Sunday, January 31, 2010

Brainwashing Techniques Used by the Oppressor

My greetings of solidarity and respects are extended to all comrades on both sides of the razorwire. I just wanted to take this time to reproduce this list of CIA brainwashing techniques that are being used against the imprisoned and the oppressors. This is going on in all prisons across the nation, but especially here at Ely State Prison, Nevada’s notorious maximum security lock-up. I’ve been here for over 11 years and I’ve seen all of these tactics being used against us; and so I felt compelled to make a reproduction of this list so that awareness can be raised!

Here’s a list of 25 tactics being used on us daily:

1) Physical removal of prisoners to areas sufficiently isolated to effectively break or seriously weaken close emotional ties.

2) Segregation of all natural leaders.

3) Use of cooperative prisoners as leaders.

4) Prohibition of group activities not in line with brainwashing objectives.

5) Spying on prisoners and reporting back private materials.

6) Ticking men into written statements which are then shown to others.

7) Exploitation of opportunities and informants.

8) Convincing prisoners that they can trust no one.

9) Treating those who are willing to collaborate in far more lenient ways than those who are not.

10) Punishing those who show uncooperative attitudes.

11) Systematic withholding of mail.

12) Preventing contact with anyone non-sympathetic to the method of treatment and regimen of the captive populace.

13) Disorganization of all group standards among prisoners.

14) Building a group conviction among the prisoners that they have been abandoned by and totally isolated from their social order.

15) Undermining of all emotional supports.

16) Preventing prisoners from writing home or to friends in the community regarding the conditions of their confinement.

17) Making available and permitting access to only those publications and books that contain materials which are neutral to or supportive of the desired new attitudes. While making it hard or impossible to gain access to radical, political, educational or empowering literature and books.

18) Placing individuals into new and ambiguous situations for which the standards are kept deliberately unclear and then putting pressure on him to conform to what is desired in order to win favour and a reprieve from the pressure.

19) Placing individuals whose willpower has been severely weakened, or eroded, into a living situation with several others who are more advanced in their thought-reform, whose job is to further undermine the individual emotional supports.

20) Using techniques of character invalidation, i.e. humiliations, revilement, shouting, to induce feelings of guilt, fear and suggestibility; coupled with sleeplessness and exacting prison regimen and periodic interrogational interviews.

21) Meeting all insincere attempts to comply with cellmates’ pressures with renewed hostility.

22) Rewarding of submission and subservience to the attitudes encompassing the brainwashing objective with a lifting of pressure and acceptance as a human being.

23) Providing social and emotional supports which reinforce the new attitudes.

24) Divide and conquer techniques to quell riots and disruptions. When one prisoner is acting out or causing disruption on the tier over an injustice being done to him, guards will go to other inmates’ door laughing, joking, slandering and defacing the character of the disruptive inmate, trying to turn the other prisoners against him. Those who go along with this and take the bait by laughing and joking with the guards, are in turn ostracized and looked down upon by the other prisoners.

25) Using food as a control method, “doggy treat” tactics”. “If you comply we will give you extra food that we would otherwise throw away.” Those who are extremely non-compliant, or who write grievances, might not get fed at all.

Those are just 25 of the brainwashing techniques being used on us daily. There are more though. But now that we know what is being done to us, it is up to us to figure out ways to defend ourselves against these tactics. The best weapon for anyone to have is knowledge. Knowledge of yourself, knowledge of your enemy, knowledge of your surroundings, knowledge of your culture, your history, knowledge of your purpose in life. Knowledge is a weapon. Arm yourself with knowledge.

My love goes out to all of those who keep the fire of resistance burning in their hearts! Peace.

Solidarity and Respects,

Coyote
January 25th, 2010
ABC Nevada Prison Chapter
Ely State Prison

Monday, January 25, 2010

Article: Voices from Solitary: Coyote Calling

The new website / weblog of Solitary Watch published this article yesterday on their site:

Voices from Solitary: Coyote Calling.

January 24, 2010
by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

One of the aims of Solitary Watch News is to build an online archive of literature, drawings, and reportage by people who are, or have been, in solitary confinement. These will be compiled in the Voices from Solitary section of the site, and sometimes featured in blog posts. Readers are encouraged to send in their suggestions.

A reader from Nevada Prison Watch recently told us about the writings of Coyote Sheff, which are now being published by his friends on the outside on a blog, Coyote Calling. Coyote has been in Nevada’s Ely State Prison for about a decade, much of it in Discliplinary Segregation. In fact, of the eight units at Ely, seven are in some form of permanent lockdown, where prisoners are held in their cells 23 hours a day, either alone or with a cellmate.

