FDR 25 or… fascism?

FDR 25 or… fascism? (Xs)

10/21/2010

At the Utah State Koncentration Kamp they have a policy (FDR 25) which is “top secret” as the Division Director, a.k.a. overseer, will tell you here:

“The policy you are requesting is FDR 25, intensive management / suicide prevention / strip cell. FDR 25 is classified as protected under the provisions of Grama Paragraph 63G-2-305 (12). That chapter deals with how staff is to handle and interact with criminals in the system. In fact, we do not let that chapter out to anyone not in law enforcement. Your request for a copy is, therefore, denied.”

A snippet of this policy states:

“Inmates shall not be permitted to receive newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, brochures, etc. Including religious texts, newspapers or pamphlets.”

Fascism: extreme totalitarian right-wing philosophy.

Right-wing: conservative or reactionary.

Reactionary: tending to oppose (esp. political) change.

So basically the “corrective facility” in which I am caged in has policies in which they break down how to treat and interact with Jews (I mean criminals). This policy includes restrictions on allowing captives religious texts and newspapers, etc. and I´m supposed to be corrected in some “out-of-the-blue” fashion, I guess, as I sit all alone with nothing in a solitary cell.

Hypocrisy: False claim to virtue; pretense.

The cherry on top of this Hitler-esque Hill is the symbol the Utah Department of Corrections uses on its letterhead and on their website. Which states they provide Honor, Integrity, and Accountability.

Honorable Departments with nothing to hide wouldn´t have top secret policies aimed at reactionary ends. And no policy supported by that department, could have a single ounce of integrity if it keeps men from practicing their religion and free speech. Last I checked this was still Amerikkka with a constitution that was written by revolutionaries in an attempt to stop that sort of injustice. And accountability. Who´s responsible for caging men for decades alone without magazines, religious texts, pictures, newspapers, and then releasing them? Is this their “accountability” they tout from one of the peeks in Southern Utah´s Red Rock on their letterhead symbol? Are they to be held accountable for men who don´t even know who the Amerikan president is because they´ve not read a newspaper in decades? How do you expect a person like that to get a job let alone be reintroduced back into society?

I just don´t get it. Unless the whole point (goal) is institutionalization. And then you have thousands of men in their youth, or prime, kept away from any and all pictures of the opposite sex in magazines, photos, etc. for decades. For punishment? I´m not even wanting to get the ramifications of that one. Or should I? For propriety´s sake I better skirt it. Yet… it is a reality. It is true. Wouldn´t any grown adult who was kept away from the opposite sex, even in photos, for decades become a management problem? I´d like to see one of you out there attempt it and let´s see if your loved ones don´t treat you with a little “ intensive management.”

And then you´re going to let these men out. The next time you guys see a high speed chase, ask yourself this: Is it possible this man was paroled thinking Bill Clinton was still president and the Twin Towers still stood?

Just imagine it. Is he running from the cops or from a world that suddenly fast forwarded twenty years and grew an internet. Is he scared of the handcuffs or more afraid of being kept without pictures of Britney Spears, Hayden Panitierre or Megan Fox for decades? Maybe this man is a devout Muslim or Christian on parole and as he “high speeds”, he´s attempting to memorize the Bible´s Second Letter to the Corinthians before they cage him and keep him without his holy texts for another decade.

Do you ever think of this society? Or are you too busy hating?

The next time a man at your local 7-11 seems shifty-eyed or suspicious, please don´t call the cops, maybe he just never knew Doritos had thirty-one flavors now and Michael Jackson´s not still the King of Neverland (King of Pop though he´ll forever stand). Maybe the cover of the latest “Maxim” magazine just took him some time to digest and he´s still catching his bearings.

Mayhap actually attending a church service, after two decades without has him overcome with the “Holy Spirit.” Maybe he needs a hug or a conversation and not a phone call to the cops and more solitary.

And know, reader, I´ve personally been at both ends of this field. I grew up being told, shown and believing people in prison are there for a just reason and deserve it, because they are bad people or lacking in some degree. I was taught this by my own family even though my own father was in prison. I was taught to hate him. And I did.

