AjlPNK^ PRISONERS NEWS ^ pec / al PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD (N,Y.CHAPTER) THE March, 1974 ^olume 4^ No. 3 L ATESI HOAX In late December the President of the United States signed into Law a Bill called "The Family Visitation Act of 1973". The Act reads in part: "Each prisoner, convict ed of an offense against the United States and con fined in a penal or correctional institution, shall, during each year of confinement, te entitled to not less.than twelve, nor more than thirty days of fami ly and social visitation furlough"; and goes on to establish criteria respecting conduct and trustworth iness. After the President signed the Act into Law in late December it went to the offices of the Director of the u.s. bureau of prisons to be implemented. Norman A. Carlson, Director of the B of Prisons, promptly gutted it to the point where it applies to approximately 50 men out of every 1,000 prisoners in his Bureau's penal institutions. Carlson's method of doing this consisted of sev eral sentences contained in a Bureau of Prisons' pol icy statement. The Policy Statement is entitled "In mate Furloughs" and is numbered 7300.1 2B (1-7-74). It does not refer to the law as "The Family Visita tion Act of 1973". In fact, the policy statement it self makes no mention of the humane intent of the U.S. Congress in passing the Act into Law and gives no deference to the concept of general family visi tation rights for prisoners. Rather it talks of cri sis/ emergencies, correctional objectives, and re lease preparation. Carlson's policy outline says: "1. Ordinarily, an inmatejnust have full minimum custody to be considered for a furlough." 2. "Ordinarily, furloughs will not be granted for persons identified with large scale cri minal activity, for offenders convicted of serious crimes against persons, for persons whose presence in the cotmiunity would attract undue attentTo^n or create unual attention, or for persons obtaining med- cial or dental treatment not ^funded by the Bureau of Prisons." By implementing the Family Visitation Furlough Act in this manner Carlson has, in effect, vetoed the Act and neutralized it to fit some correctional concept strictly unrelated to anything like a prisoner keep ing family-ties and other social-ties in strong and healthy condition. ETA'iL h ; m 1 V "The Face", R. WardL- Page- 1 (continued from page 1) An example of how this goes can be shown by look- institution at Terre.Haute, Indiana. At this prison are lodged over eleven-hundred men. Out of those eleven hundred, as of late January/1974, only eighty-eight (88) prisoners ar^ on minimum-cus tody status; and that is a normal ffgure for penal populations around the country (Atlanta, Leaven worth, Lewisburg, Me Neil Island, Marion, La Tuna, Lompoc). Out of those 88 prisoners somewhere near half that number are excluded from furlough-release by reason of not measuring up to the other qualific ations in Carlson's policy statement. So what federal prisoners have in the Act is a Law that applies to only 4 or 5 per cent of the pop ulation in each penal institution. To carry it a bit further one can note that most prisoners on minimum custody in penal institu tions have only a short time left to serve on their sentences. Thus the so-called Family Visitation Fur lough Act does not apply at all to men with lengthy terms left to serve. In fact, Norman Carlson has made eligible for release-furloughs under the Work-release, School-re lease, and Emergency Furlough release acts of the late 1960's; and has nulled-out the Furlough Act to a point of utter mean-inglessness for ninety-five per cent of federal prisoners in the Nation's largest prisons. The over-all effect of these manuevors on the part of Carlson and his staff is to stifle yet another common-sense approach to lessening the de teriorating, debasing and degrading aspects of treatment of federal offenders in prison-warehouses by helping prisoners preserve and strenghten commun ity-ties and thereby increasing the likelihood that they will not return to jails or prisons shortly after being released. Here at Terre Haute there was a lot of exceit.T- ement anA,anticipation over the passage of this Act among the prisoners in general population. A cruel hoax was perpetrated on them; one that it will take several more months for them, in the main, to see clearly. In the U.S. House of Representatives are Con gressmen Koch, Badillo, Conyers, Fauntroy, Mitchell, Nix, Podell, Roncallo, Rosenthal, Roybal and Tiernan, all of whom sponsor^ the Furlqtigh Act of 1973. One wonders if they too know that Director Carlson, in effect, vetoed their Act eight days after the Presi dent signed it into law. What cjyi prisoners and concerned public do about it? Writing their Congress persons can be a beginning. Yet - so long as people like Carlson are given such broad powers to implement Public Laws in any manner they elect to, then reform of the general treatment prisoners receive will be largely beyond the reach of any law that Public Representatives place into a bureaucratic structure. Terre Haute Federal Prison s/ ■ ■\ "White House", Willie Hamilton, Greenhaven ^ Page 2 T ^ r §? ... Ill SUNSET rtl'l'lllll ..