Ely State Prison, located in a remote town in Eastern Nevada, is currently being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project for ”grossly inadequate medical care” to its 1,000 prisoners. The ACLU filed suit after state officials failed to act on the findings of an expert, Dr. William Noel, who was sent in to investigate medical conditions at Ely. According to the ACLU:

In his report, Noel wrote that medical care at ESP shows “the most shocking and callous disregard for human life and human suffering that I have ever encountered in the medical profession in my 35 years of practice.” According to the report…there is a horrific pattern of neglect, misguided health care policies, and little accountability for frequently under-qualified staff. Noel also noted numerous instances where important medical records were missing from prisoners’ medical files. Finally, Noel and the ACLU have raised serious concerns about prisoners who died and were cremated before autopsies were completed and their families notified.


This piece by Coyote Sheff is called “Solitary Enslavement.”

We sit in these cells like dead bodies sit in cemeteries. Death fills our lungs, fills our minds, fills our hearts and fills our souls as it lurks and lingers and seeps through the concrete. Our minds go numb and our spirits fade into inactivity. We sit here waiting to waste away, erode, dissolve, and disappear into the cracks of the cement.

Solitary confinement. What an evil concept, what a wicked notion, what a clever way to destroy a man without even laying a finger on him. Solitary confinement — the murderer of minds, hearts, and souls. The person who designed such an evil conception must’ve had murder on his mind and hate in his heart.

We die alone in these cold cells, as our hands stretch out to clutch concrete, but fail miserably to hold anything in their grasp other than the death-stenched air. We die alone — a lonely, miserable, suffering death. We die alone….

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Not All There



This is the place where demons drool
over petty rule
leaving you all alone

while your mind fades and erodes between the thickness of steel and stone.

This is the place where sadness stains
the looks on our faces
and where madness remains
in the hearts and minds of the opposite races.

This is the place
of misery and despair
locked down in a cell with nothing to lose
and without a single care.

This is the place where we are all here
'cuz we are not all there.

Coyote 2008
Ely State Prison

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Greetings from the Graveyard, Pt I: Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS:


1. NOT ALL THERE (INSIDE COVER)

2. INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

3. NOTE FROM MY COMRADE MARCUS

4. E.S.P. THE BASIC RUNDOWN

5. SOLITARY ENSLAVEMENT

6. APPLY YOURSELF

7. MADNESS

8. THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS

9. THE CASE OF THE CASEWORKERS

10. THE SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE

11. GENERAL POPULOCKDOWN

12. THERE'S NO LOVE HERE

13. KUMITE

14. BUT UNTIL THEN

15. THE WRITING'S ON THE WALL

16. THE EAGLE AND THE SOW

17. BEWARE OF THE GRIMALKIN

18. DEAR MR. CORRECTIONAL OFFICER

19. THE THOUGHTS OF AN EXILE

20. IN SOLITUDE I SUFFER

21. FREE YOUR MIND

22. ON HEART

23. DESPAIR

24. BURIED ALIVE

25. STAGNATION

26. TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO LIVE

27. WE MUST KEEP RESISTANCE IN OUR HEARTS

28. LIFE IS GOOD

Greetings from the Graveyard - Introduction to Part One

"Greetings from the Graveyard" is a 3-part zine I want to use as a tool to raise awareness about the oppressive struggles that prisoners here in Nevada's maximum security prison (Ely State Prison) have to endure. Hopefully in so doing, it will also shed light on the struggles of prisoners all over America. I want to use this 3-part zine, not only to raise awareness, but also to gain support from sincere, dedicated people and activists on the outs.

It is important that people on both sides of the razor-wire understand the struggles, atrocities, injustices, and oppression that people in prison face. In all honesty, this is a crooked, corrupt, and inhumane system where we are being warehoused. There is no rehabilitation in these prisons, no programs, no health care, no love, no support. This entire American Judicial System is foul and corrupt. It is designed to oppress the poor and people of color. It’s just a cruel, merciless system where racism, violence, and sadism take place everyday.


I wanted to break this zine down to 3 sections, to shed light on 3 different aspects of the prison struggle. This first section is made up entirely of my latest writings. I write these pieces to give people a clear understanding of how barbaric and primitive this system on the inside is, and how most prisoners assume violent mentalities and predatory ways just to endure. Violence is glorified, respected, honored, and bragged about in this psychopathic environment. There's really no healthy, productive way for us to be reformed while living in this sadistic, oppressive environment.


