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July
2015

WOMEN BECOME LEADERS IN THE
FIGHT AGAINST SOLITARY
CONFINEMENT IN NEW YORK
By Keri Blakinger
essica Casanova’s nephew wrote her a
letter: “I”m here in a steel coffin. I’m
breathing but I’m dead.” Casanova recounted, “I didn’t know what that meant so
I got on a bus and I found out.”
That was in 2012, and three years later,
she’s still finding out. As it turned out, Casanova’s nephew, Juan, was in solitary confinement. He was spending 23 hours a day
alone in a cell and deteriorating quickly.
Juan had entered the New York State
prison system as a teenager with mental
health issues. Casanova said, “He suffered
from antisocial personality, borderline personality, severe depression, and addiction.”
His first trip to solitary was in 2001, for
allegedly smoking a joint. Although Juan
was only isolation for a matter of months,
Casanova said, “He’s never been the same
after that.” While his first stay was brief, at

J

CONTENTS
Women Fight Against Solitary ..1
Meet UN Special Rapporteur ...2
Ed's Ramblings ........................3
Quote Box ................................5
Black Cats Bond ......................6
The Law of Organization. .........7
Women: Loved Ones Inside.....9

this point the 33-year-old has now spent a
total of about 10 years in solitary. Casanova went on to explain that her nephew now
suffers from extreme bouts of depression,
paranoia, and mood swings. She added,
“Sometimes in the letters it seems like he
might be hallucinating.”
“Seeing someone in solitary confinement,” Casanova said, “is like you’re
watching them die right in front of your
eyes. … I have never in my life experienced another human being being reduced
to nothingness.” She added, “I just don’t
understand how this can happen in the
world.”
Although her nephew’s experience
opened Casanova’s eyes, the 43-years-old
East Harlem resident is not the only one
coming to such realizations. Nationwide,
there are at least 80,000 people in solitary
confinement on any given day – and most
have
families who watch them suffer.
h
Leah Gitter, a retired New York City
schoolteacher,
is another of those suffering
s
relatives.
Her godson, Robert, has spent
r
time
in solitary both in Attica and Green
t
Haven,
maximum security prisons in New
H
York
Y State.
Gitter said that, during the time Robert
was
w in solitary confinement, “I saw him
becoming
more unstable and more isolated
b
and
a sicker. It was like he was withdrawing.”
She added, “You get into this mindset
i
where
w
you can’t function because of all that
isolation
i
and he wasn’t well to begin with.”
As is perhaps evident from Casanova’s
and
a
Gitter’s stories, despite the documented
m
mental health impacts, individuals

with existing mental health problems are
routinely placed in solitary confinement, a
practice which may be counterproductive
to any perceived public safety goals. Gitter
observed, “I don’t know who benefits from
punishing people like that.”
Robin Goods can relate. Her son, George,
has spent more than a decade in solitary
confinement in California. She said, “I
have been visiting with my son George E.
Jacobs for the past 10 years behind a glass
window. When I look into his eyes I can
see the progression of the effects of torture.
The first year George had a distance look in
his eyes. After the second year in the SHU
he had a vague look in his eyes. Now after
ten years in the SHU, George has a hollow
empty look in his eyes. I am witnessing my
son being slowly and deliberately tortured
to the point of … devastating mental health
deterioration.”
Initially, her son was isolated for a small
infraction – Goods said she was told that
he refused to take out his shoe laces before
a visit. He was sentenced to two years in
solitary, but prison officials gradually extended his stay longer and longer. She said,
“When he goes for the review they say it’s
small infractions like refusing to eat, sharing food.” Recently, George was let out of
SHU, but instead of being moved to general population, he was just placed in another type of solitary confinement know as
Administrative Segregation.
Goods said, “The deterioration is so profound that it almost affects me. You feel
like you want to scream at the top of your
lungs, because how can you help? What

can you do?” Answering her own question,
she continued, “I felt so depressed and
helpless and anything I tried wasn’t going
anywhere. Then I became angry and decided to stand back up and fight.”
That urge to fight is something Goods
has in common with Casanova and Gitter. As a result of their family connections,
all three women have become crusaders
against solitary confinement.
Gitter said that, knowing about the conditions of her godson’s confinement, “I was
so frustrated. This was the only way I could
survive — to think that I could do something, to save his life.” She became active
in Mental Health Alternatives to Solitary
Confinement (MHASC) and “fought like
hell” to get the SHU Exclusion Law passed
in 2008. The law is meant to bar most people with serious mental illness from being
placed in isolation in New York’s state prisons. Gitter said, “We had press conferences
and lobby days. We were relentless, even
though it took eight years – a human rights
bill [took] eight years to get passed.”
Jennifer Parish, the director of criminal
justice advocacy at the Urban Justice Center’s Mental Health Project, said, “Leah in
some way is the godmother of the movement. She’s been a force for speaking to
policy makers at all different levels … She
had really done so much to gather people
around addressing the problem of people
with mental illness in our prison system
and in solitary confinement.”
While Gitter has been involved in solitary confinement activism for over a decade, Casanova got into it more recently. In
2013, she joined the New York Campaign
for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement
(CAIC) and in 2014 spoke at the first press
conference announcing the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary
Confinement Act. The HALT Act, which is
gradually gaining momentum in both the
Senate and the House, would ban solitary
confinement in New York’s prisons and
jails to 15 days, the limit suggested by the
UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture. Individuals requiring more secure housing over
the long term would be placed in new Residential Rehabilitation Units with increased
therapy and programming.
Parish said of Casanova, “She’s a tremendous advocate. When she talks about
what her nephew has gone through it’s just
incredibly powerful.”
Though Goods lives in New Jersey, she’s
also been active in CAIC, a New Yorkbased group. Parish said, “Robin has a
2

