Under Lock & Key

4 October 2011 - Hello and greetings from the concrete tombs of Pelican Bay! This is my first time writing. I came across your most recent publication, it was very helpful, being that I’m currently on a hunger strike since 9/26/11. I was able and fortunate to be able to partake in this worthy cause.

At the moment I am being housed in an overflow unit (Ad-Seg). Every one of us is either validated or serving an indeterminate SHU, we all are awaiting bed space in the SHU. I started my hunger strike on 9/26/2011 in solidarity with all prisoners who are in the same struggle. On 9/29 the cops came around to all those on the hunger strike and announced that all who continue on hunger strike will be given disciplinary “write ups,” so a lot of guys accepted their trays and ended their HS. That evening the cops came by again and said all those who are on HS will not only be “written up” but also have all their property taken immediately, so unfortunately only 3 of us out of 64 are currently still on HS.

They (cops) came and took every single thing we had in our cells. It will be easier to tell you what we were left with, they left us with state issue clothes, nothing else, no toothbrush, no books, absolutely nothing. I was fortunate enough to come across this one piece of paper and envelope. Also remember that we haven’t even received the “write up” yet, but our property was illegally taken three days after we began our HS.

4 October 2011 - Regarding the current hunger strike that is going on in California’s prison system, Calipatria state prison is participating in A, B, C yards and ASU went on hunger strike on 9/26/2011. Unfortunately the mainline yards have started eating again but ASU still has 100 strong not eating. I came to ASU in April 2010 at a healthy 7’1” 420 pounds and I weighed in at 281 this morning.

3 October 2011 - Today we close our 8th day of this hunger strike. The ASU here at Calipatria State Prison was the last to stop during the July 1st, 2011 hunger strike. Some prisoners went 27 days. They ended up going to Centinela prison central health for treatment (IV and observation). I myself lasted 16 days. Fell out on the 7th day and was given an IV for a few hours.

This hunger strike is crazy! But living in ASU/SHU for years is straight torture. It changes a person. More than half of us here at CAL-ASU are validated waiting to go to Pelican Bay SHU. I’ve been waiting a year and a half. So we all got together, and once again have joined the movement.

Last time CDCR retaliated by not giving us our liquids (milk/juice). We 602ed [institutional appealed] it and won. This time around they were forced to give us our liquids. Not much but it’s progress. We’re supporting the Bay’s 5 core demands, but we also have our issues here. We’re SHU prisoners therefore entitled to SHU privileges: TVs, radios, shoes, etc. Here we’re given nothing. We’ve argued, demanded, 602ed, and yet we have nothing. CDCR’s run around and usual response, “we’ll look into it,” or plain denials is all we get.

I drafted a group 602 for our TVs/radios. It’s been done before, but I did it so I’ll be able to write a writ once it’s denied. It may work, it may not. I refuse to just sit on my ass. If I gots to fight CDCR with paper and pen, I will. If I gots to starve myself for a better tomorrow, I have, and am, and will.

Last hunger strike we received many promises from Calipatria officials. The only one they honored was to give us some of our canteen items (chips, rice, beans) in their original packaging. We used to get them on paper lunch bags. We’re demanding those promises be met! Mainly the issuance of TVs.

The movement is strong here, we all try to motivate one another. Many showed their support for a few days but their health prevented them from continuing. Many continue believing in the movement, so they’re holding strong even though they hear their stomach rumble. I’ve lost 10 pounds in 5 days, the last weigh in we had.

I write to let you know that I and all races here at Delano State Prison Ad-Seg participated in the hunger strike from the 26th to the 1st in support of our brothers in SHU placement because of validation.

Can you please keep me updated on all the current actions that are happening because of the hunger strike? If there is anything else that I or my brothers around us can do in support, please do not hesitate to let me know.

The refusal of this prison to meet all of the five demands has resulted in yet another hunger strike here in Pelican Bay. The demand that was left untouched by prison officials was the debriefing process. This debriefing process has forced people to either snitch on someone or simply make up gangs in order to get out of the torture chamber known as Security Housing Unit (SHU), and this has gone on for decades.

