WITNESS AND RESISTANCE TO CELLING MODERN SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA’S RURAL PRISONS (2026)* By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

“The prison-industrial complex is not only a mechanism to convert public tax money into profits for private corporations, it is an essential element of neo-liberal capitalism. It serves two purposes. One to neutralize and contain huge segments of potentially rebellious sectors of the population, and two, to sustain a system of super-exploitation, where mainly Black and Latino captives are imprisoned in white rural, overseer communities.” – Assata Shakur

PRISONERS LYNCHED BY VIRGINIA GUARDS COVERED UP

In 2025 two people died in custody at Virginia’s remote supermaxes, Red Onion and Wallens Ridge State Prisons. Both deaths have numerous things in common, reflecting a pattern.

Although coroners ruled both cases to be homicides, they’ve gone unprosecuted. Both prisoners were known to complain against abusive conditions. Both were killed by groups of white guards and were members of marginalized groups that have been the frequent victims of hate-motivated violence throughout Amerikan history – one, Aubrey McKay, was Black and the other, Michael Marcotte (née Hailey aka Lilith), was transgender. In other words, both were lynched, and consistent with Amerika’s history of murders of minorities by white mobs, the killers have been protected.

Both deaths were justified with false reports and covered up by Va officials up to the highest levels. They came to light as homicides only because private citizens and prisoner support groups like UPROAR, which I co-founded in 2025, independently pieced the cases together by speaking with witnesses, unearthing evidence, publicly confronting officials about and protesting the killings, and bringing media attention to them.

At every step, officials tried to intimidate and silence these efforts, angling to keep a lid on the murders and protect the killers.

With the evidence pieced together by outside groups and shared with the surviving relatives of Aubrey and Lilith, lawsuits were brought against the Va prison system. The cases were defended and settled by government attorneys at taxpayer expense, to hide the evidence of the murders with payoffs and allow the killers to escape accountability. (1) URROAR has protested the handling of Lilith’s case by the local prosecuting attorney’s office. (2)

MY YEARS AT RED ONION AND WALLENS RIDGE

Red Onion and Wallens Ridge have both maintained national notoriety for racist abuses, sadistic violence, and terror and torture of their prisoners since they opened in 1998 and 1999 respectively. They have been repeatedly targeted with complaints and protests of these abuses, which officials have always denied, and often gotten away with BECAUSE outside people were generally unable to penetrate the veils of official lies, coverups, concrete walls and high mountains that hide the internal operations of these prisons.

I spent 14 years in solitary confinement at both prisons, where I was both the victim and witness of their inhumane conditions, and racism and brutal violence inflicted by their staff with impunity. One one occasion I was beaten into a mild coma; on another I had all but three of my then three feet long dreadlocks ripped out from the roots and suffered numerous lacerations that had to be stitched closed. These beatings by mobs of white guards were no different from the one that killed Aubrey McKay, except that I somehow survived.

Aubrey and Lilith were far from isolated killings, and but for the courageous and persistent efforts of concerned outside people, their cases would’ve been successfully hidden as many others were. My own incidents were swept under the rug with lying reports that the guards who beat me were acting in self defense. Much like the guards who beat Aubrey to death falsely claimed that they “found” him unresponsive in his cell.

But, I was never content to be a mere victim and witness. I spend much of my time resisting, exposing and trying to counter this culture of racism and abuse.

HOUSING DANGEROUS PRISONERS THAT DIDN’T EXIST

When both prisons opened as Va’s first and only supermaxes, they were justified to the public as needed to house 2400 chronically violent prisoners who were never going home. A lie that was quickly exposed.

I arrived at Red Onion in Sept 1998, among the first wave of prisoners brought to the prison that had just opened the month before.

I came with a group of men from Greensville Correctional Center, not because we were dangerous or never going home, but because we persisted in vocally protesting executions of prisoners in the state execution chamber called the “death house,” that was located behind our solitary confinement cellblock at Greensville. Each time an execution took place, we’d yell protests out our cells’ back windows to the executioners and attendees as they entered and exited the building. Administrators repeatedly threatened us with all manner of abuses in efforts to stop our protests, which didn’t deter us. Without any notice or classification hearing to approve the transfers as policy required, we were moved to Red Onion the day after we protested a Sept 1998 execution.

