WHEN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT REPLACED ALCATRAZWITH MARION IN 1962 IT CREATED . .

DANIEL RERRIGAN, S.J.Eddie Griffin

REV. LEON WHITEJake McCarthy

SCOTT W.MYERSFred Bustillo

AUDREY ARONSON MYERS

ALCATRAZ FEDERAL PRISON San Francisco Bay 1934 — 1963

CONTENTSPreface 3Introduction — Reverend Leon White 4Hell In a Very Small Place - Daniel Berrigan, SJ 5Prison Within a Prison — Scott W. Myers 8The Control Unit at Marion - Eddie G. Griffin (29484) 9The Air Is Constantly Stale — Scott F. Anderson 10Chicano/Latino Cultural Group Is Disbanded - Fred Bustillo 11A Message from Rafael Cancel Miranda 12America's New Birdman - Jake McCarthy 13Sense of Humanity — Jake McCarthy 14Repression Is the Recipe! The Antidote Is Unity! — Audrey Aronson Myers 15Religious Leaders Rap Marion Prison - Bart Pollock 16Inside View of Marion Control Unit - Photo 17My Poem — Victor G. Bono 18What Is Being Done 19

Cover design by Don Wells D Edited by Scott W. Myers

Printing by the Peace Institute Press

1 1980, The National Committee to Support the Marion Brothers.

PREFACE

THERE IS a growing crisis in the criminal justice sys-tem in America. Rising unemployment, fallinghealth, education and welfare benefits, deteriorat-

ing housing and inflation are forcing more and morepeople below the poverty line. And since it is illegal, forall intents and purposes, to be poor in this country, manyof these people are being thrown into the hands of thepolice and courts. There they are treated as human waste—to be processed by the system and either thrown backonto the street with less than they had before, or sent tojails or prisons.

An ever increasing number are sent to the jails andprisons. In fact as long ago as 1970, then-director of theU.S. Bureau of Prisons, James V. Bennett, proclaimed, "TheU.S. has the largest prison population of any nation in theworld." And the situation is worse today. In 1975 therewere 226,000 people in state and federal prisons. In 1976,249,000, and on January 1, 1977, there were 283,000.This represents a 25% increase in only two years — thelargest increase in U.S. history! And that doesn't includethe exploding population of our city and county jails, orour youth detention centers.

To contain this skyrocketing prisoner population thefederal government, together with state and local govern-ments, has undertaken a two-part program that threatensour freedom, indeed our lives. The first part is a stepped-upexpansion drive. That means building more prisons; con-verting existing facilities, such as army barracks or Olym-pic dormitory housing, into prisons,- or expanding existingprisons.

The second step is the establishment of behavior controlprograms and special long-term control units in these pris-ons. This "Penology of Control" involves the use of drugs,sensory deprivation, long-term solitary confinement, pseud-scientific therapy techniques, and total visual and soundsurveillance — so that more and more prisoners can becrowded together in the prisons. Some people, such asU.S. Bureau of Prisons Director, Norman Carlson, haveeven begun to talk about "incapacitation" of prisoners asa legitimate purpose of prisons.

The control units are the backbone of this entire strategybecause in them are held the prisoners who resist or pro-test against deteriorating conditions in the prisons. These

so-called "troublemakers" are sent to the control units forlong periods of solitary on the grounds that they are "dan-gerous" or a "security risk." In fact, these are the jail-house lawyers, the activists, the inmate leaders, Muslims,Marxists. They are more often than not the Black, NativeAmerican, Hispanic or Asian prisoners, though White pris-oners who protest are also put into the control units.

These special units are spreading throughout the U.S.prison system. Control units already exist in state prisonsin Georgia, New Jersey and Michigan. Two are being builtin new federal prisons in New York and Alabama. Two areplanned for the New Mexico and Arizona state prisons.

The arch-example of this type of program, though, isthe Long-Term Control Unit at the Marion, Illinois, FederalPrison —the replacement for Alcatraz as the maximum-security prison in the U.S. Opened in 1972 to break a workstoppage, the control unit is a "prison inside a prison,"an indefinite solitary confinement unit where men are heldin 6' x 8' cells, 23 y2 hours a day, for two, three and fouryears. Prisoners from all the federal and many state pris-ons are sent to the control unit.

But the more important thing about Marion is that aneight-year struggle, involving prisoners, ex-prisoners,activ-ists, lawyers, churches, professionals and students, hasemerged as a force that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons cannotignore. Years of lawsuits, hunger strikes, work stoppages,demonstrations, marches, petition drives and even sit-inshave begun to crumble the walls of secrecy and total au-thority that surround the federal prison system's operations.

This pamphlet is an attempt to re-tell the Marion storyfrom as many different views as possible. The priest, thebishop, the journalist, the activist, the prisoner —Black,White, Hispanic and Native American— all the voices thathave been raised over the past eight years are representedhere, if not as a story-teller, then as a subject of the story.

Here you will find Dan Berrigan's "Hell In a Very SmallSpace," the article that first kindled the fires of support inreligious communities across America. In the section ofprisoner writings, there is an editorial by Eddie Griffin, theformer control unit inmate who wrote the pamphlet "Break-ing Men's Minds," the best description of behavior controlin prisons published to date. Two very different kinds ofmaterial were contributed by Scott and Audrey AronsonMyers, the founders and co-directors of the National Com-mittee to Support the Marion Brothers, the organizationthat has spearheaded a five-year public support drive.Other contributions come from Fred Bustillo, a jailhouselawyer who spent many long months in the Marion controlunit, Jake McCarthy, a columnist for the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch." And there is an article on the National InterfaithDelegation which did an inspection tour of Marion in No-vember, 1979 under the leadership of Roman CatholicBishop Maurice Dingman (Des Moines, Iowa) and includedother Catholic and Protestant religious leaders.

We hope you will find this pamphlet an educational tooland that you will want to share it with others in yourchurch, community, school or other organization. Finally,at the end of the pamphlet you will find a section entitled"What Is Being Done." Not surprisingly, not enough isbeing done. We need you to join us and others in thisstruggle, and so some simple ways of joining in and help-ing are explained in this final section.

INTRODUCTION

By Reverend Leon WhiteCommission for Racial Justice

United Church of Christ

IN FEBRUARY, 1974 Dr. Charles Cobb, the Executive Di-rector of the United Church of Christ Commission forRacial Justice, led a ten-person team on a fact-finding

mission to the Butner, North Carolina Federal Center forCorrectional Research. Butner, then under construction, wasunder attack by many community organizations, churches,civil rights and prisoner rights groups because it plannedto conduct behavior modification research on prisoners.

I was not a member of that fact-finding team, but Irecall reading the statement Dr. Cobb wrote when thebehavior research parts of Butner's program had beeneliminated. Dr. Cobb said: "We shal l not condone or sub-mit to anything that seeks to control the behavior of men,whether that be called behavior modification or behaviorcorrection. We stand foursquare against any procedure orpractice that makes us automatons rather than men."

While the Butner Prison did not institute a behaviormodification program, Marion Federal Prison in Ill inois did.Prisons are designed for many purposes—for punishment,for rehabilitation, for control—and we may all argue therelative merits of these and other correctional systems andmethods. Yet, I urge, prisons ought not be designed tostrip the humanity of their inmates. The Behavior Modifica-tion Unit at Marion Federal Prison is operated to do pre-cisely this: to isolate, to drug, to brainwash, to change thepersonality, beliefs and behavior and thus to dehumanizethe seventy-two men who live there. Marion is the behav-ior control experimentation center of the U.S. Bureau ofPrisons and may, before long, become just the first ofmany such units in the country.

Dr. Cobb's statement and the 1974 mission were freshin my mind not long ago when I joined a similar mission,this time to the Marion, Illinois Federal Prison and its noto-rious long-term control unit. Our team, which consisted offive people representing a broad cross section of religiousgroups and denominations, spent a day at the Marionprison. We saw the entire control unit, listened to and

watched presentations by the prison administration andinterviewed eight prisoners—four from the control unit andfour from the prison's general population.

I am seriously disturbed by what I saw and heard, andI believe you would be disturbed too, had you been therewith us. You would have heard top level officials talkabout the purpose of the prison as "containment," asthough this were a military operation. You would haveheard them talk about-"giving up" on men who, from allappearances, do not merit such expressions of despair andfuti l i ty. And, as if this were not enough, you would haveheard the prison's warden say that twelve prisoners hadbeen released in 1978, then added, "But if we were doingour job, that number would be zero."

The administration must have realized that such state-ments had a deep impact on our visiting team because theassociate warden asked for our reaction as we were leav-ing the prison. He wanted to know if we could say any-thing good about the prison. Our answer was a simple,"No."

Why No? Why so emphatically? And why are we soanxious for you to read these pages and then raise yourvoices, along with ours, in protest? Because special long-term control units like Marion's work to demean the valueof human life, not enhance it. Behind the long periods ofsolitary confinement, the twenty-four-hour-a-day surveil-lance, the behavior pattern logs, the sensory deprivationand all the other methods, is an insidious idea: that cer-tain human beings do not possess the faculties of rationaland moral comprehension which we call "being human"and therefore are to be treated as sub-human, as animals.This idea is contrary to Christian faith and morality as wellas to Jewish and Muslim faith and morality.

