As Americans of varying backgrounds and ages, we are required to re-evaluate: (1) our society and its relationship to those it labels “criminal;” (2) our personal values and attitudes about prisoners and the prison system; (3) our commitment to wider social change. It is important that we learn to conceptualize how a series of abolition-type reforms, partial abolitions of the system, and particular alternatives can lead toward the elimination of prisons. Abolitionists advocate maximum amounts of caring for all people (including the victims of crime) and minimum intervention in the lives of all people, including lawbreakers. In the minds of some, this may pose a paradox, but not for us, because we examine the underlying causes of crime and seek new responses to build a safer community. The abolitionist ideology is based on economic and social justice for all, concern for all victims, and reconciliation within a caring community.

I feared he would be martyred, when he returned to Russia after getting poisoned by the FSB and helping Bellingcat track down the agents who poisoned him (nobody in power did anything about them). Back then, his life was saved by a pilot deciding to make an emergency landing and a doctor suspecting a neurotoxin.

What finally took his life will be difficult to ascertain due to lack of transparency - a remote location, an extremely authoritarian system, war, politically controlled law enforcement and courts. Still, a day before death, Navalny appeared in court for another potential addition to his already 19-year sentence - in good spirits.

During Navalny's imprisonment, the regime made a sustained effort to break that spirit, issuing a constant stream of disciplinary punishments (a total of 27 times): for not placing his hands behind his back, for incorrectly introducing himself, for uttering a profanity, for failing to clear leaves in the yard, for citing the European Court of Human Rights’ demand for his release, for addressing the guard without using a patronym, and for declining to wash the fence.

They also transfered him to the far north and previously used sleep deprivement against him. I tend to assume that they also killed him, either directly or indirectly.

He was definitely not the perfect politician, but did things which a common politician never dares to do, which suggests having some principles. When they came for anarchists, he didn't forget them, but also spoke for anarchists.

While most lockdowns are intermittent (lasting from a few days to several weeks), an increasing number of state and federal prisons keep prisoners locked down for most or even all of the year. In addition, many prisons make people suffer through constant lockdown “cycles,” where prisoners get a very brief return to normal “gen pop” status before they are once again subject to several days or weeks of lockdown.

For those unfamiliar with the distinction between solitary confinement and lockdown, the latter is considered far more severe, as prisoners have no routines or any real rights whatsoever under lockdown. Solitary confinement is already rightly considered a form of torture under international law, but persons in solitary have a set routine, as stark as it is. Under lockdown, there is no such routine: There is no guarantee of exercise, showers are irregular at best, and access to phone, email or visitation are nonexistent. Education, religious activities, rehabilitative programs, psychiatric intervention to crises, access to commissary (“the store,” where somewhat healthier food and vitamins as well as soap can be bought) are typically denied or are nearly impossible to get. Meetings with attorneys come to a halt or are hard to obtain. People under lockdown are often not even given basic hygiene materials such as soap or toothpaste.

Throughout modern American carceral history, lockdowns have been reserved for major disruptive events that ostensibly threatened the lives of staff, prisoners or the surrounding community. Justifications for full lockdowns would typically only include prisoner escapes, murders of staff or prisoners, and large-scale violent prison riots, and they typically ended within days or a few weeks at most. Even then, they would almost always be contained to one unit or prison, not across an entire state or the whole nation.

Those days are gone. Lockdowns are now issued for almost any reason, according to interviews with a wide array of prisoners, attorneys, advocates and loved ones on the outside of prison walls. Barbee describes a sense of hopelessness and bewilderment on the part of those who have no way of knowing what is happening inside or if their family members in prison are even alive. Lockdowns happen so fast that prisoners rarely have the opportunity to inform anyone who cares about them.

Prison lockdowns have intensified in both duration and levels of abuse and deprivation over the years.

In addition, many other prison facilities are mimicking key facets of lockdown status even if prisoners technically remain in “gen pop.” Such examples include severe limits on access to confidential legal counsel, denial of family visitation without explanation, returned email or postal communication without justification, and many other restrictions that violate both constitutional rights and prison regulations.

The move toward lockdowns is functioning as a strategic manner of eroding an already paltry level of civil/human rights protections for prisoners within the U.S. carceral system.

Since April 2021, protesters in Atlanta, Georgia have been fighting to defend Weelaunee Forest, where politicians and profiteers are attempting to build a police training compound known as Cop City. This movement has spread around the country, identifying and attacking the roots of state and corporate support for the project; later this month, opponents of Cop City will gather in Tucson, Arizona.

Yet the proposed police militarization center in Atlanta is only one of many. All across the United States, governments are allocating hundreds of millions of dollars to build new police militarization facilities, seeking to expand the repressive capabilities of the police and pouring more money into the pockets of their allies.

The movement to Stop Cop City has given rise to one of the fiercest struggles of the past three years. Does it represent a reproducible strategy by which abolitionists can take a structural approach to stopping the expansion of the police-industrial complex?

Boycott them:

• #BankOfAmerica (#BofA)
• #FifthThird
• #JPMorgan #Chase
• #PNC Bank
• #Suntrust
• #USBank (#USBancorp)
• #WellsFargo

Did I miss any?

And note that non-US banks are not off the hook here. Many banks in Europe invest in JPMorgan who then invests in private prisons in the US.

(clearnet link to the same page for those without Tor).

Canonical YouTube link

The Families United Against Torture and for Human Rights that we accompany in Frayba are made up of people who have achieved their freedom and follow a process of searching for justice and truth; as well as relatives of survivors of torture in detention, mostly women, grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters, nieces, aunts who, out of love, promote justice for their relatives. Those who make up Familias Unidas come from the municipalities of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, La Concordia, Pichucalco, Jiquipilas, Palenque, Playas de Catazajá, Teopisca, Villaflores, Chilón, Cintalapa, Venustiano Carranza, Huimanguillo, and Tabasco.

The survivors, as well as their families, have reflected that torture is part of a State strategy, with clear methods to generate physical and mental pain, to generate fear and terror, break the social and solidarity fabric, intimidate the population and , as a form of control, to inhibit defense and justice actions.

At Frayba for 32 years we have accompanied relatives and victims of acts of torture. Governments of all colors have passed, constitutional and legal reforms too, but illegal detentions accompanied by acts of torture continue to be the main investigation method of the Attorney General's Office of the State of Chiapas, simulating justice, filling the prisons with victims of human rights violations.