FROM GANG WARS TO RACE WARS: OFFICIALS CONTINUE TO MANUFACTURE GROUP VIOLENCE IN VIRGINIA PRISONS (2024) y Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

In a 2023 article I outlined how officials manufactured gangs and gang wars in Virginia’s remote supermax prisons Red Onion (RO) and Wallens Ridge; I also demonstrated why this was done, namely to justify the continued operation of these two expensive and demonstrably unneeded prisons. (*)

Not only are the same culprits still inciting violence between groups in Va prisons, but they are now perpetuating and inciting violence-prone racist white gangs against the now-existing Black gangs.

As my earlier article showed, there were no gangs in Va’s prisons before 2004. In fact there were no criminal gang laws on the books in Va at all prior to 2000. That’s because there were no gangs in Va at the time. Officials in Va’s prisons manufactured them and it spread from there.

Now they are busy facilitating the development of violent racist white gangs in the same prisons, again, where no such groups previously existed.

Beginning in 2013 Va officials transferred numerous prisoners to other states who distinguished themselves for challenging and resisting abuse at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge. I was the first to be transferred in this manner in 2012.

My transfer made Va officials’ motives of placing problematic Black prisoners in racially hostile settings apparent. I was sent to Oregon, one of the only states where Blacks are a minority in the prisons, and where there are some 13 different Aryan gangs. The object was clearly to set me up for violent conflict with these white supremacists. I wrote about it in an article, “Political Struggle in the Teeth of Prison Reaction – From Virginia to Oregon.” (*)

Other Va prisoners were transferred to Colorado into a prison environment much like Oregon’s, but where white supremacist groups were in open war against Blacks. I recall corresponding with Pierre Watkins, a Va prisoner, identified Black gang leader, and comrade of mines who was shipped to Colorado after he and several others at RO joined the historic 2013 hunger strike with California prisoners who were protesting long term solitary confinement. Pierre described how Colorado prison officials were enabling white supremacist gangs to attack and even kill Black prisoners, and that Va officials had dropped him into an open race war there.

Subsequently, other Va prisoners identified as Black gang leaders were also sent to Colorado, including Kofi Donkur aka L.I., who described the violent race war Va deliberately inserted them into in Colorado in his article “Blood in the Clenched Fist Alliance.” (*)

Va officials KNEW exactly what they were doing putting us in these racially hostile environments. In fact I was shipped between 5 different state prison systems from 2012 – 2021, and IN EACH ONE was housed in cellblocks with Aryan and Latino gangs known to be hostile towards Blacks.

Not coincidentally, upon my 2021 return, I found an Aryan presence in Va’s prisons where none had existed before. In my absence for a decade, Va officials had facilitated this development in their predominantly white-staffed prisons like Red Onion, Wallens Ridge, Keen Mountain, River North and Augusta. But upon returning to RO in Oct 2023, I saw what was now amiss. Prisoners from Colorado and Oregon, specifically ones belonging to actively violent Aryan gangs, were being transferred to these Va prisons and put with Va’s fledgling Aryan groups, who they were infusing with their own violent brand of anti-Black politics.

Worse still, I listened as RO guards admitted facilitating attacks by these whites on Black prisoners to create a race war between these groups. One such attack occurred on Dec 30, 2023 on a RO solitary confinement exercise yard.

While on a hunger strike at RO, I was taken to a local hospital to receive intravenous fluids on Jan 4, 2024. The three guards who transported me to the hospital, a guard R. Oh, Sgt H. Lewis and a guard Short, exposed staffs’ role in that incident as they talked and laughed about officials knowing this documented Aryan prisoner was plotting to stab several Black Crips on the solitary exercise yard, and had cut a hole in the yard’s fence so he could crawl through and attack them.

On the appointed day, RO officials had moved the regular guards from the area, and assigned only rookie guards to the post. They said staff knew the cage had been cut and watched as the Aryan crawled through after the rookies brought the Black prisoner out in handcuffs. The Aryan then attacked repeatedly stabbing the still-handcuffed Black prisoner as the rookies ran and guards in the gun post shot their guns but deliberately missed the Aryan.

They laughed about officials having allowed something similar to occur a decade earlier at RO when a white supremacist prisoner, Robert Gleason, was allowed to take a rope to an outside solitary confinement exercise yard and strangle a Black Crip to death through the fence. Gleason pled guilty and was executed during 2013 for this and another killing he was allowed to carry out on another targeted prisoner.

Va interstate compact officials were bringing known violent Aryans to Va from Colorado, Oregon and so on, and mixing them with Va’s homegrown Aryans, allowing them to infuse the Va groups with their violent racial politics.

At the center of this was one of the main orchestrators of the first wave of manufacturing gangs and gang wars in these remote prisons during and since 2005, who I identified in my prior article, James Bentley, who is now RO’s chief investigator and top so-called gang specialist.

Whether it’s gang wars or race wars, the ruling class and their armed enforcers have always been behind the scenes pulling strings, plating the poor and oppressed against each other – divide, agitate and rule.

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!

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Endnotes:

1. See, rashidmod.com