Original Artwork by Jose Villarreal for Indigenous Peoples Day
Editors Note: Jose is one of several power-FUL PNN Plantation prison correspondents who was involved in the Hunger Strike to end all solitary confinement and the in-human treatment of all of our incarcerated brothers and sisters.
Revolutionary Greetings! I have temporarily stopped my hunger strike- for now. There are many things and efforts taking place here in the SHU. Some people are going on strike for a week or two while others are jumping back in for the long haul; some are jumping in alone, while some are doing so in groups and this will continue so long as the state continues to refuse to end this torture.
It should shock the conscience of the planet that people will die because a state would rather continue to torture humans than to save lives. The heart of our 5 demands is to end the torture in these concentration kamps, but these demands are in odds with the states’ goals. We know what their goals are, we prisoners know them well and the state is determined to carry out their deadly program at all costs. But we need the public to understand what the states’ intention is; we need people out in society to understand what these SHU’s are all about and why the state is making such a fuss over keeping “business as usual” even when word is getting out about their dirty little secrets.
The people should take a minute to notice why is it that some of the best prison theoreticians, the most honorable prison revolutionaries, selfless acts, organized strikes and activism deriving from the SHU? California leads the U.S. in the prison boom- it is ground zero and SHU prisoners are tortured by the thousands in solitary confinement, but the SHU is the spot where it seems the most transformation is taking place, where prisoners are learning and shedding their old bourgeois, individualistic ways so why the torture?
Someone out in society who is unfamiliar with the prison kamps or the injustice system may be a little confused as to why those who are clearly bettering themselves are being tortured more than any other prisoners. Just so you’re with me now, those who continue in the same old mentality may be left alone on the prisons general population but those who transform, become conscience and attempt to better themselves, their nation or people in general, these are the individuals who are tortured. It’s a very simple explanation and this is because these SHU’s (read concentration kamps) were built primarily for the revolutionary, the conscience, the prison activist or jailhouse lawyer. In classic co Intel pro style these kamps were designed to neutralize the enemy of the state or as the state puts it “persons of influence”. This is what it comes down to, this is the bare bones of what we are facing and what this prison struggle is all about whether some participating strikers even realize it themselves but this is what we are truly up against here.
Our development as people within these dungeons goes against state interests, and one quick example to prove this is when SHU prisoners here in Pelican Bay released the call to “end all hostilities” between all nationalities. According to what the sate claims the Pelican Bay SHU holds the state of California’s “Gang Leaders”. The state isolates prisoners here stating their “power and influence” on other prisoners and youth out in society. That said, when these same prisoners issue a call to end hostilities, such a call should carry weight since according to the state this is where “power and influence” exists, so why wouldn’t the state publicize this call for peace? The state has huge resources in corporate media, so why wasn’t this call broadcast on every evening news program? Why didn’t we see it on the front page of every major corporate newspaper? After all coming from so-called “gang leaders” this call would save thousands of poor lives right? The reason the state is attempting to not just make this call go away, but to punish those and possibly assassinate those who initiated this call for peace and the end to hostilities is because it goes against the states’ interests, plain and simple.
The ruling class will not stand by while poor people are transformed and mobilized to empower the people, they will target these people and neutralize the look to history and back in the 70’s when the national liberation struggles peaked, groups like the Brown Berets, the Black Panthers and the Young Lords party who were transforming and mobilizing poor brown and black were targeted and neutralized. The “persons of influence” were served prison or the morgue. When prisoners in Attica transformed and mobilized they were neutralized and gunned down. Today as California prisoners are transforming and mobilizing. Many of us will also be neutralized by the state whether we are starved to death or by other means, but the state will do all it can to teach us a lesson for disobeying the lash. But at this point we see nothing that can be worse than torture!
One of the ways the state is retaliating at this time is once those who go a certain amount of time without eating they take away all your property and then re-house you. When this happens, the prisoner is unable to communicate with the outside world via letters. You are unable to write letters because you and everyone else in your pod have no paper, envelopes or stamps because all your property is bagged up in some storeroom. Even if you would get this material somehow you have no address book to write anyone outside of prison. This extreme isolation is used to further our torture and makes it difficult for our outside supporters to know what’s really going on. But those prisoners who are not moved and who do have their property it is important that we write to our friends and family as well as outside supporters in order to explain what is occurring in this kamp, while countering state slander against our beautiful struggle. We have the ability to be a voice when this privilege is currently out of reach for those in some in all boxer underwear and nothing else in their cell, held incommunicado.
Recently on a local radio station it was revealed that over 20 prisoners who have been on continuous hunger strike since July 8th to Folsom Prison which also has a SHU. The SHU at Folsom is used for medical, as it is close to U.C. Davis hospital. This tells us that these men who have been moved are suffering life-threatening symptoms and that should they die the prison would not want the publicity of 20+ prisoners dying in Pelican Bay SHU. This is another misstep because we will make sure the truth is told! What was also learned from the radio is that the four main representatives here in the SHU who signed the “agreement to end hostilities” and who were our prison negotiators have been taken out of the SHU and moved to the Ad Seg (ASU). The ASU is usually used to house people waiting for a bed to open in the SHU. What’s unique- and horrifying in this case is that the prison not just moved these four men to ASU without property, without even a pen to write with and left unable to write letters or communicate what is occurring to them. What’s more before they were moved whole pods were emptied out in order to house four men.
To get an idea of what ASU looks like, there is a long hallway and as you walk down the hall there is four “wings” on the left side and four wings on the right side. Each wing is a unit which has around twelve cells and prisoners are held in these windowless cells with nothing in them but a mattress and a sheet. What the prison has done is place these four men in a unit or wing along and one of the men in each of the four corners of the ASU. Each wing has a door so that even if one would yell at the top of your lungs the other wing would not hear; you are essentially sealed off from anyone even your fellow prisoners.
The reps are being tortured in this was as they hit the 60th day of hunger because this is history repeating itself. These are men attempting t negotiate to resolve the strikes and find solutions with the state and they get this treatment. These are the men who sent the call to end hostilities in an attempt to end decades-long wars and an attempt to save countless future lives from poor on poor crime and for this they are tortured in this way. These men are attempting to transform and mobilize poor people in these kamps who have been cast off from society and for this they are singled out to be neutralized alone in the four corners of the ASU. What is taking place in the ASU is the state heightening psychological warfare to the max where an entire unit is emptied in order to house one person! This is an attempt to instill a sense of helplessness in these reps and highlight isolation in their minds in order to inflict the most damage. But what these bourgeois officials cannot grasp is this is not a game and people are ready to die for this and because of our understanding of who and what we are up against we are that much more determined to win. State officials are paid to do this but we do this to survive! The best way to describe this is how US military were in Vietnam being paid to fight while the Vietnamese people were in it for their very survival and this was why they were successful.
But people should understand this is a protracted struggle and will take different forms and will continue for some time but we have made a leap forward and will continue to transform and mobilize these kamps from the inside out!
Peoples power siempre!
Jose H. Villarreal