by MARK GABRISH CONLAN
Copyright © 2013 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
Awareness protest at
Fairmount & University, City Heights, August 5
Amber
Marta
Kira
Buried Alive 24/7
(with aerial photo of Pelican Bay)
“Debrief”/Snitch,
Parole or Die
Hunger for Justice
Solitary Is Torture
Isabel
Artcrafts made by
prisoners in Tecate, Mexico — a right denied to California’s SHU inmates
As these words
are written, prisoners incarcerated in the so-called SHU (pronounced “shoe” and
variously standing for Special, Secure or Security Housing Unit) at Pelican Bay
State Prison in Northern California have been on a hunger strike for 53 days.
Eleven days ago, on August 18, an organization called the San Diego Committee
for Prisoners’ Rights, reachable by phone at (619) 508-6756 or online via
Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/San-Diego-Committee-for-Prisoners-Rights/174419419310779,
sponsored an event at the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park to build
support for the hunger strikers. It consisted of a showing of a 2011
documentary film, Concrete and Sunshine,
about the vast expansion of the prison-industrial complex in California in the
last 30 years, plus often heartrending live stories from the wives, sisters and
other family members at Pelican Bay.
According to an
in-depth article by Los Angeles Times
reporter Paige St. John (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ff-ashker-20130729,0,1327999,full.story),
the hunger strike began July 8. It was called by Todd Ashker and three
other inmates being held in solitary confinement in the Pelican Bay SHU:
Antonio “Chuco” Guillen, alleged leader of the Latino gang Nuestra Familia;
Arturo “Tablas” Castellanos, a supposed member of the Mexican Mafia; and Ron
Dewberry a.k.a. Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, alleged to belong to the Black Guerrilla
Family.
Ashker, a white
man whose body is covered in tattoos with white-supremacist symbols, and the
others formed what they called the “Short Corridor Collective,” after the
hallway on which their cells are located, in August 2012. Though many of the
prisoners involved had landed in the SHU in the first place for racially
motivated murders or assaults committed in prison, Ashker presented the group
as “a collective effort initiated by a multiracial group of long-term,
similarly situated (SHU) prisoners who decided enough is enough.”
According to
Ashker, the white, Black and Latino members of the Short Corridor Collective
reached an “agreement to end hostilities,” by which they would end racially
motivated assaults on each other and focus on a common enemy — the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), which runs the state’s
prisons — and the “informers, snitches, rats and obstructionists” who,
according to the group’s statement, “use us against each other for their
benefit!!”
In her article,
St. John described the Pelican Bay SHU as “divided into pods of eight cells
stacked four-wide and two-high, facing a blank wall. There are no bars. Each
steel door is perforated to let in air and light. Once a day, that door slides
open. The prisoner can enter an empty concrete ‘dog run’ for 90 minutes to
exercise. Kept indoors for years, men in the SHU take on a ghostly pallor, as
if dusted with flour. They get less canteen food than do other inmates, less
clothing, and are allowed limited belongings, fewer visits and no phone calls.
Every privilege, from mail to medical care, is rationed.”
What’s more, the
length of time a prisoner must spend in the SHU is open-ended. It’s not like
“the hole” in prison movies, where a particular infraction against prison rules
got you locked in solitary for a specific period of time. “For those accused of
gang involvement, the SHU is an indefinite sentence,” St. John explained. “More
than 400 have been inside Pelican Bay’s SHU for more than a decade; 78,
including Ashker, have been held there for more than two decades.” The
prisoners’ mental-health complaints — “anger, anxiety, depression, insomnia,
inability to concentrate and loss of a sense of time” — are similar to those
experienced by prisoners in solitary in other states and countries, which has
led at least one United Nations official to declare solitary a form of torture.
