Category: Wilderness Defence

by Daniel McGowan

I cur­rent­ly reside at a halfway house in Brook­lyn, serv­ing out the last few months of a sev­en-year sen­tence for my role in arsons cred­it­ed to the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front (ELF) at two lum­ber com­pa­nies in Ore­gon in 2001.  My case, and the fed­er­al government’s rush to pros­e­cute envi­ron­men­tal activism as a form of ter­ror­ism, were recent­ly explored in the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed doc­u­men­tary, If a Tree Falls: A Sto­ry of the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front. 

What has received less atten­tion, though, is what hap­pened to me while in fed­er­al prison.  I was a low secu­ri­ty pris­on­er with a spot­less dis­ci­pli­nary record, and my sen­tenc­ing judge rec­om­mend­ed that I be held at a prison close to home.  But one year into my sen­tence, I was abrupt­ly trans­ferred to an exper­i­men­tal seg­re­ga­tion unit, opened under the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, that is euphemisti­cal­ly called a “Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Man­age­ment Unit” (CMU).  Since August 2008, when I first arrived at the CMU, I have been try­ing to get answers as to why I was sin­gled out to be sent there.  Only now — three years after I filed a fed­er­al law­suit to get to the truth — have I learned why the Fed­er­al Bureau of Pris­ons (BOP) sent me to the CMU: they sim­ply did not like what I had to say in my pub­lished writ­ing and per­son­al let­ters.  In short, based on its dis­agree­ment with my polit­i­cal views, the gov­ern­ment sent me to a prison unit from which it would be hard­er for me to be heard, serv­ing as a pun­ish­ment for my beliefs.

The first of the two CMUs was opened qui­et­ly, with­out the pub­lic scruti­ny required by law, in 2006 in Terre Haute, Indi­ana; the Mar­i­on, Illi­nois CMU fol­lowed in 2008.  In fact, at a hear­ing in my case before I was sen­tenced, my attor­neys argued that giv­ing me the “ter­ror­ism enhance­ment” could result in my des­ig­na­tion to a CMU.  How right they were! The units are designed to iso­late pris­on­ers from the rest of the pris­on­er pop­u­la­tion, and more impor­tant­ly, from the rest of the world.  They impose strict lim­i­ta­tions on your phone calls home and vis­its from fam­i­ly and friends — you have far less access to calls and vis­its than in gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion.  The com­mu­ni­ca­tions restric­tions at the CMUs are, in some respects, harsh­er than those at ADX, the noto­ri­ous fed­er­al “Super­max” prison in Col­orado.  Also, unlike ADX, they are not based on a pris­on­ers’  dis­ci­pli­nary vio­la­tions. When my wife and loved ones vis­it­ed me at the CMUs, we were banned from any phys­i­cal con­tact what­so­ev­er.  All inter­ac­tions where con­duct­ed over a tele­phone, with Plex­i­glas  and bars between us.  Until they were threat­ened with legal action, CMU pris­on­ers were only allowed one sin­gle 15-minute phone call per week.

T‑shirt design from Daniel’s sup­port cam­paign. These can still be ordered here.

This is very dif­fer­ent from most pris­ons.  I start­ed my sen­tence at FCI Sand­stone — a low secu­ri­ty facil­i­ty in Min­neso­ta.  I nev­er received a sin­gle inci­dent report the whole time I was there and stayed in touch with my fam­i­ly by phone and through vis­its.  The impor­tance of main­tain­ing these fam­i­ly con­nec­tions can­not be over­stat­ed.  My calls home were, for exam­ple, the only way I could build a rela­tion­ship with my then two-and-a-half year old niece.   When my fam­i­ly would vis­it, it was incred­i­bly impor­tant to all of us to be able to hug and hold hands in a brief moment of semi-nor­mal­cy and inti­ma­cy. It was these vis­its that allowed us to main­tain our close con­tact with each oth­er through a time of phys­i­cal dis­con­nec­tion, trau­ma and dis­tress.

What’s also notable about the CMUs is who is sent there. It became quick­ly obvi­ous to me that many CMU pris­on­ers were there because of their reli­gion or in retal­i­a­tion for their speech. By my count, around two-thirds of the men are Mus­lim, many of whom have been caught up in the so-called “war on ter­ror,” oth­ers who just spoke out for their rights or alleged­ly took lead­er­ship posi­tions in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty at oth­er facil­i­ties. Some, like me, were pris­on­ers who have polit­i­cal views and per­spec­tives that are not shared by the Depart­ment of Jus­tice.

