Insist prisoners’ demands be met before someone else dies – contact information below

Update Feb. 10, 7:30 p.m.: Sal Rodriguez of Solitary Watch reports: “While the cause of death and its possible relationship to the hunger strike remains unconfirmed, (CDCR spokesperson Terry) Thornton responded to questions from Solitary Watch with an apparent affirmation that an inmate death had taken place and the statement: ‘I do not know the results of the autopsy.’

“In response to a phone call, Tom Edmonds, chief deputy coroner in Kings County, confirmed that inmate Christian Gomez died on Feb. 2 at Corcoran but also did not share the cause of death.”

CDCR’s Inmate Locator lists Christian Alexander Gomez, 27, CDCR No. G-07338, at Corcoran State Prison. Anyone with more information is invited to contact the Bay View at editor@sfbayview.com, 4917 Third St., San Francisco CA 94124, or (415) 671-0789 any time. Our deepest condolences go to the family, friends and comrades of the martyr, Christian Gomez.

by Isaac Ontiveros, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity

This banner was on display the day Occupy Oakland opened at Oscar Grant Plaza in front of City Hall Oct. 1, 2011, and must continue to be heeded until the hunger strikers’ demands are met – the death of a striker making it more critical than ever. Now Occupy Oakland has called for a National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners for Monday Feb. 20, and rallies are planned around the country. The Bay Area will rally in front of San Quentin noon to 3 p.m. Give or get a ride at 10 a.m. at Oscar Grant Plaza in Oakland or 1540 Market St. in San Francisco. – Photo: Sharon Peterson

As of Feb. 9, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) disclosed that 30 men were still striking and a representative in the office said that prisoners had been intermittently striking for the last month. Unlike the California prisoner hunger strikes of July and September, little attention has been given to the ongoing strike at Corcoran.

Family members and advocates fear strikers may be experiencing serious medical issues and even death. A prisoner at Corcoran, who remains unnamed due to fear of reprisal, stated in a letter received on Feb. 5: “On or about Feb 2nd or 3rd 2012 an inmate has passed away due to not eating that has been going on over here in Corcoran ASU. Inmates are passing out and having other medical problems and it seems that this is not being taken seriously. There will be more casualties if this isn’t addressed or brought to light.”

While this death is unconfirmed, it raises concerns that the CDCR is failing to deal with this hunger strike in an appropriate manner. “The prisoners are making very reasonable and legitimate demands regarding basic human rights,” says Carol Strickman, a lawyer working on behalf of some hunger strikers in California. “For those of us on the outside, the slow pace of reform is frustrating. For those people enduring barbarous conditions, the lack of meaningful improvement is unbearable.”

A prisoner at Corcoran ASU wrote this letter to activist Kendra Castaneda, whose husband is at Calipatria ASU. The writer’s name is withheld for his protection. Retaliation against hunger strikers who communicate with activists has been brutal. The three Corcoran ASU petitioners – Asian, Latino and Black – were immediately transferred to other cells or other prisons after calling the strike in December. Kendra reports that one of the petitioners, Juan Jaimes, wrote her on Jan. 31 to say "we are not accepting any state food whatsoever and were not being allowed any food items from canteen at all." He said the hunger strike at Corcoran ASU will be on-going until their humane demands are met. – Letter courtesy of Kendra Castaneda

Following the September hunger strike and significant pressure from the public and legislators in Sacramento, the CDCR announced that it would make changes to its gang validation procedure and would release a draft for review by stakeholders sometime in January. “The CDCR is clearly behind on their timeline. Meanwhile, prisoners continue to be validated largely due to association and baseless allegations effectively dooming them to indefinite SHU sentences without any means of challenging their cases,” says Azadeh Zohrabi of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition. The stakeholders’ review will reportedly involve the California Correctional and Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), state legislators and prison advocates.

Lawyers, families, and advocates will continue to monitor the situation at Corcoran. For updates and further information, please visit www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com.

Isaac Ontiveros of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization working to abolish the prison industrial complex, is a spokesperson for the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition. He can be reached at (510) 444-0484 or isaac@criticalresistance.org.

How you can help

Activist Kendra Castaneda, who first heard the news of this tragic death and notified the coalition, writes:

Please put the pressure on CDCR before someone else dies.

“Please put the pressure on CDCR before someone else dies. This could be your loved one or family member. Please help:

“Email or write or call asap to Matthew Cate and demand that he meet these prisoners’ demands. Write or call Corcoran Warden C. Gipson and email or call Nancy Kincaid to make sure these men are receiving proper medical treatment while on their hunger strike.”

Here’s the contact information:

• Gov. Jerry Brown, c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento CA 95814, (916) 445-2841. He can also be reached through his website, at http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php.
• CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate: 1515 S St., Suite 330, Sacramento, CA 95811, (916) 323-6001, Matthew.Cate@cdcr.ca.gov
• Corcoran Warden Connie Gipson: Corcoran State Prison, P.O. Box 8800, Corcoran, CA 93212, (559) 992-8800
• California Correctional Health Care Services Director of Communications Nancy Kincaid: P.O. Box 4038, Sacramento, CA 95812-4038, (916) 323-1923

Related Posts

• Hunger strike updates: Legislative hearing on Pelican Bay SHU tomorrow in Sacramento
• 12,000 California prisoners on hunger strike
• California prisoners resume hunger strike today
• From Pelican Bay: CDCR to offset prison population cut by putting more men in solitary
• We are willing to sacrifice ourselves to change our conditions

by Bruce Reilly

A proposal passed Jan. 10 by the General Assembly of Occupy Oakland is to generate a national day of action that will call attention to prisons across America. While presidential candidates take to their stumps, one might be unaware that America is the international leader in incarceration with no competition in sight. Monday, Feb. 20, amidst American Black History Month, has also been declared by the United Nations as “World Day of Social Justice.”

The call coincides with a recent call to action by supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal to condemn solitary confinement as a means of torture. Mumia had been transferred to solitary for seven weeks after leaving Death Row. The call also comes amidst growing awareness of the relationship between Wall Street, prisons, prison labor and paid lobbyists pushing policies that create more prisoners.

The call for a National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners comes amidst growing awareness of the relationship between Wall Street, prisons, prison labor and paid lobbyists pushing policies that create more prisoners.

We are calling for Feb. 20, 2012, to be a National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners. In the Bay Area we will Occupy San Quentin to stand in solidarity with the people confined within its walls and to demand the end of the incarceration as a means of containing those dispossessed by unjust social policies.

Reasons

Prisons have become a central institution in American society, integral to our politics, economy and culture.

Between 1976 and 2000, the United States built on average a new prison each week and the number of imprisoned Americans increased tenfold.

Prison has made the threat of torture part of everyday life for millions of individuals in the United States, especially the 7.3 million people – who are disproportionately people of color – currently incarcerated or under correctional supervision.

Imprisonment itself is a form of torture. The typical American prison, juvenile hall and detainment camp is designed to maximize degradation, brutalization and dehumanization.

Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. Between 1970 and 1995, the incarceration of African Americans increased 7 times. Currently African Americans make up 12 percent of the population in the U.S. but 53 percent of the nation’s prison population. There are more African Americans under correctional control today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. There are more African Americans under correctional control today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

The prison system is the most visible example of policies of punitive containment of the most marginalized and oppressed in our society. Prior to incarceration, two thirds of all prisoners lived in conditions of economic hardship – while the perpetrators of white-collar crime largely go free.

In addition, the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that in 2008 alone there was a loss in economic input associated with people released from prison equal to $57 billion to $65 billion.

We call on Occupies across the country to support:

1. Abolishing unjust sentences, such as the death penalty, life without the possibility of parole, three strikes, juvenile life without parole, and the practice of trying children as adults.

2. Standing in solidarity with movements initiated by prisoners and taking action to support prisoner demands, including the Georgia Prison Strike and the Pelican Bay/California Prisoners Hunger Strikes.

3. Freeing political prisoners, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Lynne Stewart, Bradley Manning and Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, a Black Panther Party member incarcerated since 1969.

4. Demanding an end to the repression of activists, specifically the targeting of African Americans and those with histories of incarceration, such as Khali of Occupy Oakland, who could now face a life sentence on trumped-up charges, and many others being falsely charged after only exercising their First Amendment rights.

5. Demanding an end to the brutality of the current system, including the torture of those who have lived for many years in Security Housing Units (SHUs) or in other forms of solitary confinement.

6. Demanding that our tax money spent on isolating, harming and killing prisoners instead be invested in improving the quality of life for all and be spent on education, housing, health care, mental health care and other human services which contribute to the public good.

Bay Area

On Feb. 20, 12 noon-3 p.m., we will organize in front of San Quentin, where male death row prisoners are housed, where Stanley Tookie Williams was immorally executed by the state of California in 2005 and where Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on death row, is currently imprisoned.

At this demonstration, through prisoners’ writings and other artistic and political expressions, we will express the voices of the people who have been inside the walls. The organizers of this action will reach out to the community for support and participation. We will contact social service organizations, faith institutions, labor organizations, schools, prisoners, former prisoners and their family members.

Get a ride or give a ride at 10 a.m. at either Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th and Broadway, Oakland, or 1540 Market St., San Francisco.

National and international outreach

We will reach out to Occupies across the country to have similar demonstrations outside of prisons, jails, juvenile halls and detainment facilities or other actions as such groups deem appropriate. We will also reach out to Occupies outside of the United States and will seek to attract international attention and support.

Endorsers include Angela Davis, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Jack Bryson, Kevin Cooper Defense Committee, Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu Jamal, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu Jamal, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, Occupied Oakland Tribune, Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression, Prison Activist Resource Center, Prison Watch Network, San Francisco Bay View newspaper, All of Us or None, Critical Resistance, Michelle Alexander, Occupy SF and the Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network.

“Social justice is more than an ethical imperative, it is a foundation for national stability and global prosperity. Equal opportunity, solidarity and respect for human rights – these are essential to unlocking the full productive potential of nations and peoples.” – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Anti-prison activist Bruce Reilly can be reached on his blog, Unprison, where this story first appeared.

Occupy Death Row

by Kevin Cooper

Kevin Cooper

One cannot live on this planet and not know the bed capitalism lays here within this country. The roots from the tree of greed have spread to damn near every part of this world. They have had an impact, directly or indirectly, on every person in this world, to one degree or another.

Capitalism and the capitalists who run and control it need very important ingredients to make it work. They need “The Haves” and “The Have Nots”!

These days, as it once was when this country was first formed, it is very easy to tell the difference between the two. Some of the people, who for most of their lives considered themselves the “Haves,” are finding out that they were living a lie. That now they are part of the “Have Nots.” This reality is causing them, or at least some of them, to become part of this Occupy movement, and understandably so.

I have never considered myself to be a “Have” nor has this country ever treated me as a “Have”! No man or woman on death row in this state or any other state is a “Have.” We are also the “Have Nots.” We are the bottom 1 percent, who damn near everyone shits on. We are scapegoated, ignored, humiliated, disowned and ritually tortured and murdered by and at the hands of the top 1 percent – and some of the 99 percent as well!

Kevin Cooper 1985

It seems that the 1 percent are immune from the sentence of death, even when their policies in war – or peace – have killed untold numbers of people around the world. The bottom 1 percent is not immune and seems to be used as part of entertainment, from the media to the politicians.

While these truths must be known to the 99 percent who are now saying that they are the “Have Nots,” these truths are not acknowledged by the majority of them. We who are the bottom 1 percent, the historical “Have Nots,” the ones who are paraded before the public and humiliated, strapped to a gurney, tortured and murdered by the powers that be – we ask, “Why aren’t we included in this Occupy movement?”

While people are, and should be, occupying Wall Street and every other money street in the country, as well as occupying every city that they can, I ain’t hearing no one say, “Occupy Death Row!”

Nonetheless, I have been doing so since 1985. And death row itself has been occupying this country since even before this land became a country. Executions and the various ways that poor people have been executed throughout the years proves that executions are part of this country’s DNA.

Outside San Quentin, Kevin Cooper supporters protest his execution, which was called off by an appeals court on Feb. 9, 2004. This is where Occupy San Quentin will take place on Monday, Feb. 20.

I respectfully ask the Occupy movement: Will you please not make the same mistake that was made by previous movements seeking civil or any other type of rights? That mistake was not to include the ending of capital punishment.

Our fight and our plight from here on death row is just as important to us as your fight and your plight is to you! We understand this and respect this. All we ask, and all we have the right to ask is that you not leave us behind and/or out of the conversation. Any house, even a house full of “Have Nots,” divided upon itself cannot and will not stand. We must unite!

In Struggle and Solidarity

From Death Row at San Quentin Prison,

Kevin Cooper

Related Posts

• Hunger strike recap: California prisoners show the way!
• Mumia’s first week of freedom … from Death Row
• Geronimo ji-Jaga: Tributes from Black Panther comrades and current political prisoners
• Wanda’s Picks for May 2011
• Statement of solidarity with Georgia prisoner strike

Three letters from core hunger strike organizers: Todd Ashker, Mutope Duguma (James Crawford), Arturo Castellanos

by Todd Ashker

Displaying his banner on the steps of San Francisco City Hall on June 17, 2011, poet and former political prisoner – member of the San Quentin 6 – Bato Talamantez was among the first Bay Area activists to rally public support and draw media attention to the hunger strike called by prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU to begin July 1. This photo dominated the front page of the Bay View’s July print edition. – Photo: United for Drug Policy Reform

Briefly, here’s what I’m concerned about: Right at the time – in May – when the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s prison population reduction order, in seeming response to our July hunger strike, CDCR unveils their STG plan. Here’s how it looks to me: The prison population reduction of 35,000-40,000 prisoners equals a potential loss of $2 billion in the yearly CDCR budget and the loss of approximately 7,000 CCPOA members. That’s the loss of a lot of union dues!

A clever way to offset some of this loss is to create a “new” security threat designation scheme – used in a lot of states, including Arizona, where it’s used to isolate all inmates labeled southern Hispanic from California – enabling CDCR to segregate a lot more men. Segregation costs nearly double general population and requires more staff.

I can foresee the possibility of CDCR making all the Level IVs across the state segregated isolation units! Anyone who scoffs at this doesn’t know CDCR’s history of the last 40 years, wherein they have manipulated and abused every major federal court ruling that’s been made against them! This is a fact, witnessed by many men here in my pod.

Right at the time – in May – when the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s prison population reduction order, in seeming response to our July hunger strike, CDCR unveils their “security threat group” (STG) plan. The reduction of 35,000-40,000 prisoners equals a potential loss of $2 billion in the yearly CDCR budget and 7,000 CCPOA members. The STG scheme enables CDCR to segregate a lot more men. Segregation costs nearly double general population and requires more staff.

As for the subject of “behavior” – yes, we all are interested in what CDCR’s definition will be regarding “behavior.” On Oct. 20, former CDCR Director George Guirbino came and spoke with me at my cell for about 45 minutes with Warden Lewis, and I asked him about this “behavior” definition issue. His response was that they were not sure at that time, but it should be along the lines of if they have credible evidence that you have committed an illegal act, you’ll be written up and, if found guilty, assessed a specific punishment – SHU term, demotion in step program level(s) etc. We touched on all of the points people are tripping out on there in our second hunger strike document, “Tortured SHU prisoners speak out: The struggle continues.”

News coverage of the horrors of prison life for the 2.5 million Americans locked behind enemy lines is suppressed by law and custom, limiting prisoners’ and their supporters’ ability to plead their cause and organize to achieve relief – and release. Prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU, however, crafted their demands and prepared so effectively for their hunger strike that not only did 12,000 California prisoners participate but stories appeared in both the mainstream and alternative media. This Associated Press photo of a rally at the State Building in San Francisco on the day the first strike began, July 1, 2011, appeared in many major newspapers. – Photo: Paul Sakuma, AP

We’ve let the attorneys know that they should not presume to know what’s good and not good for us – and they need to include the core reps in the loop. And when I put something out there from the collective of reps here, we need it taken care of ASAP, not sitting collecting dust for a month.

And I’ll say this: The collective doesn’t appreciate people questioning the legitimacy of our update. That’s a bit disrespectful of people to presume I’d put that out there without a consensus. And the consensus of agreement with the entire content was not solely that of the core collective but a big majority of the entire short corridor, most of whom are Hispanics. No one is taking it personal but people need to cut all the silly sh-t out!

No one can do this alone and no one should have to feel they have to. And if things aren’t right by the summer, you all are going to need to be supportive of each other because it’s possible a peaceful activity will resume. If so, some men may very well expire. That’s why people’s efforts and support to get CDCR to act before then is critical!

If things aren’t right by the summer, you all are going to need to be supportive of each other because it’s possible a peaceful activity will resume. If so, some men may very well expire. That’s why people’s efforts and support to get CDCR to act before then is critical!

I watched a program last week on PBS about the green movement in Africa, where the mothers and wives of men locked up for their political writings went on hunger strike demanding the government release their men. When, after three days, the crowd became larger, the government sent in soldiers to bust heads. The women got naked, because beating a naked woman is viewed as violating one’s own mother in their culture. Many were beaten, but their men got released!

Major TV stations covered the rally in front of CDCR headquarters in Sacramento July 18, 2011, in the midst of the first round of the hunger strike. – Photo: Grant Slater, KPCC

Most of us serving term to life sentences are way beyond our minimum parole eligibility dates. We’re not serving legit legal sentences; we’re here based on political manipulation and special interest groups, criminal organizations – e.g. CCPOA – who’ve made a money making industry off the backs of the disenfranchised (not limited to “people of color,” rather the poor composed of all races), perpetrating a 40-year criminal fraud on the taxpayers.

This is not limited to those incarcerated. It’s every one of the 99 percent. Our country is a two-class country now: the wage slave poor and the rich, period! This country’s been in a class war for a long time and people need to wake up.

The people have the power to make the changes that the courts and politicians refuse to make, because they’re part of the problem – maintaining the status quo. It’s all a matter of the people’s resolve and commitment to doing what’s needed to make it happen – through peaceful protest means!

The people have the power to make the changes that the courts and politicians refuse to make.

This is the type of message you’ll need to be sharing with as many people as possible: You’ll need to come together and say “Hey, we’re not accepting our family member’s torture no more – he shouldn’t even be in prison – and this is our plan of action” regarding serious peaceful protest rallies, outside hunger strikes at the capitol and lawmakers’ offices etc. Some things to think about: collectively utilizing the support energy in a positive, productive way to keep the focus and exposure going strong and letting it be known that we’re committed to the end to make these long overdue changes happen.

Send our brother some love and light: Todd Ashker, C-58191, PBSP SHU, D1-119, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532. This letter was written to and typed by Kendra Castaneda.

CDCR incites violence to fatten their paychecks

by Mutope Duguma

Written Jan. 19, postmarked Jan. 24, 2012 – Keep in mind that these [the new proposed regulations posted below, following the letters] are nothing but proposals, and we all know that CDCR does not see us as human beings; therefore, they do not want to let us out of these “gulags” under no circumstances, which shows how diabolical – i.e. evil – the CDCR is in respect to prisoners of color, i.e. New Afrikans, Natives, Latinos, Mexicans, and very poor whites.

This is historical hate being practiced against those individuals held in solitary confinement – i.e. Ad-Seg, SHUs, Supermax etc. And this is what CDCR hopes is the case: that citizens of this nation accept their position that we are “savages,” the “worst of the worst” etc., when actually we are more embracing of our humanity than many of the employees that work for CDCR. They (CDCR) and its 33 prison chapters have murdered, beaten and lied in order to continue this criminal empire.

