DeeDee Halleck
University of California, San Diego
February, 1999

In the past several years a lively list serve has evolved that addresses
issue of incarceration and justice in the United States. Each night I log
on to messages that range from desperate pleadings for someone life to
cautious discussions of what the slogans should be on the posters for the
next Mumia march. There are technical descriptions of prison architecture
and quests for herbal cures to cell block bronchitis epidemics. It is the
underside of what is one of our leading industries: locking people up.

Prisons are a big business here: construction of cells, outfitting of
facilities, training and equipping guards are some of the expenses of an
industry that is sapping state and local funds for education and welfare.
In the past seven years California has increased prison spending by 500
per cent, while scaling back higher education by 25 percent. In the state
capital of Sacramento, the prison guard union is the biggest lobby force,
out-flanking tobacco and agribusiness. The prison contractors, law
enforcement suppliers (stun guns, barbed wire, restraint suits, etc) and
the guards’ union were able to join forces to pass the Three Strike Law to
ensure long terms and full cells. The US has more people per capita
behind bars than any where on earth.
 At present almost two million people are behind bars: five million are in
the system if you include those awaiting sentencing or on parole. Women
are the fastest growing sector. And especially women of color. Finally
equal justice under the law.

Prisons have become a key source of labor, with many transnational
corporations contracting with states to manufacture goods and set up
telemarketing stations. TWA and Eddie Bauer Sporting Goods use prisoners
to work their phone reservations and orders. Microsoft Windows 95 was
packaged, shrinkwrapped and shipped by incarcerated workers. The State of
California put it this way: “Why go abroad, when you can have a
disciplined workforce here at home?” in a video to entice more
corporations to join the “Joint Ventureship Program” of placing factories
in prisons. As more and more U.S. businesses become entwined in this
booming industry, it seems harder and harder to reverse this trend, even
though crime rates are low every where but on television.

However, in response to these conditions there are a variety of resistant
activities that range from grass roots demonstrations to full page ads in
the New York Times to save Mumia Abu Jamal. Abu Jamal is the first
internationally recognized U.S. Death Row prisoner since the Rosenbergs
were executed during the Cold War (http://www.mumia.org/) For many in the
United States, Mumia is The Voice of the Voiceless (the title of a radio
show which he hosted before his arrest), the symbol of those masses behind
bars, and a figurehead for the broad movement of those who are resisting
the prison industrial complex.

The counter prison movement is perhaps the most focused and viable of
activist groupings in the U.S. at the present time. The people involved
are ex prisoners, families of prisoners, Quaker and other religious peace
activists, victims for reconciliation, human rights workers, Vietnam vets,
the Bruderhof (a Christian Communist network of communities numbering
several thousand), academics from sociology to geography to cultural
studies, philosophers, lawyers, parole officers and guards. For this
diverse crew the internet has become a major tool.

There are countless web sites for individual prisoners and pages for
organizations and coalitions. A clearing house in Berkeley, The Prison
Activist Resource Center, has been a central node
(http://www.igc.org/prisons) in much of the activity, maintaining both a
list serve and a web site with numerous links. The Center was one of the
central organizers of the successful Critical Resistance Conference in
Berkeley in September, 1998, a gathering of over 4,000 prison activists
and spokespersons.

Prisons are usually located in rural areas, far from the urban centers
where most of their population is from. A growing trend in incarceration
is a move to having private corporations contract with states and cities
to house prisoners. One of the results of the increased privatization of
prisons is the fact that many states contract for the housing and care of
prisoners across state lines. So someone arrested in Missouri could end
up in Texas, where the cost of maintenance is lower, and access to legal
aid and human rights may be harder to come by. One way that prisoner’s
families use the web is by creating individual prisoners pages with
personal histories, art work, poetry and addresses. Usually posted by
parents or spouses and friends, these sites become a virtual presence of
the loved one who is often far from home. Although many prison families
do not have personal computers, they can log in at the local library,
school or cyber cafe. There is an anecdote that a cleaning woman in a
large New York law firm logs on in the evening not only to activist sites,
but to on-line law journals and case records to work on legal strategies
for her husband’s case. (http://www.findlaw.com/)

A mother's site is at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1526/ A site
for high end machines is http://peopleoftheheart.org/index2.htm Lacresha
Murray Watch out, it crashed my computer with all its streaming video and
graphic arpeggios. It's an amazing story of an eleven year old child who
has been sentenced to twenty five years.

The web can also be a way to keep tune to the latest in instruments of
repression. There are many industry sites where you can order handcuffs
and pepper spray. (www.counterterrorism.com/copex.html) There are counter
cop sites such as http://www.prisonactivist.org/copwatch/

Hundreds of service organizations are posting sites: activist against
unjust sentencing (http://www.sentencing.org) the Bruderhof Christian
radicals (http://www.bruderhof.org/hold/issues/deathpen/inmates/index.htm)

There are many artists web sites addressing these issues. The graphics
collective, Third World War, has posted a series of comic style drawings
and texts. David Thorne and others have created a series of posters which
are posted on line. (http://www.igc.org/prisons/resistant-strains/)
Various political prisoners have posted drawings of their cells. Many
sites have prisoners drawings and paintings. There are many prison poems
and drawings on the Deep Dish site. (http://www.igc.org/deepdish). A web
page of the Critical Resistance Conference is archived there on line. I
worked with Gina Todus, Chris Burnett and members of Paper Tiger San
Francisco to stream audio from that conference and post cultural material
and statistics from the conference. The site has been accessed by
thousands of users and is still being up-dated.

An overview site is posted at
http://members.tripod.com/~gmoses/prison/plinks.htm

And one on the maximum security units is at
shu http://www.igc.org/prisons/cpf/CPFshu.html

Many black nationalists see the U.S. prison system as genocide, and compare it
to South Africa under apartheid:
http://www.amandla.org/

A list serve with postings of thirty or forty messages a day is maintained
by the Prison Activist Resource Center. For some the list serve is
literally a matter of life and death. The most desperate messages are the
pleas from mothers or wives or children trying to enlist help to beg for
pardons as the execution date nears. There are currently almost 4000
people on Death Rows awaiting executions. Email campaigns have been used
successfully to get medical attention for sick prisoners, or to obtain eye
glasses, and there is always hope that a flood of messages will startle a
governor or member of the state supreme court to take notice and review a
capital case. The list serve is the center of many controversies. One
very active member is Cayenne Bird who is said to the wife of an inmate
who was killed by guards. She is quite patriotic and her site has
billowing American flags as a background. She has been critical of the
fact that former Black Panther and ex-Communist Party USA member Angela
Davis has emerged as one of the main leaders of the prison activist
community. Cayenne does not consider herself a radical and spends much of
her time trying to register voters.
http://hometown.aol.com/jumplaw/politics52/index.htm

Cayenne has many on-going arguments with other list members. For a very
brief period of time, a volunteer at the server (The Institute for Global
Communication) tried managing the site and editing the mail. The hue and
cry that ensued was deafening and worse than all the on-going spats. He
quickly apologized and the site continues in its free form and often
cantankerous manner.

At its best the list serve is a true life line for the thousands of prison
activists and families of prisoners out there waging what has been lonely
battles against powerful state and corporate apparati and the peculiar
form of state slavery that has evolved in this post Cold War World. The
prison movement for many of us battle scarred lefties is the final battle:
one which looks at the true end stage of "free market" capital.

We are looking at the face of fascism in America.

We are the enemy.