Crimethinc. Ex-Workers’ Collective (CWC)

#4: Prisoners of the World, Unite!

[Editor’s Note: A plausible argument for eliminating our contemporary prison system]

In this episode, the Ex-Worker’s Collective steals enough hours from their jobs to discuss the state of the US prison system, the prison abolition movement, and the destruction of prisons. A comrade from Supermax lock up and Midwest Pages to Prisoners Zine Distro join the podcast! News and a review of Between Predicates, War by the Institute for Experimental Freedom round out the episode asking us to wonder, “What’s the fastest way outta this?!” {June 16, 2013}

(A)udio: Prisoners-of-the-World-Unite (The C@se for Prison (A)bolition)

• Full Episode Transcript

Warning: Disturbing Video Content

 
by Simon Black (Sovereign Man)

Storm Troopers

Hawthorne, CA.–A few friends sent me a disturbing, shocking, gut-wrenching video yesterday.

It’s amateur footage of police officers from a LA metro-area unit shooting, and killing, a man’s dog. While they were arresting him. For the crime of… recording them.

Apparently the cops were in the neighborhood to make an arrest. Several people were outside watching. And one man who was out walking his dog started filming with his cell phone camera.

About 2 minutes later, the man notices the police walking towards him, no doubt to harass him for the heinous act of recording them. So he puts his dog in the car, meets the police halfway on the sidewalk, and assumes the “I surrender” pose.

The dog starts barking and actually squirms out of the car and ran over to the man, jumping on one of the officers. Another drew his sidearm. And in one of the most cold-blooded acts I’ve ever seen, he shot the dog. Four times.

Trust me, I recommend you do not watch this video unless you have a strong stomach.

Not to be outdone by their West Coast cousins, government agents in the State of Virginia recently assaulted a 20-year old girl, guns blazing, because she was exiting a local supermarket with cookie dough, ice cream, and a box of bottled water.

The cops assumed she had purchased alcohol; apparently they can’t tell the difference between La Croix pure sparkling water and a case of Bud Light…still, they felt it was necessary to brandish firearms against this ‘criminal terrorist’.

It’s incredulous this is what passes for professional police work today.

Average, every day people get taken down and threatened with deadly force for committing egregious acts like…photographing the police…or buying bottled water.

Meanwhile, the real criminals (i.e. the politicians, central bankers, and puppet masters) continue waging destruction and plunder on a largely unsuspecting population.

It may be premature to draw too many parallels to Hitler’s Schutzstaffel force. But to see this culture of fear, submission, and intimidation continue to flourish within the America, one can’t help but wonder…

Animal Rendering Plant Opens Its Doors to School Children

OMAHA, Neb. (Newsweak.com Exclusive) — Eighteen grade 5 students of Mavis Beacon Elementary School are undergoing counseling after a school field trip visit to a beef slaughterhouse. The children reportedly were horrified to see how cows were processed into beef. Some of the students vomited, and most cried.

Their teacher, Maxwell Barnes, faces disciplinary action for organizing the school field trip. “I didn’t see anything wrong with it.” Barnes stated. “Earlier this year we had a field trip to a chocolate factory. Kids have a curiosity about where their food comes from. I don’t think there should be anything wrong with showing them where meat comes from.”

The children were escorted through the facility from the loading bay, where cattle enter the building, through to the stunning process where the animals receive a pneumatic bolt to the brain, rendering them brain dead. “Some of the kids started crying then.” said slaughterhouse foreman Dan Smith. “We told them it was all a natural part of how beef is made and ends up in yummy hamburgers, but that didn’t seem to help much.”

The field trip then went awry after the brain dead animals were chained up by their back legs and then cut into to be bled to death. “I saw one little boy throw up.” Smith said. “And then after that there was screaming and running and all these other kids throwing up all over the place. We tried to calm them down, but it was out of control by then. These kids were just freaked out; they didn’t even finish the tour.”

Snowden Coverage: If U.S. Mass Media Were State-Controlled, Would It Look Any Different?

Journalist Glenn Greenwald

by Jeff Cohen, June 26, 2013

The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets—especially TV news—that missed the Wall Street meltdown and cheer-led the Iraq invasion have come to resemble state-controlled media outlets in their near-total identification with the government as it pursues the now 30-year-old whistle blower.

While an independent journalism system would be dissecting the impacts of NSA surveillance on privacy rights, and separating fact from fiction, U.S. news networks have obsessed on questions like: How much damage has Snowden caused? How can he be brought to justice?

