Tag: San Quentin State Prison

Three Strikes has disproportionately targeted the poor and people of color. More than 70 percent of the Three Strikes prisoners serving life sentences are either African American or Latino; making Three Strikes one of the leading civil rights issues of today. We need your help. On Nov. 6, California residents will have another opportunity to amend Three Strikes. Vote Yes on Prop. 36.

Please DON’T vote in favor of “The SAFE California Act” to end California’s death penalty. Your vote for this act would throw away the key for all the innocent men and women on death row and, instead, sentence all prisoners on death row to spend the rest of their lives in prison without the possibility of parole and without effective legal representation.

There’s a cliché out there where you are that says, “As long as there’s life, there’s hope.” Back here where I am, behind these walls, it’s in reverse: “As long as there’s hope, there’s life.”

The state of California must make substantial changes to their prison isolation units and halt the inhuman suffering of thousands of prisoners, Amnesty International said in a new report out today. “The Edge of Endurance: Conditions in California’s Security Housing Units” explores the conditions of confinement endured by more than 3,000 prisoners – including 78 who have spent in excess of two decades in isolation.

It is absolutely impossible for George Jackson to have been validated as a BGF prison gang member, as CDCR state operatives murdered George Jackson on Aug. 21, 1971, at San Quentin State Prison, when the prison gang validation process was non-existent.

Bay Area attorneys John Burris, Matthew Kumin and Patrick Goggin joined forces to file a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of victims of the Chevron refinery explosion on Aug. 6. The resulting toxic plume released after a pipe failed in the troubled Crude Unit No. 4 covered areas in which thousands of residents live, work and play. More than 9,000 sought treatment after the fire. The lawsuit charges that Chevron was grossly negligent in handling an accident that, with proper safety measures and a timely response, could have been avoided.

Shai Alkebu-Lan was invited to attend one of San Quentin's performances of “Hamlet” by Shakespeare. It was a great performance, and many people throughout the Bay Area and the state, family and friends of inmates, staff and the thespian community as well as the media attended the performance.

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.

The premise of the SAFE California Act is to “modify” the death penalty by replacing it with Life Without the Possibility of Parole (LWOP.) The public will once again vote on how they wish to execute the so-called “worst of the worst”: either death by lethal injection, or death by long term incarceration. The act would also transfer $100 million to law enforcement.

Shouting “Inside, outside, we’re all on the same side” and “Here comes Oakland,” five full buses and two vans left Oakland to meet up with marchers from as far away as Portland and Seattle who had already arrived at plantation San Quentin for one of the largest anti-slavery rallies in California history.

This powerful event resonated deeply, bringing meaning to the “occupy” movement and showing that its power is to support existent fights and organizing efforts for silenced peoples that have been raging on for years as well as to shed light on the increasingly po’lice controlled state that we all live under.

On Monday, Feb. 20, over a dozen rallies will be held throughout the U.S. for a “National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners.” Join the Bay Area rally 12-3 p.m. at San Quentin by getting or giving a ride at 10 a.m. at Oscar Grant Plaza in Oakland or 1540 Market St. in SF. “The U.S. is the world’s leader of the incarceration industry – it’s time for the focused attention of the Occupy Movement,” notes Mumia Abu-Jamal. Big rallies on Feb. 20 will push California authorities to meet 12,000 California prisoners' five core demands and challenge the prison industrial complex everywhere.

I was validated as a prison gang member on one source of false information, even though CDCR regulations require “three (3) independent sources of information that is proven to be reliable.” Being falsely accused of prison gang membership and consequently being housed in SHU/CMU indefinitely amounts to state sponsored persecution for our political beliefs.

On May 23, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision ordering California to release tens of thousands of inmates from its overcrowded prisons on the grounds that their living conditions – including lethally inadequate healthcare – were so intolerable as to be “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Bay View by sending its love and light to a prisoner behind enemy lines. One prisoner writes, “The Bay View has been a source of inspiration and life for me. It enables me to see people still care and Blacks are still fighting for justice.”

Here at the Bay View, we’ve been debating how to best commemorate Black August and celebrate George Jackson this year. Prisoners around the country often ask us for stories about them, and we have more stories than space to publish them.