#Danbury prison

[tomorrowusa]

Steve Bannon, wannabe Joseph Goebbels and werewolf cosplayer, is busy making threats in line with Trump's retribution and revenge theme planned for a second term.

Maybe "Sloppy Steve" thinks that acting like a frothing fascist will make the dreaded administrative state fear him and decide not to imprison him on July 1st.

Unless he flees the US for some authoritarian Trump-friendly country, Steve will be doing hard time in Danbury, Connecticut.

Steve Bannon won’t be spending his prison term in a ‘Club Fed’ as he had hoped, sources say

When former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon goes to prison, he won’t be serving time at what’s known as a “Club Fed,” the most comfortable type of facility in the federal system, as he had wanted, according to people familiar with the arrangements. Instead of a minimum-security prison camp, where many nonviolent offenders serve their time, Bannon – now a right-wing podcaster with a following of loyal Trump supporters – is set to report next month to the low-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, one of the sources told CNN. A federal judge ruled recently that Bannon must turn himself in by July 1 to begin serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress even as he appeals the case. His attorneys initially thought he may be able to do his time at a camp, the sources said. But Bannon isn’t eligible for the lowest-level prison setup because he still has a pending criminal case against him in New York, where he is fighting the charges and set to go to trial in September. That case accuses him of defrauding donors in a fundraising effort branded the “We Build the Wall” campaign for a border wall between the US and Mexico.

Yep, he's a crook just like the boss. He helped scam MAGA zombies in a scheme to use private money to build part of Trump's border wall which was already in a state of disrepair when Trump was still in office.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"While the Nation of Islam [NOI] made up the largest group of Black war resisters, they were a relatively small part of a massive wave of conscientious objectors flooding federal prisons. Over twelve thousand COS served in what was known as the Civilian Public Service (CPS), and another six thousand were incarcerated in federal prisons. The majority were Jehovah's Witnesses, over four thousand of whom protested war and fealty to any government; according to some estimates, they constituted as many as 60 percent of all war resisters. Bat other COS were experienced racial justice organizers fresh from experiences with the March on Washington Movement (MOWM), the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), and the recently formed Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Bayard Rustin entered federal prison having just traveled to twenty states, including eight CPS camps, to speak with people about racial justice and nonviolent direct action on behalf of FOR. He began his prison term by singing the anti-lynching ballad "Strange Fruit" through the vents from solitary confinement at Ashland prison in Kentucky. Others, such as Wallace (Wally) Nelson and Roger Axford, first cut their political teeth in peace movements. Nelson walked out of a CPS camp (which he called Civilian Public Slavery) in 1943, penning a seven-page letter on the trend toward totalitarianism and his opposition to all coercive government. In language reminiscent of Muslims' claims to be "registered with Allah," Axford was described by a supporter as "a prisoner of the Lord" and wrote his draft board that he could not "serve God and War."

These war resisters dramatically reshaped prisons. Suddenly, as many as one-fifth of all federal prisoners were objectors. As in World War I, when Leavenworth became what one report called a "University of Radicalism," prisons became laboratories where different social movements intersected. One frequent visitor remarked that prisons "now seem to be information centers to which all news swiftly flies without hindrance." Incarcerated COs shone a spotlight on federal prisons' policy of racial segregation in particular. Black conscientious objectors such as Rustin, Nelson, and Joe Guinn, and white COS such as Axford, David Dellinger, and James Peck, came to prison ready and willing to challenge Jim Crow. While segregation in state and federal prisons continued to be illegal, unspoken and unwritten assumptions about the natural order of white supremacy and its necessity to prison security ensured its prevalence." Whereas the NAACP had previously chosen to contest segregation in prisons through closed-door arbitration, COs were now engaging in nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience. In the most dramatic example, eighteen COS waged a 135-day hunger and work strike at Danbury Prison in Connecticut in 1943 to end racial segregation in the dining hall. Suddenly prisons were filling up with groups of trained activists with experience in peace movements and the tactics of nonviolent resistance, as well as strong networks of supporters outside.

Prison administrators responded by revisiting and reevaluating prison discipline. When eight COs went on a hunger strike at Lewisburg penitentiary to protest segregation in prison cell blocks, James V. Bennett - director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) - wrote that

they think their Government discriminates against the negro race, and they are going to reform the whole social structure while they are in prison. I am letting them starve for the time-being and trying to decide what further we should do.

He saw the most pressing problem for the BOP as figuring out some way to "rehabilitate" this group.

They are, of course, not criminals, and yet I suppose it is part of our job to try and adjust them to the realistic facts of life.

One of those facts was racial segregation.

Sociologist Donald R. Taft, who was temporarily employed as a technical assistant to Bennett, believed that COs posed new problems, which invited experimentation and a revision of traditional modes of punishment. After visiting nine prisons in 1943, he submitted his "General Report on CO and JW Policy" to Bennett, which differentiated Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) from other COS and all COS from other incarcerated men. For Taft, the situation offered "an opportunity to test out for otherwise-similar non-CO inmates the next logical step in the development of Bureau penal policy." The prison's traditional regime of "deprivation of privileges, segregation or isolation, loss of good time, etc.," seemed to him "particularly ill-adapted" when applied to draft resisters. Indeed, Taft explained, "such deprivations tend to increase the feeling of already unjust punishment by the state and to satisfy any desires they may have to play the role of martyrs." He even suggested creating a special prison for COs, where the warden might allow voluntary racial integration. Taft concluded that "take-it-and-like-it-without-explanation' discipline is still rather prevalent even in federal prisons" and "might well be eliminated." Here he illuminated the dynamic of heightened repression and prisoner activism that constituted the dialectics of discipline long before the Nation of Islam was at the vanguard of the prisoners' rights movement.

