{"id":1333,"date":"2015-12-12T19:35:09","date_gmt":"2015-12-12T19:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=1333"},"modified":"2015-12-12T19:45:59","modified_gmt":"2015-12-12T19:45:59","slug":"california-ends-solitary-for-gang-validation-texas-prisons-persist-in-the-abusive-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=1333","title":{"rendered":"California Ends Solitary for Gang Validation, Texas Prisons Persist in the Abusive Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"texas\"<\/a><\/p>\n

California Solitary Success<\/h3>\n

Four years after over 6,000 California prisoners united in the first of three mass hunger strikes protesting the torture of long-term solitary confinement (among other things), a major achievement has been won. In a federal class action lawsuit brought on their behalves, Ashker v. Governor of California<\/em>, it was found that solitary confinement constitutes unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. As a result, California prison officials must now release over 2,000 prisoners from solitary, many of who have been held indefinitely (some for decades), for alleged gang affiliation.<\/p>\n

I received this news during early September 2015 with a smiling heart, since I\u2019ve been writing for many years about the torturous effects of solitary, ((Kevin \u201cRashid\u201d Johnson \u201cAmerikan Prisons Are Government Sponsored Torture,\u201d Socialism and Democracy<\/em>, Vol. 21, no. 1 (March 2007), rashidmod.com\/?p=113; <\/em>Johnson, \u201cAbu Ghraib Comes to Amerika,\u201d Socialist Viewpoint<\/em>, Vol. 11, no. 2 (March-April 2011) (The version printed in Socialist Viewpoint<\/em> is a condensed version, the original, full-length article can be read at rashidmod.com\/?p=119)<\/em>; Johnson, \u201cOregon Prisoners Driven to Suicide by Torture in Solitary Confinement Units,\u201d Rock!<\/em>\u00a0 Vol. 2, no. 4 (April 2013), also San Francisco Bay View<\/em>, Vol. 38, no. 4 (April 2013) p. B10, rashidmod.com\/?p=405<\/em>; Johnson, \u201cSolitary Confinement is Known<\/em> Torture: Yet Officials Pretend Not to Know and Play the Debating Game to Curb Protest and Continue the Practice in U.S. Prisons,\u201d Prison Focus<\/em>, No. 40 (Summer 2013) pp. 1-2, also Socialist Viewpoint<\/em>, Vol. 13, No. 4 (July\/August 2013) p. 51; Johnson, \u201cU.S. Prison Practices Would Disgrace a Nation of Savages: Texas \u2013 A Case on Record,\u201d Socialist Viewpoint<\/em>, Vol. 14, No. 1 (January\/February 2014),p. 51, Rashid.com\/p?=1007;<\/em> Johnson, \u201cWasted Minds: An Insider\u2019s Look at the Torturous Effects of U.S. Solitary Confinement,\u201d (August 2013), rashidmod.com\/?p=899<\/em>; Johnson, \u201cWhat Would Compel a Man to Try to Cut His Own Face Off?,\u201d Socialist Viewpoint<\/em>, Vol. 15, No. 1 (January\/February 2015) p. 65.))
\nand personally know and have witnessed its hardships, because I\u2019ve lived for over 20 years in solitary myself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From the outset, I \u2013 individually and as a member of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party \u2013 Prison Chapter \u2013 supported the California struggle. I drew the logo that came to represent the hunger strikes. I wrote about them, ((Kevin \u201cRashid\u201d Johnson, \u201cWhat is the Meaning of The California Prisoners Hunger Strike?\u201d San Francisco Bay View<\/em>, Vol. 36, No. 11 (November 2011), also Socialist Viewpoint<\/em>, Vol. 11, No. 6 (November\/December 2011) p. 59, rashidmod.com\/p?=308<\/em>.)) and helped spread word amongst other prisoners in the states where I was confined, encouraging them to also join. As a result, many prisoners in my home state of Virginia participated, several of who were consequently transferred out-of-state as I had been. Also, many participated in Oregon, where I was transferred to in 2012 and held for a year, up until shortly before the third hunger strike began in July 2013,<\/p>\n

My efforts and involvements in Oregon contributed to my abrupt transfer, yet again, this time from Oregon to Texas in June 2013, just a month before 30,000 prisoners went on that third strike.<\/p>\n

Upon my arrival in Texas, I was met with immediate violence at the hands of ranking Texas prison officials, who assured me I\u2019d be broken or killed. I was promptly thrown into solitary for resisting that violence, where I\u2019ve since remained.<\/p>\n

Solitary in Texas<\/h3>\n

Decades ago Texas adopted a California-style policy of indefinitely segregating prisoners for \u2018confirmed\u2019 gang affiliation. The \u2018confirmation\u2019 process is completely arbitrary, and cannot be challenged at all. Prisoners are \u2018confirmed\u2019 upon little or no evidence, often based on just the statement of another prisoner or official who may for whatever reason just want the targeted prisoner removed from general population.<\/p>\n

