San Francisco Bay View » Prison Stories

Dear Brother Hugo: Letter from a young revolutionary

Adrian — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:15:04 +0000

by Christopher Talib Spencer

At Angola State Prison in Louisiana, where young Christopher Talib Spencer lives, Blacks still work the former plantation watched by white overseers. – Photo: Bill Haber, AP

Brother Hugo, you inspire me to do better. After I read your letter to your comrade Terry, you sent me into a thinking and reflecting mode. I am a 24-year-old Afrikan revolutionary fighter, and I have been going through a transformative process using the Malcolm self-evolvement way. However, I do not have a teacher, so I have been teaching myself, and I’m still growing.

I have, however, run across a serious brother by the name of Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore, an oldtimer, and he breaks bread with me, but it’s hard for us to communicate with each other since the institution has put in so many new restrictions on CCK inmates.

My transition started in David Wade Correctional Center when I saw and experienced firsthand the chains of repression. At first I was just a young, wild, ignorant brother with no sense of self. I was headed for self-destruction.

One day a Muslim brother came with a book by my bed and told me to read it. The name of the book was “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” which I’d read before. After reading this book for a second time with a different outlook on life and self, it showed me how Brother Malcolm went through the same thing I was going through at that particular time. He embodied my whole conscious struggle within the text of that Malcolm X book.

I would like to bear witness with you when you said that your self-transformation was a “wake up” call and a liberate call. As for me, I’m still learning the true meaning of liberation.

Brother, at times I get this overwhelming sense of urgency to help educate and liberate my fellow brothers on true knowledge, but they are so shallow at times and I get upset and want to give them a fat lip for murder-mouthing but doing nothing that actually involves the liberation of self and the people.

Brother, at times I get this overwhelming sense of urgency to help educate and liberate my fellow brothers on true knowledge, but they are so shallow at times and I get upset. I’m just now learning to channel all my negative energy into the proper frequency channels.

Brother, it’s a constant struggle, and at times it has this paralyzing effect on me, whereas at times I get so mad, full of rage, that throughout my daily orbit all I do is more destroying than building. I’m just now learning to channel all my negative energy into the proper frequency channels.

After reading your letter, it just gave me hope that anything is possible with the right dedication. Even though I lack the proper educational tools to help me continue to develop, I’m still dedicated to the cause of liberated love and helping my people become conscious or in the know.

The fight that you and Brother George Jackson and Brother W.L. Nolen fought for and are still fighting for is helping me cope and find meaning with my life.

Also, it’s an honor to have a newspaper such as the Bay View to help us brothers get our voices heard and to have brothers like you featured in it.

Before I close, I would like to say to you to stay strong and sane and the fight that you and Brother George Jackson and Brother W.L. Nolen fought for and are still fighting for is helping me cope and find meaning with my life. Thank you, Brother, for being so inspiring.

Send our brother some love and light: Christopher Talib Spencer, 521940, Louisiana State Prison, Camp D Hawk, 2-Right Cell#14, Angola, LA 70712.

Hugo Pinell: Is 42 years in isolation about to end?

Mosi — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:52:55 +0000

by Kiilu Nyasha

UPDATE: Yogi’s [Hugo Pinell’s] board hearing has been postponed another year due to CDCR’s new gang validation rules. Uncommon Law,

Hugo Pinell in 1982 – he’s affectionately known as Yogi Bear.

the firm of Keith Wattley, is handling Yogi’s case and they think they can get some relief for him under the new rules. So let’s do everything we can to support Yogi and help him to stay strong in that hell hole for another year.

It would be a good thing for those with resources to check with attorney Wattley at (510) 271-0310 or kwattley@theuncommonlaw.com to see if Yogi needs financial assistance in covering legal fees.

In November 2008, voters passed Proposition 9, under which people serving indeterminate life sentences could be denied parole and another hearing for three to 15 years, instead of the established one to five years. Prop 9 argued that people convicted of serious crimes were being released from prison too frequently. This simply is not the case.

About 30,000 people were serving life sentences, and about 4,000 applied each year to appear before a two-member panel for a parole recommendation. Less than one percent received release dates in a given year. In 2006, for example, only 23 lifers were granted parole, less than 0.5 percent of those eligible for release.

The California Parole Board held a hearing for Hugo Pinell (Yogi Bear) on Jan. 14, 2009, at which they denied him parole and scheduled him to return to the board in 15 years! However, since Prop 9 wasn’t in effect in 2009 when his hearing was scheduled and postponed, the decision had to be rescinded.

A new hearing has been scheduled for May 2012, at which Yogi anticipates a 15-year hit. He would return to Board in 2027 at age 82!

Hugo Pinell has been in Pelican Bay SHU – no windows or natural light, very restricted possessions, no phone calls, 24/7 lockup unless permitted to exercise alone for an hour in an outdoor enclosure, no-contact visits of less than an hour only on weekends or holidays.

Pelican Bay is isolated in the Northwest corner of California, a very long trip by car. His mother, in her 80s with health problems, has continued to make that long trip to visit her son, now 67 years old. Can you even imagine not being able to hug your own son for over four decades?

Yogi has been in solitary confinement for at least 42 years, first in San Quentin, Folsom and Corcoran and the last 22 in the Pelican Bay SHU. He was 19 when incarcerated in 1964; in prison 48 years altogether, he’s been in solitary confinement at least 42, despite 32 years of clean time – no write-ups.

Yogi has been in solitary confinement for at least 42 years, first in San Quentin, Folsom and Corcoran and the last 22 in the Pelican Bay SHU.

Yogi earned the enmity of the prison officials back in the 1960s when he was part of the “Black Movement” behind California prison walls led by George L. Jackson, W.L. Nolen and many other conscious, standup brothers who made it safe for Blacks to walk the yards of California’s extremely racist gulags.

On Aug. 21, 1971, in what has been deemed a setup, Soledad Brother George Jackson was murdered on the yard of San Quentin by prison guards. During this orchestrated attempted escape, however, three guards were also killed, along with two inmate “trustees.”

This set the prison officials on fire, and they’ve been exacting revenge ever since on Hugo Pinell, the only defendant in the San Quentin Six case still in prison. The only defendant convicted of murder in the case, Johnny Spain, was released in 1988.

Clearly Yogi is a political prisoner, although the U.S. rarely if ever admits to holding any political prisoners. Our revolutionary hero is still strong of mind and body, has maintained his health with a strictly vegetarian diet and a grueling exercise program. His character and personality are evident in the following missive to Terry Collins.

Please write letters to newspaper editors, to Gov. Jerry Brown, the Parole Board and anyone else who might influence the board to make a humane decision to stop this senseless ongoing torture of Hugo Pinell. Contact Gov. Brown c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814, phone (916) 445-2841, fax (916) 558-3160 or by email online at http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php. Contact the parole board at Board of Parole Hearings, P.O. Box 4036, Sacramento, CA 95812-4036.

Power to the people! Here is Yogi’s letter to Terry Collins of KPOO Radio 89.5FM:

My Brother Terry,

Hugo “Yogi” Pinell, one of Black Panther Field Marshall George Jackson’s closest comrades, talks with a visitor at Pelican Bay State Prison in 2001 behind the glass and inside the visiting cell.

Best of love and health to you and family. It’s good to hear from you, always, even through the hard times, because we can share and be solid company. Thank you for the kind words and for recognizing the great work of a few brothers in here, from so long ago, who were really serious about liberation and the transformation of self.

For me, it begins with the new W.L. in San Quentin in March in 1967, because I remember the old W.L. in Soledad, in 1963-64, when he was consistently messing up, as were most of us youngsters. Therefore, when the new W.L. greeted me in San Quentin, and he was handing me some literature and telling me about the Black Consciousness studies, the Self Reliant Principles of living, the Black Liberation Movement and the building of the New Man, he became my principal example because I noticed the positive and significant changes in him. He used Malcolm as our primary example of self-transformation and he felt that all of us brothers could make that same transformation, and not talking about religion because that should be a conscientious personal choice.

Yes, there was the objective of converting the criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality, but that was only one phase of the self-transformation process, and that’s why Brother Malcolm played a big role in our mode of transformation. San Quentin was the best station in the CDC for Black prisoners to get socially and politically educated because we had some righteous brothers in the liberation movement paving the way for us to learn, grow and really transform.

San Quentin was the best station in the CDC for Black prisoners to get socially and politically educated because we had some righteous brothers in the liberation movement paving the way for us to learn, grow and really transform.

We had Muslim brothers receiving all kind of Black literature and consciousness material along with their religious material, and they would share it with all brothers interested in learning and changing. Also, by 1967, there were several Black organizations in the U.S. including the Panther Party in Oakland, founded in 1966, and some brothers were receiving revolutionary and world history material from some of these organizations and would share it.

All of that literature was part of consciousness studies, our self-reliant principles of living and self-transformation process. Most of us were very young, doing short sentences (supposedly), had been through the gladiator stations, Tracy and Soledad, and the time and place was right for self-change. We had the teachers, examples, the literature, the means and the opportunities, so it was up to us, how seriously devoted we would be toward real self-change.

This was a “wake up,” “grow up,” “self-transform,” “liberate” call and it was a voluntary thing, but to join the liberation movement we had to understand the meaning of liberate and, to embark on a commitment to freedom, we had to do away with old ways, old habits, f—d up mentality, the club, homeboy set mentality and attitude.

It was in the self-transformation process, according to our teachers. The New Man (a lifetime building) represents constant growth. History teaches us how terribly we were damaged and left to try and figure out and fit in a social structure in which we would remain confined, controlled, limited and surviving in the revolving doors.

Therefore, our best way to become free again but for good this time was and is the Malcolm self-evolvement way. Take as much control as

Political prisoners Hugo Pinell, Mumia Abu Jamal and the late Nuh Washington – Drawing: Kiilu Nyasha

possible of our minds, our senses, our energies, our emotional and spiritual powers and gradually create new selves. If we would have been self-transforming for the last 60, 50 years, there would not be millions of new slaves today and we would have the power to be making an impact and difference toward the building of the New World. Millions of us would be feeling so personally free, so new and strong and proud and rewarding of the constant evolvement work we put in over the years.

If we would have been self-transforming for the last 60, 50 years, there would not be millions of new slaves today and we would have the power to be making an impact and difference toward the building of the New World.

This is what W.L. Nolen was emphasizing the most: self-transformation. We study, observe, we learn and use everything that’s positive, constructive, truly revolutionary and compassionate to begin transforming, building anew while constantly doing away with the old, like Malcolm kept growing. The wonderful thing is that we were in control of these constant self-changes and there is no time limit, but we have to keep at it even if sometimes we stagnate. Our new ways of living become our freedom road and goal. If we grow tired, upset, afraid, stagnant, we stay on that road and then keep on pushing and growing.

I’m telling you how W.L. and the other great brothers were seeing things and realizing what we had to do to get out of prisons and become human builders and difference makers in the world. In the ‘50s, there weren’t many brothers in the CDC and they were getting victimized. Then, in the ‘60s, too many brothers were being sent to the CDC and the teachers felt we had to change, get out, become constructive and productive in society, while constantly transforming, and we wouldn’t have to occupy the cells in the CDC.

Unfortunately, my brother, more prisons were built, more brothers sent to these prisons and hardly any new selves built? Something happened along the way. All I know is that our teachers kept saying: “No matter what, wherever we are, if we’re alive and able, we gotta keep pushing and growing. It’s the only personal way to continue our growth and become free.”

Our teachers kept saying: “No matter what, wherever we are, if we’re alive and able, we gotta keep pushing and growing. It’s the only personal way to continue our growth and become free.”

Malcolm and Martin kept on pushing and evolving, in spite of the dangers and everything. You and Yuri and Kiilu, on the streets, have continued to push and grow. Even if you have stagnated, or get to feeling old, you keep on pushing and are serving the public, and being my good brother and friend. Thank you.

There is so much I can share with you, but I wanted to give you a little passage of what was going on in San Quentin when I was transferred there from Soledad in March of 1967 and the great impact all that activity and new changes had on me, especially meeting some dynamic brothers and teachers, and my best example in W.L.

I went through some bumps and stagnation before I started putting it all together and pushing on, but my foundation for change and struggle for freedom began in San Quentin in 1967.

Your brother,

Hugo

For more information, go to www.hugopinell.org.

Memories of Maroon

Adrian — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:13:24 +0000

by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Russell Maroon Shoatz

His name is almost legendary: Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, an affiliate of the Black Panther Party, activist and Black revolutionary.

My teenage memory is sparse about him, other than what I read in the paper – and largely disbelieved. As a member of the Black United Liberation Front, I prepared a leaflet in his support, calling for letters to be written to him.

Occasional news flashes intervened, but such reports became all the more rare and his name faded into the mist of memory, of all except his family and closest comrades.

Until 1995, when I was transferred to Greene’s ominous Death Row, folks assumed I knew him, although we’d never met. Again, we saw each other sparingly, until a cool day, perhaps in 1998, when we were near each other in the “yard” – actually, the “cage” – separated only by two walls of fencing.

He praised my newest book, “Faith of Our Fathers” (Africa World Press: 2004), a study of African-American and African spiritual traditions. I was thrilled he’d read and enjoyed it.

The next time I saw and really talked to him was Friday, Dec. 9, 2011, around 7 a.m., the day after I left Death Row. We both tried to ignore the biting sub-freezing temperatures in t-shirts, boxers, under thin, flimsy orange jumpsuits, with “yard” lasting only an hour.

Even though not formally on “the Row,” I unconsciously expected two hours of yard, but Maroon knew better. He launched into an analysis of the Occupy Movement that left me stunned with his brilliance, insight and succinctness. I thought to myself, “Whoa! This guy has thought long and deeply about this; I’ve got to sharpen up my game!”

According to Maroon, this new formation showed how technology has transformed not only communications, but organizing itself. It cut out the middleman – went straight to the potential activist, and convinced him or her to engage or disengage. He explained that this new social medium gave impetus to organizing in Tahrir Square, Cairo, but also in the U.S.-based Occupy Movement. Organizing would never be the same, he said.

For three frigid mornings on C pod, Maroon and I met for just under an hour, and I left impressed each time. For here was a man who was arguably one of the longest-held Black political prisoners in America – with the possible exception of former Black Panther Chip Fitzgerald of California – unquestionably one of the longest-held men in Pennsylvania’s solitary for over 30 years. And although nearly 70 years old, his mind was as sharp as a cactus, informed, analytical, intuitive, acute.

Three days – three hours – and then I was gone.

Maroon – writer, historian and theorist – remained, as he does to this day. His loving family continues to fight for his release from the tortures of “the hole” by making people aware of the plight of Maroon.

© Copyright 2012 Mumia Abu-Jamal. Read Mumia’s latest book, “The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America,” co-authored by Columbia University professor Marc Lamont Hill, available from Third World Press, TWPBooks.com. 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: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Mahanoy, 301 Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932.

Campaign to Free Russell Maroon Shoatz

A campaign to free Russell Maroon Shoatz, dedicated community activist, founding member of the Black Unity Council, former member of the Black Panther Party and soldier in the Black Liberation Army, will launch May 5 with an event at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in New York City.

For 30 of his 40 years in prison, Maroon has been held in his cell for 23-24 hours every day, deprived of social interaction and environmental stimulation in conditions widely acknowledged as torture due to their traumatic psychological impact.

A coalition of supporters, organizations and rights groups is calling for an end to Maroon’s unjust imprisonment in what he calls the “torture chamber” of the State Correctional Institution (SCI) Greene, a maximum security prison where he is forced to wage a daily battle for sanity and survival.

They demand that Maroon be immediately released into General Population, along with other prisoners who share his “detention statistics”: 25 years in prison + 50 years of age = OUT!

We demand that Maroon be immediately released into General Population, along with other prisoners who share his “detention statistics”: 25 years in prison + 50 years of age = OUT!

Maroon’s imprisonment is an outrage on many levels: Not only has his family been denied their brother, father and husband for four decades, but the entire prison population has also been denied a teacher and organizer of unparalleled prowess.

Despite not violating prison rules in over 20 years, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has deemed Maroon a permanent security threat based on his efforts to educate other prisoners about human rights, personal empowerment, and the importance of participating in movements for social justice.

How you can help

To learn more and get involved, visit Maroon’s website, russellmaroonshoats.wordpress.com.

Sign the Change.org petition calling on prison officials to end the solitary confinement torture of Russell Maroon Shoats by releasing him into the general population of the prison immediately.

It states: “During (Maroon’s 40 years in prison) he has earned a reputation amongst prison staff and prisoners as a leader because of his consistent support for human rights inside and outside the walls. Prison officials claim that Mr. Shoats is a security threat due to past escapes and attempts, though new evidence has surfaced that his continued solitary confinement is based on secret and fraudulent evidence of a non-existent plan to take over a prison in the 1980s. Prison officials also identified Maroon’s political associations as a basis for continuing to torture him via solitary confinement.”

Write to Russell Maroon Shoats, AF-3855, 175 Progress Dr., Waynesburg, PA 15370.

We denounce exploitation of any kind

Mary — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:38:19 +0000

by the Pelikan Bay Human Rights Movement

A TV is the only relief from sensory deprivation for prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU, the only relief from staring at the concrete walls that surround them. Judging from their letters, most SHU prisoners want to expand their horizons, and watching documentaries and movies is one of the few ways they can see beyond the walls. Most SHU prisoners have spent years and as many as four decades locked in their tiny 8-foot by 10-foot cells with an occasional hour of “recreation” alone in a small concrete-walled “dog run.” They are allowed few visits or phone calls or none at all. For these reasons and more, their TVs play an important role in their survival. – Prisoner’s drawing published by California Prison Focus

California taxpayers are being exploited by Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP). Prisoners are about to expose the fleecing behavior of PBSP – i.e., the 1 percent – and their corruption that targets prisoners and their families, friends and the American public.

I have requested that Warden G.D. Lewis assign someone to operate the prison’s movie programming. There are several members of staff who know how to operate video technology as well as order movies from video vendors, and it is a dereliction of duty for prisoners to be denied movie programming. This deliberate denial began as a result of Coach Dye’s retirement in November 2011 and has been going on since. The prison put on old reruns once, and that’s it.

Since November 2011, the PBSP officials have been unwilling to purchase educational or entertainment films or programs. The administration says it’s because they haven’t gotten a replacement yet to operate these programs, but all that is required is the simple operation of the video machine.

On March 7, 2012, SHU Sgt. Neal made the following statement: “Currently there is no one in the position of TV-media technician. TV issues cannot be handled until that position is filled. At this time, PBSP is in the process of filling that position. Once that position is filled, TV and media issues can be addressed or sent for annual review as appropriate. You may appeal an issue if you can demonstrate an adverse effect upon your welfare.”

This is an example of the unprofessional practices that we constantly deal with in respect of our food, program and privileges. PBSP behaves in this way in order to compromise the psyche of prisoners through sensory deprivation.

This is an example of the unprofessional practices that we constantly deal with in respect of our food, program and privileges. PBSP behaves in this way in order to compromise the psyche of prisoners through sensory deprivation.

On March 7, we told PBSP: “Prisoners have a right to challenge why inmates’ movie programs have been out of service since November 2011 per CCR Title 15, 3220.4, especially since our Inmate Welfare Fund is responsible for such a program. The excuse that staff don’t know how to work video equipment is unacceptable.”