But most prison officials shared the tendency to differentiate tradition prisoners from this influx of men whom they often regarded as outside the bounds of criminality. Beneath most state musings about the problems posed by COs were assumptions about criminality, race, and class. They saw conventional disciplinary methods as ill-suited for largely white, educated COs who were, to their mind, not really criminals. Reflecting on the distinction between the general population and political prisoners like himself, Bayes Rustin recalled that "we used to say the difference between us and other prisoners is the difference between fasting and starvation."

In most state-authored accounts, Muslim war resisters are rarely mentioned; if they were noticed at all, they seemed to be regarded with curiosity, Traces of their resistance to the prison regime appear only in the shadows and margins of official narratives of prison activism. Incarcerated Muslims were relatively few, and JWs and white COs attracted most of the state's attention. Unlike COs, who had powerful outside allies and left a robust paper trail through their hunger strikes, work stoppages, and other collective protests, incarcerated Muslim men relied on private correspondence with their wives and families to sustain them and the organization during these years. Clara Muhammad wrote Elijah and her son Emmanuel with verses from the Qur'an, as they were refused access to the holy book and given no official space for worship." Muhammad hosted meetings at Milan federal prison in Michigan on Wednesday and Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons. But the NOI was necessarily cautious during this period: Viola 2X told an undercover FBI informer that the group was "very careful to obey the laws of the United States."

One of the few portraits of Muslim men incarcerated during World War II comes from a 1944 statistical analysis of Sandstone, an isolated federal prison in Minnesota. Like other federal prisons, Sandstone was transformed during the war, receiving 427 Selective Service violators over two and a half years. By 1943, 80 percent of its prisoners were resisters. Muslims constituted 16 percent of its total population and almost half of its Black prisoners. While the study did not document their activities, it reveals how anomalous NOI members were among the war resisters. Nearly all the Muslim men at Sandstone were affiliated with Mosque No. 2 in Chicago. Their age immediately set them apart, Muslims' average age was forty-four, with the youngest man in his mid-twenties, while COs and JWs were, on average, in their late twenties. For example, James 2X (originally from Alabama), Joe X (from 'Texas), and James X (from Louisiana) were all between forty-nine and fifty-seven." Muslim men also tended to have less form education and be identified more often as unskilled laborers than their non-Muslim counterparts. Although most Selective Service violators were sen tenced to three years or less, 90 percent of NOI members received the full three years, despite a "definite tendency of shorter sentences for offenders in the Conscientious Objector group." Sandstone made national headlines in 1943 for its hunger-striking COs, but Muslims at the prison were "reported to have been their best prisoners in every respect."

When Muslims did protest prison conditions during the war, it was most often over pork served in the dining hall. Albert Bofman was a peace activist who held a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Chicago and served two years at Sandstone, where he taught Russian and economics in the prison library. During his incarceration, he drafted a report called "Maladministration and Human Relations in a Federal Prison." According to Bofman's account, Nation of Islam members all lived together in one dormitory, which he remarked "may be of their own volition, so as to carry on their religious services, etc. uninterruptedly." Bofman reported that half of all meals served with protein included pork, which he described as "tantamount to deliberate starvation" for Muslims. Beginning in 1944, the prison began substituting a double serving of beans instead of pork, but this change came only after "Muslim Negro objectors liv[ed] on a skimpy diet, refusing pork, for 3 years."

The other prison with a sizable group of Muslims was Milan, where Elijah Muhammad was incarcerated with his son Emmanuel. Taft commented that

the presence of 11 Negro Mohammedians at Milan suggests to me the need for some consideration of their special food needs. Even though as seems apparent they are not genuine Mohammedians but Negroes who have been explo[i]ted by their leaders, nevertheless, their religious views seem to be sincere and I understand they have some difficulty with the food.

During one visit to the prison, James Mullin, who was touring the country compiling reports on federal prison conditions in his role as secretary for the Prison Service Committee of the American Friends Service Committee, recorded at least forty-six vegetarians, including "Moslems" and eight other COs. His note that "Moslems have special diets (During Dec. special food and eat at special times)" suggests that Muslims at Milan had managed to secure the right to observe Ramadan, which the NOI celebrated in December.

In 1945, Mallin spent five fall days at Milan, speaking with twenty-six COs, including Muhammad, Axford, Nelson, and Guinn. These men all knew one another; at one point Muhammad even took an English course from Axford alongside Nelson. Muhammad told Mullin,

We're trying give our people the religious basis for knowledge and understanding to return to our own people in Islam.

Meanwhile, Nelson, Guinn, and Axford were all being held in solitary confinement. Axford emphasized to Mullin that the "state must not punish men for their religious convictions."Nelson and Guinn were in solitary for protesting racial segregation in the dining hall." Mullin reported that through the steel bars of the single cells, the men talked and

impressed on [him] the richness of the fellowship which had developed among them and what they are learning from each other.

Nelson's and Guinn's solitary confinement was likely retribution for a de-segregation petition that had begun circulating in Milan and had thirty-seven signatures its first day. Nelson kept a daily journal in prison, and it took a hopeful tone after a move by Muslims in the dining hall from one table to another appeared to coincide with the petition. But a conversation with James 4X Rowe indicated that it was concern over pork rather than solidarity with the desegregation campaign that prompted the move. Nelson wrote in his diary

He made me understand that... it was their dislike for pork being eating around them rather [than] racism, which is the primary [reason] they requested the table.

Such scattered references to the life and politics of incarcerated Muslims during the war appear in the historical record like light flicking across a page. Bayard Rustin's prison file, which contains detailed notes on his desegregation campaign at Ashland federal prison in Kentucky, includes a brief interrogation by prison staff of "Inmate Bey," likely a member of the Moorish Science Temple of America, who explained that "Rustin had contacted him and endeavored to get him to go along with the hunger strike movement," but Bey did not agree to participate. Nelson's diary also reveals the common misconceptions surrounding the Nation of Islam's beliefs. He wrote that a conversation with

Bro Jacob emphasized another reason (they did not join] Two days ago. They believed in and preached Black supremacy like the Bilbos (think) and Ku Klux Klan (do) white supremacy. Both are equally curious.

