Occupy for Prisoners

America is the Prisonhouse of Nations, holding 2.3 million people behind bars. This is by far the highest incarceration rate in the world. The US police and surveillance forces are expanding every day. We live in the most sophisticated police state history has ever known. The state of Ohio houses over 50,000 prisoners and kills people on death row at a rate exceeded only by the state of Texas.

Sean Swain: Request to be Removed From Security Threat Group List.

Sean Swain is an anarchist prisoner held in Mansfield OH. He is a prolific writer and organizer. He's also got a pretty wicked sense of humor and approaches his organizing and defense with theatrical aplomb. He ran for governor of Ohio from prison in 2010 on the platform of dissolving the state government if elected. Then he disputed the election results when they said he lost.

What we've been up to... and ways you can get involved.

1. Building relationships with penpals. All of RedBird's work is based on communication, requests and ideas of Ohio prisoners. We have a list of prisoners seeking penpals. If you'd like to write to someone, let us know and we'll help you make a connection. 

2. Working with Ohio prisoners who have been targeted for greater repression because of their political affiliations or actions. We have connected with a number of these prisoners, who are ready and waiting for a larger movement in Ohio to join forces in struggle.

Ban The Box Legislation

The most common complaint from formerly incarcerated people we've talked to is the difficulty finding a job. Too many people get out of prison and find themselves in 2nd class status, left with few opportunities to avoid criminal activity likely to land them back in prison.

Employer discrimination against formerly incarcerated people is a major cause of recidivism and contributor to mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex.

REPORTBACKS GALORE

We have been too busy for the internet. Here's what's up...

1. Pelican Bay- we went to Ohio State Penitentiary  for a "supermax to supermax" rally organized by the Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network. Before talking about the silly little action we did, I want to acknowledge both the amazing bravery of the hungerstrikers and the despicable apathy of the powers that starved them for four weeks (some are still refusing food). Read updates here. We made the group into about 15 people standing on the side of the road 1/4 mile away from the prison. Visitors came and waved. We chatted with folks and got sunburnt. Shift change happened and dozens of COs drove past scowling. We got bored and felt even more ineffectual than protests normally make us feel, cuz we were out of sight of both the inmates we were trying to express solidarity with and the administration we were trying to confront. So, we got our signs and some buckets and marched, past the no tresspassing signs making as much racket as we could. A couple other protesters joined us, including Brother Quahar of the new black panthers. We made it to the parking lot by looking at the ground, walking and not stopping with the noise every time a car pulled up next to us to try and talk to us. Finally in the parking lot an oily no-nonsense CO who clearly did not know how to talk with people he couldn't get away with beating up or macing with impunity informed us that the highway patrol was on their way to arrest us if we didn't leave immediately. We knew we weren't going to tear down any walls that day, and had important plans to come back and visit people the next morning, so we marched back, hoping at least half the inmates had seen or heard us. 20 minutes later 4 highway patrol cars rolled up and a much more polite officer told us that we ought not do that again. As usual he started with "who's in charge here" and when we told him no one was, he directed his statements at me, until Wes and Kate reminded him that they were there too.

2. ABC conference- We're going to the Denver ABC conference, and they've asked us to do a presentation on the Lucasville Uprising Prisoners. With that goal in mind, we visited Staughten and Alice Lynd at their house near Youngstown. They've both done a lot of work with the Lucasville cases, including writing the book on it. They have so much detailed knowledge to share. I feel like we could have talked to them all night, but we only had 45 minutes.  Then we camped out in a thunderstorm, which was surprisingly fun. The next day we went back to OSP to visit Siddique Abdullah Hasan and Bomani Shakur. This was an inspiring and very enjoyable experience. Bomani and Ben shared handshakes and book references. Hasan, Kate and Weslie talked about all kinds of current events and political prisoner issues. We also discovered they're celled on the other side of the prison. We'll have to march around the whole perimeter to be seen by them. We got a much better understanding of their case and their preferences for what we tell ABC. We'll be going back soon, for the bigger challenge of talking with Jason Robb about his affiliation with the Aryan Brotherhood and ABC's tradition of refusing solidarity with white supremacist groups. We're very much looking forward to helping the complexities of the lucasville situation enrich discussion and analysis at the ABC conference.

3. Elkton FCI food strike - got a letter from the shitheads claiming that they can't give me any records I requested. They say it's part of an ongoing criminal investigation and I can appeal to a higher authority, which I will be doing.

4. The "what are prisons for" puppet show from Mysterious Rabbit and Puppet Army was really great. If you have a chance to see them, please do.

Pelican Bay Solidarity

On July 1st hundreds of inmates in SHU in California started an indefinite hungerstrike. The mainstream media is (of course) not making a peep about this, but you can read about it and follow events here.

You can also take action by signing this petition or calling these politicians. Please do.

We couldn't help but take this opportunity to point out the irony of our nationwide celebration of america's independence from an authority far weaker than the authority the US currently holds us under and exercises  around the world. So, we made up some flyers and handed them out first at Red White and Boom and then at the Doo Dah Parade. Of course, handing out flyers isn't going to tear down any prison walls, but we got some new ideas about prison and the fact of the hunger strike's existence into hundreds of people's hands.

Prisoner Food Strike in Ohio

Last month (May 18-23) inmates at FCI Elkton (in Lisbon, OH) went on food strike. We have very little information about this right now. One of our penpals mentioned it, and the only information online about it were announcements of the subsequent lockdown and one post on prisonfamilyonline.com. We'll do some follow up and hopefully have more information soon.

Here's what we know now:

Dinner Theatre Solidarity Fundraiser

[read the reportback from this event here.]


June 11th is a new holiday! It's the international day of solidarity with long term anarchist prisoners.

RedBird Prison Abolition is planning an event to celebrate this holiday in Columbus. Please join us at 64 King Ave, on Sat June 11th for the following activities.


6PM- Discussion Circle, come talk about and take action on making ourselves and our community less dependent on the police and prison system. Continue and join the conversations we had after the last performance of Ad Seg.

Redbird Prison Abolition...

We have decided to change our name. Columbus Anarchist Black Cross is now Redbird Prison Abolition. There are various associations with "ABC" that weren't really serving us very well. We've decided our name should reflect the biggest vision and broadest goal of our activities: abolition.

Georgia Prison Strike Summary

I wrote this article for Street Speech, condensing the reading I've done on the subject into a single document. It's written for a newspaper, so there's minimum editorializing.  

On the morning of Thursday Dec 9th, thousands of inmates in six prisons in Georgia refused to leave their cells or go their work assignments. This non-violent sit-down protest lasted 6 days and has been recognized as the largest prison strike in US history. The organizing effort continues to this day. According to one inmate interviewed by Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the prisoners only called off the strike because officials couldn't respond to the striker's demands while they were on strike. Officials were faced with hiring outside workers to maintain the prison, which normally depends on unpaid inmate labor to function.