The following day, a response was received from Lt. Heggstrom, acting associate warden or correctional administrator for P.T. Smith. Now he delves further into the scheme, stating: “Per the Office of Correctional Education in Sacramento, our (PBSP’s) request has not been forwarded due to insufficient funding. In other words, Sacramento will not hire a TV specialist at this time. The state will not solicit volunteers for the position either.”

Lt. Heggstrom says Sacramento will not approve PBSP’s correctional education requests. Therefore, due to insufficient funding, they’re unable to hire a TV specialist. This is how the prison fleeces Californians, coming up with these ridiculous job titles in order to get more money allocated to them. We’re talking about playing videos – it does not take a scientist to operate these machines. Plus, there are numerous members of staff and available personnel who already qualify for such a highly skilled job.

Pelican Bay State Prison has 3,084 prisoners. Its design capacity is 2,200 prisoners and its staff capacity is 3,143 prisoners. The prison is allocated hundreds of millions of dollars annually to run the prison. This does not include the monies received from the Inmate Welfare Fund (IWF), from contracting deals with vendors or selling supplies – bought by taxpayers for prisoners – for profit.

The CDCR has created a policy that forces prisoners to purchase prison supplies such as dental floss, toiletries, paper bags, cups etc., in order to receive what is called “free monies.” The prison administration and the Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) have basically become con artists, embezzlers, exploiters and profiteers. That is why taxpayers should be reimbursed for all the funds the CDCR has made from selling items to prisoners that were supposed to be provided for free.

Prisoners are commodities. They are worth $56,000 a head in general population (GP) and $75,000 a head in the SHU.

It is important to know that prisoners are commodities. They are worth $56,000 a head in general population (GP) and $75,000 a head in the SHU. That is why the prison, with a design capacity of 2,200 prisoners, is holding 3,084 prisoners. They’re only 59 prisoners away from their staff capacity – a staff that steals income from taxpayers, including our own family members.

Prisoners’ family members provide income to us, their incarcerated family members, and the prisons pool those funds and draw interest from them. Plus, prisoners have no choice but to spend their money with only those venders the prison gets a kickback from. This is how the system – that is, PBSP – established their practice of exploitation of prisoners and Californian taxpayers.

Prisoners have no choice but to spend their money with only those venders the prison gets a kickback from.

It is not just PBSP. This is something that’s going on throughout the CDCR, whose officials and officers have been conspiring to exploit Californians and their prison population for over 50 years. If we, California prisoners, women and men, don’t resist prison officials’ illegal practices against all of us, we are going to be bound for modern-day legalized slavery!

For more information, contact the Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement:

• Sitawa N. Jamaa, s/n R.N. Dewberry, C-35671, PBSP SHU, D1-117L, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532

• Mutope Duguma, s/n James D. Crawford, D-05996, PBSP SHU, D1-117, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532

• Randall Sondai Ellis, C-68764, PBSP SHU, D1-223, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532

Palestinian prisoners’ mass hunger strike concludes after agreement is reached

Mary — Wed, 16 May 2012 05:55:25 +0000

by Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association

Ramallah, May 15, 2012 – After nearly a full month of fasting, around 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners ended last night their mass hunger strike upon reaching an agreement with the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to attain certain core demands. Addameer lauds these achievements of the prisoners’ movement and can only hope that Israel will implement any policy changes in good faith. Addameer especially commends those individuals who engaged in open hunger strike for over two months, displaying remarkable steadfastness in the struggle for their most basic rights.

Prisoners in Palestine, inspired by the 12,000 California prisoners who joined the hunger strike last September called by prisoners in solitary confinement in the Pelican Bay SHU, started hunger striking on Sept. 27, declaring, “Across the world, prisoners stand on hunger strike, demanding dignity and justice,” and have continued on and off ever since until the settlement last night. This rally Ramallah, with family members displaying photos of their imprisoned loved ones, marked the first week of last fall’s strike. – Photo: Raquel Rivas

The demands raised in the collective hunger strike, which was launched on April 17, included an end to the IPS’ abusive use of isolation for “security” reasons, which currently affects 19 prisoners, some of whom have spent 10 years in isolation, and a repeal of a series of punitive measures taken against Palestinian prisoners following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, including the denial of family visits for all Gaza prisoners since 2007 and denial of access to university education since June 2011.

Prisoners also called for an end to Israel’s practice of detaining Palestinians without charge or trial in administrative detention. Eight prisoners, including five administrative detainees, had already begun their hunger strikes as early as the end of February.

The details of the agreement signed last night by the prisoners’ committee representing the hunger strikers was recounted today to Addameer lawyer Fares Ziad in his visit to Ahed Abu Gholmeh, who is a member of the committee, and to Addameer lawyer Mahmoud Hassan during his visit to Ahmad Sa’adat in Ramleh prison medical clinic, who conveyed what he was told last night when members of the committee came to Ramleh to announce the end of the hunger strike.

There will be an end to the use of long-term isolation of prisoners for “security” reasons. Family visits that have been denied based on vague “security reasons” will be reinstated.

According to Ahed Abu Gholmeh, the nine members of the hunger strike committee met yesterday with a committee consisting of IPS officials and Israeli intelligence officers and determined the stipulations of their agreement. The written agreement contained five main provisions: The prisoners would end their hunger strike following the signing of the agreement; there will be an end to the use of long-term isolation of prisoners for “security” reasons, and the 19 prisoners will be moved out of isolation within 72 hours; family visits for first degree relatives to prisoners from the Gaza Strip and for families from the West Bank who have been denied visits based on vague “security reasons” will be reinstated within one month; the Israeli intelligence agency guarantees that there will be a committee formed to facilitate meetings between the IPS and prisoners in order to improve their daily conditions; there will be no new administrative detention orders or renewals of administrative detention orders for the 308 Palestinians currently in administrative detention, unless the secret files, upon which administrative detention is based, contains “very serious” information.

For the five administrative detainees on protracted hunger strikes, including Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh, who engaged in hunger strike for a miraculous 77 days, their administrative detention orders will not be renewed and they will be released upon the expiration of their current orders. These five have been transferred to public hospitals to receive adequate healthcare during their fragile recovery periods. In regards to Israel’s practice of administrative detention as a whole, Ahmad Sa’adat further noted that the agreement includes limitations to its widespread use in general. Addameer is concerned that these provisions of the agreement will not explicitly solve Israel’s lenient and problematic application of administrative detention, which as it stands is in stark violation of international law.

Addameer has observed that Israel has consistently failed to respect the agreements it executes with Palestinians regarding prisoners’ issues. For this reason, it will be essential for all supporters of Palestinian political prisoners to actively monitor the events of the next few months to ensure that this agreement is fully implemented. As a human rights organization committed to the international standards of the rights of prisoners, Addameer will also continue to monitor closely the conditions inside Israeli prisons in order to assure that conditions meet compliance with international human rights and humanitarian law.

On the day commemorating 64 years since the Palestinian Nakba, it is regrettable that it has taken the near-starvation of Palestinian political prisoners en masse to call attention to their plight; it is therefore imperative to take this opportunity to not only applaud their achievements but also to push forward lobbying efforts on their behalf and demand a just and permanent resolution for their cause.

On the day commemorating 64 years since the Palestinian Nakba, it is regrettable that it has taken the near-starvation of Palestinian political prisoners en masse to call attention to their plight; it is therefore imperative to take this opportunity to not only applaud their achievements but also to push forward lobbying efforts on their behalf and demand a just and permanent resolution for their cause. Addameer extends its utmost gratitude to the dedicated activists and institutions, including members of civil society and the diplomatic community, who have supported the Palestinian prisoners in their campaign for dignity.

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association can be reached at P.O. Box 17338, Jerusalem, phone +972 (0)2 296 0446 / 297 0136, fax +972 (0)2 296 0447, email info@addameer.ps, website www.addameer.org. This story first appeared at http://www.addameer.org/etemplate.php?id=481. See “Palestinian prison hunger strikers declare solidarity with California prison hunger strikers,” “3,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israel on hunger strike on Prisoners’ Day” and “1,600 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike since April 17.”

Prisoners’ families constitute a powerful voice

Mary — Sat, 12 May 2012 06:02:39 +0000

by Michael Zaharibu Dorrough

Hello Kendra,

Families of prisoners rally on Occupy 4 Prisoners Day Feb. 20 in Los Angeles. Note that the unity across racial divides evident at the rally reflects the unity forged by prisoners doing the hardest time in California in the Security Housing Units (SHUs) and other segregation units who led last year’s hunger strikes. The same unity is evident in this letter: It is written by Michael Zaharibu Dorrough, a New Afrikan political prisoner in the Corcoran SHU, saying he’s inspired by Todd Ashker, a white prisoner in the Pelican Bay SHU labeled a white supremacist. And it’s written to Kendra Castaneda, the wife of a Latino prisoner labeled a "Southern Hispanic" in Calipatria ASU. – Photo: Kendra Castaneda

I trust that you continue to be of sound health and spirit upon receiving this. You should have received a couple of my letters since March. It is possible that you may have heard from a couple of guys here whom I shared your April 14 letter with. You really do have the respect and support of us all.

I also had the opportunity to read a couple of published letters by Todd Ashker to you that was really inspiring. The families and loved ones of us all constitute a very powerful voice and matter tremendously in any change that is coming.

The families and loved ones of us all constitute a very powerful voice and matter tremendously in any change that is coming.

Todd is really correct in stating that we, the prisoner class, should no longer comply with anything that contributes in any way to the inhumanities that we are subjected to and within the context in which we are defined by the dominant class.

Our best to Todd and everyone should the opportunity present itself. Please know that you continue to inspire. Take good care.

Michael

Send our brother some love and light: Michael Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, Cor-SHU 4B-1L-53. This letter was written to Kendra Castaneda May 6, 2012, and postmarked May 8. Kendra is a prisoner human rights activist whose husband is currently incarcerated in the notorious Calipatria State Prison ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit). She can be reached at kendracastaneda55@gmail.com.

Standing on righteousness

Mosi — Fri, 11 May 2012 06:50:42 +0000

by Jamal Ortiz, aka Brotha Jamah

Pelican Bay SHU guards search a cell. Brotha Jamah is Ad/Seg, not the SHU, but it is almost as restrictive. - Photo: Laura Sullivan, NPR

Thank you for the continuous Bay View newspapers. The strength, courage and determination displayed by the prisoners who report from behind enemy lines and our outside support is a motivating factor in us keeping the line moving.

I’m still being held at Pelican Bay Ad Seg A1 Unit. Within the last 60 days, I’ve been through some fire with these racist pigs. I was pepper-sprayed for refusing to comply with a cell search that did not comply with cell searching procedures because I felt I was and am right. I stood firm on my position and attempted to take this officer’s can of pepper spray. I was charged with battery on a peace officer.

My cell and another brotha’s cell out of Oakland had been searched five times that week. Sheets, books, newspapers and other items were taken. I was left in the cell with no underwear, no T-shirt or socks. I had to tear open the mattress and sleep between the cotton to keep warm – naked! As the searches continued, the mattress was taken and I was given two blankets and a sheet.

Myself and the brotha from Oakland have been separated. I was moved from A1-118 to A1-131. He is double R from Oakland, s/n T. Wolfe, F-11442, in A1-117.

I am now in the presence of another strong comrade from San Francisco, Fillmore. He is Oba Lee Frelimo, J-25506, A1-126. He also subscribes to the Bay View newspaper.

I was unable to write the Bay View for some time due to all of my property and two phone books being taken from me until I recently received a Bay View newspaper. I was not able to write my mother for over a month until I got three letters from her two days ago and I still cannot write my father in San Leandro until he writes me.

I’ve filed a habeas corpus requesting a restraining order and to be re-housed away from specified officers. Nevertheless, I am firm in my position that I will no longer comply with orders that are outside of CDC Section R policies and procedures. I’d prefer to die a man standing on righteousness than to live as a weak coward bowing and being comfortable in oppression.

I’d prefer to die a man standing on righteousness than to live as a weak coward bowing and being comfortable in oppression.

Please don’t assume because you don’t hear from me that I’m not being prevented from writing. It means a lot to me that you continue to send the Bay View newspaper. Some just read it, but when you are at war with alligators up to your neck, realizing there’s no turning back, it becomes a tool and it’s all about how you use and apply it.

I’m asking the Bay View newspaper to please print this open letter so that California Prison Focus, MIM Distributors, Rising Son Press, Anti-Racist Action and the Black Riders Liberation Party will know why they have not heard from me – also Shaka of the Black August Organizing Committee and Brotha Secretary Yawo at the Oakland Uhuru House. I have no addresses, so at this point I cannot contact them unless they contact me.

Thank you again for continuing to send the Bay View newspaper.

In pure bullet-proof Black-on-Black love and unity.

Send our brother some love and light: Brotha Jamah D. Ortiz, K-94544, A1-131, PBSP, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95531.

Ohio hunger strike ends

Mary — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:36:46 +0000

Youngstown, Ohio, May 9, 2012 – After long negotiations with Warden David Bobby on Monday, May 7, the hunger-striking prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) began eating again. Two of the men held out through Tuesday, unsatisfied with the agreement. The warden met with them separately, and they agreed to come off the strike. Warden Bobby reported that “by lunch time today, everyone was eating.” This was confirmed by two prisoner sources.

Warden David Bobby surveys the yards of Ohio State Penitentiary in August 2010. – Photo: Geoffrey Hauschild

At this point, details on agreements are unclear, but sources inside say that the hunger strikers are satisfied and feel they achieved results. One source described the demands and the warden’s response as “reasonable.” Without going into detail, the main concerns were in regards to commissary costs, state pay rates, phone costs, length of stay and harsh penalties for petty conduct reports. The warden said that he discussed “many things” at Monday’s meeting with strike representatives, “many things beyond the main demands,” but he would not share any of the details.

The strikers are resting and recovering but have mailed detailed information to outside supporters at RedBird Prison Abolition, which will be released to the public as soon as possible. The warden admitted that one of the hunger strikers was transferred to disciplinary segregation for an unrelated rule infraction but stated that there were no reprisals or punishments for participating. One prisoner source agreed with this statement.

The hunger strike began on April 30 and was timed to align with May Day protests outside. Prisoners have stated an interest in “joining hands in struggle toward common goals” with protest and resistance movements like Occupy Wall Street.

Ben Turk can be reached at insurgent.ben@gmail.com.

A day in the life of an imprisoned revolutionary

Adrian — Tue, 08 May 2012 18:03:11 +0000

by J. Heshima Denham

“The purpose of the … control unit is to control revolutionary attitudes in the prison system and in the society at large.” – Former Marion Supermax Prison Warden Ralph Aron

“In several instances (the control unit) has been used to silence religious leaders. It has been used to silence economic and philosophical dissidents.” – Federal Judge James Foreman, U.S. District Court, East St. Louis, Illinois, 1980

“This type of struggle gives us the opportunity to become revolutionaries, the highest form of the human species, and it also allows us to emerge fully as men; those who are unable to achieve either of those two states should say so now and abandon the struggle.” – Che Guevara, Bolivia, 1967

Heshima wrote on the back of this photo - a rarity, as prisoners in isolation often go decades without being photographed: "This photo was taken a few days after the first hunger strike ended (last July). I was only 178 pounds; I'd lost 42 pounds."

Greetings, brothers and sisters. Perpetual existence in the sensory deprivation torture units of Amerika, like any form of socio-political violence, is virtually impossible to understand if you’ve not personally experienced it or some other form of coercive force over a prolonged period. Though the human imagination is infinitely capable of conjuring fantasies of such horrors, what appears equally shocking to many is how can some not only resist such systematic psychological torture, but actually improve themselves under such conditions of extreme duress.

Ironically, the answer lies in the motivation of the torture itself. The origin of our resistance lies in the very nature of the core contradictions of capitalist society in conflict with the advanced elements of its most oppressed strata: the bourgeois state’s attempt to stamp out revolutionary sentiment amongst the lumpen-proletariat in hopes of maintaining and expanding its reactionary character, in contrast with the struggle of political and politicized prisoners to raise the consciousness and revolutionary character of the entire underclass, all while resisting the fascist state’s attempts to silence our dissent, crush our will to struggle and foment defection.

We have consistently sought to expose the objective reality of our collective exploitation, of what society’s ills are, their origins in the arrangement of the productive system, and how to change them in the interests of the vast majority of the world’s people. We have consistently been tossed in control units for doing so.

Prison is a socially hostile microcosm of society at large.

Prison is a socially hostile microcosm of society at large. The same structures and relationships – political, social and economic – that make up U.S. society are reflected on any prison yard, stripped of the pretense of patriotism and unity. Those social forces who dictate society’s guidelines – i.e., the ruling class, bourgeois state, the 1 percent etc. – have ensured “the rule of law” is structured to sanction those who would disturb the maintenance of the core contradictions upon which capitalist society is based – i.e., social production leading to private appropriation, the economic class structure, the race card system etc.

Should critics or dissenters rock the boat too far outside the bourgeois prescribed course, they invariably find themselves ostracized or imprisoned. Once in prison nothing is different. Abuses of imprisoned revolutionaries dates back centuries in the U.S. The legacies of John Brown, Eugene V. Debs, Melvin B. Tolsen, Clifford James, W.L. Nolan and George L. Jackson continue today in the indefinite sensory deprivation isolation of Leonard Peltier, P. Sangu Jones, Mumia Abu Jamal, Sondai Ellis, Zaharibu Dorrough, Sitawa Dewberry, Jarvis Masters, D. Mutope Crawford, L. Powell, Wembe Johnson, F.Y. Carter and so many more principled servants of the people and champions of humanity, all daily subjected to indefinite psychological torture solely because they will never renounce the struggle against the oppression of man by man … and neither will I. I am a product of this unbroken legacy of revolutionary thought, action and eternal commitment and have shared the same torturous fate for 12 years, and will continue to do so until we win or don’t lose, until victory or death.

But I’ve been asked, “What is it really like, a day in your life?” We share a functional collective consciousness, so sharing a single day from my life should give you a glimpse into the “lives” – the existence – of all these examples of humanity’s most noble spirit: the revolutionary in perpetual resistance to indefinite torture.

I’ve been asked, “What is it really like, a day in your life?” We share a functional collective consciousness, so sharing a single day from my life should give you a glimpse into the “lives” – the existence – of all these examples of humanity’s most noble spirit: the revolutionary in perpetual resistance to indefinite torture.

I wake to darkness and cold. It’s 4:30 a.m. and I’m in my small cell in Corcoran SHU (Security Housing Unit). I turn my head slightly to see the photos of my children and grandson on my wall and close my eyes to thank the creator for giving me another day of life in which to make some contribution to the cause of freedom, justice, equality and human rights. I ask that my comrades, my children and my siblings be watched over, their health preserved.

I then open my eyes and rise. It’s particularly cold this morning as I lace up my shoes, fold my linen, and roll my mattress back. After attending to my morning ablutions, clean the sink and sweep my floor, I turn on my TV to the news and enjoy a cup of coffee in preparation for my routine.

I have to be extra careful as I change the channel since the last power surge fried my TV cord and if I move my TV it’ll blow out again. The c/o (correctional officer) walks past flashing his light into my cell. I have the cell light that glares 24/7 blocked using a piece of string and sheet so I can stave off the migraines that accompany the constant illumination we endure daily.

