Update Feb. 10, 7:30 p.m.: Sal Rodriguez of Solitary Watch reports: “While the cause of death and its possible relationship to the hunger strike remains unconfirmed, (CDCR spokesperson Terry) Thornton responded to questions from Solitary Watch with an apparent affirmation that an inmate death had taken place and the statement: ‘I do not know the results of the autopsy.’

“In response to a phone call, Tom Edmonds, chief deputy coroner in Kings County, confirmed that inmate Christian Gomez died on Feb. 2 at Corcoran but also did not share the cause of death.”

CDCR’s Inmate Locator lists Christian Alexander Gomez, 27, CDCR No. G-07338, at Corcoran State Prison. Anyone with more information is invited to contact the Bay View at editor@sfbayview.com, 4917 Third St., San Francisco CA 94124, or (415) 671-0789 any time. Our deepest condolences go to the family, friends and comrades of the martyr, Christian Gomez.

by Isaac Ontiveros, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity

This banner was on display the day Occupy Oakland opened at Oscar Grant Plaza in front of City Hall Oct. 1, 2011, and must continue to be heeded until the hunger strikers’ demands are met – the death of a striker making it more critical than ever. Now Occupy Oakland has called for a National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners for Monday Feb. 20, and rallies are planned around the country. The Bay Area will rally in front of San Quentin noon to 3 p.m. Give or get a ride at 10 a.m. at Oscar Grant Plaza in Oakland or 1540 Market St. in San Francisco. – Photo: Sharon Peterson

As of Feb. 9, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) disclosed that 30 men were still striking and a representative in the office said that prisoners had been intermittently striking for the last month. Unlike the California prisoner hunger strikes of July and September, little attention has been given to the ongoing strike at Corcoran.

Family members and advocates fear strikers may be experiencing serious medical issues and even death. A prisoner at Corcoran, who remains unnamed due to fear of reprisal, stated in a letter received on Feb. 5: “On or about Feb 2nd or 3rd 2012 an inmate has passed away due to not eating that has been going on over here in Corcoran ASU. Inmates are passing out and having other medical problems and it seems that this is not being taken seriously. There will be more casualties if this isn’t addressed or brought to light.”

While this death is unconfirmed, it raises concerns that the CDCR is failing to deal with this hunger strike in an appropriate manner. “The prisoners are making very reasonable and legitimate demands regarding basic human rights,” says Carol Strickman, a lawyer working on behalf of some hunger strikers in California. “For those of us on the outside, the slow pace of reform is frustrating. For those people enduring barbarous conditions, the lack of meaningful improvement is unbearable.”

A prisoner at Corcoran ASU wrote this letter to activist Kendra Castaneda, whose husband is at Calipatria ASU. The writer’s name is withheld for his protection. Retaliation against hunger strikers who communicate with activists has been brutal. The three Corcoran ASU petitioners – Asian, Latino and Black – were immediately transferred to other cells or other prisons after calling the strike in December. Kendra reports that one of the petitioners, Juan Jaimes, wrote her on Jan. 31 to say "we are not accepting any state food whatsoever and were not being allowed any food items from canteen at all." He said the hunger strike at Corcoran ASU will be on-going until their humane demands are met. – Letter courtesy of Kendra Castaneda

Following the September hunger strike and significant pressure from the public and legislators in Sacramento, the CDCR announced that it would make changes to its gang validation procedure and would release a draft for review by stakeholders sometime in January. “The CDCR is clearly behind on their timeline. Meanwhile, prisoners continue to be validated largely due to association and baseless allegations effectively dooming them to indefinite SHU sentences without any means of challenging their cases,” says Azadeh Zohrabi of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition. The stakeholders’ review will reportedly involve the California Correctional and Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), state legislators and prison advocates.

Lawyers, families, and advocates will continue to monitor the situation at Corcoran. For updates and further information, please visit www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com.

Isaac Ontiveros of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization working to abolish the prison industrial complex, is a spokesperson for the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition. He can be reached at (510) 444-0484 or isaac@criticalresistance.org.

How you can help

Activist Kendra Castaneda, who first heard the news of this tragic death and notified the coalition, writes:

Please put the pressure on CDCR before someone else dies.

“Please put the pressure on CDCR before someone else dies. This could be your loved one or family member. Please help:

“Email or write or call asap to Matthew Cate and demand that he meet these prisoners’ demands. Write or call Corcoran Warden C. Gipson and email or call Nancy Kincaid to make sure these men are receiving proper medical treatment while on their hunger strike.”

Here’s the contact information:

• Gov. Jerry Brown, c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento CA 95814, (916) 445-2841. He can also be reached through his website, at http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php.
• CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate: 1515 S St., Suite 330, Sacramento, CA 95811, (916) 323-6001
• Corcoran Warden Connie Gipson: Corcoran State Prison, P.O. Box 8800, Corcoran, CA 93212, (559) 992-8800
• California Correctional Health Care Services Director of Communications Nancy Kincaid: P.O. Box 4038, Sacramento, CA 95812-4038, (916) 323-1923

Related Posts

• Hunger strike updates: Legislative hearing on Pelican Bay SHU tomorrow in Sacramento
• 12,000 California prisoners on hunger strike
• California prisoners resume hunger strike today
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• We are willing to sacrifice ourselves to change our conditions

To the Occupy Oakland family and all supporters of Occupy Oakland:

Over a thousand celebratory marchers expecting to move in and make a home out of the shuttered convention center were protected from hostile militarized police only by the homemade shields carried by those at the head of the march. – Photo: Lucy Kafanov

We remember how beautiful we all were on our march, a diverse crowd of thousands coming together to turn an unused building into a social center and a new home for Occupy Oakland. We had a children’s brigade at the back and a line of shields in the front, and a celebratory crew of comrades in between. We should be emboldened that there are so many of us out there who are willing to take such action together and, like the General Strike and the Port Shutdown, see it as sign of what we can do when united in purpose and solidarity.

Yes, we were met with the heavy hand of the police state when OPD chose to turn our peaceful march into a war zone. But one fact that should not go unnoticed is the courage and resiliency we demonstrated on the streets that day. Whether it was advancing behind our shields towards a militarized police force, tearing down fences to escape a police kettle while being tear gassed, escaping through the YMCA to avoid arrest (thank you to whoever it was who let us in!), using a fire extinguisher as a smoke screen to assist the escape of those who were in City Hall, or attempting to free our comrades being transferred to the Glen Dyer Detention Facility, the people of Oakland showed what we are capable of and what we can become. Above all, we demonstrated to the city and its rogue police force that we will not be intimidated or scared by their tactics, when we know that we have each other’s backs.

Let it be clear: We are not victims of police brutality but survivors of it. There is no question that we demonstrated militant resistance to the police last Saturday. It is only natural to do so when our best intentions of creating a new world our met with such hostility. This time, the chant “When Oakland is under attack, what do you do? Stand up! Fight back!” was not an empty one. At the same time, it should also be clear that there is nothing preventing those who want to from organizing non-violent direct actions autonomously with clear guidelines as such. This is what we mean by diversity of tactics.

We recognize that there are communities who were affected in the neighborhoods where the conflicts with the police took place. We did outreach all over Oakland before the action and will continue to offer support and solidarity to those who might have been negatively affected or traumatized by the OPD’s inexcusable actions. What we saw in the streets of Oakland on the 28th was overwhelming support, whether it was bystanders bringing us water to wash off tear gas, waving and cheering us on, honking from their cars, or coming down from their apartments to join us. We experienced solidarity first hand rather than percentage points in a poll.

The OPD and the city claim that we are outsiders and that we are not from Oakland – even as 93 percent of OPD officers live outside Oakland. These lies are transparent to anyone who comes to our marches and assemblies and sees their friends and neighbors next to them. And those who came in solidarity last Saturday, from across and all around the Bay, from Dallas to Los Angeles, they are us and we are them. They are our comrades and no city press release can come between us. Our heart goes out to them and all the Occupies – over 26 at last count – who organized solidarity protests within 24 hours of the mass arrests on the 28th. We love you in the deepest meaning of the word.

The OPD and the city claim that we are outsiders and that we are not from Oakland – even as 93 percent of OPD officers live outside Oakland.

From its inception, Occupy Oakland has been about taking direct action and defending ourselves and what we reclaim to the best of our abilities. It has always been about people providing for each other and working to build radical alternatives to the patriarchal capitalist system, and it is in this spirit that we move forward together. No one comes from some “outside” in order to mess with our Oakland, other than the suburbanite riot police. We come from here and everywhere, and in our movement those who join us are all insiders, agitating together towards a better Oakland, a better world.

To be sure, many of us are frustrated about the tactical mistakes made throughout the day, and we have to learn from these as we advance. There are many questions and criticisms coming from our broader community, and we welcome your help in transforming these into better strategies for future actions. We have to learn how to take over buildings in an effective and intelligent manner. We have to learn how to move cohesively through the streets, to take offensive and defensive initiatives, to improve communication in highly charged situations.

Critiques are important but we want everyone to understand the difficulty in undertaking such an initiative in the face of such forceful police response. The state fears that one successful building takeover will lead to another. It has nightmares of whole blocks of vacant buildings put to use as social centers and nodes of resistance, inspiring those in other cities to do the same. Despite the knee-deep shit that the OPD is in right now, when it comes to challenging property relations, all bets are off and the leashes are cut.

The state fears that one successful building takeover will lead to another. It has nightmares of whole blocks of vacant buildings put to use as social centers and nodes of resistance, inspiring those in other cities to do the same.

We are dumbfounded by those who accuse us of working solely to create a spectacle, a confrontation with the police, or not being genuine in our stated goals. We are the same people who through the course of a month planned a two-day festival to launch our new home, collected and wheeled the many supplies to make it a comfortable and safe space, crafted well thought out guidelines of behavior and exclusion for inside the building to address the gendered violence we saw at the camp, and drew up defense strategies against police raids.

Occupiers eye their goal, the empty Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, and the line of militarized police preventing them from moving into it. – Photo: Dave Id, Indybay

As we continue to reflect on the actions of last Saturday, we need also to remember that many in our community are in pain and trauma, and we need each other’s support and care. More than 400 of us were imprisoned last weekend. Some of us have yet to be released, are facing trumped-up felony charges, or have been given unconstitutional stay-away orders.

The abuse we faced behind bars needs to be told and retold, as it not only shows yet another side of the repression of dissent but the everyday brutality of the prison industrial complex on all prisoners. What has not been sufficiently recounted is the solidarity we experienced with each other within the walls and cells designed to separate and isolate us. When we came out of Santa Rita, we did not want to go home but joined the dozens of comrades outside waiting for the rest of us, cheering each releasee, feeding them and nourishing them with food and comfort.

But much more importantly, the time we spent on the inside was a stark reminder of what and why we are fighting. Across the world millions of prisoners languish in prison; in California alone there are nearly 200,000 prisoners, overwhelmingly people of color, as a result of the institutionalized racism of the justice system. In Santa Rita we met some of these inmates who gave us words of support and encouragement. When we converge outside of San Quentin on Feb. 20 for our Occupy in Support of Prisoners action, we will have those prisoners in our hearts.

The time we spent on the inside was a stark reminder of what and why we are fighting. In California there are nearly 200,000 prisoners, overwhelmingly people of color, as a result of the institutionalized racism of the justice system. In Santa Rita we met some of these inmates who gave us words of support and encouragement. When we converge outside of San Quentin on Feb. 20 for our Occupy in Support of Prisoners action, we will have those prisoners in our hearts.

The broader Occupy Oakland community needs to know that we are not finished and that we continue to plan for future building reclamations and other actions. We realize that we have a way to go and need to continue outreach, build and repair bridges, and expand our movement, which after all is always a beautiful work in progress. We welcome your feedback and constructive criticisms as we learn from our missteps and move forward together. Please come and join us!

With love, vigilance, and solidarity,

The Occupy Oakland Move-in Assembly

The Move-In Assembly was created on Dec. 24, following a proposal passed at Occupy Oakland’s General Assembly. It has been holding open assemblies of approximately 80 people twice a week since Dec. 28. Learn more at Occupy Oakland Move-In Day, where this story first appeared.

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Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff congratulates the seven legendary Tuskegee Airmen – LeRoy Gillead, James Goodwin, Clyde Grimes, Richard Harder, Harold Hoskins, James Warren and Les Williams – honored by San Francisco Supervisor Malia Cohen and the entire Board of Supervisors Jan. 24. – Photo: Lance Burton

However – and with all due respect – for those of us who wrote their high school book reports after reading the Classic Comics version or watched the Disney Channel version and, perhaps even more worrisome, for those of us who may be Tyler Perry fans, then “Red Tails” is surely a must see.

For those, however, who took the time to read a book or take seriously African Americans’ participation and contributions to everyday life probably will want to take a pass. “Red Tails” is decidedly not another “Glory,” the 1989 Morgan Freeman film that was relatively accurate in its telling the story of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first all-Black infantry unit of the Civil War.

“Red Tails,” so named because the Tuskegee Airmen painted the tails of their planes red, is a cartoonish caricature of great fighting men who contributed much to the world’s titanic struggle against fascism that was WWII. But who, according to Lucas and film writers John Ridley (“Under Cover Brother” and Fox News contributor) and Aaron McGruder (“Boondocks”), had no personal relationships with family or Black women – not one Black woman appears in the film – and who were hopelessly criminal in their refusal to follow orders and complete a mission as assigned.

To be fair, all the exploits attributed to the Black pilots in “Red Tails” are absolutely true. Black pilots were originally assigned to strafing duty, the most dangerous of all air assignments, with outdated planes. They did blow up an ammunition train. They did destroy a German airfield, and one airman was among the first allied pilots to shoot down an ME (Messerschmitt) 262 fighter jet.

But for purposes of calming and soothing the qualms of Lucas’s financial backers and film industry banks who feared a film with a nearly all-Black cast would bomb – figuratively speaking of course – at the box office, all these exploits are depicted as being carried out by one lone rogue pilot, a pilot so undisciplined and uncontrollable that in real life he would have been subjected to court martial and likely expelled from the service.

Actually in real life the 332nd all-Black fighter group was assigned to clear the sea-lanes and provide air cover for the Allies’ invasion of Sicily. In the film, key members of the 332nd abandon their mission to provide air cover and criminally wander off to bomb a German airfield. Progressive military leaders don’t like to stifle self-initiative, but David Oyelowo’s role as Joe Little, rogue fighter pilot, was beyond anything reasonable or credible. Those kinds of stunts are far more suited to Saturday morning television, at which McGruder is quite successful.

Far in excess of the cartoon caricatures that are the Tuskegee Airmen in “Red Tails” are the embarrassing, emasculated 332nd squadron leading characters assigned to Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Gooding is particularly annoying as an eternally pacific, pipe-smoking mentor to his young protégé pilots. But what he comes across as is nothing more than a pretentious MacArthur wannabe, never personally putting himself in harm’s way and never taking the damn pipe out of his mouth. Meanwhile Howard’s character, Col. A.J. Bullard – a nice tip of the pilot’s cap to Eugene Bullard, a Black pilot who flew for the Lafayette Esquadrille during WWI – is a thinly disguised representation of the Tuskegee Airmens’ primary leader, Lt. Col. (later Gen.) Benjamin O. Davis. In “Red Tails,” both Howard and Gooding are little more than administrative pencil pushers far removed from any form of combat and would more appropriately have been costumed in aprons and granny hats rather than flight jackets.

In reality, Davis and other senior flight squadron officers all had their own planes and fully participated in combat missions. This was true not just in the Black units but all the white units as well. During WWII the Army Air Corps was an OJT air force. For everyone it was an on the job training because military air science was a new field and few knew very much about it.

Importantly Davis’ plane was named “By Request,” because after the Red Tails became known for providing particularly close protection for bombing raids and bomber groups’ losses diminished, they were requested specifically by the white bomber groups for protection.

As a matter of course, the actors can’t be blamed for the miserable script that was handed them. We have to assume they did the best they could.

Curiously, the “Red Tails” episode that raised the biggest question centered on the pilot shot down, captured by the Germans and taken to prison camp. What followed on screen was apparently cut and pasted from the 2002 Bruce Willis vehicle, “Hart’s War,” which featured Terrence Howard as the downed Tuskegee man.

A far more revealing episode could have been provided about the two Red Tail pilots who actually were shot down over Yugoslavia, rescued by an armed patrol of the Yugoslav Communist Party and repatriated to the Allies on the Italian border. But those kinds of political points are not attractive to film writers and producers sucking up to the banks.

But Ridley and Lucas somewhat redeem themselves.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Ridley relates that in the run-up to actually writing the Red Tails story, Lucas provided him with a van full of newspaper and magazine articles and military combat and personnel records that took months to research and review.

Unfortunately, very little of Ridley’s research found its way into McGruder’s clumsy script.

However, where Ridley’s research paid off remarkably well was in the making of the “Red Tails” companion piece, “Double Victory: the Documentary.”

Here the real and nearly complete story of the Tuskegee Airmen’s struggle against fascism overseas and racism at home is honestly and inspiringly told. It ranks among the very best, if not the best documentary ever made telling the role of Black military men in WWII.

Black women’s role as spiritual and material sustainers of the Black pilots as wives and girlfriends is fully revealed. We learn that when the first class of Tuskegee Airmen graduated, Lena Horn attended the dance that followed and danced with every graduating cadet. We get misty eyed when one former Red Tail, now in his mid-80s, tells us that after the first graduation dance, he walked his girlfriend home and asked, “Will you fly with me for the rest of our lives?” Yes, she said.

“Double Victory: the Documentary” is absolutely everything “Red Tails” is not. It’s the only redeeming aspect of the main feature. This is the film everyone absolutely should see.

Jean Damu is the former western regional representative for N’COBRA, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, and a former member of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, taught Black Studies at the University of New Mexico, has traveled and written extensively in Cuba and Africa and currently serves as a member of the Steering Committee of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Email him at jdamu2@yahoo.com.

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A proposal passed Jan. 10 by the General Assembly of Occupy Oakland is to generate a national day of action that will call attention to prisons across America. While presidential candidates take to their stumps, one might be unaware that America is the international leader in incarceration with no competition in sight. Monday, Feb. 20, amidst American Black History Month, has also been declared by the United Nations as “World Day of Social Justice.”

The call coincides with a recent call to action by supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal to condemn solitary confinement as a means of torture. Mumia had been transferred to solitary for seven weeks after leaving Death Row. The call also comes amidst growing awareness of the relationship between Wall Street, prisons, prison labor and paid lobbyists pushing policies that create more prisoners.

The call for a National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners comes amidst growing awareness of the relationship between Wall Street, prisons, prison labor and paid lobbyists pushing policies that create more prisoners.

We are calling for Feb. 20, 2012, to be a National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners. In the Bay Area we will Occupy San Quentin to stand in solidarity with the people confined within its walls and to demand the end of the incarceration as a means of containing those dispossessed by unjust social policies.

Reasons

Prisons have become a central institution in American society, integral to our politics, economy and culture.

Between 1976 and 2000, the United States built on average a new prison each week and the number of imprisoned Americans increased tenfold.

Prison has made the threat of torture part of everyday life for millions of individuals in the United States, especially the 7.3 million people – who are disproportionately people of color – currently incarcerated or under correctional supervision.

Imprisonment itself is a form of torture. The typical American prison, juvenile hall and detainment camp is designed to maximize degradation, brutalization and dehumanization.

Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. Between 1970 and 1995, the incarceration of African Americans increased 7 times. Currently African Americans make up 12 percent of the population in the U.S. but 53 percent of the nation’s prison population. There are more African Americans under correctional control today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. There are more African Americans under correctional control today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

The prison system is the most visible example of policies of punitive containment of the most marginalized and oppressed in our society. Prior to incarceration, two thirds of all prisoners lived in conditions of economic hardship – while the perpetrators of white-collar crime largely go free.

In addition, the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that in 2008 alone there was a loss in economic input associated with people released from prison equal to $57 billion to $65 billion.

We call on Occupies across the country to support:

1. Abolishing unjust sentences, such as the death penalty, life without the possibility of parole, three strikes, juvenile life without parole, and the practice of trying children as adults.

2. Standing in solidarity with movements initiated by prisoners and taking action to support prisoner demands, including the Georgia Prison Strike and the Pelican Bay/California Prisoners Hunger Strikes.

3. Freeing political prisoners, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Lynne Stewart, Bradley Manning and Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, a Black Panther Party member incarcerated since 1969.

4. Demanding an end to the repression of activists, specifically the targeting of African Americans and those with histories of incarceration, such as Khali of Occupy Oakland, who could now face a life sentence on trumped-up charges, and many others being falsely charged after only exercising their First Amendment rights.

5. Demanding an end to the brutality of the current system, including the torture of those who have lived for many years in Security Housing Units (SHUs) or in other forms of solitary confinement.

6. Demanding that our tax money spent on isolating, harming and killing prisoners instead be invested in improving the quality of life for all and be spent on education, housing, health care, mental health care and other human services which contribute to the public good.

Bay Area

On Feb. 20, 12 noon-3 p.m., we will organize in front of San Quentin, where male death row prisoners are housed, where Stanley Tookie Williams was immorally executed by the state of California in 2005 and where Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on death row, is currently imprisoned.

At this demonstration, through prisoners’ writings and other artistic and political expressions, we will express the voices of the people who have been inside the walls. The organizers of this action will reach out to the community for support and participation. We will contact social service organizations, faith institutions, labor organizations, schools, prisoners, former prisoners and their family members.

Get a ride or give a ride at 10 a.m. at either Oscar Grant Plaza, 14th and Broadway, Oakland, or 1540 Market St., San Francisco.

National and international outreach

We will reach out to Occupies across the country to have similar demonstrations outside of prisons, jails, juvenile halls and detainment facilities or other actions as such groups deem appropriate. We will also reach out to Occupies outside of the United States and will seek to attract international attention and support.

Endorsers include Angela Davis, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Jack Bryson, Kevin Cooper Defense Committee, Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu Jamal, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu Jamal, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, Occupied Oakland Tribune, Oscar Grant Committee Against Police Brutality and State Repression, Prison Activist Resource Center, Prison Watch Network, San Francisco Bay View newspaper, All of Us or None, Critical Resistance, Michelle Alexander, Occupy SF and the Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network.

“Social justice is more than an ethical imperative, it is a foundation for national stability and global prosperity. Equal opportunity, solidarity and respect for human rights – these are essential to unlocking the full productive potential of nations and peoples.” – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Anti-prison activist Bruce Reilly can be reached on his blog, Unprison, where this story first appeared.

Occupy Death Row

by Kevin Cooper

Kevin Cooper

One cannot live on this planet and not know the bed capitalism lays here within this country. The roots from the tree of greed have spread to damn near every part of this world. They have had an impact, directly or indirectly, on every person in this world, to one degree or another.

Capitalism and the capitalists who run and control it need very important ingredients to make it work. They need “The Haves” and “The Have Nots”!

These days, as it once was when this country was first formed, it is very easy to tell the difference between the two. Some of the people, who for most of their lives considered themselves the “Haves,” are finding out that they were living a lie. That now they are part of the “Have Nots.” This reality is causing them, or at least some of them, to become part of this Occupy movement, and understandably so.

I have never considered myself to be a “Have” nor has this country ever treated me as a “Have”! No man or woman on death row in this state or any other state is a “Have.” We are also the “Have Nots.” We are the bottom 1 percent, who damn near everyone shits on. We are scapegoated, ignored, humiliated, disowned and ritually tortured and murdered by and at the hands of the top 1 percent – and some of the 99 percent as well!

Kevin Cooper 1985

It seems that the 1 percent are immune from the sentence of death, even when their policies in war – or peace – have killed untold numbers of people around the world. The bottom 1 percent is not immune and seems to be used as part of entertainment, from the media to the politicians.

While these truths must be known to the 99 percent who are now saying that they are the “Have Nots,” these truths are not acknowledged by the majority of them. We who are the bottom 1 percent, the historical “Have Nots,” the ones who are paraded before the public and humiliated, strapped to a gurney, tortured and murdered by the powers that be – we ask, “Why aren’t we included in this Occupy movement?”

While people are, and should be, occupying Wall Street and every other money street in the country, as well as occupying every city that they can, I ain’t hearing no one say, “Occupy Death Row!”

