THE COLONIZER’S CORPSE

A LIBERATORY APPROACH TO MAINTAINING MENTAL
HEALTH WHILE SUBJECT TO ISOLATION IN PRISON

SEAN SWAIN
Introduction

I received a letter from Joanna Saul, Director of the Correction-
al Institution Inspection Committee (CIIC), which oversees the
prison complex the the Ohio General Assembly. She wrote, in
part, *..CIIC is currently working on a resource for inmates in
segregation or maximum security. We would very much appreci-
ate hearing from you and other inmates regarding your segrega-
tion experience and, in particular, how you stayed emotionally
and mentally strong in segregation? Our hope is to provide sug-
gestions to inmates in segregation for how to cope with being
locked down for 23 hours a day. What advice would you give an
inmate who is going to segregation?”

My Response to this Invitation

*..For the colonized, liberation springs only from the corpse of
the colonizer:” -Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth

Segregation is a traumatic experience. To stay sane, to stay mentally
organized, you have to first be sane and mentally organized. That is,
a “crazy” person can't stay sane because a crazy person isn't sane to
begin with. So this is key: You have to think in a way that makes sense;
you have to care about yourself and you have to be committed to act”
ing in such a way that serves you best. That's kind of a working defi
nition of sanity-thinking, and then, as a result, acting, in a way that
makes sense.

Thinking is key. You have to use your head for something other than a
hat rack. Especially if you are spending a long time in segregation or
isolation, since you'll be spending a lot of time inside your own head.
Any place you spend that much time you have to pay attention to the
furniture, 5o to speak, the stuff that fills up your space, what you're
putting in it. What do you put in your head space? This is important
because what goes on inside your head is more critical than what'
going on in the world around you.

People caring about themselves have to make sure they see the world
clearly. You can't react in a way that makes sense if you don't under-
stand what's really happening to you. So sane people-people who

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think and act in ways that serve their interests best-have to first face
the reality that confronts them. This means not running away from
painful truths. This means being honest with yourself. If you want
to stay sane you can't run away from your experience or try to hide
from it. You have to face it. But you face it with clear understanding.
You use your mind and you look deeply at the experience so you can
understand what it is that is happening and why it is happening, and
then you can develop for yourself a plan or an approach for acting
sane, for acting in your own best interests, and maybe even using this
experience to gair some wisdom, an opportunity o grow.

‘The place to start is by understanding the situation you are facing,
how you got there, and why it is happening to you.

“Rehabilitation never offered mental health, just the reverse. It in-
volves communication only with staff who aré not worth any contact
atall. o listen to their philosophy, or accept their outlook will destroy
you..."-Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide

Segregation and isolation are trauma. It hurts. This is the reality of it.
What you are experiencing is designed to be painful. The State, the
authorities, the ones who keep you locked up, have designed a sys-
tem, and have perfected that system, for causing you trauma. In fact,
the government has written books and manuals on it. These manuals
were written in order to teach the people who keep you locked up so
they can use, ‘the principle coercive techniques™ of “arrest, deten-
tion, deprivation of sensory stimuli through solitary confinement...
threats and fear...” What this means is, the ones who keep you locked
up will use a combination of these things in order to cause a response
from you. The response they want to cause is “debility, dependence,
and dread” “Debility” means the opposite of “ability.” Debility is, in a
sense, making someone worse, breaking them in some way. “Depen-
dence” is the opposite of “independence.” Dependence is where you
can't do for yourself any more, and you must count on someone else
to do for you. “Dread” s like fear, only it also means to lose hope.

So the reality of your situation is, the people in charge have figured
out the method for turning you into someone less able, broken, and
hopeless, all by putting you through conditions that are very pain-
ful. As the process continues, “day after day if necessary, the subject
begins to try to make sense of the situation, which becomes men-
tally intolerable” “Intolerable” means you can't stand it. Your sit
tion is designed to cause “the maximum amount of discomfort..” In
this “mentally intolerable” situation you face, a situation designed to
cause “the maximum amount of discomfort, it deprives your mind

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of “contact with an outer world and thus forcing it in on itself..” The
trauma you experience “after weeks or months of imprisonment in
an ordinary cell can be duplicated in hours or days” in isolation. As
the CIA manual concludes, describing the conditions of confinement
you will experience in segregation and maximum security, “..in the
Simple torture situation, the contest is one between the individual
and his tormentor..”