I watch the various stories engaging bourgeois state-controlled media today: Multinational and domestic corporations, sitting on trillions in cash reserves, are refusing to hire because they claim a combination of “regulatory uncertainty and adverse consumer sentiment” has them sitting on the sidelines of the labor market. I see through this blatant gambit to manipulate the working class into opposing greater financial regulation and health care reform in seconds.

In an economy fueled by consumption, which is directly proportional to wage labor payrolls, corporations are intentionally prolonging the depressed economic cycle by not hiring, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophesy of reduced consumption creating the perception amongst the exploited workers that re-establishing the deregulated free market – which is what caused this current recessionary-recovery cycle – and repealing the petty bourgeois policies of the Obama administration in favor of more industrial bourgeois policies that are championed by Republicans is their only course to broader employment.

I shake my head in a combination of pity, anger and disgust as I hear these deluded patsies parroting the ideas of the ruling class as they languish “trapped in the matrix,” their desperate conditions blinding them to their own interests. They continue to grasp and flail ineffectually to realize their immediate interests, seemingly oblivious to any conscious aspirations of changing the system itself, of seizing power and structuring society so the ownership of the means of production and distribution actually reflects the reality of social production and human need.

I immediately berate myself for the direction of my frustrated thought: I remind myself, as I rise and begin my warm-up routine of jumping jacks, that it’s not the people’s fault when the revolution fails; it is the fault of the vanguard party, our fault … MY fault. I/we must redouble my/our efforts, I think. We must combine our ideas, analyses and efforts in a more effective and efficient form to get our words heard, these ideas understood, these theories tested in the vital arena of social practice.

It’s not the people’s fault when the revolution fails; it is the fault of the vanguard party, our fault … MY fault. We must combine our ideas, analyses and efforts in a more effective and efficient form to get our words heard.

I did weight work yesterday, filling my laundry bag with stacks of transcripts and old magazines, then lashing them down with pieces of sheet and string to make a weight bag. So today I’ll do circuit training. I settle on 10 circuits of five exercises: 50 pushups, 40 crunches, 50 split-lunges, 20 dips (between the dunks) and 50 three-count squats.

The pain in my right side, which has been there since the first hunger strike, is like a piece of shrapnel in my side and by the sixth circuit I’m feeling my age, my body wanting to quit. “No one’s here but me,” I think. “I’m sweating, I’ve pushed my body, why continue to endure this pain?” Almost instantly a more insistent voice answers: “What if you were in the field of battle and the lives of your comrades and the people depended on you fighting on? What is pain to the future survival of the people, the party and the revolution? Nothing at all.”

All life is suffering; it is the nature of your existence, the price of your unwavering commitment to what is right. I heed this second voice. I ignore the pain and exhaustion and push on. I feel the cold stone under my palms and the sweat flowing from my pores, but none of it registers in my mind. I am fueled by images of combating the sick bastards on this TV who are dragging an old woman away in cuffs, her head bloodied, from an Occupy Movement protest line.

I strive to control the fire, to channel it into my exercises, and just as the rage against all the injustice I’ve witnessed and endured at the hands of this sick system seeks to overwhelm my reason, my discipline clamps down on it, I detach from my emotions, and finish my last set. I pace my small cell and drink a cup of warm water, re-asserting greater control of my breathing and heart rate in preparation for the next half of my morning regimen, cataloguing the work I have before me today and prioritizing it.

The c/o’s walk by for morning count and unlock the barbox – the sound of the metal gears falling into place, of tray slots being unlocked in preparation for chow signaling the start of another day in the torture unit. When they leave the section, I put up my window blockers and do 45 minutes to an hour of kata and martial arts training.

Here in the 4B1L-C section short corridor, the windows in the gun tower are mirror-tinted and the section windows blacked out. They can watch you, but if they’re staging a raid or monitoring your in-cell activities, you can’t see them. You thus live in a state between perpetual uncertainty and hyper-vigilance, never knowing when you’ll have your cell torn up and property destroyed or confiscated.

They are aware most imprisoned New Afrikan revolutionary nationalists practice some form of self-defense, and they believe they have sufficient documentation as to the extent of my decades of attention to these sciences in my C-file and elsewhere, but they really don’t, so I prefer to train in conditions of privacy to keep the extent of my expertise to myself. I end with some light moving meditation and then take my bird bath.

Around this time they are coming through the section door with chow. It’s scrambled eggs and potatoes today; it’s Tuesday. The menu never changes. You know the meal by the day of the week. We’re being served on paper trays, the food is grossly under-proportioned and ice cold. I go to the door and accept my small tray of food and sack lunch, looking at these c/o’s laugh and joke about the game they enjoyed over the weekend.

Through hooded eyes, I speak politely, thanking them for the cold food and wishing them a good morning. Startled by this response, they offer a nervous pleasantry in reply. I deposit my meal in a white paper cup, place the 2 slices of bread over it and scoop the 3-½ spoonfuls of cold cracked wheat cereal into my mouth and wash them down with some warm water.

I see this for the subtle psychological attack it is, reminding myself provocation and/or mental degradation is its intent. I form the opposite reaction, remembering there are men and women right now in some CIA blacksite prison in Uzbekistan being raped with a cattle-prod for breakfast yet maintaining their ideological integrity. I’ll do no less. The fact that they’ve been feeding me this way for 12 years and counting only strengthens my resolve. I’m desensitized by this point. I eat only to survive. I stopped eating for taste, texture or temperature years ago.

The food is grossly under-proportioned and ice cold. I see this for the subtle psychological attack it is and form the opposite reaction, remembering there are men and women right now in some CIA blacksite prison in Uzbekistan being raped with a cattle-prod for breakfast yet maintaining their ideological integrity. I’ll do no less.

I finish my “bird bath,” clean my sink, toilet, walls and floor, then sit down and eat half of my eggs and potatoes, saving the rest to eat with my lunch. My sack lunch – one slice of bread, two thin slices of bologna, a pack of two graham crackers and a small pack of almonds (12 almonds in a pack) – needs these extra calories to hold me till chow at 5 p.m.

I make my coffee pack, sit down and open my “office.” I intentionally maintain a massive workload so all of my time is consumed with activity. I am very conscious of time, of the quantity and quality of my daily service to the revolutionary cause.

I’m doing a portrait of a family who’s befriended my comrade Kambui in hopes of strengthening those social ties and displaying the quality of my/our work to a broader public audience; I’m designing new pieces for my/our greeting card line in hopes of raising funds for our progressive community development programs; I’m litigating a medical civil rights claim on behalf of a prisoner here with diabetes where I’ve been forced to file four different motions for extension of time because we’ve not been given law library access since August.

We’re supposed to get law library access today. I have several chapters and papers I have to review in various texts on economics, politics and mass psychology for a new piece we’re writing on the practice application of revolutionary scientific socialism in the U.S. today. I’m helping some good comrades gain a broader understanding of the ideas of Fanon, Marx, Engels, Mao, Trotsky and Ho Chi Minh as they relate to the ever-evolving conditions in modern society, trying to finish some work for our brothers and sisters in the progressive media and the Occupy Movement and putting the finishing touches on a Japanese cultural piece I/we initially intended to donate to the Fresno Museum of Art to auction off for the Japanese Tsunami Relief Fund but can only assume the museum director never wrote back because we are prisoners and she could not see past the propaganda of the state and its corresponding social stigma.

I take on all these projects, and more, intentionally. Enforced idleness is a key element of the sensory deprivation torture unit. The isolation is designed to concentrate the psychological impact of this endless idleness. The mind is supposed to turn in upon itself, warping reality. It is structured to re-enforce the concept that you have nothing to look forward to but the same nothing … forever. Its purpose is to break the minds of weak men, to transform them into craven informants, agents of the state, rats, debriefers.

The mind of the developed and committed revolutionary cannot be broken. Whenever it encounters such adverse conditions, it changes those conditions. I/we have no “idle time.” From the lowest, most oppressive conditions in this society, the SHU, we struggle daily to advance the progress of humanity itself.

We must work 10 times harder than any other segment of society to have the most miniscule influence on human affairs because we have such overwhelming power arrayed against us with the sole purpose of repressing our ideas – i.e., IGI (Institutional Gang Investigations), ISU (Investigations Services Unit), prison administrators, state officials, the U.S. federal government, decades of false propaganda and entrenched social stigmas which have created an aversion and irrational skepticism of anything positive and progressive originating here.

I/we have no “idle time.” From the lowest, most oppressive conditions in this society, the SHU, we struggle daily to advance the progress of humanity itself. We must work 10 times harder than any other segment of society to have the most miniscule influence on human affairs because we have such overwhelming power arrayed against us with the sole purpose of repressing our ideas.

We have a monumental task just overcoming the obstacles to communicate with you all. We have far too much work to do by writ of our chosen lifestyle to ever fall prey to such an innovation in psychological coercion. We are not simply immune, but where the truly committed are concerned, such attempts have the opposite effect: The fact that they would even attempt such attacks on dedicated servants of the people only hardens our resolve to resist. It makes us more revolutionary, better servants of the people and better men.

So I sit here for the first half of my day and work on this portrait. As I work, my thoughts tend to drift to my regrets. I’ve been imprisoned for most of my children’s lives and thoughts of their welfare and safety consume me: What are their interests and views, what do they value, what do they love? I look at the photo of my daughter Jawanda. I’ve never seen her face in real life or heard her laughter. I write them all (I have five children) at least once a month or more, but it’s been years since I’ve heard from most of them. I’m convinced my daughter Jawanda hates me for not being there for her and her brother as they grew up.

I push the thoughts away, comforted in the knowledge that my daily efforts in the cause are the greatest gift I could give them: a world where the interests of the many actually govern its direction and nature, democracy in form and not simply in word. Though I will not live to see the victorious revolutionary change for which I have labored all their lives, and will continue to for the remainder of my own, their children just might usher in this new social order on the heels of our contributions.

I hear keys as the section door opens and IGI officers enter the section wearing their arrogance and warped perceptions literally on their sleeves. They’re here to escort someone to ACH (hospital clinic). As they do so, the nurse and escort officer walk the tier dispensing medication. I accept and take my own meds, treatment for the inescapable damage done to my own mind which has manifested itself in an actual imbalance in my brain chemistry. I ask the officer, “Are they going to run law library?” They haven’t called with a list yet. But “doubt it,” he says.

I leave the door and return to my work, suppressing the sharp spike of anger at their continued refusal to allow us to access the courts to redress these inhumane violations of our rights. Another log on the pyre of the daily usurpations of our basic rights. Before I know it, it’s noon and I set my artwork aside and prepare my lunch while the news plays in the background.

I pick up the book Zamarabu sent down to me, “New Theories of Revolution” by Jack Woddis, and I pick up where I left off as I finish my meal. Most of the texts and concepts Brother Woddis is critiquing are close at hand and by the time my meal is finished and sufficiently digested, I have several tomes opened, cross-referencing ideas and concepts while I simultaneously view them through the prism of current social conditions and my own dialectical analysis.

I save two slices of bread, my apple and a slice of bologna from my lunch so I’ll have something to work forward to this evening. With that done, I turn my attention to addressing a question one of my comrades had on whether the practice of several small businesses trading among themselves to keep their overheads low equated a form of socialism, having seen the same story on PBS. I explained to the comrade his question underscores the importance of ideological development and a firm grasp of historical materialism when analyzing socio-economic phenomena.

What he had observed was a barter system amongst petty-bourgeois proprietors in an intra-class conflict with the more powerful industrial bourgeois interest – in this case Wal-Mart; this was not socialism. Those small businesses continue to offer their goods and services to consumers at a profit mark-up, continue to appropriate the surplus value of their workers’ labor, continue to support this system of white male privilege, race-class divide and rule, and labor exploitation. They are not socialist or revolutionary; quite the opposite, they are reactionary as they seek to turn back the wheel of history to the point where their mode of small production was the dominant segment of the bourgeois class base, where now they seek to bank together against the ruling bourgeois strata to keep from being cast back down into the working class because they can’t compete with the ruling bourgeois’ industrial scale mode of production and labor exploitation.

Socialism does not seek to “reform” capitalist property relations amongst the bourgeois elements; no, socialism seeks to abolish bourgeois property relations altogether. I went in depth on the question as did other comrades. Mind you, because we are in a sensory deprivation torture unit, these discussions cannot be held verbally, no. We must write them on paper, then shoot our lines and “fish” them to and fro amongst each other, sharing ideas, lending moral, emotional, psychological, material and spiritual support to one another via a piece of string and a weighted item tossed down the tier from one cell to another.

Because of blockers welded to the base of the doors and c/o’s who will snatch and break your line, this is of course difficult. But again none will deter us from exercising our fundamental human rights. We are here only because we believe the oppression of man by man should be opposed.

Because we are in a sensory deprivation torture unit, discussions cannot be held verbally. We must write them on paper, then shoot our lines and “fish” them to and fro amongst each other, sharing ideas, lending moral, emotional, psychological, material and spiritual support to one another via a piece of string and a weighted item tossed down the tier from one cell to another. Because of blockers welded to the base of the doors and c/o’s who will snatch and break your line, this is of course difficult. But again none will deter us from exercising our fundamental human rights. We are here only because we believe the oppression of man by man should be opposed.

By the time I finish, evening chow has come. I set my cake aside as a special treat for later and watch “Nightly Business Report” as I finish my meal, assessing and analyzing the daily permutations of global capitalism; then I watch BBC News and PBS Newshour. I then get back in “the office” and work on political pieces for various media interests, until I run out of gas around 8 p.m.

But I have one more thing to do. Today is special to me, and as I’ve done for the past 17 years of my imprisonment – this is now my 18th – I write a letter to my son giving him the benefit of my life’s experiences for the year, summing it up by recounting a story of children in India who are sent in bulk by labor firms to plantation factories as young as 9, 10 and 11 to pick cotton and work the gins in conditions as deplorable as those we experienced in the chattel slave epoch to develop textiles for a mega-rich British multinational. I explain to him that this was evil and how all that was necessary for such evil to continually prevail was for good people to do nothing.

I end my letter, slide it into the tray slot and sit down to enjoy a comedy program on TV while I eat the items I’ve saved from my earlier meals. Conscious of the pain in my side and health benefits of laughter, both chemically and psychologically, I release my emotional control and allow myself again to feel. I let go of the melancholy which is my constant companion and allow the mirth to strike me in the belly as the underclass antics of “Raising Hope” play across my TV.

Conscious of the pain in my side and health benefits of laughter, both chemically and psychologically, I release my emotional control and allow myself again to feel. I let go of the melancholy which is my constant companion and allow the mirth to strike me in the belly as the underclass antics of “Raising Hope” play across my TV.

I hear the section door pop, the bar box being opened and the gears being locked back in place as the other c/o passes out mail. It’s a special day, I’m expecting some mail and hoping to hear from my son. I receive a card wishing me holiday greetings from the beautiful brothers and sisters from a Pasadena community parish in solidarity with the prisoner hunger strike coalition. It fills me with gratitude and warmth. It’s 29 days old and postmarked, meaning IGI held this meager card for at least 26 days. I also get a ducat for blood draw in the morning.

I leave my door and laugh away the disappointment of not hearing from my family on this day, as I enjoy the 10 o’clock news. I see a wonderful story in honor of Muhammad Ali’s birthday, on how he defied the U.S. war machine by refusing to submit to coercion into their imperialist adventure in Vietnam. I suddenly feel even better, knowing I’m in such good company.

I look at my children’s photos and the images of Chairman Mao, Bob Marley, Jonathan Jackson and Buddha that are the only other images on my wall. I again close my eyes and ask the creator to watch over and bless my comrades, my children, my siblings, parents and all the people languishing under the yoke of this global Moloch of greed we call the capitalist “free market.” I close my eyes wondering why I heard from no one. I cut off my TV. I have an early start in the morning. I’m not as young as I used to be. Today was my birthday: Jan. 17, 2012.

Our existence here is one of struggle, of constant, ever present, inescapable daily struggle. I/we have attempted to convey this reality to you in many ways, but these are words, only valid if they serve to influence you positively in some way. What must be understood in the final analysis is we here are not “gang members” when speaking of adherents of NARN (New Afrikan Revolutionary Nation) Scientific Socialism; we are revolutionaries. We think, act and communicate differently than those who have not given their lives to the people.

I say this not to disparage anyone; it is simply a statement of fact. The Honorable Comrade George Lester Jackson stated, “Revolution is a war for the minds of the masses.” The state has buried us in these torture units specifically to ensure we cannot effectively communicate the reality of the collective subjugation of 99 percent of those in this society to the whims of an avaricious ruling elite. They seek to criminalize legitimate political discourse, to disparage the truth in favor of an ever-evolving lie. The truth of the matter is you and I both are nothing but commodities to these people, our values being exploited or intentionally suppressed as the interests of their profit margins dictate.

Saul D. Alinsky in his book “Rules for Radicals” said, “When you are trying to communicate and can’t find the point in the experience of the other party at which he can receive and understand, then you must create the experience for him.” I have tried to do that here without horrifying you. What must be understood is some of the greatest political, social, economic, cultural, scientific and military minds of our time are languishing in the short corridors and cell blocks of Pelican Bay and Corcoran SHUs. Many of you in progressive circles are familiar with my writing, but I am merely a product of the phenomenal principled men I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion and the unfinished legacy of democratic change and equalitarian struggle that is the hallmark of the evolution of civilization.

The state has buried us in these torture units specifically to ensure we cannot effectively communicate the reality of the collective subjugation of 99 percent of those in this society to the whims of an avaricious ruling elite. They seek to criminalize legitimate political discourse. Some of the greatest political, social, economic, cultural, scientific and military minds of our time are languishing in the short corridors and cell blocks of Pelican Bay and Corcoran SHUs.

Under these conditions – indeterminate SHU confinement – we have the full weight of the state arrayed against us. Our words in some instances are our only effective tools. If I/we write or say something I/we consider revolutionary, that I hope will alter the nature and structure of society and improve mankind, but in the final analysis fails to move anyone in a substantive way, it is not revolutionary or progressive. Communication that fails to effect its intent is so much idle chatter.

The concrete analysis of such concrete conditions would be nothing has been changed. The reason we commit so much time and effort into understanding the history and present interconnections of all human activity in our world is the ability to change people’s minds, to alter their perspectives so a previously hidden truth becomes self-evident. It’s a serious matter, as serious and strategic as war, because revolution is a war.

As you read this I’m waging that war now, against entrenched biases and artificial social stigmas manufactured by a specific socio-economic interest. This is why we are so hard on ourselves, why we intentionally expose ourselves to conditions that would crush most men’s minds and subsume their wills: Failure to communicate these ideas to you effectively is to fail you.

We are speaking of the future evolution of the world, of forging a society more reflective of human decency than human misery. We cannot fail. Our cause is just because our cause is you – serving the people.

It is my sincerest hope that you leave this brief discussion with not simply a greater grasp of this injustice, but more centrally with a determination to insist the state end this hidden hypocrisy. The U.S. – and the state of California – cannot continue criticizing Syria, China, Burma and Russia for their alleged repressive measures against dissent and maltreatment of political prisoners, yet continue to maintain its own domestic program of torture against political prisoners. It is inhumane, illegal, hypocritical and just plain wrong.