Nonetheless, I have been doing so since 1985. And death row itself has been occupying this country since even before this land became a country. Executions and the various ways that poor people have been executed throughout the years proves that executions are part of this country’s DNA.

Outside San Quentin, Kevin Cooper supporters protest his execution, which was called off by an appeals court on Feb. 9, 2004. This is where Occupy San Quentin will take place on Monday, Feb. 20.

I respectfully ask the Occupy movement: Will you please not make the same mistake that was made by previous movements seeking civil or any other type of rights? That mistake was not to include the ending of capital punishment.

Our fight and our plight from here on death row is just as important to us as your fight and your plight is to you! We understand this and respect this. All we ask, and all we have the right to ask is that you not leave us behind and/or out of the conversation. Any house, even a house full of “Have Nots,” divided upon itself cannot and will not stand. We must unite!

In Struggle and Solidarity

From Death Row at San Quentin Prison,

Kevin Cooper

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The Morning Mix with JR – January 18, 2012 at 8:00am

Click to listen (or

download)

by Minister of Information JR

Minister of Information JR describes this very special concert as a Winter Jam. Don't miss it. Doors open at 9 p.m. Tickets $12.

Our next guest is the mother of Kenneth Harding, 19-year-old unarmed Black man who was shot in mid-July [2011] over a $2 dollar bus transfer by the San Francisco Police Department. We have his mother live in the studio today. Her name is Denika Chatman.

M.O.I. JR: How are you, Miss Denika?

Denika Chatman: I’m good. Thank you for asking.

M.O.I. JR: Can you tell the people a little bit about your son, Kenneth Harding? Who was Kenneth Harding before he was murdered by the San Francisco Police Department in such an atrocious way?

Denika Chatman: My son was very filled with life. He was the life of the party. He could go anywhere and fit in. He loved life. And he was a college student, set to start college last fall. He was an entertainer. He was out here [in the S.F. Bay Area] trying to get his music out. And he was very family oriented. He loved his mother. He loved his brother. He loved his sister. And he loved the Lord.

M.O.I. JR: Can you tell the people a little bit about what happened in the middle of July.

Denika Chatman: Yes. My son, Kenny, he was on a T-train in San Francisco, Muni transit. And the police pretty much racially profiled him, approached him, asked him to supply proof of purchase of transfer for being on the train. And when he didn’t supply it, they removed him from the train where at that time he just had sat for a moment and then he took off running. And while he was running, he was running with his hands up.

And they still shot him down and allowed him to lay in the streets for over 28 minutes while he bled out and died. They wouldn’t allow the paramedics through to try to help him.

And, basically, I feel like he was ambushed because they came at him from two different directions over a $2 transit fare.

M.O.I. JR: I just want to put it out there that this is on YouTube. They can put Kenneth Harding into YouTube and this will come up.

Denika Chatman: That is correct. There was over 150 people out there that day. So, everybody pulled out their phones and started recording. And that’s why there are so many videos of my son’s death on there.

To raise awareness of police murders and demand justice for Kenneth Harding Jr., murdered by SFPD on July 16, 2011, protesters braved the rain Jan. 22, 2012, to march from the heart of Hunters Point at Third Street and Oakdale, where Kenny bled to death, to Candlestick Park as fans were arriving for the 49ers’ playoff with the New York Giants. – Photo: Kilo G Perry

M.O.I. JR: What’s been going on since in the community of Hunters Point where this occurred? What’s been going on since with people, such as Fly Benzo and Kilo and different people who support you?

Denika Chatman: That’s where the majority of my support comes from. As far as Fly, him and his brother Pladee have been assaulted, hospitalized, incarcerated for speaking openly about what they witnessed on that day and for still speaking out in regards to it, which I don’t understand because there’s also a YouTube of what happened to Fly Benzo. And I don’t understand why the courts won’t just use that as evidence and see what actually occurred on that day and that the police provoked all of this and just drop the charges.

And that’s why I endorse his campaign. Free Fly Benzo. His brother Pladee he was assaulted as well.

Kilo Perry, the police have harassed him on several occasions; he has been incarcerated for speaking out for the murder of my son, for what he saw the police do.

M.O.I. JR: Isn’t the San Francisco Police Department pushing charges that could result in Fly Benzo, otherwise known as DeBray Carpenter, where he could be facing years in prison?

Denika Chatman: That is correct. And I carry a lot of the guilt behind that because the battle he’s fighting is because he stood up for what he felt wasn’t right, the injustice done to my son. And because of that he is looking at a lot of prison time. And that’s why I’m fighting so hard for him on his side in solidarity because something has to be done. And he shouldn’t have to go through this behind speaking out against injustice.

M.O.I. JR: Can you talk a little bit about what you guys have going on Jan. 22?

Denika Chatman: Yeah. On Jan. 22, we are having a peaceful protest march and rally starting at Third Street and Oakdale, my son’s murder spot. That is San Francisco.

At Candlestick on Jan. 22, Fly Benzo (DeBray Carpenter) and other protesters handed out fliers calling for justice for Kenneth Harding Jr. to the fans tailgating before the playoff. – Photo: Kilo G Perry

M.O.I. JR: Right. Can you also talk a little bit about this concert that you have comin’ up?

Denika Chatman: Yes. I can touch on it. We’re having a big benefit concert for my son on Feb. 10. And I’ll just list a couple of the artists who will be there: The Jacka, J-Diggs, Mac Mall, Turf Talk, Beeda Weeda.

M.O.I. JR: And this is at 330 Ritch in San Francisco.

Denika Chatman: Yes. Everything is still being collaborated, put together, so we’re just waiting on finalization right now. But everything is approved to go.

M.O.I. JR: How has the police been responding to you and your family since this murder occurred?

Denika Chatman: Well, I went down to the Office of Citizen Complaints in San Francisco to turn in my complaint. At that time, I had only been in my new home for not even 10 days. And at that time they were the only ones who had my address, my physical address, because I had to put it on the paperwork. And within three to five days my home address was listed under Google with step-by-step directions on how to get to my home.

And I haven’t had any interactions with the police. However, they still haven’t been forthcoming with any of the evidence, or the videotapes, or anything to prove that they did a righteous kill.

M.O.I. JR: If people would like to help you and your supporters and would like to help fight police terrorism in aiding the people who are supporting Kenneth Harding, where can they do that and how can they do that?

Denika Chatman: Well, we just established the Kenneth Harding Jr. Foundation. If you would like to support, you can come to our meetings. You can also follow me on Facebook at Justice 4 Kenneth Harding Jr. And you can actually see everything that we’ve done up until this point as well as find out all the upcoming events. And also posted on the page, anything that’s needed or anything that has to do with the foundation, we post it up there, so that if people want to participate or become part of his committee, they are welcome to do so.

M.O.I. JR: Well, Denika, I just want to salute you for standing on the front line when you’ve faced such an atrocity to your own family, the atrocious murder of your own son by somebody who was a so-called public servant.

As 70,000 fans arrived at Candlestick for the playoff, they saw this banner, calling for justice for Kenneth Harding Jr., as they approached the overpass. – Photo: Kilo G Perry

Denika Chatman: There were actually four of them. And all their names are listed on the Justice 4 Kenneth Harding Jr. site as well.

M.O.I. JR: Well, thank you for standing on that front line. We appreciate your strength and your commitment and dedication. And you know the Block Report is behind you.

Denika Chatman: Bless you, JR. I also want to thank you for being a part of my son’s board, being part of our foundation.

And one thing that a lot of people don’t know: They can go get the [January] issue of the Bay View newspaper and read my story. It’s called “Picking up the pieces.” And on there, I’m actually giving shoutout to you for coming to Seattle to see about me and my family after all of this occurred, to you for being on the front line with me in supporting me throughout all of this, to all my front-runners who are still standing on the front line, who didn’t allow the police to get to them and silence them: Kilo Perry, Fly Benzo, Pladee Clayton, all o’ y’all. I just want to thank my true soldiers.

M.O.I. JR: Well, right on. Salute. Thank you for coming in.

Denika Chatman: Thank you for having me.

The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’“ and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe,” both available, along with many more interviews, at www.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com.

Related Posts

• Police critic Fly Benzo keeps catching hell since police murder of Kenneth Harding
• Free Fly Benzo! Criminalizing critique, cameras and community in Bayview Hunters Point
• Kenneth Harding police murder aftermath: Victory for Kilo G
• Police, media demonize Kenneth Harding’s family
• Picking up the pieces: Kenneth Harding’s mother calls on community to march for justice this Sunday

Block Report Radio interview broadcast recently on KPFA 94.1FM

M.O.I. JR: How are you?

Runoko: I’m very good, my Brotha. How are you?

M.O.I. JR: I’m great. I know that you have been doing a lot of research around the planet, relating to different civilizations, talking about the seed of those civilizations being Africans. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are, for those who have never heard of you.

Runoko: Well, my name is Runoko Rashidi. I’m a historian first and foremost and I guess an anthropologist too. I travel a great deal. Over the last 12 years, I’ve been very fortunate to have visited a hundred different countries, colonies and overseas territories in a certain time, all in search of the African presence. I write a lot, I spend a lot of time on Facebook just disseminating information and I’m also an author.

I have a new book that came out; it’s called “Black Star: The African presence in early Europe.” So that’s what I am, Brotha. I’m a historian, and I love Black people. I’m trying to make the world a better place.

I believe that what is so important is that people know who they are and have a high sense of self-esteem and have a degree of confidence that can only come from knowing your history. And I think that if you think you start with slavery, you’re messed up. And that’s what we are taught, that we either have a very negative history of slavery and colonization or that we don’t have a history at all, that we emerged out of the jungle a long time ago, and we act that way. And so we need a knowledge of self in order to counter the negative imagery and influences that we have, so in fact that it can be a guide for our behavior.

We are taught that we either have a very negative history of slavery and colonization or that we don’t have a history at all, that we emerged out of the jungle a long time ago, and we act that way. And so we need a knowledge of self in order to counter the negative imagery and influences.

M.O.I. JR: Let’s talk a little bit about your new book. What is the significance of the new book, and why did you pick the early African presence in Europe as the subject?

Runoko: Well, it just kind of came up that way. I’ve done a lot of work on the African presence in early Asia, in particular, going all the way back to the 1980s working with Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, who is an ancestor now. And I’ve also researched Africans in many other parts of the world. I spent a great deal of time in Europe, so over a period of time, I was able to gather up a lot of information.

I submitted a large manuscript to a Black publishing house in Europe a couple of years ago, and for some reason they focused on Europe. And since the manuscript was so large, I think we just decided and common sense dictated that we would take one section in particular on Europe, since the book was being published in Europe, and focus on that. So it’s a nice work. It’s a nice companion volume to the stuff that I have on Asia.

I’ve done a lot of research on Kemet, on Egypt. And really where my head is right now, where I’m being led to, is the Pacific and Australia. To my knowledge, there has never been an African-centered book to focus on the Black presence or African presence in that part of the world, and so something like that will be pioneering. It would be like Europe in the sense that it’s another chapter in the global history of African people – and chapters that only Africans themselves can write.

M.O.I. JR: Let’s get deep into your book. Tell us a little bit about the history of Europe and when Africans got to Europe.

Runoko: Well, there were many migrations out of Africa. The first migration, I don’t know if I should say migration or migrations, into Europe probably would have taken place, I don’t know, 40-50-70,000 years ago. And there would have been sporadic ice ages in there that would have transformed those original Black-skinned people into the Caucasoids that we know of today. Now there may have been several migrations like that. Maybe the first migrants perished in that ice. I don’t know.

Runoko Rashidi and Emmanuel Mah, the head of Books of Africa publishers, at an appearance in London in December 2011

So ancient Europe, pre-historic Europe, had these series of ice ages and it dramatically affected those original Black people, not only physically, but also psychologically, and it made them into what we can call a much colder people where survival of the fittest was the dominant theme, and might made right and a dog became a man’s best friend. And that was the Europe that those Africans went into and were transformed into, if that makes sense.

Pre-historic Europe had these series of ice ages and it dramatically affected those original Black people, not only physically, but also psychologically, and it made them into what we can call a much colder people where survival of the fittest was the dominant theme, and might made right and a dog became a man’s best friend. And that was the Europe that those Africans went into and were transformed into.

So the first African presence in Europe is in the pre-historic phase, where African people are the first people in Europe, and they mutate, if that is not too cold a word. And then we follow the history of African people a little later, and you find Africans still in the pre-historic phase, but they are worshipped as deities. You find these images of the Black woman, no doubt in my mind worshipped as god in Europe, especially in central Europe 20,000 years ago.

Alexandre Dumas – Photo: Nadar, 1855

Then you have Africans in the Greco-Roman world itself. It would appear that there was a Black community in ancient Athens and a Black community in the city of Corinth, where Paul went and preached and thus the Corinthians. And then you have Africans in the Roman world, African senators, African popes, African theologians, African marytrs, African saints, African writers, the head of Roman legions African – you had that.

Then you have the Moors, these Black people who converted to Islam and dominated southern Europe for hundreds of years. You have the Black Madonnas, and then you have slavery introduced, and this introduces a different kind of African who somehow was still able to distinguish himself, and thus you have the African family background, to say for example to Alexandre Dumas, the Brotha in France who wrote “The Three Muskateers,” who said, “One for all and all for one,” who said, “Your work may be finished, but your education is never complete.” He said, “A man’s mind is elevated to the status of women with whom he associates.” This is a Black man who identified himself as such.

Alexandre Dumas, the Brotha in France who wrote “The Three Muskateers,” who said, “One for all and all for one,” who said, “Your work may be finished, but your education is never complete.” He said, “A man’s mind is elevated to the status of women with whom he associates.” This is a Black man who identified himself as such.

You find the same thing and even more with Alexander S. Pushkin, the father of Russian literature, who was a man of African lineage. So African people have always been in Europe. Then you have Africans who fought in the colonial armies of Europe, in the British army, in the French army, in the Dutch army, the German army, the Belgian army, the Portuguese army, the Spanish army.

Alexander Pushkin by Vasily Tropinin

Abraham Hannibal, maternal great-grandfather of Alexandre S. Pushin, father of Russian literature, was born in Cameroon. – Photo courtesy of Dieudonne Gnammankou via Runoko Rashidi

Runoko: No, I don’t think that they are any more embracing than Europeans are here. Most of them are not aware of it, and if they were aware of it, a lot of them would resent it, because Africa is made to look so bad in the world. You hear these expressions, even from Black folks in the United States: I’ve heard people say, “Call me anything but an African.” I’ve heard Sistas and Brothas, educated Africans in America, say, “Thank God for slavery because at least it got us out of Africa.” “Slavery might’ve been bad, but at least we were able to meet Jesus” – those kinds of things.

When I do presentations, I start by asking people a lot of times, what do you think of when you think of Africa? And, my Brotha, I get three answers consistently: One is wild animals, is the first thing that people always tell me, and the second thing is disease; then you can follow that by poverty, hardship, corruption – bad things to the point where people don’t want to identify with Africa. You know the way in which we are taught: African booty scratcher, African this, jungle, the Tarzan, King Kong – so you’re permeated with a negative image of Africa.

So in 2011, when a Black man comes up and says, “You come from Africa”; no matter how white you are, your lineage is ultimately African. Well, hey, that doesn’t make me a popular fellow. But there are some people that are open, that are interested in scholarship, who have a receptive mind for the truth or facts as they are presented. They are very different, and those people are rare.

M.O.I. JR: Can you talk about the difference in which Africans see our way versus the way that European society sees its women? Even back from the time of antiquity, how would you compare people like Auset or Isis to Queen Elizabeth, or somebody like that who is in the pantheon of the Europeans?

Runoko: Nobody has ever asked me that before, Brotha. Auset for those that don’t know, is the same as Isis. It’s just that Isis is the Greek name, Auset is the African name. She is the feminine aspect of God, from Kemet, from ancient Egypt. And the name Auset means the throne. And Auset has had a history that is far more significant, as opposed to a real figure like Queen Elizabeth.

“The Black Madonnas of Europe are the superstars of the cult of Mary. I absolutely love them. They are recent depictions of the Black mother goddess, especially Ast (Isis). This is one of my favorites. This is the Black Madonna and child in the church of St. John In Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. I went to great lengths to see it and photograph last August,” writes Rashidi in Facebook. – Photo: Runoko Rashidi

M.O.I. JR: Wait. Wait. Expand on that. What did you just say? They are miracle workers because they are Black?

Runoko: (laughing) I don’t know how many people are familiar with what we call the Black Madonnas or Black Virgins.

M.O.I. JR: I’ve seen them, but I can’t really say that I know the history.

Runoko: Well, these are the superstars of the cult of Mary. They are depictions of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, I guess in the Catholic world, in the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe, that are Black. And they are the most important of all the Madonnas and child figures in Europe. They are called Black Madonnas or Black Virgins, and there are more than 500 of them that have been documented. The majority of them are in France, but they are in virtually every culture in Europe. And because they are Black, it is seriously believed by the devotees of this religion that they are able to perform miracles.

“Our Lady of the Dark Wood,” Black Madonna of Switzerland – Photo: Runoko Rashidi

Joan of Arc used to pray before a Black Madonna. Soldiers in France going on the Crusades to take Palestine away from what they considered the infidel Muslims would stop before a shrine of the Black Madonna. People who had diseases like polio or diseases of that type, you could see the braces and the crutches that they threw away in the church. You could see the notes that people wrote to the Madonnas pasted in the church, because of the miracles that they were thought to have performed.

They are called Black Madonnas or Black Virgins, and because they are Black, it is seriously believed by the devotees of this religion that they are able to perform miracles. You could see the notes that people wrote to the Madonnas pasted in the church, because of the miracles that they were thought to have performed.

They are truly the superstars of a cult of Mary, and they are called Black Madonnas or Black Virgin statues and they are scattered all over the world. And it’s one of the most fascinating chapters in “The African Presence in Europe.” It’s deep. It’s very profound. And I show a lot of pictures of them in my presentation.

M.O.I. JR: Can you tell the people a little bit of history of the Moors, ‘cause if my information is correct, this was one of the last African conquering civilizations before the Europeans took over, after the voyage of Columbus.

Runoko: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. The word Moor means “scorched.” It means black; it comes out of the Greco-Roman world. And it was a term applied to Black populations in Northwest Africa: Algeria, Morocco, maybe Tunisia, Mauritania, certainly Northwest Africa. And the first time we find the Moors, they are fighting in the army of the Carthaginians led by Gen. Hannibal Barca. They were an important part of the Carthaginian army.

Hannibal crossing the Alps

You know the Arabs come out of the Arabian Peninsula, they go into Egypt, they go into Libya, and they don’t meet much resistance. And then they get into Algeria, and they meet fierce resistance. And the resistance comes from the Berbers and the Moors. And they are led by a Black woman, interestingly enough, named Al-Kahina, probably a prophetess of some sort, and they fight a serious war against the Arabs, but they are ultimately defeated.

Now about 710, the Moors convert to Islam and, as Muslims, they go into Spain in 711 along with some Arabs and they defeat the white Spanish Christian army and re-introduce civilization into Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. They introduce concepts of literacy, of hygiene, of science, of mathematics, of agriculture.

M.O.I. JR: Let me get you to back up. When you say lost civilization, what are you talking about? I know you said what they gave them. When a civilization collapses, what does that mean?

Runoko: That means you kind of go backwards. You lose the things that made you great or the perception of the world that made you great. And so when the Roman Empire falls, after its invaded by the northern European Barbarians, I guess you could say that civilization in Europe was kaput. People are really living in a very primitive state, where even basic things like bathing are considered sinful, where reading and writing becomes virtually unknown again. And this is the kind of lifestyle – I won’t call it a civilization – this is the kind of culture that you find in Europe, and this is like in the fifth century.

Moorish nobles playing chess in 13th century Spain, a page from the chessbook of Alfonso the Wise. Note the Black servant giving orders to a white servant or slave. – Photo: Runoko Rashidi

Early in the eighth century, here come the Moors, these Black people on horseback who cross over from Africa into Europe, who build libraries and palaces and gardens and re-introduce public hygiene and improve the medical practices. Among the Moors, the role of women was very, very high. People had a degree of freedom that they didn’t experience in the white Spanish era of Spain.

Then other movements of Moors, particularly one called the Almoravid come in, in the 12th century led by a Brotha named Yusuf ibn-Tashmin, a Black man, but it doesn’t last very long and the Moors start to fighting among themselves again. Then another Moorish army comes in, and that doesn’t last very long. These white Spanish Christians are relentless, and by the 15th century, they have put so much pressure on the Moors that the Moors have been backed into the southernmost regions of Spain. And finally in January of 1492, a Moorish leader named Boab Dil, a weak Moorish ruler, surrendered to the forces of Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragona Castille. I believe Jan. 2 or Jan. 6 of 1492.

La Mezquita de Cordoba, Spain, a stunning example of Moorish architecture, was built as a huge mosque, then converted to a Christian cathedral in 1523.

M.O.I. JR: Last question because we are running out of time: How do you look at what just recently went down in North Africa, particularly in Libya, where you just identified the people calling them Moors, later Berbers. Muammar Qaddafi was a Berber. Can you put what happened in Libya over this last year into a historical context?

Runoko: Libya used to be a Black country. All of Africa was a Black continent. For one thing, Libya produced a Black man who become the emperor; his name is Septimius Severus. He was born in Northern Libya in a place named Leptis Magna in April of 145.

Libya used to be a Black country. All of Africa was a Black continent. For one thing, Libya produced a Black man who become the emperor; his name is Septimius Severus.

Libya has a Black history. It has an African history. Over a period of time, beginning in the eighth century, it’s overrun by Arabs, and it loses its Blackness, maybe even before then. Certainly by that time, you could see North Africa being transformed Black to Arab and Berber. Now you have white Berbers and Black berbers. I’ve seen both. Now, what happened in Libya was just tragic. It was a shame. It was a disgrace. There was no getting around it.

Not all Libyans are Arab; nearly half are Black Africans. This Libyan woman is Tuareg, an ancient nomadic people of the Sahara renowned as great warriors. They developed an alphabetic script to write their language in the third century. – Photo: Runoko Rashidi

And then you have other Africans, who come from various parts of Africa, going to Libya to look for work, who are trying to use Libya as a transit zone to leave Africa altogether and go to Europe. And so I think that a lot of the Sistas and Brothas who I have heard about who were killed during this overthrow of the Qaddafi regime, I think were those Black migrants. I don’t know to what extent Sistas and Brothas that have lived in Libya for generations were affected.

Now I’ll give you an example: I take people on tours and in July I took a group to Kemet. I take a group to Egypt every year. And on the first day that we were there, I was with my small group and interestingly enough I ran into two groups of Black folks besides ourselves. One was a group of four newlyweds, two couples from Darfur, of all places, in the Sudan. And we met each other right by the Great Sphinx, Herumakhet.

We talked, and interestingly enough what we talked about was Malcolm X. How about that? And right after that I met a son of a very Black young Brotha with a very heavy melanated son, and we got to talking. I said, where you from? They said, we’re from Libya. And I said, oh, you are among the migrants? And they said, oh no, we’ve been there for a very long time. And so I don’t think we know enough about the indigenous and Black populations in that part of the world to really speak with any degree of accuracy.

But I deplore what happened in Libya. I think it’s a damn shame, and I have nothing good to say about it. I think it shows how powerless African people are in many ways to resolve a conflict on their own continent – and how, even 50 years after independence, most African countries are still relatively impotent.

Let me say this, and I know we got to go. Why is this important? Well, what you do for yourself depends on what you think of yourself, and what you think of yourself depends on what you know of yourself, and what you know of yourself depends on what you have been told. So we are able to link the ancient past, what happened in pre-historic Europe, to what is happening in Libya today, because we know there is no disconnect between the past, present and the future. They are all linked. And people who know their history are in a better position to defend themselves and advance their own interests than people who do not.

The People’s Minister of Information JR is associate editor of the Bay View, author of “Block Reportin’“ and filmmaker of “Operation Small Axe,” both available, along with many more interviews, at www.blockreportradio.com. He also hosts two weekly shows on KPFA 94.1 FM and kpfa.org: The Morning Mix every Wednesday, 8-9 a.m., and The Block Report every Friday night-Saturday morning, midnight-2 a.m. He can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com.

