Hearing for AB 1539 Sick and Dying Prisoners Needs a Crowd
Dr. B. Cayenne Bird
May 06, 2007
(link to read the bill AB 1539)
(link to history of AB 1539)
I received a great deal of email from my last column describing the disastrous prison plan just passed by the legislature about people wanting more information on how to organize against the punishers sitting in power over us with our permission only because we haven't organized large enough. So here's a few friendly tips, given from the heart and depth of decades of experience, a good education and common sense.
Protests in other cities besides Sacramento will not convince the legislators or the Capitol Press Corps that enough people are serious about prison reform or in support of this bill. Passing petitions that aren't registered with the Secretary of State are another act of futility. The legislators figure that citizens who want to change laws will gather more than 600,000 signatures of verifiable registered voters on a legally approved initiative within 150 days. In their minds, unchecked petitions are to be considered lies as anyone can sit down and sign a bunch of signatures.
When many of us raised 68,000 signatures to stop the death penalty a few years ago the legislators just laughed in our faces the day we turned them in short of the 600,000 required on registered petitions. "Anyone could have signed this" some said. Others said "How many years did it take for you to get these signatures, even if they were valid?" And my favorite “Guess you all came up a little short, but this wasn’t registered so it doesn’t count at all.”
There is a specific way that the power game is played. That's what it is, tin gods playing games with people's lives who don't understand government and organizing well enough to really put up a good fight back. The fact of the matter is that all that is required to organize is an eighth grade education because writing to editors and registering voters is a part of it.
Writing to politicians is a complete waste of time. I have watched how most of the politicians handle their mail. Have you? The mail is put into large bags and an ivy league college kid with no life experience quickly scans over it. Depending on the size of their district, the lawmakers get about 8,000 emails a day so those aren't read either, at best a young person who doesn’t understand a word you are saying might open it.
What the lawmakers notice is their names in the papers and at the news web sites. That is how you reach a legislator or official. Write to editors, they always read your emails and when enough arrive on a certain topic, then at least one will get printed. It is never a waste of time to write to editors to advise them of disease outbreaks, riots, abuses, but you will need evidence to see some of it in print. Republican-owned publications and radio stations are very unfriendly, so don’t waste your time on them unless you’re having a bad day and just want to vent frustrations.
At most of the great news sites today, you can post 150 word letters to an editor which facilitates public education. The politicians do so much fear mongering that people give law enforcement way too much power because they perceive that they need protection from some unknown "other."
For example, although most people don't know a gang member, the legislators warn us that they are murderous thugs and that we are to spend billions in education dollars locking them up in cages. What the heck is a definition of a gang? Are the prison guards a gang? Are the legislators, district attorneys and prosecutors a gang?
What is the best tool for saving us from the unknown other out there called a "gang member?" As a person who actually does know some people who are classified as gang members, I believe that what they need is an education beginning at a very young age. In prison they need to be given classes in computer labs so they can find knowledge such as relationship skills, anger management, religious tolerance. There is none of that happening in prisons much to the detriment of our society. Gang members are mostly kids whose families were too large, too poor and too dysfunctional to teach them to avoid substance abuse. They couldn't afford the usual school activities that were free in my day which kept the kids out of trouble such as sports and adult supervised programs. Whatever happened to those? Why does it cost $900 to play football today, which knocks out most of the low income kids who need a vent for their energy the most?
The prison guards know that they would have no job if the members of "the other" element of our society targeted as gang members, sex offenders, and the mentally ill were helped to heal instead of hated and feared.
There are 8,000 prisoners about to get shipped out to a slave labor prison in another state thanks to the legislative gang. There is talk that they will never be able to receive visitors since the good people in other town's don't want their "trash relations" in their midst. I never heard of anything so cruel, but I am not surprised based on what I've witnessed coming out of law enforcement's purchased legislators the past decade.
Attached to those 8,000 prisoners are at least 80,000 women and children who should matter because broken family ties are going to create more of the feared "other" element. It is wrong to separate children from their fathers, even if he is a prisoner, the children still adore and need their family ties. Prison targets the poor, mentally ill and dysfunctional families who need help, not mindless punishing which never has been a crime deterrent anyway.
Since there is little or no mercy and compassion in the system then the three million people related to a state prisoner only have two choices. They must organize and mobilize the vote to be large enough and funded enough to recall or elect these bullies in power OR they must suffer. The families of prisoners are crime victims, yet they have their money robbed from them by paying inflated phone bills, half of what they send to their loved ones in order to do their appeals and buy a little extra food will be taken out for restitution. The families pay a ridiculous price for food in the visiting rooms and tolerate verbal abuse. They are told what to wear and turned away from being able to visit if they question the almighty guards and their nonsense.
Had those three million people organized massive voting groups, we could have ended 70% of the prison industry years ago. Instead we are seeing it greatly expanded, with our own tax dollars and that of our children, so that the main industry of human bondage in California can explode.
Arnold is as proud as peacock for the horrible thing that he has done and we are witnessing one party rule as the Repugly-crats passed stealth legislation in the middle of the night. This was done so that the apathetic citizens would hardly notice an increase in taxes and mortgage of their children's present and future, for even they would certainly have raised opposition.
If the petition isn't registered with the Secretary of State, it's a waste of time as 600,000 registered voters need to be turned in, but this is something that groups outside of prison reform do every day. It requires about 6,500 participating instead of just a few hundred, which is where our work has always fallen down and why things are getting worse and worse.