The idea is even more insidious when you considerthat the Marion control unit and the other control unitsmodeled on it contain high percentages of Black, Hispanicand Native American prisoners, and that these units holdso many articulate, educated men, capable of expressingtheir political and religious beliefs and acting on themwith faith -and consistency. Why, concerned people mustask, is the prison system so adamant about presentingthese men to us, the public, as violent, dangerous, evensociopathic individuals? And if the answer is that the pris-on system is trying to conceal a greater wrong, a greatercrime being committed by the prison system itself, shouldwe not raise our voices? Should not all of us, from thereligious community, from the Black, Hispanic and NativeAmerican communities—working people, students, andteachers—should we not all be challenged to confront themoral issues raised by this Marion control unit?

On the eve of his death in Memphis in 1968, Dr. MartinLuther King stood with men who had never been accordedrespect for their humanity. They were collectors of garbage.Together they stood in dignity and proclaimed totheworld,"I am a Man." Our mission in the 1980s is to continue tostand with the powerless to proclaim this simple truth.Nowhere is this needed more than in our jai ls and prisons.And as a beginning we must stand with the men at Mar-ion to proclaim to our keepers, "We too are men in theeyes of our Lord."

THB

CATHOLIC WORKERORGAN OF THE CATHOLIC WORKER MOVEMENT

PETER MAURIN, FounderDOROTHY DAY, Editor and Publisher

DANIEL MAUK, PEGGY SCHERER, Managing Editors

Vol. XLIV, No. 7 September, 1978

Marion Prison

Hell In a Very Small SpaceBy DANIEL BERRIGAN, SJ.

Writing about prisoners is a little likewriting about the dead: the mass dead,the unknown and unknowable, those killedin disasters like Managua or Nagasaki orLebanon. No one cares, no one knows; whothe dead were, what difference they madedead or alive, why they perished, what ourdebt is to them. Prisoners are the 'undead'of today's horror films (low budget) and thegothic novels of the 19th century. They in-spire horror and dread and revulsion. Adifferent planet, different beings, hardly hu-man. Who wants to know hardly humans?

For just such reasons—that no one wantsto know, that most people fear to know,that no one listens or ponders —for suchreasons, it is entirely crucial to keep writ-ing, keep talking about prisoners. What noone wants to know may be exactly whateveryone needs to know. What everyone isafraid to know may be what will snatchus from damnation. I call it the Cod LiverOil principle, out of my boyhood; the leastsavory taste in the world saves lives, savesreason. Or, I think of a sensible applica-tion of the old 'analogy of faith' principlewe learned in theology. A truth in onerealm sheds needed light on all truth.Everything real touches everything real.

Another reason why people shy awayfrom knowing about prisoners: what adrag, they sigh. The facts are such a bur-den, piling up, lying unassimilated andinert there in the mind. What are we to dowith the daily need of horrors? We cancarry it about like a sack full of snakes.But where shall we lay it down, or ex-change it for something lightsome, a cashproduct, a prestige item? Let's just takeour Jesus weightless, please.

This trembling, awe, fixation, fear. Itgathers around the fate of the great massof prisoners in America, it disrupts ourstereotypes about ourselves, free, brave,white, benign, just. . . Then the prisonersloom up, the largest concentration of pris-oners in western history, some quarter ofa million of them—largely non-white, male,poor, Ourselves? Ourselves and not our-

We,selves, we and the havoc we wreak,and the needful victims of — we.

A like fear and trembling arises at thespectacle of political prisoners. To the out-side worlds, prison is somewhat like a can-cer ward. Those who walk in will neverwalk out; so the myth goes. Prisoners areportents, sources of awe (revealers of our

Dan Berrigan speaking at St. Louis Univer-sity forum on Human Rights In a NuclearWorld. Forum was co-sponsored by NationalCommittee to Suport the Marion Brothersand the Social Justice Commission ol the

Missouri Province ot the Jesuits.

condition?). We resist the truth they haveto offer. This is why, even among peacepeople too, there is such fudging on thequestion of serious civil disobedience. Atmeetings evaluating the June actions atthe U.N., discussion on the conduct, ethos,of those taking part, was minimal. Whatcounted was, in a curiously sanatized ob-scenity, media 'exposure.' The leadership,at least the voluble part of it, seemed todread above all, the essential invisibilityof prison, the wipe-out. Arrest, well maybe.But disappearance, even for a few days?Hell no, we won't go.

Sheer hopelessness. Resignation. Youread it in the faces. Before the fact, beforethe attempt to do something, all of modernlife, at its boiling, tossing center, seemshopeless. Acceded, admitted to, the bentheads, cop-out, retreat, jogging, healthspas, kids' games for adults, homemaking,money making . . . Resistance is hopeless,a waste. 'They' are too big, omnivorous,powerful. Our side has no one, no money,no energy, etcetera, etcetera. The etceteraswould fill a Kelly girl's (sic) waste basketwith a macho stutter.

We don't want to be helpless. We don'twant to be inarticulate. We don't want tobe off the street. We don't want to sit alonein a box, be shunted around in cuffs. Wedon't want to be losers. We don't want todie, even a little. We want, maybe, to talkabout the poor, or prisoners, or refugees,or the ghettoized—to write about them, orcommiserate, or (on occasion) leaflet at aprison, or protest the death penalty. To gofar enough in, as the song has it, to beable to say we were there . . . It is a littlelike the terrified fear of the seriously ill,"I've tried everything." And often you findthey've tried everything but the one essen-tial thing. Christians have tried everythingbut Christianity.

The Undead Come AliveWhat does one do with knowledge of the

facts, the atrocious, unbearable treatmentof people, prisoners? the kind of knowl-edge that might heighten empathy, sendblood racing in compassion? and yet doessomething quite different—leaves one withfolded hands?

You unfold your hands.And then there is the question of prayer,

which consists for the most part in insistingthat God do for us what we are unwillingto do for one another. Resolve: Let's dofor one another what we would have Goddo for all. This is known as godlike activity.

In such ways, the undead (ourselves)come alive.

Prisons have a radically different rela-tionship than other public structures, to agiven culture. In a morally-underdevelopedland such as ours, one still hears talk ofthe reform of universities or the renewalof political forms, or even the rebirth ofthe churches. These are not inherentlylost causes, though the times conspire tomake them so. But the reform of prisons!One would have to be fond as Macawberor mad as Lear to propose such an oxy-moron, in America, in '78. An inherentlylost cause, which mad times invest withan altogether spurious, mad-eyed legiti-macy. It is a legitimacy lent by fear tothe absurd; fortunes are built on it, badjobs multiply like maggots, bureaucrats,academics, chaplains clone like crazy.Everyone wants a cut, everyone has some-thing to offer—the cosmetic job on a deadhorse.

For at least some prisoners, the situa-tion has a kind of wry picquancy. Theyare ornaments of a system which managesat one and the same time to be anti-bibli-cal, anti-historical, anti-human, morallyoutrageous, socially unworkable, ruinouslyexpensive, and metaphysically repugnant.A cancer spot on the universal karma. Isthere a consolation in being pitched into amadhouse? Out of the worst may come thebest. Meantime like the hero of "King ofHearts," the prisoners dance, mime, gri-mace, mimic the insanity of society-at-large.

The most neglected texts of the NewTestament in our lifetime, refer directly tothe greatest crimes of our lifetime: war,capital punishment, abortion. These areflagrant assaults on the God of Life, thecommand which is a self-revelation ofGod, 'Thou shall not kill.' The implica-tions of violating the command, in ourshucking off our godlike aura, are appal-ling. The second most neglected texts ofthe New Testament today, refer to thesecond greatest of crimes: those commit-ted against people whose fate, for onereason or another, falls short of actualmurder. In general, the condemning ofvast numbers to servitude, victimhood, ex-ploitation. And among those so reduced,mauled, made sport of, reduced to zeros,we must surely count the prisoners. Theirfate cries out to heaven for vengeance. Itis a consequence of the hardening of heart,brutalizing of conscience, which the Biblespeaks of as a common affliction of thelast times.

Now there remain these three — faith,hope, and professionalism — but the great-est of these is professionalism.

I could count on the fingers of my lefthand the number of Jesuits I know whogive a hang about prisoners. We are pro-fessionalized out of our skulls. Young peo-ple who enter the Order without a clue tothe real world, are tracked into academeas surely as, say, ghetto kids are trackedinto Attica. Thus on our side, does class-ism replace Christianity.

CollusionI spoke at a State campus in Illinois on

the horrors being even then perpetrated atthe Marion Federal Prison in that state.I was immediately taken on by a huffingbureaucrat of the university. (I had sug-gested that the evidence showed a strongly-forged collusion between the academicsand prison officials, in the creation of evermore sophisticated punishment centers.)He declared with some heat, and in theteeth of the evidence, that such things wereunthinkable at Urbana. I was reminded ofan old horse we had for years on the farm,blind in the left eye. We used to concocttricks, strategems, surprise assaults onthe poor animal, all in silence, all on theblind side. He never knew, until it was toolate. Which is to say, he never knew.

But in the matter of the Marion IllinoisBehavior Modification Center. Prisonerswho remain unbroken by the bone breakers,sometimes perform marvels of making do.One of the marvels is the research andwriting done, somehow, by a group of in-mates, subject to duress and snooping atthe Marion Center. What follows drawsheavily on their work.

In 1962, a watershed meeting was heldin Washington, between prison officials andsocial scientists. A Dr. Edgar Schein ofMIT there presented certain ideas on thesubject, 'Man Against Man (sic): Brain-washing.' The ideas were seized on bypenologists and practitioners with consid-erable fervor, and laid, in fact, the ideo-logical and practical basis for the MarionCenter. Said Schein:

In order to produce marked changes ofattitude and/or behavior, it is necessary toweaken, undermine, or remove the supports of the old attitudes. Because most ofthese supports are the face-to-face confir-mation of present behavior and attitudes,which are provided by those with whomclose emotional ties exist, it is often neces-sary to break those emotional ties. Thiscan be done either by removing the indi-vidual physically and preventing any com-munication with those whom he caresabout, or by proving to him that thosewhom he respects are not worthy of it,and, indeed, should be actively mistrusted.