The parallel made between Black Nationalism and white supremacy would blossom with devastating effects a decade later. Moreover, Taft's assessment of NOI members as "sincere" but not "genuine" Muslims marks the beginning of the long history of prison officials acting as arbiters of religious orthodoxy. As Roger Axford remarked, the prison system "makes pseudo professors out of officials." In Taft's case, it made a pseudo official out of a professor.

When Taft sent James Bennett his "General Report" in 1943, he placed the Nation of Islam in a motley subcategory that included followers of Father Divine. "Israelite Negroes," and "Mohammedan Negroes." But he cautioned that there were "a number of special groups among the CO's which might well be studied separately and I have particularly in mind the rather large group of negro Mohammedans. Possibly this group has already been studied but, if not, someone should do it because there is a feeling which might or might not be well-founded that this apparently meek and ignorant group is nevertheless a part of a movement which may be potentially dangerous. In a discussion among prison officials in the early 1960s exploring brainwashing as a form of prison discipline, the Nation of Islam was raised as a chief concern. There, Bennett made the connection between the COs of World War II and the Nation of Islam decades later. He recalled that

during the war we struggled with the conscientious objectors - non-violent coercionists - and believe me, that was really a problem.... We were always trying to find some way in which we could change or manipulate their environment.

But he cautioned that

if you pulled out what you thought was the leader and the agitator, you then create a defensive solidarity among all the rest of them and it made it impossible to deal with them as a group.

What bridged the so-called model prisoners of World War II and the politicized Muslims whom Bennett and other prison officials were considering brainwashing by the 1960s was a small group of Muslims at Norfolk Prison led by Malcolm X and his co-defendant, Malcolm "Shorty" Jarvis."

- Garrett Felber, Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. p. 22-27

[definitelynotgold]

you know what I want to see come back? lady danbury's game night for married women. I want to see Kate and Penelope at one of those, taking zero prisoners and winning a ridiculous amount of money. that was like the funnest scene of season one and every time I remember it I feel robbed that we've only seen the event once.

[hb-writes]

The Way Back

Summary: Mike is in prison and Charlie is worried—about Mike, about her brother, about school, about everything.

Prompt: “I don’t need a map to know we got lost.”

Characters: Harvey Specter & Charlie Specter (OC)

Content Warning: Just angsty. Mention of panic attacks and heart attacks.

Suits (Lines to Live By) Masterlist

The Specters had been silent for miles, both quietly stewing as they moved away from the ocean and back towards the highway, back towards New York.

Some part of Charlie still felt angry, the waves of their argument still washing over her, unwilling to let her cool. Unwilling to let it pass them over. Unwilling to let the tension between them fall away.

It felt like a waste, feeling so upset when the scenery was so beautiful. As the little town where Marcus had rented a beach house for his siblings, Katie, and the kids, gave way to thick woods that hugged the road's shoulder, Charlie found herself consciously thinking as much. That it would have been better if Harvey had just agreed to let them stay for lunch. To let that actually enjoy Marcus’s birthday celebration. 

It had been Charlie’s idea to wait until Harvey came to pick her up to have the real celebration. She had assumed Harvey wouldn’t be able to turn them down at that point. She figured he would have to slow down for a moment, but he had said no. He had said they needed to get back to the city, his frustration coming out in the sharpness of his words, the definiteness of his tone. 

Their shouting had been loud enough that Marcus got between them, and recognizing that something was off with Harvey—he was even more stuck in his ways than usual—Marcus had implored Charlie to back down. To let it go. To just do what Harvey was asking and pack up her things. To get in the car and get on the road so they could get back home. 

And she’d done it. She’d packed up and said her goodbyes and gotten into the car and she hadn’t spoken to Harvey since. 

Close to half an hour later, Charlie's eyes noted a large green sign as they passed, the one directing drivers to veer right if they were intending on taking the highway, which she assumed they were. They usually took the highways on weekend trips to visit Marcus in Massachusetts. She figured the ride home from Rhode Island wouldn't be any different. It was the most efficient and most direct route.

And Harvey was apparently in such a goddamned hurry.

Charlie had originally told him not to bother coming to pick her up, had insisted that if he wasn't even going to spend the weekend with them, she could just have Marcus drop her at the nearest train station connecting them to Penn Station or Grand Central, but that had been suggested in spite. Communicated only after Charlie had complained the whole ride there that he would be absent. Complained that he was backing out of their family week…Backing out of celebrating their brother's birthday…

So, after stopping by Danbury Federal Penitentiary, Harvey had driven three hours to the beach house, lingering for less than a half an hour before he was ushering his sister out the door even though they had planned a celebratory afternoon for Marcus.

Charlie glanced at her brother, one hand on the steering wheel as he leaned his head into the other, his elbow rested against the door. As they continued down some back road, Charlie leaned forward and reached out to turn down the music. 

“Is there a reason you didn’t take the turn for the highway?” 

Harvey glanced at her. “What are you talking about?” 

“The highway was back there,” Charlie answered. “You know, a big green sign that says ‘this way’.” 

"Yeah, well, we need some gas,” Harvey answered. “We can get on the highway after that.”

Charlie glanced at the gas gauge—they had more than enough to make it back to the city, especially considering he didn't want to stop anywhere. No lunch. No bathroom breaks. Just silence and the highway back home. Charlie rolled her eyes as she stared back out at the passing scenery. 

Silence settled between them once again and Harvey continued down the road, the space between houses and buildings growing steadily more distant, the presence of commercial buildings non-existent, including gas stations. 

