Mongoose Distro

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

Kristopher Storey 26731-018
Federal Medical Center
PO Box 14550
Lexington, KY 40512

Salaam and Revolutionary greetings. My name is Zach, but all call me Abdullah. I am a true follower of Sunni Islam and am caucasian as well. I am new to this but want to bring awareness to who I am and what’s going on in my struggle.

I am currently in TOCI Koncentration Kamp. I am 39 years of age as of August 21, 2024 and have been held against my will since 2009. I’m sentenced till 2049 in Ohio death traps.

I came to prison young and just like some was brainwashed into believing racist viewpoints and followed them for years, but I ended up being introduced to Komrade George Jackson studies and had to be around some good komrades who helped me see the truth. I started seeing how pigs used white gangs as puppets to ultimately serve them. I gave up my thinking and see how stupid it all was. As a member of a white gang I was led to think we are bettering each other, but how could that be if it just kept me and others in a criminal mindset.

So, I stepped away from that stupidity. Once I did I had gang members jumping me. C.O.s would loosen their cuffs so that they could do it.

I met a white Muslim brother who started teaching me. I saw how in Islam to teaches to want the best for Muslims, just like how you would want for yourself. So I gave my life to Allah.

I started refusing to allow staff to treat me like I’m not human. I started studying all I could on anarchy and revolutionary teachings and started seeing myself as a man who truly deserves a life.

I started filing grievances here at Toledo. I was given false conduct reports, placed in longterm solitary. They told my friends I’m a White Panther gang leader. They’ve blocked my mail, gave fake gang tickets, and stole my property. I’ve been sprayed with mace because I was doing my salah (prayer) in a rec cage. I was told to stop corresponding with brother Sean Swain or I’d be given a gang ticket. I get told that I’m a race traitor and a terrorist and have had my kufi snatched off my head.

I refuse to be silenced. I will fight for my rights and the rights of others or I’ll go to Allah trying.

I just want to show all what I’m going through. Thank you to all who care.

I’d like to hear from you all.

Free All,

Abdullah

Zachary Barfield A607-507
Toledo Correctional Institute
2001 E. Central Ave.
Toledo, OH 43606

Comrade Z here,

writing to say that all of you Mongoosedistro Maniacs are what keeps me alive through the psychological warfare executed on my person daily. Thank you another wonderful year of resistance and fury, solidarity and sabotage. How we dance as anarchists is the most beautiful movements ever created by humans.

Connally Unit is pinned down, the prisoners are intentionally oppressed and forced into some really sick and disturbing situation’s, that I like to call”Surveillance Games”, and its been going down for years. I’m advocating for prisoners right now, because of the staff misconduct, staff shortage, electrical issues, compromised roofs flooding buildings and causing accidents.

This is a genuine torture chamber, medical neglect, the body count is rising daily, people are dying ….and I know it is because of the lack of opportunities, education, and general respect for human life.

I appreciate everyone,but this fight isn’t over, As the Texas IWOC organizer here, I’m going to need serious help, fighting against the Hand Of God tactics on the prisoner population is genocide.

Warden Cueto and Warden Puente are now responsible for the deaths of over a dozen bodies since I’ve been here, this is unacceptable when the rest of the TDCJ regions are enjoying college courses, vocational training, rehabilitation programs, and parole.

This intentional oppression must be projected to the community for all to see, media networks like The Marshall Project should be contacted by comrades for us and given my information to begin reporting the current situation on The ground, I’m at risk now for speaking out, but I was sent here in fact with malicious intent,by the Huntsville Directors.

Its not the first time either, I’m raising the alarm, and this call to solidarity is for help emailing and calling the States Capital and Texas Governors office to ask why is this region intentionally causing the deaths of inmates, the quality of healthcare reduced, why aren’t programs that are worth a damn being brought here, like UTSA-college courses, or Why is our quality of food below standard when there are less inmates here because of the closure of an entire wing.

Why are linens so rare to receive, this is surreal, the classification department is playing surveillance games with human lives and putting people in danger of sexual assault like a rape factory.

This is unacceptable, they must stop intentionally creating desperate situations and make it seem like they did not know what they were doing. We say stop the bullshit on Connally Unit, we at Mongoosedistro are bringing hope to inmates that are not cool with this form of punishment, and torture.

I need help in this upcoming year, with outside liasonship and creating a direct line to the highest offices of Government in Texas to protest the current regime. Thanks again, and we will be asking comrades to bring media attention from WORTH RISES in New York- Bianca Tylek. Lawrence Bartley at The Inside Story- The Marshall Project….we need eyes on this current situation that is still under operation.

How did it get like this? I’ve lost too many friends to suicide on The Memorial Unit because of people like Warden Deward DeMoss who is racking up corpses there now, this is a corpse factory in Ramsey Unit where I came from,it was a slave furniture factory, where I witnessed the treatment of worker slaves treated way differently. I was once again provoked into speaking my mind,and here you have it raw and uncut. I’m advocating for people now,but I need help because I respect confidentiality in prison, these people in administration use it as weapon to shame you to suicide yourself. It is an understatement,when I say this is an emergency.

Texas Observer Magazine and The Final Straw Radio I’d like to recognize as the strongest media supporters of this kind of love for humanity. Birthday wishes noted,TY!!!!!!!!

Music: Nina Simone-“isnt it a pity”

Samora Pinderhughes-“masculinity”

-Z

Julio A Zuniga 1961551
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266