“We are All Doing Time” by Kevin ‘Rashid’ Johnson
January 26, 2012
Abuse at Red Onion
December 16, 2011
ALERT: Kevin Rashid Johnson was assaulted by staff at Red Onion. He has a dislocated shoulder and is yet to receive proper medical attention. He had a large swath of hair pulled out. This occurred when he refused to turn his back on an officer as he came out of the exercise cage. Please contact Director of VA DOC, Harold Clarke (804) 674-3000 and Warden Randy Mathena of Red Onion (276)796-7510. We demand that Tony Adams is held accountable for these hostile actions against Rashid. We demand that Rashid no longer be a target because of his political work.
“What’s Mao’s little Red Book gonna mean to a mother who can’t put food in her children’s stomachs tonight?”
November 24, 2011
On Saturday, November 19, 2011, BASICS caught up with John ‘Mac’ Gaskins, the Minister of Information of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party (NABPP)‡, at a speaking event at Burning Books in Buffalo, New York.
After spending nearly half his life in prison, the young Panther is now out on the streets and is part of a new generation of young revolutionaries carrying forward the legacy of the original Black Panther Party in the present.
(Radio Basics also interviewed John ‘Mac’ Gaskins back on October 3, 2011 about ongoing practices of torture that he and others have experienced at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia. To download that interview, click here).
Steve da Silva / BASICS: You were telling us tonight how you spent half of your life in prison – after catching some cases when you were younger. Here you are now, 31 years of age and on the outside as revolutionary and a New Afrikan Black Panther. Can you briefly recount how you arrived at where you’re at today?
John ‘Mac’ Gaskins: Well, my story doesn’t differ much from most guys raised in urban settings. I’m from Richmond, Virginia, and born into a single-parent home. My mother is from the bottom of the working-class. As a kid, I would watch my mother go to work, working two jobs that were never enough to secure the basic necessities for me and my sister. So early on I decided that I had a distinct role to fulfill. At about the age of ten, I had this friend who taught me how to go into stores, open up the food products and eat and drink until we got full and exited the store. But eventually, I realized that this wasn’t doing anything to help my family. So I actually started stealing products, bringing them out of the store and to my family so we could prepare meals. As this went on, the activity just progressed until I got into robberies. But I had certain moral compunctions from the start though. I never robbed a common working-class person, old ladies, anything like that. It was drug dealers, commercial establishments, and people that I felt like they were criminals themselves, either pumping poison into the community or people who have these commercial establishments in the community but don’t live in our communities and are only extracting funds from us. Ultimately, over time though I would take on some traits of an illegitimate capitalist, and this would ultimately lead me to prison at the age of 17.
My incarceration would actually begin before this though. I started going to jail when I was about 14, I spent about 2 ½ years in “Juvie” (Juvenile Detention). So that was preppin’ me for what was coming in the future, these 14 years that I would spend in prison. So ultimately I went to prison and I would endure all the practices that take place there, everything from having my fingers broken to being bit by dogs, to being strapped to a bed for days and being forced to defecate and urinate on myself. I would go without meals for days at a time, my mail was being hindered. Not having access to a telephone. I was at these “Supermax” prisons out in the mountains and I didn’t get visits. My family couldn’t afford to come visit me. I was feeling every ounce of the weight of this system and this was for me where the political education began.
I met alot of my current comrades in prison, [Kevin 'Rashid' Johnson'] and Kaysie. These brothers introduced me to important figures like George Jackson, Mao, and Che Guevera. This gave me a new way of viewing the struggles that I had been a part of thus far, whether that was trying to feed myself on the streets or battling the guards. Ultimately, I would go on an join the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, operating in my capacity as the Minister of Information. I would also co-found SPARC (Supporting Prisoners and Acting for Radical Change). SPARC created this inside-outside connection, to ensure that with every act on the inside there has to be a corresponding act on the outside. Since I got out of prison [three months ago], we’ve been trying to better coordinate the struggles inside and outside the prisons.
SD / BASICS: It seems to me that you’re a living example of the line of the NABPP – which is to transform the prisons into “Schools of Liberation”, so that when your cadre step out the prison gates they’re ready to be a positive force for revolutionary change in society. And that’s what you yourself are doing. Can you tell us a little bit about how you understand the need for a revolutionary Party that organizes the working class?
