Number 37 Summer 2011

Serving The Interests Of Prisoners And Their Loved Ones On The Outside For Over Twenty Years

FORMAL COMPLAINT
COMPLAINT ON HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND REQUEST FOR ACTION TO END OVER 20 YEARS OF STATE SANCTIONED TORTURE TO EXTRACT INFORMATION FROM OR CAUSE MENTAL ILLNESS TO CALIFORNIAS PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON SECURITY HOUSING UNIT (SHU PRISONERS).
are serving term-to-life sentences, and they have been eligible for parole for the last 5 to 25+ years, but they are told that if they want a chance to parole they have to debrief period! The CDCR-PBSP-SHU policies and practices summarized violate both the U.S. Constitution and International law banning the use of torture and other cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment as a means of obtaining information via coercion, and/or to punish for acts or suspected acts of misconduct as exemplied below: A. In December 1989, CDCR opened PBSP-SHU, bragging that it was meant to contain and isolate the prison systems 1 percent worst of the worst inmates; and this would make the system safer and easier to manage; this has proven to be false (see Note C). B. There has been a lot of CDCR-PBSP (and guard union CCPOA) propaganda generated about these worst of the worst ever since 1989 and it has been perpetrated by the corporate media via television, dramas and movies. Yet a review of these socalled demonized worst of the worst PBSP-SHU inmates, who are party to this complaint, will reveal they are actually free of being guilty of serious rule violations for many years and zero il- legal gang-related acts in prison. Many have paroled and discharged parolestaying out of prison 5 to 10+ years, but as soon as they returned to CDCR they were placed back into PBSP-SHU indenitely. C. Many of these inmates are those who utilize the legal system to challenge illegal CDCR policies and practices, and encourage others to do the same. D. For the last 10 to 20 plus years these PBSP-SHU inmates have been subject to the punitive conditions therein for arbitrarily applied status reasons, in order to coerce them into becoming notorious informants for the state, or die/suffer mental illness in SHU examples being: 1. Subject to 10+20 years of sensory deprivation via isolation and intentional limitations of normal human contact and social interaction, as much as possible. 2. Denied physical contact with family/friends; no phone calls and not even able to have a photograph taken to send home. The isolated location of PBSP-SHU near the Oregon border, and the fact that visits are restricted to 1 hours on the weekends behind glass equates to no visits for most. 3. If they want out of the SHU, prisoners have to provide staff with information and be willing to testify against other prisoners, free citizens, including family members. This is a Catch 22 situationby either becoming a notorious informant thereby placing yourself, possibly your family at serious risk of retaliation, die or become mentally ill in the SHU. This is outrageous to family, friends and concerned citizens; especially given the fact that CDCR staff are indifferent to, and incapable of guaranteeing the safety of inmate informants and their families outside of the prison. This is applied to lifer parole eligibility too (i.e., become an informant, or do life without parole). 4. Denied adequate medical care. This became more pronounced when Dr. Michael C. Sayre, became PBSP Chief Medical Ofcer in 2006, and who, with the complicity of several cronies e.g. M. McLean, Sue Risenhoover and James Flowers, et al, began to systematically discontinue and deny medication, specialist care, assistive aids and telling SHU inmates, if you want better care get out of the SHU. Now SHU inmates are chained down to the oor of the clinic like animals if they need to see a doctor/nurse. The Psychiatric Staff are complicit too claiming that there are no mental health issues precluding continued SHU connement, without any personal interaction with those inmates. 5. CDCR-PBSP staff constantly seek ways to make SHU more punitive for these inmates (e.g., most cells are freezing in winter and adequate clothing and head coverings are restricted/denied; the food portions are By: SHU Short Corridor Inmates, Pelican Bay Prison I. INTRODUCTION: his is a formal complaint and request for action to end 20+ years of state sanctioned torture in order to extract information from or cause mental illness to California inmates incarcerated indenitely in punitive isolation at Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Units (PBSP-SHU), based on arbitrary policies and practices re: the inmates status (i.e., a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) gang label, without ever being charged, and found guilty of committing a gang related illegal act), in violation of the 1st, 5th, 8th, and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and international law barring the use of torture and other cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment as a means of obtaining information, coercion and/or punishment for acts or suspected acts committed (per U.N. Conventions Against Torture of 19841985).

II. PARTIES: 1. Named Complainant(s), on behalf of themselves and those similarly situated inmates, family members, friends, and concerned citizens, harmed by such policies and practices. 2. The State of California law makers, including, but not limited to, Edmund Brown, Governor, and CDCR Secretary Mathew Cate, et al. (Each and all of them being on notice of said violations and responsible for inmate care and treatment.) III. SUMMARY OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS: The CDCR has been violating the human rights of certain inmates for the last 10 to 35 years and counting via their policy and practice of arbitrary, indenite placement of said inmates into punitive SHU units alleging said inmates status (i.e., a CDCR gang afliation classication, which, in turn, is based on allegations made by condential inmate informant seeking and receiving special treatment, etc.) mandates this SHU placement for safety and security reasons. However, the true nature of such status based indenite SHU connement is not clear. While the arbitrary nature of such policy/practice is crystal clear, demonstrated by the fact that CDCR claims all validated prison gang afliates automatically pose an immediate, severe threat to the safety and security of all general population prison, other inmates and staff solely based on this status. It is notable that most inmates who have been in the SHU for the last 10 to 35+ years have never been found guilty of committing a single gang-related illegal act. But the fact is that this status is actually only applied to a few hundred inmates, while tens of thousands of gang afliates are in general population in prisons throughout the state. This arbitrary status based indenite SHU connement was imposed on a few hundred inmates beginning in 1985 1986, without prior notice that a gang label was prohibited and sanctionable; related rules and regulations were not included in CDCR Cal. Code of Regulations, Title 15 rules book until 1999 (while prison gang culture goes back to the 1950s). The CDCR began housing these inmates in Pelican Bay State PrisonSHU (PBSP-SHU) upon its opening in December 1989. These inmates have been housed in PBSPSHU, based on this status for the last 10-20 years now and their sole avenues for release from SHU are parole, death, mental illness, or debrieng. Debrieng requires a SHU inmate to provide CDCR staff with sufcient veriable information that will adversely impact the gang, other gang members and associates to the extent that they will never accept them back. This equates to a CDCR requirement that said inmates have the choice of remaining in SHU until death, mental illness, or becoming a known informant who has caused damage to other inmates. This makes the inmate (and possibly his family members) a target for reprisal, potentially for life. Many of these inmates

smallermuch of it inedible or bland diet every day for 20+ years). No exercise equipment is provided while most prisons furnish at least a pull-up, dip-bar in SHU units; all property privileges are severely restricted/denied (compared to most long-term isolation units across the U.S. (including Federal Supermax in Florence, Colorado). Recently all college and education programs have been taken away from all PBSP-SHU inmates. Also, group punishment is a common response to any rule violation. All of this rises to a level which constitutes illegal policies that include psychological and physical torture for purposes of coercion and punishmentall based on the arbitrary status. Support for the severity of the combined conditions (exemplied above) is the fact that many of these inmates have died; many have developed serious medical and mental illness; and hundreds have elected to become known informants causing major problems for their families. When a person goes through the debrieng process, if they dont provide prison ofcials enough information on other prisoners and free citizens criminal activities they are told to come back when they doforcing those debrieng to create and invent elaborate half-truth stories incriminating many. IV. EXAMPLES OF LEGAL SUPPORT: Complainants present the following examples of legal precedent in support of this complaint, and call for action. It is notable that California lawmakers and courts have been aware of these blatantly illegal policies and practices for 20+ years; however, for the most part they remain indifferent. Therefore, more direct action is necessary. U.S.CONSTITUTION VIOLATIONS: a) 1st and 5th Amendments Right to be free of punishment for association and/or choosing not to speak (see NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 485 U.S. 866, 925 (1982); U.S. v. Sarstein, 827 F.2d 1380, 1388 (9th cir.1987), American Arab Anti-discrimination v. Reno,70 F.3d 1045, 1063 (9th cir.1995); Hydrick v. Hunter, 2006 D.J. D.A.R. 13181, 13186 (9th cir.2006); People v. Castaneda, 23 cal. 4th 743, 749 (2000) (Re: Cal. Supreme Courts interpretation of Cal. Penal Code, Section 186.22, which is the Penal Code relied upon for CDCR rules re: gang activity. See: Cal. Code of Regulations, Title 15, Section 3023 (e.g., only conviction for felonious gang activity is sanctionable per. Cal. Penal Code 186.22). b) 8th Amendment Right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment (e.g., not to be subject to serious threat or physical or mental harm) see: Valandingham v. Bojorquez, 866 F.2d 1135, 1138 (9th cir.1989)(Re: informant status issue); Beneeld v. McDowell, 241F.3d 1267, 1271 (10th cir.2001); David v. Hill, 401F.Supp.2d. 749, at page 75657 [S.D.Tex.2005] and, U.S. v Basciano, 369 F. Supp. 2d 344(E.D. N.Y.2005); and Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F.Supp. 1146, 1229-30, 1260-67 (N.D. Cal.1955); regarding punitive conditions in PBSP-SHU, and mental health issues; wherein the court questions the legitimacy of SHU punitive measures being used indenitely on the inmates at issue, and the court states In sum, those incarcerated in SHU for any length of time are severely deprived of normal human contact conditions in SHU amount to a virtual total deprivation, including, so far as possible, deprivation on human contact (Id.,at p.1230). The court noted courts have recognized SHU conditions, length of time and effects on mental health, are factors that must be considered (Id. p. 1264-65) and then concludes that PBSP-SHU conditions were not a per se violation, based on the current record (specically stating: the court cannot speculate on effect it may have on inmates conned in SHU for 10, 20 years or more. Noting the inmates studied in connection with the case had generally been in SHU Formal Complaint ...............................Continued on page 8

LETTERS
Hunger Strike Clarication
Dear CPF, Briey, I want to clarify some points relating to our July 1st protest: A. The peaceful Hunger Strike (H.S.) protest is not limited to Pelican Bay Short Corridor as indicated in our Notice of Protest with Five Core Demands. This protest is a challenge to CDCR-SHU and Ad/Seg policies and practices statewide! This is an important point because, while other states have closed down and have modied their long term SHU policies and practices during the past few years, California has done the oppositeexpanding upon and making them more punitiveall part of CDCR informant procurement agenda (used as a means of control by having as many inmates as possible on rat status, because once on rat status they own your ass!). B. This peaceful H.S. protest is not led by any individual or group; it was deemed necessary only after more than a year of discussion and thought amongst many PBSP-SHU prisoners, from all races. And it was never taken lightly by anyoneactually the opposite is the case, because no one wants to put their health/life on the line, and all understand that theres a good chance some will die before this is over, due to the mindset of the governor, legislators, CDCR administration and many member of the CCPOA. However, many of us are also lifers with 20 to 45 year in, and we recognize the illegal policies and practices (summarized in the Formal Complaint) continue unabated in spite of thousands of prisoner grievances and hundreds of court challenges. Thus we are left with no other option than an indenite H.S.the goal being to expose the illegal policies and practices at issue (and the related failure on the part of law makers and the courts) and to force positive changes. We have nothing to lose. C. We estimate there will be more than 50 prisoners on H.S. beginning on July 1st (thats 50 just in the short corridorweve heard other prisoners on other areas here, and in SHU and Ad/Seg across the state may also participate). Presently, approximately 25-30 men are committed to continuing the H.S. indenitely, until an acceptable agreement is signed off on by the governor, CDCR Secretary Cate, and Warden Lewis. Others will go for as long as each individual can stand it, as a show of support! The above numbers are lowball estimates, as communication here is restricted. Many are supportive but unable to participate because of age or serious medical problems. Some will join the protest in the days following the July 1 start date. Support is greatly appreciated. Todd Ashker, Pelican Bay SHU

That being said, let me rst dispel any propaganda CDCR will again use when they tell the media that prisoners are eating canteen food items they stocked up on prior to the H.S. That is incorrect. The truth is that PBSP has its own internal regulations called PBSP Operational Procedure (O.P.) no. 228 Hunger Strike Policy, which states, in pertinent part, at section VI.B.4: After the inmate has declared he is on hunger strike and has missed three consecutive meals [one day], the cell is to be searched, and all canteen items are to be removedand stored...1 So, when July 01, 2011 comes around, do not believe CDCRs propaganda in the face of their own Pelican Bay policy. In addition, a day before our H.S., we will submit a medical request form declaring our H.S., and we will request to be weighed on that day, and every three (3) days after, until the conclusion of the H.S. This is the proper standard (weight loss or gain) on which a judgment should be based on by your readers and not propaganda. Finally, we ask all California prisoners, who can easily end up here, or Corcoran or any SHU, on Indeterminate-SHU, to ask family and friends to write, call, fax, or e-mail: the Prison Law Ofce (www.prisonlaw.com) to do their job and le a motion to Judge Henderson to make sure the Inspector General and the prison medical overseer/ monitor is here at PBSP on July 01, 2011, until the conclusion of the H.S. to make sure theres no abuse and that no medical-records or weight-scale tampering is conducted by medical or prison staff. And no retaliation is conducted by the Administration on any of the H.S. participants. For example, moving them, removing all liquids2 and all other property from their cells; Judge Thelton Henderson (www.cand.uscourts.gov) to do the same; State Senators (www.senate.gov) and Assem-blymen Tom Ammiano and Jerry Hill, to exercise their right as state legislators to oversee PBSPs medical and prison staff during the H.S.; the Ofce of the Inspector General (www.oig.ca.gov), to do his job; to get Governor Brown involved (www.gov.ca.gov); and to inform the media of the H.S. On behalf of all H.S. participants, we thank you at California Prison Focus and all of your readers very much.

First, I write this letter on behalf of all hunger strike (H.S.) participants with serious concerns if youre attempting to tie our (all races) united H.S. with any historical revolutionary gure. Please understand that this must be viewed as a unique historical event in California prison history. Thus, this H.S. cannot and should not be tied to, or dedicated to, any historical gure. This H.S. involves all three races, and singling out just one or two of those races by tying this H.S. to any personsfor example: to George Jackson, Cesar Chavez/Zapata, or to any white historical revolutionarywill only succeed where CDCR has so far failed to accomplish, that is, it will destroy our three-race unity on this H.S. I cannot be any clearer than that. And by now, Im sure you have also received a similar note/concerns from the African hunger strikers here. Thus, this must be guarded and kept a unique and separate historical event. So please heed our warnings and wishes and do not tie it to anything or to anyone else. Thank you very much. Second, if you [CPF] really want to help us, what is greatly vital and should have priority is that you put out a Special Edition just on the PBSP Hunger Strike by late May or early June (even if its just a short edition), so all here in both C and D facility will be fully informed prior to the scheduled July 1, 2011 H.S. To be fully effective, we recommend that the short special edition should just contain: (1) copy of the formal complaint and the ve (5) core demands, and (2) some letters from all three races that you receive in support of the H.S. Including the one I sent with Mr. Ashker giving SHU prisoners instructions and warnings. And, to help get the above Special Edition out, I and others have decided to donate some funds in early May and will request family and friends to buy subscriptions to your periodical and to go to your website to stay updated. Finally, you should not have any concerns about this place banning the Special Edition when they arrive because (1) the information will be out on the street and (2) you can le suit and win damages to use to further support CPF, just like Prison Legal News (PLN) did. On behalf of all the Hunger Strike participants, we thank you very much. Arturo Castellanos C-17275 [Ed. Note: This letter was not necessary. There is no way we would in any manner try to claim credit for your struggle, or to attribute that struggle to some gure we might hold dear, in order to further our own political agenda. Nor do we refuse to print stuff out of fear your captors might censor us. However, it costs around $3,000 to print and mail out an editon of Prison Focus. We could not afford to print a special edition, and I was already working on this one, which contains my usual rants. I trust our readers to seperate my opinions from the words written by PBSP-SHU convicts.]

LETTERS

Mail Restriction
Adendum Related to the H.S., I wish to inform all PBSP SHU prisoners that recently the administration has actively been attempting to restrict SHU prisoners personal correspondence. Im still restricted from writing or receiving personal mail from those not on my approved list. Recently, the administration has begun giving other SHU prisoners a notice that they will be going to a Special Committee Hearing in order to restrict their personal correspondence. They are told to submit a list of persons they wish to write; which will be investigated and if they do not reside at that address, or if they also write another prisoner, they will be denied. The rest are your approved list, like visiting. They are not issued rule violation reports and when questioned about this and them violating their due process, the Committee states that they are under investigation and they can restrict them under safety and security, thus making it administrativesound familiar? It should, thats how most Indeterminate SHU terms are handed out, administratively with no rule violation report. So, in reality, like myself, they are literally being placed on Indeterminate Personal Correspondence Restrictions. So, do not be surprised if any of you receive a notice and the Administration tells you youre under investigation and also restricts your personal correspondence. That is their latest serious tactic and another reason why the H.S. has to succeed because this Administration will not stop using safety and security as an excuse to take everything else from us who absolutely refuse to be their debrieng-snitches (see formal complaint); and the courts will continue to take the Administrations side even though PBSPs mail policy meets any security concerns; all the countless issued 128-B stopped mail notications prove that point. Arturo Castellanos C-17275 Pelican Bay State Prison, PO Box 7500, (SHU D1-121) Crescent City, CA 95532

Corcoran: Little Change

Dear CPF: Since your visit little has changed here at Corcoran. Speaking for myself and a few others, it seems to have gotten worse. Talking/visiting with you was a no-no in many of the ofcers eyes, and their actions afterwards proved sofrom passing mail to other inmates during mail call; legal mail has been opened before I receive it; food portions smaller and cold, bogus write ups; treats, etc.its all going on. Its cold and rainy as I write these words yet the air conditioner is on and blowing. There is no hot water (it only works twice a day early morning and around eight at night). Furthermore, these cells are all cement so its COLD! Nothing has changed except they have put in a new 602 process. However, that is even laughable because youre only allowed to write one 602 every two weeks! So it limits your ability to resolve multiple issues at once. Thats two 602s per month! But what if I have three different issues I want to address? Doesnt matter! is the response. I have been in jail since I was 15 years old. Im now 28. The psychological changes that Ive been through, and seen, have been dramatic but nothing like Ive experienced here in the SHU at Corcoran. The isolation and lack of human contact puts the prisoners here through like anything Ive ever heard or been through. The small challenges or lack of normal interaction starts to add up. If one chooses to occupy their time by reading one must be mindful of the material being read or you just might be validated. So the plan is for the prisoners here to sit inside our cells 24 hours a day (on most days) do whatever we can to stay sane; while being deprived of basic human interaction and not act out. This in itself is unhealthy, not to mention almost an impossible request even of the most disciplined person. Guys on the tier yell out randomly; ash themselves; masContinued on page 29 PRISON FOCUS

HS Thoughts
Dear CPF, Im sure by now you have already received more elaborately written and detailed letters concerning the planned hunger-strike scheduled for July 1, 2011. Even so, I wish to express myself on behalf of all my fellow H.S. participants with these simple words in hopes that you publish it in order to inform your readers of the H.S. that will include SHU prisoners from all racial groups standing together as one in this struggle. [Emphasis added. Editor] There are 500+ Indeterminate-SHU prisoners housed in D-facility (units D1 thru D10) and I am one of those who has decided to fully commit himself in this indenite H.S. that has been planned since January 2011. We expect approximately 30 prisoners from each unit to participate by July 20, 2011. And we are not only doing this for ourselves, it is also for all the youngsters just coming into the prison system who could easily end up in here. As well as for all other SHU prisoners, including all the women housed throughout Californias women prisons with Indeterminate-SHU terms, who also presently suffer a similar fate as us. To the H.S. participants themselves, we recommend: no one participate if they are too elderly, or have a serious chronic illness (e.g. diabetes; heart problems, cancer, advanced liver damage, or on interferon in July). And, if one cell-partner cannot join, then the other shouldnt either. We feel obligated to give this warning because a lot of us are already committed to remain on the H.S. until CDCR agrees and signs a settlement agreement we all agree upon, even if CDCR has to obtain a court order and continually force-feed us for months However, anyone can join any time while the H.S. continues and should remain on it as long as possible in support. Also, order no food items on Julys canteen. The warden, CDCR secretary, and Governor Brown will be served with a copy of the formal complaint and the ve core demands at least 30 days prior to the H.S. (obtain copies at www.prisonersolidarity.com or www.prisons.org). 2

HS Letter to CPF
Dear CPF,
1. Participants should send a Request for Interview (multi-paged) to the Facility Capt. Woods and/or the Warden one to two weeks prior to their H.S. and point out to them that you will be on a no solid food hunger strike only. And staff should only remove solid foods, not liquids (i.e. coffee, tea, koolaid, etc.) or any other property. Otherwise it will amount to retaliation for you exercising your First Amendment right to peacefully protest. 2. We do not recommend anyone drinking any caffeine during the hunger strike.

CONTENTS
IN THIS ISSUE
Formal Complaint ........................................................................................................................................1 Multiracial Revolt Against Slave Labor Practices ........................................................................................4 Prison Focus is a publication of California Prison Focus, a nonprot organization that works with and on behalf of prisoners in Californias control units and other institutions. Permission is granted to reprint original articles from Prison Focus as long as credit is noted to Prison Focus and California Prison Focus. Also, please send us a copy of publication in which the article appears. Prison Focus welcomes articles, stories, opinion columns, news reports, poetry, photos, cartoons and other artwork. Send contributions to Editors, Prison Focus, 1904 Franklin Street, Suite 507, Oakland, CA 94612. Web: http://www.prisons.org. Email CPF at contact@prisons.org. Subscribe to Prison Focus for $20 and receive four issues ($5 for prisoners and free to California SHU prisoners). Upon request, you may receive a free sample in the next bulk mailing. Back issues are $2 each (if available). For further information, phone (510) 836-7222. 2011 California Prison Focus State Budget Battles Converge on Prison Labor Force ..............................................................................4 Coming Home: Revelations From Former Prisoners ..................................................................................5 Formally Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples Movement Arises ..............................................................6 Colorado Department of Corrections in Need of Corrections .....................................................................7 Musings on Political Prisoners and Mumia Abu-Jamal ...............................................................................7 Five Core Demands ....................................................................................................................................8 Our Potential ...............................................................................................................................................8 Post Racial America, Prisons Feast on Black Girls .....................................................................................9 The Brutality of Supermax Confinement .....................................................................................................9 Mass Incarceration Creates Costly Disaster Across America ...................................................................10 Consciousness, Leadership and Liberation ..............................................................................................10 A Partial California Prisoners Resource List ........................................................................................... 11 PBSP-SHU: Peaceful Protest ...................................................................................................................12 Using Penal Code Section 2933.6 to Expand due Process Rights for Validated ......................................12 CDCR or State Hospital ............................................................................................................................14 The Call .....................................................................................................................................................14 About Prisons ............................................................................................................................................15 Right to Challenge Communication Upheld by Feds ................................................................................16 The Prosecution Rests, But I Cant ...........................................................................................................16 The New Inquistion, Gang Validation ........................................................................................................17 Stop Abuse of Mississippis Incarcerated Youth ........................................................................................18 Injustice Against Sundiata Acoli ................................................................................................................18 Political Prisoners in America ....................................................................................................................18 Hunger Strike & Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Liberation from Dehumanization ......................................23 Money Trumps Civil Rights .......................................................................................................................23 Torture at Pelican Bay State Prison SHU..................................................................................................25 Americas Solitary Confinement Nightmare ..............................................................................................27 American Corrections ...............................................................................................................................27 Medical Experiments on Prisoners ...........................................................................................................28 Angola Three, 39 Years of Solitary Confinement ......................................................................................28 Some Thoughts About Socialism ..............................................................................................................31 Edward Dumbrique R.A.M. Sister Amazon John Thompson Steve Champion Stephen Lendman Sanyika Shakur Ron Ahnen Michelle Alexandeer Gabreil A. Huerta Don Thompson William Blum Danny Troxell Todd Ashker S.N. JamaaDewberry Arturo Castellanos G. Franco High Court to CA: Cut 30,000 Prisoners ...................................................................................................31

EDITOR
Ed Mead

ARTWORK
Many thanks to the prisoner artists Michael D. Russell and Antonio C. Ramon. Their outstanding pieces on the Pelican Bay SHU added special emphasis to the content of this issue. Artists have been attributed where possible. In issue #35 I used the great SHU art of Mr. Avitea without attribution. My apologies.

SPECIAL THANKS
Our deepest appreciation goes out to former Black Panther, George Jackson Brigade member, and political prisoner Mark Cook who paid for much of the amount needed for the printing and mailing of this issue of Prison Focus. The remainder was paid for by SHU prisoners at Pelican Bay. If there are to be more issues published there will need to be more people contributing to the cost of production. Lastly, many thanks to Leslie DiBenedetto, my former co-editor, who performed difcult task of editing/proong this issue. If there are errors in this edition it is because I have occasionally ignored her good advice.

CONTRIBUTORS
Michael Rullsell Antonio C. Ramon Freedom Archives Mumia Abu-Jamal Mark Cook Michelle Chen Marpessa Kupendua Bruce Reilly Jean Casella James Ridgeway Lynne Stewart Kevin Drum Rashel Pfeffer Lynn Washington, Jr. Tony Stitt PARC James Crawford

DEPARTMENTS
Pelican Bay Report ...................................................................................................................................15

REGULAR FEATURES
Letters .........................................................................................................................................................2 Quote Box .................................................................................................................................................17 Book Reviews ...........................................................................................................................................20 Poetry ........................................................................................................................................................26 Eds Comments .........................................................................................................................................24

Notice!
California Prison Focus is drafting litigation to contest the constitutional validity of certain CDCR practices inside Californias Security Housing Units. Any prisoner having information on this subject, or who is seeking to learn more about this law suit, should contact: Marilyn McMahon Attorney at Law PO Box 5187 Berkeley, CA 94705-0187 By way of condential legal mail. If you want a response be sure to enclose a SASE.
By Antonio C. Ramon

NUMBER 37

COMMENTARIES: SOCIETY AND PRISONS

A MULTIRACIAL REVOLT AGAINST SLAVE LABOR PRACTICES
ON MONDAY MORNING WHEN THE DOORS OPEN, CLOSE THEM. DO NOT GO TO WORK. THEY CANNOT DO ANYTHING TO US THAT THEY HAVENT ALREADY DONE. By Mark Cook his was the message that prisoners got on the fth day of a strike that turned out to be the largest prison strike in U.S. history. When it began on Thursday, Dec 9, 2010, strike leaders planned a one-day peaceful, self-imposed lockdown in several Georgia state prisons. Their headline demand was an end to slave labor in the state, which by its own law compels state prisoner to work without pay. Fifty-four thousand inmates, the largest single workforce in the state, work for Prison Industries, a wholly owned subsidiary of Georgias Department of Corrections, and get paid nothing. The inmates intent was to mount a multiracial protest against a southern prison infamous for violating human rights and practiced at pitting one group against another. To educate the public on the intolerable conditions of life for incarcerated people. The prisoners also demanded recognition by prison authorities that the United States is supposed to be a democracy, which minimally means the abolition of slavery, the right of everyone to vote including ex-cons, and have a voice in improving a rigged justice system. Their work stoppage was a conscious labor rights offensive that demonstrates growing class-consciousness among the millions of people under lock-and-key in this country. Sit-down strike, not riot. All of the men were outraged at their slave conditions. They could have rioted. Instead, they organized a sit-down strike and prepared a list of demands. They used contraband cell phones purchased from guards to communicate between prisons. And because of certain retaliation, the identity of strike leaders remains a mystery. The prisoners did not get violent. The guards did. They pepper sprayed, handcuffed and beat inmates with hammers, threw many in solitary connement, turned off heat and light utilities, secretly transferred strike activists to other prisons, offered reactionary gang members money to attack other prisoners, and more. They want to break up the unity we have here, said one inmate. We have the Crips and the Bloods, we have the Muslims, we have the head Mexicans, and we have the Aryans all with a peaceful understanding, all on common ground. We all want to be paid for our work, and we all want education in here. There are people in here who cant even read. Black men are 61 percent of the state prison population, whites 36 percent. The remaining are First Nation Americans, Latinos/ Latinas and Asians. What do they want? The public to understand that prisoners are a hidden labor force not counted in the employment/ unemployment statistics. They are workers, not animals and want to be treated fairly as working-class citizens. As a reporter with Black Agenda Report put it, With one in twelve Georgia adults in jail or prison, on parole or probation, prisoners are us. Prison workers halted the strike after the sixth day to counteract the brutal crackdowns on them and, as one said, So we can go to the law library and start the paperwork a law suit [on prison conditions]. Although the mainstream press largely ignored the historic work stoppage, word got out through the independent press, community activists, prisoners and their families and supporters all armed with cell phones and texting skills. The Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners Rights formed, and was swamped with messages of solidarity from around the country and the world. Meetings and marches took place in Oakland, Detroit, New York and Raleigh. Because of public pressure, seven prison guards were arrested on February 21 for assaulting one of the many inmates beaten. This is an important start, because similar conditions exist nationwide, and collaboration between prisoners and the public is critical. Two and a half million adults are not allowed to vote in the United States because they are in prison. Five times that number just released from prison on parole, community supervision or probation are either totally disenfranchised or blocked from employment and education opportunities, healthcare service, special housing, etc. Basic demands. The Georgia strikers presented the following nine demands, which eloquently testify to the conditions of U.S. imprisonment and what is needed to help inmates make it once released. The demands form the basis of ongoing negotiations between Georgia ofcials and the strikers. They also constitute a program for action for prison organizing in other parts of the country: A LIVING WAGE FOR WORK: In violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, the DOC demands prisoners work for free. EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES: For the great majority of prisoners, the DOC denies all opportunities for education beyond the GED, despite the benet to both prisoners and society. DECENT HEALTH CARE: In violation of the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, the DOC denies adequate medical care to prisoners, charges excessive fees for the most minimal care is responsible for extraordinary pain and suffering. DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS: Georgia prisoner are conned in over-crowded substandard conditions, with little heat in winter and oppressive heat in summer. NUTRIONAL MEALS: Vegetables and fruit are in short supply in DOC facilities while starches and fatty foods are plentiful. VOCATIONAL AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES: The DOC has stripped its facilities of all opportunities for skills training, self-improvement and proper exercise. ACCESS TO FAMILIES: The DOC has disconnected thousands of prisoners from their families by imposing excessive telephone charges and innumerable barriers to visitation. JUST PAROLE DECISIONS: The Parole Board capriciously and regularly denies parole to the majority of prisoners despite evidence of eligibility Cross-posted from: In These Times. For updates and how to help, google Black Agenda Report, San Francisco Bay View, or Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners Rights These demands are not outrageous by any standards but consistent with the demands any poor working class community in the U.S. Notwithstanding, federal prisoners in the U.S. Penitentiary at Atlanta are paid for their work. their punitive deploymentexplicitly sanctioned under the Constitutionin the dregs of industrial capitalism, speaks loud and clear to the theory of prison as Americas new Jim Crow. Allegations that prison guards severely beat an inmate protester in retaliation underscore the inequality endemic to this labor system, even though the programs are typically endorsed as a form of rehabilitation and self-help. Of course, todays prison labor is more regulated and considerably less brutal than the post-Civil War convict-lease systema regression to slavery disguised as a criminal penalty. (Some reforms were enacted during the Great Depression to prevent downward-spiraling competition between free labor and incarcerated workers.) Yet the institutional parallels are striking. From the late19th through the early 20th century, southern states, including Georgia, turned to prison labor as a release valve for dealing with scal crisis, and the white supremacist power structure, through leases with the private sector, which enabled forced labor, torture and abuse on a massive scale. How interesting, then, that in this latest economic crisis, states once again seem to be looking to prison as a convenient resource for carrying out various government services. As an inexpensive public labor source, a cash-strapped bureaucracy might see inmates as a convenient alternative to, say, real public workers. Particularly the kind of workers who vote, and who have collective bargaining rights, which tend to get in the way of budget deals. Is there any way to get around the historically ingrained perverse incentives to exploit prison labor? A budding campaign in Canada could bridge the civil rights debate and the underlying labor struggle. In Vancouver, some prisoners could soon get a full-edged union, potentially a watershed in protecting both inmates and blue-collar workers, reports the Canadian Press. Their lawyer, Natalie Dunbar, said Friday organizers at Mountain Institution in Agassiz are trying to sign up members for ConFederation, Canadian Prisoners Labor Union, Local 001. A spokeswoman for the institution said administrators are moving very carefully because no penal institution in Canada has ever been confronted with the issue. Its a new element for us, assistant warden Brenda Lamm said. Weve never had inmates trying to organize a labor union before so thats why were proceeding cautiously and thoughtfully. Dunbar said theres a lack of resources at federal institutions to address issues that plague prison populations as a workforce, such as proper work boots and qualied rst-aid personnel. Such a social experiment probably wont be attempted in Americas prison-industrial complex, which is one of the worlds largest and deeply embedded with the prot interests of corporations and ofcials. Unionization alone would never cure the racial disparities and human rights abuses that plague the system. But these are strange times. Inspired by the Wisconsin standoff, we see new labor solidarity movements popping up across the country, new momentum for public sector labor organizing, and rising political backlash against policies that degrade working people. Maybe the workers taking to the streets have some courage to share with their brothers and sisters trapped behind bars.

STATE BUDGET BATTLES CONVERGE ON PRISON LABOR FORCE

By Michelle Chen, March 9, 2011 rison isnt just about doing hard time. For many, its about working full-time, too. These days, state governments seem ready to squeeze their captive workforces to plug budget gaps on the cheap. From the chain gang to the gulag, labor in the prison population predates our modern labor regulations and to this day, remains relatively untouched by the legal protections afforded to regular workers. So in most states, prison work has come to be seen as a hybrid between conscript labor and rehabilitation, putting otherwise idle inmates to work on farms, manufacturing plants, and janitorial jobs. The New York Times reports that in many areas, laborers in prison uniforms are a growing presence at public work sites, suggesting that theyre being used to alleviate scal pressures that are now eroding common public sector services: [O]fcials are expanding the practice to combat cuts in federal nancing and dwindling tax revenue, using prisoners to paint vehicles, clean courthouses, sweep campsites and perform many other services done before the recession by private contractors or government employees. In New Jersey, inmates on road kill patrol clean deer carcasses from highways. Georgia inmates tend municipal graveyards. In Ohio, they paint their own cells. In California, prison ofcials hope to expand existing programs, including one in which wet-suitclad inmates repair leaky public water tanks. There are no gures on how many prisoners have been enrolled in new or expanded programs nationwide, but experts in criminal justice have taken note of the increase. As we reported in December, prison labor conditions have sparked some noteworthy revolts. A wave of strikes rocked several prisons in Georgia late last year, touching off a national campaign for the dignied treatment of prison workers. The uprisings shed light on how vulnerable inmates are when the prison-industrial complex operates not just as a warden and dictator but a boss as well, marshaling the labor of thousands with little oversight. The Georgia inmates drafted a list of grievances ranging from abusive treatment and work without wages. The inmates direct actions resonated with civil rights groups who have pointed out disturbing continuities between the era of slavery and the racialization of imprisonment, and by extension, the industries tied to it. The mass incarceration of black men, and

By Michael David Russell

PRISON FOCUS

COMING HOME: REVELATIONS FROM FORMER PRISONERS

I want to live every day, because Im afraid I might lose it all again! - Former DOC No. A27963 By Sis. Marpessa Kupendua ransitioning from a prisoner number to an adult person expected to take on adult responsibilities can be overwhelming for many ex-inmates, particularly those who were incarcerated for long periods of time. The prison industry is ourishing because America is locking up more people than any country in the entire world (2 million + and counting), most for non-violent convictions. The subsequent psychological, sensory and physical impact that many of these returnees experience often goes unaddressed and isnt discussed very often by politicians or mainstream media, even though each day many of us will share space with someone who has spent a signicant portion of their life in a cage. Every one of us should be concerned because these men and women are of us and will be returning to us, our communities, and many to our own families. This is dedicated to better understanding the impact of this systems corrections from those who lived it. up. I want to see her, but part of me wants to leave that part of me behind....!!! i want to help but how can i help, i barely have my feet on the ground as it is. But I promised I would and she is counting on me for support. I went into a serious depression and was put on a medication that drove me into a prison within myself. It took the program staff several months to realize I wasnt talking to anyone or eating, that I had lost about 30 pounds. I was gone even though I was performing my required duties. After all those years of taking care of myself, to be so strong and resourceful and get myself paroled (By Gods grace) and then not know how to do anything for myself was really difcult. making event for me. I have not yet adjusted to thinking for myself completely. It is all a lot faster, people are different, more hostile and pushy than I remember. Once you get outside those gates, you lose those same independent, ambitious thoughts you had, you feel lost and very dependent on others guidance. I felt thrust into solitude after the active, super-responsible life-style I had in prison. I had a job, a routine, and had earned my respect. I sat in my room at the halfway house, where there was a small TV. For three days, I never turned it on because I didnt know how to, and I was too ashamed to ask anyone for help. I worry about violating parole every time I step outside, by resembling someone or just by talking to the wrong person. Every time I see the police go by, even though Im not breaking any law, makes my heart skip a beat because they love to harass Blacks and Latinos; its a game to them. I only did ve years and I still jump at the sound of keys or two way radio. I am in awe of all of you as I watch you scurrying around, maneuvering so nonchalantly, effortlessly, while I stumble around like Im deaf/blind, not knowing which way to go, too prideful to ask many times. I watch peoples conversations but have little to offer outside of prison stories, so I have no conversational chit-chat. I watch people hop on and off buses, read confusing street signs and symbols, while Im still getting lost in these huge stores or feel nervous sitting in a waiting room where it seems that everyone is watching me.

