Medical Self Defense and the Black Panther Party --An interview with Alondra Nelson

 

Medical Self Defense and the Black Panther Party

--An interview with Alondra Nelson

By Angola 3 News

Alondra Nelson, a professor of sociology and gender studies at Columbia University, is the author of a new book released last month, entitled Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination. By documenting the multifaceted health activism of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and critically assessing the BPP’s strategy and tactics in a respectful and appreciative manner, Body and Soul presents an analysis that is rare and badly needed in US colleges and universities today. In this interview, Nelson discusses how the Panthers’ legacy can both inspire and provide important strategic lessons for today’s new generation of political activists

In her book, Nelson writes that “the Party’s focus on health care was both practical and ideological.” On a practical level, the BPP provided free community health care services, including preventative education. Simultaneously, the BPP railed against the medical-industrial complex, declaring that health care was “a right and not a privilege.” Ronald “Doc” Satchel, the minister of health for the Chicago BPP, wrote in the BPP newspaper that “the medical profession within this capitalist society…is composed generally of people working for their own benefit and advancement rather than the humane aspects of medical care.” A newsletter published by the Southern California chapter argued that “poor people in general and black people in particular are not given the best care available. Our people are treated like animals, experimented on and made to wait long hours in waiting rooms."

By 1970, People’s Free Medical Clinics had become a requirement for every BPP chapter. In 1972, the BPP revised point six of the founding ten-point-platform, adding a demand for “completely free healthcare for all black and oppressed people…We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventative medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide ourselves with proper medical attention and care.”

While citing Martin Luther King’s 1966 declaration that “of all forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane,” one chapter provides an important historical context for the BPP’s health activism by detailing what Nelson calls “the long medical civil rights movement,” that began long before the BPP. “Mobilized in response to the distinctly hazardous risks posed by segregated medical facilities, professions, societies, and schools; deficient or nonexistent healthcare services; medical maltreatment; and scientific racism, activism challenges to medical discrimination have been an important focal point for African American protest efforts and organizations. The Panthers were heirs to health activism that directly reflected tactics drawn from this tradition,” writes Nelson.

Nelson says the central focus of her scholarly work is on “the intersections of science, technology, medicine and inequality.” She has co-edited Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life (2001) and Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History (scheduled to be released in March, 2012). To learn more, please visit www.alondranelson.com.

Angola 3 News:         In our recent interview with Billy X Jennings from It’s About Time BPP, one theme explored was how, with rare exception, the mainstream media has misrepresented the BPP. However, it seems that the even the radical and anti-capitalist media has generally underreported the health activism that is the focus if your book. How did the BPP’s health activism relate to their better-known stances against white supremacy, capitalism, and police violence?

Alondra Nelson:        Yes, it’s true. The Black Panthers’ health activism has been under-reported across the ideological spectrum. Their critics obviously did not want to cast them in a positive light. And, as your question suggests, even the Party’s supporters said little about this important aspect of the BPP’s work. I think its plausible to say that many on the Right and some of us on the Left--in very different ways and for completely opposite reasons--were captivated by a vision of the Party that did not include its health politics. Depictions of African Americans working in their neighborhoods, wearing white medical coats, was unspectacular compared to images of Black radicals wearing leather jackets and carrying guns.

It is ironic that our collective memory of the Panthers remains so incomplete because their health activism—from their political writing about medical issues in The Black Panther newspaper, to their practice of DIY healthcare—exemplified the anti-racist, anti-capitalist stance for which they are known. In fact, the reality of health inequality brought the BPP’s political perspective into sharper relief because it offered stark and specific examples of how economic and racial oppression literally damaged bodies, families and communities.

As you know, the BPP was originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, a name that reflected that protecting communities from police brutality was a primary motivation for the group’s founding. The BPP exposed the misuse of power whether it was at the hands of police officers or physicians. So, it’s also useful to think of the Panthers as being engaged in medical self-defense.

In Los Angeles, Party members Ericka Huggins and Elaine Brown, nursing professor Marie Branch, Dr. Terry Kupers, and others established that chapter’s People’s Free Medical Clinic. But, like all of the BPP’s health activism, this work extended beyond the clinic, including in this case, confronting police brutality. (Branch shared meeting notes with me from the 1970s from her personal archive where the formation of BPP health programs and prisoners’ protection from medical discrimination were seamlessly discussed). The LA Panthers advocated for and provided health care for incarcerated persons; some of these men and women needed medical attention because they had been abused while in police custody.

A3N:   How does the story of the BPP’s health activism, as presented in your book, contribute to and challenge the traditional presentations of the BPP by both the mainstream and alternative media?

AN:     Body and Soul offers an account of the BPP that moves away from the narrow confines of the so-called “culture wars,” in which the Party can only ever be a positive force or a negative element. Paying attention to the Party’s health activism calls into question the inaccurate stereotype of the activists as aimless thugs.

We also gain a different perspective on things we thought we already knew about the BPP, like the fact that the Panthers were avid followers of Fanon, Che and Mao, whose writings were required reading for all members. Through the prism of health, one can see very clearly the influence of Fanon’s dissection of colonial medicine in Algeria on the Panthers’ understanding of medical discrimination in the U.S. We can take seriously the fact that Fanon and Che were physicians as well as political thinkers. We can appreciate that Mao, who established the “barefoot doctors” lay health worker program, made available to the Party not only broad revolutionary principles, but also specific ideas about health care as political practice.

A3N:   What do you think were the most successful tactics employed by the BPP as part of its health activism? Strategically speaking, what lessons from the BPP’s health activism do you think are most applicable for today’s activists to learn from?

AN:     In addition to setting up their own clinics, they used legal approaches not dissimilar from the NAACP to voice their opposition to problematic biomedical research. The Party leadership realized early on that “policing the police” would not be the only method they used in their effort to topple racism and capitalism. The Panthers were pretty flexible tacticians.

One of the lessons that the BPP offers today’s activists is that they should be more loyal to the desired outcome than to the tactic. The sit-in came to be associated with the southern civil rights movement just as the mic check is now emblematic of the Occupy movement. But these groups also used other tactics: marching, occupying, sermons, etc. Social movements are dynamic phenomena; circumstances are constantly changing. So too should tactics.

One of the BPP’s more fascinating tactics was what I call, after sociologist Lily Hoffman, the “politics of knowledge.” Working in this vein, the Panthers engaged and reinterpreted scientific ideas about race and disease. They reinterpreted scientific theories about the causes of sickle cell anemia, for example, by placing the prevalence of the disease in the context of the history of the transatlantic slave trade, the medical-industrial complex and contemporary racism.

The Panthers use of this tactic—the politics of knowledge—should remind today’s activists that “framing” matters. It is important to be able to translate political arguments—health-related ones and other ones—into language, into stories really, that resonate with the broader public. The Party could be expert at this.

The Nixon administration and mainstream philanthropies would ultimately coopt the issue of sickle cell anemia. But the BPP played a key role in raising awareness about the disease and in situating it in a powerful political language that could mobilize communities.

A3N:   Along with chapters focusing on the BPP’s free medical clinics and the campaign to educate the Black community about and test for Sickle Cell Anemia, another chapter focuses on the BPP’s involvement with a diverse coalition that successfully organized against the formation of the Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence at UCLA in 1973. You write that BPP felt that the Center’s “biologization of violence” line of research would ultimately “craft a narrative of Black and Latino violent pathology” that would serve to “make already marginalized populations more vulnerable to medicine as a tool of social control,” and “effect the further criminalization of social groups—black males, the incarcerated—and in turn justify calls for increased surveillance and social control.”

