Working to Extend Democracy to All  V Volume V l Volume 1, N 1 Number b 1 1

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November  N N November b 2011 2011

UN URGES END TO LONG TERM SOLITARY By Patrick Worsnip, Oct 18 2011 NITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. torture investigator called on nations on Tuesday to end lengthy solitary confinement in prisons, saying it could cause serious mental and physical damage and amount to torture. Solitary confinement is practiced in a majority of countries for reasons ranging from punishment to protection of prisoners from fellow inmates but is subject to widespread abuse, said Juan Mendez, U.N. special rapporteur on torture.

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“It can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment when used as a punishment, during pretrial detention, indefinitely or for a prolonged period, for persons with mental disabilities or juveniles,” he told the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee. “Segregation, isolation, separation, cellular, lockdown, supermax, the hole, secure housing unit ... whatever the name, solitary confinement should be banned by states as a punishment or extortion (of information) technique,” Mendez said. Citing studies showing a significant number of people would experience serious health problems and that some lasting mental damage was caused by just a few days of isolation, he said all solitary confinement longer than 15 days should be banned. He defined solitary confinement as an inmate being held in isolation from all except guards for at least 22 hours a day. Mendez told reporters he conceded that short-term solitary confinement was admissible under certain circumstances, such as the protection of lesbian, gay or bisexual detainees or people who had fallen foul of prison gangs. But he said there was “no

justification for using it as a penalty, because that’s an inhumane penalty.” Mendez disputed the use of solitary confinement on national security grounds, citing the case of a woman in China who was isolated for two years of an eight-year sentence imposed for supplying state secrets to foreigners. In a written report submitted to the General Assembly, he also described as “problematic” the use of super maximum security jails where solitary confinement is routine. He cited the United States, where he said between 20,000 and 25,000 people are being held in isolation. Referring to Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of leaking secret documents to WikiLeaks, Mendez told journalists there had been a “big improvement” in his detention since he was moved to Fort Leavenworth military base in Kansas after eight months in solitary at a military brig in Virginia. Mendez had sought a meeting with Manning, who is awaiting a court martial, but they failed to persuade U.S. authorities to let them speak privately. Mendez said he planned to issue a report on Manning and other cases in the next few weeks. Mendez also criticized the holding of pretrial detainees in solitary, which he said was common in Denmark. While this could be justified for short periods, it needed to be strictly controlled, he said. Mendez, a law professor at American University in Washington, said three days he himself spent in solitary confinement under military rule in his native Argentina in the 1970s “were the three longest days in my life.” ♦

STOP SOLITARY

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he ACLU, together with our statebased affiliates, scholars, activists, mental health experts, and faithbased organizations around the country, is engaged in a campaign to challenge the use of long-term solitary confinement – in the courts, in the legislatures, in reforms of correctional practice, and in the battle for public opinion. The goal of the Stop Solitary campaign is to limit and abolish the use of long-term solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails and juvenile detention centers. The ACLU website also provides pages for getting started with the campaign to abolish solitary confinement in your area, such as: • Stop Solitary – Quick Facts • Stop Solitary Briefing Paper • Getting Started – Collecting Corrections Data in Your State • Campaign Dos and Don’ts • Model Social Networking Language • Model Stop Solitary Legislation • Model Fiscal Analysis Memo • Checklist for a Visit to a Supermax Facility For more information see: http://www. aclu.org/prisoners-rights/stop-solitary-advocacy-campaign-tools

Excerpts from a letter written by Chad Landrum [Chad Landrum is a Hispanic prisoner from PBSP-SHU who, as a result of his participation in HS2, has been moved to the hospital at Corcoran. Chad suffers from end stage liver disease and Hep C.]

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t the request of the Pelican Bay’s CMO (Chief Medical Officer), who made a call down here in advance, I was singled out for discriminatory treatment immediately upon our arrival [at Corcoran]. I was further isolated, even from all other comrades, of which I have since been effectively “extraordinarily rendered” and lost down one of these long hospital corridors. My circumstances have since retained continuity, and aside from receiving your letter, I’ve heard, and know, of nothing concerning our circumstances [with respect to the Hunger Strike]. I recently broke my own hunger strike after I began experiencing an episode of encephalopathy which was well on its way to incapacitating me, both physically and mentally. Had I not been in a psychologically compromised state, upon my recovery, I should have continued my course. On the other hand, I knew that this second round of the hunger strike hadn’t retained the degree of momentum that we had generated around the first hunger strike. In a nutshell, it was insufficiently planned and executed. Our message and goals not only need to be more concise and reach the prison masses directly; they need to be inclusive of them and their interests beyond the validation process. When the conditions are right and complement one another both subjectively and objectively, there exists the dialectical unity necessary to facilitate the further progression of our struggle, and when the time for martyrs descends down upon us, I am convinced that the love and compassion I retain for the convict masses and all oppressed gente, will be equally matched with the quantity of discipline necessary to do what’s correct, morally and in correspondence with objective necessity, so that others may live. Not simply as living and breathing empty biological vessels, for this alone is not too little, but to live as the social beings who we are. For human beings, social intercourse and all of its manifestations are as much of a requirement to define life as oxygen is to sustain it. To the puerco’s (pigs) a sentence 2

of perpetual isolation behind the pseudojustified validation process is nothing less than a means of perpetuating their economic self-interest. For those of us unfortunate enough to land in these tombs, it is a psychological death sentence to be carried out forthwith by the slow strangulation of our social intercourse, the social oxygen required for the development of the human species and our personalities—that which gives each individual of the collective a distinct identity. The dialectical connection between the individual and the collective is a connection of interdependence and inseparability. For the collective is the group expression of the totality of the multitude of individualities, and likewise, each individual is a manifestation of the collective, contradictions and all, that gives shape to our individual identities. To subjugate one to the total deprivation of social intercourse is to artificially separate the individual from the collective, thus subjecting one to a slow torturous process of “social extermination”, which when carried out under sanitized conditions is not so apparently conspicuous to those self-proclaimed defenders of humanity who might notice otherwise, or who choose not to, where we strung up by our wrists and being electrocuted. Instead, under the refined forms of sensory deprivation, it is a quieter and subtler method in its form, but with essentially the same socially incapacitating and deadly consequences that reduces the once social being to a dehumanized state of existence tantamount to a social lobotomy. The most extroverted individual will turn inwards psychologically, eventually becoming socially incapacitated and incapable of forming any social bonds despite one’s instincts and inner desire to do just the opposite to, connect with others both physically and emotionally—to have human contact. ♦

