Althusser
21st February 2013, 18:17
http://www.signalfire.org/?p=23364
EMERGENCY ALERT: Oregon DOC Attempting to Kill Kevin Rashid Johnson!
http://revolutionaryfrontlines.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/rashid.jpg?w=468
Kevin Rashid Johnson is a New African Communist prison organizer and intellectual in the United States and one of the founders of the NABPP-PC (New African Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter). He has spent most of his adult life in the prison system and continually been subjected to political repression and violence in retaliation for his organizing efforts. He is currently held at Snake River Correctional Inst in Oregon.
After a long and uncharacteristic silence in communication with him and no information on his circumstances -a supporter received the following letter from his cellmate:
This is about Rashid. We need a lot of help. They are trying to kill him. On Jan. 31 they put something in his food that made him crazy. On Feb. 2 he took 30 pills. They did not do anything to get the pills out of him. On Jan. 4 [sic; I assume he means Feb. 4] he ate 3 razor blades. This is all on videotape. They lied and said the X-ray showed nothing. The [blades] are still in him right now. He has not eaten since Feb. 3. He has not drunk anything since Feb. 5. He is passing out and they wont do anything to help him. Said he is the one that wont eat or drink so they are not helping him at all. He is peeing blood and has bad kidney pains. Med staff will not give him IV fluids. [As of Feb. 10 he had] lost over 16 pounds. His blood pressure is 191/100 and his urine is the color of coffee.
It is of the upmost importance to put ALL POSSIBLE PRESSURE on the Oregon DOC AS SOON AS POSSIBLE in order to protect this comrades life!
Please call Snake River at 541-881-5000 and dial 0 to speak with a staff member and express your concern over the situation:
Also call the DOC Inspector General at (877) 678-4222 and Oregon DOC at 503-945-9090.
Fax number for Snake River Superintendents Office is (541)881-5460.
Email address of Snake River Superintendent Mark Nooth is [email protected]
Rashids inmate number is #19370490
Snake River is open 8-5 PST/MST. Further details on the situation and support actions will be posted here as they become available.
About Kevin "Rashid" Johnson
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/profiles/rashid.html
Kevin "Rashid" Johnson & the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter
In 1990, Kevin "Rashid" Johnson was a drug dealer, an ambitious member of amerika's Black lumpen proletariat, or underclass. Like so many, as a young adult he was arrested and received a lengthy prison sentence. He has been incarcerated ever since - for the past eighteen years in conditions of solitary confinement.
As Rashid has written, "Because I accepted my lifestyle and all of its consequences, I was always reluctant to involve my family or others on the outside of prison in my conflicts with the pigs. I dealt with my own problemsdirectly."
In 1993, Rashid was transferred to Greenville prison. As he has written:
What I was to encounter at Greensville defied anything that Id expected. The pigs had a refined system and license for brutalizing prisoners. I was not to understand the magnitude of the situation until a few days after being there. The pigs had a tier of handpicked proxy prisoners, whom they used to violently suppress those who got out of line. The ringleader Ill call him Pumpkin was a career con with a reputation for butchering other prisoners. He had a trustee job (all trustees were similarly selected). Pumpkin was allowed by the pigs to keep weapons on his person. Part of the mental terror game was that while he was out cleaning (everyone knew he was a pig hit man and stayed armed), the pigs would bring others out around him in handcuffs (segregation prisoners must be handcuffed from behind when outside their cells, unless they have a trustee job, or are locked inside an exercise yard or shower stall). The she-pigs (guards and nurses) were the tools used to sic Pumpkin on others. He regarded and jealously guarded these she-pigs like actual mates, whereas all they did for him was bring him bubble gum, watch him masturbate in their presence and flirt with him.
The setup game usually went like this: one of their she-dogs would provoke an argument with the target (refuse him something he was due, etc.). Shed then report to Pumpkin that the target had disrespected her, or any of many other claims. Pumpkin would then come to the targets cell and start a hostile verbal exchange, send a challenge via third-party message, etc. Once the conflict was established, the pigs would move the target into the tier with Pumpkin and his cronies the entire tier rode with him. The pigs would thoroughly search the targets property for weapons before moving him, to ensure that he had no means of defense. Once assigned to a cell on Pumpkins tier, the target was fair game. If he was stouthearted, hed stand his ground. The next day or so the pigs would put them on the exercise yard together, remove everyones handcuffs except the targets (theyd put five to seven prisoners in each pen), and allow them to mob attack the still handcuffed target. Or if they wanted him butchered, hed be unhandcuffed and left to contend unarmed against a knife-wielding Pumpkin.
