This is an update about Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, a prisoner activist and intellectual who is currently in a dire situation in Snake River Correctional Institution in Oregon. As was reported last week, Rashid has been in the midst of a health crisis for almost a month now, which has included
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The Scott Ross: How The US Used Pussy Riot And You Liked It
Why were you outraged over Russia locking up Pussy Riot but ambivalent over America bringing its full weight down on open access activist Aaron Swartz? Simple, because hating a Russian government is easier than improving your own. When Russian punk band Pussy Riot received 2 years for “hooliganism motivated by
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Video Interview with Sanyika Shakur
In this interview, New Afrikan Communist Sanyika Shakur discusses his personal social development, his time in Pelican Bay-SHU, the 2011 California prisoners’ hunger strikes, the effects of long-term isolation torture, New Afrikan nationalism, communism, and the struggle against gender oppression. In a biographical note written while in PB-SHU, Shakur explained:
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Rock Vol.2 #2
The latest issue of Rock is out; this is a newsletter produced by former political prisoner Ed Mead with content for and by prisoners at Pelican Bay. Pelican Bay’s SHU is an isolation torture unit where people spend years and even decades in solitary confinement, deprived of all human contact.
Continue readingArt Threat: The imagination, art, and activism of Herman’s House
Last week I attended the Toronto theatrical premiere of Herman’s House, a thought-provoking documentary written and directed by Angad Singh Bhalla. This Canadian film tells the story of an artistic collaboration between Jackie Sumell and Herman Wallace. Sumell is a multidisciplinary artist from New York. Wallace is a Black Panther from Louisiana who has been […]
Continue readingThings Are Good: Reading for Faster Freedom in Brazil
Prisoners in Brazil may be able to shorten their stay in jail by reading and writing. It’s only 48 days but it can make a difference, the prisoners need to read from a collection of philosophy, science, literature, or the classics then reflect on them in a submitted paper. Educational
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Red Onion Prisoners on Hunger Strike! Day 11…
Men at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia are not only refusing meals but also refusing showers and refusing recreation time. We must support these courageous comrades who are actively revolting against the incarceration nation. Go to http://virginiaprisonstrike.blogspot.com and take action! These reports are from Rock Volume 1, #6, June 2012, available here. Solidarity Statement with
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Inmate Dies During Hunger Strike at California’s Corcoran State Prison
This troubling news reposted from Solitary Watch: News of a death in Corcoran State Prison’s Administrative Segregation Unit is emerging as an underreported hunger strike in the prison’s ASU comes to a close. Inmates in the ASU are held in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement. Many have been in isolation for years
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: From Bad to Worse: Transferred from Red Onion to Wallens Ridge State Prison
Wallens Ridge State Prison This is the latest dispatch from Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, Minister of Defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter, and author of Defying the Tomb: From Bad to Worse: Transferred from Red Onion to Wallens Ridge State PrisonBy Kevin “Rashid” Johnson On January 20, 2012,
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Defying the Tomb: Struggle, Education, Survival and Liberation in Lock-Down
WHERE: Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen Street, New YorkWHEN: Saturday, February 11, 2012 @ 7pm Soledad Brother-esque, this book is a collection of letters between Johnson and a fellow prisoner, Outlaw. It also includes some essays written by Rashid discussing a variety of political issues. Acclaimed by several political prisoners and movement veterans,
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Abuse Reports Culminate In Hair-Raising Assault By Red Onion State Prison Guards
In the following report, Rashid details a vicious racist attack on his person by guards at Red Onion State Prison, which occurred on December 12, 2011. Since this report was written, Rashid’s situation has gotten even worse, as earlier this week he was transferred to Wallens Ridge State Prison (Virginia’s
Continue readingWe Have Our Priorities
According to Correctional Services Canada, the average annual cost of keeping someone in a federal prison in Canada in 2004-2005 was $88,067 . Now compare that to the annual amount spent per student in Canada during the same time period of $8726 including operating budgets and salaries.
Continue readingCanada’s aging prison population
First off I’d like to offer kudos to Howard Sapers, the Correctional Investigator of Canada, a true gem within our civil service .In his latest report Sapers highlights the aging of our prison population and the special challenges faced by both the effected inmates and their jailers
The older offender is often a neglected, but significant and growing, segment of the offender population. Today,
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Mandatory Sentences Really Mean Mandatory
Canada’s top legal group, the Canadian Bar Association, was not exactly kind to Harper’s approach to crime in its recent annual conference. It identified many issues from overcrowding to the rates of mentally ill in the prison system. But the issue tha…
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The Spawn of Guantanamo Bay – SuperMax Prison Hell
Prison is not supposed to be a walk in the beach. I understand that. People that commit offences need to be consequenced for their transgressions against what society deems to be the proper set of standards. Consequences should not include psychological torture, self-mutilation and degradation. “Supermax prisoners’ daily lives are chock full of alienating and […]
Sketchy Thoughts: Support the California Prisoners’ Hunger Strike!
In the months before summer 2011, news spread that between 50 and 100 prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison in the Security Housing Unit (SHU), Corridor D, were going on an indefinite hunger strike, starting July 1.What was initially expected to…
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Hugo Pinell Participating in the California Hungerstrike
Excerpted from a letter to Kiilu Nyasha:A hunger strike has been in effect since July 1 and I’ve been with it, altho is very hard to know what’s going on? On July 1, one station up here announced the hunger strike, but nothing since and I don’t kno…
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Eddie Griffin’s Statement of Support for Prisoner Hunger Strike at Pelican Bay
Eddie Griffin, one of the surviving Marion Brothers who went on hunger strike in 1976, writes here of his support for the Pelican Bay strike, and his own experiences thirty five years ago. In solidarity with the California hunger strikers, Griffin has …
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Life in Pelican Bay SHU
From IF THE SHU FITS: CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT AT CALIFORNIA’SPELICAN BAY STATE PRISON:B. General Conditions Within the SHUFrom the outside, the SHU resembles a “massive concrete bunker.”[65] From the inside, it is a “windowless labyrinth of cells …
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Letter from Bomani Shakur of the Lucasville 5
The Lucasville 5 are five prisoners who were framed for the murder of snitches and guards in the 1993 Lucasville prison riot. The 1993 riot and hostage taking was one of the longest in u.s. prison history, and yet it ended relatively peacefully. It was…
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