■- T »» 953 flM-M killer in our midst "Did you know there is a government sponsored kil ler in our midst called methadone." lou have heard all the. qualifying aspects of methadone such as, how it helps to make one a productive citizen to live a .crime free life. Here are the hard cold facts about methadone. It was developed in SejTnany during World war II because of the morphine shortage. The origi nal name was dolaphine in honor of Adolph Hitler. It is an addictive drug four times as potent as her- 3in, and government sponsored, why? Because it is -heap..to manufacture and to curb the crime rate,, lig business was losing too much money to addicts. There is no concern or Health factors involved in jutting it on the market. If there was you wouldn't le warned of the dangers of using it, such as "meth- idone produces low blood pressure which impairs men- ,al and physi'&al abilities. This has been shown way 3ack in 1948 in research. Children born to mothers on nethadohe go through the same withdrawal symptoms as if the mother was on heroin. Also in reported stud ies of this same "killer drug methadone", brain de generation has been found. To put it bluntly, the da iage caused by methadone in our youth in their early twenties is similar to senile persons of 70-80 years )ld. Ask yourself this question. "If this is the mira- ;le drug proclaimed by persons in deverse jiositions is a cure all to heroin addiction, then Why must we je maintained on it for periods of two to three years, lometimes longer?" Is it disabling? If not why then should the government place a person on welfare, when there is such a large number of persons on the wel- are rolls that the government is trying to put off? lust as it has come to the publics attention of the infortunate men who underwent syphTTis experiment some years ago. The government is doing the thing lith you now, but on a much larger scale. Somewhere letween 50-100,000 people. Everytime you read the laper about a death due to an overdose of methadone ;he_government will explain away the killer they spon- At sunset The evening sky is red Trails of blood interweave the clouds oozing slowly across the westfern sky ani^rh"^ pointed towers and the massive granite walls The grass is tinted red and the avenues of stone bleed and moan t' ’ ® catwalk Times Square a scarred graveyard filled with lead and the men Who believed in REVOLUTION arl dead They lived like animals but they died like men Attica a small fire again^ the wind / - - — ^ where the suit sets in'diso-der and the moon rises infra-red Alexander Del HcWo^ Concerned Puertd Rican Committee Attica, New York agency is making a careful inves- ipslsis. reprinted from "The Insider", D.C. Jail H.S. ANNOUNCEMENT coming out next month (April). We feel a real need to use this month for fund raising, for recruitment of new people to work on the paper, for political discus sion about the politics of the paper and of our our collective in a way which will help us to deal more effectively with the increasing amount of work entailed in put- nng out the paper, doing other prison work and relating to others in the prison struggle. Right now we are at a critical point on all of these is- sues, so we hope that not putting out the next MS will allow us the needed time and energy. Page 3 # J OUR REAL SITUATION < <]-3 < o 0 <3 o <1 <i <3 < <3 < < < TASKS WE FACE IN OUR STRUGGLE ■i We preface this article with the explanation that it is aimed primarily at those comrades in the prisons who have shown by their actions that they are true revolutionists and leaders in the struggle, and in that sense it is not a "popular" article, for its puf'- pose is to serve established cadre who are today di rectly involved in practical and theoretical work. The reasons for this will become obvious as the reader continues, but in no sense do we exclude any prisoner from benifiting from it, since all of us have revolu tionary potential. Hovyever. only some and not all of us have used this potential to serve the prison move ment, and in any case. The Midnight Special should be employed as a theoretical organ of this movement to FURTHER it, not simply as a popular organ that re peats itself without clarifying the issues, strate gies, and tactics that this movement faces. That should be clear to anyone who views the prison move ment in the US as but one of the interconnected fronts in the international class struggle for liberation, and who intends to add their.weight to changing the particular conditions which we face in these capital ist concentration camps for the poor. We need a mass organ to hammer out the various questions and approa ches that arise from our work in the prisons. Midnight Special has, to a point, served the movement well in this respect, but we have