leadership role within CAIC she’s one of
the co-chairs of the legislative committee.
She’s been part of taking trips to communities upstate to help form branches of CAIC.
She’s done presentations upstate. Her son
is in California so the fact that she’s working so strongly here is amazing.”
Goods said that, if there’s one thing she’s
learned through her activism, it’s that if
you’re a family member of someone in
solitary, “You are the extended voice on
the outside and you should use it as loudly
as you can. There’s nothing worse going to
happen than what’s already happened.”
Although Casanova, Gitter, and Goods
are all important figures in the movement
against solitary, they aren’t the only ones
– there are wives, girlfriends, parents, siblings, and children scattered throughout activist groups.
“I think,” Parish said, “one of the most
important roles that family members play
in the movement is reminding everyone who’s involved about the urgency of
changing these policies. Because every day
their family members are facing solitary or
have the potential to face it, and it reminds
us that this is not an abstract problem. I
think that for people are in the movement
it can sometimes be far away. Prisons are
closed institutions. But the families constantly keep the fire burning in all of us to
make the changes.” ●
http://solitarywatch.com/2015/05/28/
with-loved-ones-in-prison-women-become-leaders-in-the-fight-against-solitaryconfinement-in-new-york/#more-15401

CON MEETS WITH
UN SPECIAL
RAPPORTEUR ON
TORTURE
By Baridi J. Williamson, April 29, 2015
n Dec. 9, 2014, I visited with Mr.
Juan Méndez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, who is now an
expert on our class action lawsuit to end
solitary confinement torture here in California. Hopefully, it will have a ripple effect across the U.S.
Being that Mr. Méndez, who had previously been denied access into this state’s
prisons, was only able to visit about 10 men
here in the Pelican Bay SHU, I presented
him a full human, civil and constitutional
rights report on behalf of all the men there

O

and our outside mutually suffering families.
It was titled, “CDC’s solitary confinement
(SHU) torture policies, practices, environment and conditions of dehumanization,
sensory deprivation, anti-social isolation,
cruelty and torture is rotten to its core!”
I gave him a living experience witnessed
from its opening in late December 1989 to
the present under its “snitch, parole or die”
mass validation and indeterminate SHU
torture classification and enhanced coerced
debriefing.
Because as I explained to Mr. Méndez,
CDCR is still scheming to keep their multimillion-dollar SHU prison cells filled to
keep receiving these annual multi-billion
dollars of taxpayer’s money when they
are supposed to release all of us instead of
holding anyone in the varying steps 1-4.
And in some instances – like my former
cellie PJ – they have not even presented his
case before the DRB (Departmental Review Board) since he has been kept in solitary confinement (SHU) for over a quarter
century, and CDCR claimed to be “reviewing those cases who’ve been there the longest.” He should have been released to GP
(general population) by now!
Here we are, after experiencing the
largest prison hunger strike in California
history, legislative hearings, class action
lawsuits, CDCR officials’ admissions that
their scheme to mass-validate (although
they prefer to use the term “over-classify”)
was wrong and our five core demands were
reasonable and should have been granted a
long time ago. Why in the hell do they still
have anyone in that SHU after they have
been wrongfully placed and kept there?
Their scheme was designed and created,
implemented, instituted, orchestrated, administered, managed, operated and supervised to break the human mind and spirit to
create “broken” men. Sadly, they did break
many human beings under their diabolical
scheme, coercing them to debrief and out
of despair to escape the crushing pressures
of their SHU torture. Those men agreed to
become prison informants (snitches) and
say whatever their tormentors tell them to
even if it means to lie on their fellow SHU
captives and keep them forever in SHU so
the snitch can get out.
Here we are, in 2015, decades after
CDCR’s human-breaking, snitch-making
scheme began, and there are many real men
who have not been broken and continue to
defy and resist that scheme, including myself. You will never count me among the
broken men! ●
Rock!

ED'S RAMBLINGS AND A HISTORY LESSON
"American capitalism, based as it is on
exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, simply
cannot survive without force.”
–Philip Agee, CIA Diary