‘This is not presented to shock you or to scare you. It is presented so
that you can have a clear idea of what you face. Only by seeing reality
asit is can you react to it in a way that makes the most sense for you.
You have to see what you face and what it is designed to do to you,
and when you know that, when you can see it for what it is, you are
better equipped to respond to it.

Whatever you did to come to prison (or didn't do), and whatever you
did to go to segregation or level 4 (or didn't do), you are in the cus
tody of people who want to make your life “mentally intolerable,” and
they are putting you through “the simple torture situation.”

‘They know that what they are doing to you will not make you a better
person. They are not doing this to you to * help” you or to “reform”
you. This is designed to destroy you. This is very important to know,
because it can guide your approach to this trauma, this “simple tor-
ture situation,” if you recognize that you are not being “corrected, Le.,
made better, but you are being debilitated, i, made worse.

Itis a necessary and healthy thing to call something what it really is.
The words we use have an influence on how we see things. When you
use words, even in your head, like “corrections officer,” and ‘inmate,”
you create a picture of “correcting” a picture of an offender who has
offended; but when you use the same words, even if just in your head,
that are used by the very same people who wrote the manuals and
designed this system, you see a “tormentor” and a “subject,” you see a
“simple torture situation” that involves torturer and a victim.

Why is this important? Because you can't expect ice cream to come
out of a toaster. A toaster is a machine that is designed to do one
thing. So if you hold your cone under the toaster and expect ice cream
to come out, you are going to be very disappointed. The same is true
for the prison’s isolation unit. This is a machine thatis designed to do
one thing.

Don't expect this machine to do anything else. You are in the “simple
torture situation” Itis a simple fact that you cannot expect those who

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biect you to this “simple torture situation” to offer you any real as-
sistance. People who torture are not nice people.

If you expect them to be kind and caring and good, you are expecting
ice cream to fall out of a toaster.

It may be that you have met staff who seem like they are shocked and
saddened by the conditions they witness. They may talk about how
things are unfair and how the situation needs to change. They may
even try to address some conditions that they think are too much.
‘They take no personal joy from the suffering they see and they make
it clear that they are “only doing their jobs."

And that is the point, isn't it? They do their jobs. They work, they
keep it going, and they receive their pay-checks for doing “their jobs."
Their jobs include keeping you in “debility, dependence, and dread”
So “their jobs” are to serve the “tormentor” and they do those jobs,
despite the harm it will cause you.

We mustalso consider that everyone working for this machine knows
what it does to you. Hundreds of studies have shown again and again
how isolation causes mental illness in humans. But more than that,
by the manuals that were written, we know that's what it's designed
to do. This is no mistake. This is no accidental result that happens
again and again and again, any more than a Toyota Camry “acciden-
tally” comes off the end of the assembly line at the factory over and
over and over again.

The factory makes cars. It's designed to. The isolation unit makes
broken minds. It's designed to.

And beyond that, think about it: Why is this “resource” being written?
Its being written because staff at the CIIC recognize that the brutal,
harsh conditions of isolation are causing prisoners to become men-
tally ill so, rather than end the practice of driving prisoners insane,
they opt to give you advice from prisoners who have survived a pro-
cess designed to drive them insane. That speaks loudly. Would “kind,”
“caring," “concerned,” “nice” people work with every ounce of their
beings to shut down a torture machine, or would they hand its vic-
tims a well-produced brochure?

So, for our purposes of staying sane and seeing the situation as it is,
recognizing reality so we can act in our own best interests, we have
toset aside false ideas that really do not ft, that do not serve us hon-
estly. We have to use words that paint an accurate picture.