Our imprisonment has no bearing on the truth and validity of our ideas. If this is truly a nation which values democracy, equality, human rights and fundamental fairness as its social imperatives, surely its people cannot allow this practice of political repression to continue unchallenged. Surely you will challenge it.

Our imprisonment has no bearing on the truth and validity of our ideas. If this is truly a nation which values democracy, equality, human rights and fundamental fairness as its social imperatives, surely its people cannot allow this practice of political repression to continue unchallenged.

If nothing else, I hope sharing a day in my life will compel you to value your own a little more and cherish that of your fellow man or woman as you do your own. My/our love, loyalty and solidarity to you all … until we win or don’t lose.

Send our brother some love and light: J. Heshima Denham, J-38283, CSP-COR-SHU, 4B1L-46, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212.

25 Ohio supermax prisoners start a hunger strike

Mary — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:02:04 +0000

by Ben Turk

The successful conclusion of the Lucasville prisoners’ hunger strike in January 2011, which inspired the California hunger strike in July, was celebrated with a march and rally on Martin Luther King Day.

On Monday, April 30, at least 25 prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) began a hunger strike. They are demanding that the warden meet and negotiate with them for improved conditions in Ohio’s supermax prison. These hunger strikers say they intend to continue to refuse food until their demands are met. Another larger group of prisoners will show symbolic solidarity with the hunger strikers and workers outside of prison by also refusing food on a one-day fast for May Day, the international day of worker solidarity and resistance.

Information about the hunger strike is limited at this time, because supermax prisoners have very constrained access to communication with the outside world. The hunger strikers are asking supporters of their cause to participate by calling Warden David Bobby at (330) 743-0700 and ODRC Director Gary Mohr at (614) 752-1164. The hunger strikers are asking people to encourage Warden Bobby to meet with the prisoners and take their demands seriously.

This is the second hunger strike at OSP this year. The first occurred on Feb. 20-23 in solidarity with the Occupy Movement’s call for an “Occupy for Prisoners” day of action. That hunger strike ended with Warden Bobby, as well as officials from Central Office in Columbus, promising to increase recreation time to the court-mandated minimum as well as improve enrichment programming, food quality and commissary practices. At this time, it is unclear if that promise was kept and what relationship, if any, the current hunger strike has with February’s Occupy for Prisoners hunger strike.

Ohio State Penitentiary opened in 1998. It houses over 270 level 4 and 5 maximum security prisoners and until recently also housed 116 of Ohio’s death row prisoners. OSP was built in response to the 1993 uprising at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

OSP hunger strike enters second week

Monday, May 7, 2012, Youngstown, Ohio – Prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) continue the hunger strike they started on Monday, April 30, in solidarity with May Day.

The number of prisoners refusing food has fluctuated from 24 to 48 over the last week, as some prisoners joined late. Communication with the supermax prisoners has been limited since the beginning of the strike, but a clear list of grievances and demands has emerged from at least two sources.

The two primary demands are:

1. Improved commissary practices and increased state pay. The prison commissary can set prices at up to 35 percent mark-up on basic necessities like shampoo, food and soap. These prices fluctuate unexpectedly and are often prohibitive to prisoners without outside support, as state pay is only $9 a month.

2. A transparent and accountable security level classification process. OSP houses level 4 and 5 prisoners, the highest security level in Ohio. Once prisoners are classified at these levels and transferred to OSP, there is no clear process for how they can reduce their level and get transferred out of the facility. Prisoners can spend years in OSP without any negative conduct reports and still have no hope of their level being reduced.

Other grievances include:

1. Food portions and quality have been reduced due to austerity measures.

2. Inadequate medical care. Also due to austerity cuts, prison officials have stopped sending prisoners to outside treatment centers for MRIs and EEGs unless their conditions are considered life threatening. They also often ignore doctor recommendations for pain medications.

3. Lack of enrichment programming. There are strict bans on many books and movies, and the institutional television channel has little variety. One prisoner said they run the same programs on a loop every six months.

The two sources for these demands are an open letter written to the local Youngstown paper by prisoner Marcus Harris and phone conversations with a trusted anonymous source inside the prison. This source also stated that at least one hunger striker has been punished for his participation, sprayed with mace in his cell and sent to disciplinary isolation. This report has not yet been confirmed.

Warden David Bobby met with hunger strike representatives for three hours on Wednesday, May 2. He says he will “continue to communicate with the inmates and listen to their concerns.” Thus far, the warden has called a committee to review commissary practices, comparing them with other Ohio institutions.

He says that the security level classification system is not uniform because it takes the reasons a prisoner was transferred to OSP into account. One prisoner source was familiar with this argument. He described a situation where someone got sentenced to Level 5 at OSP for 48 months or less. He got no negative reports for those 48 months but was still denied a security transfer because of “the reasons he was originally classified Level 5, but they already knew that when the brought him in and told him it’d be 48 months or less.”

This prisoner also said that consequences for petty conduct reports, like refusing to cuff up or return a food tray, have recently increased. “Someone who used to be sent to the hole for 16 days now might be dropped a level from 4 to 5.” He considers these changes an attempt to keep OSP full of prisoners as “job security” for the warden and officers.

The warden said OSP currently has the most prisoners it has since it opened in 1996. He also said the current hunger strike is the biggest hunger strike since he became warden four years ago. It is also the second hunger strike this year.

In February, 25 prisoners went on hunger strike for three days. Two major demands from that hunger strike were increased recreation time, to the court required minimum of five hours a week, and improved commissary practices. The recreation time demand was met, but the prisoners say the current hunger strike “follows directly” from the neglected commissary demand from February. The warden says he does not remember what the demands in February were and that the recreation schedule has changed repeatedly since the transfer of death row from OSP to Chillicothe last December.

Prisoner Mark Harris’ letter ends: “In short, we are sensory deprived, underfed, isolated with little to no movement, unable to hug our children, family and friends, and we are stuck for an overly extended period of time with limited programming.” He requests that people use “whatever resources [they] have to help spread the word of our cause, to call and check up on us and our health and also to look into these matters.”

To reach Warden David Bobby, call (330) 743-0700. ODRC Director Gary Mohr can be reached at (614) 752-1164.

Ben Turk can be reached at insurgent.ben@gmail.com.

Corcoran officials retaliate against hunger strikers

Adrian — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:37:39 +0000

by Pyung Hwa Ryoo

Corcoran Warden Connie Gipson

When we, the prisoners housed in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) of CSP-Corcoran, initiated a hunger strike to protest against the inhumane conditions and constitutional violations we faced in the ASU1, the prison officials responded with retaliation and indifference. Their intent was clear: to set an example of what would occur if these protests that had been rocking the California Department of Corrections (CDC) this past year continued. Their statement was not only meant for the protestors in this ASU1, but for the entire class of oppressed prisoners in the CDC.

The hunger strike in this ASU1 initially began on Dec. 28, 2011. It was a collective effort with various races and subgroups standing in solidarity for a common interest. A petition was prepared with the issues we wanted to address, and it was submitted to the Corcoran prison officials and also sent out to prisoner rights groups in an attempt to gather support and attention.

A few hours after the protest began, Warden Gipson sent her staff to move the prisoners who were allegedly, and falsely, identified as “strike leaders” to a different ASU. I was included in that category because my signature was on the petition that was submitted to prison officials. When we initially refused to move, the correctional staff came to our cells wearing full riot gear to cell-extract and move us by force. Since we were engaging in a peaceful protest, we agreed to move and were placed in the other ASU, which turned out to be 3A-03 EOP, an Ad Seg unit that houses severely mentally ill inmates.

While isolated in that psychiatric ward, we continued to refuse food until we received word that the hunger strike had ended in the ASU1. I later found out that the warden and captain had met with the spokesmen of the ASU1 protestors and promised to grant the majority of our demands but requested three weeks to implement the changes and to have the agreements in writing. The protestors agreed to give the prison officials the benefit of the doubt, and for that reason the hunger strike was put on hold.

I continued to file complaints and 602s during this period asserting that my placement in a unit along with severely mentally ill inmates violated my Eighth Amendment rights because I was not mentally ill and that my placement in this psychiatric ward was the result of illegal retaliation by prison officials against me for exercising my First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and protest. These grievances went ignored.

In addition to my isolation in the psychiatric ward, I received a 115 for “inciting/leading a mass disturbance,” which carries a 12-month SHU term, and was later found guilty although they had no evidence to support that charge besides my signature on a petition. The other protestors who were also falsely identified as “Strike Leaders” were issued the same 115 for “inciting/leading a mass disturbance.”

On Jan. 18, 2012, Warden Gipson ordered her staff to move me, as well as other isolated protestors, back to the ASU1, believing that the hunger strike was over. Before we were moved back, she sent an email to Lt. Cruz, a correctional officer in 3A-03 and asked him to read it to us. It contained a warning that she would not tolerate any more disturbances in the ASU1 and a threat that any such behavior would carry more severe reprisals.

After three weeks had passed since the hunger strike was put on hold, it was clear that the prison officials had no intent to honor their word and keep their promises. The hunger strike resumed on Jan. 27, 2012.

The ASU1 lieutenant, after hearing that we resumed the protest, came to a few protestors and stated the following: “We are tired of you guys, all you guys, doing hunger strikes and asking for all this shit. I am not only speaking for myself, but for my superiors as well. There are correctional officers and staff getting laid off because the state doesn’t have money, and you guys in here are asking for more shit? You know what? We don’t care if you guys starve yourselves to death. You guys aren’t getting shit. The only thing you’ll get are incident packets.”

Most important of all, the correctional staff and prison officials were deliberately indifferent to the medical needs of the starved protestors in the ASU1. When some of the protestors started losing consciousness, experiencing serious pain and requesting emergency medical attention, the correctional staff were deliberately slow in responding, and in many instances they just simply ignored them.

Two days later, on Jan. 29, 2012, Warden Gipson sent her staff again to round up the alleged “strike leaders” and place them in isolation. This time, the spokesmen who had previously come out to speak and negotiate with the prison officials regarding our demands were also included in that category. We were all moved once again to 3A-03 psychiatric ward, although we were not mentally ill. Furthermore, our visits were suspended by Classification Committee for the duration of our “involvement in the hunger strike” and we were issued another 115 for “inciting/ leading a mass disturbance.”

The retaliation did not stop there. All the participants in the hunger strike were issued 115s for “participation in a mass disturbance,” and, the most important of all, the correctional staff and prison officials were deliberately indifferent to the medical needs of the starved protestors in the ASU1. When some of the protestors started losing consciousness, experiencing serious pain and requesting emergency medical attention, the correctional staff were deliberately slow in responding, and in many instances they just simply ignored them.

This conduct and this mindset of prison officials, setting an example of action deliberately indifferent to the medical needs of the protestors, directly contributed to the death of one of our own. His brave sacrifice and unfailing personal commitment will never be forgotten, nor will it have been for naught.

This is where they stand. The oppressors who take away our freedom and liberty continue to fight tooth and nail to deprive us of even our basic human rights. They employ brutal means of retaliation and suppression in an attempt to keep us from exposing the harsh truths of everyday life inside these prison walls.

This conduct and this mindset of prison officials, setting an example of action deliberately indifferent to the medical needs of the protestors, directly contributed to the death of one of our own. His brave sacrifice and unfailing personal commitment will never be forgotten, nor will it have been for naught.

Although the ASU1 hunger strike may have ended, I will continue to have the spirit of resistance. The outcome will not be decided by a single battle but many, and I will do my part, in hopes that my small contribution may make a difference.

In solidarity.

Send our brother some love and light: Pyung Hwa Ryoo, F-88924, Corcoran ASU1 3A-03-213, P.O. Box 3461, Corcoran CA 93212. Also signing their December petition were William E. Brown, T-58106, Corcoran ASU1-140L, P.O. Box 3456, Corcoran, CA 93212, and Juan Jaimes, V-08644, KVSP B-8-127, P.O. Box 5102, Delano, CA 93216.

CDCR approves TVs to Calipatria ASU in response to last year’s hunger strike

Adrian — Sun, 06 May 2012 23:39:11 +0000

by Kendra Castaneda

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. The men in ASU have no air conditioning, even though temperatures can exceed 120 degrees in the summer. – Photo: Kendra Castaneda

Hundreds of men at Calipatria State Prison in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) participated last year in the Pelican Bay State Prison hunger strike that spread statewide in July and again in September. They starved themselves in unity with the five core demands from the Pelican Bay SHU, but the men at Calipatria added their own demand, which was to have an appliance – either a TV or radio – to stimulate their minds so long as they had to be forced to stay in segregation.

With help from articles that were published to expose the illegally extended years these men are serving in this “temporary” segregation unit, from loved ones pushing CDCR to have these men’s demand met, from the men themselves at Calipatria ASU who’ve had the courage to publicly describe the extremely inhumane conditions they are facing and after Warden Leland McEwen was removed from Calipatria State Prison, CDCR-Sacramento approved TVs for all the men.

On April 19, 2012, TVs were distributed around to every cell in the Administrative Segregation Unit. Finally the men have more to watch than a concrete wall. Considering how cruel CDCR is and that CDCR has yet to meet the five humane demands from Pelican Bay SHU, this is a huge breakthrough and a direct result of last year’s statewide hunger strike.

Update on the case against Calipatria IGI E. Duarte

Something very disturbing has been brought to my attention with the Velarde vs. Duarte case from Calipatria State Prison. The attorney general of Imperial County, who is representing IGI (Institutional Gang Investigator) E. Duarte, was recently allowed into Calipatria’s Administrative Segregation Unit. The AG’s staff was allowed by CDCR to “interrogate” the inmates specifically about me without any of these inmates’ attorneys present.

The county attorney general’s staff asked them who I am, which men do I write to in the prison, whether I have a personal relationship with Harold Velarde and so on. If the AG wanted to know about me as a human rights activist, then I am not hard to find and contact. He could have emailed me personally, for I know he reads these articles, and my email address is published at the end of each article I write.

He could have just talked to me directly without taking the risk of violating ethics codes that members of the California State Bar must follow, but instead his staff is interrogating men who will be testifying in court at the end of this year in their civil case against IGI Duarte. They say Duarte has used excessive force on prisoners, falsified documentation and planted evidence to “validate” them as “gang members.”

Prisoner advocate Kendra Castaneda fights together with her husband, Robbie Riva, consigned to the Calipatria ASU, for human rights for all prisoners. Robbie’s visting privileges were cut off over a year ago. This was one of their last visits together. Their daughter badly misses her daddy.

Once validated, they are labeled “the worst of the worst” and must endure the torture of solitary confinement indefinitely, until they “parole, snitch or die,” as the guards often remind them. Gang validation and indefinite solitary confinement terms – penalties that threaten every prisoner in the state – are at the heart of what motivated 12,000 California prisoners to starve themselves simultaneously at the peak of the hunger strikes last year.

It seems to me that CDCR, in allowing the AG’s staff to interrogate the men in Calipatria ASU, is not watching itself carefully, as its dirty tactics are getting extremely sloppy. And isn’t interrogating a plaintiff and witnesses in a current court case illegal?

The IGIs are known to retaliate against inmates who speak up exposing their inhumane conditions and abuses, and now the Imperial County AG’s staff member thought he wasn’t going to get caught interrogating the plaintiff, witnesses and other men who will be testifying in court in the case against IGI E. Duarte. If CDCR retaliates in any way against the men at Calipatria State Prison ASU who are involved in the Velarde vs. Duarte case or the families of these men, it will be released to the public and exposed at this court trial.

Kendra Castaneda is a prisoner human rights activist whose husband is currently incarcerated in the notorious Calipatria State Prison ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit). She can be reached at kendracastaneda55@gmail.com.

Kendra made these videos on July 24, 2011, as the first round of last year’s hunger strike was ending.

Slavery on the new plantation

junya — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:14:01 +0000

by Kiilu Nyasha

A youngster in a Georgia forced labor camp around 1932 is subjected to an ugly form of punishment. – Photo: John Spivak

“Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It’s the same, but with a new name. They’re practicing slavery under color of law.”– Ruchell Cinque Magee

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution retained the right to enslave within the confines of prison: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” It was adopted Dec. 6, 1865.

Even before the abolition of chattel slavery, America’s history of prison labor had already begun in New York’s State Prison at Auburn soon after it opened in 1817. Auburn became the first prison that contracted with a private business to operate a factory within its walls. Later, in the post-Civil War period, the “contract and lease” system proliferated, allowing private companies to employ prisoners and sell their products for profit.

Today, such prisons are referred to as “factories with fences.”

The convict-lease system

In Southern states, Slave Codes were rewritten as Black Codes, a series of laws criminalizing the law-abiding activities of Black people, such as standing around, “loitering,” or walking at night, “breaking curfew.” The enforcement of these codes dramatically increased the number of Blacks in Southern prisons. In 1878, Georgia leased out 1,239 convicts, 1,124 of whom were Black.

The lease system provided slave labor for plantation owners or private industries as well as revenue for the state, since incarcerated workers were entirely in the custody of the contractors who paid a set annual fee to the state, about $25,000. Entire prisons were leased out to private contractors who literally worked hundreds of prisoners to death. Prisons became the new plantations; Angola State Prison in Louisiana was a literal plantation and still is except the slaves are now called convicts and the prison is known as “The Farm.” (A documentary of that title is available on DVD and online.)

The inherent brutality and cruelty of the lease system and the loss of outside jobs sparked resistance that eventually brought about its demise.

One of the most famous battles was the Coal Creek Rebellion of 1891. When the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co. locked out their workers and replaced them with convicts, the miners stormed the prison and freed 400 captives; and when the company continued to contract prisoners, the miners burned the prison down. The Tennessee leasing system was disbanded shortly thereafter. But it remained in many states until the rise of resistance in the 1930s.

Strikes by prisoners and union workers together were organized by the then radical CIO and other labor unions. They pressured Congress to pass the 1935 Ashurst-Sumners Act making it illegal to transport prison-made goods across state lines. But under President Jimmy Carter, Congress granted exemptions to the act by passing the Justice System Improvement Act of 1979, which produced the Prison Industries Enhancement program, or PIE, that eventually spread to all 50 states. This lifted the ban on interstate transportation and sale of prison-made products, permitting a for-profit relationship between prisons and the private sector and prompting a dramatic increase in prison labor which continues to escalate.

As the leasing system phased out, a new, even more brutal exploitation emerged – the chain gang. An extremely dehumanizing cruelty that chained men – and later women – together in groups of five, it was originated to build extensive roads and highways. The first state to institute chain gangs was Alabama, followed by Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana and Oklahoma.

Arizona’s first female chain gang was instituted in 1996. Complete with striped uniforms, the women of a Phoenix jail – to this day – spend four to six hours a day chained together in groups of 30, clearing roadsides of weeds and burying the indigent.

Georgia’s chain-gang conditions were particularly brutal. Men were put out to work swinging 12-pound sledge hammers for 16 hours a day, malnourished and shackled together, unable to move their legs a full stride. Wounds from metal shackles often became infected, leading to illness and death. Prisoners who could not keep up with the grueling pace were whipped or shut in a sweatbox or tied to a hitching post, a stationary metal rail. Chained to the post with hands raised high over his head, the prisoner remained tethered in that position in the Southern heat for many hours without water or bathroom breaks.