Unfazed by polls showing that half of the American rabble—I mean, public—believe Snowden did a good thing by leaking documentation of NSA spying, TV news panels have usually excluded anyone who speaks for these millions of Americans. Although TV hosts and most panelists are not government officials, some have a penchant for speaking of the government with the pronoun “We.”

After Snowden made it out of Hong Kong to Russia, New York Times journalist and CNBC talking head Andrew Ross Sorkin expressed his frustration: “We’ve screwed this up, to even let him get to Russia.”  By “we,” he meant the U.S. government.

Last time I checked, Sorkin was working for the Times and CNBC, not the CIA or FBI.

When a huge swath of the country is on the side of the guy-on-the-run and not the government, it’s much easier to see that there’s nothing “objective” or “neutral” about journalists who so closely identify with the spy agencies or Justice Department or White House.

The standard exclusion of dissenting views – panels often span from hawk (“he’s a traitor who needs to be jailed”) to dove (“he may have been well-intentioned but he needs to be jailed”) – offers yet another reason why young people, more libertarian in their views, have turned away from these outlets. Virtually no one speaks for them. While a TIME poll found 53 percent of respondents saying Snowden did “a good thing,” that was the sentiment of 70 percent of those age 18 to 34.

I teach college journalism classes about independent media. New developments like WikiLeaks and independent bloggers like Glenn Greenwald may scare the wits out of establishment media, but they sure don’t scare young people or journalism students.

As media employees at elite outlets have grown cozier with their government and corporate sources (Sorkin is famously close with Wall Street CEOs), they exhibit an almost instinctual antipathy toward those adversarial journalists who challenge powerful elites day after day.

Look at the reactions of some top mainstream journalists to Greenwald, who built up a big readership as a solo blogger before moving his blog to Salon and then the Guardian, where he broke the Snowden/NSA stories. I know several journalism professors who view Greenwald as one of the world’s best journalists. He’s known as accurate, thorough, well-documented and ethical.

It was Sorkin, the New York Times guy, who declared on CNBC that maybe Greenwald should be arrested: “I told you this in the green room—I would arrest him [Snowden] and now I’d almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, who’s the journalist who seems to be out there, almost, he wants to help him get to Ecuador.”

If it’s strange for a journalist to suggest another journalist’s arrest, it was almost as strange when Sorkin wrote in a Times column that he went down to check out the Occupy Wall Street encampment “after getting a call from the chief executive of a major bank.” Sorkin concluded: “As I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably don’t have to worry about being in imminent personal danger. This didn’t seem like a brutal group—at least not yet.”

Another mainstream media star is NBC’s David Gregory (seen literally dancing with White House source Karl Rove in 2007). Since he interviewed Greenwald on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” there’s been scrutiny of Gregory’s factually-misleading question: “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you be charged with a crime?” And of Greenwald’s response: “I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies.”

But I’m  just as bothered by Gregory’s retort—“Well, the question of who’s a journalist may be up to a debate with regards to what you’re doing”—and the ensuing discussion in mainstream outlets questioning Greenwald’s bona fides as a journalist.

A Washington Post article (“On NSA disclosures, has Glenn Greenwald become something other than a reporter?”) questioned the blogger’s credentials as a journalist because he’s also an advocate: “Greenwald has appeared frequently on TV to plead Snowden’s case as a whistleblower—an advocacy role many mainstream journalists would be uncomfortable with.”

The Post article spoke of “the line between journalism—traditionally, the dispassionate reporting of facts—and outright involvement in the news seems blurrier than ever.” Libertarian journalist Matt Welch critiqued the article as “historically illiterate.”

The truth is that many of the greatest journalists in our country’s history—from Ida B. Wells to I.F. Stone —were accurate reporters of fact, but hardly dispassionate. And mainstream outlets have always had hybrid reporter/columnists offering both fact and advocacy; one of the most famous, David Broder, graced the pages of the Washington Post for years, including its front page.

Broder was a reporter, columnist and TV talking head—yet no one questioned whether Broder was a genuine journalist. That’s because, unlike Greenwald, the reporting and opinions of a David Broder were militantly pro-establishment, pro-bipartisan consensus.

And Broder’s not alone as a hybrid reporter/columnist in the mainstream. Let’s not forget the delightful pundit who wanted to “almost arrest” Greenwald. His official Times bio states: “Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist, chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, and editor of Dealbook for The New York Times.”

The reason Glenn Greenwald’s credentials as a journalist are being questioned by some mainstreamers is not that he blurs the line between journalist and advocate. It’s because of the anti-establishment content of his journalism and advocacy.

