By suspending the Death Penalty, Gov. Newsome shows he is governor even to the least

From Michael Reed Dorrough:

Michael Reed Dorrough’s article written in Feb-March of 2019, was published in the SF Bayview newspaper of June 2019:

via By suspending the Death Penalty, Gov. Newsome shows he is governor even to the least — Michael Dorrough is Innocent

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Statement in support of the hunger strikes that are underway

On behalf of the NCTT and the many people who struggled to be released from California’s solitary confinement.

“In every age, no matter how cruel the oppression carried on by those in power, there have been those who struggled for a different world. I believe this is the genius of humankind, the thing that makes us half divine; the fact that some human beings can envision a world that has never existed.”
Anne Braden

“Close your eyes and visualise your life without its limits.
You are the master of your destiny with the rest of your life to live.
Dwell beyond the cell into the freedom of your mind. Dare to dream of the breeze in trees with leaves that reach the skies.

Experience fresh cut cut grass beneath your free bare feet. Your lungs exhale great pleasure with the fresh crisp air they breathe.
The spirit of ancient ancestors manifest in spores that fill the sky; sunkissed babies inhale prophetic ties.King of all things living, master of things made; you will change the world tomorrow with the dreams you have made today.
Take this in your heart, keep this vision in your mind,.
This is how I see you through my open eyes.”
Author unknown

 

In Bondage

I would be wondering in distant fields
where man, and bird, and beast, live leisurely
And the old earth is kind, and ever yields
Her goodly gifts to all her children free;
Where life is fairer, lighter, less demanding,
And boys and girls have time and space for play

Before they come to years of understanding –
Somewhere I would be singing, far away.
For life is greater than the thousand wars
Men wage for it in their insatiate lust,
And will remain like the eternal stars,
When all that shines to-day is drift and dust.

But I am bound wity you in your mean graves,
O children of Palestine, simple slaves of                                                                  ruthless slaves

Taken from “In Bondage,” by Claude McKay

To/for our Palestinian Brothers and Sisters,
Your courage and leadership, as it always has been, continues to inspire us all.
Love and struggling with you

From:
Clyde (Abasi) Jackson and Michael (Zaharibu) Dorrough,
on behalf of the NCTT and those who continue to resist…

Welcome to the new site!

Since the Settlement of Ashker v. Brown, the NCTT-Cor-SHU team is being spread around in different locations. That is why the webteam has decided to make the move to WordPress and to give this site a new name and home.

Our new URL: NARNCollectivethinktank.org

Our new Twitter address: @NARNCTT

Our new Email address: NCTT [@] riseup.net

Thank you for staying with us in making change happen for justice, equality and progress!

Stop Censorship in California’s Prisons!

Read and send in your comment via this link, thank you!

Join the Facebook Page against censorship here.

Open letter to Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and Senator Loni Hancock from prisoners in solitary confinement in Corcoran State Prison

Reblogged from: SF Bay View
May 23rd 2014

by Michael R. Dorrough, J. Heshima Denham, Kambui Robinson and Jabari Scott

Dear Assemblyman Ammiano,

We write out of concern for the manner in which certain aspects of CDCR’s Step-Down Program (SDP) are being implemented.

The specific area of concern has to do with the self-directed journals and cognitive behavior therapy, which are two components of the SDP. Because the aim of these components is to change and restructure the subject’s thought processes – psychological reprograming – it is a mental health issue, which requires the involvement of mental health professionals in its implementation and oversight.

These aspects of the SDP require that an evaluation and diagnosis of each prisoner be made and a treatment plan be developed based on that evaluation and diagnosis. No such evaluations have occurred. In spite of this, a treatment plan has been developed and is being aggressively pursued.

The person who is entrusted with the responsibility for the implementation and oversight of the self-directed journals and cognitive behavioral therapy program is a “facilitator.” He has no legal certification or license to act in the role of a mental health professional.

Because cognitive behavior therapy is a mental health issue, a certified psychologist and/or psychiatrist should conduct the required evaluations, make the appropriate diagnosis and develop any treatment plan for those prisoners who warrant such treatment.

Under this circumstance, any information shared with clinicians is privileged and protected by patient confidentiality.

As it currently stands, there are no mental health professionals involved in these aspects of the SDP. Pursuant to §700.2, “Step-Down components,” the CDCR has developed a “treatment plan” – the self-directed journals and  cognitive behavior therapy – which is a one size fits all approach to psychotherapeutic reconditioning.

This is the best proof that CDCR custody staff are neither legally nor professionally qualified and certified to act in the capacity of psychiatric professionals. As it stands, any information provided under this circumstance is not protected by doctor-patient confidentiality and can be used in any manner CDCR deems fit – and this is illegal.

To compound the illegality of the policy, we are being compelled to submit to psychotherapeutic reprogramming by CDCR custody staff through naked coercion.

We are writing in the hope that legislators will affirmatively act to prohibit CDCR from continuing to violate the law. This practice, left unchecked, will only result in further legitimate criticism from human rights activists and the continued diminishment of the state’s human rights record in the eyes of the world.

At the minimum, we believe that participation in the self-directed journals and cognitive behavior therapy program should be discretionary – voluntary – as opposed to mandatory – involuntary – and placed firmly under the auspices of certified mental health professionals.

In closing, we would like to thank you for your understanding, courage and leadership demonstrated on this issue thus far.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Michael R. Dorrough, D-83611

J. Heshima Denham, J-38283

Kambui Robinson, C-82830

Jabari Scott, H-30536

The writers can all be reached at P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran CA 93212. This letter was written May 6.
——- 
Open letter to Sen. Loni Hancock from prisoners in solitary confinement in Corcoran State Prison
May 23, 2014
From: SF Bay View
by Michael R. Dorrough, J. Heshima Denham, Kambui Robinson and Jabari Scott

Dear Sen. Hancock,

We write out of concern for the manner in which certain aspects of the step-down program (SDP) are being implemented by the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation).

Specifically, our concern has to do with the self-directed journals and cognitive behavior therapy, which are two components of the SDP.

Because these components have to do with changing and restructuring the thought processes – psychological reprogramming – of people, they involve mental health issues and require the involvement of mental health professionals in their implementation and oversight.

These aspects of the SDP require that an evaluation of each prisoner be made and a treatment plan be developed based on that evaluation.

No such evaluations have occurred, and no such treatment plans have been developed.

The person who is entrusted with the responsibility for the implementation and oversight of the self-directed journals and cognitive behavior program is a facilitator. He has no legal certification to carry out the role of a mental health professional. Because cognitive behavior therapy is a mental health issue, a psychologist or psychiatrist should be conducting the required evaluations and developing any treatment plan for those prisoners who warrant such treatment.

Under this circumstance, any information that is shared is privileged information, protected by confidentiality. Yet there are no mental health professionals involved in these aspects.

Pursuant to §700.2, Step-down program components, the CDCR has developed a treatment plan, the self-directed journals and cognitive behavior therapy, which is a one size fits all approach to psychotherapy. This is the best proof that CDCR custody staff are neither legally nor professionally qualified or certified to carry out the role of psychiatric professionals.

Any information provided under this circumstance is not protected by doctor-patient confidentiality and can be used in any manner the CDCR deems fit.

This is illegal. To compound the illegality, we are being compelled to submit to psychotherapeutic reprogramming by CDCR custody staff.

We are writing in the hope that the legislators will affirmatively act to prohibit the CDCR from continuing to violate the law.

This practice, gone unchecked, will only result in further legitimate criticism from human rights activists, and the continued diminishment of the states human rights record in the eyes of the world.

At minimum, we believe that participation in the self-directed journals and cognitive behavior therapy program should be voluntary and not mandatory and that it should be done under the auspices of certified mental health professionals.

In closing, we would like to thank you for your understanding and for the courage and leadership that you have demonstrated on this matter.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Michael R. Dorrough, D-83611
J. Heshima Denham, J-38283
Kambui Robinson, C-82830
Jabari Scott, H-30536

The writers can all be reached at P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran CA 93212. This letter was written May 6.

