Resistance Inside the Prisons of CalifAztlán!

Close to 1,000 prisoners from two of the most heinous-operated prisons in California, Pelican Bay and Corcoran State Prisons (1200 miles away from each other), collectively and consciously organized a hunger strike on Sunday, July 1, 2001. The strike lasted a week. The majority of the hunger strikers were Mexican and African held captive in the notorious S.H.U.s (Security Housing Units).

The SHUs are psychological deprivation programs denying the five human senses turning a person into a mentally retarded vegetable. The S.H.U.'s (Security Housing Units) are cemented built-in graves insulated from any kind of noise; where prisoners have no access to fresh air breathing fumes from the air conditioners, boxed in cells with temperatures above 100 degrees, and the cells are the size of a bathroom with a toilet. The SHU prisoners never have physical contact with people.

The majority in the U.S. prisons and in the SHUs are Mexican and African. Those who have been forced into the SHUs have resisted consciously or unconsciously to a colonial system (gringo-white power) that has maintained poor and oppressed people in poverty, ignorance and disorganized. A colonial system that began from the theft of the indigenous peoples' land (Raza), freedom and millions of Raza lives were wiped out. With the near extermination of Raza, the foreign invaders (now called "Americans") needed masses of people to plough the land and sailed to the African continent to steal African people from their homeland forcing them to work in plantations as property to the "Americans". The slave trade gave rise to the wealth of the U.S. of A. Today, the slave trade continues in the now U.S. prisons, as the U.S. Constitution so states.

The protest exposed the S.H.U.s as torture programs that whomever was forced into the SHUs was decided arbitrarily by prison guards, prison administrators and the governor. One example was on December 17, 1999, where Governor Gray Davis ordered seven of the 68 Raza hunger strikers from New Folsom Prison to be put in the SHUs indeterminately. They had collectively staged a hunger strike demanding basic human needs be met. Gov. Davis, a democrat, supported by the biggest union in California-the prison guard union, opted by putting 7 in the SHU and broke the strike. Jose Luis Aviña, son of Quetzaoceloaciua was one of the hunger strikers who was put in the SHU at that time. Gov. Davis' scheme was to put down any kind of organizing in the community in defense of prisoners and the target was Quetzaoceloaciua's son. Quetzaoceloaciua is the Coordinator of the Barrio Defense Committee in San Jose, a community-based organization that defends the democratic rights of la Raza. The Barrio Defense Committee has played a role in mobilizing la Raza throughout the states of California and Texas to organize and resist inside the prisons and to organize families of the prisoners to take a stand in defense of their loved ones.

The U.S. government implemented SHUs all over the U.S. with different names and operate in the same way against the same people: Mexican, African, Puertoriquen and other oppressed peoples.

The U.S. government feared a massive resistance inside the California prisons of 200,000 and had to stop the strike immediately. Evidence of that was during the 1999 New Folsom Prison hunger strike, in which several prisons throughout the state of California had hunger strikes and clashes with the prison guards. The July 1st strike lasted one week because:

(1) the U.S. govt. used Senator Richard Polanco from Los Angeles, a Mexican in name only to stop the strike. The fastest growing population in California are Raza becoming the majority in many places. So, the use of brown faces within the U.S. govt. is a tactic used by the gringo govt. to confuse and pacify la Raza. Polanco publicly stated that he supports the SHUs but that "they had to be less brutal", meaning ignoring and denying genocide committed against la Raza (half of the prison population are Raza, majority young men). Polanco pleaded with Steve Castillo, one of the organizers in the Pelican Bay SHU to stop the strike with the promise that Polanco and the Catholic Church would sit down and "negotiate" with the prison administrators;

(2) Further evidence of stopping the strike was when the July 1st hunger strike began, there was a media blackout statewide and nationally. The Barrio Defense Committee, organized a caravan to Sacramento (the capital of California where heads of state make decisions) and held a demonstration in front of the Dept. of Corrections on July 2nd, in support of the hunger strikers. The Barrio Defense Committee called for a press conference, but no media showed up (local, Spanish-speaking or statewide). In every demonstration the Barrio Defense Committee organized in Sacramento, the media appeared, except for the July 2nd one. The Sacramento Bee, the biggest newspaper in California, that follows and reports on prison issues (known to defend prison-building) had a small article hidden on the hunger strike. In Los Angeles, where the families of the SHUs prisoners live did not know of the organized resistance because the media had blocked the information; and

(3) no organizations that advocate prisoners' rights massively exposed the hunger strikes (in Spanish or English). In California, there have been huge conferences on what the "white left" have called "prison industrial complex building" and massive mobilizations in defense of one man. Yet, no outcry came out in defense of the hundreds of courageous and valiant men who were in the frontlines of battle against the most repressive forces of the U.S. govt's arsenal. The only known organized demonstrations and massive outcries came from the Barrio Defense Committee, Raza Rights Coalition and the Chicano Mexicano Prison Project in San Diego. The San Francisco-based California Prison Focus had met with the negotiators in Crescent City, where Pelican Bay is located, and to this date negotiations continue. In the meantime, the hunger strikers stated they would stop the strike momentarily to re-organize and strategize to resume again in January 2002.

The hunger strike was an organized and conscious protest of people who are in the worse conditions a human being could be in. In which any kind of resistance, even looking at a guard in the eye could cause a prisoner a beating, extend prison time and even death. There is an absolute silence of the torture the guards commit against the prisoners. The U.S. govt. has succeeded in convincing the public (with the use of the politicians, media, war on crime and drugs campaigns, criminalizing the communities) that the "SHUs are necessary because it houses the worst of the worst" and supposedly creating a fear hysteria in the minds of primarily white people who have been responsible for voting for laws such as Three Strikes You're Out (commit 3 felonies, you're in for 25 years to life) and Prop. 21 (imprisoning children of 14 years and up), but most of all have also benefited from the prison-building. The U.S. govt. has handed over high paying jobs to white people and increasingly Mexicans from rural towns to buy them off. Prison-building created Silicon Valley, one of the wealthiest zones in the world located between the San Francisco Bay Area and Salinas. This is the parasitic relation in which the rich get richer at the expense of poor and oppressed people getting poorer, exploited and locked up.

The July 1st strike shook the state (U.S. govt., prisons). They understood the significance of a prison economy, if it falls. The Barrio Defense Committee understands that la Raza, poor and oppressed people will be the ones that will take the prisons down. To win such an objective we must build organization, mobilize and be organized. TIERRA Y LIBERTAD! RAZA LOCKDOWN ARE POLITICAL PRISONERS OF WAR IN AZTLAN! FREE JOSE LUIS, CONVICT THE POLICE!

You can support the hunger strikers by:
1. Demanding to the Governor and Richard Polanco to dismantle the SHUs immediately;
2. All SHU prisoners must be taken out of the SHUs or any torture program;
3. All SHU prisoners must be medically treated;
4. All SHU prisoners must be compensated for the torture committed against them.

Write, fax, call and email to:
Governor Gray Davis State Capital Sacramento, CA 95814 (916) 445-2841/ FAX (916) 445-4633

Senator Richard Polanco 300 S. Spring St., #8710 Los Angeles ,CA 90013 (916) 324-6175 / FAX (916) 327-8817 (213) 620-2529/ FAX (213) 617-0077 senator.polanco@sen.ca.gov

Bill Lockyer, Attorney General 1300 I Street, Suite 1740 Sacramento, CA 95814 (916) 324-5437

Build a Barrio Defense Committee in your barrio!Barrio Defense Committee P.O. Box 1523 * San Jose, CA 95109 (408) 885-9785 barriodefens@aol.com