After riding in a transport van for over 7 hours in handcuffs, shackles and chains secured to a torturous “black box” device, we arrived at Red Onion which sits atop a remote mountain. The staff at both prisons were drawn from local segregated white communities, whereas the prisoners housed in these prisons have always been primarily Black. The staff share close community ties, many were related by blood or marriage, and certain families predominated in the staff bodies like the Mullinses, Flemings, McCoys and Halls. The also held similar ties to the local government. Cronyism, nepotism, secrecy and protectionism were the norm.

The operations of these prisons using armed politically empowered poor whites to violently police disenfranchised unarmed Blacks repeated the same racialized system used throughout the U.S. South to uphold slavery and Jim Crow segregation, which produced a culture of untold terror and horrors against Blacks, just as has occurred in these prisons. At Red Onion and Wallens Ridge I heard my peers remark constantly that their treatment in these prisons made them hate white people.

THE INTAKE PROCESS

When we arrived at Red Onion, a group of white guards approached and entered our transport van bombarding us with threats and racist taunts and names, while another group stood outside dressed in body armor. We were explicitly told that we were transferred to Red Onion to be taught a lesson because of our “big mouths” (for protesting the executions at Greensville). From there we underwent the standard intake process, which was calculated to intimidate or provoke us.

One by one the prisoners were manhandled from the van while being verbally threatened and insulted. We were taken to a holding area, placed in glass-fronted cells and ordered to strip naked. Each one was walked through a verbally abusive and humiliating videotaped strip search, as the mob of armored guards stood by menacingly while a taser was trained on our naked bodies. Often women guards operated the handheld video cameras. Any sign of hesitation or resistance was used as grounds to speciously justify immediately attacking and beating the naked prisoner.

Every day for months on end we watch from our cells as dozens of handcuffed and leg shackled Black prisoners were dragged through the prison and into cellblocks naked and bleeding, while being electrocuted, kicked, stomped and electrocuted by groups of white guards.

As we were taken to our new cells following the intake process and while stun guns were pressed against our bodies, guards would point to gun posts stationed throughout the prison, including inside the housing units, threatening that they’d shoot us and kill us if we caused problems at the prison. Before these supermaxes opened, no Va prisons had nor used firearms inside their perimeters. They also boasted about possessing and threatened us with an array of electric weapons, including the stun guns (Ultron 2’s) which all guards carried and held against our bodies during restrained escorts around the prison, stun belts, tasers an electric shields.

Red Onion and Wallens Ridge were epicenters of physical and racist abuses, where we were forced to devise methods of resistance and protest.

Prisoners were routinely electrocuted, brutally beaten, and shot (often they were shot in their faces with buckshot – several lost eyes as a result). Shootings occurred so frequently that we heard guns going off throughout the day and the air inside the compound was routinely clouded with smoke and smelled like burnt gunpowder. Guards routinely opened fire on groups of prisoners locked inside small exercise yards without warning, shooting them like turkeys in a barrel, then falsely reported that they were fighting. Like pulling wings off flies, the abuse was sadistic entertainment to staff given license to act out racist and violent fantasies against us, while inventing lying pretexts to justify on paper gratuitous assaults on us. And even though shootings were underreported, there were still so many reports that it brought media attention. (3)

Because we had no meaningful outlets for redress, and no outside support nor advocacy groups in Va, I wrote to Human Rights Watch (HRW) in New York in 1998 asking them to investigate conditions at Red Onion. I also prompted others around me to do the same and circulated word to others.

We also spread word throughout the prison for others to write HRW with calls aired through a local call-in radio program, called “The 8-Ball Show,” that aired out of Whitesburg, Ky. (4) The desperation of our situation came through in the huge volume of letters that HRW received, which HRW attorney Jamie Fellner gave testament to in her responses to us. She promptly visited Red Onion to meet with many of us, including me. Virginia officials refused to allow her to tour the prison or to respond to her questions to them, and tried to discourage her from visiting us telling her we were violently dangerous and they couldn’t assure her safety in her requested face-to-face visits with us. They especially warned her against meeting with me.