Rashid took the lead in organizing and waging war against the "Pumpkin" and his goon squad, and the guards who were giving the orders to dole out abuse as well. Not only did this force Pumpkin's crew to back down and sue for peace, but it brought about some limited reforms at Greenville itself, though it also led to Rashid's being transfered again, and to the beginning of what would be 18 years (and counting) in "segregation":
On account of the systematic attacks on the pigs at the height of their abuses, the DOCs internal affairs office decided to get involved in investigating the years of prisoner complaints of brutality in the unit. In their efforts to neutralize our responses, the internal affairs unit ended up having a dozen pigs criminally prosecuted for brutality and using other prisoners to enter prisoners cells and attack them once allowing a prisoner to use riot gear. Two pigs were ultimately convicted. Pumpkin was also prosecuted and convicted for an incident where the pigs opened another prisoners cell, allowing him to ambush him. The prisoner was stabbed multiple times. Pumpkins trustee job was immediately terminated under the backlash of this incident. [...] Several weeks later I was transferred back to Mecklenburg prison, returning to the scene of past abuses [...]
During my stay at Mecklenburg, one of the ranking pigs, who were instrumental in torturing me with the freezing strip cell treatment, was ambushed. On this occasion Id been strapped to the bunk by the pigs. In order for a prisoner to receive meals and toilet breaks while strapped down, the pigs must come to his cell, remove the chains and straps and handcuff him. They will leave the cell, close the door, and remove the cuffs through a hatch in the door. However, during this 1994 episode, when the pigs came in to release me for a toilet break, the claim is that Id gotten out of the restraints and was lying on the bunk under a blanket as though still strapped down. When the ranking pig and two others moved to lift the blanket, I allegedly rose up, with weapon in hand, and attacked. Two of them (the ranking pig included) received multiple stab wounds, and the third pig received a cracked jaw. This incident, in its obvious preplanning and execution, left the pigs in such a quandary that no retribution followed. Indeed, I was several days later transferred to Buckingham and quickly released into the general population.
By this time it was realized that I was not insane at all, but calculating and determined. While prison administrators and those who proposed to study me from a distance put forward the fiction that I was inclined to unprovoked violence against the pigs, the pigs who dealt with me on a day-to-day basis knew, very clearly, that any violence from me was always in response to their own acts of violence or abuse of me or my peers. As long as the pigs remembered this, things went well, but there was always some lone pig with a cowboy complex who had to test his hand, and Id answer it. The majority of the pigs at Buckingham didnt want me in the population walking about. They therefore attempted several times through trumped-up reports to have me returned to segregation. On the last occasion that this was done, I was charged with being in an unauthorized area of the prison. The pigs waited until Id locked into the cell at count time to come and lock me up in segregation. I refused to go peacefully. One pig threatened that if I didnt, Id receive a severe ass-whipping. In response I agreed to walk peacefully to segregation. When the pigs opened the cell door to escort me out, the threatening pig received a nose broken in two places. Ive been in segregation ever since.
While in segregation, Rashid taught himself law, and began litigating against the prisons. For a period of six years he launched various lawsuits, and at first scored several victories, until he acquired the reputation of being troublemaker with various judges who then sought to shut him out of the courts:
With the added psychological deterrent of litigation, my clashes with the pigs declined somewhat in frequency. They focused primarily on isolating me from others. Their efforts to perpetuate a discontinuity in our unity has been the pigs only effective weapon against me. And theyve admitted in a thousand ways that their greatest fear is ending up with many other prisoners on their hands who think and act as I do. Their isolating me was long a tactic that I could not devise an effective countermeasure against, that is, until after 2001, when I was first exposed to revolutionary theory and have since come to understand the role of ideology. Without a unifying ideology, there can be no unity of struggle. Ideology was something Id never had, and thus something I could not share. The prisoners whod united in struggle with me had done so because of me. Not because of a shared principle. Therefore, when I was no longer around, they lost the initiative to struggle on, and the pigs were free to resort to their old oppressive acts.