A Eulogy for Chokwe Lumumba (2-25-2014)

In the 1980s the Ku Klux Klan planned to march down West St. in Downtown Jackson, MS, and Chokwe and the New Afrikan People’s Organization (of which me and my homies were members of their ‘self-defense forces corps’) had organized a counter-protest of hundreds and hundreds of New Afrikan people, and some White brothers and sisters, and we all converged on West St.

I was young, ultra-radical, and full of fire – and I really wanted a physical engagement, but it was not  to be – and that was a good thing. The cops were out in full force with riot sticks, and the Klan were grouped around their 3 busses ant the top of West St. with the cops – some Black – in a defensive line protecting them.

Chokwe was at the head of us all, with a bullhorn telling us all how we were not going to let the Klan march. As Chokwe inspired us all, he yelled out: “They have the ‘po-lice’ to protect them and their hate, and we have our protectors of our right!”And when he said it, 30 NAPO-S.D.C. soldiers – big, musclebound New Afrikan men in black muscle shirts, black tame, and black combat boots, detached from the crowd in perfect unison, and walked into the street in orderly rows, assuming parade rest opposite the police – those of us from the corps (most of us were former street thugs) converged in the street behind them, pumping our fists in the air, and as we did so, a miracle occurred: the Klan piled back onto their busses and pulled out! Chokwe yelled, as though he knew the course of events all along: “The Klan’s not going to march here today – we are!” – and began to lead us all in a historic march down West St. and throughout downtown Jackson, ending in a vacant lot on Farish St. (a historically and traditionally New Afrikan section of Downtown) and gave a rousing speech on the merits of anti-racism, human dignity, and resistance to hate.

The feeling I felt this day, the elation, love, and unity has never left my mind, nor did this tall, wise, slim man who invoked it in me: Chokwe Lumumba. I loved him, I still love him – and I will always love him. I have always, by writ of my social experiences and development, been imbued with revolutionary potential – but it was Chokwe who inspired me to try and fulfill that potential – to translate these ideas into a social force.

Our world is diminished without him, but I will never stop seeking to live up to the example he set for me over 30 years ago.

March 2014

Ncttcorshu.org

Published as part of the article: Chokwe Lumumba: Dare to struggle, dare to win!  in the SF Bay View

Declining a Deal with the Devil: Coercive journaling required to ‘step down’ from solitary confinement – A Discussion on the coercive nature of Par. 700.2 of CDCR’s Security Threat Group Pilot Program

This was published in the SF Bay View:

“The chief function of the disciplinary power is to ‘train’… It ‘trains’ the moving, confused, useless multitudes of bodies and forces them into a multiplicity of individual elements – small, separate cells … combinatory segments.
“Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise … The exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation: an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see [the] induce[d] effects of power, and in which, conversely, the means of coercion make those on whom they are applied clearly visible.” – Michel Foucault: “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison”* (1977)

Salutations, Brothers and Sisters,

Our need to have this discussion comes on the heels of a number of people who were taken before the Departmental Review Board (DRB) here at California State Prison-Corcoran SHU (Security Housing Unit) on Nov. 12, 13 and 14, 2013, pursuant to the new SDP (Step Down Program) pilot program.

Comrade Zaharibu Dorrough also attended the DRB on Nov. 13, 2013, and was placed in Step 2 of the SDP with an understanding that, if accepted and completed, Zah would be transferred to Tehachapi SHU and placed in Step 3, where, according to Section 3334 (k) (Page 153), contact visits are allowed.

Contradictory positions are being taken by administration officials as to whether or not participating in the self-directed journals portion of the CDCR’s cognitive restructuring program (brainwashing), as described in Section 700.2 of the pilot program, is mandatory. [SFBayView.com, at http://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/CDCR%E2%80%99s-Oct.-11-2012-Security-Threat-Group-Pilot-Program.pdf, is the only place online where the SDP can be found.]

But since implicit in making it a requirement that people participate in those programs available in each step and that any failure to do so will result in a person being moved back to Step 1 until that person agrees to subordinate him/herself to the dictates of Section 700.2, the cognitive restructuring/brainwashing program is, clearly, mandatory.

It has also been established that a facility has been opened at Pelican Bay in Del Norte County for those prisoners who have medical and mental health problems.

 If prisoners choose not to participate in the Step Down Program or any aspect of it, retaliation follows, ranging from a person being put back in Step 1 to a person being transferred to Pelican Bay.

There is absolutely nothing at all that distinguishes the DRB and STG (Security Threat Group) Committee from any other committee. And while the new policies will result in some prisoners being released to general population, these new policies do not represent a pathway to general population or even a less restrictive housing environment, as the CDCR is quick to claim for certain prisoners.

Specifically though, it is the CDCR’s attempt to brainwash us all through their behavior modification program. And that is exactly what the cognitive restructuring program is.We have had the opportunity to see and read the self-directed journals. They are insidious.

The NCTT-Cor-SHU (New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN) Collective Think Tank Corcoran SHU) has articulated in previous statements** how the self-directed journals, their themes, and the additional “integrated, cognitive behavior change program” are a systematic and progressive brainwashing initiative designed to emulate in those subjected to it the same personality restructuring as the debriefing process – i.e., character invalidation, Skinnerian operant conditioning (learned helplessness) etc. – introduction of state-approved new attitudes through “thought reformation,” criminalization of cultural mores, disorganization of group standards, prohibition of group activities not consistent with brainwashing objectives, encounter group sensitivity sessions, Synanon Attack Therapy etc.

It is our assessment that politically mature and ideologically advanced men and women could be subjected to such brainwashing techniques and suffer no deleterious effects, save the insult towards one’s dignity that the state would dare attempt to use such transparent and futile techniques against us.

However, that is not the case for younger and/or less developed prisoners. Many of these young men and women may view the themes of some of these journals and have no experiential basis from which to even understand their meaning, let alone the processes attendant to them, thus leaving them all vulnerable to these brainwashing techniques.

In order to successfully complete this aspect of the Step Down Program, you must be willing to accept and believe all of the absolute worst things that the state has said about us all and continues to say – and invalidate yourself completely.

Prison is not conducive to the maturation process, and the less developed we are, the easier it is, even in the face of resistance, for us to be turned into whatever the state wants us to be. That is why study is so very important.

Taking certain people before the DRB and placing them in certain steps is an effort by the CDCR to try and exploit the perception of influence of principled people and to try and legitimize the Step Down Program itself and the brainwashing components thereof.

It is the CDCR’s hope that they will be able to use as leverage the decades of sensory deprivation confinement of many of us. The prospect of our having access to our families and loved ones will persuade us to comply, and they will use what they perceive as our influence to herd untold numbers of underdeveloped and impressionable men and women into a process we know full well will result in them being transformed into broken people, a submissive and subservient population of prisoners who will make the misappropriation of tax dollars a more orderly enterprise.

There is no set of circumstances in which any principled person would agree to aid the state in carrying out such an insidious, vile and patently evil process.

The Step Down Program and Cognitive Restructuring Program that the CDCR is attempting to implement seems to have been first introduced in the New Mexico Penitentiary after the riot there in 1980. In a book titled “The Hate Factory” by G. Hirliman, there is a discussion about the efforts to implement the Cognitive Restructuring Program as part of a “behaviorally based step program,” as well as efforts to defeat it – by prisoners, their families and prison reform advocates, as well as a lawsuit filed by the ACLU to stop its use. From Hirliman’s book (Pages viii-ix; see Google Books for a digital version of these pages):

“The genius who shaped the Cognitive Restructuring program for prisons is Dr. Stanton Samenow. He believes that people are born criminals. It’s not the environment or anything else that makes a criminal: it’s in his genes, he’s predisposed. Therefore, there’s only one cure: reprogramming. … Doctor Samenow began applying this process to the treatment of criminals during a study he conducted with criminally insane inmates at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. …
“He did not prove the rehabilitative success of Cognitive Restructuring during his six-year study at St. Elizabeth’s, however.”

