PELICAN BAY RIOT, page 16
“Hi baby, how’s the drive going?”
“It’s going okay. I’m just daydreaming about what happened to Damon…”
“I know you love him like a brother, but thank God you’re making it. Where are you?”
“I’m at the bottom of the Grapevine. I pulled off the freeway to answer your call so I can concentrate on this hill.”
“You concentrate on that hill honey and don’t forget how many hills you’ve already climbed and conquered. I’m proud of you baby. I love you.”
“Love you too beautiful.”
I pulled back on the road and started thinking about the research I’d done on Pelican Bay while driving up the hill. According to Pelican Bay State Prison’s own website and mission statement, it was designed to house California’s most serious criminal offenders in a secure, safe and disciplined institutional setting with one half of the prison housing maximum security inmates in a general population setting where inmates were able to get limited yard together, and with the other half of the prisoners housed in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) designed for inmates presenting serious management concerns. They went on to say that the S.H.U. is a modern design for inmates who are difficult management cases, prison gang members, and violent maximum security inmates.
There was too much grey area for S.H.U. confinement…
Difficult management cases could mean too many things. Prisoners who bucked the system as jail house lawyers and filed suits on behalf of themselves or other inmates were retaliated against.
As for prison gang members, it took 2 of 3 things to validate a prisoner for S.H.U. confinement currently. The first thing was self admission. You screwed yourself if you admitted you ran with a gang. I thought back to the many times I’d been in prison. Every time a prison inmate was classified to a new yard for housing in the California Prison System, a team of counselors, Inmate Gang Investigators and the Warden were present with a pen and paper and a barrage of questions like, “Do you have any enemies?”, Then, “Who do you run with?” If you were a Black inmate, “Do you run with the Crips or Bloods?” If you were a Mexican inmate, “Do you run with the southern Mexicans or northern Mexicans? If you were a White inmate, “Do you run with the Peckerwoods or Skin heads?” I had to force them to write down that I was neither and couldn’t I just be a White man born of my momma? Either the classification team was inexperienced every time, or they were overzealous to label inmates. To start the questions with, do you have any potential enemies and follow it up with, which gang do you run with for protection, is a setup. I remembered how I saw many young, first time prisoners get to the yard in a hurry to join sides and tattoo ink on their bodies to represent that protection, that belonging. Those tattoos led to a more obscure form of self admission and the second factor in determining gang validation. An often times artistic image combined with a county the inmate is from is looked at like a gang tattoo. The third possible way to validation is for 2 or more prisoners to testify that another prisoner is a gang member with a certain level of influence, hardly a credible way for the prison system to determine things.
The third factor for S.H.U. housing according to Pelican Bay-is to house violent maximum security inmates. That goes with the territory, especially considering that classification process where inmates are pitted against each other from the start. The Crips and Bloods are notorious for animosity, as are the southern and northern Mexicans and for the Whites, the Peckerwoods and Skin heads. It’s always a battle for power and control to decide who uses which showers, which side of the dayroom prisoners can congregate in, or who uses which tables, handball courts, basketball courts and workout bars on the prison yard.
I looked out the window at the Grapevine Mountain at the ravines with all the turns and twist and remembered the letters Damon sent. He’d spent an additional 18 months in the Hole-Administrative-Segregation, C-6, where I’d left him on my parole date before taking the State Prison bus to the Pelican Bay S.H.U. The original reason for his S.H.U. confinement for being a shot caller who forced that riot to happen had been thrown out. But they were still keeping him as a validated gang member. In my letters asking him how that was possible I’d found that 2 other validated gang members held captive by the Pelican Bay S.H.U. had gone through the debriefing process to get out of the S.H.U.’s isolation. After the debriefing process they had been transferred to a brand new level 4 prison built in Delano, California. The prisoners that had testified against Damon and others in writing in the debriefing papers left the cells at Pelican Bay that Damon and the others filled. Pelican Bay was now breaking a percentage of prisoners down psychologically and regurgitating them.
I thought back to how well I knew Damon. He, like me, had grown up in rich, Republican south Orange County, California where beautiful beaches and mansions peppered the landscape. He’d grown up surfing and skateboarding in high school and like many others began to experiment with drugs. He had never joined a gang.
In his letters to me he had to be careful what he said so that his words couldn’t be twisted into any more evidence in the form of self admission. Every letter in and out was photocopied, studied and put in his file. In one letter in response to my question of how the Administration determined validation, he danced just close enough for me to make out how his name was used by the 2 prisoners who had debriefed. His name had shown up into the wrong hands on the Roll Call list, through the grapevine.
