Support Kinross Prisoners: Call in to Oaks Facility & Michigan Department of Corrections

Social Media Event Here

We are asking for a phone zap to support prisoners inside that are facing continuous retaliation from last fall’s Kinross rebellion. (See script below and phone numbers).

Context

On September 10th, 2016 over 400 prisoners protested peacefully at Kinross Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as a part of the September 9 nationwide prison workers’ strike.

The prisoners met with the wardens to peacefully communicate their demands. These demands included better wages, better quality and quantity of food, and no retaliation for the peaceful protest. To read more about the September 9th Prison Strike, go here.

Yet about 150 prisoners from Kinross were accused of being instigators and were transferred to a bunch of different facilities. In at least some cases, they were accused of “incite to riot” and placed in higher-security levels and disciplinary isolation.

More recently we have gotten reports of the continued retaliations to people transferred from Kinross to Oaks Facility:

“I still don’t know when exactly I will be taken off of this ‘administrative segregation’ they have all of us on. We all went to get our monthly review this past Thursday and we were told that ‘they still don’t know what Lansing wants to do with us, and maybe by the middle of June they will be able to tell us something.’ Something about this is very strange though. All of us Kinross people that are here are still in the hole except for the few guys that they have been riding out to level five. And we were told from our unit counselor that Lansing took the hold off of us. All the keep telling us is ‘maybe next month!’ They’ve been saying that for the past three months! The living conditions that they have us in at this facility are so terrible. Any other facility that has long term segregation allows you to use the phone twice a month, order food to eat, watch t.v. They don’t have any of that for us here. We truly do not have a voice at all in anything that is being done to us right now! …the oaks facility is still holding well over 50 guys from Kinross, inside their segregation units…they are going to keep all of us us Kinross guys in the hole until they figure out what they are going to do with this facility because they don’t have enough bed space here…while they take their previous time trying to figure out what they want to do to the facility we get to suffer longer.”

We are calling for a coordinated phone blast concentrated over the next week (but feel free to not stop there). We are asking for people to call Michigan Department of Corrections director Heidi Washington and the warden from Oaks Facility, Thomas Mackie to tell them the retaliations need to stop.

After calling, please comment on this Facebook page to let us know what happened.

Sample script

“HI. THIS MESSAGE IS FOR (Heidi Washington/Thomas Mackie). I’M CALLING ABOUT ALL THE PRISONERS WHO WERE TRANSFERRED FROM KINROSS TO OAKS FACILITY AFTER THEIR NONVIOLENT DEMONSTRATION ON SEPTEMBER 10. I DEMAND THAT ALL CHARGES AGAINST THEM BE DROPPED, THAT ALL OF THEM BE REMOVED FROM DISCIPLINARY SEGREGATION, THAT THEY BE RETURNED TO THEIR PREVIOUS SECURITY LEVELS AND THE GENERAL POPULATION, AND THAT THERE BE NO FURTHER RETALIATION AGAINST THEM OF ANY KIND.”

MDOC Director, Heidi Washington:
517-241-7238, (if there’s no answer, leave a message on her assistant’s phone, Sandra Simon).

Oaks Correctional Facility (ECF):
SECURITY LEVELS: II and IV
TELEPHONE: (231) 723-8272
Warden: Thomas Mackie

Remember you are not required to give out your government name to make a complaint. We would ask that no detailed information about prisoner solidarity groups be given, as many groups are trying to maintain communication with people incarcerated and do not want to invite more scrutiny.