Hello. My name is brother Khalfani Malik Khaldun, Indiana political prisoner. I am calling from the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility, a prison located in southern Indiana. I am presenting one of my personal pieces, “There is a storm a’coming.”
Repression breeds revolutionary resistance. We know through painful experience that freedom is never found materially given up by the oppressor it must be demanded by the oppressed. By Martin Luther king, Jr.: “Power never concedes anything without a demand. That demand has to come as a form of collective and massive revolutionary resistance.”
Today in America, still having the Thirteenth Amendment as an enforceable constitutional law, once any human being is convicted of a crime in this country, they are considered goods of enslavement. America, with 5% of the world’s population, has 25% of its prisoners.
Mass incarceration, which means a perpetual crisis of prisoners reentering society, has generated an understanding of solitary confinement’s consequence: which is absolutely negative on the human spirit, mind, and body when used as a suppressor of resistance for long-term conditions for an estimated 25,000 prisoners held in state and federal plantations.
And perhaps 80,000 others in isolation sections in other prisons are being exploited through the enforcement of this arbitrary unconstitutional law, the Thirteenth Amendment. The condition of imprisonment is tantamount to enslavement. Coupled with the exploitation of involuntary servitude, i.e. forced prison labor, there inevitably becomes a time that the human spirit says “Enough is enough.”
In 1842, Charles Dickens wrote after visiting the Eastern State Prison in Philadelphia that opened in 1829, he stated these following words: “I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body. And because its ghastly sad and tokens are not so palpable to the eye insists of touch as scars up on the surface, and it exhorts few cries that human ears can hear. Therefore, I more denounce it as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not raised up to stay.”
The inevitable collective movement giving birth surrounding labor exploitation in the Attica uprising last year was a calm before the storm, a universal fellowship of oppressed souls higher of their current conditions of being rendered slaves had said “No more. Power to the people. September the 9th through September the 12th will forever be recognized as the days a nation behind bars was built. When prisoncrats start walking off their jobs or refusing to be agents of prison exploitation, the movement is winning.
When we can improve our lines of communication from state prison to federal prison, to move as one, we are winning. When social media gets taken advantage of and promote a prison-wide national protest, we are winning. When a massive show of unity can foster national solidarity, we are winning. And it feels great. When we fight, we win. History has always been made. Our voices and demands have been heard. There is a storm a’coming, and nothing, and nobody, can stand in its way. Repression breeds resistance. And that resistance is you and me. All power to the people.
This is brother Khalfani Malik Khaldun, also known as Leonard McQuade, P.O. Box 1111, Carlisle, IN 47838. Please contact me if you want any responses or a copy of this. Power to the people. Thank you.
![Prison Radio is sharing an abbreviated version of a press release covering recent racist incidents at SCI Rockview in PA and the organizing to demand accountability. We are reaching out to people incarcerated at Rockview as well as recently transferred folks, inviting them to call, in hopes of hearing commentaries from them.
Benner Township, PA.-
On November 24th, 2023, imprisoned people at SCI Rockview found two nooses hanging in the CO’s office, displayed visibly for many prisoners to see. When the prisoners asked the staff why the nooses were hung, they were told it was a joke.
By December 4th, prisoners filed a grievance to document what they saw, noting that the hanging of the nooses was “unethical, racially motivated, hateful, [a] deliberate debasement of black inmates" and “unsafe for inmates, staff, [and] the whole prison in general.” In the grievance, they demanded that Sgt. Mosser and CO Richard be fired and investigated for a hate crime, and for CO Kirchner to get therapy. Captain Andrews, the head of security, denied the grievance.
The sergeant and COs are still working in the prison to this day, with no repercussions...
As of March 10th, prisoners have reached out to Pennsylvania officials at the Dept. of Corrections in a letter campaign, sending 100 copies of the grievance. Copies of the letter also were mailed to Governor Shapiro, Senator Fetterman, Senator Street, and various advocacy groups. The demands for relief in the original grievance have now become the platform of demands for this campaign. About 20 of the 100 letters were withheld by the prison.
Activists on the outside are joining forces with prisoners to elevate their demands, flooding the phone lines of DOC offices, assisting with outreach to media, and circulating the stories of prisoners who have found unity in opposition to the facility's virulent institutional racism.
In any other workplace, hanging a noose would be grounds for immediate termination. However, Nicki Paul, the superintendent's assistant and "grievance coordinator" informed the public that they self-investigated their staff and found they did nothing wrong.
Read the full article at i
https://conta.cc/4ayDxlB](https://www.prisonradio.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)