Political or Gang Activity? “New Afrikan” Prisoners in Solitary Confinement
Three “New Afrikan” prisoners in California Security Housing Units (Pelican Bay and Corcoran State Prisons) have recently written to Solitary Watch criticizing their continued isolation for being members of the Black Guerilla Family (BGF), the only black prison gang in California that will lead to placement in the SHU.
According to Mutope Duguma (legal name James Crawford) at Pelican Bay, it’s his political views “that got me placed in solitary confinement and labeled a BGF member, which I am not, but in order to place you in solitary confinement IGI/ISU/OCS have to label you a BGF if you’re a New Afrikan.”
He has been in solitary for over a decade. “My cell has a concrete slab bed, the cell is white with a concrete brick slab for TV holding. Toilet and sink connected all in one and the steel front panel door and a white painted wall in front. No trees. No animals. No sun. No life. Just prisoners isolated from the world,” he writes.
Life for men in the SHU is bleak, reports Duguma., “I get up at 5:30 AM, go to the yard when my rotation comes around for 90 minutes, then I am back in my cell for the rest of the day.”
Prisoners labeled BGF are routinely validated on the basis of their political views. In a June 2012 ruling, the California Court of Appeals found that Duguma’s political writings were wrongly used to prevent outgoing mail to the San Francisco Bay View newspaper. Duguma referred to himself as a “New Afrikan Nationalist Revolutionary Man.”
A Correctional officer intercepted the letter and sent a “Stopped Mail Notification”, indicating that the letter “promotes gang activity,” and that his writings were a reference to “ideology created by the Black Guerilla Family.”
Stanford Professor James Campbell, after reading the letter, told the court that Duguma is “a serious political thinker using terms such as ‘New Afrikan’ and ‘New Afrikan Nationalist Revolutionary Man’ that were ubiquitous in Black urban life in the 1960s and 1970s…”
The court ultimately ruled that “without any evidence showing the letter to promote violence or otherwise threaten security, the confiscation violates the First Amendment” and ordered that the letter finally be sent to the Bay View.
According to accounts by men in California’s SHUs, drawings are also used to justify their continued isolation. One common image used to validate prisoners is any drawing of a dragon. For the BGF, one of their symbols is a dragon squeezing a prison guard tower.
According to J., who is held at Corcoran State Prison:
A K-9 unit was allowed into our cells and spilled some coffee on a Japanese cultural piece I’m doing for an auction to aid the Japanese Tsunami Relief Fund which depicts the Sun Goddess Amazerasu releasing a phoenix into the sky at sunrise over the Sea of Japan wearing a kimoni with imperial dragons on it and a crown featuring the Japense Imperial Crest (Dragon and Phoenix). When I filed to have IGI/ISU compensate me for the piece, after reviewing the work, it was returned to me and I was told that if I attempted to mail it out it would be confiscated because “it has dragons on the kimono and you’re B.G.F.”
I asked–“Are you saying the Japanese Imperial family is B.G.F?” The response was “If you try to mail it out we’ll take it.”
In addition, J. writes, “D. and I wrote several pieces for newsletters. These were confiscated by an I.G.I. officer and were used as “BGF gang material” as a basis to deny D.’s inactive status.”
D., also at the Corcoran SHU, writes:
Think about this. I could write as many letters as I want. And call someone as many “n’s” as I want. Call women all manner of foul things. I can even compare the President to Adolf Hitler. And it would be cool. Protected speech. But they have actually criminalized certain people, language.
I could mention the first or last name of certain Afrikans, and I would automatically be accused of gang activity. Even if the person was dead.
If they came in the cell and found an actual book marker that came from a vendor with books. And the book marker had a drawing of a dragon on it. They would say that it’s gang activity. Some of this has sunk to such a low level that it would be as comical as it sounds were it not so destructive.
D.’s reference to the potential for gang validation for saying something about a dead person is actually based on how he himself was validated. Gang validation documents sent to Solitary Watch indicate that among the pieces of evidence of gang activity in his case (which ranged from a confidential informant to his name appearing on a piece of paper in another prisoner’s cell), was a eulogy he had written for a deceased African-American prisoner who had been a BGF member.
While it cannot be definitively said that none of these men have ever been involved with the BGF, it appears from these and other instances of seemingly weak evidence of gang activity that prison officials may be overreaching in their efforts to curb legitimately disruptive gang activity.