Related Posts

• Toward African freedom in Libya and beyond
• Cynthia McKinney on President Obama and Libya, Japan and 9/11 truth
• Stop the wicked West! Out of the killing fields in Ivory Coast and Libya comes a new world order
• Pierre Labossiere on welcoming Aristide home to Haiti
• U.S., NATO and the attacks against Libya

by TaLea Monet and DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter

“After the contractor agreed to give B&C Painting and Decorating a piece of the contact, we celebrated with the Black Power salute,” says Fly Benzo. From left are Terrance Carpenter, Barbara Banks, DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter, Lawrence Williams Jr. wearing a hard hat, little Angel Perry in front, with other jobseekers and a couple of Unity Homes residents standing in solidarity on Jan. 17. – Photo: Kilo G Perry

California’s Health and Safety Code Section 33422.1 reads as follows: “To the greatest extent feasible, contracts for work to be performed in connection with any redevelopment project shall be awarded to business concerns which are located in, or owned in the substantial part by persons residing in the project area.”

Section 33422.3 reads: “To insure training and employment opportunities for lower-income project area residents, the agency may specify in the call for bids for any contract over one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) for work to be performed in connection with any redevelopment project that project area residents, if available, shall be employed for a specified percentage of each craft or type of workmen needed to execute the craft or work.”

In their first attempt to win justice on the Unity Homes project, Fly Benzo and the Black Star Coalition shut down the job, stopping the crew and the equipment, like this heavy duty forklift used for construction projects. – Photo: Kilo G Perry

The Unity Homes contract was instead awarded to a non-union out-of-town contractor – clearly in violation of California law. B&C has been in business in Hunters Point since 1984 and has played a key role in the development and maintenance of numerous residential and commercial complexes in the community, such as Northridge Cooperative Homes and Bayview Plaza.

On Friday, Jan. 13, DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter, Kilo G and Claude Carpenter – along with the rest of the Black Star Coalition and unemployed Bayview residents – marched to the job site, bringing the contractor’s work to a screeching halt by standing unmoved in front of the heavy construction equipment. They demanded that they be given the same opportunity to work the site and would not budge to let the workers continue.

DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter and TaLea Monet

To show that they meant business, the group made yet another trip to the work site on Tuesday, Jan. 17. Apparently the first shutdown was effective, because this time around the contractors agreed to give Barbara Banks, lifetime resident of Bayview and owner of B&C, a piece of the contract in an attempt to stop the protesting and keep the peace.

The Black Star Coalition vows to remain firm when dealing with the malpractice involved in tax increment financing, a scheme used by redevelopment agencies, which, by the will of the voters, are shutting down as of Feb. 3, 2012. “We’re not going anywhere,” says DeBray. “We’re going to continue to stand rooted and exercise our First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Next stop … West Point!

Bayview Hunters Point community advocate DeBray “Fly Benzo” Carpenter can be reached on Facebook or at flybenzo@gmail.com.

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• Unfair trade! Sen. Leno aims to give our clean parkland to Lennar, toxic land to the people
• Foreclosure victory as homeowners pack courtroom
• Bayview Library: building down, price up $2 million
• SF Public Health Department ethics under investigation – hearing June 23

by Todd Ashker

Displaying his banner on the steps of San Francisco City Hall on June 17, 2011, poet and former political prisoner – member of the San Quentin 6 – Bato Talamantez was among the first Bay Area activists to rally public support and draw media attention to the hunger strike called by prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU to begin July 1. This photo dominated the front page of the Bay View’s July print edition. – Photo: United for Drug Policy Reform

Briefly, here’s what I’m concerned about: Right at the time – in May – when the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s prison population reduction order, in seeming response to our July hunger strike, CDCR unveils their STG plan. Here’s how it looks to me: The prison population reduction of 35,000-40,000 prisoners equals a potential loss of $2 billion in the yearly CDCR budget and the loss of approximately 7,000 CCPOA members. That’s the loss of a lot of union dues!

A clever way to offset some of this loss is to create a “new” security threat designation scheme – used in a lot of states, including Arizona, where it’s used to isolate all inmates labeled southern Hispanic from California – enabling CDCR to segregate a lot more men. Segregation costs nearly double general population and requires more staff.

I can foresee the possibility of CDCR making all the Level IVs across the state segregated isolation units! Anyone who scoffs at this doesn’t know CDCR’s history of the last 40 years, wherein they have manipulated and abused every major federal court ruling that’s been made against them! This is a fact, witnessed by many men here in my pod.

Right at the time – in May – when the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s prison population reduction order, in seeming response to our July hunger strike, CDCR unveils their “security threat group” (STG) plan. The reduction of 35,000-40,000 prisoners equals a potential loss of $2 billion in the yearly CDCR budget and 7,000 CCPOA members. The STG scheme enables CDCR to segregate a lot more men. Segregation costs nearly double general population and requires more staff.

As for the subject of “behavior” – yes, we all are interested in what CDCR’s definition will be regarding “behavior.” On Oct. 20, former CDCR Director George Guirbino came and spoke with me at my cell for about 45 minutes with Warden Lewis, and I asked him about this “behavior” definition issue. His response was that they were not sure at that time, but it should be along the lines of if they have credible evidence that you have committed an illegal act, you’ll be written up and, if found guilty, assessed a specific punishment – SHU term, demotion in step program level(s) etc. We touched on all of the points people are tripping out on there in our second hunger strike document, “Tortured SHU prisoners speak out: The struggle continues.”

News coverage of the horrors of prison life for the 2.5 million Americans locked behind enemy lines is suppressed by law and custom, limiting prisoners’ and their supporters’ ability to plead their cause and organize to achieve relief – and release. Prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU, however, crafted their demands and prepared so effectively for their hunger strike that not only did 12,000 California prisoners participate but stories appeared in both the mainstream and alternative media. This Associated Press photo of a rally at the State Building in San Francisco on the day the first strike began, July 1, 2011, appeared in many major newspapers. – Photo: Paul Sakuma, AP

We’ve let the attorneys know that they should not presume to know what’s good and not good for us – and they need to include the core reps in the loop. And when I put something out there from the collective of reps here, we need it taken care of ASAP, not sitting collecting dust for a month.

And I’ll say this: The collective doesn’t appreciate people questioning the legitimacy of our update. That’s a bit disrespectful of people to presume I’d put that out there without a consensus. And the consensus of agreement with the entire content was not solely that of the core collective but a big majority of the entire short corridor, most of whom are Hispanics. No one is taking it personal but people need to cut all the silly sh-t out!

No one can do this alone and no one should have to feel they have to. And if things aren’t right by the summer, you all are going to need to be supportive of each other because it’s possible a peaceful activity will resume. If so, some men may very well expire. That’s why people’s efforts and support to get CDCR to act before then is critical!

If things aren’t right by the summer, you all are going to need to be supportive of each other because it’s possible a peaceful activity will resume. If so, some men may very well expire. That’s why people’s efforts and support to get CDCR to act before then is critical!

I watched a program last week on PBS about the green movement in Africa, where the mothers and wives of men locked up for their political writings went on hunger strike demanding the government release their men. When, after three days, the crowd became larger, the government sent in soldiers to bust heads. The women got naked, because beating a naked woman is viewed as violating one’s own mother in their culture. Many were beaten, but their men got released!

Major TV stations covered the rally in front of CDCR headquarters in Sacramento July 18, 2011, in the midst of the first round of the hunger strike. – Photo: Grant Slater, KPCC

Most of us serving term to life sentences are way beyond our minimum parole eligibility dates. We’re not serving legit legal sentences; we’re here based on political manipulation and special interest groups, criminal organizations – e.g. CCPOA – who’ve made a money making industry off the backs of the disenfranchised (not limited to “people of color,” rather the poor composed of all races), perpetrating a 40-year criminal fraud on the taxpayers.

This is not limited to those incarcerated. It’s every one of the 99 percent. Our country is a two-class country now: the wage slave poor and the rich, period! This country’s been in a class war for a long time and people need to wake up.

The people have the power to make the changes that the courts and politicians refuse to make, because they’re part of the problem – maintaining the status quo. It’s all a matter of the people’s resolve and commitment to doing what’s needed to make it happen – through peaceful protest means!

The people have the power to make the changes that the courts and politicians refuse to make.

This is the type of message you’ll need to be sharing with as many people as possible: You’ll need to come together and say “Hey, we’re not accepting our family member’s torture no more – he shouldn’t even be in prison – and this is our plan of action” regarding serious peaceful protest rallies, outside hunger strikes at the capitol and lawmakers’ offices etc. Some things to think about: collectively utilizing the support energy in a positive, productive way to keep the focus and exposure going strong and letting it be known that we’re committed to the end to make these long overdue changes happen.

Send our brother some love and light: Todd Ashker, C-58191, PBSP SHU, D1-119, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532. This letter was written to and typed by Kendra Castaneda.

CDCR incites violence to fatten their paychecks

by Mutope Duguma

Written Jan. 19, postmarked Jan. 24, 2012 – Keep in mind that these [the new proposed regulations posted below, following the letters] are nothing but proposals, and we all know that CDCR does not see us as human beings; therefore, they do not want to let us out of these “gulags” under no circumstances, which shows how diabolical – i.e. evil – the CDCR is in respect to prisoners of color, i.e. New Afrikans, Natives, Latinos, Mexicans, and very poor whites.

This is historical hate being practiced against those individuals held in solitary confinement – i.e. Ad-Seg, SHUs, Supermax etc. And this is what CDCR hopes is the case: that citizens of this nation accept their position that we are “savages,” the “worst of the worst” etc., when actually we are more embracing of our humanity than many of the employees that work for CDCR. They (CDCR) and its 33 prison chapters have murdered, beaten and lied in order to continue this criminal empire.

CDCR hopes that citizens of this nation accept their position that we are “savages,” the “worst of the worst.”

We are not going anywhere, because if CDCR attempts to manipulate a policy where it keeps us in solitary confinement, then our struggle continues. We are very mindful that we are the victims of a powerful system that has gone astray. They’re only going to create some kind of contradiction in which they (CDCR) can say, “We told you so: These guys are violent.”

This is a frame from TV coverage of the July 18 rally by KCRA, Sacramento.

CDCR profiles prisoners and then, based on their assessment of that prisoner, already know that if that prisoner is placed in a certain predicament then he or she will engage in violence. This is just one of many ways CDCR manufacture violence, which is a big PAYCHECK for many CDCR officers through overtime and asking the legislature for more money. So they do not only play the prisoner, but the taxpayers as well.

Most of the violence in CDCR is manufactured by prison guards and those who sit at the top in Sacramento. This is why we are working to shut down all racial violence – a big PAYCHECK for many CDCR officers through overtime and an excuse to ask the legislature for more money. So they do not only play the prisoner, but the taxpayers as well.

We are very progressive when it comes to what will be the new policy that will govern whether we will remain back here for nothing. If they use “behavior,” then it has to be connected to conduct, where one has actually been involved in an incident that was cause for a rule violation report (RVR). So that’s cool. We want that, you dig? We don’t really care about CDCR’s stepdown program because we are proposing our own, which we already had before and which was successful.

We believe and want it enforced that everyone who has been in solitary confinement indefinitely illegally should be released from SHU and Ad-Segs immediately while being provided an adequate medical checkup due to being denied medical treatment years on top of years. These are nothing but games from CDCR once again.

We believe and want it enforced that everyone who has been in solitary confinement indefinitely illegally should be released from SHU and Ad-Segs immediately while being provided an adequate medical checkup due to being denied medical treatment years on top of years.

You are now learning the true nature of CDCR. This program – whatever it turns out to be – will be for EVERY prisoner held in a California state prison. Those held in solitary confinement, such as Ad-Segs, waiting to be placed in SHU should have been in SHU 90 days after they received their indeterminate SHU program. The system plays on prisoners’ inability to file CDCR 602 appeals and writs. They take their time because they abuse the power they’ve been entrusted with.

Remember this, that CDCR is going to do what it is going to do and we are going to do what we have to do through peaceful nonviolent demonstrations in order to continue our struggle for liberation. And we are dealing with thousands of human beings’ lives, so we have to be careful how we move forward. We have people who are literally willing to die rather than to be subjected to this another day.

We have people who are literally willing to die rather than to be subjected to this another day.

We have many superior minds back here who will easily see if CDCR is playing their same old games as usual. This is not an overnight struggle! We are very much fighting for our lives and our family and friends’ lives. We have a lot of major activities going on that will expose this criminal empire for what is.

Send our brother some love and light: Mutope Duguma, s/n James Crawford, D-05996, PBSP-SHU D1-117, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532. This letter was written to and typed by Kendra Castaneda.

Challenge CDCR in the open

by Arturo Castellanos

Written Jan. 16, 2012 – I’m writing you because attorneys have sent me a lot of copies of downloads from your website and others who have heavily criticized your pro-active actions. What made me laugh is that you’re a little thing and an army of one – and the others are talking bad about you. And I say anyone who claims to be walking and striving to put forward our demands – which include Ad-Seg – should NOT be trying to undermine all your hard won effort!

Evidence that word of the dramatic hunger strike in California had reached the rest of the U.S. and beyond is this banner hanging from an overpass in Philadelphia on July 18.

Why are they trying to silence a strong outspoken person who is helping all of us – and being heard?

We are all in the same struggle so don’t indirectly help CDCR by trying to silence a strong voice among you. What we need is A LOT more Kendras who are NOT afraid to challenge CDCR in the open and not take a passive stance and just hope for the best. That latter stance – passive – is the reason we have remained in the SHU all these years!

Everyone in this struggle needs to work together or else you are just an obstructionist to our cause – and I can’t make it clearer than that!

Arturo Castellanos is barred from receiving mail, an issue that should be raised with CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate. This letter was written to and typed by Kendra Castaneda.

Status of CDCR’s new regs

by Terry Kupers, Laura Magnani and Carol Strickman for the mediation team

Jan. 4, 2012 – On Dec. 28, 2011, two members of the mediation team spoke with Undersecretary Terri McDonald about the status of the new regulations on gang validation and SHU classification policies and procedures. Undersecretary McDonald stated the following:

A rally in support of the Sept. 26, 2011, resumption of the hunger strike was organized by Revolution activists and held at the Pelican Bay State Prison gate on Oct. 1.

2. In addition, CDCR is designing a four-step “stepdown program” designed for exiting gang members. Step 1 is high security and step 4 is transition to general population. Debriefing is not required to qualify for this program.

3. CDCR has drafted a “concept paper” about these new policies, which it intends to send to its national experts in early January. CDCR did not adopt the prior recommendations of the 2007 experts’ report, mostly because of cost. CDCR’s concept paper will not be available to prisoners and their advocates until after the experts weigh in.

4. CDCR hopes to hear back from these experts by late January or early February.

5. CDCR will then revise its concept paper and send it to “stakeholders” for feedback.

6. Stakeholders include such groups as legislators, law enforcement leaders in the community who work with gangs, the Prison Law Office and the mediation team.

7. After hearing from the stakeholders, CDCR will then turn its concepts into detailed regulations.

8. Then CDCR will propose these changes officially through the public hearing process, negotiating with unions etc. She also stated that the Castillo case would have to be factored in, so that someone coming up for a six-year review doesn’t lose ground with the new provisions. All of this will take time.

9. The status of individual prisoners who are currently in SHU will not be reviewed until all of this has happened, other than those who are up for annual review by the ICC (Institution Classification Committee).

10. The stepdown program can be implemented sooner, as it does not involve policy changes. She gave an example of prisoners going to an “integrated yard,” composed of prisoners affiliated with enemy gangs, to see if they can get along.

11. She cautioned that there will be no large-scale exodus from the SHUs. They are concerned that, if they move too fast and violent incidents occur, the entire reform process will be destroyed.

12. Although the process will be slow, she stated that CDCR is committed to reworking its validation procedures, making SHU consignment behavior-based, opening the stepdown program and re-evaluating all current SHU occupants when the new regulations on validation and SHU placement are in place.

13. Regarding the specific promises that Scott Kernan negotiated as part of demand no. 5 – calendars, hobby items, sweats etc. – she states that they have all been accomplished already with the exception of the chin-up bars, because they involve some expensive structural changes, and the photographs, which are happening over time, when prisoners get their ICC reviews. She states that these items are not privileged-based.

14. CDCR officials who are involved are George Guirbino, who has retired but will remain on contract with CDCR for this purpose, Suzan Hubbard and Director Subio. Hubbard and Guirbino will be on the panel reviewing individual prisoners’ cases once the new regulations are rolled out.

Although the undersecretary’s comments do not provide all of the detail that we need, this information is helpful in general terms. We will provide more information as we learn it.

Terry Kupers, M.D., M.S.P., a clinical psychiatrist, professor at the Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology, and an expert in forensic mental health and the effects of solitary confinement, can be reached at kupers@igc.org or his office, (510) 654-8333. Laura Magnani, regional director for the American Friends Service Committee in San Francisco and co-author of “Beyond Prisons” in 2006 and author of “Buried Alive: Long Term Isolation in Youth and Adult Prisons” in 2008, can be reached at lmagnani@afsc.org or (415) 565-0201, ext. 11. Carol Strickman, a lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, can be reached at carol@prisonerswithchildren.org or (415) 255-7036, ext. 324.

Related Posts

• Greed drives solitary confinement torture
• Hearing on Solitary Confinement: seeking compassion in the capitol
• Hunger strike in the supermax: Pelican Bay prisoners protest conditions in solitary confinement
• To witness people say no to state-sanctioned torture is a beautiful sight indeed
• Strike updates: Stop prison torture at Pelican Bay

At the Rainbow Recreation Center, Brother Fred hands out bagged food while his youngest son, Bilal, checks names off the list. Bilal studied law in Britain and is a solicitor. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

Saturday morning, Jan. 28, 2012, I called friends looking for someone to ride bikes with – remember my club, Ramadan Rides: Rides for Every Body? We should ride to San Quentin on Feb. 20 for the Occupy Action. Let’s talk about it.

Hamdiyah called me back and couldn’t ride – a meeting this morning at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, but she told me that her husband, Brother Fred, and his youngest son, Bilal, visiting with his wife from Egypt, where he told me he is working with displaced Sudanese refugees, were feeding people at Rainbow Recreation Center, International and Seminary. Bilal studied law in Britain and is a solicitor.

I walked over to Rainbow, where each Saturday for the past seven years East Bay Educational Program has been giving away food to needy Oaklanders. With a line around the block when I arrived, Brother Fred and Bilal had a list with peoples’ names. As they gave them a bag of food, produce and dry goods like macaroni we spoke about food security and people served here weekly, numbering from 200 to 400 persons. At the beginning of the month, Brother Fred said the lines tend to be longer. There were people being served from all walks of life, all ethnicities and all ages and physical abilities. One woman I met told me that she picks up food and often gives it to neighbors who are not able to get to the site.

I love feeding people – there is a rush that one gets and a feeling of warmth when one satisfies this need which is basic to all one’s endeavors. Can’t think when you’re hungry. True, Americans do not know true hunger, but one can’t compare hunger in a Third World country at war to hunger in a First World city like Oakland, where we have our battles, but …

There is hunger and there is homelessness and unemployment and under-education here. It might not look like the Alexandra Township or Soweto, but for us it is cause for concern and I was so happy to find something in my neighborhood to smile about and want to participate in.

In case you haven’t heard, I do not like my neighborhood, my block or any of the blocks nearby. The feeling of a small town which I felt in West Oakland’s Oak Center before all of us were evicted and/or left when our bid to change the Oak Center 1 apartment complex into a cooperative was denied – was when I loved this city. Now, I just live here. I am a property owner who feels gipped. I know the few homeowners I share property lines with, unless the house is owned by a bank, the worse type of slumlord. These neighbors wave and say hi as they blast their music on weekends and late at night, operate illegal businesses out of their homes and take up all the parking on the street. None of the homeowners nearby are Black nor are the renters. I am not plugged in at all. All I like about East Oakland is the Bay Trail at Zone Way – once I hitch my bike to my car and drive to it. There I can let my worries about safety and poor city services pave the road behind me as I toss them over my shoulder.

I enjoyed Madagascar, perhaps more than Johannesburg, which is a city that is like New York, unfriendly. I met a few nice people through friends and a few expatriates who wanted to be reached – all didn’t return calls. I was like, I gave ten years of my life to free your nation – can’t I get a phone call response. It was weird. But the good people I met like Shaka Jamal’s friend, Tsakane was a great brother. He and his wife and little boy picked me up one evening when I was dying of boredom and took me by a friend’s who is a visual artist, a fine artist, to visit with his wife and baby girl. That was fun. We never got back over but it was great meeting Black folks and finding out what they thought on the eve of the African National Congress’s 100th anniversary Jan. 8 in Bloemfontein. I couldn’t find anyone interested in going – with 82 percent unemployment and most of the kids failing the Metric or high school exit exam that same week, the timing was kind of dismal – not to mention the controversy with President Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema, the leader of the ANC Youth League.

Crystal Carter spoke of how for the past five years she has been coming to Rainbow, often getting food to share with neighbors who can’t get out. As Carter gave Brother Fred a hug, she said she often comes because it’s good for her soul. Recovering from a really horrific car accident hasn’t been easy on Carter either, as she has had to adjust to living with less income. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

I stayed at a youth hostel in Melville. Melville is a college town, walking distance from Johannesburg University and the premier university of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg or Wits. While I was there, there was a stampede at JU, where the mother of an applicant was trampled to death, others ended up in the hospital where they described being impaled under foot as people stepped on their chests and necks, arms and legs trying to rush the gate which was pushed down by anxious enrollees.

In America people camp out on Black Friday for a good deal. This past November a person was shot in a parking lot over a TV. In Joburg people camp out in front of a university to get a shot at late admission. Not that a college degree guarantees employment, nope, but it is something constructive to do with one’s time. I met a college graduate in Soweto. He is recycling plastics. Another young man wants to be a doctor; he is a tour guide sharing his reality with others.

The tours set up by the hostel were really Euro centered – animals and buildings, not people. Of course there were people there but there was no opportunity to really connect. I didn’t do any road trips – next time. I want to see the parts of South Africa that don’t look like cloned America. The cost of living was similar to here and the Ashby Flea Market had better gifts and goods than I saw in Rosebank, a celebrated African marketplace in a suburb outside of Joburg proper. I saw many products I could get cheaper here. I heard there were African films, indie films and directors, but I didn’t see any such films in any of the theatre listings, which were playing American films.

Lonnie Scoggins, program co-founder, is proud of his granddaughter, who spoke of how much she enjoyed helping others on Saturday mornings with her grandfather. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

While in Joburg, I couldn’t find any African music or places to dance or hear poetry. I was near Seventh Street, a place known for its music and lively night scene, but nothing was happening. The time when I was there was between holiday and the start of school – a kind of limbo time. I thought of the irony of a Seventh Street in Joburg like the Seventh Street in Oakland. The weekend I left there was a concert with Pinise and Bheki Khoza at The Lucky Bean, which sold out before I could get tickets. I thought about walking down and just hanging out, but one doesn’t hang out in a big city alone. Selaelo introduced me to jazz singer Brenda Joyce, whom I spoke to but didn’t get a chance to meet this time. I think she’s been in South Africa for 17 years.

I can’t begin to know what it must feel like to live in a country owned by the colonizers. The SA government doesn’t own or control a third of the land, just public land where the railroad tracks lie. There are no more gold mines in Joburg, though the wealth is still tied up by multinationals – some African, most not. I saw many old mines where people sift for gold dust. Oprah’s school sits behind one such mountain. While I was in the country, her first class graduated.

These newspapers were spread out on the sidewalk for sale in Joburg on Jan. 12. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

Mbeki actually opened a conference, which began in Cape Town as I was leaving the country. It’s entitled: The Knowledge Conference.

The Rosebank Market in a suburg of Johannesburg is reminiscent of the Ashby Flea Market in Berkeley. – Photo: TaSin Sabir

The police were looking for counterfeit goods; the only problem was they were beating up pedestrians in the way of their SWAT operation, spraying pepper spray at close range, snatching cameras off witnesses filming the brutality and humiliating onlookers like a taxi driver who laughed. He was made to lie face down in a muddy puddle. The police used the fire department’s Jaws of Life to pry the bars from merchant windows closed when they saw the police coming. One woman said the police take her entire inventory.