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You have an enemy. Your enemy is evil-evil personified, and it takes
someone evil to engage in torture. Your evil enemy intends to torture
you for a long, long time, until your mind is broken. The best you can
hope for is for the most sympathetic people to hand you advice on
how to survive their “simple torture situation.” You can only count on
youat this point.

“The State has never any object but to limit the individual, to tame
him, to subordinate him, to subject him to something general; it lasts
only so long as the individual is not all in all, and is only the clearcut
limitation of me, my limitedness, my slavery” -Max Stirner

You may ask, “Why do | want to face this? It feels very hopeless”
What we've done so far is simply an inventory of your reality. You
have some serious forces stacked against you. But you aren't better
offif you don't see it or if you ignore it. You aren't in a better place if
you convince yourself of some fairie tale, some myth that your en-
emy feeds you to keep you asleep and “under control” If you buy into
those lies and let them guide you, the damage you will experience
will be the same; the only difference will be that your actions will be
more predictable and more of a benefit for the torture machine to
keep going and going and going.

If you buy into the false idea that your “tormenters” (the govern-
ment's word, remember) are the “good guys,” and you “put yourself
here,” and you “deserve” this (whatever “this” is), and this trauma is
to “correct” you or make you “better” or “teach you a (pro-social) les-
son,” you will experience the same trauma as everyone who has the
courage to face the truth. The only differences will be that (1) you
won't know why this is happening, (2) you won't be able to figure
out how to prevent your enemy from succeeding because you won't
see what your enemy is really trying to do to you, and (3) you won't
be able to act in your own best interests because you misunderstand
your reality.

So, by facing this reality, you will be establishing a principle that's
absolutely crucial for maintaining your sanity. It this: Always seek
the truth, no matter how bad it is.

One way to think of this is a scene from the movie, “The Matrix” The
main character, Neo, meets Morpheus, who offers Neo the chance to
know the truth. If Neo chooses the red pill, he wakes up to reality. If
he chooses the blue pill, he remains asleep.

If you want to get through the “simple torture situation” and survive

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what your “tormentor” does to you, choose the red pill.
Always choose the red pill.

Once your eyes are open, it gives you things to think about. You can
look at every experience, every single element of your situation, and
you can ask yourself, "Why is the enemy doing this to me? How is this
Supposed to make me feel? How is this supposed to impact my mind
and my health and my struggle? How can I respond to this in a way
that serves my survival and my long-term success?

For instance: Have you ever noticed that most segregation units are
freezing cold all year around? Why is that? Why does the enemy keep
you intolerably cold? First, there’s the discomfort so, on the most
basic level, your enemy simply wants you to suffer. But second, cold
people will seck to get warm and the only feasible strategy for that in
segregation is to get under your covers; you remain inactive in bed.
This serves the enemy in several ways

1. Inactive people burn fewer calories, so the enemy can cut your
food portions and you won't lose weight. Your enemy saves mon-
ey on food.

2.If you're laying in bed, you're not doing something else. You're
not writing letters or buiiding muscles or sharing ideas or build-
ing unity or writing an inspiring poem.

3. People laying in bed will sleep, and sleeping people’s behavior
is predictable.

4. Constant cold has a psychological impact, as it wears on your
morale and makes you feel hopeless. It contributes to the assault
on your mind.

Once you recognize this and see the truth of it, what can you do? Well,
for a start, simply knowing what is being dore to you (and knowing
why) makes the intolerable a bit more tolerable. The cold is a tactic
being used on you. And when you know your enemy’s designs, you
can use your head to prevent his success.

How? Tiwo ways. There are actions you can take to “adjust to the con-
ditions;” and actions you can take to “change the conditions.”