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Other black victims of this radical group besides the journalist Bailey are mentioned in this article on the Center for Investigative Reporting web site here.
http://cironline.org/reports/survivor-recounts-life-rape-abuse-your-black-muslim-bakery-leader-3708
Funny that this new concern coincides with the recent incarceration of Yusuf Bey IV which makes me question whether Bey’s Attorney Lorna Brown will become the new Fay Stender?
Who are these people?
A recent article on the investigative web site by the name of Chauncey Bailey Project, a site named after a murdered journalist , asserts that Brown passed imprisoned Bey’s hit list on to his associates on the streets. As for Stender:
Page 246 of Cummin’s book:
“George Jackson’s onetime attorney Fay Stender, who had withdrawn from the Soledad Brothers case just before the San Quentin AC bloodbath, became herself a victim. A former BGF member retells the story:
“A woman knocked on the door of Fay Stender’s house. When Fay answered, a man appeared with a gun and came into the house. I think Fay’s son or daughter was there at the time. He accused her of betraying George Jackson and the revolutionary movement and shot her several times….For years rumors had been going around, people would talk about killing Fay, doing this and that. Rumormongers, people who just wanted to see stuff happen. Would start rumors about her stealing from the Soledad Brothers defense fund…She didn’t betray anybody…She moved on.”
Black Panther attorney Charles Garry blamed radicals inside San Quentin for Stenders shooting: “The screwballs in prison said she didn’t give the guns that George Jackson demanded.” Stender was not killed, but she was paralyzed. She took her own life a year later. Ironically, Fay Stender was a victim of the prison movement foco theory that had appeared originally in California inmate self-improvement organizations and covert study groups, the mutant offspring of prison self-education crystallized in and made finally inevitable by George Jackson’s Blood in My Eye. “
Besides the journalist Bailey another of Bey’s victims is described here:
“Broussard has testified that Bey IV and Mackey bragged they killed Wills in July 2007 because he was white, saying they boasted they “got a devil.”
“All whites are devils by nature,” Dawud Bey said on the stand. African-Americans, he said, are not devils by nature but can become them through their actions. Some whites, he said, can stop being devils if they are kind and helpful to blacks.
References to white devils “came up a lot” around the bakery and in Bey IV’s sermons, he said.
Asked about Black Muslims who had killed whites believing they are devils, he said, “that’s a good thing in my opinion.”
In killing Wills Bey took his inspiration from the Zebra Murders of the 70’s which were carried out by the group called the “Death Angels”.
The Zebra Killings occurred in the San Francisco Bay area between 1972 and 1974 and left 71 people dead. (The fact these were just white civilians should give people pause.)
…this group which believed that whites were created 3,000 years ago by a black mad scientist named Yacub who wanted a race of inferiors to rule over. Death Angels believed they could earn “points” towards going to heaven when they died if they killed whites. For them, whites were not human beings but “grafted snakes,” “blue-eyed devils” and “white motherf—–s.”
Read more here: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=21980
Here is someone’s comment on the news story found below about a suicide on Death Row. There is no way to know if this is actually true or not but I do believe the guards fear it’s true:
“I was hanging out with a group of prison guards a while back, and they told me Folsom is getting worse than San Quetin. Also the Black Gorillla Family is trying to reorganize, but they want to kill a guard due to something that happened in the 70’s. Ironic that inmates will be reading this on their smuggled in smart phones.”
(Note it’s “Guerrilla” not Gorillla. And who besides maybe a cop would hangout with CO’s?)
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/27/4762111/death-row-inmates-death-investigated.html#storylink=cpy
@Lilly White I was reading a book entitled Prison Race by Renford Reese. In this book a former inmate who was a Crip talks about how outdated most prison intelligence is, in speaking of BGF he states that in his 17 years in the CDC he NEVER met a validated member of BGF, so this singling out of BGF is unnecessary. You comments and total lack of realiaty with regards to what’s going on n the CDC sickens me.
I studied Computer Science not political theory or it’s history. I should have read this article.
The Left vs. the Liberals
By Sean Wilentz
“Kazin describes how the New Left degenerated into ferocious and abiding contempt for liberals and liberalism, which sent some of its adherents spiraling into the violence and neo-Leninist sectarianism of the Weather Underground.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/aug/16/left-vs-liberals/?pagination=false
Here is another example of an attack on liberals by those supporting radicals. Excerpts:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128694647587767.html
What the liberals won’t tell you
…as happens with virtually all prison-related stories in the US mainstream media, the two most important words were left unprinted, unuttered: race and revolution.
Race and revolution
while broad patterns can be discerned, these are the numbers that are missing:
How many of those in solitary confinement are black?