arraigned Dec. 9 for the charge of “damaging part of a vehicle” filed by District Attorney Jon Alexander. In June, Sayre allegedly tampered with a correctional sergeant’s 2004 BMW sedan by pointing the windshield wipers’ upward, twisting the rearview mirrors around and piling “two handfuls” of small rocks on the hood, a Del Norte County sheriff’s deputy report stated. A correctional officer later overheard Sayre fulminating about a car being in his spot prompting the officer to go inspect the vehicle, the report said. Sayre was overheard saying “words to the effect of ‘That’s okay; I left a nasty little message on the car,’” said the report. When the correctional officer went out to the BMW, he found the note Sayre left, which read “The next time you park here, I key the hell out of it,” the report said. The BMW’s owner surveyed the damages after her shift and found there were scratches in the paint on the passenger door, hood and trunk, the report said. There were also chips of paint gouged on the right side of the car, the report said. An auto shop estimated the cost of repairing the damages at $2,600, the report stated. A surveillance video captured Sayre tampering with the car and walking around it, the report said. Sayre confirmed he altered the wipers and mirrors, placed rocks on the hood and left the note, but said he had been careful to not damage the BMW, the report said. “We tend to associate this type of sophomoric behavior with the Level 1 inmates on the other side of the walls,” said Alexander. Sayre was unavailable for comment, a prison spokesman said. ♦

CONTENTS Excerpts From Letter ...............2

Medical officer faces criminal complaint Accused of vandalism at Pelican Bay Written by Anthony Skeens, The Triplicate November 23, 2011 misdemeanor criminal complaint has been filed against the chief medical officer at Pelican Bay State Prison, accusing him of vandalizing a coworker’s car that was parked in his designated space. Michael C. Sayre, 64, is scheduled to be

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Medical Officer Charged ..........2 Minutes of Meeting ..................3 Why I Chained Myself..............3 Summary of Conversation .......4 Red Onion Torture Unit ............6 Three Hunger Strikers Die .......8 Are Gang Members Special? ..9

¡Basta B t Y Ya!!

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition Meeting: November 21, 2011 Prisoner Updates: Prisoner at pelican bay says they’re getting a gang-related 115 (not regular 115). Related to a phone call w/ a family member. Conversation was in Spanish. Was translated and supposedly contains “gang” info. Letters from prisoner who is dying liver failure. Subjected to preferential treatment. Complaints about nursing staff. He would rather be in Pelican Bay. Transferred to Corcoran. He said we could try to get his property back to him b/c they took his property away. Letters from Corcoran: prisoners have lost privileges, lost their beanies. Several prisoners received 115s. Penny will make copies and give to Jay/Molly Sharon’s penpal at North Kern got heavy retaliation for the strike. He can’t get Sharon’s mail. It’s getting returned to her as “gang” material. Prisoner can filed a 602 (standard appeal form for prisoners to use with any complaint) and the corresponder could file something under Title 15. Will send info w/ names taken out to Jay/ Molly for media. Suicides: Funeral service tomorrow for Hozel: 2723 San Pablo in Oakland. Jay spoke to mother of Hozel’s daughter and people are welcome to come & show support/give respect/condolences to the family. Yolanda also confirmed that Hozel was on strike. Carol also got letters regarding Hozel: Nov 6th: Hozel was on a hunger strike. Was hospitalized. Family thinking he died b/c of lack of medical care, not that he was driven to kill himself per se. Alex Machado: filed a case last year about his wrong placement in the SHU. They moved him to Pelican Bay & his case was dismissed. Transfer people from prison to prison mooting out your litigation. He was validated during a “riot” in ’09. he had info misconduct by the gang unit during this incident. Both filed cases in court. We’ve heard they were both jailhouse lawyers. Not confirmed yet. These incidents are endemic to the prison system & the conditions. So how do we Number 1

connect this back to the demands and the fight we’re in and need to continue? What’s the baseline? Do the suicides in some way reflect the hunger strike? We need figures around suicide rates These suicides need to fuel our legislative front Coleman case: focused on mental health They go through a very elaborate breakdown of classifying deaths and investigation What is the procedure/protocol for CDCR re: deaths? Get a lawyer to figure it out What info do we need from families: Vick: what does the autopsy report say? What was his relationship to the hunger strike? Alex: Hozel: we have the most info about Penny can help gather info Jane Kahn= lawyer to contact. Jay will hit her up. Decision: integrate work/focus on the suicides within our on-going strategies: use these incidences as we’ve used specific incidence of abuse & violence to expose the entire prison system. 12,000 people went on strike b/c these incidences happen every day. Media Update: Media team’s been contact by Terry Thorton. She’s accusing us of lying since our last press release. We’re working on getting above info and possibly sending out another press release this week if needed. Please continue to send media needs & ideas to Molly & Jay Legal & Mediation Update: Center for Constitutional Rights interested in filing a suit next year. Go after some of the due-process issues & gang validation. One way to attack long-term confinement for lots of people. Could do a media splash around law suit Gang Management Policy Proposal/ What’s going on with changes to gang validation? Team of CDCR people are supposed to write something & give it Mathew Cate, who would have time to look it over for approval (we’re talking two months from end of strike; mid-December) Then the document will be given to the stakeholders for review, and then it is revealed to the world & published, comment periods, hearing possibly (this part could take about a year). Under Secretary could write a memo even if the main thing is not yet approved.