Schein had arrived for the meeting pre-pared to offer more than theory. He fairlybristled with practicalities, of which Iquote only a few:—Physical removal of prisoners to areassufficiently isolated to effectively break orseriously weaken close emotional ties.—Segregation of all natural leaders.—Spying on prisoners, reporting back pri-vate material.—Exploitation of opportunists and inform-ers.—Convincing prisoners they can trust noone.—Systematic witholding of mail.—Building a group conviction among pris-oners that they have been abandoned byor are totally isolated from their socialorder.—Using techniques of character invalida-tion; i.e., humiliation, revilement, shout-ing, to induce feelings of fear, guilt, andsuggestibility; coupled with sleeplessness,an exacting prison regimen and periodicinterrogational interviews.

And so on and so on. But the above willconvey something of the flavor.

Are we to conclude that Dr. Schein iswithout human feeling? Perhaps rather,that he is in stern control. His psyche isuntrammelled, he is ready for the job tobe done. And he urges a like discipline onhis hearers:

I would like to have you think of brain-washing, not in terms of politics, ethics,and morals, but in terms of the deliberatechanging of human behavior and attitudesby a group of men who have relativelycomplete control over the environment inwhich the captive populace lives.

It would be a fatally simple error toconsign Dr. Schein and his likes to theclosed cabinet of Dr. Cagliari. He is nomoral mutation. Indeed the treason of theintellectual is a crime at least as old asthe groves of academe, whose values havesheltered, over the centuries, every typefrom the impassioned socratic to the nit-picking aberrant sophist, making the worstargument appear the better.

What is new in the situation is the widelargesse of the federal cornucopia, the out-pouring of whose goodies on campus re-search (especially in the social and puresciences) the Vietnam decade illustrated.The truism was revealed to cynic and inno-cent alike—no campus, however private orprestigious, can exist without governmentbenefits. And, on the other hand, no warcould be waged, no public opinion beturned around, no prison technique beintroduced or tested, without the collabo-ration of the academics. From 'value free,'the campuses had turned necrophilic, para-sitic.

This is the stringed and purring back-ground music that played to Schein andhis well-bred savageries. And for counter-point, a fervent and grateful response.That a gentleman's agreement was beingreached, that great things would follow,no one could be allowed to doubt. The Di-rector of Federal Prisons offered an even-handed invitation to those present to getthe work underway:.. .we have a tremendous opportunity hereto carry on some of the experimenting towhich the various panelists have alluded.We can manipulate our environment andculture. We can perhaps undertake someof the techniques Dr. Schein discussed...Do things on your own. Undertake a littleexperiment with what you can do with theMuslims. Do it as individuals. Do it asgroups, and let us know the results.

Thus the principle was blessed: campusgo-getters with the smarts, do what has tobe done. They are like the Iscariot with abriefcase of credentials; they like theirbetrayal clean and direct, they would stealcoins from a dead man's eyes. And thoseothers who claim some connection with ahumane tradition, who like to call on theshades of Socrates or Luther or Aquinas —they don't know what goes on in the labsor board rooms, or don't want to know.It comes to the same thing. There is acorrupting innocence as there is a bluster-ing upfront corruption.

In such wise, by silence and collusion aswell as Judas' bargaining, the fate of the

sweating prisoners at Marion is settledand sealed. In, among other places, theacademic clots and clusters of Urbanacampus. There, as elsewhere, it is as rareto encounter a right-minded, passionate,faculty member, as it is to meet his-hercounterpart among say, the Jesuits.We are,in one of the baser coinages, 'privatized.'

When I was in Danbury prison, I hadoccasion to ask a prison doctor a question.(He had been a student in a college theol-ogy course I taught at Le Moyne. A goodman, but weak, in a bad spot.) How long,in his opinion, could a prisoner bear withsolitary confinement, without psychicharm? He put the outer limit at one week."After that, one can expect disorientation,growing intense as the isolation goes on."Yet in Danbury, a relatively benign box,stretches in solitary often went for 30 daysor more.

The Marion Pen, however, is not foolingaround. There is a concentrated effort topush matters to the limit; the limit ofendurance, the limit of the law, the limitof ethics. And over. It is not merely thatthe proposals of Schein and his crew ofman-eaters have been put into practice,built in, quite coldly and literally. One canexpect, after all, that a free hand will beoffered when the silk-suited, brief-casedscalpers descend on the defenseless. Awink, a covert nod, a bargain struck. Whohas not seen it? Who, after all, need know,if this or that rule is bent, this or that newidea tried out? And if something leaks, whocares? And who says (this is the clincher)who says the caring must begin with thosewho are assaulted, bewildered, thrown offbalance by a brand of new and fractiousprisoners, politically reborn, hip, beyondimpressing with a stick or winning overwith carrots?

And Marion, be it noted, is not simply aprison where the ante is up, or the prisonheat turned higher. Marion cannot reallybe compared on a yardstick of high-secu-rity, legitimate violence, with conditions atAtlanta or Lewisburg. What all these penshave in common is, in other words, far lesssignificant than what Marion alone prac-tices and pushes.

In common, arguably, in the high volt-age federal system are the following: mur-ders, brutalization, drug pushing, destruc-tion of mail, intimidation and harassmentof visitors and families, racism designedto fragment the prisoners, abuse of reli-gious belief and practice, misuse of ther-apy techniques, moronic labor assign-ments, slave wages and practice of solitaryconfinement.

Then we come to Marion. Literally andsymbolically to the end of the line, the Be-havior Modification system. This is thedarling of the federal workhouses, the 'ironmaiden' of that chorus of furies whosechant is all of a new creation. There,straight-jacketed, alternately cherished,

cossetted and cursed, permanently keptoff balance, marinated in numerous sweetand sour juices, persuaded that conformityis all, drugged if need be, therapied out ofhis skull, victimized by every free-floatingploy of the psycho trade—there dwells theprisoner who has made it, who is in pro-cess of making it, who horrors! may for atime resist making it.

We must linger over this obscure figure,his existence, his secret thought, his darkvision of life. These are of moment to all.And one need not cheaply or carelesslydraw lines linking his fate and ours. Thelinkage is there, for those with eyes tosee; indeed it has been boldly and expli-citly drawn by prison authorities: "Thepurpose of the Marion control unit is tocontrol revolutionary attitudes in the pris-on system and in the society at large."(Ralph Aron, former warden of Marion.Emphasis mine.)

Rage in Secret

Unique! Still, we are told that, at Mar-ion even, a few prisoners hold out. Theyare jealous of their souls. They guard theirthoughts, nursing their rage in secret. Andlet us not stop there; that dark rage is notwhat makes them dangerous; indeed, it isarguable that hatred is a serviceable toolof captivity. No, these holdouts cherishtheir anger, separate it with a jeweler'sprecision from the detritus of racism andfrenzy. Justice is their passion. They arepure anger, cleanly fueled; like a blowtorch laced with oxygen, they burn straightup. They are in service. And this makesthem dangerous as a laser in skilled hands.They cut through adamant, they cut throughtime and the walls of hell itself. They cutthrough lies and rhetoric and false prom-ises and threats and black looks and de-scending goons' clubs. They cut throughthe opaque culture, the omni-resistantcurtain that hems them in — a spiritualslavery.

At this point the battle is joined.

One must be careful in the name of theheroic resisters of Marion, not to mystifythe issue. Humans created Marion, hu-mans must render it less lethal, or betterstill, must dismantle it. A mitigation of itshorrors, of injustice and the degradation ofsouls, must be sought by legal and illegalmeans. Humans oppose humans, in a con-test to the death; seizing on public apathy,certain minds are determined to make ofthe defenseless the victims, and of victims(if required) corpses. This must be re-sisted, the guilty brought to the bar.

On the other hand, it seems to me ex-traordinarily significant that the prisonershave grasped something deeper: the spir-itual conflict that underlies their plight.Humans indeed created Marion but Marionis out of control, a technique gone berserk.To insist on this, to document it, the pris-

oners have done their homework on prisonreligion as well as prison economics, pris-on miseducation, prison discipline. More;they have had to create forms of faiththat would help them to nurture the rootsof resistance, speak for the soul, functionin strikingly traditional ways; fasting, non-violent reprise, care for one another, disci-pline, meditation. They have thus createdwhole cloth, a community deserving of thename prison religion has sold out; resist-ing, faithful improvising, tactically naive,witty.

And they have done all this, it must beremembered, in circumstances designed todaunt all but the hardiest spirits.

We are to imagine a cell, six-feet-by-nine,in which one is locked for an unspecifiednumber of days, weeks, months, for twentythree and one-half hours each day, on un-specified charges.

There you sit. And there you stand, andthere you pace. And there you bend overand in Daudet's wonderful phrase, 'teachthe ants their ABC's,' In principle (asapart from practice) no one can lay ahand on you: no drugs, no screaming,wheaming, therapy sessions, no chaplains'soft soap, no yard, no sky. A double door,a sheet of steel, a sound-proofed existence,also people-proofed, time-proofed, motion-proofed.