Jeff Cohen

Monday, July 8, 2013 – 3:00pm to 5:00pm

Recreation Park, Chehalis, WA
Across the street from Green Hill
Carpools leaving from the artesian well in Olympia at 2:00 pm

Prisoners in Pelican Bay’s [California] Secure Housing Unit have called for a hunger and work strike beginning July 8th.

Here in Washington, youth prisoners at Green Hill juvenile prison in Chehalis have written and delivered to the prison administration their own list of demands, including better education and treatment programs, better food, more visitation rights, access to legal materials, better healthcare, minimum wage for all jobs, longer phone privileges, and more. They are going on STRIKE starting July 8th until their demands are met.

In solidarity, there will be a noise demo outside the prison on July 8th. A noise demo is a concrete way to let prisoners know that we’re here for them on the outside. We’ll be hanging out in the park across from the prison playing music, communicating messages of support, and otherwise making LOTS of noise so they can hear us on the inside.

Bring pots and pans, signs, banners, your friends, and whatever else you need to make lots of noise!

Carpools will be leaving from the artesian well in Olympia at 2:00 pm.

www.prisonstrike.wordpress.com
www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com

————————-

GREEN HILL YOUTH PRISONERS’ DEMANDS
1. BAN THE BOX: Stop branding felons as criminals for life. Stop discrimination against felons for Pell Grants, food stamps, welfare, public housing, or job applications. If the box on job applications denies us real work, how can we make money legally?

2. TREATMENT PROGRAMS: Bring sex offender treatment back to JRA/DOC beyond the ART/DBT programs. Make a reduction to sex offender treatment payments on parole to affordable prices. This applies as well to drug and alcohol treatment payments.

3. EDUCATION: Provide relevant and specialized educational programs to all residents even after they have graduated from High School. These could include cosmetology, music/multimedia production, library access, law training, culinary arts, and more. There are plenty of rooms that are currently not being used for anything but storage. They should be used.

4. LEGAL ACCESS: Access to updated legal material, updated each year. This should include: A well-stocked law library in the school available to all, updated regularly. Books and resources available at anytime. Access to internet sites with relevant legal material available at all times. Access to resources detailing available legal counsel. Copies of JRA/DOC employee policy handbooks in every single wing for residents to read. These must be updated each year.

5. WAGES: All residents must be paid minimum wage for all positions. Residents should be free to organize their jobs without punishment. New jobs should be created that provide real technical training. Change the 13th amendment allowing prison slavery!

5. TRANSITIONAL HELP: Provide free clothing upon exiting any facility (DOC/JRA). These clothes must be brand new. We need guaranteed housing 3 months before leaving a facility. JRA and DOC need to help provide jobs or training to every exiting resident and help provide treatment programs. This needs to extend to parolees.

6. PHONE CALLS & VISITATION: Increase time limit for calls to 15 minutes. These phones must be fixed and functional. Visitation and phone calls should be available for more than just family and mentors.

7. HEALTH: Surgeries must be provided by JRA and DOC immediately even if not an emergency situation. If a surgery is needed, it must be provided in at most 3 months time. Showers must be available each day. If parents can provide aids such as glasses they should be allowed inside instead of relying on state supplies.

8. FOOD: Residents should have input on the menu within reason. Current portions need to be doubled as they are currently too small. Religious and vegetarian/vegan diets must be respected.

9. SPENDING PRIVILEGES: Food and hygiene materials must be more readily available from outside of the facility. The current limits on how much we can spend are too small, and should be expanded to over $40.

10. FREEDOM OF SPEECH: The 1st amendment must be respected in JRA/DOC facilities. We have a right to speak our mind and express ourselves with whatever language we choose as long it does not threaten others. We must also be free to organize without punishment.

Ex JP Eric, and Kim Williams

By Tanya Eiserer, 8:47 am on June 27, 2013

Grand jury takes up capital murder indictments against former JP, wife jailed in revenge killings of Kaufman DA, his wife, deputy assistant

Kaufman, TX — Oh, how low the mighty have fallen. But friends in low places have always known the threat to public safety by the pillars of the community was greater than that from even the usual criminal elements. A case in point: A grand jury in Kaufman County is expected to consider capital murder indictments this morning against former Justice of the Peace Eric Williams and his wife in the revenge killings of the county’s district attorney, his wife and a top assistant.

Previous speculation ran to suspicions directed at drug gangs or the Colorado Prison Superintendent slayings suspect who died in a gun battle with Texas authorities.

Kaufman County officials plan a news conference at noon to discuss the results of those proceedings.