In spite of this, and it should come as no surprise, Dr. Samenow is popular within law enforcement, corrections and the political establishment. The American Community Corrections Institute or ACCI, for instance, uses cognitive restructuring.

There is no marked difference between asking us to endorse – via our participation – a state-sponsored brainwashing program like this and asking us to convince the women in Valley State, CIW and CCWF prisons to submit to sterilization!

That we are having a conversation about behavior modification, forced female sterilization and human experimentation in the modern California Department of Corrections should arouse this entire nation to arms against such structural fascism in its midst.

Despite the historic and heroic efforts of numerous activists and principled journalists across this state, nation and globe in raising public awareness of U.S. domestic torture units in supermax prisons across America, this particular issue, the active pursuit of brainwashing prisoners against their will, and now the revelation that hundreds of women were sterilized by the state – on American soil or anywhere else on this planet for that matter – has simply not garnered the degree of public discourse that it warrants.

Consider for a moment: The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and Justice Now found that the CDCR conducted 116 illegal sterilizations for purposes of “birth control” during caesarian section without the consent of their victims, though this is prohibited under federal, state and common law. This was not only common practice in CDCR facilities for women but, like mass incarceration itself, medical staff disproportionately targeted New Afrikan (Black) and Latino women.

With this in mind, this same agency seeks to instruct and alter the values, moral compasses and thought processes of prisoners via thematic journals with themes such as “Social values,” “Thinking errors” and “Values” – the latter which proposes to “guide inmates through an evaluation of the criminal values that have influenced their lives and help them weigh the consequences of living a life based on criminal values versus responsible values”!

The sheer mengalesque authoritarian hypocrisy of this department is breathtakingly horrifying.
The CDCR is presiding over the largest domestic torture program in the U.S. engaged in forced sterilization and advocating the mandatory brainwashing of scores of SHU prisoners – and they want to instruct us in “social values,” “thinking errors” and what is and is not “criminal”? Seriously?!

Where is the Legislature, the Congress, Department of Justice while this resurgence of Nazi-era pseudo-science is being codified into CDCR policy with taxpayer funding? Where is the Sacramento Bee, CBS, Oakland Tribune, NBC, LA Times, ABC, San Diego Union Tribune, Fox News or the Associated Press while horrors prohibited by the Nuremberg Code are given new life in contemporary penal best practices?
Has this society truly decayed so thoroughly that our culture, our communities – all of us: free and bond, rich and poor, all cultures and religions – will tolerate public officials engaging in such repugnant assaults on the very fabric of humanity without the most vocal and vigorous organized outrage?!

What must be understood is that these are not assaults on prisoners but on the very nature of human civilization. We ask you all, have we truly sunk so low into the quagmire of individualistic pursuits and sidewalk escapism indicative of the capitalist arrangement that we cannot even be roused to mass resistance against state-sponsored torture, sterilization and brainwashing? The NCTT, indeed all of us simply refuse to believe this. The past two and a half years in particular give credence to the dynamic influence of people power and its transformative potential.

If the CDCR were genuinely sincere that the SDP is a legitimate path out of the torture unit for prisoners – as opposed to another venue to break men’s and women’s minds, Section 700.2 of the STG Pilot Program would be discretionary, not mandatory. Under such circumstances, perhaps, prisoners confined to these torture units might be amenable to at least giving the program a try. Unfortunately, that’s simply not their position. And that is the best proof of the program’s actual intent.

We should all consider that while to some, including some of us in prison, these may simply be compelling words on paper, in truth this really is about human lives and minds – some of who will, consciously or unconsciously, spread these techniques to those communities that they will go back to.
This alone should move us all to action.

“Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.” – Mahatma Mohandas S. Gandhi

Long live the spirit of the beloved Herman Wallace – love and with you always.

Send our brothers of the NCTT-Cor-SHU some love and light:

• Michael (Zaharibu) Dorrough, D-83611, 4B-1L-43, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212
• J. Heshima Denham, J-38283, 4B-1L-43, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212
• Kambui Robinson, C-82830, 4B-1L-49, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212
• Jabari Scott, H-30536, 4B-1L-63, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

*Google Books description of Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison”: “In this brilliant work, the most influential philosopher since Sartre suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner’s body to his soul.”

**Earlier articles by NCTT-Cor-SHU on brainwashing of California prisoners are “Creating broken men?” “Creating broken men, Part 2” and “Legislative alert: CDCR’s Step-Down Pilot Program is in fact systematic, mandatory brainwashing.” [or on this site]

CDCR Implements New Brainwashing Tactic, [possibly] Mandatory ‘Journaling,’ as Part of Step-Down Program

This piece was written as a follow up to two previously published essays (see: Legislative alert: CDCR’s Step-Down Pilot Program is in fact systematic, mandatory brainwashing  and: Creating Broken Men, pt 2) on the mandatory brainwashing by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) of thousands of people confined in Secure Housing Units (SHU’s). 

——————————-

A recap of the discussion we started here:

1. One of our brothers who has been in the SHU for 25 years was taken to the review board and they attempted to bribe him with the promise of transfer to another prison and contact-visits in Step 3 of CDCR’s Step-Down-Program (SDP) if he agreed to participate in Step 2 for six months – most centrally the “self-directed journal” outlined in Section 700.2 [p.42-45] of CDCR’s “Security-Threat-Group-Pilot-Program” – their hope being if he does it, then countless other younger, more vulnerable prisoners can be herded into this brainwashing program. He of course refused.

2. We had an opportunity to review one of the journals (The Con Game) and it’s even worse than we thought – well, more accurately, it’s exactly what we knew it would be: a blatant character invalidation and brainwashing tool.

3. Most disturbing of all, they’ve announced a director’s rules change to provisions of CCR Section 3040, which introduces mandatory brainwashing for EVERY PRISONER IN CDCR – called “cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)” – and attaching it to this same regulation that governs mandatory work and education assignments while confined to CDCR.

I think I may have been unclear as to what we were speaking of as it relates to these journals. “Interactive journaling” (for which “The Change Companies” has a registration in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) is just one component of the “Cognitive Restructuring ” [or “brainwashing”] Program” described in paragraph 700.2 of the Step-Down-Program (SDP) p.42-45.

The 21 Journals are simply the first phase of  “… an integrated, cognitive behavior change program…” If this first Journal theme is any indication, the primary purpose of these Journals is “character invalidation,” validating conservative authoritarian views as “responsible thinking and beliefs,” and developing a psychological profile by which to alter the core psychology of the subject.

There is much more involved in this, but these primary components are necessary in any form of brainwashing. What makes this so insidious is they use language that actually seeks to characterize sociological phenomena like poverty or educational underdevelopment as absolutely irrelevant factors in the subject’s decision to violate the state “law” or rebel against personal property – and it’s solely and completely the subject’s “fault;” and this runs contrary to all objective sociological and economic research and evidence available. For example, the Journal The Con Game begins by stating:

“Changing your criminal behavior is a tough job… in order to begin making positive changes to the way you think and act, you must first break through your con game. This journal will help you recognize your faulty beliefs and encourage you to change your behavior. .. Be careful! Answer honestly. Don’t be a victim of your own con game.”

It goes on to a section “Don’t fall for myths… that support the con game,” which is a collection of conservative, right-wing political views on social issues overly simplified and couched in unambiguous absolute language.

For example:

“ Myth: Criminals are the victims of society. They are products of dysfunctional families, abusive childhoods, bad neighborhoods, poor schools, and an unfair economic system. “My criminal behavior isn’t my fault. I just learned to survive the best way I knew how.” Truth: Each person is responsible for his or her own thinking and behavior. Many people grow up in difficult circumstances and lead responsible, crime-free lives. Task: Explain how you have practiced this myth in the past.”