Worth pausing over; considerable geniushas been expended here. Your body willbear no marks of brutality, sadism, tech-nique. Physical torture, its principle andinstruments and skills, is for export; yourinternal colon is unmarked. Apart fromcalling attention to what must remain adiscreet enterprise, such stigmata wouldmake the prisoner a less pure subject ofsoul bending. For the Marion Center is,after all, a laboratory. It may also be aconfessional, a gulag, a Devil's Island upto date. But it is first and foremost a lab-oratory of social and soul change; it mustapproach the decontaminated purity ofSkinner's famous Cambridge cellar.

Congratulations. You are now a candi-date, honored in principle, dishonored inpractice (a truly Pauline irony)—a candi-date for the twice-born human. Withinsuch a vocation, it is understandable thatthe choices are not large. You may hastenthe process, or abort it by suicide, as manydo. A regrettable outcome, cheating onthe state, whose outreach cannot preventthis final evasion. Or you may sabotagethe process by an altogether wilful stub-borness. Some have even memorized por-tions of the Bible or the Bill of Rights asa bright bulwark; they incant the wordsnight and day as though some secret vir-tue exuded from them, to make one un-touchable by calipers and saw.

And finally, and in large part, otherssubmit; and thus rejoin America, restoredin limb, chastened in soul.

SOJOURNERS MAGAZINEOctober '78 — Vol. 7, No. 10

Prison Within a PrisonSilencing Critics in the Marion Control Unit

By SCOTT W. MYERS

The date is December 31,1977. The time:around midnight. Prisoners in the long-term control unit at Marion, Illinois, Fed-eral Prison hear strange sounds comingfrom the cell of Scott Caldwell. Concerned,they call for a guard. A few minutes laterthe night man appears. He goes to openCaldwell's cell door but can't find the key.Telling the prisoners he will return soon,he departs. About ten minutes later hecomes back, this time with the correct key.He opens the cell door and enters. Insidehe finds Caldwell hanging from a make-shift noose. He is dead. The guard callsfor assistance and the body is quicklytaken away.

Scott Caldwell is not the first man tocommit suicide as a result of confinementin the Marion long-term control unit. Since1972 eight men have killed themselves inthe control unit, or shortly after being re-leased: Paul Duhart, Willie Adams, LeComte Ely, Charles Alfano, and others.This might not seem extraordinary con-sidering the suicide rate in some jails. Butthere are only 72 cells in the Marion con-trol unit, making the suicide rate higherthan in any other federal prison.

What is it about this long-term controlunit that has driven so many men to suchdespair that they have chosen to end theirlives? What type of confinement would ex-tinguish the will to live in so many people?

First, the control unit is a prison withina prison, a maximum-security cell-blockinside the top maximum-security prison inthe United States. (Marion replaced Alca-traz when it was closed in the early 1960s.)Inside the unit, men are kept in solitaryconfinement in six-foot by eight-foot cells,twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day, for anindefinite period of time. Some men havebeen kept there two, three and four years.One man, Hiller "Red" Hayes, was keptthere nearly six years before dying after aheart attack in 1977.

The control unit is not merely Marion's"hole," either. The U.S. Bureau of Prisonssends prisoners to the control unit fromevery federal prison in the country, frommany state prisons, and even from U.S.protectorates, such as Puerto Rico andthe Virgin Islands. The Bureau's officialline is that these are the most dangerousprisoners in the country, and that extremesecurity measures are needed to preventthem from doing harm to other prisoners.

8

But last April, after a three-year courtinquiry into the control unit's operations,a federal district judge found that the con-trol unit "has been used to silence prisoncritics, religious leaders, economic andphilosophical dissidents." The judge's find-ings have been supported by no less anauthority than former Marion warden,Ralph Aron. In an amazingly frank pieceof testimony in the 1975 trial of a classaction suit, 'Bono vs. Saxbe,' to close thecontrol unit, Aron said, "The purpose ofthe long-term control unit is to controlrevolutionary attitudes in the prison sys-tem and in the society at large."

Aron's statements have been taken seri-ously by control unit prisoners, their law-yers, and a prisoner rights organizationcalled the National Committee to Supportthe Marion Brothers. They have chargedthat the U.S. Bureau of Prisons is conduct-ing a well-planned behavior control pro-gram in the control unit to repress criti-cisim and opposition by prisoners. Theysay the control unit employs indefinite soli-tary confinement, sensory deprivation (cut-

GEORGE KNOWLTON

ting off light and sound from a person'senvironment), restrictive visiting (over tel-ephones through a plexiglass shield), andpseudo - scientific t h e r a p y programs tobreak the spirits of activist prisoners. Theyhave charged that prisoners have been fedtranquilizing drugs in their food and arebeaten if they don't accept the conditionsof their confinement. They even report in-

cidents in which guards have thrown urineon prisoners.

Many of these charges have been docu-mented. In a 1977 court ruling, the SeventhU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicagoordered the release of a prisoner from thecontrol unit's sensory deprivation "boxcar"cells. The court said the closed-front cells,used to punish prisoners who continue toresist even in the control unit, "representa form of punishment equal to the rack,the screw, and the wheel of medievaltimes." In 1976, prisoners reported that12 beatings had taken place in the unit inthree months.

Congressman Herman Badillo (D - NY)called for an investigation into the beatingsand two U.S. Bureau of Prisons employeeswere assigned the job. Although these in-vestigators refused to interview any of thevictims, they found that guards had keptbottles of urine in a cabinet to throw onprisoners. Even earlier, in 1975, an investi-gation by the U.S. General Accounting Of-fice prompted Congressman Ralph Metcalf eto call for the immediate closing of theunit. "The long-term control unit," he said,"is long-term punishment under the guiseof what is, in fact, pseudo-scientific experi-mentation."

Revelations such as these have broughtthe control unit under intense legal attackin the courts. In July, 1972, when the unitwas opened to confine more than 100 pris-oners who had joined in a work stoppageat Marion, officials claimed the unit's pur-pose was "treatment." But the prisonersfiled a class action suit, 'Adams vs. Carl-son,' charging that the unit was a punish-ment unit, not a treatment unit. The U.S.District Court in East St. Louis, Illinois,ruled against the men, but their appealwas upheld by the Seventh Circuit Court.As a result, most of the men were released.

Soon after, however, the Bureau of Pris-ons replaced the released prisoners withother men. So in 1974, another class actionsuit, 'Bono vs. Saxbe,' was brought in thefederal courts. In this suit the prisonerscalled for an end to indefinite solitary con-finement, closing of the boxcar cells, anend to restrictive visiting, and expandedlegal rights in disciplinary hearings. Theysaid confinement in the control unit viola-ted Constitutional guarantees against crueland unusual punishment.

'Bono vs. Saxbe' was tried in 1975 insouthern Illinois, but it was not until April,1978, that Federal District Judge JamesForeman ruled on it. Under the pressureof a writ of mandamus, which forces ajudge to explain why he shouldn't be com-pelled to issue a ruling, Foreman orderedthe closed-front doors to the boxcar cellsremoved, but allowed the control unit toremain in operation. Indefinite solitaryconfinement, he argued, was not cruel andunusual punishment, but a form of preven-

Sunday, June 12, 1977

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCHtive detention, a necessary tool for pre-venting prisoner disruptions before theyoccur.

At a demonstration held in front of Fore-man's court building two days later, one ofthe prisoner's lawyers, Michael Deutsch,denounced the decision and said it wouldbe appealed.

"The doctrine of preventive detention isjust another form of behavior control," hetold more than 100 demonstrators. "Be-cause of the court's ruling, the Bureau ofPrisons can now legally lock up prisonersindefinitely on the basis that they can pre-dict their behavior, that they can predictthey will join a hunger strike or a workstoppage. This is a very dangerous doc-trine." Apparently prisoners are not theonly ones in danger. Two Marion guardsattended the East St. Louis demonstrationand took photos of each of the demonstra-tors.

The final outcome in the battle over theMarion control unit will have far-reachingimpact on U.S. penal policies. The Bureauof Prisons and many state prison systemssee control units as the solution to wide-spread prisoner unrest in U.S. prisons Ifthey can lock up their critics indefinitelyand cut them off from the outside world,they will have carte blanche to run theirprisons in any way they please.

There are already plans for more controlunits. The spread of such units throughoutU.S. prisons raises serious questions aboutChristian's ministry to prisoners. Tradi-tionally, Christians have sought to estab-lish chaplaincy programs in prisons. Inmore recent years, prisoner visitation andsupport programs have been undertakenin many areas.

The effect of control units is to renderboth approaches impotent. This is not tocondemn visitation, counseling, and wor-ship services. But can one who professesfaith in Jesus Christ walk away from theseprisons and remain silent about the mis-ery and death that pervades them? Oris one led instead to recall the very firstsermon of Jesus Christ in the gospel ofLuke: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon mebecause he has anointed me to preach goodnews to the poor. He has sent me to pro-claim release to the captives . . . . " ?

This is the call we must start answeringif we wish to prevent more Scott Caldwellsfrom ending their lives in control units likeMarion's.

The Control Unit at MarionTiny, Isolated Cells Used to Make Prisoners Conform

By Eddie G. Griffin (29484)Inmcrfe, Federal Prison. Marion, 111.

There are a number of prisoners who,officials concede, cannot have their behav-ior modified by conventional means. As alast resort, they are sent to the ControlUnit.

The Control Unit is 70 solitary confine-ment "tombs," some of which are encasedby heavy steel doors. Here a prisoner isconcealed from other prisoners and theoutside world for an extended period oftime — sometimes for years. His only re-lief is 30 minutes of recreation and a 10-minute shower.