I thought this attention to corporate profits was rather insane, yet typical in a world where corporations have more rights than flesh and blood people. The only response to the excessive force complaints was to make sure they were documented, that the operation wasn’t supposed to harm pedestrians.

The newspaper for the homeless community, like our Street Spirit or Street Sheet is called: Homeless Talk: Helping the Poor Help Themselves, www.homelesstalk.org.za. On the cover is “homeless babe,” a scantily clad woman with a whistle in her mouth. Looks like the kind of whistles women wear to alert the police – counter intuitive juxtaposition of images, especially given the high level of violence against women in South Africa, per the news coverage. This is why playwright Selaelo Maredi’s latest work is about violence against women. I was privileged to see the first staged reading while I was there at the Westend Theatre in a historic area of Pretoria called Tshwane.

Paepae Kenny Mmekwa, Usuthu Art Productions, invited me to hear his percussion group perform the following week, so that’s what took me back to Pretoria. We danced too. Paepae is also a famous choreographer in the Pedi tradition. This dance uses the movement of birds and other animals. It was really fun. Lulu or Abu Baker, who is a member of the Mouride Brotherhood (the Muridiyya), told me that the day I was visiting was the day of the great pilgrimage at Touba in Senegal, so he left to go pray after we dropped by a diner. He told me they chanted all night – sounded really nice. The fourth member of the group was Joseph Mmaphuti Kgomo.

A young woman sells art prints at the Rosebank Flea Market outside Joburg. – Photo: TaSin Sabir

Motshepe, a member of the percussion ensemble, connected me with his uncle, Tlokwe Sehume, who for many years brought a cultural program to Pretoria that united the cultural traditions of the indigenous South African people from all the regions. Normally hosted in the past during Heritage Month, the absence of funding suspended the production for the past few years. With the ANC’s 100th celebration, it is back this year.

Sehume will be in Austin, Texas, at the University of Texas in March and when back in South Africa will host this highly anticipated and welcome collage of African culture. It shows how despite differences there is more the various ethnic groups share than they differ. This is also seen in the great Museum Africa. Visit www.medupromotions.co.za. He calls his work “music of the mountains.”

The Usuthu Art Productions percussion ensemble is composed of, from left, Motshepe Kgawane, Lulu “Abu Bakr” Tseola, Joseph Mmaphuti Kgomo and Paepae Kenneth Mmekwa in front of the drums. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

The enemy of the people in the past is the same enemy today: greed, power, self-interest. This enemy doesn’t have a particular hue, although in Africa, more often than not, he isn’t Black – he is green or gold or multifaceted. There are Black leaders who are keeping the people oppressed, but in South Africa the wealth never really changed hands. The Black African-led government is not really in charge of anything significant, which is why most of the people are still suffering.

I met a movie star at the local IT café which I hung out at and filed my grades one rainy afternoon. The rain was no joke in South Africa or Madagascar. Once one hears the thunder and sees the lightning, run for cover. The rain, which falls at an angle, wets you unless you have a large umbrella and serious rain gear. I took to wearing sandals and TaSin and I carried rain ponchos or plastic rain jackets.

I met Mike Mvelase, who plays Kaphela, Kethiewe’s husband, in the popular African show, Generations on SABC 1. He wasn’t going to Blomfontein either. I also met a sister who is a journalist, poet and jeweler, Faith Balaji. Her business is called negritude.

Paepae, Joseph, Abu Bakr and Motshepe are joined here by Margaret Makoka of Cool Arts. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

My last day in town I actually tasted South African food: a starchy item mixed with beans and some screaming cabbage, green sweet potatoes and pumpkin. We dropped by a fast food place, but the food was too spicy. The food at Woolworths was really yummy – funny, Woolworths isn’t owned by Black Africans, but they work there. Wal-Mart is on its way.

I went to a Black church on Martin King’s birthday, My Father’s House, but couldn’t get a lift to the program the American Blacks were throwing that afternoon for King’s Birthday, so I ended up working on my application for the World Cultures doctoral program at UC Merced, which was due Jan. 15. One great thing about being in Africa was getting an extra 10 hours. When I woke up later on the next day in Joburg, it was still Jan. 15 in California.

My last day in Joburg I spent at Artist Proof Studio talking to artists like Prince Newtown, who crafts jewelry from utensils. I bought earrings made from forks and he gave me rings from other cutlery. He also had really beautiful sterling work. He was quite flamboyant and fun. I loved his costume work, like the glasses made from scissors forks. He also made hats.

It started storming so I ended up spending the entire day at Artist Proof and left just in time to get back to the hostel, change clothes and leave for the airport – I thought my flight was Monday, when in fact it was Tuesday, so this was my second run. I had a rehearsal the evening before and still almost missed my plane when I spent too much time trying to spend the last of my rand. The attendant actually came looking for me, and then we sat in the hanger for another hour.

Wanda joins the percussionists and dancers of Usuthu Art Productions in the State Theater rehearsal studio.

Gregory Maqoma, a choreographer who has performed here like Kweyama, who produced work at UC Berkeley in 2009, was here with his acclaimed solo performance, “Beautiful Me.” Moving into Dance is a part of what’s called the dance corner, where I believe at least three, maybe four companies are housed. Paepae went there – it is the second oldest dance company in South Africa.

Many of the institutions are not Black African founded, like Moving or the company next door or Artist Proof for that matter. The new South Africa seems to be a place where a homogenized population is the aim. Opening night for plays at the Market Theatre was so Berkeley as in bi-cultural and urban chic, although I did see Black men with Black women. The majority population is still Black, even if the directors for these works were not all Black and in the recent search for an artistic director the aim was to keep the leader Black.

Well, I’ve been back a week now and don’t necessarily feel like running around and have been lying low, teaching four classes and getting back acclimated to this time zone. For the first time, I actually have jet lag. I am taking an Afro-Haitian dance class with Colette Eloi, new adjunct faculty at Laney College. She just completed her MFA.

Alexandra Township is near the center of Johannesburg. Its infrastructure was designed for a population of about 70,000. Current population estimates vary widely from 180,000 to 750,000. – Photo: Wanda Sabir

I was looking through my business cards and ran into one with Yvette Hochberg’s name written on the back. She passed peacefully, I hear, the day there was a fundraiser scheduled for her. I got a letter from a brother with an herbal remedy – thanks, but it arrived too late.

Independent Lens ‘Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock’

“Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock” airs Feb. 2 on PBS at 10 p.m. (check listings). Director Sharon La Cruise’s excellent first feature film highlights the story of a wonderful self-made woman, Daisy Bates, whom Bayard Rustin introduces at the March on Washington as the organizer of the Children’s Civil Movement, referencing her organization efforts in the 1957 integration of Central High by the Little Rock 9. She and her husband owned the first Black newspaper, the Arkansas State Press, which certainly provided a platform for their politics.

The story of her presidency of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP was a contentious one, as were most of her actions and victories. The director balances the criticism of Bates and her praise well. A beautiful woman, Mrs. Bates was accused of loving the camera too much, of being uneducated, which in my opinion made her work that much more remarkable. She took up with a married man for 10 years before he and she married; however, she never held her life up as an example of perfection for moral scrutiny – in fact, she would never have been the poster child for the Civil Rights Movement. Rosa Parks, Bates’s good friend, was, when in fact Emmett Till was the poster child literally for the start of the Civil Rights Movement. Mrs. Bates brought the movement full circle when once again she let the children lead.

She played not only a crucial role in the fight against segregation, but a thankless role, which cost her husband the newspaper he loved and Black people a major vehicle for liberation. She died almost penniless, and her grave remained unmarked from 1999 to about 2007.

La Cruise’s film is a wonderful treatment and long overdue tribute to a woman who up to now remained one of our unsung heroes. I don’t remember her story or photo in the “I Dream a World” exhibition, but I am happy the director was captivated enough to write Mrs. Bates’ attorney and, after two years, during which Mrs. Bates died, decide to step out on faith and make this wonderful film based on Bates’s memoir: “The Long Shadow of Little Rock,” containing much archival material and conversations with friends and colleagues who knew Mrs. Bates.

“Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock” presents a woman whose complexity at birth is not lessened by her life, which is certainly more interesting than anything one could imagine as this woman keeps her peers and foes on their collective toes. Her relationship with her husband, Lucious Christopher “L.C.” Bates, an insurance agent and an experienced journalist, is one of teamwork. Certainly he was a man who was secure in his masculinity to the extent that he allowed his wife the freedom to be herself – certainly a more public persona than he, not to say that they were not without their tribulations. They never had any children; to a certain degree, the work – African liberation – was their passion and their child.

Born to a mother who was raped and murdered by three white men, who were never prosecuted, and raised by friends of the family after her father abandoned her, Daisy Bates was a woman who used her life to right the wrong she experienced as a child growing up in the small lumber town of Huttig, Arkansas.

Never a dull moment, one sees echoes of Zora Neale Hurston in Daisy Bates, also Dr. Dorothy I. Height. She was a fearless woman who held her own in all male assemblies, a woman racists called Mrs. Bates. Listen to an interview with the director on my radio show, www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks, Jan. 27 and don’t miss the itvs.org national debut.

‘Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War’ by Leymah Gbowee

“Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War” is Leymah Gbowee’s challenging and exciting story about peace in Liberia, a country once at war. Liberia is a country with a complex history. It is the country where formerly enslaved African Americans were shipped once slavery ended and free labor was outlawed, which in itself created a dilemma, “Mighty” discloses.

African Americans brought with them a plantation mentality where American-born Blacks thought themselves better than indigenous Africans and over the centuries developed a class system based on a birthright despite the eventual blurring of concrete indicators as African Americans became more African. Gbowee’s story is really inspiring. Before the war, she’d planned to attend university to become a doctor, and war – the immediacy of war – changed all that temporarily as the protagonist became a mother and common law wife.

“Mighty” speaks to how dreams never really die as long as there is memory and hope and support. It also speaks to the great sacrifices a leader makes and the price these sacrifices exact on her, emotionally and physically, and on her family. The people whom the protagonist loves and whom she sacrifices much for often don’t stand by her in the end, as petty drama and jealousy eat at the fabric of their bond.

Excellently recounted, “Mighty” shows a woman whose life is a work in progress. At times I lose track of her age and then realize how young Gbowee is and what decisions she has to make concerning the lives of so many others. When the peace talk protests grow intense, she is awake around the clock. I am amazed she has time for debriefing and self-reflection. Her sister’s support and her children’s understanding is amazing. I love the aspects of the book that look at the culture she is a part of, which is clearly not Western. The end of the book is too quickly summed up.

There is too much left to cover; I hope this is just Part 1 of the story. I’d love to read the story from the perspective of Gbowee’s children, adopted and ones she bore. I’d love to hear the story from the perspective of the wonderful friend she had in Tunde.

“Mighty” isn’t a love story, unless perhaps it is the story about a young woman coming to value herself and that love’s growth. “Mighty” addresses the stress or pressures a leader faces and how unhealthy habits escalate and grow. True to form, we learn that Gbowee is stubborn and learns her lessons the hard way, whether that is as a girl or a more mature woman. She is not one to be pushed.

Luckily we know the end of the story – that she survives. “Mighty” fills in the details as we count the casualties along the way. It is a sad and triumphant story. No one wants the hero’s journey. Those who jealously pulled at Gbowee’s glory didn’t really want what she suffered, though in many cases her comrades suffered as much or more. I wish there was more regarding the strategy the organizers used and more information about what their handbook covered. It would have also been great to hear more of the women’s stories, perhaps in another book we will.

“Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” directed by Gini Reticker, produced by Abigail E. Disney, shows the courage of the Liberian women who defeat the Charles Taylor war machine with prayer and nonviolent resistance. The women, led by movement spokesperson Leymah Gbowee, assemble along the road where the president’s caravan passed twice daily. Dressed in plain white garments, these women – from the city, from the countryside, rural women, educated and uneducated women, Christian and Muslim women, women who called on the ancient indigenous spirits and goddesses – sat or stood together in the oppressive heat and in the summer storms getting wet and growing dark and weak as they became the key voice for peace in a country that was violently spinning out of control. The film is on-line at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/women-war-and-peace/full-episodes/pray-the-devil-back-to-hell/. There are also links to other films in the “Women, War and Peace” series, as well as to interviews with Ms. Gbowee.

Unlike her memoir, the film “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” is a heroines’ story, the story of a nation which is confronted by its most vulnerable population, its women. Liberia’s quest for peace is a story, a story which ends as it begins. The film could be a miniseries; the culminating event is not the end, rather the beginning, which we’d never know unless we read 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Gbowee’s tale of triumph and personal sacrifice.

I am happy Abigail Disney told me about the memoir when we last spoke in a radio interview – what a wonderful journey it has been this weekend. I am just disappointed I wasn’t able to meet Ms. Gbowee when she was here on tour last year.

22nd Annual African American Celebration through Poetry

The 22nd Annual African American Celebration through Poetry is Saturday, Feb. 4, 1-4 p.m., at the West Oakland Branch Library, 1801 Adeline St., (510) 238-7352. I started this event 22 years ago, and I host it. This year the theme is great Black women. All are welcome to attend. There is an open mic at the end of the program.

Author event

Tim Wise is touring with his new book, “Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority,” with a stop at Cal State East Bay Thursday, Feb. 2, 7 p.m. It is a free event. Visit http://csueastbaytickets.universitytickets.com/user_pages/event.asp?id=164&cid=26. The location: MPR, New Union, Cal State East Bay. Contact ASI Diversity Center at CSU East Bay, (510) 885-3908 for more information.

Film

At Stanford University, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 7-9 p.m., in the Black Community Services Center there will be a screening of a “We Still Live Here – Âs Nutayuneân.” The director will be there as well as linguists. The film is about an indigenous nation which revived a “sleeping” language. The Wampanoag nation are the people who welcomed the Pilgrims and helped them through that difficult first winter in the New World. Remember that first Thanksgiving? Listen to our interview Friday, Jan. 27. She is my second interview. Visit http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/we-still-live-here/film.html and http://www.makepeaceproductions.com/screenings/201201-stanford.jpg.

Theatre

Community Works presents the Bay Area Premiere of Daniel Beaty’s “Through the Night,” Feb. 11 at Brava Theater, 2781 24th St., in San Francisco, 7 p.m. This is a celebration of Community Works’ 15th anniversary. Tickets are $40 with $100 VIP tickets, which include preferred seating and entrance into the Sweet and Savory post-show reception with the playwright-actor Beaty and honorees. Visit brava.org and communityworkswest.org. CW produces work that empowers youth and strengthens families impacted by incarceration.

‘Word Becomes Flesh’ at Black Choreographers Here and Now

Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s “Word Becomes Flesh” at Laney College, 900 Fallon St., Oakland, Feb. 11, 8 p.m., Feb. 17, 8 p.m., and Feb. 19, 4 p.m., at Dance Mission in San Francisco, $25 general admission, $15 students and seniors. It is a collaboration between La Peña Cultural Center, Black Choreographers Here and Now, and the Living Word Festival.

Formerly a solo performance, this male soul journey is now danced by multiple men. In the work the characters question their masculinity, approaching fatherhood, relationships with their baby’s mama, not to mention their fathers and father’s fathers. It is a fluid tapestry that traverses landscapes above and below plane surfaces.

Bamuthi is a lovely choreographer and writer, so the poetry is in his character’s feet as much as in the words one hears from their mouths. I don’t remember if they speak; when it was a solo work, Bamuthi spoke. I have only seen the work as a company performance once, and alas, that detail escapes me. When I met the choreographer perhaps 15 years ago, it was as a poet. He was in a film screening I attended called “Slamnation.”

This work is not as abstract as his last, performed at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, “Red, Black and Green,” which was physical theatre as well as a visual art work, similar to site specific works used by Joanna Haigood’s Zaccho Dance Company and Alonozo King’s LINES Contemporary Ballet.

“Word Becomes Flesh” is a fluid evening-length choreopoem written in the form of a narrative verse play. Presented as a series of performed letters to an unborn son, the piece uses poetry, dance and live music to document nine months of pregnancy from a young single father’s perspective. These performed letters incorporate elements of ritual, archetypes and symbolic sites within the constructs of hip hop culture. Directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, it features Daveed Diggs, Dahlak Brathwaite, Dion Decibels, Ben Turner, Mic Turner and B.Yung.

Second Annual Ubuntu Awards Dinner

Saturday, Feb. 11, 5-9 p.m., is the Second Annual Ubuntu Awards at the Lake Merritt Hotel, 1800 Madison St., Oakland. Dr. Yao Graham, Third World Network, Africa, will give the keynote. Linda Burnham will be the mistress of ceremonies. Honorees include Adam Hochchild, Christine Chacha, Jacqueline Copeland-Carson and Mutombo Mpanya, Dr. Robert Scott (posthumous), The Allen Temple AIDS Ministry and Dr. Wangari Maathai (posthumous). For tickets or more information, call (510) 663-2255 or email PriorityAfrica@priorityAfrica.org.

More film

The Indie Film Festival is in San Francisco Feb. 9-23.Visit http://sfindie.virb.com/. The African Film Festival continues at Pacific Film Archive, UC Berkeley, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, Jan. 26-Feb. 29. Visit http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/african_2012. Friday, Feb. 3, at 9:30 a.m. on Wanda’s Picks Radio we speak to the director of the New York based African Film Festival on tour. Some of the films I have seen and recommend are “Kinshasa Symphony” and “Viva Riva,” which I have a love/hate relationship with. As the first feature to come out of Congo in decades, it is too bad such an unsavory character stars. It is Melvin Van Peebles’s “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” set in Africa, with bloody African sensibility and a boogyman that looks just like the protagonist.

Also at PFA, Saturday, Feb. 11, 3 p.m., is “Screenagers: 14th Annual Bay Area High School Film and Video Festival” (U.S., 2010-11, c. 90 mins.). The artists will be there in person. Witness the future of film in this innovative program of works by local high-school students, curated by their own peers.

Also at PFA, on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 7 p.m., is “The Green Wave,” by Ali Samadi Ahadi (Germany/Iran, 2010, 80 mins.). It’s introduced by Jeffrey Skoller. This riveting documentary for the 21st century combines powerful animation, minute-by-minute Twitter feeds, blog accounts and cell phone footage with conventional on-camera testimonies to recount the abortive 2009 antigovernment Iranian youth revolt. Dubbed “the Green Wave,” it was a revolution in flux, yet evergreen with hope.

Black Choreographers Here and Now

Black Choreographers Here and Now will be performed in two locations, in Oakland and San Francisco, Feb. 10-26. Visit www.bchandn.org.

Museum of the African Disapora events

This month the MoAD, 685 Mission St. in San Francisco, will host films on Thursday evenings, 6-8 p.m. and for the month of February will offer a two for one admission. Visit moadsf.org/visit/calendar.html.

'Redefining Black Power' cover

Thursday, Feb. 9, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., Joanne Griffith will be at Marcus Books, 3900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland, with guests Hodari Davis, national program director for Youth Speaks, with Dereca Blackmon, social justice activist, to discuss “Activism in the Age of Obama” and her new book, “Redefining Black Power,” at Marcus Books in Oakland. For more information, call (510) 652-2344.

Alliance for California Traditional Arts 2011 Apprenticeship Program

Master artist Patricia A. Montgomery and apprentice Helen Anderson discuss the work and process for the three quilts Helen Anderson will have on display Feb. 4, 1-3 p.m., at Eastbay Church of Religious Science, 4130 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. In the work, Anderson uses the adinkra symbol, the Sankofa bird who is looking over his shoulder, to literally retrace the European slave trade as a way to heal the trauma of post-traumatic slave disorder. The intended six month art-making journey ended up taking a year, a year in which Anderson learned quilting techniques and discovered in the art-making process keys to her own pain unlocked by the stitching, piecing, matting, placing, covering and uncovering process within the textile – the fabric and the quilting metaphor where nothing is ever really lost or discarded. Hum, so what does that mean for a people sold and purchased, disrespected and abused?

Initially the plan was to create six quilts – one per month. Anderson completed three quilts. This means the journey is not over – rather it has just begun – but then that’s the way life works, isn’t it? Healing is an on-going process. Patricia said of Helen that her Sankofa journey was material and spiritual, that her stitching was experiential, a different process than her own. The vitamin one takes today serves this moment; one has to keep taking supplements, keep drinking water and washing oneself in the river of remembrance. Both the master teacher and student will join me on the air Friday, Feb. 3, 8:30 a.m., so tune in: blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks.

SFJAZZ Spring Season

For all the SFJAZZ events January-June , visit www.sfjazz.org.

Art at Jazz Heritage Gallery

James Knox, Jim Dennis and James Gayles have work on display at Jazz Heritage Gallery. The reception is Thursday, Feb. 2, 6-9 p.m., with a panel discussion in the Jazz Heritage Center Theatre, 1330 Fillmore St., San Francisco, from 6-7 p.m. This will be followed by a reception from 7-9 p.m. in the Lush Life Gallery with live music provided by guitarist Calvin Keys. The photography exhibit runs from Feb. 1 through March 4.

Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at Cal Performances

On Friday and Saturday, Feb. 24 and 25, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley Campus, Bancroft Way at Telegraph Ave., Berkeley, Bill T. Jones brings his new work, “Story/Time,” to Cal Performances for its West Coast premiere. The work is based on more than 70 very short stories from Jones’ life. This work features a collaboration between Bill T. Jones, choreography, and writer and director Ted Coffey, music and moving images. Tickets are $30, $40, $46, $52, $60 and $68, available through the Cal Performances Ticket Office at Zellerbach Hall. Call (510) 642-9988 to charge by phone, visit www.calperformances.org or buy your tickets at the door.

Bay View Arts Editor Wanda Sabir can be reached at wsab1@aol.com. Visit her website at www.wandaspicks.com throughout the month for updates to Wanda’s Picks, her blog, photos and Wanda’s Picks Radio. Her shows are streamed live Wednesdays at 6-7 a.m. and Fridays at 8-10 a.m., can be heard by phone at (347) 237-4610 and are archived on the Afrikan Sistahs’ Media Network.

Related Posts

• Wanda’s Picks for January 2012
• Wanda’s Picks for December 2011
• Wanda’s Picks for October 2011
• Wanda’s Picks for May 2011
• Wanda’s Picks for February 2011

California’s state prisons, especially those built in the most recent prison construction boom, are located in remote, isolated parts of the state. Far off the beaten path, they get little or no news coverage, and visitors must travel for hours from even the closest city.

Feb. 4 update: Independent investigators visit Calipatria

Progress in the Velarde vs. Duarte case: The court ordered CDCR to allow Attorney General staff, independent lawyers and experts inside Calipatria State Prison on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012, into Facility B for cell inspections and to inspect elsewhere throughout the prison. All the inmates were watching them very carefully.

There’s no need for families and supporters to worry. The inspectors were sent to the prison; they were sent to help. They do not work with CDCR and they do not work with the prison officials. They are going above and beyond their usual role to get justice for the inmates who have been abused and mistreated in some form or another by IGI E. Duarte.

 Jan. 28 update: Court gives green light

Many inmates at Calipatria State Prison have agreed to come forward and testify in court against Calipatria Institutional Gang Investigator (IGI) E. Duarte, for the courts have officially granted a trial. Not only will it be for the Velarde case, but the United States District Court will be hearing from inmates who have either been victims or witnesses to IGI Duarte using excessive force on an inmate, falsifying documentation on an inmate or planting evidence on an inmate to “validate” him as a “gang member.”

Testimony will limited to misconduct by Duarte that prisoners have witnessed; no other testimony will be allowed. Yes, there will be media attention, but none will focus directly on the inmates – only on the information they make public.

Again, if anyone wants to come forward about IGI E. Duarte’s misconduct and expose him, not only will it help expose the false charges, false validations and false segregation many men have endured at Calipatria ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit), but it could also help expose for the first time an IGI purposely planting evidence and falsifying documentation to get an inmate validated and sent to the SHU. It could possibly open the doors toward ending the corrupt CDCR validation process and help many more men in the SHUs and AdSegs throughout California. Contact me at kendracastaneda55@gmail.com.