hot served ourselves, i.e. we have used it mainly as an outlet to bijch about things, not clarify and wage consistent ideological struggle in line with changing them. By the same token, without a truly mass struggle ^yprisoners organized around immediate, popular, conditions, then all talk of power and eventually overthrowing the system that generates these prisons remains abstract rhetoric, and without any real understanding of where we have been, where we are now, and thus, where we are going, then even our attempts to organize remain abstract and directionless. Grasping this necessary truth, let us proceed. The prison struggle has been going on for years, but only in recent times has it passed through its spontanious childhood and begun to recognize itself for what it is: An anti-capitalist, anti-imperial ist, and anti-rascist struggle (all of these factors being closely connected). Attica was the watershed in this movement, our Paris Commune, so to speak, and out.of Attica (not to downplay the heroic strug gles of other prisons) come most of the lessons our movement must learn from. We say this because Attica represents a mass theory being put into mass PRACTICE, and because this mass practice was carried out to its fullest possible dimensions at the time. I-n this sense, certain lessons for our movement become more obvious, more completely fought out, than those arising out of other, less fully carried out, prison struggles, and it is not out of a sense of New York State chauvinism or provincialism that we say Attica represents the highest level of struggle our movement has taken. Out of Attica came the concrete"proofs of what we are capable of (under certain conditions) and what the enemy is capable of (under certain conditions also), and only by grasping concrete lessons from this concrete practice can the TEMPORARY defeat of Attica become a stepping stdne towards victory. An attempt to portray two of the more important lessons of Attica is as follows, althougtr-there are many more: A) "UNITY OF THE MANY Tb DEFEAT THE FEW" While ev eryone in prison faces th^.'Same general exploitation and dehumanization, prisoners have always been highly Stratified within their inter-prison composition. The prime force of this stratification has been, and still is, that of racism, i.e.. Black, White, and Latin prisoners divided among themselves and fighting each other whiTe rascist adminestrators and guards stood back in gle? watching us cut each others throats. (As an aside, we place no blame here on those who run these prisons, even though they foster these inter prisoner antagonisms, for the internal contradictions among us are primary, vihile external conditioning on the part of these flunkies of capital is secondary. In other words, we must deal with our own weaknesses rather/than blowing out of proportion the mans strength to manipulate us.) The burdon of this racism rests mainly oh the shoulders of the white prisoners, pris oners "Who identify with their captors and petty priv- aleges before they identify themselves as prisoners and allies of their fellow prisoners of color, and while this problem cannot be gone into fully here be cause of space (seeVhe article from the Constock sec tion of the Peoples Party in the Nov. issue of MS), it is still the primary contradiction we face today in our work, and even though to a lesser degree, still exists. Th^econdary force of this stratification are the vafTous internal organizations contending with each other for mass leadership (e.g.,Black Muslims, Peoples-Party, Five Percenters, gangster cliques of various races. Young Lords, Sunnah Muslims, etc.,, etc.). Much of this competition has been unprincepled, even physical, and has nearly always promoted disunity. Why this has been so is dufe to the fact that all these groups have their own theories, yet up until recently, the very nature of prison prevented them from being tested in practice. Today, it is aparent in practice which groups are interested in their own privaleges and organizational moves and which groups seek to further the betterment of ALL prison ers, regardless of race or geligion. But this is not a polemic, rather, it is an objective drawing ^of lessons TOWARDS unity that seeks to go beyond our subjective differences because of the particular conditions we all face, for Attica proved in practice that a united front of oppressed prisoners — regard- ' less of race or sect--is possible, and we cannot ignore this objective fact for a rehashing of our petty squabbles of old. Each of these prison groups has its own program and discipline based on its own-conception of the world, whether it be political, religuos, both, or niether, and it is possible for ALL of these groups, while maintaining their part icular stance, to come together to change the gen eral conditions of these prisons through a general and united stance BASED ON OUR COMMON REALITY. Of course, that is bound up in whether or not these groups RECOGNIZE their