S

hortly before the invasion of Iraq
in 2003, I was a member of Prison
Talk Online (PTO), a place where
former prisoners and the loved ones of
those on the inside share stories, problems,
and pretty much anything else they want
to write about. It’s a very nice forum. The
site was run by a Texas patriot who called
himself FedX. He would prattle on-andon about how “we gonna kick the asses of
those ragheads” in Iraq. Well, of course I
objected to his pro-war diatribes, whereupon FedX promptly kicked me off the board
because of said objection. I eloquently (or
so I thought) argued that the weapons inspectors sent by the U.S. said there were
no weapons of mass destruction1, that Iraq
was a secular nation, and it had more rights
for women than any other country in the region. I argued that we are there only going
there to steal there oil. Etc. There was no
using reason. I left the forum.
Fast forward about 12 years. In today’s
news it was reported that Ramadi, less than
70 miles from Bagdad, fell to ISIS. CBS
said 1,300 U.S. soldiers (they did not say
how many were wounded) were killed in
the battle to retake Ramadi from the Iraqi
resistance fighters (who were defending
their nation from the foreign invaders and
occupiers).
Mr. FedX must be feeling real proud
right now that 1,300 U.S. troops died for
absolutely nothing—as did the thousands
of soldiers killed in other Iraqi battles (and
the 58,000 plus who were killed in the Viet
Nam War). All died for absolutely nothing!
The U.S. gets away with all this because of
its weapons of mass deception. Were it not
for that, the American people might object
to having their sons and daughters slaughtered in wars that serve no purpose other
than to make the rich even richer.
How fucked up is our system of governance? John Kiriakon, who exposed the
CIA’s torture program served two years in
prison for doing so, while those who ordered the torture (in which on at least nine
occasions ended in death) have never been
charged with any crime. But hey, those are
1. Why Israel and other Middle Eastern na ons can
have such weapons and Iraq can’t is a mystery to me.

Volume 4, Number 7

small potatoes compared to the crime of
starting a wars of aggression and slaughtering millions2.
The author John Pilger writes that:
“since 1945, the US has tried to
overthrow more than 50 governments,
many of them democratically elected;
grossly interfered in elections in 30
countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical
and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.
He goes on to note:
“[t]he leaders of these obstructive
nations are usually violently shoved
aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile,
or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of
Congo. All are subjected to a western
media campaign of vilification – think
Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez when he
was alive, and now Vladimir Putin.”
The same people doing these wrongs
are also destroying the planet for nothing
other than the holy grail of profit. Worse,
they are committing these crimes in your
name. So as you are standing there watching a Boston Marathon or some such thing
and someone blows you up, you are not
an innocent bystander to the person who
planted that device—you are one of those
who remains silent as despicable crimes
against humanity are being committed in
your name. Yet you’ve never objected to
these evils, or even asked why these people
want to kill you. Doesn’t that leave you as
somewhat less than innocent?
The question of “why” is difficult for
many people because bourgeois propaganda provides you with a readymade answer:
Then president George W. Bush, newscasters like the former Dan Rather, and entertainers such as David Letterman all tell us
why the terrorists hate us—“they hate us
because they are jealous.” Now you have
the answer as to “why.” The only problem
is that it’s a false answer. People do not
strap on suicide vests and kill themselves
and others because they are jealous of some
2. According to former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara 2.3 million Vietnamese were killed in Vietnam. The globally recognized figure for Iraqis killed
so far in that blunder of a war is 1.5 million. These
figures do not include all the people around the world
assassinated by the CIA, murdered in drone strikes,
the invasions of places like Grenada, Panama and
Afghanistan, the bombing campaigns against Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Libya, etc.

nation on a far off continent. Just how stupid do you have to be to believe a story like
that?
The U.S. invaded Iraq for only one reason—oil. The invasion was an international act of armed robbery. Who could
have guessed that the victims of this crime
would violently object? Our leaders were
telling us the joyful Iraqi people would be
throwing rose peddles at the feet of our
troops in thanks for having liberated them
from Saddam’s harsh rule.
I do not care much for the existing U.S.
government. I love this land, but I do not
like the government, which for the most
part serve only the interests of the rich and
powerful at the expense of poor and working people. For a more just government
it will be essential to replace the existing
U.S. ruling class and replace it with working class rule—socialism.
Because of the ruling class’ hatred of the
term socialism, there is a lot of confusion
about what the term actually means. This
is confusion is rooted in a dis-information
campaign that has been waged for over a
hundred years, and is primarily expressed
through the bourgeoisie’s monopoly on the
media outlets and the means of education.
Germany’s top propaganda officer during
World War II was Dr. Gobbles, who said
something to the effect that a lie told often enough becomes truth in the eyes of the
masses. Thus your parents, you, and your
children will be taught that capitalism is
democracy and socialism is totalitarianism
(fascism).
Actually, the ruling class media is selling
you a lie. Capitalism and socialism are both
economic systems, whereas democracy and
totalitarianism are political systems. Think
of these terms in the context of a huge ocean
liner. The infrastructure of that ship, the
bottom part of the vessel, holds the engine
that drives the ship forward. That engine is
the economic system, and it can be socialist or capitalist, etc. In our socialist analogy the wealth created by working people
would be divided among working people
(not go into private hands of billionaires),
and the government would be organized to
protect the interests of workers rather than
those of the rich. I’m guessing you already
know what the capitalist’s engine looks like
and what it does so I won’t go there. All
you have to do is look inside the prisons,
at the ever growing homelessness problem,
endless wars, corruption, etc.
3