I remembered the first time I went to prison on drug charges at 19 years old. It was an intimidating ordeal, being confined to a cell as the new kid on the block. Like any survivor, I studied my older cell mate and others on the tier to learn how to adapt to prison life. Within my first week in the cell my cell mate told me he needed to write my name down on a Roll Call list. He explained the list was sent to whoever had control of the yard to keep track of things in an organized way. I learned that child molesters, rapist and snitches were uncovered through this process and was impressed with the underground vigilante justice system. The Roll Call list was also utilized to keep track of the many different neighborhood gangs. On the lower level California prison yards the Roll Call list wasn’t used that much or sent upstream to the powers that determined things but on the higher level prison yards the list made it to other prisons like Pelican Bay. Prison gang members at the top of the food chain were utilizing the list to organize a way to tax underlings below them. Now, with many more prisons being built like Pelican Bay’s model of extreme isolation, it looked like the list was being used as an avenue to get out of isolation…
Chapter 5
The reason I was desperate to see how my friend Damon was holding up was because the prisoners at Pelican Bay had started a hunger strike. My letters had stopped getting to him. I knew my letters weren’t getting to him based on his letters back to me; he wasn’t answering my questions.
The first letter after he let me know about the hunger strike mentioned that after the prisoners turned down the first 9 meals, the prison guards responded by retaliating against them. He mentioned that as the media got involved and shined a spotlight on their plight, the prison guards started taking away their yard and showers. Their excuse to the prisoners were that since they were hunger striking, the Administration had to call meetings to determine how to deal with it and that there wasn’t enough staff left to escort prisoners to yard or run showers. Damon mentioned a couple of prisoners who already had medical problems. They had passed out from not eating and the prison guards hadn’t responded. Prisoners in cells had banged on their cell doors and yelled out, “MEDICAL EMERGENCY!!” An hour later prison guards arrived, and took their time, without any care.
In my letter back to him, I asked how the prisoners were doing who had the medical emergency. I asked what it was like to go without food for a week. Along with many more questions, that up to this point, he answered all of.
In the next letter I received from Damon a few days later, 9 days into the hunger strike, he didn’t answer any of my new questions. He wrote that the inmates on his tier had rebelled against their yard and shower privileges being taken by boarding up their cells. The prison guards had mounted up for cell extractions and this time to try and break their spirits, handcuffed them to their toilets and took turns stomping on their heads and kicking them in the face until they were unconscious.
I remembered what cell extractions were like from personal experience many years ago. We were in Administrative Segregation and weren’t getting our showers or personal hygiene so we boarded up our cells. Our entire group of cells decided to cover our cells completely so the guards couldn’t see inside. We did it during the head count. The head count always went to Sacramento, headquarters to California’s 36 prisons, as a double check that all the prisoners were accounted for. Not being able to count us was going to slow that process down. We were doing it in an attempt to get enough attention to talk with the Warden that our rights under California law for humane treatment were being violated. It hadn’t worked out well for us. Instead of getting the Warden, we got the cell extraction team. Many of us in cells couldn’t help but look out from cracks we created in the cardboard used to block our cell off. We watched the I.G.I. Gooners mount up in riot gear. A number of them had shields held in front of them, a few had battering rams, a few had batons, a few had tear gas grenades and others had pepper spray canisters the size of small fire extinguishers. All of them wore helmets with face shields that protected them from the gas and pepper spray along with bullet proof vest and heavy jackets and gloves. They looked like an unstoppable army as they took turns at each cell 10 deep as they administered the gas and pepper spray and then rushed into the cell. My cell mate and I rolled up our mattresses and held them in front of us and pushed them against the cell door to try and block the I.G.I. Gooners. 2 prisoners against 10 Gooners with those weapons ended in pain.
I imagined what it must have been like with the Pelican Bay inmates, tired and weary from lack of food, with their cell extractions ending in being handcuffed to toilets and being stomped on…
Chapter 6
I remembered how I went on the internet again and researched the hunger strike at Pelican Bay one last time before my road trip; I was relieved to find that other humanitarian groups and some of the media were following the strike. The prisoners were building momentum. They had articulated the reason for the strike, cruel and unusual punishment in the form of torture and had 5 core demands they wanted addressed.
The first demand the prisoners wanted addressed was the process Pelican Bay uses to validate gang members to S.H.U. terms without end. They went on to say that prisoners are accused of being active participants of prison gangs using false or highly dubious evidence, where in the isolated S.H.U, their only way out is to debrief and that it provides false information, wrongly landing other prisoners in the S.H.U, in an endless cycle.
The second demand was to eliminate group punishments. They went on to say that Pelican Bay punished an entire race if one individual broke a rule, and that the practice was used to keep that entire race in the S.H.U. indefinitely.
The third demand was for Pelican Bay to comply with the recommendations of the U.S. Commission of Safety and Abuse in Prisons regarding long term solitary confinement. They went on to say that as of May 18, 2011, California kept 3,259 prisoners in the S.H.U, with hundreds more in Administrative Segregation waiting for a S.H.U. cell to open up, with some prisoners kept in isolation for over 30 years.
The forth demand was to provide adequate food.
The fifth demand was to expand and provide constructive programs to engage in self help treatment, education and religious activities that were being denied even if the prisoners paid for it themselves.
