Update from Killer Kern Valley State Prison
As expected brothas are still struggling against the oppressive administrators here, and when I say brothas I’m talking Black-Africans. We’re now coming up from a race based lockdown where all Blacks were locked down for being Black.
K. Harrington (the Warden) said it was because members of the “Black population” had assaulted C/Os on two different occasions. As if the Black population was a gang or organization where one or two individual’s actions are a reflection of the mass, and is to be responded to as such.
Almost any other prison you go to in California, individuals are held accountable for their own actions, or those in which they are affiliated. For instance, if a Crip does something out of the administrators regulation, they hold the CRIPs or the individual Crip gang at fault. Not the whole Black population.
But you know this Department of Corruption, they have tactics for everything they do. My theory on our situation here is the inciting of violence. Whether it be against them (pigs) or us (prisoners).
At this time, the California Correctional and Police Officer Agency can use a little publicity on reasons why California tax payers and makers shouldn’t start firing their asses left and right, starting from the top. All they need is a few riots to crack off, they’ll then call up the local news and have them come out and throw it on the news basically painting to the general public: “see, this is why you all need us.” California is in a bad position again, and they can’t just build new prisons to put themselves in a better one.
The pigs aren’t giving us canteen, the food portions have been reduced and it’s the pigs do more taunting towards the Blacks for us to make a move. And a lot of the brothas here don’t even see what it is that is taking place, they fall right into the plans of these capitalist pigz.
The water is still contaminated with arsenic lead and they’ve said nothing about it although when I appealed it they responded to me saying that it’ll be fixed by the second quarter of 2009. Well it’s now the 5th, making this the third quarter. I’m going to the courts about the issue but I have plenty more so I have to move slow.
Brothers here seem to do a lot of mumbling about the problems, but they refuse to unite and address the issues for fear of being sent to the SHU or ASU for standing up for their rights. Although they (the administrators) already have us all labeled as united “Black Population”.
Only the strong survive.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This letter illustrates the type of racial profiling and pitting of oppressed nations against each other that goes on in the criminal injustice system and on the streets. However we would go further than this author and argue that singling out lumpen organizations (LO) is another aspect of the same problem. The prisons decide who to validate as gang members, often putting people in groups with which they have no affiliation. And the prison administrators pit LOs against each other and selectively punish one or the other to increase the violence and repression in prisons.
