InsideOutsideUnity#2

InsideOutsideUnity#2

FOR EDUCATIONAL AND MEDIA PURPOSES

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

A summary of recent articles published on rashidmod.com and other platforms:

Many prisoners and people from poor communities don’t know or remember who George Jackson was. Those who do regard him as a major influence on the prison culture of the 1970s when prisoners’ values were raised from preying on and warring with each other to uniting their numbers to challenge and change abusive conditions and treatments. Comrade George (as he was affectionately known) was not just a cultural and political influence he was also a warrior. He embraced that warrior ethic that has been trained out of many of us by the system and even the culture of our oppressed communities, through such methods as our elders and parents giving us “The Talk,” (teaching us to behave passively and fearfully when confronted by cops).

After Comrade George was assassinated by guards in 1971, officials systematically moved to purge the values and principles that people like him gave us. This was the prison boom era of building supermax prisons and control units which were used to isolate and lock away conscious prisoners like George, so that those without principles and who embraced the values that officials wanted to spread throughout the prisoner body became the influential ones. This was also the era when the entertainment media was used to popularize the gangsta image (imitating the white mafia) in place of the revolutionary image of Comrades like George. The system has trained us to think like they want us to, which is common sense from their perspective of control and divide and rule.

Changes in today’s prison culture demand that prisoners ask themselves and answer some probing questions.

In the title of a recently published article Rashid posed the question, “Are You an Informant? A Question Every Prisoner Today Must Ask Themself.” This article warrants serious attention and discussion by all of us. We want to share some slightly edited excerpts from that article here (In many places the word “snitch” is replaced by “informant”.).

“It’s almost depressing how deeply [informant] culture has become ingrained in today’s prison culture. Only a few decades ago, prisoners set specific limits on how we engaged with guards and refused to entertain conversations with officials about other prisoners or give credibility to negative rumors about any prisoner unless there was credible proof. [This was the basis of “checking paperwork.”]

“Today, however, [officials] can say most anything against a prisoner to other prisoners and the information is accepted and spread as fact without scrutiny or question. I can’t count how many times I hear prisoners say, ” Officer so-and-so said this or that about this prisoner so it MUST be true.” Since when did they become a credible source of information about or among us?

“I now see and truly grasp the effects of the removal and isolation of conscious prisoners from the general populations that began in the 1970s and the purge of the old ‘convict code’ from among us. The result is that [officials] have successfully reeducated prisoners into adopting their own value system so that today an [informant culture] predominates. Most prisoners are now informants and don’t even realize it. I should explain.

“For those who don’t remember the divide and rule games they play, and who now believe [officials] are their friends and peers, you need to understand that there are TWO TYPES OF INFORMANTS – or people who peddle information for them. One type is the person who GIVES INFORMATION TO THEM about their peers, the other type is the person who SPREADS MISINFORMATION FOR THEM among their peers.

“Those who take things [officials] say and repeat/spread them to others are the latter type of informant.

“The most common type of rumor they create and have informants spread, is false character attacks on people they want to see targeted or discredited. Often the slander consists of them falsely labeling someone as a snitch or a pedophile or some other stigma that will undermine the person’s character and credibility and incite others against them with violence. It was because we knew they played these types of divide and conquer games that ‘conscious’ prisoners and convicts never accepted anything cops or prison officials said about any prisoner at faces value, nor engaged in conversations with them about others. It’s common sense really.

“Spreading this sort of [official] slander was called ‘snitch-jacketing’ or ‘bad-jacketing’ someone.

“Professor and renowned AmerIndian political leader Ward Churchill broke the practice down in his study of the counterintelligence methods used by the FBI against the Black Panther Party and American Indian Movement, which often included bad-jacketing leading members. He also observed that the method is often used by prison officials to sow violent division between and against prisoners they fear or dislike.

“Here’s Ward:

“‘Snitch-jacketing’ or ‘bad-jacketing’ refers to the practice of creating suspicion – through the spread of rumors, manufacture of evidence, etc – that bona fide organizational members, usually in key positions, are FBI/police informers, guilty of such offenses as skimming organizational funds and the like. The purpose of this tactic was to ‘isolate and eliminate’ leadership; such efforts were continued – and in some cases accelerated – when it was known that the likely outcome would be extreme violence visited upon the ‘jacketed’ individual(s). Bad-jacketing was a very commonly used technique [by the FBI and police].’ (1)

“Churchill went on to quote Jo Durden-Smith’s book WHO KILLED GEORGE JACKSON on the frequent use of bad-jacketing by prison officials. Jo wrote:

“‘This ‘bad jacketing’ technique, [is] well known in prisons where guards are adept at turning members of a group against each other….’ (2)

“So, for those prisoners who blindly embrace and repeat rumors and reputation attacks on other prisoners coming from officials, you are in fact an informant.

“I have repeatedly seen prisoners and even people on the outside, embrace and spread rumors created by prison officials, even when they recognized the bad jacketing game to be a common ploy used by them to attack, discredit and incite division and violence against those who oppose them. I talk a little about this in my first book DEFYING THE TOMB.

“We need to reeducate today’s prisoners and members of the oppressed communities, who have no idea that most are outright informants for guards and police, and have a backward desire to impress and befriend them instead of recognizing them as their oppressors and the real opposition.

“As the slogan went a few decades ago, ‘STOP [INFORMING]!'”

In many places, informant activity has served as a gateway to greater collaborations with officials. In many instances prisoners openly work hand-in-hand with them as agents, performing in the role of guards themselves, as hitmen, as enforcers of control in cellblocks and so on. These collaborationist roles have become accepted through the normalization of informing.

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Footnotes:

1. Ward Churchill, AGENTS OF REPRESSION: THE FBI’S SECRET WAR AGAINST THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY AND THE AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT (South End Press; Cambridge, MA 2002), p.49

2. Jo Durden-Smith, WHO KILLED GEORGE JACKSON? (Alfred A. Knopf; NY 1976)