By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
“Independent analysis of Virginia’s political culture, prisons, and state power.”
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
Let's take a step back, to understand how we got to this place that Virginia Government Officials in the form of Prison Officials foisted fraud and disingenuous narratives on the People of Virginia. So during the tenure of Ed Murray as Director of the Virginia Department of Corrections, from 1986--1994, Virginia Officials realized that new prisons would be needed, as such Director Murray laid the ground work for what became Virginia's building spree of Prisons, particularly SUSSEX I and II, then RED ONION and WALLENS RIDGE STATE PRISONS. The building of the Prisons occurred under the Republican Administration of the racist Governor George Allen of Macaca infamy, which as preposterous and weird as it sounds, later claimed that Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison was his "monument".But that's an aside from the issue of fraud and disingenuous narratives. So prior to the construction of the aforementioned prisons, Virginia had an early entry into the SUPER- MAX Prison business way back in 1977 with a Prison called MECKLENBURG TREATMENT CENTER, then later changed to CORRECTIONAL CENTER. The TREATMENT CENTER moniker was a result of the then prevailing speculations and assumptions that Prisoners designated and described by the Commonwealth of Virginia via The Department of Corrections as "trouble-makers" or "worst of the worst" would be "treated" under Solitary Confinement conditions, not unlike its resurrected familiar at RED ONION and WALLENS RIDGE STATE PRISONS in 2011 under fraudulent and disingenuous narratives as SEGREGATION REDUCTION STEP DOWN PROGRAM. It was as if detaining an imprisoned Virginian under SOLITARY CONFINEMENT conditions was like giving someone Tylenol or Advil, because they had a headache. This is what was being done in the name of the People of Virginia in 1977 and again was resurrected in 2011 by Virginia Department of Corrections apparatchiks. The thing is just as Virginia Department of Corrections apparatchiks are now wasting Virginia taxpayer money in Court Room after Court Room fighting claims by Virginia Prisoners that the Solitary Confinement regime of the SEGREGATION REDUCTION STEP DOWN is everything that is wrong with the Human Condition, so where Prisoners detained in MECKLENBURG'S SOLITARY CONFINEMENT PHASE PROGRAM then also fighting the same comparative Program, [see BROWN v. LANDON], even to the point of Prisoners then taking over Buildings, holding Prison Officials hostage in 1984 to draw attention to the savagery and barbarity of MECKLENBURG'S imprisonment condition. Which resulted not only in the PHASE PROGRAM SOLITARY CONFINEMENT regime being discontinued, but the Virginia Legislature demanding a comprehensive study of what could have gone so catastrophically wrong with MECKLENBURG. The task fell to Virginia's legislative Investigative arm, the JLARC (JOINT LEGISLATIVE AUDIT AND REVIEW COMMISSION), who submitted their findings in a Report in 1985,which among many conclusions, determined that Virginia should never ever again, place and congregate all of the so-called "worst of the worst" prisoners at one Prison. But in 1998 Governor George Allen of Macaca infamy, I guess seeing tributes to himself as RAMESES II and his Red Onion State Prison Koncentration Kamp "monument", along with the then Director of The Virginia Department of Corrections, Ron Angelone, who I can only describe as another Rudy Guliani saw fit to ignore the JLARC's advisement and made a Public Relations spectacle of not only promoting the notion of a Virginia "worst of the worst" ( who it turned out most were old scores being settled, vindictively) prisoner being confined at Red Onion State Prison and its other sisters, but the Virginia public was told that these Prisons would be called "STATE PRISONS", in anticipation of the Koncentration Kamp heritage.
