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Introduction by Editor Nube Brown
I am perpetually humbled and honored to be able to introduce the genius and epitome of revolutionary love and humanity consistently asserted by the prisoner class. In particular, these two men, despite being modern-day enslaved, being tortured by decades of solitary confinement, both being lifers – Zah without the possibility of parole, Fati denied parole 14 times and going on 50 years of incarceration this year – continue to fellowship in solidarity with their Brothers to imagine and develop ways to transform, and ultimately abolish, this genocidal system of legal slavery, the last bastion being the Board of Parole Hearings.
What follows is a call to action to ignite passionate and creative dialogue in elevated consciousness, education and unity to reclaim our community power, the People’s power, to bring our People home on our own terms, by the People’s standards, with dignity, love and healing. We want free!
Community Release Board proposal – an alternative to the Board of Parole Hearings
Developed by Zah and Fati
A community is a group of people producing, reproducing, living, loving and developing within a reasonable distance of each other who generally possess a common set of evolved beliefs. At the nuclear level, family is the atom of community. The natural extension of a community is a city, a county, a state. The graduation evolves through the coalescing of multiple communities.
As it pertains to this proposal, such united communities are the city, county, or state X, Y, Z versus John or Jane Doe on the face page of a charge sheet. When the community law is broken, it seeks to identify, arrest and prosecute the alleged culprit. If convicted, the person, the convict, is subject to a range of sanctions up to and including a period of exile served in state or federal prison.
If the governed had the right to alter or abolish the governmental ties which bound them among the 13 colonies, which dissolved the ties which legally bound them and declared themselves a new nation, then our communities are certainly within our rights to alter any state agency to ensure it better serves us now.
We must now engage in a campaign that gives back to the communities the ultimate say in determining when prisoners will be reintegrated back into their community. We can do this by creating a Community Release Board (CRB), which can be developed through protest, proposition or legislation, spearheaded by a determined group of organizers, united for its realization.
These organizers will be entrusted with the responsibility of educating the public and to organize mass consciousness to protest, to proposition and to apply political pressure to advance the agenda of reclaiming the right of the people, the governed, to alter or abolish the government, the right of the community to exercise this kind of issue.
Today, I am 37 years beyond my MERD.
The CRB will contribute to curing California’s inability to operate its prisons within their capacity, absent federal oversight or caveat, where capacity is above 100 percent and the combustible consequence of crowding too many people into not enough space looms on the horizon.
The CRB will guard against class and race targeting and act as a hedge to impede private prison profiteers and bought-off politicians.
By implementing a practiced parole program guided by a prisoner’s base term and diluting dependency on manipulated opinion, the CRB will contribute to shrinking CDCR’s budget by resisting taking at face-value future behavior predictors, colored by hidden prison politics and petit-peon beliefs.
Note from Fati
The late Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt was targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO and local police redsquads in their effort to destroy the LA chapter of the BPP (Black Panther Party). He was framed and convicted for a murder he did not commit. He was interned at the California Department of Corrections for 27 years, until his tenacious and capable attorney convinced the court to recognize the miscarriage of justice and order his release, and award him millions of dollars.
The Board of Prison Terms (called at that time), or BPH, in its wisdom, held him 20 years beyond his Minimum Eligible Release Date (MERD). Had Ji-Jaga’s fate been left to the Board of Prison Terms’ discretion, chances are he would’ve died innocent in prison, or had been subjected continuously to the same treatment Sundiata Acoli reported he faced across the country at his New Jersey parole board hearings – a 40-year train of denials.
I, Fati, appeared before the Board of Prison Terms in December of 1981, two years beyond my MERD. The deputy district attorney representing my committed county of Los Angeles, recommended that I be given a five-year parole date. The Board rejected the recommendation and denied my parole, over the view of my commitment-county representative. Today, I am 37 years beyond my MERD. – Fati
The CRB will create space, and its ripple effect will remove the pressure for new jail and prison construction, manage overcrowding and speed up Lifer community reintegration by purging current Board of Parole Hearing (BPH) dysfunction.
The CRB will serve as an alternate board to the BPH for all indeterminate life prisoners, including those prisoners who have Life Without Parole (LWOP) sentences and who have served 20 years of their sentence.
The indeterminate prisoner’s Minimum Eligible Parole Date (MEPD) will serve as the dividing line between BPH authority and the CRB’s. For LWOPs, the dividing line will be the 20 years that have been served. Note: During the 1970s, 20 years was legally considered to be a life term.