CDCR hopes that citizens of this nation accept their position that we are “savages,” the “worst of the worst.”

We are not going anywhere, because if CDCR attempts to manipulate a policy where it keeps us in solitary confinement, then our struggle continues. We are very mindful that we are the victims of a powerful system that has gone astray. They’re only going to create some kind of contradiction in which they (CDCR) can say, “We told you so: These guys are violent.”

This is a frame from TV coverage of the July 18 rally by KCRA, Sacramento.

CDCR profiles prisoners and then, based on their assessment of that prisoner, already know that if that prisoner is placed in a certain predicament then he or she will engage in violence. This is just one of many ways CDCR manufacture violence, which is a big PAYCHECK for many CDCR officers through overtime and asking the legislature for more money. So they do not only play the prisoner, but the taxpayers as well.

Most of the violence in CDCR is manufactured by prison guards and those who sit at the top in Sacramento. This is why we are working to shut down all racial violence – a big PAYCHECK for many CDCR officers through overtime and an excuse to ask the legislature for more money. So they do not only play the prisoner, but the taxpayers as well.

We are very progressive when it comes to what will be the new policy that will govern whether we will remain back here for nothing. If they use “behavior,” then it has to be connected to conduct, where one has actually been involved in an incident that was cause for a rule violation report (RVR). So that’s cool. We want that, you dig? We don’t really care about CDCR’s stepdown program because we are proposing our own, which we already had before and which was successful.

We believe and want it enforced that everyone who has been in solitary confinement indefinitely illegally should be released from SHU and Ad-Segs immediately while being provided an adequate medical checkup due to being denied medical treatment years on top of years. These are nothing but games from CDCR once again.

We believe and want it enforced that everyone who has been in solitary confinement indefinitely illegally should be released from SHU and Ad-Segs immediately while being provided an adequate medical checkup due to being denied medical treatment years on top of years.

You are now learning the true nature of CDCR. This program – whatever it turns out to be – will be for EVERY prisoner held in a California state prison. Those held in solitary confinement, such as Ad-Segs, waiting to be placed in SHU should have been in SHU 90 days after they received their indeterminate SHU program. The system plays on prisoners’ inability to file CDCR 602 appeals and writs. They take their time because they abuse the power they’ve been entrusted with.

Remember this, that CDCR is going to do what it is going to do and we are going to do what we have to do through peaceful nonviolent demonstrations in order to continue our struggle for liberation. And we are dealing with thousands of human beings’ lives, so we have to be careful how we move forward. We have people who are literally willing to die rather than to be subjected to this another day.

We have people who are literally willing to die rather than to be subjected to this another day.

We have many superior minds back here who will easily see if CDCR is playing their same old games as usual. This is not an overnight struggle! We are very much fighting for our lives and our family and friends’ lives. We have a lot of major activities going on that will expose this criminal empire for what is.

Send our brother some love and light: Mutope Duguma, s/n James Crawford, D-05996, PBSP-SHU D1-117, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532. This letter was written to and typed by Kendra Castaneda.

Challenge CDCR in the open

by Arturo Castellanos

Written Jan. 16, 2012 – I’m writing you because attorneys have sent me a lot of copies of downloads from your website and others who have heavily criticized your pro-active actions. What made me laugh is that you’re a little thing and an army of one – and the others are talking bad about you. And I say anyone who claims to be walking and striving to put forward our demands – which include Ad-Seg – should NOT be trying to undermine all your hard won effort!

Evidence that word of the dramatic hunger strike in California had reached the rest of the U.S. and beyond is this banner hanging from an overpass in Philadelphia on July 18.

Why are they trying to silence a strong outspoken person who is helping all of us – and being heard?

We are all in the same struggle so don’t indirectly help CDCR by trying to silence a strong voice among you. What we need is A LOT more Kendras who are NOT afraid to challenge CDCR in the open and not take a passive stance and just hope for the best. That latter stance – passive – is the reason we have remained in the SHU all these years!

Everyone in this struggle needs to work together or else you are just an obstructionist to our cause – and I can’t make it clearer than that!

Arturo Castellanos is barred from receiving mail, an issue that should be raised with CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate. This letter was written to and typed by Kendra Castaneda.

Status of CDCR’s new regs

by Terry Kupers, Laura Magnani and Carol Strickman for the mediation team

Jan. 4, 2012 – On Dec. 28, 2011, two members of the mediation team spoke with Undersecretary Terri McDonald about the status of the new regulations on gang validation and SHU classification policies and procedures. Undersecretary McDonald stated the following:

A rally in support of the Sept. 26, 2011, resumption of the hunger strike was organized by Revolution activists and held at the Pelican Bay State Prison gate on Oct. 1.

2. In addition, CDCR is designing a four-step “stepdown program” designed for exiting gang members. Step 1 is high security and step 4 is transition to general population. Debriefing is not required to qualify for this program.

3. CDCR has drafted a “concept paper” about these new policies, which it intends to send to its national experts in early January. CDCR did not adopt the prior recommendations of the 2007 experts’ report, mostly because of cost. CDCR’s concept paper will not be available to prisoners and their advocates until after the experts weigh in.

4. CDCR hopes to hear back from these experts by late January or early February.

5. CDCR will then revise its concept paper and send it to “stakeholders” for feedback.

6. Stakeholders include such groups as legislators, law enforcement leaders in the community who work with gangs, the Prison Law Office and the mediation team.

7. After hearing from the stakeholders, CDCR will then turn its concepts into detailed regulations.

8. Then CDCR will propose these changes officially through the public hearing process, negotiating with unions etc. She also stated that the Castillo case would have to be factored in, so that someone coming up for a six-year review doesn’t lose ground with the new provisions. All of this will take time.

9. The status of individual prisoners who are currently in SHU will not be reviewed until all of this has happened, other than those who are up for annual review by the ICC (Institution Classification Committee).

10. The stepdown program can be implemented sooner, as it does not involve policy changes. She gave an example of prisoners going to an “integrated yard,” composed of prisoners affiliated with enemy gangs, to see if they can get along.

11. She cautioned that there will be no large-scale exodus from the SHUs. They are concerned that, if they move too fast and violent incidents occur, the entire reform process will be destroyed.

12. Although the process will be slow, she stated that CDCR is committed to reworking its validation procedures, making SHU consignment behavior-based, opening the stepdown program and re-evaluating all current SHU occupants when the new regulations on validation and SHU placement are in place.

13. Regarding the specific promises that Scott Kernan negotiated as part of demand no. 5 – calendars, hobby items, sweats etc. – she states that they have all been accomplished already with the exception of the chin-up bars, because they involve some expensive structural changes, and the photographs, which are happening over time, when prisoners get their ICC reviews. She states that these items are not privileged-based.

14. CDCR officials who are involved are George Guirbino, who has retired but will remain on contract with CDCR for this purpose, Suzan Hubbard and Director Subio. Hubbard and Guirbino will be on the panel reviewing individual prisoners’ cases once the new regulations are rolled out.

Although the undersecretary’s comments do not provide all of the detail that we need, this information is helpful in general terms. We will provide more information as we learn it.

Terry Kupers, M.D., M.S.P., a clinical psychiatrist, professor at the Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology, and an expert in forensic mental health and the effects of solitary confinement, can be reached at kupers@igc.org or his office, (510) 654-8333. Laura Magnani, regional director for the American Friends Service Committee in San Francisco and co-author of “Beyond Prisons” in 2006 and author of “Buried Alive: Long Term Isolation in Youth and Adult Prisons” in 2008, can be reached at lmagnani@afsc.org or (415) 565-0201, ext. 11. Carol Strickman, a lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, can be reached at carol@prisonerswithchildren.org or (415) 255-7036, ext. 324.

Related Posts

• Greed drives solitary confinement torture
• Hearing on Solitary Confinement: seeking compassion in the capitol
• Hunger strike in the supermax: Pelican Bay prisoners protest conditions in solitary confinement
• To witness people say no to state-sanctioned torture is a beautiful sight indeed
• Strike updates: Stop prison torture at Pelican Bay

by Kendra Castaneda

California’s state prisons, especially those built in the most recent prison construction boom, are located in remote, isolated parts of the state. Far off the beaten path, they get little or no news coverage, and visitors must travel for hours from even the closest city.

Feb. 4 update: Independent investigators visit Calipatria

Progress in the Velarde vs. Duarte case: The court ordered CDCR to allow Attorney General staff, independent lawyers and experts inside Calipatria State Prison on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012, into Facility B for cell inspections and to inspect elsewhere throughout the prison. All the inmates were watching them very carefully.

There’s no need for families and supporters to worry. The inspectors were sent to the prison; they were sent to help. They do not work with CDCR and they do not work with the prison officials. They are going above and beyond their usual role to get justice for the inmates who have been abused and mistreated in some form or another by IGI E. Duarte.

 Jan. 28 update: Court gives green light

Many inmates at Calipatria State Prison have agreed to come forward and testify in court against Calipatria Institutional Gang Investigator (IGI) E. Duarte, for the courts have officially granted a trial. Not only will it be for the Velarde case, but the United States District Court will be hearing from inmates who have either been victims or witnesses to IGI Duarte using excessive force on an inmate, falsifying documentation on an inmate or planting evidence on an inmate to “validate” him as a “gang member.”

Testimony will limited to misconduct by Duarte that prisoners have witnessed; no other testimony will be allowed. Yes, there will be media attention, but none will focus directly on the inmates – only on the information they make public.

Again, if anyone wants to come forward about IGI E. Duarte’s misconduct and expose him, not only will it help expose the false charges, false validations and false segregation many men have endured at Calipatria ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit), but it could also help expose for the first time an IGI purposely planting evidence and falsifying documentation to get an inmate validated and sent to the SHU. It could possibly open the doors toward ending the corrupt CDCR validation process and help many more men in the SHUs and AdSegs throughout California. Contact me at kendracastaneda55@gmail.com.

*****

Original article, posted Jan. 17: Calipatria State Prison Institutional Gang Investigator (IGI) E. Duarte is currently under investigation by the United States District Court due to a complaint of excessive force on an inmate and complaints of falsifying legal documentation and planting evidence on inmates.

After IGI Duarte broke his leg, Harold Velarde had the courage to file a complaint with the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. It was originally denied, but in October 2011, the court ordered the case to be investigated.

Another prisoner, Jesus Macias, reports he has proof that IGI Duarte “fabricated evidence and lied in every report.” We are now calling for more evidence of Duarte’s wrongdoing.

If you know anybody who has witnessed Institutional Gang Investigator E. Duarte at Calipatria State Prison use excessive force, falsify documentation or plant evidence on an inmate, especially if it resulted in the prisoner being “validated” as a “prison gang member,” or if you know an inmate who has been targeted by IGI Duarte, please contact me as soon as possible at kendracastaneda55@gmail.com.

Jesus Macias: IGI Duarte fabricated evidence that ‘validated’ me as a gang member

This letter from Jesus Macias, currently in Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) at Calipatria State Prison, describes his experience with IGI Duarte. It was written to me on Sept. 25, 2011, one day before the California statewide hunger strike called by prisoners in the Pelican Bay State Prison SHU resumed. Prisoners at Calipatria joined in that hunger strike, and continued to strike after nearly all the 12,000 prisoners participating had stopped.

Calipatria is a four-hour drive from Los Angeles. The scorching heat of the Mojave Desert is too much for many older cars. This makes the trip dangerous for visitors, who are mostly women, many with children eager to visit daddy.

“I first like to thank you and all the good people helping us out to bring our situation here in Calipatria ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit) and all SHUs (Security Housing Units) in California to light!

“My name is Jesus Macias, CDC E-14338. I am currently housed in Calipatria ASU and I’ve been serving a life-plus-five-year sentence for attempted murder in 1988. I was 18 years old at the time. I came into the prison system at a young age, so I was young, dumb and got myself into a lot of trouble.

“After my last SHU term in 2000, I realized this is not a life for me. I started programing, going to school, picking up my grades and getting a job, picking up a trade, and I’ve been programming ever since with NO ‘115 disciplinary actions’ at all! I am what an official would call a model inmate.

“I had been going to my board hearings and they told me I had a chance to go home to my family. Well, now that dream is shattered.

“On Jan. 11, 2011, at 1:00 a.m., I was awakened by institutional gang investigator officers yelling at me not to move and to follow their directions. After being cuffed, I was left in the shower while the IGI officers searched my cell.

“After two hours I asked IGI Officer E. Duarte, ‘Why are you searching my cell?’ He said it was routine. I asked him, ‘Did you leave a cell search slip?’ Looking upset at me, he said, ‘I’ll give it to you right now. Wait!’

“When he gave it to me, he said, ‘I’m going to get you!’ I asked him, ‘What do you mean?’ He didn’t answer me and left. Then, on Jan. 25, 2011, I was picked up by who else but IGI Officer E. Duarte for a validation package. All the so-called evidence they had on me was found that day, on Jan. 11, 2011.

“But I have that cell search slip IGI E. Duarte gave me, and there was no contraband or gang material ever found in my cell that morning! I wrote my rebuttal and 602 appeal telling them this IGI Officer E. Duarte fabricated evidence and lied in every report. I have his own cell search slip with his signature.

“They didn’t care and rubber stamped me all the way through OCS/SSU (Office of Correctional Safety Special Services Unit) and validated me! Since being back here in Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU), I found more inmates with similar situations with IGI E. Duarte. The sad thing about all this is nothing’s being done about it by their own supervisor, Warden Leland McEwen, who overlooks them.

“But I have that cell search slip IGI E. Duarte gave me, and there was no contraband or gang material ever found in my cell that morning! They didn’t care and rubber stamped me all the way through OCS/SSU (Office of Correctional Safety Special Services Unit) and validated me!”

“As for the conditions here in Calipatria ASU, they are the worst I have ever experienced within these 23 years in prison. Most of the time our food is cold and small portions, the staff does not clean the tier and it gets so nasty that we have to purposely flood the tier with water and shampoo just to try and keep it clean.

“As for clothes exchange, it’s rare if we get that. As for your basic supplies – toothpaste, toothbrush or simple things like a spoon – they are always short or they say they just don’t have any! There are boxes on all the exit doors blocking all the exits!

Calipatria State Prison covers 1,227.5 acres lying 184 feet below sea level in the Mojave Desert near the Salton Sea and the Mexican border, the hottest area in North America.

“That’s why I am hunger striking for my freedom out of isolation and being treated humanely, not tortured!

“Thank you for hearing me and giving me a minute of your time. God bless. – Jesus Macias

“P.S. Here is a copy of my cell search slip. There was nothing ever found, no contraband or gang material, which IGI E. Duarte says he found. I am just lucky I kept my receipt; it’s the only proof I have that he fabricated evidence and lied in every report. He says he found gang material that morning, Jan. 11, 2011, when my cell search slip says different.

“I would really like if you could post my letter out to the media so they can have a brief idea of what has been going on in Calipatria State Prison Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU).”

Harold Velarde: IGI Duarte broke my leg

Harold Anthony Velarde filed his complaint, Case No. 11-CV-0287-AJB-CAB, against IGI Duarte on Feb. 10, 2011. Initially denied, the judge has now ordered that Duarte be investigated.

Families with loved ones locked up in Calipatria are often given inadequate or inaccurate information when they call in preparation for a visit. After the 10-hour drive to Calipatria from the Bay Area, families have been turned away – told only after they arrived that visiting was cancelled.

“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.”

Velarde asserts in his complaint that defendant E. Duarte, who resides in Imperial, was acting under color of law “while performing his duties as security and investigations at Calipatria State Prison.” Velarde says Duarte “violated my Eighth Amendment rights [by] use of excessive force.”

Under “Supporting Facts,” Velarde, who is representing himself in this case, wrote:

“On Oct. 6, 2009, at Calipatria State Prison a riot occurred between Mexican inmates and some C/Os [correctional officers]. After the incident was contained and all inmates were restrained, from my cell door, inside my cell I saw C/O Magdaleno hitting a prone, restrained inmate in the back of the head with a pepper spray can. I yelled for the C/O to stop and my door was approached and I was told they’d be back for me. About two hours later two C/Os came to my door and ordered me to cuff up. The one with the spray pointed was Black and Duarte was the one who cuffed me.

“I comply with the C/O and cuff through the food porthole. After I’m cuffed, behind my back, my door opens and I’m ordered to back out and face the wall. C/O Duarte grabs my neck while I’m facing the wall and slams my face into it. I turn away from the wall ‘cause of the surprise and C/O Duarte puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes down with all his weight.

“My femur then snaps due to mobility issues from an old gunshot wound. I jump to the ground on my backside and tell the C/O, ‘You broke my leg.’ He responds, ‘I don’t give a fu-k.’ As soon as medical came, I was escorted to the hospital for surgery. They placed a steel plate aside my femur.

“C/O Duarte grabs my neck while I’m facing the wall and slams my face into it. I turn away from the wall ‘cause of the surprise and C/O Duarte puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes down with all his weight. My femur then snaps … They placed a steel plate aside my femur.”

“C/O Duarte never explains the gash under my eye from slamming my face into the wall in his reports. My injuries were documented by a lieutenant and sergeant with a video recorder. There are also so many witnesses.”

Velarde is requesting damages in the amount of $250,000 and punitive damages in the sum of $150,000. He wants a trial by jury.

Kendra Castaneda is a prisoner human rights activist with a loved one currently incarcerated in the Calipatria State Prison ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit). She can be reached at kendracastaneda55@gmail.com. She asks anyone with information about Institutional Gang Investigator (IGI) E. Duarte to contact her right away.

Related Posts

• Inhumane conditions at Calipatria State Prison ASU
• Hunger striker dies mysteriously at Calipatria, family reports funeral is Tuesday, Nov. 22, in Oakland
• Corcoran ASU hunger strikers continue after one starves to death, while CDCR lags on gang validation revisions
• From Pelican Bay: CDCR to offset prison population cut by putting more men in solitary
• ‘Suicide of participant’ after historic California prison hunger strike?

by William E. Brown Jr.

William E. Brown Jr. and his family

While we are going through the “due process” of Corcoran’s imperial domination, here are the ripple effects of our strike. The first slap in the face arose when they made the biased and discriminatory decision to send the ASU1 sergeant to move me and my young KAGE brother [another Black prisoner] away from our ASU cell F169 to a mental health building that’s used only for CCCMS (Correctional Clinical Case Management System) mentally ill inmates.

Since our protest was presented peacefully, we refused to partake in any violent resistance after being threatened with possible cell extraction, then an additional 115 citation for rule violations. As an older brother wise to CDC(R)’s trickery, I felt more than responsible not to lose control of the incident, which could have aggravated me and my young Black brotha’s present circumstances.

After allowing others alike involved to know that we will carry on strong and keep the revolt lit in honor of our united front, we agreed to move straight ahead.

The next slap in the face arose when an email came on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, 6:42 p.m., to [prison officials] Arnold Cruz and Vincent Marmolejo in hopes to use this coercion to end our civil rights to a peaceful protest. The email read:

“Can you speak to inmates Ryoo and Brown [the Corcoran ASU hunger strike petition was signed by Pyung Hwa Ryoo, Juan Jaimes and William E. Brown]? Please let them know the hunger strike is over and resolutions to some of the issues they presented (in the petition) are forthcoming, as I had discussed with Ryoo last week. The inmates in ASU-1 ate tonight and declared hunger strike over. Let me know what happens. Thanks.”

