"THIS PLACE IS NOTHING MORE THAN A TORTURE CHAMBER"/SOLIDARITY WITH PRISON HUNGER STRIKERS

It's prison friday here at Scission and as you know the story has to be about the historic hunger strikes taking place on the West Coast, centered in California, but spreading beyond.  I think rather then waste space and time with my own comments, I will instead post two separate pieces.  The first from Prison Culture and the second from Solitary Watch.  


WHY A HUNGER STRIKE

Death Row prisoners in the Adjustment Center (A/C) Unit at San Quentin State Prison are organized and united in planning and executing a Hunger Strike this summer of 2013 to protest inhumane conditions of isolation and long-term confinement of prisoners in the A/C:

·         the lack of law library access

·          the lack of exercise and yard equipment

·         the unfair administration and classification committee practices

·         the controversial and unfair practice of using inmate informants, anonymous informants and confidential information

·         to retain prisoners in the A/C for years

·         the unlawful and under the table use of labeling a prisoner as an alleged prison gang member, associate or affiliate

·         using prisoners alleged gang status, validation, confirmation and documents (such as 130s, 128 A/B, staff information) to hold them in the A/C as grade B prisoners, yet treating them as S.H.U. / ad-seg –grade D prisoners for an indeterminate amount of time

·         the unlawful practice of group punishment tactics and lockdowns

·         the unlawful practice policy of “interviewing” / forced interrogation

·         the illegal use and excessive practice of property restriction or “property control”

·         the degrading practice and policy of “shower shoes only”, stripping prisoners at yard in front of everyone, and not allowing prisoners to be fully dressed in state blues when going to Law Library

·         the denial of religious, hobby craft, library books and educational programs or materials

·         the unlawful practice of withholding, censoring, denying and returning prisoners´mail without notification or legitimate reasons to do so

·         the denial of contact visits, phone calls, participation in food charity drives, nutritional items, honoring medical chromos and legal books or materials

·         the excessive abuse of power and authority by Warden, his administration and staff to do as they wish with condemned, S.H.U./ ad-seg prisoners in the A/C

In spite of the ongoing negotiations between the Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement and top CDCR administrators, the San Quentin administration is resisting any attempt to improve the plight of death row prisoners housed in the A/C. Unlike the Title 15- California´s Code of Regulation for all California State prisoners- San Quentin top officials have concocted and enacted an exclusive code of regulations called the O.P.608., which mandates that death row prisoners are under the control of the Warden of San Quentin. It is this illegal and repressive code of regulations that A/C death row prisoners are vigorously challenging as well.

Some may know about the A/C, but for those that don´t, it´s a prison within a prison and S.H.U. unit, housing 102 prisoners with over 90% of it being condemned prisoners. Many of us have been housed here since our arrival into the prison system as condemned men. The majority hasn´t have a disciplinary infraction and for those that have, have exceeded the time limitations triple the max set to be served for them. It´s a punishment unit and a psychologically torturous dungeon. We hardly ever leave the unit unless it is to see medical specialists. We´re fed and shit in our cells. We´re kept confined to our cells 22-24 hours a day, only to come out for five purposes:

1.      yard, which is held three times a week for 2-3 hours

2.      showers, which are done three times a week

3.      medical sick calls

4.      visiting (that is behind a dirty plexiglass window, through a 25 year old 2way intercom that interferes with and shares everyone´s conversations, leading everyone to shout over one another for an hour. You hardly ever get extended visits, even when it´s possible, or a courteous staff.)

5.      Law library, which takes up to three months to physically access it

Prisoners here are constantly deprived, harassed, ridiculed, psychologically tortured and have our only form of communication (mail) withheld for weeks and months –both incoming and outgoing. Often times we will learn of the death /passing of a family member or friend three months after the fact. Not allowing us to send our condolences, or what we would like to have shared in our absence at their burials, causing our family and friends to worry about us and not allowing us to pay our last respects to the dearly departed. All with the purpose of intimidating and breaking a prisoner´s spirit. In order to have them submit and fabricate information on fellow prisoners to be released from this torturous dungeon and gain better privileges for themselves and their loved ones.