THE REAL WORLD

A study of the attitudes of released prisoners in the United States revealed that most expected to be labeled ex-cons and treated as failures and pariahs Getting paperwork together to apply for services such as a birth certicate, social security card, drivers license, etc., are very difcult to obtain and yet are very necessary to acquire quickly in order to become recognized as a person in this system. Learning bus/ subway systems or even walking routes may be difcult because of the changes that have taken place in the landscape. A steady diet of encouragement is necessary in order to try and help them nd a new normal in their life and set and achieve goals. The feelings of alienation may still be present, no matter how many people may feel that they are close to the inmate. The dysfunctional consequences of institutionalization are not always immediately obvious once the institutional structure and procedural imperatives have been removed. This is especially true in cases where persons retain a minimum of structure wherever they re-enter free society. Moreover, the most negative consequences of institutionalization may rst occur in the form of internal chaos, disorganization, stress, and fear. Yet, institutionalization has taught most people to cover their internal states, and not to openly or easily reveal intimate feelings or reactions. So, the outward appearance of normality and adjustment may mask a range of serious problems in adapting to the free world ... when severely institutionalized persons confront complicated problems or conicts, especially in the form of unexpected events that cannot be planned for in advance, the myriad of challenges that the non-institutionalized confront in their everyday lives outside the institution may become overwhelming. The facade of normality begins to deteriorate, and persons may behave in dysfunctional or even destructive ways because all of the external structure and supports upon which they relied to keep themselves controlled, directed, and balanced have been removed. ... Parents who return from periods of incarceration still dependent on institutional structures and routines cannot be expected to effectively organize the lives of their children or exercise the initiative and autonomous decision-making that parenting requires. ... Those who remain emotionally over-controlled and alienated from others will experience problems being psychologically available and nurturing. See: http://aspe.hhsgov/hsp/prison2home02/ Haney.htm#II It felt like I was walking into another world again, I couldnt believe it. Because Ive been ghting so long, when (my release) eventually came I didnt know whether to take it or run back inside. I was very frightened to walk across a street. I couldnt judge the time, distance, and speed of on-coming trafc. I had a problem with my sensory depth perception from bars being right in front of my face. I realized it was a problem after wildly running in an almost panic across the street, only to see the on-rushing trafc to remain still considerable distances down the street. I told myself, youve got a problem, so get over it - fast. And thats exactly what I did. I worked and worked on it. DO NOT walk up behind me without saying something or making noise of some kind BEFORE you get near me... It takes a long time to adjust to basic things, like knowing you can open the bedroom door and go out. One man I know of couldnt leave his bedroom without someone coming to get him. Im a lot more claustrophobic now -- even the shower curtain bothers me. Many of us suffer from sleep disorders, paranoia, pervasive anxiety, depression, nightmares, night sweats and many symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The rst few days are the hardest, just getting your senses used to not being in an institution can be overwhelming. The smells of urban life, the sounds, eyes adjusting to home lighting. Feet hardly know how to walk on wood oors and carpeting (vs. concrete). Being able to close a door and not be watched, the softness of cushions and blankets and people, lights that can be turned on and off when you want. Last I checked life doesnt come with instructions. You just got to take it how it comes sometimes. I wish I knew how to make it through a trip to the grocery store without becoming overwhelmed and traumatized by the experience of too many choices. Ice cream was a 30 minute decision

FOR FAMILY AND SUPPORTERS

Former prisoners should receive counseling as part of their release plan to help move through the potentially challenging moments they may experience upon re-entry. Likewise the family should (ideally) be offered counseling before the inmate is released, particularly the children of soon to be exprisoners. Caretakers of the children during the incarceration need to know the pitfalls that could occur and learn the tools to protect everyone emotionally while remaining as supportive as possible during the readjustment period. The family members are changed people as a result of the inmates incarceration, just as the inmate is, and so things will likely not ever get back to the way they once were. Supporters should always offer encouragement and guidance geared toward smoothing out potentially bumpy transitions and not make the returnee feel as though they owe them something for having supported them while incarcerated nor exacerbate negativity that only serves to further divide and cause pain within the family. Ex-prisoners may not readily accept the advice of others because they are nally free to not follow anyone elses orders and so may make errors in judgment when dealing with seemingly simple situations. Opportunists may take advantage of some of these vulnerable returnees as some can be easily manipulated and led into situations that are detrimental to them. Former friends and dangerous inuences may arise and ex-prisoners may even fall into some old patterns. Even when mistakes are made, the last thing returnees need to deal with is ridicule or condemnation, breeding resentment and deterring badly needed support. Many have been terrorized mentally and physically at the hands of guards and other inmates and have deep scarring that no one can see from the outside looking in. Comparing one ex-prisoners successes to anothers lack thereof is meaningless because each individuals journey through their prison years varies greatly and so shall their journey upon release. I had a family. I had a house. I had a car. I had a job.... I was making good money. Everything was going well, and now I dont have the patience for anything.... I have problems with my physical self. I have aches in my body and my legs.... [My] life is a lot harder. No matter how many visits, phone calls, and letters you have shared with people, you still dont know how much they have changed over a lengthy period of time until youre actually around them regularly, and they feel the same way about you. Here are some experiences: My son wasnt a baby anymore and he hadnt seen me in 10 years. Now he was 12. He wouldnt let me hug him. He wouldnt even shake my hand. Im trying to understand this. I cry every night. I want to prove to myself and those who stuck by me that i can make it right. Im so scared of letting anyone down after the burden Ive been. Everything has been taken from me while inside, my mom had been taken from me, my dad has been taken from me, I have no family at all out here and I am completely on my own with $75 and nowhere to go. I was engaged when I got locked up at 18now Im 45, the rest of my teens, all of my 20s, 30s, and most of my 40s, gone! My only child was born while i was inside and is now himself an inmate and so well never be together. I live with my mother in my old neighborhood. I need a pardon in order to get paid for wrongful imprisonment. After all theyve taken from me, youd think theyd at least provide me with my basic needs, Im embarrassed to depend on my family as a 45 year old man to have to eat. Every night I pray and pray for the prisoners I left behind, I feel so badly for them living under such horrible conditions and promised many of them I would help them when I got out. My one friend is getting out of prison this week, she has been locked up for 8 years....she was 18 when she got locked NUMBER 37

EMPLOYMENT/SURVIVAL
Statistically more than half of all inmates are arrested at some point, so setting small goals and working towards accomplishing them soon after release is key to getting on good footing. The basic requirements are just what anyone would expect them to be: information on where to obtain temporary shelter, food, clothing, health care/medicines, and the legal documents necessary to apply for employment and services. Instead of prisons providing some semblance of these basic requirements for inmates upon release, most are instead sent home with less than $100, the clothes on their backs, and no support system. They are programmed to fail so that this system can continue to keep its well-oiled, prison moneymaking machine humming. There had been no help from inside to prepare me to be successful getting out. At the core of being successful outside is how you make decisions. I felt inadequate, stupid, less than other people when I rst got out, and that made it harder to feel able to make any of the decisions. We think we have a plan and think we have an idea of what it will be, hour by hour, minute by minute. We just get a Plan A together, but we are not prepared with Plan B, C, or D for when Plan A doesnt work! I wish I never had to talk about why I went to jail again. Every time I have to tell someone Ive been to jail, I have to go through the entire story. I just want to put it all behind me, but no one will let me. I just want to work. I am out of a job, so I need a job and services to help are limited. Because all my adult life has been inside, I have no work history before 2009 and didnt make enough to pay into unemployment benets. Because of unemployments structure (like the rest of the government) I only received benets for four months and have no more money. Also as grateful as I am for friends who come thru in my time of need, I am growing soul weary of taking handouts at my age. I feel like I should be able to take care of myself and not feel as dependent as I was when I was incarcerated. The biggest psychological effect that incarceration had on me when I came out after twelve years was not being able to move about as freely as I imagined I would. It isnt that I am not learning some of the things I need to, but that I am not learning all the things I want to and it comes down to time. Often people who come out realize that the help they thought they would easily nd isnt available and they must do things on their own and that takes time and often just living day to day is hard enough. Now a person can either take their time, manage their time and eventually get to it, or get caught up again and be back on the prison plantation. Basic things like how to use cell phones, developing resumes, getting legal documents like ss cards, birth certicates and such are difcult tasks and when people dont plan on how to do some of these things before they come out it will be an even harder task when they are released. It is frustrating to lay awake and think Well if I go back to prison at least my life will be assigned to me: job, clothes, bed, and food will all be handed to me and I dont have to worry. Dont get me wrong I have no intention (for now) of committing a crime, however I wonder what I will do if push comes to shove and Im truly out of cash and have no way to eat or support myself at all. Sent home with no money, job, or place to live. Red tape keeps me from collecting anything from the state for my wrongful imprisonment. Even though ive been exonerated, the record hasnt shown it and so the charges are still on my 5

record and I cant get a job! Were not seen as community members when we get out, and we face discrimination in employment, housing, etc. People dont necessarily see the value of former prisoners, or understand that we have a right to be part of the community and have something to contribute. We need to get that sense of self and value as part of community. One of the things that happens is we dont know the questions to ask because we dont know the answers we need.

GOD BLESS THE CHILD

Information is power. Bostons Coming Home Directory is an excellent example of the type of resource that exoffenders need upon release from prison, listing providers of emergency assistance, health care, housing help, legal assistance, support groups, veterans and womens groups, plus much more, check it out at http://www.cominghomedirectory.org/index.php. This directory is exactly the type of information that needs to be in the hands of ex-offenders and their families/supporters from day one. Residents of cities that dont provide a directory along these same lines should get together and create one and make it widely available. This would be a really excellent project for prison activists or any group/church/club to take on. Ex-offenders need assistance applying for and receiving services for some period of time following release, this is basic and should not even be an issue anywhere in this country! Former prisoners, their families and supporters must become involved in organizing for serious changes in state and federal policies and within the prison hellholes themselves. All can attest to the horrendous conditions and practices that violate health codes and constitutional guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment. With millions of lives being impacted in some way by the prison system, there could be a massive prison movement happening right now if people who know the deal would simply participate at whatever level they can; there is strength in numbers! A great example of returnees and supporters organizing is Returning Citizens United (returningcitizensunited@verizon.net) of Washington, DC., who actively organize to break the cycle of homelessness, addiction, and incarceration by working in coalition for affordable housing, jobs, and addiction treatment services which can help address the root causes of these issues. They also are ghting for alternatives to incarceration. They believe that by continued recognition for those who have lost their way, they can work together as a unit to help restore the lives of homeless, recovering, and returning citizens (ex-offenders) by meeting their needs so that they can regain structure and stability in society. Helping to rebuild shattered lives is an onerous task that can be rife with frustration and anguish, particularly when it comes to families and supporters. Breaking old habits is more than just a notion for returnees sometimes, but they also must not just be about themselves and recognize that their loved ones have endured tremendous anxiety, depression and grief from missing them and worrying over their day to day survival inside the prison. No matter the amount of joy family and friends may have felt at any given time, that could instantly convert to that sad, sinking feeling by just the thought of their loved one locked up in a prison far away from home. Many family members struggle with illnesses, addictions, and other destructive behaviors as they, too, have done time right along with the ex-prisoner as well as endured the gossiping whispers of a community, church or workplace. Children are traumatized by the teasing of their peers because they have a parent or sibling in prison and are devastated when visits and phone calls end, many times having gone for years without even their human touch. Many families also suffer nancial ruin from lawyer fees, nes, the obscene price gouging of prisoner phone calls, traveling hundreds of miles to rural areas to visit, and putting money in prison commissary accounts. Some parolees are even asked to pay a monthly fee for their parole before they have even secured employment, so this also falls to the families to pay! These families truly are the forgotten victims. Supporters must show compassion and not be judgmental or harsh when issues arise as the family and ex-prisoner struggle to readjust around a myriad of issues. Plans may have to change but you best believe that there is always a new day and a new way to ght for a positive outcome for all concerned. What I really wish I knew back then that I know now is that no matter how well you plan your release it wont be anything like you plan!! Even and especially the happy family reunions we dream about wont be so happy. They may be at rst but then the reality of time and distance starts to show. Our families have a lot of unresolved emotions that may be hidden behind the I just want you home face. My kids told me a year before I got out on Mothers Day that they couldnt wait to see me every day. When I got out they had moved from LA area to near San Bernardino and will barely speak to me. I took it hard when my plans werent going my way especially with my family. I just want women to know that even though it wont go as planned, dont make the mistake I made and let it stop you from taking advantage of what new opportunities arise from life planning itself. This is not the structured world of prison. No one ever knows how a day can begin and end. Just push on and enjoy having a day to begin 6

and end. There arent any limits out here and we stand equal to those around us so we dont have to bend to others will anymore. I think that was my downfall, I forgot that someone elses word isnt law, that I have the power over my life and most of all my freedom, including freedom to question or challenge or change the course of my life. My best advice: dont plan beyond nding a place to stay. The rst week get your ID, SSI card, and GR or whatever income will sustain you until you get a job. But let all the rest be and take it as it comes. Keep on pushing forward, together we can make better days ahead! Thanks to: Bilal, Deirdre, Diana, Karima, Lee, Mary Ellen, Misty, Mustafa, Nikki, Robin, Vonda and Yango CA Coalition for Women Prisoners - http://www.womenprisoners.org/ Prisoners are People, Too - http://www.prp2.org/ The Intersectionality of Race, Gender, and Reentry Challenges for African-American Women, American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. November, 2010. AfricanAmerican women offenders face collateral attacks on their motherhood, on their ability to secure housing and employment, and on their ability to reintegrate. Reentry programs must have a race and gender focus that confronts intersectionality. http://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/prison_ programs_recidivism_reentry/ http://innocenceprojectpa.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/ exonerees-speak-about-life-after-prison-2/ http://thejerichomovement.com - Jericho is a movement with the dened goal of gaining recognition of the fact that political prisoners and prisoners of war exist inside of the United States despite the US governments continued denial ... and winning amnesty and freedom for these political prisoners. http://truthinjustice.org/nding-solace.htm http://www.law.berkeley.edu/les/IHRLC/ReturningHomeDownloadable.pdf http://www.scribd.com/doc/11210655/Life-After-PrisonSteps-to-Making-it-on-the-Outside (Cons Helping Cons was not specically excerpted in this piece but has great suggestions for ex-prisoners, well worth checking out).

By Michael David Russell

FORMERLY INCARCERATED & CONVICTED PEOPLES MOVEMENT ARISES!

By Bruce Reilly labama represents the answer to a clarion call. This is a call that speaks to us in our own voice; clear, loud and urgent. A voice that speaks to our identity and emanates from the soul, ringing true both in the head and the heart. Our objective is a collective one, continuing in that vein, as we gathered fty people from across the nation to engage in a conversation about the need to build a Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples Movement. We understand and declare very clearly: the criminal justice system does not work. It is no more than a destructive force in our communities now and for future generations. Fifty formerly incarcerated came with a dedication and commitment stating that this was our time. We were not deterred by our inability to raise the entire budget to y, feed and house people in Alabama for three days, nor were the few dozen supporters who found their own means to be present for this historic moment. As activists, we have been to our share of conferences and rallies, yet before many of us left our homes, we knew this invitation was different. And we readily subsidized our own ght for restoration of our

own civil and human rights. The rst exercise was to introduce ourselves to each other not simply by our names or the many great struggles that we were currently engaged in, but by who we embraced as our heroes. We wrote our names and the name of our hero on a piece of paper and we taped those to the front of the table where we sat. We were quickly able to see the right people were in the room. We participated in designing a historical time line and this practice drew us closer to discovering our common history, something uniquely ours as formerly incarcerated. Knowing where we came from made it easier to nd our vision. We agreed to accept as our vision The Fight for the Full Restoration of Our Civil and Human Rights. The concept and construction of a movement requires a vessel large enough to hold us all, and steering a vessel of this scale requires a crew of many navigators and leaders. Agreeing on a vision was an essential and amazing accomplishment in light of the fact that time was short, and with so many leaders in the room, egos could easily have gotten in the way. We agreed to maintain the structure that propelled us to this point. However, we needed to enlarge the steering committee to seriously consider setting a national agenda. Twenty people volunteered to join the steering committee, providing us greater diversity in both geography and gender. We decided we would do regular conference calls to move forward with the agenda and coordinating the Los Angeles convening. The Steering Committee planned to kick off the beginning of this movement by walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in Selma. Days before any of us hopped in a plane, bus, train, or car, we were informed that we would have stay on the sidewalk if we were going to march across the bridge. Over 247 people called the mayor of Selma and let him know we were coming to march over the bridge, and not on the sidewalk. Some of us consciously considered going to jail again, and some of us even emptied our bank accounts just in case we needed bail. We didnt anticipate Mayor George Evans of Selma would ask to speak with us after our march, or agree to read our statement at the 46-year Jubilee marking Bloody Sunday. Nor did we anticipate that our march across the bridge would be headlines on one of the largest papers in Alabama, with over twenty photos online. Our own Tina Reynolds was photographed carrying a sign proclaiming that Democracy Starts At Home. We should be allowed to vote and exercise our civil rights regardless of where we live in the United States. Our visit to the state capital in Montgomery is a testament to the power of unity. While standing on the stairs of the capital building we were introduced to, and had a short conversation with, Alabama Chief Justice Sue Cobb-Bell. The Chief Justice explained the serious effort underway to rewrite the criminal code and reduce the prison population by three thousand. Once inside, we were led into a conference room where we met Rep. John Rogers, the head of the Alabama Black Caucus. After a spirited discussion about pressing issues, we were ultimately promised a community forum of which we would take part in choosing the community organizations to participate. We were also promised that key elected ofcials, including the governor, would be present at the forum. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the work and support that our host organization, The Ordinary People Society (TOPS), put into the initial organizing. On a side note: TOPS was seriously respected by prominent members of the Alabama legislature, who pledged their support to this struggle, and prominent ofcials in both Selma and Montgomery. Meanwhile, our allies were honing their own efforts, such as supporting those organizations on our side (and inspiring those who should be), and creating more spaces for our voices to be heard. They are committed to recognizing our priorities and helping us create the tools for our organizing efforts. Last but not least, we want to thank everyone who attended and wrapped their heads around the bigger picture of Movement and a larger agenda. As a collective we all committed to something bigger than each of our own organizations or individual work. We took action and decided to organize through Regions represented by our expanded steering committee. Regional caucuses will facilitate closer collaboration in our areas, and we will build a movement on one accord, as a collective committed to The Fight for Full Restoration of our Civil and Human Rights. Let us keep moving forward, and share this document with people we believe should know and participate in our common efforts to build a movement. Let people know about the goal to meet in Los Angeles November 2nd, 2011. We have recognized the dates below for action, meetings, and solidarity. We call on our members to take part in order to raise our capacity, prole, and build a movement: [Ed. Note: Dates that have taken place before Prison Focus was printed have been omitted] Aug. 21st (40th Anniversary of San Quentin Uprising) Sept. 29th (40th Anniversary of Attica Rebellion) Formerly Incarcerated & Convicted Peoples Movement PRISON FOCUS

COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS IN NEED OF CORRECTION

By Jean Casella and James Ridgeway For seven years, Clair L. Beazer has been an inmate in the supermax Colorado State Penitentiary in Caon City which, as weve written before, qualies as the solitary connement capital of the Western World. In this essay, Beazer describes the effects of years of solitary connement, pointing out that while it is particularly torturous for inmates already suffering from mental illness, this interminable, indenite isolation also causes lasting psychological and physical damage to all prisoners who endure it. Beazer notes that at long last, some hope is offered by the bill introduced in the Colorado state legislature to limit the use of solitary connement. In an instance of grim irony, we received his essay, written last month, just a day before lawmakers chose to back away from most meaningful portions of the bill. n most instances the law is a simple matter of doing what you should rather than what you want. One consequence of continuing to do what you want regardless, is that a conscientious legislator someplace may nd it necessary to propose a law to compel you to do what you should do. Just such a circumstance has come about in the state of Colorados Department of Corrections (C.D.O.C.), of whom some are known to say the reason theyre called the Department of Corrections is because theyre always getting it wrong. The C.D.O.Cs execrable practice of warehousing the mentally ill in lockdown 24/7 is unconscionable. To sentence men without due process to a solitary existence in a lonely cell with only the company of their psychoses and personal demons for interminable, indenite periods, some lasting decades, would and does appear on the surface alone indefensible. To further exacerbate their evil usage by holding them thus until their mandatory release date only serves to discharge innitely more dangerous parolees into the public. Enduring this type of incarceration has many debilitating effects, the most common being depression with accompanying apathy and lethargy. The minimal activity and lack of meaningful exercise can atrophy their legs and some can barely walk after years of inactivity, and you can bet that there is little market for ex-cons who cant even walk a quarter mile after release. Then theres the other end of the spectrum, motivated, active, angry inmates that compulsively work out 2, 4, 8 hours a day in the fashion of the hardened vengeful convict portrayed by Robert DeNiro in the movie Cape Fear. For months, then years, then decades, driven by their isolation, not even allowed IN PRISON to walk out of a cell without a two or three-man escort. In restrains, handcuffs, shackles, bellychains, lock-boxes. Surrounded by thick concrete walls, high fences, barbed wire, razor wire, armed tower and perimeter guards, electried kill fences. Ominously and inevitably their long-awaited day arrives, and when it does the C.D.O.C. dutifully, imprisoned in full restraints, escorts them to the prison gates, where and when they unleash them upon the public. Not surprisingly, their recidivism rate is exponentially and in some cases horrifyingly higher, as is their toll on societyyou know, the public the C.D.O.C. ostensibly exists to defend. The public may want to consider if perhaps the Prison Industrial Complex (of which the C.D.O.C. is denitely a part with its Incarceration Capitol of the World designation and proud title) nds it more protable to release their homemade monsters. After all, we all know that high-prole horric crimes can and often do drive news cycles, and have for years. Surely after all these years of high-prole horric crimes that lead the news cycles somebody, anybody, everybody must have noticed that they drive incarceration rates. Even so, no one is surprised that the C.D.O.C. has come out in erce opposition to the Senate Bill 176 (introduced by Sen. Morgan Carroll, if passed the C.D.O.C would need to limit the solitary connement of mentally ill prisoners Denver Post, March 14, 2011) , as they claim it is because they say there is no indication ofcials are abusing the use of solitary connement. Please allow me, from my true insider perspective, to disabuse you of that notion because for those of us actually in solitary connement, we say they are abusing the over-use of solitary connement. They also make the preposterous claim that the average stay is 18 months Let me tell you that those numbers are about as an off the books as C.D.O. (Collateralized Debt Obligation) at AIG. I personally have been in Ad Seg for 7 years. Let me to a survey, to my immediate right 7 years, to my left 8 years, next to him 4 years and under me 10 years. In my 7 years, Ive only witnessed 2 men get of Ad Seg. 2! The C.D.O.C. is in need of correction and the honorable Sen. Morgan Carroll and Rep. Claire Levy are the conscientious lawmakers trying to write another C.D.O.C. with Senate Bill 176, which is a start, a good start, at least, at long last. I (we) dont have much hope up here in the shameless incarceration capital of the world, and maybe, just maybe these

venerable legislators can compel the C.D.O.C to stop doing what it wants and force it to begin doing what it should. You can write to Clair Beazer at the following address: Mr. Clair L. Beazer, CSP #49801, C.C.F., Box Number 600, Canon City, CO 81215-0600. Source: Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 www.Freedomarchives.org

WHERE THE BILL OF RIGHTS GOES TO DIE

By Kevin Drum ay 17, 2011 Mother JonesSo heres the story: police in Lexington, Kentucky, were chasing after some guy whod just scored some crack. He went into an apartment building, but police didnt know what door he had gone into. So, smelling marijuana under one door, they pounded loudly and announced their presence. But they guessed wrong. It was just some random dude doing drugs, not the guy they were after. The dude, unsurprisingly, panicked when police suddenly started pounding on his door and tried to dump the evidence. Police, hearing this, busted down his door, arrested him, and eventually sent him to prison for 11 years. But lets back up. The police busted down his door? Dont you need a search warrant for that kind of thing? Answer: no, not if there are exigent circumstances that make it urgent that police get in. For example, if a suspect is busily getting rid of evidence. But back up again. This particular guy, it turns out, had actually done nothing to attract police attention in the rst place, and the only reason he was ushing his drugs away was because police were pounding on his door. This is pretty predictable behavior, which means that the police created the exigent circumstances themselves and then used that as an excuse to bust down a door instead of getting a search warrant. Surely thats a violation of the Fourth Amendment? Well, maybe it was last week, but its not anymore thanks to eight Supreme Court justices who ruled yesterday that this behavior is ne and dandy. As Scott Lemieux says, the war on drugs is where the Bill of Rights goes to die: Dismayingly, and demonstrating again that the Supreme Court essentially lacks a real liberal wing, the decision was 8-1, with both of Obamas appointees in the majority....The key problem with the case, as [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg convincingly argues, is that its the latest example of the drift of the exigency exception away from actual emergencies and toward the mere convenience of the police. If the police have time to obtain a warrant and there isnt an actual emergency, they should be required to obtain one. But when security in the home faces the War (On Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs, it generally loses. But dont worry. This will never happen to a law-abiding person like you. Nothing to get in a lather about. Kevin Drum is a political blogger for Mother Jones

SOME MUSINGS ON THE SUBJECT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS AND MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

By Lynne Stewart n the USA we hope we are experiencing that groundswell of a time when events and history come together; that the protest against what is happening to civil service workers will result in such a wave of people power that change will start breaking out for all of us. (It should be noted that this outpouring of peoples outrage is not institutionalizednot led by the unions or the established Left but mainly by outraged individuals and students, who are not coming out for a rally on the weekend and then resuming life as usualthe plasma TV, the remote control, beer, sports and the SUV. No, People seem to be ready to make it happen this time. The Common Good. We need it and mostly we need it for our Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War. This group of morally incorruptible and creative and clear political thinkers, dating from the righteous struggles of the 60s; some of whom have been in the depths of dungeons for more than a lifetime, and others, who are relative newcomers (like me, Bradley Manning, of Wikileaks; and Tim DeChristopher, the man who bid on the Utah oil leases and disrupted Bushs last environmental gifting to the nancially elite.) Of course, ofcially there are no political prisoners in the US; just like ofcially, the government is now trying to say, they always supported the anti-Mubarak forces and democracy for Egypt. History says differently, and we must be ready to seize the moment to pressure for release of the unjustly imprisoned 100+ men and women, known to be incarcerated for their espoused political motivations. (This number sadly does not include the Muslims, but thats a struggle for another day.) We do not deserve to be called a movement if we do not rescue our own. Their absolute and abiding faith in us to do so remains the litmus test of our dedication and belief in solidarity. It is stronger than any religious belief I know of. We must recognize that COINTELPRO has now morphed into the outrageous entrapment tactics of FBI informants targeting mosques and youth of color. It is hard to believe that juries are swallowing the swill served up to them by the governmentbut the history of America says differently. How many Black men were lynched and more lately convicted of rape because it was an easy killracism + sex = GUILTY? Then it was communism and anarchismSacco and Vanzettithe deportation of Emma Goldman followed by McCarthy and the witch hunts of the 50s. Then the 60s and the attacks on the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army and any movement that sought real change. Fast forward to now and we have countless terrorist plots by men and women who cant even do the math or who have been lured by dollar or glory promises, and grand jury subpoenas for green terrorism, and supporters of righteous movements abroad. Many of our U.S. political prisoners are well known internationally. Mumia Abu Jamal epitomizes the best among us politically and as a racial champion. His brilliant insights collected weekly by Noelle Hanrahan for broadcast and his courage as he toughs it out on Death Row must bring a deep commitment from all of us not to allow them to subject him to his state-contrived death. He is the best of the best. Likewise Leonard Peltier, a warrior who enlisted in a war that has been waged for 400 years against the U.S. planned genocide of native people. Both men are innocent of the crimes for which they continue to rot in prison. And the state knows it. At this time there is little hope for relief for either man through legal channels. No! Their freedom depends on whether, we, the people can be organized, rise up and demand it. May it happen. We challenge a wily opponent, one who in the sixties was able to buy our movement and con people with notions that poverty pimping was organizing for change. We know better. There is a new generation. The freedom of our own must be realized and it must be soon. We cannot be deterred. We ask and resolve that the international community join us. This struggle is an urgent one because of the age of our captured heroes. We must Free Mumia! Leonard shall be returned to the Lakota and all native peoples! Free All Political Prisoners! Free em all. Lynne Stewart Carswell Federal Prison Fort Worth TEXAS 3/21/11

US JUDGES CONSIDER FATE OF 13 YEAR OLD

S appeals judges are considering whether a 13-yearold boy accused of murder could be tried as an adult -- and risk spending the rest of his life behind bars. The Pennsylvania Superior Court was considering a case that has attracted international scrutiny because of the possibility that Jordan Brown, who was just 11 at the time of his alleged crime, might be imprisoned as an adult and never be released. A key requirement of the juvenile court would be for Brown to show potential for rehabilitation, in which case he could be free as early as when he turned 21. However, the lower court found against him after insisting that he show remorse -- something his lawyers say he cant do, given that he insists he did not commit the murder. Defense lawyers argued that the lower court had violated Browns Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. Appeals judges said this was the key issue to consider. The bottom line is, from my viewpoint: were his Fifth Amendment rights violated because of the way the trial court handled these proceedings? Superior Court Judge Cheryl Allen asked a prosecution lawyer. But Christopher Carusone, Pennsylvanias chief deputy attorney general, said no one had tried to force a guilty plea on the boy. It was not used to determine guilt, because were not there yet, he said, pointing out that the case hasnt gone to trial. Brown was just 11, a chubby schoolboy, when he allegedly shot Kenzie Houk in her rural home northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Last year, a local judge ruled that Brown should stand trial as an adult for what is being considered the double murder of Houk and her near full-term baby son. In the two years since the crime, Brown has been in custody and the case has drawn attention to how children are handled in the American criminal justice system. Human rights group Amnesty International has campaigned to overturn the lower court judges ruling, saying it is deeply disturbed by the fact that, if convicted, Brown would never be free again. However, under Pennsylvania law, a serious crime like a homicide is initially led in criminal court unless the defense can make a case for sending it to the juvenile system. This could go on and on, said Jack Houk, Kenzies father, before revealing a tattoo on his wrist bearing the name of his daughter surrounded by elaborate decorations. 7

NUMBER 37

Final Complaint ............................. Continued from page 1 for 3 years or less. (Id.,p.1267) see also: U.C. Santa Cruz Prof. Craig Haney, expert psych. Studies of mental health issues re: SHU Syndrome available online (see U.C. Santa Cruz website). Importantly, the Madrid court acknowledged the applicability of the principles covered by the U.S. Supreme Court in Helling v. McKinney, 509 US 25 (1993) (Id., at p.1261, these same standards will not tolerate conditions likely to make inmates seriously mentally ill). The Helling court principle is that inmates subjected to unconstitutional conditions do not have to actually suffer physical-mental harm in order to obtain relief if the risk of future harm is a substantial risk the courts are supposed to provide relief. And in the unpublished ruling USDC N.D. Cal #c9821038 JW, Grifn v. Gomez, the court ordered CDCR PBSPSHU to release Grifn to general population after nding that the debrieng requirement, and risk of serious mental substantial risk(s) to both physical and mental health, that when combined (per Wilson v. Selter, 501 U.S. 294, 304305(1991) rose to the level of an 8th Amendment violation and ordered Grifns release from PBSP-SHU in 2006 (Id., order Granting Writ-June 28, 2006). CDCRs response has been: 1) To place Grifn in the Administration Segregation Units, and 2) to transfer him to Corcoran SHU. Also see: Robinson v. California 370 us.660 (1962), which held punishment for status is particularly obnoxious and cruel and unusual punishment. MISCELLANEOUS: See: Madrid ruling at p. 1241, at FN. 186 (Re: some validated gang afliates not placed in SHU; also note: Cal. Code of Regulations, Title 15, Sections 3378(d) and 3378(e) re: general prison population vs. SHU gang afliates eligibility for inactive status). This supports contention re: arbitrary nature of SHU; the fact that there are tens of thousands of gang afliates in CDCR general prison population is well publicized in news stories and published general rulings. See also: Madrid ruling at pages 1263 at FN. 204 (re: contrary evidence showing a decline in CDCR violence starting in 1984six years prior to opening PBSPSHU. Notably an analytical study of CDCR violence since Madrids Jan. 1995 ruling will reveal a prison system a lot worse off since PBSP-SHU opened.) See: U.S.D.C. N.D. Cal #coo 905 S.I., Lira v. Cate order dated 9-30-09 Findings of fact and conclusions of law (wherein, after a court trial, the court held CDCR-PBSP-SHU ofcials denied Lira of procedural and substantive due processincluding that the 180 day classication reviews of his continued SHU retention (mandated in Madrid) were meaningless (id., order at p. 3, 40-42), and that PBSP-SHU (for 8 years) caused Lira serious mental illness. Such principles apply to all (however, very few obtain relief). INTERNATIONAL VIOLATIONS (i.e., U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and 1984 convention against torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment ratied by U.S.A. 1994). Wherein the 1984 (C.A.T.) Article 1 denes, and criminalizes Torture (i.e., any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inicted on a person for such purpose as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person,when such pain or suffering is inicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent acquiescence of Public Ofcial or other person acting in Ofcial Capacity). There are no exceptions - (Article 2) violations are criminal acts (Article 4). Clearly the acts and omissions summarized herein violate clearly established U.S. Constitution principles, and International Treaty Law (a agrant violation of Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution, which afrms that treaty law is the Supreme Law of the Land). CONCLUSION GOOD CAUSE be demonstrated, the complainants request a formal investigation, ofcial international condemnation of said policies and practices, as well as direct action by those affected, as deemed warranted, just and necessary to right these wrongs. D. Troxell T. Ashker S.N. JamaaDewberry Anthony Castellanos G. Franco Gabriel Huerte James Crawford *NOTE: On February 5, 2010, the original of this complaint was sent to Gov. Schwarzenegger & CDCR Secretary Cate. [Ed. Note: There are other names associated with this undertaking, but they are too numerous to list here. At the start it appears as if there will be between 50 and 60 participants.] 8

FINAL NOTICE: PBSP SHU D-CORRIDOR HUNGER STRIKE

ttention: beginning July 1, 2011, several inmates housed indenitely in PBSP-SHU D-Facility, Corridor Isolation, will begin an indenite hunger strike in order to draw attention to, and to peacefully protest, 25 years of torture via CDCRs arbitrary, illegal, and progressively more punitive policies and practices, as summarized in the accompanying Formal Complaint. PBSP-SHU, D-Facility Corridor inmates hunger strike protest is to continue indenitely until the following changes are made:

OUR FIVE CORE DEMANDS:

1. Individual Accountability - This is in response to PBSPs application of group punishment as a means to address individual inmates rule violations. This includes the administrations abusive, pretextual use of safety and concern to justify what are unnecessary punitive acts. This policy has been applied in the context of justifying indenite SHU status, and progressively restricting our programming and privileges. 2. Abolish the Debrieng Policy, and Modify Active/ Inactive Gang Status Criteria - the debrieng policy is illegal and redundant, as pointed out in the Formal Complaint [IV-A, p. 7]. The Active/Inactive gang status criteria must be modied in order to comply with state law and applicable CDC rules and regulations [eg, see Formal Complaint, p. 7, IV-B] as follows: A) cease the use of innocuous association to deny an active status, B) cease the use of informant/debriefer allegations of illegal gang activity to deny inactive status, unless such allegations are also supported by factual corroborating evidence, in which case CDCR-PBSP staff shall and must follow the regulations by issuing a rule violation report and affording the inmate his due process required by law. 3. Comply with U.S. Commission 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Connement - CDCR shall implement the ndings and recommendations of the US commission on safety and abuse in Americas prisons nal 2006 report regarding CDCR SHU facilities as follows: A) End Conditions of Isolation (p. 14) Ensure that prisoners in SHU and Ad-Seg (Administrative Segregation) have regular meaningful contact and freedom from extreme physical deprivations that are known to cause lasting harm. (pp. 52-57) B) Make Segregation a Last Resort (p. 14). Create a more productive form of connement in the areas of allowing inmates in SHU and Ad-Seg [Administrative Segregation] the opportunity to engage in meaningful self-help treatment, work, education, religious, and other productive activities relating to having a sense of being a part of the community. C) End Long-Term Solitary Connement. Release inmates to general prison population who have been warehoused indenitely in SHU for the last 10 to 40 years (and counting). D) Provide SHU Inmates Immediate Meaningful Access to: i) adequate natural sunlight ii) quality health care and treatment, including the mandate of transferring all PBSP-SHU inmates with chronic health care problems to the New Folsom Medical SHU facility. 4. Provide Adequate Food - cease the practice of denying adequate food, and provide wholesome and nutritional meals including special diet meals, and allow inmates to purchase additional vitamin supplements. A) PBSP staff must cease their use of food as a tool to punish SHU inmates. B) Provide a sergeant/lieutenant to independently observe the serving of each meal, and ensure each tray has the complete issue of food on it. C) Feed the inmates whose job it is to serve SHU meals with meals that are separate from the pans of food sent from kitchen for SHU meals. 5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indenite SHU Status Inmates. Examples include: A) Expand visiting regarding amount of time and adding one day per week. B) Allow one photo per year. C) Allow a weekly phone call. D) Allow Two (2) annual packages per year. A 30 lb. package based on item weight and not packaging and box weight. E) Expand canteen and package items allowed. Allow us to have the items in their original packaging [the cost

for cosmetics, stationary, envelopes, should not count towards the max draw limit] F) More TV channels. G) Allow TV/Radio combinations, or TV and small battery operated radio H) Allow Hobby Craft Items - art paper, colored pens, small pieces of colored pencils, watercolors, chalk, etc. I) Allow sweat suits and watch caps. J) Allow wall calendars. K) Install pull-up/dip bars on SHU yards. L) Allow correspondence courses that require proctored exams. NOTE: The above examples of programs/privileges are all similar to what is allowed in other Supermax prisons (e.g., Federal Florence, Colorado, and Ohio), which supports our position that CDCR-PBSP staff claims that such are a threat to safety and security are exaggerations. D. Troxell; T. Ashker; S.N.Jamaa--Dewberry; A. Castellanos; G. Franco

OUR POTENTIAL
By Ed Mead was watching CNN the other day and saw a story about a New York City program that helps to educate ex-cons in order to get them into the workforce. What struck me was not so much the program (which on a micro level may produce some marginal results, but within the context of the current economic system is doomed to failure on a macro level) was some statistics they brandished. CNN said there are 7.3 million people in the United States under some form of penal supervision, parole, probation, etc., and that there are 14 million ex-convicts out on the streets. Stop and think for a moment about those numbers. And as you read this also think about the 2.3 million people still doing time. We are talking about a potential resource of close to 25 million people, not counting their friends and families or those supportive of prison issues. As you well know, the 13th amendment of the U.S. constitution legitimizes slavery in the case of those convicted of a crime. This amendment runs counter to various treaties the U.S. is a signatory to, which the constitution mandates is the supreme law of the land. The United Nations charter on human rights, which bars all forms of slavery, is one such treaty. The U.S. judicial system, however, can only decide what is and what is not constitutionalthey do not have the power to hold that portions of the constitution itself are unconstitutional. Accordingly, as a direct result of having the legal status of slaves under the U.S. constitution, prisoners are disenfranchised from the bourgeois political process. They are also stripped of their social responsibility, held in a condition of dependency, dehumanized, and in general treated by their captors as less than full human beings. The next step in this process is for the prisoner to ask her or his self, who in this society is knowingly and openly in support of the slavery of millions of U.S. citizenswho is pro-slavery? When put in this context the number will be relatively small. The next question is who is supportive of disenfranchising millions of U.S. citizens from the electoral process? The number will again be small. And nally, who is in support of the torture of prisoners and the high recidivism/ failure rate of current correctional practices?1 When all is said and done the number of those who respond in the afrmative to these three questions will not be a large one. The point I am trying to get across here is that what is right, good, and just is on our side. Only that which is evil, bad, and unjust will oppose us. There are 2.3 million of us on the inside, 7.3 more million with only one foot on the streets, and 14 million ex-cons for us to draw fromnot counting friends, families, and supporters. Moreover, the failure of the status quo has become so apparent that even conservatives are talking about changes in penal practices. The existing bad economic situation on the streets is yet another ally. With right on our side, and some 25 million friends, is there any reason why we cannot build a national struggle aimed at rectifying this terrible situation? Is the color of some assholes skin or the region he comes from more important than our common causeis it more important that what is right and just? These articial divisions are all that stand between you and the unity needed to start this glorious work. It is time to set aside those old childish games, time to stop playing at being the mans fool. It is time for you to put on your big girl panties. It is time to implement All for One - One for All. The system has stolen your sense of responsibility; to take it back all you need do is exercise it! The process starts by talking with each other. Then studying, together or separately. Planning and peacefully implementing soon follow. Take what is yours, take responsibility! We are indeed our brothers keeper.

1. Think of the seventy percent unemployment rate for ex-convicts in California and, according to the governors ofcial website, the seventy percent recidivism rate in that state.

