed
light on injustice.” ●
Israeli Prisons ..... Continued from page 3
Israel, facing very difficult conditions, constants harassment, and are now subject to
the impacts of the current freezing weather.
In related news, the Palestinian Prisoner
Society (PPS) filed an appeal with the Israeli High Court Saturday calling on Israeli
authorities to provide adequate clothing
and covers for Palestinian prisoners held in
Israeli prison camps, as many of the prisoners are held in outdoor camps with no heat,
in the midst of a severe winter storm. The
appeal also included reports that the placement in outdoor cages was being used by
Israeli interrogators as a form of torture.
The Israeli High Court denied the appeal,
but Palestinian prisoner groups say that the
practices are ongoing, and many prisoners
are facing death or severe frostbite as a result of the cold, sleet and wind. ●

Rock!

I. Hands up…
Her hands were up and
She was shot down like
Michael Brown; she couldn’t
Breathe but they left her for
The coroner, like Eric Garner—
But Ida B, Rosa
Luxemburg and Mama
Harriet had other
Plans for Assata…
Her bloodthirsty captors
Tortured her until
Toussaint, Dessalines,
John Brown and other
Ancestors conspired
With her comrades like
Marilyn Buck, John
Brown of her generation,
Deciding “night time
Is the right time,” a
Good flight time, for
Fleeing torturers, and
Like Mama Harriet
She “hit the road, Jack“
Following the North
Star south in footsteps
Of freedom fighter
Robert Williams to
Open armed welcome
90 miles offshore,
And a thousand miles
From her hell/Dixie
II. Celebrating Cuban 5
Now, they were serious
‘bout “smoking them out
Of their holes,” “draining
The swamp,” infested
With terrorists up
In Florida, they
Were serious about
Ferreting out gusanos,
Terrorists, thick like
Lice hobnobbing with Nazis,
Ton-Ton Macoute and
Other cutthroats, saboteurs
Sipping rum and boasting
Of bombing passenger
Planes, hotels, power lines…
Guess the Cuban 5
Knew all along that
If Architects of
Torture wanted to
Wage a real war on
Terror, plenty NY
99 cents stores
Sell mirrors… razors…

CUBA SÍ, JERSEY NO!

Try swindlers and banksters like WellsFargo
Keep pushin’ for ending the embargo
III. Shut Guantanamo/ free ‘em all!
Exonerate Assata, shut Guantanamo
Orwellian as
Withdraw slave-patrols, AKA po-po
Ever, code-switching
Convene Peoples’ Tribunals under
‘Interests’ translating
Jericho
Into spying and
Host numero uno at Harlem’s Apollo—
Lying, Commander
Shout something that we all now know
Unpacked politics
It’s way past time to let ‘em ALL go:
As concentrated
Robert ‘Seth’ Hayes, 39 years
Expression of
Leonard Peltier, 37 years
Economics,
Chuck Africa, 34 years
War with less violent
Debbie Africa, 34 years
Means, diplomats
Delbert Africa, 34 years
Subbing for Marines…
Eddie Africa, 34 years
Like the Nixon visit,
Janet Africa, 34 years
Following “ping-pong diplomacy—”
Janine Africa, 34 years
And China’s off and running
Michael Africa, 34 years
On the “capitalist road” we see…
Phil Africa, 34 years
Mohamman Kati, 34 years, 86 years
Rulers sometimes move to remove
old
Some things from the headlines,
David Gilbert, 31years
While sharpening long knives and
*Sekou Odinga, 31years
Memories, having no deadlines…
Try swindlers and banksters like WellsWas street heat hurting Wall Street
Default swappers, sub-primers, too big Fargo
Keep pushin’ for ending the embargo
To fail, in the midst of seasonal retail?
“Our interests,” “our values,” & Cubans Exonerate Assata, shut Guantanamo
Withdraw slave-patrols, AKA po-po
Freeing 53, inspiring his new lust for
Convene Peoples’ Tribunals under
liberty?
Jericho
Raise our hands shouting these
Host numero uno at Harlem’s Apollo—
demands:
Try swindlers and banksters like Wells- Shout something that we all now know
It’s way past time to let ‘em ALL go:
Fargo
Oscar Lopez Rivera, 31 years
Keep pushin’ for ending the embargo
Zolo Azania, 31 years
Exonerate Assata, shut Guantanamo
Mumia Abu Jamal, 31 years, 30 on
Withdraw slave-patrols, AKA po-po
Death Row
Convene Peoples’ Tribunals under
Abdulla Majid, 30 years
Jericho
Host numero uno at Harlem’s Apollo— Joan Laaneim, 28 years
Shout something that we all now know Mutulu Shakur, 26 years
Jamil Al-Amin AKA H.
Rap
It’s way past time to let ‘em ALL go:
Brown
12
years,
Ruchelle ‘Cinque’ Magee, 49 years
2solitary confinement
Hugo ‘Yogi’ Pinell, 49 years
Kamau Sadiki, 10 years
Romaine ‘Chip’ Fitzgerald, 45 years
*Lynne Stewart, 4 years
*Marshall Eddie Conway, 42 years
Try swindlers and banksters like WellsMondo We Langa, 42 years
Fargo
Ed Poindexter, 42 years
+Herman Wallace, 42 years, 41solitary Keep pushin’ for ending the embargo
Exonerate Assata, shut Guantanamo
confinement
Withdraw slave-patrols, AKA po-po
Albert Woodfox, 42 years, 41solitary
Convene Peoples’ Tribunals under
confinement
Jericho
Jalil Muntquin, 41 years
Host numero uno at Harlem’s Apollo—
Russell Maroon Shoats, 40 years,
Shout something that we all now know
30solitary confinement
It’s way past time to let ‘em ALL go:
Sundiata Acoli, 40 years
It’s way past time to let ‘em
Herman Bell, 39 years
ALL go…
Veronza Bowers, 39 years
* Released; + Deceased

Volume 4, Number 3

9

Free Electronic Copy

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do not send such materials to third
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to this newsletter's return address
(below). Anything for publication in
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me or to CPF in Oakland.

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
Seattle, WA 98146

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