Charlie wished she could put more distance between her and her brother. They felt miles apart, even though she could reach out and touch him, but it had felt like Harvey was somewhere else for weeks now, ever since he had dropped Mike off at the prison. Charlie slumped against the window, trying to remember the nice week she'd had with Marcus, trying not to focus on the fact that it had been cut short and the tension she felt now. 

It had been Harvey’s idea for her to still go. He had insisted on it. Insisted on getting her out of the city, and away from the firm's problems. Away from Mike's imprisonment. Away from Harvey.

Not that they'd spent much time together recently anyway. Harvey’s focus had been on Mike, on making sure that he got out. He seemed always to be at the office or Danbury at all hours. Charlie understood why. She didn’t blame her brother for being distant, but she was still worried—about Mike, about her brother, about school, about everything.

So she had needed the distraction of a spring break out of the city with family, and it had worked, in a way, but then again, it hadn't, Charlie’s mind constantly straying to the brother who had stayed behind. The brother who had been stressed and overworked and emotionally detached for weeks now, ever since Mike's sentencing.

"There's nothing out here," Charlie offered. "I think we're going the wrong way. You should—”

"You gonna keep running your mouth or you gonna actually be helpful?” came Harvey’s sharp reply. 

“I am being helpful,” she said. “I’m saying there’s no gas station this way.”

“Pull up a goddamn map and check then."

Charlie rolled her eyes, but dug her phone out of her pocket anyway, scrolling for the maps app she rarely used. 

"Don't really need a map to know we're lost."

"We're not lost."

"No? Then where the hell are we?"

"We're not—"

"Yes, we are."

"We aren't—"

"Just pull over!” Charlie shouted before her tone softened. "Please."

It was Charlie’s pleading that finally did it, so raw and tear-filled that Harvey pressed his foot to the brake pedal as if it was automatic, as if there was nothing else he could even consider doing but acquiescing to his sister’s request. 

“We’re lost, Harvey,” she said, “And we don’t have any signal out here.”

It made Harvey feel sick in the pit of his stomach. He knew Charlie was talking about being lost in the here and now. He knew it was a solvable problem, but the words reminded him that he’d been feeling lost for weeks now. 

And then they reminded him of the time Charlie had wandered from his side at the mall. How panicked he’d been for the ten minutes or so before he found her smiling, tucked into the mall’s security office with a cookie she had somehow cajoled the guard into buying for her. 

Harvey saw no trace of a smile on his sister now though and Harvey didn’t smile either. He hadn’t smiled since Mike had gone away for Harvey, and every day had felt like those ten minutes when he’d lost Charlie that one time. Every day had felt like 24 hours of worry and hurt, unending concern and fear and panic and relentless drive. 

Harvey was exhausted. 

“You’re no help to him like this. It’s no good. You need to slow down. Take a break—”

“What do you think this was?” 

He was talking about the drive to pick her up. That and the thirty minutes he spent in the company of family, restless and ready to go the entire time, the whole thing ending with the two of them bickering and him using her full name as he told her to get her ass in the car. 

“This wasn’t a break, Harvey.” 

“And how exactly am I supposed to take a break?” Harvey asked. “He doesn’t get a break. There’s no Spring Break or beach houses at Danbury. No birthday dinners or board games for him.” 

Charlie swallowed, feeling the sting of her brother’s words, part of her ashamed that she’d had a spring break at the beach with all of those things. She’d had a break, a week of board games and movies and afternoon walks on the chilly beach. She’d enjoyed a week of helping Marcus cook dinner and a daily wine sampling practice that both of them had vowed not to tell Harvey about.

“I know,” Charlie said, the swell of emotion heavy in her chest even though she didn’t know. Not really. She didn’t have a clue what Mike was going through outside of what she could imagine, what she’d read about in books or seen on tv. 

She didn’t know what anyone was going through when it came down to it. Not Mike. Not Harvey. Not Donna or Rachel. They were all dealing on their own. Keeping everything inside either from necessity or to protect her. Everyone was going through the motions—functioning—but even so, Charlie knew her brother. She knew when something was wrong.

Charlie had seen Harvey stressed. She had seen him on edge and overworked. But this was something different. All-consuming, like there was nothing else in his life. 

Little sleep.

No women.

Harvey barely ate, barely spoke unless it concerned Mike or his cases. 

“I’m worried about him, too,” Charlie mumbled. 

Harvey didn’t scoff or comment, but Charlie could feel her brother dismissing it. Dismissing her words. As if it was impossible for her to know enough to worry about him. As if Harvey had a monopoly on that feeling. 

“I’m worried about him, Harvey, but I’m worried about you, too,” Charlie continued. “I mean, when’s the last time you actually slept?” 

It wasn't often that Charlie admitted to worrying about her brother. And it wasn’t often that Harvey made anything less than a conscious effort to hide anything worrisome from his sister. More often than not, Harvey exuded nonchalance. More often than not, Charlie had no idea what her brother was going through. More often than not, Harvey kept up that boundary that allowed Charlie to stay a kid, to focus on school, even now that she was a senior, about to graduate.

Harvey wasn’t even aware of how he was presenting to her now. He’d been so focused on Mike. So focused on Gallow. So focused on Sutter. He didn’t think about what it looked like, but it was all Charlie could think about—her brother was stressed, and though she tried not to, all she could think about was her brother's panic attacks. 

And her father’s heart attack. 

Charlie didn’t know much about the state of her brother’s heart. As far as she knew, Harvey was in good shape. He was healthy, but heart disease could be genetic, and there was no way all of this stress was good for him. 

Charlie got out of the car, pacing along the edge of the road and putting some distance between herself and the car. She felt the prickle of tears and she pressed her eyes closed, willing it all to hold. Willing it to stay inside. 

