Portland Anarchist Black Cross

Politicized Anarchists:

• Mark Jordan
• Jerome White-Bey
• Coyote Sheff

Mark Jordan                                             

Mark is a a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1994, at the age of 18, Mark was arrested on federal bank robbery charges. In 1995, he was sentenced to 26 1/2 years in federal prison.

His first several years behind bars, Mark subjected himself to a cloistered life of study and reflection.  He obtained degrees and certificates in law, Paralegal Studies, Psychology, Psychotherapeutic Studies, Philosophy, Religion, Community Planning, and Political Theory. By 1997, Mark began to take an active role in the fledgling prisoners’ rights movement and criminal justice reform. In the summer of that year, after taking part in a non-violent protest at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, he was transferred to the U.S. penitentiary in Florence, Colorado where he spent over a decade in solitary confinement in the Special Management Unit.

After getting out of solitary, Mark employed himself as an educator to his fellow convicts in the prison’s Education Department and participated in the development of ”Neutral Block,” a prisoner collective that virtually eliminated the practice of forcible gang induction throughout the Bureau of Prisons. He also organized his fellow prisoners toward vindicating their rights in the courts, exposing prisoner abuse, challenging flawed administrative policies, and advocating for non-violent resolution, self-education/rehabilitation, and social/political awareness.  Mark loves nature and has a particular affinity for trees.

Mark serves as Honorary Chair and Policy Advisor to the nonprofit – Jordan Center for Criminal Justice and Penal Reform:  www.jordancenter.org   Those wishing to learn more about the Center’s work, or who would like to volunteer their time or assistance, can contact Mark by email at: mjordan@jordancenter.org

Jerome White-Bey           

Jerome is an anarchist prison activist who set up the Missouri Prison Labour Union to fight slave labour in prisons.

Jerome White-Bey #37479
5A-118
ERDCC
2727 Highway K
Bonne Terre, MO 63628

Coyote Sheff

Coyote is a 31-year-old self-defined anarchist who holds his own prison chapter of Anarchist Black Cross in the confines of Nevada’s maximum security prison, Ely State Prison.

To send letters of encouragement and support, write to:

Coyote Sheff, 55671
P.O. Box 1989
Ely, NV 89301-1989

In addition to starting a prison chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross, Coyote has organized anarchist reading and discussion groups amongst inmates, as well as exercise groups.  He has written for radical and anarchist publications, including a first-hand account of a prison riot at Ely State Prison.

Many of Coyote’s writings can be found on his blog, Coyote Calling.

A longer description of Coyote’s organizing has been published in 4 Struggle Mag.  For other writings by Coyote, see:

• Make the Walls Transparent
• Las Vegas Indymedia
• They Can’t Kill a Revolutionary at SF Bay View (in solidarity with the 2008 hunger strike of Ikemba)
• Prison Abolitionist