Conditions in Texas\u2019 solitary are worse than California\u2019s. The federal courts have actually found solitary in Texas to be the worst in the entire U.S., and that it invariably causes its victims mental damage \u2013 not only exacerbating the problems of the already mentally ill, but also impairing those of sound mind. ((As the Texas federal courts have found, \u201cTexas\u2019 administrative segregation units are virtual incubators of psychoses \u2013 seeding illness in otherwise healthy inmates and exacerbating illness in those already suffering from mental infirmities . . . \u201d Ruiz v. Johnson<\/em>, 37 F. Supp. 2d 85s, 907 (S.D. Tex. 1999).<\/p>\n

About 80% of the prisoners housed in my solitary cellblock are indefinitely segregated because of alleged \u2018confirmed\u2019 gang affiliation. My neighbor, Matthew Salazar #1052313, has been held in solitary for this reason for thirteen of his fifteen years imprisoned in Texas.<\/p>\n

Their only hope of eventual release is to apply to participate in the GRAD (Gang Renunciation and Disassociation) program. Texas prison officials emphasize that participation in this program is a privilege. Just to get enrolled, a prisoner must jump through a series of hurdles and weather repeated harassments and meticulous property searches (including having all papers and correspondents\u2019 addresses, etc. scrutinized and often recorded) by GI (Gang Investigation) officials who operate inside the prisons with the greatest impunity. Another condition for enrollment is \u2013 just like in California \u2013 that the \u2018confirmed\u2019 prisoners identify other prisoners as gang affiliates. Participation in GRAD therefore places one in danger, since any participant or graduate of the program is instantly tagged by others as a snitch. One must therefore either endure the permanent torture and mental damage inherent in Texas\u2019 solitary confinement (often upon a false \u2018confirmation\u2019), or become a known snitch.<\/p>\n

Texas Prisoners Need Help!<\/h3>\n

Upon my transfer to Texas, I immediately set about working to expose those around me to the California prison-based struggle and the growing movement on the outside against solitary, which they needed to tap into. Getting them involved has proven a difficult undertaking, largely because Texas prisoners are deeply apolitical and pessimistic about possibilities for change or gaining broad outside support.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve been left isolated and led astray all too long and often, living under the most arbitrarily abusive conditions, and face severe reprisals for the smallest shows of united resistance against abuse.<\/p>\n

Texas prison officials work consciously to keep its segregated prisoners politically backward, divided and isolated from public support. Texas courts \u2013 since the death of its one favorable federal judges, William Wayne Justice \u2013 are extremely hostile towards Texas prisoners, and there exists virtually no willing outside legal or organized public support for them that understands the nature and workings of the prison system.<\/p>\n

Very little consciousness-raising literature is allowed into the prisons and illiteracy is high. There are no Texas-based prisoner-oriented media like California has long had, such as California Prison Focus<\/em> and San Francisco Bay View<\/em> newspapers, or former political prisoner Ed Mead\u2019s self-published newsletters like Prison Art<\/em>, Rock!<\/em>, Hunger Strike Support<\/em>, etc. which played decisive roles in raising California prisoners\u2019 consciousness, and getting their voices and views shared across the broader prisoner body and out to the public, and ultimately overcoming the divisive prisoner culture that California officials cultivated and kept embroiled in violent conflicts.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) [sic!], is the only prison system I know of that publishes its own monthly newspaper, called The Echo<\/em>, that uses prisoner \u201cstaff writers\u201d to proselytize prisoners with the administration\u2019s happy slave and pro-pig indoctrinations. The paper, which has been in publication since 1928, is dutifully delivered \u2018free\u2019 to every prisoner in Texas.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve encountered many Texas prisoners who see the need for and want change; there is just so little faith in the possibility, or even in themselves as potential agents of change. Most who I\u2019ve struggled to inspire feel that \u2018other\u2019 places are different. That what happened in California for example, could never happen in Texas. But I know different. I witnessed that it took decades of struggle, by folks like Ed Mead via media he\u2019s published or edited, to finally open the eyes of many of California\u2019s prisoners to how they were being divided, used, manipulated and exploited by prison officials to their own collective disadvantage. This prompted a series of early attempts at unity, which grew until it converged in the epic hunger strikes and finally on agreement by all the previously warring prisoners (except those most deeply in pawn to prison officials) to end all hostilities across the entire California prison system and jails.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen that sort of pessimism here in Texas before. I experienced, struggled with and to some degree overcame it while I was confined in Virginia, and then in Oregon. It\u2019s actually typical of those, who by nature of oppressive conditions such as imprisonment, are conditioned to think individualistically and see themselves as absolutely powerless, unable to overcome cultural and other long-standing divisions, publicly abandoned and despised, and subject to the absolute impunity of officials who are perceived as sole \u2018legitimate\u2019 power-holders. But it\u2019s been this way for so long in Texas that prisoners can see it no other way. Many are actually afraid to, like slaves cowed by generations of incessant brutality. Actually, this is<\/em> their condition \u2013 literally.<\/p>\n