Mac: First of all, prisoners are an untapped reservoir of revolutionary potential. These guys have nothing vested in the current system, so these are our soldiers. It’s just like when I go into the poorest communities, these people who be living at the bottom of society, this is where we wanna build our base and headquarters. Among the core principles of the Panthers is going into communities, living amongst people, learning about their needs, and organizing people around those needs as a means of raising mass consciousness.
By the government’s inability or unwillingness to do so, they’ve shown that they’re not addressing the basic needs of people. People are in the predicament their in now out of decades of governmental neglect and indifference. So its the role of the Panthers to be that vanguard in the communities.
But what is long range politics to people who can’t put food in their stomachs tonight? To people whose very lives are not guaranteed for tomorrow? We’re living in communities that are over-policed, they’re ridden by crime and poverty. You have whole communities that are excluded from any economic and social participation. So it’s our role to go amongst these people, learn about their needs, and organize them around those needs.
BASICS: You were telling us earlier about the need for ‘Serve the People’ programs to organize and uplift the people, which revolutionaries from Huey Newton to Mao Tse-Tung stressed the importance of. What are these ‘STP’ programs and how are you building them where you’re at, in Washington D.C.?
Mac: I think that one of the most important programs are those that are feeding people. What is [Mao's] little Red Book gonna mean to a mother who can’t put food in her children’s stomachs tonight? So that’s at the top of the agenda, creating free food programs. Winter time is coming and its getting cold, so we wanna get some clothes out to people in the communities. We wanna get some condoms out there, talk about the dangers of unprotected sex, talk to the teenage girls about pregnancy. We are also trying to get some sort of visitation transportation out to the prisons so they can visit their loved ones. We also wanna build re-entry programs for prisoners. The Panther line is all about addressing any problems and needs that the people are having in the communities. If there’s a pot-hole in the road, we gonna get us a bag of gravel and cement and we gonna fix that.
The people learn through observation and participation, so the Panther is gonna be that example in the community.
BASICS: Any thoughts on the state of this continent, where things are going, and what we need to do?
John ‘Mac’ Gaskins with BASICS correspondent and Radio Basics host Steve da Silva.Mac: Conditions have never been more ripe for revolutionary change. People all over the world are participating in revolutionary struggles. We’re talking about the empowerment of the masses. We want the unconditional freeing of the people. That entails the liberation of the means of production and distribution. At this point, we’re gonna start with basic STPs, and these ain’t gonna change basic social conditions in and of themselves. But if people are gonna make revolution, they first have to survive. We are an internationalist organization, and we uniting with all working class people around the world. Now is the time for people to take their own destiny into their hands. All power to the people man, and thanks again Steve.
BASICS: Thanks again for being with BASICS.
http://basicsnews.ca/2011/11/interview-with-john-mac-gaskins-new-afrikan-black-panther-party/
Surveillance video of prison murder obtained by Bristol Herald Courier
November 14, 2011
Next Post
November 3, 2011
Friends and Comrades,
Supporting Prisoners and Acting for Radical Change–SPARC–recently expanded from Appalachia to the DC area.
Article on John Watson in Tri Cities newspaper
October 29, 2011
Red Onion inmate accused in slaying of cellmate remains locked in segregation
Published: October 29, 2011
An inmate accused of killing his cellmate at the state’s supermax-security prison remains locked in segregation for the slaying even though charges have not been placed.
The Bristol Herald Courier has learned that John Keyvann Watson, 31, is blamed for the Sept. 6 death of Kawaski Bass, 31, at the Red Onion State Prison, located in Pound.
Corrections officials and investigators refuse to confirm that Watson is a suspect because the investigation is ongoing.
Watson, in a hand-written letter sent to his mother weeks after the incident, writes that he killed Bass while defending himself against a sexual assault that had brewed since they were first thrown into the same cell.
“This dude slept nude (until i said some things) was living in filth, wanted to have some homosexual conversation w/ me (which i cut off) and practically ran the cell, because my plan from day one was to ‘get moved’ ma’,” Watson wrote.
Watson is serving 103 years for two counts of second-degree murder that stem from a 2002 attack in Richmond, court records show. The Virginia Department of Corrections has tentatively set his good-time release date for Sept. 7, 2100.
He wrote that he is now in segregation waiting to learn whether he will be charged.
Bass was serving a 65-year sentence for the 1998 and 1999 convictions of robbery, use of a firearm, carjacking, assault and battery, and conspiracy in several Virginia counties and had a good-time release date of Jan. 21, 2061.