I try to shine the spotlight on this type of violent predatory mentality in a couple of these essays, such as "Central PopuLockdown", and "Madness". I wrote those not as an imprisoned radical intellectual, but from the perspective of a convict who once took up the means of violence as a survival mechanism. I want people to see all different sides and different types of mentalities that we take up as the everyday "norm" in these dungeons.

Also, some of these writings were written as "Release Therapy" for me. These were instances where I was using the paper and pen as an avenue to release my frustrations, anger, and stress. This can be seen in essays like "Writings on the Wall", and "Dear Mr. Correctional Officer", just to name a couple.


I want people to understand that it’s hard for us to rise above this madness and to overcome these violent, predatory mentalities. It’s hard, but its necessary if we are to hold on to a sense of what's left of our humanity. It’s necessary for our communities, society and humanity. We truly and sincerely need outside support. We need people to get involved in our lives and in our struggles. We need people to give us genuine love and support. These warm rays of life are what keep us sane in here; keep us going in here; and keep us alive and human in here.


We need people to send us letters, accept our phone calls, come visit us, and most importantly, send us books so that we can use this time to educate/ re-educate ourselves and liberate our minds. It is through books, literature, education, and study that we become conscious. Consciousness is a saviour. It's what enables us to rise above this madness and change our ways of thinking from violent, criminalistic, predatory and unproductive thoughts to a more healthy, honest, wise, productive, and truthful outlook on life. With this outlook and a conscious level of thinking, we begin to understand on a more clear, truthful and active level. Conscious people don't do stupid things. Conscious people have a true appreciation and respect for life and humanity. This is why I'm always passing out zines and literature and giving books away to other prisoners in here. This is why I'm always writing zines and literature of my own: to raise consciousness in the hearts and minds of my fellow prisoners.

So, I sincerely want for this first zine to help people on the outs to understand what we are going through in these graveyards called prisons. I need people to understand why we need help from the outs and what kind of help we need. Love can conquer hate. Love can help and love can heal. And that's what we need: love, healing, and support.


I want this zine to inspire people to start getting involved in our lives and our struggles in real and meaningful ways. Help us help ourselves, because we cannot expect the people who imprison us to help us. If you are an activist, get involved in a real struggle. If you are not an activist, now is your chance to become one. We need sincere, dedicated, compassionate people to get involved in our plight.


As always, my writings are for people on both sides of the walls.


In solidarity and with respect, Coyote


ABC- Nevada Prison Chapter

Friday, January 22, 2010

Note from my Comrade Marcus

To become aware of these atrocities, one must first become introduced to the 3 W's: World, War, and Warehouses. Once one becomes familiarized with these three, you'll then find that we are all prisoners with like struggles. Therefore, we are all subjected to the same institution and its forced mentalities of insane thinking. The relevance of this institution is it needs for us to become reliant upon its mechanisms. Like a clock ticking away and we're the sprockets turning its gears. It needs us to keep in tune to its tock. For without us, it cannot function. The clock takes extreme measures against all resistance.


These prison warehouses, for some, is the beginning of its extreme measures; and for others, it is the end. Those on the outs are subjected to wars and fighting for the continuous reign of capitalism. And some are just plainly confined to the world and its oppression, living as puppets till death, finding that in the end, it costs way too much to die. Lives pay dearly for war bullets, while the institution hails on and on. The warehouses destroy human nature with no compassion towards our wellbeing. And the institution hails on and on, biting its own tail for nourishment. And we come straight from its ass as its substance.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Apply Yourself

They say you learn something new everyday, but do you really? I see people losing their minds everyday and sometimes it seems like the people who keep us here want our minds to stay stagnant while we are in here, but it's really not up to them, it's up to us. It's up to each and every one of us to take true strides to educate and elevate ourselves. It's up to each and every one of us in here to take true strides to liberate our minds, liberate our souls through books, through knowledge, through the connections we make with others. It's up to each and every one of us to get our minds right and our game tight. For those who choose to stay stuck on stupid while they sit here and dwell here, that's up to them. If that's what they choose to do, then that's on them. It's sad to see, and it's hard to be around people like that, but what can you do?