Actions you can take to adjust to the conditions would be to find al-
ternatives for staying warm. If you have 3 pairs of socks, wear 2 of
them and use the third pair as mittens so you can stay up, stay awake,
read and write. You can wrap blankets around you while you pace the

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floor: You can write a poem or a rap and between verses you do push
ups~this keeps you in shape and keeps you warm. You can pace and
think and geta good understanding of the situation you face, and then
share your insight with other prisoners so they too have the tools to
effectively struggle and maintain. You can read literature from others
who share your perspective and write to them, finding ways to coop-
erate and build relationships and start projects.

Which leads to actions that “change the conditions” You may decide
that adjusting to conditions isn't good enough; you want the condi
tions to change. Rather than wrapping yourselfin blankets, you want
to make the enemy’s torture machine turn the heat up. This is a very
different approach from “adjusting.”

What can you do to make the torture machine turn up the heat? And,
at the same time, within that question is another question: What can
you do to stand up for your dignity and affirm your human value and
Combat the forces that work toward your destruction? And still an-
other question: What can you do to take a healthy and affirmative
approach to exercise your own personal power in order to change
the world for the better and give yourself something to feel a sense of
accomplishment?

There exists a prison grievance process, but this is an open joke
among prisoners and staffalike. The grievance process serves to mis
direct prisoners from engaging in any effective response to wrongs
and serves as a kind of gauntlet where prison officials can identify
future possible lawsuits and employ a harassment campaign to co-
erce potential prisoner litigants to give up. At its best, the grievance
process represents an effort to get a career prisoncrat to declare that
other career prisoncrats wronged a convicted felon no one cares
about.

Being able to see the grievance process as a tool of your enemy’s pro-
gram liberates you to think of other ways to exercise your personal
power to change conditions. What else can you do?

Individual actions are very limited. The enemy has a vast machine.
So,itis a good idea to build a working group, a collective of prisoners
who cooperate in struggle. The larger the number of prisoners will-
ing to struggle, the more collective power you can bring against the
enemy.

Mention must be made here that your enemy may appeal to “rules”
that the enemy imposes in order to keep you powerless while trapped

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in the torture machine. In reality, these rules do not exist. The enemy
appeals to “rules” as part of his false mythology that he is “the good
guy” and you are “the bad guy,” that he is “correcting’ you because you
are “maladjusted,” that all of this is for “your own good” and you “did
this to yourself” and these “rules are necessary.”

Reality is quite the opposite. Your enemy tortures human beings. Your
enemy is evil personified. Anyone who tortures has no respect for laws
or rules or morals or the basic foundations of human relations, so any
appeal to “rules” is really a trick, a manipulation to get you to aban-
don any strategy that would be effective for forcing real, substantive
change. In reality, it is not “moral” or “right” to abide by the enemy’s
“rules” and abandon efforts to stop his evil agenda. In fact, it can eas-
ily be argued that you have a moral duty, an ethical responsibility to
stop torturers by what Malcolm X referred to as “any means neces-
sary” Your inaction, your following the “rules,” guarantees that others
will be tortured and destroyed, perhaps generation after generation,
their minds mangled by a machine designed to tear apart human be”
ings from the inside out.

Itis both immoral and psychologically unhealthy not to resist evil.

So, from this view, it becomes necessary to engage the enemy in the
most effective way to save the most lives. To do that, you must bring
pressure, leverage upon your enemy. To borrow from his own play-
book, you must make his situation “intolerable;” and create the situ-
ation where torturing you (or continuing those conditions you most
wish to change) becomes more costly, more painful, and more trouble-
some than meeting your demands.

From a lockdown isolation unit there is little that can be done. How-
ever, those tactics that can be engaged can be very effective.

For instance, prisoners can simultaneously flush toilets and break
pipes. Plumbing is designed to hold only a certain amount of water
flow. Repeatedly breaking the pipes becomes costly, time-consuming,
and disruptive for the enemy.

Also, prisoners can block cell door windows and barricade cells, re-
quiring the enemy to summon cell-extraction teams. This becomes
costly, time-consuming and disruptive.