Thanks to a lawsuit settled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Alabama’s Department of Corrections agreed in 1996 to stop chaining prisoners together. A few years later, the center won a court ruling that ended use of the hitching post as a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

In response to the demands of World War II, the number of both free and captive road workers declined significantly. In 1941, there were 1,750 prisoners slaving in 28 active road camps for all types of construction and maintenance. The numbers bottomed out by war’s end at 540 captives in 17 camps.

The proliferation of prisons, jails and camps

Books by George Jackson – best sellers when they were published – remain very popular with today’s prisoners; but in California, possession of his books or even a clipping from the Bay View containing his name can result in punishments as torturous as indefinite solitary confinement.

In the 1940s, California Gov. Earl Warren conducted secret investigations into the state’s only prisons, San Quentin and Folsom. The depravity, squalor, sadism and torture he found led the governor to initiate the building of Soledad Prison in 1951.

Prisoners were put to work in educational and vocational programs that taught basic courses in English and math and provided training in trades ranging from gardening to meat cutting. At wages of 7 to 25 cents an hour, California prisoners used their acquired skills to turn out institutional clothing and furniture, license plates and stickers; seed new crops; slaughter pigs; and produce and sell dairy products to a nearby mental institution.

Within a decade this “model prison” at Soledad had become another torture chamber of filthy dungeons, literal “holes,” virulently racist guards, officially sanctioned brutality, torture and murder. Though prison jobs were supposed to be voluntary, if prisoners refused to work they were often given longer sentences, denied privileges or thrown into solitary confinement. Forced to work long hours under miserable conditions, in the 1960s, “Soledad Brother” George Jackson organized a work strike that turned into a riot after white strikebreakers tried to lynch one of the Black strikers.

The Black Movement’s resistance, led by George Jackson, W.L. Nolen and Hugo “Yogi” Pinell, eventually brought Congressional oversight and an overhaul of California’s prison system, according to “The Melancholy History of Soledad Prison” by Min S. Yee.

California’s prison population has risen exponentially to approximately 174,000 prisoners crammed into 90 penitentiaries, prisons and camps stretched across 900 miles of the fifth-largest economy in the world, as Ruth Gilmore’s book, “Golden Gulag,” reports. That number can be doubled or tripled by those on other forms of penal control, such as probation, parole or house arrest.

Since 1984, California has erected 43 prisons – and only one university – making it a global leader in prison construction. Most of the new prisons have been built in rural areas far from family and friends, and most captives are Black or Brown men, although the incarceration of women has skyrocketed. Suicide and recidivism rates approach twice the national average, and the state spends more on prisons than on higher education. (The seeming contradiction between 43 as the number of new prisons and 33, the total number of prisons in California, is explained by additional buildings constructed at a given prison complex.)

Between 1998 and 2009, the CDCR’s budget grew from $3.5 billion to $10.3 billion (the latest figures available). At the overcrowding peak in August 2007, the department had 72 gyms and 125 dayrooms jammed with 19,618 inmate beds.

“They provided an accurate and extremely graphic example of the crowding and inhumanity that engulfed the entire system,” said Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office in Berkeley, which sued to force the state to ease crowding as a way to improve the treatment of sick and mentally ill inmates.

The privatizing of federal and state prisons

Under court order to reduce overcrowding, by 2009, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) had transferred 8,000 prisoners to private prisons in four states –Tennessee, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Arizona, among the most virulently racist states in the country. The rest of the prisoners released from state prison in order to comply with the court ordered reduction were transferred to county jails. Currently, the inmate population is about 142,000, and CDCR must remove another 17,000 prisoners to reach the June 2013 court deadline.

At the peak of overcrowding, prisoners filled every empty space. This is the state prison in Lancaster, near Los Angeles, in 2008. – Photo: Spencer Weiner, AP

In 1985, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger lauded China’s prison labor program: “1,000 inmates in one prison I visited comprised a complete factory unit producing hosiery and what we would call casual or sport shoes … Indeed it had been a factory and was taken over to make a prison.” Burger called for the conversion of prisons into factories, the repeal of laws limiting prison industry production and sales, and the active participation of business and organized labor.

Heeding the judge’s call, California voters passed Proposition 139 in 1990, establishing the Joint Venture Program allowing California businesses to cash in on prison labor. “This is the new jobs program for California, so we can compete on a Third World basis with countries like Bangladesh,” observed Richard Holober with the California Federation of Labor.

Currently, California’s Prison Industrial Authority (CALPIA) employs 7,000 captives assigned to 5,039 positions in manufacturing, agricultural service enterprises, and selling and administration at 22 prisons throughout the state. It produces goods and services such as office furniture, clothing, food products, shoes, printing services, signs, binders, gloves, license plates, cell equipment and much more. Wages are 30 to 95 cents per hour before deductions.

For the state’s highest wage, $1 per hour, prisoners provide the “backbone of the state’s wildland firefighting crews,” according to an unpublished CDCR report. The California Department of Forestry saves more than $80 million annually using prison labor. California’s Department of Forestry has 200 fire crews comprised of CDCR and CYA (California Youth Authority) minimum-security captives housed in 46 conservation camps throughout the state. These prisoners average 10 million work hours per year according to the CDCR.

“Their primary function is to construct fire lines by hand in areas where heavy machinery cannot be used because of steep topography, rocky terrain or areas that may be considered environmentally sensitive” – i.e., the most dangerous fire lines.

This prisoner is working for Furniture Medic, which describes itself as one of the world's largest furniture repair and restoration companies.

Now at least 37 states have similar programs wherein prisoners manufacture everything from blue jeans to auto parts, electronics and toys. Clothing made in Oregon and California is exported to other countries, competing successfully with apparel made in Asia and Latin America.

One of the newest forms of slave labor is the U.S. Army’s “Civilian Inmate Labor Program” to “benefit both the Army and corrections systems,” according to its official Army website, by providing “a convenient source of labor at no direct cost to Army installations,” additional space to alleviate prison overcrowding, and cost-effective use of land and facilities otherwise not being utilized.

“With a few exceptions,” this program is currently limited to prisoners under the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) that allows the U.S. attorney general to provide the services of federal prisoners to other federal agencies, defining the types of services they can perform. The program stipulates that the “Army is not interested in, nor can afford, any relationship with a corrections facility if that relationship stipulates payment for civilian inmate labor. Installation civilian inmate labor program operating costs must not exceed the cost avoidance generated from using inmate labor.” In other words, the prison labor must be free of charge.

The three “exceptions” to exclusive federal contracting are as follows: 1) “a demonstration project” providing “prerelease employment training to nonviolent offenders in a State correctional facility” [CF]; 2) Army National Guard units, which “may use inmates from an off-post State and/or local CF”; 3) civil works projects that require such services as constructing or repairing roads, maintaining or reforesting public land, building levees, landscaping, painting, carpentry, trash pickup etc.

This Civilian Inmate Labor Program document includes in its countless specifications such caveats as “Inmates must not be referred to as employees.” A prisoner would not qualify if he/she is a “person in whom there is a significant public interest,” who has been a “significant management problem,” “a principal organized crime figure,” any “inmate convicted of a violent crime,” a sex offense, involvement with drugs within the last three years, an escape risk, “a threat to the general public.” Makes one wonder why such a prisoner isn’t just released or paroled. In fact, the “hiring qualifications” make me suspect the “Civilian Inmate Labor Program” is a backdoor draft, especially considering a military already stretched to its limit.

Note: When I tried to find an updated web page on the Civilian Inmate Labor Program, there was none. The date remains 2005 for its latest report. Could the latest data be classified?

The Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a nonprofit Justice Department subsidiary that does business as UNICOR, was created in 1935 and began supplying the Pentagon on a broad scale in the 1980s.

The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s under the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. but reached its height in 1990 under Bill Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. In fact, President Clinton accomplished a record $10 billion prison building boom in the 1990s.

His program for cutting the federal workforce resulted in the Justice Department’s contracting of private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates, according to Global Research, 2008.

By 2003, there were 100 FPI factories working 20,274 prisoners with sales totaling $666.8 million. And currently FPI employs about 19,000 captives, slightly less than 20 percent of the federal prison population, in 106 prison factories around the country. Profits totaled at least $40 million!

In 2005, FPI sold more than $750,000,000 worth of goods to the federal government. Sales to the Army alone put UNICOR on the Army’s list of top 50 suppliers, ahead of well-known corporations like Dell Computer, according to Wayne Woolley, Newhouse News Service.

In 2011, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released a report that exposes how private prison companies are “working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.” The report notes that while the total number of prisoners increased less than 16 percent, the number of people held in private federal and state facilities increased by 120 and 33 percent, respectively.

Government spending on so-called corrections rose to $74 billion in 2007. And in 2011 the two largest private prison companies – Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) – made over $2.9 billion in profits. These corporations use three strategies to influence public policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions and networking. They succeeded in getting Arizona’s harsh new immigration laws passed and came close to winning the privatization of all of Florida’s prisons.

A relatively new ordering tool used by BOP (Bureau of Prisons) is GSA Advantage! the federal government’s premier online ordering system that provides 24-hour access to over 17 million products and services, solutions available from over 16,000 GSA Multiple Award Schedules contractors, as well as all products available from GSA Global Supply.

UNICOR improved its method of breaking down and recycling the components of computer monitors and TVs after a series of articles in the Bay View by a former federal prisoner revealed the previous process that required prisoners with no protective gear to smash the glass screens by hand, causing unnecessary injuries and exposure to carcinogenic chemicals.

Since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the Army’s Communication and Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, N.J., has shipped more than 200,000 radios to combat zones, most with at least some components manufactured by federal inmates working in 11 prison electronics factories around the country. Under current law, UNICOR enjoys a contracting preference known as “mandatory source,” which obligates government agencies to try to buy certain goods from the prisons before allowing private companies to bid on the work. This same contracting restriction applies to state agencies.

The demand for defense products from FPI became so great that “national exigency” provisions were invoked so the 20 percent limit on goods provided in each category could be exceeded. The rules were waived during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Private manufacturers say they’ve been hurt by such practice, as they are unable to bid on various products.

According to the Left Business Observer, Federal Prison Industries produces 100 percent of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bulletproof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98 percent of the entire market for equipment assembly services, 93 percent of paints and paintbrushes, 92 percent of stove assembly, 46 percent of body armor, 36 percent of home appliances, 30 percent of headphones, microphones and speakers, 21 percent of office furniture, plus airplane parts, medical supplies and much more. Prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

By 2007, the overall sales figures and profits for federal and state prison industries had skyrocketed into the billions. Apparently, the military industrial complex (MIC) and the prison industrial complex (PIC) have joined forces.

The PIC is a network of public and private prisons, of military personnel, politicians, business contacts, prison guard unions, contractors, subcontractors and suppliers – all making big profits at the expense of the poor people who comprise the overwhelming majority of captives. The fastest growing industry in the country, it has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites and mail-order and Internet catalogs and direct advertising campaigns.

Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ labor lobby for longer sentences in order to expand their workforce.

Replacing the “contract and lease” system of the 19th century, private companies that have contracted prison labor include Microsoft, Boeing, Honeywell, IBM, Revlon, Pierre Cardin, Compaq, Victoria Secret, Macy’s, Target, Nordstrom and countless others.

In 1995, there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, private companies operate 264 correctional facilities housing some 99,000 adult prisoners. The two largest private prison corporations in the U.S., GEO Group and CCA, are transnationals, managing prisons and detention centers in 34 states, Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

A top performer on the New York Stock Exchange, CCA calls California its “new frontier” and boasts of investors such as Wal-Mart, Exxon, General Motors, Ford, Chevrolet, Texaco, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon and UPS. Currently, CCA has 80,000 beds in 65 facilities, and GEO Group operates 61 facilities with 49,000 beds, according to Wikipedia. [Editor's note: for updated data, check CCA and GEO websites]

Employers (read: slavers) don’t have to pay health or unemployment insurance, vacation time, sick leave or overtime. They can hire, fire or reassign inmates as they so desire, and can pay the workers as little as 21 cents an hour. The inmates cannot respond with a strike, file a grievance, or threaten to leave and get a better job.

On Sept. 19, 2005, UNICOR was commended for its outstanding support of the nation’s military. The deputy commander of the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia (DSCP) presented the Bureau of Prisons director with a “Supporting the Warfighter” award. The award recognized UNICOR for its tremendous support of DSCP’s mission to provide equipment, materials and supplies to each branch of the armed forces. “We at DSCP are very appreciative of UNICOR, especially with our critical need items. With more than $200 million worth of orders during fiscal years 2004 and 2005, UNICOR has not had a single delinquency.”

Mass roundups of immigrants and non-citizens, currently about half of all federal prisoners, and dragnets in low-income ‘hoods have increased the prison population to unprecedented levels. Andrea Hornbein points out in Profit Motive: “The majority of these arrests are for low level offenses or outstanding warrants and impact the taxpayer far more than the offense. For example, a $300 robbery resulting in a five-year sentence, at the Massachusetts average of $43,000 per year, will cost $215,000. That doesn’t even include law enforcement and court costs.”

Nearly 75 percent of all prisoners are drug war captives. A criminal record today practically forces an ex-con into illegal employment since he doesn’t qualify for legitimate jobs or subsidized housing. Minor parole violations, unaffordable bail, parole denials, longer mandatory sentencing and three strikes laws, slashing of welfare rolls, overburdened court systems, shortages of public defenders, massive closings of mental hospitals and high unemployment – about 50 percent for Black men – all contribute to the high rates of incarceration and recidivism. Thus, the slave labor pool continues to expand.

Among the most powerful unions today are the guards’ unions. The California Corrections Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) wields so much political power it practically decides who governs the state. Moreover, its members get the state’s biggest payouts, according to the L.A. Times: “More than 1,600 officers’ earnings exceeded legislators’ 2007 salaries of $113,098.” Base pay for 6,000 guards earning $100,000 or more totaled $453 million, with overtime adding another $220 million to wages. One lieutenant earned $252,570; that’s more than any other state official, including the governor.

California’s per prisoner cost has risen to $49,000, and that figure doubles and triples for elderly and high-security captives. That’s enough money to send a person through Harvard!

The National Correctional Industries Association (NCIA) is an international nonprofit professional association, whose self-declared mission is “to promote excellence and credibility in correctional industries through professional development and innovative business solutions.”

NCIA’s members include all 50 state correctional industry agencies, Federal Prison Industries, foreign correctional industry agencies, city and county jail industry programs, and private sector companies working in partnership with correctional industries.

Chattel slavery was ended following prolonged guerrilla warfare between the slaves and the slave-owners and their political allies. Referred to as the “Underground Railroad,” it was led by the revolutionary General Harriet Tubman with support from her alliances with abolitionists, Black and White. It only makes sense that this new form of slavery must produce prison abolitionists.

As George Jackson noted in a KPFA interview with Karen Wald in the spring of 1971: “I’m saying that it’s impossible, impossible, to concentration-camp resisters. … We have to prove that this thing won’t work here. And the only way to prove it is resistance … and then that resistance has to be supported, of course, from the street. … We can fight, but the results are … not conducive to proving our point … that this thing won’t work on us. From inside, we fight and we die. … (T)he point is – in the new face of war – to fight and win.”

Power to the people.

Kiilu Nyasha, Black Panther veteran, revolutionary journalist and Bay View columnist, blogs at The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha, where episodes of her TV talk show, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, along with her essays are posted. She can be reached at Kiilu2@sbcglobal.net. This essay, originally written in 2007, was updated in March 2012.

Re-asserting the cultural revolution in the National Occupy Movement

Mary — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:17:50 +0000

Waging and winning the cultural revolution means throwing off oppression by convincing the people that the interests of the ruling 1% are opposite, not identical to those of the 99%

by Zaharibu Dorrough, J. Heshima Denham, Kambui Robinson and Jabari Scott of the NCTT Corcoran Security Housing Unit (SHU)

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Michael Zaharibu Dorrough and his family are not the sort of patriarchal, authoritarian family that prepares children to confuse the interests of the ruling 1 percent with their own interests and to submit to oppression without protest.

Steadfast greetings, brothers and sisters. Our love and solidarity to you all. We felt it appropriate to open this statement with Dr. King’s call, which has been applicable to any given period where injustice is rife. We felt compelled to provide some necessary clarity and context to the struggle taking place.

The National Occupy Movement has been magnificent in how it has changed the framework in which the discourse on unequal distribution of wealth must be made. But in order for the movement to develop into the popular movement that it must become to effect permanent and meaningful change, the slogan, “We are the 99 percent,” must become a reality. It is imperative that both Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Occupy the Hood (OTH) struggle together to form a popular movement.

It is crucial to any lasting progress that we reignite the cultural revolution that was started early in this nation’s history but never fulfilled: John Brown’s revolt, Thomas Dorr’s rebellion, the civil and human rights struggles of the 1950s-‘60s, the armed revolts throughout this nation’s history, including the rebellions in Watts, Oakland (Kambui and Jabari’s hometown), Harlem, Detroit, Cleveland (Zaharibu’s hometown), Chicago (Heshima’s hometown), and Kent State, to name a few.

These struggles laid the foundation for the cultural revolution that the U.S. was in the process of undergoing up until the later 1970s. No society can make the necessary transformation from a capitalist, patriarchal, authoritarian, racist, sexist, homophobic, unjust one to one in which democratic ideals can prevail and fulfilling one’s potential is actually possible and encouraged without undergoing a cultural revolutionary transformation.

We are not talking about what kind of government we want; that can and will occur in time, and you will know when that time comes just as you knew that the time had come to fight this battle. A cultural revolution occurs during the transitional stage in the struggle and consists of people from different cultural – i.e., racial, ethnic, religious – backgrounds and schools of thought varying politically, economically, socially, spiritually, intellectually, educationally and sexually all coming together to realize a vision for the kind of society they want to share and live in. It is quite possibly the crucial step in a society transforming itself. That’s exactly what was underway toward the mid- to late 1970s.

We believe that because of the overall political immaturity of all but a few of the liberation groups at that time, the movement was not able to develop into a cohesive popular movement. As a result, groups were crushed, individuals either went into exile, were assassinated or imprisoned, while a lot of others in the movement were co-opted by the system.

Billions of dollars were spent on social programs during the Johnson administration. Yet most, perhaps all, of these programs no longer exist. The cultural revolution of that time – traditionally called the “social revolution” – was re-characterized as the “sexual revolution” by the ruling class, reduced to a period of time in which citizens engaged in promiscuous sex – nothing more.

It was part of the ruling class’s effort to de-legitimize the efforts made by those brave citizens who dared to struggle! Simultaneously, they were re-enforcing the puritanical component of the authoritarian mass psychology. It was also the intention of the ruling class to re-write the historical record of the period, thus depriving future generations of a historical record to build on.

There is already an understanding of the underlying conditions that are responsible for so much misery, and those conditions have always existed, but what is not as clear is why have so many accepted these conditions for so long? We will try to address that here.

But what must be clear at the outset is change, developing a popular movement, must consist of OWS and OTH forging meaningful coalitions with one another. Coalitions that recognize that this struggle is not a “white” struggle; it is a people’s struggle.

The Occupy Movement is not a “white” struggle; it is a people’s struggle. The middle class must be prepared to take the necessary steps to reach these goals and that includes reaching out to the underclass.

