How little sleep is too little? A court has just sided with prisoners who claim they got less than four hours per night, ruling, “[N]ighttime prison conditions—namely the hallway lighting, heavy doors slamming, and prisoners yelling—further imperil inmates’ sleep prospects during this three-and-a-half-hour window.” Staff Writer Michelle Pitcher reports: https://www.texasobserver.org/criminal-justice-prison-sleep-tdcj-sleep-deprivation-lawsuit/
Azat Miftakhov de nouveau condamné à quatre ans de prison
Communiqué de l’association Solidarité FreeAzat — Le 28 mars 2024, le #mathématicien#russe Azat Miftakhov a été condamné par le tribunal militaire de Ekaterinbourg à 4 ans de #prison, dont 18 mois dans une prison de haute sécurité, pour «#ApologieDuTerrorisme», suite à un simulacre de procès.
Hassan Muhammad, a.k.a. Vibez, who is serving time due to actions stemming from the 2020 uprisings, is getting out of prison in May and will need financial support to get back on their feet:
they are set to be back in the Portland area, so if you have other types of support you can offer (or just want to connect or say hi), you can write to them at:
Hassan Muhammad #19203494
Oregon State Penitentiary
2605 State Sreet
Salem, Oregon 97310
Today in Labor History March 29, 1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. They were executed at Sing Sing in 1953. The Rosenberg’s sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol (adopted by Abel Meeropol, the composer of “Strange Fruit,”), maintained their parents’ innocence. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, decoded Soviet cables showed that their father had, in fact, collaborated, but that their mother was innocent. They continued to fight for the mother’s pardon, but Obama refused to grant it. The Rosenberg’s sons were among the last students to attend the anarchist Modern School, in Lakewood, New Jersey, before it finally shut its doors in 1958.
Today in Labor History March 29, 1935: French illegalist anarchist Clément Duval died. He was a major influence on other illegalist anarchists of the era, including members of the Bonnot Gang. In 1886, Duval robbed the mansion of a Parisian socialite. He was condemned to death, but his sentence was later commuted to hard labor on Devil's Island, French Guiana, setting for the novel Papillon. According to Paul Albert, "The story of Clement Duval was lifted and, shorn of all politics, turned into the bestseller Papillon." In a letter printed in the November 1886 issue of the anarchist paper Le Révolté, Duval famously declared: "Theft is but restitution carried out by an individual to his own benefit, being conscious of another's undue monopolization of collectively produced wealth."
Today in Labor History March 28, 1849: French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was sentenced to three years in prison for anti-government writings. Famous for the saying, “Property is Theft,” many believe that he was the first person to call himself an anarchist.
Today in Labor History March 28, 1892: French anarchist, Ravachol, was arrested for blowing up the homes of two government officials. His attentat was in response to the police murders of 9 workers, who had been demonstrating for the eight-hour-day, on May 1, 1891, and for the Clichy Affair, that same day, when anarchists were arrested and tortured by police.
Today In Labor History March 26, 1918: American anarchist Philip Grosser wrote about being tortured in the prison on Alcatraz Island, while serving time there for refusing to serve in World War I. By 1920, he was the only draft resistor still serving time at Alcatraz. Alexander Berkman referred to him as "one of [my] finest comrades."
Today In Labor History March 26, 1910: Congress amended the Immigration Act of 1907 to specifically bar entrance of “paupers, anarchists, criminals and the diseased.” The amendment was specifically designed to limit entry of Eastern and Southern European immigrants, many of whom were becoming radicalized by the deplorable working and living conditions in late 19th and early 20th century America. The law came in the midst of a wave of anti-immigrant hysteria, whipped up by government and media-generated pro-eugenics propaganda. The original law included the following statement of “undesirables” to be prohibited entry into the United States: “All idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons, and persons who have been insane within five years previous; persons who have had two or more attacks of insanity at any time previously; paupers; persons likely to become a public charge; professional beggars; persons afflicted with tuberculosis or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease.”
Joshua Russell had pleaded guilty to a fed charge of making an interstate #threat against #Hobbs, a Dem who was AZ’s chief #elections officer in 2022 & is now the state’s gov.