With the beginnings of my studies in revolutionary history and theory in 2001, litigation and my isolated clashes with the pigs paled in importance. My first exposure to revolutionary ideas came with my meeting Hanif Shabazz-Bey in 2001. Hanif is a political prisoner who is apparently well known within prison movement circles. Upon meeting we developed an instant affinity. He began sending me a variety of publications through which I was first exposed to the works of George Jackson. [...]
I became engrossed in acquiring and studying all that George had studied and more, which included the classics and not-so-classics: Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Che Guevara, Rosa Luxemburg, Harry Magdoff, Paul Sweezy, Albert Szymanski, bell hooks, Cornel West, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Vo Nguyen Giap, etc. I investigated the various revolutionary schools of thought Communism, Anarchy, New Afrikan Nationalism, Feminism, and other left-leaning theories. I studied military thinkers and military history, sociology and history, political science, economic theories (left and right), revolutionary history, etc. and I am still studying, refining my views, and testing them in practice.
The more I studied, reflected, practiced, and drew insight from my own practical experiences, the more it all fell together, so clear and obvious. As my conceptualizations developed, I wrote a few essays, usually at others requests, (my ideas were still forming, some I could not clearly articulate, so I adopted terms, thoughts, and ideas. But it was all quickly coming together.) I could see where the failures and successes had occurred in various anti-colonial, class, anti-racist, feminist, and anti-imperialist struggles. And I could see where the failure to apply the scientific Marxist approach to the study and practice of resisting oppressive conditions (Historical and Dialectical Materialism) resulted in failed idealist attempts to make the desired social changes. [...]
I still endure repression at the hands of the pigs, as do my peers. I still take a principled stand against this repression. But above all else, I am working on bringing my peers into a principled ideological and political consciousness that will give them discipline and a cause to struggle for, while simultaneously imparting to them the correct methods of mass based struggle. The pigs response continues to be to isolate me. Their violence has proven futile. Even in this most totalitarian of environments, innovation and relentless commitment to an ideal has proven, to my satisfaction, that the oppressive institutions are not invulnerable. Fear is our greatest hindrance. Fear and half measures. They can isolate me, but they cannot isolate an ideal.
EMERGENCY ALERT: Oregon DOC Attempting to Kill Kevin Rashid Johnson!
http://revolutionaryfrontlines.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/rashid.jpg?w=468
Kevin Rashid Johnson is a New African Communist prison organizer and intellectual in the United States and one of the founders of the NABPP-PC (New African Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter). He has spent most of his adult life in the prison system and continually been subjected to political repression and violence in retaliation for his organizing efforts. He is currently held at Snake River Correctional Inst in Oregon.
After a long and uncharacteristic silence in communication with him and no information on his circumstances -a supporter received the following letter from his cellmate:
This is about Rashid. We need a lot of help. They are trying to kill him. On Jan. 31 they put something in his food that made him crazy. On Feb. 2 he took 30 pills. They did not do anything to get the pills out of him. On Jan. 4 [sic; I assume he means Feb. 4] he ate 3 razor blades. This is all on videotape. They lied and said the X-ray showed nothing. The [blades] are still in him right now. He has not eaten since Feb. 3. He has not drunk anything since Feb. 5. He is passing out and they wont do anything to help him. Said he is the one that wont eat or drink so they are not helping him at all. He is peeing blood and has bad kidney pains. Med staff will not give him IV fluids. [As of Feb. 10 he had] lost over 16 pounds. His blood pressure is 191/100 and his urine is the color of coffee.
It is of the upmost importance to put ALL POSSIBLE PRESSURE on the Oregon DOC AS SOON AS POSSIBLE in order to protect this comrades life!
Please call Snake River at 541-881-5000 and dial 0 to speak with a staff member and express your concern over the situation:
Also call the DOC Inspector General at (877) 678-4222 and Oregon DOC at 503-945-9090.
Fax number for Snake River Superintendents Office is (541)881-5460.
Email address of Snake River Superintendent Mark Nooth is [email protected]
Rashids inmate number is #19370490
Snake River is open 8-5 PST/MST. Further details on the situation and support actions will be posted here as they become available.
