Peaceful protest

June 3, 2013
by Mutope Duguma

Published: SF Bayview

CDCr is only resorting to desperate acts because we, as an oppressed prison class, have removed the justification that normally under these types of circumstances allow CDCr to brutally attack us like they have in the past, physically, for fighting against prison oppression. By implementing our protracted peaceful protests, we are able to neutralize CDCr from literally using their usual heavy handed violent approach as a means to suppress our peaceful protests.

The peace protests that have been chosen are done so to limit all unnecessary physical interaction with CDCr officials, other than medical staff, for our medical concerns, while being able to peacefully protest our long term torture in solitary confinement and prison oppression, in which prisoners have suffered along with their families unjustly. Our only action is remaining in our cells and personally sacrificing ourselves due to the deliberate torture we continue to suffer at the hands of our CDCr captors, who have for 10 to 40 years inflicted much more pain and suffering on us as a prison class than we could ever inflict upon ourselves.

Their current antics demonstrate that they will never stop subjecting prisoners held in General Population, Ad-Seg and SHUs to physical and psychological torture. It has become a part of their daily practice, embedded in their prison policies.

This is why on April 11, 2013, IGI Frisk, SSU Swartz and SSU Manunu – authorized by Secretary Beard, who instructed OCS Chief Anthony Chaus, who sent a direct order to PBSP Capt. Barneburg – assembled at PBSP to show the Joint Tactical Force of SSU and ISU, which then entered into D-1 building, specifically E pod, with the intent of intimidating prisoners with their joint task force. IGI Frisk called out the names of cells 117 to 120 and 217 to 220. SSU Swartz was writing down all our names and alleged affiliates on a small note pad.

All prisoners knew that these agents’ actions were an attempt to stop our peaceful non-violent struggle against CDCr. We prisoners are aware that the SSU (Special Services Unit) body of CDCr is exclusively used to terrorize our friends and family members on the streets. Therefore, this was an implied threat against them. Because if SSU wanted our names, all they had to do was get them from IGI or ISU. They could have gotten them off our picture identification cards that are posted in front of each pod before you enter them. These threats are real because CDCr has a history of carrying them out systematically. Therefore, we clearly understand the danger we and our families face.

On May 14, 2013, a sergeant came into PBSP D-1 building and he laid out an elaborate retaliatory reprisal plan in response to our peaceful protest. Yes, we prisoners will be subjected to the same retaliatory reprisals. He went on to speak about a mandate wherein all floor officers will be receiving orders to strip all prisoners, participants and non-participants, for the upcoming Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement actions this summer.

The sergeant was clear that CDCr and PBSP will be doing the same thing they did Sept. 26, 2011, but with more malice this time around. [Read Duguma’s account of what happened on Sept. 26, 2011, in “They took the 15 of us hunger strikers to ASU-Hell-Row.”]

All prisoners knew that these agents’ actions were an attempt to stop our peaceful non-violent struggle against CDCr.

Now these retaliatory reprisals are for one reason, to create the interactions that we prisoners have attempted to avoid. Yet we must not let CDCr strategies and tactics disrupt our peaceful protests. Creating a plan to attack prisoners is a clear sign that CDCr will never change their oppressive ways and that they will always run the CDCr with threats of intimidation and death.

Their response is what causes the so-called “mass disturbance” which they then will blame prisoners for later. Their response is to manipulate internal strife amongst prisoners, which is why their plan blankets all prisoners, in order to plant the seeds of dissention for the sole purpose of inciting prison violence amongst the prison populace.

They will attempt to provoke angry reactions to what they do to you. They will try to give you the impression that it is prisoners who are responsible for what they are doing to you. They will write you up frivolous CDCr 115 Rule Violation Reports (RVRs). These actions are to deter you from our current struggle to be free from solitary confinement and prison oppression.

Now these retaliatory reprisals are for one reason, to create the interactions that we prisoners have attempted to avoid. Yet we must not let CDCr strategies and tactics disrupt our peaceful protests.

Our families, friends – our sanity, our civil and human rights – are all worth fighting for and we all have suffered enough at the hands of CDCr. There will be no end to our suffering and our families’ and friends’ suffering if we as a prison class do not put an end to it ourselves through every peaceful protest at our disposal.

We all suffer from physical and psychological damage from being held indefinitely under these savage conditions, in solitary confinement. We have always said that our struggle is a protracted struggle and we intend to continue our Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement until justice is won and the long term solitary confinement torture is ended.

In solidarity,
Mutope Duguma


Send our brother some love and light: Mutope Duguma, s/n James Crawford, D-05996, D-1-117, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532. This letter was dated May 15, 2013.

Institutionalized racism and censorship are relatives

May 24, 2013

From: SF Bay View

Statement from the Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement First Amendment Campaign

by Sondai Dumisani, Abasi Ganda, Mutope Duguma, Abdul O. Shakur, Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa

Drawing by Michael David Russell, C-90473, D7-217, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532

The San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper for March 2013, Vol. 38, Issue 3, was censored by staff at Pelican Bay due to an article titled “Prisoners’ peaceful protest to resume July 8 if demands are not met” on Page 3 in the “Behind Enemy Lines” section. The article was written by our four representatives, Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, Arturo Castellanos, Todd Ashker and Antonio Guillen.

Before it was sent to Willie and Mary Ratcliff for publication, it was sent to the following: Gov. Brown, the secretary and undersecretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and to the warden of Pelican Bay State Prison. The article was then forwarded to many news outlets, including the local news here in the Crescent City area.

Every prisoner with a TV watched it being aired three or four times, where it was also reported that we prisoners will be going back on our peaceful hunger strike on July 8, 2013, if our Five Core Demands are not met, as per our representatives, due to our long term confinement, torture and overall prison oppression, in which prisoners are made to suffer indefinitely in solitary confinement, administrative segregation and security housing units throughout California.

