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

Dear Pig

Everything you are
is everything I hate
Everything you love
is everything I ain't
I want to live
you are already dead
I struggle to achieve revolution
Divesting knowledge like you do bread
The day your obese heart stops
and all you know ceases to exist
I'll still be sweating truth
Your daughter my wife, you not missed
Keep me here for years
but know the longer I stay
my mind's building the future
how it'll be one day
Understand I'm a man now
not that weak confused child
What pain you caused me growing up
will return, boomerang, anything but mild
For now I sit
starved, rattling my chains
but I'm stronger for this
You weaken by the day!

Also published here.
February 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

Earlier alarming calls from Utah's dungeons...

From: Prison Action News (Boston Anarchist Black Cross) 2009
Also published here.

Utah
Utah State Prison, Draper 2009
I wish strength to all comrades worldwide. Last year on April 16th I caused a code red count by not racking in and having the SWAT Team deployed. For a couple hours I was considered AWOL from this Utah plantation. I sat in protest of the conditions and unjust treatment we were subject to last spring.

Since then I've been housed here in supermax, and along with the escape attempt they charged me with last year, there've been several inciting riots and disorderly conducts. My comrades in these actions have since been moved, if that's the word. One terminated or paroled and I wish him luck on the streets. The other, after continual abuses, resorted to hanging himself last month. And I want to just say to Spider and all those that choose that route, you're not forgotten and may you finally rest. I'm exposing as much as I can about these sadistic guards and have been studying law to better arm myself and eventually bring a rock solid case against the USP.

One pig was fired because of me documenting his exploits, but he has since been rehired, though it seems, and I hope, it's only temporary. The pig got a lawyer and he's suing the DOC for firing him. Sgt. Feikert doesn't realize that in a way he's now fighting on our side, the oppressed side. His lawsuit will weaken his and the prison industrial complex's capital. No matter who eventually wins, it's still a pig-on-pig fight and I can think of no better way at their throats than that.

By refusing OMR, I and others, especially almost all of section 3, have pretty much shutdown most all moves and the pigs have had to come up with new policies and rules to move us. One comrade in section 3 has been back here over 15 years, but his story is he's been kept here because the pigs fear his mind and political actions. The section 3 strike has, I assume, been his resistance and I want to wish strength to him and all those who are down.

Amerikan prisons are growing and no way a body looks at that fact is positive. Yet as a presence, us comrades are growing also. Both in numbers and knowledge, strength, and solidarity. We must all not become complacent but train our bodies and minds to be ready for action when the call to arms sounds.
It's not 'if,' it's 'when.' (Rage Against the Machine)

Word is born,
Fight the war, fuck the norm,
Now I got no patience,
So sick of complacence,
With the D - E - F - I - A - N – C- E,
Mind of a Revolutionary,
So clear the lane,
The finger to the land of the chains,
What? The land of the free?
Whoever told you that is your enemy,
Now something must be done,
About vengeance, a badge and a gun,
Now action must be taken,
We don't need the key, We'll break in.

I feel the time is nearing for revolution as the bloodthirsty U.S. overextends militarily overseas, and opportunities and weaknesses are becoming exposed here at home. Every small strike or rebellion we cause matters. We must remember that, and I want to say RIGHT ON to P.A.N. and all those that uphold the struggle by letting our voices beheard. We, as captives, have really no choice but to struggle. Either we struggle as awhole or lay down. But these ABC Networks and others have my, and I think I speak for us all, appreciation and respect, for all the tiresome, time consuming work andsupport you all provide for us convicts.
In Unity! Up the Struggle!

Brandon Green #35439,
UI 208
Utah State Prison
P.O. Box 250,
Draper, Utah 84020


From: Prison Action News (Boston ABC, 2008): p. 18-19

Utah State Prison
Draper, December 2008

The Utah State Prison is begging for litigation for First & Fourth Amendment Rights Violations, in its UINTA-1 Special Intensive Management Unit (SIMU), for Muslim diet refusals. Religious literature is not being allowed through the mail and obvious cruel & unusual punishment-type issues with mentally ill inmates being housed in these solitary cells. The denial of books and basic hygiene materials, combined with the fact that most all CO´s are just plain mean and emotionally desensitized from years of inflicting abuse, surely account for the unbelievably high rate of suicide attempts and actual suicide rates I witness day in and day out.

Those of us who speak up and out get extra shakedowns, refused writing materials and Grievance Forms; and our doors kicked during counts with taunting-type language.
SWAT Team extractions and beatings with pepper spray seeping into neighboring cells happen almost daily, and usually to the same poor mentally ill and confused inmates. One is actually almost totally deaf, so the direct orders he receives, fall literally on deaf ears. Psychiatric medications are pushed on inmates like dope on the streets, mostly so everyone will just sleep through the abuse. I find myself scared to even shower because these CO’s sometimes don’t need an excuse to throw you down and rough you up.