On Dec. 31, 2011, the prison officials came and pulled us from our cell and took our personal property based on illegal grounds. We continued our peaceful protest! After threats and more coercion, we both pondered our wellbeing and the odds were stacked against us, meaning harsher retaliation. We came to an adult understanding with Lt. Rush, who in exchange personally walked an emergency copy of our 602 inmate appeal (complaint) to the warden’s office.

The third slap in the face came when I was served an additional CDC 115 (Rules Violation Report) charging a violation of CCR Sec. 3005(a) and citing the specific act of “inciting and leading a hunger strike.” I’m like “Wow!” Under “Circumstances,” the 115 reads:

“On Friday, December 30, 2011, the Southern Hispanic, Black, and Other inmates in ASU1 participated in a mass hunger strike to address grievances in ASU1. Due to the ‘Hunger Strike,’ there was a disruption in the ASU1 program. A list of demands was sent to staff, and you inmate BROWN T-58106 (ASU1-169) were listed as one of the instigators of the Hunger Strike. Your actions caused a disruption to the normal operations of ASU1, and possible health concerns for the inmates involved. Your actions created additional work for staff, and time delays in which it was necessary for staff to address your issues. Attached is a list of demands with inmate RYOO F-88924, inmate JAIMES V-08644 (ASU1-165), and inmate BROWN T-58106 (ASU1-169), listed as the signers for the inmate grievance. Based on this information you are deemed as leading the Hunger Strike and causing the disruption in ASU1.”

Prior to this whole incident, all we had done was submit a peaceful civil rights/human rights group petition reflecting the colorful complaints of all races, and all we got is retaliation. CDC(R) fails and refuses to comply with our demands, which are protected by case law as well as federal and state law, California Code of Regulations Title 15 and CDC(R) Department Operations Manual (DOM).

For many years, we’ve been dirt under the rug, left for dead by those in society who turn a blind eye, only to be cast as outlaws and black, brown, yellow and white trash. Even now as I humbly await my next 115 hearing to be conducted, I’m preparing a civil suit.

For many years, we’ve been dirt under the rug, left for dead by those in society who turn a blind eye, only to be cast as outlaws and black, brown, yellow and white trash.

Those same biased prison officials continue to violate many more inmates’ due process by failing or refusing to allow certain evidence or documents or even answer relevant questions pertaining to our defense. Many times we are refused access to witnesses who could possibly assist with our defense in hopes of a much greater outcome than the guilty verdict.

Just because the official has the power, there’s never a preponderance of the evidence standard considered when a hearing officer is labeled as being unlisted as having gone “through the procedure of the State Bar.” How could it not be determined that a hearing officer hadn’t made an impartial decision in his or her fact finding when he has not been through the training of the State Bar to legally enforce an order without a predetermined belief system.

These underground rules are being used as a gateway to target certain inmates who CDC(R) considers too active, or to later validate them as alleged gang members for inciting or leading certain racial groups. This is to discourage further litigation, advocacy – standing against the very injustice that Martin Luther King and others alike marched for. As King stood against genocidal environments, me and my brothers will continue to rattle the KAGE.

These underground rules are being used as a gateway to target certain inmates who CDC(R) considers too active, or to later validate them as alleged gang members for inciting or leading certain racial groups.

There are three possible aims of punishment: restraint, revenge or reform. Capitalism only seems to succeed at the first two. As we the prisoner advocates for justice know, the retributive and vengeful “justice” of the present system has been a total and utter failure.

Attempting to reform people through coercion and force can never succeed. Arguments based on fear and terror are never convincing. The institutionalized murder – the death penalty – has never had the slightest effect on violent crime figures. It amounts to no more than revenge.

If prison achieves anything, it tends to perpetuate crime with minor offenders who often go on to commit greater crimes. The motto then goes, Why not re-offend if nothing has changed?

Capitalism cannot solve the problem. It creates the very conditions which lead to most crimes. The supposed system of justice amounts to a closed cast of judges and legal professionals who are initiated into a tangled web of complex rules and regulations, where any concept of justice or fair play intrudes purely at random.

Because the beast is on its knees, because the moment is ripe, I’m approaching the oppressor’s gates with unity like the ants, the heart of a lion and the rage of a bull to liberate my people. I won’t lose ambition so long as I’m still breathing. Mandela stayed strong for 28 years. Huey P. told us we bear rights. “Wait” sounds too much like never.

GLJ [George Lester Jackson] was a Soledad brother who made the jailhouse rock, saying, “You’ve got to find a way to make people know you’re there.” That’s crucial, whether in terms of making career gains, letting our families know we care or, like Malcolm, sending a message to our elected officials. I recommend that everyone read “Stride Toward Freedom,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s first published book.

Send our brother some love and light: William E. Brown Jr., T-58106, P.O. Box 8800, Corcoran CA 93212. See his FriendsWithPens.com page.

Related Posts

• New hunger strike: Petition for improved conditions in Administrative Segregation Unit at Corcoran State Prison
• ‘People Power’ pries Abu-Jamal from punitive administrative custody
• Justice makes a nation great
• Buy Black Wednesdays 9: Black is the new religion: Afrika closed until further notice
• We dare to win: The reality and impact of SHU torture units

by Linn Washington Jr.

He’s out!

Public pressure to release Mumia Abu-Jamal from the “hole” trumped the pressure from those trying to keep torturing him. – Photo: Linn Washington

For the first time since receiving a controversial death sentence in 1982 for killing a Philadelphia policeman, the widely acclaimed author-activist finds himself in general population, a prison housing status far less restrictive than the solitary confinement of death row.

Inmates in general population have full privileges to visitation, telephone and commissary, along with access to all prison programs and services, all things denied or severely limited to convicts on death row waiting to be killed by the state.

In early December 2011, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections officials, after the federal courts had removed his death penalty and the Philadelphia district attorney opted not to attempt to re-try the penalty phase in hopes of winning a new death sentence, placed Abu-Jamal in administrative custody (aka “The Hole”).

Administrative custody is confinement in a Spartan isolation cell where conditions are more draconian than even death row.

The release of Abu-Jamal from administrative custody into general population on Friday, Jan. 27, 2012, followed a multi-layered protest campaign by his supporters worldwide that included flooding Pennsylvania prison authorities with telephone calls, collecting petitions containing over 5,000 signatures and a complaint filed with United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Supporters condemned the administrative custody placement, calling it retaliation for Abu-Jamal’s having successfully defeated the state’s efforts to execute him. Abu-Jamal, a model prisoner, did not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DoC) regulations dictating administrative custody placement.

The release of Abu-Jamal from administrative custody into general population on Friday, Jan. 27, 2012, followed a multi-layered protest campaign by his supporters worldwide that included flooding Pennsylvania prison authorities with telephone calls, collecting petitions containing over 5,000 signatures and a complaint filed with United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Prison staff evaluations of Abu-Jamal since his December death row removal, sources said, listed him as “polite [and] respectful.” Those positive evaluations did not evidence any of the incorrigibility or other serious misbehaviors that usually trigger AC placement.

“When people are united around an issue, they have power. This is the power of the people – all races in many places,” said Pam Africa, director of the Philadelphia-based International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal, in a statement released through his wife Wadiya Jamal, thanked his supporters for their hard work. “I am no longer on death row, no longer in the hole, I’m in population,” Abu-Jamal’s statement noted. “This is only Part One and I thank you for the work you’ve done. But the struggle is for freedom!”

Media reports quoted Pennsylvania DoC spokespersons confirming Abu-Jamal’s placement in general population at Mahanoy Prison, a medium security facility about 100 miles from Philadelphia in central Pennsylvania where he was transferred last December from another prison in western Pennsylvania that houses the state’s death row.

DoC spokespersons had previously declined comment on Abu-Jamal’s administrative custody placement, citing regulations covering inmate privacy.

Prison officials advanced ever-changing rationales for keeping Abu-Jamal in AC at Mahanoy, including the curious claim that they were waiting for legal clarification that the courts had formally replaced Abu-Jamal’s death sentence with life in prison.

That Kafkaesque claim contradicted the DoC’s own documents specifically acknowledging that federal courts had vacated the death sentence – thus requiring a default life sentence – and Philadelphia’s DA having dropped appeals to reinstate the death sentence.

Typical of the way that Abu-Jamal’s long-running case has shone a bright light on grievous abuses within the criminal justice system, his AC placement exposed what independent prison monitors have long contended is a dirty secret of Pennsylvania’s prison system: authorities using administrative custody isolation to maliciously penalize inmates who are not violating prison rules.

Bret Grote, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Human Rights Coalition, said during a media interview that prison authorities misuse administrative custody as repression against inmates for their political activism, their complaining about poor conditions in prison, their roles as jailhouse lawyers and often for racist reasons.

Grote said Pennsylvania’s DoC holds approximately 2,500 of its 50,000-plus prisoners in solitary confinement on any given day. That’s 5 percent of the total.

Prison authorities misuse administrative custody as repression against inmates for their political activism, their complaining about poor conditions in prison, their roles as jailhouse lawyers and often for racist reasons.

“Andre Jacobs and Carrington Keys, two members of a group of prisoners known as the Dallas 6 [Dallas is a Pennsylvania prison] have been held in solitary for approximately 11 and nine years respectively as a result of their speaking out against torture and other human rights violations inside the state’s control units,” Grote said during an interview with Prison Radio.

Philadelphian Russell “Maroon” Shoats, a former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member, has spent 30 of his 40 years in prison inside an isolation cell despite not having any prison infractions, said his daughter Theresa Shoats during a press conference in Philadelphia held one day before Abu-Jamal’s release.

“Prison officials keep my Dad in solitary instead of releasing him into general population because they say he is a leader. My Dad turns 70 this year and he has medical problems, some from being in solitary for so long. Keeping him in solitary is unfair,” Shoats said about her father, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman.

“My Dad says he encourages young inmates to read to stay sane. Why does that make him too dangerous for general population? He told me that 15 young men hung themselves in SCI Greene during a one-year period.”

King Downing, director of the American Friends Service Center’s Healing Justice Program, said prison authorities nationwide misuse solitary confinement to “silence political prisoners.” Downing hosted the press conference where Shoats spoke alongside other speakers representing Abu-Jamal.

Prison authorities nationwide misuse solitary confinement to “silence political prisoners.”

Last October, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez called on all countries worldwide to ban the use of solitary confinement of inmates as punishment and/or an extortion technique, except in very exceptional circumstances.

Mendez cited scientific studies establishing the mental and medical damage arising from prolonged isolation. His report stated that an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 persons regularly occupy solitary confinement cells across America.

Last October, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez called on all countries worldwide to ban the use of solitary confinement of inmates as punishment and/or an extortion technique, except in very exceptional circumstances.

Recently a federal jury awarded a New Mexico man $22 million for violations of his constitutional rights arising from his having spent two years in solitary confinement in a county jail in Albuquerque following a drunk driving arrest. Although during that entire time he was never even charged or brought to trial, authorities in Dona Ana County New Mexico vow to appeal that verdict, one of the largest damage judgments in history for illegal incarceration.

Linn Washington, a professor of journalism at Temple University and award-winning columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune, has covered Mumia Abu-Jamal’s fight for freedom from the beginning, in December 1981. This story first appeared on This Can’t Be Happening, the website featuring the work of a news collective comprising Linn Washington and three other renowned journalists. They can be reached at thiscantbehappeningmail@yahoo.com.

Message from Wadiya A. Jamal, wife of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Saturday, July 28, 7:30 p.m. – I just received a call from my beloved husband who is now out of administrative custody and in general population at SCI Mahanoy. He is relieved after being in these solitary torture chambers for over 30 years. He can’t wait to face and embrace me, his wife, and his children and grandchildren. The next moment is for him to be released from the belly of the beast. He is surprised at how many men are in these prison cells – Black, white, Hispanic. He said he’s been shown a lot of love from the others in population. We need to bring Mumia and all the other men home!

Mumia said he wanted to see me as soon as possible, to come up tomorrow, Sunday, a visiting day. But the prison won’t let me visit until Monday.

Wadiya A Jamal, with BIG pride

Related Posts

• Sadism in the cell
• 3rd Circuit appeal ruling favoring Abu-Jamal smacks down US Supreme Court
• Fox finds a new Black boogeyman: Glen Beck’s Mumia obsession
• Mumia’s first week of freedom … from Death Row
• The making of Geronimo ji Jaga

by Addul Olugbala Shakar, Coorindator, Pelikkkan Bay Political Prisoners Coalition (PBPPC)

Besides the Bay View, these prisoners in Georgia are openly reading and discussing in their study group the two books by George Jackson, “Soledad Brother” and “Blood in My Eye.” In California, prison authorities are terrified of the inspirational effect Jackson’s writings have on prisoners.

I would like to briefly expound upon a subject that Brotha David Johnson had briefly touched on in the October issue of the Bay View. He spoke briefly on the political prisoner issue. At present only a handful of us at Pelikkkan Bay are recognized as political prisoners, myself and Hugo Pinell in particular, but contrary to popular misconception there are at least 30 New Afrikan political prisoners being unjustly held in solitary confinement here at Pelikkkan Bay. These New Afrikan revoluntionary brothas have been denied parole and release from SHU solely based on their political beliefs and activities, and the last time I checked this qualifies them as political prisoners and they are all active within the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM).

When a prisoners transforms his criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality and then commits himself to fighting racism, fascism, oppression, imperialism and pig brutality and he is persecuted for his political activities and belief, placed in solitary confinement and or denied parole, he becomes a tortured prisoner and legal combatant for his political beliefs, thus a “political prisoner.” He meets all the criteria supported by the United Nations and global community, and every time the Prison Rights Movement, Jericho Movement, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, New Afrikan Independence Movement and the Anarchist Movement fail to support these New Afrikan political prisoners and POWs and/or recognize their status as political prisoners and POWs, it only facilitates their political torture, persecution and isolation and fortifies their suffering and, unbeknownst to many, some of these brothas came to prison for their service to the revolution.

We are the only class of New Afrikan/Black prisoners in the entire country who are forbidden to speak the name of the author of the book “Soledad Brother” and are punished for doing so. We can’t even mention the title of his other book. We can’t quote none of his writings. It is considered gang activity and material and used as a gang validation source for prison gang membership. His books, writings and image are banned in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) here at Pelikkkan Bay State Prison. Many of us have been denied release from SHU for possessing his books and writings; some have even received indeterminate SHU sentences for this.

We are the only class of New Afrikan/Black prisoners in the entire country who are forbidden to speak the name of the author of the book “Soledad Brother” and are punished for doing so. It is considered gang activity.

No class of prisoner in this country is being subjected to this level of political persecution and political censorship. Combined we have close to 1,000 years in solitary confinement. The CDC is using our persecution as a warning for the Black prison population. If they dare to struggle, they will end up like us. Unfortunately, it has worked.

In 2007 the OCS and IGI raided our cells and confiscated our political and Black history literature. They confiscated my pictures, political drawings by Comrade Kevin Rashid Johnson, pamphlets and proposals that I wrote, over 50 of my poems, my books, such as Malcolm X speeches and Kwame Nkrumah revolutionary handbook, all material that had Comrade’s name in it, as well as my Black Liberation Army literature and Cointelpro documents. They claim it was all gang related.

Combined we have close to 1,000 years in solitary confinement. The CDC is using our persecution as a warning for the Black prison population.

People, you will be surprised at the degree of our censorship. This very article was confiscated the first time I attempted to send it to the Bay View. I also received a serious disciplinary report for writing this article and it will be used to deny my release from the SHU when I become eligible in 2014.

When I initially attempted to send this article to Sista Mary [Bay View editor], I had seven pages of printed documents that contained statements from the warden, OCS and IGI, and I had instructed Sista Mary to print an underlined portion that would both expose and validate our political persecution. IGI and ISU confiscated everything and accused me of promoting gang activity when I suggested that the warden’s statement be printed along with my article. Now as a result of this I will not be eligible for release from SHU until 2020. I guess this is supposed to discourage me. Do they not realize I am prepared to die for our revolutionary cause – Allahu-Akbar!

This very article was confiscated the first time I attempted to send it to the Bay View. I also received a serious disciplinary report for writing this article and it will be used to deny my release from the SHU when I become eligible in 2014.

The PBPPC is designed to mobilize a grassroots effort to specifically address our political persecution and censorship. The Bay View has supported us for many years and has provided us with a medium to share our stories. People, I am a New Afrikan revolutionary combatant, so I am not looking for your sympathy. Don’t cry for me. I am your first responder. I suffer so you can live in a world free of racial oppression. I relish the sacrifice.

Over 20 years I have slept on concrete floors, without mattress or blanket, determined never to be comfortable in this man-made hell. I allow the constant pain to fuel my Black rage. Is this insanity? No! I am but a soldier expressing a profound love for my people. I realize I am often misunderstood and many have accused me of being too extreme, on the brink of insanity.

I ask, is it too crazy to want an end to the suffering of our people and global community? Before you condemn me, look outside your front door and tell me what do you see? We as Black people are being persecuted on every continent, but we find time to murder each other, sell drugs to each other, abandon our parental responsibilities. We don’t even have the will to stop using the word “Nigger” – but yet I am insane? I love you, my people, and I will bid you my unconditional love.

Send our brother some love and light: Abdul Olugbala Shakur (s/n J. Harvey), C-48884, PBSP SHU, D-4-112, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532.

Pelican Bay State Prison Second Level Review: Warden’s Level Decision

With his letter, Brother Shakur sent the warden’s decision on his appeal protesting IGI, which had “stopped and retained one outgoing mailing on October 20, 2011. HARVEY feels that this was an effort to censor his political views and it was not promoting gang activity.”

In the section headed “Findings,” the warden writes: “HARVEY is a validated member of the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) prison gang with the alias of ‘Abdul Shakur.’ The BGF views themselves as political prisoners and utilizes literature as a means of spreading their ideology to other African Americans.

“The mailing in question had the address of ‘Bay View Attn. Mary Ratcliff, 4917 Third Street, San Francisco , CA. 94124.’ HARVEY speaks of censorship he feels he is under by correctional staff at PBSP. HARVEY also includes a copy of an inmate Appeal he filed in 2009. HARVEY gives Ms. Ratcliff the instruction to add the underlined portions of the Appeal to his article.

“A review of the underlined portion in the Appeal, outlines the history and ideologies of the BGF, as well as subsidiaries of the BGF. HARVEY utilizes the Appeal response in an attempt to have BGF ideologies and history published in his article.”

Under “Determination of Issue,” the warden rules: “The Second Level Reviewer examined all the pertinent documents, including all information received during the Second Level Interview. This Appeal is DENIED. By HARVEY attempting to have the history and ideologies of the BGF printed in his article, HARVEY is promoting and attempting to further the BGF by educating other individuals who would read his article. HARVEY was issued a Rules Violation Report and given an opportunity to plead his case to a staff member outside of the IGI and was found guilty of promoting gang activity through the mailing in question. Sergeant Frisk reviewed all the available information and determined the IGI staff acted in accordance with institutional policy, thus warranting the mail stoppage.”

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• Attica Solidarity Statement from the San Quentin Six
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• Wanda’s Picks for July 2011

Transferred from Red Onion to Wallens Ridge State Prison

by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

Rashid Johnson

From one set-up to another

On the morning of Jan. 20, I was confronted at my cell by Red Onion C-Building Unit Manager Michael Younce and Lt. Delmer Tate, who both lied telling me that agent Johnny Acosta wanted to speak with me in the prison’s video-court area. I was, upon being handcuffed and leg shackled, “escorted” by them to the prison’s transport area, put into a cell and told to strip down to be searched by security chief Kevin McCoy because I was “taking a trip.”