While writing that the defeat of the Center was a “notable triumph,” you note further that it “was somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory for Newton and his allies, as blocking resources to the center as an entity would not prevent individual researchers from pursuing other sources of support for their investigations.” With this in mind, how has biologization of violence research progressed since the 1970s? How much influence has it had on public policy?

AN:     Attempts to attribute the causes of violence to biology (and closely related to this, criminality) are a very old story. In the late 19th century, the influential Italian criminologist Lombroso, claimed that new methods (e.g., phrenology) and theories (e.g., social Darwinism) showed that the tendency toward criminal behavior was inherited.

More than one hundred years later, similar ideas persist. In the 1990s, during the first Bush presidency, Louis Sullivan, the Secretary of Health and Human Services set-up a “violence initiative” to explore the biological models of social unrest in urban settings. Your readers may recall that around the same time another Bush official, referencing studies on violence among non-human primates, said that disproportionately black and brown “inner cities” were like “jungles.” (The initiative and controversial commentary around it would recall to the heated debate the Panthers were engaged in over plans to form a “violence center” at UCLA in the 1970s that may have had an especially harmful impact on black and Latino youth and men).

Recently behavioral researchers have aimed to link the presence of what has been called the “warrior gene” to violent, criminal behavior. At a time when we are learning even more about the complexities of genetic inheritance, about the epigenome and the systems biology, it simply does not make sense that one single genetic marker could have such a dramatic, determinative effect.

A3N:   What role has biologization of violence research played in justifying the mass incarceration explosion that began in the 1970s, increasing the prison population from 300,000 to 2.4 million today, giving the US the highest incarceration rate and the largest total prisoner population in the world?

AN:     To the extent that the longstanding efforts that I have just described have kept in circulation the fallacy that there is a definitive link between human biology and violence, theses ideas have indeed served as a justification for the expansion of the carceral system.

This is where the policy implications of the biologization of violence come to the fore: If violence is “in your genes” or “in your blood,” then one can justify policies that lock people away because these people are “lost causes.”

And, in turn, the idea that there is a innate predisposition to violence contributes to the decline of support for rehabilitation and reparative justice programs. 

A3N:   Since the 1970s, has the US come any closer to realizing the BPP’s public health goals?  If BPP co-founder Huey P Newton were alive today, what do you think he would say about President Obama’s “Affordable Care Act?”

AN:     The revised ten-point platform was prescient in capturing one side of the recent debates about widening health inequality in the U.S. and what to do about it. If I had to venture a guess, I would say that Newton and the Party would have appreciated the historic nature of what President Obama accomplished—a feat that many administrations before his had variously tried to accomplish and failed to do. Perhaps Newton would have even observed that the Affordable Care Act is a very small step in the right direction.

However, some journalists and pundits have noted the similarity between President Obama’s historic Affordable Care Act and the national insurance plan that former President Nixon backed unsuccessfully. Given the animus between the Party and Nixon, and the way this administration and its agents worked to destroy the BPP, it is hard to imagine that Newton would have been in strong support of recent healthcare reform legislation. There would have certainly been opposition to the fact that President Obama’s plan is a boon for insurance companies because the Panthers demanded, “healthcare for the people, not for profit.”

--Angola 3 News is an official project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com, where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. Additionally we are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more. Our articles and videos have been published by Alternet, Truthout, Counterpunch, Monthly Review, Z Magazine, Indymedia, and many others.

VIDEO: Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons --An interview with Victoria Law

Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons 
--An interview with Victoria Law

By Angola 3 News

(First published by Truthout)

Activist and journalist Victoria Law is the author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press, 2009). Law has previously been interviewed by Angola 3 News on two separate occasions. Our first interview focused on the torture of women prisoners in the US. The second interview looked at how the women’s liberation movements of the 1970s advocated for the decriminalization of women’s self defense. Taking this critique of the US criminal “justice” system one step further, Law presented a prison abolitionist critique of the how the mainstream women's movement, then and now, has embraced the same “justice” system as a vehicle for combating violence against women.

While citing the important work of INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence, Law argues that “today, abuse is treated as an individual pathology rather than a broader social issue rooted in centuries of patriarchy and misogyny. Viewing abuse as an individual problem has meant that the solution becomes intervening in and punishing individual abusers without looking at the overall conditions that allow abuse to go unchallenged and also allows the state to begin to co-opt concerns about gendered violence.”

Furthermore, “the threat of imprisonment does not deter abuse; it simply drives it further underground. Remember that there are many forms of abuse and violence, and not all are illegal. It also sets up a false dichotomy in which the survivor has to choose between personal safety and criminalizing and/or imprisoning a loved one. Arrest and imprisonment does not reduce, let alone prevent, violence. Building structures and networks to address the lack of options and resources available to women is more effective. Challenging patriarchy and male supremacy is a much more effective solution, although it is not one that funders and the state want to see,” says Law.

In our new video-interview, Law builds upon her earlier prison abolitionist critique by discussing practical alternatives for effectively confronting gender violence without using the prison system. She cites many success stories where women, not wanting to work with the police, instead collectively organized in an autonomous fashion. Law stresses that at the foundation of these anti-violence projects is the idea that gender violence needs to be a seen as a community issue, as opposed to simply being a problem for the individual to deal with.

One group spotlighted, Sistah II Sistah / Hermana a Hermana, in New York City, was formed to confront both interpersonal violence and state violence. They formed discussion groups where experiences are shared and the women collectively decide what tactics and strategies to employ. In one instance, they confronted an ex-boyfriend who was stalking a member of the group by going to his workplace, where they demanded he stop and successfully enlisted the support of his employer and co-workers.

Self defense advocacy and training is another tactic employed by many of the groups cited by Law. For example, in the 1970s, two feminist martial artists founded Brooklyn Women’s Martial Arts (BWMA), later renamed the Center for Anti-Violence Education in the 1980s. Along with teaching practical self defense techniques at sliding-scale classes, Law emphasizes that the Center also focused on the larger picture of how violence “holds different types of oppressions together,” resulting in a complex situation for poor women of color.

Our interview is being released in conjunction with the Unite to End Violence Against Women campaign first initiated in 1991 by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. This campaign began sixteen days of action on November 25, the International Day Against Violence Against Women, and will conclude on December 10, International Human Rights Day. We will be releasing two more segments of our video interview with Victoria Law during the sixteen days of action, so stay tuned to learn more about how Chinese sisterhood societies dealt with gender violence, as well as an update on new stories of women prisoners’ resistance that have happened since the first edition of Resistance Behind Bars was released in 2009 (a second edition is scheduled to be released next year). 

--Angola 3 News is an official project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com, where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. Additionally we are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more. Our articles and videos have been published by Alternet, Truthout, Counterpunch, Monthly Review, Z Magazine, Indymedia, and many others.

Bonding With Herman Wallace Inside a Louisiana Dungeon

Bonding With Herman Wallace Inside a Louisiana Dungeon

By Ashley Wennerstrom

I first wrote to Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox after seeing In the Land of the Free last spring and learning of the horrendous injustices the Angola 3 have suffered.  I felt compelled to offer my support and admiration for their commitment to social justice.  Within just a few days, I received a response from Herman (Albert wrote me a beautiful letter the following week) and we began to exchange letters on a weekly basis.  After several months of sparring about political philosophy, discussing literature, and discovering unexpected similarities, I was delighted when Herman asked me to join him for a special visit.

