How prisoners overwhelmed fascist forces in the July 4th rebellion at ManCI. A participant’s account from inside the special manglement unit. (Follow up to this post.)
Ghandi would not approve.
It’s 11 July 13, 8 days since my last dispatch when Blackjack was strapping the plastic lunch tray to his arm. Since then, its’ been a rough-and-tumble bucket-o-blood back here in the Special Manglement Unit of Mansfield Corruptional Institution. Backjack’s missing 3 teeth (that he really doesn’t use much back here anyway) and my stomach injuries had me puking for a time (no blood, a good sign), but as of today, neither of us are leaking fluids and the fascist fuckweasels have now moved us to the veritable suburbs of the SMU.
This is the whole story, and most of it is true.
July 4 began with emergency lockdown, the fascists all hopped up on adrenaline, coffee, and the news of the escape that happened the previous night. Turns out, a prisoner escaped the old-fashioned way. He leaned a steel ladder against the fence and left. No shit.
But as with any other situation where popular forces strike a successful blow against the fuckweasel control system, those of us still locked in the showbox take the full brunt of it. Breakfast was shit and there was no recreation. So even before Warden Terry Tibbals, a.k.a, BLACK LIGHTNING, arrived at his office with his bag of donuts and cup of decaf, all hell had already broke loose in the Special Manglement Unit.
Forty steel doors banging, busted sprinkler heads pounding thousands of gallons of rusty water down the stairs and cascading over the top range, the nazis jacking cans of pepper spray and running for the exit.
Fuck them. It’s not like they planned to have a barbecue anyway.
So, if you’ve been locked in the shoebox for any length of time, you know what’s coming. A captain or a major will soon be on-station to announce his own importance, only to find every fucking cell-door window blocked and barricaded, whereupon he will slosh with wet socks and shoes back to an office to call in the Extraction Team- a crew of genetic oddities on brain-entrancing drugs, clad in jackboots and helmets, shields and flak vests. Their whole reason to exist is to crush human skulls and reckless abandon, cell-to-cell, breaking bones and spirits, but from the rumbling of the steel doors, we knew they’d better get some chips and beer because they were gonna be there a while.
In SMU4B, Blackjack and I occupied the cell closest to the entrance so by dumb luck and a twist of fate, we were the front line of the very first battle, ground zero in the struggle between the rebellion and the goddamn stormtroopers goose-stepping in mechanical unison, hopped up on their innate hatred of humanity and the echoes of unhappy childhoods.
It would be seven on two, close quarters blind fighting, the hierarch machine coming to exterminate the anarchist tendency once and for all, and for our part, the possibility that we would fight and die, not for some inglorious cause, but driven by the simple sad reality that it’s better to fight and perhaps die than to live as slaves.
Blackjack and I took a quick inventory and came up with an impromptu battle plan. They might kill us, might pound us to death, but they were going to know we were here. The least we could do on the way out, with the snapping of bones and growls of rage, is scar these fascist fuckweasels for life so they wake up from sweaty nightmares decades from now and realize that yet against they’ve shit the bd, screaming my name, “SWAIN!”, since no one know who to pronounce Blackjack’s (Blackjack included).
WELCOME TO WACO
We know how it goes down. The Extraction Team opens the food slot and sprays an industrial sized can of outdoor-use-only pepper spray into the cell, a space the size of a bathroom, blasting some napalm-death that peels off skin and lights the lungs on fire. So we had to prepare for that. Then, they’d key the door and bullrush in, a phalanx behind riot shields and helmets, pounding ahead and crushing anything organic in their way. At least 7 of them, taming, breaking, punishing.
We had to stop that too.
The fascist fuckweasels had the latest technology for violence and brutality. We had a plastic bag, styrofoam cups, shampoo, toothpaste, sheets, blankets, a broom, socks, soap, 2 lunch trays, a razor blade and a stapler.
I don’t know where the fuck we got the stapler but it was brand new and had a full compliment of staples. We quickly concluded that the stapler, while convenient for all our segregation office needs, really proved quite irrelevant in a violent struggle for liberation against the forces of fuckweaselry. But all that other shit could kick a fucking dent in their machinery.
