Long-running anarchist radio and podcast The Final Straw presents a statement from Mark “Mustafa” Hinkston, a look at the upcoming June 11th day of solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoners, and a discussion on continuing solidarity with prisoners arrested following the George Floyd uprising.
from thefreeonline on June 2nd 2023 by Its Going Down — Final Straw
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First up, after some announcements concerning a local case of police brutality and jail issues in Buncombe County, NC, we’ll hear a statement from Mark “Mustafa” Hinkston, a politicized prisoner we first heard from some years back, who is being held in Ohio about the cruelty of his keeping. His letter can be found below.
Then, we’ll hear a reading out of Against Oblivion, Against Despair: A Call for June 11th , an invitation to the 2023 celebration of the June 11th International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners. More on that, including translations of the statement, statements by prisoners, artwork, action reports, can be found at June11.org.
Finally, we’ll hear a chat with Chazz, an anarchist participating in continued support of prisoners from the George Floyd Uprising.
You can find more on some of these prisoners at UprisingSupport.Org, and info for other political prisoners at PrisonerSolidarity.Com.
Hear our past shows on anti-repression or June 11th more specifically, check out . We’d also like to suggest recent episodes of Channel Zero Network member shows It’s Going Down podcast entitled ‘“States of Incarceration”: Abolition, Revolt, and Organization’ and Coffee With Comrade’s episode, “June 11th”.
by Its Going Down — Final Straw
June 11 Statement from Eric King
from anarchistnews.org 2nd June 2023 By thecollective
‘All love and respect to all my Anarchist comrades, state and federal, everyone who has supported any of us in any way’.
From Mongoose Distro
Greetings comrades. Let me tell you about this prison, the federal supermax ADX [in Florence, Colorado]. In this joint there are different levels and units with varying levels of physical isolation and communication, but there are things we all experience.
Everyone is locked down at least 21 hours a day, at max 24. When you have inside rec you are by yourself in a room without a pull up bar. Outside rec cages are 8 x 10 foot dog kennels surrounded by concrete walls and a chain link roof — a cage within a cage. Unless you are in the pre-release unit (K-A) or long-term elder unit (K-B), you will never be in the same room as another person. And even in those units you only come around your ‘group’ — which is one to four other people — for inside rec. The other 22 ½ hours are in your cell by yourself. I have been in C-unit, the discipline unit and K-A; there is one other person in my group.
The cells are sparse. Concrete walls and double doors make any communication between convicts very difficult. Cells feature a low concrete beed, an oddly shitty mattress, a concrete desk, concrete stool, and in some units, a shelf above the desk. You never have solo interactions with staff — you are always double-manned with one of them carrying a steel baton, and you’re always cuffed behind your back. Depending on the unit, you can get 4–10 calls per month. I’ve made two ‘live-monitored’ calls in the past 10 months, but I’m being told that by participating in psychology programs I’ll earn a few calls per month. Time will tell. We’re allowed five visits per month, all non-contact in a concrete booth over the phone.
All visits have to be scheduled in advance, which can be difficult with such restricted communication. I’m the only Anarchist here, but I’m definitely not the only political prisoner. Within this prison there is a group of prisoners the US government has attempted to bury. The general abolitionist community has consented to this, and it’s devastating.
Anarchist Prisoner Eric King Found Not Guilty in Assault of Prison Guard…Mar 18, 2022 — King is serving a 10-year sentence, with less than two more years left, stemming from an attempted molotov cocktail attack on a congressional …
The most restrictive unit in the most restrictive prison in America is H-Unit, which is for people on SAMS (Special Administrative Measures). These restrictions are placed by the Attorney General, and they are sickening. SAMS vary per captive, but all entail only being allowed to write to direct blood family and your lawyer. The FBI must read and approve all letters, magazines, and books. Calls are severely limited, live-monitored by the FBI, and reviewed by magistrate judges.
These convicts get three showers per week. The vast majority of people on SAMS are Muslim and foreign born. Because their families are in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, or in Africa, it is nearly impossible to get visits, calls, or mail. These people will never see their families or home countries again. Their children will get married, have kids, grow old, and they will never know it. If that doesn’t make you sick, I don’t even know what we’re doing here.
Most of these people have never been to America or speak English. They had war brought to them. They were farmers, bakers, engineers, fathers, and husbands, and then US and Western imperialists arrived on their land. Many of these people never harmed anyone, but were entrapped by rivals and US bootlickers. Some were fighting their own governments, some donated money to local charity groups that were later deemed terrorist organizations. Others did attack US “interests,” or attempted to.
Some of these actions make me really uncomfortable — just like some of the IRA’s, Kurd’s, and Palestinian actions make me uncomfortable. Just like US drone strikes, missile attacks, and invasions make me uncomfortable. It’s only from a place of privilege that I can tell an occupied people how they should fight. The goal is freedom, not being palatable to Western sensibilities. We took to the streets with rage and sorrow when the pigs killed Tortuguita (Rest in Power). How would our hearts burn if they’d wiped out the entire encampment? If they killed 100,000 little Tortuguitas? It’s hard and painful to even fathom.
Sometimes, after 10 or 15 years, via lawsuits or legal pressure, people can be released from their SAMS. These people end up in other ADX units or the CMU. The heartbreaking thing about this is that almost all of these fighters get off SAMS and find themselves supportless, friendless. Imagine you go 15 years of being banned from contact and reading material and when you finally are allowed access there is no one there for you to talk to. How heartbreaking that must feel. Think of someone like Richard Reed (Raheem). He did 7 years on SAMS then forced his way to the Life/Elder unit. He will never leave this prison, he will never touch or talk to his loved ones again. No one is standing by him.