*****

Original article, posted Jan. 17: Calipatria State Prison Institutional Gang Investigator (IGI) E. Duarte is currently under investigation by the United States District Court due to a complaint of excessive force on an inmate and complaints of falsifying legal documentation and planting evidence on inmates.

After IGI Duarte broke his leg, Harold Velarde had the courage to file a complaint with the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. It was originally denied, but in October 2011, the court ordered the case to be investigated.

Another prisoner, Jesus Macias, reports he has proof that IGI Duarte “fabricated evidence and lied in every report.” We are now calling for more evidence of Duarte’s wrongdoing.

If you know anybody who has witnessed Institutional Gang Investigator E. Duarte at Calipatria State Prison use excessive force, falsify documentation or plant evidence on an inmate, especially if it resulted in the prisoner being “validated” as a “prison gang member,” or if you know an inmate who has been targeted by IGI Duarte, please contact me as soon as possible at kendracastaneda55@gmail.com.

Jesus Macias: IGI Duarte fabricated evidence that ‘validated’ me as a gang member

This letter from Jesus Macias, currently in Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) at Calipatria State Prison, describes his experience with IGI Duarte. It was written to me on Sept. 25, 2011, one day before the California statewide hunger strike called by prisoners in the Pelican Bay State Prison SHU resumed. Prisoners at Calipatria joined in that hunger strike, and continued to strike after nearly all the 12,000 prisoners participating had stopped.

Calipatria is a four-hour drive from Los Angeles. The scorching heat of the Mojave Desert is too much for many older cars. This makes the trip dangerous for visitors, who are mostly women, many with children eager to visit daddy.

“I first like to thank you and all the good people helping us out to bring our situation here in Calipatria ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit) and all SHUs (Security Housing Units) in California to light!

“My name is Jesus Macias, CDC E-14338. I am currently housed in Calipatria ASU and I’ve been serving a life-plus-five-year sentence for attempted murder in 1988. I was 18 years old at the time. I came into the prison system at a young age, so I was young, dumb and got myself into a lot of trouble.

“After my last SHU term in 2000, I realized this is not a life for me. I started programing, going to school, picking up my grades and getting a job, picking up a trade, and I’ve been programming ever since with NO ‘115 disciplinary actions’ at all! I am what an official would call a model inmate.

“I had been going to my board hearings and they told me I had a chance to go home to my family. Well, now that dream is shattered.

“On Jan. 11, 2011, at 1:00 a.m., I was awakened by institutional gang investigator officers yelling at me not to move and to follow their directions. After being cuffed, I was left in the shower while the IGI officers searched my cell.

“After two hours I asked IGI Officer E. Duarte, ‘Why are you searching my cell?’ He said it was routine. I asked him, ‘Did you leave a cell search slip?’ Looking upset at me, he said, ‘I’ll give it to you right now. Wait!’

“When he gave it to me, he said, ‘I’m going to get you!’ I asked him, ‘What do you mean?’ He didn’t answer me and left. Then, on Jan. 25, 2011, I was picked up by who else but IGI Officer E. Duarte for a validation package. All the so-called evidence they had on me was found that day, on Jan. 11, 2011.

“But I have that cell search slip IGI E. Duarte gave me, and there was no contraband or gang material ever found in my cell that morning! I wrote my rebuttal and 602 appeal telling them this IGI Officer E. Duarte fabricated evidence and lied in every report. I have his own cell search slip with his signature.

“They didn’t care and rubber stamped me all the way through OCS/SSU (Office of Correctional Safety Special Services Unit) and validated me! Since being back here in Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU), I found more inmates with similar situations with IGI E. Duarte. The sad thing about all this is nothing’s being done about it by their own supervisor, Warden Leland McEwen, who overlooks them.

“But I have that cell search slip IGI E. Duarte gave me, and there was no contraband or gang material ever found in my cell that morning! They didn’t care and rubber stamped me all the way through OCS/SSU (Office of Correctional Safety Special Services Unit) and validated me!”

“As for the conditions here in Calipatria ASU, they are the worst I have ever experienced within these 23 years in prison. Most of the time our food is cold and small portions, the staff does not clean the tier and it gets so nasty that we have to purposely flood the tier with water and shampoo just to try and keep it clean.

“As for clothes exchange, it’s rare if we get that. As for your basic supplies – toothpaste, toothbrush or simple things like a spoon – they are always short or they say they just don’t have any! There are boxes on all the exit doors blocking all the exits!

Calipatria State Prison covers 1,227.5 acres lying 184 feet below sea level in the Mojave Desert near the Salton Sea and the Mexican border, the hottest area in North America.

“That’s why I am hunger striking for my freedom out of isolation and being treated humanely, not tortured!

“Thank you for hearing me and giving me a minute of your time. God bless. – Jesus Macias

“P.S. Here is a copy of my cell search slip. There was nothing ever found, no contraband or gang material, which IGI E. Duarte says he found. I am just lucky I kept my receipt; it’s the only proof I have that he fabricated evidence and lied in every report. He says he found gang material that morning, Jan. 11, 2011, when my cell search slip says different.

“I would really like if you could post my letter out to the media so they can have a brief idea of what has been going on in Calipatria State Prison Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU).”

Harold Velarde: IGI Duarte broke my leg

Harold Anthony Velarde filed his complaint, Case No. 11-CV-0287-AJB-CAB, against IGI Duarte on Feb. 10, 2011. Initially denied, the judge has now ordered that Duarte be investigated.

Families with loved ones locked up in Calipatria are often given inadequate or inaccurate information when they call in preparation for a visit. After the 10-hour drive to Calipatria from the Bay Area, families have been turned away – told only after they arrived that visiting was cancelled.

“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.”

Velarde asserts in his complaint that defendant E. Duarte, who resides in Imperial, was acting under color of law “while performing his duties as security and investigations at Calipatria State Prison.” Velarde says Duarte “violated my Eighth Amendment rights [by] use of excessive force.”

Under “Supporting Facts,” Velarde, who is representing himself in this case, wrote:

“On Oct. 6, 2009, at Calipatria State Prison a riot occurred between Mexican inmates and some C/Os [correctional officers]. After the incident was contained and all inmates were restrained, from my cell door, inside my cell I saw C/O Magdaleno hitting a prone, restrained inmate in the back of the head with a pepper spray can. I yelled for the C/O to stop and my door was approached and I was told they’d be back for me. About two hours later two C/Os came to my door and ordered me to cuff up. The one with the spray pointed was Black and Duarte was the one who cuffed me.

“I comply with the C/O and cuff through the food porthole. After I’m cuffed, behind my back, my door opens and I’m ordered to back out and face the wall. C/O Duarte grabs my neck while I’m facing the wall and slams my face into it. I turn away from the wall ‘cause of the surprise and C/O Duarte puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes down with all his weight.

“My femur then snaps due to mobility issues from an old gunshot wound. I jump to the ground on my backside and tell the C/O, ‘You broke my leg.’ He responds, ‘I don’t give a fu-k.’ As soon as medical came, I was escorted to the hospital for surgery. They placed a steel plate aside my femur.

“C/O Duarte grabs my neck while I’m facing the wall and slams my face into it. I turn away from the wall ‘cause of the surprise and C/O Duarte puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes down with all his weight. My femur then snaps … They placed a steel plate aside my femur.”

“C/O Duarte never explains the gash under my eye from slamming my face into the wall in his reports. My injuries were documented by a lieutenant and sergeant with a video recorder. There are also so many witnesses.”

Velarde is requesting damages in the amount of $250,000 and punitive damages in the sum of $150,000. He wants a trial by jury.

Kendra Castaneda is a prisoner human rights activist with a loved one currently incarcerated in the Calipatria State Prison ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit). She can be reached at kendracastaneda55@gmail.com. She asks anyone with information about Institutional Gang Investigator (IGI) E. Duarte to contact her right away.

Related Posts

• Inhumane conditions at Calipatria State Prison ASU
• Hunger striker dies mysteriously at Calipatria, family reports funeral is Tuesday, Nov. 22, in Oakland
• Corcoran ASU hunger strikers continue after one starves to death, while CDCR lags on gang validation revisions
• From Pelican Bay: CDCR to offset prison population cut by putting more men in solitary
• ‘Suicide of participant’ after historic California prison hunger strike?

Part 1

A page from "Techniques to Achieve Naturally Healthy Hair"

During the 1960s, Black Power and Black Pride proponents ushered in “naturals” and “afro” hair styles. In between shouts of “Right on” and “Power to the people,” many of these proponents declared that the hair straightening process was damaging to the brains of African Americans. These proponents were more than likely speaking figuratively about the psyche of Blacks; but from a literal standpoint, they may have actually been on to something.

The 1970s saw the environmental movement in the U.S. creating unprecedented awareness of the damage that humans were doing to planet Earth and various measures to cease or slow that damage. The majority of media attention regarding toxic chemicals since that time has focused on the possibly adverse effects of household chemicals on the environment or industrial chemicals’ possibly adverse effects on the environment and/or human, animal and plant life.

Very little if any media attention or research has looked at the possible connections between African American beauty salons, the personal care products utilized primarily by Black women and adverse health outcomes, specifically in the area of reproductive health. But that has begun to change.

In May of 2011, Dr. Mary Beth Terry and others authored a study which found that African-American and African-Caribbean women were more likely to be exposed to hormonally-active chemicals in hair products.

Terry’s study, “Racial/Ethnic Differences in Hormonally-Active Hair Product Use: A Plausible Risk Factor for Health Disparities,” published in the Journal of Immigrant Health, found that the African-American and African-Caribbean women surveyed used products that contained chemicals that are commonly referred to as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which have been linked to various reproductive effects and birth defects, breast cancer and heart disease.

Most recently, a team of researchers led by Dr. Lauren Wise of Boston University’s Slone Epidemiology Center found strong evidence which indicates that African-American women’s hair relaxer use increases the risk for uterine fibroid tumors by exposing Black women to various chemicals through scalp lesions and burns from the products.

Fibroids are non-cancerous growths that develop in or just outside a woman’s uterus (womb) from normal uterine cells that begin to grow abnormally. Although fibroids tend to be extremely common, African-American women tend to get them two to three times as often as white women and tend to experience more symptoms from them, such as prolonged and heavy menstrual flow, difficulty conceiving a child, and instances of pain during menses and also during intercourse.

Wise’s team also found that women who got their first menstrual period before the age of 10 were more likely to have uterine fibroids. The researchers followed more than 23,000 pre-menopausal African-American women from 1997 to 2009 and published their study, “Hair Relaxer Use and Risk of Uterine Leiomyomata in African-American Women,” onlined in the Jan. 10, 2012, edition of the Journal of American Epidemiology.

Researchers have also posited that a link exists between the early onset of puberty in Black girls and Black hair care products. In a study of 300 African-American, African-Caribbean, Hispanic and white women in New York City, the reported age when these women experienced their first menstrual period (menarche) varied from age 8 to age 19; however, the African-Americans were more likely to use hair products and reached menarche earlier than other racial or ethnic groups.

Dr. Tamarra James-Todd of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital is the lead author of “Childhood Hair Product Use and Earlier Age at Menarche in a Racially Diverse Study Population,” published online in the June 2011 Annals of Epidemiology. The study specifically cited the use of hair oils and hair straightening (“perm”) products and the onset of early menarche in the women.

According to figures from the Black-Owned Beauty Supply Association, African-Americans are estimated to spend between $7 billion and $9 billion dollars per year on hair and beauty products. The potential costs to our health, however, have yet to be adequately quantified.

Part 2

“Take the kinks out of your mind, instead of out of your hair.” – Marcus Mosiah Garvey, founder, Universal Negro Improvement Association

Black women today who strive to take Marcus Garvey’s admonition to heart are in a better position than their sisters of the past. Research focusing on the products used in African-American beauty salons – and homes – is increasing; and while the findings are showing links to adverse health outcomes primarily amongst Black women, there exists an increased motivation for natural, less toxic beauty products, as well as calls to more stringently regulate the personal care product industry.

In Los Angeles, Black Women for Wellness (BWW), a Leimert Park-based, grassroots health and wellness advocacy organization, has produced a “green chemistry” booklet entitled “Black Going Green,” which is a part of their “Green Chemistry Initiative.”

The 28-page booklet, which is geared toward African American women and girls, lists many chemical ingredients and the possible health risks of everyday household and personal beauty products, and provides many healthy and environmentally-friendly alternatives.

Readers will find information on products and chemicals such as relaxers, detanglers, shampoo and conditioner, nail polish and lipstick.

“In order to make better choices and be more critical consumers, we understood that arming Black women – the primary caretakers in our communities – with reliable information was key,” said Nourbese Flint, program director at Black Women for Wellness and project coordinator for the booklet. “This is one small step to help Black women make the kinds of choices that are critical to increasing our community’s health and well-being,” said Flint.

Also as part of its Green Chemistry Initiative, the organization has organized a “Beauty Salon Campaign” to conduct research amongst African American beauty salons to explore possible connections between products utilized primarily by Black women and possible reproductive health disparities.

According to BWW Executive Director Jan Robinson-Flint, the project, which is still in the data-gathering stage, is doing a survey of beauty supply stores, beauty salons, barber shops and wig shops within a one-mile radius of the organization’s Leimert Park-based headquarters – approximately 60 stores in all.

“We asked the owners and the stylists what were the products that they were using? And from those products what we did was create a list of the top 10 chemicals … and then looked at the impact of those chemicals – because they’re toxins – on our health and well-being. Anytime you look at any statistics for Black women, you’ll find that we are at the top,” said Robinson-Flint.

BWW plans to rate the chemicals in terms of how toxic they are once the results of their research are made public.

Another component of BWW’s Green Chemistry Initiative is an Activist and Advocate Academy organized with the goal of “developing a cadre of women and youth working with the African American and Black community to increase information and education on Green Chemistry issues as they impact health and wellbeing, and increase the voices of African American women and girls with environmental justice issues as they impact our health and wellbeing.”

Dera Baskin, a midwife and health educator, attended the academy in 2011 with the purpose of learning how reproductive and environmental justice intersect and to find out what the common citizen can do to change personal and community environments.

As a “birth worker,” Baskin said that many of the families she works with are not aware of the exposure to chemicals in their home environments and how they can reduce or remove them. “All in the name of beauty and looking cute … we are damaging our bodies and [our] ability to bring forth healthy babies … we often buy products because of the brand, smell, what it will do aesthetically without thinking about what it will do long term. I wanted to be able to learn and share accurate information with people who look like me,” she said.

Black Women for Wellness is a member of the National Healthy Nail and Beauty Salon Alliance which works to raise the profile of salon worker health and safety issues primarily in the Asian/Pacific Islander community. Along with the Bay Area-based California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, the group has provided testimony before congressional committees in Washington, D.C., regarding concerns of African-American salons and their clients.

Saffiyah Edley, the owner of Los Angeles-based Luv Mi Kinks told the Salon Worker Health and Safety Congressional Briefing in Washington, D.C., last May that a truly “natural hair care industry” is needed “where hair product manufacturers can’t hide behind harmful ingredients.” Edley said, “Awareness is needed for stylists and clients around the harm that may be caused by using certain products. But what’s needed the most is that manufacturers must take responsibility for products on the market today that they are making and take out harmful chemicals.”

In addition to helping to organize the congressional briefing, the Oakland-based California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, along with the Environmental Finance Center (EFC), has also produced a “Techniques to Achieve Naturally Healthy Hair” to highlight sustainable alternatives for hair care.

The multicultural, multiethnic publication gives an explanation of five basic hair textures: wavy, tightly coiled, straight, very curly and grey hair, which is included because of its different growth pattern and occasional difficulty in managing.

The guide also provides tips on natural hair styles for men, women and children such as braids and pony tails, natural curls and crimps, and the use of a flat iron for straightening. Natural care techniques mentioned in the guide include avocado or olive oil hair conditioners, using witch hazel for dandruff and sunflower oil for moisturizing and tips for “greening” hair salons.

A project of the Environmental Protection Agency, the EFC seeks to build green economies and foster sustainable communities in the U.S. by working with government and industry, communities and Native American Tribes.

The partnership between grassroots groups, business and government will be necessary for success.

Says Saffiyah Edley, “There are safer alternatives, but we need regulation in order to really push them forward.”

Fact box

The chemicals found in common African-American hair products are known as estrogen and endocrine-disrupting chemicals or EDCs. Although comprehensive research is ongoing, many of these chemicals are believed to be linked to reproductive effects and birth defects, breast cancer, heart disease, cognitive disorders, premature puberty and altered immune function, to name a few.

Chemicals found in Common African American Hair Products such as straighteners/relaxers (perms), detanglers, colorants, shampoos and conditioners

Estrogen and endocrine-disrupting chemicals or EDCs, compiled primarily from the booklet, “Techniques to Achieve Naturally Healthy Hair”:

• Sodium Hydroxide (Lye) and Calcium Hydroxide (No Lye)

• Diazolidinyl Urea

• DMDM Hydantoin

• Propylene Glycol

• Diethanolamine

• Monoethanolamine

• Triethanolamine

• Sodium Lauryl Sulfate or Sodium Laureth Sulfate

• Hydroquinone

• Colorants and Synthetic Colors labeled as D&C and/or FD&C

Thandisizwe Chimurenga is a Los Angeles-based writer and a 2011-2012 New America Media Environmental Health Justice Fellow. Thandi is also the conductor of the CyberGround Railroad, “Black Los Angeles’ News and Views Source,” a community journalist and a founder and host of Some of Us Are Brave, a Black women’s public affairs show on KPFK-Pacifica Los Angeles. She has reported for the L.A. Watts Times newspaper, KPFK Evening News and Free Speech Radio News. She covered the trial of Johannes Mehserle, who murdered Oscar Grant, for the Bay View and several other Bay Area news organizations and is the author of a forthcoming book on the trial. She can be reached at tchimurenga@gmail.com.

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William E. Brown Jr. and his family

While we are going through the “due process” of Corcoran’s imperial domination, here are the ripple effects of our strike. The first slap in the face arose when they made the biased and discriminatory decision to send the ASU1 sergeant to move me and my young KAGE brother [another Black prisoner] away from our ASU cell F169 to a mental health building that’s used only for CCCMS (Correctional Clinical Case Management System) mentally ill inmates.

Since our protest was presented peacefully, we refused to partake in any violent resistance after being threatened with possible cell extraction, then an additional 115 citation for rule violations. As an older brother wise to CDC(R)’s trickery, I felt more than responsible not to lose control of the incident, which could have aggravated me and my young Black brotha’s present circumstances.

After allowing others alike involved to know that we will carry on strong and keep the revolt lit in honor of our united front, we agreed to move straight ahead.

The next slap in the face arose when an email came on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, 6:42 p.m., to [prison officials] Arnold Cruz and Vincent Marmolejo in hopes to use this coercion to end our civil rights to a peaceful protest. The email read:

“Can you speak to inmates Ryoo and Brown [the Corcoran ASU hunger strike petition was signed by Pyung Hwa Ryoo, Juan Jaimes and William E. Brown]? Please let them know the hunger strike is over and resolutions to some of the issues they presented (in the petition) are forthcoming, as I had discussed with Ryoo last week. The inmates in ASU-1 ate tonight and declared hunger strike over. Let me know what happens. Thanks.”

On Dec. 31, 2011, the prison officials came and pulled us from our cell and took our personal property based on illegal grounds. We continued our peaceful protest! After threats and more coercion, we both pondered our wellbeing and the odds were stacked against us, meaning harsher retaliation. We came to an adult understanding with Lt. Rush, who in exchange personally walked an emergency copy of our 602 inmate appeal (complaint) to the warden’s office.

The third slap in the face came when I was served an additional CDC 115 (Rules Violation Report) charging a violation of CCR Sec. 3005(a) and citing the specific act of “inciting and leading a hunger strike.” I’m like “Wow!” Under “Circumstances,” the 115 reads:

“On Friday, December 30, 2011, the Southern Hispanic, Black, and Other inmates in ASU1 participated in a mass hunger strike to address grievances in ASU1. Due to the ‘Hunger Strike,’ there was a disruption in the ASU1 program. A list of demands was sent to staff, and you inmate BROWN T-58106 (ASU1-169) were listed as one of the instigators of the Hunger Strike. Your actions caused a disruption to the normal operations of ASU1, and possible health concerns for the inmates involved. Your actions created additional work for staff, and time delays in which it was necessary for staff to address your issues. Attached is a list of demands with inmate RYOO F-88924, inmate JAIMES V-08644 (ASU1-165), and inmate BROWN T-58106 (ASU1-169), listed as the signers for the inmate grievance. Based on this information you are deemed as leading the Hunger Strike and causing the disruption in ASU1.”

Prior to this whole incident, all we had done was submit a peaceful civil rights/human rights group petition reflecting the colorful complaints of all races, and all we got is retaliation. CDC(R) fails and refuses to comply with our demands, which are protected by case law as well as federal and state law, California Code of Regulations Title 15 and CDC(R) Department Operations Manual (DOM).

For many years, we’ve been dirt under the rug, left for dead by those in society who turn a blind eye, only to be cast as outlaws and black, brown, yellow and white trash. Even now as I humbly await my next 115 hearing to be conducted, I’m preparing a civil suit.

For many years, we’ve been dirt under the rug, left for dead by those in society who turn a blind eye, only to be cast as outlaws and black, brown, yellow and white trash.

Those same biased prison officials continue to violate many more inmates’ due process by failing or refusing to allow certain evidence or documents or even answer relevant questions pertaining to our defense. Many times we are refused access to witnesses who could possibly assist with our defense in hopes of a much greater outcome than the guilty verdict.

Just because the official has the power, there’s never a preponderance of the evidence standard considered when a hearing officer is labeled as being unlisted as having gone “through the procedure of the State Bar.” How could it not be determined that a hearing officer hadn’t made an impartial decision in his or her fact finding when he has not been through the training of the State Bar to legally enforce an order without a predetermined belief system.

These underground rules are being used as a gateway to target certain inmates who CDC(R) considers too active, or to later validate them as alleged gang members for inciting or leading certain racial groups. This is to discourage further litigation, advocacy – standing against the very injustice that Martin Luther King and others alike marched for. As King stood against genocidal environments, me and my brothers will continue to rattle the KAGE.

These underground rules are being used as a gateway to target certain inmates who CDC(R) considers too active, or to later validate them as alleged gang members for inciting or leading certain racial groups.

There are three possible aims of punishment: restraint, revenge or reform. Capitalism only seems to succeed at the first two. As we the prisoner advocates for justice know, the retributive and vengeful “justice” of the present system has been a total and utter failure.

Attempting to reform people through coercion and force can never succeed. Arguments based on fear and terror are never convincing. The institutionalized murder – the death penalty – has never had the slightest effect on violent crime figures. It amounts to no more than revenge.

If prison achieves anything, it tends to perpetuate crime with minor offenders who often go on to commit greater crimes. The motto then goes, Why not re-offend if nothing has changed?

Capitalism cannot solve the problem. It creates the very conditions which lead to most crimes. The supposed system of justice amounts to a closed cast of judges and legal professionals who are initiated into a tangled web of complex rules and regulations, where any concept of justice or fair play intrudes purely at random.

Because the beast is on its knees, because the moment is ripe, I’m approaching the oppressor’s gates with unity like the ants, the heart of a lion and the rage of a bull to liberate my people. I won’t lose ambition so long as I’m still breathing. Mandela stayed strong for 28 years. Huey P. told us we bear rights. “Wait” sounds too much like never.

GLJ [George Lester Jackson] was a Soledad brother who made the jailhouse rock, saying, “You’ve got to find a way to make people know you’re there.” That’s crucial, whether in terms of making career gains, letting our families know we care or, like Malcolm, sending a message to our elected officials. I recommend that everyone read “Stride Toward Freedom,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s first published book.

Send our brother some love and light: William E. Brown Jr., T-58106, P.O. Box 8800, Corcoran CA 93212. See his FriendsWithPens.com page.

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• We dare to win: The reality and impact of SHU torture units

He’s out!