Legislative Update: Working on putting a bill together: Max SHU placement=[Redacted] Creation of some sort of review board of CDCR (community run, legislative, combo Restoration of credit for time-served during SHU placement. Still on the table: could do a procedural bill of rights? Didn’t want to sponsor media access demand b/c someone else is taking this up most likely Mental health issues: Want to & need to get a legislator up to Pelican Bay Penny hit up New Mexico to talk about how they overhauled SHU. Getting more info. Also looking into Mississippi & Colorado. ♦

Why I Chained Myself to the State Building in Los Angeles

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n a word, torture… torture in a brutal and barbaric penal system hell-bent on the destruction of thousands of prisoners in high-tech torture chambers called Security Housing Units or SHU’s. In the SHU you’re locked up in a small, windowless concrete cell 23 hours a day, with minimum human contact and maximum sensory deprivation. Imagine your only human contact with the outside world is the punch of a prison guard, or a violent gas explosion as part of “extracting” you from your cell. Imagine never hearing music ever again. Think about everything that makes you human… that keeps you physically and mentally alive… that connects you with the world and other people… that gives you a reason to live, to love, to learn and think…. All this is what the SHU tries to extinguish. Of the 1100 prisoners in the SHU in Pelican Bay State Prison, over 500 have been literally buried alive in the SHU, entombed, for over 10 years; 78 for over 20 years. The cruelty and illegitimacy of the State of California’s actions must stop and stopping torture requires such inhumanity becoming a MAJOR focus of resistance in society. Prisoners at Pelican Bay and other state prisons have rebelled against all this; for 20 days in July and now for 19 days, from September 26 to October 14, upwards of 3

12,000 courageous prisoners have carried out a hunger strike. The prisoners stopped eating, risked their lives, and made their just and reasonable demands to end long term solitary confinement and torture, and snatched the initiative from the prison authorities, spotlighting a towering crime that has been for far too long covered up. What these prisoners have done is truly heroic. They are an inspiration, setting an example for everyone fighting for an end to injustice, and we must come to their side. Yet in California the Governor supports the prison officials in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation(CDCR). As the CDCR viciously intensified their almost unimaginably cruel treatment of prisoners who are on a hunger strike with even greater repression and violence these past weeks and months, Gov. Brown fully backed the assault, saying: “We have individuals who are dedicated to their gang membership who order people to be killed, who order crimes to be committed on the outside. My recommendation is to deal effectively with gangs in prison.” No, Governor Brown torture is unequivocally unacceptable, no matter what labels are put on prisoners. This is why I chained myself to the State Building in Los Angeles. The CDCR response to this hunger strike has been vicious, outrageous, and ominous: intimidation and retaliation against prisoners and their families; “general population” prisoners put into isolation for participating in the hunger strike; fluids and vitamins deliberately withheld to further incapacitate the striking prisoners; expulsion orders to two key mediation team lawyers who have been banned from Pelican Bay prison pending an investigation into whether they had “jeopardized the safety and security of the CDCR”; denial of family visits; further isolation of hunger striking SHU prisoners by placing them “down under” in Administrative Segregation Units, in extreme cold with no medicine and medical attention; brutal cell extractions of hunger striking prisoners, with the use of suffocating gas explosions in the prisoners cells…. What people do on the outside of prison will be a big factor in what happens now that the prison authorities have reacted with vicious reprisals against prisoners, families, and legal advocates. The hunger strike has been halted for now. The torture, despite an epic struggle, continues… the 5 demands of the prisoners have NOT yet been met… but many, many more people, 4

millions more, learned about the SHU’s and thousands today are looking for ways to act to put an end to such inhuman, punitive treatment. We have a moral responsibility to act in a way that corresponds with the justness of the prisoners’ demands and with what is truly at stake. In the words of Revolution newspaper, a determined and bold movement outside the walls of prison is urgently needed to expose and demand an end to these high-tech torture chambers called “SHU’s”. That’s why I chained myself to the State Building in Los Angeles. ♦ By Keith James

Summary of Conversation with Scott Kernan November 11, 2011 am sending this mailing to our previous list of 16 prisoners. The main purpose of this letter is to provide the enclosed summary of the conversation that the mediation team (Laura Magnani, Ron Ahnen, Marilyn McMahon and I) had with Scott Kernan on October 13. I am sorry it has taken us this long to send it to you. But I also want to fill you in on the major developments in this last period. First, Scott Kernan has definitely retired now. His last day was October 21. He was interviewed by KALW News (public radio) and here is an excerpt: KERNAN: We dealt with the Pelican Bay Prison hunger strike non-traditionally in that we didn’t take the canteen out of the inmates’ cells, so we left them with the food that they can purchase through the store. We didn’t discipline any of the inmates. We evaluated their domains and it was very public. Our house wasn’t in order.

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We had some problems with our policies. They had gone too far. MULLANE: What polices had gone too far? KERNAN: Well some of it’s conditions of confinement, and the SHU (Security Housing Unit) policy itself – you know we have about 8,000 incidents of violence in the prison system each year that have some kind of gang involvement. I mean it’s a lot of people getting hurt and stabbed. Gangs, I can’t emphatically enough say, is one of the biggest problems that the prison system faces. We really took a sincere look at the issues that they had raised and we talked to their advocates… MULLANE: Who’s we? KERNAN: Me. I talked to the advocates regularly… MULLANE: So you went to Pelican Bay? KERNAN: I did, ultimately, go to Pelican Bay on two occasions and talk to the inmate leaders directly and admitted policies that weren’t in order. We weren’t consistent in all the SHU’s and so they were right in some of their issues. And when I say conditions of confinement, that’s one thing, but the SHU policy itself, the idea of using a validation system that places them in an indeterminate SHU environment. MULLANE: Do you think it’s a form of torture? KERNAN: I don’t. I really think that the type of inmates that belong in SHU, notwithstanding what I said about overvalidating, I think that the people that are the head of these gangs are a tremendous threat to the staff and public and to other inmate, and need to be in an environment that’s admittedly harsh, but prevents them from communicating their wishes. We’ve actually had three murders in the last couple weeks, but two of the murders were on SHU yards amongst Aryan brotherhoods. In all of my career I’ve seen significant violent and murders as a result of gang direction. So what we said we would do in the first hunger strike, we said we’d made a number of changes to the conditions of confinement and it included everything from giving them calendars and watch-caps and take a photo once a year if they’re behaving… MULLANE: Of themselves? KERNAN: Of themselves, so they can give to the families. And other things. So we’ve implemented those changes systemwide. ¡Basta Ya!