coimion enemy in the prisons, and whether or not they recognize the need to change the prisons themselves. And that can only come about through dialogue. That is one of the reasons this is being written. As one of the spokesmen for the Peoples Party, I am more than willingly bound to represent the princeples and program of that Party. But we are not dogmatists, we are multi-national revolutionaries who seek to educate and organize ALL our fellow prisoners to struggle to- better ALL of our conditions of life in the prisons, and" we will work with any and all groups whlT^re themselves for real and who seek ways to do the same thing. We maintain our programatical and ideological identity, yes, but we do not isolate ourselves in'a corner because others do not exactly ascribe to our views, yet wish to change conditions also, for to do so is to avoid the burning questions that face us, leaving it the mans field to provide us with answers that will never come. Isnt that what Attica taught us, that diverse groups (and diverse individuals) can Page 4 ■R. / < ◄ (continued from page 4) come together and struggle against a conmon oppress ion, and that from living practice what is correct and what is incorrect will manifest themselves? No one argues this point, and that group which expresses and practices this need the most consistently and patiently, the group which best sums up the real needs and actions of prisoners, will be the group which,1n the end, will lead the prisoner/workers In realizing these needs. We have seen the tactic of the united front put into practice creativly in Attica, therefore it is a lesson in the hands of the people to be used. Why it eventually was overcome by the enemy was because this enemy was able to unite many reactionaries to defeat what became the few in Attica, while the real many on the streets were disunited and could not prevent the enemies forces from murdering unarmed men. This leads us to the next lesson: B.) "WHILE THE COMMON ENEMY SURROUNDS US WITH WALLS, THE COMMON PEOPLE SURROUND THE ENEMY." The mass murder in Attica could not have taken place without the follow ing favorable pre-conditions for the enemy: l.)The great masses of American working and oppressed people were asleep, both to revolutionary ideology and struggle and to what Attica meant in terms of their interests as well as ours. 2.) The families and friends of N.Y.S. prisoners were not mobilized to where they could serve as our front line of, support, a situation of our own making through a lack of preparatory work, and 3.) Existing revolutionary Parties and prison support groups, for the most part, were incapable of coming to Attica's aid in a manner consistent with true revolutionary solidarity and struggle. In short, the men in "D" ’ Block yard were left to their own devices to counter the entire capitalist State apparatDs; and while they made brilliant usage of the material at hand,(and even if they would have been armed, though this would have prolonged the uprising and made the final body count much more evenijy«&oner or later the forceful crushing of the r«ellion was inevitable, the above conditions being in play. However, the purly milit ary viewpoint would in all cases lead us to defeat at this stage of the movement (there is no real and consistent movement on the streets, in a military sense, to back isolated instances of prison rebellion) ESPECIALLY TAKING INTO CONSIDERATION THE TOPOGRAPH- ACAL FEATURES OF PRISONS, and that is why politics have led —and always will lead, even when conditions -- ....W w ■ riKAj ^ mil IS.UVI, micu UUIlUIttUI are right for military struggle--our movement. For those ^e the outside, it is a matter of mobilizing > c> > t> 0 b i> i> C> factories, the streets, or the prisons. For those on the inside, it is a matter of forging wncrete links with those on the outside, and this means any and all groups, people, relatives, etc. who can insure another slaughbr like Attica will ’ be the existing Left, for example, (and putting aside “ -he rotten armchair sectarianism that so character- AN^JUST^STOnn^THroF^*^ descended upon Attica intervention would have been out of the question. Four days was sufficient active, on the spot support work, yet the turn-out was minimal and inefective We recognize that Attica\«s "something new", but ^^®\'"e''elutioL are also "something new , and those who are taken unawares — for living reality has a way of compressing and exhausting theory in a short period of time-should seriously question their ability to deal with the relatively as the general movement " “'•a across ^ ''ttica by the Left understanding the conditions imposed on our comrades on the street let us ask you the following question: What will ’ you do in response to the next Attica? To simply keen talking about prisoners heroic struggles , and yet to have no concrete points of action at hand if and when more Atticas arise (which we might add, has happened with the SAME LACK OF RESPONSE), this, we