Sitting on top of that ships economic
infrastructure is a political system. While
the engine drives the vessel forward, it is
the political superstructure that determines
the direction the ship is steering. This superstructure sits atop any infrastructure that
may be in place, be it capitalism or socialism. In other words, you can have capitalist
infrastructure along with a fascist superstructure, as was the case back in 1970s
when Chile’s democratically elected government was violently overthrown (with
U.S. help) and a fascist dictator install in
his place. On the other hand you could have
a socialist engine with a liberal democracy
guiding it forward. My point is that capitalism does not equal democracy.
Now that we understand how a given
society’s economic system and political organization are two separate things, we can
then move on to define socialism. You will
hear the right wing accuse politicians who
want to improve conditions for ordinary
people referred to as socialists. Obama
got a lot of that over his healthcare program for Americans. Some Scandinavian
countries are called socialists because of
how well they take care of their citizens.
But socialism is not about social programs
such as health care and such. Oh yes, everyone would have a right to free medical
treatment, education, a job, etc. But that too
is not socialism. Socialism is an economic
system defined by which class owns the
means of production3. So while some might
say Sweden is a socialist nation because of
its liberal social policies, it is not socialist because the means of production are
in private rather than public hands. They
are simply a fairer and more just form of
capitalism—they are able to provide these
social programs by taxing their capitalists,
something the U.S. is unwilling to do.
So when anyone tries to fool you by
saying this or that nation is socialist, even
some countries who might even call themselves socialists, all you have to do is look
at which class owns the means of production—a government representing the working class (the overwhelming majority), or
what we have now, a government by the
rich for the rich (the one percent)?
Every economic system, be it slavery,
feudalism, capitalism, socialism, or communism (there are no others) implements
laws to secure their particular system. Under slavery for example, be it Greek, Roman, American, etc., the slave was prop3. “Means of produc on” are factories and everything else used to extract surplus value from workers.

4

erty. The slave’s owner could slit guts out
of a slave just to watch him die, and the law
of the time would have protected his right
to do so—it was his property.
Then came feudalism, which for working people was an improvement over the
system of slavery. You as a worker were
no longer property, but you were tied to the
land, which you worked for your lord, who
allowed you to keep a certain amount of
what you produced.
After feudalism came capitalism, yet
another improvement for working people.
They were no longer tied to the land, but
could go into the cities and work in the
growing number of factories ushered in by
the industrial revolution. Since then capitalism has been steadily evolving to the
point where today we have fascism at home
and imperialism abroad.

The global transition from slavery to
feudalism took several thousand years, as
slavery existed long before the early Egyptians implemented that system. The shift
from feudalism to capitalism took about
one thousand years, from the end of the Roman Empire to the industrial age. It appears
as if the change from capitalism to socialism will take less time. The first socialist
experiment was nearly a hundred years ago
with the 1917 revolution in Russia. The
second was in China. Global imperialism
has been able to reverse those gains, as
both Russia and China are now capitalists.
Remember, which class owns the means of
production. In both Russia and China those
means are today in private hands rather
than in the hands of a government representing the interests of the global working
class. Again, don’t listen to what they say
about themselves, look at their economic
engine instead. China says it’s a communist nation, it is ruled by a communist party,
but the means of production are in private
hands and the government of China represents the interests of those owners, of their

own billionaires.
What about communism? Socialism is
from each according to his ability, to each
according to his work. Communism is
from each according to his ability, to each
according to his need. While under slavery
the law protected your right to own other
human beings. Under feudalism the laws
of the day mandated that you be tied to the
land you were born on, as agriculture and
animal husbandry were the dominant means
of production, which required a stable
workforce. And as noted earlier, for working people capitalism was an improvement
over feudalism. Workers were now free to
sell their labor to anyone who would hire
them. These were the days of child labor,
the 16 hour work day, and so many other
abuses. Just as the laws slavery protected
the rights of the slave owners, to too the
laws of capitalism enshrine the right of the
rich to extract surplus value4 (oppress and
exploit) from working people. This seems
fair and just to most folks, right? Not so under socialism. In a socialist system it would
be a crime for you to personally profit from
the labor of others. Such exploitation will
be a thing of the past.
Unfortunately we can’t afford to wait
another thousand years for the next economic transition. Some years ago an economist I trust wrote that U.S. imperialism’s
economy (GDP) must grow by 3.6 percent
a year just to stand still. According to the
Bureau of Economic Analysis’ quarterly
data: “Real gross domestic product -- the
value of the production of goods and services in the United States, adjusted for
price changes -- increased at an annual rate
of 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2015.”
Not only must U.S. imperialism expand or
die, the same is true of the little imperialists
like Russia and China. Which leads us to
the need for urgency.
World Wars I and II had the same basic cause. The global resources were all
claimed and controlled by the big imperialist powers, like England, France, and the
U.S. The up-and-coming economies such
as those of Germany or Japan had no place
to grow, as at a certain point they too must
also expand or die. As they attempt to expand into other countries these weaker imperialists come up against the big imperialists, who had already carved up the global
resources and now must defend them from
the challengers. In the case of WW II, for
4. According to Marx’s theory, surplus value is equal
to the new value created by workers in excess of their
own labor-cost, which is then appropriated by the
capitalist as profit.