The other thing was we said that we would do a comprehensive review of our SHU polices and that we would make changes… MULLANE: Were you the one who took the secretary’s confirmation of these changes to the hunger strike leaders at Pelican Bay? KERNAN: Yes. MULLANE: And what was their response? KERNAN: Um interestingly, very positive. I went there the first time and talked to them, and put out some memorandums that outlined these changes – memorandums to the CDCR policies so that the wardens at the other places could implement it. So I went back because they were not ending the hunger strike, I went back a second time, and I sat down with them and they said, “Hey the memo that you did doesn’t say exactly what you said you would do.” So this is what I did, I gave them the memo and I put them back in the holding cell and said, “You guys go rewrite this memo so that you know that all the inmates will understand it, and I’ll be back in a little bit.” MULLANE: What did you do? KERNAN: Went to have lunch. (laughs) I went and had lunch and I knew that the risk was that they would change the memo to say that I want a swimming pool and whatever they were going to want. The risk was that they were going to take this… because again there’s this very healthy distrust that they have of me, and there’s a very healthy distrust I have of them and their motivations. But again that was the fear, so I was pleasantly surprised when I came back from lunch and they had reworked the memo and had not appreciably changed what I said. So it was just a communication barrier. So I took the memo, typed it up, signed it, gave it to them, and we distributed it across the system and that was the end of the first hunger strike. MULLANE: What was the reaction throughout the CDCR? Did people think, “Oh, that worked. That was good.” KERNAN: Oh no. They did not think that. They won’t ever think that. No. MULLANE: So you didn’t get a bunch of backslaps when you got back to Sacramento? KERNAN: No. I think they view that – and again for a lot of good reasons – they view that kind of communication, especialNumber 1

ly with the leaders that we’re talking about, I mean these are the leaders of the prison gangs that lack real family, the Mexican mafia, Nuestra Familia, the Aryan Brotherhood – these are not nice people. So for us to recognize their status, one, and to actually engage them in communication to try and see if there’s common ground that we can move was not something that I think operations people will ever feel is necessarily the right way to go about it. And to their criticism, the inmates quickly resumed the second hunger strike without good cause in my opinion. And I think emboldened that idea. [At the end of the interview, he was asked about retirement plans.] MULLANE: Are you saying that you would like to be secretary of the CDCR? KERNAN: No, what I’m saying is if that opportunity came up, it would be a very competitive process, but you know… if it was a possibility in the future, I sure wouldn’t rule it out. I love the department; I’ve done it all my life, and I’ve worked with great people and see what they go through on the line, and I’d love to take a shot at trying to run this undoable job sometime in the future. But having said that, let me go decompress for a little bit and when they come after me when this airs, I’ll say, “Forget that, I’m enjoying my golf game!” So who knows. Next topic: Replacing Scott Kernan is Terry McDonald. Marilyn and I are waiting to see what CDCR will decide to do about our exclusions from Pelican Bay. I should be hearing something soon, as Kernan had 20 work days to make a decision from the date of our meeting, and Monday is the last day. Marilyn is still waiting for a meeting to be scheduled. As you may know, representatives from Amnesty International were at Pelican Bay, Corcoran and Valley State this week. They were able to ask a lot of questions about conditions of confinement. The Guardian (a London newspaper) is planning on doing a series about long term solitary confinement in US prisons. The reporter would like to hear from SHU prisoners so feel free to write her. Sadhibh Walshe, 364 15th Street, #L, Brooklyn, NY 11215. Regarding CDCR revising regulations, we will be contacting them soon to find out the status. It has been a month since they said it would take them about a month to show Matthew Cate. Regarding legislation, the Hunger Strike

Solidarity Coalition has a subcommittee on legislation, which I am on. We are meeting weekly and will be discussing what legislation to try for. You can write me with your thoughts on this. Regarding litigation, there is a legal team continuing to do interviews, investigation and research on issues around gang validation, due process and long term solitary confinement. So, things are moving forward on several levels. I have been receiving a lot of mail, which I appreciate. I read every letter. Unfortunately, I am not able to reply to most. To the extent that you can, please let others know this. Ed Mead will be sending out mailings to a larger group, hopefully every two weeks or so. Many people have written to me about their 115s. We do want to know what is happening; I’m glad to hear that people are appealing. I was hoping to provide some legal assistance to this effort but do not know if this will be possible. One prisoner informs me that he will be writing some sort of self-help piece. We may be able to distribute that. We have heard of two suicides by hanging at Pelican Bay: Johnny Vick, who died on September 16 and a jailhouse lawyer in ASU possibly named Robert Machado, some time toward the end of October. If anyone has any information about these deaths, please write to me. People also are asking for more information about the renewed hunger strike -- what was achieved, etc. I am wondering whether any of you will be writing up a statement about his. In my own mind, one concrete result was CDCR’s statement that it intended to review everyone’s status under the new regulations. Second, the fact that the September hunger strike had almost 12,000 participants is significant in itself. While media attention was not as pronounced, there still was coverage, and it generally remained sympathetic. I think we have succeeded in framing the issue as that of torture. More legislators are concerned and expressing support. Outside supporters are continuing to carry on the issues. Supporters have reached out to, and gotten positive support from the Occupy movement. Occupy LA and (I think) Occupy Oakland endorsed the hunger strike. Supporters marched in the massive Oakland demonstration with “Human Rights for Pelican Bay Prisoners Now” banners. This is an on-going struggle. ♦ Very truly yours, Carol Strickman, Staff attorney 5

