Vol. 76/No. 25 June 25, 2012
A voice to prisoners
I’m an avid reader of the Militant newspaper and was very interested in the articles about prisoners’ struggles. I’m currently housed within a gang block where we are restricted from participating in any vocational programs or working. We are kept segregated from population under the banner of security risk. At least 80 percent of us housed here have no gang affiliation.Within this unit they further segregate us according to an ever-changing policy that suits their ambiguous and vague ends. We only receive around three to four hours of recreation a day.
There exists no adequate law library, no law clerk, and representation pushes us to plead out due to their negligence in researching and fighting our cases coupled with the extreme punitive measures used to detain us, and the complicit enhancements with the prosecutor’s immense arbitrariness and freedom to increase our sentences. Most detainees face an additional 20 years to life for prior criminal history that we’ve already paid for but are doomed to pay for once more at the cost of families, our children, our freedom, our rights.
They add to the abuse by exorbitant telephone prices from Global Tel Link. When your family adds $25 to your phone account, GTL automatically takes $5. Calls are approximately $10 for a 20 minute call. When money is added to your commissary online they take $6.95 for every $20.
The true abuse stems from the assault on our civil liberties. The Department of Justice, the district courts, the detention facilities, the public defenders office, everyone works against the accused.
Help me give a voice to prisoners. Help me build a true representation, a true perception of who we are, what we face, and what we are up against.
A prisoner
Rhode Island
Hunger strike in Illinois
Illinois has followed in the steps of California and Virginia. On June 3, 2012, twenty-three political prisoners went on hunger strike together in protest of various administrative issues at Pontiac Correctional Center. On the same day I.A. interrogated all of the strikers in an attempt to frame the strike as “gang activity.”Pontiac Correctional Center exists in Illinois for the sole purpose of isolating prisoners from each other and the world. The vast majority of prisoners here are in segregation. As part of the administration’s oppression against us we are beaten, unfed, given inadequate law libraries, isolated, and much more. All of this is being protested by the strikers. From Palestine to California and Virginia to Illinois the Revolution against tyranny and despair, extortion and exploitation, oppression and capitalism is growing stronger.
In the name of Revolution, Solidarity, and Struggle,
A prisoner
Illinois
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