Angola 3 News: San Quentin Six Declare Solidarity with CA Prisoners’ Agreement to End Hostilities

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

San Quentin Six Declare Solidarity with CA Prisoners’ Agreement to End Hostilities

The authors dedicate their essay to Marilyn Buck (1947-2010).

San Quentin 6 Declare Solidarity with CA Prisoners’ Agreement to End Hostilities

by Sundiata Tate, Bato Talamantez and Giappa Johnson – three of the San Quentin 6

(Reprinted in full by Angola 3 News. Watch the video of our April 6, 2012 event, featuring Bato Talamantez at the end)

We strongly support the statement issued by the Pelican Bay prison Short Corridor Collective calling for the end of racial and factional hostilities inside California prisons and in county jails. We believe that this along with our struggle for human rights is a most righteous cause which will have a tremendous impact on changing the perception that the Security Housing Units (SHUs) house only the worst of the worst.

The truth is that the SHUs are filled with those who have transformed themselves into socially conscious men and women who desire to live more productive and constructive lives while working to bring an end to their tortuous living conditions. These comrades who have issued the agreement to end hostilities demonstrate their commitment to changing not only their conditions but themselves. Furthermore, they seek to change how prisoners are treated and how prisons are currently run.

We encourage all prisoners everywhere to better understand the vile system that has entrapped them, that works to break them down and defeat the struggle for self-respect, dignity and a “say” in prison conditions that affect us all. This is an unjust prison system that continues to punish and inflict cruelty and torture while at the same time vilifying prisoners as animals who are unfit for better treatment.

This is no place for human beings to be put in, and those who find themselves trapped in these places cannot remain silent. If you don’t holler loud enough, no one will hear you!

Supporters of the striking prisoners. Photo by Indybay.org

What we OOGs see happening now behind the walls and razor wire and amongst seasoned prisoners is both heartening as well as sad. Having been subjected to similar conditions, we understand all too well the psychological stress, duress and damage that these conditions inflict on human beings.

We also know that there are many prisoners who cannot and will not survive the isolation without being driven mad or committing suicide. Already too many prisoners we know have died, while others are dying due to medical neglect, old age and the indifference of the state. It is inhumane to deprive a person of their humanity, to touch and be touched by loved ones. It crushes the spirit!

What’s in a touch? For those who cannot touch another human being, it’s a difference of the magnitude between heaven and earth! It is such a huge part of what makes us human.

There is no way to justify human beings forcibly held in isolation for indefinite terms without hope for release. In California, prisoners in isolation have not been able to touch their loved ones or any other human beings for decades. What is the purpose of living if one has to live like an animal in a cage instead of as a human being?

Ultimately, this is a peaceful movement to assert our humanity. Differences in race, sets and associations matter not. Each of us is ultimately responsible for maintaining and preserving our own self-respect. We hope that as comrades you will help lift each other up as you come to realize that the same oppressor oppresses us all!

Photos of the San Quentin Six at the time of their trial.

We are all human beings. Let not the dark path separate you from fellow prisoners nor bury you alone!

The punishment for a conviction should not be arbitrarily extended nor intensified by prison authorities. No such thing as indefinite SHU! There should be no adding on to the sentence by depriving people of their good-time credits while people are in the SHU or by other means!

No such thing as three strikes! Families have been drastically affected! Their human right to visit their loved ones has been made nearly impossible for tens of thousands of families because of the distance families have to travel. For those who can afford to travel, the visit is traumatic when they finally arrive at their destination and are forced to speak to their loved ones through thick glass without being allowed to touch their family, loved ones and their children.

Sometimes families travel all the way to the prison, where they are told by prison guards that they will not be allowed to visit – with no explanation for the denial. This is degrading and painful to all involved. Yet, in California, that is a reality for tens of thousands of families and their communities.

Poster from the time of the SQ6 trial.

We must unite to end long term isolation as punitive punishment! We support you in this movement and join your call.

The three of us were imprisoned together 40 years ago. Circumstances beyond our doing or control put us together in similar situations as your own. We endured, stood our ground for better and for worse, supported each other. We got beaten down but got back up.

Prison struggle made us comrades. Forty years later, we are still of one mind and proud to call each other comrades. Never surrender lest your spirit be broken. Other comrades will help you.

Maintain freedom of mind while captive. Prisoners from cradle to the grave but never slaves! Stand for the good and for justice for all. Struggle to overcome internal conflict. No longer is this about just one individual, one race, set or prison. Take heart. You are not alone!

--The San Quentin 6 (also including Hugo Pinell, who survives still in the Pelican Bay SHU after 42 years in solitary confinement, Johnnie Spain, whose murder sentence was overturned and who was released in 1988, and Fleeta Drumgo, who was killed in Oakland in 1979) were accused of attempting to escape on Aug. 21, 1971, the day George Jackson was assassinated. Their dramatic trial, the longest in state history, lasting from July 28, 1975, to Aug. 12, 1976, cost the state over $2.2 million – nearly $9 million in today’s dollars. They can be reached via Bato Talamantez at batowato@gmail.com.

