War ad Racism in the New Millennium (a sentencing statement!)
(see previous post for background)

Foremost, i ask the court to overlook my being seated as i address you! It seems i am chained to this chair as i have been since day one of these proceedings. Actually, that's part of what precipitates today's sentencing and plea agreement, and is the basis for this statement.

It is painfully obvious to me, that in a day and age where i am chained to a chair much like the suspects chained to benches then interrogated with rubber hoses in the "war on terrors'" secret prisons, my chances for equity are slim to none. Pre-ordaining that i am to be treated as an "enemy combatant" found guilty without hearing or trial of harboring an uncontrollable potential to do harm to anyone in this courtroom. While five guards lurk over my shoulder and five pounds of chains and locks render my arms, wrists, and legs immobile is to say in no uncertain terms; "although you've shown absolutely no desire for such acts, although we have no record of your being deranged, violent, or even unpleasant in the least. You are the latest Frankensteinesque monster in a long line of monsters we've paraded into this...our sacred club house.

Experience has taught us to chain, to shackle, to lock up the monsters. Your honor, i am without doubt this spirit of "better safe than sorry" would have infected any jury sitting daily in its mist. While wrestling to extricate the truth form sensationalized arguments about my guilt under the burden of subconscious alarm bells ringing reminders of being programmed with the state's propaganda about pelican bay prison - security housing units, worst of the worst, tv shows like Prison Break and other such nonsense, resulting in another wrongful conviction.

I ask the court to take into consideration that such treatment combined with the two degrading strip-searches one is put through before arriving to the court, spending up to four hours in a dehumanizingly filthy holding cell here in the court, while shackles swell one's wrists and ankles, having your legal property, property which could have proven your case, thrown away by pbsp staff, as mine has been. Creates a psychological strain, reinforcing the state's already overwhelming advantage. Tipping the scales of justice in their favor to the point of breaking the blindfolded lady's deformed arm.

Your honor, the offense to which i have plead guilty, and the original charging offense "possession of a weapon" are not evidence of a desire on my part or the part of any Black captive to coalesce with criminality but stand to strengthen and protect the vanguard trails blazed by Blacks since our captivity and colonization on this continent began. It is no more coincidence that today the 9th day of Black history month 2007, i stand (or rather sit) before you charged as the result of an officer's bruised ego, for the offense of arming oneself against the same vile spirit of greed, animosity, incompetence, racist hate, terrorism, and skin privilege, which have always been, and continue to be, leveled against Blacks throughout amerikan settler society, whether in its prison plantations or ghettos.

Attested to with murderous attacks condoned through inaction by the administrators of amerikan jurisprudence and the enforcers of law and order. To be Black in amerika is to be hunted into near extinction like the grey wolf or silver fox, for the preciousness of our labor, intellect and culture. Blacks represent 35% of arrests, 55% of convictions, and 74% of prison sentences. Where the hunt is intensified to the point of life and death.

Point in fact:
November 16 2005, Chadwick Cochran murdered by racist in LA county jail.
September 6 2005. Lloyd Avery murdered i prison cell, pelican bay state prison.
January 13 2006. Outnumbered Black captives attacked in San Quentin reception center.
February 4 2006. Outnumbered Black captives attacked in Castaic County Jail, Los Angeles. Another Black is murdered.
February 15 2006. Pitchess Detention Center, LA County, 35 Black captives forced to defend themselves against 170 armed attackers.
February 8, 2006. More attacks on outnumbered Blacks in CTF Soledad's B-Yard.
February 10, 2006. Outnumbered and shackled Blacks attacked with weapons by racists on a bus en route to court.
February 14 2006. Two more such attacks, where the attackers are armed ad unfettered while the outnumbered Blacks are shackled.
February 10, 2006. More racist attacks on Black captives.
February 12 2006. Anthony Thompson murdered while defending another Black under attack by racists at odds of 4 to 1. The same day, still more attacks on Black captives.
February 13, 2006. Outnumbered Blacks attacked by racists at Sierra Conservation Center State Prison.
From February 17, up to the present day, we can list more of the same types of racist violence against Black captives.

However, it's best we look at the Black community at large: 2005, 13 year old Devin Brown was murdered for joy-riding by Los Angeles police, who are not charged after an internal investigation rules the murder unjust.
October 31, 2006. Ten Black children ages 12 to 17 are rounded up like escaped slaves for defending themselves against racist threats, in Long Beach California. Alla re now incarcerated in a case eerily similar to the 1931 Scottsboro Nine case.
November 26, 2006. Sean Bell murdered by NYPD in a hail of 50 bullets the morning he was to marry the mother of his child.
November 2006. Atlanta police raid the home of 92 year old Kathryn Johnson, murdering her in cold blood.
December 30, 2006. Westlake Louisiana's first Black Mayor Gerald Washington murdered after receiving racist death threats.
December 15, 2006. 14 year old Cheryl Green murdered by racists for allegedly violating racist no Blacks allowed prohibition in the Harbor Gateway area of LA.