Our Hunger Strike begins July 2013 in solidarity with the National Strike. Our demands are fair, reasonable, create no serious threat to the safety and security of the A/C, and are all within the power of authority of the San Quentin Warden to order the following immediate changes without delay. It´ll create a more positive and productive environment because it will ensure that prisoners be treated with human dignity and fairly.

We ask you for your support as we place our health, bodies and lives on the line in order to bring about a positive change –peacefully. None of us want to die, but due to our deteriorating circumstances, having been sentenced to death and now the administration has unjustly sentenced us all to an unlawful and indeterminate S.H.U./ grade B program. A “civil” and psychologically torturous death in the A/C as well as their abuse of power and authority and abuse of discretion has left us with no other alternative but to place what we value most at stake – our lives, for positive change and human dignity. We would truly appreciate and welcome your support. Your help will give us strength and will nourish our starving bodies.

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Voices from Solitary: This Place Is Nothing More Than A Torture Chamber

Pelican Bay State Prison

The following was written by Tony, 35, who is engaged in the statewide hunger strike against long-term solitary confinement and related issues at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California. Incarcerated sine he was nineteen years old, he has been in the Security Housing Units (SHU) for over nine years, longer than the average term of 6.8 years. He writes about the mental challenges that he faces while locked in what he calls a “tomb box,” and makes an important, practical appeal to the reader: “Ask yourselves do we want a rehabilitated person with an education and job skills who can contribute to society?  Or do we want an angrily, hateful, uneducated, and unskilled person who was mentally tortured back on the street?”

–Sal Rodriguez

My letter to family and friends………

I am a prisoner, have been since the age of nineteen. I am now thirty-five years of age. I was placed in the S.H.U without Due Process, originally. Not for infractions of rules and regulations. Rather hearsay and embellishments. The California Department of Corrections, rather than provide me educational/ rehabilitation programs, instead simply warehouse me in a tomb box, windowless cell, with no human contact, I am basically sensory deprived. I live in the worlds infamous security housing unit at Pelican Bay State Prison. For us in the Security Housing Units (SHU) this place is nothing more than a torture chamber.

I have been in the S.H.U. for over nine (9) years . I was placed in Ad–Seg. in 2003, and I haven’t been able to touch or hug my loved one’s since then. Every single minute feels like being under water trying to gasp for air. Day in and day out, confined , isolated within a concrete box. The space is the size of a large bathroom. This is my daily existence. Isolation gnaws at the brain. Imagine yourself in your own windowless bathroom, day after day, with no human touch or able to see the sun, much less feel it. I am keenly aware of every single minute. Time weighs heavy. What is at stake?  My sanity.

Who invented this type of punishment? Who thought it was a good idea to place a human being in a confined space, deeply isolated. Until, to the point, a human breaks and becomes mentally unraveled. Who?   Only in an institution or group of people that have lost their humanness.

The use of isolation as a tactic to break humans was practiced by the once Soviet Union KGB and the North Korean government and Vietnam Government as a torture method. More recently, The United States of America on terrorist at Guantanamo Bay.  P.O.W’s from the United States, would attest to the fact that this was a tactic to break a soldier who were prisoners  of war. Senator John McCain of Arizona was subjected to this tactic for four years, as a P.O.W, in the Vietnam War. Is isolation torture?  YES…

Long term isolation may not leave physical scars, but it scars the mind. With its timed, methodic, sinister, daily isolation, to break

Mental torture methods are being practiced everyday within our nation’s borders! You might say, “WHAT?!”  Yes, everyday imprisoned humans, just like myself , all across civilized America are being subjected to long term isolation.  NOT just in the state of California, but also, Colorado, Chicago, Ohio, New York, etc.  Which most American people do not even know. Within the walls of the prison, I am in their:  Security Housing Units.  This is a cover up name for what is more suitable and should be called:

Mental  Torture Chambers.