The article for which Capt. Puget stopped delivery of the SF Bay View is the exact same article that Lt. Diggle passed around the prison for the four representatives, per Associate Warden P.T. Smith. That is how it was able to be circulated throughout solitary confinement.

So it is very questionable how CDCr and PBSP can now state that the article is, and I quote, “a threat to the penological interests” under California Code of Regulations Sections 3006(c)(5) and 3135(c)(5). The rules read as follows:

“3006. Contraband. … (c) Except as authorized by the institution head, inmates shall not possess or have under their control any matter which contains or concerns any of the following: … (5) Plans to disrupt the order, or breach of security, of any facility.”

“3135. Disturbing or Offensive Correspondence. … (c) Certain correspondence, including but not limited to the following, is disallowed, regardless of values or morals, in order to ensure the safety and security of the institution/facility. … (5) Concerns plans to disrupt the order, or breach the security of any institution/facility.”
There has been a clear line of communication between our representatives and CDCr and PBSP. It is understood that all prisoners’ actions will always be peaceful. Under no circumstances can we see how on the one hand the CDCr and PBSP can kill us prisoners with oppressive prison policies, then turn around and say that they are concerned with the security of the institution but not the many human beings inside this institution who are being tortured and murdered by proxy.

The prisoners are not the culprits here. We are only responding to the horrible prison conditions that are sucking the very life out of us each and every day we spend wasting away in solitary confinement, under sensory deprivation that allows the prison officials to administer a very cruel form of physical and psychological torture.

The SF Bay View does not advocate violence, nor is it complicit in conspiring to advocate violence. The SF Bay View is a 21st century independent national Black newspaper that economically struggles daily to put this information out to the public.

It serves the interests of human beings who struggle day to day, especially those in the New Afrikan, Afrikan Amerikan and Latino communities, who are disenfranchised by the poor governing practices of the states. It is a newspaper that is serving the interests of all poor citizens of this nation. It has no political ties to no one. It caters to no establishment. It is a very small newspaper that is exercising its right to freedom of speech, a freedom that is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Under no circumstances can we see how CDCr and PBSP can say that they are concerned with the security of the institution but not the many human beings inside this institution who are being tortured and murdered by proxy.

The CDCr and PBSP are trying to use their political power through the use of prison rules and policies to censor the SF Bay View. Why? No reason but racism, in order to suppress the voice of the prisoners and the people.

The PBSP SHU white male officers are obsessed with the SF Bay View. They go online and read its contents, and they converse with each other daily about it. They attempt to threaten, intimidate, as well as question prisoners who are writing these articles in the Bay View.

The lot of them, for the most part, see the Bay View as a threat to their interests personally. They sadly see only black and white. They have nothing good to say about the newspaper, despite it being representative of their own class interests. Yet they cannot see past their racism.

I asked one officer how many times have the L.A. Times, USA Today, Sacramento Bee or Triplicate been mail-stopped for printing the same rhetoric? He initially said he didn’t know, but once I pressed him, he said, admittedly, “Never.” I then asked him, “Why do you think that?” He immediately had an epiphany and went on the defensive.

The PBSP SHU white male officers are obsessed with the SF Bay View.

These officers are reading the SF Bay View front to back, and they hate the fact that someone would even provide a platform for prisoners to express themselves, especially when those prisoners are talking about prison oppression. Any mention of torture inside solitary confinement kicks off their reaction, because these officers are the oppressors, the puppets who carry out the many atrocities perpetrated against the prisoners daily in the prison industrial slave complex.

To say the SF Bay View is a threat to the penological interests of the prison and that it plans to disrupt the order or breach the security of any facility is what those of us in this country who are conscious men and women of all nationalities call “institutionalized racism,” where institutions hide behind broadly interpreted prison rules, policies, laws, both state and federal, to suppress the people’s right to assemble in peaceful protest by exercising our freedom of speech, especially where there exists an outright abuse of power by the state and federal government.

These officers are reading the SF Bay View front to back, and they hate the fact that someone would even provide a platform for prisoners to express themselves, especially when those prisoners are talking about prison oppression.

The only defense that can protect the people is to assemble the power of the people. We are our only defense. We have suffered enough injustice at the hands of a very evil system – CDCr and PBSP – and it is time that we prisoners express that pain and suffering by all means at our disposal, because CDCr and PBSP are censoring SF Bay View in order to censor prisoners, because we are exposing the cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners.

We collectively commend and value the courage and commitment as well as the principled stand that the SF Bay View is taking to speak truth to power. But there must be real clarity brought to what is going on here, because throughout Amerika there are New Afrikan prisoners who are held in solitary confinement for refusing to become a-political, meaning to cease adhering to their political, ideological and philosophical beliefs, for which we are persecuted by the state, which is a practice that is in direct contrast to our First Amendment rights.

These cruel and unusual punishments are crimes against our humanity, and because we choose to exercise our constitutional rights, we are now being severely punished and tortured by the state of California, the same state that is now censoring the SF Bay View to further silence our voice.

CDCr and PBSP are censoring SF Bay View in order to censor prisoners, because we are exposing the cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners.

We say that the SF Bay View must continue to fight against institutionalized racism, prisoner oppression, long-term solitary confinement and any other form of abusive actions by the state that uses its power to suppress the voice of the people, because the New Afrikans, Afrikan-Amerikans in Amerika, have no voice. We have been shut out of mainstream media politically, socio-culturally and economically since our inception into this nation, so that we have no outlet to convey our concerns and suffering, as they relate to our conditions inside of Amerika. We have been silenced as a people.

