InsideOutsideUnity #1 FOR EDUCATIONAL AND MEDIA PURPOSES

InsideOutsideUnity #1

FOR EDUCATIONAL AND MEDIA PURPOSES

Welcome to InsideOutsideUnity, a project of BP Publishers, to expand the political and social knowledge of the incarcerated.

Summary of reports from Prison Riot Radio, Prison Radio, Richmond Times Dispatch, New York Times, The Virginia Defender, The Appeal, and rashidmod.com:

During Oct 2024 longtime prisoner organizer Kevin “Rashid” Johnson publicized that a dozen prisoners at Red Onion Prison (RO) had set themselves on fire in desperate efforts to be transferred away from abusive conditions at the prison.

Virginia Defender editor Phil Wilayto contacted RO’s warden investigating the report and was told by the warden no self-burnings had occurred. After further investigation Wilayto found that there had indeed been several such incidents and reported on them in the Defender.

On Nov 27, 2024 VDOC director Chadwick Dotson was quoted in the Richmond Times Dispatch as saying “to be clear, these inmates did not set themselves on fire or self immolate,” and called the reports “ludicrous” and inventions of abolitionists and radicals attempting to undermine the image of the VDOC. Only days later on Dec 4 the New York Times reported that Va lawmakers confirmed that at least 6 at RO had self-immolated and wanted to know why.

Then on Jan 8, 2025 The Appeal reported that it obtained internal emails of exchanges during Sept 2024 between RO’s AW, major and investigator stating that “in the past three weeks,” 3 prisoners had “set Fire to themselves,” and were exploring ways to deter others from doing the same, including having them prosecuted for setting fires in their cells. The emails also admitted that at least five prisoners had received disciplinary infractions for setting fires and self mutilation. Dotson was exposed as having lied to the public.

In response to the longstanding history of abuses at RO and its sister supermax, Wallens Ridge (WR) the Defenders took up Rashid’s call for a public rally calling for shutting RO and WR down and firing Dotson and VDOC Operations Chief A. David Robinson. The rally was held on Jan 8, 2025 in downtown Richmond and was well-attended despite a water crisis and freezing temperatures. After the rally some 100 people met at the Wesley Memorial church not far away to discuss the crisis in RO and Va’s remote prisons, and a call that Rashid put out in Dec 2024 to create a prisoner support network of prisoner’s loved ones and not professional advocates and not-for-profits with ties to politicians and who chase grant money and are therefore not willing to challenge abusers. In fact various groups and people avoided the rally for this very reason.

Not only did no official response address the fact that Dotson had lied to the media and public, but the VDOC slyly changed their narrative from denying the burnings to claiming they were acts of manipulation and denying that anything was wrong at RO. Dotson was reported as inviting state legislators, including Black Caucus members to visit RO.

These claims were immediately refuted by a Delegate Holly Siebold in a Dec 6, 2024 letter to Dotson where she stated conditions at RO were “inhumane,” based on what she witnessed when she visited the prison during May 2024. Then on Dec 30, 2024 Delegate Michael Jones made a surprise visit to RO, speaking to prisoners and staff. Reporters who came with him were denied entry. Jones left the prison and issued a press release in which he stated he found numerous problems at RO that needed to be immediately addressed, including racist abuses of Black prisoners, misuse of canines, inadequate food, arbitrary assignments to the prison, inadequate medical care, lack of programs. This all contradicted Dotson’s dismissal of complaints about conditions and abuses at RO.

Despite these findings these politicians proposed that the VDOC and Dotson investigate themselves and devise reforms in the remote Western Region prisons. The same VDOC and director that denied anything was amiss at the prison, and not only lied in the media about the desperate measures prisoners had been driven to in response but deliberately tried to hide the abuses they were reacting to.

Rashid persisted in reporting on VDOC abuses and in the public call to shut its remote prisons down and fire top officials. In contrast to this, the very not-for-profits and individuals with ties to Va politicians opposed this call and endorsed allowing the VDOC to investigate itself and “reform” RO, WR, River North and other remote prisons notorious for abuses. These forces have since created a rift and instigated infighting within the Va prison reform circles; a number of them resorting to name calling and such. Divide and conquer actions they know serve the prisoners’ abusers.

Despite all of this, efforts moved forward to develop the prisoner support group of loved ones. Initially called People Against Prison Abuse or PAPA. The name has since evolved “to stand apart from those who co-opt our struggle for profit or reactionary agendas.” The new name is Uniting Prisoners’ Relatives Organizing Against Repression or UPROAR.

As a mission statement expressed:

“We want to capture four core purposes of UPROAR. They being:

“1 – Direct confrontation: we don’t just advocate, we organize, resist and apply pressure.

“2 – Families as a force: this is a movement led by prisoners and their loved ones, not by detached NGOs, not-for-profits, or career activists.

“3 – Inside-Outside-Unity: we connect the struggle inside to generate pressure outside, breaking the isolation prisons depend on.

“4 – Material Resistance: we expose repression, mobilize communities, and dismantle systemic abuse not just describe it.”

Readers interested in connecting your loved ones with UPROAR have them go to this link

bit.ly/join-uproar

On IG @uproaragainstrepression

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