Many people think that it’s okay to torture prisoner’s because we have been dehumanized by the system. That we are nothing more than criminals. Worst of the worst. That we are monsters. That we are shot-callers, violent to the core. We have been called this and that long enough. They have conveniently convinced themselves and everyone else that this is to be true.  for that, now, they can treat us anyway that they want. We are less than human to them.

It’s understandable that in a civil society there is a rule of law and justice must be served, but where within the functions of justice did it become acceptable to inflict the injustice of mental torture.  Prisoner’s, criminals, convicts, we are still human.  Are we not?  We feel.  We love and are loved.  We have hope.  Goals.  We even dream…..  We eagerly ask for rehabilitative programs, to be taught skills, to better ourselves, and to be educated.  It’s a proven fact that prisoner’s who are provided such programs, have a greater chance of not returning to prison.  That is a good thing for everyone.  Even with the fact, prison administrations still fit to spend tax dollars not on rehabilitation programs, but rather to simply isolate us in a windowless concrete box.  We are placed in long term isolation where we either develop a mental health condition, or naturally begin to hate our captors.

Our prison system has simply boiled down to a policy of:  LOCK THEM UP AND THROW AWAY THE KEY.   This, however, only works against the interests of society.  Because the reality is simple; a large percentage of all people imprisoned will someday be released.  Ask yourselves do we want a rehabilitated person with an education and job skills who can contribute to society?  Or do we want an angrily, hateful, uneducated, and unskilled person who was mentally tortured back on the street?  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.) is badly enough.  Now, imagine some-thing equal or greater than that.   The answer is quite simple.  We can achieve this.  It’s not impossible:  all that needs to be done is to employ the human element of treating prisoner’s like human beings.  That is all have ever requested.

It is up to us all to demand that the prison system spend tax dollars on rehabilitation programs,Not  on employing long term isolation.  Call and or write your Governor, Senators, Congressman, Congresswoman, and stress to them the importance to end long term isolation.  They have your vote(s) and best of interest to listen.  It’s been said that the humanness of a civilized society is measured in how it treats its prisoner’s.

The Security Housing Unit with its current policies and practices is an entity that does nothing else but breeds hate and despair.  the Security Housing Units should be shut down.  Nothing good is gained from long term isolation.

Every human being imprisoned within the confines of SHU wants nothing more than to achieve the complete closure of the “mental torture chambers”.  It is why on July 8th, 2013 inmates who want better treatment of our human rights will be participating in a state wide, peaceful, non-violent, hunger strike.  Others in other states similar to our situation are encouraged to participate.  We will be demanding that the human element  be the governing part of how prison’s are run.  We will sacrifice our health and or lives for this belief.  The frightening part of it all is, that we the so-called “MONSTERS”. and not our captors, demand this.  We are on the side of human rights.

When you the readers out there hear about our peaceful protest don’t think, “SHIT, IT’S JUST A BUNCH OF SNIVELING PRISONER’S “.   Rather know, get informed, and realize , it’s a group of human beings, from all races:  Black, Brown, White, and Red, within a concrete box risking their health and lives to end the inhumane treatment being inflicted upon us.  Especially to my younger cousins and younger family members whose support I didn’t have in the two hunger strikes in 2011.  Hope this letter to you has opened your eyes and mind.  It is one my reasons to write this letter.  Therefore, we don’t want to spend another minute that feels like a year in mental torture chamber.  We hope.  We believe that justice and humane treatment should go hand in hand.

Tony     Date:  6/16/13
Imprisoned now for 17 years and still full of hope.

CAPITAL'S BOMBING OF LAC-MEGANTIC

By now every one of you have heard "all" about the train explosion that ripped a small Canadian town apart over the weekend.

The media has described it in all kinds of ways, has reported on all sorts of theories as to what went wrong.  They have failed to mention one thing - Capitalism.

I am actually going to reprint right here and now (as prelude to the actual post below) an article which I think catches the true spirit of what we can learn, of what we already know as to the Lac_Megantic bombing by global capital.  The article from Ml FireDogLake is authored by someone going by the handle of Knut.  It reads like this:

The appropriate subtitle is ‘Bhopal Coming to Your Hometown Soon.’

