This collection contains materials about women political prisoners and prisoners of war held in the United States and the struggles to free them.
The Lexington Control Unit was an experimental government prison built to house five women political prisoners. This collection contains materials related to the campaign to shut it down, its conditions and the women forced to live there.
Found 31 records
Originally published in The Nation 3/26/1988
Reproduction of article
Shut down all Control Units! Conditions in the High Security Unit and what you can do.
Materials about the documentary by Nina Rosenblum about the Lexington Control Unit.
Reproduction. Handwritten caption indicates "mid-70's"
Statements of solidarity, October 1987
Interview with Susan Rosenberg, an American revolutionary anti-imperialist female political prisoner, about Lexington prison. Susan Rosenberg describes the focus of Lexington as “the psychological element of incarceration to disintegrate the personality”. She speaks about the terribly harsh and restrictive conditions of Lexington, as well as the psychological impact of the prison. Rosenberg speaks about how every prisoner is there for political reasons, as the control unit is not based on disciplinary measures, but on classification of who and what the prisoners are associated with. Susan Rosenberg’s attorney, Michael Schubert, speaks about the isolation and solitary confinement the Lexington prisoners experience, and how such isolation is aimed at keeping the prisoners isolated from politics.
Political prisoners Alejandrina Torres, Silvia Baraldini, and Susan Rosenberg describe their living conditions at the control unit of the federal women’s prison in Lexington which opened in 1986: radical isolation, constant surveillance, sensory deprivation, no personal property, limited visits, etc. Defined by the government as the most dangerous women in prison for their political activities in various anti-war and liberation movements, Torres, Baraldini, and Rosenberg have been subjected to a sophisticated kind of psychological torture. According to them they have been used as examples of the consequences to be expected if one challenges the hegemony of US power. The interviews stress the importance of public pressure to have the unit closed.
a collection of poems, most likely written by Erika Huggins from inside Niantic Prison.
Reproduction