This is somewhat opposite from the methods that sometimes seem to be most prominently advocated here; namely attacking the figures of authority while staying above the fray on the messy individual issues...
Well I'm a pretty calm and dispassionate fellow I think. But just suppose that we really are headed for "World War Three." A BS WW3. That would be a state of imprisonment essentially for progressives. I'm not talking nonsense about a state of actual physical imprisonment because of course, no P.A.T.R.I.O.T.ic citizen concerns one's self with such matters. No, I'm talking exclusively about ideological imprisonment.
What you are told to do by the authorities, and what seems sensible, is to just mark your time and you'll be fine eventually, you'll have your freedom back. Don't try to use your individuality if you want to preserve it and get back to it. Enjoy the approved reading list, the care packages of inspected wine and cheese from France, and the actually quite stimulating conversations possible through censored correspondence.
The above advice is what you are expected to do in a period when civil liberties are curtailed, and for most people it isn't bad advice. Should the "unthinkable" happen and we find ourselves in such a state... Heck we have our toe in the water already... Then I advise you to consider it. Think about whether it will be possible for you to mark the years that way. Will you be able to keep your head down no matter what is going on around you? Will you be willing to play ball even when it costs your dignity and private interests to do so? If so... More power to you. Seriously. Enjoy your NPR (or CNN, come to that) and remember never to make eye contact, because everybody knows you are weak, friendless up to a certain point and beyond a certain point.
Now for the other options and/or necessities: Personal power and usefulness. And collective power and usefulness. Useful means useful to other people in a collective you belong to, to others in the general population, and to the authorities themselves.
Never forget the authorities are the ones in charge, no matter what never forget that or willfully ignore it. Never forget there is a reason they are in charge and it is not, however it may seem, an entirely bad reason. Nor is your imprisonment entirely unjust. Because it's all relative and this world is not ordered according to your ideas. You can make some of your own rules but they will have to coexist with the authority's terrain, and you will need to be really committed to these rules of yours, too. These rules will need to matter more to you than you matter to yourself or they are meaningless and instantly forgotten. These rules constitute the collective.
Already on DailyKos you have some experience with this. Do not for example allege that the authorities started the fire in the cafeteria. They did not, that's stupid. They can do whatever they want no matter what, they really don't need any excuses and if there is one place they prize order, it's the cafeteria. You may not realize this, because the prison is supposed to be non-profit, but the cafeteria is the source of a lot of income for the authorities so they wouldn't do that. If they ever pulled anything like that it would be on undesirables, down in the laundry room maybe. It's not like the guards especially want everyone's clothes to stink, but the warden's office wouldn't care. But that didn't happen. A fire in the cafeteria happened.
There's another important point: What happened in the cafeteria wasn't the start of this. You were already in prison, you just never knew it before, or maybe you did. Some of us did. Some of us knew from way back. Some of us came up through reformatories; because our parents maybe were jailbirds. We came up with a bit of a choice back then, but, like all of us, we made a choice. Maybe it didn't seem like a choice. Maybe we just fell in with the wrong crowd or maybe all on our own we just paid attention to the wrong things. None of that matters now; if you are reading this you are a lifer.
It's also critical to understand that everyone in prison is innocent. You will swear that up and down; you don't deserve this, but at the same time you will feel that there are many others here who definitely do deserve this. Try to keep that to yourself. Sure there are some extremes it's safe to pick on as you wish but in general try not to make people feel guilty because that really pisses them off. You don't like it yourself so don't try it on others unless you want the same reaction you'd like to give, but simply haven't gotten around to.
I know I said you could choose to mark your time minding your own business in hopes of getting out. But I didn't say you could actually get out. Because even if physically out you're institutionalized. You can enjoy freedom, and do so responsibly, but face facts: This world really is a prison. It's just that sometimes the rules are so lax and your habits so well-conformed that you'd never rub up against them. And more importantly, when things are good, the other inmates are either far away or well-heeled.