Under New Administration Torture Unit Closes then Reopens at Red Onion State Prison, And Prison Abuse on the Rise INTRODUCTION On October 4, 2011 Randy Mathena replaced Tracy S. Ray as Chief warden of Virginia’s remote Red Onion State Prison. The same day Jeff Kiser replaced Richard Rowlette as the new Assistant warden. During February 2011, Kevin McCoy was promoted to Chief of security. This new administrative trio consists of veterans and key players of Red Onion’s notorious early years of extreme physical abuse of prisoners and unconcealed racism, which generated independent investigations and scathing reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Mathena and Kiser subsequently left Red Onion to allow for a period of damage control. Meanwhile McCoy refined his game of doing dirt and cleaning up behind himself and others and maneuvered his way up the ranks – from sergeant, to lieutenant to captain, and now security chief (major). As explained in my recent article, Abu Ghraib Comes to Amerika, Ray came onboard as Red Onion’s chief warden in 2004 to repair the prison’s image, which saw a marked decline in physical abuse in favor of psychological abuse. However, Mathena and Kiser’s return, along with McCoy’s recent promotion, has seen an almost instant revival of the old program of overt physical brutality, racism and deliberate efforts to provoke and create situations to speciously justify physical abuse. B-3 Torture Unit Closed Down Abu Ghraib Comes to America brought exposure and protest of a psychological torture unit [B-3] constructed under Ray at the prison, and other illegal practices and conditions. As I discussed, Ray’s ‘justifications’ for constructing B-3 was the murder of a Red Onion prisoner during the summer of 2010. I also pointed out that B-3 was not a meaningful response, because guards frequently act to incite and facilitate prisoneron- prisoner violence. This was all confirmed when the accused killer Robert Glenson pled guilty to that and a prior prisoner killing, and at his trials implicated Ray and other officials as knowing about, and being complicit in, those murders. Worse still, on the very day Glenson was transferred from Red Onion to Virginia’s death row in Waverly, Vir6

ginia, another prisoner was killed at Red Onion, after he and his cellmate, who were forcibly housed together in a small cell for some 23 hours per day, repeatedly requested to be housed separately due to incompatibility issues. This death occurred in the unit adjoining B-3, with lieutenant Delmer Tate the responsible and supervising guard of both units. Together, both Red Onion’s and Tracy Ray’s public and political images took a nosedive, leading to the return of Mathena as warden the following month. Tate was booted out of B-building less than two weeks after the latest prisoner death, and Mathena promptly closed B-3 down, admitting the torture unit to be problematic to operate, and pointless. B-3 was emptied and formally closed on October 21, 2011. B-3 Reopens Considering the great sums of taxpayer money wasted on B-3’s construction and the inefficiency of leaving an entire housing unit empty indefinitely, Mathena and Co. were destined to find some use for it. So, not even a week after its closing, I was thrown into the unit. This following Mathena’s discovering that I’d done a radio interview by phone, discussing the racism and abuse at Red Onion, and persecution of politically active prisoners. McCoy had me totally banned from all telephone use. The pretext for the move to B-3 was obviously staged. First, on October 25, 2011, my entire A-3 unit was subjected to a routine shakedown, myself included. Then, the next day, a second shakedown was staged–which is almost unheard of. While all others were searched by regular low-ranking guards, I was singled out to be searched by lieutenants Delmer Tate and Stacy Day. Initially, they conducted the cell search in usual fashion with me standing outside the cell restrained and watching. Then Tate claimed need to search the cell outside my presence and had me locked inside a shower stall. All my property was then removed from the cell, and I, (handcuffed behind my back and leg shackled), along with my belongings, was moved to B-3, with a K-9 guard and large menacing dog trailing closely behind me; like a scene from Abu Ghraib. Dogs are almost never used at Red Onion. I was put into a cell with a video camera inside. I promptly pressed complaints on the move as punitive, retaliatory and unjustified. Both Mathena and Kiser admitted as much, both having come into the A-3

unit and spoken to me briefly while I was locked inside the shower stall. Inside B-3 I am banned from all contact with other prisoners. Later that day, Donell Blount, a frequent and effective litigator against abuses at the prison, was brought into B-3, also by Tate. The pretext for moving Blount in was a nail being missing from a fixture inside a cell that Tate had him put into in another unit! Coincidentally: Blount has lawsuits pending against Tate. A third prisoner was also brought into B-3 for allegedly flooding his cell in another unit. The next day, a fourth prisoner, Michael Boone, was brought in, after being assaulted by guards, and throwing a liquid substance on them to prevent a second assault attempt by them. (Incident detailed below). Both Boone and Blount had just been moved out of B-3 on October 20, 2011. That evening a mob of some forty guards swarmed into B-3, and took up positions around our cells. All wore “strike force” uniforms and no identifying name tags as the rules require. Many aren’t employed at Red Onion. In abusive tones and language we were each demanded to submit to being restrained and having our cells searched. My third shakedown in three days. Instead of searching my property, the guards dumped and threw it all around the cell. Then they walked on my scattered belongings, sheets, bed, pillow, etc., leaving filthy bootprints. Upon returning into the cell I was kicked twice in the leg by the guards. The series of confrontations were obviously calculated to provoke a response whereby the guards could ‘justify’ violent reactions. On October 28, 2011 a fifth prisoner, Damion Land, was brought into B-3, for protesting guards refusing another prisoner’s breakfast meal in another unit. (Incident detail below). October 30, 2011, I was subjected to my fourth shakedown in less than a week. Assaults and abuse On being moved from B-3 to another unit on October 20, Michael Boone witnessed two guards, Coyle and Looney, slam a prisoner, Harold Carpenter, to the concrete floor for no reason, then pile on and smash his face to the floor in B-5 unit. The next day he witnessed a guard, Turner, repeatedly slam a steel tray slot hatch and box onto another prisoner, Brian Farabee’s, arm. These incidents alerted Boone to a ¡Basta Ya!

