Cellmate or not: Indeterminate SHU confinement is torture

Cell of Todd Ashker in PBSP

Indeterminate SHU confinement is torture, and though not all those thus situated are in cells alone (some have cellies), this makes the torture no less acute, and in some ways even more challenging.

Like all oppressed people, prisoners confined to these torture units must not only contend with seeking ways to resist the unrelenting, daily assaults on their psyche and humanity, but must also contend with the prospect of people who have never been subjected to the inexorable psychological and physical degradation of being confined to a bathroom with 2 bunks crammed into it for 23-24 hours a day, every day, trying to define our reality.

It has recently been suggested that those confined to these sensory deprivation torture units indefinitely, but who have a cellie, are not in “solitary confinement,” as though another human occupying a space not even large enough for one will somehow mitigate the deleterious effects of this isolation. It doesn’t. The only marked difference is the number of stressors you must contend with in a day. Having a cellmate under this circumstance forces you to modify your daily life to account for the mood swings, biological activities, and other idiosyncrasies of someone who is always – no matter how far in this tiny cell you go – only 2 steps away from you. 

As men who have a collective 60+ years in these torture units, both with cellies and without, we can state definitively what constitutes “solitary confinement” is the complete and total isolation from sensory stimuli and “normalized” human social interactions which accompany the unique conditions of torture unit confinement (i.e. S.H.U.’s, S.M.U.’s, supermaxes, ad-seg’s, etc.), not whether another human has been crammed off into this tiny space with you.

The love, friendship, admiration and respect we hold for one another is genuine and abiding, but has no impact on how isolation affects the mind, and how you may perceive others or their activities. We may hold a conversation with one another, or a neighbor through the vent, then not say a word to another for 2 or 3 days save “excuse me” when sliding past or using the toilet; that anyone truly believes having a cellmate somehow lessens the effects of this isolation only reveals their ignorance of this reality. 

For someone to attempt to define our reality in these torture units, who’ve never experienced it for a month, let alone decades, is no different than U.S. government officials and policy makers attempting to define the realities of the First Nations (Native Americans) who they had massacred, forced onto reservations, and then into “boarding schools” where they raped children of their language, culture, identity and innocence. Can anyone identify the reality of the Apache child whose hair is cut to serve his tribal identity  and then beaten for speaking their native tongue, but that Apache child? No, of course not! Neither can anyone define the reality of the prisoner(s) confined in U.S. domestic torture units across the U.S. like Pelican Bay, Corcoran, and Tehachapi save those of us who have, and do, live this reality. Just as many men who have had cellies have committed suicide to escape these torture units as those without.

Solitary confinement must be defined by the effects this isolation, and the torture techniques used to break men, has on those so situated. We should know. All of us have been both with and without cellies over our periods of indefinite SHU confinement. Despite our level of development and continued advancement it would be the height of hubris for us to contend this isolation has not adversely affected our minds and bodies. For anyone to consider these conditions anything less than torture could only be a prison industrialist, or some other type of draconian public official.

In the final analysis, torture must be defined by the effects it has on its victims and no one who has been confined to these indefinite torture units for any length of time, either single or double celled, has escaped the psychological and physical devastation of the torture unit.

N.C.T.T.-Cor-SHU

May 2013

NCTTCorSHU.org

July 8th: Peaceful Protests of refusing food in CA SHU's and elsewhere will resume if demands are not met!

Please spread this flyer, thank you! Also follow NCTTCOrSHU.org (this site), Californiaprisonwatch.org, Stopmassincarceration.org, SFBayview.com, Prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com, and other sites with updates.
Also actions of solidarity are planned in other states (Louisiana for one, Ohio may follow). CDCR should at least hear and talk with the prisoners and their representatives!

Latest on CDCR's proposed new " STG" program is that NONE of the prisoners in the units in at least Cor-SHU 4B 1L have signed a "contract" that CDCR has installed to push prisoners to comply with their new solitary confinement punishment rules.

Institutionalized racism and censorship are relatives

This comes from the SF Bay View, May 24, 2013:

Statement from the Pelican Bay Human Rights Movement First Amendment Campaign
by Sondai Dumisani, Abasi Ganda, Mutope Duguma, Abdul O. Shakur, Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The W.L. Nolen Mentorship Program

This was published on the SF Bay View site and in its April issue


by Kíjana Tashiri Askari, Baridi Yero and Yafeu Iyapo

“To enable the people of the community to have an intelligent or informed opinion about matters of importance, the principal role of leaders is to study and to institute studies upon the basis of which plans are developed.” – from “The Destruction of Black Civilization,” Page 357, by Chancellor Williams

Mission Statement

The W.L. Nolen Mentorship Program (WLNMP) is a community-based pen pal service that has been constructed in order to provide the people of our communities with an opportunity to connect with and engage the current class and generation of New Afrikan Black Revolutionaries on several fronts. There are many within our communities who have unfortunately succumbed to an incorrect level of understanding, that the New Afrikan Black Liberation Movement, as it once was constructed under the tutelage and guidance of such beautiful and courageous New Afrikan Black brothas as W.L. Nolen, William Christmas, James McClain, Cleveland Edwards, Alvin “Sweet Jugs” Miller, Jeffrey “Khatari” Gaulden, Comrade George Jackson and countless others was somehow ended when these brothas were murdered by the fascist goons of this police state!

