I began the day like any other day at Sussex II. I woke up, went to breakfast, called my wife, and spent a signification part of the morning in lock-down. This is the primary characteristic of that prison -- lock-down! After 11:00 AM count, I went to "early lunch" and then to my scheduled 12:30 visit with the chaplain. I left the chaplain's office around 2:30 and went to the law library because I was also scheduled to visit there from 1:00-4:00 pm. I put my stuff in the cell, came out and asked for a place on the phone line. About ten minutes later I was able to get on the phone. Towards the end of my call, the Security Control Booth officer (Watson), began yelling "Lock Down NOW!" in an extremely urgent tone and manner. Guys haphazardly began going to their cells so I remained on the phone in an attempt to finish my call. When Officer Watson continued yelling even more frantically for us to lock-down, I looked back and noticed a Lieutenant, two rank-and-file officers, and a K-9 officer enter the unit. I immediately ended my call and walked to my cell. However, while I was walking to my cell, I saw that the Lieutenant was summoning my roommate over. I went in the room and was confused as I watched them place him in hand-cuffs. My cell door closed and immediately they came to the cell door and yelled out to Watson, "Open cell 20!" I initially thought they were going to tell me to pack up my roommate's property, but when they came in the ell they instructed me to separate all of our belongings. So I placed all of my things on my bed and left my roommate's where it was. After making sure that I hadn't forgotten anything, the Lieutenant then said, "OK. now put your hands behind your back for me please." Being used to the script, I complied calmly asking, "What's going on man?" The Lieutenant looking at the ground said, "You're going to the Watch Commander's office." As we walked down the steps, out of the building and down the boulevard, the K-9 Officer and his dog trailed behind with the dog barking the entire time. When we approached the end of the walk, I noticed the Warden and the head investigator, Lieutenant M.D. Carpenter, standing in front of the Watch Commander's office. When I began to turn right to meet them, the Lieutenant tightly gripped my arm and moved me left toward the vocation hallway. Confused, I asked, "Where ya'll taking me?" That's when the Lieutenant said, "You're being transferred." This all happened around 5:30 PM. So, they threw me and my roommate in a van and drove us across the lot to Sussex 1 State Prison. Once there, we were placed in solitary confinement around 7:00 PM. I've been there ever since.
The first two days I sat in the cell with nothing. I only had one blanket, two sheets, and a pillow case. They never gave me a pillow. I was told that my property was still at Sussex 2. They never gave me soap, toothbrush, underwear, towel, wash cloth, shower shoes, toothpaste, deodorant etc. for two days. It wasn't until my loved ones and comrades began flooding their desks with calls that they finally brought me a bar of soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, and deodorant. I had to wait an additional 24 hours before I finally received boxers, socks, t-shirts -- three pairs each, a wash cloth, and a towel. Needless to say, the first four days was rough. I'd been allowed to use the phone twice but I didn't have any stamps, paper, or envelopes. I had to steel an ink pen from an officer. If they would have found it, they'd probably write me up rather than fix the problem that led me to having take the pen.
This is the principle of VADOC: the prisoner is never right and the officer is never wrong, which leads me to Thursday, May 1, 2018. Around 9:30 AM that morning, I was served a charge. Intelligence Officer Lt. M. D. Carpenter wrote a disciplinary report of the following: "Upon completion of investigation, it was determined that offender Pughsley was encouraging others to participate in a group demonstration. On April 24, 2018 the Intelligence Department received information, demanding resolve for certain offender grievances. Subsequently, a targeted cell search of offender Pughsley's cell was conduced by Intelligence staff. A petition was found among offender Pughsley's personal property. Furthermore, a handwriting analysis was conducted and Intelligence Officer Carpenter was able to immediately identify the handwriting of offender Pughsley as the author of the petition. The petition contained 55 confirmed offender signatures and state numbers. Therefore, the offender was charged accordingly."