Authorities allege that Williams, 46, gunned down Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse as he walked to the courthouse on Jan. 31, and killed District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, in their home over Easter weekend. They say Kim Williams, 46, was in the getaway vehicle during the killings. [Kim had confessed to being in the vehicle.]

Authorities say investigators matched spent shell casings found at the McLelland crime scene with a live round found at a storage shed where Eric Williams stored large amounts of ammunition of various types and dozens of weapons. Both had been ejected from the same gun.

The two suspects are expected to be tried on a charge of capital murder and, if convicted, could be sentenced to death or to spend the remainder of their lives in prison if convicted. Eric Williams is also charged with making a terrorist threat after authorities say he sent an e-mail promising another attack the day after the McLelland slayings.

Eric Williams is being held in the Kaufman County Jail in lieu of $23 million bail. Kim Williams is being held there in lieu of $10 million bail.

Authorities claim the murder plot was hatched after McLelland and Hasse prosecuted Williams in a theft and burglary case which resulted in his removal as Justice of the Peace and the loss of his law license in 2012. He was sentenced to probation, even though Hasse and McLelland argued that he should receive the maximum two-year prison sentence.

The case left Williams and his wife in dire financial straits and without health insurance, Kim Williams has said prior to her arrest.

Kim Williams told authorities she was the getaway driver in the Hasse case and was in the car at the time of the McLelland slayings. She said her husband shot Mike McLelland, 63, his wife, Cynthia, 65, and Hasse, 57.

Williams said he’s innocent. He told authorities he was at home at the time of the slayings.

Court records indicate Eric Williams began setting the plot in motion in late December when he had a friend rent a Seagoville storage unit on his behalf.

Inside the storage unit, Williams stored large amounts of weapons, authorities say. Shell casings found at the McLelland crime scene matched a live round found at the storage shed, according to investigators.

Police also seized a Crown Victoria thought to have been used in the McLelland slayings from inside a storage unit. A neighbor’s surveillance video had captured a white Crown Victoria entering the McLellands’ neighborhood before the slayings and then leaving afterward.

A silver 2001 Mercury Sable, believed to have been used in the Hasse slaying, was soon found after investigators found evidence that Eric Williams used a Kaufman County Lexis-Nexis account on Jan. 27 to conduct a search of the car’s license plate. The car was traced to a previous owner who had sold it.

Law officers questioned the woman listed in State records as the car’s owner. She told authorities she sold it on Craigslist, but a towing company had contacted her to tell her the vehicle had been towed from the Seagoville storage facility.

Storage unit employees spotted the Sable parked on the property on Feb. 25, indicating what authorities believe: It must have been parked inside the storage unit used by Williams before that time. The storage unit had room for one car. Authorities say Williams purchased the Crown Victoria under a fake name on Feb. 23.

The storage facility notified the towing company on March 7  the Sable had been left abandoned on the property. It was towed.

How America Became a Police State – From the Peacekeeping Night Watch, to Militarized Pursuit of Victimless Crime

How did the United States come to have a militarized police force that pursues victimless crimes with incredibly elaborate, aggressive, and sophisticated methods? A summary of the US transformation from a country of ideals based on liberty, prosperity, and freedom from unwarranted tax, to a society where militarized police enforce every single law the out of control government wishes follows.

Martial Law is imposed in Venice, CA.

By Cassius Methyl (June 16, 2013)

In 1625 America, the first organization resembling a police force was created in what is now New York, known as the “Night Watch”. The Night Watch had not many powers, other than to keep the peace, prevent violent crime, alert people if a fire was to break out, or do things that genuinely serve a community of people. The Night Watch soon grew to be a presence in other American cities such as Boston, and Philadelphia.

After the American Revolution, for what one might call a brief period of time, it seemed this new nation was truly free. There were no militarized police preventing smoking cannabis many grew for hemp, the will of a corrupt body of politicians wasn’t being forced down the throats of the masses, prosperity due to the free market reigned, and one could see, in hindsight, that this form of self governance, a philosophy of self ownership, truly brought prosperity.

Some grew cannabis, smoked and drank as they pleased, and enjoyed a variety of things a free life can bring [at least the white landed male gentry], while enjoying peace, with the concept of self ownership breeding few criminals. Today, the state and the chains brought down on the people from a state, induce crime, poverty, lack of happiness/prosperity. Rational investigation into the era supports this analysis. [The author omits the egregious institution of slavery along w/the disenfranchisement of women as a counter-analysis.]