There is an urgent need for this level of false consciousness to be corrected to accurately reflect the New Afrikan Black Liberation movement as it existed in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It is still being propagated by today’s class of New Afrikan Black Revolutionaries, as predicated upon the continuum of the same ideological struggle of New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalism (NARN). That struggle entails resisting the litany of human rights abuses, such as genocide, that are based upon systemic cultural deprivation and social isolation; torture by way of indefinite solitary confinement; institutional racism; police brutality; arbitrary parole board denials; inadequate food and nutrition; inadequate medical and mental health care; being deprived of our First Amendment freedoms of speech, expression and association; and falsely labeling prisoners as gang members.

Objectives

The W.L. Nolan Mentorship Program will serve as a medium to negate the level of false consciousness amongst the people by providing the people with a correct understanding of the New Afrikan Black Liberation Movement via the social principles of “Each One Teach One,” which is our communal, cooperative work, where the people will have the opportunity to educate themselves on various issues by corresponding with New Afrikan Black Revolutionaries.

For those individuals who are not familiar with the social concept of “Each One Teach One,” it essentially entails replacing “individualism” with “collectivism,” where the problems of the individual become the problems of the community. By speaking with one voice via our collective struggles of unified activity that is geared towards finding and developing community-based solutions, we will protect the health of our communities.

“Each One Teach One” essentially entails replacing “individualism” with “collectivism,” where the problems of the individual become the problems of the community.

Hence, participants of the WLNMP are encouraged to discuss and write about any personal issue that they may need mentorship with, as we New Afrikan Black Revolutionaries can provide tutelage and guidance in the following areas:

1) violence prevention and intervention;
2) developing critical thinking skills;
3) cultural tolerance and sensitivity;
4) alternatives to joining gangs;
5) support for single mothas;
6) economic empowerment;
7) how to overcome alcohol and drug addiction;
8) domestic violence conflict resolution;
9) avoiding negative peer pressure; and 
10) providing tools to help develop community responsibility and awareness.

A study guide will be provided to the people as a part of the WLNMP so the people will have the opportunity to raise their level of understanding of the New Afrikan Black Liberation movement as it is presently constructed in today’s slave kamps (prisons) to thus uproot the materialism of false consciousness amongst the people. The issue of being right or wrong, as it pertains to the material in the study guide, is of no real significance, as freedom is a constant struggle!


But, my people, it is imperative to understand, that the WLNMP can only be sustained by each correspondent being willing to donate and contribute stamps and writing paper as a part of their participation and correspondence, as this is the only way that communication can be maintained. We’re only allowed to have up to 40 stamps or embossed envelopes and a total of 500 sheets of writing paper sent to us per each mailing. However, any amount – e.g., 5 to 10 stamps or embossed envelopes and 50 sheets of writing paper – that is sent will be definitely appreciated, as it will go a long way towards achieving the objectives herein.
Participants will be required to fill out the WLNMP application so that your progress and completion of the program can be properly documented with a certificate of achievement and extra credits if you’re a person in school.

And on that note, all power to the people who do not fear real freedom!
Educate to Liberate!

For more information, contact us at:

• Kijana Tashiri Askari, s/n M. Harrison, H-54077, D3-122, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Yafeu Iyapo, s/n L. Alexander, B-72288, D3-118, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532
• Baridi Yero, s/n J. Williamson, D-34288, D4-107, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532

Alarming: Corcoran SHU administrators are directing staff to dispense with California law and state procedures/policy regarding mass hunger strikes

On Monday April 8^th they ran no yard on 4B facility in Corcoran-SHU. We of course investigated as to why we were, yet again, denied yard access without explanation and discovered staff had all gone to some sort of “training.”

By chance, or design, one of the N.C.T.T.-Cor-SHU coordinators was under escort by 2 officers who, by happenstance or design, began discussing the nature of this training that would take another 2 days of additional training to complete:

In preparation for the July 8^th peaceful protest action (hunger strike, work stoppage, etc.) Corcoran SHU administrators are directing staff to dispense with California law and state procedures/policy regarding mass hunger strikes and instead will institute a policy designed to raise the potential for maximum casualties (deaths) amongst prisoner participants, while negating the existence of input data or any health care services monitoring information.

CDCR staff at Corcoran have been directed that there will be no weigh ins, blood pressure checks, or other medical monitoring of hunger strike participants for the duration of the July 8^th peaceful protest. Instead, a single officer will be given a video camera to “monitor” participants every few days or so. The facility will be locked down, a state of emergency enacted and all yard, visits, and medical ducats will be suspended. No one will leave the cells. No medical intervention of any kind, including health care services daily nursing observations and weekly pcp evaluations as mandated by California CorrectionalHealth Care Services Policy Manual 1.m.s.p.&p., vol. 4, chapter 22.2, will be allowed.