The real truth is, both of these views have a direct impact on the viable choices and ultimate decisions of the underclass whether “the law” is a barrier to their survival. The choice between starvation and theft is an easy one – the human imperative of survival will always win out. There are not “many” people who grew up in underclass communities who lived “crime-free lives” –  the underground economy in most underclass communities is as legitimate as the “mainstream” economy. This is a sociological fact. This absolutist view – this black and white notion of human survival in capitalist America is the sole province of the conservative right and simply ignores empirical socio-economic data and proof.

These journal-authors continue to seek to impose a supply-side solution to a demand-driven problem; this covers 2 very different types of social behavior: predatory crimes (robbery, home invasion, car-jacking) and market-based crimes (drug trafficking, prostitution, illegal gambling, etc.) – neither can be significantly reduced from the supply-side. “Supply & demand” in this case is a question of social conformity vs. human need. “Supply” in the case of ‘predatory’ crimes is the number of people (poor) beyond the threshold of social conformity due to economic need and “demand” is the relative socio-economic conditions and/or desperation compelling them to act to relieve that economic distress.

As long as the conditions (social & economic, i.e. poverty, disproportionate concentrations of wealth, lack of opportunities, hopelessness, etc.) which compel low income populations to commit predatory crimes exist, there will be enough of the poor willing to “break the law” to meet their needs….  And they knowthis.

At the same time, there has never been a single case in history where a black market was defeated from the “supply”-side. From prostitution to prohibition, from gambling to illicit drugs – the story is the same. Supply-side controls act, much like price supports in agri-commodities, to encourage production and increase profits. At best a few mid-level intermediaries get knocked out of business. But as long as demand persists, the market is served more or less as before. In the meantime the failure to “win the war” on this or that vice becomes a pretext for increasing police budgets, expanding law enforcement powers, pouring more money into the voracious maw of the prison industrial complex, and apparently funding wholesale brainwashing programs to condition guys to believe none of this is true and it’s just all their fault.

These journal-editors go on to explain your “barriers to change…” They state, 

“If you want to make lasting, positive life changes, you will want to carefully cultivate your thoughts and behaviors. The first step is to recognize those negative or criminal traits… If you don’t make a strong and consistent effort to change these beliefs and behaviors they will continue to lead you towards … criminal activities.”

They list 8 “barriers” (entitlement, insecurity, manipulation, selfishness, lying, cutting corners, superiority, and dominance) then ask you to read their descriptions of each, admit you conduct yourself like this, then “Give an example of how you might think of act this way.” This is a classic character validation – to successfully complete this section you must state you are an insecure, entitled, manipulative, selfish, lying, superior, domineering, corner-cutter – a piece of scum.

They go on to state: 

“Go over your answers you have given in this section, now use the space below to describe those areas you are willing to change today to drop the con game.”

Now men like us don’t even think this way, and to be honest, this process is aimed at these youngsters, not us.

The journal-editors go on to ask you to explain (give an example):

–          You are good at convincing people of your point of view
–          Are you good at coming up with things people want to hear most?
–          Are you successful at getting people to trust what you say when you are lying?

As this goes on and on, basically you have to explain how you’re a manipulative liar – classic character invalidation; they even ask you to admit you’re like a reptile:

“A chameleon is a reptile that can change its color so as to blend in with its surroundings. How has your past behavior been similar to the actions of a chameleon? Explain.”

Et cetera for 22 pages. They even go so far as to instruct you to ignore your instincts to resist this conditioning, stating:

“Feelings of fear and doubt are part of being human. As you begin to make positive changes, these feelings will appear from time to time… It will be helpful if you fully accept who you are today… you have an opportunity to continue along the path toward responsible thinking and behavior. Maintaining positive change requires you to concentrate on continually challenging your beliefs and actions. All the work you are doing will allow you to reach a point of inner peace. Accept the real you, not the “con” you.”

Just the words themselves are chilling. I am a revolutionary, a progressive, a righteous man – my beliefs and actions are just and correct, they would subject much younger, less developed, and more impressionable men to this process transforming them into docile, subservient, broken slaves parroting the ideas and beliefs of the Tea Party Republican caucus.

Again, this is just the preparatory stage, conditioning the mind of the subject to accept he is just a scumbag because he was born a scumbag and his only hope is to acknowledge this, denounce himself and adopt their predetermined set of “responsible beliefs, thinking, and ideas” and you don’t have a choice in the matter.

This matter is so sick, they accompany the words with imagery designs to impress upon your subconscious mind the brainwashing objectives they seek you to adopt. As I told you in a previous communique “The Change Companies” have their copyright registration notice on page 2 which includes a trade-marked “process.” However, it has been redacted. It looks like this (see ill.):

A covered -up trademark “process”

So they don’t even want us knowing what process is being used against us. This is one of the reasons we need to get as much information as we can on “The Change Companies.” 

It is our understanding that they do have this same “process” being used in other states, but only California is making it compulsory. If someone wants to subject themselves to systematic brainwashing techniques – by all means feel free; the U.S. has become ever more complacent in accepting behavior modification in their daily lives in everything from weight loss and anger management – to stopping smoking – but these things are both mild and most importantly voluntary – what we’re talking about here is a radical, 4 year long (1 year at minimum – if you start in step 4) alteration of the core psychology of tens of thousands of prisoners to reflect the attitudes and beliefs of authoritarian conservatism, of the state and interests of its ruling class (to be docile, submissive to authority, long suffering toward exploitation and socio-economic disenfranchisement, and above all to notseek any change in the system itself – to ask their status and role of oppressed man/woman).

I sincerely do not believe anyone has looked into the legality of this program – no more than they looked off into the NSA’s practice of spying on every American in the U.S. and most of the rest of the world either.

The COMPAS Program

The “Compas Program” (which is part of the “cognitive behaviorial therapy” initiative they’ve just made mandatory for everyone in CDCR with a release date) begins with a “compass assessment” quiz which’ answers will be used to not simply discern which brainwashing components to employ against the subject – but to build a forensic profile of the subject’s friends, family, and community. 

“Compas” stands for “Correctional Offender Management and Profiling for Alternative Sanctions.” This is truly sinister and diabolical what is going on here in California.

Some samples of questions this COMPAS assessment asks to people who have to do these journals:

Family of origin:

Question 3) How is your relationship with parents (parental figure) and / or siblings?

Peers:

Q. 11) In the last couple of years before this incarceration, how many of your friends / aquaintances were taking illegal drugs?

Substance abuse:

Q. 22) Did you use heroin, cocain, crack or meth as a juvenile?

Residence / Stability:

Q. 24) In the last 12 months before this incarceration, how often did you move?

Social environment:

Q. 34) In the neighborhood you lived in before this incarceration, did some of your friends or family feel they needed to carry a weapon to protect themselves?

Q. 37) In the neighborhood you lived in before this incarceration, was it easy to get drugs?

Education:

Q. 39) What were your usual grades in High School?

Vocation:

Q. 51) Thinking of your financial situation prior to this incarceration, how often did you have conflict with friends/family ove rmoney?

Q. 56) Thinking of your financial situation prior to this incarceration, how often did you have barely enough money to get by?

Leisure / recreation:

Q. 65) In your leisure time prior to this incarceration, how often did you feel bored?

Social isolation:

Q. 69) “I felt lonely.”

Criminal personality:

Q. 82) To get ahead in life you must always put yourself first.

Anger: 

Q. 83) Some peopel see me as a violent person.

Q. 86) If people make me angry or lose my temper, I can be dangerous.

Criminal attitudes: 

Q. 88) A hungry person has a right to steal.

Q. 89) When people get into trouble whti the law it’s because they have no chance to get a decent job. 

Q. 92) When things get stolen from rich people they won’t miss this stuff because insurance will cover the loss.

Q. 96) Many people get into trouble or use drugs, because society has given them no educatioj, job or future.

With this information they compile a profile to determine which brainwashing techniques and programs will best achieve the ends they seek – and then enroll you forcibly. If you refuse, they write you a 115 for “Refusing a direct order” – or in case of the Step-Down-Program  – leave you in Step 1. 