When she turned back to the car, Harvey was standing beside the driver’s side, watching her. He looked ready for more, still ready to fight. To argue about whether they were lost or anything else, but Charlie didn’t want to fight him, not on this, so she closed the distance between them instead, wrapping her arms around him as she settled against his chest.

Charlie didn’t know if Harvey was doing it for her or himself, but he accepted the hug without resistance. Charlie held on for as long as Harvey seemed to need and then some, knowing that her brother never pulled away first. It was always up to her. 

“Give me the keys,” she said. “I’m driving.” 

Harvey seemed reluctant and Charlie sighed.

“Please, Harvey. Just let me do this. Let me help.” 

Charlie held out her hand, ushering a quiet thank you when he handed them over without a fight before proceeding to the passenger’s side. 

“So what’s your plan?” he asked as she settled behind the steering wheel. “Since we’re lost and all?”

Charlie shrugged as she secured her seatbelt and began adjusting the mirrors. “We’ll just go back the way we came.” 

Sometimes it wasn’t so easy. Sometimes you couldn’t just go back, but just now they could. Just now, they could make things simple and Charlie was grateful for that. Grateful that a hug and retracing their steps could put them back on track. Grateful that something had eased in her chest, and had seemed to shift in Harvey’s too.  

 Harvey helped navigate until they were back to the highway, the conversation between them less charged and more collegial, but shortly after Charlie merged into the traffic heading back to the city, Harvey started to drift. Leaning against the window and snoring gently for miles and miles, he slept—if not peacefully, then deeply, at least.

Things still felt confusing and lost and messy, but they had found their way back to the highway and she knew Harvey would find his way back from this, too. It was a tough situation, but Charlie knew her brother. She knew Mike and Rachel and Donna. 

And even though they were probably all feeling a little lost, Charlie knew they were all tough enough to get through this, too. 

Suits (Lines to Live By) Masterlist

[soundofvesper]

Splinter - my Polin fic on AO3

Summary:

Penelope is arrested by the Queen’s guards on the night of her engagement party to Colin, accused of being Lady Whistledown.

The Queen's mercy must be earned: Penelope now has to help the palace with a delicate matter that will put her life in danger even as she loses her freedom, all but becoming a prisoner of the crown.

If being Lady Whistledown drove a wedge between her and Colin, how can it be the solution to their problems and to London's safety?

When the wolves are at your door, you best fight together if you want to survive.

Colin had the distinct, uncanny feeling that whatever came next would be bad.

“What,” he cleared his throat, “does this have to do with Penelope?” He would have congratulated himself over the steadiness of his voice, when, with the way felt just then, 'unsteady' was the least of his worries.

Lady Danbury snorted, then shot Violet a look he could not decipher. It was his mother who answered, her voice tactfully bland. “One should think it is not Penelope Featherington the Queen has … engaged in whatever matter of state is occupying the palace, but rather Lady Whistledown.”

[darkmaga-returns]

BREAKING – Stephen K. Bannon Released From Prison.

Former Trump chief strategist and War Room host Stephen K. Bannon was released from FCI Danbury in Connecticut on Tuesday morning at around 3:15AM, The National Pulse can report.

Bannon, 70, has now officially completed his prison sentence, handed down after an unconstitutional Congressional committee “investigating” the January 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol held him in contempt for refusing to breach Presidential privilege.

The former Goldman Sachs investment banker and Breitbart News executive chairman was eligible for early release under the First Step Act, but the Biden-Harris Bureau of Prisons (BoP) unlawfully ignored his request.

Bannon — who was met outside FCI Danbury by his daughter Maureen — will host his War Room show at 10AM EST, and will host a press conference at 3PM.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Project 2025 :: blueprint for a second Trump term of office]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 4, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 05, 2024

Monday, July 1, was a busy day. That morning the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States that gives the president absolute immunity for committing crimes while engaging in official acts. On the same day, Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon began a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress at a low-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Before he began serving his sentence, he swore he would “be more powerful in prison than I am now.” 

“On July 2, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, went onto Bannon’s webcast War Room to hearten Bannon’s right-wing followers after Bannon’s incarceration. Former representative Dave Brat (R-VA) was sitting in for Bannon and conducted the interview.  

“[W]e are going to win,” Roberts told them. “We're in the process of taking this country back…. We ought to be really encouraged by what happened yesterday. And in spite of all of the injustice, which, of course, friends and audience of this show, of our friend Steve know, we are going to prevail.”

“That Supreme Court ruling yesterday on immunity is vital, and it's vital for a lot of reasons,” Roberts said, adding that the nation needs a strong leader because “the radical left…has taken over our institutions.” “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution,” he said, “which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts took over the presidency of the Heritage Foundation in 2021, and he shifted it from a conservative think tank to an organization devoted to “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Central to that project for Roberts has been working to bring the policies of Hungary’s president Viktor Orbán, a close ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, to the United States. 

In 2023, Roberts brought the Heritage Foundation into a formal partnership with Hungary’s Danube Institute, a think tank overseen by a foundation that is directly funded by the Hungarian government; as journalist Casey Michel reported, it is, “for all intents and purposes, a state-funded front for pushing pro-Orbán rhetoric.” The Danube Institute has given grants to far-right figures in the U.S., and, Michel noted in March, “we have no idea how much funding may be flowing directly from Orbán’s regime to the Heritage Foundation.” Roberts has called modern Hungary “not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

Orbán has been open about his determination to overthrow the concept of western democracy and replace it with what he has, on different occasions, called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy.” He wants to replace the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy with Christian culture, stop the immigration that he believes undermines Hungarian culture, and reject “adaptable family models” in favor of “the Christian family model.” He is moving Hungary away from the stabilizing international systems supported by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

No matter what he calls it, Orbán’s model is not democracy at all. As soon as he retook office in 2010, he began to establish control over the media, cracking down on those critical of his far-right political party, Fidesz, and rewarding those who toed the party line. In 2012 his supporters rewrote the country’s constitution to strengthen his hand, and extreme gerrymandering gave his party more power while changes to election rules benefited his campaigns. Increasingly, he used the power of the state to concentrate wealth among his cronies, and he reworked the country’s judicial system and civil service system to stack it with his loyalists, who attacked immigrants, women, and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals. While Hungary still holds elections, state control of the media and the apparatus of voting means that it is impossible for the people of Hungary to remove him from power.

