Mongoose Distro

“California has no fewer than nine involuntary commitment procedures that may apply to persons who have various mental problems and who pose a threat to their own welfare or to the safety of others. Some of these laws, including [Welfare and Institutions Code §] 6500, operate in a manner largely independent from the criminal justice system.”

– California Supreme Court Justice J. Baxter, People v. Barrett, 54 Cal. 4th 1081, 30 July 2012

If you have ever wondered what happens to people once they enter the system under an involuntary civil commitment, you might consider watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a documentary – it’s far less fiction than it appears at first glance.

The differences between prisons and lockdown psych wards (now termed ‘forensic hospitals’ in the ever-shifting sands of mealymouthed obfuscation) are nominal. Having personally spent time in both, I can attest that prison is far less terrifying. And fewer people die there.

A common misconception, one even I held until I really started beating the bushes, is that you have to be stark raving mad in order to end up in a place where psychiatrists are elevated to godhood and nurses are permitted to forcibly inject ‘patients’ with powerful psychotropic drugs or strap them to a table in five point restraints – imagine a straightjacket, but for your legs as well as your arms. The fifth ‘point’ is your head, by the way.

Yet being crazy really has nothing to do with ending up in a psych ward – after all, prisons are full of people who are stark raving mad, too. The people who populate forensic hospitals, by and large, are more often simply inconvenient.

Let’s talk about Christine Barrett. You don’t know who she is; that’s OK, nobody else does either. But since you and I still retain the vestiges of our humanity we are allowed to care about people we don’t know, and the way the system so neatly erases them from existence can illuminate our understanding of the machine from which we are all struggling to break free.

“Christine Barrett is an adult who has long been diagnosed with mental retardation and other mental disorders, and who has lived in the community while being supported and supervised by others. Because of her increasingly violent behaviors, Barrett became the subject of this proceeding to civilly commit her as a mentally retarded person who is a danger to herself or others.”

– Justice J. Baxter

The proceeding in question was a petition for civil commitment under California Welfare and Institutions Code § 6500, a state law which permits ‘the involuntary institutionalization of adults with developmental disabilities deemed to be “mentally retarded and dangerous”.’

I am aware that it is offensive to call people ‘retarded,’ however this is the language in use by the California Code of Regulations and the California Supreme Court at the time this case was decided – 30 July 2012 – so I’m rolling with it. Literally everything about the way this went down offends me and the words are the least of it.

I stumbled onto Christine’s case while doing research for the Beyond the Ninth Wave journalism project, seeking subjects to interview about their experiences in prison or in forensic hospitals. Most people in psych wards are either convicts, or those who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity of some crime, or people who have served their time but have been deemed too much of a risk to let go – outrageous stories for other days. I had never heard of Welfare and Institutions Code § 6500.

Discovering that somebody could be locked up even if they didn’t commit a crime, especially a person who was developmentally disabled and therefore not in their ‘right mind,’ rang an alarm bell. When I realized this as a California Supreme Court ruling which set a precedent that could be applied to any future unfortunates who found themselves in similar dire straits, I smelled an uncommon stink. The more I dug into the scant details concerning the fate of Ms. Barrett, the more that stink grew downright sulfurous.

Christine has been virtually obliterated from existence, so the only narrative concerning her experiences comes from the official court record. One-sided as it mostly is, we can glean a lot by reading in between the lines.

Christine lived at home with her parents until 2001, when ‘because of physical assaults, verbal abuse, and noncompliance with her treatment plan’ she was placed in a group home [at age 18.] She remained there for five years, but she ‘repeatedly left the premises without proper notice or supervision, disrupting the community by “threatening people,” and acting in “inappropriate” and “self-destructive” ways.’ The same problems occurred inside the group home, ‘often triggering emergency response and psychiatric hospitalizations.’

Setting aside a few obvious red flags – a teenager’s ‘noncompliance’ with her ‘treatment plan,’ a psychobabblese way to say she didn’t take the pills they told her to and did things they’d forbidden her to do, for instance – we are already talking about a person whose young life has been overrun by meddlers and who is obviously struggling. Whatever her parents, doctors, caregivers, or others did right, wrong, did that they shouldn’t, didn’t do that they should, is immaterial because as soon as she’s of age Christine was removed from the only home she’s ever known and dumped in a halfway house with a bunch of strangers.

It’s hardly shocking that a teenager would want to do anything but remain locked up all day, but the vague language still leaves open the possibility that her behavior was, in fact, truly dangerous. We’ll need to run it all through a translator to shear away the bullshit:

‘Emergency response and psychiatric hospitalizations’ is just a fancy way to say someone didn’t like how she was behaving so they called the cops, wrestled her down, and took her to a psych ward for a shot of Thorazine in the ass and some time in isolation. None of that is conducive to promoting positive mental health outcomes, evidenced by the fact that it kept right on happening.

At some point the group home decided it could no longer deal with her – Christine had become inconvenient, so in 2006 she was moved into a condo owned by her parents ‘with support staff [from the San Andreas Regional Center, the same “community-based nonprofit agency funded and regulated by the State of California to serve developmentally disabled people” that ran the group home] so she could live independently.’

Well, it didn’t work out.

In January of 2009 the coordinator of the Regional Center, Betty Crane, requested that the Santa Clara district attorney file a petition ‘on behalf of the People’ to civilly commit Christine under Welfare and Institutions Code § 6500. Meaning: the person ultimately charged with her care, maintenance, and support, the person paid by the state to take care of her, contacted the top prosecutor in the county and requested they lock Christine up in a forensic hospital against her will.

Inconvenient.

The district attorney filed the petition, the same as an indictment would be filed against a criminal. The petition alleged that Christine was ‘a mentally retarded adult who lived in a private residence with staff assistance,’ and that she was a danger to herself or others. On this basis alone the court was asked to hold an evidentiary hearing and to commit Christine to the custody of the California State Department of Developmental Services [DDS] for a period of one year.

The evidence the petition relied upon was ‘assessments, evaluations, reports, and other documents’ provided by the Regional Center and DDS, which were filed in the form of a confidential exhibit. In other words, the people who had control of her life worked with the state department in charge of their funding in order to transfer her from one agency to the other by giving a bunch of their internal documents to the prosecutor facilitating the transfer. Then they all claimed the documents were her private medical records so on one else would be allowed to scrutinize what they’d written about her.

Most of what we know about Christine comes from the doctor’s testimony: she was 27 years old at the time [2009], and her IQ was in the 40s or 50s, what Dr. Thomas classified as ‘moderate retardation.’ Based on school records and psych reports ‘from her early life, before she became a client of the [Regional] Center in 2001,’ she had been diagnosed with various other mental disorders over the years, including ‘autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder.’

None of these reports were put on record, nor were the clinicians who threw such a wide variety of spaghetti strands at the wall of Christine’s childhood self brought in to testify. Christine’s counsel, appointed by the state because her parents apparently didn’t find it worth the trouble to hire one for her, voiced no objections and allowed the prosecutor’s axeman to weave his narrative unopposed.

Dr. Thomas continued, opining that ‘because of the cognitive deficits associated with mental retardation, [Christine] has serious difficulty controlling her behavior and is a “danger to herself or others.'” That danger rested on two main factors, he claimed, the ‘incapacity to understand the complexity of her disorder,’ and ‘volatile and violent history as set forth in “incident reports” compiled by the Regional Center.’

The same Regional Center he worked for. The same Regional Center the coordinator who initiated the commitment proceedings worked for. The same Regional Center which prepared the documents from which he cited his evidence. The same Regional Center which had been solely responsible for Christine’s welfare and supervision for at this point nine years, her entire adult life.

Yet still her public defender challenged nothing and raised no concerns of conflicts of interest, allowing hearsay and speculation to be transmuted into truth. If it were a boxing match, that’s what’s known as taking a dive.

From Dr. Thomas’s testimony we can at least catch a glimpse of what Christine’s ‘dangerous, violent, volatile’ behavior consisted of. He cited Regional Center reports documenting 30 ‘incidents’ during the 18 months she lived at her parents’ condo, and characterized a typical ‘incident’ as a time when Christine ‘grew agitated about personal matters and responded by assault, property damage, or self abuse.’

For example: ‘[Christine] was once obsessing about her hair color, then became upset when she found out her mother was coming for a visit. She broke a chair and other furnishings, and was restrained by staff when she showed aggression towards her mother. [Christine] locked herself in the bathroom but became docile when the police arrived and took her for a psychiatric evaluation.’

The horror! I wonder who was more traumatized, the mother who got yelled at by the daughter she knows is unwell, or the girl being gaffled up by the police and hauled off to the psych ward – again – when she has had a lifetime of psychological intervention. What more possible ‘evaluation’ need be performed? And why the police, when she already has Regional Center staff restraining her? But her lawyer asked no such question, nor did anyone else.

Dr. Thomas further testified that ‘the furnishings and pictures and all kinds of things had to be removed from her apartment just to keep her safe.’ Such a stark, sterile environment brings to mind the image of a barren prison cell, one she could neither be alone within nor leave unsupervised. Yet this was all done so she might ‘live independently’ – like a dog chained up in a backyard.

Later that same month: ‘[Christine] was crying in her bedroom when she suddenly emerged and punched holes in the walls. She threw a glass bowl at a window, breaking the window on the second try.’