sudden propensity of guards to openly assault prisoners. On October 26 in the B-4 unit Boone was himself targeted in a premeditated assault at lunch. One guard, J. Hammond, commented to another, J. Dickenson, upon reaching Boone’s cell to serve his meal, “You wanna handle this or do you want me to?” Dickenson replied, “You go ahead” and proceeded to position the food service cart to block the unit surveillance camera’s view of Boone’s cell door. When Boone reached out of his door’s slot to retrieve his lunch tray from inside a steel tray slot box used to serve meals, Hammond snatched the steel box from the door and repeatedly slammed it down onto Boone’s arm, trying to break his arm. During the attack Mathena was in an adjoining unit, and came into Boone’s unit a few minutes afterward. Boone summoned and described to Mathena what happened, showing his injured arm. Mathena blew Boone off, stating he’d “look at the camera”. Nothing was done. Medical staff found Boone’s arm to have multiple lacerations, swelling, and bruising, and ordered x-rays, noting a possible break or fracture. That same day at dinner, the same guards attempted to set Boone up for another assault. Initially another guard, Hall, came to serve Boone’s dinner. But, when they got to his cell, another guard, Creed, went into another unit and got Hammond and Dickenson, who came and stood on the sides of Boone’s door. The guards then opened Boone’s slot and waited for him to reach out to retrieve his tray, specifically threatening to assault him again. Instead, Boone admittedly sprayed a liquid substance out the slot on them to get them from around his cell. In response, Mathena had Boone confronted with teams of guards in riot armor and strapped down by his extremities to a steel bedframe. The next day Boone was moved to B-3. Nothing was done to, or about, the assaulting guards. On October 28, 2011 in the A-4 unit a guard, Holdbrook, refused to serve a prisoner, R. Luffin, his breakfast tray. Four prisoners in the unit covered their cell door windows in protest, and to get a supervisor to come to the unit. These prisoners were Gail (cell 413), Wilson (414), Brown (416), and Damian Land. A sergeant, Phillips, came to the unit, refused to do anything, then called another sergeant, Payne. Payne likewise refused to correct the denied meal, and summoned a lieutenant Stanley. Stanley announced that Luffin would receive no Number 1

meal because Holbrook lied, claiming he’d refused his own breakfast. Luffin then allegedly flooded his cell. Mathena then entered the unit and went into an office with Stanley. A counselor and mental health worker were called in but spoke to none of the prisoners. Meanwhile Payne repeatedly sprayed Gail with tear gas from a 36 ounce container until Gail vomited. Gail is an asthmatic who is not supposed to be gassed, yet all involved officials along with medical staff deliberately targeted only him to be gassed. Gail could have died. Luffin was then brought out of his cell to be moved to another unit, at which point Mathena directed guards to provide him a breakfast tray. Stanley emerged from the office with Mathena and led a group of riot armored guards to Land’s cell. Land was given no instruction nor opportunity to submit to being voluntarily handcuffed. Instead, Stanley had the cell door opened abruptly without warning, and the armored guards rushed in to physically subdue, handcuff and shackle Land, (no gas was used on him, as is standard procedure for “cell extractions”), and move him to B-3. Land then received a bogus disciplinary infraction for “ringleading” a “group demonstration”. Whereas the entire incident had been obviously created and calculated by officials to create a ‘disruption’ and make it appear as some premeditated group rebellion. On October 31, 2011 Dickenson left his post in the B-4 unit and brought the nurse into B-3 to conduct a.m. pill rounds, with the obvious intentions of targeting Boone for attack. I witnessed this entire incident. Dickenson put the steel tray slot box into Boone’s door, the nurse, Trish Cox, placed Boone’s medication into the box, then Dickenson opened the slot. When Boone reached into the box to retrieve his meds Dickenson took the box off the door and repeatedly slammed it down onto Boone’s arm. Boone sat with his arm passively on the slot allowing the numerous surveillance cameras mounted around the B-3 unit to film the attack. Once Dickenson was tired and realized Boone wasn’t going to resist nor move his arm despite being beaten, and thus he couldn’t shut the slot with Boone’s arm obstructing it, he called a sergeant Thompson to the unit. A portable audio-video camera was also brought to Boone’s cell, whereupon he, I and others described what had occurred. Dickenson left the unit with nothing done to him, and the nurse examined

Boone’s arm, finding a new series of bruises and lacerations and again, suspecting a fractured or broken bone, recommended x-rays. Later that day Mathena came into the unit. Both Boone and I described the assault to him. Again he claimed he’d check the cameras. I brought up the interesting fact that during Red Onion’s early and most openly abusive years, he presided as Assistant Warden. And suddenly upon his return guards suddenly felt open license to overtly assault prisoners and provoke incidents that would obviously lead to guards’ uses of violence. He couldn’t deny this trend. On November 1, 2011 Boone was taken to see the doctor, who also ordered x-rays. He has as of this November 14, 2011, date received no x-rays. No effort was made to investigate the assault either, until he pressed complaints and grievances. His arm was only photographed as a result on November 8, 2011, yet no investigation has been conducted and no investigator has spoken with him to ascertain any facts. On November 4, 2011, Brian Barabee was moved into B-3 for the grave offense of having been on a hunger strike since October 28, 2011. Guards also turned off his cell’s water so he couldn’t drink. The B-3 cells are extremely cold (one typically bundles up in all his clothes and blankets inside the cell for warmth), with no fixtures nor furniture except a steel bed and toilet / sink combination unit. Farabee, extremely emaciated and dehydrated, was allowed only boxers in the cell, and given a mattress only from approximately 10 pm to 6 am. He was otherwise left in a cold empty cell (all his property was taken) with no means of maintaining body heat, and made to sit, stand and lie on cold steel and concrete surfaces during the day. In his weakened state Farabee’s metabolism was obviously very low and his need for sources of retaining body heat much greater than that of the average healthy person. Yet he received just the opposite, in an effort to torture him off the strike. Indeed, on November 7, 2011, guards dressed up in riot armor and removed his mattress by force because he was too weak to bring it to the cell door. I filed emergency grievances on witnessing this blatant torture. Ultimately he was moved out of B-3 to the medical unit on November 7, 2011. On November 14, 2011 he was moved back to B-3 still on hunger strike. On November 7, 2011, Philip Crayton was brought into B-3 by Tate, and strapped 7