By the time those goose-stepping goons arrived, we were prepared- and the fascists would wish they could trade places with ATF agents crawling across the roof of some half-baked cult leader clinging to his bibles and guns in a podunk Texas town.
Welcome to Waco.
THE STANDOFF – NO SCRATCH THAT: THE EPIC MOTHERFUCKING STAND-OFF TO END ALL STAND-OFFS
If you’re reading this on your I-phone in study hall, don’t try this at home.
Well, unless you really, really hate your parents.
Unable to see into the cell because the window in the cell door was blocked, the fascists opened the food slot, only to find a bed sheet hanging in front of the door. They still couldn’t see. On top of that, a blanket was wedged in the 4 inch frame of the outside window with a roll of toilet paper to block the light from the sun, making the cell pitch dark. The lead fuckweasel reached his hand into the food slot to grab the sheet and yank it down, only to take a bar of soap in a sock across the knuckles, quickly withdrawing his hand in a stream of obscenities.
I was a pitcher in little league. I can swing the shit out of a sock.
Angered, they went straight to the pepper-spray, letting loose with about a gallon of it. What they didn’t know is that we used a whole tube of toothpaste, minty fresh and approved by the American Dental Association, to adhere a plastic bag over the food slot. That bag caught every bit of the pepper spray and when I hit that bag with the soap-in-a-sock, it coughed its contents right back at the fuckweasels who unleashed it.
That sent them running and sprawling into the cascading toilet water, coughing and cussing with gallons of snot pouring down the flesh of their inflamed faces.
Cancel the family outing with the fireworks. You’re not gonna be feeling very festive.
So as they splashed in the toilet water and rinsed their faces, the door rattling reached a savage pitch and I knew the maniacs and wildmen behind those steel doors were chewing on the inside of their own mouths just to get the taste of blood.
And here’s an abject lesson for all the forces of fascism from the colonizer troops in the oil wars to the pigs firing rubber bullets into occupy encampments to the fuckweasel prison guards imposing the program at the hot end of a can of pepper spray: It’s all fun and games until someone loses and eye. And then it’s just FUN.
They formed up, fueled on rage and pain, a seething hate machine, and keyed the door. It swung wide open and they came in behind the shield, into the dark unknown. They still could not see because the sheet wasn’t fastened to the door; it didn’t move when the door moved. It remained in the doorway because we hung the sheet from a curtain rod we created out of styrofoam cups- a lot of styrofoam cups, stacked, like 50 of them, and then wedged them into the door frame. So when they came marching into the battle dome, they came in blind with the sheet draped in front of their faces.
They didn’t see the shampoo on the floor or the plastic cup lids floating in the shampoo. The shield-man’s jackboots slid on the cup lids and we went hydro-planing forward, shoved from behind by the six-man phalanx that followed.
Keep in mind, there’s a steel bunkbed 3 feet in from the door and it’s bolted to the floor, creating a bottle-neck, a 3 foot square killing-floor where the goons must come in single-file across shampoo and cup lids sliding under their feet, as they follow a blinded shield-man into a dark room, a sheet hanging in his face.
The shield-man didn’t see me in the shower, pulling the trip line tight. It caught his foot and he fell forward, his fuckweasel friends piling up behind him. Blackjack and I both began yelling, “I got him! I got him!” and “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!” giving the impression that the shield-man hadn’t fallen, but had instead tackled one of us.
I let go of the trip line and pulled the strip of sheet we had cut with the razor blade to hook into the sprinkler. I yanked it hard, unleashing thousands of gallons of black gunk fire suppressant pushed by tens of thousands of gallons of water. It was cold and disorienting and blinding, immediately blasting the pile of fuckweasels like a fire-hose from the ceiling.
That was Blackjack’s cue. They hadn’t seen him under the mattress on the top bunk. He sprang to his feet, all possible pepper-spray neutralized by the water filling the air, and with his half of the broomstick secured to his wrist with a strip of bedsheet (just in case he might drop it, he could recall it to his hand with a flick of the wrist) he leaped down from the top rack onto the fuckweasel heap, swinging like a madman. From the opposite side, out of the shower, I rushed into the maelstrom with my half of the broomstick tied to my wrist, and the soap-in-a-sock in my other hand screaming and snarling like a savage. In no time, we were behind the bewildered pile of drenched muscle and heavy equipment, and we bolted for the door.