Is this really ‘dangerous’ behavior? It’s not like she’s driving drunk down the street or waving a gun around. This is the equivalent of a temper tantrum by a distressed individual who has never been free, nor been taught any coping skills whatsoever. And 30 such ‘incidents’ in 18 months equates to about one bad day every couple weeks – that’s few enough to be inconsequential in the aggregate.

Absent from the testimony of Dr. Thomas is any mention of precipitating events and aggravating factors, attempts to de-escalate, or any explanation as to why the Regional Center staff was so ill equipped to deal with Christine’s ‘outbursts’ that they had to continually call in the police to traumatize her further and haul her away for psychiatric hospitalizations despite being fully aware that she was developmentally disabled, not psychotic.

More: ‘In December of 2008 [Christine] refused to leave home for a mental health appointment. She threatened to harm staff, destroyed furnishing, and purposely scratched her [own] face to make it bleed.’ This ‘episode’ too triggered a 911 call and an admission to a psych ward for forcible medication.

Finally, the two ‘incidents’ which led to the petition for her commitment: ‘[Christine] came home upset after attending church with her parents. She assaulted staff and was hospitalized for emergency psychiatric care.’ No further details were given by Dr. Thomas, but again her inability to express her distress in a socially acceptable way is met with an extreme overreaction and ends in her being injected with sedatives and locked up.

‘Later that month [Christine] cursed and angrily announced she had changed her name. She threatened to harm the staff with a knife, then entered the bathroom and scratched her [own] arm.’

That was apparently the last straw, though no mention is made of how this woman who is imprisoned in her condo with no furniture and no pictures was permitted to get her hands on a knife. Despite the dramatic rendition by the prosecution’s ham, nowhere in the records is there any mention of anything Christine did genuinely harming anyone or herself – ‘scratches’ and ‘assaults’ resulting from her thrashing about when staff tries to restrain her aside.

Dr. Thomas nevertheless recommended Christine be committed to ‘a particular secure treatment facility’ – serendipitously enough, the same one in which she was already being held for her ‘interim placement.’ Then the prosecution rested.

Christine’s counsel called only one witness to testify on her behalf and refute all the allegations Dr. Thomas made: Christine herself. In response to her public defender’s questioning, she testified that she didn’t like her current placement because she couldn’t go on outings, but the people were nice and the food was good, she liked her medication because it calmed her, and she denied being mentally disordered.

Perry Mason declined to call Christine’s parents or other family, any of her current or former doctors or nurses, anyone who had ever been even peripherally involved in the care she’d been receiving her entire life, or even anyone who had ever known her. Instead he simply asked if she liked the food, then rested his case. Bravo.

The trial court found that Christine was ‘mentally retarded and dangerous under § 6500, and that the danger she posed to herself or others was based on, and caused by, her mental retardation.’ Thus she was committed to the DDS for one year beginning that day – 8 April 2009.

~

Then Christine Barret entered California’s Great Disappearin’ Machine.

A follow up hearing was scheduled for July 2009 to ‘review the complex nature of [Christine’s] diagnosed disorders and ensure the best placement and treatment options over the long term.’ The court imagined that in the intervening three months either the Regional Center or the Department of Developmental Services secure treatment facility would conduct a full evaluation of her psychiatric history and prepare a plan to help her cope with the issues which had necessitated her commitment in the first place.

None of that happened. No record exists of any July 2009 hearing or any other trial proceeding after 8 April. However, she did appeal her commitment order on the grounds that the trial court violated her rights of due process and equal protection under the law when they failed to advise her that she had the right to a trial by jury (rather than to have the matter decided by just a judge), and that they failed to obtain her consent to waive that right.

The appellate court denied her appeal, and the California Supreme Court upheld that denial with an astounding demonstration of just how thoroughly an inconvenient person like Christine Barrett can be screwed by the system:

The California Supreme Court concluded that ‘such people [the subjects of a hearing to determine whether they are mentally retarded and dangerous under § 6500] are not in a position to personally assert or waive the right to a jury trial, to sufficiently comprehend the jury trial advisement, or to override the views of counsel on the subject. Sole control over such tactical and procedural decisions rests with counsel, whether or not the client has been consulted or objects.’

In other words, someone even alleged to be mentally retarded and dangerous does not even need to be advised of their rights, let alone be permitted to assert them. In really other words, merely being accused of being retarded makes you so retarded you couldn’t even assert your rights, so don’t bother even telling you what they are or asking for your input.

No, leave it all to the court appointed public defender to be the sole custodian of that person’s fate. If such a notion doesn’t put a chill in your bones then you’ve never had the opportunity to experience just how little help these bastions of apathy are capable of rendering. Virtually everyone sitting in prison or involuntarily committed to a forensic hospital had a public defender, if that might serve to clarify the dangers of this prospect.

The other clever – diabolical – maneuver the system pulled in Christine’s case concerned the actual requirements of § 6500:

‘No mentally retarded person may be committed to the California Department of Developmental Services unless he or she is a danger to themselves or others. . . . for mentally retarded persons under the treatment of a state hospital or other facility when the petition is filed, proof of a recent overt act is not needed to find them to be a danger to themselves or others.’

Meaning: the mere fact of having been placed under the care of a facility imputes dangerousness. Just by filing the petition, the Regional Center’s coordinator ensured Christine would be locked up in her ‘interim placement,’ which then served as a basis to prove she was dangerous, thus sealing her fate with a tidy circle of self-serving logic.

Finally, the petition asserts that it only commits the unfortunate target for a period of one year. One might ask why not ride it out? Do your time, as it were, even if it is manifestly unjust. One year is not a life sentence.

Oh, except it is, sucker. The law further provides: ‘an order of commitment expires automatically one year after it is made. Subsequent commitment for additional periods may be sought for persons who remain mentally retarded and dangerous. Recommitment procedures are the same as with the initial petition.’

Are you still retarded? Check. (And even if you say you aren’t, we’ll have to ask your lawyer.)

Are you still dangerous? Being that you are in a state treatment facility, that’s implied.

Check.

See you next year. And the next. And the next.

~

POSTSCRIPT:

Christine Barrett was involuntarily committed to the California Department of Developmental Services on 8 April 2009 for a period of one year. As of 30 July 2012 her appeals were exhausted and she was still enmeshed within the system, being recommitted year after year. Unlike a state convict, there is no public information regarding DDS ‘clients’ or even the facilities in which they are located. She has, for all intents and purposes, been disappeared.

I managed to track Christine to a place called California Psychiatric Transitions in Delhi, CA but so far as I know she is no longer there – mail addressed to her there comes back ‘return to sender,’ at any rate. California Psychiatric Transitions is a ‘private, secure psychiatric treatment facility contracted to provide services for the State of California’ – one of countless bląck sites sprinkled across the Golden State where inconvenient folks like Christine can be buried.

Judging by the allegations in the lawsuits against California Psychiatric Transitions that I’ve read, I’d prefer taking my chances with Jack in the Cuckoo’s Nest.

~

RONIN GREY SUBSTACK: HTTPS://RONINGREY.SUBSTACK.COM — RONINGREYAUTHOR@GMAIL.COM

Mail: TERHUNE AD0786
CTFN PO BOX 705
SOLEDAD CA 93960

Dear Director Chambers-Smith,

  Hi… yet again… again.

  I hope these letters are benefitting you, expanding your thinking, increasing your empathy, persuading you to see that bigotry against people whose ideas for human social organization are more imaginative and thoughtful than your own is not very nice… or reasonable… or fair… or appropriate. Perhaps you’ll come to see that it is a waste of your agency’s resources to continue its campaign against my very existence.

  Previously, I shared how Anarchism is the only real advocate of freedom– which is “the absence of external regulation.” So, it isn’t only that if you are an Anarchist, you want freedom; it’s that, if you want freedom, you *are* an Anarchist.

  Everyone else pays lip service to a “compromised freedom,” which is really “slavery.”

  Also, Anarchists are the only ones who do not suffer the trifecta of delusions that are the foundation for the Kool Aid cult called hierarchy. Thus, to be an Anarchist is to rationally apply reason to questions of social organization and reject the collective mental illness called hierarchy.

  So, based on what we’ve already covered, it’s safe to conclude that Anarchists are rational, healthy-minded advocates for freedom in human society while Hierarchs are irrational and mentally ill slaves accepting a compromise they falsely call freedom.

No offense.

  I would like to continue here by discussing how Anarchism alone promotes the principles of autonomy, voluntary association, cooperation, and mutual aid; while the Hierarch delusion, on the other hand, dooms us to compulsion, alienation, compliance, conformity, and obedience under the threat of force. But to begin, I think we first have to discuss violence.

  Hierarchs love to call Anarchists “bomb throwing crazies,” characterizing Anarchists as violent and destructive and unpredictable. Is this fair? Let’s consider…

  Every single war in the last 8,000 years was started by Hierarchs, forcing armies of strangers to slaughter one another for their nation states or religious authorities. In World War II alone, just in the area of the Russian front– a space the size of New Jersey –Hierarchs from two opposing sides butchered more human beings in an eighteen month period than the entire world population at the time of the Golden Age of Greece. That is, the equivalent of the world population at the dawn of democracy was reduced to bones and ashes in eighteen months on the Russian Front.

  Can you name a single war carried out by Anarchists? Neither can I.

  Harry Truman, a Hierarch, ordered two bombs dropped on population centers that evaporated more human beings than everyone killed by all of the Anarchists throughout human history. Just one Hierarch was more murderous, all on his own, than all Anarchists combined over millennia.