And then I came to prison. And I became the one hated. I paroled and was “that man” at the gas station (mouth full of the new cool ranch Doritos. Hands gripping several Maxims). Four times I received the “phone call” instead of the hug or conversation. And I again sit without religion, photos or newspapers. As society and my family hates me. Yet know, I sit with the utmost respect of my father now and extreme love. I now know why he was shifty-eyed and suspicious. But sadly. I don´t think I´ll ever understand why I was taught to hate him… - (Bourgeoise propaganda?) –

So at the start of this essay I showed you how “corrections” can oppose change. (if that is possible? I question it, even though I live it, is the sad part). I spoke about three words, or six, and how fascism, right-wing and reactionary can hide behind honor, integrity and accountability.

You know, I´m actually afraid that if I was to learn the whole FDR25 policy I´d discover it states how to drive a man mad real slow and convince him he´s mentally ill so they can push mind-numbing and body weakening psychotropics on him to stop his humanity and turn him into a good middle-class sleep. I´m scared it would be the revision of the German code used in the 1930s. The one that had all those past upstanding middle-class citizens driving their children to soccer and piano practice as they crinkled their noses trying to ignore those smells and ashes hitting their windshields. To ignore their Kamps.

I mean. History does repeat.

And FDR 25, at least the part not “top secret,” doesn´t bid well for things to come. Take it from me. I sit inside one of new Germany´s modern Koncentration Kamps. My face is up against the glass as I watch my comrades one by one being marched off to the firing squad chambers.

The precise titles and tags do change. But what they mean doesn´t.

How we smell doesn´t change either, nor what they do to us and the end result. The basics remain true. And foul.

Our ashes are just disguised as “corrections” and “rehabilitation.” Our punishment for dissent disguised as intensive management and control units. Our pleas for help batted down by the $$ Government´s Prison Litigation Reform Act.

Our humanity denied by policies like FDA25.

In strength (don´t you smell us?) and struggle,

B.

Silent Accusation II (Spencer Hooper RIP)

Give us rest, give us time
To sort out why our country doesn't realize
Torture laws and racism exist
And there's more to life than
Those Seinfield reruns you missed
As long as you have a Mazda Miata
With a full tank and a pack of smokes
You couldn't care less about 500,000 dead Iraqi children
Less names to intrude on your child's
Santa Claus naughty or nice list!?! folks?
A dead man hangs from an air vent
As a bunch of cowards laugh at him
But this man's dying breath
Pleaded for me to seek justice for him
And the justice will multiply a thousand fold
Because my strength is endless
I've chosen to pick up a revolutionary cause
And the world's vendettas
Against my supposed country
I'll carry the progressive red flag
And your overweight greedy amerikkkans
Will finally understand the meaning of sad
It's a true emotion that bubbles from within
Totally opposite than your sugar come down
And more human than your bullshit "sin"
Ring around the rosey and pop goes the weasel
Is that spittle on your lip Mr Vegetate?
Dialectics is jet fuel to your racist diesel
Give us rest, give us time
To sort out this mess we've made of our lives
Give us a chance to pay for our crimes
You have our bodies, some of our minds
What more do you want?
More pain and some fines!
Take his rigid body and cut it down
Call him worthless, call him clown
I called him friend, his mother's son
Look at his face, look what you've done.  (Published here)

The Statue of Armageddon

I went to church and learned how to cry

Then came to prison and learned how to smile

Seeking forgiveness only from myself

Becoming unshakable on my solitary shelf

Amerikkkan missiles with nuclear tips

Poised like paper tigers ready to Rip

Payloads in excess of seven destroyed earths

Armageddon, she´s ready, with Lady Liberty´s purse

She´s taken her crown and turned it to horns

Her torch turned missile, Her country wanting more

Gimme Gimme, like a spoiled presidential child

Taking from the weak in the United $nakes style

I sit unable to do much more than write

My pen and myself and the long lonely nights

2.4 million captives loudly screeching the truth

Lady Liberty a missile silo waiting to be used

(stop her)

(October 2010)

Apologetic subterfuge

Published earlier here in this publication.