Rock!

example, Japan goes into China, the Philippines, etc. while Germany does the same
thing in Europe, like taking France, invading Russia, and so on.
Karl Marx wrote that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” The
now conquered weak wanna be imperialists of WW I and II, like Japan and Germany, are now occupied nations. Whereas
today it is Russia and China who are looking for their places in the economic sun, a
place already occupied by the big imperialists of the U.S. and its NATO puppets. Are
we on our way to WW III? I don’t think we
are on our way to WW III, as it appears as if
we are already in the opening phases of that
conflict—think Middle East, Ukraine, Syria, Northern Africa, the South China Sea,
etc. To one degree or another some people
see a larger war looming, although they do
not know what to do about it—they see
no rational alternative. Of course there are
none as blind as those who refuse to see.
Neoliberalism is U.S. imperialism’s doctrine chosen to carry out the PNAC (Plan
for a New American Century), the road
map for the empire and its stooges to encompass the globe and reach Full Spectrum
Dominance. Its instruments resonate with
Kissinger’s infamous dictum - “Who controls the food supply controls the people;
who controls the energy can control whole
continents; who controls money can control the world.” Control the world? The
problem with the whole world domination
thing is that there are nations, Russia and
China come to mind, who are not interested
in being dominated by anyone.
In her Junius Pamphlet, Rosa Luxemburg quoted Fredrich Engels as saying
“Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” She goes on to
say, “[T]he triumph of imperialism leads to
the annihilation of civilization. At first, this
happens sporadically for the duration of a
modern war, but then when the period of
unlimited wars begins it progresses toward
its inevitable consequences. Today, we face
the choice exactly as Fredrich Engels foresaw … either the triumph of imperialism
and the collapse of all civilization …. or the
victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international
[working class] against imperialism and
its method of war.” We still stand at that
crossroads today—the victory of socialism
or world-wide death and destruction. As always, you have a vote. You vote with your
feet. ●
Volume 4, Number 7

Quote Box
"The debate heres isn't only how to protect the country. It's how to protect our values.
If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it
alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion
of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty.
It applies to all human beings, not just in America--even those designated as 'unlawful
enemy combatants.' If you make this exception the whole Constitution crumbles."
Alberto J. Mora,
former Navy General Counsel
"It bothers me that the executive branch is taking the amazing position that just on
the president's say-so, any American citizen can be picked up, not just in Afghanistan,
but at O'Hare Airport or on the streets of any city in this country, and locked up without
access to a lawyer or court just because the government says he's connected somehow
with the Taliban or Al Qaeda."
Laurence Tribe, Professor of Constitutional Law,
Harvard University
"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who
does them. There is almost no kind of outrage—torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians—which does not change its moral color when it is
committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
George Orwell
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and
where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress,
rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe"
Frederick Douglass
"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
"Movements are like this. They are grassroots, often underground, and they start with
crazy people who are willing to believe in the impossible. Movements never start in
corporate offices with executives drawing up a master plan. If we truly want to see the
world changed, we must begin as a band of madmen, welcoming other crazy people
who want to be a part of something bigger than themselves."
Neil Cole
"As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no
man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever."
Clarence Darrow, Attorney
"The violent subjugation of the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Afghans will only ensure
that those who oppose us will increasingly speak to us in the language we speak to
them—violence."
Chris Hedges
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private
power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in
its essence is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any
controlling private power."
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

5

BLACK CATS BOND: THE INTERNATIONAL WORKERS OF
THE WORLD AND THE NEW AFRIKAN BLACK PANTHER
PARTY - PRISON CHAPTER (2015)

I

have, as an active leading member of
the New Afrikan Black Panther Party Prison Chapter (NABPP-PC), recently
joined the International Workers of the
World (IWW) upon its founding the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee
(IWOC).(1)
The IWOC’s stated purpose is to “function [ ] as a liaison for prisoners to organize each other, unionize, and build solid
bridges between prisoners on the inside and
fellow workers on the outside.”(2) To this
end the IWW has recognized:
“Prisoners are on the front lines of wage
slavery and forced slave labor where refusal to work while in prison results in the
inhumane retaliation and participation in
slave labor contributes to the mechanisms
of exploitation. The [IWW] has consciously grasped the importance of organizing
pris-oners so that prisoners can directly
challenge prison slavery, work conditions, and the system itself: break cycles of
criminalization, exploitation, and the state
sponsored divisions of our working class.
At the same time, the prison environment
and culture is a melting pot of capitalistic
and exploitative tactics and all forms of
oppression. These poisons must be challenged in prisons, institutions, and in all of
us, through organized working class solidarity.” [3]
The NABPP-PC has unity with this line
and purpose, and allies with the IWW to
these and broader ends. Indeed we have
for years advanced the idea of extending
union membership to prisoners.[4] So the
IWOC’s founding is right on time!
The NABPP-PC is not a traditional communist party, but rather a pre-party formation that advances the cause of revolutionary intercommunalism, and whose target
base is the oppressed urban masses and
prisoners (the lumpen and unemployed in
particular [5]) of all nationalities, “races,”
etc., but especially New Afrikans/Blacks.
Within the NABPP-PC we have the White
Panther Organization (WPO) and Brown
Panther Organizing Committee (BPOC),
which operate as arms of the NABPP-PC
to bring our line and strategy to all other
oppressed peoples.
The NABPP-PC is guided by the ideological and political line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM). We unite in cama6