fel? i^a rat^r one sided and dogmatic approach which borders on opportunism. To those who do not agree, let us ask ’ "to the matter: Even feirgetting other possible Attica's for the mo- rent, what are you doing for the indicted Attica McGee, and the San Quentin Six, to name but a few who are now immediately under the guns If you can answer that with a positive and affirmitive revolutionary reply and consience, then re-ask yourselves the first question we posed. Do the answers dovetail in any appreciable time, in this fomat. But If they do not, we have no alternative but to question the stance of those who can only re ply with abstract ^ : I -7.. lO a, excuse making to concrete questions that effect those ^ on the inside as a matter of life and death. The “ ■ entire matter can be generally posed as follows: The g internal united front we spoke of before must be^ex- 4: tended to an external united front with the exi.st- ^ ing anti-imperialist forces on the streets, and these ^ -links must be cultivated and of a reciprocal nature if real lessons are to be drawn from Attica.These links are there in embryo, they need only to be nur= 5 tured and built upon in the days to come. These, “ too, are factories, and while they are already hot beds of revolutionary practice and theory, will the -crops be left to rot, or will they be reaped in a meaningful way by those organizations seriously dealing in terms of pow|r? We are listening, comrades. _ Now I must speak in terms of the existing pri son movement in NYS: Over the last year a reaction has set in upon our movement, a situation we are not adequately dealing with. Every revolutionary move ment has a definate ebb and flow which correspcrtids to its ability to attack or its necessity to retreat and reform ranks, and it is in full accordance with objective reality that, after Attica, either more prisons would follow or the enemy would be able to turn back and, to a certain degree, disperse our move ments ability to function. The latter, after an up and down struggle that went on for over two years, is what took place and is taking place, and new re sponses to new conditions must be formulated. We can characterize this reaction as follows: 1) After two years of panic and uncertainty on the part of Albany — seen in their overreaction and indescriminate violence, on the one hand, and by their brief fling at reform, on the other —the Dept, of Correction has both cleaned house internally and set up tactics and program^ to prevent further Atti ca's from crystalizing. At the same time, the condi tions we face as prisoners are pretty much the same, \ minus some of their more conspicuous window dressing \ that is available to but a select few. Prieser, a ' methodical law and order bureaucrat (most jail house lawyers know him through his commentaries to the Pen al Code), has replaced Oswald and has shown his "cap abilities" as Commisioner, appeasing both the guards' union and the bourgoies liberals, while crippling our movement through selective populations and isolating its head. Security has been beefed up, prison groups have been played off and paid off against one another (only to have this tactic reversed once the job is done), and arbitrary violence has become more dis- crimenating; all the while, Prieser has maintained a low profile due to being publicity shy. In short, the enemy has implemented new tactics and spin-offs of the old, and we have yet to effectively counter them, thus being forced into a defensive pattern at the moment. The regime has stabiliz°(f*'its position through undermining and dislocating ours, and this must be recognized and dealt with. The enemy has re trenched and contained many of the outward manifesta tions of our movement, even to the point where they are capable of'analyzing quantitative changes in one prison and disrupting this process of development by shaking up the population (drafts, mass isolation, etc.) and heading off qualitative change. We must recognize that Albany is not the same thing as the average idiot we confront daily on the lower levels, - and we must meet thqir sophistication with our own, not call old things byjiew names and keep falling flat on our ass time and time again. 2) Many of the older and top prison cadres have been killed, paroled, or face chronic isolation, while new and relatively inexperienced cadre are left to grope in the dark for effective measures to deal with the situation. These new cadres will make mistakes--they will also learn from them, but in the Page 6 meantime, the reaction entrenches itself into harder and harder lines of resistance & will pose greater problems as a result. By the same token, not enough fresh blood is being brought into the movement and disciplined for.Party work, for rather than recognize the reaction for what it is and gear our work accord ingly, many of us are waging the type of struggle that was applicable in the past and will be again (in'a general sense) in the future, BUT WHICH IS DE TRIMENTAL AND SELF DEFEATING (in that we have much more important things to be doing instead of going one on one with a para-military force of hundreds) at present. We are losing our mass roots among the prisoner/workers, a factor that must be dealt with in view of long term gains, not short term flare- ups that HEIGHTEN the reaction process through the simple fact of diminishing returns. 