PRISON FOCUS

INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF PEOPLE OF AFRIKAN DESCENT: CALL FOR SUPPORT

IN POST RACIAL AMERICA PRISONS FEAST ON BLACK GIRLS

By Rachel Pfeffer, Mar 15, 2011 frican American girls and young women have become the fastest growing population of incarcerated young people in the country. Efforts to stop mass incarceration focused on black girls are almost nonexistant in government policy, the media, foundations and academia. Recently, the Thelton Henderson Center for Social Justice at the University of California, Berkeleys Boalt Law School took the bold and necessary step of organizing a day-and-ahalf free event titled, African American Girls and Young Women and Juvenile Justice System: A Call to Action. The beauty of this conference was the focus on black girls and the passionate energy to create a path for action among the participants. Academics and activists, among them formerly incarcerated African American girls and young women, gathered together from across the divides of class, age, race and place to talk about what we know about these young people, their interaction with the criminal justice system--and what we are going to do about it. Sociologist Nikki Jones of UC Santa Barbara, and Meda Chesney-Lind, University of Hawaii opened up the conference with a look at the statistics. No, said Jones, Black girls are not committing more crimes, even though they are being incarcerated in record numbers. Ive been studying this for decades, said Chesney-Lind. She added, We have never seen these kind of numbers before. National policies like zero tolerance are responsible for the school to prison pipeline. And a dual justice system that treats white girls differently from black girls is disproportionately impacting African American girls. She continued, In 2008, we knew the arrest rate in California was 49 out of every 1,000 for black girls, 8.9 per 1,000 for white girls and 14.9 per 1,000 for Latinas. The cause of the over criminalization of African American young women is best understood by looking back through the lens of American history and the ideological construction of black criminality. The shackles of slavery endured into other eras, including convict leasing systems and chain gangs, said Prisicilla Ocen, a professor at UCLAs Critical Race Studies. In order to sustain these systems, de-humanizing stereotypes of black women were created to maintain the difference between white and African American women, she said. Black girls are still dealing with racial and gendered stereotypes that were used to justify punishment. Ocen continued, These historical stereotypes laid the groundwork for the creation of a dual criminal justice system one where African American women and girls are treated differently for the same behaviors. Many participants saw the treatment of African American girls in the justice system as criminal with little accountability. Adults are committing crimes too; this is part of the story that needs to be told, said Barry Krisberg, Research and Policy Director at UC Berkeleys Earl Warren Institute on Law. Krisberg went on, Once in the criminal justice system, African American girls are treated with brutality, so much emotional and sexual abuse. We are violating African American girls human rights everyday in all 58 counties of California. Where are the lawsuits? Where is the accountability? The breadth of the problem seems overwhelming, yet no one at the conference seemed daunted. The resolve in the room at Boalt Law School was palpable and the ideas for action began to ow. Formerly incarcerated participants, who work at the Center for Young Womens Development (CYWD), and other formerly incarcerated African American girls will lead these efforts. They are the experts. For the past 17 years, young women at CYWD have been leaving jail, the street economies and gangs to work for selfhealing, social justice, policy change and a meaningful place in their communities. The call to action is the task before usthere are a number of things we can do, said Lateefah Simon, activist and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights San Francisco. The Henderson Center can provide institutional support for African American Leaders, who are engaging in the criminal justice system. We can convene all the judges, we can organize ourselves locally and nationally to focus on African American girl, said Simon. Yes, lets do that--we want our girls to be free. There is room for everyone to have a meaningful part in efforts to stop the over incarceration of African American girls or young women. For more information about how to get involved in this effort please contact: african.american. girls.a.call.to.action@lists.berkeley.edu. Rachel Pfeffer is the founder of the Center for Young Womens Development and currently on the Advisory Board. For more information www.cywd.org. http://ethnoblog. newamericamedia.org/2011/03/in-post-racial-america-prisons-feast-on-black-girls-1.php#

THE BRUTALITY OF SUPERMAX CONFINEMENT

By Jean Casella and James Ridgeway ot to be missed by Solitary Watchers is a new article on supermax connement published in the Boston Review. The piece is by Lance Tapley, known for his investigative reporting in the Portland Phoenix. This comprehensive piece makes a strong case for identifying solitary connementand the abusive practices that accompany itas torture. Tapley points to an irony in the negative reaction of many Americans to the mistreatment of war on terrorism prisoners at Guantnamo: Tens of thousands of American citizens are being held in equivalent or worse conditions in this countrys super-harsh, super-maximum security, solitary-connement prisons. The Obama administrationsomewhat unsteadilyplans to shut down the Guantnamo detention center and ship its inmates to one or more supermaxes in the United States, as though this would mark a substantive change. In the supermaxes inmates suffer weeks, months, years, or even decades of minddestroying isolation, usually without meaningful recourse to challenge the conditions of their captivity. Prisoners may be regularly beaten in cell extractions, and they receive meager health services. The isolation frequently leads to insane behavior including self-injury and suicide. Tapleys reporting has helped make public the brutality of cell extractionthe act of removing a prisoner from his cell, which is often done with excessive force, regardless of whether the prisoner resists. In the Boston Review article, he describes one prisoners experiences, and includes a leaked video of a cell extraction in Maine: They beat the shit out of you, Mike James said, hunched near the smeared plexiglass separating us. He was talking about the cell extractions hed endured at the hands of the supermax-unit guards at the Maine State Prison. They push you, knee you, poke you, he said, his voice faint but ardent through the speaker. They slam your head against the wall and drop you on the oor while youre cuffed. He lifted his manacled hands to a scar on his chin. They split it wide open. Theyre yelling Stop resisting! Stop resisting! when youre not even moving. James experienced frequent cell extractionson one occasion, ve of them in a single day. In this procedure, ve hollering guards wearing helmets and body armor charge into the cell. The point man smashes a big shield into the prisoner. The others spray mace into his face, push him onto the bed, and twist his arms behind his back to handcuff him, connecting the cuffs by a chain to leg irons. As they continue to mace him, the guards carry him screaming to an observation room, where they bind him to a special chair. He remains there for hours. A scene such as this might have taken place at Abu Ghraib, where American soldiers tormented captured Iraqis. But as described by prisoners and guards and vividly revealed in a leaked video (the Maine prison records these events to ensure that inmates are not mistreated), an extraction is the supermaxs normal, zero-tolerance reaction to prisoner disobedience, which may be as minor as protesting bad food by covering the cell doors tiny window with a piece of paper. Such extractions occur all the time, not just in Maine but throughout the country. The principle applied is total control of a prisoners actions. Even if the inmate has no history of violence, when he leaves the cell hes in handcuffs and ankle shackles, with a guard on either side. But he doesnt often leave the cell. In Maines supermax, which is typical, an inmate spends 23 hours a day alone in a 6.5-by-14-foot space. When the weather is good, hell spend an hour a day, ve days a week, usually alone, in a small dog run outdoors. Radios and TVs are forbidden. Cell lights are on night and day. When the cold food is shoved through the door slot, prisoners fear it is contaminated by the feces, urine, and blood splattered on the cell door and corridor surfaces by the many mentally ill or enraged inmates. The prisoner is not allowed a toothbrush but is provided a plastic nub to use on a ngertip. Mental-health care usually amounts to a ve-minute, through-the-steel-door conversation with a social worker once or twice a week. The prisoner gets a shower a few times a week, a brief telephone call every week or two, and occasional no-contact access to a visitor. The article also debunks the myth that prisoners in prolonged solitary connement are the worst of the worst. When supermaxes were built across the country in the 1980s and 1990s, they were theoretically for the worst of the worst, the most violent prisoners. But an inmate may be put in one for possession of contraband such as marijuana, if accused by another inmate of being a gang member, for hesitating to follow a guards order, and even for protection from other inmates. Several prisoners are in the Maine supermax because they got themselves tattooed. By many accounts mental illness is the most common denominator; mentally ill inmates have a hard time following prison rules. A Wisconsin study found that three-quarters of the prisoners in one solitary-connement unit were mentally ill. In Maine, over half of supermax inmates are classied as having a serious mental illness. Submitted by Jericho Amnesty Movement

he hundreds of years of residing within the boundaries of those territories referred to as the U.S.A. has seen no signicant improvement for the quality of life of those Afrikan-descended peoples who were abducted, taken captive, forced into exile and sold into bondage. Such is the case in spite of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, both Urban Renewal and Model Cities programs of L.B.J.s Great Society era, Afrmative Action and every other social welfare program that has come and gone. As we have entered into a modem day slave era in lieu of the Prison Industrial Complex; it should be clear, by now, that we as a collective body of people will never enjoy the full benet of our humanity so long as we continue to expect the oppressor class of these United States to treat us as their peers and continue to seek redress under their capitalistic system. By now it should be clear that we must apply some other process and strategy besides one predicated by assimilation, integration and inclusion into that which is referred to as the American Dream. Therefore, it is being suggested that we formulate a comprehensive, coordinated, strategic plan of action to seek all the rights guaranteed to national minorities under international law. During this International Year of People of Afrikan Descent, let us develop a platform and mechanism to articulate our demand for the human rights that this U.S. government has systemically denied us ever since the rst of our fore-parents set foot on the various shores in this western hemisphere. We need not expect nor look to the political elite and ruling class of the global society to qualify our demand for selfdetermination and political independence. We need only be men and women enough to take a death-defying determined stance in pursuit of that which is rightfully ours, until we achieve our victory. Likewise, we cannot and should not expect the United Nations to deliver us from the condition of oppression and tyranny under which we subsist. However, the international arena does provide an excellent forum wherein to present our argument. Thereby, the entire world will come to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are justied in pursuing our liberation in direct accord with international law. U.S. Held Political Prisoners & Prisoners of War In regard to Political Prisoners and P.O.W.s held imprisoned on U.S. territory we intend to initiate an active, nonpassive campaign to push for the Ofce of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to support an effort to develop and convene a Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a means of resolving; a) the status of those whom have been identied, by popular opinion, as Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War imprisoned on U.S. territory in the aftermath of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation Struggle, b) the fact that the Liberation Struggle was a legitimate Revolutionary Movement in full compliance with the stipulations dened in the U.N. General Assembly resolution # 3103, ratied on 12-12-1973 stating: The struggle of peoples under colonial or alien domination and racist regimes for the implementation of their rights to self-determination and independence is legitimate and in full accord with the principles of international law., and c) the fact that the U.S. government conducted Low Intensity Warfare against the Black Liberation Movement in response to that Liberation Struggle. On behalf of the Jericho Movement we request this body give its full support to this and all other initiatives being conducted in pursuit of amnesty and the unconditional release of our Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War. In addition, we call on those bodies and organizations represented here to encourage their respected members and participants to sign any and all petitions being circulated calling for the U.S. congress to re-open COINTELPRO Hearings. This initiative is being executed as a means of giving credence to the claim that the U.S. government engaged in illegal activities to apprehend, prosecute and convict a great many of those languishing in prison on account of their political activities, associations and views.

NUMBER 37

MASS INCARCERATION CREATES COSTLY DISASTER ACROSS AMERICA

By Linn Washington Jr. erman Garner doesnt dispute the drug charge that slammed him in prison for nine years. Garner does dispute the damning circumstances that doing the time for his crime still leaves him penalized despite his having ended his sentence in the penal system. Garner carries the former felon stain. That status slams employment doors shut in his face despite his having a MBA Degree and two years of law school. Ive applied for jobs at thousands of places in person and on the internet, but Im unable to get a job, said Garner, a Cleveland, Ohio resident who recently published a book about his prison/life experiences titled Wavering Between Extremes. Recently Garner joined hundreds of people attending a day-long conference at Princeton University entitled Imprisonment Of A Race, that featured presentations by scholars and experts on the devastating, multi-faceted impact of mass incarceration across America. The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country on earth, accounting for 25 percent of the worlds prisoners, despite having just ve percent of the worlds population. America currently holds over two million in prisons with double that number under supervision of parole and probation, according to federal government gures. Mass incarceration consumes over $50-billion annually across America money far better spent on creating jobs and improving education. Under federal law persons with drug convictions like Garner are permanently barred from receiving nancial aid for education, food stamps, welfare and publicly funded housing. But only drug convictions trigger these exclusions under federal law. Violent bank robbers, white-collar criminals like Wall Street scam artists who steal billions, and even murderers whove done their time do not face the post-release deprivations slapped on those with drug convictions on their records, including those imprisoned for simple possession, and not major drug sales. Academics see this topic of mass incarceration as numbers, but for millions it is their daily lives, said Princeton conference panelist Dr. Khalilah Brown-Dean of Yale University. Exclusions mandated by federal laws compound the legal deprivations of rights found in the laws of most states, such as barring ex-felons from jobs and even stripping ex-felons of their right to vote. Mass incarceration raises questions of protecting and preserving democracy, Dr. Brown-Dean said, referencing the estimated ve-millionplus Americans barred from voting by such felony disenfranchisement laws. Many of those felony disenfranchisement laws date from measures enacted in the late 1800s which were devised specically to bar blacks from voting, as a way to preserve Americas apartheid. During the 2000 presidential election Republican ofcials in Florida manipulated that states anti-felon voting law fraudulently to bar tens of thousands of blacks from voting. For example, many people with common names like John Smith who shared their name with a felon were barred from voting, despite having no criminal record. Republican George W. Bush won by Florida by a razor thin 537 vote margina margin secured by that felon disenfranchisement scheme. That victory in the state where George W.s brother Jeb served as governor sent him to the White House. Policies creating barriers to things like education and employment make it increasingly difcult for persons recently released from prison to remain crime-free according to a report released earlier this year by the Smart on Crime Coalition. More than 60 percent of the two-million-plus people in American prisons are racial and ethnic minorities. The U.S. imprisons more than South Africa did under apartheid. A nation that promotes democracy has a racial caste in its prisons. We must break that caste system, said the special guest speaker at the Imprisonment conference, Pennsylvania Death Row Journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who telephoned from prison. Racism is written all over the economically/ socially debilitating practices embedded in mass incarceration. An often cited University of Wisconsin study found that 17 percent of white ex-con job seekers received interviews, compared to only ve percent of black ex-con job seekers a race-based disparity that is additionally devastating for people of color like Garner. Ohio State University Law Professor Michelle Alexander, the featured speaker at that Princeton conference streamed live on the internet, said a major reason why imprisonment rates soared during the past four decades despite decreases in crime rates is anti-crime policies craftily manipulated by conservative Republican ofcials for political purposes. Harsh anti-crimes policies of the 1970s and 1980s were largely a punitive backlash to advances of the Civil Rights

Movement, said Alexander, author of the hugely popular 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Pennsylvanias prison population, for example, soared from 8,243 in 1980 to 51,487 in 2010, while the California prison population leapt during the same period from 23,264 to over 170,000. Incarceration costs are especially obscene when compared to college costs. A report released in January 2011 by Pennsylvanias auditor general noted the Keystone State now spends $32,059 annually to imprison one persona cost that exceeds the annual $20,074 tuition for the MBA degree program at Penn State University. A report released in January 2010 by a UCLA professor noted that the Golden State spends over $48,000 annually to imprison one person, more than four times the tuition cost of UCLA for a California resident. Back in 1980, California spent more of its state budget on higher education than on prisons, but that had reversed by 2010, with more of that states budget going for prisons than for higher education. Americas corrosive War on Drugs a war that basically ignores drug kingpins has devastated black families, author/professor Alexander said. A black child today is less likely to be raised in a two-parent household than during slavery, she said. In major urban areas almost one-half of black men have criminal records. Thus they face a lifetime of legalized discrimination, encompassing exclusions from employment and access to nancial assistance required to secure a viable quality of life. Africa-Americans are 13 percent of Americas population and 14 percent of the nations drug users but are 37 percent of persons arrested for drugs and 56 percent of the inmates in state prisons for drug offenses, noted the 2009 congressional testimony of Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project and a conference panelist. Both ex-felon Herman Garner and Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of Princetons Center for African American Studies, which hosted the conference, expressed similar views on the impacts of mass incarceration. Dr. Glaude said mass incarceration is a moral crisis with political and social consequences for Americas future, during his remarks opening the conference. Garner, in an interview, described the US prison system as the biggest problem in the American black community. While politicians pushing punitive policies help drive mass incarceration its budget- busting persistence implicates the blind-eye of society, said one conference panelist, history professor Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the new director of the fabled Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. Middle-class whites and blacks in the U.S. are a new kind of Silent Majority regarding mass incarceration, Dr. Muhammad charged. This Silent Majority supports unjust policies of increased law enforcement and incarceration as the only way to address crime, ignoring proven alternative approaches like jobs, education and ending societal inequities. Famed Princeton Professor Dr. Cornell West criticized both the black middle class and black leadership for inaction on mass incarceration. The new black middle class and black leadership are not attuned to the suffering in poor black communities, West said during the conferences Keynote Conversation between him and Professor Alexander. We need more middle-class people with genuine respect for the poor. This is more than serving as role model mentors, he said. Author Alexander said ending the mind-boggling scale of mass incarceration requires a major social movement. One attendee at the Princeton conference, Daryl Brooks, an activist in Trenton, NJ who operates the respected Todays News N.J. blog, backs Alexanders suggestion. To x this problem we need mass boycotts. America only understands money and violence. We need to shutdown businesses like during the 60s, said Brooks, who spent three-years in prison for a conviction he says was false, aimed at crushing his activism. Blacks leaders allowed this incarceration to happen by doing too little to challenge this repression, Brooks said. The Obama Administration is doing too little to address mass incarceration and its impacts, many of the Princeton panelists and conference attendees agreed. These critics blast the Obama Administration for what they called its tepid approaches to the torturous scourge of 240 sexual assaults daily in state and federal prisons, charging it with foot-dragging on the Prison Rape Elimination Act which was approved by Congress during the administration of George W. Bush. While Obama fullled a campaign pledge to address the sentencing disparity penalizing powder cocaine more harshly than crack cocaine (a drug derived from powder cocaine), Obamas proclivity for bipartisan consensus has resulted in legislation that lower but did not eliminate the disparity. A 1995 US Sentencing Commission report called for eliminating the scientically bogus disparity a recommendation rejected by Democratic President Bill Clinton and the Republican controlled Congress the

rst ever rejection of a Commission recommendation. That powder-crack legislation did not apply retroactively, thus failing to mitigate stiff crack cocaine sentences (often ten years for simple possession) that leaves blacks and Hispanics languishing in federal prisons. (Federal authorities rarely prosecute whites for crack cocaine violations despite federal statistics documenting that whites are the nations largest users of crack cocaine.) Obama and [US Attorney General Eric] Holder have no courage when it comes to the prison-industrial complex, Dr. Cornell West said. Source URL: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/545

CONSCIOUSNESS, LEADERSHIP AND LIBERATION

THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHANGE By: Tony Stitt he prison culture is on the same level of existence, consciousness and development as slave plantations with the majority of those within the prison system having the same mind-set of slaves who feared death more than oppression, and had no idea of the power of unity. Prior to being placed in the SHU, I spent most of my time trying to awaken a level of consciousness and advocacy within prisoners (this was a very difcult task for me because of the psychological chains upon their minds). To my amazement, Im nding the same problems with the majority of those around me here in the SHU. The disruption of most prisoners consciousness before they come to prison, and the dark alien consciousness in prison, has reduced them from being their true selves to submissive and complacent beings notorious for their destructive behavior. Its my belief, that in order to break these chains of slavery upon prisoners minds the prison system must bring these minds to an embryonic state wherein they can take things from them. This pacication of their minds lessens the chances of igniting the fuel of revolution that once burned within them. With a base of over 160,000 people, the prison population could be a force to be reckoned with, and has the ability to build a coffer containing millions of dollars. Such a movement requires conscious leadership that isnt faint of heart or swayed by corruption like its opposition. During the 1960s and 1970s, strong and unafraid leaders within the prison system stood up and spoke out against their oppression and the corrupted prison environment. Its time for new leaders to rise up and take charge of the prison movement for change, freedom and the abolishing of the present failed prison system. Over the years Ive heard stories about the demise of prison leaders, who led the charge in the past, and I have always been energized by their spiritholding on to the belief that we can restore today that which they gave their lives for. It is time for prisoners of all races, and different neighborhoods, to once again put an end to ghting amongst ourselves and unite as one clenched st to ght against the bureaucracy that keeps us behind barbed wire and concrete walls. Sun Tzu pointed out in the text, The Art Of War, that correct leadership and strong alliances are the key to a successful revolution. So leaders stand up and begin to re-build the bridges among our fellow prisoners. Until next time, brothers and sisters. Tony Stitt, Pelican Bay State Prison

By Michael David Russell

10

PRISON FOCUS

A PARTIAL CALIFORNIA PRISONERS RESOURCE LIST

Provided by the Prison Activist Resource Center
Death Penalty Focus 870 Market Street, Suite 859 San Francisco, CA, 94102 (415) 243-0143 http://www.deathpenalty.org information@deathpenalty.org Dedicated to abolishing capital punishment through grassroots organizing, media outreach, nationwide coalition building, and education of political and civic leaders and the public about the death penalty and its alternatives. Does not offer any legal services or become involved in individual legal cases. Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund Inc. 2212 6th St. Berkeley, CA, 94710 (800) 348-4232 CA Prisoners Only. DREDF takes on very few cases each year. We receive far more requests for assistance than our resources allow us to take on. If we cannot take your case we can provide you with referrals to other organizations. Please do not send original supporting materials. Please note; we do not provide assistance with disability benets such as denial of Social Security Disability benets. Families to Amend Californias Three Strikes (FACTS) 3982 S. Figueroa Street #209 Los Angeles, CA, 90037 http://www.facts1.com (213) 746-4844 Works to amend Californias Three Strikes law to target violent felonies only. Quarterly newsletter (by donation). Print return address exactly if you want a response. Free Battered Women 1540 Market Street suite 490 San Francisco, CA, 94102 (415) 255-7036 x320 http://www.freebatteredwomen.org In California, the majority of women prisoners are survivors of domestic violence; some are doing time for defending themselves and their children, or were forced to confess to crimes. Join the movement to free battered women from prison. Justice Now 1322 Webster Street suite 210 Oakland, CA, 94612 (510) 839-7654 http://www.jnow.org Focuses solely on the needs of women prisoners. They work on alternative `sentencing, document human rights abuses in prison, and their Building a World without Prisons project (works with women prisoners to get their words and art in the media) La Raza Centro Legal Inc. 474 Valencia Street, Suite 295 Attn: Detention Project San Francisco, CA, 94103 (415) 575-3500 http://www.lrcl.org Resources and possible legal referrals for INS detainees in Northern California. We are not able to help with criminal or other civil matters. Spanish services provided. Malcolm X Grassroots Movement California Ofce PO Box 3585 Oakland, CA, 94609 (877) 248-6095 http://www.mxgm.org The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is an organization of Afrikans in America/New Afrikans whose mission is to defend the human rights of our people and promote self-determination in our community. MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140 unlockthebox@nym.hush.com MIM(prisons) is a revolutionary anti-imperialist group ghting criminal injustice, helping prisoners to organize and educate themselves. Sends books and offers prisoners a free subscription to our newspaper MIM(Prisons). Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF)--National Ofce 634 S. Spring St., 11th oor Los Angeles, CA, 90014 (213) 629-2512 http://www.maldef.org Has regional ofces in GA, IL, TX, CA, and DC. Largest Latino civil rights organization. Write for more info. Provides referrals. Best to use online contact form. NUMBER 37 Center for the Children of Incarcerated Parents P.O. Box 41-286 Eagle Rock, CA, 90041 (626) 449-2470 http://e-ccip.org/index.html ccip@earthlink.net Provides free educational material for incarcerated parents and their children, as well as therapeutic services, family reunication services, and related information. Many services are free. Centro Legal De La Raza 3022 International Blvd, Suite 410 Oakland, CA, 94601 (510) 437-1554 http://centrolegal.org/en/services/advocacy.html Provides many services for immigrants and helps with detention cases. Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex National Ofce 1904 Franklin Street suite 504 Oakland, CA, 94612 (510) 444-0484 http://www.criticalresistance.org Critical Resistance provides information on the prison industrial complex and produces quarterly newspaper The Abolitionist. Please do not contact for legal help. CR has chapters in Baltimore, Chicago, Gainesville, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Tampa-St. Petersburg, and Washington DC. National Center for Lesbian Rights: California ofce 870 Market Street suite 370 San Francisco, CA, 94102 (415) 392-6257 http://www.nclrights.org Provides legal referrals for LGBTQQI National Center for Youth Law 405 14th Street, 15th Floor Oakland, CA, 94612 http://www.youthlaw.org info@youthlaw.org Provides information, referrals, technical assistance, or written materials; serves as co-counsel in cases affecting a large number of children and families. Assists lawyers who are directly representing at-risk or incarcerated youth. Publishes Youth Law News. National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights 310 8th Street suite 303 Oakland, CA, 94607 (510) 465-1984 http://www.nnirr.org Helps monitor and share information to build campaigns against immigration raids, police collaboration with immigration enforcement, abuses by immigration police or other law enforcement agents, and BICE and other DH.S. activity in workplaces, neighborhoods, and public spaces. Prison Program at Buddhist Peace Fellowship PO Box 3470 Berkeley, CA, 94703 (510) 655-6169 http://www.bpf.org/html/current_projects/prison_program/ prison_program.html The Buddhist Peace Fellowship Prison Project provides ministry to help prisoners develop skills to meet everyday violence in prison. Also has training for inmate meditation programs, a Community Correspondence Program, and an Advocacy and Education network. Prison Reform Unity Project 1150 Duchow Way Apt 4 Non-denominational Folsom, CA, 95630 (916) 983-7618 http://prisonministry.net/prup We are a national group of people who work on prison reform issues and urgent inmate needs and when possible helping parolees with re-entry issues. Our goals are to reform the prison system and make it a better place based on rehabilitation versus warehousing. Our goal is also to help reduce recidivism in the United States and to resolve issues such as medical neglect/abuse. Our goal is that no one would be left out in the cold alone. We have a group where we try to educate the public on what is going on through news articles. It is also a place where people can come when they are in need of assistance for their imprisoned loved one or themselves once released from prison. We have in the past done a nationwide picket at all the prisons to bring attention to the need for prison reform. Prison University Project PO Box 492 San Quentin, CA, 94964 (415) 455-8088 http://www.prisonuniversityproject.org info@prisonuniversity project.org Provides excellent higher education programs to people incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison; to create a replicable model for such programs; and to stimulate public awareness and meaningful dialogue about higher education and criminal justice in California. Prisoners Literature Project 2022 Blake St Berkeley, CA, 94704 http://www.prisonersliteratureproject.com No Texas or Oregon requests. Request by subject. Stamps or donations greatly appreciated. San Francisco AIDS Foundation 995 Market St, Ste 200 San Francisco , CA, 94103 (415) 487-3000 http://www.sfaf.org/ feedback@sfaf.org Provides California HIV/AIDS hotline at 800- 367-AIDS. Puts out publication called BETA, available in Spanish and English. San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership. P.O. Box 293, 1563 Solano Ave. Berkeley, CA, 94707. http://www.sfcipp.org nellbernstein@att.net 2.4 million U.S. children have a parent behind bars today. The partnership formed to improve the lives of incarcerated children and to demand a Bill of Rights for them, downloadable from the website in English and Spanish. SYDA Foundation Yoga Prison Project PO Box 99140 Emeryville, CA, 94662 Mails monthly free newsletter and the Siddha Yoga Home Study Course to any inmate that requests it. The Hepatitis C Support Project (HCSP) PO Box 427037 Hepatitis C Support Project San Francisco, CA, 94142 http://www.hcvadvocate.org/ alanfranciscus@hcvadvocate.org Publishes monthly patient newsletter. Fact sheets on Hep C available for free download in ve languages. Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex (TGI) Justice Project 342 9th Street suite 202B San Francisco, CA, 94103 (415) 252-1444 http://www.tgijp.org The TGI Justice Project works mainly with prisoners in CA; they work on alternative sentencing, writing advocacy letters trying to help transgender prisoners get access to hormones, nding attorneys and preparing cases for attorneys. Prisoners can send condential legal mail to the above address, c/o Alexander Lee, Attorney at Law. WORLD (Women Organized to Respond to LifeThreatening Diseases) 414 13th Street 2nd oor Oakland, CA, 94612 (510) 986-0340 http://www.womenhiv.org/ Provides information and educational support for women and families infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. Spanish resources available. Barrios Unidos 1817 Soquel Avenue Santa Cruz, CA, 95062 (831) 457-8208 http://www.barriosunidos.net Post-release services. Performs Pow-wow/ Cinco De Mayo/Juneteenth ceremonies at Tracy and info packet related to cultural traditions. California Coalition for Women Prisoners 1540 Market St. #6 San Francisco, CA, 94102 (415) 255-7036 x314 http://www.womenprisoners.org Runs action center and produces newsletter The Fire Inside 11

PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON SHU: PEACEFUL PROTEST HUNGER STRIKE STARTING JULY 1
t is important for readers to understand the cruelty of the policy sanctioned by the state that allows the CDCR to place men/women under an indeterminate SHU program only on the word of a prison informerwhere there is no offense, no violence, nor any gang or criminal activity. Yet prisoners who are held in indeterminate SHU are held, well, indenitelyfor the rest of their lives in SHUs and Adjustment Centers across the state, and even on Death Row if validated as a gang member. The cruelty is a protracted attack against prisoners, their families, friends, and all of their associates who are subjected to investigations for criminal activities. It does not matter if they are into crime or gang activity or not, the objective is to insinuate that they are and to cut off any relationships that may exist with the prisoner. The gang investigation ofcers manufacture their evidence by using inmate informers to create an assumption of crime to attack our friends and families. The CDCRs gang investigators understand that the prisoners held in solitary connement are being subjected to various forms of torture and are nonetheless able to sustain themselves, even in the face of these ongoing attacks. Prisoners have adapted to maintain their sanity. So the gang investigators take it a step further, beyond the prison walls, where they work to intimidate by way of threats and other means our friends and families, be they children, grandparents, sisters, bothers, parents or whomeverpeople who are completely innocent of any gang or criminal activity. They intimidate and incriminate people across the board. They run them off in fear of being prosecuted for a crime that does not exist (other than to say they are under investigation). This kind of attack is not only very intimidating for someone who has never even had a trafc ticket, they are actually cruel to those dear to us. Since 1990 prisoners at Pelican Bay have been making complaints against abuses by prison guards. Some of these abuses against PBSP-SHU prisoners were addressed in the Madrid case, where the court agreed that guards were responsible for a number of areas of prisoner mistreatment. Because medical treatment was so bad the federal court put the prisons into receivership and appointed a special master to oversee changes.1 Many prisoners have suffered mental disorders as a direct result of their placement in the Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Units (PBSP-SHU). The overwhelming majority of these men had not mental illness prior to entering the SHU, but rather lost their sanity as a result of their placement in this facility, as a result of the long-term impact of such connement. The Madrid ruling was a failure. Prison guards either ignore the court order altogether or implement token rules
1. According to the San Francisco Chronicle one prisoner a week was being killed in the states prison system due to medical neglect.

they do not follow. Nothing the court did persuaded the guard staff or prison administration to change their abusive behavior. This place is a plantation or a prison colony and we prisoners are the slaves (a status legitimized by the 13th amendment to the U.S. constitution). The guards are free to do with us as they please. They have complete control of our medical care, mail, visits, property, supplies, law library access, laundry, yard, isolation, the lights in our cell, family, friends, lock downs, etc. This is an environment in which the prison guards can torture prisoners both physically and psychologically over extended periods of time. One such attack is the dehumanizing yet widely used potty watch which is used under false pretensesnot to nd drugs, but to humiliate other human beings. The actual objective or goal of all this is to force every indenitely held SHU prisoner to debrief (to turn rat, snitch, turncoat, however you want do dene it). Some SHU prisoners break and give their captors names just to escape the terrible conditions of connement. These prisoners are rewarded by being placed in Special Need Yards (SNY) where living conditions are better. This has been happening since the 1990s and it continues today. Ninety-ve percent of the debriefers lie in order to get out of the SHU and then go on to become lifetime stoolies for the cops. The CDCR uses every trick they can to force men into debrieng, including every increasing levels of what can only be described at torture. But if you are innocent, or if you are a principled person, they force you to endure every hardship in an effort to break you. It is this ever increasing attack that has forced us prisoners to put aside our historical differences in order to address the protracted attack on our lives and to expose the criminal activities and abuses against all indeterminate SHU prisoners in the state of California. Effective July 1st we are initiating a peaceful protest by way of an indenite hunger strike in which we will not eat until our core demands are met. This hunger strike will be carried on by all races, New Afrikans (Blacks), Mexicans (i.e. of all walks), whites and others who realize that we are silently being murdered by CDCR/CCPOA Union as well as the U.S. judicial system who have turned a blind eye while we suffer a civil death at the hands of proteers. Therefore we have decided to put our fate in our own hands. Some of us have already suffered a slow, agonizing death in which the state has shown no compassion toward these dying prisoners. Rather than compassion they turn up their ruthlessness. No one wants to die. Yet under this current system of what amounts to intense torture, what choice do we have? If one is to die, it will be on our own terms. Power concedes to nothing without demand. James Crawford, Mutop DuGuya (a/k/a Bow Low) MuTope DuGuma

toward early release. In addition, section 2932 specically governs what procedures shall be used when credits are denied or lost for serious disciplinary offenses. In this case, Petitioner is considered to have committed serious misconduct by violating c.c.r. Title 15, section 3023. Any doubt as to whether validation is a form of misconduct is dispelled by P.C. 2035. A review of the title, legislative language and legislative history of section 2933.6 leads to the unavoidable conclusion that validation is considered serious misconduct. Accordingly, Petitioner has a statutory interest in receiving the procedural due process required under section 2932. C. THE PRIVATE INTERESTS AFFECTED BY THE OFFICAL ACTION IS SUBSTANTIAL Being validated as a prison gang member or associate has an enormously adverse impact on inmates private interests. Validation has direct and collateral consequences on all aspects of an inmates life while in prison and on parole. 1. RELEASE DATE-LIBERTY An inmates private interest in early release through credit earning is inevitably and directly affected by gang validation. See P.C. 2933.6. Petitioner is due to serve additional months. in prison because he is validated. Validated inmates are assigned indeterminate SHU terms. Therefore, they are ineligible to earn credits for an indeterminate amount of time. The longer an inmate is in SHU, the less time he will have to earn credits once release. Of course, this I assuming he will ever be released. For those inmates with 6 years or less to serve on their prison term, there is no controversy they will not earn any credits and will serve their maximum term. 2. MENTAL AND PHYSICAL HEALTH Petitioner is in Pelican Bay SHU long-term solitary connement. The harsh conditions of connement-validated inmates endure mirror those of inmates who have committed violent offenses while in prison. The Federal District Court made extensive ndings of fact on the conditions of connement imposed on validated inmates. See Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F. Supp 1146, 1228-1230 (N.D. Cal. 1995). Validated inmates are assigned indeterminate SHU terms. There is overwhelming evidence that long-term solitary connement deteriorates a persons mental and physical health. (See e.g. Haney C, The Social Psychology of Isolation: Why Solitary Connement is Psychologically Harmful, Prison Service Journal issue #181, pp. 12-20; Haney C Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and Supermax Connement, 40 Crime & Delinquency 124-156 (January 2003, Study of Pelican Bay SHU inmates); Hawkley LC, Cacioppo JT, Loneliness Matters: A Theoretical and Empirical Review of Consequences and Mechanisms, 40 ann. Behav.med? 218-227 (2010); Shiovitz-Ezra S, Ayalon L. Situational Versus Chronic Loneliness as Risk Factors for All-Cause Mortality, 22 Int. Psychgeriatr. 455-462 (2010).). Accordingly, the private interest in maintaining ones mental and physical well-being should be recognized by the court. 3. COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES Finally, the collateral consequences of gang validation are substantial. Upon being released on parole validated inmates are designated to the highest level of parole supervision: High Control. See CCR Title 15, 3504 (a)(1). High Control designation is not a discretionary decision, it is mandatory for validated inmates and entails substantial limitations on a parolees liberty once released. See CCR Title 15, 3504 (a) (1). Validated inmates released on parole are also subject to Global Positioning System (GPS) supervision, which means being required to wear a GPS monitor for the duration of parole. See CCR, Title 15, 3561 (b)(2). Finally, for those inmates serving life with the possibility of parole being validated virtually ensures that the parole board will not grant a parole date. These collateral consequences and any others not mentioned should be recognized as private interests. See Wolff v. McDonnell (1974) 418 US 539, 565 (recognizing collateral consequences, in support of affording increased procedural due process). II. THE RISK OF ERRONEOUS DEPRIVATION OF SUCH INTEREST TROUGH THE CURRENT PROCEUDRES IS SUBSTAINTIAL; PROBABLE VALUE OF SUBSTITUTE PROCEDURES A. INADEQUATE NOTICE UNDER CURRENT PROCEDURES A. INADEQUATE NOTICE UNDER CURRENT PROCEDURES Currently, prison ofcials are not required to promptly notify an inmate when evidence is obtained that is considered to be a source item towards validation. As a result it can be many months or years after the evidence is discovered that an inmate is notied and given a chance to submit a rebuttal. These unwarranted delays in notication have a chilling PRISON FOCUS

USING CA PENAL CODE SECTION 2933.6 TO EXPAND DUE PROCESS RIGHTS FOR VALIDATED INMATES: A GUIDE TO ACTION
By Edward Dumbrique his article is written with the aim of assisting inmates who want to challenge the woefully inadequate rubber stamp gang validation process. The following is an argument under the California Constitution Article 1, sections 7(A), 15. It is necessary to le a CDC 602 and obtain a third level response before ling a Habeas Corpus petition. In order to avoid getting your appeal screened out as untimely you should le the CDC 602 either once you have received your validation packet or after going to committee (if you are already validated). If we are challenging this issue from Calipatria to Pelican Bay, we increase the chance of one or more of these courts ruling in our favor, which will benet us all.

I. PETITIONERS DUE PROCESS RIGHTS UNDER THE CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION ARE BEING VIOLATED BY THE CURRENT GANG VALIDATION PROCESS, WHICH PROVIDES INSUFFICIENT PROCEDURES TO PROTECT THE PRIVATE INTERESTS NOW AT STAKE AFTER THE AMENDMENT TO PENAL CODE SECTION 2933.6 A. STANDARD OF REVIEW Our state due process constitutional analysis differs from that conducted pursuant to the federal due process clause in that the claimant need not establish a property or liberty interest as a prerequisite to invoking due process protection. The state due process clause focuses rather on an individuals due process liberty interest to be free from arbitrary adjudicative procedures. Ryan v. California Interscholastic Federation- San Diego Section, (2001) 94 Cal. App. 4th 1048, 1069. Procedural due process under the California Constitution is much more 12

inclusive and protects a broader range of interests than under the federal constitution Id. At 1069 (citing cases). Although under the state due process analysis an aggrieved party need not establish a protected property interest, the claimant must nevertheless identify a statutorily conferred benet or interest of which he has been deprived to trigger procedural due process under the California Constitution and the Ramirez analysis of what procedures are due, Ryan, 94 Cal. App. 4th at 1071 (citing cases). The Ramirez analysis of what procedures are due requires consideration of four factors: 1) The private interest that will be affected by the ofcial action. 2) The risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards. 3) The dignitary interest in informing individual of the nature, grounds and consequences of the action and in enabling them to present their side of the story before a responsible governmental ofcial, and 4) The governmental interest, including the function involved and the scal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedure would entail. People v. Ramirez, (1979) 25 Cal. 3d 260, 269. California law requires a more stringent standard of proof for disciplinary ndings than is dictated by the federal due process clause In re Rothwell, 164, Cal. App 4th 160 (2008).