Nobody is
actually sentenced to a SHU in a court of law. Assignments to SHU’s are made by
prison officials on their own authority. According to a leaflet produced by
supporters of the hunger strike, “Thousands of prisoners are in solitary based
on the prison’s determination that they are associated with a prison gang, not
for committing a violent act or breaking a prison rule. The evidence of gang
association can be as trivial as who signed their birthday card, what books
they read, the art they draw, or who they say ‘Hi!’ to. It is often based on
general statements of secret witnesses who have provided this information to
get out of solitary confinement themselves.”
That process is
what CDCR calls “debriefing” and the prisoners call “snitching.” Its abolition
is one of the five key demands of the hunger strikers. “Prisoners are accused
of being active participants of the prison gangs using false evidence and are
sent to long-term isolation (SHU),” the strikers’ demand sheet explains. “They
can escape these torturous conditions only if they ‘debrief’; that is, become
informants, ‘snitch’ on other prisoners. Debriefing produces false information
(wrongly landing other prisoners in SHU) and can endanger the lives of
debriefing prisoners and their families.” It’s because of this state policy
that prisoners grimly joke that there are only three ways out of the SHU:
debriefing, parole for the crime that put them in prison in the first place, or
death.
Other demands of
the hunger strikers include an end to “group punishment and administrative
abuse,” particularly the CDCR’s practice of punishing racially motivated
assaults in prison by putting all the inmates of the attacker’s race, not just
the attacker himself, in the SHU; an end to long-term solitary confinement; adequate
and nutritious food; and education, self-help treatment, religious counseling
and other “constructive programming” aimed at helping inmates become
productive, law-abiding citizens when they’re finally released. California used
to call this “rehabilitation” until the state redefined the mission of its
prison system in the early 1980’s and said its goal was just to punish
prisoners, not to reform them.
The Families Speak Out
The August 18
event was introduced by Avon (the speakers identified themselves by first names
only), an activist with the San Diego Committee for Prisoners’ Rights and the
peace group ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). He announced that many
other organizations had endorsed the program, including the Committee Against Police
Brutality, the Association of Raza
Educators and groups supporting global justice and the Zapatista movement in Mexico. (At the end of the program this
author, a board member of Activist San Diego, announced that group’s
endorsement of the Pelican Bay hunger strike by a unanimous vote of its board.)
Avon talked about his group’s visibility actions not only around the Pelican
Bay strike but other abuses, including mass detentions of alleged undocumented
immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
After the Concrete
and Sunshine film was screened, family
members of the Pelican Bay hunger strikers spoke. “My brother has been in the
Pelican Bay SHU for eight years,” said Amber, and he is not ‘the worst of the
worst’” — referring to how CDCR officials in general and the agency’s head,
Jeffrey Beard, refer to the strikers. Amber read a series of letters she
received from her brother, the first written on day 3 and the next on day 17.
“The people from
Sacramento arrive today,” Amber’s brother wrote on day 17. “CDCR has started to
spread misinformation, but the strike is the bright light and CDCR are the
cockroaches that flee when the light is turned on. They prefer to work in the
dark, but this light will shine on any falsehoods.”
The attitude of CDCR
officials that especially upset Amber, her brother, the other hunger strikers
and their families was vividly depicted by Jeffrey Beard in an op-ed he
published in the August 6 Los Angeles Times. “Some prisoners claim this strike is about living conditions in the
Security Housing Units, commonly called SHU’s, which house some of the most
dangerous inmates in California,” Beard wrote. “Don’t be fooled. Many of those
participating in the hunger strike are under extreme pressure to do so from
violent prison gangs, which called the strike in an attempt to restore their
ability to terrorize fellow prisoners, prison staff and communities throughout
California.”
Beard quoted two
prisoners who participated in a previous hunger strike in 2011. “Honestly, we
did not care about human rights,” one of them said. “The objective was to get
into the general population, or mainline, and start running our street
regiments again.”
Another prisoner
Beard quoted said, “We knew we could tap big-time support through this tactic,
but we weren’t trying to improve the conditions in the SHU; we were trying to
get out of the SHU to further our gang agenda on the mainline.”