3) Along with every reaction follow left and right deviations; both of these deviations, while cloaking themselves in diflierent forms, end up leading to es sentially the same'result: assistance in furthering the reaction through dissapating the movement. By right deviations I mean the manner In which some of us drop out of practical political work and await the "goo>^oTd days" to appear once again WITHOUT LAY ING THE PATIENT AND PERSISTENT FOUNDATION TO INSURE A NEW AND MASS MOVEMENT, while still others become co-optated by the reaction itself and fall before the mans "sugar coated bullets", i.e., concessions and jive jailhouse positions. On the left, some exchange practical and meaningful rebuilding for empty rhetoric, tactics that reek of anarchist individualism, and the particular disease I have categorized before as "rev olutionary chauvinism", and will let the paper on this suffice at the mgment. Can we deal with this reaction? Of course we can, since we have dealt with it before and survived its most viscious attacks. The question is, HOW DO WE DEAL WITH IT? First, we must recognize it. Secgnd, we must analize its particular causes and effects in each prison and gear the work in each prison accord ingly. And third, while understanding that for every action there is a reaction, and that the situation we are now in was inevitable in a struggle THAT COULD NOT BE COMPLETED AS WE WOULD HAVE LIKED, WE ARE AT THE SAME TIME DEALING WITH HUMAN FORCES THAT MUST COUNTER THIS REACTION, and that means the prisoner/ worker you lock next to, eat next to, and work next to. It means organizing and educating on whatever level we have to retreat to, on whatever levels are open for us, and by patiently opening those levels that have been effectively shut off. To attack now out of a lack of understanding of objective conditions or out of frustration or sheer bravado, means to do so without mass support inside and street support out side, and that means defeat and wasting our forces unnecessarily. We have learned how to attack, have seen our movement temporarily halted, and now we must learn to retreat and rebuild. These are the lessons that Attica and the present situation we are in teach us, and only by learning from them and acting upon them will we avoid standing around and saying to each other, "remember the time we . . . " That is, if the enemy even lets us stand -around. They are preparing, gathering their forces all across the world, and if we bullshit, letting the fascists crush us because of our own weaknesses, then even those they just think have been into something will end up just like our comrades in Chile. And even though the prison movement is secondary to the movement that must be built in the streets, we have our part to play and must ,go about it in the best way we can. I close with fraternal greetings to all other sec tions of the Peoples Party, to all prisoner/workers, to all of our comrades in struggle on the streets, and with especial greetings of strength to the Attica Brothers. MINISTER OF INFORMATION PEOPLES PARTY III Comstock Prison, N.Y. / RHETORIC OR PRACTICE - In the VPflr IQ?"^ manw __ _______ _ .n • articles; in- e^ritnn ly.^ directed toward sSeak%^rMIo%°^ Rhetoric" used by those who do not elucidating on the various forces that I p 1 p ^° revolutionary I state solely that we were born, and we are here. hp,.! majority of our white brothers who. thru hard study and much stj;uggle have embraced the ideol- fakinn dedicated and are not faking. They believe in only allowing their deeds to themselves the'luxury especially when that Rhetoric is di- rected toward our non-white comrades. Never will this be done by any true white brother Much has transpired in the years of our birth, to the pride of some, to the shame of others. It takes an extreme sense of awareness to realize a former lackey of your enemy can become your comrade Only much study and hard work can bring this level of awareness about. The reverse side of the coin is also true. Those who were once a lackey of the enemy and now are com- must.also realize it takes an extreme sense of thPrrfiL°L^® ’ r Iton-white bro- thers find .themselves in the position of only being by their'dleds^ dcothers U p the answer. We as a revolutionary force cannot afford the luxury if pi! forefathers have seen to that). We. if ever to become a revolutionary force, must adopt self-discipline. We must start applying =t'"099lod so hard to obtain-- within our own ranks." ...It is the duty of all who understand these words to,practice brotherhood with all non-white brothers every minute