  Can you think of a single event where Anarchists deployed weapons of mass destruction on a population center? Me neither.

  Every single genocide in history has been carried out by Hierarchs in campaigns of religious, ethnic, or national cleansing.

  Can you point to a single genocide waged by Anarchists? Exactly.

  Over the last 8,000 years of human civilization, Hierarchs have exclusively ruled every nation state, have organized and deployed every single military attack, have exclusively imposed “order” by force of arms, have exclusively ruled, raided, invaded, occupied, and conquered in every conflict where humans have slaughtered other humans.

  Nobody can kill, kill, kill like you Hierarchs.

  You’re off the chain. Somebody should stop you.

  On occasion, Anarchists have tried– to no avail. In the early 1900s, some Anarchists, exhausted by the continual Hierarch bloodbath, killed a king or two and shot the President of France. An Anarchist named Leon Czolgosz killed U.S. President William McKinley.

  The Hierarch death machine just kept grinding along.

  And, in all fairness, just as a quick side note, even when it comes to presidential assassinations in the U.S., Hierarchs are responsible for 3 out of 4 presidential killings. So, Hierarchs are still 3 times as murderous as Anarchists, even when it comes to killing the leader of Hierarchs.

  This reveals an important point, I think: hierarchy has always been carried out through violence, right from the beginning, and up to today. Need I remind you, but the “few” have never ruled the “many” by recourse to rainbows and daisies and cuddly puppies; from hierarchy’s inception, the “few” ruled through recourse to clubs and spears and sharp swords. Archaeologists uncovering forgotten civilizations can tell you whether there was hierarchy or not; if they find large numbers of weapons, there was hierarchy.

  The enforcement of hierarchy has evolved from clubs and spears and swords to tanks and guns and helicopters, but the program itself that you still worship and defend at all costs hasn’t come up with a single original idea about human social organization since the Bronze Age, the same period when somebody invented the wheel.

  I’m not saying you should feel stuck in the past or feel stupid… but if you DO, in fact, feel stuck in the past, or, if you feel sort of stupid, that’s probably a good sign that you’re picking up what I’m throwing down. Just saying, if I were a proponent of a slavery system pawning itself off as freedom… and it was based on irrational delusions irreconcilable with reality… and it caused more carnage and human suffering than anything else in the history of the world… I might feel stuck in the past and stupid too.

  But that’s just me.

  At any rate, everything else aside, the principle problem with hierarchy is that it’s based on violence. Force. The few rule the many, however the few may arrive at power, by demanding obedience, conformity, compliance to their rules and laws. The many obey… or else.

  However well hidden it may be, there’s always an “or else.” Laws do not enforce themselves. If laws were self enforceable, they wouldn’t be necessary in the first place. The few write laws to compel us to do what we do not want to do, not what we do voluntarily.

  Laws are enforced by law enforcement. The word, “enforcement,” has 3 syllables, “en-force-ment.” The important one is that syllable in the middle: “FORCE.” There is no enFORCEment without FORCE.

  Cops carry guns. There are no nonviolent uses for guns.

  Wherever hierarchy exists, whenever the few rule the many– however the few obtain power –the many are forced to obey, comply, conform… under violence and the threat of violence. This means the many are alienated from power, which resides elsewhere, with the few.

  Just a quick note, but in the U.S. we have a convenient myth to distract us from this truth, a narrative that government is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” This myth is actually quite laughable. If government were just an extension of people being people, it would not be government. It would just be a continuation of everybody living in some hippy-dippy utopia. Government is power… wielded by the few… withheld from the many… despite well intending slogans.

  Where you have “of the people, by the people, for the people,” you don’t have laws imposed to make people do what they don’t want to do… and you don’t have Secret Service whose job is to stop them many from killing the ruling few.

  In the U.S., you have a sales pitch (“of the people…”) that’s very Anarchist, but a system that’s very Hierarchist. Anarchism is the fulfillment of that sales pitch. By an Anarchist understanding, we are equals and we are free, each autonomous and possessing dignity. No one can compel you; they must persuade you.

  In such a world where each of us is free, where none of us has power over the other, our relationships and associations are voluntarily entered into. We choose our relationships with equals rather than being compelled by rulers.

  In such a world where power is distributed, there are no bosses, no kings, no authorities to whom we must bend the knee. Equals do not command other equals.

  THAT weirdness only happens in the Hierarch delusion.

  Instead, we have freedom to choose with whom we cooperate and collaborate, with whom we organize ourselves for mutual benefit between equals. In the absence of rulers and bosses we have a community of the willing, collectively deciding through consultation and consensus how to maintain our community, stockholders in its success, contributors and beneficiaries.

  Now, anyone indoctrinated in the Hierarch delusion will immediately respond, “That will never work.” I will address the practicality of an Anarchist world in later correspondence but will simply say here that not only could this work, but it has worked. In fact, for more than 4 million years, over 99% of human existence, humans lived in nonhierarchic, consensus-based communities… prior to the advent of hierarchy… and they lived quite well, it seems.

  It is not just possible for humans to live in such egalitarian communities, but we are literally designed for it. We inherit DNA from thousands of generations of people who successfully lived and thrived in such societies. If they could do it, we could do it. We are, genetically and biologically, continuations of those millions of years of nonhierarchic success stories.

  In my experience, there is only one group who insist a society of free humans could never work. The term for such people is, “assholes.” Assholes are absolutely convinced that, without imposition of force, everyone would behave as badly, as viciously, as stupidly, as the assholes themselves would behave. It is in the nature of assholes to project onto the entire population their own incapacities, incompetencies, and flaws of character endemic to assholes themselves.

  Because they are assholes, they imagine everyone else to also be assholes.

  If it were true that it is the nature of humanity to be assholes, we would have gone extinct long ago, before hierarchy had the collateral effect of allowing assholes to thrive.

  Hierarchy is, objectively, an asshole factory.

  But, to everyone who genuinely worries that the absence of hierarchy could lead to a world of “all against all,” defined by brutality, violence, the strong subjugating and exploiting and devouring the weak, I urge you to look out your window; the imposition of hierarchy has brought you the very world you fear most.

  The difference between the dystopia you mistakenly imagine under Anarchism and the dystopia you experience under hierarchy is that the predators in your imagination have mohawks and face tattoos and nose piercings, while the predators running this current dystopia wear suits and carry briefcases and tell you how good you have it… and that you should stop daydreaming and get back to work.

  Apart from the question of fashion, the current dystopia is very real. Whatever can be said against Anarchism, it couldn’t do worse than this. By all historical evidence, it would do far, far better.

  Just a quick observation before I close: I realize I can’t go questioning the deeply held myths that are central to how people see themselves and their world. Both Galileo and Copernicus did that, insisting in their eras that the earth was round and circumnavigated the sun… and people in power wanted to burn them at the stake.

  Here, now, I’m committing a grave sacrilege far more dangerous than Galileo or Copernicus; I’m suggesting the very social structure from which you derive identity and meaning is a swindle, a complex of delusions designed to enslave and imprison you, and you cannot see the cages from the inside.

  I suspect that’s part of the reason your predecessor designated me a gang leader… had me tortured for a year… isolated me at supermax… then blacksited me in place… and weaponized the disciplinary process to make me look like a super-terrorist who should never be released… and began the process of illegally renditioning me… all because I had the audacity to to question his deeply held belief central to his understanding of his own identity and the world… but you guys no longer burn heretics at the stake.

  I’m also questioning your central beliefs.

  I guess I have to hope you’re not an asshole.

  The truth is dangerous.

  Stay dangerous.

Freedom,

Sean.

***

Feel free, as always, to send this whole series to ODRC Director Annette Chambers Smith:

Director Annette Chambers Smith

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction

4545 Fisher Rd., Ste. D

Columbus, OH 43228

annette.chambers-smith@odrc.state.oh.us

Dear Director Chambers-Smith:

  Hi, yet again.

  In my last letter, I recounted for you how Anarchism, and Anarchism alone, advocates for freedom, and how every other political ideology compromises freedom… and seeks power,,, and how that compromise of freedom is, really, slavery. So, only Anarchists advocate for freedom and only Anarchists truly oppose slavery.

  I left off suggesting that anyone who accepts the validity of hierarchy provably suffers a mental illness. That’s the argument I would like to pick up in this letter. But, before I do, I hope you are beginning to see that Anarchists are not the “bomb throwing crazies” who want “mayhem, madness, chaos and bedlam” as you imagine us to be. Perhaps there are some who do– I cannot speak for them –but Anarchism is a deep, rich political philosophy; a reasonable, rational, thoughtful critique of the current social (dis)order and the powers that shape it.

  For purposes of this letter, the key word in that is “rational,” as opposed to hierarchy’s irrationality.

  The social sciences have attempted to quantify “irrationality” or “madness,” understanding such phenomena through the lens of mental illness. One of the terms to designate irrationality is “delusion.” Delusion is understood as a belief that is provably divergent from objective reality, a belief that causes one to act in ways that are not in the sufferer’s best interests. To give an example of a delusion, imagine I believed myself to be Napoleon, Emperor of France, and I behaved in daily life as if I were Napoleon. My false belief and my conduct based upon that belief would constitute a delusion.

  It is my position that Hierarchs, everyone who does not identify as Anarchists, everyone who accepts the hierarchical ordering of society as valid and legitimate, suffers from a mental delusion. I can prove it, irrefutably.