Public pressure to release Mumia Abu-Jamal from the “hole” trumped the pressure from those trying to keep torturing him. – Photo: Linn Washington

For the first time since receiving a controversial death sentence in 1982 for killing a Philadelphia policeman, the widely acclaimed author-activist finds himself in general population, a prison housing status far less restrictive than the solitary confinement of death row.

Inmates in general population have full privileges to visitation, telephone and commissary, along with access to all prison programs and services, all things denied or severely limited to convicts on death row waiting to be killed by the state.

In early December 2011, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections officials, after the federal courts had removed his death penalty and the Philadelphia district attorney opted not to attempt to re-try the penalty phase in hopes of winning a new death sentence, placed Abu-Jamal in administrative custody (aka “The Hole”).

Administrative custody is confinement in a Spartan isolation cell where conditions are more draconian than even death row.

The release of Abu-Jamal from administrative custody into general population on Friday, Jan. 27, 2012, followed a multi-layered protest campaign by his supporters worldwide that included flooding Pennsylvania prison authorities with telephone calls, collecting petitions containing over 5,000 signatures and a complaint filed with United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Supporters condemned the administrative custody placement, calling it retaliation for Abu-Jamal’s having successfully defeated the state’s efforts to execute him. Abu-Jamal, a model prisoner, did not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DoC) regulations dictating administrative custody placement.

The release of Abu-Jamal from administrative custody into general population on Friday, Jan. 27, 2012, followed a multi-layered protest campaign by his supporters worldwide that included flooding Pennsylvania prison authorities with telephone calls, collecting petitions containing over 5,000 signatures and a complaint filed with United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Prison staff evaluations of Abu-Jamal since his December death row removal, sources said, listed him as “polite [and] respectful.” Those positive evaluations did not evidence any of the incorrigibility or other serious misbehaviors that usually trigger AC placement.

“When people are united around an issue, they have power. This is the power of the people – all races in many places,” said Pam Africa, director of the Philadelphia-based International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal, in a statement released through his wife Wadiya Jamal, thanked his supporters for their hard work. “I am no longer on death row, no longer in the hole, I’m in population,” Abu-Jamal’s statement noted. “This is only Part One and I thank you for the work you’ve done. But the struggle is for freedom!”

Media reports quoted Pennsylvania DoC spokespersons confirming Abu-Jamal’s placement in general population at Mahanoy Prison, a medium security facility about 100 miles from Philadelphia in central Pennsylvania where he was transferred last December from another prison in western Pennsylvania that houses the state’s death row.

DoC spokespersons had previously declined comment on Abu-Jamal’s administrative custody placement, citing regulations covering inmate privacy.

Prison officials advanced ever-changing rationales for keeping Abu-Jamal in AC at Mahanoy, including the curious claim that they were waiting for legal clarification that the courts had formally replaced Abu-Jamal’s death sentence with life in prison.

That Kafkaesque claim contradicted the DoC’s own documents specifically acknowledging that federal courts had vacated the death sentence – thus requiring a default life sentence – and Philadelphia’s DA having dropped appeals to reinstate the death sentence.

Typical of the way that Abu-Jamal’s long-running case has shone a bright light on grievous abuses within the criminal justice system, his AC placement exposed what independent prison monitors have long contended is a dirty secret of Pennsylvania’s prison system: authorities using administrative custody isolation to maliciously penalize inmates who are not violating prison rules.

Bret Grote, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Human Rights Coalition, said during a media interview that prison authorities misuse administrative custody as repression against inmates for their political activism, their complaining about poor conditions in prison, their roles as jailhouse lawyers and often for racist reasons.

Grote said Pennsylvania’s DoC holds approximately 2,500 of its 50,000-plus prisoners in solitary confinement on any given day. That’s 5 percent of the total.

Prison authorities misuse administrative custody as repression against inmates for their political activism, their complaining about poor conditions in prison, their roles as jailhouse lawyers and often for racist reasons.

“Andre Jacobs and Carrington Keys, two members of a group of prisoners known as the Dallas 6 [Dallas is a Pennsylvania prison] have been held in solitary for approximately 11 and nine years respectively as a result of their speaking out against torture and other human rights violations inside the state’s control units,” Grote said during an interview with Prison Radio.

Philadelphian Russell “Maroon” Shoats, a former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member, has spent 30 of his 40 years in prison inside an isolation cell despite not having any prison infractions, said his daughter Theresa Shoats during a press conference in Philadelphia held one day before Abu-Jamal’s release.

“Prison officials keep my Dad in solitary instead of releasing him into general population because they say he is a leader. My Dad turns 70 this year and he has medical problems, some from being in solitary for so long. Keeping him in solitary is unfair,” Shoats said about her father, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman.

“My Dad says he encourages young inmates to read to stay sane. Why does that make him too dangerous for general population? He told me that 15 young men hung themselves in SCI Greene during a one-year period.”

King Downing, director of the American Friends Service Center’s Healing Justice Program, said prison authorities nationwide misuse solitary confinement to “silence political prisoners.” Downing hosted the press conference where Shoats spoke alongside other speakers representing Abu-Jamal.

Prison authorities nationwide misuse solitary confinement to “silence political prisoners.”

Last October, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez called on all countries worldwide to ban the use of solitary confinement of inmates as punishment and/or an extortion technique, except in very exceptional circumstances.

Mendez cited scientific studies establishing the mental and medical damage arising from prolonged isolation. His report stated that an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 persons regularly occupy solitary confinement cells across America.

Last October, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez called on all countries worldwide to ban the use of solitary confinement of inmates as punishment and/or an extortion technique, except in very exceptional circumstances.

Recently a federal jury awarded a New Mexico man $22 million for violations of his constitutional rights arising from his having spent two years in solitary confinement in a county jail in Albuquerque following a drunk driving arrest. Although during that entire time he was never even charged or brought to trial, authorities in Dona Ana County New Mexico vow to appeal that verdict, one of the largest damage judgments in history for illegal incarceration.

Linn Washington, a professor of journalism at Temple University and award-winning columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune, has covered Mumia Abu-Jamal’s fight for freedom from the beginning, in December 1981. This story first appeared on This Can’t Be Happening, the website featuring the work of a news collective comprising Linn Washington and three other renowned journalists. They can be reached at thiscantbehappeningmail@yahoo.com.

Message from Wadiya A. Jamal, wife of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Saturday, July 28, 7:30 p.m. – I just received a call from my beloved husband who is now out of administrative custody and in general population at SCI Mahanoy. He is relieved after being in these solitary torture chambers for over 30 years. He can’t wait to face and embrace me, his wife, and his children and grandchildren. The next moment is for him to be released from the belly of the beast. He is surprised at how many men are in these prison cells – Black, white, Hispanic. He said he’s been shown a lot of love from the others in population. We need to bring Mumia and all the other men home!

Mumia said he wanted to see me as soon as possible, to come up tomorrow, Sunday, a visiting day. But the prison won’t let me visit until Monday.

Wadiya A Jamal, with BIG pride

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Besides the Bay View, these prisoners in Georgia are openly reading and discussing in their study group the two books by George Jackson, “Soledad Brother” and “Blood in My Eye.” In California, prison authorities are terrified of the inspirational effect Jackson’s writings have on prisoners.

I would like to briefly expound upon a subject that Brotha David Johnson had briefly touched on in the October issue of the Bay View. He spoke briefly on the political prisoner issue. At present only a handful of us at Pelikkkan Bay are recognized as political prisoners, myself and Hugo Pinell in particular, but contrary to popular misconception there are at least 30 New Afrikan political prisoners being unjustly held in solitary confinement here at Pelikkkan Bay. These New Afrikan revoluntionary brothas have been denied parole and release from SHU solely based on their political beliefs and activities, and the last time I checked this qualifies them as political prisoners and they are all active within the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM).

When a prisoners transforms his criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality and then commits himself to fighting racism, fascism, oppression, imperialism and pig brutality and he is persecuted for his political activities and belief, placed in solitary confinement and or denied parole, he becomes a tortured prisoner and legal combatant for his political beliefs, thus a “political prisoner.” He meets all the criteria supported by the United Nations and global community, and every time the Prison Rights Movement, Jericho Movement, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, New Afrikan Independence Movement and the Anarchist Movement fail to support these New Afrikan political prisoners and POWs and/or recognize their status as political prisoners and POWs, it only facilitates their political torture, persecution and isolation and fortifies their suffering and, unbeknownst to many, some of these brothas came to prison for their service to the revolution.

We are the only class of New Afrikan/Black prisoners in the entire country who are forbidden to speak the name of the author of the book “Soledad Brother” and are punished for doing so. We can’t even mention the title of his other book. We can’t quote none of his writings. It is considered gang activity and material and used as a gang validation source for prison gang membership. His books, writings and image are banned in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) here at Pelikkkan Bay State Prison. Many of us have been denied release from SHU for possessing his books and writings; some have even received indeterminate SHU sentences for this.

We are the only class of New Afrikan/Black prisoners in the entire country who are forbidden to speak the name of the author of the book “Soledad Brother” and are punished for doing so. It is considered gang activity.

No class of prisoner in this country is being subjected to this level of political persecution and political censorship. Combined we have close to 1,000 years in solitary confinement. The CDC is using our persecution as a warning for the Black prison population. If they dare to struggle, they will end up like us. Unfortunately, it has worked.

In 2007 the OCS and IGI raided our cells and confiscated our political and Black history literature. They confiscated my pictures, political drawings by Comrade Kevin Rashid Johnson, pamphlets and proposals that I wrote, over 50 of my poems, my books, such as Malcolm X speeches and Kwame Nkrumah revolutionary handbook, all material that had Comrade’s name in it, as well as my Black Liberation Army literature and Cointelpro documents. They claim it was all gang related.

Combined we have close to 1,000 years in solitary confinement. The CDC is using our persecution as a warning for the Black prison population.

People, you will be surprised at the degree of our censorship. This very article was confiscated the first time I attempted to send it to the Bay View. I also received a serious disciplinary report for writing this article and it will be used to deny my release from the SHU when I become eligible in 2014.

When I initially attempted to send this article to Sista Mary [Bay View editor], I had seven pages of printed documents that contained statements from the warden, OCS and IGI, and I had instructed Sista Mary to print an underlined portion that would both expose and validate our political persecution. IGI and ISU confiscated everything and accused me of promoting gang activity when I suggested that the warden’s statement be printed along with my article. Now as a result of this I will not be eligible for release from SHU until 2020. I guess this is supposed to discourage me. Do they not realize I am prepared to die for our revolutionary cause – Allahu-Akbar!

This very article was confiscated the first time I attempted to send it to the Bay View. I also received a serious disciplinary report for writing this article and it will be used to deny my release from the SHU when I become eligible in 2014.

The PBPPC is designed to mobilize a grassroots effort to specifically address our political persecution and censorship. The Bay View has supported us for many years and has provided us with a medium to share our stories. People, I am a New Afrikan revolutionary combatant, so I am not looking for your sympathy. Don’t cry for me. I am your first responder. I suffer so you can live in a world free of racial oppression. I relish the sacrifice.

Over 20 years I have slept on concrete floors, without mattress or blanket, determined never to be comfortable in this man-made hell. I allow the constant pain to fuel my Black rage. Is this insanity? No! I am but a soldier expressing a profound love for my people. I realize I am often misunderstood and many have accused me of being too extreme, on the brink of insanity.

I ask, is it too crazy to want an end to the suffering of our people and global community? Before you condemn me, look outside your front door and tell me what do you see? We as Black people are being persecuted on every continent, but we find time to murder each other, sell drugs to each other, abandon our parental responsibilities. We don’t even have the will to stop using the word “Nigger” – but yet I am insane? I love you, my people, and I will bid you my unconditional love.

Send our brother some love and light: Abdul Olugbala Shakur (s/n J. Harvey), C-48884, PBSP SHU, D-4-112, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532.

Pelican Bay State Prison Second Level Review: Warden’s Level Decision

With his letter, Brother Shakur sent the warden’s decision on his appeal protesting IGI, which had “stopped and retained one outgoing mailing on October 20, 2011. HARVEY feels that this was an effort to censor his political views and it was not promoting gang activity.”

In the section headed “Findings,” the warden writes: “HARVEY is a validated member of the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) prison gang with the alias of ‘Abdul Shakur.’ The BGF views themselves as political prisoners and utilizes literature as a means of spreading their ideology to other African Americans.

“The mailing in question had the address of ‘Bay View Attn. Mary Ratcliff, 4917 Third Street, San Francisco , CA. 94124.’ HARVEY speaks of censorship he feels he is under by correctional staff at PBSP. HARVEY also includes a copy of an inmate Appeal he filed in 2009. HARVEY gives Ms. Ratcliff the instruction to add the underlined portions of the Appeal to his article.

“A review of the underlined portion in the Appeal, outlines the history and ideologies of the BGF, as well as subsidiaries of the BGF. HARVEY utilizes the Appeal response in an attempt to have BGF ideologies and history published in his article.”

Under “Determination of Issue,” the warden rules: “The Second Level Reviewer examined all the pertinent documents, including all information received during the Second Level Interview. This Appeal is DENIED. By HARVEY attempting to have the history and ideologies of the BGF printed in his article, HARVEY is promoting and attempting to further the BGF by educating other individuals who would read his article. HARVEY was issued a Rules Violation Report and given an opportunity to plead his case to a staff member outside of the IGI and was found guilty of promoting gang activity through the mailing in question. Sergeant Frisk reviewed all the available information and determined the IGI staff acted in accordance with institutional policy, thus warranting the mail stoppage.”

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by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

Rashid Johnson

From one set-up to another

On the morning of Jan. 20, I was confronted at my cell by Red Onion C-Building Unit Manager Michael Younce and Lt. Delmer Tate, who both lied telling me that agent Johnny Acosta wanted to speak with me in the prison’s video-court area. I was, upon being handcuffed and leg shackled, “escorted” by them to the prison’s transport area, put into a cell and told to strip down to be searched by security chief Kevin McCoy because I was “taking a trip.”

Numerous guards entered the area, including one Joseph Ely, a prior Red Onion guard who’d transferred to Wallens Ridge to be promoted to lieutenant. Ely was carrying transportation restraints and a 50,000 volt electric stun belt, which prisoners are made to wear when taken on road trips. I instantly realized I was being transferred to Wallens Ridge.

I asked McCoy several times about my property. He assured it’d be right behind me. It wasn’t. It was all left at Red Onion, where much of it will likely be destroyed, “lost” and taken.

McCoy attempted to provoke a situation by having me given a pair of pants to wear that were too small. I refused to wear them. After a standoff, I was given a pair in the correct size, restrained, belted and taken to a transport van. Inside the van, I was crushed and locked inside a tiny steel cage measuring about 5 feet high and 2 by 2 feet square, in which I could barely move.

Once on the road, Ely asked if I knew where I was going. I answered, “Obviously to Wallens Ridge.” He then asked did I really not know I was being transferred? I told him no, that I was told I was going to see someone. He added, “You know why you’re going back, don’t you?” “Not really,” I answered. He then stated, “Well, you know a lot of people don’t like you. You probably won’t leave walking.” I was to receive numerous similar threats by guards that I was being sent to Wallens Ridge to be set up for violence.

Upon reaching Wallens Ridge, I was met by numerous guards, especially ranking guards, whom I’d known from my 2000-2003 confinement at Wallens Ridge. All displayed openly hostile attitudes. One of the guards, who was holding one of my arms and “escorting” me from the van to the intake area, Dixon, repeatedly dug his fingers into my right arm. I was also accompanied during this walk by two large dogs barking loudly and straining wildly against their leashes.

I went through the strip search and endured another standoff over too-small clothes, by Sgt. Cochrane and Lt. Swiney, both obviously trying to provoke a situation to “justify” using violence. So I relented and wore the clothes for the brief walk to the unit.

I was leg-shackled, cuffed from behind and “escorted” by a mob of guards to the D-3 housing unit. Every cell in the unit was empty. I was put into D-301, one of only two cells in the block with a steel box approximately 8 by 12 by 18 inches with a Plexiglas cover, welded to the outside of a cell door and around the opening in the door through which food and other items are passed and handcuffs applied and removed. I was made to kneel to have the leg shackles removed and to put my hands outside the slot into the box where the handcuffs were removed. I then removed my hands from the box and a steel plate was slid in place across the door opening, closing off access to the box.

Rashid was assaulted by staff at Red Onion on Dec. 12. He has a dislocated shoulder and is yet to receive proper medical attention. He had a 3 by 7 inch swath of hair pulled out by the roots. This occurred when he refused to turn his back on an officer as he came out of the exercise cage. Please contact VDOC Director Harold Clarke at (804) 674-3000.

I’ve had my meals and beverages dropped into the visibly filthy box on the door which is never cleaned, indeed it can’t be where it contains rust, peeling paint, fermented food and beverages residue, and one must place dirty clothes, shoes, toilet cleaning items, etc. into the box to be searched by or exchanged with guards. Using the box for meal service is a per se health hazard. Not only is my food contaminated by being placed into direct contact with the box’s surfaces, but I’ve found paint particles, dirt, lint, etc. in my food and beverages from the box.

I was also brought clothes by Swiney that had been sprayed with mace or gas. I’ve been kept incommunicado – denied phone use, all property and kept in a completely empty unit.

I’ve also received two trays with foods containing broken pieces of metal and rocks. Guards, including Cochrane, refuse to provide me with or to accept for filing forms needed to pursue emergency and other grievances and complaints. I had to go through a Lt. Bergan to obtain complaint forms from Cochrane, who then gave me only two out of five requested by me.

The Dec. 12, 2011, assault where my hair was ripped out was preceded by threats by the assaulting guard, in that I’m now being faced with a consistent series of threats by a staff known to abuse and even kill prisoners – which I’ll elaborate on below. It is important that this situation be made known as broadly as possible. I believe outside exposure, support and pressure has kept many of the more serious, violent official intentions at bay. These threats under the circumstances must be taken very seriously.

Wallens Ridge: A nest of vipers

Several of the threats here have been accompanied by guards making disparaging remarks about me being a “protester,” “Black Panther” etc., often accompanied by racial slurs. It is well known that Black prisoners known to challenge or protest abuses or who are politically active are abuse targets at Wallens Ridge. John Gaskins, aka Mac, who was recently released from Wallens Ridge, has been both witness and victim. While at the prison, he witnessed prisoners inclined to protest being set up by guards, beaten and thrown into segregation. He was himself, for this reason, set up on a false infraction and thrown in segregation until he was released from Virginia’s prisons. He expected to be beaten by the guards himself at any time.

Rashid explains: “This method of ‘escorting’ segregation prisoners is used ostensibly so guards can maintain complete control while remaining behind the prisoner so he cannot butt, spit or otherwise assault them and can be easily maneuvered to place and pinned against a wall. During such escorts, guards are to remain behind and to the side of the prisoner.”

In my prior update/article, I discussed a 2001 beating by three ranking Wallens Ridge guards of a Black prisoner, last name Plummer, which resulted in the guards being prosecuted. The charges were circumvented by the entire prison’s staff coming together to stage a scene at the prison to sway the jury to acquit the guards, and the investigator – Johnny Acosta – who found the guards to have assaulted Plummer, was in turn sued by them. Many of the guards involved in that coverup still work at Wallens Ridge, including Major Combs, Cochrane, Swiney etc.

Prisoners have also been killed by Wallens Ridge officials or at their prompting. Most recent was the controversial killing of Harvey Lee Watson by his cellmate, Robert Gleason, who pled guilty to the killing and implicated Wallens Ridge staff as complicit and responsible. Several were fired after the fact, when autopsies found Watson had been dead for half a day when discovered by guards inside the cell.

The guards had falsified records, claiming they’d been making routine checks of the prisoners. However, those who caused his death were passed over. Gleason personally told me numerous times that he only realized after killing Watson that Wallens Ridge officials had used him, set him up to kill Watson to remove a thorn from their side. He vowed to plead guilty to the killing and to use the case to expose what they’d done. Which he did, to no avail.

In that case, they wanted to silence Watson, who kept protesting that officials had knowingly transported him from Sussex One State Prison in Waverly, Virginia, to Wallens Ridge with a dead prisoner sitting with him in the van. Watson had also just set his cell on fire the night before being transferred and had recently set another prisoner on fire.

He had outstanding punitive segregation sentences to serve and was not supposed to have been released to population. He also was supposed at all times to have been housed in cells alone, even in population, due to his mental health status. However, ranking Wallens Ridge officials and the counselor, wife of Lt. A. Gallihar, conspired to put Watson in Gleason’s cell in population. Gleason was known to have been convicted, suspected and charged with numerous killings. Officials felt he was their man for the job.

In the cell, Gleason complained to staff counselor Gallihar, ranking officials, the warden, even people on the outside that Watson was sick and needed to be moved out of his cell before he was forced into a drastic reaction. Watson would drink urine, masturbate in the open, talk loudly to himself all times of night etc. Lt. Gallihar, his wife and others told Gleason, “You know how to deal with it,” refusing to move Watson.

Gleason admittedly snapped and killed Watson. The scandal has been widely reported in the media and Gleason is open about what happened and why. The day after the killing, A. Gallihar, who wasn’t at the prison the day of the killing, fabricated an incident report as though he was, on his wife’s behalf to cover for her.

During or about 2003, a white Connecticut prisoner was strangled to death by Wallens Ridge guards who claimed the death a suicide hanging. A similar attack was attempted against another white prisoner, Michael Austin, now confined at Red Onion, during or about 2010. The guards disliked Austin because he’d grown up around and embraced Black urban culture and clashed with the prison’s rural white guards who’d ridicule him and try to influence him with racist values.

In his case, guards premeditatedly rushed into his cell, claiming falsely he was attempting to hang himself, put a thick string around his neck and began choking him. Their designs to strangle him to death were foiled only because the string broke.

During 2003, another Connecticut prisoner, a Black man named Lawrence Frazier, was electrocuted to death by numerous Wallens Ridge guards while he was restrained to a steel bed frame by his extremities. The death was dismissed as caused by insulin shock, however an examining doctor found the electrocutions contributed to, if not caused, his death.

A documentary, “Up the Ridge,” was filmed by a local radio group exposing the racism and abuses surrounding the prison and reporting on Frazier’s killing.

During 2001, I was myself the victim of a brutal assault by a mob of Wallens Ridge guards, including two who beat Plummer just months later. In my case, I was drawn out of my segregation cell while fully unrestrained by a guard G. Sexton, inviting me to an off-the-record one-on-one fight – what we call “a fair one” in prison. His intentions, however, weren’t to fight but to set me up for a mob attack.

Sexton never once put up a fight, but was knocked down almost immediately and began screaming for backup. I was subdued without resisting and upon being handcuffed and shackled was repeatedly kicked in the face and head, electrocuted with multiple 50,000 volt stun weapons, had all but three of my then almost 2-foot-long dreadlocks systematically ripped out, and was left with multiple facial lacerations that had to be stitched closed, burns across my upper body and arms, and blood red and purple contusions covering the entire whites of my eyes across their front halves.

The attack was covered up by Wallens Ridge officials at all levels and Internal Affairs agents who destroyed pod surveillance camera footage of the attack, moved all vocal prisoner witnesses to other units and colluded on reports claiming all my injuries were inflicted by Sexton defending himself against an unanticipated attack by me when the cell “accidentally” opened. At first they’d claimed I opened it, whereas Sexton himself told guards in the control booth to open it.

What’s more, Wallens Ridge’s present warden, Gregory Halloway, has subjected me to extensive past torture while a unit manager at Greensville Correctional Center, during 1998. At that time he kept me on an illegal status, called “white cell status,” when I was left for eight months, even during winter, with nothing inside the cell but one pair of boxer shorts. No property was permitted. I could not even brush my teeth and ended up having to have several filled for cavities as a result. I was only allowed a mattress and bedding from 10 p.m. through 6 a.m. I contracted the flu, sinus infections and colds. Throughout the white cell confinement, my cell window to the outside was broken, letting in freezing cold outside temperatures.

While on white cell status, Holloway accused me of knocking him unconscious in the medical department while my blood pressure was being taken with my hands cuffed, supposedly in response to his torturing me. I remained on white cell status until I was transferred to Red Onion in 1998 from Greensville.