No better representation of authoritarian excess exists than CDCR’s brainwashing programs.

Not only do CDCR want to be able to march into those Legislative Hearings in February trumpeting how they have this program underway and men are going for it – they want to use men like us to convince all these other men that it’s okay to submit to this also.

Written on Dec. 18^th2013 in a letter to the webmaster. 

—-

What you can do:

Protest this making mandatory of psychological “therapy” that collects all personal information and uses it to manipulate the person in prison even more:

Write today January 7th (or just write and make your opinion known!):

There will be a public hearing on this on Jan. 7, 2014, at 10-11 a.m. in the Kern Room at 1515 S St., North Building, Sacramento.

To: CDCR Regulation and Policy Management Branch P.O. Box 942883 Sacramento, CA 94283-0001

RPMB@cdcr.ca.gov

Re: CCR Title 15, Section 3040 new rules changes relating to Section 700.2 of the Step Down Program [p.42-45]

Legislative alert: CDCR’s Step-Down Pilot Program is in fact systematic, mandatory brainwashing

By NCTTCorSHU

There is a matter of some urgency that should be passed along as broadly as possible, because it is just that serious. We issued a statement, “Creating broken men, Part 2,” where we voiced our outrage at the inclusion of the mandatory brainwashing components of Section 700.2 [p. 42-45] of the CDCR’s Step Down Program (SDP.) Since that time several things have developed:

1. The doctors took Zaharibu Dorrough to the review board and attempted to bribe him with the promise of transfer to Tehachapi and touch visits in Step 3 IF he agreed to participate in Step 2 for six months – most centrally the “self-directed journal” outlined in Section 700.2 [p.42-45] – their hope being if Zah does it, then countless other younger, more vulnerable prisoners can be herded into this brainwashing program. He of course refused, and we’re putting the finishing touches on a new statement on all of this, so I’ll leave that point.

2. We had an opportunity to review one of the journals (“The Con Game”) and it’s even worse than we thought – well, more accurately, it’s exactly what we knew it would be: a blatant character invalidation and brainwashing tool.

3. Most disturbing of all, they’ve announced a director’s rules change to provisions of CCR Section 3040, which introduces mandatory brainwashing for EVERY PRISONER IN CDCR – called “cognitive behavioral therapy” – and attaching it to this same regulation that governs mandatory work and education assignments while confined to CDCR.

All of this is in violation of Article 1 of the Nuremburg Code and the most fundamental basics of human rights. I don’t know if this is simply an issue most don’t genuinely understand or if CDCR has so thoroughly hidden and downplayed what they are attempting – but this is the single greatest evil this struggle faces. It is even more urgent than the issue of indefinite solitary sensory deprivation confinement.

What we have determined is CDCR’s SDP Pilot Program has zero to do with “a behavior-based path for ‘validated’ prisoners to exit the SHU” and is in fact a systematic and mandatory brainwashing program using the prospect of eventual SHU release as the coercive component to force men and women to submit to these techniques.

According to the SDP/STG [Security Threat Group] policy, if you refuse to submit to the “cognitive restructuring” components of the SDP, such as “self-directed journals,” you will be “stuck” in whatever step they decide to stick you in … forever – or, like the debriefing process, until you finally capitulate and ask them to brainwash you. In other words, you can be “STG behavior”-free for, presumably, the rest of your life and you’ll still be stuck in say, Step 2, in the SHU.

They have changed nothing, but are creating a new and more efficient means to produce the same broken minds and subservient slaves as the debriefing process – only on a much grander scale. It is in fact worse than the debriefing process – and not simply in the SHU. They seek to extend this to every prison and prisoner in CDCR’s custody.

CDCR is in the process of changing their regulations to incorporate mandatory brainwashing – what they’re calling in this proposed rules change “cognitive behavioral therapy,” which they define as “evidence-based psychotherapeutic treatment which addresses dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behaviors, and cognitive processes in all three areas to reach proscribed goals” – to ensure everyone who enters CDCR will leave it a warped, submissive and subservient slave.

What we have determined is CDCR’s SDP Pilot Program has zero to do with “a behavior-based path for ‘validated’ prisoners to exit the SHU” and is in fact a systematic and mandatory brainwashing program using the prospect of eventual SHU release as the coercive component to force men and women to submit to these techniques.

To ensure their capacity to force this conditioning on prisoners, they’ve actually attached this sick, twisted assault on the underclass to provisions of CCR Title 15, Section 3040, Participation, which makes work, education and “other programs” mandatory for all CDCR prisoners. It in turn derives its authority from the slavery provisions of the 13th Amendment. I can only describe this as evil. Every activist, family member and citizen should be mobilizing against this manifestation of fascism in their midst.

Here they seek to instill beliefs and values which are synonymous with those of right-wing, authoritarian conservatism – while simultaneously seeking to absolve the nature and structure of capitalist society and contrapositive authoritarian conditioning inherent in the U.S. fascist mass psychology for any of society’s ills, including institutional racism, sexism, intentional underdevelopment, social containment and criminalization.

Instead they seek to lay all blame at the feet of the individual and their choices – a view rejected and debunked by sociological and criminological academia for decades. The origin of all crime is the disproportionate distribution of wealth, privilege and opportunity in a society – not simply individual choices. It is the lack of viable choices which coerces people into the underground economy – and inevitably into prisons where they’ve erected a multi-billion dollar industry built on jailing millions of poor people and people of color.

CDCR is in the process of changing their regulations to incorporate mandatory brainwashing – what they’re calling in this proposed rules change “cognitive behavioral therapy,” to ensure everyone who enters CDCR will leave it a warped, submissive and subservient slave.

These journals stress “taking personal responsibility,” but CDCR takes none for the hundreds of female prisoners they forcibly sterilized in California prisons, the tens of thousands subjected to years of psychological torture in U.S. SHU units, the tens of billions of dollars pillaged from underclass and minority communities by lending institutions during the subprime loan fiascos, the centuries of institutional racism, sexism, xenophobia and state-sponsored hate that adversely affects the “choices” available to the people subjected to these structural components of U.S. capitalism.

Financial corporations embezzled billions of dollars from hundreds of millions of U.S. citizens – via credit default swaps and other exotic financial instruments – in 2008, and not one of these Wall Street executives or government regulators has spent a day in jail.

There’s a guy in 3 Block who got caught with 20 rocks of cocaine and another guy in B Section who stole two pizzas, and they both got 25 to life under the three strikes law – and CDCR and “The Change Company” [the name of the vendor providing them with the journals] have the audacity and unmitigated gall to speak of “responsible” vs. “irresponsible” thinking.

The origin of all crime is the disproportionate distribution of wealth, privilege and opportunity in a society – not simply individual choices. It is the lack of viable choices which coerces people into the underground economy – and inevitably into prisons where they’ve erected a multi-billion dollar industry built on jailing millions of poor people and people of color.

Prisons are tools of repression to enforce property rights and maintain the current social order. Social conditions in these capitalist nations are such that “perpetual growth” has met the boundaries of planetary ecological/environmental capacity. They can’t keep on reaping super profits from the appropriation of surplus labor value without meeting ever increasing resistance from those suffering the ever decreasing share of wealth and resources available.

Their solution is to increase the psychological and behavioral malleability and passivity of the most potentially revolutionary segments of U.S. society: the underclass, the working poor, the unemployed … the prisoner. CDCR is and has always been a model for the nation in prison “best practices.” As goes California – so goes the nation.

The introduction and imposition of mandatory brainwashing – cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive restructuring, self-directed journals, behavior modification etc. – across CDCR facilities will produce a steady stream of broken men and women; who will in turn take these techniques, warped values, authoritarian beliefs and twisted ideals out to their communities where, just like those female slaves who were subjected to “slave seasoning” would raise their sons to be “good boys” – physically strong, so they could work hard, but psychologically and emotionally weak, so they would not rebel against the institution of slavery and thereby be murdered brutally by the slavemaster.

Prisons are tools of repression to enforce property rights and maintain the current social order.