About Kevin "Rashid" Johnson
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/profiles/rashid.html
Kevin "Rashid" Johnson & the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter
In 1990, Kevin "Rashid" Johnson was a drug dealer, an ambitious member of amerika's Black lumpen proletariat, or underclass. Like so many, as a young adult he was arrested and received a lengthy prison sentence. He has been incarcerated ever since - for the past eighteen years in conditions of solitary confinement.
As Rashid has written, "Because I accepted my lifestyle and all of its consequences, I was always reluctant to involve my family or others on the outside of prison in my conflicts with the pigs. I dealt with my own problemsdirectly."
In 1993, Rashid was transferred to Greenville prison. As he has written:
What I was to encounter at Greensville defied anything that Id expected. The pigs had a refined system and license for brutalizing prisoners. I was not to understand the magnitude of the situation until a few days after being there. The pigs had a tier of handpicked proxy prisoners, whom they used to violently suppress those who got out of line. The ringleader Ill call him Pumpkin was a career con with a reputation for butchering other prisoners. He had a trustee job (all trustees were similarly selected). Pumpkin was allowed by the pigs to keep weapons on his person. Part of the mental terror game was that while he was out cleaning (everyone knew he was a pig hit man and stayed armed), the pigs would bring others out around him in handcuffs (segregation prisoners must be handcuffed from behind when outside their cells, unless they have a trustee job, or are locked inside an exercise yard or shower stall). The she-pigs (guards and nurses) were the tools used to sic Pumpkin on others. He regarded and jealously guarded these she-pigs like actual mates, whereas all they did for him was bring him bubble gum, watch him masturbate in their presence and flirt with him.
The setup game usually went like this: one of their she-dogs would provoke an argument with the target (refuse him something he was due, etc.). Shed then report to Pumpkin that the target had disrespected her, or any of many other claims. Pumpkin would then come to the targets cell and start a hostile verbal exchange, send a challenge via third-party message, etc. Once the conflict was established, the pigs would move the target into the tier with Pumpkin and his cronies the entire tier rode with him. The pigs would thoroughly search the targets property for weapons before moving him, to ensure that he had no means of defense. Once assigned to a cell on Pumpkins tier, the target was fair game. If he was stouthearted, hed stand his ground. The next day or so the pigs would put them on the exercise yard together, remove everyones handcuffs except the targets (theyd put five to seven prisoners in each pen), and allow them to mob attack the still handcuffed target. Or if they wanted him butchered, hed be unhandcuffed and left to contend unarmed against a knife-wielding Pumpkin.
Rashid took the lead in organizing and waging war against the "Pumpkin" and his goon squad, and the guards who were giving the orders to dole out abuse as well. Not only did this force Pumpkin's crew to back down and sue for peace, but it brought about some limited reforms at Greenville itself, though it also led to Rashid's being transfered again, and to the beginning of what would be 18 years (and counting) in "segregation":
On account of the systematic attacks on the pigs at the height of their abuses, the DOCs internal affairs office decided to get involved in investigating the years of prisoner complaints of brutality in the unit. In their efforts to neutralize our responses, the internal affairs unit ended up having a dozen pigs criminally prosecuted for brutality and using other prisoners to enter prisoners cells and attack them once allowing a prisoner to use riot gear. Two pigs were ultimately convicted. Pumpkin was also prosecuted and convicted for an incident where the pigs opened another prisoners cell, allowing him to ambush him. The prisoner was stabbed multiple times. Pumpkins trustee job was immediately terminated under the backlash of this incident. [...] Several weeks later I was transferred back to Mecklenburg prison, returning to the scene of past abuses [...]
During my stay at Mecklenburg, one of the ranking pigs, who were instrumental in torturing me with the freezing strip cell treatment, was ambushed. On this occasion Id been strapped to the bunk by the pigs. In order for a prisoner to receive meals and toilet breaks while strapped down, the pigs must come to his cell, remove the chains and straps and handcuff him. They will leave the cell, close the door, and remove the cuffs through a hatch in the door. However, during this 1994 episode, when the pigs came in to release me for a toilet break, the claim is that Id gotten out of the restraints and was lying on the bunk under a blanket as though still strapped down. When the ranking pig and two others moved to lift the blanket, I allegedly rose up, with weapon in hand, and attacked. Two of them (the ranking pig included) received multiple stab wounds, and the third pig received a cracked jaw. This incident, in its obvious preplanning and execution, left the pigs in such a quandary that no retribution followed. Indeed, I was several days later transferred to Buckingham and quickly released into the general population.