Undeterred, Fellner responded after meeting with us, that she found the experience rewarding and enlightening. Her investigations concluded with a scathing 1999 report, titled, “Red Onion State Prison – Super Maximum Security Confinement in Virginia,” where she documented the environment of extreme abuse and racism against prisoners. She also revealed that Va officials knew from studies made before the prisons opened that Va’s prisoners were not violent and many of those at Red Onion were soon to be released back to society. This contradicted the official lies fed to the public to justify the expensive and unneeded operations of the two 1200-bed supermaxes. (5)

OFFICIALS MANUFACTURE REASONS TO KEEP UNNEEDED SUPERMAXES OPEN

In the wake of the lies and abuses exposed by the HRW report, which received substantial media publicity and was followed by a critical Amnesty International report, Va officials had to transfer most of the prisoners at Red Onion to lower security prisons. They then repeatedly rewrote their own classification policies trying to make more Va prisoners fit supermax criteria to refill the emptied beds. This tact failed.

Unable to fill the prison with own prisoners, Va officials began contracting to house hundreds of prisoners at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge from other states and U.S. territories including New Mexico, Connecticut, DC, Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, Maryland, and others. They also filled entire cellblocks with minimum security prisoners to do work detail around the prison, like maintenance, food preparation, housecleaning, and so on. These interstate prisoners and ‘cadre’ workers were just bed-fillers.

In service to prison corporations, Va officials also used these prison to market weapons and supermaxes to other states. Multiple times per week ranking Red Onion and Wallens Ridge staff gave tours to groups of officials from other states boasting about the effectiveness of their supermaxes and state-of-the-art weapons in controlling Va prisoners. What they didn’t mention was, as the HRW report revealed, Va didn’t have a particularly dangerous prisoner population to control under supermax conditions to begin with.

The interstate transfers backfired however, because these prisoners suffered the same racism and physical abuses as Va prisoners, beginning with the intake process.

The systemic abuses, including murders by staff and suicides of the interstate prisoners, generated massive protests from their loved ones and support groups in their home states. Va ended up entangled in scandals and lawsuits in such states as New Mexico and Connecticut, who in turn terminated their contracts to house their prisoners in the supermaxes. (6)

This harrowing incident and another Connecticut prisoner’s tragic suicide were reported in the documentary UP THE RIDGE, which can be viewed on YouTube. This documentary also confirmed the truth that these supermaxes were never needed to address any valid prison security concerns. In fact, a member of the housing authority of Big Stone Gap, the town where Wallens Ridge is located, admitted in an interview for the film that the idea for the prison was just a random pitch they made to blow the top off a mountain to build the prison on and rent it to the state, which Va officials agreed to. (7)

Because Va couldn’t fill these prisons and still had too few prisoners who met its repeatedly reduced supermax criteria, in 2005 they cut Red Onion’s prisoner population in half and reduced the security level of Wallens Ridge from supermax solitary confinement to maximum security general population.

Alongside this scaling down process, they hatched yet another scheme to justify continuing to operate these expensive unneeded prisons to continue enriching prison corporations and propping up the local rural economy. Namely, they manufactured gangs and violent conflicts between them that previously never existed, and claimed to need the prisons to control gang violence. Before 2004 there was no gang presence in Va’s prisons. Indeed, there were no gang laws on the books in Va before 2000; this is because there was no substantial gang activity in Va. I detail how this gang presence was manufactured in Red Onion and Wallens Ridge in a 2004 article, “How Prison Officials Manufactured Gangs and Gang Wars in Virginia’s Prisons.” (8)

OUTSIDE ORGANIZING

As with the modifications of their security levels and housing practices and the presence of electric weapons, changes in these remote prisons came in response to media exposure and/or public protest of abuses, which Va officials resisted, covered up and avoided accountability for. Ultrons and tazers were removed from these prisons in response to the scandal behind the killing of Larry Frazier at Wallens Ridge, by a mob of guards who repeatedly electrocuted him while he was strapped defenseless to a bedframe by his extremities. In true lynching style, they shipped his mutilated corpse to his family wrapped in a bloody sheet.

As a result of the publicity surrounding the frequent shootings when the prisons first opened, lethal ammunition was replaced with rubber bullets and pepperball (gas) rounds. Also, outside group exercise in solitary was replaced with single-person dog-kennel style cages, because guards had been constantly shooting prisoners under false claims that they were responding to fights on the group exercise yards.

The use of extreme weapon systems and over-the-top abuses continued however. As one weapon system was removed because of exposure of abuses, new ones were brought in and abused. With the removal of electric weapons, attack dogs were introduced in 2005, leading to yet another extreme level of abuse reviving racist outrages from the slavery and Jim Crow eras.