‘These kinds of tactics are most effective if sustained by large numbers
of prisoners over a duration of time.
From a superficial analysis, this kind of approach could be seen as
“self-defeating” or “maladjusted;” particularly if someone sees the
torturer’s system as legitimate. Persons under this kind of delusion
would be horrified by this advice and would instead urge prisoners
to go along with the program, to be the proverbial “good Germans,”
little Adolf Eichmanns following orders and keeping the program go-
ing. Their position is built upon the false belief that “good behavior,”
i conduct that does not disrupt the torture machine’s efficiency, is
rewarded, while “bad behavior” i.¢., conduct that disrupts the torture
machine’s efficiency is punished appropriately.

‘This myth is so provably absurd it does not even merit a response.

However it must be pointed out that there is what seems to be a con-
tradiction - since resistance will provoke a state response, is it not
fair to say that engaging in struggle is not acting in one’s own best
interests? This is a valid question, and the answer depends upon
whether you look at your short-term, immediate interests, or wheth-

er you look at your long-term, larger interests. Do you care more
about your immediate situation, your immediate personal comfort?
If so, then you serve those interests better by going along with the
enemy’s torture program and helping his evil agenda continue. But
if you care about your sanity - which is really the important priority,
the true topic of all of this - then you must act in a way that preserves
your dignity, your principles, and your sense of justice by exercising
personal power and contributing to a greater good, even at the ex-
pense of your immediate well-being.

To give an example of this conflict of interests, consider a hunger-
striker who suffers hunger and diminished health in order to force
the enemy to meet important demands related to human dignity. One
may argue that it is “insane” for the hunger-striker to harm themself,
that long-term sanity cannot be served if the hunger-striker starves
to death. But from another view, the hunger-striker sees the “harm”
of hunger and health effects far outweighed by the greater “harm”
caused by the conditions that the hunger-striker struggles to change.

This is a far more valid conception from a mental health perspective,
though an uneasy and uncomfortable one for apologists of state pow-
er since, by this conception, “suicide bombers” can be understood as
engaging in a perfectly healthy response, from a psychological per-
spective, if the so-called “suicide bombers” are acting under a firm
belief that their actions will result in changes that will benefit their
children or future generations. In that way, a suicide bomber, psycho-
logically speaking, would be no different from a soldier jumping onto

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a grenade to save his platoon, except one is a bit more assertive and
proactive.

Conclusion: Psychological Necessity of Revolutionary Violence

Asafinal note, those who defend the torture machine may object that
the approach advocated here “promotes violence.” Again, this analy-
sis proceeds from the delusion that the torturers are "good” and “val-
id” and “right”

A more accurate assessment is to say that the state itself is violence.
Its every component is violence, from its means for maintaining itself
to every project the state undertakes.

The state maintains itself through taxation: Pay, or else. It compels
obedience: Obey the laws, or else. It defends the economic status quo
and its ruling elite: Work, or else. It has now intruded into our mental
lives, dictating what we can think and believe (or else). So, in this con-
text, even the state’s most “benevolent” “service,” at best, rests upon a
billy-club, a shot-gun, or an Apache attack helicopter:

In light of this, there is never an absence of violence so long as the
state exists. The state makes violence inevitable. The only question
is whether the state will be unilaterally punching the subjects in the
face, as it has for centuries, or whether the subjects will be punching
the state back.

If peace, the absence of violence, can only be achieved in the absence
of the state, which is itself violerce, then with any action undertaken
tolimit or diminish the state, no matter how “violent” the action, the
cause of peace is better served. This is not really an opinion, but is an
objective observation of fact that really isn't disputable.

If someone wants peace and not violence, it's necessary to tear down
the state’s torture machine. This is not just a matter of social justice,
morality, or political theory, but is an indispensible approach for the
maintenance of individual mental health for those trapped in the

“simple torture situation.” »
gt
SEAN SWAINIS AN ANARCHISTPRISONER 7
HELD HOSTAGE BY THE STATE OF OHIO. r4, £ »
WRITE TO SEAN AT: ot ” w
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