By this time it was realized that I was not insane at all, but calculating and determined. While prison administrators and those who proposed to study me from a distance put forward the fiction that I was inclined to unprovoked violence against the pigs, the pigs who dealt with me on a day-to-day basis knew, very clearly, that any violence from me was always in response to their own acts of violence or abuse of me or my peers. As long as the pigs remembered this, things went well, but there was always some lone pig with a cowboy complex who had to test his hand, and Id answer it. The majority of the pigs at Buckingham didnt want me in the population walking about. They therefore attempted several times through trumped-up reports to have me returned to segregation. On the last occasion that this was done, I was charged with being in an unauthorized area of the prison. The pigs waited until Id locked into the cell at count time to come and lock me up in segregation. I refused to go peacefully. One pig threatened that if I didnt, Id receive a severe ass-whipping. In response I agreed to walk peacefully to segregation. When the pigs opened the cell door to escort me out, the threatening pig received a nose broken in two places. Ive been in segregation ever since.
While in segregation, Rashid taught himself law, and began litigating against the prisons. For a period of six years he launched various lawsuits, and at first scored several victories, until he acquired the reputation of being troublemaker with various judges who then sought to shut him out of the courts:
With the added psychological deterrent of litigation, my clashes with the pigs declined somewhat in frequency. They focused primarily on isolating me from others. Their efforts to perpetuate a discontinuity in our unity has been the pigs only effective weapon against me. And theyve admitted in a thousand ways that their greatest fear is ending up with many other prisoners on their hands who think and act as I do. Their isolating me was long a tactic that I could not devise an effective countermeasure against, that is, until after 2001, when I was first exposed to revolutionary theory and have since come to understand the role of ideology. Without a unifying ideology, there can be no unity of struggle. Ideology was something Id never had, and thus something I could not share. The prisoners whod united in struggle with me had done so because of me. Not because of a shared principle. Therefore, when I was no longer around, they lost the initiative to struggle on, and the pigs were free to resort to their old oppressive acts.
With the beginnings of my studies in revolutionary history and theory in 2001, litigation and my isolated clashes with the pigs paled in importance. My first exposure to revolutionary ideas came with my meeting Hanif Shabazz-Bey in 2001. Hanif is a political prisoner who is apparently well known within prison movement circles. Upon meeting we developed an instant affinity. He began sending me a variety of publications through which I was first exposed to the works of George Jackson. [...]
I became engrossed in acquiring and studying all that George had studied and more, which included the classics and not-so-classics: Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Che Guevara, Rosa Luxemburg, Harry Magdoff, Paul Sweezy, Albert Szymanski, bell hooks, Cornel West, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Vo Nguyen Giap, etc. I investigated the various revolutionary schools of thought Communism, Anarchy, New Afrikan Nationalism, Feminism, and other left-leaning theories. I studied military thinkers and military history, sociology and history, political science, economic theories (left and right), revolutionary history, etc. and I am still studying, refining my views, and testing them in practice.
The more I studied, reflected, practiced, and drew insight from my own practical experiences, the more it all fell together, so clear and obvious. As my conceptualizations developed, I wrote a few essays, usually at others requests, (my ideas were still forming, some I could not clearly articulate, so I adopted terms, thoughts, and ideas. But it was all quickly coming together.) I could see where the failures and successes had occurred in various anti-colonial, class, anti-racist, feminist, and anti-imperialist struggles. And I could see where the failure to apply the scientific Marxist approach to the study and practice of resisting oppressive conditions (Historical and Dialectical Materialism) resulted in failed idealist attempts to make the desired social changes. [...]
I still endure repression at the hands of the pigs, as do my peers. I still take a principled stand against this repression. But above all else, I am working on bringing my peers into a principled ideological and political consciousness that will give them discipline and a cause to struggle for, while simultaneously imparting to them the correct methods of mass based struggle. The pigs response continues to be to isolate me. Their violence has proven futile. Even in this most totalitarian of environments, innovation and relentless commitment to an ideal has proven, to my satisfaction, that the oppressive institutions are not invulnerable. Fear is our greatest hindrance. Fear and half measures. They can isolate me, but they cannot isolate an ideal.