Folsom prison riot

[KurtFF8]

Source (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11118897)


Seven inmates at Folsom prison in California have been taken to hospital after guards opened fire during a riot, authorities say. None of the prisoners' injuries are believed to be life-threatening, prison spokesman Luis Patino said.
The riot, involving about 200 inmates, broke out on Friday night. No guards were injured, reports said.
Three of the wounded inmates were reportedly taken to local hospitals, while others were treated at the jail.
Investigation Initial reports said that five inmates had been wounded by guards when they opened fire.
The number of casualties was later increased, but Mr Patino said it was unclear if all the wounded had been shot by the guards, or injured by other inmates.
The medium-security prison, which holds about 4,000 prisoners, has now been brought under control and the cause of the riot is being investigated, Mr Patino said.
Folsom State Prison, about 20 miles (32km) from the state capital Sacramento, was made famous by the US singer-songwriter Johnny Cash in his 1955 song Folsom Prison Blues.
Cash also performed a concert for inmates in the prison's refectory in 1968.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I'd expect prisons to blow up (not literally) in California as this crisis continues. There will be both the pressure within of overcrowded prisons which has been going on for a while and already causes riots and "sickness epidemics" (although some of these "epidemics" are just a euphemism for a lockdown due to a riot or fighting or just collective punishment according to my friend who is in Soledad prison).

But there will also be the pressure from the festering contradiction of such a huge prison system being funded while all other services are being cut in California. After cutting money to schools, parks, poor people, infrastructure, and so on because of a budget shortfall, California actually BORROWED money to build a death penalty chamber.

So I think this combination of factors will mean a real "hot" decade for California prisons and I think pretty much anything could develop out of it. The California rulers might decide that such a system is too much of a liability and initiate reforms on their own if only to decrease the pressure (although the economic crisis has a counter-effect on this which is that Prisons will be more important in scapegoating criminals as crime will no doubt increase due to the long recession). There could be a prisoner movement that comes out of the shitty conditions, overcrowding, abuse and so on inside California prisons. There could also be a movement from the outside that develops out of a combination of human-rights/anti-racism/anti-budget-cuts forces. Or it could be a combination or something else. The main thing is that the staus-quo can't hold and the ruling class doesn't have an answer to the problem and the working class isn't organized to provide an alternative and that makes this an explosive and volatile situation.

[durhamleft]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Ts4M3irWM

" I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him dieeeee...."

[MarxSchmarx]

What is somewhat bothering about reports like these is that they almost never go into depth about the source of the overcrowding and the overfunding of the penal infrastructure - and in California, the problem is quite perspicuously traceable to the voters. California has for decades, through its initiative system, pursued ever longer prison sentences for an ever wider array of crimes. I am sure one can count on one hand the number of times these kinds of ballot measures have failed. Voters throughout the state (across all income levels) routinely vote for these measures with large majorities.

Of course one has to look at the socioeconomic context in which this occurs. Many of these initiatives are bankrolled by millionaires and billionaires and flamed by opportunistic politicians and a yellow press. But this hornets nest Jimmie Higgins describes is also a very clear case of an abject failure of direct democracy, at least on a large scale in a modern industrial democracy.

[scarletghoul]

We really need people like George Jackson now.. Does anyone know how much revolutionism there is among prisoners right now ? Any notable leaders or groups ?

[Rusty Shackleford]

We really need people like George Jackson now.. Does anyone know how much revolutionism there is among prisoners right now ? Any notable leaders or groups ?
i do have to give the RCP credit, they are pushing their paper in the prison system.

[scarletghoul]

Yeah I heard some stuff about that. Do you know how much is circulating ?

[Rusty Shackleford]

not really.

i know there was some issue at pelican bay. i have one of their papers i found on the ground at a rally talking about that.

[Jimmie Higgins]

i do have to give the RCP credit, they are pushing their paper in the prison system.

I've heard they have some connections with some prisoners, but I don't know much about their work with prisons. But they've got the right idea at any rate, this is an area all radicals should be thinking about how to relate our politics to people caught up in all levels of the criminal justice system.


Does anyone know how much revolutionism there is among prisoners right now ? Any notable leaders or groups ? Today 04:57I don't know of anything big, but organizations and prisoner groups pop up here and there.

Because of people I know in the ISO who also work in the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, I'm somewhat familiar with the DRIVE Movement which is an organization of Death Row Prisoners in Texas who are using civil disobedience and non-cooperation tactics.

http://drivemovement.org/

So while there is always something here or there, really I think it will probably take radicalization on the outside to start to encourage widespread organizing inside prisons. For one thing, it's just plain difficult to organize in prisons because people are literally divided both in cells and into racial and gang affiliations - segregation is legal in California prisons. So the default mode and culture of prison is anti-solidarity and it would take a wide-spread understanding of the value of organizing and collective action and solidarity for there to begin to be wide-spread prison movements in California in my opinion.

There are always riots and problems that show that people are dissatisfied and angry in prison (this seems obvious) but it seems like most organizing in prisons comes first from people who've learned to organize outside - so the Black Panthers are a good example and in general people in the 1960s prisons would have first or second-hand knowledge of soldiers organizing and civil and anti-war movements. So a large social movement or strike wave would probably create the sort of atmosphere where people know that this kind of action is effective and that they don't have to put up with the staus quo if they fight.

[bcbm]

I've heard they have some connections with some prisoners, but I don't know much about their work with prisons. But they've got the right idea at any rate, this is an area all radicals should be thinking about how to relate our politics to people caught up in all levels of the criminal justice system.for sure. almost every anarchist periodical i can think of is offered free to prisoners, i know green anarchy (lol) used to have a decent circulation in prisons, or at least seemed to get a couple letters from prisoners every month.

edit: despite my lol earlier, i think part of what made green anarchy appealing to the prisoners who read it was their large focus on prisoner resistance in the us and across the globe and their inclusion of articles by/about current prisoners as well as a pretty strong critique of prisons as an institution.

[bailey_187]

In the UK the RCG's paper "Fight Racism Fight Imperialism" is quite widely read in prisons for a political paper.