Rising From the Pit: Illinois Prisoners Join National Upsurge of Resistance to Torture and Dehumanizing Conditions in U.S. Prisons
from Gregory Koger | January 27, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
In 1878, convicts began backbreaking labor carving into the limestone bluffs along the bank of the Mississippi River outside Chester, Illinois. Over a decade of sweat and sorrow at gunpoint produced two cell houses enclosed by a massive wall, built from the limestone quarried by the prisoners. The prison—formerly Southern Illinois Penitentiary and now Menard "Correctional Center"—is known as "The Pit."
On January 15, 2014, prisoners in The Pit's "High Security Unit" (HSU) began a hunger strike to oppose their placement into inhumane conditions in isolation under Administrative Detention. Solitary confinement exceeding 15 days is considered torture and prohibited under international law. We must support the prisoners stepping forward and putting their lives on the line to demand an end to these crimes being systematically perpetrated by the rulers of the United States.
The courageous hunger strike by prisoners at Menard is the latest uprising in a wave of prisoner-led struggle against torture and the dehumanizing conditions within the U.S.'s historically unprecedented system of mass incarceration. Last year's 30,000-strong resumption of the California prison hunger strike (which I joined for two weeks in solidarity while a political prisoner in Cook County Jail) was the biggest and most publicized, but a number of other organized struggles by prisoners have taken place in the last several years—from work stoppages in Georgia to hunger strikes in Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, and Washington. Prisoners in Indiana's Westville "Correctional Facility" began a hunger strike on January 13, 2014 to protest nutritionally deficient food. Also, last year prisoners in Guantánamo participated in a long hunger strike, which continues to today, during which they have faced brutal forced feeding. Their courageous hunger strike brought their resistance and exposure of this hellhole of U.S. torture to the attention of the world.
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Many of the prisoners now on hunger strike in Menard were formerly held in Tamms—Illinois' official "supermax" prison which was modeled after Pelican Bay SHU. (Tamms was closed down in January 2013 after a long political and legal battle by prisoners, family members, and activists.) Several of the prisoners placed in the HSU at Menard are "jailhouse lawyers"—prisoners self-educated in the law who help other prisoners with legal work and challenge prison conditions.
"They won't tell anybody why they are in Administrative Detention, let alone give them an informal hearing to contest the undisclosed allegations," one Menard prisoner wrote. He said, "There are mice just running wild. They have 20 guys using one pair of fingernail clippers with no cleaning in between uses, there is absolutely no mental health screening or evaluation, nor do any mental health staff even make rounds." Another prisoner said, "I'm a jailhouse lawyer. And [I] file/help other prisoners with their grievances and lawsuits. Because of that I was retaliated against and transferred to Menard and placed in the High Security Unit under Administrative Detention."1
Since beginning the hunger strike, prisoners reported to attorney Alice Lynd (published in the San Francisco BayView) that "officers shook down their cells and took any food they found. The hunger strikers were sent to see medical staff and charged $5 for medical treatment."2 In 2000 the Illinois Department of Corrections began charging prisoners $2 per incident, and raised to $5 by 2012, as a "co-pay" to receive medical care—a direct violation of international law, including the United Nations Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment which states that prisoners' medical "care and treatment shall be provided free of charge."
Additionally, Lynd reported that one prisoner was pushed down the stairs by two officers while handcuffed and then beaten.3 Officers pushing handcuffed and/or shackled prisoners down the stairs is a common form of retaliation in segregation units in Illinois prisons, as prisoners are never allowed to leave their cells without handcuffs and/or shackles.
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With the closing of Tamms—the most visible face of torture in Illinois' prison system—prisoners were sent to other prisons where the practice of solitary confinement has been hiding behind older and less scrutinized walls. Within weeks of the transfer of Tamms prisoners to Illinois' long-term disciplinary segregation prison in Pontiac, IL, nearly 50 prisoners began a hunger strike opposing the conditions there. A number of other smaller and not well-publicized hunger strikes against the conditions at Pontiac have taken place since it was converted from a regular maximum security prison to long-term disciplinary segregation in the late 1990s.
Debate and struggle roil every day behind the prison walls about the repressive and degrading conditions and what to do about it—especially in solitary confinement. Far too often prisoners have little or no connection on the other side of the walls to expose the horrors of what they are facing—and to support them when they do organize to oppose those conditions.
Solitary confinement is specifically implemented to destroy people psychologically, emotionally, and intellectually. It is a severely damaging and demobilizing form of torture that survivors never escape. Over 80,000 people are held in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons.
Mass incarceration, rooted in the foundational white supremacy of this country, is a response of the ruling class to the driving dynamics of capitalism-imperialism. The drive for ever greater profits has decimated inner-city communities as factories uprooted and set up sweatshops abroad where they can even more brutally exploit workers than they can here—leaving generations of principally Black and brown youth, already locked out of society, who will never be meaningfully employed. It is also a conscious response to the revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s—implemented to contain and repress millions who this system has no future for and who could become the backbone of the struggle for a radically different and more liberated world for all humanity.
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The conditions and retaliation described by the men in Menard sound all too real and familiar to me. I spent over six years straight in indeterminate segregation in Pontiac—and most of my time there in the North Cellhouse. It was under those same conditions that I became part of a new generation of prison-educated revolutionaries beginning to emerge within those concrete tombs. I firmly believe it will take revolution—nothing less—to end the crimes of this system, and that we can bring into being a society that values and meets the material, cultural, and intellectual needs of all humanity—a communist world.
Last year Carl Dix, Clyde Young, and I issued a call—"An Appeal to the Brothers and Sisters Locked Down in this Society's Prisons: Bear Witness to Torture in U.S. Prisons and to All Law Enforcement Abuse." I'd like to reiterate that call, which read in part:
"The world needs to know of the sadistic, systemic horror of long-term solitary confinement, which is enforced on more than 80,000 people in the U.S. prison system. We know that revisiting this can be difficult for those who are facing or have faced these conditions, but the truth must be laid bare for all. All of society needs to know of the racial profiling that sucked you into the pipeline to prison, of the horrific conditions everyone in prison endures and of the open discrimination formerly incarcerated people face after release. You are in a unique position to expose the lying justifications given by the authorities for what they are.
"Send these stories to the Bear Witness Project of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. Through this you will be opening the eyes of those who are shielded from the real situation in the inner cities and the actual conditions enforced in prison. And letting those caught up in the cycle of going in and out of prison know that what they're up against are social problems, not individual ones, and that by standing up and resisting them together, we can change the way mass incarceration is looked at in society and contribute to bringing forward a movement that can end it."
And I call on all people of conscience to support the prisoners and to step forward and follow the courageous example they are setting. Much love, respect and support to the brothers and sisters rising up from deep within the depths of this criminal system of injustice.
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Mail Bear Witness correspondence to:
PRLF
1321 N. Milwaukee Avenue, #407
Chicago, IL 60622
or
Stop Mass Incarceration Network
P.O. Box 941,
Knickerbocker Station,
New York City, NY 10002-0900
For those outside the walls:
contact@PRLF.org
stopmassincarceration@gmail.com
Web: www.stopmassincarceration.org
1. "Locked-Up in 'High Security Unit' and Not Told Why, Prisoners Hunger Strike for Answer," Ray Downs; Riverfront Times Blogs, January 21, 2014 [back]
2. "Update from Menard hunger strikers: We need outside support, force feeding threatened" Alice Lynd; San Francisco BayView, January 21, 2014 [back]
3. Ibid. [back]
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