B. PETITIONER HAS A STATUTORILY CONFERRED BENEFIT OR INTEREST All prisoners in California are eligible to participate in Californias statutory sentencing scheme. See Penal Code sections 2931 et. Seq. Therefore, petitioner has a statutorily conferred benet or interest in earning credits

effect on inmates ability to marshal the facts and prepare a defense against the charge. For example, the staff member who documented the evidence and is familiar with the circumstances will not be the one considering an inmates rebuttal. Also staff or inmates who have relevant information that can exonerate him or her will not be accessible due to transfers or release and their memories may have faded due to the passage of time. This creates an unnecessary risk of erroneous deprivation and arbitrary validations. I. PROBABLE VALUE OF SUBSTITUTE PROCEDURES Requiring an inmate be notied within 15 days of the date the evidence is discovered would allow the inmate a fair opportunity to marshal the facts and prepare a defense to the charge. Additionally, promptly notifying the inmate of his alleged misconductgang activity will deter the inmate from engaging in further gang activity which is in the interest of prison ofcials objective. This would also promote accuracy and reliability in governmental decision-making. B. NO INVESTIGATIVE EMPLOYEE UNDER CURRENT PROCEDURES Inmates being validated are placed in administrative segregation. This housing status signicantly restricts inmate movement and makes it unlikely the inmate can collect and present evidence necessary for an adequate presentation of a defense. This creates an unnecessary risk of erroneous deprivation and arbitrary validations. I. PROBABLE VALUE OF SUBSTITUTE PROCEDURES Investigative employees are routinely assigned to inmates charged with a CDC 115 Rules Violation Report (See CCR Title 15; 3315 (d)). Requiring inmates who are being validated or have been accused of engaging in gang activity to be assigned an Investigative Employee would ensure the inmate has the ability to present a defense to the charge. Similar to section 3315 (d) investigative employees would only be assigned when the inmates housing status makes it unlikely the inmate can collect and present the evidence for his defense himself. This procedure would promote accuracy and reliability in governmental decision-making. C. NO RIGHT TO CALL WITNESSES OR PRESENT WRITTEN STATEMENTS FROM PARTIES WITH RELEVANT INFORMATION UNDER CURRENT PROCEDURES Inmates being validated cannot call witnesses or even present written statements from inmates or any other parties who have relevant information to the presentation of a defense. This creates an unnecessary risk of erroneous deprivation and arbitrary validations. I. PROBABLE VALUES OF SUBSTITUTE PROCEDURES The right to call witnesses is routinely granted to inmates charged with a CDC 115 Rules. Violation Report See CCR Title 15, 3315 (e). D. BURDEN OF PROOF REQUIRED UNDER CURRENT PROCEDURES: INFERENCES VS. PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE STANDARD Under current procedures, inferences of gang association are recognized as scarce items for validation purposes. See CCR Title 15, 3378 (c)(4), which states, an associate is an inmate/parolee, who is involved periodically or regularly with members or associates of a gang. This identication requires at least three independent source items of documentation indicative of association with validated gang members as associates. Validation of an inmate/parolee as an associate of a prison gang shall require that at least one source item be a direct link to a current or former validated member or associate of the gang. This inferences used as source items for validation are often based on association that is nominal, passive, inactive, or purely technical. The use of inferences may be appropriate in the initial decision to segregate an inmate being validated. However, the momentous decision to keep him segregated and punish the inmate for gang association should be not founded on mere inference of gang association, which are notoriously subjective and invite arbitrary and discriminatory decisions by governmental ofcials. Surely, the substantial private interests call for a fact-based fundamentally fair decision making process. CDCRs denition of gang activity is found in CCR Title 15, 3000 & 3023. The authority cited by these regulations NUMBER 37

is Penal Code section 186.22. Section 186.22 is a key section in the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act (STEP). In interpreting P.C. 186.22, the court in People v. Englebrecht (2011) 88 Cal. App.4th 1236, 1261 held, The participation or acting in concert must be more than nominal, passive, inactive, or purely technical. The Englebrecht court denition was based on People v. Castenada (2000) 23 Cal. 4th 743, 747. In Castenada, our Supreme Court considered the meaning of actively participates in any criminal street gang as used in P.C. 186.22. The California Supreme Court dened the term as meaning involvement with a criminal street gang that is more than nominal or passive Castenada, 23 Cal 4th at 747 (citing Scales v. United States (1961) 367 U.S. 203, 223: See also Scott N. Tachiki. Indeterminate Sentences in Supermax Prisons Based upon Alleged Gang Afliations: A Reexamination of Procedural Protection and a Proposal for Greater Procedural Requirements; 83 Calif. L. rev. 115 (1995) (arguing, inter alia, that some evidence of misconduct should be a predicate for segregation on the basis of gang afliation). For the above reasons mere inferences of gang activity/ association based on behavior that is nominal, passive, inactivity or purely technical should not be considered as source items for validation purposes. Allowing inferences to be used creates an overwhelming risk of erroneous deprivation and arbitrary and discriminatory validations.

perfunctory review process); Lira v. Cate, U.S.D.C. N.D. Cal. 2009 Case No. 000-09050-SI (Judge Illston concluding the periodic reviews of gang validation and SHU connement were insufcient because the Classication Committee had no real power or interest in reviewing the merit of the original validation); Also in Stewart v. Alameida, 418 F. Supp.2d 1154, 1163 (N.D. Cal. 2006) (There is a valid, rational connection between institutional security and regulations designed to isolate threats before their potential is realized. This nexus is not destroyed by the possibility that inferences might sometimes be a necessary substitute for direct evidence [in gang validation].). If this court allows a perfunctory review process and mere inferences to replace direct evidence of gang association, then many inmates will be required to serve extra years in prison based on arbitrary decisions. The result is rubberstamp decisions and perfunctory reviews. Inmates submit rebuttals to the OCS, but these rebuttals receive no acknowledgement or explanation on why the OCS found the rebuttal unpersuasive. Upon validation and an interval of 180 days, inmates appear before ICC for supposed consideration for release from SHU if they no longer pose a threat to the institution. ICC regularly denies release and does not give any written disposition explaining how the inmate continues to be a threat other then the fact he is validated. With OCS and ICC not having to explain the reasons for their actions, they have created system where arbitrary decision are made by governmental ofcials insulated from review (since inmates do not know the rationale behind the decisions and therefore cannot challenge them directly). I. PROBABLE VALUE OF SUBSTITUTE PROCEDURES OCS should be required to provide inmates, who are validated with a reasonably detailed explanation as to why source items are reliable and qualify as gang activity. OCS should also be required to address the issues raised in the inmates rebuttal to the sufciency of the evidence. When ICC retains an inmate on indeterminate SHU status they should be required to explain with sufcient detail why the inmate continue to be a threat to the institution. This will encourage fairer decisions. A reasons requirement promotes thought by the decision maker, focuses attention on the relevant points and further protects against arbitrary decisions while promoting accuracy and reliability in governmental decision-making. It also establishes a record for judicial review. F. CURRENT PROCEUDRES PROVIDE MEANINGLESS REVIEWS As noted above in part E, ICC is required to conduct periodic reviews in order to determine whether the inmate continues to pose a threat to the institution and therefore needs to be retained in SHU. Therefore, the decision to validate the inmate and the subsequent decision of whether or not to segregate him are the supposedly independent decision. The fact is inmates who are validated are guaranteed to get sent to the SHU and are automatically deemed a sever threat. See OCR Title 15, 3341.5 (c)(2)(1)(2). The Federal District Court in Liva V. Cate criticized this fact. Other courts likewise have held meaningful reviews to be required in order to satisfy due process. See e.g. In re Henderson (1972) 101 Cal. Rptr. 479, 484 (Although conduct or circumstances may have warranted the initial connement, lapse of time or change in circumstances may subsequently dissipate or erode the legal justication for its continuance; Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 477 A.9 (1983) (prison ofcials must engage in periodic review of the decision to segregate an inmate to ascertain whether a prisoner remains a security risk); McClary v. Keely, 4 F.Supp.2d 195, 213 (WDNY 1998) affd 237 F.3d 185(2d Circ.2001) (Due processes not satised where the periodic reviews are a sham; the reviews must be meaningful an not simply perfunctory); Giano v. Kelly, 869 F. Supp. 143, 150-151 (WDNY 1994); Rhinehart v. Gomez, 1998 WL 118179 p.4 (N.D.Cal); Mims v Shapp, 744 F.2d 946, 951-95 (3d Cir. 1984); Keely v. Brwer, 525 F.2d 394, 400 (8th Circ. 1975) An inmate can be free of gang activity for years, have no violent history and still be denied release from SHU based on the initial validation. This is a status-based decision. Allowing these status based on decisions with no evidence of conduct or intent results in arbitrary and erroneous deprivation. I. PROBABLE VALUE OF SUBSTITUE PROCEDURES 13

By Michael David Russell

I. PROBABLE VALUE OF SUBSTITUTE PROCEDURES Requiring all source items toward validation to be based on activity/association that is more than nominal, passive, inactive or purely technical and based upon a preponderance of the evidence would promote accuracy and reliability in governmental decision-making. E. CURRENT PROCEDURES PROVIDE INSUFFICIENT WRITTEN DISPOSITIONS There are three occasions in the validation process where momentous decisions are made: 1) The Ofce of Correctional Safety Committees decision on whether or not the evidence submitted is sufcient to validate the inmate; 2) Once an inmate is validated, the Institutional Classication Committees (ICC) decision of whether or not to release the inmate to general population or assign him an indeterminate SHU term, and 3) At the periodic reviews where ICC determines whether the inmate continues to pose a threat and requires segregation or can be released from SHU. See CCR Title 15, 3335, 3339(a). and 3341.5 (c)(3). At all three of these stages validated are not provided with an explanation or statement of reasons for the decision. The fact that ofcials can make these judgments that affects all aspect of the inmates life without any justication invites arbitrary governmental action. This is exactly what the Federal District Court criticized in Grifn v. Gomez, 2008 U.S. Dist Lexis 111776 p.? (The court called the Validation process a

ICC should be required to conduct comprehensive III. PETITIONERS DIGNITARY INTEREST reviews of the inmates le and any other relevant inThe California Constitution as interpreted by the Califorformation to determine whether retention in SHU is nia Supreme Court recognizes the dignitary interests in innecessary. Similar to inmates sentenced to life in Califorming individuals of the nature, grounds, and consequencfornia trying to get a parole date, validated inmates are es of the activity, and in enabling them to present their side of trying to get parole from S HU and release to the general the story before a responsible governmental ofcial Ramirez population. The Parole Board must conduct meaningful 158 Cal. Rptr. at 321. reviews and ICC should be required to do the same. This is what petitioner seeks through this petition. A number of studies concluded that incarceration in SHU-like conditions should be based on some evidence IV. GOVERNMENTAL INTEREST; FISCAL AND ADof overt misconduct and not status alone. See Scott N. MINISTRATIVE BURDENS Tachiki, Indeterminate Sentences in Supermax Prisons It is very expensive to house an inmate in SHU, substanBased Upon Alleged Gang Afliations: A Reexaminatially more than what it could to house an inmate in general tion of Procedural Protection and a Proposal for Great population, therefore and scal burdens, will be off set the Procedural Requirements, 83 Calif. L. Rev. 1115, 1138money saved from not having to segregate the inmate. 1146 (1995); Supermax Prisons: An Overview and The administrative burden that may result from affording General Considerations, U.S. Dept. of Justice, National additional procedures with be de minimis since the burden of Institute of Corrections (Jan. 1999) (Suggesting that validating an inmate carries its own burden. These likewise segregation should be based solely on actual behavior offset each other. because attempting to use predictive criteria based on subjective information has led historically to unsatisfacV. CONCLUSION tory and possibly indefensible results); Phillip Kassel, For all the above reasons inmates subject to validation The Gang Crackdown in Massachusetts Connement : should be granted increased procedural due process under 37, 59 (1998) (discussing prison studies and arguing that the California Constitution Article I, sections 7(a), 15. prisons should punish prisoners conduct not their status in part because punishing status, particularly since accurate gang identications are so difcult, can rise to the justied perception of arbitrariness in prison management, contributing to instability.) Human Rights Watch, Supermax Prisons: An overview, at http://www. he ongoing treatment of mentally ill patient who are hrw.org/reports/2000/supermax/spprmx002.htm (argunot ill at all but suffer from post drugs induced trances ing that mere membership in a gang, absent actual danfrom drug abuse or temporary insanity which can be gerous or predatory behavior, should not be the basis remedied without min altering drugs prescribed by psycholofor supermax connement.) ; Jerry R. DeMaio, If You gists and psychiatrists. Build It They Will Come : The Threat of OverclassicaC.D.C.R. California Department of Corrections and Retion in Wisconsins Supermax Prison, 2001 Wis. L. Rev. habilitation. 207, 229 criteria, (2001) (The only fair solution may Rehabilitation means to restore to a former capacity rank be to dene gang activity based on objective, concrete or right: to restore to good condition or health. criteria, such as documenting assaultive or threatening C.D.C.R. has incorporated a money making business in behavior. This would lower the risk of misidentifying patients suffering from drug abuse and people who are not gang members, and subjecting them to unnecessary ininsane at all and given medication to replace one drug with tensive incarceration of (Wisconsins SHU equivalent). another as for example methadone to help heroin addicts. Further, state and federal courts have clearly rejected Mind altering drugs as in Meloril, Prozac, Thorozine, Seroguilt by association and gang membership as evidence quil etc. are being administered to inmates who are not menthat a specic act was committed. See e.g. N.A.A.C.P. tally ill and can be brought back to normal with rehabilitav. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982) 485 U.S. 886, 925 tion, a daily program of yard, work, and housing and proper (rejecting not only guilt by association, but also guilt counseling. Instead the medication administered is damaging for association, characterizing guilt by association as inmates brains so they are unable to function and require a philosophy alien to the traditions of a free society further treatment. I dont want to go into types of damages and the First Amendment itself.; U.S. v. Robal, 389 because Im not a psychiatrist. U.S. 258, 264 (holding unconstitutional law establishing guilt by association alone); Keyishian v. Board of Regents, (1967) 385 U.S. 589, 607 (rejecting law resting on the doctrine of guilt by association which has no place here) Uphaus v Wyman, (1959) 360 U.S. 72, 79. (guilt by association remains a thoroughly discredited doctrine) Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, (1951) 351 U.S. 123, 175 (Douglas J concurring) (rejecting guilt by association as one of the most odious institutions of history); American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee v. Reno, 70 F. 3d 1045, 1063 (9th Cir. 1995) (Guilt by association alone violates the First Amendment.) ; People v. Perez, (1981) 114 Cal. Dpp. 3d 47c, 477 (Evidence of gang membership inadmissible insofar as it does not have any tendency in reason to prove a disputed fact, i.e. the identity of the person who committed the charged offense); People v. Soto (1984) 15?? Cal. App. 3d 694, 712-713 (Membership in an organization does not lead reasonably to any inference as to the conduct of a member on a given occasion); People v. Gomez (1991) 235 Cal. App. 2d 957, 971 (P.C. 186.22 regulates conduct, not speech or association, and there is no right of association to engage in criminal conduct one is free to associate with whomever one wishes under the statute as long as the primary purpose of associating oneself with a group is not to commit crime. It is not the associating with others about which section 186.22 addresses, but the association with others about which section 186.22 addresses, but the association with others for the purpose By Antonio C. Ramon of promoting, furthering or assisting them in the commission of crime); People v. Castenada (2000) 23, What I do know is C.D.C.R. is making a habit of having CAL. 4TH 742, 749 (as a persons active participation in mentally retarded inmates housed in E.O.P. PHU, CCMS a criminal street gang, without more, does not amount to housing on prison yards when they require to be proper evala violation of section 186.22) uated in a state hospital like Napa, Patton, etc. For the above reasons, the segregation of validated Inmates come to prison to try to better there lives just to inmates should require meaningful reviews where the be lured into the dynamics of psychology to be used as guindecision to retain the inmate in SHU is based on actual ea pigs and given medication to resolve problems resulting conduct and evidence of gang activity and not status from long or short term drug or and alcohol abuse. These alone. To determine what constitutes conduct and gang inmates that are mentally ill require a proper setting a Mental activity prison ofcials should abide by the relevant and Hospital. governing regulations denite gang activity. See CCR Inmates recovering from temporary insanity, drug abuse tit. 14, 3000 & 3023. should be given a chance the chance to rehabilitate them-

C.D.C.R. OR STATE HOSPITAL

selves in prisonnot medicated. Why are mentally ill inmates being housed in C.D.C.R. because they are given deals without knowing whats going on. During trial proceedings if your lawyer has a doubt if youre incompetent to stand trial, youll be evaluated by therapists in order to stand trial if youre competent. If you are mentally ill, all court proceedings stop and you are sent to a state hospital. Taking a deal before hand once in prison, they are faced with the realization of being behind bars after the effects of drugs ware off, cant cope with it, then abuse medication which isnt necessary and complicates matters worse by brain washing individuals so they cant function once released into society or to a E.P yard. Its a revolving door with no results. All the scal budget spent on psychologist, psychiatrists, psychic techs, meds, and numerous C.O.S. to escort inmates in C.D.C.R. can be spent on rehabilitating individuals by given them proper housing not a isolated cell block in Maximum Security Prisons, but on a G.P. yard and given the opportunity to go to school, college, vocational school or work (a P.I.A. job), and talk to a counselor not a psychic about how to better your life. What Im saying is, is this a warehouse to store mentally handicapped inmates without the goals set by C.D.C.R. to rehabilitate him. If thats the case make this a state hospital and have psychic around the clock caring for these mentally handicapped inmates and are C.O.s trained to deal with and capable of caring for mentally ill people without the use of force on a handicapped person in PHY, CCOMS use of force on a handicapped person in PHU, CCOMS blocks. You decide C.D.R. or State Hospital? By R.A.M. Pelican Bay

THE CALL
By Mutope Duguma (s/n James Crawford) This is a call for all prisoners in Security Housing Units (SHUs), Administrative Segregation (Ad-Seg), and General Populations (GP), as well as the free oppressed and non-oppressed people to support the indenite July 1st 2011 peaceful Hunger Strike in protest of the violation of our civil/human rights, here at Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit (PBSP-SHU), short corridor D1 through D4 and its overow D5 through D10. It should be clear to everyone that none of the hunger strike participants want to die, but due to our circumstances, whereas that state of California has sentenced all of us on Indeterminate SHU program to a civil death merely on the word of a prison informer (snitch). The purpose of the Hunger Strike is to combat both the Ad-Seg/SHU psychological and physical torture, as well as the justications used of support treatment of the type that lends to prisoners being subjected to a civil death. Those subjected to indeterminate SHU programs are neglected and deprived of the basic human necessities while withering away in a very isolated and hostile environment. Prison ofcials have utilized the assassination of prisoners character to each other as well as the general public in order to justify their inhumane treatment of prisoners. The code of silence used by guards allows them the freedom to use everything at their disposal in order to break those prisoners who prison ofcials and correctional ofcers (C/O) believe cannot be broken. It is this mentality that set in motion the establishing of the short corridor, D1 through D4 and its D5 though D10 overow. This mentality has created the current atmosphere in which C/Os and prison ofcials agreed upon plan to break indeterminate SHU prisoners. This protracted attack on SHU prisoners cuts across every aspect of the prisons function: Food, mail, visiting, medical, yard, hot/cold temperatures, privileges (canteen, packages, property, etc.), isolation, cell searches, family/friends, and socio-culture, economic, and political deprivation. This is nothing short of the psychological/ physical torture of SHU/Ad-Seg prisoners. It takes place day in and day out, without a break or rest. The prisons gang intelligence unit was extremely angered at the fact that prisoners who had been held in SHU under inhuman conditions for anywhere from ten (10) to forty (40) years had not been broken. So the gang intelligence unit created the short corridor and intensied the pressure of their attacks on the prisoners housed there. The object was to use blanket pressure to encourage these particular isolated prisoners to debrief (i.e. snitch on order to be released from SHU). The C/Os and administrative ofcials are all in agreement and all do their part in depriving short corridor prisoners and its overow of their basic civil/human rights. None of the deliberate attacks are a gment of anyones imagination. These continuous attacks are carried out against prisoners to a science by all of them. They are deliberate and conscious acts against essentially defenseless prisoners. It is these ongoing attacks that have led to the short corPRISON FOCUS

14

ridor and overow SHU prisoners to organize ourselves themselves around an indenite Hunger Strike in an effort to combat the dehumanizing treatment we prisoners of all races are subjected to on a daily basis. Therefore, on July 1, 2011, we ask that all prisoners throughout the State of California who have been suffering injustices in General Population, Administrative Segregation and solitary connement, etc. to join in our peaceful strike to put a stop to the blatant violations of prisoners civil/human rights. As you know, prison gang investigators have used threats of validation and other means to get prisoners to engage in a protracted war against each other in order to serve their narrow interests. If you cannot participate in the Hunger Strike then support it in principle by not eating for the rst 24 hours of the strike. I say that those of you who carry yourselves as principled human beings, no matter youre housing status, must ght to right this and other egregious wrongs. Although it is us today (united New Afrikans, Whites, Northern and Southern Mexicans, and others) it will be you all tomorrow. It is in your interests to peacefully support us in this protest today, and to beware of agitators, provocateurs, and obstructionists, because they are the ones who put ninety percent of us back here because they could not remain principled even within themselves. The following demands are all similar to what is allowed in other super max prisons (e.g. federal Florence, Colorado, Ohio and Indiana State Penitentiaries). The claim by CDCR and PBSP that implementing the practices of the federal prison system or that of other states would be a threat to safety and security are exaggerations. [Ed. Note: The Five Core Demand are printed on page 8.]

uprisings like Attica Prison in New York in 1971, where protesting prisoners asking only to be treated like human beings were massacred in cold blood on the order of politicians in such unbridled and savage carnage by National Guard troops that they also shot dead prison guards. Prison guards have been killed by inmates throughout the life of prisons in apparent acts of desperation. It takes very extreme conditions to make hardened prisoners do such a thing, along with conditions far beyond human endurance. Prisons are seething with frustration and anguish in an environment of unprecedented violence and terrifying realities. It does not get any worse. Suicide is common. Still, voters (i.e., society at large), prisoncrats, politicians and presidents steadily take more and more things away from us in already extremely restrictive living conditions, such as visiting time, conjugal visits, reading material, property, medical treatment, access to foods and products, religious practices, grooming practices, access to courts and the press, the need to strike and protest, and make harsher laws that keep us in prison longer or for life. The courts upheld that prisoners are not entitled to such human things and may be so treated, citing the 13th Amendment Slavery Clause. The most powerful and inuential governing and review bodies have made it clear that rather than having human rights under the Constitution, these things, and more, were only privileges that can be just as easily taken away as they had been allowed, with no legal or moral consequence attached and at the discretion of prisoncrats. Thus, they deny to prisoners what is lawfully theirs. Surely, as any dog in an alley would sympathize, such a constitution, system, society, and government must be overthrown in the interest of humanity. There is no other solution; everything else has failed miserably. Sister Amazon, Corcoran State Prison, Ad-Seg

ABOUT PRISONS
rison is government. Prison is one of the most stark, living images of the tyranny of government, with its secrecy, unrestrained cruelty, corruption, tortuous conditions and treatment, extreme sexism and racism and hate by guards, and its overall degrading nature at the hands of prisoncrats. Mass incarceration is the product of the failures of society in terms of social institutions, economy, politicians, and state and federal governments. Prisons and prisoners are the cover-up and scapegoats of these failures. Prisons have become increasingly relied upon to hold back and stamp out social protest of the errors and tyranny of government, and the desire for people to be really free, by locking up anti-social and anti-government protesters and anyone who challenges injustice, inhumanity and tyrannical rule. Prison, by its very idea and nature, acts tyrannically toward it subjects, with or without impunity. Prisoncrats essentially answer to no one and cannot be controlled with token toothless checks-and- balances measures. Prisons are antinature and have become extremely harmful and dangerous institutions of government, producing angry, vengeful subjects, extreme violence and bizarre behavior in people who are then released back into society, untreated. Prisoncrats are well aware of this cycle but care not for the public above their own self-perpetuating interest, which is money and its attendant political power to buy off politicians and control election agendas to their benet which means more prisons, more guards and a bigger and more powerful union and treasure chest for their ever-expanding schemes, which always produce in the end, harsher conditions for prisoners. Prisons have become a power bloc with broad political and economic inuence both domestically and abroad. As with corrupt government and the ultimate demise of any government, prison is a sudden image of what is taking place in society by degrees: the steady erosion of fundamental human rights, restrictions on movement and privacy and possessions, and naked tyranny camouaged in civil rhetoric. The day-to-day unbearable existence of prison life will eventually befall the greater society, absent the dissolution of government. The United States is the only government in the world with a constitution that unabashedly enshrines slavery on its subjects, making slavery and conditions of slavery constitutionally right, proper, required and thereby morally and legally right and sustainable. The institution of slavery that the Constitution proposes, enacts and upholds is that of prison, found in the 13th Amendment. The 13th Amendment, which actually was an afterthought, reserves slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for violating the law. This proslavery clause has been supported and more rmly instituted by rulings at all levels of court, up to the Supreme Court. It is practiced and enforced by the treatment of prisoners like slaves, with every kind of brutality, inhumanity and more vileness a virtual green light to treat us as less than human, degrade us and strip us of our sense of self-worth. The 13th Amendment is cloaked in anti-slavery sleight-of-tongue riddles, but we prisoners are slaves and exist in slave status, and this makes it right and permissible, even laudable, to deny prisoners normal human rights as others have and to treat us inhumanely. We are not considered full human beings with full human rights and respect due us. Prisoners are reminded of this day-in-and-day-out by the way in which we are treated by guards, medical personnel, and others in the prisons. Among the results that have been popular are NUMBER 37

used this as evidence of gang activity. One prisoner became friends with another prisoner while in GP only to nd out later that his new friend was being investigated at the time of being a gang associate. He noted, I was not aware of that at the time. They should at least give you a warning of who not to associate with. Even with the gun-re, there are big signs on the walls noting that one warning shot will be red. But when it comes to getting validated and landing in the SHU, they dont give you any warning that you might be speaking with someone who is a suspected gang member. Yet another prisoner said they put a known gang associate in a cell near him and then claimed that he was associating with the gang member. Still another talked with a fellow prisoner while in reception for only a few days, but that was used to validate him. Race continues to be used by the prisons to pit one prisoner against another. A white prisoner noted that he was not a member of the Nazi low riders as claimed. They used several pieces of false evidence to validate him, but most were debriefers. They tried to tie him to ghts at his previous prison claiming falsely that he had a leadership role. He is constantly being written up with 115s even though he has never assaulted anyone. He has 602ed most of his 115s and beaten them. (In one incident, he was not even on the yard at the time!) He feels his challenges to the write ups are the main reason for his validation. Another prisoner reported that prison guards get wind of ghts before they happen, but they allow them to happen anyway. Pressure to Debrief: CPF views long-term isolation in the SHU as a form of mental and physical torture that is prohibited both by the U.S. constitution and international law. One prisoner we talked to demonstrated the depth of the cruelty of prison ofcials. This prisoner has a disease which will likely take his life within the coming year, and doctors encouraged him to contact his family as it may be his last opportunity to do so. After some hesitation, the prisoner requested a phone call to his family. When the guards arrived for what he thought would be the phone call to his family, the guard simply put a piece of paper on the door with the word DEBRIEF. The prisoner refused and was not allowed to By Ron Ahnen, CPF make the phone call. verview: In April, Marilyn McMahon and I had the Food: Most prisoners reported that the food was low in opportunity to talk with 16 prisoners at Pelican Bay. both quality and quantity. One prisoner said, The food was We visited mostly with prisoners on the SHU side, really good here 20 years ago. Another reported that he had but I note that prisoners housed in B2 on general popula- to cut back in his workout routine [his way to relieve stress] tion side are now being converted to a permanent Ad-Seg or due to lack of protein. He noted that spaghetti comes with makeshift SHU. The ofcial prison reports list only 3,259 sauce and noodles, but no meat. prisoners in SHU units system wide, but we know the real Mental Health: A few of the prisoners were willing to number is much larger than this due to Ad Seg units that speak about the difculty of enduring the mental torture of have become de facto SHUs. As in past reports, we report SHU. Several noted that SHU prisoners show clear signs of all information anonymously to prevent retaliation by prison mental disorder including PTSD, problems relating to other guards. Here are several key issues reported by prisoners: human beings, or just plain shutting down. Stress is high. Lockdown: After the stabbing incident in January, the Medical: Getting an appointment to see the doctor takes a prison was on lockdown until just before our visit. For SHU, long time, sometimes 3 or 4 months. Trying to see a dentist lockdown means no yard. One prisoner mentioned only is even worse. One prisoner said he refuses to put in to see getting yard once in the last month. Another noted they re- the doctor because all they do is take your $5, weigh you, ceived no yard in January or February. and tell you Youre ne. You dont even see the doctor, but Family Visits: Due to the Lockdown, visiting for southern a nurse practitioner. One prisoner reported having all of his Hispanics was denied and visiting for other prisoners was re- chronos simply cancelled after being transferred to Pelican stricted. One prisoner noted that he was getting regular visits Bay. He was in the process of trying to get them reinstated while in general population, but since being moved to SHU, with the 602 process. One prisoner cannot get attention for his wife and family have not come to visit. He stated, SHU are-ups due to a slipped disk and sometimes is in so much put an end to my marriage, not prison. pain he cannot even remain standing. He was refused treatBogus Gang Validation: ment by a doctor on one [Note: CPF reiterates our view Getting an appointment to see the visit but was clearly in that prison ofcials have the duty doctor takes a long time, sometimes 3 or so much pain that the to investigate matters that truly 4 months. Trying to see a dentist is even nurse defended him and threaten the safety of prisoners worse. ultimately he ended up and staffincluding gang activspending a few days in ity, and to use legal means to ensure the safety of everyone. the hospital. One prisoner suspects he has diabetes, but his The patterns of gang validation processes reported by prison- tests come back negative. Fellow prisoners save breakfast ers clearly demonstrate, however, that prison ofcials abuse syrup packages for him and throw them toward his cell if he this mechanism, and do so in order to punish individuals for encounters a low sugar attack. One prisoner developed pain defending their rights or to justify their own jobs (eg, gang in his thigh and down his leg, and suspects nerve damage. investigators). This abuse results in validating prisoners as He has seen several doctors who only grant him Motrin and gang associates by the hundreds and placing them in SHU say it will go away. A recent doctor told him Its a cyst indeterminately, a very illegitimate and illegal practice.] The without even examining and suggested the previous doctors issue of bogus gang validations resonated loudly during our was just guessing in his diagnosis. visit and echoes what we hear in our correspondence with Retaliation: This issue is tied to bogus gang validations prisoners. When asked, most prisoners estimated that only because prisoners often receive a validation packet shortly 10 to 20 percent of ofcially validated gang members or as- after sending in a 602. One prisoner was assisting others sociates serving SHU sentences had actually been involved with their legal matters, and had seven legal books removed in such activity (lowest estimate was 1 percent, highest was from his cell. He 602ed it and won a judgment to replace the half). Prisoners continued to report the use of common or books. A week later he was validated as a gang associate. cultural symbols as indicative of gang activity, a practice that Yard: As noted above, for the past few months there was clearly violates established federal law precedent (see Lira virtually no yard. All of PBSP was on a modied program vs Cate). One prisoner said he didnt even receive his valida- from August 2010 to February 2011 meaning only 5 hours tion packet, and another said that prison ofcials stuffed a per week of yard rather than 10. One prisoner reported getpoem he wrote that contained the word sureo in a letter ting yard on only ve times in the last six months. from his girlfriend and called it gang communication. Tsunami: Prisoners reported to us that during the Tsunami One Hispanic prisoner reported being validated for tattoos warning, padlocks were manually placed on the cells to keep that he has for cultural reasons, some of which he obtained them secure. One prisoner noted What happens if the water while a soldier in Vietnam. One prisoner was validated for reaches here, we all drown in our cells? having the name of a gang associate in his cell. He used the Educational Programming: With all these problems ocpersons name to obtain additional legal paperwork because curring in SHU, one prisoner reported that he asked everyone the limit on 30 pages makes it impossible to do real legal on his pod what he should report to CPF as their main issue. work. One prisoner was asked if he knew person X, his former crime partner. He said, of course I know him and they PBSP-Report .....................................Continued on page 27

PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON INVESTIGATIVE REPORT, APRIL 2011

15

RIGHT TO CHALLENGE EXPERIMENTAL ISOLATION UNITS RESTRICTING COMMUNICATION UPHELD IN FEDERAL COURT
Center for Constitutional Rights Wins Over Government Motion to Dismiss Case Involving Segregated Units That Target Muslims, Activists

DOJ ASKS SUPREME COURT TO RULE COPS CAN TRACK SUSPECT BY GPS WITHOUT A WARRANT

n March 30, 2011, in a New York federal court, prisoners in two experimental federal prison units called Communications Management Units (CMUs) won the right to have their day in court and challenge the violation of their fundamental constitutional rights, including the right to due process. The units are being used overwhelmingly to hold Muslim prisoners and prisoners with unpopular political beliefs. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) led the case on their behalf exactly one year ago on March 30, 2010. Said CCR Attorney Alexis Agathocleous, Today, Judge Urbina has agreed that our clients have raised serious constitutional questions about the CMUs, and has vindicated their right to a day in court to pursue their claims. Our clients were designated to the CMUs without due process or oversight, even though they have no signicant history of disciplinary infractions. This led to pattern of retaliatory designations to the CMUs. In a signicant victory for our clients, the court will now scrutinize the BOPs actions. Said plaintiff Hedaya Jayyousi, I am deeply gratied that the court will hear our claims. My husband has been held under these conditions for years without a proper explanation. My children and I hope that we will now be given some answers. Transfers to the CMU are not explained, nor are prisoners told how release into less restrictive connement may be earned as there is no meaningful review process. The court agreed the plaintiffs had alleged conditions in the CMUs that were sufciently restrictive to support their claim that they have a liberty interest in having the right to procedural due process. The court wrote, In light of the plaintiffs factual allegations supporting their contention that reviews provided by the defendants are illusory and meaningless, the court determines that they have adequately alleged there is a high risk that the procedures used by the defendants have resulted in erroneous deprivations of their liberty interests. Lawyers say that because these transfers are not based on facts or discipline for infractions, a pattern of religious and political discrimination and retaliation for prisoners lawful advocacy has emerged. The court allowed the claims of violation of due process as well as of retaliation to go forward. The court found that plaintiff Royal Jones made serious allegations that cannot be dismissed that he was put into the CMU in retaliation for protected speech, and speaking out and ling complaints about improper prison conditions. Similarly, the court found that allegations that plaintiff Daniel McGowan was twice designated to the CMU in retaliation for social justice advocacy and for seeking legal information from his attorneys could not be dismissed. The court further refused to allow the BOP to evade review by transferring the Center for Constitutional Rights clients from the CMU. The court dismissed several of the claims raised by the lawsuit, including claims of equal protection, substantive due process, and freedom of association. CCR led Aref v. Holder in the D.C. District Court on behalf of current and former prisoners of the units in Terre Haute, IN and Marion, IL; two other plaintiffs are the spouses of those prisoners. The CMUs were secretly opened under the Bush administration in 2006 and 2007 respectively and were designed to monitor and control the communications of certain prisoners and to isolate them from other prisoners and the outside world. The ve plaintiffs in Aref were designated to the two CMUs despite having relatively or totally clean disciplinary histories, and none of the plaintiffs have received any communications-related disciplinary infractions in the last decade. Between 65 and 72 percent of CMU prisoners are Muslim men. In addition to heavily restricted telephone and visitation access, CMU prisoners are categorically denied any physical contact with family members and are forbidden from hugging, touching or embracing their children or spouses during visits. For information about CCRs federal lawsuit around CMUs, visit the Aref, et al v. Holder, et al case page or www. ccrjustice.org/cmu. The law rm Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP and attorney Kenneth A. Kreuscher are co-counsel in the case. Source: Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 16

he U.S. Justice Department is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a federal appeals court decision requiring police to get a warrant before attaching a global positioning device to a suspects car. Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal urged the Supreme Court to grant cert to resolve a circuit split, according to stories by the Washington Post, Wireds Threat Level blog and The BLT (The Blog of Legal Times). At issue is whether use of the device is a search under the Fourth Amendment and whether a person has an expectation of privacy for his travel in public, The BLT says. The police used a GPS device to record the movements of accused cocaine dealer Antoine Jones, including his trips to a stash house where police found cocaine and $850,000 in cash. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned Jones conviction because police did not get a warrant. The government contends the GPS device can be installed under a 1983 Supreme Court case, United States v. Knotts, which allowed police to install a beeper device in a can of chemical used to make drugs. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a persons movements from one place to another, the government argues in its brief (PDF posted by Threat Level). The D.C. Circuit said the case did not apply because it involved tracking from one place to another, while the GPS was used to track a persons movements 24 hours a day for 28 days. Washington, D.C., lawyer Daniel Prywes calls United States v. Jones the seminal privacy case of the 21st Century, the Post says. He wrote a brief in the case for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

THE PROSECUTION RESTS, BUT I CANT

By John Thompson SPENT 18 years in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them on death row. Ive been free since 2003, exonerated after evidence covered up by prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my execution date. Those prosecutors were never punished. Last month, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn a case Id won against them and the district attorney who oversaw my case, ruling that they were not liable for the failure to turn over that evidence which included proof that blood at the robbery scene wasnt mine. Because of that, prosecutors are free to do the same thing to someone else today. I was arrested in January 1985 in New Orleans. I remember the police coming to my grandmothers house we all knew it was the cops because of how hard they banged on the door before kicking it in. My grandmother and my mom were there, along with my little brother and sister, my two sons John Jr., 4, and Dedric, 6 my girlfriend and me. The ofcers had guns drawn and were yelling. I guess they thought they were coming for a murderer. All the children were scared and crying. I was 22. They took me to the homicide division, and played a cassette tape on which a man I knew named Kevin Freeman accused me of shooting a man. He had also been arrested as a suspect in the murder. A few weeks earlier he had sold me a ring and a gun; it turned out that the ring belonged to the victim and the gun was the murder weapon. My picture was on the news, and a man called in to report that I looked like someone who had recently tried to rob his children. Suddenly I was accused of that crime, too. I was tried for the robbery rst. My lawyers never knew there was blood evidence at the scene, and I was convicted based on the victims identication. After that, my lawyers thought it was best if I didnt testify at the murder trial. So I never defended myself, or got to explain that I got the ring and the gun from Kevin Freeman. And now that I ofcially had a history of violent crime because of the robbery conviction, the prosecutors used it to get the death penalty. I remember the judge telling the courtroom the number of volts of electricity they would put into my body. If the rst attempt didnt kill me, he said, theyd put more volts in. On Sept. 1, 1987, I arrived on death row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary the infamous Angola prison. I was put in a dead mans cell. His things were still there; he had been executed only a few days before. That past summer they had executed eight men at Angola. I received my rst execution date right before I arrived. I would end up knowing 12 men who were executed there. Over the years, I was given six execution dates, but all of them were delayed until nally my appeals were exhausted. The seventh and last date was set for May 20, 1999. My lawyers had been with me for 11 years by then; they ew

in from Philadelphia to give me the news. They didnt want me to hear it from the prison ofcials. They said it would take a miracle to avoid this execution. I told them it was ne I was innocent, but it was time to give up. But then I remembered something about May 20. I had just nished reading a letter from my younger son about how he wanted to go on his senior class trip. Id been thinking about how I could nd a way to pay for it by selling my typewriter and radio. Oh, no, hold on, I said, thats the day before John Jr. is graduating from high school. I begged them to get it delayed; I knew it would hurt him. To make things worse, the next day, when John Jr. was at school, his teacher read the whole class an article from the newspaper about my execution. She didnt know I was John Jr.s dad; she was just trying to teach them a lesson about making bad choices. So he learned that his father was going to be killed from his teacher, reading the newspaper aloud. I panicked. I needed to talk to him, reassure him. Amazingly, I got a miracle. The same day that my lawyers visited, an investigator they had hired to look through the evidence one last time found, on some forgotten microche, a report sent to the prosecutors on the blood type of the perpetrator of the armed robbery. It didnt match mine; the report, hidden for 15 years, had never been turned over to my lawyers. The investigator later found the names of witnesses and police reports from the murder case that hadnt been turned over either. As a result, the armed robbery conviction was thrown out in 1999, and I was taken off death row. Then, in 2002, my murder conviction was thrown out. At a retrial the following year, the jury took only 35 minutes to acquit me. The prosecutors involved in my two cases, from the ofce of the Orleans Parish district attorney, Harry Connick Sr., helped to cover up 10 separate pieces of evidence. And most of them are still able to practice law today. Why werent they punished for what they did? When the hidden evidence rst surfaced, Mr. Connick announced that his ofce would hold a grand jury investigation. But once it became clear how many people had been involved, he called it off. In 2005, I sued the prosecutors and the district attorneys ofce for what they did to me. The jurors heard testimony from the special prosecutor who had been assigned by Mr. Connicks ofce to the canceled investigation, who told them, We should have indicted these guys, but they didnt and it was wrong. The jury awarded me $14 million in damages $1 million for every year on death row which would have been paid by the district attorneys ofce. That jury verdict is what the Supreme Court has just overturned.

The prosecutors involved in my case ... helped to cover up 10 separate pieces of evidence. ... Why werent they punished for what they did?
I dont care about the money. I just want to know why the prosecutors who hid evidence, sent me to prison for something I didnt do and nearly had me killed are not in jail themselves. There were no ethics charges against them, no criminal charges, no one was red and now, according to the Supreme Court, no one can be sued. Worst of all, I wasnt the only person they played dirty with. Of the six men one of my prosecutors got sentenced to death, ve eventually had their convictions reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct. Because we were sentenced to death, the courts had to appoint us lawyers to ght our appeals. I was lucky, and got lawyers who went to extraordinary lengths But there are more than 4,000 people serving life without parole in Louisiana, almost none of whom have lawyers after their convictions are nal. Someone needs to look at those cases to see how many others might be innocent. If a private investigator hired by a generous law rm hadnt found the blood evidence, Id be dead today. No doubt about it. A crime was denitely committed in this case, but not by me. John Thompson is the director of Resurrection After Exoneration, a support group for exonerated inmates.

LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE FOR $10 CRACK DEAL

Apr 21, 2011 28-year-old Cherokee County man who sold $10 worth of crack to an undercover informant has been sentenced to life in prison without parole under the states repeat offender law. Prosecutors say James R. Byers Jr. was sentenced after he was convicted of third offense distribution of crack cocaine and distribution of crack cocaine within a half mile of a school or park. Byers prior criminal record includes ve drug convictions. Prosecutors say Byers sold the crack to an informant in August 2009 near an elementary school. Cherokee County sheriffs deputies videotaped the transaction. The Associated Press. PRISON FOCUS

THE NEW INQUISITION

Gang Validation
By Steve Champion n July 23, 2010, my cell was searched and three boxes of my property (legal material, books, notes, and personal writings) were conscated and turned over to Institutional Gang Investigations (I.G.I.) for possible gang validation. The reason for the action, I was told, was my possession of a Kiswahili dictionary and the book Soledad Brother by George Jackson. This is not the rst time I have been targeted for a gang validation wherein George Jackson was the cause. In May 2007, I co-wrote an article in which we referred to Jackson as Comrade George Jackson. It was determined by I.G.I. that the word Comrade constituted gang association or sympathy; therefore, I needed to be investigated (the investigation yielded nothing). I have been in San Quentin (and on death row) for almost 28 years, and for most of this time I have had George Jacksons books in my cell. I ordered them through the prison Special Purchase Order (SPO). My cell has been searched hundreds if not thousands of times and never, not once, were George Jacksons books taken. Why now? And why the link to gang activity when it is well known that George Jackson was a member of the Black Panther Party and a political revolutionary? It is only by exposing the insidious and inscrutable use of politically charged books to label prisoners gang members, thereby criminalizing critical literacy, that we can arrive at answers. Both prisoners and prison activists need to understand how the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is using political and historical texts to repress prisoners. My story is not new or unique. Ive read numerous accounts from across the U.S. prison landscape, state and federal, of prisoners having books by George Jackson, Che Guevara, Chairman Mao, and others stolen from their cells, or conscated under the false pretext of gang activity. Some prisoners have even been validated as gang members and locked away indenitely in Security Housing Units (SHUs). And in June 2010, a ruling by a California appeals court explicitly condoned the practice in California, as follows: Assigning an inmate to secure housing based on his possession of constitutionally protected materials linking him to a gang [does] not violate his rst amendment rights. Lets be clear. The conscation of leftist and revolutionary books, magazines, and newspapers is not a mere First Amendment issue; failing to understand the bigger picture will just extend your stay in wonderland. Thus, Im not going to argue a case of censorship (although one can certainly be made since none of the above authors have been ruled to be either dangerous or obscene by a court of law or the PIC). I am interested in a much broader analysis that deconstructs the current ideology of suppression in U.S. prisons that can be traced to other interrelated post-9/11 realities, such as creation of Homeland Security and the gradual erosion of civil liberties; the prosecution of a global war on terrorism; the virtually unrestricted spending on and by intelligence agencies; and redening domestic terrorism to meet the threat posed by gang violence. Included in these realties, but in a more subtle way, is the governments fear of the possible rise of a new prison movement and radicalized prisoners. The fear of prisoners becoming political extremists and functioning as independent terrorist cells once they are released is, I believe, the main catalyst for the unofcial policy of censorship carried out nationwide. But such fear is unfounded and seems to be based more on paranoia than rooted in reality: How many inmates have been paroled who have participated in or been linked to a terrorist organization? Where is the evidence? Can prison administrators or the government show this happening? They cannot. The objective of this unofcial policy is fourfold: 1. To dene any in prison political activism as gang activity. 2. To criminalize and dehumanize politically conscious prisoners, past and present, by labeling them gang members. 3. To redene revolutionary and leftist writings as gang literature. 4. To institute countermeasures that will disrupt, inhibit, and delegitimize the emergence and growth of individuals/groups that could in any way be inuenced by

radical views. Prison administrators know that if even one prisoner shuns George Jacksons books or other leftist material because he thinks he might be labeled a gang member and placed in the SHU, then the strategy of suppression is effective. Doing routine or targeted cell searches when George Jacksons books and other leftist literature are not being found (or not being found in abundance) allows prison ofcials to claim that the policy is effective. One prisoners fears can potentially infect many, and the fear becomes a deadly pathogen that kills self-determination, resistance, and critical thinking. Unwittingly, a fearful prisoner becomes a tool for a COINTELPRO-like apparatus. But because they understand what is at stake, politically conscious prisoners can never become unwitting agents of a pacication operation; they understand that acquiescence would mean the struggle is lost. The price they pay for this understanding is long-term persecution in SHUs. What also facilitates the suppression of political consciousness is the unending cycle of ethnic and sectarian violence that permeates the U.S. prison system. Violence is micromanaged to perpetuate racial hatred and division among prison groups. And let me be honest, prisoners make it easy for prison administrators to accomplish this when they fail to redress the stark contradictions between their intransigent conicts against each other and the repressive and often brutal treatment meted out to them by the prison regime. As long as prisoners dont frame their conditions and treatment in a political context, they will remain powerless to alter their situation. The gang mentality cannot produce viable change for prisoners. This can only come from conscious prisoners who are willing to struggle collectively. The need for a new and radical ethos among prisoners is self-evident and long overdue. How to bring a unifying ethos into being is open for discussion and critical debate. Such debate can take place in cells, on the tiers, in yards, at school, and in work places between friends and foes. What cannot be questioned is the truth that the route from an apolitical gangster mentality to a socio-politically conscious prisoner is only through education. This is the fundamental message to all prison writers and activists. It is why prisoners, me included, have gravitated to the writings of George Jackson, Franz Fannon, Che Guevara, Bobby Sands, Liam Mellows, Nelson Mandela, Paulo Freire, MalBy Antonio C. Ramon colm X, and many others like them. The trajectory and/or transformation of their lives offer prisoners a new perspective from which to radically contextualize their own identity. Prisoners can tangibly and emotionally relate to the words of these authors, even though most prisoners dont view themselves through a political lens. Yet these same apolitical prisoners will recognize on a general level that their own existential condition can be compared to George Jacksons. It is this identication with George Jackson that makes him symbolically powerful and very much alive. And for this, he must be vilied and punished, over and over again suppressed and chased away from anyone who dares consume his words. The revisionist tactic by the PIC of not acknowledging that George Jackson developed a political philosophy that he lived and died for (not unlike like the Founding Fathers of the United States) makes it easy to deny the political activism and convictions of conscious prisoners. However, the conscation of books, newspapers, and magazines with political content acknowledges the existence of politically minded prisoners. The truth is contained in the systems lie: George Jackson was not a gang member! He was a political thinker. To suspect a prisoner of gang activity because he reads Jacksons books is, therefore, also a politicalcertainly not a logicalmove. It is ideas that can change individuals and, so, change the world. Ideas awaken the mind, galvanize courage, and liberate people; and ideas, not gangs, are the most potent weapons against tyrants and repressive regimes. People may fear other people, but peoples ideas are feared even more. Steve Champion is on Californias Death Row at San Quentin. He is author of Dead to Deliverance: A Death Row Memoir. You may write him at Steve Champion, C-58001, San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, CA 94974 http://www.counterpunch.org/champion02162011.html, February 16, 2011

QUOTE BOX
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not rst existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Abraham Lincoln When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glories it. Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist To be innocent in America is to permit the continued theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the state by Wall Street swindlers and speculators. To be innocent in America is to stand by as insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in the name of prot, condemn ill people, including children, to die. To be innocent in America is refusing to resist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not only illegal under international law but responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. This is the odd age we live in. Innocence is complicity. Chris Hedges The goal of a good society is to structure social relations and institutions so that cooperative and generous impulses are rewarded, while antisocial ones are discouraged. The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: ruthless, competitive, conniving, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishmentor at least much handicapto honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need. Michael Parenti There is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But its better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what youre ghting for. Paulo Coelho To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest. Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi - (1869-1948) Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves the necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. - (1809-1894) If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you nally hand over your brothers. Albert Camus We are reluctant to admit that we owe our liberties to men of a type that today we hate and fearunruly men, disturbers of the peace, men who resent and denounce the insolence of elected personsin a word, free men. Gerald W. Johnson I was called a terrorist What I tell people who say those struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists, that I was also a terrorist. But today, I am admired by the very same people who said I was one. Nelson Mandela Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the worlds estimation. Susan B. Anthony, (1820-1906) The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like hes the victim and make the victim look like hes the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. . . . . If you arent careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches It could probably be shown that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress. Mark Twain, 1835-1910 We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free. Epictetus (55-135 A.D.) Greek philosopher

NUMBER 37

17

HELP STOP ABUSE OF MSS INCARCERATED YOUTH!

This youth prison has violent, abusive conditions But the company that runs it makes millions. Join us in calling on Mississippi ofcials to shut down this prison. By Nelson, ColorOfChange.org eenagers and young men locked up at the youth prison in Walnut Grove, Mississippi live in a nightmarishly abusive and violent environment. According to a lawsuit against the prison, guards have sold drugs to the youth there, engaged in sexual relationships with them, beaten them while they are handcuffed and defenseless, and looked the other way as some inmates are brutally attacked by others.1 The prison is privately run, and its management has tried to increase their prots by cutting essential safety, health and educational services. Its sick. Mississippi shouldnt be paying a private company to neglect and abuse youth prisoners. Will you join us in demanding that Mississippi ofcials cancel the states contract with the company that operates the prison? It takes just a moment: http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/geo/ Two youths have lost their lives in the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility over the past three years and countless others endure daily threats to their safety. The violence at the prison was highlighted a year ago when a melee broke out in the prison, leaving multiple youth injured and 21-year-old Michael McIntosh with permanent brain damage.2 Ross Walton, who spent three years inside the Walnut Grove prison said this when he testied recently in front of the Mississippi state legislature: Walnut Grove treated us like we were nothing. Like we didnt matter. Like our destiny was to spend the rest of our lives locked up, making more money for the private prison corporations and making our mothers cry.We have the potential to turn our lives around and make you proud. And we all deserve more than an abusive prison that cares more about prots than people. A for-prot youth prison, like Walnut Grove, has a strong nancial incentive to imprison as many young people as possible on the cheap, and a nancial disincentive to rehabilitate prisoners (which would reduce the demand for prison beds). This prot motive is a big part of why the Walnut Grove prison has such terrible conditions. The prison is run by the GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut), the second largest for-prot prison company in the country. The company makes hundreds of millions of dollars each year, and has a long history of health and safety violations in their facilities. A SYSTEMIC PROBLEM Weve seen before how private prisons create openings for corruption and abuse. In the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a private juvenile prison company bribed two judges to ll their cells with youth who committed minor infractions. One of the judges, Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella, Jr., was recently convicted of accepting bribes and kickbacks for putting juveniles into detention centers. He and another judge, Michael Conahan, are said to have received $2.6 million for their scheme.3 In Boise Idaho, guards at a corporate prison watched, but did not intervene as a man was beaten unconscious by another inmate. This victim now lives with permanent brain damage and the company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), faces an FBI Civil Rights investigation.4 ENDING THE ABUSE AT WALNUT GROVE Some of the youth imprisoned at Walnut Grove have committed serious crimes, but 67% of them are there for nonviolent offenses.5 But no matter what crime theyve committed, childrens lives shouldnt be at risk because corporations cut corners in order to increase their prots. Youth prisoners must be given safe and healthy conditions, and an opportunity to lead successful lives after their incarceration. The abuse at Walnut Grove needs to end immediately and the youth there should be moved to facilities that can provide for their care and rehabilitation. Your voice can help make that happen. Please join us in calling on Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, and the Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner, to cancel the states contract with the GEO Group. And please ask your friends and family to do the same. It just takes a minute: http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/geo. James, Gabriel, William, Dani, Matt References: 1. Federal Lawsuit Reveals Inhumane Conditions at ForProt Youth Prison, SPLC, 11-16-2010 2. C.B., et al. v. Walnut Grove Correctional Authority, et al. SPLC, 11-16-2010 3. The verdicts in, let change begin, The Times Leader, 2-20-2011 4. The public doesnt know what goes on behind these walls, KBOI, 2-28-2011 5. Federal lawsuit seeks to end years of physical, sexual abuse of teenage inmates, Better Mississippi Report, 1220-2010

SYSTEMATIC INJUSTICE AGAINST SUNDIATA ACOLI

By Stephen Lendman n her book titled The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander cites Martin Luther King in 1968 highlighting the need to shift from civil to human rights advocacy, saying initiatives for it just began. In fact, its truer now than then with Blacks and Hispanics comprising two-thirds of Americas prison population, by far the worlds largest at around 2.4 million, most incarcerated for nonviolent or political reasons. Focusing on the war on drugs, Alexander characterizes the New Jim Crow as a modern-day racial caste system designed by elitists who embrace colorblindness. Believing poor Blacks are dangerous and economically superuous, Americas gulag became an instrument of control. According to Alexander: Any movement to end mass incarceration must deal with (it) as a racial caste system, not (a method) of crime control. We need an effective system of crime prevention and control in our communities, but that is not what the current system is. (Its) better designed to create crime, and a perpetual class of people labeled criminals, rather than to eliminate crime or reduce the number of criminals. Overall, Americas most vulnerable are victimized by judicial unfairness, the get tough on crime policies, a guilty unless proved innocent mentality, three strikes and youre out, racist drug laws, poverty, and advocacy for social justice issues challenging repressive state policies. As a result, gures like former UN ambassador Andrew Young believes (t)here are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people (in America incarcerated as) political prisoners. Including undocumented Latino immigrants and other aliens, its tens of thousands, an April 2011 Government Accountability Ofce (GAO) report saying Washington annually spends over $1.5 billion imprisoning them. Currently, around 55,000 are in federal prisons, another 75,000 in state facilities. At a November 2010 Workers World Party conference, International Action Center organizer Gloria Verdieu said: Freeing all political prisoners, prisoners of conscience and prisoners of war tops Americas social justice struggle, because the state uses the criminal justice system to lock up those who sacrice their livelihood for freedom and justices for the masses. In fact, international precedent recognizes releasing them. France freed anarchists, Germany Baader-Meinhof gures, and Britain IRA members. Not America, however, in contrast to notorious criminals pardoned, including Iran-Contra conspirators Caspar Weinberger, Elliott Abrams and John Poindexter, as well as others convicted of serious offenses warranting long internments. Unlike them, today in America, heroic activists are incarcerated unjustly, including Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Ramsey Muniz, Oscar Lopez Rivera, the Cuban Five, lawyers Lynne Stewart and Paul Bergrin, and, among many others, Sundiata Acoli (born Clark Edward Squire) for 38 years. (Access his complete prole at: http://www.sundiataacoli.org). Born in January 1937, it calls him a New African political prisoner of war, mathematician, and computer analyst with a BA in math from Prairie View A & M College. In summer 1964, he did voter registration work in Mississippi. In 1968, he joined the Harlem Black Panther Party, doing community work relating to schools, housing, jobs, child care, drugs, and police brutality. In 1969, he and others were arrested in the Panther 21 conspiracy case, jailed for two years without bail, then acquitted and released. Afterward, FBI pressure denied him professional employment, and COINTELPRO harassment and surveillance drove him underground. Driving on the New Jersey Turnpike in May 1973, he and others were accosted by state troopers. Zayd Shakur was killed, Assata Shakur wounded and captured. One state trooper was killed, another wounded. Acoli was captured days later. In a highly charged, sensationalized and prejudicial trial, he was convicted of rst degree murder and sentenced to life plus 30 years. Initially for ve years at Trenton State Prison (TSP), he was conned to a special Management Control Unit (MCU) solely for political reasons, given only 10 minutes daily for showers and two hours weekly for recreation. The International Jurist (TIJ) publishes perspectives and opinions on the current state of international law and its future, especially international humanitarian law, human rights law, transitional justice and international criminal law, and comparative law. After interviewing Acoli in September 1979, TIJ declared him a political prisoner. Days later, he was secretly transferred to solitary connement at maximum security US Penitentiary, Marion, IL despite no outstanding federal charges. In July 1987, he was sent to Leavenworth, KS federal prison. Eligible for parole in fall 1992, he was denied permission to attend his own hearing, permitted only to participate by prison phone. Despite his exemplary prison work, academic and disciplinary record, hundreds of supportive letters, and

numerous offers as a computer professional, he was denied in a 20 minute proceeding, giving him a 20-year hit, the longest in New Jersey history, minimally requiring him to serve another 12 years before again becoming eligible for parole. Reasons given were his Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army membership, as well as hundreds of Free Sundiata form letters calling him a New Afrikan Prisoner of War and that he hadnt been sufciently rehabilitated. At issue, however, is forcing him to renounce his social justice advocacy and admit wrongdoing for struggling to liberate his people. On March 4, 2010, the New Jersey State Parole Board (NJPB) denied him for the third time, again calling him not rehabilitated despite over a 1,000 supportive letters and petitions from noted gures, including lawyers, clergy, academics, psychologists, community members, and journalists. Then in mid-July, with no explanation, he got written notice of a 10-year hit, requiring at least another six years imprisonment before parole eligibility at which time hell be 79 years old or perhaps dead. On August 27, 2010, an administrative appeal to the New Jersey Parole Board was led, his legal advisers saying his case is strong based on NJPB procedural errors. Throughout his incarceration, hes endured harsh treatment yet maintained an exemplary record, as well as becoming a talented painter and writer on prison industrial complex issues. Hes also a father, grandfather, and both brother and mentor to fellow inmates besides making invaluable community contributions before incarceration. In the 1960s, after years as a skilled computer programmer, he participated in southern civil rights struggles. Moreover, his New York chapter Black Panther Party activities involved him in numerous social justice struggles, including education, slum housing, school breakfasts, healthcare, legal help, and politics. He also worked on anti-drug and police brutality initiatives, an admirable record overall deserving praise, not incarceration for nearly four decades. A FINAL COMMENT On April 17, 2011, Acolis latest article headlined, Sundiata Acoli: Why You Should Support Black Political Prisoners/POWs and How, said: My name is Sundiata Acoli....and am now a Black Political Prisoner and Prisoner or War (PP/POW) whos been (incarcerated) for the last 37 years. So why should you care, he asked? Why should you support Black PP/POWs? Well, maybe you shouldnt. If youre happy with (how America) and the world is going, and if you want (Washington and Western powers) to dominate and oppress the rest of the world, then (dont) support Black PP/POWs (and it agenda to end predatory) capitalism, sexism, (racism), and all unjust oppressions of people and life (on) earth. That advocacy got Acoli and many others imprisoned for supporting and doing the right thing. Now its up to mass activism no longer to tolerate it. [Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.] Source: Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110

POLITICAL PRISONERS IN AMERICA

By Stephen Lendman oted journalist HL Menchen described The most dangerous man to any government (as someone) who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable, yet resisting, he faces recrimination - political imprisonment for his beliefs and activism, ofcials tolerating no opposition to their authority, no matter how extreme or lawless. In his book Race to Incarcerate, Marc Mauer focuses on Americas obsession with imprisonment, punishment, and the commodication of prisoners to ll beds - harming societys most vulnerable, targeted for supporting ethnic justice, racial emancipation, and political, economic and social equality across gender and color lines, locked away in the Land of the Free. In submitting a new report to the UN, National conference of Black Lawyers activist/attorney Stan Willis said: The United States is very, very concerned when its citizens begin to raise questions in these international forums, because (America) still prefers to posture itself, including the Obama administration, as the leader of the free world and that they dont have any human rights violations, and they certainly dont have any political prisoners, and we have to dispel that notion in the international community.

18

PRISON FOCUS

American ofcials dont want to have these issues reach the worlds people. How do you go into Iraq (and) Afghanistan telling people about their democracy when (youve got innocent people) locked down in prison for 30 - 40 years as political prisoners....(activists) against social injustice, colonialism, and/or imperialism, (incarcerated for) their political commitments. Others are victimized by judicial unfairness, get tough on crime policies, a guilty unless proved innocent mentality, three strikes and youre out, and what the Innocence Project calls McJustice - the crisis of indigent defense. Also for being undocumented, violating the racist drug laws, for being Black, Latino or Muslim, to ll prison beds, to satisfy the prison-industrial complex, one of Americas fastest growing, including a private gulag, prisons for prot, nearly a score of corporations running dozens of facilities with tens of thousands of prisoners, about 8% of state and federal inmates, expected to increase exponentially in the next decade, the Wall Street Journal saying: This multimillion-dollar industry has its own advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors. Over 2.4 million prisoners are held in federal and state facilities, local jails, Indian, juvenile, and military ones, US territories, and numbers held by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), half for nonviolent offenses, many for political activism, the Truth & Justice Foundation (the National Innocence Project) estimating up to 15% wrongfully convicted overall. Using modern-day slave labor, the Left Business Observer reports that American prisons produce 100% of US military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. They also supply 98% of equipment assembly services, 93% of paints and paintbrushes, 92% of stove assemblies, 46% of body armor, 36% of home appliances, 30% of headphones, microphones and speakers, 21% of ofce furniture, and much more. Captives in Americas gulag, political and other prisoners have languished for decades, under cruel and inhumane conditions. Some die there. Others rot, endure years of solitary connement, poor medical care, other forms of abuse, and perfunctory parole hearings denying their right to justice. AMERICAS LONGSTANDING POLITICAL REPRESSION AGENDA COINTELPRO targeted political activists, J. Edgar Hoovers illegal counterintelligence program to neutralize political dissidents, including communists; anti-war, human and civil rights activists; the American Indian Movement; Black Panther Party; Puerto Rican nationalists; the Chicano Movement; environmentalists, and others challenging state authority - threats to domestic tranquility for supporting equity and justice, the rule of law, and right over wrong. Today theyre called terrorists. Yale Law Professor/constitutional scholar Thomas I. Emerson (1908 - 1981) expressed outrage saying: The FBI jeopardizes the whole system of free expression which is the cornerstone of our society (raising) the specter of a police state....In essence, the FBI conceives of itself as an instrument to prevent radical social change in America.... The Bureaus view of its function leads it beyond data collection into political warfare, protecting privilege from benecial social change, denying due process and judicial fairness to societys most vulnerable, easy pickings for Americas criminal injustice system. DEFINITIONS OF POLITICAL PRISONERS The Free Dictionary call them people who have been imprisoned for holding or advocating dissenting political views....for holding, expressing, or acting in accord with particular political beliefs. In the 1960s, Amnesty International (AI) coined the term prisoner of conscience, referring to anyone incarcerated for their race, religion, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, beliefs, or lifestyle. In a London Observer May 28, 1961 article titled, The Forgotten Prisoners, AIs founder Peter Benenson (1921 2005) dened the term as follows: Any person who is physically restrained (in prison or otherwise) for expressing any opinion which he honestly holds and which does not advocate or condone personal violence. Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will nd a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government. Millions are affected globally - by no means (all) behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains, and their numbers are growing. That is why we have started Appeal for Amnesty (AI), 1961. The campaign, which opens today, is the result of an initiative by a group of lawyers, writers and publishers in London, who share the underlying conviction expressed by Voltaire: I detest your views, but am prepared to die for your right to express them. Howard Zinn called dissent the highest form of patriotism. In fact, if patriotism means being true to the principles NUMBER 37

for which your country is supposed to stand, then certainly the right to dissent is one of those principles. And if were exercising that right to dissent, its a patriotic act....One of the great mistakes (about) patriotism....is to think (it) means support for your government....(ignoring Americas Declaration of Independence principle that) when governments have become destructive (of life, liberty and equality) it is the right of the people....to alter or abolish it. INCARCERATION AS AN INSTRUMENT OF SOCIAL CONTROL In her 1999 article titled, Prisons, Social Control and Political Prisoners, former political prisoner Marilyn Buck called prisons warehouses to disappear the unacceptable.... to deprive their captives of their liberties, their human agency, and to punish....(to) stigmatize prisoners through moralistic denunciations and indictment based on bad genes - skin color (ethnicity, or other characteristics) as a crime. Millions of prisoners arent incarcerated because they are criminal, but because theyve been accused of breaking (a law) designed to exert tighter social control and State repression, scapegoating, demonizing, and criminalizing them for their beliefs and activism. Americas militarized police state brutalizes them, locking them in cages for advocating peace, not war, for their courage to resist injustice, defend freedom, equality, and human rights, and believe another world isnt just possible but struggling for it nonviolently is noble and needed. In a 1986 Quinn v. Robinson ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit differentiated between political and other crimes, saying: It is the fact that the insurgents are seeking to change their governments that makes the political offense exception applicable, not the reasons for wishing to do so or the nature of the acts by which they hope to accomplish that goal. In other words, advocating benecial social or political change is criminal, turning justice on its head, the same kind that imprisons lawyers for defending unpopular clients to intimidate others not to try. In the Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal, Vol. 18, 2002, J. Sofyah Elijah headlined, The Reality of Political Prisoners in the United States: What September 11 Taught Us About Defending Them, saying: In a post-9/11 climate, they and their lawyers have been targeted for renewed abuse, constitutional protections not shielding against spurious charges, corrupt prosecutors, hanging judges, and long imprisonments, many under extremely harsh conditions, including long-term isolation, over time producing severe anxiety, panic attacks, irrational anger, social withdrawal, and a profound sense of hopelessness and despair, for many a totally dysfunctional state and inability ever to live normally outside of connement. Always unfair, American justice is now worse than ever, unjustly affecting undocumented immigrants, Blacks and Latinos, anyone of color, Muslims for their faith, ethnicity, activism and prominence, and those challenging state authority, its imperial marauding, and sweeping homeland repression, turning America into a police state. Activists were always targeted, noted civil liberties writer Stephen Kohn documenting nearly 1,000 cases in his 1994 book titled, American Political Prisoners: Prosecutions Under the Espionage and Sedition Acts. Today, its under the 1996 Effective Death Penalty and Anti-Terrorism Act, and post-9/11 ones, including: -- the 2001 USA Patriot Act, eroding Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment due process rights; First Amendment free expression and association ones; and Fourth Amendment freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, enabling vast extralegal surveillance powers to destroy the right of privacy; -- the 2001 Military Order Number 1, letting the president usurp authority to capture, kidnap, arrest and torture accused terrorists, holding them indenitely without charge; trying them in Military Commissions with no right of appeal; denying them due process and judicial fairness; -- the 2002 Homeland Security Act, a sweeping anti-terrorism bill creating a national Gestapo, centralizing unprecedented military and law enforcement power in the executive branch, enhanced by US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), established in 2002 to militarize the homeland, Canada, Mexico, Gulf of Mexico, Straits of Florida, and, for the rst time, let troops deploy on US streets to protect national security, and -- other repressive laws, Executive Orders, National and Homeland Security Presidential Directives, and other measures targeting anyone threatening state authority by any means, including those advocating nonviolent political or social change. Using previously unavailable FBI, Bureau of Prisons and other DOJ divisions les, Kohn covered earlier cases, including activists for blowing the whistle on WW I participation, unionists ghting for worker rights, pacists, socialists, and others for having unpopular political or religious beliefs. In three parts, he chronicled the history and use of the law to imprison anyone for their political or religious views, described prison life in their own words, and covered hundreds of people affected, discussing their beliefs, length of imprisonment, and treatment.

Earlier through today, theyve been targeted, hunted down, rounded up, held in detention, kept in isolation, denied bail, restricted in their right to counsel, provided the McJustice kind, tried on secret evidence, convicted on spurious charges, given long sentences, then incarcerated and abused in Americas gulag, its hell, for Dante its entrance inscription saying Abandon hope all ye who enter here, the fate of many locked away in the land of the free. A FINAL NOTE On July 15, political prisoner Marilyn Buck was released from the federal prison medical center in Carswell, TX and paroled to New York. Three weeks later on August 3, she died. She served 25 years of an 80 year sentence for opposing racial injustice and US imperialism. Late last year, she was diagnosed with uterine sarcoma, a rare aggressive cancer that took her life. To the end, she heroically maintained her beliefs. Information Clearing House

CA SENATE APPROVES BILL TO END LWOP FOR JUVENILES

n Wednesday June 1, the California Senate approved Senator Leland Yees SB9 on a 21-16 vote. If approved by the state Assembly, the bill could end the practice of sentencing children in California to life without parole (LWOP). An earlier attempt by Senator Lee (SB399) was approved by Senate, but died in Assembly last year. The US is the only country in the world to have LWOP for juveniles. California leads the nation for racial disparity in handing out LWOP for juveniles, with African American and Latino youths serving sentences rates eighteen and ve times higher than white youth. Senator Yee, who is also a child psychologist, states that The neuroscience is clear - brain maturation continues well through adolescence and thus impulse control, planning, and critical thinking skills are not yet fully developed.. (the bill) is an incredibly modest proposal that respects victims, international law, and the fact that children have a greater capacity for rehabilitation than adults. Under SB9, courts could review cases of juveniles sentenced to life without parole after 15 years, potentially allowing some individuals to receive a new minimum sentence of 25 years to life in instances when offenders show remorse and are working towards rehabilitation. Excerpted from jlwop.com

No Struggle, No Progress
The whole history of progress of human liberty Shows that all concessions Yet made to her august claims Have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle There is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, And yet deprecate agitation, Are men [and women] who want crops Without plowing up the ground, They want rain Without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean Without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; Or it may be a physical one; Or it may be both moral and physical; But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what any people Will quietly submit to And you have found the exact measure Of injustice and wrong Which will be imposed upon them, And these will continue till they are resisted. . . The limits. . . are prescribed By the endurance Of those whom [are] oppress[ed]. Men [and Women] may not get all they pay for in this world, but they pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrong heaped on us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrice, and if needs be by our lives and the lives of others Frederick Douglass, 1857 19

BOOK REVIEWS
James Yaki Sayles Meditations on Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earth, New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings ISBN: 9781894946322 Publisher: Kersplebedeb Release Date: 2010-02-241 By Sanyika Shakur On Meditations: A Weapon for Struggle The following is a review of Meditations on Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings by James Yaki Sayles. The review is written by New Afrikan Communist Sanyika Shakur, the author of the international bestseller Monster: the Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member, and a comrade of Yakis.

e see Yakis involvement with the student orgs & demos; his community service & his military actions, leading to his capture & imprisonment. In the kamps tho the comrad poured in on & evolved into the ideo-theoretical giant that touched Us all. Rightfully, the editors began at the beginning. Then they expertly connect the dots that will ultimately raise the consciousness & heighten the struggle. * First, with the War for the Cities - which is a lesson he always taught Us which is to function with the People in the area in which you live. Deal with the People who are off the block. The old tired & true From The Masses to The Masses. The rad was from Chicago, so it stands to reason that this would be where hed concentrate his initial efforts. Its where he knew best. And yet as We see he doesnt just say Oh Chicago is such a bad place - as if We can only clean-up Chicago Wed be alright. No, Yaki ties War for the Cities into the whole colonial matrix of u.s. imperialism. The language is precise, clear & conscious. is any ghetto - it is but one of the urban reservations that We nd Ourselves stranded on. * Second, after establishing the fact of a war - of national oppression & genocidal violence - We fall into the Free the RNA 11: Prisoner of War chapter - brilliant! Both Yakis piece & the editorial placement. Cause We are reading, studying & meditating the things that are engaging Our social consciousness: Him (Yaki); How (National Oppression); What (War); Where (New Afrika - inside amerika, a prisonhouse of nations); Why (capitalist-imperialist exploitation for wealth & prot) - but let me not get ahead of myself here. In explaining who the RNA 11 are, Comrad Yaki diligently explicated how, why, where & when the Provisional Government was formed. Crucial this is because most New Afrikans, while natural citizens, remain woefully oblivious to these facts. And as such, they go unknowingly along with the current colonial-settler government of amerika because they see or know of no other alternative. Truthfully, the masses arent necessarily down with the U.S. government, but without an alternative they cling to what is available. So, presenting this piece after War for the Cities highlights the realization of Our alternative to U.S. settler government. Simultaneously it points up the lengths to which the oppressive arrangement will go to keep its position rm & crush any opposition. Over 500 New Afrikan Nationalists signed the New Afrikan Declaration of Independence. No more than seventy ve euro-amerikans signed the U.S. declaration of independence. Imagine that. The difference? Class. Cats will get caught up on that nationality thing, or as the cultural nationalists stress, black race, & miss the boat altogether on the class signicance that is the concrete under any struggle. But as always, Comrad Yaki blows away all that foolishness here. Yes, its a good thing to be around New Afrikans - but id rather be around Communists. * Third, lest We forget, the Comrad (& again the editorial geniuses) goes right into On Transforming the Colonial & Criminal Mentality. i remember when i rst read & studied this piece back in the mid-1980s - it was shocking to me. No, seriously, because up until that time i was thinking like the old Eldridge Cleaver, that the criminal or outlaw was just like a revolutionary. That as long as he or she was breaking the law or shooting pigs they were somehow on Our side. That when the revolution matured & We hit the streets, in confrontation with the state, theyd be with Us against the law. But On Transforming... shattered that line of thinking & brought the truth right down front! And, in so doing, taught a fantastic lesson in dialectics. The criminal has no qualm with capitalism, colonialism or imperialism. In fact, the criminal is in league with these evils. Why, the capitalist is who the criminal wants to be. The criminal can only ourish under capitalism - with some degree of impunity. The criminal is an individualist, a greed driven parasite, just like the capitalists. The criminal has more in common - as far as class aspirations - with the oppressor than he or she has with the working class &/or revolutionaries. Again We are confronted with class & class interests. How

practical it is to run this chapter right after the RNA-11: POW piece; lest people get the notion that packing heat & correcting pigs is the be all & end all to revolution. To transform ones mentality is, in essence, to commit class suicide. To alter ones class allegiance. Of course its dialectical, far from static, so it can go either way, i.e. a rev can commit class suicide by becoming a capitalist or criminal. Conversely, a backward, or lumpen, individual can transform into a rev. Also, while skillfully explaining this process, the difference between the two (rev vs. criminal) & how to go about actually doing it (thru study, struggle & practice) - the rad lays down some very important denitions: Captive Colonials (those New Afrikans captured who are not revs, but natural citizens of the Nation); Political Prisoners (New Afrikans captured for non-military anti-imperialist activity) & Prisoners of War (those New Afrikans who are captured for carrying out military strikes against the state). Also included within these denitions is the category of PP or POW where one who is already in a kamp, who has transformed his or her colonial/criminal mentality, makes political/military assertions & is consequently locked in a SHU/Control Unit for it, is recognized by Our Movement. These denitions, along with the whole Transforming... piece on the criminal/colonial mentality, is of the utmost importance to have in Our ideo-theoretical arsenal because they give Us concrete lines to follow, to adhere to & to apply in Our overstanding of struggle in the belly of the beast. * Fourth, Scenes from the Battle of Algiers. Now, ive read, studied & meditated on the Transforming... piece, i have read the paraphrased version of Ali Apontes scene in question - but i never saw the movie. Thought the Comrads paraphrased version was sufcient. That is until i read the actual scenes from the lm! A master stroke by the editors to bring the actual scenes in. It totally brings to life what the Comrad wrote in the Transformation piece. Its like seeing it as it happens & if youre a real studier (like me) you wont be able to help yourself from going back to the Transformation piece after youve read the actual Scenes. The fact is the transformation must be genuine & thorough - not an emotional commitment based on race, or an imagined slight, but a genuine & authentic transformation of class allegiance & interest. And this must be tied into the struggle for National independence & Socialism. i feel this piece is pivotal in the work as a whole.