Fuck everything else. If we got through the open cell door and out into the block, we faced one guard with a cell phone taking video and another guard with a handful of keys.
Yeah. Keys. The great equalizer. We had 2 primitive clubs in our fists, rags wrapped round our faces, and as many as 78 other comrades trapped behind steel doors – doors that could be opened with those keys. We only had to get out of the cell and lock the extraction team inside. But, as we reached the door, the fuckweasels outside the cell dropped everything and threw themselves against the closing door. Blackjack got his club wedged in to keep it from closing as he struggled against the door, I swung on the extraction team trying to regain their feet, and a helmet flew against the wall.
Unfortunately, there was no head inside it.
Maybe next time.
Blackjack thrust against the door and it gave, knocking down the guards on the outside, and we tumbled out of the cell and into the block, the rattling doors and cheers completely deafening. We crawled forward in the ice-cold water and gunk, clawing at the fallen guards, but before we gained purchase, the extraction team had us by the legs, dragging us back into the containment of the cell, our nails dragging on the concrete, one pig’s tasteful yet understated loafer still gripped in my left hand, pepper spray firing from every direction.
Strange, but they didn’t beat us to death. Sure, they got their random kicks and punches in as they held us down and confiscated our weapons, but then they bolted, leaving us sprawled, broken and bloody in a flood of toilet water on the concrete floor.
It was surprisingly comfortable, but I still had all my teeth. As amazing as this is, with all the damage the fascist fuckweasels have inflicted over the decades, the dentist tells me that my teeth are in fantastic shape. Blackjack’s missing 3 teeth. We couldn’t find them. And, even if we could, they had been floating in toilet water.
I pulled something in my abdomen that caused me to puke from the pain for a few days and we both have scorch marks from random pepper-spray blasts, but no broken bones. Our eyes are still firmly in their sockets, and neither of us appear to be leaking any vital fluids.
It took a long time for the fascists to regain control of SMU 4, as they faced inspired and courageous resistance in every fucking cell. The extraction team left the unit at the end of their shift dispirited and haunted by their experience.
Brave new world, shitbags. Brave new motherfuckin’ world.
THE AFTERMATH
We should be dead right now. I mean, several prisoners died here in Terry “Black Lightning” Tibbals’ mismanaged care for a hell of a lot less. Our survival seems a complete absurdity. But here we are.
The official story is that the video of events was lost when the pig dropped the cell phone in his effort to contain us in Cell 1019. I suspect that’s bullshit. I suspect that nobody wants to explain why we had a broomstick in the first place (general incompetence by the pigs on cell-cleaning day), or why the extraction team marched into a cell without visual capacity, or how to starved-out captives out-manoeuvred and out-fought their best fuckweasel fighting force. Whatever their motive, I’ve been told that these events didn’t happen… not the way they happened, anyway.
HELLA HELLA OCCUPY
Four days later, we remained in a burned out shell of a cell, paint peeled from the walls, chunks of concrete missing out of the ceiling. So on July 8, as Pelican Bay revolutionaries undertook a monumental, historic hunger-strike, Blackjack and I were cuffed and escorted out to the outdoor recreation cage. No shit.
Beginning at 6:30 in the morning, we announced to the fuckweasel establishment that we were occupying the recreation cage and not giving it back until our demands were met. Inside the block, the rest of the SMU4 prisoners were again off the chain, rattling doors and flooding the unit. By dinner, they sent in a negotiator to use his “interpersonal communication” training to talk us out of the cage. When that failed, they called the extraction team… who simply did not show up.
Officer Miller, a shitbag of the highest order and a regular feature on SMU4 (who can be reached by calling ManCI and then dialing 806 and extension 6101), took a cell phone video of our demands for coming out of the recreation cage. When told all demands would be met, we surrendered, only to be dragged, handcuffed, back to our burned-out cave to find our food in the toilet and most of our property destroyed. Miller and Bradshaw had taken all of our soap, toilet paper and pens. As if we needed them.