  My first premise is that we accept the universal truism that “all men[sic] are created equal.” Human equality is a foundational belief to which everyone participating in the modern world subscribes. The truth of that statement is self evident. We are each, by virtue of human birth, endowed with the same rights and obligations as every other human.

  Hierarchs everywhere, Director, accept this to be true. As do I.

  You and I are equals. You have authority to lock me in a cage and no duty to obey anything I say. I have no authority over you and possess a duty to obey you.

  I think I like your equality better than mine. I would very much like to trade equalities with you.

  This is something of an anecdote for what I like to term Hierarchy’s Prime Delusion. The Prime Delusion can be summed up this way: Everyone is equal; some equals possess a “right to rule” while other equals don’t; most equals possess a “duty to obey” that the ruling equals don’t.

  Under hierarchy, some of us have a “right to rule,” however that right is obtained. Perhaps the “right to rule” is obtained by pulling a sword from a stone, or maybe killing a menacing giant by using a slingshot, or inheriting power from gods, or getting more votes than someone else attempting to gain the “right to rule.” However it comes to be, we have some people in hierarchy who possess this “right to rule” while others have a “duty to obey.”

  By this belief system called hierarchy, there is not one specie of human but two species. One specie of human, however one may come to be part of it, has the right not only to rule self but to rule others. The other specie, however we get stuck in it, has the absence of the right to rule others and even the absence of the right to rule self; this specie, instead, has the wonderful consolation prize, the “duty to obey.”

  The problem with this is… If you and I are equal, if we are born with the same inalienable rights, with autonomy and sovereignty and a will to choose and to act according to conscience– as we all accept to be true –then neither of us, at any time, can assume a “right to rule” the other, can presume a “duty to obey” imposed upon the other, can compel or force or subjugate the will of the other, command the other to serve an agenda or a program that the other does not willingly consent to serving. Born equal, we each have the right to obey our own conscience and to choose our own course. Our equality provides us the right, at any time, to say, “No.”

  Neither of us may rationally assume membership in a separate specie where we have a “right to rule” the other and to impose a “duty to obey” onto the other. These are irrational falsehoods, myths, that are not just convenient for hierarchy but are a necessary foundation for the system of hierarchy to exist and to continue. Thus, the delusion of hierarchy is premised upon the irrational belief in the “right to rule” and “duty to obey” which provably cannot exist among equals. Poor, deluded Hierarchs then conform to a complex of behaviors based upon this irrational belief, a complex of behaviors that results in personal disempowerment.

  Hierarchy is a delusion. It is no less a delusion because it is suffered by millions or even billions of people. In fact, its popularity does not diminish its irrationality, but instead increases its danger. A global, mass delusion is very dangerous.

  And a quick point here– however we “feel” about the complex of hierarchy being a delusion, a delusion is a delusion. Reason does not seek our consent any more than gravity or thermodynamics. So, our “feelings” about hierarchy being a delusion are irrelevant to the rational conclusion that hierarchy is, objectively, a delusion.

  Those who ascribe to this delusion are mentally ill.

  And so, we now proceed to what I term Hierarchy’s Secondary Delusion. Hierarchy’s Secondary Delusion is implicitly premised upon the Prime Delusion, but also serves as a kind of justification for the Prime Delusion. The Secondary Delusion can be stated like this: “Because humans are selfish and greedy, stupid and corrupt, humans cannot be trusted to rule themselves and so humans need a system of hierarchy for life to be orderly, safe and stable.”

  This is an ostensible truism for all deluded Hierarchs. It serves as a justification for the Prime Delusion in that it makes hierarchy a “need,” and since hierarchy is a “need,” that somehow makes it less irrational to believe in it. However, I would point out that if human survival was dependent upon unicorns, faerie dust and magical beans, and if our only salvation hinged upon the reality of unicorns, faerie dust and magical beans, it would still be irrational to believe in unicorns, faerie dust and magical beans. Thus, it is still irrational to believe in the validity of hierarchy, whether we frame it as a “need” or not.

  All of that notwithstanding, let’s take a closer look at the Secondary Delusion, somewhat restated: “Because humans are selfish and greedy, stupid and corrupt, humans cannot be trusted to rule themselves and so need an inordinate amount of social, political and financial power concentrated into the hands of a select few selfish, greedy, stupid, corrupt humans, who will, by force and threat of force, wield that inordinate power over the many, and this will result in life being more orderly, safe, and stable than if everyone were left to their own devices to cooperate as they see fit.”

  What is an ostensible truism to Hierarchs is a self evident untruism. It is irrational and internally consistent to believe that humans are selfish, greedy, stupid and corrupt, and then to believe that order and safety and stability could be served by concentrating power into the hands of a select few selfish, greedy, stupid, corrupt humans. Rationally, we would expect the concentration of power to result in more disorder, more danger, and more instability, as we have witnessed from hierarchy as it continues.

  Which brings us to Hierarchy’s Tertiary Delusion. The Tertiary Delusion is premised upon the Prime Delusion and the Secondary Delusion. It accepts that the “right to rule” and “duty to obey” can exist among equals, and accepts that the concentration of power into the hands of a select few can somehow result in a better outcome, but takes it all one step further, stated this way: “All of human history, from primitive societies to the present, has been a steady march of progress and improvement, so that, at each stage, in each era, we humans organized in hierarchy have experienced an increasing sense of joy, meaning, purpose, and reward than we experienced previously, proving that the hierarchical structuring of society has been a great success and the best is yet to come.”

  This belief in progress and improvement is a principle tenet, a foundational belief for all Hierarchs. It is also provably, irrefutably irrational.

  Exhibit one: The last 10,000 years of human history. Case closed.

  By all quantitative metrics, by all accounts of sociologists, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, climatologists and all the other -ologists, things are not getting better and better; things are getting worse and worse. Provably so.

  Modern society under hierarchy has reached the ultimate pinnacle of suicide,  mass murder, terrorism, war, population displacement, species die off, social deviance such as crime, economic instability, disease, famine, genocide, madness, and toxification of the environment. By all of these metrics, human society has never been less orderly, less stable, less safe. And it is getting worse. Every day.

  If we want joy, meaning, purpose, and reward, we would be better off going back in time to when our hairy, stinky ancestors fornicated in the mud and killed woolly mammoth to cook over an open fire at the mouth of a cave than to live under hierarchy today. So, this Tertiary Delusion is the irrational belief that we experience progress and improvement when, objectively, all available evidence indicates we experience catastrophic systems failure on a global scale, where systems collapse due to the failure and unsustainability of the hierarchical model is almost imminent.

  Taken together, this trifecta of delusions that you Hierarchs experience is incredibly dangerous. It is a global mental illness and it is more than a mere lifestyle choice, as if being a Hierarch and adhering to delusions or instead being an Anarchist and renouncing those delusions is like choosing a preference, Pepsi or Coke, McDonalds or Burger King, everything relative. It is not. As I will argue later, hierarchy is a dangerous Kool Aid cult, a mass delusion, and its trifecta of irrationalities is, itself, a looming extinction level event.

  What I’m saying is, if deluded Hierarchs don’t change their lowdown ways, they’re going to wipe out the human race. And when all of you sputter out, you’ll be taking me with you.

  And I don’t want to go.

  I want to live… and save your children… and your grandchildren… and generations yet unborn. So, this series of letters is really serious business if we’re going to get people like you to abandon archaic and irrational organizational models from the Bronze Age and change our trajectory, our impending doom.

  I hope we can do that.

  In my next letter I hope to pick up the discussion with how Anarchism, and only Anarchism, can bring us to fully living out the principles of autonomy, voluntary association and cooperation, and mutual aid… while hierarchy dooms us to alienation, compliance and obedience under threat of force. Then, perhaps when I finish this, you’ll hate me less and order your flying monkeys to undo all of these state terrors motivated by Hierarch bigotry, and you’ll recognize my human dignity.

  And maybe even quit your job.

  The truth is dangerous.

  Stay dangerous.

Freedom,

Sean.

***

ODRC Director Annette Chambers-Smith

ODRC

4545 Fisher Road, Ste. D

Columbus, Ohio 43228

annette.chambers-smith@odrc.state.oh.us

Dear Director Chambers-Smith,

  Hi, again.

  I left off my last letter mentioning how Anarchism to me represents freedom, sanity, and a number of virtues that correspond to a healthy and meaningful life. Taking those topics in order, I’ll begin with freedom.

  Freedom is the most important condition of life for me. In fact, I would suggest that while there are multitudes of varying and conflicting factions within the global Anarchist milieu, and while those varying factions have developed over centuries in responses to different eras, all Anarchists, at their very foundation, value freedom over everything else.

  I would also suggest that freedom is the natural state of every living thing, and that no other artificial or fabricated state, however it comes to be, can surpass freedom. And if you agree, that makes you an Anarchist, whether you use the term or not.

  Now to the pivotal question: What IS freedom?,– because people often view freedom very differently. If you were to take a poll, you’ll find that everyone values freedom greatly, but when asked to define what freedom is, you get a lot of varying ideas. Many people will list a catalogue of freedoms– “freedom of speech,” “freedom of religion,” and so on. This gives insight perhaps as to which freedoms are a priority to the particular person, but doesn’t really give much insight as to what freedom actually is.