1. Available from AK Press, 674-A 23rd Street,Oakland, CA 94612 http://www.akpress.org/2010/items/meditationsonbook

* Fifth, the Raids on Chicago Public Housing - Fact Sheet - here We see the rad going back to the block or the hood in an effort to point up the continuing genocidal violence perpetrated under the guise of bourgeois law & order. And while this was written for Crossroad in 1989, it is just as relevant today as it was then. But what can We learn from this? We can see that We need to be more conscious & active in Our particular areas of operation - to document, study & struggle with the people who are in these conditions. Again, from the masses to the masses. And, again, like everything else, the Comrad keeps politics in command by tying the Chicago Housing Raids into the overall genocidal violence of U.S. capitalism against internal nations. Get out, get active, get involved in whats going on where you live. Learn from the masses, keep your politics in command, transform the conditions under which you live. * Sixth, We have the From One Generation to the Next piece. Again, right out of the New Afrikan P.O.W. Journals, Books 1-7. Also in abbreviated form in False Nationalism False Internationalism: Class Contradictions in the Armed Struggle. This, too, was/is beautifully placed because it clearly puts into perspective the continuity of struggle & migration. And isnt it poignant today with whats going on

with immigration (so-called) issues with Mexicanos? Our New Afrikan ideological formulation instructs Us that just like Mexicano people (or other immigrants) who are coming across the articial & political border in search of work & better conditions, so too did New Afrikans migrate out of the National Territory & into amerika in search of better jobs & nicer white folks. And, true to the social development of others, before & to come, the Northern cities proved to be devastating to Our cultural unity & awareness. This is essentially what From One Generation to the Next points out. That Ours is a struggle with continuity, unbroken except occasionally in Our own mind. Now, if youre not aware at this point of Yakis consciousness & energy; the class nature of the struggle; the National reality of New Afrika as an internal neo-colonized Nation; or of the existence of Our Provisional Government, Declaration of Independence & the war waged against oppressed nationalities & Our efforts to extricate Ourselves from U.S. capitalist-imperialism & the need to transform your colonial (allegiance to the oppressor nation) & criminal (allegiance to individualism, exploitation & capitalist class interests) mentality - while constructing a proletarian/revolutionary mentality - then youre not reading, studying or meditating on this work. But read on - read over & think deeply, cause this is the truth! Where else are you gonna nd quotes by Martin Luther King, jr. on: Extremism, Capitalism, Imperialism? Read on. * Seventh, Malcolm, Model of Personal Transformation - here, no clearer, is the actual transformation of the colonial/criminal mentality in Brother Malcolm X. And altho We know that his early stages of consciousness with the patriarchal theocracy of the NOI was hardly complete, We know that he continued to grow, transform & develop his revolutionary mentality. Its unfortunate for Us all, however, but it is a testament to his seriousness & commitment (and correct line) that he was targeted & assassinated by reactionaries in league with the settler government. Continuously, We are confronted with class alliances that go above & beyond whats perceived as race. The leadership of the capitalist Nation of Islam had more in common, on a class level, with the U.S. ruling class, than it did with people of its own Nation. So when Malcolm pointed out that the hit on Kennedy was a case of the chickens coming home to roost - & the bourgeois press reported it (knowing Elijah Muhammads class allegiance) - Elijah Muhammad acted swiftly to show his class allegiance with capitalism & submission to imperialism. He silenced Malcolm for ninety days. Malcolm, however, had that infernal thirst for truth & genuine freedom & kept on studying & investigating other struggles that resembled Ours only to nd that every revolution fought has been against capitalism & for some type of socialism. We can learn a whole lot from the steadfastness of Malcolm in the face of varying degrees of adversity that rushed upon him. He committed class suicide in prison; he overcame his addiction; he became an excellent orator, recruiter & military strategist; he read, studied & meditated constantly - never being satised with what was. He associated with other movements & struggles. He travelled & made alliances. And, too, We must overstand that when he left the petty-bourgeois Nation of Islam, according to what his beliefs were initially, he wasnt just going against Elijah Muhammad, but against Allah himself. Elijah Muhammad had propped himself up as the Messenger of Allah, so to oppose him was to oppose Allah. No easy feat, huh? Once he found orthodox Islam he was relieved, im sure, to learn that that b.s. old Elijah was kicking was just that. So, Malcolm was a true revolutionary - he was the message he brought. And it is this sort of fortitude, thoroughness & conscious effort that We must strive to emulate. This is, of course, a strong piece & a well-placed piece in the work. Props to the rad & kudos to the keen eye of the editors. * Eighth, Reections on Victor Serges What Everyone Should Know About (State) Repression. Perfect piece, perfect placement. i know i keep saying this, but building a book of this magnitude, of this depth & seriousness, is like arranging an album of classic jazz - some Bird, or Coltrane. The layout has to be coherent & consistent in order to maximize the effect. In order to realize the intent - which of course, is to heighten awareness so as to see things both as they really are as well as they can be. So, the Model of Personal Transformation of Malcolm is followed by What Everyone Should Know About (State) Repression - can you dig that? They were able to repress & eliminate Malcolm, the Muslim Mosque Inc. & the Organization or Afro-American Unity (both of his young orgs) because their security wasnt tight. Because there was no real culture of security. i remember when this piece was rst sent to me in 1988, the actual pamphlet the Comrads printed it in was called: Study Notes On Secure Communications: So That We Dont Fool Ourselves Again. It was an eye-opening piece then & its still - more so - an eye popper now! Especially in the day & age of Patriot Acts & Homeland Security! Its timely & precise. It reminds Us that any anti-imperialist activity is against the law & expect to be surveilled. Therefore work PRISON FOCUS

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overtime to create a culture of security & need to know. The stress throughout this piece is consciousness. Overstand your situation, believe that the enemy is always alert, act always as if your phone is tapped, your mail is being opened & that anyone can be turned. Its not about being paranoid - its about being secure. But again, all this stems from being conscious, overstanding your politics, keeping them in command & maintaining a working-class stand. Never say anything over the phone that you wouldnt say to a police ofcer. Why? Because the police are your class enemy - they represent the settler state as a rst line of defense & offense. We have to overstand, dialectically, that weaknesses of every kind begin within - as a qualitative degeneration. That the primary cause of change is within a thing - anything. And that the secondary, or quantitative development is what alters the time & the space of the thing. So We know that Our old Movement was destroyed by its primary weaknesses - by the internal, or qualitative, deciencies - & only secondarily by the outer or quantitative make-up of the contradiction. The internal was Us, Our orgs & the class make up of them & how they in turn related to each other & the masses. With no clear class-based criterion for recruitment, Our qualitative center was weak, unsound & not ready for prime time with the imperialist state. The secondary make up of this contradiction was the imperialist state as represented by its various security agencies, foundations, social orgs & loyal citizens. We learned that the FBI, or Cointelpro didnt destroy Our Movement. Didnt scatter Our forces. On the contrary, Our Movement was weakened from within. We, as the rads say, Fooled Ourselves. Like the New Afrikan in this piece who after discussing surveillance & knowing that others cars had been tagged, still refused to be an espionage agent - to secure himself. Its almost as if We have grown biased against Our own safety & security. And this discussion, as pointed out by Comrad Yaki, took place at the so-called height of consciousness. And yet & still, stunning strikes were able to be made against Us by the oppressive forces. We are not emphasizing security & safety in order to just be safe & secure - We are emphasizing security & safety in order to carry out Our activity of re-building. In order to raise up cadres who can relate to the masses in order to replenish ranks, in order to re-build Our Movement, in order to get free & build Socialism. If We are to do these necessary things We need to survive, to have a sense of safety & security. And of course, to make strikes. Can you see how things are building with this work? We are climbing up a ladder of consciousness, circling & spiraling towards a heightened state of revolutionary awareness. You see, the Comrad has both the practical & the theoretical experience that he brings to the table here & lays out. This work is important. i remember what Comrad Yaki would do was type out position papers, policies & long theoretical tracts & send them out to Us wherever We happened to be. That way Wed all have the same things & then hed expect Our comments, positions & feedback. So a lot of these Meditations on Wretched - especially Parts One, Two & Three - We (Comrads of the NAC) got in raw letter form. i can remember thinking as these papers arrived, how was he able to see things as he did - so vividly, so astoundingly clear? The answer, of course, is study & meditation. The Brotha was a beast - seriously. And trust me, We need beasts more than ever. We come now upon the actual Meditations on Wretched of the Earth, the primary namesake of the work. If youve read my rst book, Monster, youll know then that on page 345, i wrote about my initial arrival at San Quentin SHU (the hole) & a fellow prisoner sending me Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earth. This was 85 or early 86. Admittedly the book was over my head - i couldnt overstand what Fanon was saying. i even admitted this in the book. i wanted to, tho, cause id heard that it was considered the Panther Bible. Well, it now appears that not even they completely overstood Wretched of the Earth. A small consolation to whats left of my ego... When We started receiving these Meditations i was so grateful that the Comrad had taken the time to break down Wretched from a New Afrikan Communist perspective. This work will last a hundred years because it is the truth. And it is rich with substance & dialectical-materialist reasoning. Its solid & concrete. It is a true weapon for Our struggle & should be read, studied, discussed, meditated upon & practiced in order to realize a better world than that in which We now live. This work will take its place next to Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat, by J. Sakai; Night-Vision: Illuminating War & Class on the Neo-Colonial Terrain, by Butch Lee & Red Rover; False Nationalism False Internationalism: Class Contradictions in the Armed Struggle; Coming of Black Genocide, by Bottomsh Blues. i wont go into the Wretched Meditations, by now you should be ready to go forth. Trust me, this is ideo-theoretical gold! Lets get free! Re-Build! Sanyika Shakur New Afrikan Communist You can write to Sanyika at: s/n Kody Scott D#07829 Pelican Bay State Prison PO Box 7500 (SHU-C-7-112) Crescent City, CA 95532 NUMBER 37

Another Review of Meditations on Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings
ISBN: 9781894946322 Publisher: Kersplebedeb Release Date: 2010-02-24 Available from AK Books, http://www.akpress.org/2010/ items/meditationsonbook By Ed Mead [Note: When referring to Wretched Im meaning Fanons book, when I say Meditations Im talking about Yakis book on Fanon.] ames Yaki Sayles Meditations on Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings is one of those rare books that will instill in the reader a new paradigm of political thoughta new way of thinking about race, nationalism, and the revolutionary struggle for freedom. Because of this, because of the important subject matter and the books expansive content, it is a difcult to review. I am supplementing Sanyika Shakurs review, which is also included in the book review section of this issue, because I feel it does not squarely address much of the actual content of Meditations. Well, I am not going to be able to do an exhaustive review either, although I do want to comment on aspects of the book that changed my way of thinking, one of which is the subject of deconstructing race. Sanyika is a New Afrikan and his review was primarily aimed at that audience. Im eruoamerican and in this case my review will be aimed at more toward that segment of readers. Like Sanyika, I too read Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earth a long time ago, back in the early 1970s for me. I thought I understood the book then. Today, after reading Meditations, I understand that I didnt really get it at all. I was hungry for knowledge and the book was like a delicious pie at my table, and I took only crumbs, thinking I had eaten the entire pie. Yakis Meditations is the whole pie, and much more. It is also a book that will create a lot of controversy around the issue of race. But let me start you out on something easierrebellion versus revolution.

Ive been in rebellion all my life. Just didnt know it. ... The rst rebellion is always crime.
I watched The Battle of Algiers for the second time the other day. The rst time was probably 30 years ago. It is a movie about the national liberation struggle against French imperialism in Algiers back in the 1960s. The movie starts out with a small-time street hustler named Ali being busted and tossed into prison as a common criminal. While conned he became politicized, transformed from a criminal or lumpen with nationalist sentiments to a revolutionary nationalist. Yaki, a former political prisoner/POW himself, takes up the story from here: We know this already sounds familiar to many: Ive been in rebellion all my life. Just didnt know it. And, For a young New Afrikan growing up in the ghetto, the rst rebellion is always crime. [Comrade George] A clear distinction must be drawn between rebellion and revolution, because unless this is done, We become confused in our thought and our actions. Arriving at clarity on this and other issues is a necessary aspect of transforming the criminal, and the colonial, mentality. We can rebel against something without necessarily rebelling or making revolution for something. A rebellion is generally an attack upon those who rulebut it is an attack which is spontaneous, short-lived, and without the purpose of replacing those who rule. Rebellions bring into question the methods of those who rule, but stop short of actually calling into question their very right to rule, without calling into question the entire authority and the foundation upon which that authority or legitimacy rests. We rebel as a means of exposing intolerable conditions and treatment, but We seek to have someone other than ourselves change these conditions, and to change the treatment, rather than to assume responsibility ourselves for our whole lives. A rebellion essentially wants to end bad housing. Have full employment, and end police brutality and change prison conditions, etc.to reform the system, and to leave the power to make these reforms in the hands of the massa. A revolution, on the other hand, seeks not merely to reform the system, but to completely overthrow it, and to place the power overthrowing it, and the power for running the new system that is established, in the hands of the revolutionary masses. Thus the slogan, All Power To The People! Yaki spends some time discussing the issue of race, particularly pointing out scientic studies demonstrating that there is more genetic differences between some groups of Europeans than there are between New Afrikans and Euro-

peansthe former being primarily one of skin pigmentation rather than any differences on the genetic level. Once this alleged difference is debunked he moves on to the issue of racism itself: No matter how We see the relation between racism and capitalism (e.g., that they arose simultaneously, or that one preceded the other), I think they should always be mentioned together. That is, I believe its counterproductive to ever talk about racism without immediately and thoroughly linking it to capitalism, so that no one can be unmindful of the need to struggle against capitalism if they claim to be anti-racist or against racism. Racism is used to justify and facilitate the exploitation of peoples, and is based on the false belief that humanity is divided into a plurality of races that stand in relation to each other as inferior or superior based on physical and/ or cultural differences. There are no racesonly people(s), united and distinguished by common history (social development), habits, interests, etc.sometimes We call all of this nationality or ideology. Yaki asks us to de-link ourselves from the use of language that reinforces and reproduces racial ideology, e.g., the terms white and black in reference to the identity of peoples. He quotes Ngugi wa Thiongo who discussed the practice of writers under colonialism: Imperialism was far too easily seen in terms of the skin pigmentation of the colonizer. Labor was not just labor but black labor; capital not just capital but white owned capital. The terms white and black were freely interchangeable with the terms Europe and Africa. when the with man came to Africa and not when the imperialist or the colonialist came to Africa; or one day these whites will go and not one day imperialism or these imperialists will go. On page 275, in the last paragraph, Yaki says something that will surely cause controversy: By New Afrikans I dont mean black people. I mean those who come to identify their nationality as New Afrikan, and who thus exhibit the consciousness and embrace the values and philosophy those who pursue the goals of New Afrikans. To me, being a New Afrikan is not about the color of ones skin, but about ones thought and practice. I know that not everyone agrees with this, but thats their problem. When speaking about prisoners Yaki writes: This criminal/colonial mentality was similarly described by ComradeSister Assata Shakur [while she was in prison]: I am sad when I see what happens to women who lose their strength. They see themselves as bad children who expect to be punished because they have not, in some way, conformed to the conduct required of good children in the opinion of prison guards. Therefore, when they are punished they feel absolution has been dealt and they are again in the good graces f the guards. Approval has been given by the enemy, but the enemy is no longer recognized as the enemy. The enemy becomes the maternal gure pattering their lives. Its like a plantation in prison. You can see the need for a revolution clearly. This reminds me of a statement made by Harriet Tubman who said something to the effect of: I freed a thousand slaves; I could have freed another thousand if theyd only known they were slaves. Once again I have written a review that only nibbled around the edges of a serious political book. In my review of Yakis outstanding Meditations, Ive barely mentioned the name Frantz Fanon, who was the subject matter of the volume. In order to glean the full richness of these meditations you will need to read the book for yourself. If you fancy yourself as being a revolutionary in America today, this book is not only an original contribution to revolutionary thought and must read book, it is a book you should be organizing study groups around. Thats what we in the Seattle Chapter of National Jericho Movement are doing. I urge you to read and study this book as well.

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Jalil Muntaqim

We Are Our Own Liberators Selected Prison Writings

Second edition with an extensive collection of new material. 304pp. ISBN 9780974288468 5.5x8.5 paperback, $17.95 (U.S.) By Ed Mead, March 2011 n a recent review of another book I wrote: as a revolutionary I see little on the political horizon containing much of what I would call real political substance. And that I am looking for political writings that strike a chord within my understanding of dialectical and historical materialism as applied to the conditions and circumstances existing in the world today. Well, Ive found such writings. The book is by Jalil A. Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom) and it is the second edition of We Are Our Own Liberators.1 I rst worked with Jalil back in the mid-1970s when I was a prisoner at the Washington State Penitentiary at Walla Walla. He was then organizing the United Nations petition campaign in an effort to get that body to recognize the plight of political prisoners held in U.S. custody. Jalil was then and still is an imprisoned member of the Black Liberation Army. Hes been locked down for some forty years for his alleged participation in BLA crimes. During his imprisonment Jalil has tirelessly struggled in both word and deed to advance the cause of political and social prisoners, as well as the New Afrikan struggle for nationhood. We Are Our Own Liberators is not an easy read. While Jalils book is exceptionally well written, like all books containing signicant content, it requires some concentration on the part of the reader. But this effort will be a labor of love for those interested in the politics of progressive Black Nationalism. We Are Our Own Liberators is the handbook, the roadmap activists must traverse on the journey to New Afrikan and class-based revolutionary change in America. It is not, like so many books written by current or former political prisoners (including the one I am working on), a book about himself or his personal trials and tribulations. It is a book about the actual mechanics of building a revolutionary organization and class struggle. The overall thrust and primary content of Jalils book is a step-by-step how to manual for the current and next generation of revolutionaries to use when building cadre and organizations that can reach out to and successfully engage the masses. But in the process of doing this he also addresses the weaknesses that must be overcome within the Black Community and other social segments by those seeking to implement these changes. This is accomplished through an analysis of the black bourgeoisie and other reactionary forces and the negative impact they have within these communities. The book should be read just for this analysis, although the real substance is the well thought-out guide to building revolutionary organization in todays America. It is difcult, at least for me as a white ex-con, to distill the essence of Jalils political/organizational substance into a mere reviewthe content is too rich and deep, too detailed and methodical for easy categorization. It is something New Afrikans and progressive whites must read, must study. So rather that address this broad range of content, Ill merely nibble around the edges. I suspect that every reviewer of a progressive political book will take that which he or she feels to be the most relevant, and then give that material special attention. For me it was Jalils criticism of the leftist formations in this country a subject I too feel strongly about. He says: Only a few of these radicals/militants, either in the past or recently, ever took seriously the fact that Marx and Lenin were both developing their theories in a systematic reection upon specic historical reality, a totally different historical reality from what exists in the United States today. Marx was writing at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Europe 100 years ago and Lenin in backwards Russia over fty years ago, in periods when rapid developments in the production forces were the urgent concerns. Jalil points out that the United States is not old-time Europe or Russia, and that todays radicals need to do more than replace the revolutionary role of workers with those in the so called third world who are in revolt, or casting domestic social movements into the role Marx and Lenin gave to the working class. He notes that some of these social movements (e.g., the prisoners movement) have begun to substitute themselves for New Afrikan workers. Jalil goes on to argue that instead of merely reacting to rebellions and to each other in sectarian and opportunist ways. The revolutionary cadre organization must make its own serious analysis of the unique historical development of the United States and the material development in their area and nationally. Addressing the subject of armed struggle Jalil notes that: Many leftists in the class and national liberation struggle have labeled individuals or groups who ad-

vocated revolutionary armed struggle ultra-leftist. These erroneous postulations have ill effects on the entire revolutionary movement. They tend to strip the revolutionary movement of its militancy and prevent certain measures of defense from developing with a greater participation from the oppressed masses. Thus, those who partake in armed actions are not only ghting monopoly-capitalist enemies, but also isolated and abandoned by those claiming to be progressive political activists and revolutionaries. Most of those who condemn revolutionary armed struggle are either in cahoots with U.S. imperialism, seeking to subvert and defuse the revolutionary development of the mass and popular movement, or lack understanding of the necessity of the revolutionary armed struggle and thus speak in unprincipled ways on issues they know little about. They fear the repression of the State in defense of its continued existence. We Are Our Own Liberators is not a book that advocates for or is about armed struggle. The dialectical relationship between mass struggle and armed struggle is mentioned to provide lessons to be learned from past experience. I emphasize the subject here because of the way in which the mass movement of the 1970s actively aided the state in their effort to distance themselves from the armed front and the possibility of repression. I also want to highlight the issue because of the way in which todays above-ground left eschews any kind of militancy. They have taken a movement that put hundreds of thousands of Americans into the streets to protest the invasion of Iraq, and through their passivity, their obsequiousness to bourgeois legality, have managed to reduce that movement to occasional marches numbering less than a hundred people. They refuse to admit their mistakes or to examine the failure of their practice, even in times such as these, when the future is so pregnant with the possibility of change. They forget that revolution is against the lawthat revolution is an act by witch one class violently overthrows another. In addition to the organizational red meat (vegetarians and vegans forgive me) of this book, it is also interspersed with Jalils outstanding poetry (one reviewer called his poems strong and multi-layered), as well as brief commentaries on subjects such as Obama, a tribute to Nuh Washington, and others. These chapters provide relief from the heavy reading on matters such as organizational and cadre development. One of my favorites was a chapter called The Criminalization of Poverty in Capitalist America. Jalil cites statistics on the ever growing gap between the rich and poor, and the government policies that work to generate greater levels of poverty. He points out the relationship between poverty and crime, adding that the real criminals are those who create the socio-economic conditions that perpetuate impoverishment and deect culpability of their criminal behavior. If I were to isolate one weakness in Jalils book it would be his failure to update material in this second edition. Some areas of the book were written a number of years ago. I would like to have seen those parts updated with more recent statistics. That said, for New Afrikan and progressive whites serious about building a revolutionary movement, and who of us isnt, We Are Our Own Liberators is a must read bookthe central thrust of which we should all be working to implement in our day-to-day political practice.

This small woman fought back. Everyone was hollering and throwing things out of their windows. An egg went ying and it hit one of the guards. Four of them dragged the woman up the stairs and into the entrance to the block. The cops had bloodlust in their eyes. In the hall they couldnt get the cuffs onto her. Her fury matched theirs. Eventually they overpowered her and carried her off, I had never before seen that level of brutality directed against a woman. We were all crying from anger, frustration, and fear. And yet in the D.C. jail, it was almost normal. It was not extremea little more brutal than usual, but only a little. To administer by fear and control by terror was a tactic that was understood by the prisoners; it was a natural way of life, inside or outside. I cried because I didnt know how to resist that level of dehumanization. Amid the wreckage of my cell, I spotted a book of poetry on the oor. I found the well-known poem by Langston Hughes, Harlem, the one that begins What happens to a dream deferred? I stood at my window and in the pulsating silence, in the aftermath of what we had just been through, I read it at the top of my lungs. No one said anything. Then a single voice started singing Amazing Grace, and then another and another until there were many voices. Everyone knew the words. It was a most beautiful rendition, the richest I had ever heard. And as the sound rose and fell I remembered hearing somewhere that this song had been written by a slaver, a ship captain who experienced a dramatic conversion and later spoke out strongly against slavery. I once was lost, but now am found. What I was learning in those endless days at the jail was the relentlessness of prison and oppression and the constant abuse of authority as a way of life. To lessen ones expectations about the quality and content of life is a terrible thing. In prison one faces a direct attempt to destroy the human spirit. More than anything else, life in the DC jail was designed to dehumanize us in order enslave us. An American Radical, Political Prisoner in My Own Country is a great read in terms of writing style and in terms of her experiences on the inside. She readily captures the realities of prison life from the perspective of the prisoner, and she has keen insight into the many ways the correctional philosophy and practice of her captors are awed. It is always refreshing to read about the experiences of a woman doing time, there are so few examples. This is one of the best. So long as one isnt looking for political direction, which isnt the authors intention, Ill give Susans book two thumbs up. You cant go wrong buying this well written and insightful book.

ILLINOIS ABOLISHES DEATH PENALTY

16th US state to get rid of capital punishment llinois governor Pat Quinn after signing legislation abolishing the death penalty at the state capitol in Springeld. Photograph: Seth Perlman/AP Illinois has abolished the death penalty after two decades of deliberation on the grounds that the justice system could execute innocent people by mistake, in a move that is likely to renew calls for other US states to follow. The move will save 15 men from execution who are on Illinoiss death row, moving them to life in prison with no hope of parole. Governor Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has long supported capital punishment, spent two months deliberating on the decision, which he described as the most difcult he has made in ofce. If the system cant be guaranteed, 100% error-free, then we shouldnt have the system, Quinn said. It cannot stand. The governors decision incensed many prosecutors and relatives of victims of crime. Republican representative Jim Durkin predicted Quinn will pay a political price if he seeks re-election in four years time. Quinn said he would oppose any attempt to reinstate a new version of the death penalty. He also promised to commute the sentence of anyone who might receive a death sentence between now and when the measure takes effect on July 1, a spokeswoman said. Illinois becomes the 16th state in the US without a death penalty. New York and New Jersey abolished the death penalty in 2007. New Mexico followed suit in 2009. In his comments, Quinn returned often to the fact that 20 people sent to death row had seen their cases overturned after evidence surfaced that they were innocent or had been convicted improperly. Campaigners studying capital punishment said Illinoiss move carries more weight than states that halted executions but had not used the death penalty often. Illinois stands out because it was a state that used it, reconsidered it and now rejected it, said Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington. Illinois has executed 12 men since 1977, when the death penalty was reinstated. The last execution was Andrew Kokoraleis on March 17, 1999. At the time, the average length of stay on death row was 13 years. Associated Press, March 10, 2011

BOOK REVIEW
An American Radical, Political Prisoner in My Own Country By Susan Rosenberg Pub Date: March 1st, 2011 ISBN: 978-0-8065-3304-9 Page count: 496pp Publisher: Citadel/Kensington By Ed Mead n American Radical, Political Prisoner in My Own Country by Susan Rosenberg is about the time she spent in various womens prisons as a result of her political actions against the U.S. government. This is a book I enjoyed reading, front to back. It is timely, the content important, often moving, and educational for those who have not spent time inside a prison. It is also an extraordinarily well written book. At times tears welled up inside me as I read portions of this book; at other times I would nd myself sharing in her triumphs or despair. As a former prisoner I could readily relate to the petty bureaucracy and power mongering of prisoncrats. I am recommending this book to anyone wanting to know more about life inside for a classconscious woman doing time in the federal prison system. As I said, it was Susans engaging writing style made it easier to meet her at each stage of her development during her sixteen years of imprisonment. Heres a little sample of how well Susan writes. This selection was from her time in the D.C jail. Another prisoner was brushing her teeth when the goon squad suddenly opened the door of her cell and ordered her out. Had they waited ten seconds she could have spit out the mouth full of tooth paste into her sink, but instead the guards rudely grabbed her. She spit the emulsied toothpaste into the guards face:

1. Published by and available from Arissa Media Group, P.O. Box 27991, Tempe, AZ 85283, http://www.arissa.org/weareourownliberators.html.

22

PRISON FOCUS

THE HUNGER STRIKE AND THE PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED: LIBERATION FROM DEHUMANIZATION
By Ron Ahnen, Preseident, CPF hinking about the recent Supreme Court decision declaring that overcrowded conditions in California prisons constitute nothing less than cruel and unusual punishment, and considering the upcoming hunger strike in Pelican Bay SHU starting July 1 over ve core demands of prisoners got me thinking about Paulo Freires book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In it, he argues that the process of overcoming oppression and dismantling the social structures and institutions that dehumanize our fellow human beings must necessarily be led by the oppressed themselves. He writes, Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible signicance of an oppressive society? Who suffer the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the necessity of liberation? The hunger strikers have taken the rst step in recovering their humanity. They have consciously acted in concert with one another, overcoming all sorts of barriers to demand together respect for their basic human rights. In order to start the process of liberation, Freire notes, the oppressed must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform. The simple recognition of oppression does not automatically lead to liberation, though it is an imperative rst step. The oppressed must also come to understand and exploit real avenues and possibilities for change. They must act. The prisoners on hunger strike are not idealistically blinded or naive people on a fools errand. Cynics may abound, but Freire argues that the oppressed who have adapted to the structure of domination in which they are immersed and have become resigned to it, are inhibited from waging the struggle for freedom so long as they feel incapable of running the risks it requires. Those who believe no change will come from this strike are frozen--unable to carry out the transformations that could lead to their liberation. They have been defeated before the process of change has even had a chance to start. In contrast, the prisoners on hunger strike clearly see injustice, and understand that change can happen, but only if they set aside their fear of reprisal and take action. Hunger strikes are serious business. There are risks. Lets not kid ourselves--some people could die. Those planning to fast have concluded that, ironically, the only way to get both the prison ofcials and the general public to perceive the depth of their inhumane condition is to starve their own bodies. Only then will enough onlookers begin to scratch their heads and ask themselves, How bad must it be when the prisoners themselves are willing to risk their own lives for the possibility of liberation that maybe only their fellow inmates will enjoy? And the risks are not merely limited to the hunger strikers. For Freire, the struggle of the oppressed for their liberation threatens not only the oppressor, but also their own oppressed comrades who are fearful of still greater repression. How will the other prisoners act toward the hunger strikers? Will they resent them? support them? join them? Freire tells us, when they discover within themselves the yearning to be free, they perceive that this yearning can be transformed into reality only when the same yearning is aroused in their comrades. Without mutual support, the strike will get nowhere. This hunger strike has brought prisoners together, united, in a way that is seldom seen inside prison walls. Representatives from ve different groups--based primarily on race-are cooperating and participating. We know that race is used in our society to as an instrument of domination, but it is doubly so in prisons where people are classied more often than not by the color of their skin. Prisoners cells carry color coded information sheets to indicate the race of the person inside. Cooperation among prisoners of different races during this hunger strike signies an imperative step--if not the most important step--in the process of prisoners recovering their humanity. The hunger strike does not make race suddenly irrelevant, but it does mean that racial divisions do not prevent prisoners from naming their condition as oppressive, from identifying their oppressors, and from cooperating as an oppressed class to demand their liberation from the terrible form of dehumanization that is the Pelican Bay SHU. For the oppressed, according to Freire, the task of liberation is a double one, for they can only become truly liberated if their oppressors are also liberated from their participation in supporting and continuing the oppressive prison structure. Prisoners rightfully and justly despise their condition, and they may be tempted to despise their oppressors even more.

But for Freire, they will not nd liberation without entering a dialogue with their oppressors. He notes, the pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization. The oppressors are in dire need of liberation-liberation from their daily treatment of other human beings as objects and without dignity. By oppressing their fellow human beings, they dehumanize not only the oppressed, but themselves. They degrade their own human dignity. The process of liberation occurs via the dialogue between prisoners and their oppressors that the hunger strike will spark. Each group must struggle to recover their own humanity. Who are the oppressors? Its easy to point to the guards, prison ofcials, or the governor. But the real answer is: we are. We, the people of California. All of us. We have become oppressors out of fear and out of ignorance. We have dehumanized people rst by labeling them criminals, felons, animals, monsters, and worst of the worst, and second, by attaching more value to those labels than the human beings behind them. In our mind, we have made objects out of people, and then proceeded to warehouse them in the smallest of cells with little to no regard for physical, mental, emotional or psychological well-being. This is exactly the kind of dehumanization that the Supreme Court declared may not stand. We, the people of California, have been too quick to latch on to the last slick politician toting fear of crime as the key issue of the dayusually sprinkled with a healthy dose of racism, sexism, or classism. With almost willful ignorance, we swiftly reach for simplistic solutions like mass R. Garcia, 2004 incarceration which make us feel safer even as we make it impossible for most prisoners to educate themselves, kick bad habits, recover from addiction, and otherwise prepare themselves for a crime-free life after prison. Our actions, and especially our inaction to stop these processes, have allowed oppression to ourish in our state. We, the activists, supporters, and friends of the hunger striking prisoners, have recognized our part in the process of dehumanizing our fellow human beings. We are beginning our own liberation just as the prisoners have begun theirs. We must also act if we are to achieve our mutual goals of recovering our humanity. We must contact our elected ofcials, sign the online support petition, take to the streets, show up at protests, ood the governors ofce with phone calls, emails and letters. We must let our ire be felt as never before. If we fail to do so, we fail not only the prisoners, but ourselves. CPF fully supports the prisoners on hunger strike and their very legitimate ve core demands. We strongly urge prison ofcials to grant these demands and to attend to the hunger strikers in the most humane, open, honest, caring, and transparent fashion possible throughout the strike. Most importantly, we remain optimistic that real change is possible and on the horizon. In deep support.

MONEY TRUMPS CIVIL RIGHTS

By Michelle Alexander, Columbus, Ohio HE legal scholar Derrick A. Bell foresaw that mass incarceration, like earlier systems of racial control, would continue to exist as long as it served the perceived interests of white elites. Thirty years of civil rights litigation and advocacy have failed to slow the pace of a racially biased drug war or to prevent the emergence of a penal system of astonishing size. Yet a few short years of tight state budgets have inspired former get tough true believers to suddenly denounce the costs of imprisonment. Were wasting tax dollars on prisons, they say. Its time to shift course. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, shocked many earlier this year when he co-wrote an essay for The Washington Post calling on conservative legislators to lead the way in addressing an issue often considered off-limits to reform: prisons. Republican governors had already been sounding the same note. As California was careening toward bankruptcy last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lamented that more money was being spent on prisons than on education. Priorities have become out of whack over the years, he said. What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison uniforms than on caps and gowns? Another Republican gov-

ernor, John R. Kasich of Ohio, recently announced support for reducing penalties for nonviolent drug offenders as part of an effort to slash the size of the states prison population. A majority of those swept into our nations prison system are poor people of color, but the sudden shift away from the get tough rhetoric that has dominated the national discourse on crime has not been inspired by a surge in concern about the devastating human toll of mass incarceration. Instead, as Professor Bell predicted, the changing tide is best explained by perceived white interests. In this economic climate, it is impossible to maintain the vast prison state without raising taxes on the (white) middle class. Given this political reality, it is hardly a surprise to read a headline that says, N.A.A.C.P. Joins With Gingrich in Urging Prison Reform, rather than the other way around. If there were ever an illustration of Professor Bells theory that whites will support racial justice only to the extent that it is in their interests, this would seem to be it. Of course, in the late 1970s, when Professor Bell, who now teaches at New York University School of Law, rst advanced his theories, our prison population was much smaller. The Reagan revolution had not yet taken hold. No one knew that the war on drugs and the get tough movement would unleash a wave of punitiveness that would trap generations in ghettoes, and brand them criminals and felons. No one foresaw the caste-like system that would emerge, the millions who would be stripped of basic civil and human rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement the right to vote, to serve on juries, and to be free of discrimination in employment, housing, education and public benets. Today, 2.3 million Americans are behind bars; the United States has the worlds highest rate of incarceration. Convictions for non-violent crimes and relatively minor drug offenses mostly possession, not sale have accounted for the bulk of the increase in the prison population since the mid-1980s. African-Americans are far more likely to get prison sentences for drug offenses than white offenders, even though studies have consistently shown that they are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites. What to do now? Understandably, civil rights advocates and criminal justice reformers are celebrating this moment of what Professor Bell calls interest convergence. They say we must catch the wave and ride it. Many have given up all hope of persuading the white electorate that they should care about the severe racial disparities in the criminal justice system or the racial politics that birthed the drug war. Its possible now, they say, to win big without talking about race or making it an issue. Public relations consultants like the FrameWorks Institutewhich dedicates itself to changing the public conversation about social problemsadvise advocates to speak in a practical tone and avoid discussions of fairness between groups and the historical legacy of racism. Surely the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have rejected that advice. In 1963, in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail, he chastised white ministers for their indifference to black suffering: I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negros great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cant agree with your methods of direct action; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another mans freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a more convenient season. He continued: We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Such language would not have tested well in a focus group. Yet it helped to change the course of history. Those who believe that righteous indignation and protest politics were appropriate in the struggle to end Jim Crow, but that something less will do as we seek to dismantle mass incarceration, fail to appreciate the magnitude of the challenge. If our nation were to return to the rates of incarceration we had in the 1970s, we would have to release four out of ve people behind bars. A million people employed by the criminal justice system could lose their jobs. Private prison companies would see their prots vanish. This system is now so deeply rooted in our social, political and economic structures that it is not going to fade away without a major shift in public consciousness. Yes, some prison downsizing is likely to occur in the months and years to come. But we ought not fool ourselves: we will not end mass incarceration without a recommitment to the movement-building work that was begun in the 1950s and 1960s and left unnished. A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch. If we fail to rise to the challenge, and push past the politics of momentary interest convergence, future generations will judge us harshly. [Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University, is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.] 23

NUMBER 37

Talking To You

irst of all, we of California Prison Focus extend our thanks and appreciation to former Black Panther, George Jackson Brigade member, and political prisoner Mark Cook who paid most of the costs to print and mail out this issue of Prison Focus, the remainder was paid by SHU prisoners on the Short Corridor of the Pelican Bay SHU. Thanks to all of you. If there are to be more issues published there will need to be more people contributing to the costs of production, and it must come from folks both inside and out. The volunteers at California Prison Focus give their time, money, and labor to make this publication happen. But it cant be done without your ongoing nancial support. Help us out if you like the work we do. If you dont like it, get off our mailing list. Ive been editing or co-editing Prison Focus for about ten years now. The goal Ive tried to keep in mind when writing this has been the pressing need to help make social prisoners more rights conscious, and the rights conscious prisoners more class conscious. My message is that its the duty of the class conscious to win over the rights conscious, who in turn can win over or neutralize the more backwards elements. The more immediate slogan has always been one of working to extend democracy to all. That of course includes smashing the Thirteenth Amendment, which legitimizes slavery for millions of American citizens. Prisoners are held under conditions of dependency and irresponsibility, disenfranchised and much more due to their status under that Amendment. It abolished slavery for all except those convicted of a crime. Today we have some 2.3 million slaves inside of the American gulag. There are 7.3 million more people with only one foot on the streets (those on probation and parole, etc.), and another 14 million ex-cons out here in minimum custody. Thats a huge number of potential-slaves, slaves, and former slaves of the state. It has nally started to dawn upon some conservatives (most liberals have not gotten even this far, still being locked into rehabilitation mode), in this time of huge budget cutting, that sending non-violent offenders to prison, like drug users, only results in more violent crime and recidivism. It accomplishes the opposite of its intended purpose, and it does so at huge public expense. In short, prison administrators and related prisoncrats might, heaven forbid, be held accountable or somehow responsible for their downright dismal and ongoing failures. And as editor I have also tried to help reduce the high recidivism rates by advocating the need to put ex-convicts to work, and to do so without seeking help from the class enemys government. According to some experts, the ex-convict unemployment rate in California is seventy percent, about the same as their recidivism rate. Recidivism can be reduced by creating not-for-prot (not government sanctioned nonprots), ex-con owned industrial and service cooperatives.1 The manufacture of solar-cell panels, for example, would be one such industryone that could be started out of a garage or basement. The former prisoners working and managing such organizations (not businesses), especially at rst, would be class and rights conscious ex-cons dedicated to working for equal rights for prisonersincluding the universal human right to organize.2 I am from the era back when there was a strong prisoners movement, back in the late 1960s and up until the later part of the 1970sthe decade in which prisoners in the U.S. made more progress than in any time in their history.3 It should be noted that, like the early labor unions in this country (back when they had some ght in them), the prisoners movement was led by communists of all races. 4 Anyone who disputes this fact is a fool. Many of the class conscious prisoners from this period are still conned, all these many years later. Yet the ear of the younger prisoners has not yet heard them. This publication has tried to be an avenue through which those younger prisoners can nd and hear the wise voices from a previous generation of prisoner activists. It is the task of the reader to learn from these elders of our struggle. Talking At You As I write this Japan has just suffered a shattering earthquake and tsunami, with the count of missing or dead at around 28,000. In addition, two nuclear power plants are on the verge of a meltdown. This is a time when the citizens of the world need to be sending aid and otherwise supporting the people of that devastated nation. What do the global

Note: The views expressed in these comments are the opinions of the writer, and do not necessarily reect the views of California Prison Focus or its members. rich do in such a situation of need? Within the rst days of the disaster the rich pulled $183 billion worth of their stocks out of Japanese companies. This is a classic example of the way in which the system of capitalism puts individual greed above human need. There are medicines that will save lives, for example, but because there are not enough people suffering from these diseases, and hence not enough prot in manufacturing the medicines, the pharmaceutical companies refuse to produce them. They put prots before people. In the interesting statistics department, the wealthiest 5% of Americans control 72% of Americas nancial wealth. The bottom 80% control only 7% of the nations nancial wealth. The richest 400 Americans have more combined wealth than the poorer half of all Americans. That means 400 people have more wealth than 150,000,000 people combined. Meanwhile, according to the Federal Reserve, the average American familys household net worth declined 23% between 2007 and 2009.5 Amongst 20 of the worlds wealthiest countries, America now has the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children. And todays dollar would buy less than a nickels worth of goods and services in Woodrow Wilsons time.6 Two thirds of U.S. corporations pay no federal taxes.7 At a time when homelessness is widespread, including entire families, 13 percent of all U.S. homes are currently vacant.8 The percentage of Americans who have jobs has fallen to the lowest point in three decades and now hovers just above 45 percent of the total population, according to an analysis of labor data published by USA Today.

1. While it is not a progressive organization and has many other weaknesses, something along the lines of Delancey Street in San Francisco would be the starting point. 2. At the very height of the prisoners rights movement of the 1970s, in a case involving the right of South Carolina prisoners to organize themselves into a union, the U.S. Supreme Court held said nothat prisoners do not have such a right. It will take a mass movement of those in and out of prison to build the force needed to generate meaningful change, a part of which is overturning that pro-slavery ruling. 3. In place of that movement rose a continuing series of reactionary attacks on the rights of prisoners that continues to this day. 4. It was those ghting unions that brought you the eight hour work day, weekends, and an end to the exploitation of child labor. All of that forward progress stopped when the communists were kicked out of the unions. Its been downhill for the unions ever since.

