BY NORTON SANDLER
DES MOINES, Iowa - Mark Curtis was released from lockup
at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Ft. Madison August 2,
after spending 344 days in punitive segregation. "I got
help from another prisoner in carrying my stuff over to my
new cell house and about a half dozen guys I know stopped
to talk," said Curtis during a telephone conversation
shortly after his discharge from lockup.
"One of them asked me about Mumia Abu-Jamal, figuring that I might be familiar with that struggle. These new conditions will provide better opportunities for political discussions," he emphasized.
"The thing that struck me immediately about the cell house is how much cleaner it is than where I've been the past year."
A union and socialist activist, Curtis was framed up and convicted on rape and burglary charges in 1988. At the time of his arrest, he was involved in a struggle to protest a raid by the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the Monfort meatpacking plant in Des Moines that resulted in 17 of his Latino co-workers being hauled out of the plant in handcuffs.
Last August 23, while working as a janitor in the prison hospital, Curtis was thrown into lockup, tried, and found guilty in an internal prison hearing on the phony charge of assaulting another inmate.
He spent 30 days in what is termed the "hole," and another 10 months in punitive segregation, locked up for 23 hours a day in a five by seven foot cell. Curtis was allowed three showers and shaves a week, two telephone calls a month, and an hour's exercise a day in a small area prisoners refer to as "dog pens."
In 1993, Curtis completed the sentence on the trumped up rape charge. He is being held in the maximum security prison now on the basis of the burglary charge tacked on by cops and prosecutors several weeks after his original arrest.
According to Iowa Board of Parole statistics, prisoners released in 1994 who were convicted of the same burglary charge as Curtis served an average of 76.2 months in prison. In September Curtis will have served 84 months.
The Mark Curtis Defense Committee is urging those who support his release on parole to write a letter to the Iowa Board of Parole, Capitol Annex, 523 East 12th Street, Des Moines, Iowa, 50319, with a copy to the Mark Curtis Defense Committee, Box 1048, Des Moines, Iowa, 50311. A delegation will deliver the letters to the Parole Board in September.