Throughout Los Angeles county, Black children already oppressed by insignificant educations are right now being terrorized with death threats if they attend school on certain white and non-white settler holidays. This your honor is War and Racism in the New Millennium.

Allow me to offer a quote: "when people walk on each other, when disharmony is the norm, when the structure which mediates relations between the races has fallen apart, it is the fault of those in charge. Where such conditions exist, a wise man generally adapts to prevail." George Lester Jackson.

In closing, suffice it to say, under such conditions as i've outlined to the court herein, it seems the truly wise would find it criminal not to take advantage of their right as stated in the u.s. constitutions' second amendment. "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed."

Free all PP/POWs and PPOCs.
Shut down the SHUs
Haroun Akili Mungu Mtumishi

Egos, COs, and Razors!

Here in PBSP's infamous shu (security housing unit), everything is done with the intent of breaking one's spirit. You can lose your mind to the sensory deprivation and isolation, earning a release to a psu (psychiatric unit) which is no better and i some ways worse. The other option is to become a rat, a snitch, and a pc (protective custody inmate), which means you make up really fantastic lies...the types most people see on shows like Prison Break, about real people who the administration hasn't been able to break.

"What about parole?" I hear you saying. Well even that's a fantasy which most of us who have parole dates will probably never see come true, for several reasons. Here's one...

It all began on August 1st, 2006, as i sat i this cage attempting to do some legal work. I say attempting, because when you're so cold that your hands are swollen, every letter of every word you scratch out becomes a syringe jammed into your fingers, each prick injecting anti-though serum that prevents one from doing much of anything other than climbing into every piece of raggedy clothing one can find and under anything available for warmth (i've heard stories of guys lining their bedding with newspaper, magazines,and brown paperbags).

What's worse is knowing it's being doe as a form of torture. The reasoning behind not turning on the central heating and turning up the cold air when it's raining and 30 or 40 degrees is to break one's spirit. It makes conditions so unbearable, one is forced to act in ways those applying the technique want...torture!

So i'm sitting here and two troopers storm up to this cage... "Castlin, report to the front of the cell and submit to cuffs, for a cell search!"

"Search for what? Why do you need to search?"

"Don't worry about that. I'm ordering you to submit to cuffs!"

"First, who are you? Second, i don't take orders. i'm not in anybody's gang, definitely not yours, and i don't work in a fast food joint. And third, the rules and regulations section 3287 says that during special inspections or searches, initiated because the inmate is suspected or having contraband the inmate should be permitted to observe the search. Therefore, i need to know the purpose of the search."

"You're fricken making this more difficult o your fricken self. Submit to cuffs now, or i'll call the sergeant and you'll be fricken sorry!"

"Listen little fella, you call the sergeant, the govern-nator, and the president! The rules say what they say, so i want to observe the search!"

Well, to make a long story short, eventually the sergeant comes. He tells me the search is for an inactive gang status review. I cannot observe...because in his words "we don't follow those rules. We've got our own and if you don't like it, file another lawsuit." [every six years they put on this facade, pretending to review one's shu placement and either release you to a general population (gp) yard, or keep you in shu for another six years. This charade goes on constantly, with them using such innocuous things as a book by George L. Jackson (Blood in my Eye) which i ordered and was approved to have by the same staff, or a poem by Hugo Pinell which was taken out of a magazine they approved us to have, as evidence that you're not only a member of a 'prison gang' but an 'active member,' which really means you haven't been broken of your political activism.]

Not wanting to be physically removed, at which point they'd still have searched the cell with the added satisfaction of beating on me under the pretense of law and order, i allow the search. Thirty minutes into it, the same officer who threatened me comes to where i'm being held in an even smaller cage and says

"We've got you now; I'm booking your for the weapon."

"What weapon?"

"The razor. I found it in your cell."

"You didn't get no razor from my cell!"

"Prove it!" he said with a grin.

So now, 6 or 7 months later, this is where we find ourselves. i was charged with a felony. "possession of a weapon" [which, by the way, is impossible to get. In the shu, we are only allowed disposable razors three times a week when we shower. You're issued one razor with your cell number on it, as you enter the shower stall. Immediately after you come out, you must return the razor, little clear plastic cover and all, to the CO who inspects it, ensuring your number and all its parts are untampered and intact.]

If i'm convicted of this felony, i'll be given a life sentence. It's really that simple; at any moment of any day, any CO, for any reason, can simply say i did or didn't do something, i had or didn't have something, and the fantasy of a parole date vanishes like smoke before a fan...or is pushed another year or two away. This has not been a total bust. i did learn a few things.