  Others, particularly in prison, will focus on specific joys of life to which they have been deprived, defining freedom as being able to smoke, drink, get high, or get “laid.” Again, these are more priorities of freedoms rather than definitions of what freedom actually is.

  The best definition of freedom I’ve found was developed by Ward Churchill, a prolific writer and former professor. He’s a brilliant guy. He defined freedom as, “the absence of external regulation.”

  I like that. It’s both accurate and elegant. I use that definition. Freedom is “the absence of external regulation.”

  To unpack that, where something is regulating you… and that something isn’t you… you’re not free. Where something else is beyond you and is dictating to you or ordering you, regulating you, you’re not free. You are only “free” where you are regulating you… where YOU are in charge of you.

  Freedom is the absence of external regulation. Where you have “external regulation,” you’re not free; where there is no external regulation, where you are in charge of you, you’re free.

  This definition, by the way, doesn’t distinguish. It doesn’t matter what the “external regulation” is. If it’s present, you’re not free.

  So, perhaps we should take a deeper look at this relationship between “freedom” and “external regulation.” Our definition sets them up as opposites. Two opposing forces. Where you have one, the other is absent. We can maybe graph that relationship like this:

0——————————————————————————-0

Freedom                                              

External Regulation

(absence of                                    

(absence of freedom)

external regulation)

  Our graph has two absolute points at each end. One is “Freedom (the absence of external regulation),” and the other one is “External Regulation (the absence of freedom).” These two absolute points are connected by a horizontal line between them, which represents a kind of continuum, a space where the interplay between these two opposites occur.

  So, with this graph, if you have a situation with very little external regulation, you might plot yourself on this continuum very close to the absolute point, Freedom. If, on this other hand, you are subjected to almost constant external regulation, you might plot yourself very close to the other absolute point, External Regulation.

  I hope this graph gives us a chance to think about freedom and external regulation visually, as a kind of interplay between two forces.

  But now that we have this graph and we have a way to visualize freedom and its absence, let’s think a little deeper about external regulation and what it is. External regulation implies an external regulat-or, someone who is doing the regulation. Kind of a no brainer, but for external regulation to exist, there must be an external regulator.

  And again, quick side note, but our definition doesn’t distinguish. It doesn’t make any judgment as to whether a regulator is good or bad, benevolent or malevolent, friendly or tyrannical. It doesn’t matter the title of the regulator or the kind of system the regulator has in place or the regulator’s motives for regulating you. An external regulator is an external regulator. Where an external regulator is externally regulating you, you’re not free.

  Freedom is the absence of external regulation and is, therefore, the absence of an external regulator.

  Now, to the next question, what an external regulator is and what it does. A regulator regulates. It rules. It governs. So, generally, the word we use for an “external regulator” is what? “Government.” That’s the common word for the thing that regulates, that governs. Govern-ment. What it does is right in its name.

  Now, again, this isn’t a referendum on any particular kind of govern-ment or political ideology. Government is government. External regulation is external regulation. It doesn’t matter if it’s being performed by a king or an autocrat or a socialist party or a senate or a western democratic republic. External regulation is external regulation. Where it exists, you’re not free.

  Recall, freedom is “the absence of external regulation,” and external regulation comes from an external regulat-or, and external regulators are more commonly known as “government.”

  Freedom is the absence of external regulation, the absence of government. The terms are interchangeable. In fact, we can modify our graph:

0———————————————————————————-0

Freedom                                                              

Government

(absence of                                                        

(absence of

government)                                                        

freedom)

  Where you have freedom, you have an absence of government. Where you have government– external regulation imposed by an external regulator –you have an absence of freedom. The more governed you are, the less free you are, and vice versa.

  This might seem counterintuitive to many who feel, particularly here in the U.S., that “government” gives us “freedom,” that government is the source or protector of freedom. As point of fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

  Government is, and always has been, the opposing force to freedom. Government is not the source of rights but the limiter of rights, the restricter that defines rights that government chooses to recognize and then restricts those rights to only the exercise that government wants to allow.

  Not to get too deep into the weeds here, but even the so called Founding Fathers urged a healthy suspicion of government, calling it a “necessary evil.” They wrote a whole collection of works describing government as the enemy of freedom.

  So, it is universally true that “freedom” and “government” are opposing forces. Where there is freedom, there is an absence of external regulation, government; where you have government, regulation, you have an absence of freedom.

  So, on a practical level, this also holds true. Consider, the ideology that puts government first and sublimates the rights of the subject to the needs of government is Fascism. To Fascists, the authoritarian state is all that matters. Fascists advocate for the nonexistence of individual freedom.

  At the opposite end the is only one ideology that advocates for freedom and the complete absence of government: Anarchism. So, we can graph this, superimposed upon our other graphs:

0————————————————————————-0

Freedom                                                    

Government

(Anarchism)                                                  

(Fascism)

  Anarchists are the only partisans who advocate for freedom, for the absence of government. Every other political ideology occupies a point somewhere on the continuum between the two absolutes; every other ideology advocates a compromise position for freedom. The more authoritarian drift toward Fascism while the less imposing systems drift in the opposite direction.

  But to be clear, Anarchists, and only Anarchists, advocate for freedom, for the absence of external regulation, the absence of government. In fact, absence of government is the simplest definition for Anarchism.

  So, in the U.S., neither major party stands for “freedom.” Both parties stand for a COMPROMISE of freedom, a compromised freedom according to whichever party’s priorities for exercising power. Both parties agree on compromising freedom, and they both agree on government, but disagree only on how freedom should best be compromised to fulfill the aims of power.

  And, again, not to get too deep in the weeds on this, but this compromise of freedom made by both parties reveals the real reason both democrats and republicans seek to crush and eliminate Anarchists out of existence: Anarchists are examples that expose the fraud and hypocrisy of both parties and their fraudulent claims of loving “freedom.” Anarchists are a reminder, an aggravation, demonstrating that both parties compromise freedom and really seek power.

  Perhaps that’s why your predecessor, Gary Mohr, had me tortured. Perhaps that’s why your Gang Czar, DJ Norris, has me on the gang list.

  At any rate, to finish up this question of freedom, there’s one last matter to which I turn your attention: Nonfreedom. What is the word we use for nonfreedom? What is the status of those who are not free?

  Slavery.

  You’re either free, or you’re a slave. Those are the only two states of being.

  Anarchists advocate freedom. Anarchists advocate the absence of government, of external regulation, of slavery. No one else does.

  Everyone but Anarchists, without exception, advocate for a compromise of freedom, varying degrees of compromise. And that means they also accept varying degrees of nonfreedom, which, we know, is slavery.

To be an Anarchist is to be an advocate for uncompromised freedom, to be an advocate against external regulation, government, and slavery, not just for oneself, but for everyone everywhere. To be anything other than an Anarchist is to advocate for the compromise of freedom, for varying degrees of slavery, for everyone everywhere. So, I am an Anarchist because I advocate for freedom, not just for me but for you; and I am an Anarchist because I oppose slavery in all of its forms, for me, for you, for everyone.

  I hope this presentation makes clear why I believe Anarchism, and Anarchism alone, advocates freedom, and why everyone who advocates freedom in its fullness is, by virtue of that, an Anarchist, whether they identify by that word or not.

  I will pick up in my next letter the topic of Anarchism equating with sanity and how hierarchy, based upon a series of provable delusions, is itself a kind of mental illness. That is, everyone who embraces hierarchy is mentally ill.

  No offense.

  And so, I will close here.

  The truth is dangerous.

  Stay dangerous.

Freedom,

Sean

***

To share with ODRC Director Annette Chambers Smith:

ODRC Director Annette Chambers Smith

ODRC

4545 Fisher Road, Ste. D

Columbus, Ohio 43228

annette.chambers-smith@odrc.state.oh.us

^^^ click link to print, download, read

Anson Chi
FCI McKean
PO Box 8000
Bradford, PA 16701

In the midst of organizing the community, and succeeding in creating the perfect storm with community members, the TDCJ has felt the Warmth of True Resistance by Inmates all over the State, and its going to continue because of the brutality, and retaliation on families and inmates alike. This community is kicking ass in fighting back, and I’m proud of them for taking my suggestions and utilizing them however they see fit, as long as its towards the Agency and the Secret Society of Slaveholders, (ACA). Connally Unit is in desperate need of an uprising, and its a Tinderbox as we speak, so I’ve come to the conclusion that the Community be helped in phone zapping and mass emailing the Highest Federal Courts to Force the Appointment of Special Masters to come fix the TDCJ once and for all!!!

While they retaliated on me using the same officer, he’s destroyed my property twice, sexually harassed me to further intimidate and humiliate me into acting out. I’m acting out by asking for help in requesting that I be allowed to file a report on him, I’ve reported it to a Captain, Risk Management, Major Harrol, Warden Puente, all top officials and I have received no help. The same officer has been allowed to file a disciplinary case on me for reporting him, “Threatening an Officer”, he filed this because I reported him twice maybe three times for abuse of authority.

We are a voice against violent predator officers, and this one attacked me while I was asleep, began by destroying my property and then shining his flashlight on my private parts while asking me to submit to restraints, which I quickly refused.