The current New Afrikan/Afrikan Amerikan newspapers, for the most part, only cover politicians who are Afrikan Amerikans and celebrities, along with stories that make the mainstream media or news where some injustice occurred that is so egregious that the world is forced to pay attention to it. Other than that, our voice as an oppressed class of people inside these prisons and in the free world is shut out.

So we ask every conscious human being to get a subscription to the San Francisco Bay View Black National Newspaper and all the unconscious human beings also need to get a copy of the SF Bay View. This way, Willie and Mary can continue to represent the oppressed people of this nation and the non-oppressed, while at the same time beating back the attacks by our oppressors.

We ask that the financially able individuals from all walks of life make generous contributions to the San Francisco Bay View in hopes that it can continue the struggle as the voice of the oppressed prison class and our communities by speaking truth to power where there is sincere need to do so and by all means support our Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement to end long term solitary confinement and prison torture, the death penalty and suicides inside these torture chambers.

We write this article on behalf of our First Amendment Campaign and we encourage people to join our “Hands Off the Bay View” campaign.

We encourage businesses to advertise in the Bay View.

Send our brothers some love and light:

• Sondai Dumisani (s/n R. Elllis), C-68764, D1-223 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Abasi Ganda (s/n E. Jackson), C-33559, D2-107 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Mutope Duguma (s/n J. Crawford), D-05996, D1-117 (SHU) , P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Abdul Olugbala Shakur (s/n J. Harvey), C-48884, D1-119 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (s/n R. Dewberry), C-35671, D1-117 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532

Hands off the Bay View

From: SF Bay View

April 26, 2013

Statement from the Pelikan Bay Human Rights Movement First Amendment Campaign

by Abdul Olugbala Shakur, Sondai Kamdibe Dumisani, Abasi Ganda, Ifoma Modibo Kambon, Dadisi Yero, Askari Joka, Mutope Duguma, Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, Baridi Yero, Kijana Tashiri Askari, Yafeu I-Yapo

Preamble: Fascist repression can only flourish when the voices of its victims have been brutally silenced and isolated within the concrete confines of a man-made construct where the scrutiny of the media cannot transcend the walls. Those walls are erected by legislative venality and deprive humanity of an eyewitness account of how captured human minds, spirits and bodies are being disfigured by the instrument of officially sanctioned evil that plagues this vortex of torture they call Pelikan Bay.

Drawing by Michael Russell, C-90473, PBSP SHU D7-217, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532

But contrary to the fascist intent, the voices of resistance reverberated within the depths of this concrete hell as New Afrikan revolutionary prisoners since our arrival have refused to remain silent and have waged a continuous campaign to put an end to this racial injustice. And for over 20 years the San Francisco Bay View has played a critical role in allowing our voices to be heard.

As a result they themselves have become a target for the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) agents of repression, such as the Office of Correctional Safety (OCS), Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI) and Investigations Services Unit (ISU). The confiscation of the March [and, since this was written on April 5, also the April] issue of the Bay View is a clear indication of the agents of fascist repression escalating their attacks against the Bay View.

It is imperative for all of us to understand that the Bay View is part of us. Mary and Willie Ratcliff is our sista and brotha and they have sacrificed much to help us and serve our communities. We must now go beyond rhetoric and lip service in support for the Bay View.

We now present the following statement: The San Francisco Bay View is a national Black newspaper that serves the interests of the New Afrikan communities inside Amerikkka. Its objective is to always bring attention to the injustice that occurs against New Afrikan people by speaking out against the injustices handed down by the state and federal government, who systematically abuse their authority in order to suppress the voices of the oppressed.

For over 20 years the San Francisco Bay View has played a critical role in allowing our voices to be heard.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is supposed to protect our freedom of speech, but time after time we see that the state officials tend to resort back to the Dred Scott v. Stanford Supreme Court case, where it was said that New Afrikan people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

These are the words that Warden G.D. Lewis, C.D.W. Ducart, A.W. Swift, ISU Capt. Barneburg, IGI Lt. Frisk and their subordinates live by when it comes to New Afrikans’ freedom of speech – even after several court victories in respect to our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, in which the court clearly stipulated in their many rulings that the prison officials were in violation of our First Amendment rights.

Brad Ford, a prisoner in the federal system, uses his meager earnings to buy subscriptions for younger prisoners he mentors. The Bay View, denied for three of the last four months to subscribers at Pelican Bay State Prison in California, is currently being allowed in to federal and state prisons around the country and throughout California, except for Pelican Bay.

These same officials continue to defy the courts in order to violate our First Amendment rights. These officials have chosen a course of action where they themselves have not only violated our First Amendment rights continuously but have conspired to use their positions as state officials with the power to deprive us prisoners of our procedural due process rights. The March issue, Vol. 38, No. 3, of the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper, of which Mary Ratcliff and Willie Ratcliff are editor and publisher, was denied [to subscribers at Pelican Bay] per CCR Title15, Section 3006(c)(3): “Except as authorized by the institution head, inmates shall not possess or have under their control any matter which contains or concerns any of the following: … 

(3) Plans to disrupt the order or breach the security of any facility” and CCR Title 15, Section 3315(a)(2)(C): A serious disruption of facility operations. Yet the officials chose not to provide us a clear 1819 form per CCR Title 15 3136(a), disapproval of inmate mail per each mail item incoming or outgoing.

The officials’ actions are calculating and malicious because they deliberately withheld the Bay View paper from the prisoners who actually had been consistent in their litigation against the blatant violations of our First Amendment rights. It was each of us who were not provided the CDCR 1819 forms which we have to have in order to file a 602 appeal grievance form for that which is having an adverse effect on us. In this case, it’s our First Amendment violation governing our incoming mail.