The train wreck (this time literal as well as figurative) at Lac-Mégantic hasn’t got much play here, but it is important enough to deserve attention, as it perfectly illustrates the principle of regulatory capture, like the non-incendiary financial meltdown in 2008. Here’s the story.

In 2003 the Canadian Pacific Railway sold off the portion of its line that runs east of Montreal through northern Maine to Portland to a private company headquartered in Chicago known as the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway. The enterprise (like all well-run American enterprises headed by MBA types) was almost completely levered, which meant after paying interest, bribes and executive salaries didn’t have much left over to maintain the tracks. I can testify to this, as the tracks run close to our country house, and we sometimes walk on them. The wood is rotten, the rails in bad shape, and there is grass where there should be gravel in the road bed. They also use inferior equipment. In the particular case in question, they used tank cars for explosive material (it could just as well been something toxic like sulphuric acid) that are no longer permitted because the walls are not at least one inch thick. But they got a variance which allowed the company to ship oil in them until they were replaced, which in the case of this company would have been never. Not surprisingly, when the train derailed in the middle of a small town (which could have been Montreal or Portland, Maine for that matter), they exploded.

The train, composed of 70 tank cars and five engines to draw them, had only one engineer. This is also a variance, which they got from the Canadian regulatory agency last year. I’d like you to imagine a heavily loaded train carrying explosive or toxic materials going through your town with only one person to make sure it gets through safely. At Nantes, QC, the engineer got off the train to take a nap. He would be replaced by an American crew (of one!) to take the train through Maine. The locomotive motors were left running to maintain pressure in the air brake system. While he was napping one of the engines caught on fire. A local noticed, and called the fire department, which put the fire out. The breaks having failed, the train moved out of the station on a grade that fell some 350 feet in 12 kilometers. By the time it reached the town it was going close to 50 miles an hour into a curve that it had to take at 5 miles. The rest is history. It is hardly worth mentioning that the Company President blamed the Nantes fire department.

The whole episode seems to me to sum up what has become of American capitalism. Over-leveraged, shoddy product and performance, milking the enterprise of its capital, and capturing regulators to get away with it. It is the banking disaster writ small. In the mean time the investigators have found only 5 bodies of the 60 to 80 that were incinerated in the center of town when the train exploded.

Rabble has reported that Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway is owned by Rail World which describes itself thusly:

A railway management, consulting and investment corporation specializing in privatizations and restructurings. Its purpose is to promote rail industry privatization by bringing together government bodies wishing to sell their stakes with investment capital and management skills. Rail World was incorporated in July 1999 by Edward A. Burkhardt, who is the President and Chief Executive Officer. 

Rabble says that the MMAR network is a cobbling together of old and secondary lines, up to a century old as a matter of fact, gathered in from larger companies over the past decades in an endless quest for profits.  Rail World, Rabble reports:

...operates former state-owned rail lines in Poland, Finland, The Ukraine and the Baltic states. Edward Burkhardt oversaw the privatization of the rail and ferry networks in New Zealand during the 1990s. He serves as the honorary-consul for New Zealand in Chicago.

 Meanwhile Edward Burkhardt has pointed the finger of blame at everyone but himself.  First he blamed the local firefighters and then he blamed the workers at his company.

Dirt Diggers Digest points a flashlight beam directly at Burkhardt,

Burkhardt is a living symbol of the pitfalls of deregulation, deunionization, privatization and the other features of laissez-faire capitalism. He first made his mark in the late 1980s, when his Wisconsin Central Railroad took advantage of federal railroad deregulation, via the 1980 Staggers Rail Act, to purchase 2,700 miles of track from the Soo Line and remake it into a supposedly dynamic and efficient carrier. That efficiency came largely from operating non-union and thus eliminating work rules that had promoted safety.

