Author’s Note: The following notes of mine were presented to members of an inmate support group on Facebook. They’re offered here for critique, with the hope that other collectives might share observations from similar outreach models.
I’m still searching for volunteer opportunities. Feel free to help me make use of my time.
Supplemental materials: “Exhausted Grievances in Summary (for legal and investigative purpose).”
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F*****’ Science, bro!
1) Catalyze the physical structure/ Provide multipurpose scaffolding
A) Suggest and graph simple goals to harness and steer the collective’s momentum.
i. Establishing more reliable communications between their existing and our hidden states is a priority among goals. There are a lot of nooks and crannies to be filled. Find network nodes and purpose them adequately to filter then funnel the information needing returned that further assists in synthesizing the model.
This requires unambiguous instructions with delivery mechanisms that allow for, measure, and confirm feedback.
An introduction to the project with goals and ambitions, plus instructions on how to fill out grievances and submit them to the support network will cover it. They’ll need to explain what kind of grievances are most helpful and what will be done once they’re collected.
A request to forward the same information to jailhouse lawyers and paralegals who may wish to participate should also be included with a specific request to introduce themselves for followup. Those are the contacts most significant in value. They’re detrimental to the bigger picture (which includes providing them with the resources needed to litigate change by filing through friendly federal districts).
Also, encourage our nodes to connect their nodes to your nodes: ask them to ask their families and friends to join the network.
Should you ever need resources for further development, these people will be your crowd-sourcing go-tos.
ii. Weekly Conferences/ Organize and task subgroups
Publicize goals on the platform and identify motivated responders. Generally, it helps having two people support the initiator to draw in others speculating. This method may be used to create your network’s influencers–which some people may have an easier time following than the person who actually knows what they’re doing.
Identify an easy and fixable task once a week for the first few weeks to give participants that first taste of victory that everyone needs. Introduce more ambitious projects and feedback loops that allow your subgroups to evolve on their own.
B) Physical presence
Reliable, accessible and offers some discretion. Functions as point-of-contact for channelling communications. Provides volunteers a level of anonymity. Forwarding options to avoid interruption.
C) Process and utilize the information returned
File scanned documents to the forum, categorized, with some meta, and request your volunteers help identify content and flag redundancies. Redundancies are good, represent class potential, and more easily illustrate to oversight the need for intervention than individual grievances that can be argued as flukes.
Depending on the platform, one may not be as visible as they want to Web crawlers and witnesses. There may be a need to crossover from the group page to something more searchable, like a photo blog or another forum where meta is more visible to search.
WHAT WORKS FOR ME
I forward summaries of grievances through JPay. Those are then uploaded by my volunteer to a WordPress blog while the physical copies are mailed to be attached to their summaries. Press, oversight and advocates are then contacted and asked to view it there, which conveniently saves money on copies and postage.
EXAMPLE ( Actual JPay Message):
“Exhausted Grievances in Summary”
[Please update “date last updated.” And one correction on Grievance 14: add IM before the number]
GRIEVANCE 15
Category: Conditions of Confinement
Date: 6/10/2020
Location: IMSI
Grievance Number: IM 200000280
Responders: Laing, Gary Hartgrove, Tyrell Davis
Disposition: Denied, Denied
Notes: Grievance addresses inadequate out-of-cell time for Administrative Segregation.
[Attachment 1] [Attachment 2]
Related materials: Grievances IM 200000025, IM 200000159
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GRIEVANCE 16
Category: Security
Date: 8/18/2020
Location: IMSI
Grievance Number: IM 200000411
Responders: Develbiss, Nicolas Baird, Tyrell Davis
Notes: Communications reporting staff-on-inmate violence were censored.
[Attachment 1] [Attachment 2]
Related materials: Grievances II 190000285, CF 190000104, IM 190000181, IM 190000216, II 190000578, IM 200000170, Grievance attempt 2-25-20, FAT! (August 2020).
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