[From 1/13 to 1/16, Malik was restricted to their cell and unable to use the phone or tablet. This is a statement they wrote on the 14th, during the cell in.]
What used to be the state hospital, and infamous for the movie “The One that Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” now a prison, was designed by a man who also designed college campuses. The point is that an institution is an institution. Some just have other levels of restriction, access, surveillance, and state sanctioned violence. Not by much, though, with universities having their own small, militarized police force and their own surveillance and restrictions. I’d say they make right prisons themselves, especially with their crack on organizing, just like prisons, but I digress.
I’ve been here [at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution] just a few weeks and see that pigs here are overtly racist, incredibly petty, and antagonistic, and well, what would you expect from eastern Oregon’s prisons? [unintelligible] All prisons and pigs are heinous and should be set alight, but I’d like to take a second to talk about and highlight EO thus far.
Already, I’ve been woken up at 5 AM by ten pigs attempting to take me back to the hole because they said I was cursing out staff at 5 AM. I was woken up from a dead sleep to state attack dogs attempting to put me back in isolation for something I didn’t do. And they probably would’ve, too, if not for the pig who was allegedly cursed [at] telling them that it was a white guy who was cursing at them. Even still, ten pigs deep because your fellow piglet got cursed out? That’s insane.
I’ve learned they just love to take people to the hole and give out cell ins like candy on Halloween. Not even Snake [River] is like that. The reason being is dual fold. One, EO is used as a training facility, so all new pigs come here to train, and like street pigs, they’re given quotas of cell ins to write and people to take to the hole. My second day here, I was pulled off the phone randomly to be strip searched, looking for new tattoos. Allegedly. I just got out of a hole, and I’m in a cell by myself, so how could I possibly?
And the second reason comes by this example. Yesterday, I was kicked off the phone by a particular pig named Sauer, who has, since I’ve been here, been the only one to accost me regularly and seems to have an obsession with looking at my crotch. He stopped me in the chow hall on the one rare day I leave cell because I have to turn in mail, and [he] calls me over to examine my hand as it was resting in the waistband of my shorts and shouted at me [to] keep my hands out of my pants. A reminder of why I just don’t leave my cell. Because pigs like that exist. They live for the power trip ’cause the rest of their menial existence is superfluous at best.
He then comes in the unit last night, and his eyes searched the room and hone in on, once more, my crotch and my hand resting on my waistband of my pants and tells me to get off the phone and cell in. When I ask why, he says ’cause my hand was in my pants. So I asked for a rule that states I can’t rest my hands there, and he says he doesn’t need one, but that there is no place in polite society for people like me and my hand in my pants. I was flabbergasted by the entire statement but further infuriated when I was told I had to stay in my cell for 72 hours.
For what? Not even [for] my hand being in my pants, but rather for asking what rule I broke and asking to take his name for my grievance. He said it was combative and disobedience and unauthorized area because I asked his name instead of going back to the cell right away. If none of this makes sense and sounds convoluted, it’s because it doesn’t, and it is.
EOCI operates on a broken windows policing model. Clearly, they are too ignorant and backwards of hicks to know how that worked in New York, or they know exactly, and it’s their express intent. But maybe two things could be true at the same time. The system isn’t broken; it’s working as well as intended. Their idea to police and monitor so intensely, issuing extreme penalties on the little things in hopes to stop big things is simply a ploy for power and to exert control.
That particular pig Sauer, he walks in the unit, and it gets quiet. People look on anxiously, waiting to see who he hones in on, hoping it’s not them. He smiles all the while, getting off on the fear, getting off on the [unintelligible] and anxiety because in his menial life elsewhere, there’s no such joy. He commands no such power. It’s a fear tactic, like the only tool the state has is violence and the threat of [it] to instill fear and submission. So like immigrants and brown people under Trump’s regime, I stay inside. I don’t even go to chow. I’d rather go hungry ’till my body stop telling me I am. I’d rather hide inside.
Though, also like immigrants are seeing, you’re not even safe indoors. Here, you can get a seventy two hour cell in for your shoe being untied, shirt untucked, putting on your hat too soon before going outside, putting on your gloves before making it to the yard, walking around the track more than three times, forgetting to sign up for showers, not cleaning your cell, or changing your sheets, not having your light on when you leave the cell, or not having your TV off, not having your drawer locked, having too much stuff, not having your bed made at all times, sleeping with both blankets because you can only use one because the other must be made on your bed at all times. The list of things is so vast, there’s a large bulletin board just for rules about the unit, about twenty pages long, but you can’t look at them because that would require you to stand up in the day room, which is also not allowed. You can only sit. Unless you’re on the phone. You can only stand then. No sitting. Should you get tired and squat down — cell in, ’cause there’s also no place in polite society for sitting or squatting on the phone. And if that’s the case, someone should tell these pigs that, since all they do all day is sit on their phone.
Like New York in the ’90s, and the fascist America today under a police state, fascist jack boots can and will stop and frisk you, ask for your ID and detain you indefinitely. So I don’t go outside. Unfortunately, that strategy still hasn’t worked, and I am now celled in for seventy two hours. What that means, if you’re curious for a comparison, COVID lockdown, or ICE neighborhood lockdowns, or basically like I never left the hole. Same shit, different prison.
I’m not sure I’m gonna make it here long. That’s most likely the intent, though, because if you go back to the hole within six months of leaving IMU, you go back to IMU. Essentially, you’re on probation. In prison. I wish it wasn’t so, but it’s not like I’m free. There’s no difference in my conditions, except more availability to talk to people. Even that, of course, is subject to revocation. I’m closer, but only by three hours, so visits are still a rare thing. So the truth is, no difference.
Though I won’t do is get discouraged or broken. Because I know the strength of revolutionary love I have for the people and those who hold it for me, violence is the only tool that the state has. Anarchists are much more adept and resourceful. So I’ll file my grievances and discrimination complaints, considering [that] resting your hands in your waistband is not, in fact, a rule, and another person of a lighter complexion was also celled in for only twenty four hours as opposed to seventy two. I’ll continue to avoid and limit my interactions with these fascists and hope for the best.
I also have to add an addendum that my cell in was extended another nine hours. Once again, I left my cell to turn in my mail and allegedly didn’t lock my drawer.
Super trooper crime fighters, doing such great work for their community. I wish they fucking kill themselves.