These broken men and women will warp the minds of others, who will in turn warp others, until we will have a docile, submissive, subservient U.S. underclass population, content to continue enduring even more exploitation, more severe repression, and even greater usurpations – all because we, the progressives, the revolutionaries, the social justice activists, the common man and woman failed to act.

I feel at times as though many simply don’t understand what’s transpiring, its interconnections and its ultimate social impact. There are no disparate social forces – all is interconnected, and it is within these interconnections that the vast, horrifying, awe-inspiring scope of what these evil people are trying to do becomes sickeningly clear.

I don’t believe the legislators in Sacramento know this is the case. Coercive behavior modification and/or cognitive restructuring techniques are prohibited under Article 1 of the Nuremburg Code. The forced sterilization of female prisoners is a war crime.

Female slaves who were subjected to “slave seasoning” would raise their sons to be “good boys” – physically strong, so they could work hard, but psychologically and emotionally weak, so they would not rebel against the institution of slavery and thereby be murdered brutally by the slavemaster.

The fact that we must invoke the Nuremburg Code and war crimes statutes to oppose what a prison system in the U.S. is doing is the best proof of 1) how racist, sick and inhumane the U.S. actually is and 2) how completely oblivious the U.S. population is of this fact – and the U.S. mass media is complicit in this. It is my assessment that U.S. journalists have so thoroughly crafted this image of what they want the world to believe American society is, they willfully conceal, under-report and ignore and fail to investigate its vilest contradictions in order to preserve this illusion. Any journalist who claims ignorance must acknowledge it is a willful ignorance.

We simply can’t stand idly by and allow something like his to sweep up untold generations in this sick process. History will judge us all harshly should we do so. Every activist, every able-bodied person, period, should be mobilizing to oppose these violations of the Nuremburg Code.

Now as it relates to Section 700.2 of the SDP [p.42-45], noise has to be made about it, like nothing before, but as it relates to the new director’s rules changes to Title 15, Section 3040 and related sections, there will be a public hearing on this on Jan. 7, 2014, at 10-11 a.m. in the Kern Room at 1515 S St., North Building, Sacramento.

Written comments may be sent by mail to CDCR, Regulation and Policy Management Branch (RPMB), P.O. Box 942883, Sacramento, CA 94283, by fax to (916) 324-6075 or by email to RPMB@cdcr.ca.gov, by 5 p.m. on Jan. 7, 2014.

There will be a public hearing on this on Jan. 7, 2014, at 10-11 a.m. in the Kern Room at 1515 S St., North Building, Sacramento.

The Kern Room should be packed with protestors on Jan. 7 at 10 a.m. to bring media attention to the reality of this evil. A letter writing and email campaign should be organized to flood them with complaints about this continually leading up to Jan. 7.

I’m contacting everyone I can on this, and I do encourage you to do the same. This is even more important than the abolition of SHU.

The Kern Room should be packed with protestors on Jan. 7 at 10 a.m. to bring media attention to the reality of this evil.

It is these people’s intention to subject tens of thousands of prisoners, 95 percent of them hailing from underclass communities, to systematic cognitive restructuring where they begin with “character invalidation” and end with the complete subordination of their minds and behaviors to the dictates of authoritarian conservatism, manufacturing a docile, subservient population of men and women WHO WILL TAKE THESE SAME TECHNIQUES OUT TO THEIR COMMUNITES, warping the minds of generations to come.

In so doing, they not only make the expropriation of tax dollars, at the expense of prisoners, a more orderly process, but also make the exploitation of labor in society at large a less burdensome ordeal for corporations by stamping out the very thought of resistance or progressive, pro-people organizing.

Viewing all of this through the prism of its Hitlerian magnitude, the insidiousness of this undertaking is inspiringly horrific. We shouldn’t be having this discussion – these people have gone mad!

It is these people’s intention to subject tens of thousands of prisoners, 95 percent of them hailing from underclass communities, to systematic cognitive restructuring where they begin with “character invalidation” and end with the complete subordination of their minds and behaviors to the dictates of authoritarian conservatism, manufacturing a docile, subservient population of men and women.

The contact person on the brainwashing provisions of the new Section 3040 (et al) is Timothy Lockwood, (916) 445-2269 or RPMB@cdcr.gov. Regarding the subject matter, contact Michele Gonzalez at (916) 323-6662.

A note on those “self-directed journals,” at least all those CDCR is using: They have printed at the bottom of each page and the answer sheets: “It is illegal to photocopy this in any shape or form.” That alone should show anyone interested there’s something very wrong here.

Screenshots of the par. 700.2 (page 42-45) Step Down Program about the journaling:

On the Correlation Between the Willie Lynch Method and the Debriefing Process

This is a Zine or Pamphlet written by J. Heshima Denham, a member of the N.C.T.T.-Cor-SHU, in 2005. It was also published in: Prison Art Newsletter  Vol, 5 (2005) nr 5 (where we found it, link is gone).

See also the Freedom Archives for the whole PDF: http://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Torture/510.correlation.lynch.debriefing.pdf

By J. Heshima Denham, with an introduction by Ed Mead

The cause of progressive social change is the guiding ideological force behind the Party’s works, policies, and programs and it’s in fact the very reason for its existence.

For purposes of this essay, “The Party”, encompasses all imprisoned revolutionaries, including all politically aligned units and organizations, as well as individual revolutionary activists. Yet, in recent decades, the Party’s functional ability and influence have been drastically curtailed due primarily to its leadership’s inability to truly trust the functional apparatus of the Party’s membership following devastating instances of betrayal and compromisation by Party personnel who have “debriefed.”

Debriefing  is a process which entails revealing Party and operational secrets, doctrine, self-incrimination, and the implication of other Party personnel in revolutionary activity. It is the contention of this piece that the origins of this functional blight on our glorious Party lie in the Willie Lynch Method of slave making—man breaking; and it is the correlation between the William Lynch Method and the debriefing process which is the single most insidious evil plaguing the Party’s functional ability.

Throughout the history of New Afrikaans resistance to slavery, cultural annihilation, brutality, racism, and second class citizenship there has also existed a seldom spoken about, but all too often attested to, Legacy of Mistrust amongst the truly committed elements carrying forth that resistance.

Following many decades of retribution, escape, sabotage, and outright rebellion by Afrikaans slaves in the New World, many white slave owners sought to develop methods of control to secure their economic interests in those slaves. This delving into the process of psychologically bonding and bowing a people to the yoke of servitude reached its loathsome heights in 1712 with the William Lynch Method of slave control. The Willie Lynch Method of slave making and man breaking is perhaps the greatest psychological bane to the cause of revolution that has ever plagued the New Afrikaans collective.

The great abolitionist Frederick Douglas observed of this phenomena: “conscious of the injustice and wrong they were every hour perpetuating and knowing what they themselves would do were they the victims of such wrongs, they were constantly looking for the first signs of the dreaded retribution. They watched therefore, with skilled and practiced eyes, and learned to read, with great accuracy, the state of mind and heart of the slave, through his sable face. Unusual sobriety, apparent abstraction, sullenness, and indifference—indeed, any mood out of the common way afforded grounds for suspicion and inquiry.”

The William Lynch Method was developed specifically to thwart that “dreaded retribution” before it was ever allowed to blossom into the fertile hearts and minds of the oppressed by thoroughly stamping out the DESIRE for such retribution, let alone the cognitive and emotive faculties to carry it out. As stated by Willie Lynch himself: “I have a full proof method of controlling … slaves. I guarantee that if installed correctly it will control the slaves for at least 300 years … I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves and I take these differences and make them bigger. I use fear, distrust, and envy for control purposes.”

No self-respecting professional revolutionary or political historian can deny the fact that the bane of every major revolutionary political movement by Afrikans in Amerikkka has been to a greater or lesser degree hampered, halted, or destroyed by fear amongst the uncommitted, distrust by one faction of another, or envy of this leader or group by another or its own subordinates.

