Casey Goonan
10/26/26
Casey offers here their reflections on the recent book drive they organized for the prison library, its popularity with everyone locked up, as well as how it has since been blocked and how Casey subsequently was fired from their library job.
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– Casey Support Committee
AFFIRMATION
Thank you to everyone out in the so-called “free world” for contributing to our Summer Book Drive. On behalf of the Support Committee and every convict at FCI Allenwood Medium involved in this autonomous initiative, we send our revolutionary love and profound gratitude. From this self-organized prisoner initiative, we introduced a wide range of new, interesting, and relevant books into the prison’s official library collection. During my time as a library worker, many significant changes were made to the form and content of the library here at Allenwood Medium. Unfortunately, because of the Book Drive’s budding success and overwhelming popularity among the captives, i was fired from my job as librarian last week.
TERMINATION
On Thursday, October 1, i was fired as a library worker at FCI Allenwood Medium prison for no reason other than “ordering too many books” and “donating them directly into the library catalog” without the approval of the Education Department Supervisor, Mr. Williams. Although my boss, Ms. Ashton, knew about the plans for a mass donation and granted permission to do so, i was thrown under the bus once she learned her boss found out, and especially once she learned i was adding certain books into the catalog without her approval. There is nothing against policy within the books that were donated, even the ones i donated without Ms. Ashton’s knowledge. The Book Drive was successful in adding around one hundred brand new books to the library catalog, which transformed the library space from a realm of entertainment and distraction into one of pedagogy and critical study. By the first week of September, around seventy more books were delivered to the mailroom, yet staff deliberately let them pile up, before complaining to admin about the quantity of donations and returning them all back to sender. A few days later i learned of my termination.
It’s the overwhelming pettiness of the reaction that bothers me. There is no BOP policy that states we as prisoners cannot donate books into the library collection. There is an official process to do so however and i bypassed some of the red tape. Yet the only violation of policy i am “guilty” of is not showing my boss, Ms. Ashton, every single book that i was donating. My decision to not report donations wasn’t at all due to any intentional plot of deception. It was simply because whenever i gave my donations to Ms. Ashton, she would “never get around” to adding them into the catalog. They would just sit around and often disappear. I was frustrated by Ashton’s lack of enthusiasm regarding this rare opportunity to enhance the library collection, so i decided to just start marking, labeling, and cataloging the books myself. Basic direct action.
ACTION/REACTION
All who were involved in the Summer Book Drive (not only me as an individual) took direct action both to remedy the negligence of the correctional officers who oversee “education” operations at Allenwood Medium and to counter fascist anti-intellectualism, of which the official indifference to our depraved learning conditions is symptomatic. I am not exactly sure how the process occurred behind the scenes, but apparently a mailroom officer (who does not like me) contacted S.I.S. (the surveillance and investigative wing of the prison administration), who then contacted Mr. Williams, who in turn emailed Ms. Ashton ordering my termination as a library employee. I believe that the primary reason i was fired was politically motivated censorship, coupled with the fact that some of the COs already had an issue with me working in the library.
My termination as a library worker demonstrates how the administration at FCI Allenwood Medium will attempt to stifle any act of autonomous sufficiency and self-organization among us convicts, especially if activities aim to improve the conditions of life. The Summer Book Drive initiative was not only an attempt to counter the dehumanizing conditions of a neglectful Education Department but a demonstration of collective action to provide and (re)distribute resources in the face of (or rather in spite of) organized abandonment. Inadvertently, the initiative also illuminated a potential collective capacity that exists between concrete people across prison walls. Within a matter of weeks around 200 books were donated through a public wishlist. What other outcomes might result from a similar constellation of autonomous, informal organization? The purpose of this reportback, however, is not to address this question in particular. That must be the topic of discussion elsewhere. For now, i just want to catch everyone up to speed and explain just how the Summer Book Drive unfolded, and how our work in the library was demonstrably changing the atmosphere of learning in this prison.
REPORTBACK
When i arrived at FCI Allenwood Medium back in February, i was appalled by the lack of resources provided by the Education Department’s “library.” Barely any of the books were visible on the shelves. The shelves themselves were behind a desk, so no patrons could walk up and pull a book on their own. The content of the library catalog was almost entirely fiction, and none of the scarce non-fiction texts were visible at all. In fact, i was told by my boss Ms. Ashton that “this bunch are more of the fiction, fantasy kind of guys” — an assumption proven completely false once i conducted a survey and began offering fellow prisoners non-fiction books with social, cultural, and historical relevance. From what i’ve gathered, the library at Allenwood Medium is by far one of the worst libraries in the Federal BOP. The more time i spent in the library, i became intimately attentive to the inadequacies and intricacies of why this alleged library earned the reputation of “worst of the worst.”