Two days before our scheduled visit, I received a letter from Herman explaining that he had not yet been notified of whether our visit was approved.  I had to call the prison the morning I hoped to see him to learn that permission had indeed been granted. Upon my arrival at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, staff informed me I was not on Mr. Wallace’s visiting list and would not be allowed to enter.  I persisted, and staff eventually located my name on their list of approved special visitors.  I was instructed to pass through a metal detector and was given a full body pat down before boarding the bus to the maximum security prison.   

I waited about 15 minutes in a Plexiglass and telephone lined corridor for Herman to appear.  When he finally arrived, clad in a denim shirt and jeans, his quizzical look instantly revealed he was shocked to
find me on the opposite side of the visiting booth.  Lifting the receiver with one shackled hand, he explained that in spite of his inquiries, the prison authorities never revealed whether approval for
my visit had been granted.  He was in his cell writing a letter of complaint about this lack of information when a guard informed him a visitor had arrived.

Our two hours together passed quickly, with much laughter.  Herman appeared well physically and joked that “such a physique for a man of my age” was attributable to regular running on the yard (albeit in an
enclosed cage). Herman spoke slowly and deliberately.  His conversation drifted between topics, but he always returned to his original point. Although he claimed to be “a little bit senile,” his memory and
knowledge of outside world was remarkable. He knew better than I the geography of the New Orleans neighborhood where he grew up and, coincidentally, I now live.  He was well-versed in current politics.  He referenced social media and specific websites.  Only a few remarks—namely his confusion of my large, flower-shaped earrings for  Stars of David—reminded me that I was speaking with a man who had been without exposure to the outside world longer than I had been alive.  Herman was concerned for my safety—had I driven far in the rain?—and asked after my family.   His smile waivered only when he mentioned the difficulty of not being able to attend funerals for the numerous family and friends he’s lost throughout his 44 years of incarceration.  He quickly changed the subject when he saw my eyes well with empathetic tears.  At the end of our visit, I told Herman that I would be honored to see him again.  

One month later, Parnell Herbert and I found Herman distraught when we arrived for a visit.  Prison authorities had just searched his cell to ensure that his property was “in compliance” with regulations.  The thinly-veiled disciplinary action resulted in the seizure of many of his treasured photos, letters, and books.  Herman realized that he had one piece of good news to share with us—his recent efforts to improve conditions had been successful.  He and the other men in closed cell restriction had just been granted permission to spend an hour on the yard each day, rather than just four times each week.   Herman was back to being his usual boisterous self by then end of our 4-hour contact visit, in which the three of us were allowed to hug one another, sit in the same room together, and share a meal (if hotdogs and sodas can be considered to constitute a meal).

I spent time with Herman each of the last two weekends.  He remained shackled throughout both 2-hour non-contact visits.  At one point a guard checked to ensure that he had sufficient slack in the restraints to be able to hold the phone comfortably, but the handcuffs were kept tight enough to leave imprints on his wrists.  Herman was un-phased and jokingly bragged about his extraordinary collection of “jewelry.”  Our discussions drifted between the details of his case, personal stories about our lives and loved ones, politics, our unlikely friendship, the constant harassment he endures on a daily basis, and our mutual desire to improve the lives of others.  Just before our visit came to a close last Saturday, Herman asked, “What inspires you?”  The answer to the question—a human who has remained principled, positive and purpose-driven in spite of living a nightmare—was quite literally staring me in the face.

"We Called Ourselves the Children of Malcolm" --An interview with Billy X Jennings of It's About Time BPP

"We Called Ourselves the Children of Malcolm"
--An interview with Billy X Jennings of It's About Time BPP

Video by Angola 3 News

This year marks the 45th year since the Black Panther Party was co-founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland. It's About Time BPP is organizing events in the SF Bay Area throughout the month, with the biggest events Oct. 21-23. Read the full schedule below (click on the graphic to enlarge it) and link to the main event website here).

Featured above is a new video-interview with Billy X Jennings by Angola 3 News, entitled "We Called Ourselves the Children of Malcolm," featuring archival photos and more graphics from www.itsabouttimebpp.com, including the photo exhibit "Women of the Black Panther Party and Beyond." Link to the full screen, high quality version of the video here.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE BY IT'S ABOUT TIME BPP:

The It's About Time Committee is committed to preserving and promoting the legacy of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and its programs of community survival pending social change. We will commemorate the historic legacies of the BPP as well as the many sacrifices and constructive contributions that all of us made while serving the people body and soul. Voter Registeration

We have the responsibility to place our own experiences into historical context; otherwise the legacy of the Black Panther Party will be ignored, dismissed and distorted by today's commentators and tomorrow's historians.

We will maintain a network of Black Panther Party alumni and supporters for the purpose of providing educational information to community groups or the public at large regarding issues of social justice. This will include publishing a newsletter and maintaining a speakers' bureau. We also organize local community events and support other community organizations who promote social justice issues. We provide mentoring for urban youth groups to encourage positive community activity and voluntarism.

We commemorate the sacrifices of those who fell in body and spirit to the prevailing internal and external forces of those times. We must continue to bring attention to the plight of the many political prisoners and exiles who were victims of the government repression which contributed to the Party's demise.

We need to reclaim our history and dispel the many myths about the Party.

IT'S ABOUT TIME!

--Angola 3 News is an official project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Along with providing the latest news about a trip of Black Panther political prisoners known as the Angola 3, we are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more. Our articles and videos have been published by Alternet, Truthout, Counterpunch, Monthly Review, Z Magazine, Indymedia, and many others.

15 Years of Giving Voice to Women and Transgender Prisoners --An interview with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners

15 Years of Giving Voice to Women and Transgender Prisoners in California
--An interview with Diana Block, Pam Fadem, and Deirdre Wilson of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners

By Angola 3 News

On Sept. 26, the statewide prisoner hunger strike resumed after a postponement of almost two months to give the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) time to implement policy changes. The CDCR has reported that as of Sept. 28, almost 12,000 prisoners were striking and public support is needed in order for the strike to be most effective. An update posted October 7 at the “Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity” website stated that “medical conditions are also worsening for strikers throughout the state. We’ve received reports that after 12 days of no food, prisoners are once again losing severe weight and fainting. One hunger striker at Pelican Bay was denied his medication and consequently suffered from a heart attack and is now is an outside hospital in Oregon.”

The current hunger strike demonstrates once again that injustice fuels resistance, and California has a rich history of prisoners, former prisoners, and their supporters taking a stand. Among these freedom fighters is the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), self-publishers of a newsletter entitled The Fire Inside (archived here). CCWP will be celebrating its 15th year anniversary on October 14, with an event in San Francisco featuring longtime anti-prison activist and former political prisoner Angela Davis along with other speakers and performers.

Our previous coverage of the statewide hunger strike focused on the issue of solitary confinement, as well as statewide grassroots organizing against California’s prison system. In this interview with three members of CCWP, we examine the treatment of women and transgender prisoners in California and discuss how CCWP is fighting back.

