Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement Bulletin: File your complaint

by Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa

George_Jackson_writing_San_Quentin_web, Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement Bulletin: File your complaint, Abolition Now! It is necessary we prisoners get more involved with our destiny. Below is an illustration of a 602 complaint which every SHU and Ad-Seg prisoner should file on behalf of himself in direct relation with our Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement.

We prisoners know that it’s critical to think intelligently and create new strategies and tactics in fighting CDCR’s $9 billion machine. CDCR officials only respond to written issues. Thousands of prisoners held in SHU and Ad-Seg can file complaints, each concerning a single topic or issue. This is where prisoners become intelligent, thinking human beings. Yes, this equally goes for our fellow general population prisoner class.

Now, with this complaint, prisoners have to do the following:

  1. File the 602 appeal within your prison.
  2. Make sure that you get a signed third level response.
  3. Upon receiving the third level response, send your complete 602 to our PBHRM/PHSS legal team attorneys, who have been working diligently on behalf of all Pelican Bay SHU and Ad-Seg prisoners and the thousands of other prisoners held in SHU and Ad-Seg across this prison system for female and male prisoners.

It is necessary we prisoners get more involved with our destiny. We are illegally being held in the SHU and Ad-Seg while being subjected to sensory deprivation, both physical and psychological torture, inadequate health care and isolation.

The time is now to file our complaints in an organized effort. Send them to Anne Butterfield Weills, Attorney at Law, 499 14th St., Suite 220, Oakland CA 94612.

Explain your issue, i.e. describe the problem

On Sept. 27, 2012, Undersecretary Terry McDonald of CDCR, during an interview on the local 5 p.m. news on Channel 3, KIEM-TV, stated that 3,000 prisoners who are housed in the security housing units, SHUs, at Pelican Bay and Corcoran state prisons are being held on “behavior based” lock-up and that we’re not even 10 percent of the prison population.

Criminal gang activities and conspiracies are used to justify our long term retention in isolation. The McDonald statement clearly laid out the CDCR policy for retaining prisoners in the SHU on a behavior basis.

Yet we are being retained solely for an alleged prison gang validation. I received my latest placement notice in administrative segregation on ______________, and nowhere does it allege any behavior-based activities as cited in Undersecretary McDonald’s official statement.

We are illegally being held in the SHU and Ad-Seg while being subjected to sensory deprivation, both physical and psychological torture, inadequate health care and isolation. PBSP and CDCR officials are refusing to comply with CDCR official policy, while CDCR Undersecretary McDonald blatantly lied to the citizens of California when she said long term lock-ups of prisoners are behavior based. In response to Amnesty International’s recent report that 3,000 prisoners held in solitary confinement in California prisons are held in inhumane conditions, PBSP and CDCR need to cease the torture.

Request action

  1. I demand my IMMEDIATE release from SHU internment status.
  2. I demand that PBSP/CDCR institute a policy that reflects the official policy stated by Undersecretary McDonald on Sept. 27, 2012, regarding individual behavior-based lock-up orders.
  3. I demand that the non-fact-based SHU placement and slandering of prisoners held in solitary confinement under sensory deprivation immediately cease.
  4. I demand that CDCR Undersecretary McDonald be made to show the behavior-based lock-up order on me.

Send our brother some love and light: Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, s/n R.N. Dewberry, C-35671, PBSP SHU D1-117L, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532.