It's not the authorities that are the problem, not really. Get this through your thick skull... And I mean all of you. The general population sure as heck is no enemy to you, it is not your problem or even your concern. No, your concern is troublemakers and trouble-making unofficial groups that exist within that population, and sometimes within the authorities themselves. But ultimately, the authority is the most important asset you have here. It is like the laws of physics; it may not care whether you live or die but it wants that to happen in an orderly fashion, and that's good. That's predictable, it's peaceful, and it's even got avenues of appeal. It's what affords recourse.
Don't get on about how the warden is cruel, corrupt, or out to get us. Is that going to make him any more inclined to help us or merely tolerate us? Do you imagine he knows shame, or that such shame applies here? After all he sought out that job avidly and is performing it as he sees fit. This is not necessarily true of the guards, secretaries, and so on. Those folks might not have had the same range of choices for what they might have done with their lives. While they cherish the degree to which they are not prisoners just like you, they know deep down that they are more like you than not both in their hearts and their circumstances. But still, do not expect to get far, or accomplish anything often, on sentiment. It's just helpful for your own peace of mind to have these understandings, these kinships. They can't be exploited directly but they do help you feel less alienated so that you can work within, and indeed 99% of the time with, the system.
Now let's get to the heart of the matter: Ganging up.
See, we are different. Is this like being a minority ethnic group? To a point, yes. And past a certain point, yes. But in the middle the analogy breaks down. I'll explain: See, upon casual contact the general population views us with some caution. But as soon as they see we're decent, they like us and we are vanilla. However, when the chips are down, we're back to being starkly different and not their brothers. Actually... That's exactly like an ethnic experience in my opinion, because of course there are some people, and hard-and-fast organizations here, who will have nothing whatsoever but antagonism for us.
Some of those other associations are nuts, scary as hell, having made up their association based not on an actual ethnicity they couldn't change, or some sort of occupational specialty. No, those guys like the Red Foxes... They ganged up based on ideology.... Brrrr. Oh, heh, wait... That's what we have to do too. But of course they fancy themselves a lot like the Warden, and there are rumors of cooperation amongst them. Nevertheless the Red Foxes claim to hate the prison authority in a general way and the degenerate state of the population to boot. They love being in prison. It doesn't matter that their lives suck; they feel like they are in charge. They revel in the current state of affairs. And guess what? They aren't idiots. Yikes.
Now let's take a long look, and a second and third one, at those guys and how happy they are. Do they get extra concessions? Are their cells really any bigger or more comfortable? No. But the space in their heads is. Of course they have the countervailing affliction of being torn up by hate all the time. We shouldn't try to be just like them. But we shouldn't definitely pay attention to them, and not just because they want to shank us and rape us.
In a way, we owe those guys, the Red Foxes. They define us. Admit it. We wouldn't stand any chance of realizing we are a distinct group, much less maintain any cohesion, without their constant insistence. We're all too different. And yet here we are, in this one corner of the yard.
Here's what we need to do for starters:
Never, ever, be ashamed to be a member of this group or deny it. Consider a tattoo as a reminder. Shame is the danger; pride in itself is useless but it is a shield against the potential of shame, so adopt it. Shame will make you prey and eliminate your will to resist.
Never turn our backs on a member of this group unless they betray it. Don't go around making up new kinds of betrayals to accuse people of though, because the group needs to be bigger, not smaller. Someone who doesn't realize they have betrayed the group is still a member. Those who are hanging out with the other side, doing their work, and contemplating getting their tatts; those are the betrayers and they are few in number.
Work for the good of the group as a whole. Don't invent ways to do that though without having group approval. We all need to have a clear understanding of exactly what the group is about and up to or we can't feel like a part of it or essential to it. This reduces things to the lowest common denominator of intelligence, altruism, and energy, but that's okay. Imagination is not useless in a place with impenetrable walls, but it's not going to reconfigure those walls either. All it can work on is relationships and expectations.