In June 2026, when i was hired as a librarian, i began conducting a survey of each “car” in my unit and then across the entire compound, researching what the most popular books are among prisoners at Allenwood Medium. (For those who don’t know, “cars” are how we are collectively organized, prisoner-to-prisoner throughout the BOP; i.e. the Midwest Car, White Car, Gang Cars, Pennsylvania Car, and so on.) I made sure that all races and religious affiliations were considered in this survey, and i consolidated the results to a list of around 100 specific books, as well as dozens of authors, publishers, and topics of books that prisoners desired to read at this facility. From there my support committee and i created a wishlist derived from the survey findings and circulated the wishlist publicly using the incredible www dot bookshop dot org. The idea was to use the social platform that my support committee has worked so hard to maintain over the past two and a half years to organize a SUMMER BOOK DRIVE, where people on the outside can purchase the requested books from the public wishlist. The books then were to be delivered to me, which i would donate directly into the library collection.
As the Book Drive began, i was already involved in the process of rearranging the library stacks by subject and genre and had the support of Ms. Ashton to do this. In fact, she initially welcomed my consistency and enthusiasm. For FICTION i divided up the shelves to hold (with visible labels) ‘Fantasy’, ‘Western’, ‘Science Fiction’, ‘Thriller & Suspense’; ‘Mystery & Crime Drama’, ‘Deep State Fiction & Political Drama’, ‘Military Fiction’, ‘Historical Fiction (Modern)’, ‘Historical Fiction (Pre-Modern)’, ‘Historical Fiction (20th Century)’. As time went on my plan was to also create an section of the library for ‘Urban Novels’ and ‘African American Classics’. For NON-FICTION, i made the existing books in the library visible to patrons for the FIRST TIME EVER and then created various subject categories such as ‘US History (Pre-20th Century)’, ‘US History (20th-21st Century)’, ‘World History’, ‘Social Studies’, ‘Native Studies’, ‘Science & Nature’, ‘Geography’, ‘Music, Film, & Pop Culture’, ‘Sports’, ‘Health & Fitness’, ‘Business & Marketing’, ‘Self-Help’, ‘Survival & Uplift’, and ‘Resume & Job Search Resources’.
As i described above, around 100 books were successfully delivered to me. After receiving what books the mailroom *did* allow, i added those books into the library catalog. By “adding into the catalog,” i mean that my coworkers and i stamped, stickered, added check-out cards in the books, and shelved them. The feedback from fellow convicts regarding the Book Drive was wildly supportive and positive without a doubt. As the library collection progressed, regular patrons who entered the library would comment on how much better the selections were; how much easier it was to find books; how they felt more interested in going to the library; and most of all, i noticed a substantial interest in the non-fiction sections, especially Social Studies, US History, and Native Studies. The number of nonfiction books that patrons checked out increased markedly. Most importantly, in the days leading up to my termination, a new spirit of critical study and discussion seemed to be permeating the library and its users.
I have to remind myself that there is only so much you can do without greater organization of opposition to the prison regime from within and without. I am chalking this up as another experience, or maybe, rather, the marking of a new chapter in the Campaign Against Prison Censorship and Book Banning
[ see https://trueleappress.wordpress.com/2023/04/13/new-zine-campaign-against-prison-censorship-and-book-banning/ ].
I’m not sure what my next moves will be, but one thing is for certain: There’s a growing number of convicts in this prison who desire a deeper grasp of the world beyond the false sense of “participation” shoved upon us by the TV screens, corporate newspapers, radio shows, remedial programs, and commercial-distraction novels sanctioned by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Book Drive could be blocked but the information that such literature instills in our convict class is something that fascists can never return to sender. One idea that my celly had was to simply order books on anti-prison activism, abolition, and prisoner movement history for every prisoner at FCI Allenwood Medium. All of our information is public access on the BOP website. Just pick a name on the BOP “Inmate Locator” and order a book. Brilliant!
Ever more obvious is the substantial mass of people beyond the wall in the so-called “free world” who are impacted by the regime and continue to express a desire to participate in collective anti-prison resistance. These are people actively searching for opportunities to support their own loved ones and others in captivity. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore writes in her 1999 article ‘You Have Dislodged a Boulder’, by “organizing surplus labor into cages,” the state pulls our loved ones, especially mothers and other caregivers, into its “spheres of operation.” The regime’s gravitational pull on our families and communities creates opportunities where our people can find each other and cooperate together *against* the state’s interests. Gilmore writes, “The magnitude of imprisonment suggests the magnitude of possibility”; and that magnitude “starts small, over and over again.” The scale and dynamic capacity of formal and informal prisoner-support structures put on display by the Summer Book Drive suggests the embryo of such possibility. I know if i were on the outside right now, i would be dreaming and scheming of where to take this collectivity next. I send my blessing for anyone reading this to do the same. After all, it’s one struggle at base.
To write Casey:
Casey Goonan #24611-511
FCI Allenwood Medium
PO BOX 2000
White Deer, PA 17887
Casey Support Committee
email: [email protected]
instagram: @freecaseynow
donations: https://chuffed.org/project/