As I stated earlier, the practice of detaining Prisoners in Solitary Confinement is a General one. The Virginia Department of Corrections has always used it, notwithstanding whether it's specific and comprehensive as in MECKLENBURG'S PHASE PROGRAM or RED ONION and WALLENS RIDGE SEGREGATION REDUCTION STEP DOWN PROGRAM. Regardless of how its packaged along with euphemistic moniker, it is basically the same beast, a type of imprisonment and confinement that quickly disintegrates into every single base expression of that axiom and maxim, "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Because you have a situation where the prison officials tasked with the organized violence of its circumstance, having the proximity of absolute power during specific interactions with the prisoner, whether its allowing the prisoner showers, outside exercise, meal serving and all the various opportunities i.e strip search procedures, the prison official has to deny and deprive the prisoner a duty, by lying that the prisoner failed to comply with whatever cockamamie instruction command or directive. Are intrinsically realizing and recognizing its corrupting impact on them, yet are, according to the labor dynamic of the business of human existence, subordinate to its performance to receive a pay check and its much more easier and opportunistic (and God or the Devil has nothing to do with it, but is the same sort of initial human behavior displayed by the prisoner resulting in criminal adjudication as cause for the initial imprisonment, which makes the case for accountability of the Virginia prison official) for them to transfer the impotence of their existence onto the Prisoners going through the harm of solitary confinement, in all sorts of base ways, than challenge their supervisors on the character of the ask. Which then poses another question for Society and the Social Contract, where you have socio-persons employed in a job that is corrupting by all metrics, induced into cowardice, evidenced in the inability to question the ethics and overarching morality of the job, and are overtly and implicitly influenced and instructed by their superiors and peer pressure to indulge and engage in the corrupt and criminal behavior, of dehumanizing the Prisoner, because regardless, it is still illegal and against Virginia law for the Prison Official to violate the existence of the Virginia prisoner, considering that the Virginia prisoner is the very embodiment of Virginia law, because it created him. And we see this clearly in the Solitary Confinement type of imprisonment. The character of the fraud and disingenuous narrative foisted on the People of Virginia by Virginia Department of Corrections bureaucrats in 2011, which Governor Abigail Spanberger can summarily correct, is this, regardless of reason and logic of incentive, the SOLITARY CONFINEMENT regime of THE STEP DOWN PROGRAM at RED ONION and WALLENS RIDGE STATE PRISONS is premised on a fabrication. Red Onion State Prison opened in 1998 with the Operational model of a General Population, general Solitary Confinement which was relatively indeterminate,(but it wasn't a specific type of imprisonment as THE STEP DOWN PROGRAM of 2011,whose ambition was to keep certain Prisoners in its type of imprisonment in perpetuity), then there was an in between type of housing for prisoners who were not given the full movement of General Population prisoners, yet were not subject to the deprivations of the solitary confined. The detention of these three classes of Prisoners were what Red Onion and Wallens Ridge State Prisons opened with in 1998 and 1999 respectively. So, between 1998 and 1999, nothing changed and I emphasize that materially nothing changed from the opening of those two Koncentration Kamps, to the 2011 implementation of SOLITARY CONFINEMENT as a specific unto itself Virginia imprisonment scheme, but a money-making gambit.
The 2011 resurrection at Koncentration Kamps Red Onion and Wallens Ridge State Prisons of the reprobate and indefensible MECKLENBURG style PHASE PROGRAM SOLITARY CONFINEMENT regime under its new moniker SEGREGATION REDUCTION STEP DOWN PROGRAM, was Fraud on the People of Virginia upon a disingenuous narrative and Governor Abigail Spanberger has authority to summarily correct it. Along with a comprehensive investigation by Virginia's General Assembly into the entire creation genealogy of the SEGREGATION REDUCTION STEP DOWN PROGRAM. What the People of Virginia can do if the Governor and the General Assembly are unwilling to act is make this a Central issue on all fronts, by harnessing and applying their ingenuity, creativity and tactical industriousness. Now let me say this, historically a lot of egregious deeds have been done in the name of the People of Virginia. The egregiousness of the STEP DOWN PROGRAM, within modern times is without equal and comparison and instead of having me a Prisoner one of its initial first three Prisoners at Red Onion subjected to its regime speak to you about it. I'd rather you the Virginia People get everything about it using your position as the "Supreme Power", because Virginia is