I need your help, ladies and gentlemen. As I’ve told you before, I am the founder of UFD, which stands for the Ujima Fraternal Dynasty. UFD is a mutual self-improvement fraternity devoted to the socioeconomic empowerment of Black and disadvantaged people, regardless of race or color. UFD seeks to unite such people in a spirit of harmony to pool their knowledge, efforts, and resources toward this end. In prison, I use UFD to positively organize, motivate, inspire, and educate young prisoners and to steer them away from gangs, drugs, and violence. I have been doing this for over 10 years. It has been an uphill battle, however, because UFD isn’t an approved inmate organization, and so I have been disciplined for unauthorized organizational activity for my outreach work among young prisoners.
I operated UFD without authorization from DOC because I know DOC isn’t supportive of efforts by prisoners to reform and rehabilitate ourselves and each other in an organized fashion, because it will ultimately lead to exposing the fact that DOC doesn’t care to correct criminal behavior. DOC, under current correction thinking and philosophy, is a failed bureaucracy. When I came here to Great Meadow, I decided to try a different tactic. I decided to seek authorization to form a prison chapter of UFD here because of the large number of young prisoners that were incarcerated here. I hoped for the best because UFD’s purpose is righteous, and UFD would do much good behind these walls, as evidenced by the lives of the young prisoners UFD has positively impacted over the years. But I prepared for the worst, knowing it’s just not within DOC to allow prisoners to organize progressively, to change and better ourselves, and thereby show them up and embarrass them. I was willing to give them the credit, however, and to submit completely to their oversight, but to no avail.
So, now I must call upon you, the public, to help me and to support UFD. There are young men behind these walls who want to change. They want to do better, and UFD will help them do exactly that. Everybody wins in the end. I’m not asking that we be treated softly or be provided with luxuries. We committed crimes, and thus we owe a debt to society, but treating us harshly and restricting our ability to correct our criminal and violent behaviors is senseless. Being incarcerated and not having our freedom is punishment enough. Beating us down and vilifying us may make victims and victim advocates feel good, but it won’t heal them. Therefore, I ask you to please call and email New York State Governor, Andrew M. Cuomo and the offices of New York State Senator, Luis Sepúlveda, the chairman of the Crime Victims, Crime, and Corrections Committee of the New York State Senate, and ask them to approve UFD. This is Dontie S Mitchell, better known as in Mfalme Sikivu, reporting to you from Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York. Follow me on Facebook at Free Dontie Mitchell. Thank you for listening. God bless.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