Numerous guards entered the area, including one Joseph Ely, a prior Red Onion guard who’d transferred to Wallens Ridge to be promoted to lieutenant. Ely was carrying transportation restraints and a 50,000 volt electric stun belt, which prisoners are made to wear when taken on road trips. I instantly realized I was being transferred to Wallens Ridge.

I asked McCoy several times about my property. He assured it’d be right behind me. It wasn’t. It was all left at Red Onion, where much of it will likely be destroyed, “lost” and taken.

McCoy attempted to provoke a situation by having me given a pair of pants to wear that were too small. I refused to wear them. After a standoff, I was given a pair in the correct size, restrained, belted and taken to a transport van. Inside the van, I was crushed and locked inside a tiny steel cage measuring about 5 feet high and 2 by 2 feet square, in which I could barely move.

Once on the road, Ely asked if I knew where I was going. I answered, “Obviously to Wallens Ridge.” He then asked did I really not know I was being transferred? I told him no, that I was told I was going to see someone. He added, “You know why you’re going back, don’t you?” “Not really,” I answered. He then stated, “Well, you know a lot of people don’t like you. You probably won’t leave walking.” I was to receive numerous similar threats by guards that I was being sent to Wallens Ridge to be set up for violence.

Upon reaching Wallens Ridge, I was met by numerous guards, especially ranking guards, whom I’d known from my 2000-2003 confinement at Wallens Ridge. All displayed openly hostile attitudes. One of the guards, who was holding one of my arms and “escorting” me from the van to the intake area, Dixon, repeatedly dug his fingers into my right arm. I was also accompanied during this walk by two large dogs barking loudly and straining wildly against their leashes.

I went through the strip search and endured another standoff over too-small clothes, by Sgt. Cochrane and Lt. Swiney, both obviously trying to provoke a situation to “justify” using violence. So I relented and wore the clothes for the brief walk to the unit.

I was leg-shackled, cuffed from behind and “escorted” by a mob of guards to the D-3 housing unit. Every cell in the unit was empty. I was put into D-301, one of only two cells in the block with a steel box approximately 8 by 12 by 18 inches with a Plexiglas cover, welded to the outside of a cell door and around the opening in the door through which food and other items are passed and handcuffs applied and removed. I was made to kneel to have the leg shackles removed and to put my hands outside the slot into the box where the handcuffs were removed. I then removed my hands from the box and a steel plate was slid in place across the door opening, closing off access to the box.

Rashid was assaulted by staff at Red Onion on Dec. 12. He has a dislocated shoulder and is yet to receive proper medical attention. He had a 3 by 7 inch swath of hair pulled out by the roots. This occurred when he refused to turn his back on an officer as he came out of the exercise cage. Please contact VDOC Director Harold Clarke at (804) 674-3000.

I’ve had my meals and beverages dropped into the visibly filthy box on the door which is never cleaned, indeed it can’t be where it contains rust, peeling paint, fermented food and beverages residue, and one must place dirty clothes, shoes, toilet cleaning items, etc. into the box to be searched by or exchanged with guards. Using the box for meal service is a per se health hazard. Not only is my food contaminated by being placed into direct contact with the box’s surfaces, but I’ve found paint particles, dirt, lint, etc. in my food and beverages from the box.

I was also brought clothes by Swiney that had been sprayed with mace or gas. I’ve been kept incommunicado – denied phone use, all property and kept in a completely empty unit.

I’ve also received two trays with foods containing broken pieces of metal and rocks. Guards, including Cochrane, refuse to provide me with or to accept for filing forms needed to pursue emergency and other grievances and complaints. I had to go through a Lt. Bergan to obtain complaint forms from Cochrane, who then gave me only two out of five requested by me.

The Dec. 12, 2011, assault where my hair was ripped out was preceded by threats by the assaulting guard, in that I’m now being faced with a consistent series of threats by a staff known to abuse and even kill prisoners – which I’ll elaborate on below. It is important that this situation be made known as broadly as possible. I believe outside exposure, support and pressure has kept many of the more serious, violent official intentions at bay. These threats under the circumstances must be taken very seriously.

Wallens Ridge: A nest of vipers

Several of the threats here have been accompanied by guards making disparaging remarks about me being a “protester,” “Black Panther” etc., often accompanied by racial slurs. It is well known that Black prisoners known to challenge or protest abuses or who are politically active are abuse targets at Wallens Ridge. John Gaskins, aka Mac, who was recently released from Wallens Ridge, has been both witness and victim. While at the prison, he witnessed prisoners inclined to protest being set up by guards, beaten and thrown into segregation. He was himself, for this reason, set up on a false infraction and thrown in segregation until he was released from Virginia’s prisons. He expected to be beaten by the guards himself at any time.

Rashid explains: “This method of ‘escorting’ segregation prisoners is used ostensibly so guards can maintain complete control while remaining behind the prisoner so he cannot butt, spit or otherwise assault them and can be easily maneuvered to place and pinned against a wall. During such escorts, guards are to remain behind and to the side of the prisoner.”

In my prior update/article, I discussed a 2001 beating by three ranking Wallens Ridge guards of a Black prisoner, last name Plummer, which resulted in the guards being prosecuted. The charges were circumvented by the entire prison’s staff coming together to stage a scene at the prison to sway the jury to acquit the guards, and the investigator – Johnny Acosta – who found the guards to have assaulted Plummer, was in turn sued by them. Many of the guards involved in that coverup still work at Wallens Ridge, including Major Combs, Cochrane, Swiney etc.

Prisoners have also been killed by Wallens Ridge officials or at their prompting. Most recent was the controversial killing of Harvey Lee Watson by his cellmate, Robert Gleason, who pled guilty to the killing and implicated Wallens Ridge staff as complicit and responsible. Several were fired after the fact, when autopsies found Watson had been dead for half a day when discovered by guards inside the cell.

The guards had falsified records, claiming they’d been making routine checks of the prisoners. However, those who caused his death were passed over. Gleason personally told me numerous times that he only realized after killing Watson that Wallens Ridge officials had used him, set him up to kill Watson to remove a thorn from their side. He vowed to plead guilty to the killing and to use the case to expose what they’d done. Which he did, to no avail.

In that case, they wanted to silence Watson, who kept protesting that officials had knowingly transported him from Sussex One State Prison in Waverly, Virginia, to Wallens Ridge with a dead prisoner sitting with him in the van. Watson had also just set his cell on fire the night before being transferred and had recently set another prisoner on fire.

He had outstanding punitive segregation sentences to serve and was not supposed to have been released to population. He also was supposed at all times to have been housed in cells alone, even in population, due to his mental health status. However, ranking Wallens Ridge officials and the counselor, wife of Lt. A. Gallihar, conspired to put Watson in Gleason’s cell in population. Gleason was known to have been convicted, suspected and charged with numerous killings. Officials felt he was their man for the job.

In the cell, Gleason complained to staff counselor Gallihar, ranking officials, the warden, even people on the outside that Watson was sick and needed to be moved out of his cell before he was forced into a drastic reaction. Watson would drink urine, masturbate in the open, talk loudly to himself all times of night etc. Lt. Gallihar, his wife and others told Gleason, “You know how to deal with it,” refusing to move Watson.

Gleason admittedly snapped and killed Watson. The scandal has been widely reported in the media and Gleason is open about what happened and why. The day after the killing, A. Gallihar, who wasn’t at the prison the day of the killing, fabricated an incident report as though he was, on his wife’s behalf to cover for her.

During or about 2003, a white Connecticut prisoner was strangled to death by Wallens Ridge guards who claimed the death a suicide hanging. A similar attack was attempted against another white prisoner, Michael Austin, now confined at Red Onion, during or about 2010. The guards disliked Austin because he’d grown up around and embraced Black urban culture and clashed with the prison’s rural white guards who’d ridicule him and try to influence him with racist values.

In his case, guards premeditatedly rushed into his cell, claiming falsely he was attempting to hang himself, put a thick string around his neck and began choking him. Their designs to strangle him to death were foiled only because the string broke.

During 2003, another Connecticut prisoner, a Black man named Lawrence Frazier, was electrocuted to death by numerous Wallens Ridge guards while he was restrained to a steel bed frame by his extremities. The death was dismissed as caused by insulin shock, however an examining doctor found the electrocutions contributed to, if not caused, his death.

A documentary, “Up the Ridge,” was filmed by a local radio group exposing the racism and abuses surrounding the prison and reporting on Frazier’s killing.

During 2001, I was myself the victim of a brutal assault by a mob of Wallens Ridge guards, including two who beat Plummer just months later. In my case, I was drawn out of my segregation cell while fully unrestrained by a guard G. Sexton, inviting me to an off-the-record one-on-one fight – what we call “a fair one” in prison. His intentions, however, weren’t to fight but to set me up for a mob attack.

Sexton never once put up a fight, but was knocked down almost immediately and began screaming for backup. I was subdued without resisting and upon being handcuffed and shackled was repeatedly kicked in the face and head, electrocuted with multiple 50,000 volt stun weapons, had all but three of my then almost 2-foot-long dreadlocks systematically ripped out, and was left with multiple facial lacerations that had to be stitched closed, burns across my upper body and arms, and blood red and purple contusions covering the entire whites of my eyes across their front halves.

The attack was covered up by Wallens Ridge officials at all levels and Internal Affairs agents who destroyed pod surveillance camera footage of the attack, moved all vocal prisoner witnesses to other units and colluded on reports claiming all my injuries were inflicted by Sexton defending himself against an unanticipated attack by me when the cell “accidentally” opened. At first they’d claimed I opened it, whereas Sexton himself told guards in the control booth to open it.

What’s more, Wallens Ridge’s present warden, Gregory Halloway, has subjected me to extensive past torture while a unit manager at Greensville Correctional Center, during 1998. At that time he kept me on an illegal status, called “white cell status,” when I was left for eight months, even during winter, with nothing inside the cell but one pair of boxer shorts. No property was permitted. I could not even brush my teeth and ended up having to have several filled for cavities as a result. I was only allowed a mattress and bedding from 10 p.m. through 6 a.m. I contracted the flu, sinus infections and colds. Throughout the white cell confinement, my cell window to the outside was broken, letting in freezing cold outside temperatures.

While on white cell status, Holloway accused me of knocking him unconscious in the medical department while my blood pressure was being taken with my hands cuffed, supposedly in response to his torturing me. I remained on white cell status until I was transferred to Red Onion in 1998 from Greensville.

Therefore not only is Holloway an official who’s known to illegally torture and abuse – and will admit having me on that illegal status – but one who has cause for vengeance against me. It is highly unlikely I can expect to receive any semblance of just treatment under him, nor that he would act to prevent threatened abuses. Indeed it is probable that he is privy to such abuses.

Furthermore, Holloway is but a token Black figurehead, recently appointed to Wallens Ridge to counter a widespread image and reputation for racism like at Red Onion. Similarly, at Red Onion, a token Black warden was appointed in the early 2000s, under whose supervision racism and abuse escalated. Indeed, he went out of his way to avoid making waves with the local entrenched white supremacist status quo that de facto ran Red Onion, as it does Wallens Ridge.

Dark faces in high places is today’s chief tactic for masking institutionalized racism.

Conclusion

If officials did not send me to Wallens Ridge with deviant designs, then this admits I qualify to be housed at any other Virginia Department of Corrections prison of the same Level 5 security classification, such as Sussex One or Two State Prisons, where a more racially diverse and tolerant staff exists. At Wallens Ridge and Red Onion, I and other politically active prisoners and those who challenge abuses have been targeted in a clear pattern with official violence and abuse.

This icon of the California hunger strikes, now recognized around the world, was drawn by brilliant artist and writer Rashid Johnson. It inspired 12,000 prisoners in California and more across the U.S. and as far away as Palestine and Australia to defy the state by starving themselves.

Dare to struggle! Dare to win!

All Power to the People!

About Rashid and how you can help

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is a long-time revolutionary prison organizer, accomplished artist, Marxist theoretician and the Minister of Defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter (NABPP-PC). He has been held in segregation for the past 19 years, since 1993. Some of his writings have been published in the book “Defying the Tomb” (Kersplebedeb, 2010), available from leftwingbooks.net and AK Press. Its foreword is by Russell “Maroon” Shoats, introduction by Tom Big Warrior and afterword by Sundiata Acoli.

More of his writings and artwork are featured on his website, rashidmod.com. In 2011, from Virginia, Rashid added his voice to those of thousands supporting the demands of California prisoners hunger-striking against isolation torture; his writings have been banned in many California prisons.

To read Rashid’s account of deteriorating conditions at Red Onion State Prison and the assault by guards on Dec., 12, 2011, see rashidmod.com. Rashid can be contacted at: Kevin Johnson, 1007485, Wallens Ridge State Prison, P.O. Box 759, Big Stone Gap, VA 24219.

Supporting Prisoners and Acting for Radical Change (SPARC) is a non-sectarian revolutionary mass organization based in Virginia and Washington, D.C., focused on building effective opposition to the prison-industrial complex. SPARC is demanding that the staff of Red Onion and Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) cease their consistent campaign of targeted physical violence, harassment and administrative repression against the cadre of the NABPP-PC, which is clearly being carried out with the intention of suppressing the basic human and democratic rights of prisoners in VDOC facilities. Furthermore, SPARC supports Rashid’s request to be transferred to a less hostile environment, for instance one of the Sussex prisons.

Sign the petition: A petition to support an end to political repression against the NABPP can be downloaded from http://www.kersplebedeb.com/vdoc_petition.pdf. It is also posted as an online petition at Change.org. Spread the word!

Protest to the director of corrections: People are also encouraged to contact VDOC Director Harold Clarke in support of these demands: Harold W. Clarke, Director, Department of Corrections, P.O. Box 26963, Richmond, VA 23261-6963. His phone is (804) 674-3119, fax (804) 674-3509 and email harold.clarke@vadoc.virginia.gov.

Please send copies of all correspondence to SPARC, P.O. Box 345, Floyd VA, 24091.

SPARC can also reached by email at sparcdc@hush.com or sparc@signalfire.org or search “Supporting Prisoners and Acting for Radical Change” on Facebook for regular updates and news.

Meet Rashid’s comrade Feb. 11 in NYC: Those in the New York City area who wish to learn more about Rashid and conditions in Virginia’s prisons are encouraged to attend the book event, “Defying the Tomb: Struggle, Education, Survival and Liberation in Lock-Down,” to be held at Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen St., New York, NY 10002, on Saturday, Feb. 11, at 7 p.m. The featured speaker is Rashid’s comrade, John “Mac” Gaskins, who was in a neighboring cell with Rashid while at Red Onion and was recently released from the tombs of Wallens Ridge. It promises to be an evening where words will not be minced!

The Bay View thanks Kersplebedeb for typing and transmitting this letter with afterword. Kersplebedeb can be reached at info@kersplebedeb.com.

Please click to enlarge this petition, print it out, gather signatures and return them, or download the petition at http://www.kersplebedeb.com/vdoc_petition.pdf.

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Krip-Hop Nation releases new CD, ‘Broken Bodies: A Cultural Revolution,’ about police brutality against people with disabilities by hip-hop artists and poets with disabilities, featuring the case of Neli Latson, on Sunday, Feb. 19, 1-3:30 p.m., San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin St., Koret Auditorium, Lower Level

by Leroy F. Moore Jr.

Neli Latson

Neli loved to go to the library; everybody in the program he attended there knew him. Early in the morning on May 24, 2010, in Stafford, Virginia, Neli, who was 18 at the time, was sitting on the library lawn waiting for it to open. Somebody called the police saying they saw a strange Black man with a gun. A deputy searched Neli and found that he didn’t have a gun. The deputy asked for his name.

But Neli knew his rights and knew he hadn’t done anything wrong, so he didn’t answer the deputy’s question. Then the deputy grabbed him, and Neli protected himself. He was tried and sentenced to 10 years for assaulting a police officer; however, the judge suspended eight of the 10 years.

Krip-Hop Nation, an international project of musicians with disabilities, and I got involved in Neli’s case almost a year and half ago. Since that time I’ve been in contact with Lisa daily. Krip-Hop Nation has pulled together four songs, videos and radio shows on Neli’s case.

When Krip-Hop Nation and I found out that Lisa had been convicted on Jan. 10, 2012, of misdemeanor charges that for many would have resulted in little to no jail time, we were pissed off but not surprised. The same district attorney prosecuted both Neli and Lisa. Krip-Hop Nation, Poor Magazine, Lisa’s family and other supporters were stunned that the trial concluded with Lisa being taken away as a prisoner to be incarcerated for one year, which was later shortened to six months. Now her legal team, family and friends have raised the bail to get her out.

For Neli, Lisa’s freedom is critical. She has been tirelessly advocating for Neli, and the only constant throughout his terrifying ordeal has been his mother’s voice by telephone each day and their weekly visits. She is her son’s coping mechanism and is absolutely vital to him.

I think why many of us were not surprised by the county’s action is that we believe it is in direct retaliation for her efforts to speak out against the corruption in Stafford County and her fight to have her son released to a facility capable of addressing his autism. Her Internet campaign to win supporters to her son’s cause was even mentioned by the prosecution during the course of the trial!

Lisa Alexander

On the phone Wednesday, Jan. 25, Lisa gave me the following update on her son’s case: “Neli is going to be released from the Department of Corrections in three weeks, by Feb. 20; however, he is not coming home but will be escorted to a residential program for young adults with developmental disabilities with an opportunity to finish high school and reach his goal – and that is to go to college.

“The family had requested this residential program, not a jail sentence, on May 31 of last year; however, the judge gave Neli another year in jail. The program was researched and brought to the court’s attention again by Neli’s family. Now the court agreed that Neli should go to this residential program, but the family has to pay for it. So Neli will attend this program and will finish his last year of high school and will go on to college. The family gets visitation rights while Neli is in this residential program.

“However, the fight is still not over because Neli should not have been incarcerated in the first place. So a petition that needs more signatures is still going to the governor asking him to drop all the charges and give Neli a pardon so he can continue with his life and go on to college. The judge also stated in Neli’s release papers that he should be in a residential program until he is 22 years old, another two years. The family and friends are asking the governor of Virginia for a pardon to clear Neli’s record and also to drop any probation, period.”

In response to Krip-Hop Nation’s cultural activism to win freedom and justice for Neli Latson, Kounterclockwise, a husband and wife hip-hop duo – the husband, Deacon Burns, is a wheelchair user – has recorded one of the strongest songs about this case entitled “Free Neli Latson,” and a Black disabled retired New York police officer, Emmitt Thrower, now a poet, playwright and filmmaker, has produced this powerful video for the song.

Krip-Hop Nation and Emmitt Thrower are now teaming up to make a documentary on police brutality against people with disabilities, using Neli’s case as a central theme.

How you can help

Krip-Hop Nation CD Release: “Broken Bodies PB: Police Brutality & Profiling Mixtape” is the name of Krip-Hop Nation’s new CD, which will be released at an event on Sunday, Feb. 19, 1-3:30 p.m., at the San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin St., in the Koret Auditorium on the Lower Level. The event is headlined “Broken Bodies: A Cultural Revolution.” Join local advocates like Mesha Irizarry, and Lisa, Neli’s mother, will be Skyped in to talk about her son’s case. This is one of the first hip-hop CDs on the topic of police brutality against people with disabilities by hip-hop artists and poets with disabilities. Many of the tracks are about Neli Latson’s case.

Seeking governor’s pardon: Lisa asks you to call Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to ask for a full pardon for Neli. His phone is (804) 786-2211 and his fax is (804) 371-6351.

