Eric King has been moved and held at Grady County Jail in Oklahoma. He has been told he will be sent to USP Lee, a maximum security prison where he has already been threatened by white supremacists. 

Eric was found not guilty at trial but within a week, was put on the road and is being sent to a notorious and dangerous prison. We need your help to call attention to this situation and to shine light on the Bureau of Prisons so history does not repeat itself and Eric is put in harm’s way  by the BOP (Eric was marched into the chow hall to fight a nazi enforcer at USP McCreary by BOP staff). Hear Eric talk about what he needs at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt0m8Hj1W0U

We have to do everything we can to protect Eric and call attention to the hazardous situation they are putting him in by sending him to USP Lee. 

From supporteric.org

Within days of winning a federal court case in Colorado against his treatment at the hands of the Federal Bureau of Prisons staff, Eric is in the process of being transferred to USP Lee, a high security prison across the country in Virginia. Eric, who should be placed at a medium security facility, reasonably fears that this move is punitive and that at USP Lee he will lose access to reading materials and, more importantly, his ability to communicate with his loved ones. 

Elements in the BOP have already shown their petty and desire for vengeance against Eric through multiple instances of him being moved across the country, pitted against racist prisoners, beaten by guards and suffering years of mail, phone, visitation and book bans. During the trial, Eric’s safety and health were disrupted and property for his case destroyed by BOP staff so blatantly that Judge Martinez noted that it would be far reaching to say the disruptiveness wasn’t intentional on the part of the BOP. The judge also noted that the BOP was setting itself up for a civil suit, which is currently underway by the CLDC. 

In the meantime, Eric needs our help. As Eric isn’t set for release until December of 2023, we need to keep the light on him to avoid EK being isolated and further harmed. Below you’ll find a script and contact information for public officials in the Federal system who must be pressed to check in Eic’s well being and demand to know: 

1. Why is Eric King, who is at a medium level according to the BOP, being moved to a high security facility across the country?;          
2. Why is this  move coming so quickly after Eric successfully won a lawsuit showing  that the BOP was closing ranks to set Eric up for 20 years of additional prison as he approaches his out time?;          
3. What will you, as a public official, do to challenge the impunity of the federal  prisons to persecute prisoners and violate their human rights?; 

Contact info for who to email/call and draft templates are at
https://supportericking.org/2022/04/03/help-protect-erics-life/

Call in starts at 8am EST  Monday morning

Virginia Senators 
Senator Tim Kaine
Email: https://www.kaine.senate.gov/contact/share-your-opinion 
Twitter: @TimKaine
PHONE: (202) 224-4024 

Senator Mark. R Warner
Email: https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactPage 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRWarner 
Twitter: @MarkWarner
IG: https://www.instagram.com/senatorwarner/ 
Phone: 202-224-2023 

Mid-Atlantic BOP Regional Office 
302 Sentinel Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD  20701
Email: [email protected] 
Phone: 301-317-3100
Fax: 301-317-3119 

DSCC Office
Designation & Sentence Computation Center
Email: GRA-DSC/[email protected] 
Phone: 972-352-4400
Fax: 972-352-4395 

BOP National Office
Email: [email protected] 
Phone: 202-307-3198 

The Certain Days collective will be releasing our 22nd calendar this coming autumn. In lieu of a 2023 theme, we are doing  an open call for abolition-related art and article submissions to feature in the calendar, which hangs in more than 6,000 homes, workplaces, prison cells, and community spaces around the world. We encourage contributors to submit both new and existing work. We especially seek submissions from people in prison or jail, so please forward this call to any prison-based artists and writers.

