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Tag: Prison

Did Prison Officials Single Out Political Prisoner Barrett Brown For Solitary Confinement?

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

According to reports from supporters on social media, Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials moved imprisoned journalist Barrett Brown into solitary confinement last week.

Brown is an outspoken and controversial journalist who worked closely with Anonymous during the peak of that movement in the early years of this decade. The government noticed this collaboration and targeted Brown for prosecution during their campaign against the hacktivist group Lulzsec, a high-profile subgroup of Anonymous, which also resulted in the imprisonment of political prisoner Jeremy Hammond.

Brown was sentenced to 63 months in prison in January. In addition, he must pay about $800,000 in restitution to Strategic Forecasting, the corporate intelligence agency based in Austin, Texas, that was a target of Lulzsec hacking.

Activists Bring Solitary Confinement To College Campus For Alvaro Luna Hernandez

Posted in Austin, Journalism, and MintPress News

Dressed in a real prisoner’s clothing, an activist sat in silence on a busy college campus, alone inside a simulated solitary confinement cell drawn in chalk, on Thursday. Thousands of Texas prisoners spend about 23 hours a day in tiny confines with real walls holding them inside.

“Will you sign a postcard for my friend Alvaro?” asked Azzurra Crispino, another activist standing nearby.

The “prisoner” and his friend are part of Prison Abolition and Prisoner Support (PAPS), an Austin-based group that raises awareness about prison conditions while supporting the incarcerated. They were honoring June 11, a national day of action for long-term anarchist political prisoners held in dozens of cities around the world. For the hour and a half activists and supporters gathered under a shady tree at a corner of the University of Texas at Austin campus, the “prisoner” in the cell represented Alvaro Luna Hernandez, who has spent the last 13 years in solitary confinement in Texas prisons.

Anonymous Hacktivist Jeremy Hammond Promotes Prison Abolition From Behind Bars

Posted in Journalism, Occupy Wall Street, and Truthout

Jeremy Hammond has spent two birthdays in captivity now since his conviction, but his friends have promised to celebrate each one. As with many political prisoners, his supporters send him cards, but they’ve also invented a new tradition: turning his birthday party into political protest against his enemies.

Hammond was sentenced to a decade’s imprisonment in November 2013 for his part in the hack of Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based private intelligence agency. As part of LulzSec, an infamous collective from the Anonymous movement, Hammond liberated 5 million emails and the credit card numbers of Stratfor’s clients, which included government and military officials. The emails became part of a searchable archive on Wikileaks called the Global Intelligence files, while Anonymous used some of the credit card numbers to charge donations to charity.

Chelsea Manning Chronicles Her Incarceration, 140 Characters At A Time On Twitter

Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News

Whistleblower Chelsea Manning may be facing a 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified military documents to WikiLeaks, but she won’t let that silence her voice.

The documents and video she leaked, including the infamous “Collateral Murder” footage, revealed American war crimes in Iraq and other countries.

She’s already become a writer at the Guardian, condemning CIA torture and the leaders who gave the orders in a recent editorial. Now, she’s joined the social media generation with a popular Twitter account, @xychelsea. Manning’s Twitter has almost 50,000 followers just weeks after it became active, even though she’s only able to tweet sporadically from behind bars at a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.