Oh there he goes again, some readers will say, going off into one of his anti-capitalist tirades. Would it sound better if it came from the mouth of billionaire Warren Buffett? Capitalism is like Cinderella, Buffett says in an interview with TheMarker. She knew at midnight that everything was going to turn into pumpkins and mice, but it was just so much damn fun, dancing there. He goes on to say that the United States is moving toward plutocracygovernment of the rich, not by the people.9 Moving toward a Plutocracy might be a bit of an understatement. The rich have run the government from the beginning. Its only much worse now. Also as I write this the international imperialism, led by the United States, has launched a war against Libya, a nation with some of the sweetest crude oil on the planet. But this act of aggression is legal because, like the invasion and occupation of other nations (think Iraq for one), has been sanctioned by the United Nations. Former President Dwight Eisenhower had this to say on the subject of the U.Ns legitimacy: If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order. Eisenhower expressed the hope; the reality was captured by the radio commentator Paul Harvey: One would think by listening to all the propaganda about the United Nations that they are some sort of benevolent, peaceful organization. Never in the history of the United Nations has it stood for anything but killing and violence. They have never kept peace anywhere on this globe. Their sole function is to replace the U.S. military. Since Im doing a few quotes let me give you one more,
5. http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/24/pf/nancial_crisis_outcome/ index.htm 6. http://bit.ly/d2Qv6l 7. http://bit.ly/fKDChj 8. http://nance.yahoo.com/news/Housing-market-13-of-all-UScnnm-62477853.html?x=0 9. See, http://english.themarker.com/warren-buffett-the-u-s-ismoving-toward-plutocracy-1.351236

from Barack Obama, on December 20, 2007: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. Last night on national television he said the exact opposite; that it would be wrong of the U.S. not to militarily intervene in the world when armed insurgents were being resisted with violence by their government. He didnt use those exact words, but you get the point. As our missiles and bombs raining down on Libya? In defense of protesters opposing that nations ruler? Actually, in addition to the desire to deprive China of continued access Libyas oil, Gadhas fate was sealed by two other events; rst his decision to pursue gold standard and reject dollars for oil payments, and, secondly, his refusal to join the U.S. imperialisms Africa Command. The U.S. turns a blind eye to their friends in places like Yemen and Bahrain, who are shooting into crowds of unarmed protesters from rooftops and killing them by the hundreds. But unlike in Yemen and Bahrain, Gadha is not killing unarmed and innocent civilians. They are armed insurgents. Worse, according to AbdelHakim al-Hasidi10, the Libyan rebel leader, the jihadists who fought against U.S. troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddas regime. The Libyan Rebel Commander admits his frontline ghters have Al-Qaeda links.11 Out here on the streets the befuddled masses have magnetic yellow ribbons they attach to their cars saying Support Our Troops. They dont understand that what they are actually doing is supporting the policy thats killing those very troopsan unconstitutional policy that violates international law. In point of fact, the original yellow ribbon was for an ex-convict coming home, not a soldier. As of yesterday 4,778 U.S. military personnel are ofcially acknowledged to have sacriced their lives in Iraq, and some 30,000 have been wounded or maimed. The number of Iraqis slaughtered since the U.S. invaded Iraq is 1,421,933,12 not to mention the millions displaced and those who have ed the country. And for what? Well, for oil of course. But the way things are going in Iraq these days we may not be able to steal that oil after all. As Ive written in these pages before, the winner of the U.S. war against Iraq was Iran. While the winners of the American war against the people of Afghanistan will be the Taliban, yet it will ultimately be Russia wholl benet from that war. While the goofballs who run foreign policy for the U.S. are squandering trillions on war, and in the process alienating the peoples of the world, China is quietly building their infrastructure and adding other forms of wealth to their nation, and in the process they are winning friends around the globe. While our defense budget is over 700 billion, not including hundreds of billions more in special war appropriations, China spends a mere 65 billion for defense. Americas infrastructure is crumbling because of all the money spent on the military. Heres a little economic lesson for you: When you build bridges and the like you are adding to the national wealth. When you spend money on military equipment you might as well be producing garbage. The effect is the same. The wars that are going on now are mere schoolyard bully wars. We are taking their lunch money (oil). Like all schoolyard bullies the U.S. picks on the weak, countries like Granada, Panama, Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan (although those last two weaklings are kicking the bullys ass, as did the people of Vietnam). There will be another world war. World Wars I and II were fought for the same reason; the little sister imperialists wanted their slice of the pie, but the big imperialists had already taken the whole pie. War was the result. Just as in the prelude to WW II when Japan and Germany were making economic inroads into areas controlled by the big imperialists, note the inroads China is mading in Africa, Asia, and South America. The over 3.2 million Vietnamese people the U.S. slaughtered, the 1.4 million Iraqis butchered in that act of aggression, or the entire number of the planets dead due to colonialism-induced starvation, etc., will be nothing compared to the lives lost in this next world war. Right now the U.S. and its friends are gobbling up the global oil supplies. This is a part of what Libya is all aboutpreventing China the resource it needs to continue to grow (not unlike what the U.S. did to Japan prior to the Second World War). The Russians and the Chinese see this aggression for what it is, but for now they are too intimidated to even veto the UN resolution authoring aggression against the nation of Libya. There is only one force that can stop another World War, and that force is global socialist revolution. Not a revolution like you recently saw in Egypt, where a few of the top faces are shufed around and the citizens then get to vote for the candidate that will best represent the interests of their ruling class oppressors. That is a rebellion, not a revolution. A revolution makes a clean sweep of the whole stinking mess, the military, the police, and the courtsall of itand replaces them with institutions run by and in the interests of poor and working people.
10. A former military ofcer in Libya who ed to the U.S. and for the next twenty years lived ve miles from the CIA headquarters at Langley, VA, with no visible means of support. 11. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27768.htm 12. http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

24

PRISON FOCUS

Listen to me prattle on about world war and such when we are only concerned with prison issues here. Of course you dont have to agree with me on any of these broader questions, but I do want you to get another perspective, one different than the one you get from the bourgeois information machine. It is good to be exposed to different points of view, agree with them or not. Talking With You The theme for the next issue of Prison Focus (#38) will be gay and Lesbian oppression on the inside (in short, homophobia). This is a subject that needs to be addressed in a serious way. Please send us your articles and artwork on this subject. The due date for submissions for the next issue is August 1st, 2011. Look at the length of articles in this issue to get an idea of how long they should be (a thousand words is enough). Oh, when you write would you please stop using the term inmate and instead say it like it isprisoner or convict. Anyway, sexism and homophobia are rampant on the inside. Rights and class conscious prisoners should be addressing these issues in a serious way. Now let me say a few words about the recent and sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the issue of overcrowding in Californias prisons. The rst case, Coleman v. Brown, was led in the federal district court back in 1990, some 21 years ago. The companion case, Plata v. Brown, was led in 2001, 10 years ago. While you consider the amount of time it has taken to get this much contested ruling, also ponder the fact that Justice Anthony Kennedy cited lowercourt ndings that preventable suicide and medical neglect needlessly cause the death of at least one inmate a week in Californias prisons. Yeah, you heard me rightone death a week! So we have people dying due in large part to overcrowding and the high court is divided over the question of whether this is cruel and unusual punishment as prohibited by the U.S. Constitution? Not only was the court divided on the issue, the majority gave the prisoncrats two more years of dealing death to prisoners before they had to implement the ruling. Oh, but if the state did not have enough time to release this small number of prisoners, the Supreme Court said they can easily get extensions of time from the court. Notwithstanding the wailings of the CCPOA and their puppet victim rights groupies, nobody is getting out; the 30,000 decrease will come from attrition, transfers to out-of-state facilities, and sending prisoners to be housed in county facilities around the state. Californias prisons are designed to house a population just under 80,000, but the current number of prisoners in that system is about double that number. Psychologists have conducted overcrowding experiments with mice and found that by doing so the mice exhibit all sorts of aberrant behaviors, including cannibalism. When people look at the violence inside Californias prisons they blame the prisonersthats like blaming the mice instead of the psychologists who placed them in that condition. The fault for what is wrong with the states prisons lies directly at the doorstep of the California Department of Corrections (I wont dignify them with phony R for Rehabilitation). Not only are they killing prisoners through their ongoing neglect, according to the governors website they also have a seventy percent recidivism rate. When are they going to be held accountable? If I had a factory that produced a product with a seventy percent failure rate the public would not buy what I produced and my stockholders would revolt. The prison does produce a productangry people full of rage. That rage gets taken out on wives, children, neighbors, or the community. The penal system is expensive and it not only doesnt work, it actually makes things worse! If you have a suit of clothing with a rip in it you add a patch to strengthen the fabric. Crime is a reection of a weakness in the social fabric, but instead of adding a patch we rip the item further with prisons. It would be far cheaper to send the offender to Harvard and make a nuclear physicist of her than to keep that person in prison. Simply put, you dont get good from doing bad to people. You put a dog in a cage and poke a stick in at it day in and day out, week after week, year after year, and surpriseyou have an angry animal on your hands. Prisoners have 20 square feet of unobstructed oor space, most often divided between two or more people. State law requires that a primate be given 100 square feet of unobstructed oor space for every 100 pounds of the animals body weight. Why would we give humans any less? Is it because we are a society of vindictive and punitive people? Those are not positive character traits. It is time for people to start talking about right and wrong, and about true justice. Its also time to start holding correctional ofcials responsible for their actions or, in the case of medical neglect, inactions. This condition cannot continue unchanged. Prisoners should have their right to life and the pursuit of happiness, only their liberty denied them, and then only for as long as necessary. And that freedom denied them must be under conditions suitable for a living human being, given the right to vote, and with access to computers and all other amenities taken for granted by the citizens of this nation. Now about the July 1st SHU hunger strike: I am leaving Seattle and heading to the Bay Area from late June to early July in order to add my one human power to the effort to NUMBER 37

support these struggling prisoners. Heres what you can do to help. As you know, if we are to be successful in this effort we will need to generate all of the strength we can muster. One important aspect of this is for outside support organizations to be in touch with your family members and loved ones on the streets during this period. You need to put them in touch CPF or other support groups around the state. We will do our best to help mobilize all who contact us. Everyone can do something, no matter how small. Even tasks like licking envelopes to the media and legislators are important. At least give your loved ones on the outside an opportunity to say no. The bottom line is this: The struggle is going to be long and difcult; to win we must throw every resource we have into the ght. Any person who holds back resources is a defeatist. By the same token, there will be those who advocate the use of violence in the furtherance of prisoner goals. These people are provocateurs and listening to them will result in certain defeat. Protracted peaceful struggle is required to win. And the object is to win! The Security Housing Units may have at one time or another been a grand experiment in the eyes of prisoncrats, but that experiment has clearly failed, and has done so at great human cost. It is long past time to transform these insanity inducing units into minimum security housing, and to release the victims of this barbaric practice back into the states general population. They can do that now, or they can do it when they are forced to do so. But they will do it. If there is ever going to be a line drawn in the sand by the prisoners of California, now is the time to peacefully draw it. Shutting down the SHUs must be the rst thing on the list issues to draw that line around. If not shutting down the SHUs, then at least implementing the Five Core Demands of the SHU convicts. You have responsibility, you only need exercise it. Take responsibility for your conditions of existence. Vote with your feet!

TORTURE IN PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON SHU

n November of 1986 I was taken off the prisons general population yard of Old Folsom and placed in the newly opened Security Housing Unit (SHU) of New Folsom. The reason I was given was that there was a condential memo in my C-le that connected me to a so-called prison gang. As I later found out under appeal, there was no such memo in my le, but by this time there were already a few other memos from debriefers that would take the place of that non-existent memo. I was told that if I wanted out of SHU I would have to confess to all the illegal activities I had ever been involved in during the course of my life, and I would also have to inform on and incriminate others. This is called debrieng. In January of 1990 I was sent to the SHU at Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP). Is there torture going on here at PBSP-SHU? Most denitely, yes! But its not the kind of torture thats easily spotted or proved to exist. Nobodys nger nails are being pulled out with a pair of pliers; nobodys esh is being burnt off with a blow torch; nobodys on a rack having their bone brokenin fact nobodys even being water-boarded (at least not that Im aware of). Whats going on here at PBSP-SHU is psychological torture. My dictionary denes torture as the act of inicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty. While other prisoners can come to the SHU for a variety of disciplinary offenseseven assault and murderand have a set SHU term (three to ve years in the worst case scenarios), many of us are here solely for administrative reasons (non-disciplinary), and were here indenitelywhich means until we snitch, die, or go insane. The conditions here are well documented in the case of Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F. supp. 1146 (ND Cal 1995), in that we are severely deprived of normal human contact condition in SHU amount to a virtual total deprivation, including, so far as possible, deprivation of human contact. (Id. at p. 1230) Unfortunately the court stopped short of holding that the conditions were unconstitutionalbut then again, it was only considering cases where prisoners had been subjected to these conditions for about three years. Now, here we are, and weve been here over twenty years and nothing has changed for the better. In fact, now we have the short corridor where about two hundred of us have been isolated from even the rest of the SHU. The visiting schedule has been impacted by the creation of this short corridor, making it even more burdensome for any family or friends who may visit, many of whom travel close to a thousand miles to get hereand then get to visit

for only an hour and a half! You see, regardless of any written policy or goals of the institution about fostering family bonds and ties to the community, just the opposite is true. This institution wants to break as many ties and bonds to family and community as it can. Its all part of an effort to apply even greater pressure so that the prisoners who havent broken yet to crack and become debriefers. The latest tactic has been to turn up the stopping of our personal mail. Our families and friends are sent threatening, menacing notices that accuse them of promoting gang activity, circumventing mail, third party correspondence, unauthorized business dealings for sending contraband. Our loved ones are not told that they can appeal these accusations, let alone how to go about appealing. It is not even pointed out to them why or how these conclusions are reached. Our friends and families are made to guess at what it was they said for staff to accuse them of such transgressions. They shouldnt have to guess. We prisoners are then left to appeal these mail stoppages, and thats when were hit from a different angleof trying to get all of our appeals in within the 15 working day time limit, but the rules say we can only le one appeal every seven days. It is a battle just to get your appeal in without having it sent back, and in effect placing you beyond the time limits to appeal. But even if your appeal does make it through, it is sent to the Institutional Gang Investigations Unit, the very unit that stopped the mail in the rst place. And the third level of review merely rubber stamps the denial. This is all designed in a effort to frustrate and disrupt any and all bonds we may have with family and friends on the outside. Its very hard to carry on a conversation through letters when the mail is continuously stopped. Many people on the outside just decide to stop writing rather than endure the frustration. Most people dont know what its like to be isolated for so long, the way that weve been here, and I would say that its like being locked in the trunk of a car with just enough weather stripping removed so that you can breathe, and with enough food and water stuffed in every day so that you can physically survive. Soon you are going to realize what it actually means when it is said that we are social beings. You are going to crave social interaction and human contact. Soon you will be hollering out the cracks of the trunk to see if anyone is out there, anyone you can talk to if even for a brief time. Just like that Pink Floyd song says, Hey you, out there beyond the walls, can you hear me? And yet every time you talk, every time you act like a human being, youre told that thats gang activity and you have to stay another six years in SHU before your next review. A book was found in my cell on December 8, 2008, that my neighbor had let me read. It had his name and number on the book cover. This same neighbor also shared with me some pages from a Readers Digest magazine someone had sent himthe jokes section. These pages also had his name and number written on them. It was concluded by staff that a friendship with a validated gang members [is] proved through this lending and borrowing personal property [and] solidies the association with the gang itself. My next review will not be 2014. Now let me say, there are many of us who can endure this and much moreto the very end, hasta la puratita muerte! But you know what? It doesnt make this existence any less sorry. Its a sorry existence not matter how well you can endure it. I myself can, if I let myself, get lost in my own little world within the trunk of this car, reading my books and drinking my little pulque. I myself can, if I let myself, let myself become comfortably numb. But thats sorry, and so I struggle in whatever way I can. The U.S. is under the jurisdiction of the United Nations Conventions Against Torture (CAT), and under CAT torture includes any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, in intentionally inicted. Using indeterminate total lock down to extract confessions is torture by international standards as is the use of prolonged solitary connement. And here we are, were being tortured!! Were being held in prolonged solitary connement; our captors are trying to break our bonds and ties with family, friends, and community in an effort to extract information from us, in an effort to make us debrief. Theres this giant junk yard over here in Crescent City, full of hundreds of wrecked cars, one stacked on top the other, and there are human beings locked in each of the trunks cant you hear us? Gabriel A. Huerta #C-80766 Pelican Bay State Prison -SHU P.O. Box 7500 (D3-222) Crescent City, CA 95532 25

THESE WALLS
You dont moveYou dont speak You just sit there and mock me You sit there laughing, knowing you hold me hostage Conned to your dungeons perimeter You sit there a witness to my lonely nights My helpless pleading cries set me free! You have come to know me as well as you could And see my everyday activities You know my routine and you come to know how I am You sit by and do nothing to heed my pleas But what can you do? You have also been put here as a prisoner of your own rights You sit there and see my dignity, vitality, valor and courage To not be defeated within this conned space You sit by and watch as I exercise becoming strong, t Day by day You sit and watch as I read books on life, shapes and form Mentally preparing myself for the challenges and the road ahead You sit and watch as I laugh and interact with other human beings You sit and watch day by day, minute by minute, second by second As I become triumphant to your atrocities, your injustices and your Degrading de-humanizing ways You are powerless to stop my path my destiny my future You sit by as the mocker becomes the mocked! Bobby Villado, Kern Valley State Prison

Caged Up
Locked in a cell With concrete walls Old chipped paint And a steel bathroom stall

S.H.U.
I am brought before a committee of men, Insidious irony, subtle words of the pen. They smile in my face, they reach for my soul, Letting misery and solitude take their toll. Announcing their judgment with noses held high The power they aunt will make you sigh. I live in oppression, I live in a cage, With all of my anger building up to a rage. I have been given an indeterminate SHU. You ask what that means?! You mean this is new?! Averaging twenty-three hours a day in a cell, A windowless closet, a solitary hell. Sensory deprivation, a prison within a prison. Creative insanity or inspiring vision? Living my life like a chaotic scream, Someone please wake me from this horrible dream. Not wanting to give in, not wanting to die, If I were not a man, I would surely cry. I shall not feel the suns warming ray, For I will be in Pelican Bay. Robert Perrine (Sykes) High Desert State Prison

POETRY

A metal bed frame Colored green and bright Scratched up oors And a glowing white light Recycled air Flowing through the vent The smell of depression A sullen scent Constant yelling And prying eyes Surrounded by people Full of anger and lies Cuffed on the move And shackled down Whenever you walk Theres guards all around Guns always loaded Sights always drawn One act of aggression And your life could be gone Ten-minute showers And back to the cell Knife ghts and st ghts A never-ending hell Alone with our thoughts As the years go by Life without freedom Caged up til we die By Sean Bromley

Completely Killing Me
Terror inside is what I feel constantly, Like the force of a sword diving into my heart. Enough pain mentally to break the silence of a monk. Waking up to the shadows of darkness, Just the pressure of the bars conning me in the process. My thoughts being strangled searching for breath. Whats hope if your labeled as a worthless, Human wreck stranded left for death. These walls kill the most determined, Souls to rebel whats real; is those who rebel. Only to be freed from cruel and unusual neglect. Must I say we as a mass to the system, Are dollar symbols of advancement. As I write this illustration of mine, Releasing frustrations plus keeping my sanity. I admit this prison living is completely killing me, But my choices as a soldier is to strive. No matter how hard I must stay alive mentally, By defeating the killing completely from killing me. By Fedro Black

The Secret Amendment

As the smoke begins to clear and dissipates into the air, The lives of millions of people will be destroyed beyond repair. Many of them will be victimized, while others are brutally slain. Because the unseen hand has elected to bring about change. These changes wont be on the ballot- the meanings will be discreet, The essence of life as we know it today, will virtually be obsolete. The option to choose will be no morein fact, all rights will be void; And freedom will have no meaning at all, once the constitutions destroyed. A change of such magnitude spells disaster, no matter how well its disguised. And death shall fall abundantly upon those who fail to comply. Many are blind but others deny the seriousness of the situation. But beyond the horizon, what awaits us all, is a path of total subjugation. The new world order is comprised of ideas of global power and control; The elite will preside over governing laws, while society does as its told. The indigenous people of early America were victims of a new world order; The European stumbled upon the new world and immediately thought to take over. And so began their reign of terror of murder, rape, and pillage; And innocent blood spilled over the land, throughout every tribe and village. Carnage was carried out incessantly; men, women, and children were slain They were murdered in hordes, by guns and by swords, til only two million remained. They had to obey and accept many changes, they couldnt do as they chose. And to stay alive, they had to comply with the new world order which arose. With history being recorded for us, the past is right in our reach And from the direction things are going, its repeating itself as we speak. You must pay very close attention to the gradual change occurring; Big Brother is practically deciding out fate, which is really rather disturbing. But whats going on is master deception disguised as democracy, U.S. voting laws whichll hinder us all a plan by the powers that be. They play on our fears and bring us to tears with continuous stories of tragedy, But violence and crime plagued us throughout time, And history reveals great savagery. Most of the time(s) these heinous acts were carried out for only one purpose. To exercise power, keep people afraid, so things ran smooth on the surface. Living under complete control is basically a life under dictatorship, But we allegedly live in a democratic society, so why are we confronted by this? We face this ordeal because Big Brother feels, he knows whats best for us all, But if we refuse to agree with their views, theyll facilitate martial law, A law designed for the coming of times, with meticulous care and decision; Where your property, home, or anything you own, can be seized without your permission. So, they perpetuate hate and try to instigate racial division amongst different groups. To cause an uproar and eventually a race-war, whichll justify their clandestine coup. When we look at the present and where things are headed, Theyre going according to plan; Where were all under siege of a new world order, as we witnessed in The Demolition Man. It looked like a show of pure entertainment, but it was much more extreme. The subliminal message of a new world order was played out upon the silver screen. And like many things that appeared in the movie, were practically at that stage; Where micro-chips are placed underneath the skin, and can single you out anyplace. Where hidden cameras are everywhere recording our every move; Some even issue trafc citations while others appear on the news. With all these revelations before us, the next thing to be on the list; Is when virtual reality sex is the norm and conventional sex is amiss. And once these changes are initiated through enactment by the elite. The new world order is eminent and the changes will be concrete. The people who rebel will die or face jail. And their sentence will not be suspended; Because slavery is legal in the penal institution, afrmed by the 13th Amendment. By Desh Carter 26

Isolation The Prison Game

Drab grey walls, Cold steel cage, Left 24 hours, To build up rage. Voices scream, When souls are lost, Concrete walls, Cold like frost. Trapped and alone, Blind to the outside, Nowhere to run, Nowhere to hide. Vindictive police, Chase cheap thrills, Towers await, Easy kills. Restricted space, Drives you insane, Another victim, Of the prison game. Steven James, P.B.S.P. Isolation-or should I say ice-o-lation Has left me feelin cold On lifes Highway Beyond the shoulder of the Road Years on end Stacked like cord of wood Like frozen wood Whishing spring would grip the good And shake me from This tarnished spot To fairer weather And somewhat softer cut. By Clayton Gene McCormack

The sounds of prison

Clliiiiddddrrrriiicckkk! Is the sound of the handcuffs that captured us Cllaaangggg! Is the sound of the steel-barred doors. That close by remote control and seal our fate. Blunk-blunk-blunk is the sound of the cage door opening Giving us temporary leave to complete the purpose Of our enslavement. Click-click/click-click/click-click NEEXXTTT! Screams the voice of the drone Who captures your impression into an Ever-expanding data base. Get upSit down! Turn around! Bend over! Put your hands on your head! Lift your feet! Open your mouth! Shut the hell up! Lift your arm! Put your hands down slowly! Lift this bale! Clean this asbestos! Pull that can over here! Lights on! Go to sleep! Everybody up! Eat! Stop eating! Lights out!Get over here, now! Face the wall! Head down! Hands behind your back! Do you understand me boy!!! Because If you so much as breathe Youre dead! Damon C. Scott 03R5603 Coxsackie, NY PRISON FOCUS

RIDGEWAY ON AMERICAS SOLITARY CONFINEMENT NIGHTMARE

He always wanted to be an insider. But it never worked out. His DNA wouldnt allow it. He was always an outsider. Always taking the side of the less powerful.

system. As a reporter at The New Republic in the 1960s, he exposed General Motors for spying on his friend Ralph Nader. He then exposed corporate connections to Americas university in his classic book The Closed Corporation: American Universities in Crisis (Ballantine Books, 1970) And now, he says he working to expose President Obamas lie that America doesnt torture. Of course we torture, Ridgeway says. Right here in America. In our own prisons. An estimated 80,000 Americans are in solitary connement. Some have been in for decades. Some are brutally beaten and restrained, even killed. Others succumb to madness and kill themselves. But to most people, they remain invisible. James Ridgeway started a web site called solitarywatch. com to nd out more. And to bring light to what he considers a disgrace to the nation. Obama says we dont torture, Ridgeway told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. Let me tell you something. Thats absolute bullshit. Were torturing right in the Presidents backyard all over the place. This is a long haul, Ridgeway said. Its an uphill battle to draw attention to a situation where there are many cases that amount to torture. These little prisoners rights groups have to have support. The larger human rights groups and criminal justice reform groups have to take on the issue of solitary connement more directly. And there has to be more publicity about what is going on. Ridgeway is working with David Bruck, a death penalty lawyer and a professor at Washington & Lee Law School in Lexington, Virginia. Together they are trying to set up a database that will provide some of the basic facts on solitary connement. Like how many prisoners are in solitary. Like how do prison ofcials decide who gets put in the hole. It could be done at the whim of a warden or even a prison guard, Ridgeway said. After the person is convicted and sentenced, he kind of disappears. He goes into this prison. And the warden, depending on reports of the guards, can put the prisoner in one kind of solitary or another. He can keep the prisoner there for as long as the warden deems necessary. Horror stories abound. The Angola 3 three African Americans in the infamous Angola state prison in Louisiana have been in solitary for 37 years. These were three men charged with the killing of a prison guard in the early 1970s. They were convicted. But there were some open questions. The convictions are kind of dubious. They contend that they were targeted because they were Black Panthers, organizing against prison conditions. The most incredible thing was that these three guys they have been locked in solitary connement for 37 years. Has Ridgeway interviewed them? I wanted to go down and visit and talk with them and talk with the warden. But I had written one article which quoted the wardens deposition. And it made the warden look questionable. The warden Burl Cain is highly regarded by the press in the United States for running an open prison that anyone can go in and look around. Except for Ridgeway. The prison banned him. I cant visit the prison. I cant talk to the prisoners. And I cant talk with Burl Cain. After reading these depositions about what happened to these guys in Angola and how they had put in solitary, I began reading about other cases where people were in solitary. Attorneys told me that if I thought the Angola 3 was a bad situation, there were many, many other cases where people were in for 15 years or 20 years in solitary. And this was very prevalent. And it was a kind of torture. Thats when I started Solitary Watch, together with Jean Casella, who is a writer and editor. Our partner in the project is David Bruck, who runs the death penalty clinic at Washington & Lee University Law School. They recognize that this is a major issue in U.S. criminal justice. Ridgeway also came across the case of two African American sisters in Mississippi Gladys and Jamie Scott who were convicted of a $12 robbery. Neither of them had a previous record. And there is evidence of coerced confessions. These two women were in rural Mississippi. They were arrested and charged with a $12 armed robbery. The circumstances were all questionable. One witness signed a statement that was written for him without reading it. They were teenaged boys. And they were allegedly threatened by the sheriff that they would be sent to a male prison where they would become bitches they would be raped unless NUMBER 37

s a student at Princeton in the 1950s, James Ridgeway worked on the student newspaper to expose the elitism and racism at the universitys eating club

they turned on the two women. They dreaded that. So, they would sign anything to get out of that. So, these two women were charged and convicted based on this testimony. No one was hurt in this robbery. There was a gun involved. But it was always a question as to who was holding the gun and who was doing what with the gun. But nobody was hurt. The judge sentenced them to two consecutive life sentences each. Jamie Scott has described through a paralegal an ugly situation in the prison where inmates have died of second rate medical care, of sewage seeping on the oors, of raining inside when it rains outside, of the resulting mold build up, and of spiders. Those conditions arent unusual, especially in solitary connement, Ridgeway says. There are people who say that solitary is becoming a mental institution. And people who arent mentally ill when they go into solitary go mad inside. They start hollering and screamingand then, of course, they just keep them in solitary indenitely. They go mad in solitary. To me, thats the proof that its a form of torture. Ridgeway has reported on the case of an inmate at the Red Onion state prison in Wise County, Virginia. There is a case in Virginia of a guy who was spared the death penalty. Instead, he was sent to solitary for life. He has begged the judge to put him to death. He said he cant stand it anymore. His name is Joseph Armstrong. Hes at Red Onion State prison in Virginiaone of the worst in Virginia. Ridgeway is not advocating for the elimination of solitary. But he does want to severely restrict it. There may be cases where for safety reasons and other reasons, people need to be by themselves for a period of time, Ridgeway says. But not 37 years. And not 20 years. Not for 15 years. Not for a year. And not at all, under the kind of arbitrary, corrupt system we have now. Maybe for a short period of observation, but nothing more. There was one recent case where a woman was thrown into solitary for reporting that she was raped by a guard. Another where a dozen Rastafarians have been in solitary for 10 years because they refuse to cut their dreadlocks. In a lot of states, the response to a prisoner being suicidal is to place him in solitary which drives sane people to suicide. As one guy whos a prisoner in Tamms in Illinois said, Lock yourself in the bathroom for ten years, and see if it makes you go crazy. In one jail in Louisiana, they have been putting suicidal prisoners in three by three foot cages, and leaving them there sometimes for weeks. These things are going on all the time. We have a blog on Solitary Watch and we have no shortage of things to post on ittheres a new story just about every day, one more outrageous than the next. There are thousands prisoners suffering from mental illness who are put in solitary because they arent treated and cant be controlled. Solitary connement cells have become the new asylums. Children in adult prisons end up in solitary for their own protection. The system is totally out of control. 24 Corporate Crime Reporter 25, August 5, 2010

SEEKING PLAINTIFFS FOR LAWSUIT CHALLENGING LONG-TERM SHU CONFINEMENT

By Edward Dumbrique, P-27237, Pelican Bay SHU he purpose of this notice is to reach out to particular inmates in order to bring them together for a class action lawsuit challenging CDCRs use of long-term SHU connement (LTSC). The goal is to improve SHU conditions and limit the amount of time inmates can be conned in SHU. In order to do this we need to prove to the court that LTSC is harmful to inmates physical and mental health because it (1) causes or places inmates at a signicant risk of developing serious psychological harm and mental anguish, and (2) exposes SHU inmates, especially older ones, to signicant and prolonged stress and offers insufcient opportunities for exercise which in combination cause or exacerbate serious medical problems, e.g. heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension. There are many studies nding that a high stress level for a prolonged period of time is harmful to human health and we intend to take advantage of this scientic evidence just as the Angola 3 did in Wilkerson v. Stalder, 639 F.Supp.2d 654 (M.D. La. 2007). This argument is best suited for older inmates with serious medical problems and 10 to 20 years in SHU. To prove that LTSC is harmful to inmates mental health we are seeking inmates-plaintiffs who are being treated for mental health problems they allege were caused or made worse by their time in SHU. We intend to have you examined by a psychologist who will hopefully conclude that your mental illness was caused or exacerbated by your time in SHU. We will introduce the medical/scientic studies to corroborate this conclusion. To prove that LTSC is harmful to inmates physical health we are seeking older inmates-plaintiffs have serious medical problems and have been in SHU for long periods of time. We intend to have you examined by a doctor who will hopefully conclude that your condition is being exacerbated by years in the high-stress environment of the SHU with insufcient opportunities for exercise. We would also introduce the medical/scientic studies to corroborate this conclusion. If your circumstances are identical to those described above and you are interested in participating in this case, please contact CPF at the address below. You should explain in as much detail as possible the facts of your case including, but not limited to: (1) Were you transferred out of Pelican Bay SHU for mental health reasons? (2) What SHU were you in and for how long? (3) When were you diagnosed with your medical or mental health problems and are you still being treated for them? (4) Did these medical or mental health problems exist prior to your connement in SHU? Contact info:

AMERICAN CORRECTIONS
By Mumia Abu-Jamal t the western Pennsylvania state prison in Woods Run, Pittsburgh, prisoners and guards alike made the phenomenon of imprisonment more hellish than usual. Thats because, according to at least one broadcast report, men at the medium to minimum security lock-up, particularly those convicted of sexual assaults against children, were raped, by other prisoners - and by several guards - with ranking staff turning a blind eye. While the radio report was unconrmed, the PA Dept. of Corrections (DOC) did the unprecedented. They red the prisons warden, two deputy superintendents, and even the major theresomething virtually unheard of in this business. Eight prison guards have been suspended without pay earlier this year (although seven of them have not been publicly identied.) An Allegheny County grand jury is presently investigating the sexual assault charges. No state government ofcial has commented publicly on the claims, but certainly the ring of the prisons highest ranking staff suggests that something is rotten in Denmark. What makes these incidents particularly poignant is the state prison in Pittsburgh, which was closed back in 2005 because of security and budgetary concerns, isnt the maximum security prison it once was. It reopened in 2007 as a treatment center, a kind of medical unit for men suffering from addictions, age related physical ailments, or serious psychological issues. Thats why it was re-classied as a medium-minimum security facility. That these men, who were promised medical treatment, were treated so basely by other prisoners - and reportedly by guards as well- gives us some sense of precisely how poisonous American corrections has become. Is there any wonder that American soldiers, many who worked as prison guards stateside, behaved so badly in Iraq and abroad?

Marilyn McMahon Attorney at Law (SBN 270059) California Prison Focus PO Box 5187 Berkeley, CA 94705 [Note from Marilyn McMahon: Condential legal mail can be sent to this address. I will not share your health information without your permission with anyone except my assistants andwithout identifying youwith Mr. Dumbrique for preparation of the lawsuit.] PBSP-Report .................................Continued from page 15 The answer: lack of educational programming! He noted that even though some prisoners are willing and can pay for their own online courses, the prison has cancelled such programs because they dont want to pay for a test monitor. CPF notes that a department which calls itself Corrections and Rehabilitation is clearly not supporting rehabilitative efforts even initiated by the prisoners themselves. Law Library: Access continues to be insufcient and constitutes nothing less than denial of legal rights. Only prisoners with a legal case pending in 30 days can ask for access, but visits are limited to two prisoners at a time for four pods. The limit of 30 pages is also insufcient to carry out serious legal research. [The recent Supreme Court decision declaring Californias overcrowded conditions to be unconstitutional alone was 91 pages]. In addition, two prisoners noted that legal materials were conscated from their cell and not returned including CPFs self-help manual on challenging a gang validation. Worst of the worst?: In nearly every mass media characterization of SHUs, the claim is made that prisons such as Pelican Bay, especially SHU, house the worst of the worstviolent prisoners who are too dangerous to allow on general population yards. Yet many of the prisoners we spoke with either had very few 115s or none at all. One prisoners last 115 was in 1987. One had two 115s in 10 years which means, he noted, that I let the guards beat me up for a while and then they wrote me up. 27

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS ON DISABLED CITIZENS,CHILDREN, AND PRISONERS

Dr LL Stanley, resident physician at San Quentin prison, implanted testicles from livestock into convicts
Mail Online, Mar 27 2011 .S. government doctors once experimented on disabled American citizens and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic u virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into people at a New York hospital. Much of this history is 40 to 80 years old, but it was the backdrop for a meeting recently held in Washington by a presidential bioethics commission. The meeting was triggered by the governments apology last year for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago. U.S. ofcials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in America - studies that often involved making healthy people sick. A review by the Associated Press of medical journal reports and decades-old press clippings found more than 40 such studies. Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvanias Center for Bioethics, said: When you give somebody a disease - even by the standards of their time - you really cross the key ethical norm of the profession. Most of the recently revealed studies, from the 1940s to the 1960s, apparently were never covered by the U.S. news media. Prisoners have long been victimized for the sake of science. In 1915, the U.S. governments Dr Joseph Goldberger recruited Mississippi inmates to go on special rations to prove his theory that the painful illness pellagra was caused by a dietary deciency. But studies using prisoners were uncommon in the rst few decades of the 20th century, and were usually performed by researchers considered eccentric even by the standards of the day. One was Dr LL Stanley, resident physician at San Quentin prison in California, who around 1920 attempted to treat older, devitalized men by implanting in them testicles from livestock and from recently executed convicts. PARTIAL LIST OF EXPERIMENTS ON PRISONERS 1) A federally funded study begun in 1942 injected experimental u vaccine in male patients at a state insane asylum in Ypsilanti, Michigan, then exposed them to u several mont later. Some of the men werent able to describe their symptoms, raising serious questions about how well they understood what was being done to them. 2) In federally funded studies in the 1940s, noted researcher Dr W Paul Havens Jnr exposed men to hepatitis in a series of experiments, including one using patients from mental institutions in Middletown and Norwich, Connecticut. 3) Researchers in the mid-1940s studied the transmission of a deadly stomach bug by having young men swallow unltered fecal matter. The study was conducted at the New York State Vocational Institution, a reformatory prison in West Coxsackie. The point was to see how well the disease spread through ingestion. The study doesnt explain if the men were rewarded for this awful task. 4) A University of Minnesota study in the late 1940s injected 11 public service employee volunteers with malaria, then starved them for ve days. Some were also subjected to hard labor. Then they were treated for malarial fevers with quinine sulfate. 5) For a study in 1957, when the Asian u pandemic was spreading, federal researchers sprayed the virus in the noses of 23 inmates at Patuxent prison in Jessup, Md., to compare their reactions to those of 32 virus-exposed inmates who had been given a new vaccine. 6) Government researchers in the 1950s tried to infect about two dozen volunteering prison inmates with gonorrhea using two different methods in an experiment at a federal prison in Atlanta. But the researchers noted their methods werent comparable to how men normally got infected - by having sex with an infected partner. Too late for the men they had already infected. Around the time of World War II, prisoners were enlisted to help the war effort by taking part in studies that could help the troops. One was a series of malaria studies at Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois was designed to test antimalarial drugs that could help soldiers ghting in the Pacic. It was at about this time that prosecution of Nazi doctors in 1947 led to the Nuremberg Code, a set of international rules to protect human test subjects. Many U.S. doctors essentially ignored them, arguing that they applied to Nazi atrocities not to American medicine. The late 1940s and 1950s saw huge growth in the U.S. pharmaceutical and health care industries, accompanied by a boom in prisoner experiments funded by both the government and corporations. By the 1960s, at least half the states allowed prisoners to be used as medical guinea pigs. But two studies in the 1960s proved to be turning points in the publics attitude toward the way test subjects were treated. The rst came to light in 1963. Researchers injected cancer cells into 19 old and debilitated patients at a hospital in the New York borough of Brooklynto see if their bodies would reject them. The hospital director said the patients

were not told they were being injected with cancer cells because there was no needthe cells were deemed harmless. But the experiment upset a lawyer named William Hyman, who sat on the hospitals board of directors. The state investigated, and the hospital ultimately said any such experiments would require the patients written consent. At nearby Staten Island, from 1963 to 1966, a controversial medical study was conducted at the Willowbrook State School for children with mental retardation. The children were intentionally given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured with gamma globulin. Those two studies, along with the Tuskegee experiment revealed in 1972, proved to be a unholy trinity that sparked extensive and critical media coverage and public disgust, said Susan Reverby, the Wellesley College historian who rst discovered records of the syphilis study in Guatemala. By the early 1970s, even experiments involving prisoners were considered scandalous. In widely covered congressional hearings in 1973, pharmaceutical industry ofcials acknowledged they were using prisoners for testing because they were cheaper than chimpanzees. When the supply of readily available prisoners and mental patients dried up, researchers looked to other countries. It made sense. Clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules. And it was easy to nd patients who were taking no medication, a factor that can complicate tests of other drugs. Despite modern-day outrage, it has not stopped Tuskegeestyle experiments continuing. American-funded doctors in Uganda failed to give the Aids drug AZT to HIV-infected pregnant women, even though it would have protected their newborns. U.S. health ofcials argued the study would answer questions about AZTs use in the developing world. The other study, by Pzer, gave an antibiotic named Trovan to children with meningitis in Nigeria, although there were doubts about its effectiveness for that disease. Critics blamed the experiment for the deaths of 11 children and the disabling scores of others. Pzer settled a lawsuit with Nigerian ofcials for $75 million but admitted no wrongdoing. The issue of American-led foreign studies was still being debated when, last October, the Guatemala study came to light. In the 1946-48 study, American scientists infected prisoners and patients in a mental hospital in Guatemala with syphilis, apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease. The study came up with no useful information and was hidden for decades.

the-clock solitary connement, with brief excursions for showers and solitary exercise in a dog pen. Woodfox is now in his mid-60s, and Wallace is nearing 70. Both depend upon mail to relieve their isolation; they can be reached at the following addresses: Herman Wallace #76759 Elayn Hunt Corr. Center PO Box 174 (CCRD #11) St Gabriel, LA 70776 Albert Woodfox #72148 Wade Corr. Center, N1A 670 Bell Hill Rd. Homer, LA 71040