of every day; but it is also our duty to the revolution, our brothers of non-white groups and ourselves, to organize ourselves within our own ranks so we may have control of ourselves as a revo lutionary force. If we cannot have control of our- selves as a revolutionary force, how can we expect to contribute fully to the revolution as a whole? ' ■J® ’ '®.''i oil" non-white brothers have been of^thpc^v^® vanguard element within we should continue in the role of attaching our.selves to the ranks of others. The mere assumption that we as rev-' 2 ® position of leadership skinnpH ">ulti-racial group because we are white skinned is a contradiction to the very revolutionary ?akP ■ I that we as a force should take a back seat is absurd. We. as revolutionaries, are well -aware of all as pects^ of our birth. It is time now we no lonaer allow ourselves to be confused with niir fJT h'ppc up — in solidarity with all oppressed people. We believe all revo utionary actions should be multi racial in e^s^shoul^L^tn with all our broth- ers shoulder to shoulder. But this is not to say we This P°=^tion beciuse we are white skinned. We. as revolutionaires."if we are to be effective."' must organize our own ranks. We must gain control of ?ankrof ’ ’ ?hP^P "' ’ thin our own ranks of the Peoples Army as a whole. Oor major ertort should be that of pulling those up who dare to deal in "Rhetoric", and all other ac tions which are not based on. deeds Within our ranks we do noftcare what life style. Ideology, or philosophy our white brothers had prior such time as his dee^ tell us different, or his lack of them, he is our comrade and we shall treat him as such I ’ e^olutionaries, cannot allow a few to?erpfB ^o,"'is'-epresent us. We cannot nnlftf ^ ask for rec ognition on the blood of our white brothers of Attica Walpole, and McAlister who paid the supreme price! ’ We must re-educate those among us who are guilty of ran^n»!^T■ their deeds not 1^ A '^^at they EiTiT- Sa!e tLil If r brothers 'who -I u ^9'", the people. One must produce his "bitten for publication must be cleared through proper channels. In order to organize. We must be able to control all whoSpeak to insure the fact that their opinions and views\correspond with the party policies as a whole part, lebtlld tt«a M tS)) )llLl3” m'rE,°pa5 “ ,hS ’ 'l'tb- dividual nature and does not represent the white rev olutionary party as a whole. elements in ’ the Kamps across immediately take appropriate steps to °'-?9"ization. Such organization should H P°^'=idS' Ideologies, philosophies, ' ’ ®°P ’ ®^ as a whole, to a ” °w t^>eir deeds to speak for them and understand the reasons why) - - In Brotherhood With All Op pressed People I Remain, "A Servant of the People" Marion, 111. Page 7 ■ START STOPPED DeaV Brothers & Sisters: Greetings! S.T.A.R.T. has Stopped! The officials have informed us that Project S.T.A.R.T. is officially closed and will be phased out within 30 days. The reason(s) for terminating S.T.A.R.T. was not made known to us; nevertheless, on behalf of the other Brothers and myself, I want to express my deep appreciation toward all the Beautiful People who were concerned egough to aid us in our struggle! Yours in Revolution, Springfield, Missouri All Power to the People!! The Finish of START Cohen also reported that the .tactics used could scarcely be called behavior-modification and that they "apoear to use the old-time prison treatment with a new title and a new make-up". From his study of the program the doctor said also that what ne - saw throughout the entirety of the START operation was an attitude of "Wait until the subject submits and then begin to reinforclp him"; 'reinforce' his submissiveness with token rewards of relatively decent treatment or an alternative of further brutal treatment was implied. Said yet another way -in terms that are in more common usage- the foregoing simply stands for break ing the spirit of a human being via brutal treat ment by other human beings. How was this being done? Arpiar Saunders of IJhe ACLU National Prison Pro ject visited the unit and reported having seen a In the final months of 1973 district court judge John Oliver of the United States District Court in Kansas City, Missouri appointed three experts in the field of psychology to review the project with in the Federal Medical Center for Prisoners at Springfield, Mo., that is called START (Special Treatment and Rehabilitative Training). Early in January 1974 those experts reported their findings. The selection of experts was a matter left to the attorneys of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and those attorneys representing federal prisoners (the ACLU's National Prison Project via lawyers Barbara Milstein and Arpiar Saunders, the Kansas City Legal Defender Group- via attorney Ron Rosen and others). The START operation has been in existence since late September of 1972. It's prisoner/victims in clude one suicide (Charles Alfono, one of the first prisoners to be scheduled