Why no theme?, you ask. Since 2008, the Certain Days collective has developed a theme for each year’s calendar. During our “off season” this year, the collective has been weighing the decision of whether to continue this project or wrap it up. After much deliberation, we are going full-steam ahead with a 2023 calendar and decided to do an open call for submissions. While “transition” may be a great theme for us, at this moment, we leave it to you, trusted artists and authors, to submit what you think would be a great fit for our 22nd calendar!  Download as PDF

FORMAT GUIDELINES

Due to space limitations, submissions may be lightly edited for clarity and concision, with no change to the original intent. 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

ABOUT THE CALENDAR 

The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar is a joint fundraising and educational project between outside organizers in Montreal, New York, and Baltimore, and current and former political prisoners, including currently imprisoned Xinachtli (s/n Alvaro Luna Hernandez) in Texas. We were happy to welcome founding members Herman Bell and Robert Seth Hayes (Rest in Power) home from prison in 2018, and David Gilbert in 2021, each of whom spent over forty years behind bars. All of the current members of the outside collective are grounded in day-to-day organizing work other than the calendar, on issues ranging from legal aid to community media, radical education to prisoner solidarity. We work from an anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, feminist, queer- and trans-liberationist position. All proceeds from the calendar go to abolitionist organizations working for a better world.

NYC ABC has finished the latest version of the “Illustrated Guide to
Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War” and it’s available for viewing
(and download) at https://nycabc.wordpress.com/2022/03/30/guide_15_2/

This update includes updated mini-bios, photos, and address changes for
several prisoners. We are thankful to remove Doug Wright (time served).
Welcome home, comrade!

On March 18, 2022, political prisoner Eric King was acquitted by a federal jury of twelve people in the U.S. District Court in Colorado. Eric was charged with assaulting a federal officer, a federal felony with a potential 20-year sentence, after he defended himself from an attack by a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Lieutenant in a storage closet. After Eric was punched repeatedly in the face, he was subjected to retaliatory physical punishment including the use of four-point restraints (in which he was shackled by his wrists and ankles in a spread-eagle position to a concrete bed for more than six hours), “diesel therapy,” additional physical attacks, and nearly continuous solitary confinement in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) for the last 3 and a half years, all at the hands of the BOP.  CLDC is currently suing the BOP on Eric’s behalf because of these appalling acts of abuse. As such, this win is incredibly momentous for Eric, his family, his community, and our movement, and we hope you join us in celebrating this hard-fought victory.

Eric’s acquittal is especially significant in the face of the horrific odds most federal criminal defendants face, and the intense pressure and blatant aggression directed from the BOP against Eric, before and during his trial. Less than 1% ofall federal criminal defendants are acquitted at trial.[1] The criminal punishment system is always stacked against defendants, especially political prisoners like Eric.

Before Eric’s trial started, the judge ruled that all evidence related to Eric’s torture at the hands of BOP had to be withheld from the jury, including the illegal use of four-point restraints. This meant that the jury never got to hear that Eric was subjected to violent retaliation by the BOP, or that Eric was suing the BOP—even though this evidence would have shown that the BOP and its employees were engaged in a cover-up, were biased against Eric, and had a motive to lie and justify their torture during the trial.

The jury also didn’t get to hear that on nearly every day of Eric’s trial, the BOP attempted to disrupt Eric’s emotional well-being and his ability to defend himself in court. After the first day of Eric’s trial, he was informed he would be moved to a “suicide cell,” for unspecified “security reasons.” Eric was told the new unit would be for suicide monitoring, with continuous lights on and camera monitoring while Eric was inside his cell, despite the fact that Eric was not suicidal, and needed to sleep and prepare for his trial. Even though Eric was ultimately never moved, his property, including his legal paperwork, was removed from his cell after he left for court and twice inventoried by the BOP. That same inventory paperwork was later destroyed when, according to BOP, a bird flew into Mr. King’s cell, a guard chased the bird into the cell, and somehow upended a cup full of coffee onto Mr. King’s papers. According to BOP, during this same time period, toilet paper ended up in Eric’s sink (also blamed on the bird) which caused Mr. King’s cell to flood while he was in court for his trial, damaging his books, personal photographs, and legal paperwork.