politically a COMMONWEALTH, meaning that "We The People" actually is the People and not a conditional and relative privilege, to learn why those Prison bureaucrats and apparatchiks thought they really could again get away with another fraud on We The People. As I've stated previously Virginia had a general practice of solitary confinement, under which the prisoner was reviewed every 90 days for possible release even though release wasn't certain at Red Onion. So for example let's use my situation as example. I was placed in solitary confinement in 1996 after a hostage incident at Virginia's Nottoway Correctional Center, this detention was the historical general solitary confinement sort, which was still Solitary Confinement without end, but it didn't present itself as an unto itself Virginia imprisonment. Even though I was sent to Mecklenburg prison, which once upon a time had a unto itself Solitary Confinement regime, but by 1996 had long since discontinued it as the savage and barbarous PHASE PROGRAM SOLITARY CONFINEMENT regime. Then when Red Onion opened in 1998 I was one of the first to open its A-Building, where I was tossed naked in A-301.So from 1996 through 2011 I was detained under the general solitary confinement regime. If prison officials wanted to release me from solitary confinement they could have, because process already existed. Nothing had changed in my circumstance since the Nottoway incident of 1996 which had been adjudicated in court and I was given an additional 30 year sentence. So when those responsible for the fraudulent STEP DOWN PROGRAM decided to implement it and decided that even though nothing had changed in my circumstance since my initial placement in solitary confinement in 1996 that my presence and existence under this being constructed unto itself type of Virginia imprisonment that would be Solitary Confinement in perpetuity was necessary only makes a mockery of the very same law they exploited in structuring the SEGREGATION REDUCTION STEP DOWN PROGRAM. Which the People of Virginia have been spending millions of Dollars, defending the fraud in Court and paying out hundreds of thousands of Dollars in settlements to Prisoners who have successfully sued the State because of the actions of those corrupt Virginia Prison Officials and their disingenuous narrative which their complicit allies in Virginia's General Assembly allowed to stand in creating the STEP DOWN PROGRAM, at the expense and in compromise of oversight, entailing transparency and the Accountability-Function of governance, which the People anticipate is done.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
The work, and I should rather say, our work of Prison Reform anticipates that Family, Ally and Friends of the Virginia Prisoner focus on this simple truism, that holding the Virginia Prison Official accountable, begins and ends with the organized nature of Speech. I do need to emphasize and stress this with how I speak on Speech. Speech to make a long story short, is the organized, concerted and committed activity of The People asserting a specific and necessary point of view, that is organic, responsible and determinative of the Progress of their existence. At times, this point of view will be in accord with pre-existing acceptances and understanding within Virginia Society, because it furthers the interest of whoever is in the status quo. At others, especially when it concerns holding accountable activities of Virginia Government expressed by the Prison Official, the Peoples point of view will not only be in diametric opposition to the status quo's narrative, but it will take on a confrontational one, not because the People, Family, Ally and Friends standing on the Speech of holding the Virginia Prison official accountable are in a confrontational stance, but the stylized archaic and idealistic formulations of governance is yet to mature to that practical recognition [even though such has always been apparent] and acceptance that interrogation of the Accountability-Function of the Constituted Aspirations of the People by the People isn't a zero sum game where a status quo loses "something", just because the People are arrayed in rank and file on the order that "equality under Law and its Process" isn't mere aspiration, but a material fact, as the all so material realization of the "Business of Human Existence". So the point is, there isn't any other aspect of Society and the Social Contract that lays bare every single contradiction and antagonism of Virginia's business of human existence, than the imprisonment scheme. Because even as all Virginians are approximate creations of Virginia law, the Virginia Prisoner is its defacto creation, as such is the most lawful. Now I don't have to go all into every single analytic minutia of the correctness of how the Virginia prisoner is the most lawful of Virginia's classes, save to state that if it rings odd it is so, because in order for Virginia's Government as governance to apply its regime of dehumanizing the prisoner, it has to not merely violate its own established laws, but negate and contradict its very