In 2023 The Insider reported on the uses of attack dogs in U.S. prisons to terrorize and maul prisoners. (9) The report found that between 2017 and 2022 Va prisoners had been attacked with dogs over 217 times compared to Arizona, which had the next highest number of dog attacks (only 15) during the same period. Most of these Va attacks occurred at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge, and resulted in the most gruesome and traumatizing violence, where prisoners had softball-sized chunks of flesh ripped from their bodies, often in unprovoked malicious attacks with these carnivorous animals.

Because I witnessed changes brought by the publicity and protests of abuses of the interstate prisoners by support group in their home states, I devised to help develop similar groups for Va prisoners, which resulted in my co-founding several such groups. The first one was Fed Up!, which I co-founded in 2004 with an outside supporter. Fed Up! brought together prisoners’ loved ones to publicize and protest abuses in the supermaxes. At that time I began writing articles and exposés on the abuses, which were published on various platforms, including our Fed Up! newsletter, and on my website, rashidmod.com.

My first report was an expose on Red Onion. (10) Fed Up!’s protests led to the replacement of the warden and numerous guards at Red Onion who complaints showed a pattern of involvement in abuses.

But Fed Up! proved unsustainable. Our key outside organizer lived in another state, and when relations between her and I broke down, so did the group. A few years later I co-founded SPARC (Supporting Prisoners And Real Change) with the family of Kim and Than Grove, who lived in Southwestern Va. This group generated support for the prisoners in Red Onion and Wallens Ridge and publicized abuses. This lent to the development of a broad outside Va prisoner support network.

In response to my role in publicizing and organizing outside protest of abuses in the prisons, I was profiled as a domestic terrorist threat by the Va State Police in a 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment Report, which cited my reports exposing prison abuses as the basis for this classification. The report said my writings and organizing Fed Up! proved effective at turning the public against the prison system, which they linked to my role in co-founding the New Afrikan Black Panther Party and promoting the unifying idea of a “brotherhood of the oppressed.” (11) This profiling came at the instigation of Red Onion investigators in efforts to counter and repress my involvement in generating outside exposure and protests of abuses.

SENT INTO DOMESTIC EXILE

Subsequently, I was transferred out of state in 2012, based upon Va officials stating that I proved to be a bad influence on both prisoners and the public, and they wanted to weaken that influence. At that time I was also involved in publicizing and supporting nationwide protests against widespread abuses of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, which was also being abused in Va’s prisons, especially in Red Onion and Wallens Ridge. In fact, I had been held in solitary since 1994.

For over a decade I was bounced from state to state -from Virginia to Oregon, then Texas, Florida, back to Virginia, then Indiana to Ohio, back to Virginia, then to South Carolina, and again to Virginia. In each state I continued publicizing and organizing against abuses, and faced a range of retaliations, from physical violence, solitary confinements based upon fabricated infractions, and other mistreatments. Each state ordered Va to remove me until no other states would accept me.

Following my transfer out of state in 2012, Va officials began using interstate transfers to remove others who proved influential and resistant to abuses in the prisons.

RETURNED TO RED ONION

I was returned to Va in latter 2021, where my efforts on prisoners’ behalves and official retaliations continued. As one measure of retaliatory abuse I was left for 1 1/2 years without treatment after being diagnosed with cancer. It was only because of outside protests that I finally received care. Those protests however prompted officials to transfer me several times within Va. I was ultimately returned to Red Onion in 2023 and threatened with placement in long-term solitary confinement, although Va officials had been lying to the public claiming they no longer practiced solitary confinement.

At Red Onion I encountered the same persistent abuses and racism, which I immediately began publicizing. I and several others went on hunger strike protesting those abuses and our planned solitary confinement, which generated media attention and public protests, leading to the passage of new laws setting limits on the use of solitary. Also state legislator Holly Siebold visited the prison and issued a statement describing its conditions as “inhumane.” (13)

After 2 1/2 months on hunger strike, and on the literal verge of dying, then-governor Glenn Younkin’s office directed Va prison officials to transfer me to Greenville’s general population in exchange for me ending my strike.

I was sent back to Red Onion in latter 2024. Upon this return, I met Ekong Eshiet, a prisoner who had just returned from treatment in a hospital for third degree burns. I learned that he and several others had set fire to themselves in desperate efforts get transferred away from the prison’s inhumane abuses. I publicized the story, generating international media attention to Red Onion and the prisoner self-immolations.