By not issuing us our CDCR 1819 form, the CDCR/PBSP (Pelican Bay State Prison) officials are not only denying us our procedural due process but our right to file a civil lawsuit and petition of writ of habeas corpus to the courts for violations of our First Amendment rights. So the CDCR/PBSP official actions are arbitrarily insidious racist attacks on New Afrikan prisoners exclusively and the only New Afrikan newspaper that has chosen to stand up against the CDCR/PBSP’s deliberate threats and power in the interest of the oppressed prison class held in CDCR custody.

We also want to say that CDCR/PBSP officials literally ran a test run when they confiscated the 25 Bay View issues in January 2013 from those lone subscribers while giving everyone else their subscription. Only through progressive litigation can we beat back these arbitrarily insidious racist attacks by prison officials who should have never been given authority to run no prison, let alone human beings.

We will aggressively continue to attack these actions against our freedom of speech! It is worth noting we have over 15 lawsuits pending in the federal court. Brotha Abdul Shakur has a lawsuit pending specifically pertaining to the confiscation of an article he had attempted to send to the Bay View. The judge in this matter recently ordered the defendants, IGI and ISU, via the attorney general to respond to Brotha Abdul’s lawsuit. He also has a similar petition being reviewed by the California Supreme Court, so we are aggressively challenging the CDCR/PBSP campaign of repression.

People, we are all in this battle together. We cannot fight this battle by ourselves, especially from within solitary confinement. We must launch a coordinated effort in our endeavors to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the Bay View against any and all attempts to sabotage its functional capacity and impede their free speech.

We will aggressively continue to attack these actions against our freedom of speech! Your support is imperative to our success.

Our First Amendment campaign is calling on all people, especially the prison rights movement, to do the following:

1. contact Warden Greg Lewis via email or phone and demand that IGI and ISU put an end to censoring the Bay View and release the March issue [and April issue] of the Bay View to the prisoners housed within the PBSP Security Housing Unit;
2. contact Assemblywoman Holly Mitchell. Inform her how Pelican Bay State Prison Institutional Gang Investigation Unit (IGI) and Investigative Services Unit (ISU) are attempting to censor the Bay View newspaper because of their reporting on the hunger strikes, the five core demands, end to hostilities, sensory deprivation, torture and long-term solitary confinement;
3. actively help to organize support for the Bay View. This will discourage the fascist agents of repression in their endeavors to ban and isolate the Bay View. Subscriptions are imperative towards the Bay View’s longevity and stability. Brotha Abdul Shakur suggested that activists should organize a Bay View subscribers’ party where attendants pledge to subscribe to the Bay View in support of our ongoing campaign to defend and protect our free speech;
4. establish communication with the primary coordinators for our First Amendment campaign. We are all involved in litigation. Brotha Abdul Shakur has seven active cases presently pending, five Section 1983 civil suits in the federal courts, one in the local superior court, and one under review in the California Supreme Court.

Your support is imperative to our success.

Send our brothers some love and light:

• Abdul Olugbala Shakur (s/n J. Harvey) C-48884, D1-119 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (s/n R. Dewberry) C-35671, D1-117 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Mutope Duguma (s/n J. Crawford) D-05996, D1-117 (SHU) , P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Sondai Kamdibe Dumisani (s/n R. Elllis) C-68764, D1-223 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Baridi Yero (s/n J. Williamson) D-34288, D4-107 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Ifoma Modibo Kambon (s/n D. Burnett) B-60892, D4-103 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Kijana Tashiri Askari (s/n M. Harrison) H-54077, D3-123 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Yafeu I-Yapo (s/n L. Alexander) B-72288, D3-119 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Abasi Ganda (s/n E. Jackson) C-33559, D2-107 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532;
• Dadisi Yero (s/n L. Benton) B-85066, D1-101 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Askari Joka (s/n J. Franklin) C-08543, D2-207 (SHU), P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532

Response from the Bay View

We are deeply grateful to the Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement First Amendment Campaign and will do all in our power to support them in defending the First Amendment rights of us all. “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons,” wrote the Russian revolutionary Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who served four years hard labor in Siberia. That truth is beginning to manifest to the U.S. public nationwide and especially in California in a recent flood of mainstream news stories critical of prison policy and practice and the politicians responsible for it.

Pelican Bay is on the wrong side of history. Its officials’ fear of the upcoming July 8 hunger strike and work stoppage, a reaction to their refusal to negotiate in good faith over the prisoners’ Five Core Demands issued two years ago, is apparent in their current violations of the laws and regulations that are supposed to govern them.

The Bay View has yet to receive any official notification from Pelican Bay State Prison saying why and from whom the March and April issues were withheld. Numerous subscribers, however, have written to say they did not receive their papers. All but one had not been issued the 1819 mail disapproval form, which is prerequisite to their filing a 602 appeal.

We want to thank those prisoners who did receive their papers for sharing them with those who did not. If any subscriber who was denied his paper is not located where he can share another subscriber’s paper, write to us and we will send a copy with the pages cited by Pelican Bay officials removed. – Willie and Mary Ratcliff

http://sfbayview.com/2013/hands-off-the-bay-view/

Motion denied, Governor: Medical neglect is still killing prisoners

March 22, 2013

In: SF BayView

by Mutope Duguma, Sitawa N. Jamaa, Abdul O. Shakur and Sondai K. Dumisani
Gov. Brown has declared that the prison crisis that allowed prisoners to die is over and that prisoners are receiving good care. His words, not ours.

It is obvious that the governor has not produced any data that supports his claim. Furthermore, the governor is deliberately misinforming the public, because he and the officials of CDCr – the secretary and undersecretary – are arbitrarily choosing not to provide the public with adequate information that pertains to the incompetence that continues to endanger prisoners by murdering them through direct medical neglect and incompetence.