But for Amber,
her brother’s struggle isn’t about maintaining a prison gang, or even improving
the conditions within the SHU. It’s about ending his isolation so she and her
family members will have the same ability to connect with him as relatives of
normal prisoners have. “My niece hasn’t been able to hug her dad, kiss him or
even hold his hand,” Amber said. “Solitary affects not only the prisoners but
the family members. Since 2011 we have been fighting this struggle. … Prisoners
are still human beings. They’re doing their time for their crimes, and nowhere
in their sentence does it say they should be tortured.”
Marta, another
sister of a Pelican Bay hunger striker, spoke in Spanish and also read a letter
from her brother. “If I cry in front of a guard, I hand him a weapon,” her
brother Luis wrote her. Marta herself accused law enforcement of “taking
control of the lives of our kids” and said both she and her brother have been
supported by their religious faith through their ordeal.
“CDCR is strong,
but love conquers all,” Marta said. “Victory is near, but some may not see it”
— a reference to her claim that some of the hunger strikers were showing signs
of organ failure and other long-term damage even before the 45-day benchmark
usually used by doctors as the point where the bodily harm from long-term
starvation becomes irreversible. “My name is Marta, but my name is also Luis,”
she concluded. [Marta’s remarks were translated here by Charles Nelson.]
“My cousin is
suffering and not eating because all he wants is five basic rights every human
being should have, what we mean when we say ‘equality,’” said Kima. “Each person
today representing a person in prison is demanding equal rights. I’ll admit
that for a few years, my cousin was out of sight, out of mind. Then I
remembered [he had been in prison] eight years and as long as he’s still alive,
he’s still my family. So I went up and drove 16 hours to see this cousin of
mine I barely knew. I was too little to remember, but with Latinos it’s all
about family. I drove up to see him, and when I saw him I didn’t know him at
all.”
Kima said that
she and the cousin she hadn’t known since she was a young girl connected over
their religious and family ties. “When I spoke to him, it changed my world,”
she said. “The same desires that run through me run through him. He is the
strongest and most positive person I have ever spoken to. Nobody in my life has
ever spoken to me like he has. How was it I forgot he was my life, my blood? So
I went back, and every single time I got more from him. He never spoke about
his situation, only about how I was, how things were out here, and how I could
make it better. I want equality for him, and for him to be able to live a
better life, even where he is.”
Since the August
18 event, the stalemate between the strikers and CDCR has continued. According
to a dispatch from the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Web site, http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/,
“California prisoner hungers strike advocates and supporters continue their
efforts to compel state decision makers to negotiate with hunger strikers as
they endure their 52nd day without food.” They had hoped for meaningful talks
with Jeffrey Beard and other CDCR officials at the start of August, but Beard’s
combative, dismissive L. A. Times op-ed
August 6 showed he was in no mood to negotiate or even acknowledge the
legitimacy of the strike. The strike has spread from Pelican Bay to other
California prisons as well, including Corcoran, where the Solidarity site
reports, “Legal observers … say that the 70 people still on strike at that
facility are facing harsh relation by prison officials including the denial of
medical care — even for those coming off strike — and the confiscation of
personal property.”
The Solidarity
site also reports that CDCR is trying to break the Pelican Bay strike by
transferring some of the organizers to other prisons in the California system.
“They presently have us four main reps on ‘G row’ by ourselves for now. No
telling how long we’ll be staying here,” said Pelican Bay striker and Short Corridor
Collective representative Aurturo Castellanos in an August 27 statement quoted
on the site. According to the site, Castellanos is one of the prisoners Jeffrey
Beard was referring to in his op-ed as a prison gang leader who’s participating
in the strike just to re-establish the power of his gang in Pelican Bay’s
general population.