February 21st, 2010: a three car convoy of Afghans were traveling to the market and then to a hospital for medical treatment. U.$. forces saw Afghans traveling together and launched an air to ground attack. Women jumped out waving their scarves to communicate they were civilians. The U.$. helicopter continued firing. 21 killed. 13 wounded.


December 26th, 2009: U.$. forces raided a home, pulled eight young men ages 11 - 18 out of their beds and gunned them down execution style. U.$. forces and distraught villagers later learned all were innocent of any wrongdoing. An apology was issued by the U.$. military.


Apologetic subterfuge?!

You can love me if you want
Feel free to hate me if you need
Just keep away from me your ignorance
Your racism and patriotic greed
Believe in your jesus
Your superiority and programmed ways
If it helps you sleep at night
Keep preaching your 'end of days'
Seven comes eleven its a crying shame
When the last time you did a pushup
you fucking lames!
Our bodies were built for sweat and love
minds wired for compassion not drugs
Turn off your fucking TV zombie
unplug that phone and those radios
Now listen, you hear it? 'crunch crunch'
That's those red white and blue imperialist goblins
eating Afghani wives and children for lunch
and the ticking sound that's increasing slowly
it's that capitalist system you love
slowly imploding
I'll shed no more tears for you Amerikkka
I'll never forgive you for what you've done
chewing on pregnant mothers and sons
killing unarmed little girls for fun
I'm an anti-imperialist communist poet
and we're winning motherfuckers
Fox 13's just not letting you know it.

February 12th 2010: U.$. forces raided a home and killed five people, including two pregnant mothers and a girl engaged to be married. The New York Times even uncovered Amerikkkan troops engaging in a deliberate cover up in an April 5th 2010 article.

According to a March 3rd 2010 report "The U.$. ignored the deaths of more than 850 Afghan children from treatable/preventable diseases as they focus warring on the second poorest country in the world"

Fuck you Amerikkka!
Straight up.
no apologies.
and no more hiding.
we're watching,
waiting....
tick tick tick!

"Home Sweet Home"

From: Solitarywatch:

October 16, 2010

by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

Brandon Green is imprisoned in Uinta 1, a supermax unit at the Utah State Prison in Draper. His writings appear on a blog created for him by Utah Prison Watch. In this piece, he challenges readers to imagine what is like to live in solitary confinement, as he vividly describes the physical and psychological deterioration that take place in an isolation cell.

Go to your bathroom door and kick a hole in it. Now lock yourself in tight. Throw all your hygiene items, except a tooth brush and toothpaste tube, out the hole. Everything. Now go to your tub and flip it over. This is where you’ll sleep. Now sit. The light switch disappears and the shower spigot. A little speaker replaces them. It listens and sometimes speaks to you. Laughs at you. Taunts you. Tells you your suffering is entertaining. You can’t shut off the light with no switch and you’ll have to shower using the sink.

As you sit, you hear ten or so voices outside the door. That’s funny. Sounds like that guy who robbed my mother’s house last year and put her in a wheelchair after brutally beating and raping her. It can’t be! Is that the judge that let the man run free too? And his twisted attorney? Why are they here!?!

The worst enemies you could imagine, or put a face to, have just moved into your house. As you sit in the bathroom. These people only wish you harm of the utmost. And your death would be nothing but joy for them. All your food, and any mail you might be expecting, will have to come from these “squatter enemies.” Good luck!

To make matters worse, these enemies of yours control all your heating, air conditioning, water from your sink and to your toilet. And to top it off, if they see you sleeping they’ll kick the door and yell at you. They laugh.

You can hear these men day and night right outside your door. You smell them barbecuing  and smoking. You’re hungry. You can hear these men torturing people. Sometimes other people in similar bathrooms next to yours are pulled out and placed in body bags. To the  amusement of these squatters.

 A day passes this way.

“My god,” you say, “what have I done to deserve this?”

A week passes.
 You cry.