We prisoners have read the Los Angeles Times article by Paige St. John, “California suppressed consultant’s report on inmate suicides,” dated Feb. 28, 2013, and we can only hope that justice will continue to prevail, by not only maintaining the oversight of CDCr’s “health care service,” as well as extend it to the very root of the problems that cause the very many deaths and suicides that are happening throughout CDCr.

Solitary confinement in California and throughout the United States is real. The lingering of human beings – i.e., prisoners – in these torture chambers (SHUs and Ad Segs) indefinitely has basically created the result that led to human beings dying unnecessarily inside these solitary confinement torture units.

Alex Machado, Christian Gomez, Armando Morales, John Owen Vick and Hozel Alonzo Blanchard are all men who should be alive, by all means, and the fact that the CDCr has reported 32 deaths by suicide in the year of 2012 alone should be more than enough reason for the oversight to be continued – and expanded as well. The CDCr’s own experts afforded them the procedures to follow in order to prevent such deaths. However, not only did the CDCr attempt to suppress this report and now the evidence in it, but the CDCr had the audacity to request that the United States District Court destroy that report.

The governor and the officials of CDCr are arbitrarily choosing not to provide the public with adequate information that pertains to the incompetence that continues to endanger prisoners by murdering them through direct medical neglect and incompetence.

Thankfully, for the lives of California prisoners, the judge refused to cooperate with such a conspiracy. Suppression of evidence like this is not an isolated act, because we prisoners know that the licensed vocational nurses and registered nurses and doctors do not responsibly oversee the CDCr health care services. Their actions are influenced by the local officials and officers who have total control over the prison.

Alex Machado, Christian Gomez, Armando Morales, John Owen Vick and Hozel Alonzo Blanchard are all men who should be alive, by all means, and the fact that the CDCr has reported 32 deaths by suicide in the year of 2012 alone should be more than enough reason for the oversight to be continued – and expanded as well.

Prison staff relationships are intermingled through personal relations – marriage, family, friendship – and are reflected by the transitions from health care services to corrections or vice versa. A good example as to how much the officials and officers control health care services can be seen in the two 2011 prisoner hunger strikes.

On July 2, 2011, prisoners held in solitary confinement in SHU and Ad Seg for years, subjected to torture and cruel and unusual punishment in violation of our U.S. constitutional rights, decided to go on a peaceful hunger strike, in which over 6,000 of us participated.

The only reason we received adequate health care services (medical treatment) during our July 1, 2011, hunger strike that lasted to July 20 is because the federal receivership oversaw the medical treatment; prisoners were weighed, vitals checked, vitamins provided daily. This prevented thousands of prisoners from suffering when many emergencies could have resulted in thousands of prisoners dying, due to CDCr Secretary Matthew Cate and Undersecretary Scott Kernan violating a verbal agreement to implement our reasonable Five Core Demands, an agreement that resulted in us ending our first hunger strike.

The only reason we received adequate health care services (medical treatment) during our July 1, 2011, hunger strike that lasted to July 20 is because the federal receivership oversaw the medical treatment.

Therefore, we decided to go back on our second hunger strike on Sept. 26, 2011, in which 12,000 prisoners participated throughout CDCr, clearly demonstrating that there is a widespread problem of deliberate medical neglect and torture inside CDCr solitary confinement units.

During our Sept. 26, 2011, hunger strike, which lasted to Oct. 13, 2011, the federal receivership allowed CDCr to oversee the health care services. The result of this action not only placed prisoners’ health at risk, but CDCr immediately implemented a policy protocol for overseeing the hunger strike that was catastrophic for prisoners: Thousands suffered and several died when CDCr was allowed to have control over the hunger strike, in which hunger strikers were denied medical treatment throughout the hunger strike.

The prison guards have no medical training yet were allowed to say to medical personnel that a prisoner was faking – “He’s not sick” – and oddly enough, the medical staff tended to allow this to be the authority on which they proceeded. Thousands of prisoners suffered behind this ill advised information. We received no daily checkups, no vitals checks, no vitamins, no weigh-ins conducted under CDCr medical supervision. Many times medical problems were treated too late and by this time the damage was done.

The conflict of interest lies in the relationships between the prison guards, who are responsible for providing security only, and those who are responsible for providing health care services, food and religious services etc. Unfortunately, the prison guards have structured the prison environment around the deprivation of the prisoners, simply to demonstrate its dominance over prisoners, which creates severe violation of prisoners’ constitutionally protected rights.

During our Sept. 26, 2011, hunger strike, which lasted to Oct. 13, 2011, thousands suffered and several died when CDCr was allowed to have control over the hunger strike, in which hunger strikers were denied medical treatment throughout the hunger strike. 

The Bill of Rights’ 10 original amendments and Reconstruction amendments 11 through 27 of the Constitution – particularly important in respect to prisoners, the First, Fifth, Eighth and 14th Amendments – are deliberately violated routinely. The many settlements of prisoner lawsuits in years past speak volumes to this fact.

Gov. Brown’s current changes have not rendered any justice or humane treatment of prisoners thus far, and the death count and the many prisoners held inside solitary confinement, who suffer from numerous ailments and torture, only seem to exacerbate this problem. Therefore, we prisoners can only hope, in the interest of our livelihood and humanity, that the courts expand their oversight and open up an independent investigation as to why prisoners are held unjustly in solitary confinement.