raderie with all whom we can to oppose the
oppressive capitalist imperialist system,
racism and repression, whether they share
our line or not.
Various strata of the working class in
Amerika have been spontaneously rising in protest against unsatisfactory work
conditions and wages. From those in the
lower service trades, to teachers, to public
sector workers. Many have been oriented
to more radical politics than mere trade
unionism which only aspires to workplace
and wage reforms. This was evidenced in
the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in September 2011 and quickly spread
across Amerika. Various ‘mainstream’ sectors have been reaching for political lines
that address greater social ills like capitalist driven environmental crisis, imperialist
wars, the proliferation of “terroristic’ violence especially in regions of the world destabilized by the policies and actions of the
US and its allies, police violence, sexism,
prevailing racism mass imprisonment, etc.
Only a thoroughgoing revolutionary political line can connect clear analyses and solutions with these questions.
During the early 1900s proletarian revolutionary fervor and organizing was at its
height in Amerika, especially with the organizing work of Communists and Anarchists allied within the IWW. Much of this
was lost as state repression clamped down
on the IWW and the Communists were
pulled out of the IWW by the Comintern,
and concentrated in the more traditional
unions from which they were in turn driven
during the post- World War II era of the
Cold War, Red Scare and anti-communist
witch hunts. As a result the working class
struggle ground to an unceremonious halt,
from which it has not since rebounded.
The Communists of that era made many
tactical errors, one of which, implied here,
was to abandon the unions and the revolutionary work of raising the workers’ political consciousness and organizing within
them. Reflecting on this history has given
us food for thought about today’s labor
movement.
The AFL-CIO is bankrupt, but the IWW
has definite possibilities. It has grown dramatically in recent years and probably benefitted more from the Occupy Movement
than any other organization.

From just a few hundred members it
grew to a national membership of several
thousands since Occupy started. From this
we saw three different possibilities for future growth.
1. Formation of IWW caucuses within existing unions
2. Organizing unemployed workers
3. Formation of a prisoners’ union under
IWW sponsorship and for granting prisoners IWW membership
The third has been done. As the Prison
Industrial Complex grows, the issue of
unionization becomes more practical, particularly as regards unpaid or barely paid
labor and human rights in general.
In its heyday, the IWW was the closest
thing to a mass revolutionary movement
this country has seen prior to the old Black
Panther Party. It was an important spawning pool for the Communist Party even
though the Comintern pulled the communists out to concentrate them in the AFL
and later the CIO.
With the bulk of the workers now concentrated in the low-wage service sectors,
and a largely de-industrialized domestic
economy since the 1970s, there isn’t the
basis to support a typical labor union infrastructure in Amerika.
We promote assigning Panther cadre
to work within the Union to develop it as
part of the United Panther Movement [4]
with a concentration on workers in the oppressed communities, prisoners and the
unemployed. This would help to build the
United Front Against Capitalist - Imperialism, Racism and Repression and a mass
anti-imperialist movement.
Thus the NABPP-PC unites in programmatic unity with the IWW whose symbol
like our own is that of a riled black cat! ●
Dare to struggle dare to win!
All power to the people!

NOTES:

1. Ar cle II, sec. 1.c. of the IWW Cons tu on permits
membership to unpaid officers of poli cal par es.
2. The Incarcerated Worker, Vol. 1, No. 1, January
2015, p.1
3. Ibid.
4. See, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, Promo ng Proletarian Consciousness as Prisoner Rehabilita on (2007),
h p://rashidmod.com/?p=374
5. For an analysis of our line on the lumpen and the
proletariat as our mass base, see, Kevin “Rashid”
Johnson, The NABPP-PC: Our Line (2005), http://
rashidmod.com/?p=286

Rock!

Break into a railroad boxcar and you'll go to federal prison. Steal a railroad
and they'll make you a senator. So the old saying goes.
In a similar vein, five of the world’s top banks will merely pay fines after pleading guilty to rigging the price of foreign currencies and interest rates. Citigroup,
JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland pleaded guilty to conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros exchanged in the $5
trillion FX spot market. UBS pleaded guilty for its role in manipulating the Libor
benchmark interest rate. No individual bank employees were hit with criminal
charges.
Why hello Mr. George Jackson, you say you went to prison for how many
years before you were killed by guards? How much did you steal? Oh, a mere
$70. Well yes, I see your problem—you were not rich.
Introducing a new publication from the Industrial Workers of the World,
the Incarcerated Worker! Over the last year or so, some prisoners in the U.S.
and outside supporters have gotten together and formed the IWW Incarcerated
Workers Organizing Committee to address concerns such as prison labor and
conditions. Contact them at:
Industrial Workers of the World
General Headquarters
The Incarcerated Worker
PO Box 180195
Chicago, IL 60618