Therefore not only is Holloway an official who’s known to illegally torture and abuse – and will admit having me on that illegal status – but one who has cause for vengeance against me. It is highly unlikely I can expect to receive any semblance of just treatment under him, nor that he would act to prevent threatened abuses. Indeed it is probable that he is privy to such abuses.

Furthermore, Holloway is but a token Black figurehead, recently appointed to Wallens Ridge to counter a widespread image and reputation for racism like at Red Onion. Similarly, at Red Onion, a token Black warden was appointed in the early 2000s, under whose supervision racism and abuse escalated. Indeed, he went out of his way to avoid making waves with the local entrenched white supremacist status quo that de facto ran Red Onion, as it does Wallens Ridge.

Dark faces in high places is today’s chief tactic for masking institutionalized racism.

Conclusion

If officials did not send me to Wallens Ridge with deviant designs, then this admits I qualify to be housed at any other Virginia Department of Corrections prison of the same Level 5 security classification, such as Sussex One or Two State Prisons, where a more racially diverse and tolerant staff exists. At Wallens Ridge and Red Onion, I and other politically active prisoners and those who challenge abuses have been targeted in a clear pattern with official violence and abuse.

This icon of the California hunger strikes, now recognized around the world, was drawn by brilliant artist and writer Rashid Johnson. It inspired 12,000 prisoners in California and more across the U.S. and as far away as Palestine and Australia to defy the state by starving themselves.

Dare to struggle! Dare to win!

All Power to the People!

About Rashid and how you can help

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is a long-time revolutionary prison organizer, accomplished artist, Marxist theoretician and the Minister of Defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter (NABPP-PC). He has been held in segregation for the past 19 years, since 1993. Some of his writings have been published in the book “Defying the Tomb” (Kersplebedeb, 2010), available from leftwingbooks.net and AK Press. Its foreword is by Russell “Maroon” Shoats, introduction by Tom Big Warrior and afterword by Sundiata Acoli.

More of his writings and artwork are featured on his website, rashidmod.com. In 2011, from Virginia, Rashid added his voice to those of thousands supporting the demands of California prisoners hunger-striking against isolation torture; his writings have been banned in many California prisons.

To read Rashid’s account of deteriorating conditions at Red Onion State Prison and the assault by guards on Dec., 12, 2011, see rashidmod.com. Rashid can be contacted at: Kevin Johnson, 1007485, Wallens Ridge State Prison, P.O. Box 759, Big Stone Gap, VA 24219.

Supporting Prisoners and Acting for Radical Change (SPARC) is a non-sectarian revolutionary mass organization based in Virginia and Washington, D.C., focused on building effective opposition to the prison-industrial complex. SPARC is demanding that the staff of Red Onion and Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) cease their consistent campaign of targeted physical violence, harassment and administrative repression against the cadre of the NABPP-PC, which is clearly being carried out with the intention of suppressing the basic human and democratic rights of prisoners in VDOC facilities. Furthermore, SPARC supports Rashid’s request to be transferred to a less hostile environment, for instance one of the Sussex prisons.

Sign the petition: A petition to support an end to political repression against the NABPP can be downloaded from http://www.kersplebedeb.com/vdoc_petition.pdf. It is also posted as an online petition at Change.org. Spread the word!

Protest to the director of corrections: People are also encouraged to contact VDOC Director Harold Clarke in support of these demands: Harold W. Clarke, Director, Department of Corrections, P.O. Box 26963, Richmond, VA 23261-6963. His phone is (804) 674-3119, fax (804) 674-3509 and email harold.clarke@vadoc.virginia.gov.

Please send copies of all correspondence to SPARC, P.O. Box 345, Floyd VA, 24091.

SPARC can also reached by email at sparcdc@hush.com or sparc@signalfire.org or search “Supporting Prisoners and Acting for Radical Change” on Facebook for regular updates and news.

Meet Rashid’s comrade Feb. 11 in NYC: Those in the New York City area who wish to learn more about Rashid and conditions in Virginia’s prisons are encouraged to attend the book event, “Defying the Tomb: Struggle, Education, Survival and Liberation in Lock-Down,” to be held at Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen St., New York, NY 10002, on Saturday, Feb. 11, at 7 p.m. The featured speaker is Rashid’s comrade, John “Mac” Gaskins, who was in a neighboring cell with Rashid while at Red Onion and was recently released from the tombs of Wallens Ridge. It promises to be an evening where words will not be minced!

The Bay View thanks Kersplebedeb for typing and transmitting this letter with afterword. Kersplebedeb can be reached at info@kersplebedeb.com.

Please click to enlarge this petition, print it out, gather signatures and return them, or download the petition at http://www.kersplebedeb.com/vdoc_petition.pdf.

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by Joseph Debro

A 2006 billboard urges the re-election of City Councilwoman Desley Brooks. – Photo: Jakub Mosur, SF Chronicle

Descendants of former slaves have a lot to overcome in this country. We are injured by self-inflicted wounds. We are crippled by wounds inflicted by others. Politicians who represent descendants of former slaves often think that a handout helps us more than a hand up. We should all remember that if you give a fish to a hungry person, you feed that person for a day. If you teach a hungry person how to fish, you feed that person for life.

What she has done will slow down the Oakland process of importing labor and exporting capital.

Councilwoman Desley Brooks, the vice mayor of Oakland, was able to help a friend because she had a relationship with an Oakland developer. Both the friend and the developer were limited in their growth potential. She helped two people, both of whom thought that they got over.

The 8(a) program was started by a descendant of a former slave: Joe Conrad, who worked for SBA (Small Business Administration) in Washington, D.C. This program was designed to bring community benefits to the community of the descendants of former slaves. It has since been corrupted to bring advantage only to white men.

Transbay Engineering, under the leadership of the late Ray Dones and Joe Debro, trained more Black workers for union membership than any other construction company in the country. Workers were trained by OJT (on-the-job training), not by apprenticeship. Transbay would not sign a hiring hall agreement unless their workers were admitted into the unions. – Photo: Eric Luse, SF Chronicle

For reasons which are too complex to discuss, Ms. Brooks took a different approach. Her new approach compelled her to formulate a new city policy which will feed the unemployed of Oakland and other urban cities for life. Her legislation is limited to the Oakland Army Base. That limitation will be removed when it is demonstrated how well her legislation works.

Desley, who is not known for her ability to put together four votes on the Oakland City Council, was able to get eight votes for her new powerful economic development tool. What Desley has done deserves a Nobel Prize.

The legislation that she has passed into Oakland law is a great start in the right direction. Building contractors will not be granted a contract if they have no history of constructing while adding community benefits. Desley uses the geography of Oakland, as we all should, to describe where the benefits must be bestowed.

Her legislation forces all contractors to demonstrate their history of delivering community benefits to a local community in which they work. If they have no such history, they must joint venture with a contractor who has such a history. Joint ventures are the most effective way to build capacity, increase local employment and training and retain a fraction of the profits generated by local projects.

Her legislation forces all contractors to demonstrate their history of delivering community benefits to a local community in which they work. If they have no such history, they must joint venture with a contractor who has such a history.

Ms. Brooks worked with local contractors and with community groups in developing this plan. She is to be commended. This is an idea whose time has come. It will spread all over the United States. One of the contractors with whom she worked will win the demolition contract at the Oakland Army Base. He deserves it.

Joseph Debro is president of Bay Area Black Builders, co-founder of the National Association of Minority Contractors, president of Transbay Engineering and a bio-chemical engineer. He can be reached at transbay@netzero.com.

Desley Brooks on KPFA’s Education Today

Oakland City Councilwoman and Vice Mayor Desley Brooks appeared on Education Today, hosted by Kitty Kelly Epstein, on KPFA Jan. 27 to discuss this historic legislation: “I worked with a group of community folks who were engaged in the construction industry. You see all the time that the prime contractor on a construction job is always a firm, it seems like, that’s not from Oakland. And we know that when they’re not from Oakland, they’re not likely to hire Oakland people. …

Oakland City Councilwoman and Vice Mayor Desley Brooks

For them to even compete to get that job, 33 percent of their core workforce would have to be Oakland residents.

“When I drive down the street, what I hear consistently from Oakland people is, ‘I need a job.’ One of the things that cities can do with the money that they have – we give millions and millions of dollars for (construction) contracts – is recirculate the dollars in our communities. I’ve always advocated for that and tried to figure out ways that we can create jobs. …

“We’re doing the legislation on a pilot basis, so we’re testing it out. We’re testing it on the remediation work that’s to be done on the Oakland Army Base (in West Oakland). There’s approximately $9 million worth of work, and the ordinance I had pass applies only to that $9 million. If it works well, we’ll have an opportunity to consider extending it. …

Oakland spends millions and millions of dollars for construction contracts and should recirculate those dollars in our communities.

“Oakland’s unemployment rate is somewhere around 17-20 percent officially …; in our community, it’s much higher than that. … The hope is that with this ordinance, we’ll start to grow our minority contracting companies. … There are very few minority contracting firms because they are always having to compete with the major firms and they don’t get the jobs. …

“A major contractor sent me an email saying, ‘We won’t be able to bid on that work because of your 33 percent requirements. And I thought, ‘Really!’ They have probably more than $40 million in construction work with the City of Oakland already. …

“We said (when the proposed ordinance was before the City Council), ‘Put Oaklanders first! Put Oaklanders first! … Who on the Council would vote against their own residents? So it passed unanimously. …

Put Oaklanders first!

“We increased our contracting requirements (for hiring on all construction contracts) from 20 percent to 50 percent. It’s not just jobs that we’re interested in; we’re interested in contracts, because when Oakland contractors have the ability to get a contract with the city, they usually hire people who live in the neighborhoods. So again, it’s that proper distribution of wealth; it’s that recirculation of the dollars that’s so important.”

Host Kitty Kelly Epstein said: “When we looked at the number of hours on construction jobs that were going to African Americans in particular a few months ago, we found it’s about 27 percent of the population is African American and about 5 percent of the construction hours on journeyman jobs. … A minority firm is more likely to hire non-white people than a white majority firm is.”

Brooks added: “The way our contracting process has always worked is (the contractor) promises to do the local hires …, but with this new ordinance, you have to show that up front you have 33 percent (Oakland residents in your core workforce), so there’s more likelihood that an Oaklander will actually get a job. …

“I started talking about this to everyday people who needed a job. They came consistently down to the Council. They came to all the committee meetings; they came to the Council meetings – and kept pushing, because they know that when their voiced aren’t down here, they may not be heard. … I worked with some everyday folks who made a big impact in this city; it’s the first time that happened – ever.”

Education Today is broadcast at 2:30 p.m. on alternate Fridays on KPFA 94.1FM. Host Kitty Kelly Epstein can be reached at kkepstein@gmail.com. Councilwoman Desley Brooks, who represents District 6 in East Oakland, can be reached at dbrooks@oaklandnet.com.  

How you can get involved

When they learned in 2010 that 8,000 new jobs would be created through the redevelopment of the Oakland Army Base, eight organizations came together, forming the OaklandWORKS Alliance to ensure residents of the flatlands would have full access to those jobs. It was their research that revealed that African-Americans were obtaining only 5 percent of the journeyman hours on city-funded construction jobs, even though African-Americans make up 27 percent of the city’s population.

The upcoming Tuesday, Feb. 7, Oakland City Council meeting will review a number of proposals: local employment on both construction and permanent jobs, a Jobs Center to ensure that there is more fair access to employment and other provisions. The Alliance will work to ensure that the community stays involved, so that the parts of the policy which reflect the community’s interests are enforced.

OaklandWORKS also campaigned for Oakland-based contractors to be able to obtain contracts for the Army base work. Local and minority contractors have shown themselves to be much more likely to hire Oakland workers.

The OaklandWORKS Alliance includes Oakland Black Caucus, Oakland Parents Together, John George Democratic Club, The West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, PUEBLO, Black Women Organized for Political Action (BWOPA), Concerned Black Men of Oakland and Oakland Natives Give Back. For more information, contact Robyn Hodges at rehher123@gmail.com.

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by Kenyon Farrow

Etta James, 1960

No one understood the awkwardness of that casting choice better than James herself, who told The New York Post’s Page Six in 2007, when she learned the film was already in production, that “she is going to have a hill to climb, because Etta James ain’t been no angel! … I wasn’t as bourgie as she is, she’s bourgeois. She knows how to be a lady; she’s like a model. I wasn’t like that … I smoked in the bathroom in school, I was kinda arrogant.”

The woman born Jamesetta Hawkins on Jan. 25, 1938, was far more than just a torch song singer and was not at all the tragic mulatto with a white daddy complex that “Cadillac Records” constructed. In many ways, James’ personal and artistic journey, as opposed to the film’s caricature, has a lot to teach us about the shifting politics of race, class and feminist politics over the course of the last half century.

Etta James was born in Los Angeles, when many African Americans were moving due West to escape the brutality of the Jim Crow South and chase the promise of manufacturing jobs. She was raised by a handful of caregivers, as her mother was often running the streets chasing a good time. Her mother was a woman James sometimes despised and at the same time desperately wanted to please. Her father’s identity was not really known to her, though it has been rumored her father was white. In fact, James learned late in life during an argument with her mother that he was likely legendary pool shark Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone, whom James met in 1987.

At age 5, James developed two relationships that would remain with her throughout her life: one relationship with singing and one with Black gay men and the LGBT community as a whole. In her 2003 autobiography, “Rage to Survive,” James describes her first vocal coach, James Earl Hines – musical director at L.A.’s St. Paul Baptist Church and one of the early gospel superstars – as “married, acted gay as a goose, and I was crazy about him…. Truth is, all the gay guys in the choir sang like angels and acted so different…. I loved their little underground talk, their gossiping about the sisters.”

Though James’ formative years were spent singing in the church, she turned to the streets and street life for inspiration. She moved to San Francisco’s Fillmore district as an early teen, where she sang in the doo-wop group, the Creolettes (which later become The Peaches), and recorded on Modern Records before leaving in 1960 to sign with the legendary Chess Records, which the film “Cadillac Records” attempts to profile. Her debut album “At Last!” was released the same year, when she was 22 years old.

Unlike most artists who work for many years before writing or recording their “definitive” work, James is most remembered for songs from this debut album, including “At Last” (though it was not a crossover single) and “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “A Sunday Kind of Love.”

“At Last” has become arguably the most popular song in the U.S. for weddings, Valentine’s Day or other kinds of bourgeois events calling for cheap sentimentality – despite the fact that James’s powerhouse vocals and phrasing actively work against the sentimentality of the song’s arrangement, as it does in most of her work covering jazz standards during that period.

But her vocals weren’t the only place James was working decidedly against a safe “jazz singer” image. She worked in her personal life and her styling to embody the kind of Black urban street culture in which she was immersing herself:

“I [was] serious about turning little churchgoing Jamesetta into a tough bitch called Etta James…. I wanted to look like a great big high-yellow ho’. I wanted to be nasty.”

James ascribes the blonde-yellow hair and black eyebrows that she adopted early in her career to being closely associated with street-based sex workers and drag queens at the time. That’s who she was emulating.

She also says the beginning of her addiction to heroin was not a way to cope with the abandonment issues or physical abuse she suffered as a child. She started shooting drugs because she thought that’s what bad girls do and because she saw Billie Holiday, her idol, as the ultimate bad girl. She lost many friends to issues related to substance addiction – Billie Holiday, Destiny, a Black drag queen and best friend to James, even Janis Joplin, who emulated James and for whose overdose James felt personally responsible. She was able to kick heroin in the 1970s, but she struggled with addiction much of her adult life, and she was pretty open about that fact.

“In 1950,” according to African American Registry, “James’ real mother took her to the Fillmore district in San Francisco (where her next door neighbor was Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff). Within a couple of years, James began listening to doo-wop and was inspired to form a girl group, called the Creolettes. The 14-year-old girls met musician Johnny Otis. Otis took the group under his wing, helping them sign to Modern Records and changing their name to the Peaches, and he gave the singer her stage name, reversing Jamesetta into Etta James.”

But James in many ways was exactly the kind of convert the Nation of Islam sought – Black people from urban areas involved in various forms of street culture. “My religious practices might have been erratic, and my wildness surely overwhelmed my piety, but for 10 years I called myself a Muslim,” said James.

As the 1960s moved on, James’ music also began to shift from doo-wop and jazz to more R&B, blues, rock and even country over the course of the 1960s and 70s. Though James began doing the kind of gospel-influenced R&B, which later got described as “soul” music, in the early 1960s, it was Aretha Franklin who got credit for ushering in the soul era, along with James Brown, whom James toured with and sometimes sang for in the 1960s.

James really capitalized on the blues resurgence of the 1970s to make a living touring the world. She got frustrated by the fact that people constructed a blues identity for her work and deeply resented the “Earth Mama” trap she felt that put her in. It’s a trap many other Black women artists find difficult to escape as well. In the end, though, she went with it, as she saw it as the easiest way to make money to support herself and her two young sons.

By the end of the 1970s when Chess Records folded, James was on hard times, still struggling with an addiction, and trying to make a living in the disco era, without a record label and doing her own bookings. James said that without the gay community, she would have starved in the late 1970s early 1980s, when she performed in a lot of gay bars across the country. Her 1994 release, “Life from San Francisco,” was actually recorded in March 1981 in a gay bar. In her memoir, Etta recounts a harrowing premonition at the time about the onset of the AIDS epidemic.

James eventually began to record again. With her two adult sons serving as bandmates and co-producers, she recorded and toured from the 1990s up through 2011, mostly recording in the jazz and blues genres.

Is it any wonder that a woman who struggled to define herself, her sound and her career over the span of 50 years would be a little suspicious of a Hollywood portrayal of her in a film on which she was not consulted?

James was not happy about her portrayal in “Cadillac Records,” for which Beyonce served not only as actress but also as producer. Contrary to the portrayal of James in the film, she was not romantically involved with Chess Records founder Leonard Chess. Nor did she use drugs because she was distraught over not knowing the identity of her biological father – James knew this was a possibility, but clearly saw herself as Black and never tried to identify as mixed or biracial.

The film tries to suggest James was sexually attracted to Chess because he represented the white daddy she never had. Marshall Chess, the surviving son of Leonard Chess, said of the Chess-James relationship, “Now, my father was no angel, but (he) was never caught in an affair. It never happened.” Marshall reported that he asked James about it, and she said, “He kissed me on the cheek once.”

To add insult to injury, after the film, Beyonce performed Etta’s signature song, “At Last” at President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, laying claim to the tune James was still singing professionally and which she relied on to make a living. James told an audience shortly after that that Obama “is not my president” and “that woman he had singing for him, singing my song … she’s going to get her ass whipped.”

James (or likely her publicist) later released a statement saying James was “kidding” about the comment. But the conflict between James and Beyonce is not as simple as divas behaving badly. It really represents an artist angered by the attempts made without her consent to control the public’s understanding of her life and legacy. Audiences will hopefully be willing to go beyond “At Last” and beyond “Cadillac Records” to find a woman whose talent and legacy went beyond both.

Kenyon Farrow, an organizer, communications strategist, and writer on issues at the intersection of HIV/AIDS, prisons and homophobia, was one of Black Entertainment Television’s “Modern Black History Heroes” for 2011. He can be reached at kenyon@kenyonfarrow.com. This story first appeared on Colorlines.

Etta James: Rebel until the end

by Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali

In April 2003, Etta exults on receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Rhongea Southern (now Daar Malik El-Bey), Carl Dyce (the late Sigidi Abdullah), the late Harold Clayton and myself were there auditioning for Motown. Gaye and Fugua are the talent scouts.

Our audition is interrupted by a long distance call from Etta James, who is calling all the way from Chicago. In the mid-‘60s this was the equivalent of receiving a call from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as far as we were concerned. We were impressed to say the least. All the guys in the group loved Ms. James. We were all from the same bowl of grits. Like us, she was from Angel Town.

James lost her battle with leukemia on Jan. 20, 2012. She was born Jamesetta Hawkins on Jan. 25, 1938. The Los Angeles-born James is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Grammy Hall of Fame both in 1999 and 2008. Rolling Stone ranked James No. 22 on the list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and number 62 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists.

The outspoken James said she was of two minds about being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She made her views known in her autobiography, “Rage to Survive: The Etta James Story,” which she wrote along with David Ritz.

Says James: “Part of me is thrilled to be recognized, but another part resents the lily-white institution that sends down its proclamations from on high. They decide who is rock and rock and who isn’t, they decide who is important and who isn’t. Man, I grew up with some cats who should have been inducted years ago – Jesse Belvin and Johnny “Guitar” Watson to name two.” It must be mentioned that Johnny Otis, the man who introduced her when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, died days before her, on Jan. 17.

James attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles along with Belvin and Watson. “Jeff,” as it is called by Angelenos, has a heavyweight cast of graduates: Noble Peace Prize Winner Ralph Bunche, Dorothy Dandridge, Alvin Ailey , Roy Ayers and Richard “Louie Louie” Berry also went there.

Etta James’ life was surrounded by controversy. It was widely reported that she wanted to sing “At Last” at President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Beyonce ended up serenading President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

I saw her only one time in Toronto. Unfortunately, I never interviewed her. However, I have read and enjoyed “Rage to Survive.” The book reveals many little known things about Soul Sister James. She was once Jamesetta X when she joined the Nation of Islam at Temple No. 15 in Atlanta, Georgia. She says her mother used to know members of Temple 27 in Los Angeles. Sam Cooke, Hank Barry White and others came to Temple 27 to hear Minister John Shabazz, who today is Abdul Allah Muhammad.

James’ life is Africa history at its best and worst – she witnessed many major historical developments. One example: She was staying at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem when El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) met with Cuban President Fidel Castro in September 1960. Says James, “Fidel Castro was living up in the Theresa Hotel the same time as us. They blocked off the top six floors for him – this was in 1960 – and had coops on the roof with live chickens so he could prepare his own food. Fidel worried about being poisoned.” This is probably why he is still in the land of the living.”

After she parted company with the Nation of Islam, she became part of the Ahmadiyya branch of Islam. She was influenced by her partner at the time, John Lewis. “John became pious, praying five times a day. He was also urging me to become more serious. I tried and for a while I was. At the same time, running around with characters like James Brown, I got distracted.”

She was so distracted by Soul Brother No. 1 that she along with Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Kwame Ture, aka Stokely Carmichael, B.B. King, Sister Sledge and Bill Withers ended up in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) for the “Rumble in the Jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Forman. James points out, “In fact, it was a singer, Lloyd Price, who had first introduced (Muhammad) Ali to (Don) King.”

However. James ended up not performing. She returned to the USA because of the treatment she received from Mobutu Sese Seko, aka Joseph Mobutu , the man who played a role in the assassination of the great African patriot Patrice Emery Lumumba on Jan. 17, 1961.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, she did not write off the current crop of Black music makers as untalented. “I don’t subscribe to the school that says great soul music is dead. That’s usually some old fart talking, remembering his youth while forgetting that new generations are entitled to cultures of their own.”

James, like all human beings, had merits and demerits. However, the world will remember Etta James for vocal renditions of songs like “At Last,” “I’d Rather Go Blind,” “Sunday Kind of Love,” “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “All I Could Do Was Cry.”

Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali can be heard on Diasporic Music on Uhuru Radio, www.uhururadio.com, on Sundays 2-4 p.m. and Saturday Morning Live on Regent Radio, www.radioregent.com, 10 a.m.-1 p,m. every Saturday. He can be reached at norman.o.richmond@gmail.com. The co-host of SML is Malinda Francis, @docuvixen, Toronto filmmaker.

Live at Ebony Showcase Theatre in Los Angeles, April 15, 1987

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Krip-Hop Nation releases new CD, ‘Broken Bodies: A Cultural Revolution,’ about police brutality against people with disabilities by hip-hop artists and poets with disabilities, featuring the case of Neli Latson, on Sunday, Feb. 19, 1-3:30 p.m., San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin St., Koret Auditorium, Lower Level

by Leroy F. Moore Jr.

Neli Latson

Neli loved to go to the library; everybody in the program he attended there knew him. Early in the morning on May 24, 2010, in Stafford, Virginia, Neli, who was 18 at the time, was sitting on the library lawn waiting for it to open. Somebody called the police saying they saw a strange Black man with a gun. A deputy searched Neli and found that he didn’t have a gun. The deputy asked for his name.