Send our brothers some love and light:

• Mutope Duguma (James Crawford), D-05596, D1-117 up, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532
• Sitawa N. Jamaa (Ronnie Dewberry), C-35671, D1-117 low, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532
• Abdul O. Shakur (James Harvey), C-48884, D1-119 low, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532
• Sondai K. Dumisani (Randall Ellis), C-68764, D1-223 low, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532

The CDCr-CCPOA lying game: Prisoners united, women and men, know the truth

February 28, 2013

In: SF Bay View

by Mutope Duguma, Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, Abdul O. Shakur, Sondai Kamdibe Dumisani

The CDCr are masters at pulling the wool over the eyes of the California taxpayers, activist organizations, civil and human rights organizations, religious institutions, prisoners, men and women, and state and federal courts.

The recent reality that has come out of our two year struggle to be released from solitary confinement is actually showing the true nature of this beast, identified as CDCr, which uses double talk, known to many of us as deceptive lies, premeditated lies, that are deliberately designed to mislead those they are lying to.

The STG/SDP, Security Threat Group/Step Down Program contains lessons for us all. The details are clear as to the insidious class and racial discrimination with which it is implemented. We now have allowed our supporters to see that the actions of CDCr-CCPOA massively tax Californians by relying on the lying game to maintain their respectability with a naïve general public – i.e., their families, their relatives, their churches and their friends – along with establishing a network that CDCr uses to demonize and dehumanize prisoners and their communities, while making the CDCr out to be agents in the service of Jesus Christ.

The CDCr-CCPOA have to use the lying game as a means of sustainability, because they have no truths to stand on. The very system was built on a lie and it will be destroyed by its very lies.


But the CDCr has lies that can only be exposed by our truths; therefore, we prisoners have to be willing to speak truth to power, which is 10 times harder once a lie has been told. But truth liberates when it is against the oppressors.

We know that women are being traumatized daily in these prisons by sexual predators who identify themselves as upstanding prison guards who hide behind the badge of the CDCr’s so-called “honor,” while countless women are being raped and molested in the name of the CDCr – physically, psychologically and spiritually. They try to strip these women of their dignity and soul – prison guards invading the women’s most intimate areas, personal garments, showers and cells, through strip searches, groping pat downs etc.

The mere fact that the courts had to implement into law that women cannot be chained in restraints while giving birth is a clear sign that the United States is asleep while atrocities are being committed against women inside prisons all over this nation. The prison industrial slave complex has established itself so deeply into our society that the very people who are supposed to keep an out-of-control system in check have become desensitized to women being tortured in prisons.


Prison oppression is geared toward oppressing the ‘less desirable’ citizens of this nation. Women who are held in CIW and CCWF are being denied the basic keeping up of their hygiene. It is inhumane to deprive these women of an adequate amount of private hygienic toiletries, a reflection of the very system that goes around advocating the safety and security of the public.

I ask that every poor person incarcerated study slavery in all its forms, because the very practice of mass incarceration is slavery. You will see that the same components exist – bondage, dehumanizing, sadistic, insidious attacks being carried out against the poor people of this nation – systematically, for a profit, amounting to exploitation!


Our prison motto is that we prisoners, women and men, have to become united as one in order to beat back the many attacks from the CDCr/PISC. We cannot allow small incentives for a few to divide us, because at the end of the day we all will be treated the same. For instance, women in California are also held in solitary confinement units, which we identify as torture chambers, on indeterminate terms, meaning forever.

We know that CDCr-CCPOA use on women the same physical and psychological attacks that we are made to suffer here in Pelican Bay State Prison Short Corridor and Long Corridor, D-1 through D-10, C-1 through C-12 and Ad Seg throughout our indeterminate stay. We know that women and children, our future nation builders, our life providers – grandmothers, mothers, aunties, sisters, nieces and cousins, who gave each and every one of us life – are going through torture, not rehabilitation.

To treat women and men in these prisons like savages does nothing to protect society at large.

Therefore, as a “prison class,” we must make it known that we men prisoners together with women prisoners must illustrate through our humanity what civilized women and men prisoners look like to this nation. As CDCr attempts to dehumanize us, we continue to defy them, by representing our humanity.

I ask that every poor person incarcerated study slavery in all its forms, because the very practice of mass incarceration is slavery.

To suffer in silence is a crime against ourselves. Our only chance to survive this onslaught is to unite our voices with the greater good of this nation.

All power to the women in solitary confinement prisons!

Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement is forever in solidarity with all women in and out of prison.

• Mutope Duguma (s/n J. Crawford), D-05996, PBSP SHU D1-117, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532
• Sitawa Nantambu (s/n R. Dewberry), C-35671, PBSP SHU D1-117L, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532
• Abdul O. Shakur (s/n J. Harvey), C-48884, PBSP SHU D1-119, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532
• Sondai Kamdibe Dumisani (s/n R. Ellis), C-68764, PBSP SHU D1-223, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City CA 95532

Nobody deserves to be tortured: a response to CDCR’s STG-SDP plan

In: SF BayView, December 20, 2012

by Mutope Dugma

The new “Security Threat Group Prevention, Identification, and Management Strategy” will instigate new and more aggressive attacks against prisoners and their families, friends, associates and communities, who are already being victimized by our institutionalized racist system and the prison industrial complex. It is just one of their many policies to persecute prisoners incarcerated in solitary confinement units. This is comparable to government policies that persecute us poor citizens in ghettos and barrios.

The security threat group strategy in itself is a racist policy that will set a new precedent for attacks against New Afrikans (i.e. Blacks), Mexicans, Latinos, Asians and poor whites to allow CDCR to implement a classification of our people and communities. “Security threat group” means one of us can define all of us, through their validation system.

We are individuals despite all the hype around this gang validation nonsense. We must reject the “Security Threat Group Prevention, Identification, and Management Plan.” It will allow our communities to be further subjugated, persecuted and openly attacked by overzealous public servants or security guards who operate like Gestapo against poor citizens of this nation.

