Committee to End the Marion Lockdown
The Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML) was a movement organization that opposed control unit prisons in particular, and racism and oppression in general. It was founded in 1985 and came to a close in 2000. Over the course of those 15 years, CEML led and organized hundreds of educational programs and demonstrations in many parts of the country and tried to build a national movement against “end-of-the-line” prisons. Along the way the Committee wrote thousands of pages of educational and agitational literature and pioneered new ways of analyzing and fighting against this national quagmire that morphed into the proliferation of the “prison industrial complex.”
Collection includes: Publications on their efforts to shut down the Marion Prison control unit, prevent the opening of USP Florence, CO; protests against toxic water at Crab Orchard Lake; efforts to improve conditions for inmates; efforts to stop the proliferation of Control Units in general; and further human rights and social justice in the US prison system.
Kurshan, N. (2012). OUT OF CONTROL: A Chronological Narrative of the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown's 15 Year Struggle (manuscript ed., p. 1).
Documents
Mass Incarceration and Control Units in Prisons: Mind Control or Social Control?
Mind Control or Social Control?
About closing the control units at Marion Prison. Nancy Kurshan of CEML (Committee to End the Marion Lockdown), Dr. Alan Berkman who has provided medical care for Black Liberation Army and Panther members as well as AIM activists at Wounded Knee in the 1970s. Berkman also speaks about being a former political prisoner, the prison system and control units as forms of social control which target revolutionary movements. Film segments about former LA gang member and Pelican Bay prisoner Sanyika Shakur.
Transcript available for download.
Voices on and of Prisons
Steve Whitman on: The basics of imprisonment rates, racial hysteria and its beginnings, what kind of people are in control units and how control units are used against political prisoners, as well as the Amnesty International investigation into control units violations of human rights.
NPR Report on Lexington Control Unit
Jacki Lyden reports on the lawsuit challenging the placement of Susan Rosenberg, Alejandrina Torres and Silvia Beraldini in the Lexington control unit, which resulted in Lexington's closure.
Interview with Sekou Odinga
Black Liberation Army freedom fighter Sekou Odinga speaks on the politics behind his imprisonment at the Marion Lockdown.
[File of materials from Yasutake delegation to D.C.]
Authors: Vicki Legion, S. Michael YasutakePublisher: Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience; Committee to End the Marion Lockdown; American Civil Liberties UnionYear: 1990Format: CompilationCollection: Committee to End the Marion Lockdown
File of collected materials pertaining to the Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience delegation to the Bureau of Prisons. Enclosures: Cover Page: Note to Steve Whitman from Vicki Legion; 4/19/1990 Letter to Dir. J. Michael Quinlan from Rev. S. Michael Yasutake; 5/1/1990 Press Release; 5/4/1990 Statement for Rally re: Federal Penitentiary Marion, Illinois; 5/4/1990 Letter to Dir. J. Michael Quinlan from Rev. S. Michael Yasutake; 5/18/1990 A Report on the Visit to the Bureau of Prisons and the DC Detention Center; 5/17/1990 Letter to Dir. J. Michael Quinlan from Rev. S. Michael Yasutake; Flewellen, Fine, Yasutake at Congressmen Kastenmeier's office (Graphic); Thornell and Flewellen delivering petitions to BOP; Photograph by D'Auteuil Robideau.