Wisconsin Central — which also took advantage of privatization to acquire rail operations in countries such as Britain, Australia and New Zealand — racked up a questionable safety record. Burkhardt was forced out of Wisconsin Central in a boardroom dispute in 2001, but he continued his risky practices after his new company, Rail World, took over the Bangor and Aroostook line in 2003 and renamed it MMA.

Faced with operating losses, Burkhardt and his colleague Robert Grindrod targeted labor costs with little concern about the safety consequences. In 2010 the Bangor Daily News reported that MMA was planning to reduce its crews to one person in Maine, which, amazingly, was allowed by state officials. Grindrod blithely told the newspaper: “Obviously, if you are running two men on a crew and switch to one man, you’re saving 50 percent of your labor component.” The company also succeeded in getting permission for one-man crews in Canada.

Inadequate staffing may have also played a role in a 2009 incident at an MMA maintenance facility in Maine in which more than 100,000 gallons of oil were spilled during a transfer in the facility’s boiler room. In 2011 the EPA fined the company $30,000 for Clean Water Act violations.

MMA’s continued to have safety problems even before the Lac-Megantic disaster. The Wall Street Journal reported that MMA had 23 accidents, injuries or other reportable mishaps from 2010 to 2012 and that on a per-mile basis the company’s rate was much higher than the U.S. national average.

Capital has one goal, one reason for its existence, to accumulate more capital, to produce what we commonly call capital.  That's it.  Nothing else matters.  Nothing else can get in the way.

And then there is all that oil and the whole Tar Sands situation...pipelines aren't the only way to transport oil, you know.  As reported in the Globe and Mail, Peter Tertzakian, an energy economist with ARC Financial Corporation in Calgary points out, "One has to keep in mind that 10 unit trains is equal to one Keystone XL.  And 10 trains isn't that many.


Russ Girling, CEO of TransCanada agrees, " Rail, obviously, has become a very important option." 



Isn't it interesting how so many things come together when you dig a little.

Meanwhile, there is the question as to whether the train explosion even took place in Canada.

Say what?

The following is from  Mohawk Nation News.

MURDER AT MEGANTIC

MNN. 8 July 2013. On Saturday morning, July 6^th, a bomb wiped out the center of the town of Lac-Megantic [Quebec] on Mohawk Territory. Over 60 of the French settlers for whom we are responsible were murdered and ‘disappeared”.

Bomb blast on Indigenous land.

  

According to the Great Peace of Montreal 1701 is under the protection of the Constitution of the Council of the Great Peace. We have a duty to protect all living things. We demand a full investigation of this criminal act of the multinational corporations. Montreal, Mine & Atlantic Railway Ltd., was hauling 73 substandard tankers and locomotives carrying toxic crude to Irving Oil in Saint Johns New Brunswick for the US market. Every train that goes through our towns and villages is loaded with enough ammunition to create a “war zone”. 

The train was parked in Nantes. Nobody was in the locomotive. The engineer had locked up and gone to sleep at a nearby hotel. At 11:30 the brakes of one locomotive was mysteriously released. It caught fire and billowed smoke. The fire department was called to put it out. The remaining cars were not checked. At 1:00 am. the remaining cars started moving directly downhill into the Lac-Megantic town center, about 11kilometers away. A a social gathering was taking place. The train sped toward them, careened off the track, came to a stop near the middle of town and blew up like an atom bomb. The people and town centre were incinerated. The poisons ran into the lake. 

War on Mother Earth in Quebec and elsewhere!

Canada ships $73 billion in oil to the US every year, passing them through our towns and villages. Environmental regulations are constantly being removed and/or sidestepped. Moreshipping of crude oil is planned for the east and west coasts. 

The railroad tankers used in US and Canada are old and dangerous. By deregulation they don’t have to be replaced. Even more unsafe pipelines are being planned. Someone would have a strong motive for releasing those brakes. We Indigenous people should oversee any investigation of such criminal acts on our land. 

Foreign corporations normally cover their criminality by paying off all the corrupt politicians and law makers. They look for perpetrators before picking their “patsy”. The victims are forgotten. We will stop the destruction of Mother Earth caused by their toxic economy. These railroads, pipelines, roads and waterways are creating ecological destruction on our land. We are all at risk.   