REAL EYES REALIZE THE TRUTH FROM REAL LIES

ANGOLA 3 MARK 39 YEARS IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella erman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have entered their 40th year in solitary connement in the Louisiana prison system. A series of events in New Orleans last month marked the 39th anniversary of their placement in solitary, following the murder of Angola prison guard Brent Millera murder for which Wallace and Woodfox were later convicted on highly dubious evidence. The third member of the Angola 3, Robert King, was convicted of a separate prison murder, and released after 29 years in solitary when his conviction was overturned. King was among the 39 people who paid homage to Wallace and Woodfoxs four-decade ordeal by spending one hour inside a 6 x 9-foot replica cell, constructed by artist Jackie Sumell. The anniversary events, which took place at the headquarters of the organization Resurrection After Exoneration in New Orleans. Other events included the screening of the lm In the Land of the Free, in which Brent Millers widow, Teenie Vernet, expresses her belief that her husbands killers have not yet been caught. Of Wallace and Woodfox she says: If they did not do itand I believe they didntthey have been living a nightmare. The three men believe they were originally targeted because they were Black Panthers, organizing against conditions at Angola, and Wallace and Woodfox believe they remain in solitary for the same reason. In a 2008 deposition, Angola Warden Burl Cain said Woodfox wants to demonstrate. He wants to organize. He wants to be deantHe is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all kind of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the blacks chasing after them. Wallace and Woodfox were recently separated from the prison that made them famousand from one anotherand moved separately to other maximum security prisons. Wallace is now in the Hunt Correctional Center, down the river in St. Gabriel, while Woodfox is in the Wade Correctional Center in Homer, in the far northwest reaches of the state. Both remain in Closed Cell Restricted housing, or round-

ollege students, communities, and convicts in solidarity on addressing the social, the political, and the scal dilemmas of the day would truly make more sense than the nonsense going forth through the media today. Restoring Americas greatness will surely require great courage. Real eyes, Realize, Real lies is a concise articulation of The Problem, The Solution and The Proposal. Firstly the problem; A looming National debt of 14 trillion, a 2011 decit of 1.65 trillion and a 2012 election. Thanks to this Prison Focus circulation now nding its way into community gatherings, churches, and onto college campuses and political science curriculums, more and more Americans can access them and decipher with Real Eyes what exactly we are being told as opposed to what we see. According to our trusted and beautiful news anchors and talk show sweethearts (whom, to be fair, are mostly reading teleprompters in true Ron Burgandy fashion), they say the Republicans and the Tea-Party are just being scally responsible and that the latter is really just a grass roots; non-partisan movement of good American people from all over. It has become strangely important that everyone share this view so Republican strategist Bill Geddie (producer for The View) is only following the other networks lead. However, lest we forget In 2008, the Global Meltdown, which rocked our economy to its core, had us all focusing on regulating (to death) and reforming Wall Street. Also a great deal of anger (aprox. 48% of voters) were devastated at the defeat of the McCain-Palin presidency so that the marriage of Wall Street with this rage gave birth to this so-called scally-responsible Tea Party who just by coincidence want to cut the democrat-leaning and non-republican programs such as Education/Pell Grants, Health care, Union bargaining rights, Public Radio, Planned Parenthood, Immigration, etc Meanwhile, Wall Street and the rich are back in business and the media, which they own, wont say a word. So a portion of the solution is right here! Over the past 40 years. The prison population has quadrupled from 500,000 to approximately 2.3 million. The U.S.A. with a mere 5% of the World population now hold 25% of its prison population, costing over 70 billion yearly and 50 billion at the state level. Studies have shown that massive imprisonments destabilizes the communities. In 2011 research said in Los Angeles 67% of low-performing schools are located in areas with the highest incarceration rates and vice versa for high performing schools in low incarceration areas. The states general funds has opted to go toward building more prisons and propagating fear rather than investing in education or needed social programs. Realize that Education and Incarceration have been pitted against one another for funds and as we win, our family, loved one and the community is losing. Realize that the gang on gang violence and homicides were just misguided youth just like those in our nations armed forces. They arent the deplorable monsters who rape and kill women and children they arent the molesters, dope ends and alcoholics youd believe they are. Finally The Proposal. Even as the lovely couple on Oprah, the white woman married to the incarcerated black man in New Folsom, I ask that Prison Focus allows all of us as sober, clean, morally upright convicts to take a knee and ask the hand of colleges and the communities to metaphorically marry us the way that Wall Street and the enraged McCain-Palin voters got married. There was just 276 million spent on a Federal prison in New Hampshire and its empty and derelict on the 300 jobs it was supposed to offer and the 40 million expected to the local economy there in that town while costing 4 million just to sit there. Perhaps this could be a college of sorts and the lifers being wholly warehoused in California for gang related violence, obviously no longer actively bangin could get educated and run all sorts of industries at those ridiculous 3rd world wages and be glad about it because ultimately we are merely just decent people with a turbulent past to contend with. Everyone knows a gang member or two and everyone knows we arent the menaces to society that were made out to be, were old men now You were being frightened by REAL LIES!!! Donnie Phillips, E-3720b (D-10 #102) P.O. Box 7500 Crescent City, CA 95532 PRISON FOCUS

28

Letters ..............................................Continued from page 2 turbate in front of women; cuss out the staff, etc. It is my guess that this is to just feel alivea sense of being human even if it means trouble for them. Theres a sense of hopelessness inside the SHU here. It seems that even the walls scream when its quiet. Yet some men continue to push forward and stay strong in hopes that better days are ahead - being thankful for organizations like Prison Focus and people who care. Carlos Johnson, Corcoran

Heads UP
Dear CPF, RE: Letter by inmate D.C., No. 36. Firm embrace to all those souljahs that continue to remain faithful to the forgotten class although 80 percent of us dont give a damn. Now, let me touch on brother D.C. letter to you and his tirade about being validated because of your highly appreciated newsletter. In some aspects of his concerns, hes onpoint. These aspects I speak of are taking his butt home and becoming productive. Ive been incarcerated since I was 16being 22 years into my sentence and ve years validated. D.C. mentioned my brother, VooDoo, writing to you about a similar situation, but D.C. didnt take heed into VooDoos wording. He was not complaining. He was just giving the masses a heads up on what the oppressors are doing. J. Burton aka SykoJay, CSP Corcoran

seen someone go to the cops for protection without snitching on another prisoner. Encouraging people to take that route is counterproductive to building solidarity among prisoners which is something I assume CPF is trying to do. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in the mainline before we can build a strong prisoners movement. The odds seem to be stacked against us (at the moment) and the challenges are so great that most prisoners cant imagine anything changing. But struggle isnt called struggle because its easy. Its hard work. It requires a great deal of commitment and sacrice. PCing up is the antithesis to the courageous action that will be needed. Most activists on the streets seem to want to be too orderly as they try to bring about change. As a result, the most fascist elements of society are gaining momentum. I believe that sooner or later the need for prisoners to stand together will be so great that well have no choice but to set aside our differences. Nothing every stays the same, and if you cant see that, then youre not thinking outside the box. Cacalotl Cordova, Corcoran [Ed. Note: I agree with everything you say. Ive apologized in the past for printing items from SNY yards and yet Ive gone ahead and done it again. Why? Well, for two reasons: First, I believe that the soft yards were largely created due to bad self-governance by mainline prisoners. The hard yards take no responsibility for this mess; they place the onus of blame solely on weak individuals, and fail to see the role their behavior has had in creating the PC yards. The second reason I stoop to occasionally printing their stuff is that, now that soft yards make up such a huge portion of Californias prison population, I feel the solution to the greater problem is going to require the effort of all the yardssoft and hard. With that said, I will not print any more articles justifying PCing up. It was a mistake for me to do so in the article you discuss. However, if a soft yard prisoner has something to say that will actually move the struggle forward Ill print it. I correspond with a solid, class conscious convict whos on a soft yard for medical reasons, Hep-C and AIDS, and hes never ratted or checked in. There are exceptions to the rule. In the ten years Ive been working on this newspaper I think Ive knowingly printed SNY pieces something like three times. Also, I live in Seattle and dont really know which of the states prison are SNY yards, and can only guess by the content of the letters they send us.]

dation combined with the new laws and regulations effectively eliminates any accountability by the CDCR. All the while supercial, worn-out, obsolete reasoning permeates our ranks, causing dissention and divisionthe perfect recipe for our own subjugation. Lets face reality; as a whole we are all going to pay the piper for our shortsightedness if we fail to put the common good ahead of antiquated views and our bloated egos. In Georgia the prisoners demonstrated the power of unity. Black, white, brown, and yellow are just colors. They do not dene our character or integrity; nor do they enhance or reduce them. What is the point of entertaining ruminations of the natural selection of a species (jungle law); or another persons skin color; or any other genetic variance when our ship is sinking fast. Sufce it to say we are all governed by the exact same atomic and sub-atomic principles found in the universe. Our deviation from this universal law of harmony is not caused by primal instinct but by the walls we erect in our individual minds. And those walls are areas as solid and real as the ones that surround us in our cells and keep us imprisoned. Let us reach out to each other and pull one another up from the pit of ignorance and superciality. Lastly, I think Prison Focus is one of the last few forums for discourse left, and an invaluable source of information for us dungeonites, so let us all chip in to keep this good thing going and progressing. Elvin Cabrera, Tehachapi SHU

The Green Wall

Dear CPF: My name is Joel Brown. I am currently at KVSP (recently transferred from CSATF) where, I believe, Ive uncovered more evidence that the Green Wall3 has been illegally manufacturing 1030s and gang validations. While I was in ASU at CSATF awaiting transfer, I helped a couple of people with afdavits on false gang validations. It is my hope that some of what I am about to relate will catch the attention of other legal beagles doing indeterminate SHU time. It is my belief that the Green Wall illegally manufactures 1030s, and/or evidence to perpetually keep indeterminate SHU inmates locked up. When I arrived at CSATF the white inmates were locked down due to purported racial violence with the blacks and the Green Wall kept illegally appointing IAC reps (illegal no regulatory elections) then validating them claiming they were furthering racial violence. So, I wrote a 602 because I believed this claim was unfounded. The Green Wall also purported that numerous staff assaults by blacks were happening across the state. Said 602 struck a nerve and the Green Wall doubled its efforts in attempting to kill me by instigating/manipulating an incident by use of brutal force. In any event, we nally came off lockdown and the Green Wall was harassing all the races because of my 602s (they purposely lost a 602) submitted on April 4, 2010, which was to end all indeterminate SHU terms and on August 30, 2010, the Green Wall claims several white inmates assaulted staff so one Lt. Goss (believed Green Wall) comes to the program holding cages and tells me and two other inmates something to the effect of, you know, I hate AIS politics, all gangs really and AB politics run C yard. So if you gentlemen feel your lives are in danger because you didnt participate in the staff assault, you let me know. Well thank you, Lt. Goss for telling us what the purported AB politics supposedly are. Ive been in CDC (now CDCR) for 24 years and witnessed at least a few purported staff assaults where others did not participate and never saw or heard of anyones life being in danger over it. The Green Wall was hoping that one, or all of us, would get scared and lockup (turn SNY) and repeat his lie illegally baiting/seeding us with purported AB politics by using information Lt. Goss gave us, thus, illegally manufacturing 1030 information in an attempt to instigate white-on-white violence in retaliation over the alleged staff assault of 8/30/10 (a Green Wall manufactured incident). Its funny because the Green Wall also exposed the illegal gang validation practice by validating at least two inmates that werent even involved in the purported staff assault (I say purported because I can prove that the Green Wall entrapped and/or illegally manufactured the alleged staff assault). Those validations using 1030s were never given to the inmates in legal form thus indicating that these were manufactured as were the subsequent gang validations on the spot and in retaliation for the 8/30/10 Green Wall manufactured incident. When the attempt of Green Wall to create white-on-white violence failed, they got extremely angry at me. I continued to write the press about these situations and nally received some good press from the Sacramento Bee and Charles Piller. On 9/23/10, I wrote to Mr. Piller and related to him that it was my belief that the Green Wall issued a blatant death threat against me on legal mail over an article that I wrote on 8/1/10 regarding illegally manufactured 1030s and false gang validations, which I didnt know had even been published. As a result of this article, on 9/24/10, the Green Wall illegally (illegally because it takes a Captains level decision
3. The green in Green Wall represents the color of the guards uniforms, and the wall represents the code or wall of silence the guards impose on each other.

Criticism of CPF
Dear CPF, I have something impoortant to say. I do not avoid reading articles with views that dont conform to my own even when theyre written by some PC who makes ridiculous claims of now PCs have dared to stand on their own even though theyve practically ran to the cops for protection. If you need to ask the C.O.s for protection, go ahead. Many people on the streets call the cops for help when they feel they have no other option. People have to seek protection from violent predators that victimize people in their own communities. Theyll get that protection anywhere they can nd it. Thats understandable. If you feel you cant defend yourself, go right on ahead. But dont take that route in prison and then act as if youve taken some admirable and courageous action that should be emulated. Theres a lot that needs to change in the mainline yards and some of the greatest obstacles we need to overcome are established norms setup by prisoners themselves. Thats no secret. Divisions help our enemies. Anyone with common sense can reach that conclusion. However, PC yards also serve those who want to keep us divided. They provide a safety valve through which dissent against the status quo can be funneled. You wont change a mainline yard by asking the cops to remove you from it, and you sure as hell wont change it by railing against mainline prisoners after youve PCed up and diminished any inuence you might have once had. The underlying animosity felt toward PCs is not because theyve broken free of the ideals and views of the majority of inmates in the mainline population, thats self-deceptive reasoning of someone with a psychological need to justify his actions. Most PCs dont express this change of ideals until after theyve been removed from the mainline. I got myself in trouble, I got scared, and I asked the cops to get me the hell out of there is too honest an answer for most PCs. Theyre too concerned with preserving their self-image. You werent as hard as you thought you were , no big deal, own up to it, try being yourself now that youve come to that realization. Everyone in a PC yard may not be a snitch, but that is the impression most of us have, and that is where the animosity comes fromthat and the shameless continuing charade of the hard-core convict. I know that the need to preserve their self-image will prevent PCs from being honest with readers of Prison Focus. I dont pretend to tear down psychological defense mechanisms. I just dont think that some of the views expressed in articles like Thinking Outside the Box should go unchallenged, Especially when they are printed in such an important prisoner venues as CPF. There are a few class-conscious prisoners on the mainline who arent oblivious to the divide-and-conquer tactics of the oppressor. We do what we can to educate others and build relationships with prisoners outside our respective groups. A big part of our efforts has to do with sharing literature. Among the material I like to pass along is CPF. Some of the prisoners I try to reach are turned off by articles written by PCs in CPF because even though they may include legitimate critiques of gang culture, most of what they write are bitter rants lled with falsehoods aimed at the mainline population. To top it off they usually assertions the the grass is greener on the other side. This is in essence a call for prisoners to collaborate with the cops. Contrary to what some of your readers on the outside might have been led to believe, PCing up almost always entails informing on other prisoners. I cant say for certain that this is absolutely necessary, but in 13 years Ive never NUMBER 37

A Time of Change?
Dear CPF, There appears to be a cycle in Prison Focus of repeating the same things over and over again! One would think that a change would have come by now. There are times when history seems dead. And then there are times when history leaps to life. This is such a time, a time of change. A time when people refuse to become passive victims of history and instead will ght as agents of their own liberationthats what is exhilarating about these events on the inside. The CDC does not give a f___ about prisoners. Prison Focus is doing their part to put the word out now do your part. Fight! James Porter, Corcoran SHU

The Common Good

Dear CPF, First and foremost, I would like to start this letter by expressing my gratitude to CPF and its staff for the help and encouragement it gave me way back in 2008. At that time I was rounded up and corralled into administrative segregation during one of those pesky mass Gang Sweeps that have become ever so popular with the prison administrators. CPF wasted no time in supplying me with the Gang Validation Manual, the Prison Focus quarterly newspaper, and strong words of inspiration. My whole gang validation package, the three sources utilized to casually slap me with an indeterminate SHU term, consisted of three drawings. These were photocopied drawings containing Aztec symbols by artists unknown to me, and, most importantly, copied from Lowrider Magazines. It seems that just as the CDCR is intent on using the words of long-gone fallen soldiers like George Jackson to validate and divide other members of our class, they will just as readily employ other farces to violate whatever minute freedom of expression we have left in an effort to accomplish their agenda. That agenda is to keep us entombed, powerless, voiceless, and compliant for as long as possible, while they extort the highest dollar amount from taxpayers to cover our security housing placement. Fear is their weapon of choice, and it is being adroitly wielded by unscrupulous parasites whose hypocrisy is limitless. The CDCR unabashedly structures every policy and regulation to benet their paychecks and pensions. Every assembly bill or law the fat-cats push in Sacramento is designed to fatten their treasure chest under the guise of public safety. The California Department of Corruption and Recidivism maintains the perfect acronym. The so-called correction and rehabilitation term currently espoused is pure window-dressing for the general public. I have been imprisoned for nearly ten years and not one single rehabilitation program has been ever mentioned, much less offered, to improve my situation. Now my bogus gang vali-

29

to withhold/act on mail) placed me in Ad Seg. They also refused to let me sign a chrono and stay on the yard over the death threat. I went on a ve-day hunger strike to force them to sign a chrono, which I shouldnt have had to resort to, had they not illegally and purposely misconstrued the letter to Mr. Piller and let me back on the yard on 9/3/10. However, the Green Wall attempted to instigate/manufacture an incident against me and succeeded on 10/20/10, though unluckily for them my partial joint replacement left me physically unable to generate sufcient cause for them to employ lethal force against me. Im hoping that I can help an indeterminate SHU termer that has had success against the Green Wall on 1983 lawsuits with an afdavit from me, andif they will put in a correspondence approval request and help me sue the guards responsible. I would have put in a correspondence approval request myself, but CPF reports they harass people and I didnt want them harassing any legal beagle I might have requested assistance from, especially the ones that got published cases against CDCR. I, therefore; leave it up to those that may want to risk putting in a correspondence approval form with the requisite Title 15 section for assisting other inmates with legal matters. Thank you! Joel Brown, Kern Valley State Prison

inside a cramped cage. And like a tiger that obsessively bobs from one side to the other of his barred cage. I pace back and forth, over the small patch of oor beside my bunk. For hours on end, stopping at the steel door of the cell to stare out at nothing On occasion, a man might bang his head against the steel door, so he would draw enough blood to be sent to the hospital for the criminally insane, where conditions were better and the insanity label protected him from himself Besides this common scheme to merely thinking things over with yourself; everyday, you must justify your existence to yourself! I, for instance, try to nd anything to justify my very existence why do I continue to live? When I am merely waiting to die When the whole world wants me dead I kill time by reading and staying connected to society, through televisionto give my mind something to do, so I wont go crazy! I am nothing more than some imbecile, or some head of cabbageexchanging small with virtually anyonejust to keep my sanity in alignment for purposes of avoiding a mental collapse, when my life still makes no sense anyway. And even if Im cut-off from the world I will live out my life, while maintaining the status quo. James Porter, Corcoran SHU, Lifer

Got Game?
Dear CPF, People talk about the problems on the yards re: no unity, reactionary yard cultures of contemporary times, etcetera, and have offered solutions for getting ourselves more together in a common cause, and although it all makes a point, this shit plays out real fast with people back here. Lets not fool ourselves that after weve put the bullshit aside and got real in terms of a resistance to prisoncrats and social oppression that its going to be roses. There is a whole lot of bullshit in the movement as well that needs to be cleaned up. People on the yards know this and take all this and take and take all this unity/struggle talk as just another game opposite theirs. A lot of us back here outreach to movement groups and are let down one way or another by them, not holding up to their self-imposed responsibilities, just more game but from the political end. I remember when G4 was here, and shit was way more real all the way around, that motherfuckers out there get blasted for trying to put game on us. So anyone talking about us back here getting our shit together had better be serious when we do just that and come knocking on your doors. The above letter to PF is meant for publication and is signed: Sister Amazon, Corcoran Prison. [Eds Response:] The letter writer is a transsexual woman who belongs to a transsexual political party (see her article About Prisons on page 15). She says there is a lot of BS in the movement out here on the streets. I ask myself, just what movement might that be? As far as I can see there is no movement, only a disparate collection of mostly liberal nonprot organizations, including CPF, of which I am a proud member. Of course there are the leftist progressive groups, MIM Notes being one of the best, but in the absence of struggle none of them are going to be doing more than the work they are currently doing in their respective areas of interest. In the absence of class struggle there is class peace. Other than some sparse black-block anarchists here and there what the author calls the movement is in a state of class peace. Her notion of an actual movement out here is a myth. All that exists are the seeds of what could be. Game playing? Really? Late one night I busted into the headquarters of the Washington Department of Corrections in the state capitol, Olympia, and planted a huge bomb under the directors desk. The subsequent explosion did structural damage to the ve story ofce building. The act was done as part of a group working to advance the struggle of prisoners at Walla Walla, who were being brutalized in the hole in retaliation for ghting for democracy. I served 18 years for that and similar crimes. A game? The writer of that letter should have ended with the expression of her disappointment in the movement out here. Instead she went on to talk about how prisoner support people got blasted for putting game on us and anyone who is not sufciently serious when those on the inside command them to do so will have someone come knocking at your doors. This kind of thinking has its roots in a serious political errorinstead of attacking some reactionary puke whose passing would benet humanity, that mentality will want to off someone like long-time prisoner rights supporter Fay Stender. Why? Because in their view she was not doing enough work, or what some prisoners considered the right kind of support work. In short, it goes something like this, if you are to the right of our political point of view (and of course everyone is) then you are of the enemy. This political error, confusing friends for enemies, results in incidents such as the shooting of Fay Stender. For those who dont remember, Fay was a Bay Area lawyer who spent much of her professional life ghting for prisoner rights. Some of her more well-known clients included
4. Name omitted in original.

Treat Me Like a Primate, Please

Dear CPF, I have been incarcerated for seventeen continuous years of a thirty year to life sentence based on a single count complaint for a non-violent crime. During these years I have suffered deplorable and inhumane care at the hands of the states department of corruptions and retardation. What human being would treat another human like this? If I were a primate, even a dog, I would receive much better care and humanity. Strange to think a 52 year-old American citizen, a religious man, would envy an ape, but I do. A mutt at the pound is pitied. A convicted human is loathed. A primate has a minimum of 100 square feet of unobstructed open space in his cage for every 100 pounds of the animals weight. The law requires that it be given fresh air, wholesome food, adequate medical care, etc. Compare that with two large men stuck in a cell with twenty square feet of open oor space, no windows that open for fresh air and a ventilation and cooling system that has not worked for four straight years in my cage. Medical care provided by Doctor Death. You get the picture. If the federal court legally declared me to be a captive primate, then I might have equal rights in my conditions of connement to an ape or monkey. Such a ruling would bring the corrections system into the twenty-rst century for everyone. I have no problem using my name in such an action. I believe all life is a precious gift from God and should be cherished. All life is salvageable. Society is only harmed and endangered with our current treatment of prisoners. Our children are in danger from what has happened with our addiction to prisons and the deplorable conditions that harm everyone. Thomas Hightower, Mule Creek

It Makes No Sense
Dear CPF, Nothing in life prepares us for living in prison. Everyday is exactly like the last. And the next. My life is without purpose, perpetual misery is my condition in life. And my reward for surviving today is that I get to suffer tomorrow as well in prison, where there is no meaning, my mind tries to create meaning out of nothing, and this can lead me to confuse fantasy with reality. I am like a human animal in one of the old-style zoos. Before I realized it, I was thrown 30

Black Panther leader Huey Newton and George Jackson. According to Wikipedia5, Stender edited and arranged for Jacksons prison letters to be published as Soledad Brothers, he became an international celebrity. She convinced French intellectual Jean Genet to write an introduction, guaranteeing it a best seller. The substantial proceeds from the book went to a legal defense fund that she set up. Stender eventually had a falling out with Jackson over his repeated requests that she smuggle weapons and explosives into the prison. Few people remember the name of the parolee who pumped ve shots into her when in 1979 she answered that knock at her door. But Fay is remembered by a whole lot of people, including the California Women Lawyers association, a group that presents the prestigious Fay Stender Award to deserving female attorneys. It was also this kind of thinking, this political error, which put the nal nail in the cofn of prisoner support work not only in California but across the nation. Fay Stender was gunned down by an ex-con who said she had betrayed George. After that act of political genius nobody wanted to support prisoners, not only in California but even in Washington State where I was doing time. The pigs could not have dreamed of harming our struggle any more than that misguided prisoner did with his act of ultra-leftism, an error Lenin called an infantile disorder. Does any thinking person actually believe Fay was anything other than a white liberal lawyer who could crawl back into the comfort of her class and white-skin-privilege anytime the going got rough? If so theyre out of touch with reality. Class will always out in the end, just look at the Patty Hearst asco. Is someone going to shoot Patty for being what she isa daughter of the ruling class? Of course not. Now, thirty-some years after Fays untimely demise, we out here have to worry about what some fool in there will do if we are not sufciently real according to a standard nobody has seen? Everyone has the right to criticize the allvolunteer work CPF and other groups do in support of prisoners. People not only have the right to criticize our practice, they have the duty to do so. But under no circumstances does anyone have the right to in any way threaten us. Your captors come down on you from above, with dehumanizing behaviors that frequently include acts of violence. Too many prisoners have internalized the actions or behaviors of the pigs as the way things should beof what is the right and correct way to motivate people. Accordingly, among this element, if you want to motivate someone it is through violence or threats of violence. Like the U.S. government doesto rule through fear and force, intimidation and violence. But thats not the revolution Im looking to be a part of. I am working for freedom and equality, for democracy and economic fairness. My motivation comes from the justice of our cause, not through thugs who want to coerce me into conformity through the use of ever deeper levels of aggression. If the letter writers idea of revolution is about coercion and threats against each other, then I dont want any part of it. Thats worse than pig shit. It is a form of ultra-leftism; it aids the class enemy, retards development of the movement, and is at root a form of sectarianism that works to isolate us from each other. This coming from the top down with force, this pig shit, is whats created the SNY yards. The revolution that needs to come must grow from the ground up, not from the top downit must be organized from below and motivated by a love of humanity and a strong sense of justice. Its not as if all of you in there are ready to roll and just waiting for us outside support folks to get our act together. Fact is, nothing worth mentioning is happening inside Californias prisons in terms of progressive struggle.6 There is only racism and reactionary politics and the escapism of chasing after drugs or the dollar. And if you did manage to get something going youd do it wrongyoud use violence in place of a protracted peaceful resistance. People on the streets need time to organize support, something that cant happen with some ash in the pan form of resistance. Look to the comrades in Georgia for inspiration, and even their state-wide work strike was not near long enough. In any event, the very most you can expect from todays movement is a rather small amplication of your collective voice. Please dont use our supposed lack of realness as a pretext or justication for your own apathy and passivity. Your struggles in there should in no way rely on those of us doing volunteer work on the outside. If youre going get it together, do it without any thought to prisoner-support organizations. Indeed, outside support is something that you should plan to grow from scratch, starting with your own friends and family members on the streets. Yes, there is certainly outreach from the inside to progressive individuals and organizations out here in minimum custody, and yes you feel let down when we dont drop everything to do some hand-holding for you. But whats the point if there is no struggle, other than some outside volunteer being your pen pal, your go-fer, or a pawn in your latest scheme to get over?
5. Wikipedia is an online peoples encyclopedia. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fay_Stender 6. This was written well before word of the July 1st SHU hunger strike had reached us.

PRISON FOCUS

You are held in a condition of slavery, disenfranchised, and dehumanized in every way. Rectifying these terrible conditions of existence is your struggle, not ours. Dont be running your pig mentality on us because we are not, in your opinion, properly ghting that battle for you. Youre the slave. Resist. In the absence of class conict there is a state of class peace. There may not be peace among the races and regions in there, but a state of class peace certainly exists. Class struggle may generate outside support or it may not. In either case you shouldnt be threatening folks on the outside who are doing the job of support. Groups like Critical Resistance, the Prison Activist Resource Center, All Of Us Or None, CPF, Bar None, etc. may not be perfect, but they are doing the day-to-day prisoner support workand almost all of them are unpaid volunteers. Give them a break.]

Heres Some Support

Dear CPF, I just sent you a letter, and then the very next day, yesterday, issue #36 shows up in my mail. Thank you. Many, what a great issue, there are just so many things in it I could comment on, but in order to keep my rambling to you short, Ill simply say that issue 36 was right on the mark in so many ways. I also wanted to thank you for sending me copies of the newsletter, never allowing me to miss out due to my indignant status. Its much appreciated. On that same topic, Im afraid I should have tried a lot harder to scrape something up to send you. Please accept my apologies and my word that I will put forth a better effort. Please nd enclosed a book of stamps. Hopefully in these tough economic times, this will do for now to keep me on your subscription list. I will also work at getting some new subscribers your way. Every issue is very inspiring, but your latest hit home on several issues for me, and I found it exceptionally inspiring. Thanks for the great and noble work you do. James Murphy, Corcoran

Bogus Validation
Dear CPF: We prisoners are constantly on each others throats over bullshit that I had to step back from the shield of being characterized as a Los Angeles Blood. Thus the new wave of state enacted pseudo-RICO act on every prisoner who is not SNY, or EDP, will continue. General Population (so-called actives) dont generate prot like SNY, EDP, and now gang validations. So stop complaining like babies; stop tripping on your own because its doing nothing but aiding in the states plan, and start ghting re with re (ink pens with ink pens). Next they will use names like Mohammed to validate Jewish prisoners as Muslims. I was validated using one strike against me for having Soledad Brothers. IGI gave me a receipt saying the book belonged to another inmate, and in a chrono further stated that the book is approved reading material, which I will include with this letter. Despite that, CSR rejected the gang validation chrono and told IGI to submit anew. It still has not happened ve years and counting! CPF has all my evidence to back my claims. J. Burton aka SykoJay, CSP Corcoran

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SOCIALISM

By William Blum orporations, whether nancial or not, strive to maximize prot as inevitably as water seeks its own level. Weve been trying to regulate them since the 19th century. Or is it the 18th? Nothing helps for long. You close one loophole and the slime oozes out of another hole. Wall Street has not only an army of lawyers and accountants, but a horde of mathematicians with advanced degrees searching for the perfect equations to separate people from their money. After all the stimulus money has come and gone, after all the speeches by our leaders condemning greed and swearing to reforms, after the last congressional hearing deploring the corporate executives to their faces, the boys of Wall Street, shrugging off a few bruises, will resume churning out their assortment of nancial entities, documents, and packages that go by names like hedge funds, derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, index funds, credit default swaps, structured investment vehicles, subprime mortgages, and many other pieces of paper with exotic names, for which, it must be kept in mind, there had been no public need or strident demand. Speculation, bonuses, and scotch will ow again, and the boys will be all the wiser, perhaps shaken a bit that theyre so reviled, but knowing better now what to aunt and what to disguise. This is another reminder that communism or socialism have almost always been given just one chance to work, if that much, while capitalism has been given numerous chances to do so following its perennial ascos. Ralph Nader has observed: Capitalism will never fail because socialism will always be there to bail it out.

In the West, one of the most unfortunate results of the Cold War was that 70 years of anti-communist education and media stamped in peoples minds a lasting association between socialism and what the Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating command economy, no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truth and untruth. This is a set of beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative available is something called communism, and they know how awful that is. Adding to the purposeful confusion, the conservatives in England, for 30 years following the end of World War 2, lled the minds of the public with the idea that the Labour Party was socialist, and when recession hit (as it does regularly in capitalist countries) the public was then told, and believed, that socialism had failed. Yet, ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, polls taken in Russia have shown a nostalgia for the old system. In the latest example, Russia Now, a Moscow publication that appears as a supplement in the Washington Post, asked Russians: What socio-economic system do you favor? The results were: State planning and distribution: 58% ... Based on private property and market relations: 28% ... Hard to say: 14%. In 1994, Mark Brzezinski (son of Zbigniew) was a Fulbright Scholar teaching in Warsaw. He has written: I asked my students to dene democracy. Expecting a discussion on individual liberties and authentically elected institutions, I was surprised to hear my students respond that to them, democracy means a government obligation to maintain a certain standard of living and to provide health care, education and housing for all. In other words, socialism. Many Americans cannot go along with the notion of a planned, centralized society. To some extent its the terminology that bothers them because they were raised to equate a planned society with the worst excesses of Stalinism. Okay, lets forget the scary labels; lets describe it as people sitting down to discuss a particular serious societal problem, what the available options there are to solve the problem, and what institutions and forces in the society have the best access, experience, and assets to deliver those options. So, the idea is to prepare these institutions and forces to deal with the problem in a highly organized, rational manner without having to worry about which corporations prots might be adversely affected, without relying on the magic of the marketplace. Now it happens that all this is usually called planning and if the organization and planning stem from a government body it can be called centralized. Theres no reason to assume that this has to result in some kind of very authoritarian regime. All of us over a certain age individually and collectively have learned a lot about such things from the past. We know the warning signs; thats why the Bush administrations authoritarianism was so early and so strongly condemned. The overwhelming majority of people in the United States work for a salary. They dont need to be motivated by the quest for prot. Its not in our genes. Virtually everybody, if given the choice, would prefer to work at jobs where the main motivations are to produce goods and services that improve the quality of life of the society, to help others, and to provide themselves with meaningful and satisfying work. Its not natural to be primarily motivated by trying to win or steal customers from other people, no holds barred, survival of the ttest or the most ruthless. A major war can be the supreme test of a nation, a time when its put under the greatest stress. In World War 2, the US government commandeered the auto manufacturers to make tanks and jeeps instead of private cars. When a pressing need for an atom bomb was seen, Washington did not ask for bids from the private sector; it created the Manhattan Project to do it itself, with no concern for balance sheets or prot and loss statements. Women and blacks were given skilled factory jobs they had been traditionally denied. Hollywood was enlisted to make propaganda lms. Indeed, much of the nations activities, including farming, manufacturing, mining, communications, labor, education, and cultural undertakings were in some fashion brought under new and signicant government control, with the war effort coming before private prot. In peacetime, we can think of socialism as putting people before prot, with all the basics guaranteed health care, all education, decent housing, food, jobs. Those who swear by free enterprise argue that the socialism of World War 2 was instituted only because of the exigencies of the war. Thats true, but it doesnt alter the key point that it had been immediately recognized by the government that the wasteful and inefcient capitalist system, always in need of proper nancial care and feeding, was no way to run a country trying to win a war. Its also no way to run a society of human beings with human needs. Most Americans agree with this but are not consciously aware that they hold such a belief. In 1987, nearly half of 1,004 Americans surveyed by the Hearst press believed Karl Marxs aphorism: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need was to be found in the US Constitution.

Along these lines, Ive written an essay entitled: The United States invades, bombs, and kills for it, but do Americans really believe in free enterprise? I cannot describe in detail what every nut and bolt of my socialist system would look like. That might appear rather pretentious on my part; most of it would evolve through trial and error anyway; the important thing is that the foundation the crucial factors in making the important decisions would rest on peoples welfare and the common good coming before prot. Humankinds desperate need to halt environmental degradation regularly runs smack into the prot motive, as does the American health-care system. Its more than a matter of ideology; its a matter of the quality of life, sustainability, and survival.

HIGH COURT TO CALIF: CUT 30,000 PRISONERS

By Don Thompson, Associated Press n May 23rd the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that California must drastically reduce its prison population to relieve severe overcrowding that has exposed inmates to increased violence, disease and death. The high courts 5-4 decision calls on the state to cut the population to no more than 110,000 inmates. To get there, state ofcials have two years to either transfer some 33,000 inmates to other jails or release them. California has already been preparing for the ruling, driven as much by persistent multibillion dollar budget decits as by fears for the well-being of prison inmates and employees. The state has sent inmates to other states. It plans to transfer jurisdiction over others to counties, though the state doesnt have the money to do it. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a California native who wrote the majority opinion, said the state could ask a federal court for more time to reach the 110,000-inmate target, even as he chastised California for allowing unconstitutional conditions to persist for years. Our goal is to not release inmates at all, said Matthew Cate, the state corrections secretary. Shorter term inmates will leave prison before the Supreme Courts deadline expires, and newly sentenced lower-level offenders would go to local jails under the plan. Concerns over prison crowding and security grew over the weekend with a pair of riots that injured inmates, but no guards. A ght by nearly 200 inmates in a San Quentin State Prison dining hall Sunday left four men with stab or slash wounds. On Friday, six inmates were sent to hospitals, two of them with serious injuries, after about 150 inmates rioted at California State Prison, Sacramento. A special panel of three judges based in different parts of California decided in 2009 to order the prison population reduction. Mondays order puts them in charge of how the state complies. The 2009 ruling grew out of lawsuits alleging unconstitutionally poor care for mentally and physically ill inmates. One case dates back 20 years. The growth in the prison population in the nations most populous state can be attributed in part to years of get-tough sentencing laws, including a three-strikes law that sends repeat offenders to prison for life. As of May 11, there were roughly 143,000 inmates in a 33 adult prison-system designed to hold 80,000. One of the federal judges involved in the lower court ruling once blamed the prison systems poor medical care for causing the death of about one inmate every week due to neglect or medical malpractice. At the time, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a public safety emergency because of the crowding. He then began shipping inmates to private prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. More than 10,000 California inmates are now housed in private prisons out of state. Justice Anthony Kennedy cited lower-court ndings that preventable suicide and medical neglect needlessly cause the death of at least one inmate a week in Californias prisons. Gov. Jerry Brown, who as attorney general fought the ruling, sought and signed a bill that would reduce the prison population by about 40,000 inmates by transferring jurisdiction for many low-level offenders to counties. The law is stalled until the lawmakers or voters authorize money to pay for the transfer. Much of the money is intended to help counties handle the responsibility of housing convicts. Dissenters on the Supreme Court fear the worst, both in terms of public safety and what they described as a lower bar set for court intervention in how states run their prison systems. Justice Samuel Alito, in a dissent along with Chief Justice John Roberts, said he feared that the decision, like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years, we will see. Justices Thomas and Scalia wrote a separate dissent. Aside from reducing the inmate population, the court said the state must continue to improve medical treatment in prison. Cate, the corrections secretary, and J. Clark Kelso, the federal receiver who now controls prison medical care, noted that construction of a new centralized medical facility south of the state capital is already under way.

NUMBER 37

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CPF GOALS End all human rights abuses against prisoners. End the use of long-term isolation. Close the Security Housing Units. Educate the public that SHU prisoners are torture survivors. Improve medical care and living conditions for prisoners living with HIV, hepatitis C and other life-threatening diseases. Help gain compassionate release for prisoners with serious illnesses and physical disabilities. Stop all discrimination against LGBT prisoners. Abolish the prison system as we know it.

SOME GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO PRISON FOCUS SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR SUBMISSIONS: Artwork or graphics Letters (250 words) Let us know if you want us to use your name or we will only publish your initials and city & state of residence. You can also specify anonymous. Short Articles (250-500 words) The same identification guidelines apply. Topics can be issue specific, or current news or information. Helpful resources with address and pertinent information. Larger articles are accepted but be aware-our space is limited.

BECOME A VOLUNTEER

CPF depends on volunteers to do our invaluable work. We need your help answering mail, working on our newsletter, stafng our ofce, fund raising, and outreach. Check our website for the date of the next CPF meeting. PRISON FOCUS #38 I would like the topic for Prison Focus #38 to focus on the subject of homophobia and gay and Lesbian oppression on the inside. Please send us your articles and artwork. The due date for submissions for the next issue is Aug. 1, 2011. If you have ideas for issue #39 send them in to us as well. ABOUT CPF California Prison Focus is a non-prot community-based human rights organization working with and for California prisoners. Our two main issue areas are ghting against the long term isolation, torture and abuse of Security Housing Units (SHU) and demanding an end to the medical neglect and abuse of prisoners with HIV, hepatitis C and other life-threatening diseases. The focus of our work is our investigative trips to women and mens prisons with SHU facilities and/or medical units. We make at least one visit per month. We work to build strong bridges between the prisoners and the community, and to bring forth the voice of the prisoners through our newsletter, Prison Focus, and our ongoing educational outreach and community forums. Central to our work is training ourselves, prisoners and their loved ones in self-advocacy through public protest, networking, coalition building, letter writing and contacting prison ofcials and policy makers. Founded in 1991 (as Pelican Bay Information Project) we have made hundreds of prison visits and conducted thousands of interviews with prisoners. Our membership is comprised of prisoners, activists, family members of prisoners, former prisoners, human rights advocates, attorneys, and prison visitors.

Prisoner Artists!
Have you ever wanted contribute to California Prison Focus but never had the money? Good news! In October CPF will celebrate its twentieth anniversary by holding a fundraising event auctioning off art donated by prisoners. One item of donated art will be chosen for the poster that will advertise the celebration. The remainder of the donated art will be sold to help raise money for CPF. Send your art contributions to California Prison Focus, 1904 Franklin St. #507, Oakland CA 94612. Be sure to include a note letting us know you are donating your artwork to our organization for the purposes of fundraising and/or display/use in our newspaper.

Topics: PF topic of issue; current news; recent or pending legislation or policy; news from your institution; organizing efforts; booksbasically anything related to the prison industrial complex as you see it. Individual legal cases are not usually printed. Sorry, we cannot return your submissions unless a prior arrangement is made. Submissions are not guaranteed to be published and we generally cannot respond to your submissions because of the volume of mail we receive. PF welcomes all submissions (they will not be returned).

CPFS MISSION STATEMENT California Prison Focus ghts to abolish the California prison system as we know it. We investigate and expose human rights abuses with the goal of ending long term isolation, medical neglect, and all forms of discrimination. We are community activists, prisoners, and their family members working to inspire the public to demand change.