Tag: CSP-Sacramento

At Old Folsom, prisoners are housed in ASU for long term confinement from a year to 14 months. This leads to prisoners sitting idle, in forced single cell. Their demands are in line with fair and dignified treatment of a human being. On the third day of their hunger strike, Warden Ron Rackley has threatened to deny at least one striker any visits, to give him a 115 (disciplinary write-up) and revalidate him as a STG gang leader for organizing the hunger strike as well as to have him transferred out to another prison.

I would like to expose injustice and further educate you and your readers on the events surrounding the murder of Hugo “Yogi” Pinell. I was housed in California State Prison Sacramento. Black and white inmates were placed on lockdown because of racial tension between the two ethnic groups. While locked down, staff received confidential information that Hugo Pinell’s life was in danger and threats were being made on his life by racially motivated inmates.

Letters continue to pour in to the Bay View from prisoners who remember the great Hugo “Yogi” Pinell as a hero and a martyr and want the world to know and remember him too. His work will not only be memorialized but also carried forth by all he has touched. You and your lessons will be remembered always – and, like you, will forever inspire resistance. Determination. The longing to be free. And the courage to fight for it.

Black August adds another hero and martyr to the roll. By some accounts, it was his first day on the yard after 46 years in solitary confinement when Hugo “Yogi” Pinell was assassinated Aug. 12. Prison guards celebrated on social media: “May he rot in hell” and “Good riddens” (sic), they typed. Yogi was the only member of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, and his role in the events of Aug. 21, 1971, the day George Jackson was assassinated, has earned the guards’ incessant enmity ever since.

I’ve learned to use the term “visual language,” meaning I try my best to let my art creations speak to the people in a way they’ll feel and deeply understand intuitively just by viewing it. I really hope you like this composition. This art is simply titled “Help Me,” being a composition. You can see everything in it is arranged in relation to each other, especially the pain we endure as people of color.