The process begins like a prison admini-strative procedure — like typical discipli-nary action — except that a prisoner usu-ally does not know what specific offenseor infraction he is charged with. To thecontrary, he is led to believe that the ad-ministration is merely giving him a tasteof its notorious Control Unit as a warning.He is told that he is under a 30-day obser-vation and that he can (if he wishes) appealthrough remedy procedures (a processwhich takes at least six months to com-plete). But it makes no sense to go throughthe long-drawn-out procedure when a manbelieves he will be out of solitary in 30 daysanyway. He waives his Sixth Amendmentright — a move he will regret for monthsto come.

On the next occasion — more often thannot — he is remanded to the Control Unitfor an "indefinite term." And all is lost.

The first 30 days (the so-called observa-tion period) are usually spent in the "box-cars" — a nearly soundproof cell impound-ed by a thick steel grill door. The 6' x 8'x 8' chamber which serves as living quar-ters is recessed beyond the wall whereonly a peep of sunlight is allowed to enter.The atmosphere is bleak and depressing,the air stagnant and stifling. Some cellsare without lighting, except for the 60-wattbulb which burns 24 hours a day betweenthe two doors.

The chamber itself contains a stainlesssteel toilet and a "therapeutic" bed con-trived of a cold steel slab, attached to thewall by two rails, and overlaid by a one-inch thick piece of foam rubber wrappedin coarse plastic.

A man's eyes grow weary of the scene,of the poor lighting and drab walls. Some-times his vision is interrupted by a seriesof quick white flashes or invaded by shad-ows creeping around the periphery. Hisreflex is automatic. He flinches and dodgesfrom the nothing that is there. He muststruggle to stave off hallucinations andfight to suppress the skull-spliting head-aches.

But prison guards contribute to the head-aches. On their once-a-month "securitychecks," guards make their rounds with arubber mallet, banging against the steelbars. It sends shock waves to the brain.Sensitive membranes cannot withstand theshocks, consequently, some prisoners suf-fer nosebleeding afterwards.

Some guards found pleasure in admini-stering these shock-wave treatments oncea week, in the early morning hours whenmost prisoners were trying to sleep. Oc-casionally, they conduct surprise raids ona prisoner's cell, confiscating any bread,jelly, butter, sugar, salt or other foodstuffwhich a prisoner might save for hardtimes. And usually, some guards find itnecessary to explore the ceiling also, thusleaving the prisoner with dirty sheets tosleep on. All the while, the man must standin handcuffs and watch his cell beingransacked. One word could cause a beat-ing (of the worst description). During thefirst six months of the Bicentennial year(76), there were no fewer than a dozensuch beatings and, on several occasions,guards threw buckets of urine on prisoners.An investigation revealed that a stockpileof urine was kept in a cabinet in the unitfor such purposes.

The accumulation of effects, induced bythe environment, harrassments, druggings,beatings and psychological manipulations(mind-games) have produced a multitudeof physical and mental debilitations—someeffects develop into irreversible psychoses.As a result, there have been six deaths —four in the unit and two less than a monthout — all officially labeled as suicides. Butdeath, by any means in the Control Unit,is no suicide. It is itself a Death Row forthe living. Its creation added the ultimatedimension to the behavior modificationsystem. The subtle implication behind itsmeaning is made sharp and clear: Con-form or Die.

St. Louis, Missouri • Thursday, Sepfember 21, 1978

St Louis ARGUS News & ViewsRepresenting the Black Community and Working for the Welfare of all St Louisans

Inside Marion;

"The Air Is Constantly Stale"Akbar Rahman (Horace Graydon) has

been held in the control unit of the U.S.Penitentiary at Marion, 111., since April.

He is serving a 15-year term for bankrobbery and says he is considered by pris-on administrators as "too influential amongBlack inmates."

Rahman, 32, from Washington, D.C.,waspreviously held in Atlanta and is now work-ing toward a college degree through theCampus Education Program.

At the time the ARGUS talked to him inAugust, Rahman estimated his cell tem-perature to be 110 degrees, and he empha-sized that officials frowned on control unitinmates talking to reporters.

While there with Rahman, a control unittour was being given to Washington offi-cials.

What changes have they made for them[The Officials] ?

There's no real changes you can see.Actually, there are no changes, except fora more complex behavior modification pro-gram.

What does that entail?Probably the most outstanding thing

about it is the six steps you have to gothrough, and it's probably the most oppres-sive thing I've seen lately. It's step-by-step. You have to keep your cell clean.You can get disciplinarys. How well youparticipate in the work program. How wellyou get along in the unit. Any violationof these steps, and they won't credit youfor any of your time. Like 12 of us gotdisciplinarys for breaking plastic spoons.So we won't get credit for our 30 dayswhen we come up for our 30-day review.

How long have you been in here?I've been in here since April. I was in-

tially locked up for the incident on I-unit,and I've only been credited with twomonths. I had originally six months. It's areward-punishment type thing, and that'sbehavior modification. They say they don'thave behavior modification here, but that'swhat it is, no matter how well disguised itis, and guys are suffering behind it.

What have you done wrong?I've got one disciplinary for breaking the

spoon, but we had to do almost four months

10

By SCOTT F. ANDERSONARGUS Stall Writer

before getting credit for even one month.Is that because of the strike?

Well, the first 30 days they don't credityou with. The second 30 days is just to seehow you act, just a review. That's the typeof program they have down here. We haveto pay for the spoons. They cut back onyour recreation. They take away your 30

JONAH GOLDSCHMIDT

AKBAR RAHMAN

days, no commissary, plus not creditingyou with your month, plus getting a disci-plinary that goes in your jacket.Do you get a half hour of recreation a day?

Yes.

Outside?No, no, inside. Sometimes we get outside

once a week, if we're lucky. But if they'vegot 16-17 people on the range, we mightnot even get out. And when you bring outabout the Bono vs. Saxbe case, that we'resupposed to have recreation every day,they'll tell you, 'Well, we didn't have thetime.' And sometimes they'll let dudeshave more than their time, and the othersdon't get a chance.

What part did you play in the food strikelast April?

Well, I was one of the main organizersof it. Like things were really bad. Theyweren't ruling on the Bono vs. Saxbe case.They constantly had a lot of strip searches,plus there was a lot of discrimination ongroups like the Black culture group . . . theMuslims. So we said what we can do, whatsacrifices can all the inmate populationmake?

The strike was 100 percent, and they juststarted grabbing people they thought werepotential ringleaders. What happened was,they broke the strike by use of racism .. .'This is Black-led. You don't want to dowhat the Blacks do.'

There's a lot of racist attitudes out inthe population anyway. What they did wasisolate the Chicanos from the Blacks. Theyput the Chicanos over here, the whiteshere and the Blacks here. The whites saidit was a Black thing, and that's how theybroke the strike. The whites started eat-ing. The Blacks went back to eating andin order to pacify the Chicanos, they hada Spanish meal. . . because very seldomdo they have a Spanish meal, about onceevery six months. They play a lot of littlegames up here like these that are verydangerous — mind games — putting groupagainst group.

Have you been able to have any successat all with the Black Culture Society?

I used to be the chairman, but I've beenbarred from holding office in any organi-zation since the boycott. We had a showhere from SlU-Carbondale. We had Blackpoetry, and a lot of white guys walked outbecause they didn't want to hear it, whichwas their prerogative. But the administra-tion gets on the stage, pulls out the micro-phone and says (it) was creating problemswith the administration. So when they didthat, we organized a boycott. Dudes willnot stop working, but there's nothing in therecord . . . that says they have to playsports. So we stopped playing basketball,stopped going in the pool room. This wasright around Christmas time, too. Afterthey locked us up, in order to pacify mostof the Black dudes who were out, they gotbeef hamburgers and beef hot dogs.

But the food boycott forced Judge JamesForeman to rule on the Bono-Saxbe deci-sion. He would of never ruled on it if wedidn't put pressure on from here, eventhough he didn't do anything when he ruledon it. He closed down nine or ten cells,the boxcars.

They [ administrators ] said they're stillopen.

They are.

Who's in there now?They're in there on their own request.

You have to sign a paper to go into box-cars, it's quiet. There's really no differencein the boxcars from the rest of the range.

Have they taken the steel front off?The steel front is still on there.

So the cell is the same as before the lat-est Foreman ruling?

Right. They're the same. They weresupposed to take the doors off.

After the ruling, did they empty the box-cars?

They went by and asked guys if theywanted to come out, and most said theywould. A few stayed back. Then a major-ity moved out. Then as they bring peoplein, they tell them they don't have anyplace else to put them, so they have themsign a paper, place them in a boxcar andtell them they'll be moved later. This ishow they stretch the ruling. The only dif-ference in the control unit from five yearsago is that they have television. I feel thetelevision in the cell is the worst thing I'veever seen because you can get hooked onthe boob tube, and you won't get nothingdone. You get hooked on that thing, andthat's it. Dudes are constantly being ren-dered passive. Their mental faculties areslowed down.

Is there anybody up there that's close tosuicide now?

There are maybe nine or ten guys thatare very close to going off or being hurtby the administration. The administrationis constantly pushing on them.

I see it as being a very potentially ex-plosive spot behind some of the thingsthey're doing.

Is there any type of Black organizationstill in existence here?

The last I heard, there is, but they'recatching natural hell. They define Blackculture here as singing and dancing. Theysaid we're too political. That's why thecontrol unit has lasted so long. The pris-oners in the population, besides variousgroups and various people, do not dealwith the control unit because they don'tknow what's happening down here.