Many of the witnesses called by the government had previously physically attacked or injured Eric during his incarceration, and Eric had to calmly face them all for hours. Even though all criminal defendants have a constitutional right to testify on their own behalf it can be risky and terrifying. As such, many defendants make the strategic choice to invoke their constitutional right to remain silent during a trial. Eric decided to testify on his own behalf, facing dogged cross-examination by the government’s lawyer and despite BOP’s actions during the trial. Not only did Eric testify about what Lt. Wilcox did to him in the storage room, but also about the violent realities of prison life:

So being in prison sucks. Prison is not like normal life. Prison is dark. And there’s good things you can do in prison, but you have to seek out those things. You have to find those things. For the most part, prison is built around violence. It’s built around who can have the most power, who can take the most power, who can inflict most damage.

In the face of hours of frustrating and opaque testimony by BOP employees, Eric’s direct and truthful testimony was a breath of fresh air—he was clearly the most important witness in the case and he rose to the occasion.

During almost the entire trial, including during Eric’s testimony, a BOP lawyer sat in the gallery, within Eric’s eyeshot and directly behind where some of the jurors sat. Spectators in the gallery heard the lawyer scoff or talk during trial testimony, possibly within earshot of the jurors. At one point, Eric’s current SHU Lieutenant, a BOP officer, also sat with that attorney.

CLDC attorneys put BOP’s behavior on the record, while government attorneys tried to say everything that happened was just a mere coincidence—just like getting taken to a storage closet for an “interview.” At one point, Judge Martínez stated in response, “I am just amazed — I have never had anything like this happen in one case in 11-plus years of being on the bench. At some point, the explanation that it was an accident becomes too far removed from reality.”

BOP’s behavior was clearly intended to throw a wrench in Eric’s defense, and another attempt to silence Eric, but they failed. Thanks to Eric’s courage and CLDC’s advocacy, Eric was able to boldly tell his story to the jury, even in the face of this persistent repression. Best of all, despite the limited picture painted for the jury, they were still able to clearly and unanimously see that Eric was not guilty. CLDC is still investigating the BOP’s egregious behavior during the trial to add additional claims to Eric’s civil suit against the BOP.

CLDC is honored to have worked with Eric to win his criminal case. With your help, we will continue to hold the BOP accountable, until there is no such place as prison. Please consider supporting our work with a sustaining donation.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/11/only-2-of-federal-criminal-defendants-go-to-trial-and-most-who-do-are-found-guilty/

From Environmentalist to “Domestic Terrorist” with former Earth Liberation member Daniel McGowan (G&R 150)

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-environmentalist-to-domestic-terrorist-with/id1501708978?i=1000555556457

From Green and Red:

In the past ten years, we’ve also seen state repression of movements coming out of Occupy Wall Street, the Ferguson uprising, Standing Rock, Line 3 and various anti-Trump movements. Green and Red has had numerous episodes on radical movements and state repression of political movements from antifascists in Portland and Austin to water protectors at Line 3 to DAPL saboteur Jessica Reznicek.

But, before that, we had the era known as the “Green Scare,” where radical environmental and animal rights activists were targeted by the “state” (corporations, politicians, law enforcement) for its anti-capitalist politics and escalating tactics that included sabotage, animal liberation, property destruction and arson. The FBI called their operation to stop these radical movements “Operation Backfire.” After 911, they labeled people taking action “domestic terrorists.” Congress passed corporate lobbyist written legislation, such as the Animal Enterprise Terror Act and the Patriot Act, to stop them.

In our latest episode, we talk with Daniel McGowan (@thetinyraccoon), an anarchist organizer, Earth Liberation Front (ELF) member and partisan during the Green Scare era. He was part of two ELF actions in 2001. After another ELF member turned informant, he was arrested by the FBI and charged with arson, property destruction and conspiracy.  In June, 2007, McGowan was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and given a “terror enhancement” for his actions.  Most of his time in prison was spent in a secret prison unit called a Communication Management Unit.

Daniel tells us about his journey as a radical environmentalist, actions with the ELF, time in federal prison and, now, supporter of political prisoners.