Diana Block is a founding member of CCWP and has been working on The Fire Inside newsletter since it was started. She is a mother and the author of a memoir entitled Arm the Spirit – A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back (AK Press, 2009).

Pam Fadem is a long time member of CCWP and has worked on the Fire Inside for over 10 years. She is a mom, a health educator and a disability rights activist as well. Pam had her own experience with the criminal injustice system when she refused to cooperate with a federal grand jury targeting the Puerto Rican Independence Movement.

Deirdre Wilson is a former prisoner, a program coordinator for CCWP and a mother. She began to work with Free Battered Women/CCWP shortly after she got out of prison because “the whole FBW/CCWP community made me feel honored for surviving my experiences and accepted me just as I was—a rare feeling for people released from prison!”

Angola 3 News: When and how was CCWP first started?

California Coalition for Women Prisoners: First, we want to thank Angola 3 News for this opportunity to discuss the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) and The Fire Inside newsletter. This 15th Anniversary of The Fire Inside gives us a chance to reflect on where things were 15 years ago and all the many struggles that CCWP has been a part of since 1995.

Some of the founding members of CCWP are still involved with the organization, but many have gone on to other work and different parts of the country. Far too many prisoners and former prisoners have made their transition and are not around to remind us of our roots.

Luckily, The Fire Inside itself offers first-hand documentation of this history which is invaluable for building our movement forward through the next fifteen years and beyond.

CCWP was started by prisoners, former prisoners and advocates on the outside in 1995 when a lawsuit, Shumate v. Wilson, was brought by a team of legal organizations to challenge the cruel, inhumane, and unconstitutional medical care that women prisoners were enduring. The prisoner plaintiffs in the lawsuit recognized that they couldn’t expect that legal challenges alone would improve their conditions of confinement. They wanted to ignite a grassroots movement to challenge not only health care conditions but the entire prison system. CCWP was born from this vision and from the beginning it included members on both sides of the walls.

Soon after CCWP was started, prisoners decided that they wanted to put out a newsletter in collaboration with members outside. As founding member Charisse Shumate put it in the very first issue of the newsletter: “I, Charisse Shumate, wish I could be there with you because as you grow in numbers, for us behind the walls of CCWF, the big cover up is going on inside . . . Is it because they have forgot we are human? If walls could talk, we would not have to beg help.” (FI #1, June 1996).

From that first issue, published in June 1996, The Fire Inside has allowed the “walls to talk,” making visible the lives of tens of thousands of women and trans prisoners who have been literally disappeared from society.


(Video documentary by Freedom Archives and CCWP entitled, Charisse Shumate –
Fighting for Our Lives, can be viewed online here.)

A3N: What is published in The Fire Inside? How is it used as an organizing tool?

CCWP: For us, the newsletter has always been more than a printed set of words and some photos. When Dana, a former prisoner, suggested the name “The Fire Inside,” it clicked with all of us immediately because it signified that this newsletter could be a means of nurturing the fire of creativity and resistance on both sides of the walls.

As we say in the editorial for our special 15th Anniversary Commemorative issue: “Spirit and character shaped in resistance to systematic dehumanization give rise to profound expressions of humanity. The lessons are deeper than the news of particular issue or events…As long as we have a voice and can hear the voice of another, we can transform our conditions. It is not only those on the inside who suffer. It is not only those on the outside who provide the inspiration.” (FI #45, fall 2011)

The Fire Inside (FI) has always dealt with news, issues, events and the many dimensions of activism and resistance inside the women’s prisons. FI has been on the front lines of exploring and contesting the multifaceted ways in which gender oppression constructs the entire prison system. Many of the subjects it has opened up have subsequently been further investigated, documented and analyzed by advocates, academics, policymakers and authors across the United States.

Health care, motherhood and parenting, lesbianism and transgender experience, immigrant prisoners, racism, parole, spirituality, the school-to-prison pipeline, decarceration strategies and resistance are among the many topics that FI has explored over the years. Since Fall 2001, a portion of each newsletter has been translated into Spanish, since many prisoners do not speak or read English. FI has also engaged in dialogue about the torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the ravaging impact of Hurricane Katrina, the racist legacy leading to the prosecution of the Jena 6 (young black men in Jena, Louisiana), and the racist prosecution and incarceration of the New Jersey 4, four young black lesbians in New York State.

FI has provided an opportunity for people who might not think of themselves as “writers” to see their own words and thoughts in print, whether as a full article, an interview, or a collage of many short statements woven together. These conversations have provided direction for CCWP’s activist program that addresses the range of problems identified in the pages of FI. The newsletter’s purpose is not just to describe existing conditions but to support an action program which will transform them.

A3N: What are some of the key projects that CCWP is involved in today and what role do current and former prisoners themselves play in CCWP?

CCWP: Our programs are all developed through the guidance and collaboration of the prisoners and former prisoners with whom we work. Since the overwhelming majority of women in prison are women of color, we prioritize the input of people from these communities – inside and outside of prison. Our current projects fall into four main categories:

(1) We monitor and challenge the abusive conditions inside the women’s prisons, including grossly inadequate health care, sexual abuse, and economic exploitation. We are actively supporting the Supreme Court ruling that requires California to reduce its prison population by 44,000 over the next three years. With regular input from prisoners, we are closely monitoring the state’s realignment process, which is shifting prisoners from state to county institutions in order to reduce overcrowding.

Unless realignment means the actual release of prisoners AND providing those returning to the community with the livelihood, shelter, trauma recovery services and peer support they need to succeed, it is just a matter of channeling prisoners from one inhumane facility to another.

(2) We fight for the release of women and transgender prisoners from life sentences as directed by law. We advocate for changes in the dysfunctional parole system in order to insure that all of those eligible for parole are actually released. We put a focus on the campaigns for release and change of the laws regarding survivors of intimate partner battering and those convicted as juveniles.

Recently we have expanded our work with young lifers - women and trans prisoners who are sentenced to life terms, or life without parole, when they were juveniles, an increasing trend in California. The U.S. is the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life without parole and California has 270 juveniles in this category, the largest number in the country. We are working closely with a group of young lifers at the Central California Women’s Facility to educate the public about this issue and pass legislation that will change this policy. Currently, SB9, which is pending legislative approval, is a small step in this direction.

(3) We support women and transgender prisoners in their process of re-entering the community so they are able to survive, grow and become fully involved in the struggle for civil and human rights. It is extremely difficult for women and trans people coming out of prison after many years to sustain their survival and also become involved with social change activities unless they receive support and become part of a community that is dedicated to safety and to making change.

CCWP is developing new methods of offering peer support for sustainable re-entry and community involvement through our PAR program (Peer Advocates for Reentry). Through this program, we pair up women and trans people coming out of prison with former prisoners who have been out for a while to share their experiences, help navigate the system and encourage people to become involved with challenging the prison system.

(4) We organize against prison expansion and advocate for prison population reduction. As part of the CURB alliance, we develop campaigns that shift budget priorities away from incarceration and towards education and other forms of community investment. Unless we can reverse the tide of prison expansion in California and achieve a shift in public consciousness toward health and justice instead of destruction and death, we will not be able to achieve our other long term goals.

The CDCR has a history of trying to coopt activists working for women prisoners into supporting so-called “gender responsive” programs which actually feed into the expansion of the PIC. We are committed to insuring that any positive changes for women and trans prisoners do not lead to more prison beds or buildings.