While serv­ing my time I was eager to stay involved in the social jus­tice move­ments I care about, so I con­tin­ued to write polit­i­cal pieces, some of which were pub­lished on this web­site [the Huff­in­g­ton Post].  No one in the BOP ever told me to stop, or warned me that I was vio­lat­ing any rules.  But then, with­out a word of warn­ing, I was called to the dis­charge area one after­noon in May 2008 and sent to the CMU at Mar­i­on.  Ten days after I arrived, still con­fused about where I was and why, I was giv­en a sin­gle sheet of paper called a “Notice of Trans­fer.”  It includ­ed a few sen­tences about my con­vic­tion, much of which was incor­rect, by way of expla­na­tion for my CMU des­ig­na­tion.  I was pro­vid­ed no oth­er infor­ma­tion about why the BOP believed I need­ed to be sent to this iso­la­tion unit.  Frus­trat­ed, I filed admin­is­tra­tive griev­ances to try to get the infor­ma­tion cor­rect­ed, and find out how this deci­sion had been made.  When that did not work, I filed a request for doc­u­ments under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act.  I got nowhere.  The BOP would not fix the infor­ma­tion, and wouldn’t explain why they thought I belonged in a CMU.

So I decid­ed to con­tact lawyers at the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights, hav­ing known their his­to­ry of strong advo­ca­cy on these issues. We brought a fed­er­al law­suit on behalf of myself and oth­er CMU pris­on­ers to chal­lenge poli­cies, prac­tices and our des­ig­na­tion to the CMUs. The law­suit, Aref v. Hold­er, was filed in April 2010, and chal­lenges the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of var­i­ous polices and prac­tices at the CMUs, includ­ing the lack of mean­ing­ful process asso­ci­at­ed with des­ig­na­tion to the units, and the lack of any mean­ing­ful way to “step down” from the units.  The law­suit con­tends that this lack of trans­paren­cy and process has allowed peo­ple to be sent to the CMUs based on, for exam­ple, their pro­tect­ed speech.  Through dis­cov­ery in the case, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has final­ly been forced to hand over pre­vi­ous­ly-unseen mem­o­ran­da  explain­ing why I was picked out to be sent a CMU.  Authored by Leslie Smith, the Chief of the BOP’s so-called “Counter Ter­ror­ism Unit,” and cat­a­loging in detail some of the things I have said in the past years, they make one thing clear: I was sent to the CMU on the basis of speech that the BOP just dis­agrees with.

The fol­low­ing speech is list­ed in these mem­os to jus­ti­fy my des­ig­na­tion to these ultra-restric­tive units:

My attempts to “unite” envi­ron­men­tal and ani­mal lib­er­a­tion move­ments, and to “edu­cate” new mem­bers of the move­ment about errors of the past; my writ­ings about “whether mil­i­tan­cy is tru­ly effec­tive in all sit­u­a­tions”; a let­ter I wrote dis­cussing bring­ing uni­ty to the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment by focus­ing on glob­al issues; the fact that I was “pub­lish­ing [my] points of view on the inter­net in an attempt to act as a spokesper­son for the move­ment”; and the BOP’s belief that, through my writ­ing, I have “con­tin­ued to demon­strate [my] sup­port for anar­chist and rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal ter­ror­ist groups.”

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment may not agree with or like what I have to say about the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment, or oth­er social jus­tice issues. I do not par­tic­u­lar­ly care as the role of an activist is not to tai­lor one’s views to those in pow­er. But as Aref v. Hold­er con­tends, every­thing I have writ­ten is core polit­i­cal speech that is pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment.  It may be true that courts have held that a prisoner’s free­dom of speech is more restrict­ed than that of oth­er mem­bers of the pub­lic.  But no court has ever said that means that a pris­on­er is not free to express polit­i­cal views and beliefs that pose no dan­ger to prison secu­ri­ty and do not involve crim­i­nal acts.  In fact, decades of First Amend­ment jurispru­dence has refused to tol­er­ate restric­tions that are con­tent-based and moti­vat­ed by the sup­pres­sion of expres­sion.  And courts have rec­og­nized that when a pris­on­er is writ­ing to an audi­ence in the out­side world, as I was, it’s not just the prisoner’s First Amend­ment rights that are at stake: the entire public’s free­dom of speech is impli­cat­ed.

I do not know what is hap­pen­ing with the men I got to know in the CMUs but I know they are still deal­ing with every­thing I had to deal with — iso­la­tion from the out­side world, strained rela­tion­ships, always being on eggshells about the con­stant sur­veil­lance and nev­er know­ing when they will get out of the CMU. 

It is becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that the BOP is using these units to silence peo­ple, and to crack down on unpop­u­lar polit­i­cal speech. They have become units where the BOP can dump pris­on­ers they have issues with or whose polit­i­cal beliefs they find anath­e­ma. In the months that come, with CCR’s help, I hope to prove that in court and show what is hap­pen­ing at the CMUs. This needs to be dragged into the sun­light.

Fol­low Daniel McGowan on Twit­ter: www.twitter.com/@thetinyraccoon