Before I explain how ridiculous this report is, or how sloppy this investigation was, I want to give a bit of history on the Sussex 2 Human Rights Committee petition. I arrived at Sussex 2 State Prison on March 2, 2018 from Augusta Correctional Center after being framed for a disciplinary offense I didn't commit. It's well documented that I learned of the many human rights violations upon my arrival to Sussex 2. After investigating and learning the populations, it became clear to me that the prisoners wanted change but didn't really know to achieve it. I began to form a clear vision and direction of how to create change by organizing around the concept of human rights. Then, as guys began to embrace the struggle, one comrade suggested we organize under the name, "Sussex 2 Human Rights Committee". We recruited several similar minds and exchanged ideas through "kites" and meetings. One comrade suggested we write a petition to ACLU because OSS K. Mitchell was throwing prisoner's informal complaints away which gave the impression to anyone outside the prison, that there were no complaints. I brought up the idea of sending it to the Richmond Prison Organizing Committee of the Virginia Prison Justice Network (https://vapjn.wordpress.com/) instead because they would take a more rigorous approach to bringing attention to the issue along and would also move faster on the issue. Everyone agreed and we selected a comrade to write the petition. However, before we listed the issues we wanted addressed, we charged the writer with the responsibility of explaining each issue. It was also decided that everyone would help collect signatures. There were nine members of the Committee including myself. The issues we ended up with were:
better medical care
access to the law library
improve water quality
improve general maintenance and environmental issues
more programs for prisoners
an end to group punishment
have a legitimate grievance procedure
better treatment of visitors
longer visitation time
Once the petition's final draft was complete, we paid a guy to make several copies of the petition. We decided to mail the out without signatures and keep one with signatures in case this democratic action was somehow criminalized as a terror attack. It seems we made a good decision. Nevertheless, the petition used to gain signatures was circulated by the committee members in their particular units. I assume some jailhouse snitches told Investigator Carpenter about the petition. However, this was NOT the reason they snatched me and my roommate from our cells, threw us into a van, and shipped us to a higher security level prison and then placed into solitary confinement without the minimum necessities. No, they did it to punish me! Not only punish me but to send a message to the rest of the prison population that no political action would be tolerated and that any affiliation with political prisoners would be punished. This is why my roommate was moved, to help communicate that message. Now, if you want to be naively liberal or even conservative, you can say, "look, some prison administrator abused their powers, acted rashly, and did a stupid thing." But that would be a complete lack of awareness of the agency's culture of punishing political activism. Think of it this way -- if I'd have been caught with drugs, a cell phone, a woman, a shank, attempted to escape, or even murdered someone, I'd have been placed in solitary confinement at Sussex 2 and investigated there. Yet, because I was encouraging guys to become more politically conscious and active, I was transferred in the middle of the evening with a so-called "emergency transfer". Really?!
The truth is, the development of a revolutionary working class struggle is the greatest threat to VADOC operations. Prison administrators depend on us having an opportunistic lumpen proletariat consciousness. As long as prisoners are focused on increasing their capacity to consume, the State can control their behavior. All they have to do is threaten them with deprivation (i.e. no commissary no phone, no visits, no music etc.) and prisoners will comply. One of the most common and effective mechanisms used by VADOC is security level classification. Every year, prisoners are interviewed for what's known as their 'annual review'. The day you arrive at "receiving" is your annual review date. Mine is July 15th. Every year on your date, you are brought in front of your counselor and graded/scored according to your crime, sentence, age, disciplinary record over the past two years, educational achievements over the past year, and treatment and jobs programs over the year. Everyone has points to being with based on their crime(s) and sentence. If you're in for breaking and entering with four years, your score will being low. If you're like me with a murder charge and a long-term sentence, you begin high. I start off every annual review with 25 points. This means I have to lose points to have my security level decreased. If not, I'll begin at level 4 every year. Now, you also lose or gain points based on your age. You gain points for your age until you're around 35 years old and then you begin to lose points after that. I'm not aware of policy changes with points but essentially this is correct. You can go to the VADOC website and look for the operating procedure for "Security Level Classification" to get the latest specifications. Nevertheless, the system is designed to prevent guys who have a lot of time and who are young from being at lower security level prisons. There's also two major mandatory restrictions that focus on long-term offenders: (1) lifers must serve 20 years before they can go to a security level 3 prison and (2) you must have less than 20 years remaining to go to a security level 2 prison. The consequence of keeping tally this way is that is allows people who may be high risk offenders with minor crimes and short sentences more leeway to catch disciplinary offenses and not be placed in a more restrictive prison. See, there are five security levels with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. Sussex 1 is a level 5. Nevertheless, each security level places more restrictions on prisoner and vary in everything from recreation to what kind of toothpaste and toothbrush you can buy. Thus, long-term prisoners who are low-risk still get penalized harshly when they receive an infraction because their score starts out high. In fact, this is why I was transferred from Augusta for one charge while guys I know who are charged with far more serious crimes (i.e. found with marijuana in their possession or found with heroin during visitation) are still at Augusta while I was transferred to Sussex 1. The way this is able to happen legally because those guys don't have a lot of time left. It must be noted that this policy came out in 1999, four years in to Truth In Sentencing. The goals of the policy was to legitimize a mechanism to increase thousands of prisoner's security level and fill up the newly built Supermax/Highest level Security Prisons: Red Onion, Wallens Ridge, Sussex 1, and Sussex 2.
