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Prop 36: Post Release Community Supervision?
June 4, 2013
In short, Post Release Community Supervision (PRCS) is county probation. Ironically, after nearly 16 years of being “incapacitated,” PRCS has turned out to be an unforeseeable blessing for this author! While utilizing the services and benefits available under PRCS (AB 109), my transition back into society has been virtually seamless.
If only you could see our beat up and emaciated bodies
December 30, 2012
Since the last hunger strike, the administration via the “Office of Corruptional Security” has instituted documented military torture tactics here at Pelican Bay State Prison in order to create hostile living conditions and attempt to turn prisoners on each other. But many of us have seen these tactics before, so we know how to deal with it.
Three Strikes is cruel and unusual: an interview wit’ ‘Cruel and Unusual’ director Sam Banning
November 10, 2012
On Nov. 6, a majority of the voters in California voted to amend the Three Strikes Law. In Cali alone, according to the film “Cruel and Unusual,” there are over 4,000 people locked up doing life under Three Strikes for nonviolent offenses. The Documentary Film Fest is featuring “Cruel and Unusual” on Nov. 11, 12 and 15 in San Francisco and Berkeley.
Hugo Pinell: Is 42 years in isolation about to end?
May 17, 2012
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. Our teachers kept saying: “No matter what, we gotta keep pushing and growing. It’s the only way to continue our growth and become free.”
Justice makes a nation great
January 26, 2012
We are committed to contributing to meaningful and lasting change. And this is part of what keeps us amongst the sane. We understand, and always have, that the price that we will pay for this is the efforts to silence us, to isolate and destroy us!
1971: Attica prison rebellion
September 8, 2011
Against the background of the mass revolutionary Black power and prisoners’ movements in the U.S., a four day revolt began on Sept. 13, 1971, at the Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, N.Y. Its repression killed 39 people. When George Jackson, Black Panther and political prisoner, was murdered at San Quentin by the guards on Aug. 21, 1971, his book “Soledad Brother” was being passed from prisoner to prisoner and tensions were running mounting. A prisoners’ rights movement was growing.
Release my mother, son of terminally ill blind prisoner asks Gov. Jerry Brown
August 31, 2011
California spends millions of dollars every year guarding physically incapacitated prisoners. California has a $10 billion budget deficit. California taxpayers will spend nearly $2 billion to pay for the health care needs of state prisoners. A large percentage of those funds are used for a small group of severely incapacitated inmates.
From Montgomery to Los Angeles and beyond, formerly incarcerated people are building a movement
March 3, 2011
Would you feel like a full citizen if most of your civil and human rights were denied you? If the privileges afforded to community members were withheld from you, would you feel like a welcome member of the community?
Community reliance is our legacy of survival
December 14, 2010
Those of us who seek a second chance know we owe our community. Failure is not an option for a community and a people who have seen so much turmoil, who have experienced so much oppression, and yet survived only because it was group effort. I seek the shadow of a wing to survive and then thrive.
Prisoner on stolen land: an interview wit’ Aaron about political prisoner Leonard Peltier
November 24, 2010
Leonard Peltier is a legendary leader of resistance against police and government oppression specifically dealing with the indigenous people of Turtle Island (Amerikkka). Now his nephew Aaron is releasing the “Free Leonard Peltier Album,” which features some of the most notable rappers on the scene today that rap for freedom. The listening party is Tuesday, Nov. 30, 6:30 p.m., at the Black Dot Cafe, 1195 Pint St., West Oakland.
Prison guards avoid cost-cutting, rip off taxpayers
October 4, 2009
CDC (California Department of Corrections) has adopted a way to circumvent the impact of the furlough rule and, in the process of getting over by not having to adhere to this rule, never having to suffer any loss of their wages. They make extra money at the taxpayers’ expense!
Friday, Aug. 7, call Jerry Brown and tell him to drop the appeal!
August 6, 2009
On Tuesday, Aug. 4, a federal three-judge panel ordered California to release 44,000 people in prison. Call and fax Attorney General Jerry Brown all day Friday, Aug. 7, and demand that he not appeal the ruling.
‘Rebel Musiq’: an innerview of rapper Bicasso of the Living Legends
April 17, 2009
Two decades after Bob Marley’s “Rebel Music,” in 2009 Oakland, artists like Bicasso are the musical spokespeople for criminalized Black neighborhoods that are literally at war with the police; must I remind you of the cases of Oscar Grant and Lovelle Mixon?