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Stuckey 1 Andre Stuckey Word Count: 1856 Criminalization and Punishment in the United States: Reconciliation and Remedies President Trump, California Governor Gavin Newson, the Federal Bureau of State Prison Officials, county and city jail officials are violating our state and United States Constitutional rights with the intent of breaking down and destroying men and women prisoners, family bonds, and moral ethics. Take a good look at the facts and see them for what they truly are. One would have to say the whole state and federal penal system reeks of conspiracy, and it’s clear that there is way more to these tactics than we know and see. Why is a rogue warden given so much power? Whyis a rogue institution like Pelican Bay allowed to operate? Why have clear constitutional violations behind prison walls gone unnoticed for all these years? Words cannot fully convey how great it is... Have so many amazing people join our fight against oppression. Although we have much to stand proud about, we still have a long way to go and we still a even stronger support system. I heed a special call-out to our new Afrikan community, Civil Rights leaders, Human Rights leaders, all religious leaders, lawyers, actresses, actors, sports figures, musicians, entertainers and those in the business sector, to get involved in prison reform to make a difference in our community’s future and together we can rebuild justice on the foundation of a new morality that is the heart of the people. Our acts of defiance are critical and effective in catapulting us forward into a position to shine the light of justice on and expose the foul, torturous conditions of the state and federal penal system. I end this chapter with a poem of resistance. We must Fight Back We must fight back Revolution is forced upon every soldier during wartime Whether you are weak or strong Big or small T The spiritual battle Begins in every prisoner’s mind We must fight back We must fight back For what is right We must create our own New World Order We must fight back To create the love-light That will enlighten the future generations We must fight back Against the Imperialist We must fight back Against building more prisons We must fight It’s Revolution time Things will change These conditions we live in will never get better If we just stand by and do nothing Blacks and browns are being shot down by officers On a daily basis Where is the justice Obama was supposed to save us Only empty promises Lock up every black man and immigrant That’s like money in the bank Prison corporations is like new age slavery g Slave-masters sit in office buildings and warden offices By any means necessary We must fight back It’s Revolution time Stuckey 3 The scandal of mass incarceration in the United States is finally getting some public attention, with a few damning statistics frequently cited. The United States, with 5 percent of the world’s population holds 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. The United States has produced a theory of pseudo-science based on the eugenicist premise that criminals are born bad and genetically different from other humans and the only solution is to separate them from the rest of society. Penal institutions across the U.S. have latched on to this tripe and transformed it into a material force, building an entirely new sub—industry. Their hope is to brain-wash hundreds of thousands of the imprisoned poor to absolve the nature and structure of capitalist society of all culpability in the lack of viable choices available to them and for the existence of social automation technology and instead accept their innate criminality and that they were born social degenerates. Racism has developed as an ideological concept to sustain slavery in the form of the penal system and its prisons. Racist inmates further compliment this situation by working in conjunction with prison authorities to commit murderous acts against political prisoners. For example, in 2015 while I was incarcerated in Kern Valley State Prison 1 received news that political prisoner Hugo Pinell was killed in New Folsom State Prison at the hands of two white prisoners, known as Aryans. Hugo Pinell, who was of Nicaraguan heritage, was a political prisoner who had been locked up since 1965, mostly in the Security Housing Unit, or SHU. Hugo Pinell became politicized inside the California prison system while at San Quentin. Hugo and five other politically conscious prisoners were charged with participating in an August 21, 1971 rebellion and alleged escape attempt which reuted in the death of an officer as well as George Jackson, who was killed by prison guards. Hugo Pinell, William Tate, Johnny Larry Spain, David Johnson Fleeta Drumgo and Luis Talamantez became known as the San Quentin Six and became a global system of unyielding resistance against the prison system and its violent, racist design. As the California prisons began lock people up in long term isolation and control unit facilities. Hugo