A month.
You attempt suicide but your vein closes up before death.

A year.
You are now talking to yourself and running around naked. You are convinced the food you seldom receive, that’s halfway edible, is poisoned. As you eat the rotten “meat” your beard and mustache get in the way of the teeth chewing. You couldn’t cry if your life depended on it. And it used to. But you’ve forgotten why.

Two years.
You can’t remember. You’ve forgotten. Forgotten what? You don’t know. The “squatter enemies” come around and you look at them. They look at you. They laugh. You start to laugh too. You forgot why. But you do.

Three years.
You sleep 20 hours a day. You can’t help it. But your floor is clean. You keep it spotless. You don’t know why. But you do. You’re skinny. You’ve lost an easy 60 lbs. Your skin is turning yellow and your legs cramp up and atrophy. You don’t want to die anymore. Why bother? You’d rather sleep and dream. The dreams are so vivid. More real than these walls.

Five years.
You go home, you leave your bathroom, this year.
They tell you that. But why? Where do I go? I don’t want to leave now. I like my tub and sink…

Dear Comrades (One Love)

Cats and dogs raining down my window

Dust bunnies roaming around my floor

Learned worms crawling around my stomach

Telling me I was taught to want more

These measly maggots at war with science

And what´s before us as real and true

I pump my blood until the skin stretches

Sweat drips onto the concrete like Chinese tea

Searching each repetition the puddle´s reflection

for truth.

The same as I do each U.S.W. study lesson

For a MC´s guidance into deeper realms

Blood starts to puddle and pool with my sweat

I question from where but continue to pace

Letting the itch of it linger on my face

Three cold meals and denials at mail call

Four cold walls and a solitary cot

One man alone with only one thought

Your punk denials will breed lawsuits

And my stomach turns cold to hot

We, Comrades, are part of something larger

More human than “Jesus” dying on a cross

Steering the people through minefields of hate

Aware it´s a privilege we even ate

A species on the sad cusp of extinction

One Vanguard, one chance, one reason

As planet Earth spins out the seasons

Survival of the fittest as Amerikkka weakens

Our species.

One Love Comrades

Utah’s Finest

To protect and serve or belittle and torture?

To me it’s the same, to them I’m not so sure.

Kind of seems like these pigs they feel that

They enjoy our deaths, our suicides, and body bags.

Abu Ghraib wasn’t a fluke or freak of nature,

Those atrocities pale in comparison to what I see here.

Except this stuff’s okay if it were Americans?

Faces filled with expressions of understanding

Loving benevolence as if they’re doing me favors

And I’m deserving of my cage, not a slave here,

Questioning my motives like: why’s he fighting back?

Your corrections made me this way, they’re real as a heart attack.

Also published here.

Pharaoh Obama

Solitary supermax has become me,

Senses numbed, mind gone crazy,

Losing it, lost it, am lost

Freedom you say? How much does it cost

May I pay in this sweat drip from my brow

Years alone or my tired soul you must tell me how

But don’t even whisper ´Believe in the way this system is´

Not a chance, you greedy imperialistic pig

Please stop the wars, open the Mexican border, leave the Middle East alone

Downsize these concentration camps, let my people go!

Money money, that´s all you are about

Amerika´s guilty

The gavel comes down.

3.187´s

Another suicide body being zipped up

To pig laughter, back slapping and such

I´d cry if I could anymore; or seek a hug if they’d

Open this door.

Down with these prisons, down with these lies

Remove these veils from Americans eyes

We come to prison for petty stuff

Get released, return for serious stuff.

Corrections they preach, while driving us mad

They have my body, my uncles and my Dad´s

R.I.P. Spencer Hooper, Danny Gallegos, Ronnie Easterbrook

I’ll remember what this shady system took

2.4 million of us caged,

Growing steadily along with our rage

A stage for anti-imperialist thoughts.

We've Nowhere to Go!

If I was to break this whole mess (prison) down into a simpler single term it would just be survival; a group of human beings attempting to survive and see another day and to breathe another breath even if it’s a painful breath.