It must be recognized that in order for OWS to mature into a popular movement, the participation of OTH is required. Those citizens within OTH, the leadership, must mobilize with OWS. This is a protracted struggle. The middle class must be prepared to take the necessary steps to reach these goals and that includes reaching out to the underclass and OTH. OTH must see that it is in their interests to reach back and unite in this struggle.

What is a cultural revolution?

But what is it that we are struggling against? Exactly what is a cultural revolution? Why is it necessary, and what does it entail? How can it be waged successfully?

The answer lies in the nature of the struggle of the National Occupy Movement itself, the struggle between the interests of the ruling 1 percent and those of the 99 percent. It is a struggle between ideas that have been imposed on the people as a direct result of the changes in economic modes of production and the people’s unconscious acceptance, support and identification with those ideas and new ideas that reflect these warped artificial psychological structures in favor of those that free them from an exploitive political and economic relationship that serves a wealth elite.

It must be understood that our movement will NOT succeed in effecting a fundamental change in the mass psychological structure which supports this exploitive relationship. This is the core purpose of a cultural revolution, to eradicate unprogressive values, tendencies, sentiments and modes of thought. But before we can expound upon the characteristics of the cultural revolution, we first need to clearly analyze the core impediment to the successful conclusion of attempted cultural revolutions in the past.

The chief obstacle to the realization of progressive social change here has always been the patriarchal authoritarian psychological structure of reactionary men and women in the U.S. These concepts may be complex for those new to them, so we’ll attempt to be as clear and brief as possible.

For most of U.S. capitalist society’s existence, it has brutally exploited the labor, ideas and political will of the vast majority of its population to maintain and expand the wealth, power and privilege of a greedy elite ruling class the movement has identified as the 1 percent. It has been this way for hundreds of years and each time progressive social forces have attempted to cast off this yoke of oppression or move the nation closer to the idealistic sentiments expressed in the Declaration of Independence, those forces have been repressed, not simply by the ruling 1 percent and its tools, but by vast segments of the oppressed masses themselves.

What causes this illogical contradiction? What prevents the socio-economic situation they’re suffering through from reflecting the psychic structure of the masses? Again and again, throughout the history of progressive social movements, we see the economic and ideological situations of the masses in the U.S. not coinciding and in fact being at considerable variance. The socio-economic reality of the people is not directly and immediately translated into political consciousness; if it were, the social revolution would have been realized years ago. The answer lies in the unique historical processes that forged the character structure of the average Amerikan worker.

That process began with the introduction of patriarchy as the dominant force in social ideology in Europe and its impetus toward authoritarian control of every aspect of social life of the remaining members of the family unit, especially as it relates to the negation of natural social and biological processes. In the figure of the “father” the authoritarian ruling class has its representative in every family, so the family unit becomes its most vital instruments of power.

This patriarchal authoritarian process’ chief component is puritanical repression, and this is also the manner in which the ruling 1 percent chains the ideological structure of the lower middle and middle classes to its own interests. Unlike patriarchal authoritarianism, puritanical repression as a tool of mass social control is fairly recent – in the last 300 years.

If we analyze the history of puritanicalism and the etiology of the repression of natural human biological expression, you’ll find its origins aren’t at the beginning of cultural development. No, it was not until the organized establishment of patriarchal authoritarianism and the class system that puritanicalism starts to assert itself and begin to serve the interests of the ruling 1 percent in amassing material profit.

There is a logical reason for all of this when seen from the perspective of the thriving exploitation of human labor and the apparent enthusiasm of the people to accept that exploitation. You see, the ruling 1 percent very rarely need to resort to brute force to maintain control of society, as the owners of the means of production prefer to employ their ideological power over the oppressed as their primary weapon, for it is the ideology of puritanical patriarchal authoritarianism that is the mainstay of the ruling elite.

The ruling 1 percent very rarely need to resort to brute force to maintain control of society, as the owners of the means of production prefer to employ their ideological power over the oppressed as their primary weapon.

It is within the authoritarian family that the merging of the economic arrangement and the puritanical structure of society takes place; religious and other puritanical interests continue this function later. Thus, the authoritarian state has an enormous stake in the authoritarian family; it becomes the factory in which the state’s structure and ideology is molded.

Man’s authoritarian psychology is thus produced by embedding these puritanical inhibitions, guilt feelings and fear of freedom to experience natural forms of human expression. The suppression of one’s economic needs compasses a different psychological reaction than one’s natural human drives.

The suppression of one’s economic needs usually incites resistance, while the repression of natural biological needs removes those desires from the consciousness, embeds them in the subconscious and erects a “moral defense” against them, and in so doing prevents rebellion against both forms of suppression. The result is the inhibition of rebellion itself.

How the 1 percent suppresses the cultural revolution

In the average Amerikan, there is no trace of revolutionary thinking. It is this process that has strengthened political reaction in the U.S. and made far too many victims of economic inequality here passive, indifferent and apolitical. It has succeeded in creating a secondary force in man’s mind, an artificial interest that supports the authoritarian order of the ruling 1 percent.

In the average Amerikan, there is no trace of revolutionary thinking.

Yes, most are truly “trapped in the matrix.” This is observable at every level of this capitalist society. It is the conservative who first suggests reactionary repressive measures or curtailing civil liberties in the face of civil disobedience or broad political dissent. The Occupy Movement continues to experience this firsthand at the hands of national police forces.

The Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition here in the Corcoran State Prison SHU and in Pelican Bay continues to experience waves of retaliation from state prison industrialists. This “fear of freedom” is inherent to the authoritarian character structure of conservative man.

The conflict that originally takes place between natural desires and authoritarian suppression of these desires later becomes the conflict between instinct and morality within the person. This, of course, produces a contradiction within the person. Since man is not only the object of the historical processes that created the economic and ideological influences of his social life, but also reproduces them in his activities, his thinking and acting must be just as contradictory as the society from which they arose.

The U.S., for instance, is a society founded on the premises of “equality, freedom and the unalienable rights of man,” yet its formation, history and modern structure contradict this. When we speak of the realization of U.S. “manifest destiny” or the development and maintenance of its global hegemony, we are speaking of the systematic genocide of Native Americans, the organized theft of Native land, the slavery and brutalization of Africans and New Afrikans, the maintenance of institutional racism and sexism, imperialist war mongering, state-sponsored kidnapping, torture and targeted assassinations, suppression of sexual democracy, state imposition of religious moral imperatives that deprive others of their equal rights, the naked exploitation of human labor and suppression of organized labor, and the mass incarceration of the poor and people of color – all while espousing the ideas of “opportunity, fairness and equal protection under the law.”

This is the historical legacy of contradiction in the development and maintenance of U.S. society. These same contradictions are reproduced in the psychic-structures of its people.

Should the middle strata of White Amerika lose these warped concepts of “morality” to the same degree it continues to lose its intermediate position between the average worker and the upper class, this would seriously threaten the interests of the ruling 1 percent. You see, lurking also among this strata of the people, ever ready to break free of its reactionary tendencies, is the inherent revolutionary imperative of their socio-economic situation.

This is why since the start of the 2008 recession the FCC and virtually every segment of public and private enterprise has increased its push for “morality” and “strengthening traditional marriage,” because the authoritarian ideology and family unit forms the link from the wretched social reality of the lower middle class to reactionary ideology and social conservatism: The ideology of the 1 percent.

Where this ideology is uprooted from the compulsive family unit, the authoritarian system is threatened. They sense it on the horizon, and historically this is when the greatest ideological resistance asserts itself.

The socio-economic exploitation of the 99 percent, in its myriad manifestations, would not be possible without the psychological structure of the masses that accepts that status quo.

It is when the economically disenfranchised and dissatisfied classes begin to organize themselves, begin to fight for socio-political improvements and begin raising the cultural level of the broader masses that these authoritarian “moralistic” inhibitions set in. The bottom line here is every social order produces in the masses of its members that structure which it needs to achieve its main aims.

The U.S. is no different. The socio-economic exploitation of the 99 percent, in its myriad manifestations, would not be possible without the psychological structure of the masses that accepts that status quo. There is a direct correlation between the economic structure of capitalist society and the mass psychological structures of its members, not only in the sense that “the ruling ideology is the ideology of the ruling class,” but more essential to the question of a resurgence of the cultural revolution in the U.S. is that the contradictions of the economic structure of society are also embodied in the psychological structure of the subjugated masses.

The role of the cultural revolution

Which brings us to the cultural revolution itself. The role of the cultural revolution is to uproot these old unprogressive ideas and values which have served to keep us shackled to the legacy of oppressive relationships that define the majority of U.S. history and usher in new values which reflect the universal mores of freedom, justice, equality and human rights.

A cultural revolution is a reconstruction of a people’s way of life in order to move them to a given objective; it forms a new historical continuity in which re-evaluation of self, the people and the society compels us to cast aside historical revisionism. It will place the political power back in the hands of the people, rescue democracy from the stranglehold of corrupt political influences and corporate super-PACs.

The role of the cultural revolution is to uproot these old unprogressive ideas and values which have served to keep us shackled to the legacy of oppressive relationships that define the majority of U.S. history and usher in new values which reflect the universal mores of freedom, justice, equality and human rights.

A true cultural revolution entails more than simply chanting slogans, protest actions, hunger strikes or occupations. It’s more than changing our looks or altering our polling strategy to more closely reflect support for those issues dear to the movement. No, it entails changing our core psychology, how you think, changing your conduct and activities, your interactions and methods in order to transform society as a whole.

Cultural values are produced by economic and political systems. As we struggle against the institutional inequalities inherent in the U.S. capitalist arrangement, we will lose the cultural values of that system and will forge more humane values as the basis of new political and economic relationships. Such a revolution must encompass the common man and woman, illuminating for them the inherent interests in this national transformation of values and how it will positively impact their lives and the lives of their friends and loved ones. This is the reason the National Occupy Movement must organize and grow together.

Cultural values are produced by economic and political systems. As we struggle against the institutional inequalities inherent in the U.S. capitalist arrangement, we will lose the cultural values of that system and will forge more humane values as the basis of new political and economic relationships.

This calls for unity, the conscious development of united fronts and strategic alliances that grow deeper and richer as they experience trials and adversity, pass through ease and danger. Essentially this process IS the cultural revolution.

What must be understood is these different groups represent different class interests, political interests and economic interests and have different ideologies. It is the reality of this dynamic that has been the basis for the divide and rule politic that has governed life in this society and most others since the rise of monopoly capitalism. It is the basis of the primary contradiction now.

We have demonstrated how for the vast majority of this nation’s history, the ruling 1 percent has been successful in convincing desperate segments of society to identify their interests with the ruling 1 percent’s. Playing on “this” economic class interest of the middle strata or “that” religious moral lean of the lower middle strata, all along ensuring that whatever the ultimate outcome, their interests, the interests of the 1 percent elite, will be preserved as the ruling interests.

For the vast majority of this nation’s history, the ruling 1 percent has been successful in convincing desperate segments of society to identify their interests with the ruling 1 percent’s.

They’ve been consistently able to do so despite centuries of material evidence of their duplicity because they’ve been capable of maintaining control of not simply the context of these national discussions, but of the apparatus in which they’ve been held – corporate mass media – and the very cultural values upon which those discussions are based.

There is a relevant maxim which states, “The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.” The current struggle we are waging now in the National Occupy Movement, prisoner hunger strike solidarity movement, anti-imperialist movement etc. is a manifestation of the people’s consciousness that their interests and the interests of the ruling elite are not the same interests and in fact are and have always been diametrically opposed.

Winning the cultural revolution

It is for this reason that corporate entities, government officials, their police forces and corporate-owned mass media have made a collective and coordinated effort to downplay, discredit, underreport, dismiss, brutally attack, pass laws against and ultimately crush the movement before it can lead to a true cultural revolution which could force upon them a progressive transformation in the nature and structure of U.S. society.

This has been the historical trend in the U.S.:

• The gains of “Reconstruction” for New Afrikans were erased by the “1877 Compromise” that paved the way for Jim Crow and Lynch Law;

• The 1839 Anti-Renters Movement was crushed by brutality under the guise of law by 1845;

• Thomas Dorr’s rebellion for election reform in 1841 was crushed by 1842 and buried with the Supreme Court decision in Luther v. Borden in 1849;

• The Labor Movement of the International Working People’s Association of Albert Parsons and August Spies was crushed at the Haymarket Massacre on May 4, 1885;

• The aborted cultural revolution led by the Socialist Party and IWW in the 1900s was crushed by reform and brute force like the 1913 Ludlow Massacre in Colorado;

• The potential cultural revolution of the Civil Rights Movement was aborted by co-option, reform and assassinations;

• The cultural revolution of the late ‘60s to late ‘70s, which encompassed the Black Liberation Movement, Women’s Rights Movement, New Left Movement, Prison Movement, American Indian Movement and Anti-War Movement was systemically crushed by the FBI’s counter-intelligence program, superficial reforms and brutal, bloody force.

Cultural revolutions of these types in the U.S. historically all have a central purpose: to destroy the oppressors’ conditioned mores, attitudes, ways, customs, philosophies and habits that the dominant power base has instilled in us which allow these exploitive and repressive relationships to exist.

A cultural revolution is a revolution of one’s values, and the ruling 1 percent recognizes your values dictate your actions. They also realize where such a transformation in your worldview would lead; it was even noted in the Declaration of Independence: “(A)ll experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.”

A cultural revolution is a revolution of one’s values, and the ruling 1 percent recognizes your values dictate your actions. As long as the ruling 1 percent can keep you convinced that its values and interests are your own, you will continue to suffer oppression without protest.

As long as they can keep you convinced that the interests of the ruling 1 percent are your own, you will continue to be content to suffer the “evils” that you have without protestation. Thus, at all costs they must ensure you don’t realize that the values that have been instilled in you for generations – those of greed, racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, elitism, naked self-interest, religious intolerance, classism and thinly-veiled hypocrisy – were instilled to ensure you never realize you’ve long since been “reduced under absolute despotism,” and the political and economic choices available to you, no matter what your decisions, favor their interests first, and whatever interests support theirs most effectively secondly.

The entire purpose of socio-economic stratification and institutional racism is to ensure the ruling 1 percent can maintain control with “a minimum of force, a maximum of law, all made palatable by the fanfare of unity and patriotism,” as Howard Zinn wrote in “A People’s History of the United States.”

Brothers and sisters, this will not be easy because the most vital battles will have to be waged within you. But the reassertion of the cultural revolution is necessary if the movement is to realize actual success and not become just another footnote in the crushed movements of American history.

We will stand with you, wage struggle with you, but in the final analysis only you, the people, the 99 percent, can hoist this banner and carry the cultural revolution to its victorious conclusion – and on the other side a new and brighter world for us all. Until we win or don’t lose.

For more information on the NCTT (NARN (New African Revolutionary Nation) Collective Think Tank) Corcoran SHU and its work product, contact:

• Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, CSP-Cor-SHU, 4B1L #53, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• J. Heshima Denham, J-38283, CSP-Cor-SHU, 4B1L #46, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• Kambui Robinson, C-83820, CSP-Cor-SHU, 4B1L #49, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• Jabari Scott, H-30536, CSP-Cor-SHU, 4B1L #63, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

CDCR calls emergency meeting for hunger strike mediators as prisoner supporters rally outside

Mary — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:39:06 +0000

Supporters and family members will rally at CDCR Headquarters, North Building, 1515 S St., Sacramento, today, Thursday, April 26, 3 p.m.

by Isaac Ontiveros

Families and other supporters of California prisoners in solitary confinement are questioning the state’s strategy in calling this “emergency meeting” when state officials have made no real progress toward meeting the modest demands made a year ago when Pelican Bay SHU Short Corridor prisoners called for a hunger strike to begin July 1. The true emergency is that the torture of solitary confinement continues unabated, with retaliation for last year’s strikes on top of the usual abuses, and that unless substantial progress is made, the hunger strike leaders plan to call for a resumption of the strike on this July 1. Prisoners around the state vow to fast to the death if another strike is called and are mentally preparing to die. – Photo: Bill Hackwell

Sacramento – A little over a month after the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) released its “Security Threat Group Prevention, Identification and Management Strategy,” which proposes new gang validation and Security Housing Unit (SHU) step down procedures, the department has called a meeting with members of the mediation team advocating on behalf of SHU and Administrative Segregation (Ad-Seg or ASU) prisoners around the state as well as legislative aides in Sacramento.

Concerns have been raised that the new procedures would actually increase the number of people in the SHU, as the CDCR is recommending an expansion of the seven currently recognized prison gang affiliations to include other security threat groups, as well as broadening its current validation categories.

“Who are the real stakeholders? Prisoners and family members are the people most directly affected by the torture that is solitary confinement,” said Laura Magnani, a member of the mediation team. “Yet they are not being consulted in this process. The mediation team has done its best to respond to the proposal, but meaningful change will require real open participation.”

Though less than 72 hours’ notice was given for Thursday’s meeting, advocates and family members will rally outside CDCR headquarters beginning at 3 p.m. to show their ongoing support for SHU, ASU and Ad-Seg prisoners.

The proposed regulations are the CDCR’s most substantial response so far to the five core demands of thousands of prisoners around the state who engaged in two hunger strikes in 2011. The demands include an end to long term solitary confinement as well as gang validation. SHU sentences are meted out administratively by the CDCR as opposed to a judge, and indeterminate sentences are primarily reserved for those who have been validated as gang members.

The average indeterminate SHU sentence is six years, though some have spent more than 20 years in solitary confinement in California’s SHUs and Ad-Seg units. CDCR’s just released 10-year strategic plan, “The Future of California Corrections,” fails to address changes in SHU policies, further calling into question the sincerity of their plans. In response to the CDCR “Security Threat Group Prevention” proposal, one prisoner held in the Pelican Bay SHU said, “This document is a representation of the ongoing contradictions and inhumane treatment of prisoners held specifically in solitary confinement which has the potential to affect all state prisoners, women and men.”

While the CDCR has not set a public agenda for this meeting, there is hope that this will be an opportunity specifically for legislative offices to push CDCR to make meaningful changes. “Legislative aides from a number of offices, including the Assembly Public Safety Committee, will be in attendance,” says Azadeh Zohrabi, a member of the mediation team. “We’re hoping that they take this chance to ask the tough questions and demand answers that will bring relief to prisoners being subjected to inhumane conditions daily.” For more information and updates, 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.

‘If you don’t debrief, you can’t leave the SHU, period!’

Mary — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 06:04:30 +0000

by Peter Salazar

Supporters rallied outside the Pelican Bay Prison gate on Oct. 1, 2011, during the second round of last year’s hunger strike.

I was incarcerated June 1995. I went through the prison receiving center in December of 1995.

In January of 1996, I was sent to High Desert State Prison. I was placed on a maximum security yard because I was a lifer.

In April of 1996, I was taken to Ad-Seg (Administrative Segregation) by IGI (Institutional Gang Investigations). I was never told why I was being housed in Ad-Seg.

After several months in Ad-Seg, I was allowed to go back out to the general population. After a riot broke out, which I was not involved in, I was taken back to Ad-Seg by IGI.

About a year later I was again allowed access to the mainline. The prison was on lockdown for 17 months. I never left my cell.

The day before we were to come off of lockdown, I was again escorted by IGI to Ad-Seg. This time IGI told me that they sent a validation packet to Sacramento to validate me as a gang member.