Lawsuits and initiative campaigns, massive protests of 1,000 or more people at the Capitol again and again - these are the actions of reform that will have teeth. It took ten years of very hard work for Prison Law Office, our UNION, ACLU and Friends Committee on Legislation to get the release of sick and dying inmates on the table. The hearing on Wednesday before the Appropriations committee to talk about what could be saved by re-sentencing the prisoners who have six months or less to live should be a no-brainer. It will happen now or never and a crowd is needed. Don't be late, all that is needed is people to sit in the audience in support so that we can show our numbers.
California runs on groups - organized and funded groups - who write to editors and do massive protests at the Capitol and bring 20 people to the polls to vote during elections. If we want a voice, we are going to have to do much better at the organizing basics as we outnumber everyone. This makes no difference if we aren't writing to editors, showing up at important hearings with numbers of 1000 or more and raising money so that our campaigns will have more kapow.
Please email me at rightor1@yahoo.com and tell me that you are planning to attend and bring a carload.
A concrete floor is a cold and lonely place to die. In the men's prisons especially, once a prisoner goes to the hospital, he may not call or receive visits from family members. We have had numerous incidents of this cruelty happen in the past and cases of it are happening right now.
It's a choice that each of us has to agonize or organize and mobilize. All this oppressive nonsense is based on the presumption that families of prisoners are too uneducated and dysfunctional to organize. If you hang around the Capitol enough, you can hear them laughing about it. They think that it's a big joke when we only show up with a few hundred people or give them unregistered petitions with only a few thousand on it.
I don't know where the teachers are on objecting to this prison plan, especially since so many teachers have a loved one in prison or have been sent there themselves with so many witch hunts in progress. The teacher's matter because there are about 385,000 organized and mobilized into one unit. But the prison guards and other law enforcement trample them because they are too dovelike in their organizing. Still their opinion matters and it is their salaries being paid to prison guards with little or no education.
The nurses matter too but they work for the system and it isn't likely they're going to bite the hands that feed them. Did you know that many teachers with college degrees are earning less than $30,000 per year? You as a voter and a taxpayer should be involved in the process of where your money goes.
In an age of jingoism the politicians are expanding law enforcement and slavery with quips such as "interest of the public safety", "do the crime, do the time" and "paying one's debt to society." Where do these terms come from and who ever told you they were true? There is nothing about prisons that protect the public safety, locking people in cages is a practice from the dark ages. If you lock your child in a cage you are going to prison for doing so, yet others are doing it to excess in the name of "public safety." And who invented "paying one's debt to society" as a catch phrase. I was never better off because someone else was suffering abuse, both psychological and physical. Don't fall for jingoism from politicians working for special interests that do not serve the people.
There is public transportation right up to the Capitol building, don't be late as the hearings start right on time. The prisoners cannot fight for themselves, all they have is the fight of the people who profess to love and care about them. Not every prisoner has a family, many are former foster children who fell through the cracks because no one cared.
Load up the car, pack up the babies, grab the old ladies, put on your Sunday best if you have it, take the Greyhound bus if necessary, it comes within three blocks of the Capitol and there is no parking hassle. When looking for maps enter L and 10th Street in Sacramento.
When we can do recalls, initiative campaigns, elect our own people to office, we can say good bye to the bozos under the big top. The UNION families have three more lawsuits over wrongful deaths, medical neglect and torture coming to court and people are needed to attend these trials as their outcomes will affect every prisoner.
Many people have died preventable deaths. This terrifying problem continues and the job of exposing it and filing lawsuits over it, isn't nearly done. Don't worry about how lame everyone else is, just commit to yourself that you can set priorities and be where crowds are needed four times a year to dispel our reputation as a movement of not supporting legislators who are courageous enough to take bills forward for us.
Is this a new day of advocacy or an old day of apathy? Make our movement seen if you want to see reform, in the halls of the legislature, in the newspapers, noise is the American way. Nobody can do your share of the showing up for you as the power of numbers in action is the only possible solution to stop the punishers. Wed. May 9, 2007, 9a.m., Room 4202. When your loved one falls ill, it is too late to organize. Our UNION people have carried hundreds of these hearings with very few others showing up at all. This time we will go based only on the amount of participation of others as small crowds don't really matter. It seems that as long as we will do all the work that others are happy to watch us, but then we fall short on the size of crowd needed.
What I suggest is that everyone in the movement issue a call to action and we overflow that hearing room to support the bill and show our numbers which is a necessary step as our state runs on groups only. Individuals count only if they are writing big fat checks.
rightor1@yahoo.com
Join the UNION so you can become an adctivist for change instead of waiting for law enforcement's politicians to care about you
The drawing on this page is a logo I designed for our UNION using Corel Painter, Illustrator, and Photo Shop. Imagine if the prisoners had computer labs where they could develop their creativity and job skills through learning the Adobe Creative Suite. Most facilities do not allow anything but an occasional cheap typewriter with no memory if they allow the prisoners any way to do their cases at all. There couldn't be riots when they're absorbed in the creative learning process of these programs.
The back room deals with the old-fashioned typewriter companies should end. A large, funded citizen's group could insist that prisoners be given computer lab time with instructors instead of just one computer in the law library that has no internet.
Here's a proverb that I do believe holds some truth to it "the devil finds work for idle hands." There is much that can be done to help those incarcerated without spending all our prevention money to punish the sick, which is a non-solution.
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