There must be an immediate ban on transporting all war materials across Onowaregeh/Great Turtle Island. It violates the Council of the Great Peace, the law of the land. As Jimi sang in “House Burning Down”: “Look at the sky/turn a hellfire red. Somebody’s house in burning/down, down, down, down. I say, O, baby, why’d you burn your brother’s house down?” House burning down 

Terrence Nelson on Warrior societies

MNN Mohawk Nation 

Newskahentinetha2@yahoo.comThahoketoteh@hotmail.com For more news, books, workshops, to donate and sign up for MNN newsletters, go towww.mohawknationnews.com  More stories at MNN Archives.  Address:  Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0  For free download of Mohawk music thahoketoteh.ws

WHY YOU SHOULD BOYCOTT ENDER'S GAME AND ORSON SCOTT CARD

If you are a fan of science fiction, you have likely heard of Orson Scott Card.  Card is the author of Ender's Game and a lot of follow ups to it, as well as a gazillion other books and stories.  Card is also a right wing homophobic, climate change denier.  Wikipedia adds, 

Card has also said that opposition to intelligent design is based on scientific dogma rather than a substantive assessment of the evidence. He also stated he believed the intelligent design movement will never be supported by genuine scientific evidence.

Card's immersion in the LDS faith has been an important facet of his life from early on. His great-great-grandfather was Brigham Young, an important leader in the Latter Day Saint movement, and all of Card's ancestors from at least three generations have been members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). His ancestors include several other figures notable in the LDS Church, including the Cardston colony founder Charles Ora Card. As such, his faith has been a source of inspiration and influence for both his writing and his personal views.

You get the picture.

 In November, an all-star film production of Ender’s Game is hitting theaters.  Millions will rush off to see it and help to finance this creep.

Salon writing on Card's homophobia points out:

In 2008, Card lamented that he had for so long been labeled a “homophobe” because of his stated positions on homosexuality. Here’s a run-down on what he said. Notably, he’s become far more vocal and politically active in the fight against gay marriage in recent years.

1990: Card argued that states should keep sodomy laws on the books in order to punish unruly gays–presumably implying that the fear of breaking the law ought to keep most gay men in the closet where they belonged.

2004: He claimed that most homosexuals are the self-loathing victims of child abuse, who became gay “through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse.”

2008: In 2008, Card published his most controversial anti-gay screed yet, in the Mormon Times, where he argued that gay marriage “marks the end of democracy in America,” that homosexuality was a “tragic genetic mixup,” and that allowing courts to redefine marriage was a slippery slope towards total homosexual political rule and the classifying of anyone who disagreed as “mentally ill:”

Card went on to advocate for, literally, a straight people’s insurrection against a pro-gay government:

[W]hen government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary… Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down….

2009: He joined the board for anti-gay lobby The National Organization for Marriage, which was created to pass California’s notorious Proposition 8, banning gay marriage.

2012: He supported his home state North Carolina’s constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage by arguingthat gay marriage “will be the bludgeon [The Left] use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools.”

I suggest you skip the movie.

Orson, though, says you should be tolerant of his intolerance and not join in any boycott of his movies or his books.  His supporters also claim that a boycott will hurt innocent workers.  Raw Story says this is:

...an argument that seemingly ignores the fact that production crews are paid while the movie is being made, which is not impacted by how it performs at the box office.

What do I think?

I'm down with the comment I found on Joe.My. God. blog,

Yes, folks, the man who swore to "destroy the government and bring it down" over gay marriage and who declared himself to be your "mortal enemy" now wants YOU to be all noble and forgiving and shit. FUCK THAT.

It is time we quit pretending that we can all live in little cubbyholes, that some can be bigots sometimes but not at other times, that somehow being a bigoted, intolerant,fool is a protected status.  It's time we make bigoted, intolerant, fools an endangered species instead.  It's time we realize that some guy who writes books and  includes in his books his thoughts and his hate and by which overtly or subtly readers are influenced by such...by movies...by TV.  

