[Pnews] Voice from Menard: Chicago’s racist war against Blacks and Latinos continues in Illinois prisons

[Prisoner News]

    Voice from Menard: Chicago’s racist war against Blacks and Latinos
    continues in Illinois prisons
    <http://sfbayview.com/2014/voice-from-menard-chicagos-racist-war-against-blacks-and-latinos-continues-in-illinois-prisons/>

April 23, 2014
*http://sfbayview.com/2014/voice-from-menard-chicagos-racist-war-against-blacks-and-latinos-continues-in-illinois-prisons/*

/*by Muntu Sun Ra Okito (Percell Hansberry)*/

The Menard High Security Unit hunger strikers send a message of 
solidarity to the brothers of the struggle at Pelikan Bay SHU, Ohio 
Supermax, the Georgia SMU hunger strikers, and all prisoners of 
consciousness who refuse to bow down to state torture and systemic 
degradation up in these concentration kamps across Amerikkka. We also 
send mad love and respect to Bay View for creating a holy space for the 
most down-pressed voices in society to be expressed and heard.

Although the hunger strike has officially come to an end here – the 
struggle continues. The drastic and suppressive hand of Illinois 
prison-crats has had the unintended effect of heightening the 
consciousness of a new generation of captured colonials into the history 
of the prison rights movement and “teaching” them about the true nature 
of the beast.

This “lesson” was accomplished because of the prison-crats’ psychopathic 
need to totally control and exploit the minds and bodies of its 
captives. The corrupt state was forced to close down its Supermax 
(Tamms) torture factory in 2013 of January due to its budget crisis 
linked with community agitation.

However, the officers’ influential union was vehemently against the 
closure. The officers launched an aggressive propaganda campaign for 
public support by using fear to distort reality via the media, while 
their legal mercenaries filed a petition for preliminary injunction and 
a temporary restraining order against the governor’s decision – all to 
no avail.

With the collapse of a mechanism within this system of racial control 
and exploitation came a backlash encased in the obsessive fear of losing 
control and the need to find (fabricate) a rationale to re-open Tamms 
torture kamp. The threat of sending someone to Tamms often yielded the 
desired results.

To this end, the prison-crats prophesied that the closure would increase 
violence against prisoners and staff alike. Then they worked to fulfill 
the prophesy, which is to say they created and promoted violence. As 
demonstrated by Brother Haazim W. Muntaqim 
<http://sfbayview.com/2013/the-deadly-integrated-yard-policy-commentary-on-the-pelikkkan-bay-factor-an-indictable-offense/> 
(see the January 2014 Bay View) this is nothing new in this system; it’s 
the nature of the beast.

Unaware prisoners were fed the names of snitches. Then the exposed 
snitch, unbeknownst to him, would be left in general population by 
Internal Affairs, knowing fully what the predictable outcome would be.

Internal Affairs also used the snitch label falsely to discredit those 
unbent prisoners who refused to cooperate and on those captured 
colonials who were evolving toward the consciousness level of political 
prisoners and prisoners of war. The prison-crats prefer the masses to 
stay deaf, dumb and blind.


      With the collapse of a mechanism within this system of racial
      control and exploitation came a backlash encased in the obsessive
      fear of losing control and the need to find (fabricate) a
      rationale to re-open Tamms torture kamp.

Another tactic used by the administration to initiate violence was 
provocation wrapped in unjustifiable and relentless harassment – not 
limited to the placement of weapons in prisoner’s cells. Although the 
mass prison population in the state’s kamps is comprised mostly of New 
Afrikan Blacks, the primary oppressed group “selected” for racist 
scapegoat “this time” was Latinos and anybody perceived to be associated 
with this group.

In the summer of 2013, the unrelenting provocation came to a head in 
several incidents resulting in physical violence between officers and 
captives. Those captives “involved” were afterward severely assaulted 
while in handcuffs, written up and removed to disciplinary segregation.

Shortly thereafter, though, the prison-crats used the violence that they 
created and arbitrarily snatched up over 40(!) captives who had 
absolutely no involvement in the provoked confrontation and wrote bogus 
disciplinary reports, stripped some out of state, and placed a 
significant number in Administration Detention, long-term (indefinite) 
solitary confinement with no due process – not knowing why – in 
conditions that are absolutely deplorable.

Throughout the entire state’s prison system, those who weren’t snatched 
up of the targeted group, real or imagined, were fired from their 
slave-wage jobs – no explanation offered. This affected an entire racial 
group. The Menard High Security Unit is comprised of New Afrikans, 
Latinos and White captives. The White captives who partook in the hunger 
strike and/or were “perceived” to be associated with minorities were 
called (harassed as) race traders by White officers.

Kept in its proper context, it must be over-stood that the closure of 
Tammas Supermax torture center did not amount to the automatic release 
of its victims. In all systems of control (oppression) that part of it 
that dies is reborn into new form, a dynamic that has been termed 
“preservation through transformation.”

Tamms’ captured hostages were simply transferred – the vast majority – 
to another kamp, Pontiac, where a section was “transformed,” wherein 
they are still in indefinite solitary confinement (Administrative 
Detention) and are still referred to as “Tamms’ inmates by the 
prison-crats. Menard High Security Unit was also “transformed” into a 
“mini-Tamms” (indefinite isolation) for the Gestapo-like round-up.

Many are in “mini-Tamms” torture kamps on newly “transformed” 
segregation wings in several medium security prisons in the state. 
Although in transition, torture is still preserved through transformation.

The violence created by the prison-crats in Illinois is being used to 
inflict mental violence now on the public by brainwashing them into 
believing that they need more money for security and that rounding up 
the 40 captives, as well as all those who “had” to be fired from their 
slave-wage jobs and put back into their cages, is justification to 
re-open Tamms torture center.


      Kept in its proper context, it must be over-stood that the closure
      of Tammas Supermax torture center did not amount to the automatic
      release of its victims. In all systems of control (oppression)
      that part of it that dies is reborn into new form, a dynamic that
      has been termed “preservation through transformation.”

During the 2014 gubernatorial primaries several Republican candidates 
expressed the “need” to re-open it, such as Illinois Rep. Jill Tracy 
<http://www.wgem.com/story/24746935/2014/02/17/tracy-calls-for-tamms-prison-to-be-reopened>: 
“The whole purpose of Tamms was defeated with this cost-saving measure 
and as a result, we’re seeing 20 percent increase in assaults at the 
other facilities where these inmates have been put into.” But as stated 
above, the vast majority of Tamms’ captives are still in indefinite 
isolation cages, so if this is the case – and it is – what’s really 
behind the brain-staining propaganda?

It’s the human rights violations, the constitutional rights violations 
and the Gestapo-like round-ups and environment that’s being resisted in 
the Illinois concentration kamp system. The oppression here is a 
continuation of Chicago’s racist war on the New Afrikan (Black) and 
Latino communities as a whole – that’s the thing that must be over-stood.

I leave you with the words of the Chicago activist group Affordable 
Power and Justice: “Ain’t no chain – an unbroken circle of prisoner, 
race and nation unity breaks the chains that are destroying us.”

/Send our brother some love and light: Muntu Sun Ra Okito (s/n Percell 
Hansberry), B34144, P.O. Box 1000, Menard, IL 62259/.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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