A little larger look and we have these suicide bombers in the Middle East killing American troops. Their actions, even though they look very far from it, are about survival; right? I mean, do you think a person would blow himself and hundreds of people up, just because of hate? I don’t think so personally. There has to be some love inside their heads. Maybe love for their wives and children who’ve been killed and are being killed, because of the U.S. military occupations over there, the U.S. need for oil. No?

Survival: Simply to survive another day.

We were all born to a mother with this ingrained need to survive, To Live. We all have a mom whether that person is Iraqi or American. It all equals the same thing - human beings, homo-sapiens, surviving.

Now to look back on a past picture maybe. You have all seen the bloodthirsty media’s depiction of an “Indian” with scalps at his belt and blood on his tomahawk. The old west’s “Terrorist” depiction. But if you’ll check history you’ll find that this Indian learned scalping from the men he was fighting against for survival.

Sort of like the way that 19 year old in prison for petty joyriding charges learned rage, hopelessness and cruelty from keepers. People like Curtis Algier (* a Utah man who killed an officer on transport to the University Medical Center*) don’t just step on the scene readymade with batteries included. These Killers are created by their environments.

And please everyone these words are not apologist, justifying words to make a person’s wrongs seem right. These are just objective, reality based conclusions.
Picture if a man at your local Wal-Mart purposely placed small-pox or let’s say some sort of AIDS infection inside your Christmas purchases or bed linen for the family. Both scourges would kill your loved ones but let’s say you survived. Would you not make it your duty to make sure that the man’s blood was soon on your fist, your Tomahawk?

History has shown what men have done that to other men. The small-pox riddled blankets traded to American Indians, purposely - and survival was a factor in this. The men who gave the blankets out were attempting to survive. They were afraid for their lives and the lives of their children. These Indians were also attempting to survive and fought back against men who were killing their wives and children.
But who was the man who crossed the other man’s threshold?

In modern day parlance if you catch an intruder in your house you legally can shoot him. The first nations people (“Indians”) were and are just that, “First” Nations people.

The pox-blankets of old can be compared to the hummer-tank-underside equipped vehicles the military used today in Iraq / Afghanistan. You’ve all seen those huge sand colored armored vehicles with the V-shaped bottoms to prevent causalities and loss of limb. To prevent Death. To increase survival.

But who’s on whose threshold: Who’s in whose house to speak?
An Iraqi all suited up for war cruising the streets of downtown Salt Lake City would need more than an armored truck. An “Indian”, in days gone by, if he by some weird twist of fate landed on the European mainland and was walking downtown London with war paint and bow and arrow, would need armored truck and more.

I just question why it is that a certain man can cross other men’s threshold and socially this is okay. I wonder why certain men can assault, torture, murder, steal from, starve, sexually harass etc, etc. etc. and because he is a cop or “corrections officer” be free from mans laws. Because Phillip, Andrew, John, Donald, Travis, Spencer, Curtis, William, Paul, etc. and myself are being handed pox-riddled conditions / environments / treatments daily. They’re killing us and in some cases like Curtis Algiers “almost” killing us, poking us with a cruel stick through the bars of our cages so many times that we become snappish, and then releasing us back into society.

And why you ask would they do this? Again it is about survival. The DOC and BOP needs you to be scared of us, (the U.S. needs you to fear Iraqi’s and terrorists) so they expand. So they can justify 2.4 million of us in chains. Justify these wars on drugs and on terror. Because so many folks count on the system for livelihood. And expansion means money…
In essence the American people pay these men and women by way of their taxes to hand out pox-riddled blankets. And not to just anybody either; to your frightened sons, nephews, fathers, grandfathers and fellow man you do this, you pay for this to be done.
Sure death, an end to survival, was the climatic result of pox-blankets. To look at the statistics of these prisons, what they create one could not argue that sure death wasn’t ultimately the final outcome. But sure death comes in many forms. Look at H.I.V. and some cancers. They take time some of these.

The boy that grows up without his father because of an overzealous prison system and ends up lost on drugs, and ultimately overdoses is sure death.