Yes, this is really happening on Connally unit, and I’m still being targeted for political lynching, and worse for reporting sexual assault for inmates set hip by Intelligence officers here, we are seeking solidarity in the coming weeks to begin community action in contacting the states Governor, US Dist. Courts, Texas Supreme Court, Even the Dept. Of Justice to Appoint Special Masters so the community can see the reality of a corrupt institutions, don’t take no for an answer, start right here, you are the ones getting robbed by these people, this unit is falling apart and has been for years, yet billions in funding is given to the Agency for repairs and it never reaches South Texas Region, in its entirety, but if you look at the Stevenson Unit Furniture Factory, its in prime shape, its easy to see the corruption and the ugliness, you only have to be willing to accept this truth.

We need the community to help us bring College Courses, Rehabilitation programs, medium custody programs, and/or shut this unit down forever. It’s the community’s choice, its bleeding your taxpayer money and it’s out of control.

Please register on Securustech.net and or Write me :

Julio A. Zuniga “Z” #1961551
Connally Plantation
899 FM 632
Kennedy, Texas 78119

Solidarity and Sabotage, Z

Bi-fold brochure style, print double sided (flip on long edge), will need to be cut to size (8.5×7″)

January 14, 2025

It’s January’s full moon, the Wolf Moon. As I approach three months incarcerated, a quarter of my sentence should I serve it in full, I thought I’d write you all. I exist, although surely there are those who wish the world forget me.

Yazoo isn’t as bad as I expected – Miami-Dade jail is certainly far worse. At least we aren’t fed bricks (bologna or pb+j on bread wrapped in plastic). However, the isolation is awful by design. My spouse is my greatest comrade, the strongest person I know, 15 hours by car, they’ve visited 11 days and hope to return this month. Just seeing them, tension instantly melts away. My face soon hurts from smiling so much. Prison is war waged upon the soul, but love and solidarity are our greatest weapons in this fight. The holidays are over, the trips from South Florida will be shorter, but every moment together is a blessing for us both.

An imperious desire to do evil hold 1,100 souls hostage here. No one deserves prison except those who choose to spend their careers keeping human in cages, torturing, starving, and cracking the whip in the attached sewing factory. They deserve this place. One day in prison is horrible, 366 are 366 times as bad. But five years? Ten? Thirty? A friend and his wife were locked up 37 years ago. She just got off probation and was finally approved to visit. Soon they will see each other for the first time in nearly four decades. They can briefly hold each other twice: at the beginning and end of the visit. May all find love so strong, may no love ever again be torn apart for so long. I know that I’ve found that eternal love.

“NONE ARE FREE UNTIL ALL ARE FREE!!!”

I think often of the tens of thousands of Palestinian hostages held by the settler-colonial state of Israel, an appendage of the U.S. Empire. Today, it was announced that 1,000 will soon be released. Sinwar, rest in power, leader of the Palestinian Resistance, called his 22 years in prison “the academy”, for he learned the way of his enemy. The violations for which those gulags are famous are less universal here in the imperial core… unless you’re trans. Unless you’re at FCI Dublin or San Francisco. Unless your name is Darren Rainey, rest in power, boiled to death in Florida State Prison, or any of the other countless names of the lynched, known and unknown. Another handful were released from Guantanamo, where extraterritorial ambiguity means endless torture. Many here in the U.S. awaiting execution were resentenced to death by prison. “We who all have life without parole sentences are the security deposit to keep prisons open and running from generation to generation,” -Angela M. Garza.

Each reprieve is a sad miracle yet together they are but a drop in the ocean. Generations spent their lives on plantation and generations still live in concentration camps rebranded “reservations” and “immigration detention”, often located on or near the ancestral lands of the indigenous internees. Even those who walk the streets have so little freedom: COVID relief aid built the largest and best armed police state in history with cameras on every street corner and cyberweapons to hack every device.

“ALL EMPIRES SHALL FALL!!! ALL EMPIRES MUST BE TORN DOWN!!!”

“Every(one) in prison has a baby-mama,” declares my friend Joker. He is Black. His words carry the generational trauma of chattel slavery when Black men were used as studs then carted away for their labor. Now this country criminalizes abortion and mass incarcerates whole communities. A Policy of forced birth becomes one of forced labor, to provide for the little ones. Some find legitimate work – often a McDonald’s uniform or a military uniform, a Walmart badge or a police badge. In other words, in order to raise a child with legitimate pay, most must become a wage slave or a class traitor, hands soaked in blood. Yet those jobs are so limited or pay so little; many parents end up here instead. Most prisoners in Amerikkka are imprisoned for being poor – selling drugs, fraud, organized “crime”, theft – for putting food on the table. Criminalizing abortion fills the prisons directly with patients and doctors and indirectly with parents trying to make ends meet. Prisoners are both the product (to transfer taxpayer money to private profit) and the labor (to keep the prisons running and manufacture goods with enslaved hands). “Slavery shall henceforth be abolished, except as punishment for a crime.” – the 13^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The maximum pay here for an Adult In Custody is about $100 per month, but most are paid just $22 per month, barely enough to buy a month’s supply of phone calls to loved ones.

“Like flowers pushing up through the pavement, these gentle crimes keep me alive” – (unknown to me, spotted on a sticker in South Florida)

Mississippi really is beautiful. The crab grass planted at the prison’s construction is losing a protracted war to clover, wild lettuce, dandelion, and these gnarly purple flowers unknown to me. There are ancient trees in the distance, painted skies in the mornings and evenings; birds and skunks defy the barbed wire as voles excavate their burrows below. Yazoo City once burned to the ground thanks to the ghost of a witch burned at the stake seeking revenge. The rebuilt downtown was ravaged again by Walmart and now stands abandoned. Humans have not fared well here since Europeans brought genocide to the land. Yet that evil has only soaked as deep as the roots of the alien grass being routed by wild flowers yearning to be free.

I read. I write. I pretend heating instant noodles is cooking. I work out. I sift through the lies on CNN and Fox. I dream. I speak of the world as it could be. But mostly I learn. Here in the rotting carcass of this empire, there is such creativity, resilience, faith; we practice mutual aid and solidarity every day. We know who the enemy is. “Nothing in prison is free” was the first and biggest lie from a guard. Our bodies may not be free, but most of our possessions were gifts from one another, paid for in gratitude and reciprocity. The only things for sale are restricted or banned. Artificial scarcity is key to capitalism. Everyone is worse off for having come here, yet there are valuable lesson in the extraordinary nature of our humanity. These lessons are simply disdained by a society which worships domination and greed.

“I am truly free only when all human beings… are equally free.” -Mikhail Bakunin

The First Step Act and Good Time Credit will qualify me for release on April 10, 2025 as long as I am not written up. But they will hold me months past this date. The Second Chance Act already qualified me for a halfway house the day after I arrived. However, they keep making up excuses to delay the paperwork. The BOP has no discretion – these Acts are law. In practice, the BOP holds folx as long as they can. Overincarceration lawsuits will not win enough to cover lawyers’ fees unless one has been illegally held for over a year too long. So I remain in the belly of the beast at Yazoo City, Low 1, separated from my spouse and my community along with 1,100 others who deserve dignity and liberation as well. Meanwhile, states are criminalizing abortion and “fake clinics” continue to trick and manipulate folx from seeking actual medical care.

Please consider writing me, recommending books, sharing the details of our case, speaking up for bodily autonomy and the abolition of prison, distributing copies of this essay, and supporting my spouse and I:

chuffed.org/project/visitcalebf

Cashapp – $JadeF64

Instagram – @FTLauderdaleFoodNotBombs, @SolidaritySFL

In solidarity against all oppression,

Caleb Freestone

–

My name is Caleb Freestone. I am a community organizer, a peace activist, a husband, a gardener, a sailor, a cook, an artist, a writer, an abolitionist, an anarchist, a revolutionary in South Florida. I am a political prisoner serving 366 days at FCI Yazoo City for pro-choice graffiti in the style of Jane’s Revenge on three “fake clinics” in Florida during the Summer of Rage in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, allowing unrestrained criminalization of abortion healthcare.

“Liberation in our lifetimes and no mercy until then!”

Preface

To some this will read like the ranting of a lunatic, or else, more likely, as a middling author’s attempt at the imitation of such. Nonetheless, it is sincere and it is a paper some people will have to understand.

In the writing of it, I have had to rely on memory or on old notes; there is no list of works cited, but the information is sound. I encourage curious readers to do their own research.

Introduction

1. We speak of the need for a revolutionary myth. A frame of legend and symbol, archetype and ritual to bind us to and sanctify the brutality of what must be done. And what is it that must be done? The complete and irrevocable destruction of the technological system in every part of the world. What task could be more daunting? What cause could be more lost? But the gods of the earth favor the fighters in such contests. The small and the lost and the desperate and the hopelessly outmatched. The myth was unrolled for us to inhabit. We were foretold. What must be done will be done and we will do it and though the field will be well-blooded we will win in the end.
2. Not so long ago, as time is measured on this world, our species lived and thrived as we were meant to, in conditions to which we had adapted, into which we had evolved. We went upon the earth in small, autonomous bands and the wilderness was our home and though life indeed was hard, and we survived only by the sweat of our brow, we were contented. The vast majority of human history was lived in this way. But then something happened. Slowly but inexorably our kind fell under the shadow of a cruel and blind and idiot god. The Gnostics speak of the Demiurge, called also Yaldabaoth; a wicked, deformed, sightless deity that in its perverse and unnatural hunger for power claimed dominion of the world. A god, perhaps, made manifest in wheat – that great golden slavemaster who caged us first in those agricultural prisons called farms, then in choking, diseased cities and ultimately in a world-system so vast and perfect in its utility that to dream of escape is more often to dream of suicide. A god of metallurgy, smoke and poison. Something less like a god at all and indeed sharing more in common with a virus, an airline catastrophe, a serpent. We will call this Thing the Technium. The Dark One. The Black Snake. Surely it is not a god of the earth, but a crawling thing and though its victories have been great and many and its reign has been long, like any tyrant or similar parasite it can be killed. It must be killed.