Trump supporters have long admired Orbán’s nationalism and centering of Christianity, while the fact that Hungary continues to have elections enables them to pretend that the country remains a democracy.

The tight cooperation between Heritage and Orbán illuminates Project 2025, the blueprint for a new kind of government dictated by Trump or a Trump-like figure. In January 2024, Roberts told Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times that Project 2025 was designed to jump-start a right-wing takeover of the government. “[T]he Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start,” Roberts said. “And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”

Project 2025 stands on four principles that it says the country must embrace: the U.S. must “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”; “[d]ismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people”; “[d]efend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats”; and “[s]ecure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’”

In almost 1,000 pages, the document explains what these policies mean for ordinary Americans. Restoring the family and protecting children means using “government power…to restore the American family.” That, the document says, means eliminating any words associated with sexual orientation or gender identity, gender, abortion, reproductive health, or reproductive rights from any government rule, regulation, or law. Any reference to transgenderism is “pornography” and must be banned. 

The overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the right to abortion must be gratefully celebrated, the document says, but the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision accomplishing that end “is just the beginning.” 

Dismantling the administrative state starts from the premise that “people are policy.” Frustrated because nonpartisan civil employees thwarted much of Trump’s agenda in his first term, the authors of Project 2025 call for firing much of the current government workforce—about 2 million people work for the U.S. government—and replacing it with loyalists who will carry out a right-wing president’s demands. 

The plan asserts “the existential need” for an authoritarian leader to dismantle the current government that regulates business, provides a social safety net, and protects civil rights. Instead of the government Americans have built since 1933, the plan says the national government must “decentralize and privatize as much as possible” and leave “the great majority of domestic activities to state, local, and private governance.”

It attacks “America’s largest corporations, its public institutions, and its popular culture,” for their embrace of international organizations like the United Nations and the European Union and for their willingness to work with other countries. It calls for abandoning all of those partnerships and alliances. 

Also on July 1, Orbán took over the rotating presidency of the European Union. He will be operating for six months in that position under a slogan taken from Trump and adapted to Europe: “Make Europe Great Again.” The day before taking that office, Orbán announced that his political party was forming a new alliance with far-right parties in Austria and the Czech Republic in order to launch a “new era of European politics.”

Tomorrow, Orbán will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin. On July 2, Orbán met with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, where he urged Zelensky to accept a “ceasefire.” In the U.S., Trump’s team has suggested that, if reelected, Trump will call for an immediate ceasefire and will negotiate with Putin over how much of Ukraine Putin can keep while also rejecting Ukraine for NATO membership and scaling back U.S. commitment to NATO. 

“I would expect a very quick end to the conflict,” Kevin Roberts said. Putin says he supports Trump’s plan. 

Roberts’s “second American revolution,” which would destroy American democracy in an echo of a small-time dictator like Orbán and align our country with authoritarian leaders, seems a lot less patriotic than the first American Revolution. 

For my part, I will stand with the words written 248 years ago today, saying that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

Steve Bannon got out of federal prison at around 3 am Tuesday. Seven hours later, he was live on his War Room podcast to “flood the zone with shit” exactly one week before the presidential election.

Flooding the zone with shit is Bannon’s own oft-quoted description of his media strategy: churning so many lies or half-truths into the stratosphere that it becomes impossible to draw a line between fact and fiction.

“I am more energized and more focused than I’ve ever been in my entire life,” said Bannon on the War Room stream on Rumble, which garnered nearly 100,000 live viewers at one point. “The four months in federal prison not only didn’t break me, it empowered me.”

Bannon, 70, a longtime ally of and former strategist for Donald Trump, spent four months at a low-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, for contempt after he defied a subpoena in the congressional probe into the January 6 Capitol riot.

Bannon has cast himself as a martyr—someone who, like January 6 rioters and like Trump, is being unfairly persecuted by the same tyrannical forces they’re up against next week in the election.

On Tuesday on air, and later at a press conference, Bannon repeatedly suggested that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi banished him to prison because she wanted to contain his influence.

“If you’re not prepared to be sent to federal prison as a political prisoner, then you’re not worthy to be in this movement,” he said. “You have to understand, they want to put you in prison, and they will put you in prison. If you can’t accept that, then you don’t know what they represent.”

Bannon’s return to the public sphere also means the return of a massive mouthpiece to amplify the election fraud conspiracies that are already raging online. And Bannon got directly to business, spinning a tale to his viewers of Democrats plotting to heist the 2024 election.

“Every day after November 5 is going to be Stalingrad,” Bannon said. “If they can’t take it away from Trump, if they can’t nullify it right there, they want to at least delegitimize his victory.”

“They will go to any length to stop President Trump,” Bannon continued. “That’s the reality.”

A 2023 Brookings study on disinformation in political podcasts identified Bannon’s War Room as the biggest disseminator of falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims; about a fifth of all episodes assessed by researchers were determined to have claims flagged as false by debunkers such as Snopes and Politifact.

“If the Pelosi apparatus wins, you better be prepared to go to federal prison,” Bannon said. “Because these people have no qualms about weaponizing the justice system, weaponizing the legal system, against Americans who have different political views.”