One humanitarian group following the strike posted a request on the internet by family members of confined S.H.U. prisoners to write the Governor and legislators in Sacramento to demand justice against inhumane conditions at Pelican Bay’s S.H.U. They also gave some of the prisoner’s addresses in the S.H.U. and asked for letters of moral support.
Based on the prisoner’s last names I wrote 10 of them, 2 for every race, encouraging them that their hunger strike was paying off! That the media was picking up on it and that their 5 core demands were being broadcast to the world. I congratulated them on coming together as one to better their cause, rather than fight amongst themselves. None of the prisoners responded. I thought about the dogs at the Animal House for abandoned and abused canines. The prisoners would surely have written back just as the dogs would have welcomed a release from their cages to go for a walk.
Chapter 7
Following my directions I knew I was getting close. I looked out the window and was amazed by the beauty of the remote town that housed Pelican Bay. Ancient redwood trees soared hundreds of feet in the air like they were reaching out to the sky. An abundance of wildlife enjoyed an unspoiled nature of paradise. I watched a magnificent California condor soar through the air effortlessly and another smaller bird dive down to a river flowing through the forest. A sign on the road stated the cities nickname, The Redwood Gate to the Golden State.
I passed a diner and found the street to Pelican Bay, Lake Earl Drive and turned right. A sign said that Pelican Bay State Prison was 2.7 miles away.
Driving the last couple of miles to the prison compound the energy changed. The noise from the teeming wildlife stopped as if something tantamount was on the verge of happening. I began to make out the sounds of guns firing. At first, I thought the echoes of rifle fire was in response to a riot on the level 4 side of the prison where prisoners were allowed a limited program on the yard together. My mind instantly remembered all the riots I had been in, or watched from my stomach on a number of prison yards. Past scenes flashed by of men dressed in prison garb being pulled by the unseen force of willpower, punching, grunting, kicking, yelling, and stabbing at each other to their own destruction. I waited for the accompanying sound of the deeper, more explosive block gun, it wasn’t present. Nor, was the sound of the high pitched alarm. I listened on the edge of my seat waiting for the sound of an adrenaline charged guard from a gun tower yelling over and over through a loudspeaker to, “GET DOWN!” It didn’t come, only the reports of rifle fire, it wasn’t a riot.
I realized the explosions from guns being fired were coming from the gun tower prison guards, but it was target practice. I remembered that on level 4 prison yards they did that once in a while or when the yard was on lock down. Maybe the Pelican Bay hunger strike shut the whole prison down.
My body was tense and I realized my hands were gripping the steering wheel like a vise. The prison was coming into view as the forest opened up to fences filled with barbed wire. Inside the fences in contrast to the forest, the prison was filled with tan concrete buildings. I had to slow down because a California State Prison bus was in front of me waiting for a guard to open the first fenced in corridor to enter. A dirty cloud of exhaust lingered in the air over the drab green colored bus. The smoke slowly lifted over the tinted windows covered by steel bars. I watched a Pelican Bay prison guard dressed in a green uniform over laced up army boots take his time to get inside another boxed in fenced cage on the left side of the bus where he pressed a button and the gate for the bus opened. Two other Pelican Bay prison guards walked up with rifles and stood posted as sentries waiting. The door to the bus opened and two prison transport guards walked out holding rifles and greeted the Pelican Bay prison guards and handed them some papers. Another Pelican Bay prison guard walked up with a long thin piece of silver metal with a mirror attached to the end of it facing up. He walked around the edge of the bus with the mirror close to the ground while he examined the under carriage. Finished with his circle he nodded to the guard in the enclosed cage and the bus entered the corridor with another dark cloud of exhaust rising in its wake. I turned left and drove around the outskirts of the prison and knew I was passing the Maximum Security side of Pelican Bay. Through the barbed wire topped fences I saw the parts of the buildings the prisoners lived in that I remembered so vividly.
Five buildings went by in a tilted 180 degree circle and then the next prison yard came into view and I turned the corner and passed 2 more prison yards. A sign directed my path to the left to park in the visitor parking lot.
The parking lot for visitors was full. At least the prisoners were getting visits during their hunger strike. If I was right and the prison was trying to keep the prisoners from finding out that their hunger strike was building momentum by keeping their mail, it wasn’t working.
On my way to the visiting room I realized that most of the other visitors were media representatives. Some were outfitted with hats that signified which branch of media they were representing and I noticed that all of them had media passes hanging around their necks. I saw a forty something young black lady with a hat that signified she was from a radio station and noticed her name and nickname on her press pass hanging from her neck, Washina, Sista Soul.
I was hungry for conversation after the 14 hour drive, and curious. “Hi Sista Soul, who are you visiting?”
Sista Soul scrunched up her eyes like she was analyzing me to see if I was trustworthy so I smiled as big as possible. She must have seen something in my character that soothed her soul because her eyes crinkled a little. She asked, “Are you the F.B.I?” I laughed, “Not quite, I’m an ex-convict worried about my friend. I don’t think he’s been getting my mail.”