How many are self-taught lawyers, educators or political activists?
How many initiated hunger strikes, which have long been anathema to the prison administration?
If the struggle to end inhumane treatment inside prisoners is to become anything more than a largely apolitical movement for SO-CALLED “CIVIL RIGHTS”, it must put two long-ignored points back on the agenda: race and revolution.”
So the authors proclaim that the liberal media are purposely omitting these statistics.
At the same time they do not give any numbers themselves.
Is this just lazy journalism or is this another example of your either with us or against us?
In my mind there is no shortage of articles about the disproportionate numbers of minorities held in prison or solitary. Certainly not on this site. But then again I am not a revolutionary.
Excuse me for harping on this point but I just find it incredible that an apolitical movement for “human rights by liberals could be held in such contempt by both extremes right and left.
Now I understand why Lilly White used the counter intuitive term of liberal as an insult. I just read a possible explanation in Jonathan Jackson Jr’s tribute to his uncle George. On Bay View.
“The challenge for a radical in today’s world is to balance reformist tendencies (political liberalism) and revolutionary action/ideology (radicalism). While reformism entails a legitimation of the status quo as a search for changes within the system, radicalism posits a change of system. Because revolutionaries are particularly vulnerable, a certain degree of reformism is necessary to create space, space needed to begin the laborious task of making revolution.
George’s statement “Combat Liberalism” and the general reaction to it typify the gulf between the two philosophies. George was universally misunderstood by the left and the right alike. As is the case with most modern political prisoners, nearly all of his support came from reformists with liberal leanings. It seems that they acted in spite of, rather than because of, the core of his message.”
But he also wrote this:
“Among people of color in the United States, the quick fix, “blame it on whitey” mentality has become so prevalent that it shortcuts thinking. Conversely, stereotypes of minorities act as simple-minded tools of divisiveness and oppression.
George addressed these issues in prison, setting a model for the outside as well:”
“I’m always telling the brothers some of those whites are willing to work with us against the pigs. All they got to do is stop talking honky. When the races start fighting, all you have is one maniac group against another.”
I agree with George on this point although I would have phrased it a bit differently. :)
And Sal for the record I have no problem with your articles and I hope you continue more mindful of its impact on others. In fact I applaud all your efforts. I hope your generation can bring more reason to the table.
I’m glad I missed the one comment. It distresses me when people resort to such unproductive insults.
Lilly White used the term “white supremacist liberal wussies” which is a bit confusing:
According to the online dictionary these are the Synonyms for liberal.
1. progressive. 7. broad-minded, “unprejudiced”.
While “white supremacy” is the theory or belief that White people are innately superior to people of other races.
So there seems to be a problem combining these terms when insulting people.
There is another problem with your statement you write “George Jackson was “accused” of the murder of a correctional officer…”. The event which has since been memorialized in the image of the Dragon with the gun-tower in its grasp.
But he is implicated in more than just one murder. As Cummins writes:
Page 209: According to most versions of the legend, on the way back to the Adjustment center from a visit, Jackson drew a gun on his escorting officer and launched the bloodiest day in San Quentin’s history. First, he released his fellow AC revolutionary convicts, shouting, “THE DRAGON HAS COME!” Certain AC prisoners then helped Jackson take six officers and two white convict tier tenders as hostages. Five of these men, three guards and the tier tenders, were later found dead in Jackson’s cell, stabbed and with their throats slit. Three other wounded guards would recover.”
I used capital letters to emphasize parts of my post I thought needed to be made clear. Here they are again:
THE SAN QUENTIN ADMINISTRATION CHOSE TO IGNORE THE GENUINE GRIEVANCES OF THE INMATES AS A SOURCE OF PRISON REBELLION. … The committee was in part correct in its observations. Imported radical literature and the support of radical outsiders had certainly contributed to San Quentin’s revolution, though beneath this surface was A LONG HISTORY OF UNRESOLVED, LEGITIMATE PRISONER GRIVANCES that had little to do with the ideological wars of the California Right and Left that were being reproduced in San Quentin’s battle of books.
Despite this fact, in the California prison system a solution was already in the works.
THE PLAN WAS TO TURN THE PRISONERS AWAY FROM READING ANYTHING WHATSOEVER.
This history should be forgotten but it was not just read the Bay View. They have their reasons to keep it alive. I understand it too many people still have grievances that have not been addressed.
But in my opinion violent revolution was not the solution in the past nor is it today.
I speak as both a former prisoner and someone that has lost a brother in the SHU and another brother has lost his ability to function in the free world.