Daniel McGowan is a former political prisoner and former member of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). He spent 48 months in experimental Communication Management Units operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons during his seven year sentence. Daniel has been involved with political prisoner support and prison struggles for most of his activist life. He is currently a member of the Certain Days collective, NYC Books Through Bars and the Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABCF). Daniel works on the campaign to defend and free anarchist political prisoner Eric King and is an advisory board member of the Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC) & the Coalition for Civil Freedoms. Daniel is a lifelong New Yorker and grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens, NYC. He works  professionally as a paralegal and consults with people preparing to go to prison and their family & friends in setting up defense committees.

Outro// Catharsis “Arsonist’s Prayer”
Daniel’s Linktree: https://linktr.ee/tinyraccoon
G&R: Dakota Access Pipeline Saboteur Jessica Reznicek Sentenced to Prison
G&R: The Story of SHAC

Follow Green and Red//
https://linktr.ee/greenandredpodcast
Check out our new website: https://greenandredpodcast.org/
Join our Discord Party: https://bit.ly/36hqx7X

Donate to Green and Red Podcast//
Become a recurring donor at  https://www.patreon.com/greenredpodcast
Or make a one time donation here: https://bit.ly/DonateGandR

Listen to Mookie Moss of @CLDC & Josh Davidson of @CertainDays talk about Eric King’s trial (and subsequent acquittal) on @StrawFinal.

Listen at https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2022/03/27/merced-prisoner-hunger-strikes-eric-king-trial-ends/

We women are standing up during Women’s History Month for Kamau Sadiki. We invite our whole community to join us for a letter-writing workshop. Sometimes it can be difficult to find the right words. Join us to gain some guidance on writing to captured Freedom Fighters like Kamau Sadiki. Together we will be in and build community as we learn about Kamau Sadiki, the efforts to bring him home, and the fight for all US Held Political Prisoners.

Register at: tinyurl.com/womengather4kamau

Here’s the latest compilation of every other week updates:
https://nycabc.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/updates-22-mar-2022-1.pdf

NYC ABC, along with several other individuals and prisoner support
crews, now send hard copies to all political prisoners and prisoners of
war we support.

If you consistently mail the latest updates to a specific prisoner,
please let us know so we can insure there’s no overlap. The goal is to
have copies sent to all of the prisoners we list.

We’ve also been told that some prisoners are not receiving the copies
sent in, yet we aren’t getting rejection notices. If you are in steady
contact with a prisoner, please ask them whether or not they are
receiving the updates and let us know.

Free ’em all,
NYC ABC

Dear friends,

Last month on February 4th guards at FCI Memphis allowed our friend Patrick Rogers to die. Sources in here tell me that he had regularly medical emergencies, falling down unconscious frequently. The staff became agitated with having to respond to these emergencies and the new Captain here accused him of faking and spread the rumor that he was faking medical emergencies and gave instructions to not respond to these incidents. As a result his medical ailments went untreated for a long period of time. I have been told that he was hit by a truck before coming to this prison and had multiple medical conditions as a result. After falling down yet again he was taken to the Special Housing unit. Guards said this was because he “mouthed off to a guard” while witnesses claim he was taken away because he could not walk.

Shortly after being taken to the SHU the entire prison went on lockdown. On Friday the 4th of February, he died. His neighbors in Tennessee Unit A say that he was allowed to die by staff because they were concerned that he had a legitimate case for a lawsuit and they were legally vulnerable to legal action. Lt. King came into the unit after he died and callously remarked, “Well, I guess he wasn’t faking!” He was asked if he thought this was funny and unconvincingly replied no, that it was a potential lawsuit. Legal vulnerability and a fear of taking responsibility trumped this Lieutenant’s sense of what a human life is worth. I won’t speak of his sense of humor. Understandably this upset Big Pat’s friends, not to mention his family. I heard about this exchange from one of his friends in the chow hall today as the lockdown was lifted and lost my appetite. As fellow captives of the prison industrial complex we are all outraged within these walls.