A3N: Why do you think the number of women prisoners has increased so sharply as of late? How, if at all, has the mainstream media presented the rising incarceration rate?

CCWP: The growth surge for women prisoners began in the 1980’s and has continued steadily ever since. The population of women in prison has grown by about 800% since 1980. A large part of the increase has to do with the drug war and the way sentencing for drug-related offenses accelerated during the eighties. Approximately one third of all women in prison are now there due to drug-related offenses. Many women are serving long sentences for participation in incidents they were coerced into by men they were involved with.

The rising incarceration rate for women has had a devastating impact on children, families and the fabric of community life, especially in communities-of-color. From a structural perspective, undermining community fabric is part of the state’s strategy to destroy the capacity of communities to effectively resist.

When women prisoners are discussed by the corporate media, the focus is usually on sensational cases which involve violence and sex. The majority of offenses which land women in prison are ignored along with such chronic, crucial problems as health care, aging, and family relations. Legal and economic factors which have led to the dramatic increases in the women’s incarceration rate are rarely discussed. Still, it is important to recognize that women-centered advocacy organizations have forced the media to pay more attention to women prisoners over the past ten years, overcoming some of their invisibility.

A3N: What is different about conditions for female prisoners in California and throughout the US, as opposed to their male counterparts?

CCWP: We want to be careful in how we discuss the differences in conditions between men and women’s prisons. There are real differences, but our goal isn’t to make the conditions in women’s prisons “as good” as the ones in men’s prisons. Rather, our goal is to decrease the incarceration of all women, transgender and men prisoners and to improve conditions of confinement as much as is possible given the repressive nature of the PIC.

Prisons are organized to reinforce gendered forms of behavior based on a strict male/female dichotomy. So in women’s prisons this means that passivity, femininity, and obedience are consistently stressed in order to control the prisoners. There is rampant sexual abuse of large numbers of women by male officers and the trading of sexual favors for privileges. Since 80% of the women in prison have experienced abuse either as children or adults, the continuation of abusive treatment in prison is especially damaging. Women who exhibit so-called “male” behavior and transgender prisoners who identify as male or are transitioning from female to male are targeted for abuse and punishment by correctional officers. This is also true for prisoners who have transitioned from male to female.

Approximately 70% of people in women’s prisons are mothers and the majority were the primary caretakers of their children before they went to prison. This means that custody and parenting issues are extremely important for most women prisoners in a different way than they are for men. Many women are pregnant when they come to prison. Adequate healthcare during and after their pregnancy is a key issue which men do not have to face. Women face other specific health care issues over the course of their confinement as do trans prisoners. Women are also less likely to be supported by their former spouse or partner once they come to prison, leading to greater isolation.

Recently, in response to the US Supreme Court ruling mandating a reduction in the prison population, a plan has been floated to dramatically reduce the women’s prison population and possibly close a women’s prison. Of course, in and of themselves these are very positive steps which CCWP has been advocating for over the years.

However, it is important for us to insure that such plans are implemented in a way that will allow them to work. Unless women receive support and services when they are released, there is little chance that they will succeed in the current brutal economic environment with the types of stigmas and restrictions that all prisoners face.

We also need to insure that the remaining women prisoners are not subjected to more overcrowding and further reduction in basic necessities, as has been occurring over the past couple of years. And we need to counter any media formula which exceptionalizes women prisoners while it demonizes male prisoners. We need to be clear, mass incarceration is a racist, unjust and dysfunctional system for men as well as women.

A3N: What are some of the challenges to building public support for women prisoners? How do you address these challenges?
CCWP: Women prisoners have historically been invisible to the public. Over the past decade, largely as a result of demands from women prisoner organizations, this has become less true. However, the prototypical image of the violent, gang-involved, black or brown male prisoner is still the one the public is inundated with. It is the one that drives public discourse about prisoners and prisons.

CCWP’s main strategy has always been to create opportunities for prisoners, former prisoners and their family members to give voice to their own experiences and their own humanity. This is key in countering both invisibility and the demonization of prisoners.

A3N: Andrea Smith, co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence argues that “the criminalization approach proffered in the mainstream anti-violence movement doesn’t work. And, also, this criminalization approach obfuscates the role of the state in perpetrating gender violence.” Similarly, in our previous interview, author/activist Victoria Law presented a variety of reasons why activists need to work outside of the criminal "justice" system. What do you think of Smith and Law's arguments? What is the best way to reduce and prevent violence against women both inside and outside prisons?

CCWP: We strongly agree with Smith and Law’s perspectives. Our work with incarcerated survivors of domestic violence has been rooted in exposing the role of the state in perpetrating gender violence. We have shown how domestic and state violence are part of a continuum of patriarchal, gendered violence through our campaigns to free incarcerated survivors starting with Theresa Cruz (see Fire Inside Issue #5 & #15). Not only are women consistently imprisoned for self-defense against violence, but once they are incarcerated they are required to accept guilt and show remorse for these acts in order to be released.

Violence reduction and prevention is a very complicated issue. Developing community based alternatives to the state is a necessary but protracted process. Such alternatives need to be rooted in consciousness raising and public education to expose how a violence-steeped patriarchal state promotes violence on all levels of the society.

It is absurd to look to this type of state to remedy problems with violence. Instead we need to work together to create healthy communities and new transformative structures that uproot the multi-dimensional causes of violence.

A3N: In what ways did CCWP and women prisoners participate in the recent statewide hunger strike in California prisoners? [Editor’s note: This interview was conducted before the strike restarted on September 26.]

CCWP: We have been an active part of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition from the beginning. Our members have visited prisoners on strike at Pelican Bay, fasted in solidarity with the prisoners, attended rallies, the legislative hearing in Sacramento, and have mailed in information to prisoners.

People in the women’s prisons told us that they had not known about the strike until they received information from us. Once they knew about it, some women fasted for a period of time. We have an article about the strike in the commemorative issue of our newsletter.

To us, the hunger strike exemplifies the leadership that prisoners can take in organizing against the most torturous of conditions and the ways in which prisoners can overcome their divisions to act together.

It shines a spotlight on the way in which the state is increasingly using prolonged solitary confinement as a means of pressuring prisoners to inform against each other. It also exposes how the issue of “gang affiliation” is being used to silence vocal and active prisoners and keep prisoners from organizing in any way.

A3N: How can our readers best support CCWP and subscribe to The Fire Inside?

CCWP: If you are in the Bay Area, consider volunteering with CCWP. We are a volunteer-based organization with only a couple of paid staff members, so we are always in need of committed volunteers. In these challenging economic times, financial support is also critical. You can donate online or send a check to: California Coalition for Women Prisoners, 1540 Market St., Suite 490, San Francisco, CA 94102.

You can also join our Women’s News email list, which is a low volume list-serve which covers issues and articles concerning women and transgender prisoners. You can subscribe to The Fire Inside through our website or by sending us a check for $25 (to the address in the previous paragraph). And if you are in the area, please join us at our Fire Inside celebration on Friday, October 14th, 2011 (Silent Arts & Crafts Auction of donations by local artists begins at 6:30 pm; Program at 7 pm; $20 donation, no one turned away for lack of funds; At The Women’s Building, 3543 18th St. @ Valencia, San Francisco, near 16th St. BART station, Wheelchair accessible; Childcare available - please call 415-255-7036 x314 by Monday, Oct. 10.)