His fans seem to be happy he’s back. “God Bless You Steve' Get The Bannon Sledge Hammer Out, And Start Smashing The TRAITORS,” one viewer wrote during the Tuesday livestream.

“Welcome back Steve, we need our leader,” wrote another. “Give us our marching orders and lets get this done.”

[kckenobi]

Things with Feathers

Summary: Mike is on his way to prison. But he and Harvey don’t go right to Danbury. (or: in which Mike has too few chances to look at a tree, and Harvey has too few chances to look at Mike.)

Harvey unbuckles before the car has fully stopped and shoves open the door.

The ground moves. At least, that’s what it feels like. He turns his head, and it’s like looking through a wide-angle lens or a fucked up panorama, where the image stretches wrong. He can’t see straight, and his chest heaves, and Harvey leans both hands against the side of the car and braces himself to be sick.

He isn’t, though. Just stares at his shoes, watching the sight swim. And when Mike’s hand appears on his arm, he almost doesn’t feel it.

"It should be me.”

Read on ao3

[jansen-dean]

Old abandoned jailhouse I photographed back in 2019. Located in Danbury, NC. It was built in 1904. The top tower had a scaffold for hanging prisoners but was never used.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Maya Yang and Alice Herman at The Guardian:

Steve Bannon turned himself in to prison on Monday after the supreme court rejected his last-minute appeal to avoid prison time for defying multiple subpoenas surrounding the House’s January 6 insurrection investigation. He live-streamed his drive to FCI Danbury, the minimum-security prison in Connecticut where he will serve his four-month sentence, on his War Room podcast and show on Rumble. “I have no regrets and I’m proud of what I did,” Bannon, a longtime ally of Donald Trump, told a gaggle of press and supporters before turning himself into prison. “The J6 committee was completely illegitimate.” At the press conference, Bannon, who was joined by the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, appeared gleeful. He taunted the media outlets in attendance, urged supporters to take up the “fight” and gloated about the supreme court’s ruling that presidents have “absolute” immunity for official acts. Federal prosecutors say Bannon believed that he was “above the law” when he refused a deposition with the January 6 House select committee, in addition to refusing to turn over documents on his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results.

War Room host Stephen Bannon turns himself into FCI Danbury in Connecticut to serve his 4-month prison sentence for defying multiple subpoenas surrounding the House’s January 6 insurrection investigation.

As for his War Room show that airs on Real America’s Voice and streamed on Rumble, rotating guest hosts such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Monica Crowley, and Mike Davis will fill in until Bannon returns from prison.

See Also:

MMFA: Where Steve Bannon leaves us

Time: War Room host Steve Bannon prepares for prison

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"American draft resisters during the Second World War were not sent to Alcatraz or subjected to the kind of wholesale abuse (at Fort Leavenworth, for example) that occurred in the Great War. But some were mistreated, and incarceration was a trial for all—including federal prison administrators suddenly afflicted with inmates the likes of which they hadn’t previously encountered. These young radicals were committed, educated, increasingly organized, and deeply hostile to official authority. Prison, to them, was the apotheosis of government power, and they were allergic to it. “In the Prison,” COs [Conscientious Objectors] Holley Cantine and Dachine Rainer wrote later, “the population is subjected to the type of control that State functionaries aspire to impose on the population ‘at large.’ The Prison represents absolute freedom of coercion.”

The process that brought them to prison selected for those who were most likely to defy authority on behalf of conscience. At Danbury, where the young men of the Union Eight found themselves confined after refusing to register for the draft, the resisters had particular disdain for the warden, a liberal criminologist named Edgar Gerlach, whom they regarded as a vain and hypocritical martinet. At one point he telegrammed Dellinger’s parents in Wakefield, Massachusetts, with the news that their son was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Worried, they rushed to Danbury, where Dave reassured them at length. Schoenfeld, an objector confined to Danbury at the time, charitably described Gerlach as “a man of about fifty, with a clean cut, intelligent face…a comparatively advanced outlook…and a keen feeling of sympathy for the underdog.” Unfortunately, “his fate was to discover us unmanageable. We were a proud, stiff-necked lot who openly boasted we were the most radical men in the country.”

They may well have been, but prison would make them more so. Starting with the Union Eight and a handful of others, the federal prisons and church-run work camps of World War II were about to become crucibles of postwar radicalism. Here, a disparate collection of pacifist young men encountered one another and the unchecked power of the state at the same fateful time. The resulting chemical reaction further radicalized the resisters, instilled a lifelong distrust of government, and helped them and their supporters coalesce into a broader movement that went beyond pacifism to push for social change. It was in these facilities, in never-ending discussion, subversion, strikes, publicity, and some surprising triumphs, that American pacifism shifted from defense to offense.

Some COs even took pity on their jailers. Malcolm Parker, a colorful polymath who was incarcerated as a CO, later recalled “the well-nigh unbelievable tolerance and restraint shown toward us by the staff of the Federal Correctional Institution at Sandstone, Minnesota, in the face of what at times amounted to extreme provocation…I just wonder if I would have acquitted myself equally well had I been in their shoes.”

For the most truculent resisters, though, the federal prisons were America writ large: regimented, violent, arbitrary, racist, hypocritical, and satisfied with itself. The food could be sickening, sometimes literally, and every man was required to eat everything on his plate. Almost every aspect of prison life was segregated by race. Although otherwise run along fairly liberal lines—smoking was allowed in the dining hall, inmates could put on shows, and recreational facilities were ample—solitary confinement was routinely imposed. At least things weren’t as bad as they were elsewhere, according to Schoenfeld: “Wardens at other prisons allowed guards to beat and torture inmates of our type.” Lowell Naeve, arriving at Danbury in the summer of 1941, found the experience an embarrassing reenactment of the mindless conformity performed daily on the outside: “We didn’t want to get up, but we did. Why? We didn’t know. We just got up.”

