The Pelican Bay State Prison hunger strike documentary, The Strike, will air on PBS on Feb. 3. Faruq, a participant interviewed for the documentary, sees the strike as more than history—as an opportunity to reflect on the present and help determine the future.
In the spirit of Black August Memorial, Faruq talks about the conditions of Black prisoners, the need to break race divisions between them and white prisoners, and the quest for the Idea of Freedom.
Takes up: employees at a hospital in Japan sexually abusing patients with severe disabilities; the push to enforce Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act in the U.S.; ‘Menopause and Me,’ a video for women with autism and learning disabilities; and an update of the situation of people with disabilities in Russia.
A recent response to Faruq’s essay on Black August and George Jackson: Deep in the ‘hole,’ Jackson went to theory to maintain his sanity. Subjective reason, or revolution in permanence, is necessary to prevent falling into fixed moments in our liberation. What is granted by the legal arena can be taken away again by new laws.
Ex-prisoner Faruq discusses the idea of freedom. Every one of our discussions has to center on liberation, what would real freedom look like? If revolution means anything, it creates seats for everyone at the table.
The voice of a prisoner in Pennsylvania tells us about the harsh experience of being in solitary confinement for the mentally ill.
Charles Tookers’ ode to his first three years of solitary confinement
For many New Afrikan Revolutionaries August has a profound significance. For me Black August attempts to set forth a new humanism.
Faruq reflects on the question of social interaction in the modern capitalist world, seen from the point of view of someone who has spent several years in prison.
Readers’ views on philosophy and the retrogressive changed world; pandemics and social control; mental illness and criminal ‘justice’; culture’s bizarre normal; and voices from behind bars.
Readers’ Views on Philosophy and Revolution; disorder is the order; anti-Semitism; Black August, and voices from behind bars.
Former prisoner Faruq writes of how in prison he “figured out how to become truly myself” and how that is manifested while on parole.
In the spirit of Black August Memorial, Faruq talks about the conditions of Black prisoners, the need to break race divisions between them and white prisoners, and the quest for the Idea of Freedom.
Ex-prisoner Faruq takes up the revolutionary history of Black August Memorial and relates it to his life and the historic Pelican Bay Hunger Strike.
A prisoner’s critique of Wisconsin’s Governor Tony Evers’s broken promise of reducing prison population in the state to half.
What does it mean to be paroled from prison? Before release, all I had was time. It was all torture. Now, I don’t have time. The effort to sustain myself takes most of my time and energy. Freedom, for me, means having time to work out who I am, how I want to relate to others.
Pelican Bay Prisoners speak of the third anniversary of the landmark agreement in the class action lawsuit that ended indefinite solitary confinement in California prisons.
Lawyers in the lawsuit brought by California prisoners against indefinite solitary confinement filed a motion for the monitoring to continue because the four drafters of the Agreement to End Hostilities have been removed from general population to Administrative Segregation Units, based on fabricated information created by staff and/or collaborating inmate informants.
Do you ever wonder what happens to all of your family members after the courtroom drama? After the news cameras and news articles dry up? After the victim impact statements and the jury’s verdict have been handed down?
A prisoner talks about why life without parole is a second death sentence.
Prisoner Human Rights Movement representatives call on California government officials to provide mental healthcare, support groups and other relief to prisoners formerly in solitary confinement who are living with PTSD.
Bay Area Californians rally against all forms of solitary confinement including for those released from indefinite solitary into level IV general population who are experiencing conditions worse than they experienced in solitary.
Various prisoner support organizations gathered before an Alameda County Board of Supervisors Public Safety Committee hearing on jails and detention centers in November, 2017.
Jonathan J. Rodriguez submits a drawing of the view from his solitary cell.
Reader’s Views on Women vs. Reaction; Women and Philosophy; Syria and Humanity; Support Trans Children!; Animals and Us; Repression vs. Justice; Why Read “N&L”; Voices from Behind the Bars
Shared story of a prisoner experiencing solitary confinement in Pennsylvania.