I told IGI that I am not a gang member. IGI then told me that a prison informant said that I was trying to be a gang member, and that was good enough for them.

IGI then told me that if I wanted to stay on the mainline, all I had to do was tell on other gang members and I could stay on the mainline. I told IGI, “I am no snitch.” I want to know who said that I’m a gang member. IGI said, “We don’t have to tell you that.”

I told IGI that I am not a gang member. IGI then told me that a prison informant said that I was trying to be a gang member, and that was good enough for them.

I was sent to Pelican Bay State Prison SHU (Security Housing Unit) in 1999. I have been to every UCC and ICC (Unit and Institutional Classification Committees) hearing.

I always tell them that I am not a gang member. But all they do is laugh at me and make disrespectful comments.

I’ve been to two six-year inactive reviews since I’ve been here in the SHU. Both times I was denied, because IGI/OCS (Office of Correctional Safety) and the committee said because in 1996 I was found guilty of gang activity, I will have to stay here in the SHU.

I have repeatedly told the committee that I’ve done nothing wrong in the last six years. Aren’t you supposed to let me go back out to the mainline?

Committee always says, “If you don’t debrief, you can’t leave the SHU. Period!” Now I will be going to committee for my six-year inactive review April 2012.

IGI searched my cell Sept. 8, 2011. I was awakened at 4 a.m., strip searched, allowed only boxers and shower shoes, then taken to the rotunda and photographed.

All my property was taken by IGI. I was told it’s for my six-year inactive review. Three days later I was given some property back.

IGI threw a bunch of my stuff away and said it was “trash.” That was a lie by IGI. Some of my stuff they said was contraband and not allowed. The rest of the stuff they said was “gang activity.”

The items used by IGI will be three drawings, two of which have the Mexican huelga bird, or United Farm Workers logo. One item is a debriefer’s testimony.

None of these items constitute active gang activity, nor should they be considered gang activity. But I’m 100 percent sure that when I go to my inactive review in a few days, committee will say, “We are going to retain you in the SHU as an active gang member.”

This process of how they get information to validate you and keep you in the SHU is foul. I’ve been in the SHU Short Corridor for the last seven years. I don’t see CDCR releasing anyone in the Short Corridor.

I have challenged my gang validation. I went as far as you can go. The CDCR system denied me at every level. The courts denied me, and said it’s an administration issue.

I refuse to believe that I should be treated like an animal so that prison guards and politicians can line their pockets with fat paychecks for locking us in cells for 22½ hours a day, then calling it “security needs.”

The prison system has made solitary confinement a lucrative business. Housing us in solitary confinement costs $30,000 more than housing us in the general population.

I refuse to believe that I should be treated like an animal so that prison guards and politicians can line their pockets. The prison system has made solitary confinement a lucrative business. Housing us in solitary confinement costs $30,000 more than housing us in the general population.

I lost my mother to cancer on Mother’s Day 2010. My biggest regret was not being able to hold her or kiss her on our last visit 2009.

My father was diagnosed with liver cancer and is dying. His last wish is to hug me and say goodbye.

This testimony was written on April 11, 2012, and transcribed by Kendra Castaneda.

Sundiata Acoli, political prisoner for 39 years, wins appeal and is up for parole again

Mary — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 06:13:53 +0000

Sundiata Acoli

Attorney Bruce Afran’s appeal of Sundiata Acoli’s parole denial and 10-year hit resulted in the New Jersey Appellate Court’s remand to the New Jersey Parole Board that its 10-year hit be cut to three years. It was done and Sundiata has become immediately eligible for a parole hearing again. The Appellate Court must still rule on Sundiata’s 2010 denial of parole, but meanwhile he’s preparing to go before the parole board again for his newly won 2012 parole hearing. In that regard, he would greatly appreciate any and all letters sent to the parole board urging that he be released.

Sundiata is 75 years of age and has been in prison 39 years, resulting from a stop of his car by state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973, which erupted in gunfire that resulted in the death of his passenger, Zayd Shakur, and a state trooper, Werner Foerster. The other passenger, Assata Shakur, was critically wounded and captured on the scene, where another trooper, James Harper, was also wounded. Sundiata was wounded at the scene, captured in the woods 40 hours later and subsequently sentenced to life in New Jersey state prison.

Sundiata is now the longest held prisoner in New Jersey’s history of similar convictions. He has maintained an outstanding record in prison and has had only a few minor disciplinary reports over the past 30 years and none during the last 16 years. He’s also maintained an excellent work and scholastic record and has always been a positive influence in prison, particularly in mentoring prisoners toward becoming crime-free benefactors to the community upon return to society and thereby break their cycle of recidivism.

Sundiata is a 75-year-old grandfather who has long been rehabilitated, has long satisfied all requirements for parole and has no or “little likelihood of committing another crime,” which is the main criterion for parole in New Jersey. Sundiata is an old man, in declining health, who wishes to live out the rest of his days in peace tending his grandchildren.

Send letters urging the board that 39 years is enough! Release Sundiata Acoli! His New Jersey prison number is 54859, and his federal prison number is 39794-066. Address letter to: New Jersey State Parole Board, P.O. Box 862, Trenton NJ 08625, BUT ADDRESS and MAIL THE ENVELOPE TO: Florence Morgan, Esq., 120-46 Queens Blvd., Queens NY 11415. Your letter will be forwarded to the parole board after a copy is made for SAFC files.

Thank you for your support. Please keep in touch with SundiataAcoli.org at the Sundiata Acoli Freedom Page to stay abreast of Sundiata’s parole situation and additional ways you can express support and solidarity with his parole effort.

Sundiata sends his sincerest condolences to the family and comrades of Christian Gomez, the prisoner who died in the California Prisoners’ Hunger Strike – and his warmest shout out of solidarity and strength to all those participating in or supporting the California Prisoners’ Hunger Strike.

Sundiata and his Freedom Campaign, SAFC, send their sincerest condolences to the family and comrades of Christian Gomez, the prisoner who died in the California Prisoner’s Hunger Strike – and we send our warmest shout out of solidarity and strength to all those participating in or supporting the California Prisoners’ Hunger Strike.

Who is Sundiata Acoli?

Sundiata Acoli, a New Afrikan political prisoner of war, mathematician and computer analyst, was born Jan. 14, 1937, in Decatur, Texas, and raised in Vernon, Texas. He graduated from Prairie View A&M College of Texas in 1956 with a B.S. in mathematics and for the next 13 years worked for various computer-oriented firms, mostly in the New York area.

Portrait of George Jackson - Artist: Sundiata Acoli

During the summer of 1964 he did voter registration work in Mississippi. In 1968 he joined the Harlem Black Panther Party and did community work around issues of schools, housing, jobs, child care, drugs and police brutality.

In 1969 he and 13 others were arrested in the Panther 21 conspiracy case. He was held in jail without bail and on trial for two years before being acquitted, along with all other defendants, by a jury deliberating less than two hours.

Upon release, FBI intimidation of potential employers shut off all employment possibilities in the computer profession and stepped-up COINTELPRO harassment, surveillance and provocations soon drove him underground.

In May 1973, while driving the New Jersey Turnpike, he and his comrades were ambushed by N.J. state troopers. One companion, Zayd Shakur, was killed; another companion, Assata Shakur, was wounded and captured. One state trooper was killed and another wounded, and Sundiata was captured days later.

After a highly sensationalized and prejudicial trial, he was convicted of the death of the state trooper and was sentenced to Trenton State Prison (TSP) for life plus 30 years consecutive.

Upon entering TSP he was subsequently confined to a new and specially created Management Control Unit (MCU) solely because of his political background. He remained in MCU almost five years, let out of the cell only 10 minutes a day for showers and two hours twice a week for recreation.

In September 1979, the International Jurist interviewed Sundiata and subsequently declared him a political prisoner. A few days later prison officials secretly transferred him during the middle of the night to the federal prison system and put him en route to the infamous federal concentration camp at Marion, Illinois, although he had no federal charges or sentences. Marion is one of the highest security prisons in the U.S., also one of the harshest, and there Sundiata was locked down 23 hours a day. In July 1987 he was transferred to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas.

In the fall of 1992, Sundiata became eligible for parole. He was not permitted to attend his own parole hearing and was only allowed to participate via telephone from USP Leavenworth. Despite an excellent prison work, academic and disciplinary record, despite numerous job offers in the computer profession, and despite thousands of letters on his behalf, Sundiata was denied parole. Instead, at the conclusion of a 20-minute telephone hearing, he was given a 20-year hit, the longest hit in New Jersey history, which dictates that he must do at least 12 more years before coming up for parole again.

The Parole Board’s stated reason for the 20-year hit was Sundiata’s membership in the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army prior to his arrest, the receipt of hundreds of “Free Sundiata” form letters that characterized him as a New Afrikan Prisoner of War, and the feeling that the punitive aspects of his sentence had not been satisfied and that rehabilitation was not sufficiently achieved.

The Parole Board’s stated reason for the 20-year hit was Sundiata’s membership in the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army prior to his arrest, plus the receipt of hundreds of “Free Sundiata” form letters that characterized him as a New Afrikan Prisoner of War.

The real reason for the 20-year hit is to attempt to force Sundiata to renounce his political beliefs and to proclaim to the world that he was wrong to struggle for the liberation of his people.

Send our brother some love and light: Sundiata Acoli (Squire), 39794-066, P.O. Box 1000, FCI Cumberland, Cumberland MD 21501.

Words from Assata Shakur

Assata radiant

“I want so much for Sundiata to know how much he is loved and respected. I want him to know how much he is appreciated by revolutionaries all over the world. I want Sundiata to know how much he is cherished by African people, not only in the Americas, but all over the Diaspora. I want him to know how much we admire his strength, his courage, his kindness and compassion. Sundiata loves freedom and we must struggle for the life and freedom of Sundiata.”

Take action to demand change now!

Mary — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 04:09:28 +0000

by Todd Ashker

Kendra,

April 4 – I agree with your view of the corruption in our government and system of laws. I understand your anger and bitterness at the hypocrisy and unfairness! You’ve seen how it works and you’ve seen those you love get the shaft from the system because they’re not rich and don’t have the high level connections. The dirty sh-t going on behind closed doors every day is sickening. It’s fraudulent and a big sham.

This may be a good opportunity to share direct action ideas and techniques to bring lifesaving change to California prisons. More than 20 trainings are scheduled in the Bay Area – nearly a thousand nationwide – in the next few days, including one at City College of San Francisco on April 18. See the99spring.com.

You’ve seen what one of my positions is: Most of us should not even be in these sh-t holes! The only reason for it is money and politics of special interests. The poor aren’t considered a special interest. They’re considered expendable!

There are other evil motives involved. I believe this nation incarcerates so many people for purposes of psychological control of the masses. The article from Moscow in reference to the U.N. petition said many other nations have been discussing the fact that the USA is becoming more and more of a police state. It’s obvious we’re close to becoming a fascist government! But, it might be stopped because more and more people are waking up.

I really believe the time is ripe to force change to California’s sentencing laws and also paroles of lifers – it can be done with peaceful protest type activity. But it will require a very big committed effort. It needs to be propagated real big – exposing the fraud, corruption, waste of billions – and all of it tied into the sentencing laws and failure to parole enough lifers, who are way beyond our minimum terms!

And it will require very solid, committed, direct action. Words are powerful, but they must be accompanied by “direct action” in a coordinated, correlative effort in order to be effective. That’s been the problem with a lot of struggles in this country; during the past 25-30 years, there’s been a lot of words – a lot of rhetorical dialogue about fighting the good fight for change – with little to no direct action.

I believe you have to show by your actions that the cause is serious and worthy of putting lives on the line if necessary to draw attention and force the changes sought. As the old saying goes, “Power to the People!” It’s time. People have power when they come together collectively to make a hard core stand for a cause!

As the old saying goes, “Power to the People!” It’s time. People have power when they come together collectively to make a hard core stand for a cause!

There are thousands of prisoners in the California prison system who are not serving valid sentences – sentencing laws based on special interest politics are not valid. They are political. That equates to thousands of political prisoners rotting in these dungeons while our families and loved ones suffer too.

Families and loved ones need to rally together for the common cause and make a solid, hard core stand to demand changes. “Rights” are not given; they are taken by the people!

In other countries around the world – South America and Africa come to mind – families and loved ones have rallied and stood together in public places – gone on hunger strikes outside the capitol buildings and refused to move until the changes were made. This has been successful.

People out there need to think about these types of direct actions because the time for it is NOW! A STAND AND DEMAND FOR CHANGE HAS TO BE MADE!

Send our brother some love and light: Todd Ashker, C-58191, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532. Todd is one of the four prisoner representatives who presented California prison officials with five core demands and called two major hunger strikes in 2011 that at their peak drew 12,000 participants in prisons throughout California. This open letter was written to and transcribed by Kendra Castaneda.

Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement presents counter-proposal opposing CDCR ‘Security Threat Group Strategy’

Mary — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 06:51:51 +0000

by Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (Dewberry), Arturo Castellanos, Todd Ashker and Antonio Guillen

Preface

Pelican Bay prison guard George Sherman carries a rifle whenever a guard enters a cell pod in the SHU. – Photo: John Burgess, Santa Rosa Press Democrat

The Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit (PBSP SHU) short corridor prisoner representatives have read, carefully considered and hereby oppose the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR’s) March 1, 2012, “Security Threat Group Prevention, Identification and Management Strategy“ proposal (hereinafter proposal), based on the following reasons. Additionally, we do hereby present our counter proposal.

I: Summary of issues

Beginning in May of 2011, the PBSP SHU short corridor prisoners collective presented CDCR with a formal notice of intent to go on a peaceful protest hunger strike beginning July 1, 2011, in order to expose and force policy changes regarding our subjection to 25 years of torturous human rights abuse in California SHU and Administrative Segregation (Ad Seg) units. The formal notice included a list of five core demands and a formal complaint summarizing the facts and circumstances leading up to and supporting the basis for putting our lives on the line to stop the torture of our families and ourselves.

Top CDCR administrators admitted several times that the five core demands made by prisoners were reasonable and, during the negotiations conducted in late July, August and October 2011 between CDCR administrators and PBSP SHU prisoner reps and our outside mediation team, the CDCR made repeat assurances that the five core demands would all be addressed via meaningful, substantive changes, responsive to the specific demands as soon as possible. The five core demands are summarized here for the purpose of clarity:

1. Eliminate group punishment. When an individual prisoner breaks a rule, the prison staff often punishes a whole group of prisoners of the same race. This practice has been applied to keep prisoners in the SHU indefinitely and as a pretext for justifying the imposition of harsher conditions in SHU and Ad Seg units.

When an individual prisoner breaks a rule, the prison staff often punishes a whole group of prisoners of the same race.

2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria. Prisoners are accused of being participants in illegal gang activity based on innocent associational activity and unsupported fabricated “evidence” provided by confidential prisoner informants, resulting in indefinite SHU isolation torture. And to obtain release from these torturous conditions, they must successfully “debrief”; this means provide staff with information about gang activity. Debriefing produces false information that CDCR-OCS uses to justify the indefinite torture of thousands of California prisoners via SHU isolative sensory deprivation for coercive purposes, as well as endangering the lives of debriefing prisoners and their families.

3. Comply with the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) report, calling for an end to the use and abuse of long-term isolation as well as the use of segregation as “a last resort for as short a time period as possible.” And when segregation is necessary, there needs to be access to meaningful programming, human contact, sunlight etc.

4. Provide adequate food, food that is nutritious and served in adult-size portions on clean, sanitary trays. Prisoners must have the ability to purchase nutritional supplements.

5. Expand on and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU prisoners with a list of examples of things provided at similar supermax prisons across the nation.

With respect to core demands 1, 2, 3 and 5, regarding policy and practice of the basis for indefinite SHU isolation, avenue(s) available for gaining one’s release therefrom, and the progressively punitive nature of SHU and Ad Seg conditions, it’s important to remember, many SHU prisoners have been held indefinitely and subject to sensory deprivation and every other abuse imaginable that occurs in such hidden hell holes for 10 to 40-plus years and counting, solely based on what the CDCR Office of Correctional Safety (OCS) refers to as their “intelligence system,” i.e., debriefer allegations and innocent associational activity without ever actually being charged and found guilty of committing a criminal gang-related act.

Thus, the parties understood CDCR’s intelligence system for indefinite SHU placement was one of the major issues of concern to the class of SHU prisoners and their families, subjected to such long term isolation and abuse without being charged and found guilty of committing a criminal act by credible evidence and after the due process such formal charges would require. The parties all understood [the need for] a major fundamental change away from the above referenced “intelligence” based system to a “behavioral” based system, defined as a system wherein prisoners who engage in “criminal gang activity” that is supported by “credible evidence” will be subject to sanctions (per CCR, Title 15, §§ 3312-3315, et seq., i.e., rule violation reports, referral for prosecution, determinate SHU term, and corresponding loss of privileges – after receiving due process and being found guilty of the criminal act alleged).

On March 9, 2012, CDCR issued a press statement and presented their proposed gang management policy changes (the proposal) in response to our peaceful protest activity and related five core demands and the negotiation process referenced above.

II: CDCR’s proposal is not acceptable

The PBSP SHU short corridor prisoner reps have read and carefully considered CDCR’s March 2112 proposal and we hereby summarize our opposition to the proposal. This rejection is based upon the CDCR’s failure to act in good faith, as demonstrated by the mockery made of our agreements (referenced in above Section I), including Secretary Cate’s delegation of the policy change process to the Office of Correctional Safety (OCS), which resorted to the same 25 years-plus fear tactics of California prison gangs being the “worst of the worst” in order to propagate, manipulate and promote their own underlying agenda, which is to increase the power, staffing and money of the OCS office within CDCR. (See, e.g., in the last paragraph on page 5 of the proposal: “the continuing evolution of our existing intelligence network.”)

Note that the OCS is the gang intelligence goon squad in charge of the Special Services Unit (SSU) and Institutional Gang Investigation (IGI) unit within CDCR. This propagandist, manipulative abuse of state power includes the ongoing use of long-term isolation and sensory deprivation designed to coerce prisoners to become state informants, while also making a ton of money from such SHU/Ad Seg torture units.

The proposal seeks to manipulate the lawmakers and the taxpayers into allowing the CDCR-OCS to significantly expand on the use of these SHU and Ad Seg units, via the creation of new criteria and classes of what they term Security Threat Groups (STG) involved in “criminal gang behavior.” (See the proposal in general.)

The CDCR-OCS is asking the lawmakers and taxpayers to allow it to continue to violate thousands of prisoners’ human rights, including the use of torture with impunity based on false propaganda scare tactics exemplified below.

The CDCR-OCS is asking the lawmakers and taxpayers to allow it to continue to violate thousands of prisoners’ human rights, including the use of torture with impunity based on false propaganda scare tactics.

The proposal and related CDCR press statement begin with propaganda, claiming California prison gangs are “the most violent and sophisticated prison gangs in the nation. California prison gangs are connected to major criminal activity and have had influences on nearly every prison system within the United States,” according to the press statement of March 9, 2012; similar statements appear in the proposal on pages 2, 3 and 5.

They also claim their current torture practices, those utilized for over 25 years, have been “successful in reducing the impact sophisticated gang members have in CDCR facilities” by “isolating them from the general population” (proposal page 2, paragraphs 2 and 4). These are the same manipulative tactics used by OCS for 25 years. They’ve gotten away with it at a cost of hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars and with the destruction and severe physical and psychological damage long term subjection to torture units has caused thousands of prisoners and their loved ones outside prison.