The half-man half-boy who paroles all twitchy and nervous at twenty years old who is unable to find employment because of his record or lack of job skills (*PTSD* Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in Unita One parolees cases) and robs somebody just to eat is sure death, eventually.

The girl who was placed in foster care, because both parent waste away in prison
cells for drug charges and pursues an unclean lifestyle that involves AIDS and the transmission of this to hundreds is sure death for many.

War on Drugs you say?

A war on families, on survival, is more like it. A war on our lost children!?

I mean, the crime rate stays the same. It has for decades. Just look into it. But these prisons grow. Why?

And I speak all this and you might question: “If this system was so corrupt and hurting so many then why isn’t the crime rate increasing because those mind scrambled, then paroled, released, etc.” Let me just say too, the crime rate hasn’t lowered either.

But the reason again is survival. The whole in-justice system is about that. A man can survive, however dismally situated, for a quite a whole within this shady system. They know this. He will survive long enough to perpetuate the mass hysteria of a war on crime by being a paroled ‘nut-case’ and providing that ever present Ten-o-clock news high speed chase. Long enough to bring some friends and family members down with him to fill the prison bed space.

Then he’ll die. Then it starts all over again with his son, nephew or brother. By the time he’s served his purpose as the boogeyman “criminal” there should be enough beds open, because of expansion, for all three. *Hello parasitic job security*

68% recidivism rate for inmates paroled from general population. 88% from control units like Unita One. What’s the fastest growing prison type? Control Units! Why? Better odds for those that profit from this system. This system of ‘more-equals-more-money’: more job security. More harsh punishments. More War. More Oil. More ‘turning of a mass blind eye’ to a system that’s proven not to work.

Where do we go from here? More pox-blankets anyone? Please, no.

In strength (brutal reality) and hope,
Brandon G.

Firing Squad

    I've seen them walk in with the bleach

    Goose stepping out with the rifles

    Bloody fragments and bone in blonde hair

    Brand new Casio watch, new shoes, clean underwear

    The traces of the dead man's Prozac

    Ulcer medications and ibuprophins

    Mingle loosely with the trigger mens viagra

    with their cocaine and caffeine grins

    Where you off to now Mr. Executioners?

    After you've lynched in the most disgusting way

    you are off to your grandchild's christening

    to her prom night or school play

    my sweat drips on to the cold concrete and I chant, i say, "you can't stop us,

    it's inevitable. Soon all you know will fall."

    Tattered socks scrape and squeak as I motion

    I raise my arms and tap my chest, "ten"

    counting out the sets and counting down the days

    here's a promise that I believe the people support

    we won't blindfold you, we'll allow you to watch

    you'll need to see the ones now holding the rifles

    are the very same you've oppressed, starved and stifled

    and we will pull the trigger out of social conscience

    not out of your racism, greed or chauvinistic pride

    and it will not be a secret, the world can watch

    nothing will need to be hidden or secret

    because we'll explain why, to our children we'll teach it

    that the reason we kill you pig isn't out of hate

    it's that food you stockpiled that the starving masses never ate

July 2010

Hogan Return

Prison building in the distance

Stop it I say

Cease trying  to emulate the mountains

With your concrete crags.

The mountains are from God

Yours are manmade peaks

His will forever stand tall

Yours, like Troy, will fall

Damn you penitentiary

Your halogen lights attempt to rival the stars

Blasphemy, a sinner is what you are

Keeping Mother Nature out

And the poor luckless men and women in

Gulag you are destined to fall

The sun will rise on your destruction

Fingering your greasy bricks with her rays

The keepers gone home, dazed and confused

Feeling guilty, feeling soiled and used

Taken by Satan’s wiles they marched

Cuffed, beat, starved, viciously, mind-beat

Their fellow man

He raises his head and wails

Catching, billowing, pushing revolution’s sails

A movement is born on their wind

Millions together at last begin

To rebuild, to heal, to discover truth

We owe it to the people to destroy your false face

We owe it to our youth

Us Natives own this place.

January 2010