Of CDCR’s
attacks on the strikers, the statement by Castellanos and his fellow strike
leaders said, “The world is now a witness,
as Gov. [Jerry] Brown and his appointee Beard demonstrate callous and
deliberate indifference to the extreme forms of inexcusable suffering our loved
ones and ourselves are subjected to in our fight for humane treatment of the
prisoner class of human beings. … CDCR’s decades of human rights violations is
the catalyst for thousands coming together and taking up this protest. …
They fail to see the writing on the wall. … CDCR is going to change whether
they like it or not. This only motivates us more.”
Other concerns
expressed on the Solidarity Web site include the Brown administration’s recent
appeal to a court for authority to force-feed the hunger strikers, and the
state’s refusal to provide the strikers health care. According to the site,
more than 120 health care professionals have signed an open letter supporting
the strikers. “As health care providers, we are issuing this statement to
register our concern with reports that the hunger strikers are being denied
appropriate medical care,” this letter read. “Where there has been a concerted
attempt by the authorities to censor the strikers, and to keep the strike
out of the news, dozens of letters from affected strikers at prisons across the
state have reached supporters on the outside. These letters repeat similar
details of medical neglect and abuse.”
A Memoir Questioned
A bizarre
incident occurred during the showing of Concrete and Sunshine at the Centro Cultural August 18. Among the
literature tables at the entrance to the event was one run by Veracruz Pedroza
Sanchez selling Prison Letters: Walking to Honor. The book is about her relationship with her cousin,
Fernando Julio “Chunky” Sanchez, and features extended quotes from the letters
he wrote her while in prison. “Chunky” was not in a SHU; he died tragically at
age 25 when the truck returning him from a work detail in a fire zone was
involved in an accident.
Three-quarters
of the way through the film, a middle-aged Latina angrily approached Veracruz’
literature table and knocked the box containing her books to the ground. She
then started screaming at Veracruz, saying she was “Chunky”’s mother Isabel and
Veracruz’ book was illegal because it had been published without her
permission. “You have no right to use my son’s name and likeness!” she told
Veracruz, adding that she was going to organize a boycott of Veracruz’ book
within the Latino community. Due to Isabel’s objection, the organizers had to
stop the movie while she delivered her complaints in a loud, hectoring voice.
She especially objected to Veracruz’ book being sold inside the Centro Cultural
because that was where she and “Chunky”’s father had been married.
Later, after the
Pelican Bay prisoners’ families had made their presentations, the event
organizers allowed Isabel’s daughter to speak. “I want to apologize for my
mother getting upset,” she said. “My brother was a prisoner and he passed away
in a fire truck about five days before we were supposed to see him. We were six
in my family, and my brother was the baby. Before he passed he wrote a letter
to my dad acknowledging he wasn’t living up to his fullest potential. … Even in
these places that are so hard and so unnatural, you can find peace. I’m really
grateful you came out today. We didn’t say [“Chunky”] was a prisoner; we said
he was a brother who helped his family, and even now that he’s dead he helps
us.”
“It’s horrible
that our family members have no rights,” Marta, Luis’s brother, said at the end
of the event — this time speaking in English. “In Tecate, Mexico [the
prisoners] can create all these things [referring to artworks from Mexican
prisoners that were for sale at one of the back tables]. The people in the SHU
are so smart but we can’t even get a phone call. They made mistakes, but they
could create so much, and the CDCR just wants to keep them in isolation.”