Each of these prisons cost the State over $100 million each to build. This was the tough-on-crime era and many people were investing in the Prison Industrial Complex. Therefore, giving out long-term sentences and opening up these kinds of prisons was critical. Today, we've had roughly two decades to see that the security level system is flawed in many ways. For example, at Sussex 2, you have "One Building", aka "the lifer building" where everyone there has over twenty years left to serve. Many of the prisoners there have not received a charge in many years, some as long as ten or fifteen years. Yet, they're stuck in a level 4 prison until they've served twenty years. Meanwhile, you have prisoners who catch endless charges and are at level 2 or 3 prisons until they go home and, often, come back! The VADOC is aware that this is a by-product of long-term offenders being penalized by their security level classification. The truth is that they made it that way for a reason.
When a prisoner is about to be released, the state needs to produce a "productive citizen". This is the goal of the Virginia Re-Entry Initiative (VARI). For the long-term prisoner, the State needs compliance more than anything else. So they have a system designed to punish resistance -- Security Level Classification. SLC becomes a counter-insurgency/low-intensity warfare mechanism. This is why, for me, the charge was used as a way to both punish me and to break my will to resist and the higher-ups in VADOC won't check convictions for bogus charges because it isn't in their interest to do so. Transfer you, place you in solitary, write up a charge, raise your security level etc. it's modern day slave-breaking and they know that over time guys aren't going to want to continue giving up their so-called "freedoms" by trying to change this ultra-powerful system. Guys "stay out of the way", as they say here in the Virginia prison system. These words are symbolic of a broken spirit or a broken will to resist. The mission of psychological warfare is to weaken the morale of a group or a person. Petty restrictions, like having to use a two inch toothbrush for two years, can fuck with your morale. Sitting in a cell at 6:00 pm when you know there are prisoners out eating ice cream, on the phone, involved in sports tournaments, etc at lower level security levels can fuck with your morale. They know this. That's why it's important for us to have certain things -- so they can take them away! What ends up happening is that many prisoners forfeit the struggle for real freedom with their loved ones outside of prison so that they can enjoy the pseudo-freedoms used as tools of the State to weaken resistance. The Security Level Classification system has become a de facto parole system for many long-term prisoners who have been defeated by this instrument of power. Rather than use your voice as a weapon in the struggle for freedom and human rights, many give it up to make this de facto parole in order to get to a level 3 security prison.
I've heard from so many guys that say, "pick your battles" or "sometimes, you have to let them have their way". These too serve to weaken morale. I could never be a "model prisoner". Even thinking about it disgusts me. If we know that class and race contribute to the quality of justice one receives, then how could I, a poor Black man given three times the sentence recommended for my crime, ever come into a prison system that's a part of the justice system trifecta (police, courts, prisons) and be a model for the State to use as an example of how to behave?! That's some real post-traumatic shit right there, for real. Never that!
This brings me back to the bogus charge that the State used to put me in Sussex 1 solitary. The charge is violating Offense Code 128: participating in, or encouraging others, to participate in a group demonstration. Lt. Carpenter claims that her intelligence department received information that a petition was being circulated throughout the prison demanding resolve for certain grievances. Subsequently, a "targeted" cell search of offender Pughsley's cell was conducted by Intelligence staff. The obvious question is, if your Intelligence Department received information on a petition circulating, then why go my cell? Also, if I was involved in a group demonstration, whey was I the only one charged and transferred and the only one investigated? This case is a clear example of how the State recognizes what's at stake for us long-term prisoners and uses the SLC system against them to eliminate these thorns in their sides -- in this instance my activist network on the outside that is watching and paying attention to what is happening. We are placing the power back into the hands of the people. Resistance serves as a counter to the one of the most anti-democratic institutions in Amerikkkan society -- the Corrections Agency.
