Message to my comrades from lockdown inside the blood-sucking prison system

Editor’s note: Bub Myers from the Uhuru Furniture store in Philadelphia has been locked down in the clutches of the colonial prison system in Pennsylvania for over a year for a minor parole violation with no trial or conviction.


Uhuru!

I am reaching out to all my Comrades in U.S. prisons from SCI Rockview in Western, PA! I want to expose this system for what it really is—a blood sucking, head-busting slave plantation!

White power created the prison system to further exploit Africans and other oppressed peoples all over the world.

The prison system is a bailout for the white working class to boost their failing economy and communities. The slogan in white America, “Build a Prison to Save Our Economy,” is true! Once a prison is built, then Walmart, McDonald’s, hotels and gas stations, etc. are also built. 

Thousands of jobs are created from the prison system. White high school drop-outs working in prisons are paid between $35,000 and $55,000 annually. Enough to put their kids through college and to save for their retirement.

African taxpayers are unknowingly paying for our own exploitation. We foot the $31,000 to $60,000 per inmate per year bill to keep us locked up. 

Not only is the prison system fraudulent, the African working class pays for it. Unbelievable!

Incarceration tears families apart all across the globe. When the breadwinner is locked up, whether it’s the African woman or man and in some cases both, it leaves our children to fend for themselves in communities that are overseen by the colonial state!

In our communities, the police, the military police, helicopters and drugs are constantly present and are all part of the state. The drugs are placed there to keep Africans from coming together to stand up against this vicious system.

I am inside the belly of the beast and have been here for exactly a year now. In my mind, body and spirit I am fully aware of what’s really going on thanks to the Uhuru Movement! The Movement opened my eyes to how the colonial capitalist system works on all cylinders.

Here inside this jail and in all jails in the U.S. and everywhere, we experience OPPRESSION!

The inmates get paid 42 cents per hour at the most. I was getting 19 cents an hour working in the kitchen and cleaning toilets. The correction officer’s shops make furniture that’s sold to the public, making millions of dollars for the prison while we get slave wages.

The inmates literally run the prisons. We cook the food and collect all the trash. Corrections officers are just there to oversee us… that’s it.

The cell block workers clean the blocks and showers every day while the guards watch the camera. They make a worker go back to their cell because he may have passed a candy bar to a neighbor!

The corrections officers have the nerve to complain because they’re tired, not from doing any work in the jail but from partying with co-workers and family during off hours!

Even though the inmates control and run the jail, they are scared to unite for fear of retaliation. The system creates the divide and reaps the rewards at the same time. The guards know everything that goes on because of perks they offer some inmates to be their eyes and ears.

It’s a problem that some prisoners unite with the system even though it oppresses them. I try to spread consciousness about our exploitation but sometimes get into verbal confrontations because a lot of people have given up hope.

I look at my African brothers and know that we are one and a half billion strong globally! If we unite we can and will overturn this appalling system. I welcome my responsibility and cannot wait until I get out to participate in changing the world!

Now, white power has created the colonial virus which is a world pandemic! This parasitic system is definitely in crisis for sure. 

Millions of Africans all over the world, including me, are sitting ducks in prison as the man-made coronavirus is killing Africans, Indigenous and all oppressed peoples of the world at an alarming rate.

I’m reaching out to the world and exposing the conditions we are currently living in. The virus can only get inside the jail from the outside. It’s the guards, counselors and psychiatrists who bring it in. 

The guards and other workers used to make breakfast, lunch and dinner which put all of the inmates at risk for COVID-19 exposure. A lot of us don’t want to eat the food but those who don’t are out of luck because they have to eat to survive.

Since the guards, psychiatrists, counselors and unit managers complained to their unions, the kitchen workers (prisoners) are back to work because it was too much work for them. They left work tired from actually working!

This system doesn’t care about anyone. We have to find a way to destroy the prison system because it’s inhumane to the thousandth power.

I want to give all thanks to the Uhuru Movement and to the African People’s Socialist Party. I unite with them. While in prison I am arming myself with as much information about the African Socialist International and African Internationalism as I can. I will be ready as soon as I get this fallacious case behind me!

In the meantime, I would like to say African Internationalist consciousness always, Comrades!

Uhuru!

Izwe Lethu i Afrika!

The land is ours!

2020-05-12-colonial-prison-system-bub-myers-spear-620w
Derrick ‘Bub’ Myers, Truck Team Leader for Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles in Philadelphia is currently locked down in the colonial prison system in Pennsylvania.

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