Remember to sign the petition calling on Gov. McDonnell to pardon Neli.

Leroy Moore Jr., Black disabled artist, activist, columnist at Poor Magazine and founder of Krip-Hop Nation, can be reached at kriphopproject@yahoo.com.

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by Michael Zaharibu Dorrough

Zaharibu, who has been in isolation for 23½ years, was “validated” as a “gang member” and condemned to solitary confinement for having this classic and four other books by renowned authors in his cell and sharing them with other prisoners. Prison authorities labeled these books “gang material.”

“Upon the impartiality, fairness and integrity of its courts the endurance of a nation depends. Civil government is founded on justice, even as true religion is founded on mercy.”

This is my 23rd year in isolation, and regardless of how some might try to define what isolation is, I can assure you that after 23 years and in light of the almost constant, non-stop assault on the senses and your humanity, this is isolation. And at least part of what constitutes isolation must be defined according to what it takes and tries to take from you – the suicides, past and present, the surrender of one’s humanity and integrity, qualities that play a large role in becoming informants. It’s not only that people become like Judas when they do so, they become factors, major factors in the continued efforts at destroying and trying to destroy the humanity of us all.

But like many of those of us who have been buried in isolation for decades, I consider myself to be a student and I love democracy. During the hunger strike of Sept. 26-Oct. 12, I had an opportunity to speak to an officer here who stated that treating the humanity of citizens who are in prison with respect is a liberal idea whose time had passed and the people have spoken. Obviously, he considered “the people” to be those who think just as he does and even those citizens who have remained silent on the issue of democracy and justice.

I was not offended by his thinking. I understood it to be that 500-year-old process in which the elitist minority has convinced much of the middle class and working poor majority that their interests are one and the same. The conversation actually reminded me of conversations that Nelson Mandela had with his captors in a South African prison.

Hate and indifference – and it goes by many names: racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, to name just a few – are powerful tools that the ruling class minority has used to keep the majority competing against one another, from jobs to housing to education, even on how we should love and worship. You can see the pathology that it has created in some basic areas.

Hate and indifference – and it goes by many names: racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, to name just a few – are powerful tools that the ruling class minority has used to keep the majority competing against one another.

If you were to ask 5,000 people if they felt that the criminal justice system is biased, 50 percent or more would probably say yes. If you ask those same people if they believed in the death penalty, that same number of people would say yes. Even if you ask that question as it relates to life without parole, as many now do, you are still talking about a system that is biased.

We actually believe that 1) somehow the system has developed separately from the hate and indifference that the country has developed under and 2) that somehow we can leave our own hate and indifference at the front door and be fair and just in how we treat each other. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the historical record clearly bears this out. Hate and indifference is what has robbed us of our ability to look at each other and see a reflection of ourselves.

The only reason why the nation, at least many of us, have failed to see and understand how we have and continue to be affected by the legacy of hate and indifference and the pathology created by it is because it is who and what we are. Movements are crucial to overcoming this pathology.

Movements consist of citizens from different schools of thought – be it cultural, gender, political, economic, spiritual, educational. The thing that brings us all together is that everyone is being subjected to some form of oppression. The actual and spiritual poverty that results from the unequal distribution of wealth is a form of oppression. Movements are supposed to afford us with that crucial opportunity to relate to one another as fellow citizens.

The actual and spiritual poverty that results from the unequal distribution of wealth is a form of oppression.

Hate and indifference is the greatest threat to democracy. Democracy is and can be tolerant of much, but it cannot be subordinate to anything. It is the greater good. We have historically subordinated democracy to our hate and indifference: the unequal distribution of wealth, maintaining wage systems that are shamefully inconsistent with the standard of living, subjecting citizens to long-term isolation – and for many of us it is as a result of our ideas.

My retention in isolation is based on my allegedly being in possession of gang material and providing that material to other prisoners. That gang material was the following books: 1) “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, 2) “Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880” by W.E.B. Dubois, 3) “Egypt Revisited” by Ivan Van Sertima, 4) “Democracy in Mexico” by Han La Borz, 5) “Democracy Matters” by Cornel West.

The wrongful incarceration of citizens – and a lot of times this too is politically motivated – and the death penalty are all anti-democratic. And when we subordinate democracy and justice to us, as opposed to subordinating ourselves to democracy and justice, believe me, it stops being democracy and justice and it becomes exactly what it has been. These are forms of totalitarianism.

We mentioned in the previous statement that victory will require sacrifice, tenacity and, most importantly, competent strategic insight. That strategic insight must consist of our not only understanding what hate and indifference is, but also how we, individually and collectively, as well as our institutions, have been and continue to be affected psychologically by the legacy of hate and indifference.

The democratic abolitionist struggle demands it of us, and those of us here and in the Pelican Bay SHU, the NCTT, are committed to contributing to meaningful and lasting change. And this is part of what keeps us amongst the sane. We understand, and always have, that the price that we will pay for this is the efforts to silence us, to isolate and destroy us!

We are committed to contributing to meaningful and lasting change. And this is part of what keeps us amongst the sane. We understand, and always have, that the price that we will pay for this is the efforts to silence us, to isolate and destroy us!

But just as we understand this, we also understand that this struggle will also connect us to the Mary Ratcliffs of the world and the other inspiring and courageous citizens and soldiers that we have had the pleasure of meeting. When the officer said that the people have spoken, he was not talking about the Mary Ratcliffs and Sally Bystroffs, the Gabi Pinars and Nakisah Rices, the Ed Meads and Dorsey Nunns, Marilyn McMahons, Carol Strickmans, Penny Schoners, Critical Resistance and Shaka at-Thinnins, the thousands of citizens who comprise the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the People! You are all proof that beauty does exist and you are most appreciated.

Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing. It never has and never will. Those who want to be free must strike the blow!”

Send our brother some love and light: Michael Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, 4B-IL-53, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212. This letter was typed by Adrian McKinney.

Related Posts

• 1971: Attica prison rebellion
• Strike updates: Stop prison torture at Pelican Bay
• Letter of support for the hunger strikers from Bomani Shakur of the Lucasville 5 – and other strike updates
• Why you should support Black PP/POWs
• A poor people-led revolution: The POOR Magazine story

from the NCTT Corcoran SHU

“Death is impossible for us to fathom; it is so immense, so frightening that we will do almost anything to keep from thinking about it. Society is organized to make death invisible, to keep it several steps removed. That distance may seem necessary for our comfort, but it comes with a terrible price: the illusion of limitless time, and a consequent lack of seriousness about daily life. As a warrior in life, you must turn this dynamic around: Make the thought of death something not to escape but to embrace. Your days are numbered. Will you pass them halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency? Cruel theaters staged by a czar are unnecessary; death will come to you without them. Imagine it pressing in on you, leaving you no escape, for there is no escape. Feeling death at your heels will make all your actions more certain, more forceful. This could be your last throw of the dice: Make it count.” – Robert Greene, bestselling author of “The 48 Laws of Power”

“This photo was taken a few days after the first hunger strike ended. I was about 178 pounds; I’d lost 42 pounds,” Heshima Denham wrote on the back. He added these wise words: “Progress requires sacrifice; give up your life for the people.”

Since the last hunger strike ended, we have weathered wave after wave of retaliation from the state’s prison administrators that continues unabated to this day. But before I catalog these manifestations of weakness on the part of state prison administrators, we feel it’s necessary to recount why this struggle began and the nature of our resolve to see the five core demands realized.

We have been consigned to ever more aggressive sensory deprivation torture units for 10, 20, 30 and in some cases 40 years, based on an administrative determination that we are members or associates of a “gang” – a term that encompasses leftist ideologies, political and politicized prisoners, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the opinion of Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI) is not passively accepting his role as a commodity in the prison industrial complex.

“Gang” is a term that encompasses leftist ideologies, political and politicized prisoners, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the opinion of Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI) is not passively accepting his role as a commodity in the prison industrial complex.

These administrative determinations are not due to some overt act of misconduct or pattern of rules violations. No, these “validations” are based most often on the reports, words or accounts of debriefers, rats, informants and other broken men who will say and do ‘most anything their IGI and ISU (Investigative Services Unit) handlers instruct them to, to avoid confinement in the SHU (Security Housing Unit) or carry some other favor from their masters.

After decades of fruitless legal challenges, after years of suffering the deprivations of conditions so inherently evil, inhumane and psychologically torturous that most of you simply cannot comprehend the reality behind these words, most of us came to realize an immutable truth: that the state’s mantra of “the only way out of the SHU is to parole, debrief or die” was something that they not only meant, but was in fact a key feature in developing a subservient and passive pool of prisoner commodities upon which the orderly fleecing of taxpayer dollars could be based.

Thirty years of successful propaganda, of dehumanizing underclass communities and the imprisoned, of lobbying that’s led to the dominance of the CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officers Association) in judicial and political elections and appointments – all to mislead an ill-informed public into submitting greater control of their lives and society to an industrial interest that runs counter to the public safety concerns they were vested to protect. Many of us watched this state of affairs progress unchallenged as our protestations fell on deaf ears, year after year, decade after decade, until advanced age and the decimation of our communities forced us onto “death ground,” where you may survive if you can resist, but you will most surely perish if you do not.

We took up a strategy which would pull back the curtain on the state’s practice of domestic torture which has been so well hidden from the people for so long, a strategy in which some of us may yet die: THE HUNGER STRIKE. We would rather starve ourselves, to risk inevitable death, than to be indefinitely subjected to the deprivations of the torture unit.

We took up a strategy which would pull back the curtain on the state’s practice of domestic torture which has been so well hidden from the people for so long, a strategy in which some of us may yet die: THE HUNGER STRIKE.

What must be understood is that existence here is, in many ways, a fate worse than death; and when advancing age brings that mortality into stark focus, the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, “Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die every day,” resonate. This simple observation defines our resolve in realizing our five core demands.

To say this is a protracted struggle is an understatement; this is a struggle in which we will win or we will die in the effort. Our actions thus far, and the awareness of this international community of their inherent righteousness, has made this adamantine resolve clear, so why then would CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) officials resort to petty retaliatory actions? The answer lies in the very nature of the tyranny and authoritarian power they represent.

Aggression is deceptive; it inherently hides weakness. Aggressors possess poor emotional control and little patience for challenges to their interests. The first waves of retaliation from these types of aggressors may seem strong to some; this is why so many non-SHU general population prisoners dropped out of the second hunger strike as those waves struck them. But, of course, we were unmoved; and the longer such attacks go on, the clearer their underlying weaknesses and insecurity become. It is an act of irrational desperation, but one they pursue out of sheer rote.

Since the second hunger strike ended, we have experienced perpetual retaliation – some overt, some carefully disguised – all designed to erode the minds and wills of those committed to resist. We were denied any medical treatment for our starvation and when we filed emergency 602s to receive renutrition treatment and hunger strike-related injuries, they were not responded to until some 40 days later.

For example, during the first hunger strike, I (Heshima) passed out due to malnutrition and dehydration; the account was detailed in a previous statement. But simply put, their own guilt and fear caused them to assemble some 26 officers before opening my cell and piling on top of my unconscious form in order to shackle my arms and legs in chains and put me in an ambulance.

Their own guilt and fear caused them to assemble some 26 officers before opening my cell and piling on top of my unconscious form in order to shackle my arms and legs in chains and put me in an ambulance.

Mind you, according to witnesses, they casually, even jokingly, left me lying on my cell floor for 35 minutes before jumping on my body. Since then I’ve had a sharp, constant pain in my right side at the base of my ribcage. Though I’ve filed two medical appeals, as of this writing I have still not been treated or even diagnosed for this.

Zaharibu’s cholesterol, blood oxygen levels and blood pressure are so far outside of normal range he is at chronic risk for stroke, heart attack and diabetes – the nurses routinely “forgetting” to bring or administer his insulin when indicated.

Shortly after the second hunger strike ended, we were told, “One of the two pumps that delivers hot water to the institution is broken and we should have the part to fix it in two days.” That was over 50 days ago and we’ve had hot water for a total of three of those 50-plus days. In that intervening time, “due to the lack of hot water” we’ve been fed on paper trays, which ensures all meals arrive cold and grossly under-portioned. Because all we have to wash or shower with in these freezing cells is cold or lukewarm water, 80 percent of us housed in this 4BIL-C-Section short corridor have contracted a cold, upper respiratory tract infection or flu.

Because all we have to wash or shower with in these freezing cells is cold or lukewarm water, 80 percent of us housed in this 4BIL-C-Section short corridor have contracted a cold, upper respiratory tract infection or flu.

Despite numerous appeals and motions to the court, they have not run law library for any of us since August, making it impossible to access legal research, copying service or verified legal mailing, thus jeopardizing the viability of numerous legal pleadings in the courts.

We have often expounded upon the fundamental unreliability of reforms as nothing more than temporary pacification measures that can be repealed at the whim of administrators, and this analysis was again proven only weeks after the second hunger strike ended. Former Undersecretary of Corrections Scott Kernan made a big to-do about the concessions being made to improve the material conditions in SHU, including giving us action at a single special purchase order to purchase newly approved cold weather items by Dec. 31 – or those items would have to be included in annual packages.

Things like watch caps, thermals, tennis shoes etc. were all “approved” for SHU. Memos trumpeting this and Operational Procedure (OP) update chronos were issued to us all, only to be followed by a memo stating the warden of CSP-Corcoran-SHU was effectively repealing the single special purchase order for cold weather items without explanation. This was soon followed by another memo stating tennis shoes orders to SHU would not be allowed until after “Sacramento” made changes to the property matrix, something that was done by Scott Kernan back in October via emergency memo.

The warden of CSP-Corcoran-SHU was effectively repealing the single special purchase order for cold weather items without explanation.

Rolling power outages have suddenly become routine here. The mailroom suddenly devised new regulations directing any phony orders to be directed to one post office box, while letters go to another, making it more difficult and confusing for those who care to see to the welfare of their loved ones here. Not to be left out, CDCR trust account officials have raised processing fees on electronic trust deposits called “J-Pays,” some 500 percent, from $1 to $5, increasing the financial burden on underclass families while maximizing their own profiteering.

All of those things are designed to fuse with the daily mental struggles of the reality of indefinite sensory deprivation confinement to have the cumulative effect of eroding the psychology of resistance, and if this were a situation where there was some psychological threshold to breach, they may well have found some here who capitulate. But that simply is not the reality.

This is not a situation where multi-spectrum retaliation – or coercive force of any kind – will somehow diminish the resolve of those of us committed to ending the perpetual torture inherent in these indeterminate SHU units. In fact, quite the opposite is true; such actions only serve to crystallize in our minds the simple fact that we cannot lose. The alternative is simply more unpleasant than the relatively quick sacrifice of death by starvation. They can ratchet up the intensity on these petulant retaliation moves a hundredfold and it will have no other effect than increasing our resolve a thousandfold.

This is not a situation where multi-spectrum retaliation – or coercive force of any kind – will somehow diminish the resolve of those of us committed to ending the perpetual torture inherent in these indeterminate SHU units. In fact, quite the opposite is true; such actions only serve to crystallize in our minds the simple fact that we cannot lose.

We must win this struggle not simply because it is morally correct, upholds international standards of humanity, opposes governmental collusion in corporate exploitation of underclass people, and serves the interests – social, political and economic – of society as a whole, but also because it’s necessarily our survival. We are men in earnest; consequences have little meaning in the face of such conditions.

Some of you reading these words are no doubt grappling with the reality behind them, attempting to find some point of relatability, some common experience from which to draw a correlation. Unless you’ve experienced this firsthand, such an attempt is an effort in futility. But for the sake of this discussion, I challenge you to run an experiment: Go to your bathroom and close the door. Imagine that you will never leave that room. Your tub and shower, that’s your bed. Yes, your toilet is only a step or two away from where you lay your head. Your food will be brought to you here twice a day.

Stay there as long as you can. How long do you last? Twenty minutes? An hour? Six hours? Imagine you sit in that bathroom for a year, 10 years, 24 years, 40 years. You will never leave that bathroom unless you are released from prison, agree to be an agent for the same people who stuck you in that bathroom, or you die of old age and infirmity. How long would you last? How strong is your will?

Would you submit to snitchery, kowtow to your torturers and become a tool to condemn others to that same fate? Or would you fight, resist to the bitter end, give your life to expose such evil, greedy, draconian hypocrites for what they really are? Hold the mirror of social reality up to the face of every man and woman in U.S. society and force them to confront the human misery being carried to sicker and more depraved depths every day in their names? What would you do?

Would you submit to snitchery, kowtow to your torturers and become a tool to condemn others to that same fate? Or would you fight, resist to the bitter end, give your life to expose such evil, greedy, draconian hypocrites for what they really are?

Some would characterize our effort as insane, as crazy. In “Hagakure: The door of the Samurai,” Yamamoto Tsunetomo quotes Lord Naoshige as saying the way of the warrior (samurai) is in desperateness. Ten or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate.

None of us want to die, but all of us are prepared to do so to realize these five core demands. History dictates no less.

So we wait. We have been told the revisions and changes to the status quo in these torture units will be done this month or by February, but the relentless retaliatory blows we are absorbing as the sobering reminder of what we are dealing with: An entrenched labor aristocracy and political patronage of corporate speculators, who’ve grown rich and powerful off extorting billions from hapless taxpayers and criminalizing underclass people and communities, will resist any effort to curtail their wealth, privilege and socio-political status quo.

These vile and greedy people are extracting more of your tax dollars for their exclusive use than many nations’ gross national product by using us as scapegoats to frighten the people – when in fact many of us are servants of the people, political progressives who would willingly lay down our lives to advance the cause of freedom, social justice and economic equality in the nation.

In the case of the NCTT and those of like mind, ironically that’s why we were validated and consigned to these torture units in the first place. A common practice of corrupt political interests is to criminalize dissent and criticism. Who will care? We are prisoners; who will know these truths? They have already succeeded in lobbying to have media access to prisoners banned unless they consent to who will be interviewed. Again, who will care, who will know?

A common practice of corrupt political interests is to criminalize dissent and criticism. Who will care? We are prisoners; who will know these truths?

If you’re reading these words, you now know the only question that remains is: Do you care? Do you care that the very people who you’ve entrusted with ensuring public safety are in fact intentionally working against that interest to maintain a bloated prison industrial complex on your tax dollars and our souls? Do you care that the U.S., which is so vocally condemning other nations, is ignoring its U.N. treaty obligations and maintaining its own expansive domestic torture program in U.S. Supermax SHU prisons across this nation? Do you care that these evils, this blatant hypocrisy is being carried out in your name? Do you care? And if you don’t, exactly what type of society is this we’ve allowed to emerge?

If you are reading these words, you can no longer claim ignorance; to stand idly by now would be complicity. A wise man once said, “All that is necessary for evil men to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” We are under no illusions. The ultimate arbiter of our fate – and this society’s fate – is the people. YOU. YOU must rise up against this injustice and inhumanity. YOU must let the state know that substantive change at every level of society is something the people demand.

The ultimate arbiter of our fate – and this society’s fate – is the people. YOU.

We have supported, and will continue to support, progressive people’s movements, from the Dream Act to the Occupy Movement, because we recognize the inherent unity of purpose in this single political motive force, the reality that we do not represent disparate social interests but a single determined democratic imperative to put an end to the stranglehold that this greedy elite and its tools currently have on every area of people’s activity in the U.S., to put an end to these exploitive relationships that diminish and impoverish the many for the aggrandizement of the few.