existence. Which brings us full circle to our work of demanding the affirmation of the Accountability-Function. The last thing Virginia Politicians, specifically Republicans want to be concerned with is the Intellectual-liberalism consequence of their approach towards oversight of the Virginia Prison official. Which reveals their actual relationship with the Law, despite their adroitness at deceiving those susceptible for the usual reasons, that they are its defenders. We know that the only aspects of law they defend are those vestiges and remnants of its feudal and antebellum task master, that furthers the opportunity of whatever interest they presume, which is what births our reform work in opposition. Reform of Virginia's imprisonment scheme is that comprehensive acknowledgement and its operative requirement that THE PEOPLE are fully involved with the direction the underlying philosophy embraces, based on the unconditional refutation of dehumanization as any sort of self styled penological construct. Our obligation is simple and straightforward we refute with each and every opportunity the status quo narrative that is wretchedly mired in the philosophy of dehumanizing the Virginia prisoner, exposing it in all its guise.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
Also Virginia along with other sister States have State generated or Government versions of the IDEA INDUSTRY, that is produced by the Attorney General of the State and in Virginia its called OPINIONS OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL. These so-called Opinions just as products of the broader IDEA INDUSTRY are ideology dressed up as understandings of what the Law says that all Administrative heads and Legislators can submit questions for quasi explanations and elaborations of questions of law, which in actuality are hints seeking collusion. So we see this clearly with what the Director of the Virginia Department of Corrections, Harold Clarke put into effect by asking Jason Miyares the Commonwealth's Attorney General of the newly minted Republican Administration of Governor Glenn Youngkin on April 18, 2022,about the legality of the 53.1-202.3 law reforming the Earned Sentence Credits scheme. Harold Clarke's gambit was he is kindred to the reactionaries of the Republican Administration of Youngkin, so by purporting to seek guidance from Jason Miyares he was telegraphing to the Youngkin administration that he'd do his part in undermining the 53.1-202.3 law, to which Miyares promptly responded on April 25,2022, effectively telling Clarke that he should ignore the law and it is this violation that Mr. Jose Isais Garcia Vasquez challenged in the case VASQUEZ v. DOTSON 303 VA., 97 which People Mr. Vasquez won and the Supreme Court of Virginia ordered his release from Prison. Now this is what I want to share from the case as illustration and example of how the structure of the Virginia citizenry's life existence isn't actually based and just defined by the proactive behavior of electoral behavior but by what the Citizenry isn't aware of. In so many words and we see this principle in the Biology and Physics of existence, where a major part of our DNA structure exist in our ignorance's of its function. We see the same thing where what is designated, Dark Matter, occupies most of Space to our ignorance of its function. So in the VASQUEZ Case the Supreme Court of Virginia gave us this Jurisprudence and I'll excerpt it...."Under Virginia law," [c]riminal punishment serves a number of purposes, including INCAPCITATION,DETERRENCE and RETRIBUTION "[all caps are my emphasis]... Walker v. Commonwealth, 302 VA.304, see also Woodard v. Commonwealth 287 VA.276 Wilbon v. Saunders 170 VA.153.With these purposes in mind, Virginia's Sentencing Guidelines seek " to ensure the imposition of APPROPRIATE and JUST Criminal Penalties....especially for the effective INCAPACITATION of violent criminal offenders "Code sec.17.1-801 in support of these goals the General Assembly has provided various "tools for REHABILITATION of criminals", Peyton v. Commonwealth 208 VA.503 premised on the belief that REHABILITATION THAT IS TRULY EFFECTIVE reduces recidivism. [again all caps are my emphasis]. Legislating within this penological context, the General Assembly in 2020 increased the availability of Earned Sentence Credits "as an incentive for good behavior and rehabilitative activity while incarcerated" Prease 302 VA at 379,888 S.E.2d at 759. Accepting this as the DECLARED purpose of the Legislation, the Parties ask us to choose between their disparate views on whether the legislature intended Enhanced Sentence Credits to apply to criminals convicted of conspiring to commit murder. In addressing this question, however we ask "not what the legislature intended to enact, but what is the meaning of that which it did enact." People as I indicated all of the words that I fully capitalized from the portion of the Vasquez case are my emphasis, which I highlight to make this point. When the deciding Judges in the Vasquez case use and quote words as, INCAPACITATION, DETERRENCE, RETRIBUTION, APPROPRIATE, JUST and DECLARED.