Education of the public is the only solution and to do so we need unity and peace.
Eric Cummins writes on page 224:
A small group of extreme leftists in the Bay Area, renouncing the need for grass-roots support, instead chose to isolate themselves from the public further. In a few cases their analysis led them to become participants in emerging foco groups led by paroled or escaped convict guerrilla warriors.
The unreasoned extremism of one such foco, the Symbionese Liberation Army, came straight from the pages of George Jackson’s Blood in My Eye and was to undercut in 1974 what little remained of the last public support for the prison movement.
In closing he wrote:
Page 277: “We should be mindful, as the fires spread outward from our prisons into the California ghettos, to resist this time the mistake made in the 1960’s of revering ordinary street criminals as revolutionary freedom fighters….Despite the obvious injustices and horrible conditions of life in the ghettos of Los Angeles and other pockets of racism and poverty across California, it is just plain dangerous to call street crime political crime, making street criminals automatically anti-state revolutionaries. California convicts…will be only too easily convinced to see themselves as guerrilla heroes. Sadly, if it comes to that, these California prisoners will likely become ideological pawns in another cultural crossfire, this time perhaps in a race and class war of which they will be the first victims.”
I for one read all your posts Sal.
And the hostile comment above is an example of how a college campus and a prison differ in debates.
I heard no one exposing supremacy on here and I wouldn’t put a liberal label on me nor a conservative one.
My point is there are historical reasons why Eric Cummins book is titled “The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement” .
Prison reform failed in the 60’s and 70’s because of all the violence even between it’s own.
This violence gave the man the excuse to create supermax prisons to house those it feared.
Prison reform did not fail because of civil debates or reason.
It lost public support because some groups became too violent for the public to support.
Then the article should not have noted race. All gangs and any thing to do with gangs is not political the system state or federal believe they all pose risk to the facilties and being validated can be as easy, as I have written above, as getting a birthday card signed by a gang member. The validated are isolated without due process for what they might do.
The BGF is a black prison gang. That’s why it’s called Black Guerrilla Family. Hence, the article noted race. And was called “New Afrikans in Solitary Confinement.”
For articles less generally about black prisoners, feel free to read anything else by me on the SHU.
If you hadnt written it the way you did the “readers” would not have blasted the article. I’m sure we have all read your other articles. Now you know who your readers are. People against isolation of people.
WOW. What a bunch of white supremacist liberal wussies you people are, talking about “race card” and ‘keeping it HUMAN”. George Jackson was accused of the murder of a correctional officer and he was a founder of the BGF. THAT is why BGF is singled out, NOT CRIPS, NOT BLOODS. YOU people are the reason discussions AND MOVEMENTS “come to a grinding halt.” You are beyond sickening.
what are you talking about? So you are stupid as well as missing the point. White people are not people? you are the racist.
@Sal Remember prison is not a college campus where the exchange of ideas is welcomed (with a few exceptions in the news as of late). In prison unrestrained inflammatory rhetoric results in deaths. I suggest you read accounts of those that have experienced this first hand like Bunker. The following link is about Texas prisons written by a Hispanic ex-con but what he writes rings true for most states with similar demographics. I only suggest it to balance your latest posts attempt to point out there are still many white racist groups in prison today. Not exactly original news story. :)
http://www.utexas.edu/know/2010/11/22/renaud_jorge/
Also read Human Rights Watch 2001 report titled “No Escape” which deals with prison rape. I think between these two short reads you may discover the clues to the latest posts recruitment into such gangs.
Texas Observer “Cruel and Unusual Still about Justice William Justice on this.
Good Alan (;
@Sal Have you attempted to research how this special designation came into being if there actually is such a singling out of BGF?
Two good sources for the history of the BGF are Bunker’s memoir Education of A Felon and his Harpers article “War Behind Walls” and Eric Cummins “The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement.” Excerpt below.
http://harpers.org/archive/1972/02/0021411
Both you and Silveira could benefit by learning some of this history.
Remember he is the one who wrote the man up.
“Silveira does not explain what the so-called BGF ideology is or how that ideology threatens prison security,” the court wrote. “The declaration is devoid of any explanation of BGF ideology or examples of how that ideology has threatened prison security in the past.”
Hi Alan,
I am aware of BGF’s founding and general history. The reason, I suppose, that BGF membership can be inferred from political writing is because of BGF’s founding as a black nationalist, left-wing, explicitly political group. This contrasts with La Eme, Aryan Brotherhood, and the other Severe/Security Threat Groups which don’t have a particularly political bent to them.