To treat us this way is wrong, evil and unsustainable socially. Stand with us. Lend your voices, your labor, and your ideas to this historical work. We can win, but only with you all by our sides. In the final analysis, this is a struggle to determine the nature of humanity itself. We are on the right side of history; we encourage you all to stand on this same side with us. Our love, loyalty and solidarity to all those who cherish freedom, justice and human rights and fear only failure. Until we win or don’t lose.

For more information on the California prison hunger strikes or the NCTT, contact:

• Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-53, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• J. Heshima Denham, J-38283, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-46, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• Kambui Robinson, C-82830, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-49, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212.

Read these brothers’ previous stories: “California prison hunger strikers propose ‘10 core demands’ for the national Occupy Wall Street Movement,” “A brief hunger strike update from the front lines of the struggle: Corcoran-SHU 4B 1L C-section Isolation Unit” (second story in that post), “From the front lines of the struggle,”and “We dare to win: The reality and impact of SHU torture units.” This story was typed by Adrian McKinney.

Related Posts

• We dare to win: The reality and impact of SHU torture units
• From Pelican Bay: CDCR to offset prison population cut by putting more men in solitary
• CDCR: Bay View is contraband for mentioning George Jackson and Black August
• Hunger strikers at Pelican Bay end strike after nearly three weeks; strike continues at other prisons
• Action update: California admits 6,600 prisoners are on hunger strike

by Bruce A. Dixon

A year ago this month, Black, White and Brown inmates in a dozen Georgia prisons staged a brief strike. They put forward a set of simple and basic demands – wages for work, decent food and medical care, access to educational and self-improvement programs, fairness and transparency in the way the state handles grievances, inmate funds and release decisions, and more opportunities to connect with their families and loved ones.

A short-lived formation calling itself the Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoner Rights came together and met with the Georgia Department of Corrections. In the last weeks of 2010 teams of community observers were allowed to visit Macon State and Smith prisons, where they examined facilities and interviewed staff and prisoners.

The Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoner Rights was supposed to issue public reports of its fact-finding prison visits. That never happened. It was to have initiated a long-term dialog with state officials in pursuit of the inmates’ eminently just and reasonable demands. That never happened either.

It should have called public meetings and begun to organize a lasting campaign to educate the public on the meaning of Georgia’s and the nation’s prison state and the possibilities for radical reform. These are the things the prisoners expected of their allies and spokespeople on the outside.

But compromised and undermined from within and without, the coalition was unable to make any of these things happen. Thus the trust that Georgia prisoners placed in activists outside the walls to organize in support of their demands was betrayed.

From the beginning, members of the coalition uncritically deferred to a single one of their number with extremely limited local availability. That leading person vetoed public meetings, the establishment of an interactive web site or even a steering committee listserve, insisting that nobody else could be trusted to manage or access the coalition’s contacts.

The trust that Georgia prisoners placed in activists outside the walls to organize in support of their demands was betrayed.

So apart from the limited interactivity of a seldom updated Facebook page, the coalition maintained no easily found point of public contact. This leading person, in sole charge of calling meetings, simply stopped emailing or telephoning this reporter and others who contributed significantly to the cause of the prisoners.

State authorities did their part to gut the coalition as well. Georgia got a new governor at the beginning of 2011, who took a keen interest in his own right wing vision of “criminal justice reform.” Taking his cues from an ultraconservative think tank called “Right On Crime,” Gov. Deal is one of those who believes the main thing wrong with mass incarceration is that it’s too expensive.

Aided by the Pew Foundation and a major state contractor, Deal created a commission on “criminal justice reform” composed of judges, prosecutors and state legislators to approve what his consultants cooked up – a hodgepodge of recommendations to shrink the state’s maximum and medium security institutions while greatly expanding probation, home monitoring, workfare, closely supervised “diversion” and misnamed “re-entry” programs, all under the profitable guidance of well-connected “not for profit” entrepreneurs.

True to his name, Deal reportedly made a deal with some leading figures in the Coalition to Respect Prisoner Rights, who bolted the coalition with the expectation that if they help line up Black Democrats behind the white Republican governor’s “criminal justice reform” proposals, they’d get some of the state’s new “re-entry” money. A senior national civil rights leader quietly flew in and out of Atlanta the same day to quietly meet with Gov. Deal about his deal. So the Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoner Rights withered and died.

And so, a year out from the December 2010 prison strike, it is clear that activists outside the walls have largely failed to honor their commitment to those inside the walls. In the past year, not much has changed. Scores of prisoners alleged to be strike leaders were punitively transferred and locked down in the wake of the strike.

Dozens more who were not strike leaders were savagely beaten, as exemplary reprisals for the strike, and denied medical attention afterward. State officials conspired to hide from his family and the public the whereabouts of one man they beat into a coma for nearly two weeks as he hung between life and death.

Scores of prisoners alleged to be strike leaders were punitively transferred and locked down in the wake of the strike. Dozens more who were not strike leaders were savagely beaten, as exemplary reprisals for the strike, and denied medical attention afterward.

A handful of guards were charged, but local prosecutors and grand juries refused to indict. The federal Justice Department, under its first Black attorney general and president, has thus far expressed no interest in protecting prisoners from the arbitrary and brutal retaliation inflicted upon them by Georgia officials.

Inmates with debilitating and life threatening conditions are still mostly untreated. Educational programs are available to less than 5 percent of prisoners, and thousands of Georgia’s prisoners as young as 14, 15 and 16 years old continue to be confined in adult institutions with adults.

Bank of America still has the exclusive contract to handle inmate accounts and levies a parasitic fee each and every time a family member sends an inmate a few dollars and deducts another monthly charge as long as any funds remain in an inmate account. This year as last, thousands of prisoners who speak mainly Spanish are not afforded interpreters at disciplinary hearings, and with no transparency at any level it’s impossible to know whether there is any hint of fairness in these proceedings.

Inmates with debilitating and life threatening conditions are still mostly untreated. Educational programs are available to less than 5 percent of prisoners, and thousands of Georgia’s prisoners as young as 14, 15 and 16 years old continue to be confined in adult institutions with adults.

Politically connected companies like J-Pay and Global TelLink are still allowed to siphon millions each month from the families of inmates by collecting tolls on the money transfers going into and phone calls coming out of prison. Food ranges from bad to merely inadequate, vermin infestations abound and of course Georgia inmates still work every day without pay.

On Wednesday, Dec. 14, a year after the strike, Rev. Kenneth Glasgow of TOPS, The Ordinary Peoples Society, showed up at the Georgia state capitol with some of the families and supporters of prisoners savagely beaten by wardens and correctional officers in Georgia after the strike.

“We are here to reaffirm our commitment to the prisoners who made a principled stand for their own and each other’s human rights a year ago this week. We know the ball was dropped. TOPS and the National Organization of Formerly Incarcerated Persons, along with some others, are picking it up.

We are here to reaffirm our commitment to the prisoners who made a principled stand for their own and each other’s human rights a year ago.

“Over the past year we’ve worked to secure legal and other assistance to the families of some of the prisoners who suffered beat downs in retaliation for the December 2010 strike, and we’ve expanded our work with the National Organization of Formerly Incarcerated Persons. But we know that much more has to be done to fulfill the promise of last year’s coalition.

“For our part, we can promise that the next 12 months out here won’t be like the last 12. Decent food and medical care, wages for work, educational opportunities and the like are ordinary human rights to which everybody is entitled. The Ordinary Peoples Society is ready to work with whoever is willing to advance the human rights of Georgia’s prisoners.”

The question is what will that work look like? How do activists in Georgia bring the questions of the prison state and the rights of prisoners to the front burner as a public and political issue? With the corporate media determined to twist and ignore the issue, and prominent sections of the Black establishment lining up in bipartisan endorsement of a phony “criminal justice reform” package in return for a share of “re-entry program” money, how can this be done?

Hugh Esco, secretary of the Georgia Green Party, thinks he knows: “We’ve worked with people in Georgia communities to come up with 13 demands for the governor and his phony Commission on Criminal Justice Reform. Demands like ending the lifelong discrimination in housing, employment and other areas against persons convicted of felonies, automatically restoring the vote to everyone, including inmates currently in prisons and jails, decent food, health care and education behind the walls, stopping the incarceration of juveniles in adult prisons, decriminalizing homelessness, mental illness, drug use and more. Beginning this week we’ve got persons on the courthouse steps every day courts are in session, first in Cobb and Fulton counties, and within a few weeks in half a dozen other Georgia counties.

“Our volunteers will be petitioning, gathering signatures on these demands. The Georgia Green Party will be sending letters, postcards, phone calls and emails to those who sign the petitions inviting them to phone conferences and face to face public meetings beginning in January and going throughout the year. That’s what a campaign of grassroots public education looks like, and that’s how our party is going to pick up the ball that the coalition dropped last year. Our campaign even has its own website at www.endmassincarceration.org. We are also helping the families of prisoners build their own network of mutual aid and support.

2012 is an election year, so we expect that some of the friends and families of prisoners will join with us to run for seats in Georgia’s state legislature, using their 13 demands as the core of their platform. In this way we will use the elections to educate our neighbors on Georgia’s and the nation’s prison state.

“Using these methods we expect to be able to call well-attended public meetings on the prison state in many parts of Georgia this spring and summer. And 2012 is an election year, so we expect that some of the friends and families of prisoners will join with us to run for seats in Georgia’s state legislature, using their 13 demands as the core of their platform. In this way we will use the elections to educate our neighbors on Georgia’s and the nation’s prison state. Anybody who wants to help in this campaign can contact us at info@endmassincarceration.org. We’re here, we’re serious, and we aren’t going anywhere.”

The 13 demands of the Georgia Green Party’s Campaign to End Mass Incarceration can be found here.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, where this story first appeared, and a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. He can be reached at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com.

Related Posts

• Harry Belafonte explodes the presidential ‘Make me do it’ myth
• The largest inmate protest in US history
• Medical neglect stalks Georgia prisons
• Georgia prisoners’ strike: What would Dr. King say or do?
• Imperialism will be buried in Africa

by Mutope Duguma

Mutope writes, “I insist that all New Afrikans in this country read “The Melancholy History of Soledad Prison” by Min S. Yee.”

We were devalued and stripped of our African heritage. Our lifestyle was stolen away from us and our ideology – all of our social practices, and even our identity. Yes, we lost it all – our names too. Some of us have realized the importance of names. Therefore we have taken steps to re-name ourselves while dropping our slave names inherited many generations ago by our enslaved ancestors, names that can literally be traced to our New Afrikan enslaved ancestors’ slave masters. At the same time we rejected the general names placed on us to dehumanize us as a New Afrikan people, such as the “N” word, Negro, Colored, Black, Afro-American and Afrikan American, because we have always been New Afrikans here in North America.

Our struggle is one of resistance against that which has been forced upon us. Do we easily forget our struggle for freedom? If so, then let’s refresh our memories by reading these books in this order: 1) “The Destruction of Black Civilization” by Chancellor Williams; 2) “There’s a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America” by Vincent Harding; 3) “Slavery: The African American Psychic Trauma” by Sultan A. Latif and Naimah Latif; and 4) “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander.

Our struggle is one of resistance against that which has been forced upon us. The whole system conspired against New Afrikans, subjecting many of us to outright torture at the hands of those overseeing the prison industrial complex.

“The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander speaks to how the judicial process toward the New Afrikan people has not changed from 1619 to now. This New Afrikan sister laid out how the whole system conspired against New Afrikans, subjecting many of us to outright torture at the hands of those overseeing the prison industrial complex (PIC).

How easily we forget “what began to happen in the South, particularly after federal troops were removed in 1877. … (T)he state legislatures of every state passed laws which began to effectively criminalize Black life and to create a situation in which African American men found it almost impossible not to be in violation of some misdemeanor statute at almost all times. And the most broadly applied of those was that it was against the law if you were unable to prove at any given moment that you were employed. So vagrancy statutes were used to arrest thousands of Black men, even though thousands of White men could have been arrested on the same charges but they hardly ever were. And then once arrested, the judicial system had been re-tooled in such a way as to coerce huge numbers of men into commercial enterprises as forced workers through the judicial system,” explained Douglas Blackmon, author of “Slavery by Another Name,” in a KPFK interview.

There’s no question that our New Afrikan ancestors were tortured and murdered under the system of chattel slavery, where they suffered every heinous act known to mankind under the sun by the hand of their slave master – enduring a life of misery and terror.

How easily we forget – in California, prisoners being murdered in cold blood at the hand of prison guards who enjoyed and celebrated the kill, like hunting wild animals.

How easily we forget – in California, prisoners being murdered in cold blood at the hand of prison guards. Learn about how your fathers, sons, brothers, uncles and cousins were tortured and murdered at the hands of CDCR prison guards who enjoyed and celebrated the kill, like hunting wild animals. We must not forget there has not been much change since 1619, just a more functional way to cover up neo-chattel slavery.

Do we forget Weusi, who was shot to death with a mini 14 assault rifle by a gun-ho prison guard who openly fired on a melee of defenseless prisoners, shooting nine consecutive rounds. And when he was done, there was two dead and several wounded – at San Quentin in 1987. None of the prisoners seen it coming. This was cold-blooded murder – with impunity.

Do we forget the Corcoran prison guards who set up gladiator-staged fights where 50 prisoners were wounded and seven fatally wounded between 1989 and 1995?

Do we forget the Corcoran prison guards who set up gladiator-staged fights where 50 prisoners were wounded and seven fatally wounded:

1. William Martinez on April 8, 1989,

2. Randall on June 23, 1989,

3. Andres Cortez Romero on Feb. 6, 1990, one month before his release date,

4. Michael Mullins on April 9, 1993,

5. Henry Noriega on Sept. 11, 1993,

6. Preston Tate on April 2, 1994,

7. Donald Creasy on June 1, 1994.

All 50 shootings happened between the years of 1989 and 1995.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported in “Accusations of prison coverup: Agency hid staged fights at Corcoran, guards say” on Oct. 28, 1996, that Correctional Officer Richard Caruso in 1994 provided documents to the FBI which showed the prison guards were setting up gladiator-staged fights by matching prisoners up against one another. Correctional Lt. Steve Rigg in 1994 says he learned that some prison officers were “stacking the tiers” to stage fights among inmates. “One guard, Pio Cruz, liked to call the fights like a sports announcer – before grabbing a rifle and shooting the brawling inmates with wooden projectiles, officers testified in a disciplinary hearing against Cruz, who was ultimately fired.” Not prosecuted, FIRED – with impunity.

Mark Arax and Mark Gladstone wrote in the July 5, 1998, Los Angeles Times, in an article titled “State Thwarted Brutality Probe at Corcoran Prison, Investigators Say”: “Sacramento knew the level of violence,” said Steve Rigg, a former lieutenant who also cooperated with the FBI. “We assumed that they would read the numbers and say something is terribly wrong here and take appropriate corrective action. Instead, we continued to bait inmates into fights and then shoot them for throwing punches” – with impunity.

“From the day Corcoran opened in 1988, the escalating violence failed to set off any alarms” – not at the local district attorney’s office, not at the State Department of Corrections, not at the Attorney General’s Office or at the Governor’s Office.

I was personally involved in this manufactured violence from 1991 to 1992 and in 1995 in Corcoran SHU. I was transferred to Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) in 1992, when a PBSP prison guard shot and killed a New Afrikan mentally ill prisoner – with impunity. Three more were shot and killed, in 1993, 1994 and 2000.

I was personally involved in this manufactured violence from 1991 to 1992 and in 1995 in Corcoran SHU. I was transferred to Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) in 1992.

• In 1992, a PBSP prison guard shot and killed a New Afrikan mentally ill prisoner – with impunity.

• In 1993, a PBSP prison guard shot and killed a Mexican prisoner who was to be released soon – with impunity.

• In 1994, a PBSP prison guard shot and killed a New Afrikan prisoner – brain matter splattered everywhere – with impunity.

• In 2000, a PBSP prison guard shot and killed a Mexican prisoner.

Now I personally grew up where there was many fisticuffs and the loser would grab a 2 by 4 or a knife and not no one trying to break it up, in order to prevent the unarmed opponent from being murdered by using a mini 14 assault rifle to do so.

By working in solitary confinement guards are able to continue to exercise their insidious, malicious, racist and prejudiced attacks on prisoners with impunity.

Many of these cold-blooded murderers come from the general population (GP) gun towers to work in solitary confinement, i.e., SHU and Ad-Seg units, or officers who do not have the nerve to work around prisoners they have a deep hate for where their own paranoia consumes them to the point they can’t work around free prisoners on GP. By working in solitary confinement they’re able to continue to exercise their insidious, malicious, racist and prejudiced attacks on prisoners with impunity.

Mr. Vaughn Dortch, a New Afrikan prisoner who was tortured into insanity after being housed in solitary confinement – yes, mentally ill – was removed from his cell by force and taken to the prison infirmary where Pelican Bay prison guards boiled him in scalding hot water and held him down in this boiling water until he fainted. The skin on his body peeled off his flesh, while at the same time prison guards scrubbed his body with a hard scrub brush. Prison guards were making fun, saying, “We going to have us a white boy before it’s through, because his skin is so dirty and rotten it’s falling off.” This was a sadistic act carried out by racist prison guards.

Pelican Bay prison guards boiled him in scalding hot water, saying, “We going to have us a white boy before it’s through, because his skin is so dirty and rotten it’s falling off.”

Now, Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, s/n R.N. Dewberry, C-35671, D1-117L, had been in the solitary confinement unit since 1983 and this incident happened in 1990 with Vaughn Dortch, so Sitawa was in eight years and counting. He and two other prisoners was in the infirmary when V. Dortch was brought in, so they witnessed this whole incident and they cursed to the top of their lungs at these savages (i.e., prison guards) and when they realized that all these prisoners just witnessed this horrible act the prison guards went straight into action.

Lt. Brittle walked up to Sitawa and said “Aw fuck, Dewberry, did you see anything?” Dewberry replied, “I seen everything and where did you all take him,” referring to how they rushed V. Dortch out of the infirmary when he fainted. Lt. Brittle then said, “Dewberry, are you still trying to get transferred closer to the Bay Area, near your family?” Reply: “Yes.” Lt. Brittle then said, “Then maybe we can work something out, if you didn’t see anything.” Reply: “Expletive, expletive and more expletives.”

Later Sitawa would be interviewed by federal agents of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department concerning V. Dortch, who would go on to win close to $1 million and all medical expenses paid – a bill taxpayers would once again pay due to the criminal acts of so-called prison guards. As usual there will be no prosecution. And sadly these criminals in this particular case was promoted in many respects for a job well done. Again with impunity!

How easily we forget: During slavery the slaves would be dropped in a black scalding hot kettle being and boiled alive until they were dead. Some were pulled out after they fainted as well and considered amusement for the sick audience.

Here at Pelican Bay State Prison, we have had two prisoners allegedly commit suicide, but how is it suicide if someone is torturing you every day of your life in order to get you to debrief or to reduce you to an emasculated state?

Here at Pelican Bay State Prison, we have had two prisoners allegedly commit suicide, but how is it suicide if someone is torturing you every day of your life in order to get you to debrief or to reduce you to an emasculated state? This is not suicide; this is the CDCR-PBSP using its power against helpless individuals until their spirit has been broken and their lives are no longer worth living. These men were murdered because they were stripped of everything that makes life worth living.

How easily we forget

We are New Afrikans for three primary reasons:

1. The name gives recognition to our historical heritage.

2. When we use the name, it is a rejection of the attempts by the U.S. government, our colonizers, to Amerikanize us to the rest of the world.