Is the best way to survive in the controlunit, to take whatever they give you?Can you stand up in any way to this har-assment?

Complaining to officials will only com-pound the problem. The best way to dealwith these people, the most potent weaponwe have — is what I'm doing now — writ-ing, giving interviews, letting people knowwhat's happening. I've found the best wayis for each of us to be responsible for

Chicano/Latino Cultural Group DisbandedBy FRED BUSTILLO

Since the construction of the Marion Fed-eral Penitentiary in the early 1960s, whichreplaced the infamous Alcatraz, no culturalgroup had existed to serve the Chicano/Latino here. Because of the low percent-age (10%) of Chicanos that make up thepopulace of 500 prisoners, the administra-tion had always in the past enjoyed thebenefit of neglecting and, with no difficulty,assimilating this small group of Chicanosinto other groups, such as the Jaycees andgroups sponsored by them, or if nothingelse, letting them "do their own time" idly;thus, no cultural group ever surfaced todevelop.

Recognizing the need for a Chicano cul-tural group, Tony Cordova, Armando Mir-amon and myself set out the task to beginthe formalizing organization of one; withthe deep understanding that our cultureand language must continue to be devel-oped and preserved if we are to continueto exist. Also, to be in conjunction with thepopular struggles on the outside, strivingfor the same goals.

In January, 1973, the education depart-ment, after our repeated requests, par-tially approved us as a cultural group. Butbecause of the six months probationaryperiod which was attached by the prisonadministration before full recognitionwould be accorded, our group becamenothing more than a tool, threateninglyhanging over us. It could be rescinded atany time the administration felt the needto do so; if by some slim chance, as theythought, a true fusion of Chicano unitydeveloped.

In the short six-month period of our exist-ence the unity far surpassed that of domes-tic unity within our own nucleus, but in

who's down here, regardless of what wemay believe in or color or whatever, be-cause we understand 11 people have dieddown here. Don't get into any adversesituations where you can get hurt, unlessit's really necessary.

Haven't the televisions taken away theunity found down here?

Most definitely. When people down herejust started dropping like flies, they hadto do something. They had to put some-thing in to take up that excess time spentin the cell. You spend 23 and a half hours aday in the cell, and all you have is a radio,and you can't talk to the man next to you.It's the (TV) visual contact. The televi-sion is the drug. It was not put there forthe prisoner's benefit. It was put there forthe administration's benefit.

fact spilled over, reaching out to othergroups, such as the Black Culture Society,Nation of Islam, and others. Through thecollective efforts of each group's leader-ship, a Brown-Black unity was at its em-bryonic stage of development, forming aunity under the principle, common to usall, of Class and Cultural Oppression, whichwould unite us accordingly into one fistand struggle.

Upon seeing this unity the warden's footsoldiers quickly moved in, stepping up theirrepression. Our correspondence with thevarious Chicano organizations, newspapersand other periodicals, as well as book-stores offering educational materials freeof cost, were severely curtailed. One ofthe most active members of our committeewas suddenly whisked away to the segre-gation unit for allegedly having strike ma-terial in his possession, though later thiswas disproved. Therefore a charge wasfabricated, charging him with the posses-sion of a penny nail. The prison officialsconsidered this to be a sharpened instru-ment and in violation of prison regulations.He remained in segregation well over fivemonths on this fabricated charge. Themonthly Unity Bazaar meetings sponsoredby the Black Culture Society were quicklyterminated under a volley of threats tocompletely liquidate the entire B.C.S. ifsuch meetings continued. There are manyother things contributing to the process ofundermining our group by the prison offi-cials, but for the sake of brevity I will notgo into this at this time.

After the six-month probationary period,several of the group's committee membersappeared before the supervisor of educa-tion and his assistant for final word of thecultural group's approval. The followingis what was said during the few minuteswe met with these officials:

". . .the Chicano/Latino Cultural Groupwas determined by the administrationnot to be a cultural group but a revolu-tionary political group ..."The central question asked by us after

hearing this was, what in fact constitutesa cultural group? The question was in-stantly rebuffed, and the meeting endedwithout affording us an opportunity to beheard.

Because of the events that have oc-curred since the time our group was dis-banded and prevented from pursuing itsgoals, we have finally begun to challengethis egregiously racist and arbitrary moveby the prison officials. With the assistanceof the National Prison Project, and otherlegal organizations that are willing to as-sist us in litigating a civil suit, we hope tomake some headway this year. For thosewho may be willing to assist us, or forany further information, please contact us.

11

A Message from Rafael Cancel MirandaOn the occasion of the November 27, 1978 sit-in at the

St. Louis office of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons

October 22, 19784556a OaklandSt. Louis, Missouri

My people, once more we meet in spirit here in St. Louis. In the nameof the Marion Brothers, and in the name of all those who care for a bettertoday and a much better tomorrow, I want to thank you once again.

You are here in St. Louis and we are there at Marion, but somehowwe are together, walking hand in hand —Yes, even our brothers in theControl Units, which are a man-made hell, are walking alongside you today—yes, because we walk in you! Because we walk inside of your hearts—andwe walk in the heart, in the spirit of the brother or sister which is atyour side. Those who care for one another become like one.

So, my people, we want to thank you for letting us into your hearts,for fighting for us, for daring to care for those whom society callsworthless and even dangerous. Almost anyone wants a Rockefeller for afriend, but only the special ones would want to stand up for prisoners, tobe friend to a prisoner. You are those special ones, and we proudlywelcome your friendship, your brotherhood—because if someone could keepour humanity from drowning, that someone is you.

We feel better because you care, and that's the truth! For some youmight be fools. For us, you are beautiful people. I can't say that wewill change our ways, if there is such a thing, but we do hope and praythat you never change your ways !

Thank you.

Rafael

Rafael Miranda was one of the five Puerto Rican Nation-alist prisoners held in U.S. prisons for twenty-five years,the longest held political prisoners in the western hemis-phere in recent times. He was released from Marion andreturned to Puerto Rico in September, 1979 as a result ofa pardon from President Carter.

SIT-IN at Federal Bureau o/ Prisons of/ice inSt. Louis to protest control unit's "dangerousand harmful etiects on human Hie." Chargesagainst The St. Louis 9' were later dropped.An internal BOP memo has revealed chargeswere dropped because BOP wanted "to avoidtrial publicity."

12

MAY 6, 1977

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCHAmerica's New Birdman

By JAKE MCCARTHY— a personal opinion

He is likened now to the Birdman ofAlcatraz. Once he was known as a toughguy. By the time he was 35 he had spent14 years in prison for offenses committedin the state of Washington. In June 1960,while on parole, he and a woman compan-ion came through St. Louis. He attemptedto purchase a new car in Lemay, but a-roused suspicions by presenting a checkfor $2600. Police were called.

When their credentials were found to befalse, Hiller Hayes and the woman pro-duced pistols and took three hostages, in-cluding a St. Louis County policeman. Aftera high speed chase, they were stopped ata roadblock near Waterloo, 111. Hayes andthe woman surrendered without a fight.

According to a Post-Dispatch account atthe time, Hayes "was the most heavilyguarded defendant at a federal court trialhere in many years." Hayes acted as hisown defense counsel. Said the account:"He gave his greatest emphasis in an ef-fort to obtain leniency" for his femalecompanion. "He told the court that he hadthreatened to kill her children if she didnot accompany him."

Red Hayes was convicted of kidnapingand received a sentence of 99 years. Hiswoman companion got 35 years. Said thefederal judge: "All testimony is that sheis an abandoned woman . . . She is a con-victed prostitute. She and her partner areboth thieves. I have no leniency whererobbery and kidnaping are concerned."

For my part, Red Hayes showed someclass, trying to save a woman he had metless than a month before. But the story ofRed Hayes didn't end with his conviction.It was only a beginning.

In January 1962, he was sent to Alcatraz.According to his own account: "They de-termined that I had diabetes. I asked fora diet. . . and they said 'we don't haveany diet here' so I wrote to the SurgeonGeneral and was placed in solitary for mytrouble." Except for 15 months since then,Red Hayes has been in solitary confine-ment continuously for the last 15 years.

In 1965, while in the general populationat Leavenworth, Red Hayes was accusedof second-degree murder in the slaying ofanother inmate. He claimed self-defense.

In 1968, at Atlanta federal penitentiary, hewas told that the Federal Bureau of Pris-ons "ordered me on permanent lockup."On Aug. 13,1971, he was placed in the no-torious "long term control unit" at Marion,111., Federal Penitentiary — the strongestsolitary lockup in the federal prison sys-tem. He has been there five years and ninemonths.

Says fellow inmate Jesse Lopez: "RedHayes is probably the only other man be-sides the Birdman of Alcatraz in the his-tory of the federal penal system to do morethan 10 years at a clip without being re-leased from the confines of lockup."

Lopez contends that Hayes's case is"unique in that prison officials have elec-ted him as their prime example as proofof what they can enact upon any one of usat their whim. What he (Hayes) fails towrite about himself in the balance of hismodesty is that he is the forgotten man.(He is) the forgotten man in the sense ofthe tragedy of the years that have gradu-ally ate relentlessly on him in prison at theabusive rate which has left him a skeletonof the man he was in body." Hayes is now52 years old.

Says Lopez of Hayes: "He is a quietman in his position as he looks at the bars,wondering whatever thoughts have ling-ered upon his mind, looking through theyears that he has weathered without eventhe gift of letting the sun wash over hisbody for any period worth mentioning."Hayes and others in the control unit getonly a half-hour a week outside their soli-tary cells."Hayes slowly is withering in health as

he sits quietly in his cell, and undoubtedlyquestions if humanity has a conscience tobe as unfeeling about his predicament,"Lopez wrote.