I think most of the commenters missed the point of the article. This isn’t a “race card” article or a “race card” issue. The BGF and prisoners validated as BGF are in a position unique to them; political speech can be deemed gang activity. Condemning the government, using political speech like “New Afrikan” and referring to George Jackson and similar individuals can be invoked by the prisons as gang activity. This is not the case for Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia or any other prison gang to the extent that this is the case for black inmates designated BGF and actual BGF members.
Playing the race card would be to say that black inmates are only there because of their race; this is not at all what was done here. –Sal Rodriguez
I am glad I am not the only one that cringes every time the race card comes out when it is about prison reform, especially SHU.
I have heard the most eloquent of arguments beautiful and supportive and everything said perfectly and right, and then the race card gets thrown in and the argument comes to a grinding halt.
We/ they all HAVE to be colorblind here. No single race or gang gets precedence here. and that means not accusing the oppressors of their whiteness either. .. it’s beyond counterproductive, it sabotage!!!
YayBetty! All the prisoners are treated badly not just 1 color u r exactly right counter productive. I am very disappointed to have read this I hope Solitary watch uses its influence to avoid anymore race articles, it just takes away from the HUMAN rights issue at hand.
Quote from above:
“For the BGF, one of their symbols is a dragon squeezing a prison guard tower.”
I believe the symbolism mentioned maybe in reference to Jackson taking revenge over the act of a tower guard that had fired on and killed the co-founder of the BGF and Jackson’s friend W.L. Nolan and two other Black militants in August of 1970.
SF Bay View article refers to this incident in a article written October 16, 2011
by Kiilu Nyasha titled Soledad Brother: Memories of Comrade George.
“I was first a reporter – later promoted to news editor – covering the pretrial hearings for Angela Davis and Ruchell Cinque Magee stemming from the events of Aug. 7, 1970, and the Soledad Brothers, Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette and George Jackson, accused of killing a guard at Soledad State Prison in retaliation for the massacre of three Black militants – W.L. Nolen, Sweet Jugs Miller and Cleveland Edwards – by a tower guard in January ‘70.”
A more recent article titled
Still all eyes on us
August 2, 2012
by Comrade Bobby M. Dixon, Minister of Justice of the NABPP-PC
Reads
” I greet you all and call your attention to the annual commemoration of Black August. I invite you, fellow prisoners and families throughout Amerika, to join us in honoring our beloved martyrs….Comrade George Jackson, field marshal of the original Black Panther Party Prison Chapter…
We shed tears for our fallen comrades and for the masses brutally victimized by the racist, fascist, murdering police. We have a right to cry over our dead, for every life is precious beyond measure. The loss of each who has been killed by the oppressor in this land of our exile and enslavement is intolerable. We consecrate this month to those who have been taken from us but who will never be forgotten – for the love of freedom which their lives were dedicated to.
Our grief is real, and so is our determination to continue the struggle until all are free and the oppression of our people is no more. Our grief and our pain makes us more human – and stronger because it is based upon love. Our love and determination helps the people to struggle on and brings us closer to liberation. We must stand up as one – a united people, determined to win our liberation in this century.”
On the court decision excerpt below:
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/calif-appeals-court-shows-unusual-solicitude-for-prisoner-rights
According to the appeals court, incoming prisoner mail is subjected to the Supreme Court’s deferential standard of reasonableness in Turner v. Safley (1987), while outgoing mail is subjected to the higher standard of Procunier v. Martinez (1974).
Under Procunier v. Martinez, outgoing inmate mail can be censored only if it the prison restriction “furthers a substantial governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of free expression” such as security. Furthermore, under this standard, the restriction must be “no greater than necessary or essential to the protection” of the government interest.
The California appeals court found that prison officials in this case failed to meet this standard, Silveira’s declaration being “incompetent as evidence because it contains no factual allegations” and is “based solely on speculation or conjecture.”
“Silveira does not explain what the so-called BGF ideology is or how that ideology threatens prison security,” the court wrote. “The declaration is devoid of any explanation of BGF ideology or examples of how that ideology has threatened prison security in the past.”
The appeals court concluded that confiscation of the letter “was neither ‘necessary’ nor ‘essential’ to prison security.”
As have said in the past we need to understand the history and learn from the mistakes of the past or someone else will be writing similar articles 40+ years in the future.
Lets stay real and work together beyond race for the betterment of all prisoners held in solitary.