Man, I've been through so much, up here in E.S.P. for 10 years and I've been through it all. All the ups and downs, all the riots, conflicts and struggles, I've got the mail room officers hating on me, fucking with my mail and trying to make my life a living hell because of the zines that I create, zines like this one right here ("Greetings from the Graveyard"). I've got the officers appealing to the assistant warden trying to get me thrown on H.R.P. status (High Risk Prisoner) for my latest "assault" on an officer and for everything else I've been through in the past 10 years.

I try to do good, but when they see me trying to do good they try to make it harder for me; when they see I'm doing good they always try to find some petty offense to write me up for. So it's hard to maintain, after all the shit I've been through, and go through.

There's been many times when I wanted to do right and was making an effort to do good and then something would go wrong and I'd slip up and just like that I'd be back in the hole for another assault. It's easy for my family and friends to tell me, "just do good, just ignore them, just don't feed into it," but they could never understand the struggles that I go through in here. When you're living amongst all this foulness and misery sometimes it's hard to maintain your focus. It's hard to care about things when you're living in a world where no body cares. It's hard to care when nobody around you cares about you and when some of these people don't even care about themselves. It's a struggle to do right when everything's going wrong. And it's even harder to get your people to understand it when you call them and tell them, Man, I just slipped up again."

We sit here locked down in these cells, letting our minds go numb as every man is pent up within the limits of his own frustration and rage. I always speak on the importance of resistance, and I always speak on the importance of making real connections with people on the outs. I feel that when you try to elevate and educate yourself while living amongst all this stagnation and deterioration, you are engaging in a true act of resistance. Resistance isn't always about clashing with the authorities, or physically fighting the system, because under these circumstances you're only burying yourself deeper in a hole every time you get violent. I've been violent the whole time I've been incarcerated and sometimes it was necessary for me to be violent, but even though it's kept my head glued on to my shoulders it has prolonged my sentence.

So, when you take true strides to educate and elevate yourself while living under these dreary and gloomy circumstances, I'd say you are participating in a healthier act of resistance, because by doing this you're resisting intellectual death and you're also resisting spiritual famine. You are becoming conscious while dwelling in a contemptuous, disdainful, ugly nebula of ignorance and hatred. You are taking true strides to rise above it all.

It is important for us to try to make meaningful connections with people on the outs too, because nobody in here cares about you one way or the other. There's no love here. The love here is earned, not a given. Love shouldn't be earned, that's not true love. That's prison love. It's not the good kind of love. Prison love is artificial, it comes and it goes and then has to be earned all over again, it isn't given freely, there is no compassion in the type of love you'll find in prison. But we can get that from people on the outs, they can help us, they can heal us, they can show us love, friendship and compassion. That's they type of love we need, that's the type of love that's going to help us endure and grow and develop and blossom and those are the type of people who are going to get us through this and beyond this miserable, lonely existence of prison life. We need love from the people on the outs, 'cuz that's true love, not like this artificial, condensed stuff you get in here. We need real love and real support.

Maybe the people who keep us here 'want to keep our minds stagnant, maybe they just don't care one way or the other. But the fact of the matter is we, ourselves have to take true and healthy strides to rise above the madness and stagnation that we live and suffer through every day. I feel that having our minds stagnant while in prison is not only an injustice to ourselves, but an injustice to society (after we get out of prison) and an injustice to humanity. It definitely makes you question the role of prisons in America and it makes you question the intentions of those who are intent on locking us up and building more prisons. It is c1ear that they don't care about us. It is c1ear that we have to take it upon ourselves to rise above this madness.

I sit here in this cell trying to cultivate my mind and trying to encourage others to do the same. We use this time to get our minds right and our game tight, trying to rise above all of this mental and spiritual oppression. We try to make the best out of a bad situation, taking the good with the bad, making sure we get back on our feet after each time we stumble and fall, still striving to move forward, towards the imaginary light at the end of the imaginary tunnel, because it's all about perseverance and survival. And yes, you can learn something new everyday if you have the desire to do so. Just because they want us to stay stagnant in here, doesn't mean we have to. Staying sharp and staving strong is what we should aim to do. Don't lose your mind, use your mind! Apply yourself.


Just in here trying to stay on the sharp side!

Coyote

Ely State Prison, Ely, Nevada

October 27th, 2008

"Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall, escape

Walk out like somebody born into color.

Do it now"

- Rumi, 800 years ago

Please write to me and send me letters of solidarity and encouragement:

Coyote Sheff #55671
P.O. Box 1989
Ely, Nevada 89301-1989