Contacts
to Support the Prisoners
Prisoner
Hunger Strike Solidarity, http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/
San
Diego Committee for Prisoners’ Rights, (619) 508-6756, online via Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/San-Diego-Committee-for-Prisoners-Rights/174419419310779
http://www.change.org/petitions/support-pelican-bay-shu-prisoners-five-core-demands-hunger-strike
(online petition in support of the strikers and their demands)
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/51040/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=11455
(another online petition criticizing CDCR’s “refusal to recognize, address, and
implement the changes outlined by prisoners being held in Security Housing
Units [SHU’s]”)
https://ssl.capwiz.com/aclu/ca/issues/alert/?alertid=62869506&type=ST
(American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego/Imperial Counties’ campaign
against Governor Brown’s call for building even more prisons in California)
Veracruz
Sanchez, e-mail vsanchez_32@yahoo.com,
Web www.verasanchez.com (contact to
buy Prison Letters: Walking to Honor)
The Pelican Bay
Strikers’ Statement in Full
Greetings. We begin this update on where things stand with our struggle
to force an end to long-term solitary confinement and additional major reforms
to the prison system with a shout-out of solidarity, love, and respect to all
of our supporters and people of conscience worldwide.As many are aware today marks the 51st day of our peaceful hunger strike. We continue to protest decades of solitary confinement; torture for the purposes of coercion. This is the third hunger strike in two years and yet nothing of real substance has changed for the majority of us.
We are now at a critical stage, where each minute that passes is extremely taxing mentally and physically. Many of us participating since day one are suffering what may be irreversible damage, and are facing a very real possibility of death. It is a fact that a major cause of death during long fasts is heart attack. This may come at any moment for us… When it does, we’re done for.
That said, you may all rest assured that our commitment to this worthy cause remains undaunted. The world is now a witness, as Gov. Brown and his appointee [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Jeffrey] Beard demonstrate callous and deliberate indifference to the extreme forms of inexcusable suffering our loved ones and ourselves are subjected to in our fight for humane treatment of the prisoner class of human beings…
Gov. Brown’s response to our peaceful action has not been silence, as so many presume—rather, it has been loud and clear via the propaganda and rhetoric being spewed by his mouthpiece Dr. Beard. The fascist police state prisoncrats have attempted to misdirect the attention and the growing condemnation of their human rights abuses. They have tried to disrupt public support by dredging up 20-40 year old histories that are for the most part portrayed in a false light. They have desperately tried to justify and further their diabolical agenda, and indeed expand the numbers of prisoners (and loved ones outside) being tortured—to the point of death, insanity, and false confessions. They have the audacity to claim our push for reform is a “gang power play,” and that many prisoners have been “coerced into participation.” This is another tactic aimed at misleading the public so as to maintain the status quo with impunity. They have tried to ignore the fact that our collective peaceful efforts, and our call to “end group hostilities,” are contrary to their propaganda. CDCR’s decades of human rights violations is the catalyst for thousands coming together and taking up this protest…
Another clear demonstration of where Brown, Beard, et al. stand is their response to this peaceful action. They have directed their subordinates to subject participants, and non-participants alike, to systematic retaliation including, but not limited to: additional isolation and sensory deprivation via placement in the Administrative Segregation stand-alone building; withholding mail and visits; blasting cold air into SHU and Ad-Seg cells; confiscating property; fabricating rule violations and alleging gang activity; cell-extractions; threats and intimidation; and mass relocation. They have rescinded so-called privileges granted in 2011-2013. And they have cut the number of allowable books from 10 (which has been a right for 23 years), down to 5. The above are only a few examples.
We are calling on all people of conscience to make their opposition heard. We urge the people to demand that the powers that be end this abuse now. Today. Before it it is too late for some of us. On Friday August 16, CDCR transferred 51 people on hunger strike from this Ad-Seg Unit down south to a medical facility in preparation for force feeding. This is where we’ll all be soon. Some of us are considering a challenge to such feeding. What’s going on in this nation that it has come to such a point? The people have the power to change things now. Know this: Our spirit and resolve remain strong and we know we can count on you all! Together we are making it happen, not only for ourselves, but, more importantly, for the generations to come.
With the Utmost Solidarity, Love, and Respect—Onward in Struggle,
Pelican Bay State Prison Short Corridor Collective
Todd Ashker, C-58191, PBSP-SHU
Arturo Castellanos, C-17275, PBSP-SHU
Antonio Guillen, P-81948, PBSP-SHU
Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (Dewberry), C-35671, PBSP-SHU
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