In The Belly, Vol 3

Our third issue just reached comrades in PA, through their painfully slow book delivery system. That means we are posting it online now. Here are two PDFs, one is a reader and one is a Booklet, thanks to the comrades who made this beautiful booklet-making tool In The Belly 3, Reader: in-the-belly-vol-3-readerDownload https://abolitioniststudy.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/in-the-belly-vol-3-reader.pdf In The …

You Gotta Learn the History: an Interview with Michael “Safear” Ness

Michael “Safear” Ness is an imprisoned abolitionist organizer at SCI-Fayette in Pennsylvania. IA is an outside friend and comrade.  IA: When and how did you become an abolitionist in your thinking? And in your practice? Safear: I’ve been radical since before abolition was in my vocabulary. Meaning, I was always someone who wanted to understand …

Defend Stevie Against Violent Retaliation!

Image: "Bars 1" by Josh MacPhee, thanks to JustSeeds. Description: Black background, with white bars bent and broken in the middle. Stephen Wilson, a Black queer abolitionist organizer and a prisoner of the state of Pennsylvania, is once again facing retaliation, harassment, and repression at SCI-Fayette. A rank-and-file prison cop named Digiacomo, who has for …

Study Groups & Moving Together: An Interview with Stephen Wilson

image credit: Fences, by Rini Templeton, thanks to JustSeeds Stephen Wilson is a Black queer abolitionist writing, organizing, and building study groups and community behind the wall at SCI-Fayette in Pennsylvania. Ian Alexander is his friend and comrade on the outside. This interview is the first in a series that will be published together as a …

Who’s Got A Hand In This Sh*t?

By Michael "Safear" Ness (Written January 22, 2021) The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections refuses to waste money on individual COVID-19 tests for the prisoner population, instead preferring to test each prison's accumulated sewage for COVID levels. An official PA DOC memo dated January 21, 2021 from Secretary of Corrections John E. Wetzel states, "Facilities will …

Vaccine Fact Sheet

Our brilliant Chicago comrades at NU Abolition & Northside Prisoner Letter Writing Coalition made this fact sheet to send to all your imprisoned friends and contacts. Please send and share widely! "Vaccine hesitancy in the Black community and prison populations is a result of decades of medical neglect and abuse and is a fair reaction …

In The Belly Special Issue

The Imprisoned Black Radical Tradition DEAR COMRADES, This is not Volume 3 of In The Belly, it’s a special issue. While ITB is regularly written primarily by imprisoned people, Editor-In-Chief Stephen Wilson wanted to share this document with you. It is a roundtable, a series of interviews, that he conducted with a group of non-incarcerated …

Solidarity with Garrett Felber!

By Stephen Wilson ‘The things prisoners wrote really jumped off the page.’ Illustration: Eva Bee https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/nov/10/writing-to-prisoners-unlocks-more-than-you-would-think Whenever you conceptualize social justice struggles, you will always defeat your own purposes if you cannot imagine the people around whom you are struggling as equal partners. Therefore if, and this is one of the problems with all reform …

Why Should Prisoners Embrace Indigenous Resistance?

An Imprisoned Abolitionist Analysis of Our History is the Future by Nick Estes By Safear Before you celebrate Thanksgiving this year, take some time to learn the true history of the Indigenous people of America. In the mythology of American propaganda, the Indigenous are portrayed as characters in a story from the past. Have you …

Two Missives from a PA Prison, from Comrade Elliot

ONE: What's so sad now a days these young men would rather fight someone over $5 then peacefully stand up for their rights and what they believe in. I must specify because these devils are crafty that everything I am doing and attempt to do in the future is PEACEFUL so I do not care …