But Neli knew his rights and knew he hadn’t done anything wrong, so he didn’t answer the deputy’s question. Then the deputy grabbed him, and Neli protected himself. He was tried and sentenced to 10 years for assaulting a police officer; however, the judge suspended eight of the 10 years.

Krip-Hop Nation, an international project of musicians with disabilities, and I got involved in Neli’s case almost a year and half ago. Since that time I’ve been in contact with Lisa daily. Krip-Hop Nation has pulled together four songs, videos and radio shows on Neli’s case.

When Krip-Hop Nation and I found out that Lisa had been convicted on Jan. 10, 2012, of misdemeanor charges that for many would have resulted in little to no jail time, we were pissed off but not surprised. The same district attorney prosecuted both Neli and Lisa. Krip-Hop Nation, Poor Magazine, Lisa’s family and other supporters were stunned that the trial concluded with Lisa being taken away as a prisoner to be incarcerated for one year, which was later shortened to six months. Now her legal team, family and friends have raised the bail to get her out.

For Neli, Lisa’s freedom is critical. She has been tirelessly advocating for Neli, and the only constant throughout his terrifying ordeal has been his mother’s voice by telephone each day and their weekly visits. She is her son’s coping mechanism and is absolutely vital to him.

I think why many of us were not surprised by the county’s action is that we believe it is in direct retaliation for her efforts to speak out against the corruption in Stafford County and her fight to have her son released to a facility capable of addressing his autism. Her Internet campaign to win supporters to her son’s cause was even mentioned by the prosecution during the course of the trial!

Lisa Alexander

On the phone Wednesday, Jan. 25, Lisa gave me the following update on her son’s case: “Neli is going to be released from the Department of Corrections in three weeks, by Feb. 20; however, he is not coming home but will be escorted to a residential program for young adults with developmental disabilities with an opportunity to finish high school and reach his goal – and that is to go to college.

“The family had requested this residential program, not a jail sentence, on May 31 of last year; however, the judge gave Neli another year in jail. The program was researched and brought to the court’s attention again by Neli’s family. Now the court agreed that Neli should go to this residential program, but the family has to pay for it. So Neli will attend this program and will finish his last year of high school and will go on to college. The family gets visitation rights while Neli is in this residential program.

“However, the fight is still not over because Neli should not have been incarcerated in the first place. So a petition that needs more signatures is still going to the governor asking him to drop all the charges and give Neli a pardon so he can continue with his life and go on to college. The judge also stated in Neli’s release papers that he should be in a residential program until he is 22 years old, another two years. The family and friends are asking the governor of Virginia for a pardon to clear Neli’s record and also to drop any probation, period.”

In response to Krip-Hop Nation’s cultural activism to win freedom and justice for Neli Latson, Kounterclockwise, a husband and wife hip-hop duo – the husband, Deacon Burns, is a wheelchair user – has recorded one of the strongest songs about this case entitled “Free Neli Latson,” and a Black disabled retired New York police officer, Emmitt Thrower, now a poet, playwright and filmmaker, has produced this powerful video for the song.

Krip-Hop Nation and Emmitt Thrower are now teaming up to make a documentary on police brutality against people with disabilities, using Neli’s case as a central theme.

How you can help

Krip-Hop Nation CD Release: “Broken Bodies PB: Police Brutality & Profiling Mixtape” is the name of Krip-Hop Nation’s new CD, which will be released at an event on Sunday, Feb. 19, 1-3:30 p.m., at the San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin St., in the Koret Auditorium on the Lower Level. The event is headlined “Broken Bodies: A Cultural Revolution.” Join local advocates like Mesha Irizarry, and Lisa, Neli’s mother, will be Skyped in to talk about her son’s case. This is one of the first hip-hop CDs on the topic of police brutality against people with disabilities by hip-hop artists and poets with disabilities. Many of the tracks are about Neli Latson’s case.

Seeking governor’s pardon: Lisa asks you to call Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to ask for a full pardon for Neli. His phone is (804) 786-2211 and his fax is (804) 371-6351.

Remember to sign the petition calling on Gov. McDonnell to pardon Neli.

Leroy Moore Jr., Black disabled artist, activist, columnist at Poor Magazine and founder of Krip-Hop Nation, can be reached at kriphopproject@yahoo.com.

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Zaharibu, who has been in isolation for 23½ years, was “validated” as a “gang member” and condemned to solitary confinement for having this classic and four other books by renowned authors in his cell and sharing them with other prisoners. Prison authorities labeled these books “gang material.”

“Upon the impartiality, fairness and integrity of its courts the endurance of a nation depends. Civil government is founded on justice, even as true religion is founded on mercy.”

This is my 23rd year in isolation, and regardless of how some might try to define what isolation is, I can assure you that after 23 years and in light of the almost constant, non-stop assault on the senses and your humanity, this is isolation. And at least part of what constitutes isolation must be defined according to what it takes and tries to take from you – the suicides, past and present, the surrender of one’s humanity and integrity, qualities that play a large role in becoming informants. It’s not only that people become like Judas when they do so, they become factors, major factors in the continued efforts at destroying and trying to destroy the humanity of us all.

But like many of those of us who have been buried in isolation for decades, I consider myself to be a student and I love democracy. During the hunger strike of Sept. 26-Oct. 12, I had an opportunity to speak to an officer here who stated that treating the humanity of citizens who are in prison with respect is a liberal idea whose time had passed and the people have spoken. Obviously, he considered “the people” to be those who think just as he does and even those citizens who have remained silent on the issue of democracy and justice.

I was not offended by his thinking. I understood it to be that 500-year-old process in which the elitist minority has convinced much of the middle class and working poor majority that their interests are one and the same. The conversation actually reminded me of conversations that Nelson Mandela had with his captors in a South African prison.

Hate and indifference – and it goes by many names: racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, to name just a few – are powerful tools that the ruling class minority has used to keep the majority competing against one another, from jobs to housing to education, even on how we should love and worship. You can see the pathology that it has created in some basic areas.

Hate and indifference – and it goes by many names: racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, to name just a few – are powerful tools that the ruling class minority has used to keep the majority competing against one another.

If you were to ask 5,000 people if they felt that the criminal justice system is biased, 50 percent or more would probably say yes. If you ask those same people if they believed in the death penalty, that same number of people would say yes. Even if you ask that question as it relates to life without parole, as many now do, you are still talking about a system that is biased.

We actually believe that 1) somehow the system has developed separately from the hate and indifference that the country has developed under and 2) that somehow we can leave our own hate and indifference at the front door and be fair and just in how we treat each other. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the historical record clearly bears this out. Hate and indifference is what has robbed us of our ability to look at each other and see a reflection of ourselves.

The only reason why the nation, at least many of us, have failed to see and understand how we have and continue to be affected by the legacy of hate and indifference and the pathology created by it is because it is who and what we are. Movements are crucial to overcoming this pathology.

Movements consist of citizens from different schools of thought – be it cultural, gender, political, economic, spiritual, educational. The thing that brings us all together is that everyone is being subjected to some form of oppression. The actual and spiritual poverty that results from the unequal distribution of wealth is a form of oppression. Movements are supposed to afford us with that crucial opportunity to relate to one another as fellow citizens.

The actual and spiritual poverty that results from the unequal distribution of wealth is a form of oppression.

Hate and indifference is the greatest threat to democracy. Democracy is and can be tolerant of much, but it cannot be subordinate to anything. It is the greater good. We have historically subordinated democracy to our hate and indifference: the unequal distribution of wealth, maintaining wage systems that are shamefully inconsistent with the standard of living, subjecting citizens to long-term isolation – and for many of us it is as a result of our ideas.

My retention in isolation is based on my allegedly being in possession of gang material and providing that material to other prisoners. That gang material was the following books: 1) “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, 2) “Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880” by W.E.B. Dubois, 3) “Egypt Revisited” by Ivan Van Sertima, 4) “Democracy in Mexico” by Han La Borz, 5) “Democracy Matters” by Cornel West.

The wrongful incarceration of citizens – and a lot of times this too is politically motivated – and the death penalty are all anti-democratic. And when we subordinate democracy and justice to us, as opposed to subordinating ourselves to democracy and justice, believe me, it stops being democracy and justice and it becomes exactly what it has been. These are forms of totalitarianism.

We mentioned in the previous statement that victory will require sacrifice, tenacity and, most importantly, competent strategic insight. That strategic insight must consist of our not only understanding what hate and indifference is, but also how we, individually and collectively, as well as our institutions, have been and continue to be affected psychologically by the legacy of hate and indifference.

The democratic abolitionist struggle demands it of us, and those of us here and in the Pelican Bay SHU, the NCTT, are committed to contributing to meaningful and lasting change. And this is part of what keeps us amongst the sane. We understand, and always have, that the price that we will pay for this is the efforts to silence us, to isolate and destroy us!

We are committed to contributing to meaningful and lasting change. And this is part of what keeps us amongst the sane. We understand, and always have, that the price that we will pay for this is the efforts to silence us, to isolate and destroy us!

But just as we understand this, we also understand that this struggle will also connect us to the Mary Ratcliffs of the world and the other inspiring and courageous citizens and soldiers that we have had the pleasure of meeting. When the officer said that the people have spoken, he was not talking about the Mary Ratcliffs and Sally Bystroffs, the Gabi Pinars and Nakisah Rices, the Ed Meads and Dorsey Nunns, Marilyn McMahons, Carol Strickmans, Penny Schoners, Critical Resistance and Shaka at-Thinnins, the thousands of citizens who comprise the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the People! You are all proof that beauty does exist and you are most appreciated.

Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing. It never has and never will. Those who want to be free must strike the blow!”

Send our brother some love and light: Michael Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, 4B-IL-53, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212. This letter was typed by Adrian McKinney.

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“Death is impossible for us to fathom; it is so immense, so frightening that we will do almost anything to keep from thinking about it. Society is organized to make death invisible, to keep it several steps removed. That distance may seem necessary for our comfort, but it comes with a terrible price: the illusion of limitless time, and a consequent lack of seriousness about daily life. As a warrior in life, you must turn this dynamic around: Make the thought of death something not to escape but to embrace. Your days are numbered. Will you pass them halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency? Cruel theaters staged by a czar are unnecessary; death will come to you without them. Imagine it pressing in on you, leaving you no escape, for there is no escape. Feeling death at your heels will make all your actions more certain, more forceful. This could be your last throw of the dice: Make it count.” – Robert Greene, bestselling author of “The 48 Laws of Power”

“This photo was taken a few days after the first hunger strike ended. I was about 178 pounds; I’d lost 42 pounds,” Heshima Denham wrote on the back. He added these wise words: “Progress requires sacrifice; give up your life for the people.”

Since the last hunger strike ended, we have weathered wave after wave of retaliation from the state’s prison administrators that continues unabated to this day. But before I catalog these manifestations of weakness on the part of state prison administrators, we feel it’s necessary to recount why this struggle began and the nature of our resolve to see the five core demands realized.

We have been consigned to ever more aggressive sensory deprivation torture units for 10, 20, 30 and in some cases 40 years, based on an administrative determination that we are members or associates of a “gang” – a term that encompasses leftist ideologies, political and politicized prisoners, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the opinion of Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI) is not passively accepting his role as a commodity in the prison industrial complex.

“Gang” is a term that encompasses leftist ideologies, political and politicized prisoners, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the opinion of Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI) is not passively accepting his role as a commodity in the prison industrial complex.

These administrative determinations are not due to some overt act of misconduct or pattern of rules violations. No, these “validations” are based most often on the reports, words or accounts of debriefers, rats, informants and other broken men who will say and do ‘most anything their IGI and ISU (Investigative Services Unit) handlers instruct them to, to avoid confinement in the SHU (Security Housing Unit) or carry some other favor from their masters.

After decades of fruitless legal challenges, after years of suffering the deprivations of conditions so inherently evil, inhumane and psychologically torturous that most of you simply cannot comprehend the reality behind these words, most of us came to realize an immutable truth: that the state’s mantra of “the only way out of the SHU is to parole, debrief or die” was something that they not only meant, but was in fact a key feature in developing a subservient and passive pool of prisoner commodities upon which the orderly fleecing of taxpayer dollars could be based.

Thirty years of successful propaganda, of dehumanizing underclass communities and the imprisoned, of lobbying that’s led to the dominance of the CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officers Association) in judicial and political elections and appointments – all to mislead an ill-informed public into submitting greater control of their lives and society to an industrial interest that runs counter to the public safety concerns they were vested to protect. Many of us watched this state of affairs progress unchallenged as our protestations fell on deaf ears, year after year, decade after decade, until advanced age and the decimation of our communities forced us onto “death ground,” where you may survive if you can resist, but you will most surely perish if you do not.

We took up a strategy which would pull back the curtain on the state’s practice of domestic torture which has been so well hidden from the people for so long, a strategy in which some of us may yet die: THE HUNGER STRIKE. We would rather starve ourselves, to risk inevitable death, than to be indefinitely subjected to the deprivations of the torture unit.

We took up a strategy which would pull back the curtain on the state’s practice of domestic torture which has been so well hidden from the people for so long, a strategy in which some of us may yet die: THE HUNGER STRIKE.

What must be understood is that existence here is, in many ways, a fate worse than death; and when advancing age brings that mortality into stark focus, the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, “Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die every day,” resonate. This simple observation defines our resolve in realizing our five core demands.

To say this is a protracted struggle is an understatement; this is a struggle in which we will win or we will die in the effort. Our actions thus far, and the awareness of this international community of their inherent righteousness, has made this adamantine resolve clear, so why then would CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) officials resort to petty retaliatory actions? The answer lies in the very nature of the tyranny and authoritarian power they represent.

Aggression is deceptive; it inherently hides weakness. Aggressors possess poor emotional control and little patience for challenges to their interests. The first waves of retaliation from these types of aggressors may seem strong to some; this is why so many non-SHU general population prisoners dropped out of the second hunger strike as those waves struck them. But, of course, we were unmoved; and the longer such attacks go on, the clearer their underlying weaknesses and insecurity become. It is an act of irrational desperation, but one they pursue out of sheer rote.

Since the second hunger strike ended, we have experienced perpetual retaliation – some overt, some carefully disguised – all designed to erode the minds and wills of those committed to resist. We were denied any medical treatment for our starvation and when we filed emergency 602s to receive renutrition treatment and hunger strike-related injuries, they were not responded to until some 40 days later.

For example, during the first hunger strike, I (Heshima) passed out due to malnutrition and dehydration; the account was detailed in a previous statement. But simply put, their own guilt and fear caused them to assemble some 26 officers before opening my cell and piling on top of my unconscious form in order to shackle my arms and legs in chains and put me in an ambulance.

Their own guilt and fear caused them to assemble some 26 officers before opening my cell and piling on top of my unconscious form in order to shackle my arms and legs in chains and put me in an ambulance.

Mind you, according to witnesses, they casually, even jokingly, left me lying on my cell floor for 35 minutes before jumping on my body. Since then I’ve had a sharp, constant pain in my right side at the base of my ribcage. Though I’ve filed two medical appeals, as of this writing I have still not been treated or even diagnosed for this.

Zaharibu’s cholesterol, blood oxygen levels and blood pressure are so far outside of normal range he is at chronic risk for stroke, heart attack and diabetes – the nurses routinely “forgetting” to bring or administer his insulin when indicated.

Shortly after the second hunger strike ended, we were told, “One of the two pumps that delivers hot water to the institution is broken and we should have the part to fix it in two days.” That was over 50 days ago and we’ve had hot water for a total of three of those 50-plus days. In that intervening time, “due to the lack of hot water” we’ve been fed on paper trays, which ensures all meals arrive cold and grossly under-portioned. Because all we have to wash or shower with in these freezing cells is cold or lukewarm water, 80 percent of us housed in this 4BIL-C-Section short corridor have contracted a cold, upper respiratory tract infection or flu.

Because all we have to wash or shower with in these freezing cells is cold or lukewarm water, 80 percent of us housed in this 4BIL-C-Section short corridor have contracted a cold, upper respiratory tract infection or flu.

Despite numerous appeals and motions to the court, they have not run law library for any of us since August, making it impossible to access legal research, copying service or verified legal mailing, thus jeopardizing the viability of numerous legal pleadings in the courts.

We have often expounded upon the fundamental unreliability of reforms as nothing more than temporary pacification measures that can be repealed at the whim of administrators, and this analysis was again proven only weeks after the second hunger strike ended. Former Undersecretary of Corrections Scott Kernan made a big to-do about the concessions being made to improve the material conditions in SHU, including giving us action at a single special purchase order to purchase newly approved cold weather items by Dec. 31 – or those items would have to be included in annual packages.

Things like watch caps, thermals, tennis shoes etc. were all “approved” for SHU. Memos trumpeting this and Operational Procedure (OP) update chronos were issued to us all, only to be followed by a memo stating the warden of CSP-Corcoran-SHU was effectively repealing the single special purchase order for cold weather items without explanation. This was soon followed by another memo stating tennis shoes orders to SHU would not be allowed until after “Sacramento” made changes to the property matrix, something that was done by Scott Kernan back in October via emergency memo.

The warden of CSP-Corcoran-SHU was effectively repealing the single special purchase order for cold weather items without explanation.

Rolling power outages have suddenly become routine here. The mailroom suddenly devised new regulations directing any phony orders to be directed to one post office box, while letters go to another, making it more difficult and confusing for those who care to see to the welfare of their loved ones here. Not to be left out, CDCR trust account officials have raised processing fees on electronic trust deposits called “J-Pays,” some 500 percent, from $1 to $5, increasing the financial burden on underclass families while maximizing their own profiteering.

All of those things are designed to fuse with the daily mental struggles of the reality of indefinite sensory deprivation confinement to have the cumulative effect of eroding the psychology of resistance, and if this were a situation where there was some psychological threshold to breach, they may well have found some here who capitulate. But that simply is not the reality.

This is not a situation where multi-spectrum retaliation – or coercive force of any kind – will somehow diminish the resolve of those of us committed to ending the perpetual torture inherent in these indeterminate SHU units. In fact, quite the opposite is true; such actions only serve to crystallize in our minds the simple fact that we cannot lose. The alternative is simply more unpleasant than the relatively quick sacrifice of death by starvation. They can ratchet up the intensity on these petulant retaliation moves a hundredfold and it will have no other effect than increasing our resolve a thousandfold.

This is not a situation where multi-spectrum retaliation – or coercive force of any kind – will somehow diminish the resolve of those of us committed to ending the perpetual torture inherent in these indeterminate SHU units. In fact, quite the opposite is true; such actions only serve to crystallize in our minds the simple fact that we cannot lose.

We must win this struggle not simply because it is morally correct, upholds international standards of humanity, opposes governmental collusion in corporate exploitation of underclass people, and serves the interests – social, political and economic – of society as a whole, but also because it’s necessarily our survival. We are men in earnest; consequences have little meaning in the face of such conditions.

Some of you reading these words are no doubt grappling with the reality behind them, attempting to find some point of relatability, some common experience from which to draw a correlation. Unless you’ve experienced this firsthand, such an attempt is an effort in futility. But for the sake of this discussion, I challenge you to run an experiment: Go to your bathroom and close the door. Imagine that you will never leave that room. Your tub and shower, that’s your bed. Yes, your toilet is only a step or two away from where you lay your head. Your food will be brought to you here twice a day.

Stay there as long as you can. How long do you last? Twenty minutes? An hour? Six hours? Imagine you sit in that bathroom for a year, 10 years, 24 years, 40 years. You will never leave that bathroom unless you are released from prison, agree to be an agent for the same people who stuck you in that bathroom, or you die of old age and infirmity. How long would you last? How strong is your will?

Would you submit to snitchery, kowtow to your torturers and become a tool to condemn others to that same fate? Or would you fight, resist to the bitter end, give your life to expose such evil, greedy, draconian hypocrites for what they really are? Hold the mirror of social reality up to the face of every man and woman in U.S. society and force them to confront the human misery being carried to sicker and more depraved depths every day in their names? What would you do?

Would you submit to snitchery, kowtow to your torturers and become a tool to condemn others to that same fate? Or would you fight, resist to the bitter end, give your life to expose such evil, greedy, draconian hypocrites for what they really are?

Some would characterize our effort as insane, as crazy. In “Hagakure: The door of the Samurai,” Yamamoto Tsunetomo quotes Lord Naoshige as saying the way of the warrior (samurai) is in desperateness. Ten or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate.

None of us want to die, but all of us are prepared to do so to realize these five core demands. History dictates no less.

So we wait. We have been told the revisions and changes to the status quo in these torture units will be done this month or by February, but the relentless retaliatory blows we are absorbing as the sobering reminder of what we are dealing with: An entrenched labor aristocracy and political patronage of corporate speculators, who’ve grown rich and powerful off extorting billions from hapless taxpayers and criminalizing underclass people and communities, will resist any effort to curtail their wealth, privilege and socio-political status quo.

These vile and greedy people are extracting more of your tax dollars for their exclusive use than many nations’ gross national product by using us as scapegoats to frighten the people – when in fact many of us are servants of the people, political progressives who would willingly lay down our lives to advance the cause of freedom, social justice and economic equality in the nation.

In the case of the NCTT and those of like mind, ironically that’s why we were validated and consigned to these torture units in the first place. A common practice of corrupt political interests is to criminalize dissent and criticism. Who will care? We are prisoners; who will know these truths? They have already succeeded in lobbying to have media access to prisoners banned unless they consent to who will be interviewed. Again, who will care, who will know?

A common practice of corrupt political interests is to criminalize dissent and criticism. Who will care? We are prisoners; who will know these truths?

If you’re reading these words, you now know the only question that remains is: Do you care? Do you care that the very people who you’ve entrusted with ensuring public safety are in fact intentionally working against that interest to maintain a bloated prison industrial complex on your tax dollars and our souls? Do you care that the U.S., which is so vocally condemning other nations, is ignoring its U.N. treaty obligations and maintaining its own expansive domestic torture program in U.S. Supermax SHU prisons across this nation? Do you care that these evils, this blatant hypocrisy is being carried out in your name? Do you care? And if you don’t, exactly what type of society is this we’ve allowed to emerge?

If you are reading these words, you can no longer claim ignorance; to stand idly by now would be complicity. A wise man once said, “All that is necessary for evil men to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” We are under no illusions. The ultimate arbiter of our fate – and this society’s fate – is the people. YOU. YOU must rise up against this injustice and inhumanity. YOU must let the state know that substantive change at every level of society is something the people demand.

The ultimate arbiter of our fate – and this society’s fate – is the people. YOU.

We have supported, and will continue to support, progressive people’s movements, from the Dream Act to the Occupy Movement, because we recognize the inherent unity of purpose in this single political motive force, the reality that we do not represent disparate social interests but a single determined democratic imperative to put an end to the stranglehold that this greedy elite and its tools currently have on every area of people’s activity in the U.S., to put an end to these exploitive relationships that diminish and impoverish the many for the aggrandizement of the few.

To treat us this way is wrong, evil and unsustainable socially. Stand with us. Lend your voices, your labor, and your ideas to this historical work. We can win, but only with you all by our sides. In the final analysis, this is a struggle to determine the nature of humanity itself. We are on the right side of history; we encourage you all to stand on this same side with us. Our love, loyalty and solidarity to all those who cherish freedom, justice and human rights and fear only failure. Until we win or don’t lose.

For more information on the California prison hunger strikes or the NCTT, contact:

• Zaharibu Dorrough, D-83611, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-53, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• J. Heshima Denham, J-38283, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-46, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212

• Kambui Robinson, C-82830, CSP-COR-SHU, 4BIL-49, P.O. Box 3481, Corcoran, CA 93212.

Read these brothers’ previous stories: “California prison hunger strikers propose ‘10 core demands’ for the national Occupy Wall Street Movement,” “A brief hunger strike update from the front lines of the struggle: Corcoran-SHU 4B 1L C-section Isolation Unit” (second story in that post), “From the front lines of the struggle,”and “We dare to win: The reality and impact of SHU torture units.” This story was typed by Adrian McKinney.

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• We dare to win: The reality and impact of SHU torture units
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