Just think, most people in SHU are here for b.s. and are not even what the prison claims they are, do not really belong to gang xyz, etc. And so when someone can’t take the torturous conditions and wants to get out of SHU, officials require them to debrief (inform) on others, yet this person may not even know anything to tell about even if he or she wanted to, so many times this persyn will make up his own random people while at other times this may be the time for personal vengeance like how men are sent to Gitmo often because their neighbor in Pakistan didn’t like the loud music he played.

This pathetic way of “weeding out” supposed gang members or security threats is broken and changes nothing, the truth is SHU is a racist operation directed at the oppressed nations. In addition, guards are getting paid higher salaries for working in these units. Of all the people in SHU, none are the rich, the wealthy, no billionaire ever been validated as a gang member, I have yet to meet a millionaire in SHU. We are the poor, those coming from barrios and ghetto projects, those who can’t even walk down the street in our hood without getting tracked by a predator pig and slammed against the wall threatened, beaten, or worse we of the oppressed nations are open game in the streets of the united snakes.

Today is the fifth day into the strike and there is no light at the end of the tunnel and most know this. Here in SHU conditions cannot possibly get worse, we are stuffed into solitary confinement boxes, locked into isolation for the rest of our days - what is worse than this existence?

I am a California State prisoner incarcerated in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) of Corcoran State Prison. The ASU where I am housed is currently undergoing a hunger strike in support of the one kicked off in the SHU. I am in support of it as well, for I believe solidarity is needed amongst the oppressed to resist and fight against the oppressor. Many people do not see that when it comes down to it, there are only two sides, but these past few months have done a lot to enlighten and educate many behind these concrete walls.

I’m one of the prisoners struggling to stop the torturous Security Housing Units (SHU) practice on prisoners in California. It is only right. In Calipatria State Prison Ad-Seg they’re calling this peaceful hunger strike a disturbance strike. A memorandum was passed to urge prisoners to stop or else they would get a serious violation write-up. The following day a large quantity of prisoners with a couple of serious rule violations started accepting their trays in order to avoid getting an indeterminate assignment in SHU. Which is understandable. But, nonetheless a lot of prisoners are still going strong.

In Calipatria State Prison Ad-Seg, hunger strike prisoners are participating peacefully. They’re in compliance with the COs and medical staff, so this does not meet the criteria of a disturbance. The memorandum was another tactic of reprisal towards the prisoners who are participating. I hope for a positive outcome for all the prisoners in SHU confinement and for all of us here in Calipatria Ad-Seg. Along with the struggles of the SHU prisoners, we’re looking for something positive. In Calipatria we’re asking for what Ad-Seg is supposed to have. Nothing more, nothing less.

Revolutionary greetings!

I’m reporting back to you about this fascist penal system here at Chino minimum yard. They have put up a memo about the food strike and they are threatening us by saying that if we participate, they will move us off the yard and put us in Ad-Seg!

I told the comrades to keep on doing what we are doing and to hell with the fascist pigs! We will not stop, until our comrades are let out of the SHU! I told the comrades to keep the faith and if these pigs send us to the hole or the SHU, always remember, it’s just another part of the prison.

In the struggle,
from the belly of the beast!

MIM(Prisons) adds: The list of facilities that have reported hunger strikers reported by the CDCR does not include the California Institution for Men in Chino, bringing into question their count of hunger strikes at 4252 as of Thursday, September 29. There was not as much advance notice this time around, so the word that the strike is back on is still spreading.

2 October 2011 UPDATE: Latest reports are that around 12,000 prisoners were participating on September 28. This higher number includes people who have participated at any level, and includes prisoners transferred out of state.

“Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.” - Malcolm X

As most of you may know, we are engaged in a protracted struggle to secure our liberation from perpetual torture and uphold our human rights. On July 1st the Pelican Bay SHU D-Corridor Collective called for an indefinite hunger strike to peacefully protest the decades and decades of subhuman conditions we have endured in these sensory deprivation torture units. The NCTT, along with 6,600 other prisoners and untold thousands the world over answered that call. We did not eat for 21 days. I personally lost 42 pounds and had to be rushed to the emergency room at least once. Men older and less physically resilient than myself, some with chronic disease such as diabetes, asthma and cancer survivors, made these same sacrifices, and we are prepared to make those sacrifices again, taking them to their ultimate conclusion if necessary, to achieve what is by right ours already.

This makes the events of 16 August all the more perplexing, even though we were forewarned and expected it. At approximately 08:00 on 16 August 2011 some 20 to 25 Correctional Officers (COs) and some 10 to 12 ISU and IGI [“gang intelligence”] officers converged on 4B1L-C-section under the pretext that they’d received a “kite” alleging New Afrikan and/or “southern” Mexican partisans in 4B1L-C-section were going to “assault staff.”

For months, IGI has been attempting to manufacture fear and reactionary resentment amongst building COs that New Afrikans were planning to attack staff during Black August memorial. Mindful of the daily injustices visited upon indeterminate SHU prisoners, and already fearful of the dreaded retribution, some staff actually bought into this absurdity. There was no threat, there was no “kite” found – this was simple unadulterated retribution for the hunger strike and the unwanted public attention it has brought to the domestic torture camps they are managing at Pelican Bay, Corcoran and Tehachapi SHUs.

We were all stripped down and escorted out of the building and placed in the small management yard caged (imagine a K-9 kennel cage – that’s what our yard is). For approximately 6 hours they systematically tore our cells up, cut open mattresses, tore down or trod upon personal photos, confiscated any item they felt would hurt us on a personal level, with abject disregard for personal property regulations. Coffee and tooth powder was strewn over personal letters and laundry was taken or trod underfoot. We were brought back to our cells only to find what I can only describe as the leavings of a tornado of F-5 proportions.

That this was done as retaliation was itself insulting, how it was done was blatant disrespect – but what perplexes the mind is what did they hope to gain by such a transparent reactionary response? We are, and have demonstrated historically, that we are fully prepared to die to secure our human rights and dignity. So surely this could not be some act to deter resistance. Perhaps it was an act of provocation, an attempt to engender a reactionary military response to a psychological and political attack? But no, this couldn’t be the case because unlike the blindly violent monsters they would make us out to be, the truth of the matter is that we are men of principle who believe in self-defense and clearly exhausting all legal and peaceful means of protest. Unlike the state, for us violence is a last resort and we are not, and cannot be, compelled to react to provocation or allow such to deter us from the legitimate struggle for our, and the people’s human rights and dignity.

So this leaves us with the obvious conclusion that like a petulant child or a bully who’s been exposed for the sadist they are, they strike out blindly, to inflict whatever discomfort they can in an act of impotence and frustration; an acknowledgment of their weakness in the face of the people’s power.

Men in ernest are not afraid of consequence. There exists no set of retaliatory actions, no sanctions they can bring to bear, that will deter our course, as long as we have you, the people, supporting us we will win. Together we can attain even greater victories than these. It is our sincerest hope that you continue to support this effort and open yourselves up to the prospect of more progressive initiatives to come. Stand with us and we will forge a brighter tomorrow.

I am a prisoner at Pelican Bay State Prison in the ASU stand alone. As such, we are allowed no TVs and no radios as there are no electrical outlets. I am participating in the hunger strike. I had started July 1st, 2011 but took a step back and allowed the prison and the whole of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation a chance to conform to the demands/requests made. As you know, none of the core demands were addressed. Just more of the same old same old, hurry up and wait. Because of that, the hunger strike has started again, but I have no way to know the latest as I have no TV and no radio. Then like a godsend I receive your latest newsletter letting me know if I need updates, hey just write my friends at MIM(Prisons) and they will make me feel not at all alone!