Efforts to spread the word about this deadly medical negligence, deliberate indiference and fatal targeted harrassment have been hampered by staff refusing to sell us paper, stationary and stamps during this lockdown. Thanks to sympathetic guards and our constitutional right to contact family the word has already gotten out. My defense committee has been notified and asked to contact Mr. Rogers’ family while raising awareness on various social medias, spreading pamhplets, articles and writting essays. That ball is already rolling. The cops reading this message may try to censor it, but that would be a useless gesture as the cat is already out of the bag. Any attempt to censor journalism and destroy evidence leaves government employees vulnerable to civil action. As a community we have the resources, the solidarity and the ability to take legal action and win. We will. I request everyone reading this to look into the situation and #RememberPat. Contact the American Civil Liberties Union, Prison Legal News and any other groups who you think can be helpful. We need to spread the word about the conditions here before anyone else dies. This can happen to any of us at any time. The current political climate is such that the prison industrial complex wants to incarcerate everyone in the U.$. To be clear their goal is that all Amerikkkans go to jail or prison at some point in their lives. As more laws are invented more and more people’s existances are criminalized and subject to abduction and extortion at the hands of authoritatrian forces. On a long enough time frame more people will have been oppressed by unjust laws and dirty cops than people who have no criminal record. In this was the death of Patrick Rogers and people like him affect all of us. The political is personal. Don’t let them tell you that “that’s just how it is, that life is tough, that it’s just buisiness”.

Take it personally whenever any authority figure makes policies that harm you, your loved ones, your neighbors and your friends. Because it is personal. The gears of justice grind slowly and the creatures of power who have money and power are not ground under these machines, they slide out of under them with a laugh, waving to us as we are destroyed. This machine does not serve us, it serves them.

They say we are faking it when we tell them that they are killing us. They say we are faking it when we tell them to get off our necks. They say we are faking it when we tell them that climate change is genocide for those too poor to migrate. They say we are faking it when we tell them an old prisoner is dying of preventable conditions as prisons are converted into eugenic hospice centers for the elderly poor. Fuck that, fuck them. Please help us raise awareness about these conditions.

Thank you.
Dan Baker
aka Alishare
P.S. The following additional note was written by a friend of Patrick’s:

“Pat Injured himself around Oct-Nov 2021- was unsure what- lower spine (disc) or right hip. Asked to be taken out to see Hospital Doctors- *pain became unbearable over a few days period.
-He could no longer walk to the chow hall due to pain.
-He continued to ask health service for help and all they did was order him an x-ray sometime in the months ahead. As time went on he was in more and more pain. The C.O.’s on the unit would no longer call the food service and order him meals for one of us inmates to bring back for him.
Health service began to tell all the officers that Pat was “faking” and that he had been “seen” and was to await his x-ray appointment. I brought him food back from chow as there was no way Pat could go due to pain.
-Pat requested the use of a wheelchair just to go to get meals and was denied every time by the people at health service from the order of M. Law. He said Pat was “faking” and just being lazy. Pat filed a BP-8 and BP-9 and was working on the BP-10 just to get the use of a wheelchair.
He became very depressed and his health deteriorated quickly.
– A group of Lt.’s and Dr.’s came to the unit one day to tell him he was “faking” and if he called them again they would put him in the S.H.U.. This was spearheaded by M. Law and the Captain.
He eventually became incontinent and was placed in the S.H.U. where he died from an embolism. The FCI was grossly negligent and could have easily prevented Pat’s death.”

Write Daniel Baker:
Daniel Baker, 25765-509
FCI MEMPHIS 
P.O, BOX 34550
MEMPHIS, TN  38184

Join CLDC on Thursday, March 24th at 6:00pm  EST to learn about supporting movement participants through incarceration, release, and transition back home from people who have lived it. Former political prisoners will share their experiences of support as well as how they continue to support people held behind the walls.

Panelists will include Daniel McGowan, Michael “Rattler” Markus, Linda Evans, Ray Luc Levasseur and  Luke O’Donovan.

You can register for the event at https://cldc.org/event/032422