Volume 4, Number 7

THE LAW AND
ORGANIZATION

A

t the height of the prisoners’ rights
movement of the 1970s, in a case
involving the right of North Carolina prisoners to organize themselves into
a union, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
prisoners do not have such a right. See
Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor
Union, 433 U.S. 119 (1977), which held
prisoners do not have a right under the
First Amendment to join labor unions. One
might think that is the end of the story—
the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken! Not
so. The court reverses itself all the time.
Remember the Dred Scott decision in
which that high court held that black people had no rights that whites were bound
to respect? Or more recently, the leaving
of the court’s “hands off” doctrine when
it came to prisoner rights. Yeah, until the
late 1960s the courts held that prisoners
were slaves of the state and had no rights
the courts were bound to respect. So what
the high court holds on a given issue may
be reversed by judges in subsequent times.
In the case of prisoners and our rights in
relationship to the state, we can draw lessons from the workers’ movement back in
the early decades of the last century. Back
then it was not a matter of the courts saying workers had no right to organize themselves into unions—it was worse! It was
a crime for workers to organize. The government called is something like criminal
syndicalism. But workers went ahead and
organized themselves into unions anyway.
As time passed, and the labor movement
became and established fact, the congress
enacted laws that protected the rights of
workers to organize into unions.
We prisoners should take our queue from
the labor movement of old. We should organize by cell, by tier, by cellblock, and
by prison across the state and the nation.
As the Nike sports shoe conglomerate advertising campaign used to say: Just do it!
Let me translate that into convicteze for
you—just fucking do it! If you are about
done being a slave, and you don’t want to
see others suffering from being the victim
of state imposed slavery, then let’s start
the process of finally sending this crime
against humanity to the dustbin of history.
Don’t you agree that it is way past time to
address this issue? As always, you do have
a vote. You vote with your feet. ●
Ed Mead
7

POVERTY - CRIME MORE
By Bill Quigley
AMERICANS HOLD
The US spends $80 billion on this big
business of corrections every year. As a re- FAVORABLE
tired criminal court judge I know says, “the
high costs of this system would be worth VIEW OF GEORGE
it if the system was actually working and W. BUSH THAN
making us safer, but we are not safer, the
system is not working, so the actual dollars BARACK OBAMA
we are spending are another indication of
our failure.” The cost of being number one
in incarceration is four times higher than
it was in 1982. Anyone feeling four times
safer than they used to?
Center for American Progress rightly
concludes “Today, a criminal record serves
as both a direct cause and consequence of
poverty.”

According to the results of the survey, released Wednesday, 52 percent hold a favorable view of Bush, while 43 percent view
the former president unfavorably - the first
time in more than a decade that a majority
of Americans viewed Bush favorably.
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/moreamericans-hold-favorable-view-of-georgew-120609395871.html

HALF OF U.S.
HOUSEHOLDS
APPROACHING
RETIREMENT
HAVE SAVED NO
MONEY
Fifty-two percent of households of people 55 and older haven't saved a dime for
retirement
http://www.huffingtonpost.
com/2015/06/02/retirementsavings_n_7495306.html

1 IN 13 PEOPLE
KILLED BY GUNS
ARE KILLED BY
POLICE
US law enforcement officers have shot
and killed upwards of 385 people so far this
year, according to a new Washington Post
investigation. That's a rate of about 1 every 9 hours, or 2.5 shootings per day. That's
a lot compared to other countries -- cops
in Germany killed only 8 people in 20132014, for instance. British police didn't kill
anyone last year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/
wonkblog/wp/2015/06/01/police-commit1-in-13-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

8

MORE THAN 350
PEOPLE KILLED
BY US POLICE
IN THE PAST 5
MONTHS

lice shot an elderly man after his son asked
them to make sure he was okay. The man,
77-year old Mr. Douglas Harris, answered
the door whilst holding a gun, which triggered two deadly shots fired by the police.
Furthermore, nearly a quarter of those
killed were identified by police or family
members as mentally ill, and about half of
the shootings happened whilst attending
domestic disturbances or complex social
situations (eg.: a homeless person behaving
erratically or a son threatening to commit
suicide). “We have to get beyond what is
legal and start focusing on what is preventable. Most (shootings) are preventable,”
said Ronald L. Davis, a former police chief
who heads the U.S. Justice Department’s
Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services.
RELATED: Case of Georgia Police Killing of Black Teen to Be Re-opened.
The average number of police victims
stood at 2.6 per day, and at the current rate
the report predicts that police will kill almost 1,000 people this year. The Post's
report showed a higher number than that
recorded by federal agencies, which claim
an average of 400 police shootings per year
in the past decade. The recent cases of unarmed people, especially African Americans fatally shot by police officers has also
put a spotlight into the issue of racial discrimination within policing. Out of all lethal encounters with police, almost 20 percent of the killings were people unarmed
or holding a toy gun and two thirds of the
victims were black. The Post's investigation also found that only in 3 of the 385
police killings were police officers charged
with murder.

A

lmost all of the policemen that
have opened fire on unarmed civilians have been cleared of charges.
Police in the United States have killed
385 people over the past five months, according to a report published by the Washington Post. The report was based on police
records, news reports, internet sources and
the paper's own original reporting. Most of
victims – 80 percent – were carrying weapons or objects considered a lethal hazard,
however this did not necessarily translate
into the victims posing a real threat to the
lives of police officers. For example, poRock!

