Although its got a new sports facility and a recently renovated Engineering and Technology building, Eastern Michigan University (EMU) has been known more for the ongoing austerity its workers and students face. If the administration isn’t selling off rights to its parking or dining halls or dorms, it’s firing secretaries in departments whose secretaries are…
This document is the product of a group of revolutionaries in the so-called “Midwestern” region of the United States, to clarify a regional political trajectory for revolutionary abolitionist practice in the Midwest. We define it as a “trajectory” because we think that any strategy and analysis we outline should be subject to constant critique, development,…
Another week has gone by and H.H. is still in SMHU. We need to keep the pressure on to show the MDOC that WE DON’T GIVE UP. Conditions in the Egeler segregation unit continue to be cruel and inhumane. H.H. hasn’t had clean clothes in 4 weeks, continues to be cuffed whenever he leaves the…
After three weeks, H.H. is still in SMHU (segregation) which means we need to keep calling to get him out. After a confrontation with a white supremacist, H.H. was sentenced to 30 days Loss of Privileges (LOP). Instead of LOP he was put in detention in the Special Management Housing Unit (SMHU). This means lights…
I sit in a cell that is right above the COs’ desk in my unit. It provides me a unique opportunity to hear the psychology of staff in their thought-to-be-secure area, in their conversations with each other. The reason I write about this is because hearing their conversations, I witness first hand what the caste…
Editor’s note: This June 2020 op-ed by Mariame Kaba bears rereading and sharing. Congressional Democrats want to make it easier to identify and prosecute police misconduct; Joe Biden wants to give police departments $300 million. But efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms like these have failed for nearly a century. Enough. We can’t…
My mind, made and built by image and experience, producing thoughts, turned to actions. Reflection allowing me the opportunity to see myself, I wonder how and who I really am. Does systematic racism and disenfranchisement from birth to right-before-this-moment declare my value, or did it begin long before I was a thought, at the beginning…
Many weeks ago, on November 15th, abolitionists in so-called Michigan held a car caravan protest in the town of St. Louis, Michigan, to call attention to the start of what has become a devastating outbreak of COVID-19 Central Michigan Correctional Facility (STF). At that time we had just learned that the positive cases in the…
Hey J., I hope you are doing good and staying safe, this COVID-19 stuff has gotten crazy in here. They were bringing the National Guard in here to test us every week, but they said they weren’t coming in anymore because so many people coming in caught COVID while administering the test. Then our newly…
A communiqué from H.H. Gonzales, sent 11/6/2020, before prisoners rose up and were locked down on Wed. 11/10 I sit in a cell about 5 feet by 10 feet with a bunk bed, two lockers, a sink, a toilet, and a chair, with a “bunkie” (a cellmate). The walls are concrete with many different levels…
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