We are not the first to say this. It has been said before. It will be said again. And on the day the last ugly buzzing light goes out and the long-captive moths are free to make once more for the moon we will stand in the darkened world and we will marvel that we ever doubted our own inevitability.

Storm and Serpent

3. The great serpent Apep chases the sun across the black and brumous sky of the underworld. All black scales and hunger, a devourer of light. Is it not written? Look now upon the suffering world of the living. Across the desert and the fields and over hills and all through the jigsawed wild and under lake and sea the slithering, oozing pipelines carry black poison and venomous gas to sacrificial fire. The smoke of its burning reaches forth to choke the sun. Is this not that old serpent? In other deserts, in other fields, solar panels glisten like so many black, iridescent scales. Feeding on the sun. Leeching into the earth their venom. Lead. Cadmium. Arsenic. Sulfuric acid. Hydrochloric acid. Hexafluoroethane. Polyvinyl fluoride. Is this not that same asp? And who shall do battle with it? Who shall prevail? Are we not the sons and daughters of Horus? Are we not the beloved and guarded wards of the storm that comes to strike the snake to boiled ruin where it slithers in the mud toward our young?
4. The motif of the storm god fighting the serpent is found in many religions, in cultures separated by continents, by oceans, by time.
5. Thor of the Aesir, god of thunder, must on the appointed day contend with Jorgmundir, the world-serpent. In elder days, the great snake was cast into the sea and there it waits, circling the earth with its tail in its mouth. Thor will die in his struggle, venomed by the serpent’s fang, but he will be avenged. The snake will die. Is that day so distant? Look now. See our skies thrash and rage at their poisoning, their mutilation. See them hurl storm and flood like hammer-blows upon the palsied world as the great ships unspool their enormous, serpentious cables from their sterns to rest upon the sea floor. As of 2024, 458 such cables lay upon the benthic bed. 900,000 miles of internet cable. Enough to wrap around the planet thirty-six times.
6. Yahweh, too, that erstwhile father of Christ, began his career as one among many in the Canaanite pantheon. Alongside Dagon, El, Asherah, and others, Yahweh served as the god of weather and war. Set against him was the gargantuan serpent Leviathan, whom our young and virile supergod wrestled and threw into the deepest chasms of the sea.
7. Zeus and python. Thunderbird and Horned Snake. Lightning strikes the flood.As I write this the waters are rising and in the water, there is the serpent. We must seek higher ground from which to hurl our bolts. Head to the mountains. Some defensible place.
8. As I write this the waters are rising and in the water, there is the serpent. We must seek higher ground from which to hurl our bolts. Head to the mountains. Some defensible place.
9. Are we the ones to hurl the lightning, and not the gods we have named? Did Christ not say, “Did I not say, ‘ye are gods;?” John 10:34.
10. Therefore ready your lightning. The serpent is come.

The Machine Can Bleed

11. The world will not be saved by those who say “the world will not be saved”.
12. In the fist of every David who ever held a stone against armored Goliath, the gods of the earth lend their strength. To every Persius his polished shield. To every Fingolfin his rage. The beast at the heart of the labyrinth is ferocious and it is imbued with great power and it is rapacious and it is doomed. The Dark Lord strides forth from the walls of his iron fortress where in chthonic chambers slaves and acolytes toil and radioactive fuel rods seep death into the groundwater. To stand against him has ridden hard some hate-blind fanatic regarded perhaps by his own kind as a maniac, a heretic, a locust-eating imbecile. For who else but one such would have sold his only cloak for a rusted sword and come thus naked and alone to the gates of the tyrant? And though the king wields a hammer that strikes smoking pits into the earth, and though the champion will die, he will in that glorious moment wound the Lord of Artifice grieviously, so that evermore the tyrant shall go forth with a limp. And by the limp shall the world entire know that he is mortal. That the Machine can bleed. That it can be killed.
13. The meek shall indeed inherit the earth. But it is the vengeful who will win it for them.
14. Industrial technology has enabled the slavery, slaughter, and psychological and spiritual torment of the human race on such a scale that would confound the minds of even history’s most heinous sadists. It has made the earth an abattoir. It has placed the fate of billions in the hands of a few hedonistic madmen. It has subjected us to mass experimentation which has left us sick and blind and cancerous and sterile and docile as cattle, fattened on blinking lights and tinitic from the hiss of hydraulic pistons, the ceaseless bee-hive roar of engines.
15. Yellow-5, the dye they put into Doritos and candy corn and Mountain Dew, when injected into laboratory mice, causes their skin to turn transparent.
16. On December 23, 1921 Thomas Midgley Jr. discovered that adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline reduced engine-knocking in the new, crankless Cadillac Model 30. Leaded gasoline was patented and sold to the public. It was marketed as safe. Immediately workers in the processing plants producing leaded gasoline began to get sick with lead poisoning. Five of them died. By 1923 Midgley himself was suffering from the effects of lead and refused to go anywhere near his own product. Nonetheless, the Ethyl corporation continued to unleash it on the world. By the 1950s there was so much lead in the atmosphere that it had seeped into the bedrock, confusing initial efforts to determine the age of the planet. Lead causes hardening of the arteries, which conservative estimates say cause 256,000 deaths in the US alone. Globally, over 100 million deaths can be attributed to the advent of leaded gasoline. As of 2022, current estimates of death caused by lead exposure range from 500,000 to one million. In 2020, the UNICEF report warned that one in three children globally – over 800 million children – have dangerous levels of lead in their blood. Lead also causes learning disabilities and antisocial behavior. Data strongly suggests a direct correlation between lead exposure among children born from 1951-1980, when leaded gasoline was widely used, and the sudden surge in violent crime in the 1990s. Thomas Midgley Jr. also invented dichlorodifluoromethane, more commonly known as freon. This opened the door to the use of Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, in refrigeration and aerosols, resulting in the hole in the ozone layer, which led to an increase in skin cancer and cataracts. CFCs also contribute to global warming. Per kilogram, CFCs cause 10,000x more warming than CO₂. Historian John McNeil is quoted as saying, “Midgley has had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in earth’s history.” In 1941, Midgley had become so physicially deteriorated that he needed mechanical assistance for the smallest tasks. In order to get out of bed, he devised a complicated mechanism of levers, ropes and pulleys. On November 2, 1944 he became tangled in his own contraption and died of strangulation. To this day, leaded gasoline is still used in airplane engines.
17. We have reached a more dolorous age. The AI Age, which presages if not the wholesale extinction of our species then at the very least the transformation of it into something neutered, deformed, perverted into beasts of strange burden preserving only those components of our being utile to the survival and propagation of the Technium. At the same time the Transhumanist and Multiplanetary cults of the technophiles spew their lies, their blasphemies. They demand our submission, body and soul, to the Techno-Demiurge. These serpent-worshippers. These ersatz Ophites. They proclaim their millennarian prophecies of singularity and interstellar conquest, calling for us to lay ourselves and our planet and our souls and all life upon the altar to progress. What can this be but the Antichrist? The false Messiah comes to lead mankind astray? The beast whose name, like a computer, is only a string of numbers.
18. The beast, as we have said, is doomed. Like the factory. Like the computer. Like the gorgon. Like the giant and the pharaoh and the serpent. For we are foretold. We are favored by the free and wild living earth in whose name we fight. We the fighters. We who see the way of things, the truth evident in our own lives and in the archetypes that have walked the land and the dreams of those that came before us. We who have rightly identified the Great Malady, the Enemy of our kind – the Technium. We stand at the fore of a heroic and storied legion of legend and memory. It falls to us now to do the awful, sacred, wicked work that must be done so that when we die, even in their mighty company, we shall not be ashamed.
19. But we have tarried overlong. We must shed our cowardice, our trepidation, our attachment to the world as it is and we must begin the work in earnest. We could do far worse in this than to emulate the cultic origins of great faiths of the past. Let us gather and sequester ourselves – so far as is possible – from this civilization. The realm of the Technium. But do not misunderstand; This is not to be a masturbatory, indulgent exercise. We must do this not to live as we feel mankind “ought”, nor to “lead by example” on self-sustaining compounds. Like every action we take, our removal from mainstream society must be practical. Let us create such communities of radicals wherever and however possible, removed enough from the System that detection and surveillance is frustrated. Let each function in such a way that enables them to fund themselves and their ventures. These communities will need infrastructure. Internet. The ability to communicate and to travel quickly. Tools of defense. In these Farraday-caged communes let us set about the great work. Let us call it holy. Let us call it crusade. Let us call it Jihad. If we are hated and feared, so much the better. If, in our published writings (like this one), we seem deranged with quasi-religious fervor, if by our propaganda and the deeds we claim we are perceived to be some kind of extremist cult, some sect of frothing and ecstatic zealots, and if we thereby succeed in drawing to us only those who are likewise mad, likewise willing to dedicate themselves wholly to the anti-tech cause, to the war-cry of the earth, then we will not have erred.
20. In the struggle against the Technium there can be no quarter given. As a movement, anti-tech needs the kind of religious fervor that has toppled Empires and changed history. We need our myths and our legends to guide us. Our faith must be unwavering.
21. We will be free. We will find peace. We will have our revenge.

