Wobblies File Class-Action Lawsuit Against the Texas Board of Criminal Justice and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in 2022 – by Comrade Z

“The prison system does not like being reported on and you have to know that going in. You’re going to get backlash. There’s going to be retaliation. It’s part of the deal. I think for a lot of people, they will make a few forays into it and they’ll get stung a couple of times, then they give up. The reality is that it’s hard and you have to be prepared that they may come after you when you say things that they don’t really like. However, when you are in prison, you do not surrender your First Amendment rights to free speech, to comment on reality and be published. Contrary to what a lot of people assert, you have the right to write about whatever the hell you want to write about.”

-K.E. Hartman

3/17/22

Here are some cold hard facts: I am not a writer. I am not a smart man. I am not completely mentally sound, due to various forms of torture I have been through in my life. Today, TDCJ continues to play these childish, slave-breaker games to make me believe that one cell is different from another, when in reality this psychological warfare is all a farce. A cage is a cage is a cage.

Nobody said it better than Sean Swain in Last Act of the Circus Animals. There are more facts to share with you. I am a member/delegate with the Industrial Workers of the World-Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, and as a Texas prisoner, the whole idea of solidarity really appealed to me. The fact is, the union for us Texas prisoners is ideal, but we lack the support both from the IWOC-HQ and our own communities. Sad, but true. No matter what, I haven’t given up.

Today, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice is on a civil rights lawsuit by IWOC members in Texas. Texas TEAMONE has requested and extended solidarity to unite the fight. United States District Court-Galveston Division Civil Action 3:22-CV-00052 has close to 20 IWOC members on it. As we keep moving forward and allow our comrades at the IWW-IWOC to catch up with us, I have to suggest as a militant anarchist, for the brothers and sisters listening to us, the real problem is the policy makers. All comrades and jailhouse lawyers need to file U.S. §1983 on every single TBCJ member, as I have already begun to do. Bobby Lumpkin, Bryan Collier, Guistina Persich, Tammy Shelby are on my lawsuit, including the chairman of TBCJ Patrick O’Daniel. I am filing a motion for leave to supplement defendants and add the remaining eight members of the TBCJ into our class action suit. If you are with IWOC-Texas, file your lawsuit in the same fashion. We have been distracted by their psychological games far too long, and the culprits have been sitting pretty playing God for far too long. The Wizard of Oz has been discovered in Texas. Corruption is being exposed by me, X386969, and it is going to take the solidarity of all of your resources in the free world to help us bring the changes we all need, by any means necessary.

The more lawsuits filed on the policy makers will not only bring us into the political arena as activists for an overdue overhaul of the Texas government and it’s institutions. I do not believe in authority, nor do I believe in prisons. However, this cannot be said about everyone I come in contact with, therefore I am rolling with what I have, because progress is made by stepping forward, not back. Believe me, I was just retaliated on by: Sgt. Bey, Officer Dorber, Capt. Charlotte McKnight, Disciplinary Substitute Counsels Polk and Shannon, Officer Baugh, Officer Hafford, and Sgt. Timothy Williams. IWOC has been attacked by these same individuals since we filed on Chairman Patrick O’Daniels.

Thanks to texasprisonreform.com, mongoosedistro.com, Noname Books, Texas Civil Rights Project, the Marshall Project, certaindays.org, thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net, Haymarket Books, Pluto Press, AK Press, IWOC-NM, TEAMONE. To all of you, please send me some solid contacts to assist us Wobblies at Memorial Plantation.

Does anyone know a good civil rights attorney?!

Solidarity and Sabotage,

Comrade Z

Julio A. Zuniga 1961551

Memorial Unit

59 Darrington Road

Rosharon, Texas 77583