Once a participant loses consciousness, if he is discovered by staff before he expires (dies), he will then receive medical intervention in the form of force feeding (physicians order for life sustaining treatment). Once this occurs the participant will be considered no longer on “hunger strike.”

Many of you may see the obvious contradiction in prison staff being trained by warden Gilespie to intentionally violate the law and health care policy, with the complicity of prison doctors, nurses and technicians, to intentionally jeopardize the lives of peaceful protestors – but what’s not obvious, and in our opinion most insidious, by willfully preventing input data to even be collected, eliminating visits, and confining any proof of the hunger strike to correctional officer videography – CDCR can control the narrative completely.

With plausible deniability pre-structured, this approach allows CDCR to under-report actual hunger strike participant numbers, claim those on hunger strike are actually eating by recording on video non-participants who are eating, releasing the video’s to the press characterizing them as hunger strikers who are not actually striking, and do all of this while denying protestors access to mandated health care evaluation and clinical monitoring, ensuring serious injury or death befalls at least some protestors. When it does, just like with Christian Gomez, they can claim the victim was only hunger striking a day or so and instead died of a “pre-existing medical condition unrelated to the hunger strike.”

That this premeditated violation of their own policy is both illegal and immoral is a given, and in fact of secondary concern. That they are doing so to maintain this domestic torture program, with all its inhumane and arbitrary components intact, at the expense of your tax dollars, our minds, bodies, and very souls is what should outrage us all.

Our cause is a righteous cause, our peaceful protest to realize the 5 Core Demands just and fair. We can not allow the state to undermine the purpose and impact of these sacrifices. We are prepared to die to end great injustice, should we not be allowed the dignity of these sacrifices being accorded the state’s policy and our opposition acting within the guidelines of their own law? A criminal is defined not by what he/she is called, but by what they do. Who are the criminals in this case? The answer is as obvious as the question, all that’s left to be decided is if you will stand idly by as this crime is committed.

A Luta Continua

N.C.T.T.-Cor-SHU  - Ncttcorshu.org  - Twitter.com/ncttcorshu

April 10, 2013

Contemplations in a Holding Tank

How much can a brother take, as I’m sitting in this holding tank.
On my way from New Folsom State, it’s pitiful to think how low we’ve sank.
I look out of the 2x4 cage, at the merciless faces of these devils
CDC’s finest are paid, to reduce men to a sub-human level.
The information age in a micro-chip, as I race this post-industrial apocalypse.
The new world order propaganda perpetrated by the same old world fascists.
Our brothers are being locked up for life, and forced to submit to D.N.A. coding.
Prisoners are free sources of labor without rights, and you wonder why the county jails are
Overflowing.

Wake the hell up ‘cause they killin’ us and they don’t wait or hesitate.
Letting the media scare you, the more genocidal laws they can legislate.
House bill 15090 paid for the creation of A.I.D.S. to further their depopulation program.
A biological weapon bought and paid, and you bought that line about a monkey in the
Motherland.

My people obviously don’t see what I see, the thought slowly dawns on me
Those folks are lying on t.v., that smiling bitch on the news is phony
Quit biting for that bullshit, capitalists are incapable of morality,
They don’t care that your child’s illiterate, they’re too concerned with urban casualties.
They talk of family values, but criminalize young New Afrikan fathers every day of the week.
The child with no male patterning often dies, seeking his examples in the street.
They talk of being tuff on crime while giving us drugs and Tek-9’s,
They don’t care about lives-not yours or mine – just ensure ‘Amerika’s Most Wanted’ gets your
Dropped dimes.

It costs over $50,000 dollars to keep you locked up a year, and that ain’t no doubt.
But it only costs $15,000 dollars a year to send you to college, now you figure it out.
Now the Secretary of Defense is stating and making economic, foreign and domestic policy.
When the Nazi’s did it in Germany it was called fascism, now how fuckin’ blind can you be?

I’m getting on the bus now I gotta go, but the solution to society’s woes is as simple as
Putting bread in a basket.

The system of capitalist exploitation is evil and everyone knows, so we must fight oppression
Until it’s buried like a skeleton in a casket.

H.

Defiance

Artwork: cop. Heshima Denham

Defiance

Defiantly I stand in the midst of adversity and persecution, like a stone golem of old I am, impervious to the storm of conviction allayed against my very soul.

Defiantly I face those whose power is greater than my own. Like a warrior who is faced with unbeatable odds I fight on without pause.

Defiantly I look evil in its deceitful face though masked by false justice and spit in the eye of the oppressor.

Defiantly I march against my enemy, its allies and all who would advocate my destruction.

I am rebellion unbound.

Defiantly I face death and stand in prison like a standard that rallies all those who will no longer tolerate unjust imprisonment and who dare not falter in their battle for true democracy.

Defiantly I speak, defiantly I stand, defiantly I fight on, and will never surrender, never submit, never give in.

I am the unimprisonable, the unkillable, the unstoppable, the unenslavable; I am he who is spurned the world over yet who holds his head hight in the light of day.

I am the seed of ham. I am the Blackman. The Afrikan.

I am defiance.

H.