Thank you again for the opportunity to share information about our vision and our work.

--Angola 3 News is a project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. We are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more. Our work has been published by Alternet, Truthout, Counterpunch, Monthly Review, Z Magazine, Black Commentator, SF Bay View Newspaper, and many others.

Robert King Touring UK With New British Film About the Angola 3

MEDIA COVERAGE OF TOUR: Oct.4 at the Frontline (Podcast and Written Article), at Liverpool John Moores University


Saturday and Sunday, October 1&2

Black History Live at Wembley Stadium: Robert speaking & exhibition stand (campaign action, DVD’s and book sales).

More information here.

Tuesday, October 4, 7:00 PM

Frontline Club: Robert King in conversation with Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve

More information here.

Tuesday, October 11, 7:00 PM

Private Event: Middle Temple Screening - with Criminal Bar Association. Followed by Q & A with Robert King & Vadim Jean.

Wednesday, October 12, 4:00 – 7:00 PM

John Moores University Liverpool Department Humanities & Social Sciences: Screening followed by a discussion with Robert King.

More information here.

Thursday, October 13, 6:00 PM

Grenadian Overseas Association: Screening followed by Q & A with Robert King
More information here.

Friday, October 14, 5:00 PM

International Slavery Museum: Screening followed by Q & A with Robert King & Vadim Jean.

More information here.

Monday October 17, 6:00 PM

King’s College London: Screening followed by Q & A with Robert King & Vadim Jean

More information here.

Tuesday October 18, 6:00 PM

Oxford University: Screening followed by Q & A with Robert King & Vadim Jean

Wednesday October 19, 6:00 PM

ULU: Screening hosted by Goldsmiths Students' Union, LSE SU and the NUS Black Students Campaign, followed by Q & A with Robert King & Vadim Jean

Filming the Inspiring Life of Eddy Zheng, a Bay Area Community Leader Facing Deportation --An interview with Ben Wang

Filming the Inspiring Life of Eddy Zheng, a Bay Area Community Leader Facing Deportation
--An interview with Ben Wang

By Angola 3 News

(First published at Alternet)

Ben Wang is the Director/Producer of the upcoming documentary film Breathin’: The Eddy Zheng Story. The film’s website explains that “after serving over 20 years behind bars for a robbery he committed at age 16, Chinese American community leader Eddy Zheng now faces deportation to China, a huge loss to the Bay Area community. Released from prison in 2007, Eddy has dedicated his life to preventing youth violence and delinquency through his work at the Community Youth Center, Community Response Network, and many other SF Bay Area programs and organizations.”

This month, Wang and other film makers initiated a fundraising drive as they enter into the major phase of filming. As this interview is being release there is one week left. You can visit their Kickstarter page to donate and learn more. Complementing Eddy Zheng’s own website, news articles from 2002, 2005, and earlier this year, describe the various stages of the successful battle for his freedom from prison and the continued fight against deportation.

Currently a resident of Oakland, California, Wang is the co-chair of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee. Wang co-edited with Eddy Zheng, the 2007 book Other: an API Prisoners’ Anthology. In the accompanying video interview, Wang discusses working on the book with Zheng, the book’s central themes, including the urgent need to give voice to API prisoners and the legacy of the WW2-era imprisonment of Japanese Americans in US concentration camps (view photos from "relocation" in San Francisco).

Ben Wang also co-directed the documentary film entitled, AOKI, about Richard Aoki (1938-2009), a third-generation Japanese American who became one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party. According to the film’s website, AOKI also “highlights how Richard’s leadership also made a significant impact on individuals and groups in the contemporary Asian American Movement. Richard’s contributions to the groundbreaking organization Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) and its involvement in the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) student strike led to the formation of ethnic studies at U.C. Berkeley.”



Angola 3 News: How did you first meet Eddy Zheng?

Ben Wang: I first met Eddy when I was a student at UC Davis. At the time, Eddy had gathered a great deal of community support for his parole and release from state prison. I read about Eddy's case and was really moved by his story. Since getting locked up when he was 16 years old, he taught himself English, took every self-help program available, published his poetry and writings, started the first-ever poetry slam at San Quentin, and mentored at-risk youth through a program called SQUIRES.

I read some of his writings and poetry and felt that there needed to be more stories from people like him. Even though I majored in Asian American Studies at UC Davis, I felt that Asian American prisoners like Eddy had been very marginalized, even in our own communities. Their experiences and perspectives really aren't included in our education, media, or policy debates--even though criminal justice issues continue to be a topic of growing concern today.

I started corresponding with Eddy and bringing a group of UC-Davis students for regular visits at Solano prison with Eddy and a group of Asian prisoners. Through that experience, I began working with him to publish the first ever anthology of writings and artwork from Asian and Pacific Islander prisoners.

It was a very educational and inspiring experience for me to work with Eddy and so many other talented writers and artists on the book project.

A3N: When did you first start working on the film? Is there a release date yet?

BW: We are starting principal photography now, which is the major phase of filming. We are gearing up to film key scenes over the next few months with Eddy, his family, formerly incarcerated friends, and youth.

We are still fundraising for production of the film, so if readers are able to make a donation, or would just like to learn more about the project, please visit our Kickstarter page.

There is no release date set yet. Check for updates at www.eddyzhengstory.com.

A3N: So far, what have you gotten video footage of?

BW: We have already filmed some really interesting footage including Eddy's Ninth Circuit court hearing regarding his appeals, two reunions of Eddy's formerly incarcerated friends, and the grand opening of the new office of the Community Youth Center in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco.

You can check out our trailer at the Kickstarter site or Youtube.

A3N: Why do you want to make a film about Eddy?

BW: I've personally witnessed Eddy's impact on other prisoners, formerly incarcerated people, and youth. I've seen how people have changed as a result of Eddy's guidance and inspiration. So I feel that Eddy is unique in his ability to motivate change--in people and society as a whole.

At the same time, I feel that Eddy's experience is unfortunately not unique at all. There are over 2.3 million prisoners in the U.S. and the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) prisoner population has grown remarkably--increasing by over 250% from 1990 to 2000. I hope that this documentary is able to shine a light on the stories of API prisoners--this segment of our community that is too often forgotten, shunned, or persecuted because of mistakes they may have made as a kid or harsh sentencing laws (e.g. 3 strikes).

A3N: Can you tell us more about how Eddy’s situation similar to other API prisoners in the US?

BW: Unfortunately for many immigrants, all “non-citizen aliens” who commit an aggravated felony or crime of moral turpitude are mandatorily deportable, even if they immigrated to the U.S. legally or with refugee status. Between 1998 and 2006, there was a 61.6% rise in total deportations of people of Asian nationalities.

Despite the growing trend of incarceration and deportation for many Asian Americans, these individuals have largely remained invisible in public policy, the media, and in our own communities.

Eddy’s story speaks to critical issues such as the way our criminal justice system treats its youngest criminal offenders, the growth of the prison population, and how immigrants are often deported for crimes they committed decades earlier.

A3N: How has the post-Sept. 11, 2001 so-called “war on terror” affected APIs living in the US?

BW: I think that many communities have been unfairly scapegoated as result of the war on terror, including some API immigrant communities.

In addition to the war on terror, I feel that the recession has resulted in a great deal of anti-immigrant backlash. Instead of placing the blame on the root causes of 9/11 (U.S. foreign policy) or the recession (Wall Street greed), there are some very powerful people who have used these crises to rally support for their conservative causes and against people of color and working-class immigrants.