And all of this in the face of the facts and evidence to prove that CDCR-OCS’ propaganda-style manipulative statements are false. In spite of being subject to 25 to 40 years of extreme security surveillance by alleged gang expert special agents, the majority of the prisoners classified as prison gang members have never been charged or found guilty of any criminal gang-related acts! Moreover, a statistical study of the CDCR’s practice during the 25-year period prior to imposition of the current policy of placing all prison gang affiliates in SHU and comparing this data with the current 25-year SHU policy will prove that CDCR general population prisoners have been significantly more violent and out of control since the current policy has been in place.

CDCR-OCS is directly at fault for these 25 years of madness in the general population prisons by way of staff manipulating prisoners against each other to further the staff’s agenda. A lot of riots and other violence is useful support for increasing prison construction, staffing, extra hazard pay, overtime etc.

CDCR-OCS’ gang management policy of the last 25 years is a 100 percent failure, and its March 2012 proposed changes are not acceptable because they seek to increase the use of torture units and do not change the manner of dealing with those classified as prison gang members at all, which is a blatant violation of the parties’ agreement(s) during the negotiation process last year. This is shown by reference to the following examples:

A) The proposal wants to change the classification of “prison gang member” into “security threat group I” member (STG-1 member), while continuing the current policy and practice of keeping these alleged gang members in SHU indefinitely, using the same alleged “evidence” that’s been used for the past 25 years. The proposal specifies that STG- I members will remain in SHU indefinitely, until they successfully complete the process or the “step down program” consisting of a minimum of four years to complete all four steps.

Protesters rallied outside CDCR headquarters in Sacramento on July 18, 2011, during the first round of the hunger strike. – Photo: Grant Slater, KPCC

Notably, it states, “STG-I members will remain in SHU and will not be able to gain release to the general prison population via step down program based on IGI’s confirmation of participation in criminal gang behavior.” Confirmation requires either “1) a guilty finding in a serious Rules Violation Report; and/or 2) any document that clearly describes the gang behavior and is referred to the Institution Gang Investigator (IGI) for confirmation.” No. 2 is in reference to “documentation,” consisting of statements from confidential inmate informants/ debriefers, staff’s alleged observations, and other forms of innocent, associational type behavior. (See pages 3, 7 and 17-25.)

This is the exact same process CDCR-OCS has used and abused for 25 years. This changes nothing for the prisoners classified as prison gang members, which is a majority of those in PBSP short corridor, most of whom have been in SHU for between 10 and 40 years already – without ever being formally charged and found guilty of a criminal gang act.

B) The proposal fails to make meaningful, substantive changes responsive to core demands 1, 2 and 3 – and does so unsatisfactorily re core demand 5, e.g., making a mockery of our request for weekly phone calls, contact visits for steps 3 and 4 etc. And we see no point in having four steps – each requiring a minimum of one year to complete. And the vague wording in the rest of the proposal leaves too much room for abuse and manipulation – which CDCR-OCS staff have a long history of doing. All of this makes the CDCR-OCS proposal unacceptable.

III: PBSP SHU Short Corridor Prisoner Representatives

Based on CDCR’s lack of good faith in the process of changing their illegal policies and practices regarding the use and abuse of long-term isolation torture and for the reasons briefly summarized above, together with our belief that the CDCR-OCS proposal is so blatantly out of step with what was agreed to during negotiations between July through October of 2011, as to constitute an intentional stall tactic designed to prolong our subjection to those torturous conditions.

Therefore, we hereby respectfully present our attached counter proposal – to be implemented without further delay.

Respectfully submitted by the negotiators named at the end of this Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement statement

Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement Proposal

Modern Management Control Unit (MMCU)

This proposal starts by looking at concrete programs that have been implemented by CDCR and functioned effectively and by examining how they can be immediately adopted to the present-day PBSP and all 180 prison structures.

In the 1970s and 1980s the Max-B management control unit (MCU) programs, such as Chino, DVI and San Quentin Max-B, afforded as much programming as the general population (GP) prisoners had, and held individual prisoners accountable who failed to program within the MCU setting.

Today in 2012 there are still some small Max-B type programs functioning in a few CDCR facilities under different names, but segregated with the same objectives.

The new 180-design prison complexes are perfectly structured for the necessary control setting and for meeting all the security requirements needed to make this modern Max-B MCU type of unit more durable and cost-effective to operate for the California taxpayers.

PBSP B Control Program

PBSP B facility – control/behavior program facility – for the general population prototype can be implemented as a pilot program and used at other 180-design prison complexes. PBSP B facility can serve a dual purpose of allowing for a short period of decompression time for validated SHU or Ad Seg prisoners who have served decades in supermax SHUs. This applies to prisoners who have not received any serious CDCR RVR 115s for any individual behavioral misconduct demonstrating factually reliable evidence of the prisoner currently engaging in criminal gang activity that shall and can be prosecuted as a criminal offense within California’s state or federal courts.

An aerial view of Pelican Bay State Prison – Photo: CDCR

The second purpose of this M-MCU program shall allow validated prisoners to successfully complete the 90-day step program; this is a three-phase program for re-entry back in the general population of a prison setting, within the new modern structural environment of the 180 design prisons like the old MCU program – similar to what existed in the mid-1970s and 1080s at Chino, DVI, San Quentin Max-B units and old Folsom State Prison – i.e., restricted housing units.

PBSP B facility is an ideal institution for the Max-B MCU Program for release to the GP, because it is in a level IV maximum security prison, with an existing policy requiring that inactive affiliates be housed on close B status within a level IV prison setting for a period of observation that shall be no longer than 12 months.

Upon completion of that observation period, the prisoner shall be transferred to another control/behavior unit (CBU) facility to GP. In the absence of real safety needs (i.e. a specific conduct/behavior act), the prisoner may be housed in a facility consistent with his classification score.

PBSP B facility is comprised of eight housing units with one main exercise yard that is divided into three smaller separate yards with approximately 20 cells per section (i.e., A, B and C) for building 1, and building 2 is a repeat of building 1. Each housing unit has three separate housing sections, with an approximate capacity of 40 prisoners in each section. Thus, each housing unit has room for approximately 120 prisoners and a facility capacity of 900 prisoners.

Additionally, each housing unit has a separate concrete wall encased yard, with a capacity of 20 to 40 prisoners during the prisoners’ exercise periods. There are generally two or three exercising periods each day. Prisoners can effectively be segregated to fit security and safety standards, like what existed under the past management control units. All segregated programming can be operated by a schedule of Group A, Group B and Group C.

Modern Management Control Facility (MMCF/GP) has three phases:

Phase I: Initial placement into MMCF from the SHU shall be for a minimum of 30 days, with no group programming, no designated work group participation, allowed non-contact visits.

Phase II: Programming within a prisoner’s particular classification assigned to Group A, B or C. Eating in dining hall. Phase II placement shall be for a minimum of 60 days, with contact visits.

Phase III: The successful completion of 90 days MMCF/GP programming, meaning a prisoner has full access to one of the main exercise yards with his assigned group.

In Phase I, the Classification Committee will designate the assigned work group; Phase II work group A1, A2, B privilege group; Phase II work group A1, A2, B privileged work group.

1. Classification should be every 90 days

2. Telephone access: one call per month

3. Contact visits

4. Educational programs

5. Canteen items not to exceed one month’s draw of assigned privilege group

6. Conjugal visits

7. Feeding in unit’s dining halls

8. Transfer CAT Programs

9. Prisoners should be able to transfer to another institution with a MMCF to GP after one year, in order to be closer to family.

Additional requirements and support for our proposal

A. IGI and OCS should discontinue the arbitrary, unfair practice of relying on allegations from confidential informant/debriefers to keep prisoners in SHU and/or from advancing out of SHU, unless such allegations are supported by credible evidence and thereby result in issuance of a CDCR 115 Rule Violation Report and required due process thereafter who himself has been denied inactive status.

Countless prisoners in California have been "validated" as prison gang members for having a copy of the Bay View in their cell. Other prisons withhold the Bay View from subscribers. But in many prisons around the country, the Bay View is used as a textbook by prisoner study groups like this one.

B. Discontinue relying on innocent associational activity, such as roster list, group petitions, address books, poems, drawings, portraits, literature, published books, manuscripts, signing of birthday cards, signing of condolence cards, legal work, chronos for talking, envelopes with a validated prisoner’s name on it etc., unless IGI can disclose undisputed evidence during inactive review that the prisoner under review has written to another on a roster list who is promoting current gang activity; written to the address of another validated prisoner who is promoting current gang activity. The same proof of evidence shall apply to poems, drawings, cards literature, etc., showing the prisoner how his written material has promoted “current gang activity,” gang violence etc.

It is known that there are IGI and ISU and OCS officials who are deliberately, during the inactive reviews, misinterpreting what constitutes current gang activity, as well as relying on flimsy information that contains no credible evidence or documentation about the prisoner who is under review, showing him to be planning, organizing, threatening, soliciting or committing any criminal gang acts. If there is credible evidence supporting this, a CDCR 115 RVR is required.

The reason for this erroneous practice is because there is an attitude to use the inactive review as a means to continue denying specific validated members a release from SHU to the mainstream general population (GP).

There is an attitude to use the inactive review as a means to continue denying specific validated members a release from SHU to the mainstream general population.

Documented evidence clearly demonstrates the opposition, e.g. OCS, is not in favor of giving better programming opportunities to SHU prisoners, like those afforded to the general population prisoners. Prisoners have loudly and clearly called for the end to group punishment and for a focus on individual behavior instead. They have voiced their willingness to accept individual accountability for individual conduct. They (prisoners) will get that under this plan, an individual who fails to remain in compliance with the PBSP B facility (MMCF) structural setting will return to the SHU or Ad Seg.

The current long term SHU prisoners have already fulfilled a step down program during the decades spent in supermax SHUs. They should not have to do more to earn their release into a PBSP B facility (MMCF) program setting, like what existed in the mid-1970s and 1980s in what was called management control units within the SHU structure. The security level today in the 180 level IV prison is much more controlled and therefore suitable for a MMCF to be easily implemented and effectively operated.

This document is in direct relation to the Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement to address the illegal warehousing of prisoners held in California torture chambers – i.e., solitary confinement, SHU and indefinite isolation – which is stated in the five core demands that CDCR Secretary M. Cate, former Undersecretary S. Kernan and current Undersecretary Terri McDonald have all agreed that we, the prisoners held within indefinite isolation, i.e., SHU, should have had coming and we shall be afforded all of the prisoners five core demands, which is supported by California Gov. E. Brown. These demands are all reasonable.

Prisoners currently held under the indeterminate SHU term shall be relocated into this PBSP B facility-MMCF and shall be authorized to receive the same personal property items for prisoners assigned to the BMU; see Title 15, CCR 3334(e)(g).

Evidence proves CDCR SHU and Ad Seg sensory deprivation from solitary confinement conditioning causes harm to prisoners. This illegal torture must end.

These demands are all reasonable. This illegal torture must end.

The science of sensory deprivation was theoretically structured in the federal prison in Marion, Illinois, in the 1970s. It was the first known behavior modification program in the United States. There were no pre-conditional snitching (debriefing) requirements connected to being released from said program.

In California, at Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit (SHU), under the reign of the prison intelligence units (PIU) – SSU, ISU, LEIU, IGI and OCS – a high intensity (enhanced) sensory deprivation program was implemented in December 1989 against a targeted class of prisoner between the years of 1990 and 2011. Hundreds of targeted prisoners in the principal ethnic groups of New Afrikans (Black), Northern Mexican, White and Southern Mexican were tortured into debriefing.

The fact of sensory deprivation being a form of torture is linked in its application and the results. For the sake of argument, the American Medical Association Encyclopedia, page 1103, defines sensory deprivation as a form of torture. The experimenting with sensory deprivation in California has far succeeded the federal behavioral modification program.

Long-term solitary confinement by itself is an irrational and unjustifiable instrument of corrections, and when the state of California allowed the prison-industrial complex (PIC) to implement such sensory deprivation for over five years, CDCR has recklessly modified the genetic features of what are human beings’ social characteristics. And suppressing a human’s natural social behavior changes the thought process of the targeted prisoner by removing objective reality.

Once deprivation sets in, the second signal system – subjective reality – of the targeted prisoner’s thoughts will supersede the first signal system, which then produces irrationality, cannibalism, racism, chauvinism, terrorism, conformism and obscurantism. The process of deprivation passes through three phases: 1) judgment, 2) awareness, and 3) fatigue. Once the three phases are tapped into the physiological basis for the targeted prisoners, association and loyalties become short-circuited. The targeted prisoners of deprivation believe they’re no longer accountable for their behavior and actions.

Sensory deprivation has secondary phenomena, which are social deprivation, cultural deprivation, ethical deprivation and emotional deprivation. No sane targeted prisoners can escape this type of deprivation that comes from long term interment in supermax control units. The science of deprivation has been perfected by the handlers to operate with devastating force.

The techniques of torture by deprivation are used by United States military intelligence and the political police interrogators to break down the will power of the targeted prisoners. CDCR has conducted a war of attrition against the mind and body of thousands of prisoners over a prolonged period of time.

CDCR has conducted a war of attrition against the mind and body of thousands of prisoners over a prolonged period of time.

There’s a misconception that “mental” torture is not as brutal and barbaric as physical torture. Military intelligence experts will attest to the fact that mental torture is more effective than physical torture, especially inside the prison theater: 1) Physical torture produces short range returns. 2) Mental torture produces long range returns.

Admittedly, from the overview of sensory deprivation, there is no separation between physical torture and mental torture. Torture is a two-edged sword and can be an effective way towards 1) exacting punishment or 2) revenge. And, of course, the objective being to obtain a confession or information from the subject, we know that PBSP SHU was architecturally designed and intended to produce maximum sensory deprivation impact. These are its features:

1) The cage pods have no windows; the targeted prisoners will go decades without ever seeing the natural physical scenery – i.e., trees, mountains, grass, dirt, plants, birds or wildlife – of the objective world.

Prisoners will go decades without ever seeing the natural physical scenery – i.e., trees, mountains, grass, dirt, plants, birds or wildlife – of the objective world.

2) The cage pods have several strategic secret capabilities that are used for disposal of human beings, by incineration, refrigeration and or gas chamber – the degree of heat of combustion and cold (freezing point) or gaseous asphyxiate.

3) Ventilation shaft is designed to circulate stale and noxious air from cage to cage, resulting in poor air quality.

4) High intensity impulse noise is trapped in a vacuum.

The prison intelligence unit (PIU) has an established profile of every targeted prisoner’s socio-psychological characteristics – dictatorial attitude, level of self-discipline, personality, group orientation, dominance, submissiveness, paranoia, sociability, non-compatibility. The PIU establishes the racial-ethic social ecology makeup of every eight-cell pod.

It is essential to the intensity of deprivation that the social polarity atmosphere influences the phenomenal effects. It does play a significant role in bringing about the deterioration of the targeted prisoners. No targeted prisoners can escape the transformation of objective reality into subjective reality of self-preservation. The external world must become immaterial in the targeted prisoners’ minds if they are to survive the war of attrition.

During the last six months of 2011, California prisoners were compelled to get involved in two peaceful, non-violent hunger strikes to let this country’s President Obama and Gov. Brown of California and CDCR Secretary M. Cate know that this country, USA, and the state of California do in fact torture state prisoners. They later drive some to the state of sensory deprivation through the personnel of prison intelligence units, military intelligence agents and political police tormentors.

This country, USA, and the state of California do in fact torture state prisoners.

Now, over the past nine months, July 2011 to March 2012, we prisoners have lost three fellow prisoners, whom we shall honor for their courageous struggle for our PBHRM call for justice and humanity.

In memory of:

1. Johnny Owen Vick, PBSP Ad Seg

2. Hozel Alanzo Blanchard, Calipatria Ad Seg

3. Christian Gomez, Corcoran Ad Seg

These are men – human beings – who were subjected to the inhumane treatment in solitary confinement who dedicated their lives to our struggle to be liberated from these torture chambers. We dedicate to them our commitment to continue our struggle.

Respectfully submitted by Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (Dewberry), C-35671; Arturo Castellanos, C-17275; Todd Ashker, C-58191; and Antonio Guillen, P-81948.

The address of the Pelican Bay State Prison SHU is P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532. This counter-proposal is dated March 19, 2012. The Bay View has endeavored to make this as accurate a transcription as possible. For a scanned copy of the original handwritten document, email the Bay View at editor@sfbayview.com.

NCTT Corcoran SHU responds to new Security Threat Group management proposal

Mary — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 06:51:35 +0000

by J. Heshima Denham and Zaharibu Dorrough, NCTT Corcoran SHU

This banner led the July 23, 2011, march in Santa Cruz in solidarity with the hunger strikers. – Photo: Bradley, Bradley@risedup.net

Written to Kendra Castaneda on March 16, 2012, postmarked March 19 – For decades the California Department of Corrections (and Rehabilitation) has, with the support of the U.S. government, operated a domestic torture program in California SHUs – at Pelican Bay, Corcoran and CCI state prisons – whereby men are consigned to indefinite solitary confinement, sensory deprivation and constant illumination with the sole intent of compelling these state victims to become state informants.

This domestic torture program employs as its key feature the “validation process,” by which innocent “source items” – a tattoo, address, group exercise etc. – which evidence no “overt unlawful acts” in furtherance of a “gang.” And the arbitrary and subjective determinations of a staff gang investigator of these “source items” is the entire basis for consignment to indefinite confinement in these sensory deprivation torture units.

Following unprecedented peaceful, non-violent hunger strikes by tens of thousands of state prisoners and a global social outcry, CDCR has submitted a new “Security Threat Group” management proposal that states its intent to move to a “behavior-based model” that focuses on prevention of actual gang related criminal acts.

We have reviewed the proposal. Unfortunately, in its current form, it fails to meet its stated intent and instead seeks to retain the “arbitrary and subjective determination” standard for gang investigative staff. That standard is the foundation of decades of abuses and the very focus is the prevention of horrible crimes as the basis of moving to a behavior-based model in one breath; yet draft regulatory definitions, language and polices maintain the same status quo of arbitrary and subjective staff determinations that are responsible for perhaps the largest, most well hidden domestic torture program on earth.

Draft regulatory definitions, language and polices maintain the same status quo of arbitrary and subjective staff determinations that are responsible for perhaps the largest, most well hidden domestic torture program on earth.

A truly behavior based “gang” interdiction model, by definition, calls for a complete abolition of arbitrary and subjective determinations as a basis for consigning these men, fellow humans, to eternity in these torture units. By doing so, investigative staff will be free to focus their energy and resources on actually prosecuting overt unlawful acts – i.e., actual criminal conduct – as opposed to punishing men for an address, photograph or their political ideas that have NO relation to the violation of civil or criminal law. Anything short of this calls into question the validity of their stated intent and their dedication to the public good.

For more information on the NCTT Corcoran SHU or to discuss these issues, contact J. Heshima Denham, J-38283, CSP-COR-SHU, 4B1L-46, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212, and Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, CSP-COR-SHU, 4B1L-53, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212. This letter transcribed by Kendra Castaneda.

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