Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Tags Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.

Tag: Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.

Hiding and abusing the mentally ill and physically disabled inside Texas...

On Oct. 4, 2015, at the McConnell Ad-Seg Unit located in Beeville, Texas, prisoner Jarvis Dugas, No. 1386881, was preparing for a visit with his mother. Dugas, who is known to his friends as “Homestead,” is a Black man who is mentally handicapped and physically dis­abled. He walks with a pronounced limp. Dugas’ mother, Regina Strange, is a former employee of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. She is all too familiar with the overt tactics of mistreatment, abuse and degradation associated with the corrupt prison agency and because she knows that, she regularly visits her son Jarvis.

Paul Redd: Prisoners, unite! Community, stand with us!

Paraphrasing Bro Mumia’s words: Jailhouse lawyers must look beyond the state’s imprisoning bars, bricks and cement to build relationships with others in the so-called “free” world to further and support social movements that spread liberating and progressive space within society. We behind the concrete walls start this new progressive movement. But we need the outside support of our communities to stand with us.

The Prison

Brother Mumia is a shining light for those of us in the belly of the beast who are in a struggle against a wicked system. He has demonstrated to us that even on Death Row, one can still educate, inspire and motivate – some of the same things that he was doing at the time of his arrest.

‘What do they want?’

With few exceptions, major corporate outlets, networks, national newspapers and the like have treated the protests such as Occupy Wall Street as something akin to a UFO: odd, alien and inscrutable.

From state pens to Penn State

The shocking child sex scandal rocking Penn State University in State College, Pa., is an explosion of almost nuclear proportions. The scandal has shown how great wealth, fame and the business of college sports corrupted everything and everyone to keep the gravy train rolling.

Grassroots radio gives voice and life to democracy

Dear friends, attendees at the Grassroots Radio Conference: Thank you for your invitation. I join y’all today, this way, by necessity; but we are joined by our common love of radio, still a vibrant medium. This is a challenging time for all of us, whatever our field of endeavor.

Geronimo ji-Jaga: Tributes from Black Panther comrades and current political prisoners

On Thursday, June 2, 2011, came word that former Black Panther leader, Geronimo ji-Jaga (née Elmer G. Pratt) died in exile in Tanzania.

Enemies unknown

It is a measure of how powerful the U.S. military is – and how poor the media is – that the nation wages war against peoples and countries it knows nothing about. How many of us know that many of the rebels in Libya don’t want democracy but the old kingdom restored?

And like that – blink! – a new war

Just as the Arab Spring erupted across the region of Mediterranean Africa and people took to the streets in opposition to their Western-supported rulers, the West has thrust its large nose into the tent, and – voila! – a new war has emerged.

‘Bombing his own people?’

As pro- and anti-government forces battle for supremacy in the cities and deserts of Libya in North Africa, the tenor and tone of U.S./Western reporting puts the lie to the often heard claim of journalistic objectivity.

Teena Marie

The news came as a shock from a phone call with my wife, a die-hard fan, who broke the news that Teena Marie, the best musical half of the Funkster, Rick “Super-Freak” James, had died.

War against ourselves

As the 20th year passes since the West waged war against the late Saddam Hussein and the state of war slips into greater violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is another war being waged today, one which gets little coverage on TV, radio and newspapers. This war has been essentially a class war – a war against the poor and working classes.

Two messages from Mumia – from a week ago and from...

No matter how much you know about Mumia, you’re sure to find something new and exciting here – beginning with an introduction that sets the scene, then Mumia’s latest essay, “The dirty game (POLITICS),” an open letter he wrote in 1981 called “The sting of betrayal,” followed by some “Blackground info” and concluding with “Mumia Abu Jamal Radio Teach-In” featuring the voices of M1 of dead prez and Minister of Information JR, Ramona and Pam Africa and more.

Gaza prison

The recent Israeli commando attack on peaceful protesters in the Freedom Flotilla, boatloads of supplies and foodstuffs for the beleaguered Palestinians, is the latest demonstration of a paranoid state that sees enemies everywhere and treats them as such.

When there is no precedent

Citizens United abolished all limits on what corporations may spend to support the candidates of their choosing. The problem is, the "precedent" cited by the court is not precedent at all.

What good is a jury?

When guards at SCI Dallas destroy his property, threaten his life, assault his person, all while ranking officials look on approvingly, it is not simply Andre who is under attack, but the rights and lives of prisoners everywhere. By targeting jailhouse lawyers, those who stand on their constitutional rights and insist on being treated as human beings, the agents of repression in charge of the Pennsylvania DOC and the prison-industrial complex aim to silence their cries for justice.

G 20 – or more G-money?

As the G20 gathers again, they assemble amidst the wreckage of their own creation. Representatives of 20 of the alleged developed economies, they are instead representatives of casino capitalism, the use, misuse and grand-theft of public wealth to fund the bonuses of financial pirates which have looted the treasury of billions.

Circles of sameness

So Van Jones, activist, joins the Barack Obama administration, as the green energy czar, a field he’s passionate about, to provide jobs in Black communities and conserve natural resources as part of a larger change in America’s addiction to oil. But, almost immediately, Jones comes under attack from forces in America that really don’t want change.

Skip, Nadra and the Philadelphia grand jury

As the contretemps surrounding Dr. Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge Police Department recedes into the roiling news flood to become fodder for the late night comedians, we learn, if anything, that even a president has limits when it comes to a “teachable moment.” For, as any schoolteacher could have taught him, learning is a two-way street. When the student is closed to the lesson, ain’t nothing getting in. (And America ain’t trying to hear nothing about its racist present!)

Black August

“George Jackson was my hero. He set a standard for prisoners, political prisoners, for people. He showed the love, the strength, the revolutionary fervor that’s characteristic of any soldier for the people. He inspired prisoners, whom I later encountered, to put his ideas into practice. And so his spirit became a living thing.” – from the eulogy by Huey P. Newton, former Minister of Defense, Black Panther Party, at the Revolutionary Memorial Service for George Jackson, 1971