Chadwick Dotson, who was then director of the Va prison system, went in the Richmond Times Dispatch newspaper, claiming my reports on the prisoner self-immolations were false, “ludicrous,” and pot shots taken by prison abolitionists trying to undermine the prison system’s image. (14) Dotson’s lies were first contradicted by Va legislators admitting in the New York Times that the burnings indeed happened, and questioned why. (15)

His denials were definitively disproven by an Appeal article that quoted internal email exchanges from earlier in 2024, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, of Red Onion administrators discussing several prisoners having set fire to themselves and how to stop the behavior, including by making them pay for their outside burn treatment and by criminally prosecuting them. (16)

In response to the ongoing abuses at Va’s remote prisons and the desperate extremes that prisoners were driven to in efforts to escape the abuses, I put out a call in December 2024 to create another prisoner support group, composed primarily of prisoners’ loved ones, called PAPA. (17) In response, a group of us co-founded the group in early 2025, later changing its name to UPROAR. UPROAR hit the ground running, initiating campaigns and protests demanding that Red Onion and Wallens Ridge be shut down and that Dotson and his deputy, Arnold David Robinson, be fired for the persistent abuses in Va’s prisons and Dotson’s lying to the public about the self-immolations.

Va-based media outlets like the Virginia Defenders, supported the rallies calling for the firing of Dotson and Robinson and to shut down the two supermaxes. (18)

Prompted by the media attention, Va senator and Legislative Black Caucus member Mike Jones made a surprise tour of Red Onion in December 2024, and spoke to several of those who’d set themselves ablaze. The next day he issued a press release criticizing Red Onion for racist abuses of Blacks by its staff, lack of adequate food and programs, and other inhumane conditions that he stated warranted immediate resolutions. He offered no solutions however, except the tried and failed proposal to allow the proven deceitful Va prison officials to investigate and correct themselves. (19) Jones further admitted surprise at the huge numbers of Black prisoners from his Richmond district that were confined in the far-away rural district of Wise County. He would also admit that the supermaxes existed to prop up the economy of the remote region, which he criticized as “asinine.” (20) Both Mike Jones and Holly Siebold attended the rallies calling for the firing of Dotson and Robinson and closing down the supermaxes.

UPROAR attended Va administrators’ public meetings, exposing their abuses and lies in front of the media. We helped expose and bring media attention to Aubrey McKay’s lynching. We were called into meetings with the staff of then governor elect Abigail Spanberger, where our members alongside Aubrey’s grieving family and others spoke out against conditions in the supermaxes. We created our hotline through which prisoners could report abuses that we launched protests and campaigns against. It was through this hotline that we received and pieced together the evidence of Lilith’s murder, which we passed on to her surviving relatives, resulting in their lawsuit and $2.7M settlement. Their lawyer Mark Krudys credited UPROAR with collecting the evidence that made the lawsuit a “slam dunk.”

Our protests led to the firing of both Dotson and Robinson and a new Va prison administration being appointed by the new governor.

This new prison administration has promptly met with UPROAR numerous times, with the new deputy directors Karl Beckett and Jeremiah Fitz admitting to the group that our complaints and reports of abuses in the prisons have proven consistently true, and they’ve asked that we allow them time to change conditions. Although many corrupt elements from the prior administration remain in office, and the culture of racism and abuse in Va’s remote prisons is still entrenched, they proclaim to be wholly different from the prior administration. Ongoing complaints of abuse, even against the imprisoned loves ones of UPROAR members, proves otherwise.

UPROAR has recently launched a campaign to remove attack dogs from all Va prisons, and seeks all public support, exposure and protest.

Our work and struggle will persist, until this decadent system of exploiting the people and oppressing them for the profit and power of a tiny few is ended. We have gained many lessons and optimism from these experiences and the successes of our ongoing efforts. Join us!

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!

___________________

Endnotes:

* This article was written as a draft for an upcoming book, Confronting Carceral Appalachia: Facing Expansion and Fighting Back

1. Eric Kolenich, “Family of Homicide Victim to Get $2.7M: Hailey Died While in Prison in Nov 2025,” RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH, Aug 8, 2026.

2. www.wjhl.com/news/local/group-seeking-wise-co-commonwealths-attorneys-recusal-from-inmate-homicide-case/

3. Frank Green, “Inmates, Critics Question Firearm Use at Red Onion Supermax Prison,” RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH, Dec 24, 1998.