California, however, has a long history and tradition of prisoner activism. In fact it was a center of the 1960s-1970s prison movement that served as a catalyst and inspiration to the broader outside social movements of that period. Not so in Texas. During and well after the 1960s-1970s, prisoners across Texas were actually running the prisons for<\/em> officials with terror and wanton violence as a formal policy of the TDCJ. ((For an extensive analysis of the operations and uses of inmate guards (aka \u201cbuilding tenders\u201d or \u201cturnkeys\u201d), and it\u2019s being outlawed by the federal courts, see, Ruiz v. Estelle<\/em>, 503 F. Supp. 1265 (S.D. Tex. 1980).)) Remnants of that culture and attendant mentalities still remain.<\/p>\n

Not only has solitary confinement in Texas been found by the courts to be the most tortuous and dehumanizing in the U.S., its entire system has been found to be Amerika\u2019s most abusive. ((See, Ruiz v. Johnson<\/em>, 37 F. Supp. 2d 855 (S.D. Tex. 1999); Ruiz v. Johnson<\/em>, 154 F. Supp. 2d 975 (S.D. Tex. 2001); also my discussion and analyses of these findings in, \u201cU.S. Prison Practices Would Disgrace a Nation of Savages,\u201d op. cit. note 2.)) So many outrages prevail here one hardly knows where to begin. At the TDCJ prisons I\u2019ve been confined to, I\u2019ve witnessed routine beatings of prisoners \u2013 once witnessing guards bring an already unconscious prisoner into my assigned pod and then beat him bloody for over five minutes (while he was still unconscious!) with ranking guards looking on. ((The victim of this attack was Dante Roberts #698422. The assault occurred at Estelle Unit in Huntsville, TX on August 7, 2013.)) I\u2019ve witnessed guards routinely throw the entirety of prisoners\u2019 personal belongings away, or confiscate them for completely fabricated reasons. I\u2019ve seen prisoners starved for weeks on end. I\u2019ve seen guards kill prisoners. I\u2019ve both witnessed and endured being compelled to drink contaminated water, receiving grossly non-nutritious meals, denied medical care for acute medical problems, and on and on. All with a green light and\/or cover-ups from officials at the highest ranking administrative levels.<\/p>\n

Hope for change lies in only two areas for us \u2013 generating outside exposure and support, and building unity amongst ourselves. And one serves and helps advance the other.<\/p>\n

At my prompting I was able to get a number of Texas prisoners subscriptions to Ed Mead\u2019s Rock!<\/em> newsletter, through which I hoped to see them unite with and gain inspiration from the words and examples of California\u2019s struggling prisoners. Unfortunately, the TDCJ is one of the only U.S. prison systems that forces all of its prisoners to work, but doesn\u2019t pay them even a pittance. Most also have no outside financial help, and even for those who do receive a little, we are not allowed to mail stamps to outside sources. Therefore they couldn\u2019t support their subscriptions with donations of money or stamps to Ed. So, to both our disappointment, Ed couldn\u2019t afford to keep the Texas subscriptions going and was forced to terminate them. Those who did briefly receive Rock!,<\/em> however, were<\/em> encouraged by its content and the example of California\u2019s prisoners, especially their unity and agreement to end hostilities among themselves.<\/p>\n

I therefore conclude this with a call to all activists, the public at large, and all who have worked in solidarity with California\u2019s prisoners. Texas prisoners need help! We need support toward building a broad-based outside-to-inside support structure for Texas prisoners who are presently suffering all<\/em> the same outrages and abuses as California\u2019s prisoners have been struggling and won recent grievances against. This initiative should be linked up with that supporting California prisoners \u2013 Texas and California have Amerika\u2019s two largest prison populations \u2013 with an eye to extending its reach to all prison systems across Amerika. California has set the precedent that should inspire and benefit prisoners everywhere. If solitary is unacceptable there, it\u2019s unacceptable everywhere!<\/p>\n

Dare to Struggle, Dare to win!
\nAll Power to the People!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

California Solitary Success Four years after over 6,000 California prisoners united in the first of three mass hunger strikes protesting the torture of long-term solitary confinement (among other things), a major achievement has been won. In a federal class action lawsuit brought on their behalves, Ashker v. Governor of California, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,14],"class_list":["post-1333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-party-articles","tag-texas-prison-conditions","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1333"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1336,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions\/1336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}