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Report from North Kern: Progress and chaos on the road to liberation
December 27, 2012
We finally got a breakthrough with the CDCR here at North Kern State Prison: The ICC (Institutional Classification Committee) is starting to release their Ad Seg bodies back to the general population [out of solitary confinement]. They’re only keeping validated members now and not trying to validate a lot of people [as gang members or associates].
Reflections on our accomplishments so far – no more suffering in silence
December 23, 2012
Though we have yet to obtain our Five Core Demands, no one can deny how much we have achieved since our initial July 1, 2011, hunger strike. For the most part our movement for human rights has made much progress, but patience is required, for we are engaged in a protracted struggle that demands our resilience.
Nobody deserves to be tortured: a response to CDCR’s STG-SDP plan
December 20, 2012
The new “Security Threat Group Prevention, Identification, and Management Strategy” will instigate new and more aggressive attacks against prisoners and their families, friends, associates and communities, who are already being victimized by our institutionalized racist system and the prison industrial complex. It is just one of their many policies to persecute prisoners incarcerated in solitary confinement units.
U.S. at U.N. prisoners’ rights meeting: Progress, but still wrong on solitary confinement
December 13, 2012
Yesterday I wrote about the ACLU’s efforts to ensure that the U.S. government is properly engaged at a U.N. meeting in Buenos Aires on uniform rules for the treatment of prisoners. Now that the meeting is underway, it appears that the U.S. delegation is playing a constructive role – but we’ve still got work to do.
Racism at its worst: The story of Kenny Zulu Whitmore
December 9, 2012
I say this is torture: Being held in this solitary confinement cage where I can stand in the middle of the floor, extend my arms, and touch both walls. For the last 34 years, 23 hours a day is by definition torture. They say it is because of my political education, affiliation with the Angola 3 – Shaka, King and Chairman Hooks – and my ties to the Black Panther Party.
The courage to fight for love matters
December 5, 2012
The notion that emotional feelings and love interest ceases at the gates of the prison is blatantly absurd. A huge majority of individuals in prison are equipped with the same meaningful desires to embrace their heartfelt feelings in spite of their situation of being restricted and unable to express them deservingly with passion.
Creating broken men?
December 4, 2012
Many discussions are taking place on the nature of the indefinite solitary confinement program in the U.S. prisons and whether or not it constitutes torture. The debate on what to do about the program itself is being held at every level of social organization, from the U.S. Senate to the United Nations, from the California Legislature to the short corridors of Pelican Bay and Corcoran SHUs.
Free Lynne Stewart: an open letter to the Center for Constitutional Rights
December 3, 2012
We received your appeal calling for urgent support of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The appeal, regrettably, omits mention of Lynne Stewart, who is serving currently 10 years in a federal prison for her role in defending Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman as co-counsel for the defense with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and renowned civil liberties counsel Abdeen Jabara.
The youth are our future
December 2, 2012
Is it fair that your child can make one mistake and spend the rest of his or her life paying for it? Help the youth gain our freedom so we can promote peace in society. We have been refined and formed into a new image. We are no longer who we were, but we have now grown to who we were made to be. Help us; help the youth out there, which in turn will help our future.
Are lesser evils progress or collateral damage?
December 1, 2012
As a people who should be championing the cause of the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, we need to first find humane solutions to our social ills. Isolation, incarceration and, yes, LWOP sentences are barbaric and sit in the realm of the lesser of two evils. And that’s why California still has the cruel instruments of death as its solutions.
San Quentin 3 declare solidarity with prisoners’ agreement to end hostilities
December 1, 2012
Ultimately, this is a peaceful movement to assert our humanity. Differences in race, sets and associations matter not. Each of us is ultimately responsible for maintaining and preserving our own self-respect. We hope that as comrades you will help lift each other up as you come to realize that the same oppressor oppresses us all!
Tears of sorrow and rage: Oakland PD, the Black Panthers and Alan Blueford
November 30, 2012
For decades, the Oakland Police Department has been the focus of fear. For a brief time, the Black Panther Party put a crimp into their strut. But the Black Panther Party is no more, and the repression has come surging back. The family of Alan Blueford continue to organize resistance to this campaign of repression. You can join that campaign at justice4alanblueford.org.
Update from Calipatria ASU: It’s a big difference here
November 24, 2012
Things have been very mellow and tranquil here at Calipatria ASU. There hasn’t been any tension or bullsh-t with the staff or anything. Everybody got their TVs and cable installed recently and things have actually progressed. It will never be complete until the validation process is fixed and isolation has ended but there have been some real positive changes.
The Bay View has been my strength
November 23, 2012
After 12 years I have finally made it to a halfway house. Through my entire struggle behind the walls, your paper has played a major part in my political and cultural awareness. I could not have done it without you. My mission is to become a success story by giving recidivism a black eye and preventing these younger brothers from contributing to genocide as I once did when I was young and unpoliticized.
‘Settle your quarrels’: Update on End to Hostilities, prisoners’ demands, hunger strike
November 18, 2012
It’s vital that the End to Hostilities holds for all races and groups. We call on prisoners nationwide to draft up their own demands, tailored to their own individual institutional needs, to be served on CDCR and their prison wardens – I would get started on them now. We are giving CDCR a deadline to meet all of the demands, or else we are going to resume our peaceful hunger strike and work stoppage starting on July 8, 2013. All U.S. prisoners are asked to pick up the flag of solidarity and join us.
Legislative Analyst Office predicts Corrections won’t meet budget reductions
November 15, 2012
Californians demand further reductions in prison spending to restore social services. A post-election poll by Californians for Safety and Justice determined that 62 percent of voters believe too much state funding goes to California’s prison system, and 86 percent agree that more resources should be dedicated to preventing crime rather than funding prisons and jails.
California leaders call on Gov. Brown to grant demands of prisoners in solitary confinement
November 14, 2012
Arbitrary and indefinite solitary confinement is an absolute assault on humankind and a barbarity the likes of which cannot be tolerated. We hold the utmost respect for those prisoners who from the depths of Solitary Confinement throughout California risked their lives to be heard. We heard them and now we ask that you do the same.
Last minute appeal from death row: Vote No on 34 to protect our due process rights
November 6, 2012
If Proposition 34 passes, it will endorse everything that is wrong with the criminal justice system and allow the appeals of innocent people on death row to go unheard. It will take away the one guarantee, through habeas counsel, that death row prisoners have to be able to clear their names and prove their innocence. Vote No on Prop 34; do not destroy due process rights.
Survey questionnaire from the Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement First Amendment Campaign
November 6, 2012
Is your mail to or from a friend or loved one in prison being intercepted? The data gathered from this survey questionnaire will be utilized as material evidence in an ongoing case aimed at obtaining a permanent injunction in court. At your earliest convenience, please answer the questions and mail in your completed survey questionnaires.
LWOP: Death sentence by another name – Vote No on 34
November 3, 2012
Darrell Lomax is an innocent man who has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California for over 15 years. A poet, musician and activist, Darryl has been fighting for his freedom and advocating for justice. Here, he explains what’s at stake in the Proposition 34 ballot initiative that would replace the death penalty with sentences of life without the possibility of parole.