And to those of us held in the prison industrial complex – subjected to physical and psychological torture in long term isolated solitary confinement units – the term “threat group” only means that the validation process is being expanded to where all prisoners based on group validation as a gang can be and will be subjected to what we already suffer as individuals under the validation procedures.

Identification of prisoners will mean what it means now, not only who we are, but who are our family, friends and associates, and this will not stop. The identification process investigates our lives by way of other agencies, such as LAPD, OPD, SFPD, SDPD, Sheriffs etc. This I call profiling of our people and our communities. Identifying the prisoner as part of a STG – a gang member or associate – opens up covert and overt investigations of our family, friends and associates.

This is the purpose for the identification: making our people and community suspects in alleged gang activity, subjecting us to harassment, searches and investigations. It is the pretext used by CDCR to hide their racist intent.

Interdiction [the subheading of the STG strategy is “California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Proposed Implementation of the Security Threat Group Identification System and Step Down Program for Gang Interdiction and Management”], meaning to destroy, cut off or damage, or to prohibit by decree or authoritarian implementation, will only further familiarize New Afrikans, Latinos, Mexicans and Asians with what they know all too well: the authoritarian presence of militarized police inside our communities.

They patrol our communities as if we’re terrorists. Yet the prisoner will be the justification for interdiction. Remember, CDCR and Pelican Bay State Prison officials have already cut us off from our family, friends, associates and communities, and when we succeed in connecting with them, they use many scare tactics to destroy, damage or cut these relationships OFF. It’s called interdiction.

Prevention, meaning to keep from happening or existing, to hold back, hinder, stop, means that we prisoners will be suppressed by any means necessary based on flawed intelligence and through crime initiatives and policies to counter crimes that have not occurred. For example, prisoners in solitary confinement units are not allowed “contact visits,” because there is the potential for a crime to be committed. CDCR’s NO contact visits policy speculates and assumes that prisoners’ families, friends and associates will be accomplices to criminal activity. Under CDCR policy, NO kissing, touching etc. is allowed while on a contact visit to a prisoner in general population.

This is what they mean when they say prevention: instituting policies that suppress the growth and development of prisoners and their families, friends, associates and community, by cutting off whatever crimes that can be committed. But to do this is to insinuate that all our people are criminals, which reflects an inherently racist disposition inside the institution of institutionalized racism. Therefore, we all become suspects or are subjected to policies that limit our interaction and movement.

Management means that act or art of control. This is what it’s about: controlling the obsolete “poor class” prisoners, who are only an extension of the obsolete poor class of people out in society. By maintaining control over this class of people, they’re able to utilize intimidating acts or practices against prisoners toward controlling them.

The death penalty, long term solitary confinement, assault weapons, prison violence, prison oppression – all are means of maintaining control. This is how they manage prisoners.

Plan is a method for achieving an objective. Therefore, we all are in danger. The STG is only a new and more aggressive policy that will further subject prisoners to harsh conditions and the current physical and psychological torture we exist under now. I basically just interpreted the title of this new policy, which defines its true purpose and meaning.

We also see that this pilot program is filled with numerous job titles, which is how CDCR fleeces California taxpayers out of their funds. They create unnecessary positions that are irrelevant and serve no purpose. If anyone thinks that those of us held in solitary confinement units need to go through gang management programs at the ages of 40 to 70-plus years, they are only fooling themselves.

There are NO gang members or gang bangers in the “short corridor” at Pelican Bay, only grown men who came into these institutions at very young ages, who have educated themselves, and who in many cases were never gang members from the get go. What you have back here are political prisoners, jail house lawyers, strong minded influential prisoners who understand the games correctional officers and officials play.

Those of us who did come into these prisons with a backward mindset do not adhere to that gang nonsense anymore. It’s crazy to tell us, who’ve been in solitary confinement units from 10 to 40 years, that we’ve got to go through a “step down program,” or SDP, in order to get out, when we’ve been held illegally and subjected to physical and psychological torment throughout our stay in these torture chambers.

The validation system is just that. It does not mean you have committed a crime or broken the law in any way; it only means that you have been profiled or identified as an alleged “something” by the CDCR under their gang validation system. So to place you in solitary confinement units and leave you there for the rest of your natural life on the validation alone is inhumane and criminal against those prisoners subjected to this fate.

The fact that we have been here anywhere from five to 40 years for no criminal offenses, no gang offenses and no violent offenses is based on simply an administrative placement, where we are validated as gang members and associates and locked up indefinitely on flawed intelligence. Some of this so-called intelligence is so ridiculous that one has to wonder, are these intelligent gang officers or a bunch of professional liars who hide behind the veil of institutionalized racism.

There is NO way we prisoners should be held in solitary confinement units, whether Ad-Seg or SHU, on gang validations, when our average age is anywhere from 40 to 70. There are NO GANG MEMBERS back here. This CDCR knows quite well.

The pilot program is described as “a new behavior based system which will serve to enhance the existing intelligence based validation system.” These words are important to understand because they basically speak to the re-enforcement of the existing intelligence-based validation system that places prisoners in these solitary confinement units on non-behavior placement.

To say you’re now going to put prisoners – particularly alleged STG prisoners – in solitary confinement units for their behavior only means that a wider pool of prisoners will be locked up, because now alleged prison gangs, street gangs, disruptive groups etc. all fall under the STG identification, interdiction, prevention and management plan. These are for the most parts groups who could commit an offense and be given a determinate sentence of anywhere from 90 days to five years in solitary confinement, but they would be let out when that time is up.