Letters to:

Pierce Skinner 2177819
Lunenberg Correctional
PO Box 1412
Victoria, VA 23974

Books/Zines:

Pierce Skinner 2177819
VaDOC CMDC
3521 Woods Way
State Farm, VA 23160

Dear Director Chambers-Smith,

Hi. I’m writing because I have a sense that we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. One of your administration’s first actions, coming into office, was to illegally rendition me in a black van to Virginia, based upon provable lies of your predecessors. When I returned from rendition, I was irregularly sent to the super-duper-max and, in a second botched rendition to Maryland, staff chopped my finger off and I have remained here at the super-duper-max, several months after I should have had a parole hearing that didn’t occur.

I could be wrong, but between the renditions and the dismemberment and the super-duper-max placement without a parole hearing, I’ve gotten the distinct impression that you don’t like me very much. Just a hunch. But my hope is that I can change that as you get to know me and come to appreciate my sparkling personality.

Yeah. Sparkling personality.

Usually, I introduced myself as an Anarchist. I lead with that because I can’t think of anything more honorable, more significant, more meaningful than to be someone who embraces what has been called, “The Beautiful Idea”– Anarchism. But, perhaps, here, it would be better that I didn’t lead with that. I generally find that an I’m interacting with prison administrators, the mention of “Anarchism” scrambles their brains. Once I mention that word, they can no longer see me clearly… and all they imagine is chaos, mayhem, bedlam, and madness– the sky falling, the world ending, house pets engaging in interspecies fornication.

I don’t want to scramble your brain, so perhaps we should just forget I ever brought up that word? Instead, I’ll share with you who I am and what I’ve done, and then we’ll return to that other topic later.

I graduated high school, received an Honorable Discharge from the Army, and had a writing scholarship for college. In self defense, I killed a guy who broke into my home– a guy who happened to be the nephew of an official who was both the county clerk of courts and the chair of the Democratic Party… in a county where both the judge a prosecutor were Democrats.

The polygraph I passed was inadmissible and I was found guilty of murder, years before Ohio adopted the Castle Doctrine. So, I told the truth and what I did was provably a noncrime. Not that it mattered. It still doesn’t.

While in prison, I joined the American Civil Liberties Union, International Campaign for Tibet, and CURE-Ohio. I served on CURE’s prisoner advisory board for 3 years. I was a founding member of Catholic Justice Fellowship and wrote most of their published work. We successfully lobbied the Ohio Catholic Bishops to support parole reform legislation.

I have logged thousands of hours of community service, mostly painting classroom posters and teaching aides for Ohio public schools. Former Richland Prosecutor James Mayer gave me a commendation for recording the music for puppet shows prepared for child victims of crime.

In 2002, I was personally recognized by Rosa Parks for my peace work in prison, nominated for placement on the Wall of Tolerance.

I’ve taken every rehabilitative program made available to me; I received my degree from Ashland University; I completed and tutored two vocational courses; I received my paralegal certification from Blackstone Institute.

Three of my books are in publication. I’ll send you copies, if you’re interested. For more than ten years, I’ve contributed weekly commentaries to a globally syndicated radio show.

A collection of my songs was recorded by a number of indy bands and posted as “Burning Down” at bandcamp.com. A collection of about 30 of my paintings went on display in September in Stockholm, Sweden.

All of this was accomplished as a consequence of loving and generous people in my life who were able to make all of this possible despite the ODRC’s interference and obstruction… and despite my own incompetencies.

I know this sounds pretty pretentious, but my “personal papers and effects” are collected at the University of Michigan for an archive that celebrates historically influential American Anarchists. Yes, there’s that word again. My apologies. I hope if doesn’t scramble your brain.

Over the course of 34 years of captivity, I have never so much as been accused of a single fist fight or any other violence; never got involved in drugs or alcohol; never joined any gangs. I am, all things considered, very possibly the best behaved prisoner in Ohio penal history. None of this is probably going to enhance my street cred, I imagine, but all of it is true, just the same.

The ODRC’s response to this has been to blacksite me, torture me, isolate me at supermax, purge my friends and family from my visitation list, rendition me out of state, and dismember me. I currently write you from the prison designed to house the 1% of the most dangerous Ohio prisoners, and I’m on the gang list as a gang of one, facing continuances from the parole board in 5-year increments… and, as a consequence of losing my right pinkie, I’m unable to throw a spiral, and so my chances of becoming an NFL quarterback are zero.

I would hope, if you read this, that you would, at least on the face of this, consider what I have accomplished from prison and how the ODRC has responded to me, and that, as a human being, you might feel some level of consternation, a bit of discomfort, perhaps even bewilderment.

Bewilderment is something I have become accustomed to feeling, particularly in those encounters where I bleed a lot.

You might wonder, if all of this is true, WHY is it true?

And that takes us back to that word. The troubling word. The one that scrambles ODRC administrators’ brains.

It all comes down to that word, “Anarchist.”

I often ponder what might have been, if, when I was young and idealistic, I had the sense to not use that word. I could have called myself a “libertarian socialist,” or perhaps an “anti-state communalist,” or even a “horizontalist,” and I likely could have continued painting, playing guitar, writing, and entertaining myself with my own ideas about how the world could be without hierarchy, and I probably would have avoided all of the starvation and sleep deprivation and brain concussions. I would probably be home right now.

But, I used the word. I never had much sense, I guess. I called myself an Anarchist. So, if I can interject here for a moment, not to break up this train of thought, but a piece of advice, a word to the wise: Don’t ever do that. Don’t use that word, particularly when addressing people in power. You have to be very careful about telling the truth to people in power. They really can’t handle it. But I didn’t know. I thought “Anarchist” was just a regular word. I didn’t know it had magical powers, that its utterance could make the sky fall… and the world end… and house pets engage in abominable genital friction. I didn’t know it was a word so hated and so loathed as to drive otherwise ordinary and well intending employees of a state agency to such levels of revilement and derision that they would see me as a nonperson, as an object to be disassembled and destroyed, an enemy to be crushed and conquered.

Well, lesson learned, I guess.

I would like to tell you what the word “Anarchist” means to me– if my use of this darkly magical shibboleth won’t scramble your brain. I hope it hasn’t.

The etymology of the word is a good place to start. “An-” means against, and “-archy” refers to hierarchical structure, so “An-archy” is a rejection of hierarchical structure in human society.

That was as far as I got, by the way, in my explanation to Lt. Oberle here at the prison. He’s one of DJ Norris’ flying monkeys. He put me on the gang list. I got as far as the etymology of the word and I was a gang of one, teaching myself secret handshakes.

In a broad sense, an “An-archist” is someone who imagines our world being a better place if it were structured differently, if the few did not rule the many (and do it badly), if there wasn’t wealth at the expense of also having poverty, if the system we serve wasn’t defined by imposition and compulsion and exploitation and subjugation, benefitting the few and harming the most.

Probably, you don’t believe me. Probably, in your heart of hearts, you’re thinking, ‘I know all of this is a lie; Anarchists want chaos and madness and bedlam and mayhem, not peace and justice… They just want to burn the world down.’ I get it. That’s a pretty common, bigoted trope.

That slander originates with Vladimir Lenin when he kicked Mikhail Bakunin out of the Communist International because Bakunin was critical of Lenin’s monopoly on state power– and rightfully so, I would say. But Lenin smeared Bakunin, claiming all anti-statists were “Anarchists,” set on sabotage and malicious mischief.

Soviet propaganda is really powerful, it seems.

Here we are, 36 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and you are still influenced by Lenin’s lies against his enemies, told right after the Russian Revolution. The word he used to slander Bakunin still scrambles your brain.
Bakunin and others wore the word as a badge of honor, embracing it not unlike Black rappers embracing the “n” word to take its power away. If only Bakunin knew then how much brain trauma I would suffer for that word in Ohio custody, I like to think he would reconsider, perhaps going with something more agreeable, like “Bunny Rabbits” or “Unicorns.”

At any rate, I should think about closing this and picking up again later. In my ext letter, I would like to resume this discussion, sharing what Anarchism means to me– that it represents freedom as opposed to bondage; sanity as opposed to delusion; the aspiration to principles of autonomy, voluntary association, cooperation, and mutual aid as opposed to alienation and compliance and obedience under threat of force. It is a liberating and healing energy that permeates our lives and relationships, raising us up to be our best selves.

Well, most of us, anyway. Don’t judge Anarchism by my failures. I’m something of an underachiever.

And, perhaps once this dialogue concludes, you’ll realize you hate me less and you’ll order your flying monkeys to stop the state terror campaign they’ve been waging for decades, and I can be treated with the dignity that all humans deserve.

Just an idea.

A quick note before I sign off– I always close my letters wishing the recipient the best thing I can wish for them: Freedom. I shouldn’t make an exception here, despite the irony that I wish you freedom while you are the official withholding mine from me.

At any rate… The truth is dangerous, Director Chambers-Smith.

Stay dangerous.

Freedom, Sean.

*** Anyone can share this with Director Chambers Smith by email at annette.chambers-smith@odrc.state.oh.us, or by mail: Director Annette Chambers Smith Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction 4545 Fisher Road, Suite D Columbus, Ohio 43228