The predicament of such prolonged soli-tary confinement seems unusual indeed.American Civil Liberties Union attorneyArpiar Saunders looked into the case ofHiller (Red) Hayes in March 1975. Then-warden Ralph Aaron of Marion gave Saun-ders a deposition stating that Hayes hadnot had a write-up for breaking prisonrules since 1964, and restored his "goodtime."

"So you can see," Hayes writes, "theprison officials did not believe I committedmurder [at Leavenworth in 1965]. Thequestion is, why am I in solitary?"

Like the Birdman, Hayes claims to havecreated a series of inventions during hisyears alone. But the main question for nowis not whether Red Hayes should be inprison for a St. Louis kidnaping but wheth-er he should have spent most of the last 15years isolated even from his fellow pris-oners. Part of the answer is that the im-position of solitary confinement is at thewhim of prison authorities, without lawyerto defend or judge to weigh, or rules togovern.

'•"SB?

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AUGUST 29, 1977

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCHSense of Humanity

By JAKE MCCARTHY ... a personal opinion

A column about America's "New Bird-man of Alcatraz" last May told the storyof a man in the federal penitentiary whohad been kept in solitary confinementnearly continuously for the last 15 years,including the last six of them in the "longterm control unit" at Marion, 111.

His name was Miller (Red) Hayes, doinga 99-year term for taking three hostages ina police chase in St. Louis County in 1960.

The account quoted by a fellow prisoner:"Hayes slowly is withering in health as hesits quietly in his cell and undoubtedlyquestions if humanity has a conscience tobe as unfeeling about his predicament."

Hayes himself wrote: "The question is,why am I in solitary?" The question waspertinent since the former warden at Mar-ion had given a deposition to an AmericanCivil Liberties Union attorney in March1975, stating that Hayes had not had awrite-up for breaking prison rules since1964.

Last Aug. 8, Red Hayes was found deadin his cell. He was 52 years old. Accord-ing to an autopsy, his death was attributedto "heart failure due to natural causes."

Another pertinent question was raised,however, in a letter from an inmate atMarion the other day. "What is natural,"wrote Eddie Griffin, "about 15 years ofsolitary confinement in a 6' by 8' by 8' tor-ture chamber?"

Griffin's description of Marion's "longterm control unit," a laundered term forsolitary confinement, is not exaggerated.Last April, a U.S. Court of Appeals likenedMarion's "Boxcars," part of the controlunit, to medieval torture cells. Added tothe cruelty is that assignment to solitaryat Marion is for an "indefinite term." Inthe case of Hayes, it was for the rest ofhis life.

Griffin himself spent three months in the"boxcars" earlier this year, so he speakswith some expertise when he ascribes thecause of Hayes's death to something differ-ent. "The primary cause," he said, "wasstrangulation of the senses. Heart failurewas secondary. Red Hayes suffered aheart attack while in the process of beingtortured to death."

We have lately seen disclosures that theCentral Intelligence Agency in recent yearsbecame involved in experimenting withvarious forms of mind control, sometimesusing prison inmates as experimental ani-mals, to learn "brainwashing techniques",

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for possible future use against The Enemy.Although no direct link has come to light

between the CIA efforts and the "long termcontrol unit" at Marion, the latter is anoutgrowth of a series of proposals by cer-tain psychiatrists and psychologists to theFederal Bureau of Prisons to researchmethods of altering human behavior withinprison walls.

Such experimentation is rendered lessoffensive to the general public because itis performed upon offenders against soci-ety and is beyond the pale of the people'sawareness. The "experiment" at Marion,as at the federal medical facility at Spring-field, Mo., has undergone changes of formover the past few years, but has included

the use of mood-altering drugs and a studyof what sensory deprivation can accom-plish in rendering an inmate docile.

In the training of dogs and the breakingof horses, control is achieved by firmnessand repetition, but cruelty is frowned upon,and sensory deprivation — removal fromlight and sound and isolation from othercreatures — would not be considered hu-mane.

Men who are paying their debt to societythrough imprisonment have been sentencedby an orderly process to a term of years,but to subject them to an extra and indefi-layer of punishment — or worse, to experi-mentation — by administrative fiat with-out public review violates not only justicebut the basic requirements of decency.

If a dog or a horse died in training, wemight be prone to criticize the method.Marion's control unit has claimed severallives in the past five years, at least two bysuicide. Now the death of Red Hayes, itseems to me, suggests that the control unitat Marion does violence to our sense ofhumanity.

Repression Is the Recipe! The Antidote Is Unity!In November. 1979 over /our hundred people marched in Chicago in support ol (he Marion Bro(hers, as we/1 as (he PonfiacBrofhers and a half (o (he dea(h penally. Alter the march, a rally was held at DePaul University. One of the main speakersat that rally was the Co-director ol the National Committee to Support the Marion Brothers. This is the text ol her speech.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to take afew days off to recover from a bout withthe flu, and while I was sick, I startedreading some of my cookbooks. In thecourse of my reading, I came across thisbook — Now the title says "U.S. Bureau ofPrison Facilities, 78." Well, that is notwhat it really is. What this book is, is therecipe for part of a meal being preparedfor all of us by the master chefs of Wash-ington, B.C. Jimmy Carter and his eco-nomic assistants have been preparing theeconomic part of the meal — their recipeshrinks like the American job market andour dollars, each time we go to the store.

The chefs at the Pentagon are preparingtheir recipes for destruction—trident, MXand whatever new secret concoctions wedon't even have names for now. To com-plement these courses, the chefs at theFBI have concocted their new charter ofrepression, and in Congress, chefs Ken-nedy and Kastenmeier and Drinan havehelped develop both a Federal death pen-alty bill and a new streamlined son of ason of S-l. But the real gourmet delight isthe entree being developed over at theFederal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP).

Looking at all these recipes, I realizedwhat this meal was. It was the making ofthe Gulag—American style! Not Frenchstyle. Not Italian style. Not even Chineseor Korean style. This is the real thing.No one can beat the United States in thiscompetition when those master chefs reallyput their minds to it.

The other thing I discovered is that tak-en all together, this meal can give youcancer —a creeping, malignant, terminalcancer in the body politic. This cancer isthe cancer of racism, the cancer of hope-lessness and joblessness, the cancer ofjingoistic patriotism and militarism. AndI realized that the Federal Bureau of Pris-ons is the system of tumors left by thiscancer which is consuming the body. Thesetumors develop silently without many ofus knowing they are there until it is toolate. And for that reason, I thought it im-portant to talk about this aspect of theproblem more closely.

Now like every good chef the FBOPchief, Mr. Norman Carlson, gives us a fewhelpful hints in his introduction. He tellsus that the Bureau of Prisons in the pasthas used a too generous measure of reha-bilitation as an ingredient, and so this hadto be changed. This had to be reduced inthe present recipe. In fact, it has beenreduced so much it has become impossibleto detedt it. You can't see it. You can'ttaste it. It might not even be there any-more.

By AUDREY ARONSON MYERS

Instead, chef Carlson has added threenew ingredients to balance off the sweettaste of rehabilitation and release left inpeoples' mouths. In his introduction to the1978 Facilities Manual, Carlson tells us hehas replaced this with the three secretingredients which have made him a worldrenowned chef. And these are "retribu-tion, deterrence, and the physical andmental incapacitation of prisoners.

In doing my research for this little talkI learned a few interesting facts about thistumor, what it looks like and how it oper-ates. I learned that it is a series of grow-ing malignant tumors which consume any

person not firmly nailed down. One smallslip, one minor crime and you are gone-kind of like the Blob in those old horrormovies. This tumor also consumes anyempty buildings not nailed down, such asOlympic dormitory buildings in upstateNew York, and even abandoned army bar-racks from New Jersey to California.

And the biggest, ugliest tumor, the oneNorman Carlson is most proud of, is calledthe Marion, Illinois Federal Prison, andits infamous federal control unit. As amatter of fact, Norman Carlson is so proudof Marion that he and his associates havetaught chefs from all over the country towhip up similar recipes in places as di-verse as Somers, Connecticut, in Trenton,New Jersey, in Marquette, Michigan andJackson, Georgia.

Since beginning this project, I've beenconcerned about whether there is an anti-dote which works, not overnight, but slow-ly and surely. And I want you to knowthat I've found one, and it's a drug calledUnity. I'm really proud to be here todaybecause this rally and march representsa unity of a lot of diverse forces— the Na-tional Alliance Against Racist and PoliticalRepression, pacifists, religious people,Catholic Worker people, socialists and

prison people. As an extra dosage, thisantidote contains a multifacial flavoring—a part of the antidote that is key to itseffectiveness.

Those of us involved in the campaign toextricate the federal control unit at Mari-on from the body politic feel that we havemade a lot of progress in our efforts. Thisrally and march are a united and multi-racial and non-violent show of support forthe Bono vs. Saxbe case—a statement thatwe feel behavior control units constitutecruel and unusual punishment. And wewant those units already built closed andthe plans for future Marions scrapped.

On November 20th, 1979 a national inter-faith religious delegation, headed by Bish-op Maurice Dingman of Des Moines, Iowa,Reverend Leon White of the Commissionfor Racial Justice of the United Church ofChrist, and Bishop William Cosgrove ofBelleville, Illinois are going to Marion totell Norman Carlson and Warden Wilkin-son that we want the prison gates openedfor people of conscience to be able to takea look at their dirty work.