down by his extremities to a steel bedframe, for allegedly flooding his cell in another unit. While being strapped down, notoriously abusive guards, sergeants Payne and Wright, along with a guard Whisehunt, repeatedly bent Crayton’s fingers back, bent his foot at painful angles against the steel bedframe, etc. At the very moment I was writing this Farabee repeatedly asked to be given a mattress because of extreme cold. This began at around 7:00 pm. Guards refused so he covered his cell door window with wet toilet paper. Various supervising guards came to his cell including lieutenants Mullins and Artrip and sergeants Artrip and Salyers along with numerous guards. Farabee was told he would not receive the mattress until 10 pm and if he did not uncover the window he would be gassed and cell-extracted. He was then ordered strapped down to a bedframe for allegedly scratching his wrist. All because he sought a mattress and heatsource in the cell. Both he and I protested his being tortured having nothing but boxer shorts in an empty cold cell while his body metabolism is extremely low. The guards’ reply was the mental health department, warden and others automatically impose this status when prisoners go on hunger strikes, and they were only following orders. The same defense Nazi soldiers raised during the Nuremberg trials for torture and sadistic abuses of defenseless people. Prior Assault in B-3 One particularly brutal assault occurred in B-3 on September 3, 2011. The victim Kelvin Canada is a politically active prisoner who’s been an especial target of abuse at Red Onion. The September 3 assault being the third attack on Canada. The first occurring on April 10, 2011 and described by me in an earlier report, involved a guard, Fannin, opening the locked door to Canada’s segregation exercise yard cage and attempting to attack Canada while he was unrestrained, and in complete violation of prison policy and security. Canada defended himself but was shot even after he’d surrendered to other guards upon their orders. The second assault occurred November 18, 2011 when guards set him up for a cell extraction, cut the cameras off and brutally beat him after he was restrained. The B-3 incident involved guards Davis, Fields and sergeants Payne and Wright and Captain Turner attacking him while he was held kneeling with shackles on. He was thrown to the floor and piled upon, beaten, 8

and Davis repeatedly dug fingers into Canada’s left eye – a frequent assault technique at Red Onion. Canada suffered a dislocated right shoulder and blackened left eye with a large red hemorrhage across the white of his eye. Although he has been found to have a dislocated shoulder, it still has not been treated to date. CONCLUSION Abusive conditions, sadistic violence and outright physical torture are now on the rise at Red Onion. No efforts are made to even pretend at investigations or redress. With the return of Mathena, Kiser and the promotion of McCoy to security chief at Red Onion, conditions are reverting back to the prison’s early years when it won almost instant national notoriety as one of Amerika’s most abusive prisons. While U.S. officials are quick to self-righteously condemn government torture and violence against defenseless populations abroad, they consciously avert public attention away from the fact that they practice the same right here. Especially within the hidden confines of U.S. prisons. It has been my aim therefore to open cracks in these walls to allow the public a peek inside of a world they are compelled to support at great financial expense, where criminally inhumane abuses are carried out in their names As western societies matured, their populations became less accepting of officials conducting gruesome tortures in public, because they came to see that the object was to terrify them into submission to tyrannical power, and unquestioned ‘authority’. The roles of prisons in Amerika and the brutal conditions within them serve the same purpose today, only more subliminally. We must end all forms of torture. This begins with exposure and resistance to its practice. Mass resistance. Otherwise, as with the case of Red Onion, the cycle of abuse will just repeat itself and will spread until no one will be left unaffected. ♦ Dare to struggle; Dare to win! All Power to the People! Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, Nov. 14, 2011

Three Prisoners Die in Hunger Strike Related Incidents: CDCR Withholds Information from Family Members, Fails to Report Deaths

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n the month since the second phase of a massive prisoner hunger strike in California ended on September 22nd, three prisoners who had been on strike have committed suicide. Johnny Owens Vick and another prisoner were both confined in the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit. Hozel Alanzo Blanchard was confined in the Calipatria Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU). According to reports from prisoners who were housed in surrounding cells and who witnessed the deaths, guards did not come to the assistance of one of the prisoners at Pelican Bay or to Blanchard, and in the case of the Pelican Bay prisoner (whose name is being withheld for the moment), apparently guards deliberately ignored his cries for help for several hours before finally going to his cell, at which point he was already dead. “It is completely despicable that prison officials would willfully allow someone to take their own life,” said Dorsey Nunn, Executive Director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, “These guys were calling for help, their fellow prisoners were calling for help, and guards literally stood by and watched it happen.” Family members of the deceased as well as advocates are having difficult time getting information about the three men and the circumstances of their deaths. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is required to do an autopsy in cases of suspicious deaths and according to the Plata case, is required to do an annual report on every death in the system. Family members have said that their loved ones, as well as many other prisoners who participated in the hunger strike, were being severely retaliated against with disciplinary actions and threats. Blanchard’s family has said that he felt that his life was threatened and had two emergency appeals pending with the California Supreme Court at the time of his death. “It is a testament to the dire conditions under which prisoners live in solitary confinement that three people would commit suicide in the last month,” said Laura Magnani, Regional Director of the American Friends Service ¡Basta Ya!

Committee, “It also points to the severe toll that the hunger strike has taken on these men, despite some apparent victories.” Prisoners in California’s SHUs and other forms of solitary confinement have a much higher rate of suicide than those in general population. The hunger strike, which at one time involved the participation of at least 12,000 prisoners in at least 13 state prisons was organized around five core demands relating to ending the practices of group punishment, long-term solitarily confinement, and gang validation and debriefing. The CDCR has promised changes to the gang validation as soon as early next year and were due to have a draft of the new for review this November, although it’s not known whether that process is on schedule. “If the public and legislators don’t continue to push CDCR, they could easily sweep all of this under the rug,” said Emily Harris, statewide coordinator Californians United for a Responsible Budget, “These deaths are evidence that the idea of accountability is completely lost on California’s prison officials.” ♦ Source: Hungerstrike News, November 20, 2011, Vol. 3 #1