The historic examples of this methods effect on Afrikan Revolutionary Movements in this nation are legion, but I will attempt to shed light on a few of the more glaring examples in hopes that you will grasp the crux of this new perspective on an old problem. Nat Turner, himself a chattel slave, led a successful rebellion that had the potential to become a much larger resistance movement had slaves from the Jones plantation not taken up arms against Nat and his forces in defense of their “master.” These slaves feared freedom and retribution, more than harsh bondage and the whip: they trusted the man who beat and humiliated them, while distrusting a fellow slave come to free them. Willie Lynch’s admonition that, “you must also have your white servants and overseers distrust all Blacks, but it is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us.

They must love, respect, and trust only us…” Each time I examine the failure of Turners slave rebellion, these words ring tauntingly through my mind.

Denmark Vesey, in 1800, developed a plan to seize a military outpost / port town in Charlotte, North Carolina but was betrayed by one of his own lieutenants who, it is said, did not appreciate the “lofty manner in which Denmark Vesey spoke down to him.” Discovering the enormity of the conspiracy, and the alarming certainty of its success, Denmark Versey and 16 of his inner circle where discovered and summarily hanged without getting off a single shot.

In the early 1900s through the 1920s Marcus Garvey, and his United Negro Improvement  Association, were one of the most dynamic forces in the cause of Pan-Afrikan Liberation and self-determination the world has ever known. With his rousing oratory and the comparative success of his Black Star Line, Garvey sparked the imaginations, stirred the spirits, and raised the hopes of countless millions of Afrikans the world over. However, it was primarily the relentless attacks of W.E.B. DuBoise and his NAACP which led to the Federal investigations that resulted in the Honorable Marcus Garvey’s incarceration, disgrace, and failure. This, of course, coupled with the embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of dollars (unbeknown to Garvey) by his own accountants, tolled the death knoll of perhaps the greatest Black Power movement of the 20th Century. Garvey was the victim of DuBoises’ envy, and an inability to trust his own financial agents.

However, it was the launching of the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTEL PRO), and CDC’s accompanying validation and debriefing process which first staggered, then stalled, the Black Liberation Movement of the 60s and 70s and now decay the Party and its revolutionary apparatus under an insidious mold of mistrust. As revolutionary activists and political dissidents were arrested, imprisoned, and maltreated in the sweep of COINTELPRO, some uncommitted elements rather than make the necessary sacrifices for the cause, chose instead to compromise Party and organizational secrets. Not only becoming informants, but giving the tools of reaction the necessary ability to infiltrate the Party and other progressive organizations.

This process, coined “debriefing” by FBI handlers, became the crux of mistrust and rifts, not only amongst the various progressive political organizations but within the Party itself. Some claim such functional mistrust was the reason comrade Jonathan Jackson failed to have the necessary operational support present, allegedly promised by other Party personnel, which resulted in the death of this beautiful warrior and five other comrades that fateful day at the Marin County courthouse. Others contend this is also the reason comrade Fred Hamptons’ security detachment was conspicuously absent the morning he was assassinated. 

With so much “rattery” and betrayal occurring, no one knew who could or could not be trusted. In the wake of the Black Liberation Movement, and on through the transition to the New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, as more of the Party’s functional apparatus in California was imprisoned and they turned to  revolutionizing the criminal mentalities of those Afrikans who also found themselves in the concentration camp environment—seeing the success the Party was having—the California Department of Corrections turned to the same, seemingly effective tool as the FBI began, first validating progressives and revolutionary activists, and then offering them the option of debriefing—of further compromising the Party in return for their freedom and a role as a continuing informant.

Naturally, with the William Lynch Method still prevalent in the psyche of the uncommitted, they were successful in penetrating Party security with the aid of those willing to comprise their principles for a cell in a different party of the concentration camp. This was the beginning of mistrust in the imprisoned Party.

There exists a direct link between the William Lynch Method and mistrust in the Party, so profound, that it is eroding our functional ability as surely as the Colorado River continues to carve away at the Grand Canyon.

It is my contention that the origins of uncommitted personnel and their subsequent actions (such as debriefing and informing) lay in the unevolved slave mentalities they yet possess despite their political indoctrination. If one ever wishes to find the origins of his circumstances and reality he need search nor further than his own thoughts.

Our thoughts dictate our actions; our actions dictate our circumstances; our circumstances dictate our reality. If we could bring forth the collective uncommitted elements who have compromised the Party from its inception on, and analyze their psychology individually, we would invariably discover that they each, to a greater or lesser degree, still cling to ideas and behaviors reminiscent of the slave mentality. Liberal sentimentalities; envy and back biting of the truly committed; a willingness to still engage in unethical or criminal activity; intransigence; trepidation or outright cowardice in the face of sacrifice; ignorance; greed; selfishness; all remnants of the slave mentality, all the fruit of the Willie Lynch Method. Such Party personnel were never truly committed to the cause nor the Party, only to what they themselves could wrest from the People, Party and Revolution.

It is within our inability to foster ‘Internal Revolution’ (that process by which one’s psychology and very being are changed) first, in all Party personnel prior to their indoctrination where lies the reason these uncommitted elements have even been able to infiltrate our ranks. What must be understood is not that uncommitted elements exist in the Party, but why they are uncommitted elements; and the answer is because their minds have yet to be liberated. They are still for all intents and purposes slaves; and thus their actions are those of slaves.

As William Lynch states …”I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than trust, and envy is stronger than adulation, respect or admiration. The Black slave after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands.”

These words are an ominous portent comrades, 287 years later and the slave mentality still plagues us and our efforts at collective liberation. But what is more damaging to the functional apparatus of the Party, the truly committed, is not merely the presence of the uncommitted in our ranks, it is CDC’s ability to sew dissension and mistrust within our functional ranks through the debriefing process.

The manner in which they accomplish this end is two-fold, and I will attempt to illustrate those with correlates from the Willie Lynch Method in hopes they illuminate my points more vividly, though macabely. In the Willie Lynch Method of slave breaking the Afrikan female is made to watch the strongest, most rebellious male beaten to bloody ribbons, tied between two horses, tarred, feathered, and set on fire before the two horses tear him apart. As Willie Lynch states: “the next step is to…beat the remaining (slave) male to the point of death in front of the female and the infant… We have (now) reversed the relationships. In her natural uncivilized state she would have a strong dependency on the… (slave) male, and would have a limited protective tendency toward her independent male offspring, and would raise females…to be dependent like her… we reverse nature by burning and pulling one… apart… and whipping the other to the point of death—all in her presence. By being left alone, unprotected … the ordeal caused her to move from her psychological dependent state to a frozen independent state…what have you got? You’ve got the (slave) woman out front and the (slave) man behind and scared. This is a perfect situation for sound sleep and economics.”

Similarly, after witnessing supposedly solid comrades, debriefing and informing and in many instances being debriefed and informed on, truly committed personnel begin (and understandably so) to mistrust all Party personnel to a greater of lesser degree, who aren’t in their similar set of circumstances and standing firm. They are thrust into a quasi “frozen independent state”, fiercely guarding those few Party secrets and resources from all but a few, because they feel they can no longer depend on those who haven’t “gone bad yet.”

This is a perfect situation to ensure the political progress and operational range of the Party is curtailed by the Party itself. And as Willie Lynch states, “Before the breaking process, we had to be alertly on guard at all times. Now we can sleep soundly, for out of frozen fear, his woman stands guard for us. He can not get past her early infant slave molding process. He is (now) a good tool…”; and comrades, unfortunately this too is relatively true—before the inception of the debriefing process the forces of reaction “had to be alertly on guard at all times”, now they sleep soundly because we stand guard for them against our own great potential.

And comrades, potential unused is as good as having none at all. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

The second is even more insidious, because it is more self-destructive than it is passively degrading. In our attempts to weed out uncommitted and philistine elements from our functional ranks, truly committed personnel are finding any fault, even those perceived and not necessarily existent, within other truly committed personnel resulting in further fear and mistrust.