Shared story from Jesse Perez, prisoner in solitary confinement in a California prison.
At this moment of rethinking, Urszula Wislanka ask prisoners to share their ideas on humanism, as the Prisoners’ Human Rights Movement Blueprint reasserted the humanism upon which the prisoners’ movement was founded.
Prisoner and hunger striker Faruq looks at the way forward after the historic California prisoners’ hunger strike and emphasizes the importance of “the banner of our humanism that allowed the forging of a tremendous unification across the racial divides.”
Prisoner Robert Taliaferro writes of the Wisconsin maximum security facility prisoners’ hunger strike to end the inhumane practice of long-term solitary confinement and for improved medical care for prisoners with mental illness in segregation.
On Aug. 23, California’s Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition leafletted the staging area for trips to Alcatraz prison raising discussions with locals and tourists about how solitary confinement is torture.
Prisoner Brutha Baridi tells what it means to be released from the hell of solitary confinement and experience several new “first” experiences.
Buddy Bell of Voices for Creative Nonviolence tells of their recent 150-mile walk across the state of Illinois on the issues of indefinite detention, solitary confinement and the racist U.S. prison system.
Prisoner Robert Taliaferro discusses the profit made from prisoners by the prison industrial complex and the shame of supposed rehabilitative programs that in reality are required, not for rehabilitation but for continued punishment of prisoners and profit for the prisons.
A Transgender woman former prisoner exposes what life is like in solitary confinement at Rikers Island and argues for its abolition.
Jury unanimously finds that prison guards violated California prisoner Jesse Perez’s constitutional rights.
California prisoners battle barbaric ‘justice’ system; Against ISIS attacks; Women under attack; Support Maati Monjib; The Burmese Way; Race, class & politics.
Prisoner supporters speak out on draconian proposals for Rikers Island jail.
Prisoners mourn and remember assassinated prisoner Hugo ‘Yogi’ Pinell.
In California the ongoing struggle of prisoners against the U.S.’s barbaric criminal justice system reached a milestone in the effort to totally transform a society in which millions of poor, unemployed and people of color end up in an inhuman gulag.
On Aug. 12, Hugo “Yogi” Pinell (1945-2015) was killed in the California State Prison-Sacramento. Pinell was a comrade of George Jackson, W.L. Nolen, James Carr, and other founders of the modern prison movement.
A roundup of struggle of LGBTQ people including around immigration, prison, sports, as well as examples of forward movement in the fight for equality and freedom.
Pelican Bay Prison guards use court-ordered “wellness checks” to harass prisoners. They make it impossible for anyone to get any sleep as they rampage through each SHU pod for 10-20 minutes.
Readers’ thoughts on “Dialectics of Philosophy and of Forces of Revolution”; “Free Mumia!”; “Federico Arcos, 1920-2015”; and a section of “Voices from Behind the Bars.”
A discussion with Philip Zimbardo followed the San Francisco premiere of “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” a movie based on his notorious 1971 experiment. It raises questions about the meaning of being human, which for Marx turned on needing human beings as free beings whose self-determining, free, conscious activity is not a mere means but the first necessity of life.
A report of two workshops on Trans liberation at the Left Forum, one that was affirming and one that provided no way forward for Trans people except a very narrow view of both gender and the Trans liberation struggle.”
The video of Cpl. Eric Casebolt’s June 5 attack on Dejerria Becton and other kids at a pool party in McKinney, Texas, went viral because it was simultaneously shocking and commonplace. In 2015 USA, protests were inevitable and were heard around the world.
How, on the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, does that document speak to what workers and prisoners are facing today?
A woman prisoner talks about how women experience Security Housing Units (SHUs) at the California Institution for Women (CIW).
Nothing can prepare you for entering the Security Housing Unit (SHU). It’s a world unto itself where cold, quiet and emptiness come together, seeping into your bones, then eventually the mind.