It is a huge step in our journey to build the revolutionary consciousness needed to ultimately remove State power from the hands of the Capitalists. What has happened to me is a symptom, not the disease. As long as the State serves the interests of the elites, its methods of intensifying class antagonism will always result in workers being oppressed. I was born into the working class. I was even assigned to the lowest rung of the Amerikkkan working class -- Black people. Black workers are the least valued of all Amerikkkan workers. Our labor power has always been taken for granted. In a society of competitors, we, the society's former slaves, have been under-developed. European interests created "whiteness" as a racial construct along with its antithesis, Afrikan "blackness". Thus, in our relationship with "white" workers, their whiteness gives them an advantage or privilege in every sector of the economic market place. Therefore, there have always been jobs that were exclusively or preferable for white people (i.e. the overseer, slave catcher, statesman etc.) and in a society where so many people are forced to produce enormous amounts of surplus value for the owners of capital, the privileged access to certain jobs had to be protected at all cost. So, white workers supported and even introduced legal and extra-legal policies to restrict black workers from access to their privilege. This relationship between white and black, then and now, was intentional. The development of white society produced the under-development of black and brown communities. Both exist in society in a sort of mutual continuum. This is why and how blacks came to represent the largest demographic in Virginia prisons. Black men make up about 8% of the state population but make up 65% of the prison population. This isn't lost on prison administrators. In fact, it's actually at the forefront of their consciousness when they create, interpret, and enforce prison policy. For example, the Nation of Gods and Earth (5%'s) were labeled as a security threat for two decades by VADOC while Asatru was allowed to meet. Everyone knows that Black supremacist violence doesn't compare to White supremacist violence throughout the history of this country. White supremacist violence here would be better compared to Soviet liquidation, or Nazi extermination rather than Black supremacist violence. The idea that the NGE was criminalized for two decades while Asatru was allowed to meet is a farce, but only if you believe the goal of VADOC is "public safety".
It was the result of the State's goal/mission to suppress any types of Afrikan (Black) insurgency. With a population that 65% Afrikan, the VADOC understands what could happen if brothers embraced any type of radical ideas. This is why it's better to be a drug dealer rather than a revolutionary in VADOC. The latter has the potential to destroy the agency's economic scheme. At the heart of "corrections" is its industrial processes -- prison labor, corporatization, and capital investment. This makes VADOC one of the most economically viable agencies in Virginia and it's primarilly off the exploitation of Afrikan (Black) males.
Prison labor produces millions of dollars of surplus value for the agency at little cost. VCE (Virginia Correctional Enterprises), agribusiness, environmental services, highway/transport services, and "on site" prison services produce enormous amounts of surplus. For example, if you buff a floor for .45/hour for 30 hours, a prisoner will make $50/month or cost the agency $50/month. The going rate for a commercial cleaner for buffing a floor is $10/hour and at 40 hours is $400/month. The same goes for prison vs. non-prison labor such as painter, landscapers, maintenance workers, etc. Nothing that the State pays is for the benefit of the prisoner. These prisons have codes (health and administrative) that must be met quarterly. Therefore, VADOC must keep operating prisons. They have operating costs to meet and prison labor is the way to drastically keep costs down. Corporatization works to provide the agency with another revenue stream. Multi-national corporations like JPAY, Global Tel, Keefe, Correction Co. of America etc. pay the VADOC to be able to do business in prisons. Millions of dollars are poured into VADOC and the money comes largely from poor people -- prisoners and their families. Meanwhile, we kill each other our desire to use them (phone, email, commissary, kiosk etc.) Capital Investment happens when the director takes 10% of any monies that we receive under the guise of re-entry funds. Many of us will not have access to this money for several decades. Meanwhile, the director is given legal authority to invest that money in bank accounts, securities, and government bonds. So when you look at VADOC as a major corporation (the Prison Industrial Complex), then you begin to see the importance of keeping Afrikan men docile and infantile. Both are done through an intricate and comprehensive low-intensity psychological war offensive that's being waged on us daily.
Only a few of us are able to withstand the impact of these daily micro-aggressions and maintain our will to resist. This is why it is so important for people to help us. My situation serves as an example of how committed VADOC is in repressing prisoner's will to resist. Join the fight to bring a more humane criminal justice system to Virginia. It will take time. It will be hard but with commitment and persistence, we can win.
Uhuru!
Askari