Judge Steven Logan commended Russell for undergoing substance abuse treatment & other counseling since his arrest…, but concluded Russell must spend time in #prison, saying he has traumatized people in the SoS’s office.
The judge, who read Russell’s profanity-laden threats aloud in court, said Russell had accused the victim of being a terrorist, while he was threatening her life. He rejected Russell’s characterization of his actions as immature. “None of these people deserved it,” Logan said.
Earlier this month, a #Massachusetts man was sentenced to 3½yrs in #prison for making a #threat to bomb #Hobbs’ office in Feb 2021 when she was still the SoS.
In Feb, an #Alabama man accused of sending #DeathThreats to a social media account for the #MaricopaCounty#Elections Dept was charged w/making interstate #threats.
& an #Iowa man was sentenced to 2½yrs in prison for his conviction for threatening Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman & AZ AG Mark Brnovich, both #Republicans.
Today in Labor History March 25, 1931: The authorities arrested the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama and charged them with rape. The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American youths, ages 13 to 20, falsely accused of raping two white women. A lynch mob tried to murder them before they had even been indicted. All-white juries convicted each of them. Several judges gave death sentences, a common practice in Alabama at the time for black men convicted of raping white women. The Communist Party and the NAACP fought to get the cases appealed and retried. Finally, after numerous retrials and years in harsh prisons, four of the Scottsboro Boys were acquitted and released. The other five were got sentences ranging from 75 years to death. All were released or escaped by 1946. Poet and playwright Langston Hughes wrote it in his work Scottsboro Limited. And Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son was influenced by the case.
Today in Labor History March 23, 1931: The authorities hanged Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar for killing a deputy superintendent of police during the Indian Independence movement. Singh was a anti-colonial revolutionary, from Punjab, who was inspired by both Bolshevism and anarchism.
Today in Labor History March 23, 1918: 101 IWW members went on trial in Chicago for opposing World War I and for violating the Espionage Act. In September, 1917, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiring to subvert the draft and encourage desertion. Their trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history up to that time. The jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced Big Bill Haywood and 14 others to 20 years in prison. 33 others were given 10 years each. They were also fined a total of $2,500,000. The trial virtually destroyed the IWW. Haywood jumped bail and fled to the USSR, where he remained until his death 10 years later.
" Liste de personnes anarchistes et antiautoritaires en prison
Ce livret est une compilat° d’appels à écrire et soutenir des personnes anarchistes et antiautoritaires qui sont emprisonnées pour leurs idées et actions à travers le monde "
Vous trouverez le contexte pénal, les coordonnées en taule, celles des groupes de soutien, les consignes pour écrire safe...
Today in Labor History March 21, 1937: Palm Sunday, cops killed 19 unarmed men, women and children marching in a protest in Ponce, Puerto Rico. They injured another 200 civilians. The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party organized the march to commemorate the abolition of slavery in 1873 and to protest the imprisonment of the party’s leaders by the U.S. The police used Thompson submachine guns, rifles and pistols, shooting marchers in the back, during the Ponce Massacre. A commission placed the blame for the massacre on the U.S. appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Blanton Winship. However, no one, including Winship, nor any of the shooters, were ever prosecuted or punished.
Today in Labor History March 20, 2000: Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, was arrested for murdering a Georgia sheriff’s deputy. Al-Amin had been a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers. He once said that “violence is as American as cherry pie.” Al-Amin denied shooting the deputy. His fingerprints were not found on the murder weapon. He had no gunshot wounds, though officers who were present at the shootout claimed that the suspect had been hit and wounded. Another man, Otis Jackson, later confessed to being the shooter, but the authorities have repeatedly denied Al-Amin’s requests for a retrial. He is now serving a life sentence. He had been at Florence supermax, under a gag order preventing interviews with journalists. In 2014, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He is now at the U.S. Penitentiary, Tucson. In April 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal from al-Amin.
Amjad #Iraqi explains why Palestinians identify with Khader #Adnan, a prisoner who died on hunger strike, for his struggle against #israel#prisons.
"Those trying to undermine public anger over the hunger striker's death don't want to talk about the violent carceral regime that he struggled against."