Everyone has bought into the government’s version of events and the idea that if you fight back you no longer deserve love and support, or to feel human. I vehemently reject this idea. No one should ever have to suffer this level of total isolation alone. The government doesn’t get to tell me, an Anarchist, who is a good fighter and who is bad. I think we should all keep an open heart to those who resisted the US military machine and shed light on this blindspot in the abolitionist movement. What did Assata say? “It is our duty to fight for our freedom / It is our duty to win / WE MUST LOVE EACH OTHER AND SUPPORT EACH OTHER / We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Lastly, I’d like to give love and solidarity to everyone resisting Cop City in any capacity. It’s beautiful to see. Every prison is a cop city. Every prison was once a patch of land with flowers and bugs and wild life. Evil people turned that nature into militarized torture camps. Trees replaced by bars and barbed wire, wild flowers replaced by poisonous gasses. We need to shut down every cop city, past and present. I commend those who dedicate themselves to the liberation struggle.
I’ll end with this: Certain Days quoted Kathy Boudin (Rest in Power) in its May calendar page, and I feel it captures our sentiment perfectly. “The meaning of my life has come from being part of a world wide tradition of fighting for a more just and humane world.
My ideals give me strength today as well as yesterday and tomorrow.” We can all gain so much from our elders. All love and respect to all my Anarchist comrades, state and federal, everyone who has supported any of us in any way. Free Joe-Joe Bowen, Free Kamau Sadiki, Free Oso Blanco, Free Kojo Bomani Sababu!
Anarchy always,↙↙↙ everywhere.End the SAMS!Fire Ant Collective forever!
Eric King 27090
🦄 Police , 🦄 Prison , 🦄 Racism
‘Don’t Forget Us’: Forest Defenders Confront Horrors of Life in DeKalb County Jail
By Ryan Fatica, Contributor May 30, 2023
Monica had been locked up in Dekalb County Jail for five days when guards entered her pod and called out her name. She was being released.
Like always, the other women in the pod started clapping and cheering, happy to see anyone freed. Monica got up and went to her cell to start gathering her things, interrupted as she did by hugs and goodbyes from friends she’d made during her time there.
As she walked toward the cellblock door, one of her podmates stopped her for a hug. As she let Monica go, she looked her in the eyes and delivered a clear request: “Don’t forget us here.”
“I won’t,” she promised.
“That was a moment I will never forget,” said Monica, weeks later.
Monica, a forest defender who asked to be identified by an alias, was arrested on January 18, 2023, during a multi-jurisdictional raid on the Weelaunee Forest in DeKalb County, Georgia. Protesters had been camping and gathering in the forest for months in hopes of preventing the construction of a multi-million dollar police training facility, dubbed ‘Cop City’ by its opponents.
On the day Monica was arrested, Georgia State Troopers shot and killed Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a 26-year-old forest defender who went by the name Tortuguita. Subsequent autopsy reports revealed that Terán’s body suffered 57 bullet wounds. During the same raid, Monica and seven others were arrested, charged with “criminal trespass” and “domestic terrorism,” and booked into the DeKalb County Jail.
Monica was granted bond and released after five days, but most of the women she lived with in the jail had been there much longer, some for over a year, awaiting trial. Other forest defenders served a month or more in the jail, including two, Victor Puertas and Luke Harper, who were arrested at a music festival in the Weelaunee Forest on March 5 and remain in custody nearly 12 weeks later. Another forest defender is still currently incarcerated in the Bartow County Jail.
Unicorn Riot spoke with and received testimony from more than a dozen people who were formerly incarcerated at the DeKalb County Jail, as well as family members of those held there and others familiar with conditions in the jail. Most of those interviewed requested that their names be withheld out of concern that sharing their stories could affect their ongoing legal cases. Most of those interviewed were ‘Stop Cop City’ activists, while others were held on unrelated charges.
Unicorn Riot also reviewed dozens of pages of lawsuits filed by jail detainees raising civil rights complaints against the jail, the DeKalb County Sheriff, and its staff and contractors. Many of those lawsuits were filed pro se, without the help of an attorney, and handwritten on postcards purchased at the jail commissary. Many such lawsuits are dismissed on procedural grounds before lawyers for the Sheriff’s Office are even compelled to respond.
The stories they told each capture an existence, a moment of suffering, a tale of misfortune that would otherwise remain unseen. Taken together, they form a chronicle of inhumane, and often grotesque, conditions of confinement caused by a culture of neglect and apathy on the part of guards, contractors, and jail staff, often exacerbated by crumbling jail infrastructure.
In 2022, those conditions led to the deaths of nine people in the jail, a number that far exceeds the national average. Two of those deaths appear to be attributable to hypothermia after detainees were left in unheated cells in the winter. Others died by suicide or heart conditions after not receiving proper medical attention. Several of those who died in the jail had a history of struggles with mental illness.
“Nothing’s ever anybody’s job and it’s never nobody’s fault,” said Dulce, a woman who spent more than a year in the DeKalb County Jail who asked to be identified only by her nickname. “So it’s hard to get things done like they’re supposed to. Even with our food, they’d give it to us when they felt like it. We sat and watched our trays sitting in the hallway for hours. But because it wasn’t anybody’s job to do it, it wouldn’t get done. So we’re hungry just sitting there waiting for our food.”
Many of those we spoke with said they spent their time in the jail waking up at 3 or 4 a.m. to eat breakfast and then often going without food for 12 hours or longer. They talked about surviving on very few nutrients because they were often served undercooked or moldy food, much of it inedible. Some said they mopped their floors several times a day because the toilets or sewage pipes continuously seeped water and were never repaired, causing large puddles to form in their cells and pods.
The Free 