A subtle, but constant organizational self-mutilation is occurring within our ranks; like a rabid dog which gnaws off his own foot in an attempt to separate the infection from his healthy form, yet only serving to increase his injury. And here in lies another correlate from our nemesis Willie Lynch, as he states:

“Don’t forget you must pitch the old Black male vs. the young Black male, and the young…vs. the old… you must use the dark skin slaves vs. the light skinned slaves… and the female vs. the male… if used intensely… the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful…” 

Though the Parties’ own internal rivalries often flow along the lines of young or new comrades vs. old or veteran comrades; differing ideological branches; different sectors; and conflicting personalities, the correlate is none the less relevant. It is the ever present specter of the debriefer, the rat, the  betrayer which causes us to seize on the most minor or middling infraction and raise them to the level of major breaches in Party discipline, protocol, or procedure. Even I have found myself in an instance, too quick to condemn another comrade to the ranks of phillistia and uncommittedness; and I berated myself and asked the forgiveness of the comrade in question and the Party as a whole for such rashness in the throes of my zeal because, most importantly, it was wrong. I see in it, not the vigilance of the truly committed to Party security, but instead the subtle influence of our enemies in their attempts to foster dissention in our ranks. I say thee nay, comrades! We can not allow them to manipulate us into slowly devouring ourselves. Strict adherence to doctrine, discipline, and security are paramount, but this descent into organizational mutilation and mistrust of Party personnel is nothing less than slow suicide for our glorious Party and the Cause of Revolution as a whole.

The effects of this mistrust are crippling not only the Party’s ability to function, but our ability to evolve, grow, and develop. The primary purpose of all professional revolutionaries is fighting to build the Party, but I have seen firsthand comrades, this is a fight we are losing. Our ranks are dwindling. Though the masses cry out for progressive leadership there are too few truly committed, or even willing voices to answer. I have traveled the State of California for the last year, and what I have witnessed is truly disturbing. The Party’sinfluence, once deep rooted and far reaching, is now virtually symbolic alone. Though always assuming a leadership role, and gaining deference from the various Afrikan tribes, units, and organizations I encountered—that deference is almost that which is rendered to an honored elder who’s day has passed. When speaking of the Party, though with the utmost respect and admiration, the masses speak, as if referring to a great and awe inspiring warrior who fought valiantly to the death, but is dead none the less. There are those who actually believe the Party no more! This alone should alarm the entire New Afrikaans Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, all those who love freedom, justice, and equality, and most of all, every Party member alive, man and woman. Is our strategic and tactical expertise so flawed that we can not evolve to the point where we can balance Party security with our need to grow and our ability to influence the People? I know this is not true, because I know this Party—I know my comrades—and our ranks boast some of the greatest social, political, military, economic, and cultural minds of our time, so I can only conclude that it is this insidious phenomena of perpetual mistrust which is crippling our personnel, crippling our Party, crippling our cause.

Revolution, radical progressive social change, is illegal in the oppressor nation in which it takes place; therefore imprisoned Party members are a natural outgrowth of pursuing the cause of righteousness in this Evil Empire. But for the truly committed revolutionary agent, imprisonment does not stop the forward progression of the Cause; and so the forces of reaction developed “validation” and adopted the debriefing process and its Willie Lynch Method correlations have served to do great damage to the Party’s functional ability, thus gravely harming the Cause, weakening its proponents, and degrading the Revolution.

If the Party is to continue to exist as an organizational entity and more importantly if The Cause is to continue to be carried forth, the party must resist and overcome this phenomenon.

When a thing’s small, at its beginnings, it is easily uprooted or destroyed… A seed is much more easily uprooted than a tree. But this evil that plagues us is centuries old; a gnarled tree with thick canopy, many branches, and deep roots—but if we are to remove this “tree” so the “sun” of organizational success can reach us again—we must wrest this vile tree up by its roots, we must strike at its origins. Acknowledging the William Lynch Method as the true origins of the debriefing process is the key to halting its affects upon imprisoned revolutionaries. By being aware of the subtle psychological effects of the William Lynch Method that vibrate through the undercurrents of the decisions being made by imprisoned revolutionaries which are hampering our collective efforts, we can begin to devise and implement successful psychological counter measures and operational procedures which will forestall this vile evils’ effects on our Cause and finally sever this centuries-long link with the slave mentality.

We are aware, painfully so, of the myriad methods that Willie Lynch, those who employed his methods, and now the Department of Corrections have used over these many years to destroy the trust, unity, cohesiveness, and influence by which we depend on to carry forth the works, policies, and programs of the People, Party, and Revolution. Therefore we must make ourselves equally, no, more intimately familiar with those methods which will not only counter their effects but give the imprisoned revolutionary the means by which to evolve to a new and higher level of operational sophistication.

Primary among these is, and always will be, the insurance that those who claim allegiance to the Revolutionary Cause and expect to serve the people in any organized capacity must have first undergone internal Revolution before they are initiated into the secrets of the professional revolutionary Party. Internal Revolution is the process by which an individual’s psychology is so drastically changed in the direction of righteousness, progression, and willingness to sacrifice for that progress toward what is right, that he is virtually a new being. Internal Revolution is the only reliable path to true commitment, and only truly committed elements can be unfailingly relied upon to be free of the Willie Lynch Methods affects or its correlates, no matter the form they may manifest themselves (threat of validation, fear of debriefing, etc.). Lip service is one thing, but the truly committed will reveal themselves by their day to day actions and can be tested reliably in the service of the Cause. This, our ability to develop truly committed elements is the single greatest weapon we have against the debriefing process, it’s Willie Lynch correlates, and any other sinister machinations the enemies of the masses can and will throw at us.

I’m sure none would disagree with me when I say security is the preeminent concern in any clandestine political movement; and I can say with equal alacrity that it has been our strict adherence to this dictate which has been the crux of some of our own self-immolating decisions. Our fear of compromisation has bred an almost paranoid distrust amongst those in positions of responsibility and trust within our various units and organizations, of their own membership at large: and this is understandable. I myself have been informed on while promoting revolutionary sentiments and socialist mores, I myself have been validated, and uncommitted elements have compromised me in their debriefing processes. Instances of such betrayal are legion. 

But instead of succumbing to my own innate desire to put everyone in the “suspect” category, it made me more determined to build trustworthy personnel wherever I encountered revolutionary minded men and women. This is real simple: the Party must trust its membership, despite this phenomenon… or die. We must adapt already existing procedures and protocols to deal with our enemies’ evolution in intelligence capability, and develop new ones to account for future breaches in our operational security. There have been instances where legitimate revolutionary functionaries have reached out for logistical, tactical, or operational assistance from those in positions of responsibility and trust, and received only silence in reply, dooming potentially beautiful operations or sinking progressive programs by cutting their own personnel off from the well spring of functional capability. It’s killing us…slowly… but as surely as malignant cancer. But unlike cancer, there will be no outside intervention, no group of concerned individuals  to treat our organizational ills; the cure will come from one place and one place alone: ourselves.

Only we can take the necessary steps to place our functional personnel in a psychological and operational position where they all can feel comfortable trusting one another, of depending on one another, of having faith in each other and thus our cause.

Only we can wield our potential as it was meant to be wielded, and be confident that we can be relatively safe doing so. Only we can identify, develop, and encourage Internal Revolution in others, thus forging truly committed personnel. Only we can stamp out the fear, mistrust, and pettiness plaguing the imprisoned revolutionary collective. Only we can bury Willie Lynch’s vile influence, which yet haunts us like a ghost, in the impenetrable tomb of our own determination. Let us be about the business of doing so. Let us say to the forces of reaction: “Bring on your lies and false labels; bring on your SHU cells and torture; bring on your rats and informers, for we shall never surrender, never give up, never submit, never give in… and in the end we shall win.” Solidarity to all those who love freedom and fear only failure. Think on these things, they are cause for great meditation.

Prison Art Newsletter vol 5 nr 5 (2005)

And:

http://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Torture/510.correlation.lynch.debriefing.pdf