(www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com)

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Angola 3 Basics

(Download a flyer version of this fact sheet here.)

In 1972, deep in rural Louisiana, three young black men were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the biggest prison in the US, an 18,000 acre former slave plantation called Angola.

Peaceful, non-violent protest in the form of hunger and work strikes organized by inmates caught the attention of Louisiana’s elected leaders and local media in the early 1970s. They soon called for investigations into a host of unconstitutional and extraordinarily inhumane practices commonplace in what was then the “bloodiest prison in the South.” Eager to put an end to outside scrutiny, prison officials began punishing inmates they saw as troublemakers.

At the height of this unprecedented institutional chaos, Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King were charged with murders they did not commit and thrown into 6x9 foot solitary cells where they remained for decades.

Their struggle for justice continued until Robert was released in 2001, Herman in 2013, and Albert in 2016.

Despite a number of reforms achieved in the mid-70s, many officials repeatedly ignored both evidence of misconduct, and of innocence.

The State’s case was riddled with inconsistencies, obfuscations, and missteps. A bloody print at the murder scene did not match Herman, Albert or anyone charged with the crime and was never compared with the limited number of other prisoners who had access to the dormitory on the day of the murder. In 2008, NPR asked Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell why the state refused to test the print. "A fingerprint can come from anywhere," Caldwell explained. "We're not going to be fooled by that."

Potentially exculpatory DNA evidence was “lost” by prison officials—including fingernail scrapings from the victim and barely visible “specks” of blood on clothing alleged to have been worn by Albert.

Both Herman and Albert had multiple alibi witnesses with nothing to gain who testified they were far away from the scene when the murder occurred.

In contrast, several State witnesses lied under oath about rewards for their testimony. The prosecution’s star witness Hezekiah Brown told the jury: “Nobody promised me nothing.” But new evidence showed Hezekiah, a convicted serial rapist serving life, agreed to testify only in exchange for a pardon, a weekly carton of cigarettes, TV, birthday cakes, and other luxuries.

“Hezekiah was one you could put words in his mouth,” the Warden reminisced chillingly in an interview about the case years later.

Notably, Teenie Rogers, the widow of the victim, prison guard Brent Miller, after reviewing the evidence believed Herman and Albert’s trials were unfair, expressed grave doubts about their guilt, and called upon officials to find the real killer. "“Each time I look at the evidence in this case, I remember there is no proof that the men charged with Brent’s death are the ones who actually killed him. It’s easy to get caught up in vengeance and anger, but when I look at the facts, they just do not add up,” said Rogers in 2013.

Herman’s conviction was finally overturned in October 2013 by a Federal Judge. Although his trial was riddled with evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and other constitutional violations, it was the systematic exclusion of women from his jury in violation of the 14th Amendment that freed him. Unfortunately he was released in the late stages of advanced liver cancer and only experienced 3 days of freedom. Sadly for Herman, justice delayed was justice denied.

Albert’s conviction was overturned three times by judges citing racial discrimination, prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate defense, and suppression of exculpatory evidence. While the case worked its way through endless appeals, Louisiana officials refused to release Albert from solitary, even when no longer convicted of the crime, because “there’s been no rehabilitation” from “practicing Black Pantherism.”4

In June 2015, a Federal Judge courageously ordered Albert's immediate release and barred a retrial stressing the “Court's lack of confidence in the State to provide a fair third trial." This extraordinary remedy was also frozen pending yet another series of appeals.

Finally, Albert was released in February of 2016, 43 years and 10 months after first being put in isolation for a crime he didn’t commit.

Louisiana today has the highest incarceration rate in the US—thus the highest in the world.

Three-fourths of the 5,000+ prisoners at Angola are African American. And due to some of the harshest sentencing practices in the nation, 97% will die there.

Reminiscent of a bygone era, inmates still harvest cotton, corn and wheat for 4 to 20 cents an hour under the watchful eye of armed guards on horseback.

We believe that only by openly examining the failures and inequities of the criminal justice system in America can we restore integrity to that system.

We must not wait.

We can make a difference.

As the A3 did years before, now is the time to challenge injustice and demand that the innocent and wrongfully incarcerated be freed.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

In 2000, Herman, Albert and Robert filed a civil lawsuit challenging the inhumane and increasingly pervasive practice of long-term solitary confinement. Magistrate Judge Dalby described their decades of isolation as “so far beyond the pale” she could not find “anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence.” Over the course of 16 years, this seminal case detailed unconstitutionally cruel and unusual treatment and systematic due process violations at the hands of Louisiana officials and inspired worldwide action to end long term solitary.