Don't get the group in trouble and try to make it look like a positive thing to the authorities. For example let's keep our areas spic and span, and lets improve ourselves. Believe it or not, the authorities, even the warden, like to see that.
Everybody likes to see people chugging along happily and productively. The more surly and aimless we are the more we will be hated. It almost doesn't even matter what we are up to, as long as we look content doing it. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and the grease isn't the best thing. The best thing is not requiring grease. Of course there are circumstances where you want grease and then, you should make so much news you get it. But try to steer way clear of those circumstances. The best way to do that is stick together and to the proper areas.
Now to strategy. The Red Foxes? They are missing the point. They don't understand that while the warden is flattered to be popular with somebody, anybody, he really doesn't pay all that much attention to what prisoners think or say. His main interest is what they do. And the business of a prison is not well served by people who, like that Red Fox gang, hate the very idea of authority while wanting to exploit the rules of the place and treat it like their living room. The business of the prison actually is not well served by people who stir up other groups and create antagonisms where there were none. The business of the prison is not served by bastards who go around shanking other prisoners, each other, and even the occasional guard, like those Red Foxes do.
No, the business of the prison is something we should all care about. It's the best interest of the general population. And of the guards and even the warden who have families after all; giving them ulcers doesn't make this world a better place.
And that's the crux of it right there. The Red Foxes, and even some of the guards that are ostensibly aligned with them like this fellow Knute, who once thought he might be warden someday... Heck, even the warden himself it sometimes seems... They all make a very big mistake. They think the prison is the United States of America. But really it's the whole world. And it is against the interest of the authority, which is a collective, nonlocal, but distinct entity onto itself... For people to go around shanking and raping people, or taking the stuff the need to live so ruthlessly it stirs the pot unacceptably.
We aren't going to go over the warden's head. We aren't going to get the upper hand in even one antagonism with the lowliest guard, trust me, even if we get the guy fired. Especially if we get the guy fired. You don't think he'd be back? With a vengeance? You think making an example of him is going to show the authority that we are the boss? Oh, get a grip. Never in history has it once worked that way, at least not cleanly. There is always some weird convoluted payback. It's not that "It's hopeless" and there's nothing to accomplish.
Rather, one must accept that the order of things will not change, but that the chaos can be eliminated. The order of things is oppressive; imprisoning. But it's not going to change during the times it most appears like a prison, although the flip side is that the energy and interest to try to change it doesn't appear in the easy times either. All you can do, and at great cost, is change wardens. And don't think that after what happened to the last one he or she will be any more tolerant. Don't even think "riot." Seriously. But don't think that by manipulating the bureaucracy somehow to achieve the desired changes the changes will be welcomed. That's because the authority considers the authority its own property (go figure) and doesn't take kindly to prisoners manipulating it.
But as I said, we can accomplish tons. TONS:
Because authority wants the place reasonably clean, so excessive pollution is not really a part of the rules even if the warden somehow writes new rules in the margins, technically. Technicalities concern authority even less than they concern the warden, which is to say less than zero in the present tense. So feel free to get busy with the mop.
Authority wants people NOT to get noisily or messily sick, injured and untreated, tortured, slapped in solitary indefinitely for zero established reason, killed, raped, or even sleeping homeless in the hallways outside of the cells. Authority will support, if not reward, all peaceful efforts toward these aims as long as the group understands that changing the order of things is not considered peaceful in the least.
Those are the rules. They aren't fair, but you don't have any rights so fair has no meaning.
Authority will take care of the troublemakers as soon as it is clear that there are more than acceptable alternatives that actually want to cause less trouble, vis a vis the interests of authority.
Now you do all that, please, if you want to be an activist through tough times such as are prophesied here today. But you do something else, which the last "activist" generation, the "baby boomers," obviously neglected to do. You remember. And when things calm down don't go electing a Reagan or a Thatcher or even a cluelessly hawkish JFK.