I feel so strongly about my discoverythat I have even found room in my heartto help Norman Carlson. Now a lot ofpeople know my dear husband Scott is anordination candidate in the United Churchof Christ. And of all the things I havelearned in the many years of our associa-tion, the one I treasure the most is thediscovery of the Gospels. He and others—the Catholic Worker people who have sup-ported us, Dan Berrigan and men of faithinside the prisons and out, such as ShahidFaris—have taught me the importance offorgiveness. So I can even say that Ireally want to forgive Norman Carlson.Forgive him for all the torture and all theincapacitation and all the death he haswrought. I believe this so much that thenext time the Marion Brothers SupportCommittee has a public action we're allgoing to Babylon. We are all going to Wash-ington, D.C. to see Norman Carlson andhis supporters. And we are going soon.

And when we get to Washington, we willhave a very simple message — that wewant to rehabilitate you, Norman Carlson.But if we can't, we can turn your recipearound and use it too. Now we're not goingto get into retribution because we try to beChristians. But we will deter you and wewill incapacitate you, and we will comeback again and again until you are goneand the monuments to your evil—the con-trol units—have been discredited, disman-tled and thrown in the trash heap of his-tory with the rack and the screw and thestake.

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The Catholic MirrorOUicial Newspaper of the Des Moines Diocese Thursday, November 29, 1979

Religious Leaders Rap Marion PrisonBy BART POLLOCK

Marion, 111. — An interfaith delegationof religious leaders that visited the federalpenitentiary here, Nov. 20, has called foropen congressional hearings on the func-tioning of the prison's controversial "con-trol unit" to determine if human rights arebeing violated.

Led by Bishop Maurice J. Dingman ofDes Moines, the delegation included: Bish-op William M. Cosgrove of Belleville, 111.;Rev. Leon White, Coordinator of the Crim-inal Justice Task Force of the UnitedChurch of Christ Commission for RacialJustice, Raleigh, N.C.; Sr. Frances Pad-berg, SSND, Social Concerns Coordinator,School Sisters of Notre Dame, St. Louis,Mo.; and Rev. Rhodes Thompson Jr., Min-ister of Memorial Boulevard ChristianChurch, St. Louis, Mo.

A statement signed by all five membersof the delegation criticized the prison's"continued use of closed-front cells, theso-called 'boxcar' cells," and charged that"the main purpose at Marion, which iscontainment rather than rehabilitation,works against the best interest of persons."

In their statement, the religious repre-sentatives explained that they had ap-proached their task "with the convictionthat persons are extremely valuable in thesight of God and that prison facilities andpolicies must be viewed in the light of theJudaeo-Christian principle of the dignityof the human person."

The delegation, the first such group to bepermitted to enter the control unit, touredthe facility for more than an hour andvisited privately with four prisoners fromthe general population at Marion and fourwho are currently being held in the controlunit."Our visit," they concluded, "raised seri-

ous doubts about the advisability of con-tinuing this housing unit."

Bishop Dingman, who negotiated withprison officials for several months beforesecuring permission for the delegation toenter the prison, described the control unitas an area "divided into four 'ranges,'each containing 18 single - person cells.Each cell measures approximately 6% feetby 8 feet by 8Vz feet high."There's a kind of double-entry to the

cells, and they can be closed off com-pletely," he said.

Religious delegates confer alter prison visit.Rev. Leon White, Bishop Maurice Dingman,NCSMB Co-Directors Audrey and Scott Myers.

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In their statement, the delegation chargedthat closed-front cells "are being usedwith only minor modifications. We thinkthis is contrary to the intent of JudgeJames Foreman's decision in the Bono vs.Saxbe case," which outlawed the use ofclosed-front cells."The change that they made is to put in

a partial door made of glass," said BishopDingman. "Before that, it was just a blanksteel door with a very small opening."

Control unit prisoners who are not per-mitted to participate in the prison's in-dustrial program "are confined in theircells for an average of 23 hours and 20minutes per day," the bishop said.

There is no set limit on the length oftime prisoners can be held in the unit.

Those who do participate in the indus-trial program "work right outside theircells, within 20 feet of their cells," accord-ing to Bishop Dingman, "and their rec-reation area is right there in the sameplace."

Opportunities for exercise are "very lim-ited," he said. "They only have a half-hour, and they are permitted to be withtwo or three other people at the most," heexplained.

According to the bishop, prisoners in theunit are almost completely cut off fromany human contact.

He told of one man from the control unitwho said, "I am elated just shaking yourhand. I haven't done this for two years—just sitting down with people like you.""The reason we cautioned about the con-

trol unit is because of information we re-ceived from talking to people who arepresently being held there, and seeing thekind of fear and frustration that they ex-hibited." Bishop Dingman said.

"It just seemed to me that the philosophyof the place is that the cause is lost withthese people — that this is the end of theline and there isn't anything you can dofor them. And yet when we talked to thesemen, we really got the feeling that some-thing can be done, that the cause is notlost. We just can't give up on them," hesaid.

Bishop Dingman explained that by call-ing for open congressional hearings on thecontrol unit, the delegation is asking thatprison officials, legislators and citizensmake a principled judgment about thetreatment of prisoners at the Marion fa-cility, and about the philosophy of the Fed-eral Prison System that the Marion controlunit represents.

"Our duty as the church is to form con-sciences," he said. "We are bringing cer-tain principles to the prison officials andto our own people and asking that a judg-ment be made in light of these principles."Is this the direction we ought to be

going? Is this way of doing things in con-formity with our respect for the humanperson?" the bishop asked.

Rev. Leon White noted that the UnitedChurch of Christ has already passed aresolution condemning the control unit andexpressed confidence that "once religiousleaders really become concerned and in-volved, then the government will act. Thenational churches should mobilize aroundthis issue."

Rev. White described conditions at Mar-ion as "very repressive." He said, "I amconcerned about the mechanisms used tocontrol the prisoners and to take awayfrom them any degree of determination oftheir own' being."

He praised the St. Louis-based NationalCommittee to Support the Marion Brothersfor calling national attention to the situa-tion at Marion."Public scrutiny is required to keep the

place open and to help the officials to seethe potential demonic elements that arepresent in the system because the systemitself is evil," said Rev. White.

MARION PRISON CONTROL UNIT RANGE which contains eighteen cells. This range also has a caged work area. Prisoners neverleave the area you see here. Exercise is done in the open space. There are four ranges like this one. Each is isolated from the restof (he prison. Some men have spent years confined to the tiny area pictured here.

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OUR POEM

Chains, bricks, concrete, walls, steel, bars, cells,tears of years that have gone by while we have beenkept behind — forcibly shackled within, without, forwhat crime? For what law? For how long is this life to be?

Questions asked in the stillness of the darkestof the night, questions, questions, questions,

questions.

— Victor G. Bono

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WHAT IS BEING DONE

Send all contributions and requests lor information to:

National Committee to Support the Marion Brothers4556ct Oakland • St. Louis, Missouri 63110

314 533-2234

THE CAMPAIGN to close the Marion control unit andturn around federal prison segregation-control poli-cies is eight years old. In those eight years, it has

become a broad based effort involving prisoners, ex-pris-oners, lawyers, priests, religious women, journalists, pro-fessionals in medicine and psychology, churches, civil rightsand peace organizations.

Multi-racial support has been a key to the campaign'ssuccess. Blacks and Whites, Hispanics and Native Ameri-cans have all joined in various areas of the campaign •—from lawsuits and petition drives to Congress and thecourts, to marches, rallies and a public education drive.

Plans for 1980 include an all-out drive for open, full-scale Congressional hearings on the control unit and BOPcontrol policies in general. In September, a "Vote WithYour Feet / Walk for Justice" effort will be undertaken.This walk, beginning in East St. Louis and ending with alarge public rally at Marion, will be a major summer-fallproject. National and international religious and politicalleaders will be invited to speak at the rally outside theprison. Along with these larger events, there is the dailycorrespondence with scores of prisoners, public speaking,film showings, conferences, local, regional and nationalmeetings to attend.

The National Committee to Support the Marion Brothersis a non-profit prisoner rights organization that dependson grassroots support. The committee has coordinated apublic organizing drive for five years now. The committeepublishes a newsletter called "Marion Brothers News Re-port."

You can help this human rights campaign in the follow-ing ways:

1. Write letters for open, full-scale Congressional hearingson the control unit and BOP control unit policies. Writeyour own representative. Also write: Robert Kasten-meier (chairman of prison - related subcommittee),George Danielson and Thomas Railsback (also mem-bers of prison-related subcommittee), John Conyersand Ronald Dellums (Congressional Black Caucus) andDon Edwards and Robert Drinan (House JudiciaryCommittee), and Paul Simon (Congressman in Mariondistrict), all at U.S. House of Representatives, Wash-ington, D.C. 20515.

2. Organize local delegations to meet with your Congres-sional representative and/or Senators to urge them tojoin in the call for Congressional hearings.

3. Help distribute the widely renowned pamphlet "Break-ing Men's Minds" by Eddie GrifFm, a former controlunit prisoner. Price is 60# (bulk rates available).

4. Set up speaking for committee organizers, ex-prisoners,lawyers and Daniel Berrigan, who has done speakingfor the committee for the past three years. Organizemeetings with local church groups, community andcivil rights organizations, media, prison groups, etc.

5. Send a contribution to help the campaign. Your dona-tion helps pay for postage, phone, office expenses,printing, transportation, etc.

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