STUNNING NUMBER OF WOMEN WITH
INCARCERATED LOVED ONES

O

n May 20, 2015, the Du Bois Review published Racial Inequalities in Connectedness to Imprisoned Individuals in the United States,[1] a
groundbreaking article exposing the devastating effects of mass incarceration on the
women who are so often left behind to pick
up the pieces.
The article reports that 1 in 4 women in
the United States currently has an imprisoned family member.[2] Forty-four percent
of black women - just over 1 in 2.5 have an
incarcerated family member, compared to
12 percent of white women. Black women
have over 11 times as many imprisoned
family members as white women, and are
more likely to be connected to multiple
people in prison. Over 6 million black
women in the United States have a family
member currently imprisoned.
While the racial inequalities are striking,
the number of women overall affected by
the incarceration of family members and
loved ones is staggering. The study makes
clear that women in the United States currently have unprecedented levels of connectedness to people in prison. With men
making up 90 percent of the 2.2 million
people currently incarcerated, women who
have incarcerated loved ones are often left
raising children, managing family finances,
and facing stigma in their communities and
workplaces. As a result, these women are
at greater risk for a whole host of harmful
health and economic outcomes.
As Anita Wills, a member of Essie Justice Group, explains, In 2003, when my son
Kerry was sentenced to 66 years in prison, I
was devastated. I had to keep it together for
my son and grandsons. I am now 68 years
old and raising my 17-year-old grandson.
This is not how I envisioned living my retirement years.
Terryon Cross, whose father is in prison,
says, I’ve grown up with incarceration
all around me. When my son Yancy was
born, I was 16 years old. I want more than
anything for my four-year-old to grow up
without me having to drive to prison to see
and hug our family. I don’€™t want him to
think this is normal, even though it is happening all around us.
This trailblazing article sheds light on
the scope of mass incarceration’s effect on
families and loved ones ”particularly women ”and alerts us to the fact that this group
Volume 4, Number 7

has been under-studied and often ignored.
It helps lay the groundwork for a better understanding of the consequences of mass
imprisonment in the United States and its
particularly devastating impact on women
with incarcerated loved ones.
Essie Justice Group is an organization
that works directly with women with incarcerated loved ones. To speak to us for
comment on the report or to be put in touch
with the authors of the article, please email
gina@essiejusticegroup.org. ●
Gina L. Clayton
[1] The article was co-authored by Hedwig Lee and Tyler McCormick of the University of Washington, Seattle; Margaret T.
Hicken of the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor; and Christopher Wildeman of Cornell University.
[2] “Family members” include male and
female relatives such as aunts, uncles, and
cousins, as well as children, partners, and
parents. It is important to note that this
analysis focuses only on people serving
sentences in prison, and not those in jail.
Had the article included people in jail, the
number of women affected by family member incarceration would be much higher.

WAR OVER S.
CHINA SEA?
By Mike Whitney (Edited for length by Ed)
eijing’s Global Times, wrote; “If
the United States’ bottom line is
that China has to halt its [island
building] activities, then a U.S.-China war
is inevitable in the South China Sea …”
The U.S. responds; “There should be no
mistake: The United States will fly, sail,
and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world.” He
also added that the United States intended
to remain “the principal security power
in the Asia-Pacific for decades to come.”
“There should be no mistake: The United
States will fly, sail, and operate wherever
international law allows, as we do all
around the world.” He also added that the
United States intended to remain “the principal security power in the Asia-Pacific for
decades to come.” The U.S. defense secretary Carter has threatened to deploy US
warships to the area.
China has never blocked shipping lanes

B

or seized boats sailing in international waters. Never. The same cannot be said of the
United States that just recently blocked an
Iranian ship loaded with humanitarian relief–food, water and critical medical supplies–headed to starving refugees in Yemen. Of course, when the US does it, it’s
okay.
The so called pivot is Washington’s “top
priority”, which means that China’s unprecedented ascendency must be slowed
and its regional influence curtailed. Thus,
the dust up over the Spratly Islands will be
used in the same way the US has used other
incidents, that is, by demonizing China’s
leaders in the media, by assembling a coalition that will publicly oppose China’s
activities, by implementing harsh economic sanctions, by launching asymmetrical
attacks on China’s currency and financial
markets, by excluding China from critical
trade agreements, and by inciting social
unrest (color-coded revolution) through the
support of dissidents living in China. These
are the all-too-familiar signs of US meddling directed at “emerging rivals” who
threaten US global hegemony. China now
finds itself at the top of the list.
Obama said it best: “After a decade in
which we fought two wars that cost us
dearly, in blood and treasure, the United
States is turning our attention to the vast
potential of the Asia Pacific region….As
we end today’s wars, I have directed my
national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top
priority.”
US powerbrokers know that bullying
China involves significant risks for themselves and the world. Even so, they have
decided to pursue this new policy and force
a confrontation. They don’t see any way
around it. They’ve tried containment and it
hasn’t worked. China’s growing like crazy
and its regional influence threatens to leave
the US on the outside looking in. Defense
Secretary Carter says: China’s presence in
the area “risks America’s access to these
growing markets. We must all decide if
we are going to let that happen. If we’re
going to help boost our exports and our
economy…and cement our influence and
leadership in the fastest-growing region
in the world; or if, instead, we’re going to
take ourselves out of the game.”
It’s all about markets. It’s all about money. Carter’s speech goes on to say: “The
Asia-Pacific…is the defining region for our
nation’s future.” ●
[Note: And then there was the Ukraine.]
9

Message Box

Free Electronic Copy

“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

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Ronald Reagan on the
Subject of Afghanistan's
Freedom Fighters
"To watch the courageous Afghan
freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons
is an inspiration to those who love
freedom. Their courage teaches us
a great lesson-that there are things
in this world worth defending. To the
Afghan people, I say on behalf of all
Americans that we admire your heroism, your devotion to freedom, and
your relentless struggle against your
oppressors."
President Ronald Reagan,
March 21, 1983

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.

Ed Mead, Publisher
Rock Newsletter
P.O. Box 47439
Seattle, WA 98146

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