Initially, the state will take an indeterminate prisoner to BPH within a year of their MEPD and decide if it will grant parole. A parole grant will be subject to the governor’s review and reversal (GRR).
If the BPH denies parole, the authority to parole such prisoners will transfer to the prisoner’s pre-conviction community CRB with the prisoner’s central file. The CRB will review the file to determine when the prisoner will appear before the CRB.
The CRB will have the authority to parole such prisoners within an agreed upon number of years, not to exceed five and subject to GRR. After five years, the CRB’s authority to grant or deny parole is solely its own.
We know that the BPH has been extremely consistent in denying suitability for thousands of people who have done everything asked and required of them.
When the CRB grants parole, its Community Parole Agency (CPA) will assume parole supervision in all grants, except prisoners who the state classifies as high risk. These parolees will be supervised by the state. The CPA will monitor the supervision and conduct any parole violation hearings.
The state will contract with the CRB for cost sufficiency to cover salary and infrastructure agreed to with CRB negotiators.
CRB candidates will examine BPH statutes and study California Parole Boards, The Adult Authority, Community Release Board and Board of Prison Terms archives, in search of a balance between what has been, what is and what the CRB hopes to contribute to this history as it prepares to take the mantle of an alternate board and confidently write a new chapter.
CRB review decisions will be weighted towards the sentence given, when the committed crime occurred, the average time in custody during particular periods, additional convictions while in custody and sanity evaluations conducted by an unbiased, non-carceral mental health care professional, which includes the question: Does the prisoner really know right from wrong? All CRB parole grants or denials will consist of these factors, the CRB’s gathered experience and natural community sense.
The CRB’s aim is to release as many prisoners who have served their sentences, or so much time in prison without endangering public safety, by not being ruled by fear; by cutting through calcified opinion and convoluted reasoning, which has ignored time in custody, with the knowledge that age reduces dangerousness dramatically as well as likely participation in future crime.
Although the state’s highest court reversed the decision of In re Butler, a case that had to do with parole hearings, the presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline stated in 2012 that: “The board appears to be violating the rights of thousands of inmates by systematically denying parole” – a statement apparently made in an earlier lifer petition. We know that the BPH has been extremely consistent in denying suitability for thousands of people who have done everything asked and required of them.
We cannot undo any of the harm that has been caused by the actions of the BPH, and it may be pointless to try and have conversations about the reasons for why this has and continues to happen. They have not accomplished any kind of meaningful change that has led to stopping these practices.
What we can do is to campaign and protest for the development of a Community Release Board – a process that empowers the communities that we come from and gives those communities the final say as to when we are ready to be reconnected with one another.
We cannot emphasize enough that this proposal should belong to all of us who believe in and are committed to genuinely challenging the ideology of white supremacy and the system of patriarchy. Our hope is that this will generate a discussion that will lead to the inclusion of our ideas: An understanding of what community means, looks like and how it might function in connection with other like and similar communities, how communities should be chosen to sit on the CRB, etc.
As we speak, there are efforts underway, in some states, to halt the voter-approved right to allow ex-felons to vote. In Florida, conservative, right-wing efforts have introduced legislation that would make it illegal for ex-felons to vote if they still owe restitution, and in some cases this would apply to people who have not been reincarcerated for decades, but still owe restitution. They would not be allowed to vote until after their restitution is paid, which may never be accomplished in their lifetime because of the amount owed.
These are efforts by the system of hate that have existed in this country for centuries! If we are ever to begin the process of reimagining what incarceration and justice and peace mean and look like, now is the time!
We can prevent future harm from being done to the People and the communities by removing the power from individuals and institutions that care nothing about us, who support the maintaining of hate that does nothing except contribute to the generational trauma that continues to destroy all in its path, and give it back to the People.
The empowering of communities that have historically been underserved, underdeveloped and misrepresented must be done now.
Until we win, or don’t lose!
Anything worth loving is worth fighting for.
Love and always with you,
Fati and Zah
Bay View Editor Nube Brown is a New Afrikan, abolitionist and Liberate the Caged Voices columnist. She hosts Prison Focus Radio on KPOO 89.5 San Francisco and KPOO.com every Thursday 11:00 to noon and also broadcasts Bay View TV Breaking News on Instagram @sfbayview every weekday morning from 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. Connect with her at nube@sfbayview.com.