Of the fight, Watson wrote: “It all came to a head after [recreation] one mornin’ when i came back in and he ask me a homo-sexual derogatory question. i responded with a ‘What?!’ and stood up as … he approach in a threatening [manner] both physical and sexual. He hit me first, I hit him. We fought.”
Watson’s mother, Deborah Delaware, said in a telephone interview that her son had just finished a seven-year stint in segregation when he was moved into a cell with Bass. Investigators are labeling the slaying as either a gang-related attack or a contract killing, she said.
Neither scenario makes sense to Delaware: “He’s getting ready to be transferred to Sussex [a lower-security prison near the state’s southeast corner] and he kills somebody? Does that make any sense to you?”
Wise County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ron Elkins confirmed that Watson initially was being readied for transfer to a general-population prison. Elkins refused to discuss any specifics about the investigation, however.
Watson, in the Sept. 27 letter to his mother, wrote that he asked to be transferred to another cell almost as soon as he met Bass.
“They moved me into a cell w/ a dude that i knew i was going to clash w/ so before i even went into the cell i told counselor Lewis as well as Sgt. Middleton that i didn’t like this dude nor did i care to be in the cell w/ him,” he wrote.
Both men shared the same cell for roughly three weeks, Watson wrote.
Inmates at Red Onion can request a cell change by submitting a form explaining why they want to switch, Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor explained in an e-mail.
Delaware said that other Red Onion inmates have written to her that Bass was a known sexual predator at the prison.
“If the inmates knew it, then the institution knew it, too,” she said.
Traylor said he could not confirm or discuss any specifics regarding an inmate’s file.
Watson wrote that he was embarrassed by Bass’ advances: “i was shook up because i never had nobody try no stuff like that w/ me … i didn’t know the first thing to do plus my pride played a major part. i didn’t want to mention it to nobody … i mean what would i say?!”
mowens@bristolnews.com
(276) 645-2549
http://www2.tricities.com/business/2011/oct/29/red-onion-inmate-accused-slaying-cellmate-remains–ar-1418890/
John Watson Being Held in “Security Threat Pod” without Charge
October 20, 2011
SPARC is issuing an urgent request for members of the media and all concerned to investigate the claims coming from Red Onion State Prison authorities regarding the death of prisoner Kawaski Bass and to further scrutinize the reasons prison staff and administration is are accusing his former cellmate, John Watson, of a gang-related murder.
The following account is our effort to clarify and deepen the incident first described in Michael Owens’ September 8, 2011 article entitled “Red Onion State Prison inmate dies of unnatural causes”, as well as an effort to impel the public to question why such scant information has been released by prison staff and administration regarding this event.
On September 6th 2011, Kawaski Bass was killed as a result of self-defense on the part of his cellmate, John Watson. According to Watson and his family’s account, Bass had attempted to rape Watson, which led to a confrontation between the two leading to Bass’s death. This incident was the culmination of weeks of uneasiness on the part of Watson, who was waiting to be transferred out of Red Onion. Watson had explicitly told his counselor and Correctional staff that he was not comfortable sharing a cell with Bass due to his reputation for predatory behavior. The officials informed Watson that this would only be a temporary situation and that Watson would be moved out in a period of no more than “a few days.”
As Watson has indicated to us, he continued to press for relocation for at least three weeks. During this time tensions between the two cellmates intensified as Bass persistently sexually propositioned Watson and disrobed in front of him. Mr. Bass lost his life when these tensions escalated to a point where Bass forced himself upon Watson.
Mr. Watson was immediately placed in a “security threat pod”, segregated from general population and threatened to be charged with the murder, which prison administration stated was “gang-related.”
Despite this allegation, Watson has a known history of being a non-violent offender throughout his time at Red Onion State Prison. Mr. Watson’s three-year record of non-violence scheduled him to be transferred out of Red Onion into a lower-security facility within months.
To this day Watson has not received any formal chargesbeen formally charged for this incident despite continued threats and accusations that this murder was “gang-affiliated” and as well as claims made by one Red Onion investigator in particular, T. Adams, claiming that Watson was, in fact, a member of The Bloods gang.
The entire incident, in which one man lost his life and another sent to isolation, could have been avoided had the prison officials heeded Mr. Watson’s concerns and taken proper precautions to not pair these two individuals together. This incident is a direct result of prison negligence.
SPARC on WMMT FM 88.7 from Whitesburg, KY
October 18, 2011
SPARC will be on the airwaves every Monday on WMMT’s Holler to Hood program from Whitesburg, KY.
