Workshop Recap: Lucasville Uprising.

Our presentation about the Lucasville uprising had four parts. 1. the case. 2. Why it’s political. 3. What support may look like. 4. How racial dynamics complicate support.

1. THE CASE We shared a quick summary of the case, with some visual aids. We focused on thosewe knew the most about: Siddique Hasan, Bomani Shakur, Jason Rob, Namir Mateen, George Skates, and Greg Curry. These were by far not all of those involved in the uprising. There weren’t a lot of questions, so we either did a pretty good job of getting A LOT of information transmitted in 15 minutes, or people felt too overwhelmed and confused to even know what to ask.

Reportback: ABC conference!

Collaboratively written by Kate, Wes and Ben
We decided to apply to participate in the North American Anarchist Black Cross (ABC for short) conference in Denver, and look at that, we ended up going. Though we don’t focus specifically on political prisoners, as ABC groups do, we definitely do some of this kind of work and are happy to exist in the space between political prisoner support and resistance to incarceration in general. We booked a couple shows on the way out there, developed a workshop on the Lucasville Uprising, performed at the conference and had a great time meeting people and learning from them.

The conference was organized by Denver Anarchist Black Cross, who is based out of the 27 Social Center - a warehouse space that includes a print shop, health collective, childcare collective, zine library, lending library, office space, show space, and a collective house upstairs. It’s a really amazing and inspiring place. Denver ABC seems to have more members and more activities than any other ABC in the US these days, they’re not sure why. Members are also involved in a lot of diverse activities, supporting political prisoners, copwatch, courtwatch (specifically for Immigration and Customs Enforcement cases), rallies and actions against police violence, the Denver Armed Resistance Committee, and I can’t even remember all the others. 

FCI Elkton Food Strike Update #3

Letter I wrote to the guy who dismissed my FOIA request:

August 8^th, 2011 Henry J Sadowski
US Department of Justice
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Northeast Regional Office
US Custom House – 7^th floor
2^nd & Chestnut Streets
Philadelphia, PA 19106 RE: Freedom of Information Request No. 2011-08416
 Dear Henry,
 I trust you know that your response was not responsive to my request. Nevertheless, I am very dissatisfied with this response. I requested shift logs and incident reports from specific days. Nothing you say can convince me that there were no shift logs or incident reports for those days. If there is a criminal investigation going on, the sensitive information could be redacted from those logs and reports.
 You are lying to me. I do not appreciate it. Do you know what “freedom of information” means? Are you trying to prove to me that we do not live in a country that is at all responsive to or respectful of it’s citizens? If so, you are doing a good job. I have to admit I’m not surprised, I've been on to you all for a while. I expect I’ll soon verify my suspicion that the bureaucrats in the appeals process share your disdain for the citizens you allegedly serve.
 Have a nice day, you authoritarian paper pusher.

Next I'll write a letter to the attny general appeals process, but that one will be dull. When i get a dismissive response from those fuckers, i'll share my snotty retort.

In other news on this subject, kate's working on publishing an OP ED article from our penpal at Elkton about their lighting policy.