3. When we call ourselves New Afrikans, we identify ourselves as a historically evolved and legitimate nation of people in the community of Afrikan nations.

Generation after generation throughout our history, from 1619 to 2012, when we find ourselves struggling for our New Afrikan survival, it’s not by accident that Amerika as 2.3 million prisoners and 1 million-plus of those prisoners are New Afrikans.

In order for us to survive as a people, we must definitely be free to lead our own lives as a New African Nation.

One love, one struggle!

Mutope Duguma, aka James Crawford, has been reporting to Bay View readers on the hunger strike from the beginning. He is the writer of “The Call,” the formal announcement that alerted the world to this massive hunger strike, “SHU prisoners sentenced to civil death begin hunger strike,” “This hunger strike is far from over,” “Pelican Bay SHU prisoners plan to resume hunger strike Sept. 26,” “Greed drives solitary confinement torture,” “Hip hop community, support our hunger strike!” “Retaliation at Pelican Bay: Letters from the SHU,” “We are willing to sacrifice ourselves to change our conditions” and “They took the 15 of us hunger strikers to ASU-Hell-Row.” Send our brother some love and light: Mutope Duguma, s/n James D. Crawford, D-05996, PBSP-SHU, D1-117U, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532.

Related Posts

• California prisons: Torture by any means necessary
• Corcoran ASU hunger strikers continue after one starves to death, while CDCR lags on gang validation revisions
• Financing our own incarceration
• New hunger strike: Petition for improved conditions in Administrative Segregation Unit at Corcoran State Prison
• They took the 15 of us hunger strikers to ASU-Hell-Row

Scroll down for four videos from the January 2012 Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Berlin: the first featuring Mumia, his daughter Goldie and Frances Goldin and three featuring Professor Johanna Fernandez

Statement from the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal and the Move Organization: As most of you already know, Mumia was transferred to SCI-Mahanoy in upstate Pennsylvania more than a month ago, directly after Philadelphia prosecutor Seth Williams announced that he wasn’t pursuing the death penalty in Mumia’s case. This meant that Mumia’s sentence went from death to life in prison without parole.

Mumia Abu Jamal during a previous move from one prison to another

Since his arrival at Mahanoy, Superintendent John Kerestes and his staff have gone from one thing to the next to vent their fury and racism on Mumia. First they claimed to be waiting on paperwork that Mumia’s sentence is a life sentence and not death, but Mahanoy has no death chamber so Mumia would never be sent there if he still had a death sentence.

When people saw right through that, Kerestes said that Mumia has to cut his hair before going into general population. Now he’s saying that Mumia has to let them take his blood – something Mumia really doesn’t want to do – before he can be in general population. Mumia has been in prison for 30 years so why this sudden demand for his blood now?

It is crystal clear that Kerestes and his staff are doing everything they can to keep Mumia in the hole under these tortuous conditions, and it’s all rooted in racism and their fury at all the worldwide attention that stays focused on Mumia after all these years. They’re furious that their plan to legally kill Mumia ain’t working. They’re torturing Mumia for the same reason the Romans tortured Jesus Christ, because he won’t go along with the lies of the system and racism.

Prison policy has nothing to do with what they’re doing to Mumia and everybody should be clear on this. We must be vigilant over Mumia, including organizations that can visit him on an official basis. We must continue to flood Superintendent Kerestes with calls and emails. Mumia is up in serious racist KKK territory and we must have his back. We’ve brought Mumia too far to get lax now. Remember, the power of the people is a force to be reckoned with when the power of the people stays consistent and united.

Editor’s note: Contact Superintendent John Kerestes, SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Road, Frackville PA 17932, (570) 773-2158, fax (570) 783-2008.

by Linn Washington Jr.

Those intent on tormenting now ex-death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal have done it again, this time perhaps even exceeding their past efforts to painfully harass this man widely perceived as a political prisoner.

A demonstrator is interviewed at a Free Mumia rally in London. – Photo: Linn Washington

The draconian constraints of AC placement surpass the harsh restrictions of the death row isolation Abu-Jamal has endured for over a quarter century.

A jury sentenced Abu-Jamal to death following a controversial July 1982 conviction for killing a Philadelphia policeman.

No surprise that this latest punitive assault against Abu-Jamal has his worldwide support movement in an uproar. Supporters see AC placement as retaliation by those incensed that Abu-Jamal is no longer facing execution.

Energizing supporters is the opposite of what Philadelphia’s District Attorney Seth Williams said he desired when he announced last month that his office would not seek reinstitution of Abu-Jamal’s death sentence. At the time, DA Williams said he hoped avoiding a rehearing on the death sentence would consign Abu-Jamal to obscurity.

Pennsylvania’s governor and the president of Philadelphia’s police union also used the word obscurity when voicing their hopes that the life sentence for Abu-Jamal would decimate his cause célèbre status among death penalty abolitionists worldwide.

Prison authorities removed Abu-Jamal from death row mere hours after the Philadelphia DA’s December announcement, transferring him to an Administrative Custody cell block inside the same supermax Greene prison located more than 300 miles from Philadelphia in southwest Pennsylvania.

Prison officials rejected the standard procedure of placing Abu-Jamal in general population, the status for all inmates not sentenced to death.

Significantly, inmates in general population have full privileges to visitation – contact, not conjugal contact – telephone and commissary, along with access to all prison programs and services.

Administrative Custody restrictions, on the other hand, are punitive in nature, including a limited number of visits, no telephone calls – except legal or emergency – and limitations on access to legal materials needed for appeals.

Sue Bensinger, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, declined comment on Abu-Jamal’s case citing the department’s “security and privacy” regulations.

Bensinger did confirm that authorities now hold Abu-Jamal in Mahanoy, a medium security prison about 100 miles from Philadelphia in central Pennsylvania. Mahanoy, by department regulation, cannot hold death row prisoners.

DoC personnel moved Abu-Jamal to Mahanoy from Greene prison during an unannounced pre-dawn transfer on Dec. 14, 2011.

Abu-Jamal’s December removal from death row was in belated compliance with federal court rulings voiding Abu-Jamal’s death sentence. That sentence launched Abu-Jamal’s decade’s long grind on Pennsylvania’s death row – an ordeal that a string of federal court rulings since 2001 have declared to have been reached illegally and unconstitutionally.

When a federal District Court judge voided Abu-Jamal’s death sentence in December 2001, converting it to a life sentence, Pennsylvania prison authorities refused to remove him from death row. Authorities justified their refusal to transfer Abu-Jamal into general population from death row in 2001 as extending a “courtesy” to Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s Office, to that city’s police union – the Fraternal Order of Police – and to the widow of the slain officer.

When a federal District Court judge voided Abu-Jamal’s death sentence in December 2001, converting it to a life sentence, Pennsylvania prison authorities refused to remove him from death row.

The FOP, the widow and the DA’s Office, including Williams and his predecessor Lynne Abraham, actively lobbied year after year for Abu-Jamal’s continuance on death row during their unsuccessful appeals of that 2001 ruling ending his capital sentence.

Those malicious demands for Abu-Jamal’s continued death row confinement sought to inflict increased suffering through keeping Abu-Jamal mired in the deprivations of death row isolation.

That “courtesy” also cost taxpayers at least $100,000, because it costs Pennsylvania’s prison system an extra $10,000 per year to handle each death row inmate, according to prison system spokespersons.

That “courtesy” cost adds to the enormous expenditures Philadelphia prosecutors have made fighting in courts to block Abu-Jamal’s efforts to win a retrial where a jury could hear what that 1982 jury did not: evidence of innocence withheld by police and prosecutors.

As an example of the additional restrictions administrative custody imposes on Abu-Jamal, the acclaimed prison author and journalist now has no access to books, a radio and a typewriter – all items he utilized on death row for his writings.

A federal appeals court in 1998 stated Abu-Jamal had a First Amendment right to write while imprisoned. That ruling derailed efforts by detractors to bar Abu-Jamal’s writing.

Legal experts familiar with Abu-Jamal’s plight say some of those current Administrative Custody restrictions – particularly those blocking his ability to write – arguably violate that 1998 appeals court ruling.

A federal appeals court in 1998 stated Abu-Jamal had a First Amendment right to write while imprisoned. That ruling derailed efforts by detractors to bar Abu-Jamal’s writing.

Under current AC status, authorities force Abu-Jamal to wear shackles during the limited visits he’s permitted. Under administrative custody restrictions, his visits are actually less frequent and of shorter duration than were his highly restrictive death row visitations.

Prison authorities had stopped shackling Abu-Jamal during death row visits a few years ago, following complaints from Noble Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Tutu, during a visit to the famous inmate, refused to see him until the shackles, which Tutu declared were a gratuitous torture, were removed.

In an interesting twist, Maureen Faulkner, the slain officer’s widow, expressed her desire in December for having Abu-Jamal placed in general population where, she said, he would live among the “criminals that infest” Pennsylvania’s prisons. Faulkner has been at the forefront of past punitive efforts against Abu-Jamal, including the legal rights-robbing onslaught that led to the 1998 federal appeals court ruling.

That 1995 onslaught was retaliation for the publication of Abu-Jamal’s book, “Live From Death Row,” and it substantially sabotaged his pivotal hearing that year appealing his conviction. The book features essays on prison life Abu-Jamal had prepared for an NPR program that detractors successfully intimidated NPR into cancelling before it could air.

This perverse Administrative Custody confinement, the latest link in the chain of injustices lashing Abu-Jamal since his 1981 arrest, is just the latest violation by the Department of Corrections of the Pennsylvania prison system’s own written regulations for placing inmates into that harsh disciplinary status.

Abu-Jamal does not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania Department of Corrections regulations for justifying administrative custody placement.

A model prisoner, Abu-Jamal does not constitute “a threat” to life, property, himself, staff, other inmates, the public or orderly prison operations, as the policy declaration for AC placement states.

Indeed, prison staff evaluations of Abu-Jamal since his December death row removal list him as “polite [and] respectful.” Those positive evaluations hardly offer evidence of incorrigibility or other serious misbehavior which usually triggers AC placement.

Among the ever-changing rationales prison authorities advance for keeping Abu-Jamal in AC is their curious and Kafkaesque claim that they are awaiting legal clarification that the courts have formally replaced Abu-Jamal’s death sentence with life in prison.

That claim contradicts the Department of Corrections’ own documents specifically acknowledging that federal courts have vacated the death sentence – requiring a life sentence – and that the Philadelphia DA has dropped appeals to reinstate the death sentence and is accepting the life imprisonment.

Since DoC documents clearly reference a vacated death sentence, how can prison officials also claim they need clarification for what is objectively obvious, unless they are using that need-for-clarification explanation to cover up continued punitive harassment?

The mammoth legal battles raging around Abu-Jamal’s conviction obscure the smaller, little known skirmishes Abu-Jamal constantly has to fight over mundane matters, like the types of food he can eat, what newspapers he can read and the permissible length of his dreadlock hair style.

In 2003 Abu-Jamal and other inmates at Greene prison asked authorities for healthier diets, prompting hundreds of activists from Germany and other countries to send letters to prison authorities supporting that dietary request which arrived containing garlic cloves in the envelopes. Activists used garlic because it is widely recognized for its medicinal properties and it makes a pungent statement.

Abu-Jamal’s current AC status once again limits his ability to obtain food from the prison commissary which he needs for his vegetarian diet.

In the late 1980s Abu-Jamal mounted an unsuccessful lawsuit against prison authorities for barring his death row receipt of a newspaper published by a socialist organization.

Prison authorities barred that newspaper by speciously deeming it a “danger” to prison security, despite their allowing non-isolation-cell inmates to receive white racist hate literature and pornography.

Those racist and pornographic publications approved for general population inmates clearly threatened security by spurring interracial tensions and homosexual rapes – unlike a leftist newspaper sent to one inmate in death row isolation.

Linn Washington

Authorities now cite Abu-Jamal’s hair length as a reason for keeping him in punitive isolation, though suspiciously, they only first offered that excuse five long weeks after his December AC placement.

While Abu-Jamal’s detractors indignantly dismiss all claims of his being a political prisoner, his post-arrest ordeals provide a compelling case of a person specifically targeted by authorities for being who he is politically more than for the crime he is supposedly serving time for.

Linn Washington, a professor of journalism at Temple University and award-winning columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune, has covered Mumia Abu-Jamal’s fight for freedom from the beginning, in December 1981. This story first appeared on This Can’t Be Happening, the website featuring the work of a news collective comprising Linn Washington and three other renowned journalists. They can be reached at thiscantbehappeningmail@yahoo.com. Washington is a contributor to “Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion,” forthcoming from AK Press.

Greeting by Mumia Abu Jamal and presentation by his daughter Goldie and renowned activist Frances Goldin for the Rosa Luxemburg Conference Jan. 14, 2012, in Berlin

Professor Johanna Fernandez speaks on Mumia Abu Jamal at the Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Berlin

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by Gabriel Huerta

Written Oct. 18, postmarked Nov. 30, 2011 – Well, here I am again, on my 18th day of a renewed hunger strike in protest over the inhumane and torturous conditions of the Security Housing Units (SHUs) in California’s prisons.

Prison bus - Photo: Sam Morris

What really struck me though was when we arrived at Corcoran it was already nighttime and all the lights lit up the prison like a big city. It’s enormous.

It got me to wondering just how much does it cost to run a place like this. It must be a fortune! Then I realized that we prisoners actually finance a big part of our own incarceration. Now, how crazy is that? How is it that this prison industrial complex can actually work its psychology on us and have us working to keep our own selves locked up?

The way I see it is they gave us good time, work time so that we were able to work off our time faster if we worked and behaved. It makes sense, to be able to come out of your cell and have more movement so that you can do a little hustling, while at the same time making a few bucks that you can spend at the canteen, all the while cutting your sentence down more and more. Hell yeah, that makes sense.

But what’s happened though, throughout the years, the sentences got longer and longer. It’s a business psychology: Think of a store that has a half-off sale to bring in more customers. An item that ordinarily costs $20 can now be had for $10. Great deal!

But little by little they raise the price of this item to $50, though it doesn’t actually cost them any more to produce now than before. So now when they have a half-off sale, we’re paying $25, more than the full price from before! And we think we’re getting a deal! Now that’s business psychology or, like we say in regular English, “That’s game!”

Maybe it’s just the mental fog I’m in right now, but I would say that it’s time to bring those prices back down to normal. I see the three strikers working as best they can to get another initiative on the ballot. I see the lifers bending over backwards with decades of clean time and all sorts of positive achievements, like vocation, education and self-help, yet the Parole Board still refuses to give them dates. Look to our fellow prisoners in Georgia and Ohio and admire their accomplishments.

I just got some news on our current hunger strike: Our mediation team has met with CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) representatives and believes that this time CDCR is serious about reforming the policies of keeping prisoners in the SHU. We weren’t asking for a lot. We forged a collective that went beyond racial lines and groups and we stood up – now there’s a real possibility for change. In no way is this “over” yet. It will be a battle in itself to have CDCR comply with even half of its promises. But we’re ready to rock!

And in this mental fog, I find myself wondering about the three strikers, the lifers and those who want family visiting back and other positive programs. The stage is being set. Will they be ready to throw down their oars, or is that just a crazy thought?

See Gabriel’s previous story, “The musings – or mental fog – of a hunger striker,” published in the November Bay View. And send our brother some love and light: Gabriel A. Huerta, C-80766, D3-222, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532.

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by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mumia Abu Jamal

For example, in every “hole” in the state, where all Death Rows are sited, men and women with the worst sentences live the least contentious lives. If they can afford it – really if their family can – they have TV, radio and other amenities, if they can afford it. Some work prison jobs for the glorious wage of around $35 to $50 a month – yes, a month. There, every mind is attuned to the ultimate sentence – death – and against such an immensity, amenities seem trivial.

Yet Death Row is a class (as in classification), and beyond it lies a chasm of classifications that are as maddening as they are mundane: AC (Administrative Custody), DC (Disciplinary Custody), PC (Protective Custody) and beyond. All are lock-up statuses, all have their distinct rules of what is or isn’t allowed and all have degrees of repression.

Every major U.S. history book has described America as virtually classless, with rigid class distinctions more a British or European thing. How then can a Nation that claimed classlessness give birth to such institutions that are so riddled with class differentiations?

Because America was never classless, and not only did it have rigid classes, it had – and has – caste, more rigid than stone. Millions of Blacks live in such a caste, as noted recently in Michelle Alexander’s excellent work, “The New Jim Crow.”

The ruling, wealthy class built prisons and courts to protect them and their wealth from the masses. They also built the ideological illusion of classlessness, which is maintained through their media. They brayed about freedom, while erecting the most massive prison complex – the prison industrial complex – this earth has ever seen.

The ruling, wealthy class built prisons and courts to protect them and their wealth from the masses.

They built Prison Nation.

© Copyright 2011 Mumia Abu-Jamal. Read Mumia’s latest book, “Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.,” available from City Lights Publishing, www.citylights.com or (415) 362-8193. Keep updated at www.freemumia.com. For Mumia’s commentaries, visit www.prisonradio.org. For recent interviews with Mumia, visit www.blockreportradio.com. Encourage the media to publish and broadcast Mumia’s commentaries and interviews. Send our brotha some love and light at: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Greene, 175 Progress Dr., Waynesburg PA 15370.

A small victory for Brother Mumia Abu Jamal

by Jawad Latif Muhammad

On Thursday, Dec. 8, I saw on the evening news that Mumia Abu Jamal’s sentence was commuted to life. However, we all know the fight to win our brother’s freedom is far from over until he is out with his beloved family and the community. This victory is major for us in this important time in history, with the system having taken from us Stanley Tookie Williams, Troy Davis and many others. Many brothers and sisters who are innocent are in prison and on Death Row rotting away, losing their minds, not able to ever change the conditions of our communities.

Brother Mumia Abu Jamal has always claimed his innocence since being charged with the murder of Officer Faulkner. With many appeals, he has finally received some relief from the courts.

Brother Mumia is a shining light for those of us in the belly of the beast who are in a struggle against a wicked system. Regardless of the circumstances, we must never give up the fight against the powers that be, even if it costs us our very lives. We must understand that this system is not rooted in freedom, justice and equality, which is the basis of every human life. Brother Mumia has demonstrated to us that even on Death Row, one can still educate, inspire and motivate – some of the same things that he was doing at the time of his arrest.

Brother Mumia is a shining light for those of us in the belly of the beast who are in a struggle against a wicked system. He has demonstrated to us that even on Death Row, one can still educate, inspire and motivate – some of the same things that he was doing at the time of his arrest.

Brother Mumia Abu Jamal represents the continued struggle of our people around the world. Nothing has changed; the injustice is done in different ways so that we can’t recognize it. We cannot stop our continued fight, and in unity we can accomplish anything. That’s the only way we can see the vision of freedom become a reality for those who are innocent and all the political prisoners in America and the world. The power is the people!

Send our brother some love and light: Jawad Latif Muhammad (S. Williams), 563001, Darrington Unit, 59 Darrington Rd, Rosharon TX 77583.

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by Anthony Robinson Jr.

“We will now criticize the unjust with the weapon.” – Comrade

Written Nov. 1, 2011 – In our struggle for freedom, that weapon has been and will continue to be Truth. I am a California prisoner who was sent involuntarily to NFORK CCA (the Corrections Corporation of America’s North Fork Prison), a private prison in Oklahoma, where I have been for over a year. California thought they could more effectively silence my protests and lawsuits by hurling me hundreds of miles away.