Are Gang Members Special? From the California Supreme Court to Pelican Bay By by Hadar Aviram, Associate Professor of Law at UC Hastings his month the California Supreme Court, presiding at UC Hastings, heard oral arguments in People v. Vang, an assault case involving gang expert testimony. Under California sentencing laws, a gang sentencing enhancement requires the jury to decide whether the defendant committed the offense to benefit the gang. Evidence to this effect is often presented through the testimony of gang experts, usually police officers, who testify as to the norms and practices of gangs in general and the gang in question, to show whether a given defendant’s behavior falls in line with gang-related behavior. In Vang, the prosecutor asked the cop/expert two detailed hypothetical questions based on the facts of the assault according to the evidence, then asking the expert whether an assault under such facts would be gang related. By doing so, argued the defense, the prosecutor thinly disguised questions regarding the actual defendants’ behavior as hypothetical scenarios, effectively

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substituting the testifying cop/expert’s logic and common sense for the jury’s. The government, on the other hand, argued that it would be difficult to define permissible questions that are abstract enough to require the jury to make a “logical leap” and independently assess the perpetrator’s mens rea, while only being provided with guidelines from the cop/expert about the impact of gang membership on the development of such mens rea. Setting aside the important criminal justice question of the merits and pitfalls of treating police officers as supposedly impartial ethnographers and gang experts— this practice is, by now, modus operandi in California courts—I would like to suggest that there is an even more fundamental issue at the root of Vang: The assumption that gang members are fundamentally different from other people; that their behavior is governed by special rules inaccessible through common personal experience; and, therefore, special knowledge is required to make sense of them and interpret their lifestyle to the ordinary jury member. This assumption did not originate with modern gangs; it is approximately 150 years old. In 1865, a doctor named Cesare Lombroso wrote the first medical criminology book, titled L’Uomo Delinquente (“The Criminal Man”). Lombroso’s premise, a novelty at the time, was that criminals were innately different from law-abiding citizens, and predisposed to commit crime by virtue of being “atavistic”, that is, “stuck” in a lessdeveloped evolutionary phase. Lombroso gleaned this predisposition from a series of medical findings involving the measurements of inmates’ skulls (based on the then-popular science of phrenology), their bodily and facial features, tattoos, handwriting, and laughter patterns. Pages upon pages of the book included photographs showing the common features of criminals and distinguishing these “special” features from those of ordinary people. In the years since 1865, we have come to reject Lombroso’s “science”, both in itself and as a measure for establishing criminality (not before making a lamentable detour into the territory of eugenics for several tragic decades). However, the idea that criminals were special, or somehow different from law-abiding citizens, persisted. Much of the criminology of the early 20th century consisted of ethnographies and observations of criminal groups under the assumption that lack of privilege, living in a given neighborhood, or having a certain

subset of role models shapes a unique human being, predisposed to commit crime. This literature—much of which was, admittedly, incredibly helpful for understanding phenomena such as juvenile gangs—suggests that, while some human beings are within the realm of the knowable through common sense and life experience, others cannot be understood without the benefit of special expertise. Today’s California gang members are the new Lombrosian criminals. To curb criminal gang activity, we have adopted special sentencing rules and uniquely oppressive correctional practices. This special treatment goes beyond the mere development of special investigation practices, evidentiary rules and penal technologies; it includes the development of a new body of knowledge that regards gang members as special, their lives and behavior beyond the reach of ordinary human common sense. But we have done more: By examining gang practices as special and unique, through the lens of clinical expertise, we have relegated gang members to the status of incorrigible specimens, who can only be studied, controlled, governed, and suppressed through special, dehumanizing technologies. The perversity of this approach is evident these days, as the Pelican Bay inmates plan on renewing their hunger strike on September 26th. The hunger strike, which lasted for 21 days in July and received woefully little media coverage, aimed at changing the correctional policies involved in incarceration at the Security Housing Units (SHU) in Pelican Bay. When inmates are identified as gang members, they are subject to a penal regime that consists of complete isolation for 22 ½ hours a day in tiny cells, their only companion often the blearing sound of a television set. Their daily respite from years of solitary confinement is a 90-minute outing in a barren exercise pen surrounded by 15-foot-high concrete walls and a limited sky view. The entrance ticket into the SHU consists of being identified by prison authorities as a gang member, placing the burden of “debriefing”—disavowing and disproving gang membership—on the inmates themselves, most of whom never find their way out of the SHU. Despite consistent findings by social psychologists about the immense, irrevocable harms of subjecting human beings to a regime of isolation, and despite a federal judge’s comment in 1995 according to which such practices “hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable”, courts have 9

consistently found SHU incarceration practices constitutional. To add insult to injury, during the July Pelican Bay hunger strike CDCR officials went on record discrediting the strike because it is “led by gang leaders.” This argument is the epitome of Lombrosian thinking. It implies that the public is to disregard the merit in the striking inmates’ claims against the dreadful conditions of their confinement merely because they are (suspected to be) gang members or led by gang authorities. Why would the arguments against solitary confinement and its devastating effects on the human psyche be any less valid just because the humans making them, and subject to them, happen to be (suspected

of) belonging to gangs? Indeed, gangs are unique organizations. So are corporations, hedge funds, motorcycle clubs, cults, schools, military units, and academic departments. Crime has occurred in each and every one of these contexts, and while criminal decision making has required an explication of the social setting for the crime, it has not deprived us of the sense that juries are capable of understanding these microcosms of human experience. Nor has it implied that any of these settings rightfully denies its participants of human status. While belonging to a subculture has important implications as to a person’s behavior, social context, and range of choices, it does not deny the person’s

humanity, relegate his or her behavior to a place beyond the realm of the logically accessible, or make him or her less worthy of basic necessities and rights. Gang members may be more difficult to explicate—and empathize with—than people whose lives more closely resemble that of the average jury member, but they are people, just like prosecutors, jurors, and prison officials. As such, their lives are not completely beyond the realm of reasoning, understanding, and empathy. As we follow up on the upcoming hunger strike, we would do well to educate ourselves on the merits of the inmates’ demands and remember that the measure of a society is the dignity with which it treats its weakest members. ♦

Ed Mead P.O. Box 47439 Seattle, WA 98146

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