Why am I focusing on the vocabulary applied by Virginia Supreme Court Judges in a open and shut Habeas case, in the context of Society or the Social Contract is Structured on and a composite of IDEAS. Because beyond the classic definition and understanding that language or vocabulary are conceptual tools, vocabulary is in fact Technological, encompassing thesis, antithesis and the approximate synthesis which to put it simply is sword and plowshare, interchangeably. So with this established, I want to focus on the vocabulary imbued in the VASQUEZ case. So words or vocabulary in legal processes can in themselves create law where none existed or deny its presence despite its existence and that is why the Social Contract or the existence of the socio-person is much more an establishment of IDEAS than the heavy lifting of that initial electoral activity. This brings me to the why of this series which I started 4 parts ago. Because to put it bluntly everything that are obstacles, welcoming portals or incentives and disincentives are what we either struggle, fight or War against. Which is the insight von Clausewitz postulated and Chaka Zulu with his practice stated and I paraphrase that, War is Politics by another name or means and the fact is its successful application is subsequently based on to what extent one is aware of the supporting, determining and animating IDEA of the activity. So when Virginia Judges state that criminal punishment in Virginia is intended to accomplish any number of anticipations, which despite being formulated on legislative action voted in by Representatives of the People, and the very idea of "representation" itself characterizes how inadequate and anticipatory of its accompanying latent corruption, as means of dealing with systemic forces unleashed, its very terms is incapable of not only resolving but reconciling. Then add on and combine a structural ignorance of the very voters. We can easily see how that aphorism, "in the land of the blind the one-eyed is King", not only fits but as that other simplification of determining an entire history of a political-economy by observation and grasp of its daily occurrence of "buying and selling", only reinforces the pure unbridled farcical nature of the injustices of what ignorance of whatever the IDEAS dictating those applied terms of the Social Contract are. For Family, Ally and Friends of the Imprisoned listed are the Part V of this continuity of the STRUCTURED-ON IDEAS series. THE CUMULATIVE PROBABILITY OF ARREST BY AGE 28 YEARS IN THE UNITED STATES BY DISABILITY STATUS RACE/ETHNICITY, AND GENDER----107 AM. J. PUB.HEALTH 1977 by ERIN J .McCAULEY THE FAILURE OF FAULT UNDER SEC.1983 MUNICIPAL LIABILITY FOR STATE LAW ENFORCEMENT----84 CORNELL L.REV.1503 by MARK R. BROWN [cited in N.N v. MADISON METRO. SCH. DIST. 670 F. SUPP 2d 927] THE PINNACLE OF PRECEDENT: THE NEED FOR CONSISTENCY IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW----59 AKRON L.REV. 499 by ELIZ SLABAUGH DEEPLY ROOTED IN AMERICAN HISTORY AND TRADITION: THE U.S.SUPREME COURTS ABYSMAL TRACK RECORD ON RACIAL JUSTICE AND EQUITY----15 ALA C.R. and C.L.L REV.45 by ZAMIR BEN-DAN [cited in HARM v. NAT'L ASS'N OF EMERGENCY MED TECHNICIANS 2025 U.S. DIST. LEXIS 60232] JUDICIAL CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES? LESSONS FROM ISLAMIC CRIMINAL LAW FOR CURING THE ILLS OF MASS INCARCERATION----25 IND.INTL. and COMP .L .REV.385 by MOHAMMED A. ARAFA and JONATHAN G. BURN SECTION 1983 LITIGATION: THE MAZE, THE MUD AND THE MADNESS----23 WM. and MARY BILL OF RTS.J. 913 by KAREN M. BLUM [cited in 4 cases] WHO WILL SUPERVISE THE SUPERVISORS? ESTABLISHING LIABILITY FOR FAILURE TO TRAIN, SUPERVISE OR DISCIPLINE SUBORDINATE IN A POST-IQBAL/CONNICK WORLD----47 HARV. C. R-C.L. L REV.273 by ROSALIE BERGER LEVINSON People Read, Study and vote accordingly.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
| image by William Thorpe |
Frederick Douglass delivered this speech on July 5, 1852, to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti‑Slavery Society. He begins by acknowledging the revolutionary ideals of the Founders — courage, resistance to tyranny, and the promise of liberty — but immediately turns the celebration inside out.
Douglass argues that Independence Day is a national ritual of hypocrisy so long as millions remain enslaved. The holiday’s symbols — liberty bells, flags, patriotic oratory — become grotesque when measured against the lived reality of Black people in America.
He indicts the nation for:
Legalized violence against enslaved people
Theft of labor and the economic engine of slavery
Religious institutions that bless bondage
Courts and legislatures that codify racial domination
A public conscience that refuses to see the humanity of the enslaved
Douglass insists that the slave knows America better than the patriot does: the slave sees the country not as an ideal but as a machine of law, built to extract labor and deny personhood.
He closes by arguing that slavery is not only immoral but unsustainable, and that the forces of justice — moral, political, and global — are already moving against it.
“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.” “You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
These two lines are the speech’s core: the enslaved person is constituted by law, stripped of rights, and forced to witness a celebration of freedoms they are denied.
The nation celebrates liberty while enforcing bondage. Douglass frames this contradiction as structural, not accidental.
Douglass emphasizes that slavery is not a social accident — it is legislated, protected, and enforced by courts, Congress, and the Constitution.
The enslaved person reveals the truth of America’s political identity: a republic that speaks freedom while practicing domination.
Douglass refuses to soften the indictment. He names slavery as cruel, barbaric, and shameful, and insists that no patriotic ritual can cover it.
Despite the brutality, Douglass argues that abolition is inevitable because slavery contradicts every principle the nation claims to honor
By vapac