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A victory in the First Amendment Campaign
August 26, 2012
The struggle is long and arduous, and sometimes we do etch out significant victories, as in the case of our Brotha Mutope Duguma in In re Crawford, a significant step in reaffirming that prisoners are entitled to a measure of First Amendment protection that cannot be ignored simply because the state dislikes the spiel.
Black August, a month for reflection, struggle, sacrifice and resistance
July 11, 2012
Black August is a month of reflection on the losses that we as a people have suffered. It is a month of high elation and extreme sorrow – elation for our resistance, sorrow for our losses. For me, the three most significant events of August are Jonathan Jackson’s raid on the Marin County Courthouse in 1970, the August 1971 liberation of the San Quentin Adjustment Center by Comrade George Jackson and Nat Turner’s slave uprising.
Trayvon, Christian, Jason, Gerardo, Kendrec and nine children in Afghanistan: a discussion of race, violence and the authoritarian psychology
June 29, 2012
In the past year we have witnessed a succession of murderous assaults reflecting a common character structure: The authoritarian psychology: Jason Smith beaten to death by racists in Louisiana; Trayvon Martin murdered by a racist vigilante in Florida; Christian Gomez allowed to die on hunger strike by prison guards in California; 17 people, nine of them children, slaughtered in Afghanistan; Kendrec McDade slain by racist police in California; Gerardo Perez-Ruiz murdered by border vigilantes in Arizona.
Families of California prisoners respond to controversial solitary confinement reform proposal
June 17, 2012
We are the families of thousands of loved ones who have been incarcerated indefinitely – some for decades – in California’s “supermax” segregated and administrative housing units. Solitary confinement, even for short periods, has been known for centuries to cause irreparable physical and psychological damage: torture. Yet California continues to condone this practice.
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.”
CDCR calls emergency meeting for hunger strike mediators as prisoner supporters rally outside
April 26, 2012
A little over a month after CDCR released its “Security Threat Group Prevention, Identification and Management Strategy,” which proposes new gang validation and 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.
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!
Inhumane conditions at Calipatria State Prison ASU
December 14, 2011
At Calipatria State Prison near the Mexican border in the Mojave Desert, the ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit) is so isolated the prison authorities can do anything they want to the ASU inmates without anyone knowing. The men are forced to wear nothing but boxers, and some do not get blankets in their freezing cold cells.
Hunger strike organizer: Ad-Seg/ASU units are bad news
December 13, 2011
It’s a good thing to have exposure of torture going on in the Ad/Segs. We’d included all SHUs and Ad/Seg units from the beginning in our formal complaint. We all need to be united and work together on making the wrongs in this system right! It’s critical to include ASUs in the process of challenging SHU issues!
California prison hunger strikers propose ‘10 core demands’ for the national Occupy Wall Street Movement
December 6, 2011
The key factor thus far in failing to harness the mass support of the people is the lack of broad-based, articulable demands around which the uncommitted people who may support our message but not our movement can be educated, organized and mobilized to join the movement and transform not only the nature and structure of U.S. society, but the WORLD.
Let’s rock! The musings – or mental fog – of a hunger striker
November 5, 2011
Sitting here on my 17th day of a hunger strike in protest of the inhumane and torturous treatment of our confinement in the SHU of Pelican Bay State Prison, my heart races at 126 beats per minute – at rest! This morning I was dozing in and out of a dream. I usually don’t remember my dreams any more, but this is what I remember:
Greed drives solitary confinement torture
September 18, 2011
We’re entering into our hunger strike on Sept. 26 because our suffering must be exposed to the world. We will not stop under any circumstances until we’re liberated from these gulags.
Stop stealing our jobs, our freedom, our land and our lives
August 7, 2011
Minutes after the outrageous police killing of 19-year-old Kenneth Harding a stone’s throw from my home and office, I joined the crowd and for two hours listened to the witnesses, shared the anger and echoed the calls for unity. Let us demand the right to “own and operate and control the economy of our community,” as Brother Malcolm advised. Now – right now – is the time for us to prove that it’s not the police, it’s not the prison guards or the big developers who have the power to impoverish and enslave us and drive us off our land. The ultimate power belongs to the people, and we will use it.
Letters from Hugo Pinell and other hunger strikers – Rally to support the hunger strikers
July 15, 2011
I got a letter today from Yogi Bear, Hugo Antonio Lyons Pinell. As most of you know, Yogi has been tortured in the Pelican Bay SHU since 1990 and in other California gulags since the early 1970s. He began his incarceration in 1964 at age 19. He has joined the hunger strike and writes …
As hunger strikers’ medical crises worsen, marchers will ‘bring the noise’ to downtown SF at rush hour Friday
July 14, 2011
Legal representatives visited Pelican Bay SHU hunger strikers Tuesday. Each prisoner explained how medical conditions of hundreds of hunger strikers in the SHU are worsening. The only way to prevent people from dying right now is for the CDCR to negotiate with the prisoners’ outside mediation team.
Dying for human rights: Prisoners begin hunger strike
July 3, 2011
What exactly is a hunger strike? It is when someone, or a group of people, will choose death over their current living conditions. But not an unknown pointless death; instead, they will commit a long, grueling, public death designed to create change.
Solidarity and commitment
June 30, 2011
The Black August Organizing Committee stands in full solidarity with those of our brothers and sisters persecuted and tormented daily within the confines of America’s concentration camps.
Court: No proof Black August incites prison violence
September 4, 2010
I’m writing to update you on the continuing attempt to deny us Afrikan descendants here at Pelican Bay solitary confinement SHU control units the exercise of the human birthright to read, write, study, learn and celebrate our African heritage, history and culture.
The terrible aftermath of Marsy’s Law
January 26, 2009
Life-term prisoners – lifers – are beginning to experience the effects of Prop 9, Marsy’s Law. On Jan. 14, when political prisoner Hugo Pinnell appeared before the Parole Board, he was told to come back in 15 years!