for START, committed suicide on the day that he was notified, June 29, 1972), two men driven into such extreme psychosis as to warrant being taken out of START and placed in sanitarium-wards at Springfield, numerous beat ings, drug assaults, much calculated brutality (call ed "aversive control" in the parlance of modern corrections officials and in the vocabulary of behavior-modification technicians), and the di vestment of most of the human rights accorded to Imprisoned persons by edict of the World Health Code's precepts. r- Among the findings of the experts were that the program was not an acceptable incorporation of scientific principals that would warrant its being called an experiment and that it was, as instituted, unethical Dr. Harold L. Cohen, one of the experts who reported to the Court of Judge Oliver, replied to the question (from the Court) "Is the START pro gram consistent with the etblc^ of mental health?" as follows: "No prolonged isolation and removal from reinforcing human contacts, in my judgement, is consistent with the development of the mental health requirements needed-for any individual, plirticipating in a democratic society." Dr. Colipn had previously noted in his report that isolation and removal from such contacts were an integral part of START's techniques. Page ' • — r'*' a prisoner shackled hand and foot to a metal bed frame and forced to defecate upon himself. Arpiar also saw other prisoners with black eyes who stated that the unit guar^were responsible for the injuries. The guards, when questioned, made the traditional conuient that the prisoners had injured themselves by beating he^s against the cell walls, but there were no additional facial marks on the prisoners which which would indicate that the injuries had been self-inflicted...Yet other START victims reported to lawyers and others around the Nation during its operation that drug assaults, food deprivations and constant harrassments were integral parts of START's method of inducing and reinforcing submissiveness. A short while after receiving it's copies of the expert's reports, the U.S. Burg^ of Prisons' legal staff and the'bureau's Director Norman A. Carlson, quietly announced to the Court that START would be closed and the prisoners contained in it transferred to'other prisons (second week of February 1974). This manuevor is instantly suspect in terms of the bureau s legal-staff conspiring to avoid having Judge Oliver make a judicial declaration of prison ers rights to be free of participating in such op erations and the "treatment and rehabilitative training" that they offer. A declaration by a fed eral district court judge on that point would pose a severe obstacle to the initiation of any such programs at others of it's numerous prisons around the Nation- outside the jurisdictional reach of Judge Olivers powers. By closing the START program prior to a trial, the physical condition being challenged no longer exists and thereby grounds are created upon which the bureau of prisons' legal representatives (U.S. Attorney General's office employees) can request that the prisoners' lawsuits be dismissed, as no longer relating to anything ^ ” 2 judge's jurisdiction. By this move ® Marion federal prison in Illinois, a START #3 at Leavenworth federal prison in Kansas, and other such operations can flourish, at least for a while. So, in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 7, 1974, the U S bureau of Prisons Minister of Propaganda, Theodore, ' (called quixotically "a Pub!ic Information Officer ) issued a press release to the public media that proclaimed that START is being closed for causes based on economic reasons —few inmates were involved in the project and the ratio of staff to inmates was too high to make it feasible to continue." This press-release was dutifully picked-up and reported by news-services around the country, along with a comment that the prison-officials involved in the project considered it to be a "valid correc tional program designed to reform inmates." Terre Haute, Federal Prison Terre Haute, Ind.* *» ■ , C.A.R.E. FREE : ■ m ii W iiiV "Discontent" by E. Reddy, Auburn Time seems to be passing much faster tRese last few weeks. Can't kee|? track of where it's really going. A month has gone by already since I was'released from "CARE" - it seems like only yesterday. I'm finding it rather difficult to readjust back, out here in general population.. Other than the few comrades that were returned to the-g^neral population with me, very few other prisoners here seem interest in anything of a constructive nature. It's nothing left in this camp now, but mostjy collaborators, reae- tionaries and highly sophistica'ted fakes. As sad as it may sound, 1 must admit these prisoncrats succeeded in achieving their objective- causing diversion and nega ting any serious threats of mass resistance. I didn't realize this earlier-nor had I even conceded such an idea in the greatest of my imagination, but I see now tha