A3N: Anything else to add?

BW: Thank you to all of our very generous supporters!

We are blessed to have an incredible team working on this film including Producer Christine Kwon, Executive Producer Deann Borshay Liem, Director of Photography R.J. Lozada, Writer Momo Chang, Associate Producer Geraldine Ah-Sue, and more!

You can also visit Eddy's website at www.eddyzheng.com for legal updates and his blog.

--Angola 3 News is a project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. We are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more.

California Prison Crisis Sparks Statewide Hunger Strike --An interview with Isaac Ontiveros of Critical Resistance

(ABOVE: Protest at CDCR headquarters in Sacramento on July 25, photo by Indybay.org)

California Prison Crisis Sparks Statewide Hunger Strike
--An interview with Isaac Ontiveros of Critical Resistance

By Angola 3 News

On July 20, hunger strikers at California’s infamous Supermax, Pelican Bay State Prison Secure Housing Unit (PBSP-SHU), declared victory and ended their nearly three-week fast for human rights. The strike had been announced several months beforehand and when it began on July 1, the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay were joined in the fast by thousands of other prisoners across the state. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), at least 6,600 prisoners in at least one third of California’s 33 prisons participated in the hunger strike.

In response to the hunger strike, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and the Public Safety Committee in the State Assembly of California will hold an informational hearing on August 23 regarding conditions and policies of the Security Housing Units at Pelican Bay. Activists have initiated a statewide mobilization around this hearing, in order to pressure state legislators and the CDCR to make substantial changes.

A statement written by the Short Corridor Collective, composed of some Pelican Bay hunger strike leaders, explains that on July 1:

a collective group of PBSP-SHU inmates composed of all races began an indefinite hunger strike as a means of peacefully protesting 20-40 years of human rights violations.... The decision to strike was not made on a whim. It came about in response to years of subjection to progressively more primitive conditions and decades of isolation, sensory deprivation and total lack of normal human contact, with no end in sight. This reality, coupled with our prior ineffective collective filing of thousands of inmate grievances and hundreds of court actions to challenge such blatantly illegal policies and practices (as more fully detailed and supported by case law, in our formal complaint available online here) led to our conclusion that a peaceful protest via hunger strike was our only available avenue to expose what’s really been going on here in CDCR-SHU prisons and to force meaningful change.... We ended the hunger strike the evening of July 20, 2011, on the basis of CDCR’s top level administrators’ interactions with our team of mediators, as well as with us directly, wherein they agreed to accede to a few small requests immediately, as a tangible good faith gesture in support of their assurance that all of our other issues will receive real attention, with meaningful changes being implemented over time."

On August 3, the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition announced that it had just received a letter from the hunger strike leaders at Pelican Bay, dated July 24, explaining that strikers have given the California Department of Corrections and Reform (CDCR) a deadline of two to three weeks from July 20 to come up with some substantive changes in response to their five core demands. Todd Ashker, one of the leaders of the hunger strike, explains that if the CDCR does not follow through, prisoners at Pelican Bay plan to go back on hunger strike:

It's very important that our supporters know where we stand, and that CDCR knows that we're not going to go for any B.S. We remain as serious about our stand now as we were at the start, and mean what we said regarding an indefinite hunger strike peaceful protest until our demands are met. I repeat − we're simply giving CDCR a brief grace period in response to their request for the opportunity to get [it] right in a timely fashion!

Hugo Pinell, one of the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay State Prison, has now been held in continuous solitary confinement for over 40 years—longer than any other US prisoner known to date. In a letter written during the strike to journalist Kiilu Nyasha, Pinell explained why he was fasting:

I have to get with it because it’s for a great cause and if good changes come about, I could get a break too. At this point, a move to a mainline would be great, being that my keepers are determined to keep me until I die. On a mainline, we could have contact visits again! It’s been too long since I’ve touched my Mom and all of my loved ones…I wasn’t prepared for a hunger strike, so I don’t know how well or how long I can hold on, but I had to participate…I don’t even think in terms of doing or saying something wrong, for that would strike against everything I live for: freedom, becoming a new man and the New World. So, Sis, this hunger strike provides me with an opportunity for change while also allowing me to be in concert with, and in support of, all those willing to risk their precious and valuable health.

Our previous interview with Solitary Watch about the Pelican Bay hunger strike examined the broader issue of solitary confinement in prisons throughout the US. In this follow-up report, we place the strike in context, alongside a statewide grassroots movement calling for cuts in prison spending to address California’s budget crisis, and a recent US Supreme Court ruling that calls for the reduction of California state prisoners by at least 30,000, in response to overcrowding.

We interviewed Isaac Ontiveros for an inside look from within California’s anti-prison movement. Ontiveros is the Communications Director for Critical Resistance, a national organization that is working to abolish the prison-industrial complex and is a member of the Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) alliance and the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition.

Angola 3 News: What is the latest news from the hunger strikers?

Isaac Ontiveros: As far as we know, the leaders of the strike at Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit have called an end to the strike—based on what they see as some movement on the part of the CDCR beginning to address some of their demands.

At the peak of the strike at least 6,600 prisoners across at least a third of California’s 33 prisons participated. These are official CDCR numbers, so we can confidently assume actual numbers were higher. Right now, our struggle is to determine how many other prisoners, in what prisons, are continuing to strike. Given how isolated prisoners are throughout the system, this is a challenge, to say the least.

A3N: Why have the Pelican Bay hunger strikers declared victory?

IO: The prisoners made very important, historic gains. That the strikers were able to move the CDCR at all was no small feat, especially when working under some the most horrendous conditions possible. The fact that they were able to coordinate among themselves despite extreme isolation is also impressive. Furthermore, solidarity was able to spread throughout the California system. This solidarity crossed the racial and geographic lines that we are taught are uncrossable; and strike leaders were able to incite strong support of people outside of prison on an international level. This is all very important when we think about victories, especially if we understand victories as being stepping-stones to further and greater victories.

As far as the specific concessions made by the prison administration, the details are still coming, but it seems that CDCR has moved a bit on the prisoners demands around providing and expanding some of the privileges and programs they have access to in the SHU. These gains—for example, some around cold weather clothing and access to calendars—may seem modest, but for people in such extremely oppressive conditions, these things take on a different weight. Also, it seems like there could be some movement on some of their other demands, perhaps some review of the “debriefing” process.

A3N: How can our readers support the next phase of this struggle?

IO: The next phase is to hold the CDCR to good faith negotiations, and to continue our push for all of the strikers’ demands to get met. It is very important for supporters to continue their solidarity work on the outside, with particular attention toward defending strike leaders from retaliation from the prison administration.

Many people are coordinating actions all over the US and in other parts of the world. A potentially important legislative hearing on conditions in Pelican Bay’s SHU is happening on August 23rd in Sacramento—there is lots of talk about that being a big point of mobilization.

Folks should stay tuned to the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity website for more information.

A3N: In recent months, CURB has organized statewide mass protests against California prison politics. In response to the use of California’s budget crisis as an excuse to cut state programs serving low-income residents, CURB presented a “Budget for Humanity” that called for dramatic reductions in prison spending and the number of prisoners. How does this campaign support the recent hunger strike?

IO: I think CURB’s fight is absolutely related to the strike because more prisons mean more torture, more SHUs, more people be locked up, more communities devastated economically and socially—all of it.