Amazingly, the stapler we hid under the steel sink and toilet combo remained there, and was in perfect working condition.
Very durable.
Officer Miller threatened to put his dick and balls in our food, so- as a natural consequence, Blackjack and I went without food the entire day, right along with the heroes of Pelican Bay and the thousands of hunger strikers across the country and around the world. Miller’s threats sparked a night of mayhem, leading the Gestapo High Command to conclude that Blackjack and I are a dangerous influence, and they moved us out of that stagnant cave in SMU 4 to the veritable zombie suburbs of SMU2- a comfortable peaceful corner of the special manglement unit where we are surrounded by prisoners incapable of action if you lit their asses on fire and chased them with a super-soaker filled with gasoline. The mentality of the entire unit revolves around a betting ticket put out by a prisoner called Vegas, and daily discussions of professional sports events. No revolution here.
Though we’ve been put out to pasture, the situation has greatly improved. Our food portions are back to standard; the laundry service has resumed; the cells are clean and dry, without toilet water pouring from the ceiling; and Blackjack and I are now in a cell where we can sleep without steel doors 3 feet away, banging us awake every ½ hour.
Some kind of disciplinary action was taken against us, but we don’t know what it was since we refuse to answer any more conduct reports. When the officer who came to shackle us heard we refused to go, he asked, “Are we gonna have to do this the hard way?” We responded, “you better go ask the extraction team.” He left, never returned.
So, there’s a lesson to derive from all this: the only effective answer to state terror in any form is equal and opposite revolutionary violence. Plain and simple. It’s the only thing the fascist fuckweasels understand.
I think of the last 9 and a half months that Blackjack and I foolishly tried to go along with the fascist program, to appeal to reason, to employ the non-violent processes made available to us – while our captors reduced us to conditions that where inhumane and intolerable, starving us out. If only we had undertaken this path nine months earlier, and maintained it, we might be drinking martinis by an olympic-sized swimming pool right now.
A point Derrick Jensen made in Endgame applies here: more prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps survived by resisting than by going along with the program.*
So I think about the events of these last 8 days and consider how the world would be different if this approach had been undertaken by the occupy encampments across the US and around the world, undertaken by everyone rejecting the global concentration camp imposed on us all. Imagine if the skull-bashing and finger snapping pigs of the State-terror machine, instead of being met with passive resistance to the dismantling of the encampments, had been met with molotov cocktails and bowling balls raining from roof tops; and resisters sporting helmets shoulder pads, and baseball bats appropriated from Dick’s sporting goods; or had faced man-hole covers blasting into the sky and streets collapsing under them from improvised explosive devices in the sewers – perhaps the trajectory of history would be quite different today.
All I’m saying is, if a former gas station attendant and a former sandwich station tech at Wendy’s can nearly defeat the hyper-fascist forces inside the State’s mind-fuck control unit by employing styrofoam cups, a tube of toothpaste, and a broken broomstick, what hope exists for the crapitalist pigs and their fuckweasel enforcers? If only a small fraction of so-called anarchists, revolutionaries, freedom-fighters, libertarians, tea-partiers or occupy supporters got serious for a moment, all the world’s officer Millers would have to remove their balls from our instant potatoes and run naked, screaming for their miserable and worthless lives, chased by angry hordes carrying pitchforks and torches, demanding a reckoning. I don’t want to impress you. I don’t even want to inspire you. I just want to wake you up. The state is a can of pepper-spray and there’s no reasoning with it. Freedom means destroying it.
We don’t need Gandhi’s approval. This is reality, however it is we feel about it. We need Gandhi to pass that tube of toothpaste and get that lunch tray strapped to his arm.
This is how you take back the future.
Brave new motherfucking world, Mohandas. Brave new motherfucking world.
Freedom or Death,
Sean Swain
Anarchist Prisoner of War
Mansfield Corruptional Institution
Super Mind-fuck Unit 2
11 July 2013
*BTW Sean doesn’t have access to the internet, so he doesn’t know about DJ being a a transphobic salmon touching turd.