I'm not calling for censorship of the arts, although, well, I won't go there right now.  However, we have the right and the obligation in fact to educate, organize, take action to expose and to fight back against those like Orson Scott Card who enjoy the money in their wallets, that millions of unsuspecting "fans" put there, while hiding behind their supposed "intellectual" freedoms.  For some reason, the Scott Cards of the world always think it is okay to oppress others, but we have no right to fight back.

The following is from  GeeksOut.

GEEKS OUT RESPONDS TO ORSON SCOTT CARD, STILL PLANS TO SKIP ENDER'S GAME

The Bill of Rights protects your freedom of speech but it does not protect your right to a blockbuster opening weekend.

NOM Board Member and Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card’s tone-deaf plea for “tolerance” from pro-gay marriage forces, first given to Entertainment Weekly, struck such a sour note with so manybecause it seems to miss the point entirely.

This is not and has never been about a much beloved sci-fi novel. Leaving aside the fact that Card thinks gay civil rights didn’t exist in the mid-80s, which is pretty insulting to the post-Stonewall generation frontline against a little something called AIDS—this is about us, here and now. This is about our community refusing to financially support an extreme anti-gay activist. We didn’t read his diary, and we’re not taking dinner table conversation out of context—Orson Scott Card has a very public record of far-right comments against marriage equality as a concept and LGBT folk as human beings, such as:

“But homosexual "marriage" is an act of intolerance. It is an attempt to eliminate any special preference for marriage in society—to erase the protected status of marriage in the constant balancing act between civilization and individual reproduction.

So if my friends insist on calling what they do "marriage," they are not turning their relationship into what my wife and I have created, because no court has the power to change what their relationship actually is.

Instead they are attempting to strike a death blow against the well-earned protected status of our, and every other, real marriage.

They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents’ clothes.

The dark secret of homosexual society—the one that dares not speak its name—is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.”

—Orson Scott Card, “Homosexual ‘Marriage’ and Civilization,” 2004

Tell families in 37 states where gay marriage is still illegal that it’s a “moot issue.” Tell citizens in Indiana, where it’s now a criminal act for same-sex couples even to apply for a marriage license. Tell that to the Virginians whose governor wants to recriminalize sodomy. I doubt very much children delegitimized and stigmatized by red-state legislatures across the country are kickin’ back with a cold drink to let historical inevitability do the work now that the Supreme Court has ruled on DOMA. That’s a bizarrely dismissive and defeatist attitude from the same man who swore,

“W]hen government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary… Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down….”

—Orson Scott Card, The Mormon Times, 2008

Does this look "moot" to anyone? 

This plea for tolerance is perhaps a bridge too far, especially from someone who characterized gay marriage as “the bludgeon [The Left] use to make sure that it becomes illegal to teach traditional values in the schools,” (2012). There’s nothing more democratic and tolerant than a consumer boycott, rooted in the ideas of free market accountability. Skip Ender’s Game is about doing what all of us do every day—use facts to determine who and what to support with our money.

Orson Scott Card, we can tolerate your anti-gay activism, your right-wing extremism, your campaign of fear-mongering and insults, but we’re not going to pay you for it. You’ve got the right to express your opinions and beliefs any way you choose—but you don’t have a right to our money.

How many homophobic billboards and absurd “Gathering Storm” ads would a new fortune built off ofEnder’s Game lunchboxes buy for NOM?  

Now would be an ideal time to hear from Lionsgate, as we know them to be a company of open hearts and allies of LGBT families. Now would be a great time, too, to hear from the cast and creative team behind Ender’s Game who have no connection to the author’s anti-gay activities and who’ve been vocal supporters of gay rights in the past. How do you cut this guy a check?

No matter what happens with Skip Ender’s Game, American voters have already rejected Orson Scott Card's and NOM’s extreme anti-gay agenda. Whether they’ll continue to fund it at the box office remains to be seen.  

—Geeks OUT