was placed inside of the SHU in prisons like Pelican Bay, Corcoran, and Tecachapi. Despite being locked in a cell for 23 hours a day he continued to work for racially and politically motivated placement in the SHU. Hugo’s life was a living hell as the prison guards brutally inflicted pain on him in an effort to break him. He endured more than fifty years of sensory deprivation. For decades, he was denied being able to touch his family or any other human being, as well as attempts on his life. It was the will of the prison authorities that Hugo be murdered on his second day into the general population after decades in the SHU. Hugo Pinell was convicted in 1971 of killing a prison guard and slammed down in the SHU. Those two racist, white prisoners—Aryans——that killed him were either working for prison guards, or were too blind to see how this act served the interests of the state. News reports say the prison guards were cheering and celebrating at the news of Hugo’s death, high fives all the way around. The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that freed slaves actually reinstituted enslavement through racial, capitalist, and misogynist imprisonment. Ever since a clause in the 13th Amendment allowed for enslavement as punishment for crime, the groundwork has been laid for the prison industrial complex to function as the 21“ Century equivalent of chattel slavery. The prison industrial complex represents a system of transferring public wealth over to powerful corporate and political interests that are wreaking harm on an unimagined scale. The state and federal prison system profits from human misery and is grounded in ideologies of white supremacy that makes the association of blackness and criminality as interlocked in the modern U.S.s imagination as Africaness and enslavement were before 1865. In order to change the "' ”"""" ”"""" "‘”“”' ' ""‘ ' " ’ A ' ' " ’ ' ""' " ""_f:f":" Stuckey 5 prison system we must organize more national prisoners movements. The Bourgeois state will give us what we want as long as we do it both on a massive scale and with peaceful means. As current and ex-convicts we must do this to win our rights to vote and abolish the pro-slavery provision of the 13th Amendment. Prison life in and of itself is the most reduced circumstance of human existence. It is absolutely impossible to do one’s own time individually in a racially partisan environment. America’s prison system is a disaster as it squeezes higher education out of state budgets. We have five times as many people in prison as we ever had before 1865 and five times as many as any other advanced Democracy per capita. Prison is horrible for the prisoner and expensive for the state. Political literature has a real role in the building of true political power. An organ in any mass movement is its scaffolding which ensures a strong theoretical training and guidance. This is important because in any struggle, at some point it needs a definite political character. We need to meet 21“ Century needs which includes creating a strong propaganda arm. Social media, the creation of pamphlets, the production of solid articles and literature which deliver powerful portrayals of prison oppression and our struggles to obtain justice should be pursued with as much vigor as possible. Government officials in collusion with the bought- and-paid-for media—government mouthpiece-—that exaggerate and manipulate facts, isolated incidents and targeted survey statistics as well as play on people’s emotions in order to obfuscate policies in legislation to further the gain of the prison system. Legislators continue to deprive people of essential benefits that strengthen and sustain a community prosperity. Totalitarian culture dictates that in order to subordinate the masses, instruments of oppression need to be imposed and enforced. V we "*"'—'*"'-7“ “M ~ ~~ ~ ~--~~~:~*—~~v~~'~ ~ ~~— V ~ ~—~—~~~~ » —~— —— —~—«——— v—»_«- — —- America’s greatest sin, slavery, is a practice that continues to plague our community into the 21“ Century. The rate of incarceration has steadily increased since slavery’s re-appropriation. In order to stop this trend we must call out corporations who contribute to mass incarceration in order to reverse the cycle of dehumanization and enslavement for profit in this country. The mentality of prison employees has been indoctrinated and degraded to the point that they no longer look upon inmates as people but as a commodity to be housed, fed, counted, and traded. Society as a whole is unaware of the gross abuses facilitated by those in power who profit off of misdirected government dollars and incarcerate the most people possible in the name and goal of profits and numbers. Most prisoners are officially institutionalized and comfortable in their slave conditions. So it’s up to us revolutionaries to fight an undeclared war against a dark force involved in keeping us ignorant, enslaved and broken. This dark force must be challenged at every step, and the fat cats profiting from our misery must be exposed.