I am once again calling on the Bay View, i.e. Voice of the People:

On Oct. 11, 2011, a riot kicked off where Black inmates were fending off inmates from every other demographic. We faced insurmountable odds and some people were in critical condition afterwards, but the biggest odds against us has yet to be pointed out and is now working diligently to manufacture cover stories to conceal their liability; the odds I speak of is the role of CCA NFORK and COCF (Sacramento-based California Out-of-State Correctional Facility, a unit in CDCR, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) in setting the stage for such a catastrophic event to take place.

For years CCA NFORK has been operating under-staffed and unprofessionally with no consequences brought to them, even though, in the contract between CCA and COCF, it states that they are to maintain a sufficient number of staff to ensure the safety and security of inmates and staff, or they face indemnity and breach of contract.

The day of the riot it was apparent that they didn’t have the staff to curtail the aggression. They were so desperate for manpower they were using nurses to hold spray cans on those of us who made it out of the chow-hall and were being placed in restraints. In my 10 years in California prisons, I have never seen an MTA or nurse touch a spray can during or after a riot. The nurses couldn’t even carry out effectively their assigned duties and tend to the wounded because they had to adopt the role of security force against the people.

The memos they passed out soon after the riot provided insight into the cover story they are manufacturing. During feeding, inmates are to be instructed to go to the back of the cell and sit on the bunk, while two officers come around to feed, placing our food on the floor. They are trying to infer and imply that there was a more pressing need for staff safety as an explanation as to why it took over an hour to get to the injured and wounded. Failure to protect is an understatement! Tacked on to this is their deliberate indifference as they have falsely concluded that the Black inmates intentionally started a riot with Southern inmates, whose numbers consume nearly 60 percent of the inmate population.

How is such a racial disparity created in a facility, a reasonable person might ask? Intentionally, of course. In Alpha North, where I am housed, there are 29 Black inmates to 80 or so Southerners. And nearly every building is set up as such.

The beginning of this year they removed all the Northerners off the line and replaced them with nearly all Southerners. The stated reason was potential tension, gleaned through informants and kites, of a riot between Southern and Northern groups. After talking with the chief of security, lieutenants etc. about the increased racial disparity that is intentionally being catered to, I wrote a grievance to Warden F.E. Figueroa letting him know in no uncertain terms that there is an implicit failure to protect liability in the racial disparity alone.

It became obvious after my appeal was ignored that CCA NFORK and COCF have exchanged security for profits. The less staff a private institution has to hire, the more it profits. When that institution is allowed to operate understaffed, they guarantee a profit by not hiring the staff it would take to cover the gap to become properly staffed.

CCA NFORK and COCF have exchanged security for profits. The less staff a private institution has to hire, the more it profits.

For those of us like myself who have been sent out here involuntarily so that California can fabricate on the books a decrease of overcrowding, we have implicitly been asked to exchange comforts like Xbox, Playstation, hobbies and crafts for security. And the guise would probably still seem impenetrable, but for this riot.

Even though we are on lockdown and in our confined cells, we may be more vulnerable than ever if left in the hands of corporate think tanks and an obviously draconian COCF machine that would like nothing more than to quietly put back together their Frankenstein puzzle of quite a “functional” CCA/COCF institution.

The Milgram experiment (“a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience,” according to Wikipedia) is seen all over again in regards to the prestige given the prison industrial complex that disables people’s right to question and demand the basic human necessity of rehabilitation.

The people have been taught to look at America’s prisons as such a necessity that an inherent legitimacy grows, in which legislatures, wardens, corrections unions etc. are allowed to treat prisoners as inhumanly as it takes to turn a profit or break what is seen as a rebellious spirit. The Greek concept of civil death has been resurrected in regards to prisoners.

Have our sentences ushered us out of the definition of what it means to be human? Has the privilege of humanity been taken off the list like an item on our commissary?

Have our sentences ushered us out of the definition of what it means to be human? Has the privilege of humanity been taken off the list like an item on our commissary?

In Solidarity!

Send our brother some love and light: Anthony Robinson Jr., P-57144, NFORK AN-247, 1605 E. Main, Sayre, OK 73662. He is the author of “Incarcerated Tears: Book of Poems, Volume 1.”

Black and Brown must unite against our common enemy, the system

by Marcus Dalton

This is in regard to the unjust conditions and unsafe environment of a facility that is not capable of operating or containing a full scale riot. On Oct. 11, a riot between inmates occurred. The riot started in the kitchen and spread to almost every part of the facility.

This facility has operated understaffed for two years and the day of the incident, they were so understaffed that they used OJT (on the job trainees) who have not been properly trained as C/Os (correctional officers), C/Os from other facilities, C/Os on their day off and nurses to try and control the situation. It took over an hour and 30 minutes to do so, and at the height of the assaults some buildings were overrun by inmates with no thought on their mind but to kill anyone from the other side. The odds were overwhelming, and the staff who are assigned to insure our safety and security were confused and lost.

The day of the incident, they were so understaffed that they used OJT (on the job trainees) who have not been properly trained as C/Os, C/Os from other facilities, C/Os on their day off and nurses to try and control the situation.

The majority of us were forced out here (to CCA’s North Fork Prison in Oklahoma) by the aggressive “Involuntary Transfer” policy adopted by CDCR in response to the overcrowding in the CDCR prison system. By CCA being a private organization, profit is its top priority and everything else is second.

Prisoners in the exercise yard at North Fork Correctional Facility, Oklahoma - Photo: Corrections Corporation of America

The cover story they sold the media was that it happened over food conditions, but why would inmates riot with each other over food conditions? The food conditions were protested by our hunger strike in support of the California hunger strike two weeks prior, which many may not know took place because of the “sweep it under the rug” tactics used by CDCR and North Fork CCA so as to not affect its profit margin and image as a functional facility.

I have been here from the opening of this facility in 2008 to California inmates. My cellie, Anthony Robinson Jr., has continued to file Form 22s and 602s against this facility since his arrival in protest to the lack of preparedness, understaffing and political tricks being used to keep this facility running by the warden, the head of security and Oklahoma auditors.

The fact that inmates were able to take over buildings and controls to doors and were opening them to hurt inmates who were behind them is more than enough of a reason to bring light to the situation. Injuries ranged from minor to serious. Some inmates, including Kevin Hicks and Jabar Walton, were in critical condition. They say that the FBI has started a criminal investigation, but to what effect?

The facility seems to be more concerned about punishment and profit or loss. The main kitchen was partially destroyed, which made them cut back on food portions. They refuse to allow food purchases from canteen and the family package program in retaliation.

They say that the FBI has started a criminal investigation, but the facility seems to be more concerned about punishment and profit or loss.

The reason for the riot may never be known, but the more important issue is that this came at a time when we should be coming together. There are more serious concerns. Black and Brown relations need to come together! We have one common enemy which is the system!

Black and Brown relations need to come together! We have one common enemy which is the system!

Send our brother some love and light. Marcus Dalton and Anthony Robinson are cellmates, so Marcus can be reached in care of Anthony.

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by Carl Harrison

Guards routinely violate prisoners' constitutional rights and the most fundamental human rights. How else could this writer and the writers of letters the Bay View often receives have been "left on my cell floor to die."

People from all over the world and from all over America came to California to get these jobs. The unions, special interest groups in unison with this new powerful government voting pool started changing the laws to make it much simpler to lock up minorities, the poor, illiterate and uneducated, mentally ill and medically ill, developmentally disabled.

Standing armies of police were poured into the cities’ poor districts to target these people exclusively. County prosecutors and police realized that these weak people were defenseless and had to rely on public defense attorneys who were in most part overworked or lapdogs of the courts.

You see, courts control which attorneys get the most money, which places public defenders at the control of hanging judges who want convictions. Police, they obtain rank, status and higher pay when they make more arrests and cause convictions, and prosecutors also need convictions for the same reasons.

Unfortunately, the rich and middle class are simply not suitable targets for police and prosecutors because they can fight back with real defenses that police and prosecutors shy from. They prefer easy kills who can’t fight back and cause trouble for the government.

In addition, the target groups are usually a burden on government treasury because they are receiving government financial aid, which government employees want to reroute into their own agency’s pockets once the targets are locked away in jail or prison and no longer qualified for aid by virtue of incarceration.

California is going broke because crooks and corruption cannot properly run our government. In the last few years California prisons have been forced to lay off or retire over a thousand employees due to the budget problem.

During this crisis it was also discovered by numerous legal help organizations that numerous prisoners had been wrongfully convicted and had suffered years of involuntary servitude in prison. Of course these legal help agencies only helped prisoners where DNA was a factor; all the rest of us have no legal help. The California prison became a public relations embarrassment, because while they cried for more money, the taxpayer was wondering how many prisoners were unjustly locked away.

On March 18, 2009, at Mule Creek Prison, I’d been fighting my criminal case for 22 years under conditions of poverty, prison abuses, mental and physical disabilities, making my attempts almost impossible. However, I struggled inch by inch working to prove my innocence until finally I had obtained all of the evidence I needed.

As I prepared to present this evidence to the courts, legislature and executive branches of government, I made the terrible mistake of showing my evidence to several prison staff who had constantly been harassing me, saying I was guilty and should accept it and do my time. Well, on March 18, 2009, a sergeant and correctional officer took every piece of paper I had in my cell and destroyed it all, 12 boxes of legal material.

Their excuse? They said I had no pending case and the papers were just old worthless material. Both excuses were proved untrue in my prison appeal, but my appeal was denied regardless.

I filed a habeas corpus writ (10-HC-1248) and a personal injury/property damage case (09-CU-5954). Both were denied by the judge, who was untruthful and grossly abusing her position as an unbiased judge and refused to properly conduct and act on my motions to the court while I’d been moved 300 miles as a tactic to isolate my access to court.

Also, when I filed for relief, the prison began a deadly attack against me that ended me with a SHU (Security Housing Unit assignment) and 12 serious rule violations, two heart attacks and numerous seizures. In these cases I was left on my cell floor to die, but by the grace of God I recovered on my own.

Staff were trying to place their inmate thugs into my cell to kill me, but I refused cellmates (RVR 3005(c)). Sexual assaults, physical assaults – all were covered by staff and internal affairs. Of course a moron, even today, could look at prison records and prove I’m telling the truth, but it won’t happen. As for the judge, I’ve never seen a judge so deep in conspiracy and corruption in my life except for the judge in my criminal case.

This judge lied when she denied my habeas corpus writ. She stated an informal inquiry was granted and the attorney general responded and I answered. She denied the petition, saying, “After reviewing all of the evidence I find no ground to issue and habeas corpus is denied.”

I asked for court dockets and the records and told her that she was mistaken and there had been no informal inquiry, no response by the attorney general and I never answered because there was nothing to answer. Her response? Sorry, all rulings are final and I can’t give you any records in the case unless you can pay for them. I had no money and she refused to even send me the court dockets in the case, which would have clearly shown she lied in her denial.

As for the personal injury/property damage action, I was isolated at Los Angeles Prison, with no law library access and then placed back into SHU with no law library period. Every motion I filed to that judge was denied. I was unable to attend any of the court hearings in the action, by phone or personal appearance due to the judge’s denial of “all” my motions and pleas and the case was dismissed.

Anybody who cares can contact the court and obtain records in these court cases (10-HC-1248 and 09-CV-5954) to verify I’m telling the truth, and I have all documents to support everything I say in this letter. Is there an honorable citizen who cares?

Send our brother some love and light: Carl F. Harrison, J-43634, A-1-102, P.O. Box 290066, Represa CA 95671. This letter was typed by Adrian McKinney.

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by Allen Jones

California prisons are so overcrowded – this is Lancaster State Prison – a federal court order demands the release of some 33,000 prisoners. Lawmakers have finally begun the release – to county jails rather than the street – but are those most deserving of release on the list? – Photo: Spencer Weiner, AP

I am all for releasing people who do not belong in prison. However, if we continue to treat men and women who commit crimes like animals on a leash, with unfair laws that create more envy than solution to recidivism, then we will never release the right prisoner.

With public safety in mind, lawmakers have followed up the Three Strikes law that voters approved in 1994 with their own unsafe and ill-conceived law. AB-109, signed by Gov. Brown to meet a federal court order to reduce California’s prison population, might satisfy the court but denies hope to some deserving inmates in the name of “public safety.”

Before AB-109 became law, the situation with current California prisoners Michael James, a Black inmate, and Michael Schneider, a white inmate, was this:

Michael James, convicted in 1994, is serving a 25-to-life sentence under Three Strikes for passing a bad check at an Alpha Beta store for $94.

Michael Schneider, convicted in 2008, is serving a 28-year-four-month sentence for running fraudulent real estate investment scams and Ponzi schemes for over 14 years, stealing over $43,000,000 from more than 57 investors, many of whom were elderly and lost their life savings. He pleaded no contest to 173 felony counts, including residential burglary, builder financial abuse, embezzlement, grand theft and forgery.

Unbelievably, these two men will serve the same amount of time behind bars. James must serve a minimum of 25 years while Schneider could be release after serving only 24 years. But wait!

Michael Schneider, a Ponzi schemer, is also labeled under AB-109 as a “N3” type offender: 1) nonviolent, 2) non-serious and 3) not a sex offender, even though he stole $43 million. Under this new law, N3 convicted candidates are most likely to avoid prison time as of Oct. 1, 2011. James is a petty thief, but he’s also labeled a Three Strikes offender.

Schneider is not the type of prisoner to start prison riots or hunger strikes. Our elected officials presume a fearful public would prefer to have him back in their community over the prisoner who fits the image of the typical criminal. Nevertheless, it appears that fear is passing so many laws that commonsense can be heard shouting, “Enough already!”

Lawmakers have made it clear that no inmate would be released from state prison to the street under AB-109. However, anyone who believes that none these prisoners will be set free, considering the extra burden placed on the counties and the county jails, probably also believes there is a Santa Claus.

In all fairness, lawmakers, in fear of being labeled soft on crime, should share the blame of creating a bad law with all Californians. On the other hand, nonviolent Wall Street type criminals currently serving time in California prisons are receiving a share of AB-109 as the state’s largest Christmas gift.

Prison officials are working around the clock with teams of mental health, rehabilitation, probation and other agencies of the state to find those best suited for release to county control. However, in the process, they have to pass over more than 8,000 second and third strikers who pose a lesser threat to public safety.

Matt Cate, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, referred to “Brown’s plan” as the solution to comply with the court order. That tells me Cate is so interested in keeping his job he endorses releasing an undeserving individual from prison, while more deserving prisoners, many Black, rot in prison for petty crimes.

With the tool of AB-109 to assist and a computer program assessment already in use to release inmates, many undeserving individuals will move to the front of the line for release.

California’s Three Strikes law is being treated as if it is not guilty of contributing to the large number of truly nonviolent inmates and being responsible for prison overcrowding. Second and third strikers are not eligible for early release under the new law.

AB-109 unjustly and intentionally disqualifies these inmates simply because of the label “career criminal” associated with the Three Strikes law.

Gov. Jerry Brown, the California legislature and prison Secretary Matthew Cate, should be forced to answer to the fact that a white nonviolent prisoner who stole $43 million would be safer to release than a Black nonviolent prisoner who stole $94.

In addition, we should all demand that California lawmakers amend AB-109, designed to comply with the federal order to ease prison overcrowding. This law must allow many of the 8,000 nonviolent, non-serious and non-sex offenders who are also N3 types to be considered for transfer to the county level.

Contact the governor’s office today: Gov. Jerry Brown, c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento CA 95814, (916) 445-2841. He can also be reached through his website, at http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php.

San Francisco writer Allen Jones, author of “Case Game: Activating the Activist,” can be reached at (415) 756-7733 or jones-allen@att.net. Visit his website, at http://casegame.squarespace.com.

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by Joshua Emerson Smith

Free the mothers! Why continue to punish their children?

Roughly half of the 9,543 women currently incarcerated in state prison fall into this category. But CDCR estimates department case managers will approve only about 500 inmates for early release.

One of the reasons more women will not qualify is a lack of support services at the local level, including drug treatment and transitional housing programs, said Dana Toyama, CDCR spokeswoman.

“They have to be released to their county of last legal residence, and they have to have some sort of rehabilitative program to go to,” she said. “We do have inmates that want to do this but there’s just nothing available in their community.”

Currently, only a few of the State’s 58 counties are prioritizing their rehabilitation programs, said Barry Krisberg, director of research and policy at the Earl Warren Institute of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

“The statistics would argue that recidivism rates are going to be low if we can give them some treatment services,” he said. “This will work well in some places because you have a critical mass of people that want to innovate: prison less, community more. But there’s just a dozen of them at the best.”

The program is estimated to save the state about $6 million a year. But it’s not clear how much if any of that will go towards funding local services. Advocates have expressed anxiety even in innovative counties like Alameda and San Francisco, where law enforcement officials are working closely with service providers.

“There’s a tremendous amount of concern that there is not enough money to do what we need to do,” said Ruth Morgan, executive director of San Francisco based Community Works.” We need money to provide parent education, to provide family support, to hire case managers. For the last five years, we’ve all seen tremendous cuts in our programs.”

In part, releasing these mothers is motivated by a larger realignment effort to reduce prison overcrowding, mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court. In total, the state is looking to empty its prisons of at least 33,000 inmates.

The transfer of inmates from state facilities to local county jails has already started as the first step in the program.

Qualifying mothers under the release program – widely seen as the lowest risk population – would be required to live in either sober living treatment facilities, transitional house or at their own legal residence. They will report to parole agents and be electronically monitored.

The idea is to reunite families, said Robert Oaks, spokesperson for Sen. Carol Liu, District 21, author of the bill that created the program.

“Research has shown that if you keep women and their kids together, they’re far less likely to repeat offend,” Oaks said. “And the kids are far less likely to end up in the foster care system. If we can break the cycle, we’re going to save so much money compared to the huge cost we have in the state budget for corrections right now.”

About 19,000 children have mothers serving time in the California prison system, according to the National Research Council on Crime and Delinquency. And these children are at a very high risk for ending up in prison themselves, said Nell Burnstein, author of “Children of the Incarcerated.”

“When you ask what’s the effect on the child of having an incarcerated parent, the answer is exactly the same as losing a parent in any other way, except that you’re stigmatized rather than helped by the community,” she said. “The single best predictor that a kid is going to end up in prison: being in foster care.”

JeVaughn Baker, spokesman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, recognized the state’s significant budget crisis and said cuts to corrections has to be a part of saving money in California. However, he emphasized this should not come at the cost of public safety.

“There has to be a real commitment to these reentry programs and support services,” he said. “If you’re talking about vocational training, transitional housing, substance abuse training, we’re very much in favor of those things. Those resources have to be there. Obviously that’s the difficulty now within the community and at the local level.”

Currently, it costs an average of about $49,000 a year to house one inmate in state prison. The state is estimated to save $2 billion annually due to prison realignment.

Gov. Jerry Brown has pledged to provide immediate and long term funding for local law enforcement departments. But many fear it won’t show up in time, and a major opportunity to reform criminal justice in California will be lost.

Karen Shain, policy director with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, has been working with mothers applying for the release program. She said many of the women are very excited but, at the same time, they’re concerned about the challenges of making a successful transition.

“What I don’t want is for these women to be set up to fail because there’s no way to get a job, get a house, reunify with their kids, get food stamps, all the things that you need in order to really survive,” she said.

Joshua Emerson Smith has reported for community radio in Berkeley and in Valdez, Alaska, and is currently writing mostly for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the East Bay Express. He can be reached at emerson.joshua@gmail.com. This story first appeared on HealthyCal.org.

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