When I do try and grieve these issues, either I receive no responses or get excessive retaliation. I’ve been handcuffed to a hitching post for several hours and forced to urinate on myself, which I still to this day have shoulder pain from. Just one voice in 2.3 million. Utah State Prison is soon to be served a wake up call…

Brandon Green,#35439,
UINTA-One,
Utah State Prison,
P.O. Box 250,
Draper, Utah 84020

Utah State Prison- Draper December 2008 - November 2009

From: 

http://www.baamboston.org/wp-content/uploads/pan-3.pdf

 

Also published here.

Utah State Prison- Draper December 2008

The Utah State Prison is begging for litigation for First & Fourth Amendment Rights Violations, in its UINTA-1 Special Intensive Management Unit (SIMU), for Muslim diet refusals. Religious literature is not being allowed through the mail and obvious cruel & unusual punishment-type issues with mentally ill inmates being housed in these solitary cells. The denial of books and basic hygiene materials, combined with the fact that most all COs are just plain mean and emotionally desensitized from years of inflicting abuse, surely account for the unbelievably high rate of suicide attempts and actual suicide rates I witness day in and day out.

Those of us who speak up and out get extra shakedowns, refused writing materials and Grievance Forms; and our doors kicked during counts with taunting-type language.

SWAT Team extractions and beatings with pepper spray seeping into neighboring cells happen almost daily, and usually to the same poor mentally ill and confused inmates. One is actually almost totally deaf, so the direct orders he receives, fall literally on deaf ears. Psychiatric medications are pushed on inmates like dope on the streets, mostly so everyone will just sleep through the abuse. I find myself scared to even shower because these CO’s sometimes don’t need an excuse to throw you down and rough you up.

When I do try and grieve these issues, either I receive no responses or get excessive retaliation. I’ve been handcuffed to a hitching post for several hours and forced to urinate on myself, which I still to this day have shoulder pain from.

Just one voice in 2.3 million. Utah State Prison is soon to be served a wakeup call…

Brandon Green, (address etc) Draper, Utah 84020

November 2009, Draper, UT

I send strength to all comrades worldwide! The beautiful people at TIME and Prison Reform Community Center have been helping me and about forty convicts here at the USP Auschwitz expose the abuses and the murders resulting from said abuses. As I wrote in last January’s issue of PAN, Utah pigs are belittling and torturing us all here in Uinta one Solitary Supermax day and night by denial of hearing aids to the deaf, sleep deprivation, starvation, freezing, and refusing to deliver all personal mail. For the last year and a half, I’ve recorded each and every incident while I was awake and sent copies to several human rights organizations. TIME was my only response and that only through the persistent mailings and phone calls by a family member to get their letter to me. Once I learned that TIME was interested in helping, I contacted attorneys to grease up some of my letters so these Nazi pigs’ sticky fingers wouldn’t hold them up. I also sent calls to arms to those who’ve experienced or are experiencing inhumane conditions in hopes they would stand up and fight back. They did stand up and we are fighting.

Just this October 26th, I was informed that an investigation was begun, spearheaded by none other than Adolf Hitler “himself” Warden Steven Turley. So far the facts are these: A Sgt. Scott and Officer Robinson just returned from a 3-week suspension without pay, but these guys are alcoholics and rumor has it they were suspended after being busted for poaching beer and driving under the influence of alcohol.

The investigation has just started with many statements and grievances in favor of us and against these swine and interviews will soon follow. It’s just a matter of time until turn keys will be turning burgers or tossing and turning in one of these cells beside me. In the upcoming July issue I’ll let everyone know how this all pans out.

Abu Ghraib’s scandal included several higher up grand dragons from Utah DOC and the way these scum-pig-leaches look out for and watch each others’ backs. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still employed somewhere in the shady injustice system. My goal here is to keep at their throats, record each abuse, expose each grievance, and raise support from the outside and convict awareness on the inside until the true nature of an Amerikan prison is known by the masses. I breathe revolution, I sweat revolution, and I will see revolution or die in the process. I’ll die with a smile on my face and righteous rage in my heart. Behind these fences, ghetto fences, prison fences, the poor, struggling fences, we are the ones who will bring about revolution. We on the bottom can see more clearly than those with their heads in the clouds. History’s wheel is about to open. Let us make sure our minds are right and our shoestrings are tight. An army sits in silence on the outskirts of small Amerikan towns and big cities, huddled, hungry, and waiting, 2.4 million strong.

We stir. Dreams over.

Brandon Green …

P.S. It’s 11/7/09 and I’ve just discovered that an officer Nelson is on administrative leave without pay, so Sgt. Scott and Officer Robinson may have suffered the same fate. But this ‘must’ be the tip of the iceberg.