The demands of the strikers were particular to the conditions of Pelican Bay’s SHU, and the SHU has a very specific function-- but the fact that solidarity spread throughout the California system also speaks to how common the conditions the strike leaders were talking about are to all prisoners—deadly lack of healthcare, poor food, torture, overcrowding, breaking up of political organizing, and more. These conditions are also connected to those on the outside, primarily in Black and Brown communities.

Right now CURB’s main platform, as outlined in the Budget for Humanity, is demanding an end to all prison and jail construction; an immediate reduction of prison and jail overcrowding; the releasing of tax dollars from the grip of imprisonment; and an end to cuts to the most vital services, along with a reprioritization of how California uses it resources, to create what, and for whom. These demands feed and are fed by each other. Ending prison and jail construction frees tens of thousands of people along with billions of dollars. Ending the attack on basic resources like education, healthcare, meaningful employment, creates strong communities for people to come home to and to thrive in.

We also have to understand that this is not just a matter of fiscal sense-making and balancing the budget. This is also about political power. This is about capitalism and white supremacy. We need to understand that SHUs, the prison system in general, and police are tools of repression used to thwart peoples’ efforts and abilities to fight back, build up their communities, and build self-determination.

This also links CURB’s work with prisoner strike solidarity, along with community struggles against gang injunctions, police violence, ICE raids, and more. So I think CURB’s work—along with the work of so many other organizations and coalitions—is a step toward building larger and stronger grassroots movements that will make larger, stronger, and more thoroughgoing economic and social changes.

A3N: Can you give a history of California's "budget crisis"? How far back does this go? How does it relate, if at all, to the accelerated incarceration rates in the US that began in the 1970s, where the number of prisoners increased from 300,000 to over 2 million today?

IO: The best answer to this question is the wonderful and very important book Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore. The book explores these questions in great detail and I really can’t recommend it enough.

But roughly, we can understand that in the late 60s and early 70s, the powers-that-be in the US responded to social uprisings against racism, social and economic inequality, and other forms of oppression in the US —linked to anti-imperialist struggles happening all over the planet at the time—by making war primarily on communities of color in a variety ways, including the expansion and further militarization of policing and the expansion of imprisonment. This is intertwined with a crisis in the capitalist system occurring at the same time. So we saw an assault on organized labor and social services and programs that was basically the rise of neoliberal economic models—creating a deepening in the divide between the haves and have-nots (already pretty deep for those marginalized to begin with).

Into the 1980s we saw the war on drugs—which we should understand as a war on Black and Brown communities—go into full gear with the passing of thousands of laws, tougher and longer sentences, and the activation of all sorts of media stories and images that aggressively criminalize and dehumanize poor people and people of color, especially Black people.

Even though the so-called crime rate started dropping steadily in the early 80s, the economy, this fear-mongering, increased policing, mixed with the proliferation of anti-social ideas that social services are a waste, created the perfect storm for a gigantic increase in imprisonment. And the cycle perpetuated itself from there with harsher probation and parole conditions that made it easier to deny essential services and to land more people back in cages for longer amounts of time. Tying it back to the 60s and 70s, this cycle makes it more difficult for social movements to change the oppressive social and economic relationships the system is predicated on.

So, California, with one of the largest economies in the world, is situated in this history. The gutting of social services, the attack on labor, the loss of jobs, tax revolts , the abandonment of certain industries, financial speculation, the disuse of farmland, housing bubbles, energy speculation, “dot-com bubbles”, the criminalization of people of color, anti-immigrant hysteria, the passage of the three strikes law, etc., leads to one the largest prison expansions in world history.

Between 1982 and 2000, California's prison population grew 500%. Between 1984 and 2005, at least 20 prisons were built. In this period, only one university was built. And right now, these prisons are close to 200% of their holding capacity.

Obviously this history is cursory, simplistic, and leaves out a lot, but in engaging with any crisis there are questions we need ask, patterns we need to identify, and actions we need to take. In thinking about budget crisis, we need to ask ourselves: why does everything (education, healthcare and services, wages, jobs, etc.) except corrections get cut? What does this mean for the health of our communities? How does this relate to further economic crisis? How are we prepared to organize around this crisis? What are our opportunities?

A3N: Have there been any examples of other states reducing their prison populations as a response to budget issues?

IO: Yes, even right now, states are reducing prison spending, closing facilities and releasing people in response to the economic havoc caused by prisons. To be clear, much of this reduction is not based on progressive or humanitarian politics, or even an opposition to imprisonment. But, in the past year, New York, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Florida, and Connecticut have all implemented a variety of schemes to shrink imprisonment. Some of them have to do with sentencing reforms and parole and probation reforms, some schemes involve outright prison closure.

I think the key here is for organizations and individuals that want to see longer-term and deeper changes to organize around making these shrinkages permanent, and then to battle to have funds no longer wasted on prison spending be put towards repairing and building up the communities imprisonment has devastated—so that people coming home can stay home.

A3N: Further influencing California prison politics is a recent US Supreme Court ruling that calls for the reduction of California state prisoners by at least 30,000, in response to overcrowding. How significant is this ruling?

IO: This ruling is very significant. It says even the Supreme Court—which is far from a politically progressive entity—recognizes that the California prison system is scandalous, devastating, and deadly. It says change needs to happen immediately.

The Supreme Court decision gives us a chance to address the human rights crisis in California prisons, and to change the system itself, hopefully so that we can avoid further crisis.

Acting strongly here also positions us to take steps to address human rights crises happening outside the prisons, in the communities from which these thousands and thousand of prisoners are taken.

A3N: Since the CDCR released their proposal responding to the US Supreme Court ruling (that has been criticized by CURB in an open letter to Gov Brown) has there been any response from the state government?

IO: Unfortunately, but maybe not surprisingly, Gov. Brown and the CDCR’s plan is to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. They came up with a scheme called realignment where--rather than let people out of cages, reforming parole conditions, and using the tens of millions of dollars that would free up to support these prisoners return to their communities—they have decided to shift these 33-40,000 prisoners to the county level, ie. jails. Brown and the CDCR are responding to one crisis by creating the conditions for 58 crises.

For example, Los Angeles County is 33% of the entire California prison system. Its jails are already overcrowded and have been the subject of human and civil rights abuse scandals. Brown and CDCR’s realignment scheme would add at least an extra 11,000 to that system. Their scheme does nothing to address sentencing guidelines, and there seems to be a not-so-hidden construction scheme bubbling away on the side burner already. So, they propose more disaster.

What’s hopeful is that, luckily, people all over the state are more imaginative and humane than Brown and Co. and are ready for some serious changes. A recent poll shows a vast majority of Californians oppose cutting key state services and increasing taxes to pay for more prisons and jails: 80% of Californians favor paroling people who are terminally ill or medically incapacitated, and 60% support reducing life sentences for third strike prisoners.

People are ready for changes, and I’d wager they are ready to think about even greater changes. If Brown and the CDCR want to shift the burden to the county-level, then, with some strong organizing, residents, organization, and coalitions like CURB can meet them on their own turf, and say, “the only solution is to bring our friends, family member, and neighbors all the way home.” And we can move forward from there.

(This article was first published by Alternet. Permission is granted to reprint if Alternet is cited as the original source.)

--Angola 3 News is a project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. We are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more.