@Alan “Lets stay real and work together beyond race for the betterment of all prisoners held in solitary”EXACTLY!!!!! all gangs can be construed as political they all buck and circumvent the system a guy can end up in the shu because a gang members name was signed to a birthday card. “stay real” this is a HUMAN rights issue, all people.
I agree with 8forever that the racial aspect of this man’s plight is counterproductive to the reform movements ultimate goals, just as it was in the past. Too many prisoners have died because of the view that the repression is primarily racially driven and this ultimately divides and conquers the inmates themselves.
Also a little background when posting these articles would be helpful to those who have never done time. Those that have done time, especially those that served time in California during the sixties like myself, know the significance of the DRAGON image. George Jackson’s nickname is the Dragon and he along with W.L. Nolen co-founded the BGF prison gang in 1966 while serving time in San Quentin Prison.
Jackson took the name Dragon from Ho Chi Minh whose line is often quoted by inmates,
“When the prison gates fly open, the real dragons will emerge.”
Eric Cummings wrote in “The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement.”
On page 172: IN THE EYES OF SAN QUENTIN PRISON STAFF HE (George Jackson) SEEMED AN ALMOST SUPERHUMAN THREAT, A SUPER-CONVICT now held personally accountable for each San Quentin guard death….
In the eyes of black revolutionary prisoners he was the promised deliverer A SHAMAN OF REVENGE, THE DRAGON…
Page 209: In the words of AC inmate Johnny Spain, “There was gun introduced into the Adjustment Center on August 21, 1971.” According to most versions of the legend, on the way back to the Adjustment center from a visit, Jackson drew a gun on his escorting officer and launched the bloodiest day in San Quentin’s history. First, he released his fellow AC revolutionary convicts, shouting, “THE DRAGON HAS COME!” Certain AC prisoners then helped Jackson take six officers and two white convict tier tenders as hostages. Five of these men, three guards and the tier tenders, were later found dead in Jackson’s cell, stabbed and with their throats slit. Three other wounded guards would recover.
Page 237-38: This ongoing high level of inmate radical organizing, seemingly resistant even to the severest prison discipline, continued to alarm prison officials….
In December 1973….the House Committee on Internal Security, was particularly interested to hear about “the unrestricted flow of extremist propaganda into the prison.” that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had claimed ”stimulated the hardened criminal inmates into an alliance with revolutionary extremists.”
…For the Committee on Internal Security and the San Quentin officers who testified before it, San Quentin’s problem with radicals was entirely an imported one.
AGAIN THE SAN QUENTIN ADMINISTRATION CHOSE TO IGNORE THE GENUINE GRIEVANCES OF THE INMATES AS A SOURCE OF PRISON REBELLION. … The committee was in part correct in its observations. Imported radical literature and the support of radical outsiders had certainly contributed to San Quentin’s revolution, though beneath this surface was A LONG HISTORY OF UNRESOLVED, LEGITIMATE PRISONER GRIVANCES that had little to do with the ideological wars of the California Right and Left that were being reproduced in San Quentin’s battle of books.
Despite this fact, in the California prison system a solution was already in the works.
THE PLAN WAS TO TURN THE PRISONERS AWAY FROM READING ANYTHING WHATSOEVER.
I think this last line and this latest article answers the question “If inmates will be widely allowed to have the AFSC’s “Survivor’s Manual” mentioned in your previous piece.”
P.S. The censors are out of control there lies another problem these censors seem to take personal ideology and discrimination to work with them rather than conducting themselves professionally. There seems to be no defined rules for the whole of say ADX just random perception of a censor with no check or balance no guideline or rule book each day brings new revelation of how out of control indefinite isolation is.To choose 1 issue would be to choose to banish isolation because the abuse of power is rampant Mr. Dugma’s censor no one else chose to keep his mail from going out. These petty facilitators of torture spend endless tax dollars making-it-up as they go along. Disgusting shame. I would say again I pray for the day isolation is outlawed and these that get paid to torture people another set of Nazis “just doing their job”would be treat like war criminals, Mail is sacred to these isolated men and even if Samuels says rehabilitation and correction are his goal the censors do their level best to keep these people isolated, I am surprised anything gets in or out. I get mail 3 weeks to a month old, thats ridiculous and CRUEL. They do not care if these people can communicate at all. Too anyone,
Oh no! Sure lets make it political, All “gangs” watever color can be construed , how bout lets keep this a HUMAN rights issue not say just one color is mistreated. better do the numbers of white vs everyone else. Please please We do not want in race color creed religion in Solitary confinement.