This is a just system because it deals with individual accountability. And no one should be held in solitary confinement indefinitely even if he wants to be there. Now all these determinate SHU prisoners will fall under this new validation system, where CDCR officials will utilize the SDP to place people under a STG I and STG II validation, holding them inside a program that serves no purpose whatsoever, but to further torment the prisoners. The step down program offers nothing but harassment to those prisoners inside that program.

The STG-SDP Pilot Program is lacking any real commitment to letting us out of the solitary confinement units. There is too much bureaucracy we have to go through, and this is with the same biased, prejudiced and racist prison guards who have held us back here for the 22½ years since Pelican Bay State Prison was built, without adequate clothing, adequate food or educational programs under severe isolation from our families, friends, associates and other prisoners. No natural sunlight, no adequate medical care etc.

So why would CDCR and PBSP do right by us prisoners now? They’re only expanding their “torture chambers,” and anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly not reading what CDCR is saying. One thing CDCR is good at is playing psychological games and tormenting prisoners. We all know this first hand because we’ve seen many go crazy or insane or mad or loony or mentally ill or catatonic or delusional or become severely depressed. I’ve seen them all here in Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Units.

People have to realize that CDCR and PBSP officials have had a lot of success in torturing prisoners into submitting to their debriefing program that is used to frame and set up prisoners for this mockery of a system. We continue to reject this pilot program. It does nothing toward giving us a gateway out of these torture chambers.

They’re even saying that NO STG I members who are influential are ever getting out. Who determines who gets out and who stays? We say nobody deserves to be tortured in solitary confinement units at the hands of anyone.

One love, one struggle, in solidarity always,

Mutope Dugma

PBSP update: Assessment of meetings with assistant warden

SF BayView, September 17, 2012

Our four principal negotiators/representatives here in the Pelican Bay State Prison Short Corridor remain steadfast toward achieving our five core demands, which has been an ongoing struggle. There has not been much that we as a collective would lay claim to, but one is aware of the manipulative games that CDCR and wardens are playing to attempt to discourage any future demonstrations on a collective level.

Our four reps have been in an ongoing dialogue with the associate warden, appointed by the warden here at PBSP SHU (Security Housing Unit) to deal with our Core Demand No. 5 exclusively. This is something that started in the month of February and continues to this day.

But sadly, there have not been any substantial programs or privileges authorized by the warden, who chooses to maintain the solitary confinement prisoners in a NON-productive state of programming, while offering small concessions on canteen and packages, which is something that was supposed to have been given to us over 23 years ago. Outside of that, we have not been able to get any cooperation from prison officials.

We have caught them in many lies in respect to these meetings and how they all conspired to mislead our representatives, who saw very quickly through their games but decided to go through the process so that the public can see that the mentality that oversees these procedures will never see us as human beings.

For the last 25-plus years, we have been subjected to these solitary confinement units – Ad Seg, SHU – the result of administrative placement, whereas for the most part we have been model prisoners for those amount of years, while being deprived of any meaningful programming or privileges. Yet in the current meetings, the heartlessness that is shown toward our collective is something that one must see as a personal attack that has nothing to do with prison security or policy.

Providing us a decent meal three times a day should be a human right. Our captors don’t think so.

Holding us in solitary confinement units indefinitely is in violation of our civil and human rights. Our captors don’t think so.

Depriving us of any meaningful – or any – contact with our families, friends and associates is denying us a natural right, as well as a civil and human right. Our captors don’t think so.

Subjecting us to NO programming or privileges whatsoever, when our behavior has been above prison requirements, is unacceptable. Our captors don’t think so.

What they think is that we should remain in the worst mental and physical state imaginable until we rot and die in these hell holes for doing nothing.

But being the kind of human beings they are, they have a history of hating. As Laura Magnani put it during the mediation team meeting in April in Sacramento with George Giurbino [representing CDCR] and legislative aides,

 “(We notice) that you all are making decisions over the lives of New Afrikans and Mexicans, who are more than 85 percent of the prison population and solitary confinement units, in California. Yet there is not one (such) person present in this room who is in the CDCR decision-making process.”

The same can be said for our meetings with the assistant wardens, where there is not one human being who is New Afrikan or Mexican in the decision-making process.

Here at PBSP SHU, it’s impossible to treat people like human beings if you have an inherited history to treat them like animals. This is why we have been made to suffer for 20-plus years here without even being given proper clothing for a very cold climate, until we subjected ourselves to a hunger strike in which three prisoners died. This is HATE – NOT about gang activity or violation of prison policy, rules and regulations. It’s about HATE by those who are in a position of power to do as they please and they subjectively do just that.

The meetings, in my opinion, are only a front so that the administration can come back later and say that they did this and that, when actually they did nothing; you dig? It’s an attempt to manipulate the Amerikan people into thinking that they are not torturing prisoners, because the prison is catering to their every need.

But the truth is in their actions, and there have been NONE in our favor thus far. We have been dealing with Demand No. 4 as well, and there has been nothing substantial on that. Demands No. 1, 2 and 3 are for the policies of the STG (Security Threat Group), and we have all seen what that is. We’re waiting on the revised version now.

As for health and medical issues, we have not even begun to address that, but it is good the federal government didn’t let CDCR get out from under their oversight.

It is also important to know that all reps/negotiators should have been in dialogue with their wardens at CCI (Tehachapi), Corcoran and New Folsom SHUs. I even encourage prisoners in general population to do this as well.

There is also a pattern where all the CDCR officials who have been dealing with overseeing our process – Undersecretary Scott Kernan, retired; Adult Director George Giurbino, soon to retire; Warden G.D. Lewis, soon to retire; and Assistant Warden P.T. Smith, soon to retire – all who have nothing to lose, which is why they are not sincere in their negotiating with our representatives. Instead, they are playing GAMES.

One Love, One Struggle.