(Witness article pt 15)

4. The radio program, which was originally called “The 8-Ball Show” aired on Appalshop community radio, WMMT-FM 88.7, and has gone through several hosts and names over the years; names including Holler to the Hood, and now Calls From Home and Hip Hop From the Hilltop. It is the only radio program that airs urban music where Red Onion and Wallens Ridge are located and since 1998 has broadcasted toll-free messages and music dedicated from loves ones of those imprisoned there.

5. Jamie Fellner, “Red Onion State Prison – Super Maximum Security Confinement in Virginia” HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, (New York; 1999) www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1999/redonion/

6. “Bowing to ACLU Lawsuit, Ct Officials Will Move Prisoners Out of Notorious Virginia ‘Supermax’,” ACLU, July 24, 2001 www.aclu.org/news/bowing-aclu-lawsuit-ct-officials-will-move-prisoners-out-notorious-virginia-supermax .

7. Chuck Miller’s statement is quoted in Judah Schept, COAL, CAGES, CRISIS: THE RISE OF THE PRISON ECONOMY IN CENTRAL APPALACHIA (NY; 2022), p. 50

8. See, Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “How Officials Manufactured Gangs and Gang Wars in Virginia’s Prisons” (2024) www.rashidmod.com/?p=3554. This article also appears as a chapter in Joy James, ed., STOP COP CITIES: DISMANTLING STATE AND CORPORATE-FUNDED ARMIES AND PRISONS (Pluto Books: Las Vegas, Nv; 2024), pp. 95-105.

9. Hannah Heckler, “Patrol Dogs Are Terrorizing and Mauling Prisoners Inside the United States,” THE INSIDER, July 23, 2023.

10. Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “Red Onion State Prison an Exposé: Racism and Brutality Equal Kind and Usual Punishment in Virginia” (2004) www.rashidmod.com/?p=176.

11. 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment Report, pp. 50-51.

12. See, William Thorpe v. Virginia Department of Corrections, case #2:20-cv-00007 (U.S. District Court, Western District of Virginia).

13. Phil Wilayto, “Red Onion Hunger Strike Spotlights Lack of Transparency by VDOC Leadership,” THE VIRGINIA DEFENDER, Winter 2024, p. 8

14. Luca Powell, “Red Onion Rumors of Self-Immlation ‘Ludicrous,’ Says Prison Chief,” RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH, Nov 27, 2024.

15. “Virginia Lawmakers Want to Know Why 6 Inmates Have Burned Themselves,” NEW YORK TIMES, Dec 1, 2024 www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/us/Virginian prisoners churn supertest.HTML.

16. Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, “Prisoners Burned Themselves, So Staff Discussed Making Them Pay Money: Emails Show Virginia Department of Corrections Officials Discussing Punishing People at Red Onion State Prison Who Self Immolated,” THE APPEAL, Jan 8, 2025 www.theappeal.org/red-onion-virginia-prison-self-immolated/

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “The Richmond Times Dispatch Enables Prison Officials to Lie Big to the Public” (2025) www.rashidmod.com

17. Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “A Call to Organize a Prisoner Support Network Composed of Prisoners’ Loved Ones – PAPA (People Against Prison Abuse)” (2024) www.rashidmod.com/?p=3648

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “Creating an UPROAR Steering Committee” (2025) www.rashidmod.com/?p=3748

See UPROAR website: uproar.mayfirst.info

IG: @uproaragainstrepression

18. Phil Wilayto, “Prison Justice Activists Demand Shut Down Red Onion!,” THE VIRGINIA DEFENDER Jan 12, 2025 www.docs.google.com/document/d/1fq7Zqcm8-tDL3yes4hDfJKAQmUz1CFBN-gwLHQnmSNM/edit?USP=sharing

19. Luca Powell, “Richmond Delegate Made a Surprise Visit to Red Onion, Calls For More Oversight,” RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH, Jan 1, 2025 www.richmond.com/news/local/governments politics/red-onion-prison-jones/article_a5562cfc-c84e-11ef-b5a5-030eb6f8f648.htm.

Phil Wilayto, “Virginia Black Caucuc Member Conducts Unannounced Visit to Red Onion, Scene of Self-Immoations,” THE VIRGINIA DEFENDER, Jan 1, 2025

20. Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, “Propping Up Virginia’s Rural Economies With Prisons is ‘Asinine’ Says Virginia Legislator” (2025) www.rashidmod.com/?p=3765