Unfortunately, the “system”, the soon appointed sheriffs and police, the federal government, along with other power structures, would ruin this freedom/prosperity. It slowly faded. Today, we have some few of our constitutional rights left, but many are gone. They remain to be taken back. A seminal event leading to this change occurred around 1833, when Philadelphia established its own 24-hour police force.

In 1935, those claiming license to bureaucratic rule over Chicago did the same thing. In the  early history of these American cities, the masters issuing directives to the new police departments were groups of the privileged/robber barons who paid their way while beginning to infect the cities with corruption, using the newly minted police for their own personal means, their own political agendas.

From the outset, the police in America were unnecessary, illegitimate, and too often corrupt/incompetent. Some cities, today a part of the modernized US, had military style police-rule before officially becoming part of America, as illustrated, for instance, by New Orleans, under the authority of Spanish Colonial Governor Baron De Carondelet, which created its first police department in 1796. The United States would buy this territory  as part of the Louisiana Purchase six years later.

In the era following the 1830’s and before the Civil War, Americans began to lose their right to police themselves. In 1845, the NYPD was created. Shortly after, they tried to use their power to enforce city ordinances, requesting some taverns be shut down due to non-compliance with city ordinances. Riots broke out.

In 1875, after the Civil War, America saw its first hint of the war on drugs by the police when a San Francisco city ordinance banned the smoking of opium in its opium dens. Until the 1900’s, the only examples of a police force locking people in cages for victimless crimes in the U.S. were instances of city ordinances. Many of these were created as a result of corrupt influence, were protested en mass, ignored, or unenforced. They were roughly as ineffective as the current ‘war on drugs’, though much less pursued by the enforcement arms of government.

In the 1800’s, the industrial revolution era spawned small towns known as “company towns”, owned by corporations. They resembled concentration camp blocks, yet they were voluntary to live in, as they were houses in a neighborhood entirely owned by the company. The company towns had company goons policing the places where the workers lived, enforcing whatever rules the decision makers in the company wished, as terms of employment. [How little times have changed!] It has been said the company town model is what influenced today’s movers and shakers to make the entire U.S. into a region patrolled by police, including remote rural areas.

Arresting people for victimless crimes is king of tyranny. It is not warranted by the Constitutional, it does not serve to prevent any violent crime or crime with victims [force or fraud]; the ‘drug war’ does not benefit the public [Mexico and Prohibition being a classic example].  The era when Americans were most free, demonstrates the government which governs least governs best is the formula for prosperity/stability. Even with today’s vastly different technologies and capabilities, this cornerstone of freedom and prosperity is self evident. The police were never properly warranted to do what they do today: warrantless searches, excessive force, routinely lying under oath and in their sworn written reports, unfettered surveillance. It is patently unlawful for the NSA has to record and store data from all electronic/telephonic communications. It is also a violation of the natural rights of all human beings.

This system is ripe for collapse.  Those righteous citizens demanding freedom from a tyrannical government may bring about a 3rd [the Civil War being the 2nd] American revolution. We can hope it will be a peaceful one. It is long overdue. The pillars holding up the current cesspool are corporate lapdog media, public schools of indoctrination, and the government’s monopoly on force and imprisonment.

“When the people are afraid of the government, that’s tyranny. When the government is afraid of the people, that’s liberty!” -B. Franklin-

2 Officers (A)mbushed while opening gate to Station

Venice, CA (Tuesday, June 25, 2013, 9:20 a.m.) – 2 LA police officers were ambushed in their car outside the mid city police station and wounded, but both returned to duty after being treated at a local hospital for their injuries, one a grazed head wound, the other shot in the hand while returning fire. A ‘shelter in place’ is is now imposed for a 25 black radius. The 25-block perimeter is from Pico Boulevard to Washington Boulevard and from Redondo Boulevard to Rimpau Boulevard.

At least one of the suspects was described as wearing black clothing. Three persons of interest are in custody why the search continues. A police spokesman described the attack as “brazen”.

About 200 officers, uniformed and plain clothes, were sweeping the streets with help from four K-9 teams armed with assault rifles and armored vehicles. Residents have been instructed to remain indoors/in their homes.

In a perfect world there would not be government agents spying on you. And you’d be able to go about your daily life without worrying about someone reading your emails or text messages. But we are not living in a perfect world, and thus you can always expect the government to do what they have always done throughout history; they lie, they steal, they kill, they spy, and they always strive for more power and more control.

The bottom line is; when it comes to your freedom of integrity and privacy, the government cannot give it to you. Because your freedom is not theirs to give.
It belongs to you and you alone.

If you want it back, you must take it for yourself.
This Black Paper will help you with that.

NSA-Black-Paper