The number of COs who felt a duty to rebel was small, but they had an outsized impact. In the federal prisons, a few hundred pacifists through sheer force of will managed to bring about lasting change, demonstrating that organized nonviolence could work against segregation and other noxious practices. More broadly, and perhaps more importantly, the camps and prisons that held war resisters became laboratories for the techniques of nonviolent protest suitable to the circumstances but transferrable to America at large. Prepared by Gandhi, Shridharani, and Gregg, and drawing on the experience of labor radicals and suffragists, resisters showed that nonviolent “direct action,” whether deployed by an individual or, much better, as a collective, can produce important institutional change. It had to be done in the right way; you had to be able to withstand potentially brutal consequences, and you couldn’t overlook public opinion, which could help you leverage small actions to achieve a large impact. CO John Hampton, who spent much of his stay at Sandstone in solitary confinement, stuffed the toilet with bits of his clothing and kept flushing until he’d flooded the whole block of punitive cells. Water for the entire prison had to be shut off to solve the problems caused by a single determined inmate."

- Daniel Akst, War By Other Means: How the Pacifists of World War 2 Changed American for Good. New York: Melville House, 2022. p. 122-124.

[follow-up-news]

Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman-Fried ’s fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, began her two-year prison sentence Thursday for her role in a fraud that cost investors, lenders and customers billions of dollars. Ellison, 30, reported to the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. She had pleaded guilty and testified extensively against Bankman-Fried, her former boyfriend, before he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Ellison could have faced decades in prison herself, but both the judge and prosecutors said she deserved credit for her cooperation. At her sentencing hearing in New York in September, she tearfully apologized and said she was “deeply ashamed.” Ellison was chief executive at Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency hedge fund controlled by Bankman-Fried. FTX was one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, known for its Super Bowl TV ad and its extensive lobbying campaign in Washington, before it collapsed in 2022. U.S. prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried and other top executives of looting customer accounts on the exchange to make risky investments, make millions of dollars of illegal political donations, bribe Chinese officials and buy luxury real estate in the Caribbean.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

The East Sun Building – Karen Taylor

▲ Sun Myung Moon and Kamiyama with a fishing boat in production

_________________________________

March 19, 2001

The East Sun Building was my prison for nearly two years. Not only did I work there in building the Good Go sports fishing boats, but I also lived there, as did all the Master Marine members. I believe that it was considered cheap and convenient to keep us in that huge, cold and dark hulk of a place. Eventually we were moved to the New Yorker Hotel due to Fire Department inspections. Of course, it was completely illegal and hazardous for us to live in the building, but like the Blues Brothers, we were on a mission for God!

The East Sun Building was located directly across from a large housing project. It was a very dangerous area with the predominant occupants being black and Hispanic Americans. To venture out at night was to tempt fate, but I have walked to the East Sun Building from the Long Island City subway station quite often during daylight hours without incident.

I felt like a prisoner in the place and I refer to my time there as “repaying my debt to society” or “my Danbury sentence”. We were never taken anywhere for Sunday outings while living in the place and the brothers had awful living conditions. Their living quarters were an enormous windowless dark room on the 2nd floor with a bed platform built of plywood that ran the entire length of the room. It had been promised by Mr. Kamiyama that the platform would be carpeted, but that never occurred.

The handful of sisters that were sent to work in the place had much better living conditions, but we all felt trapped and there was a heavy atmosphere of unhappiness in the building. Many members who were considered problematic were sent there from different church departments, particularly CARP. The East Sun Building effectively became a dumping ground.

One CARP member was sent to work in Master Marine who had been discovered during an aggressive witnessing campaign. Bobby was a 16 year old runaway. This boy eventually broke into the Master Marine office one night, stole about $12,000, and vanished into New York City. He knew that he would not be pursued since he left a note clearly indicating that he would contact the Dept. of Immigration and reveal how many illegal immigrants were working for Master Marine if we pressed charges. Smart kid.

I loved Mr. Kamiyama’s (TK) explanation to Master Marine members that this was indemnity to prevent a serious injury to one of the boat builders. The truth is, TK had already been instructed by Rev. Moon that the boy should go home, but nobody took action, even after I spoke to the production supervisor about Bobby’s bad behavior. This theft was preventable. I would call this “indumbnity”!

We were visited by Rev. Moon fairly regularly and I have had a unique experience or two with him while working there.

http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Taylor/Taylor-EastSun.htm

[darkmaga-returns]

W. James Antle III

Oct 30, 2024

One week before Election Day and hours before Vice President Kamala Harris was set to give a speech warning that a Republican administration would persecute its domestic political opponents, Steve Bannon was released from prison.

Whatever your views on the legal merits of his stint in Danbury, Connecticut, it steps a bit on Harris’s message.

“The four months in federal prison not only didn’t break me, it empowered me,” Bannon declared. “I am more energized and more focused than I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

Frequently vilified across the political spectrum, Bannon is nonetheless an important figure in what might happen over the next four years, much less the next six days. Two questions that stand before us are how much different a second Donald Trump term would be from the first if he wins and whether the nationalist-populist movement can survive if he loses.

As significant as Breitbart was heading into the 2016 presidential election, Bannon was much closer to a populist lone wolf in the broader conservative media ecosystem than he is today. Neither Bannon nor Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also a more thoroughgoing Trumpist than Trump himself, lasted the duration of that tumultuous first term in the White House.

Much as the Reaganites and movement conservatives were often outhustled by Bushies and pre-Reagan Republicans with more government experience during Ronald Reagan’s administration, too many Trump-era turf wars were won by people who would have been more comfortable in a third George W. Bush term. Trump undervalued the importance of policy alignment in personnel and many parts of his agenda couldn’t be well served by simply bumping every previous Republican administration official up a rung or two.