1. This charge is a matter of business as usual, or should i say sports as usual. Here in crescent city, they've got a nice con-game going, where a triad of pbsp, the DA's office, and the public defenders' office line up tenpins (convicts) with meaningless petty offensives (initiated by COs) then charge them with strike-able felonies (done by the DA) and finally they're bowed down (by a public defender pretending to give a damned) with an 8, 12, or 16 pound ball (representing the number of months they give you in a plea agreement. Or you can play baseball (3 strikes and you're out!) take your bogus case to a jury trial with no money, no chance of wining, and all the players - even your appointed attorney and the judge - on the opposite team.

Either way, the triad wins. The DA gets another conviction on her record, a notch in her belt come time to run for office. The public defender racks up another favor and paycheck; the COs get job security, along with the added satisfaction of teaching you a lesson and supporting their lies about "the worst of the worst" and other such nonsense with stats.

2. What i was missing throughout this entire ordeal is...it never was about the physical razor, which the CO claims to have found in my cage. That was just a prop in the game - a physical metaphor, if you will, for the real razor. My willingness to stand up to their supposed authority. My wit, my tongue, which on that cold August morning in 2006 was sharp enough to cut one of pbsp's igi officers (the worse of the worst!) clear down to his soul, exposing the fragile and timid ego of a child. So, inflated with the pompousness of class orientation and skin privilege he believes as they all do. He's done nothing wrong. Perhaps he hasn't...as laws were made to protect people like him from the desperation of the oppressed slaves, like me!

3. The pomp ad circumstance of a trial would only be used to further bolster the farce of a working judicial system in amerika. Although it bruises my own often inflated ego to acquiescent once again to another unjust plea agreement, this travesty proves for the last time the truth of Gs words..."You don't get justice in amerika. You take it!"

So, i'll accept this latest plea agreement, return to my cold cage, continue to study, write, and smoulder, always on the look out for a chance to set the prairies ablaze!

push up. push out. push back.
shut down the shus
akili

(post note: 1. the next post will be my sentencing statement; 2. Of course, i was denied inactive gang status. big surprise.)

Smoke and Mirrors

When one accepts consciousness, one of the first skills s/he learns is to read into the rhetoric that is amerika's cultural legacy, better known as 'double talk,' or 'telling little white lies.' This cultural heritage is grounded in fairy-tales such as 'amerika is founded on principles of democracy and freedom for all,' 'Thanksgiving' and 'amerikan moral conscience.'

Mythomania pervades every institution of amerikanism from the hypocritical constitution, which includes the laudable words, 'all men are created equal' yet was written at a time when Afrikans were legally and socially considered three-fifths a man, property worth no more than the two hogshead of rum its first president George Washington sold his slaves for.

To its cock and bull political system, which murders hundreds of thousands of innocent poor people worldwide, under the guise of 'delivering democracy' and 'making the world save from WMDs.' Double talk never delivers the promised democracy or safety, but manages to keep the corporate benefactors rich, and the politicians' constituency too busy ducking bullets and falling buildings to turn their guns on them.

These are illusionist times of smoke and mirrors, where the meaning of words disappear like nickels dropped into a magicians' top hat, and reappear from behind the ear of some totally unconvinced spectator who's all too happy to participate in the show and have his/her ego stroked.

Therefore, it comes as no shock that the words 'peace' in the official title for California prison guards (i.e. peace officers) or the recently re-adopted 'rehabilitation' are nothing more than nickels in the hands of the state's greatest illusionists, California Correctional Peace Officers' Association (CCPOA - california's largest and most powerful union).

The facts are

1. The prisoncrats who reap the rewards from the corrections business want peace and rehabilitation like poor people in Louisiana want another hurricane!

2. Amerikan prisons are testing ground for the most egregious and wanton disregard for a person's humanity, where the highest paid and supposedly best trained paramilitary/peace officers in the world [only outdone by the UN's murderous blue helmet peace keeping forces] learn the tricks of the trade.

Every day, captives are forced to endure a sadistic officer's attempts to provoke a violent confrontation. These acts run the gambit, from instigating captive on captive combat, ignorance and cultural insensitivity on their part, to the outright criminally racist and purposeful exploitation of their positions and the power it gives them.

Case in point: i was attempting to attend the law library recently, and undergoing a degrading strip search. Naked, i hold out my hands, palms up, palms down. "Okay," says the guard. Open my mouth, stick out my tongue. "Okay," says the guard. Run my fingers through my hair. "Okay," says the guard. Lift my scrotum, run my hand under. "Okay," says the guard. I turn around. Lift my left foot. "Okay." Right foot. "Okay." Squat, cough and turn back around to retrieve my clothes when he snidely says, "bend over again, touch your toes and point that thang at me!"

How do you respond to such vulgar and disrespectful statements? Think about your vulnerability. You're naked in front of two guards, another lurks above you with a loaded mini-14 assault rifle.

Is it a setup? Are they trying to provoke a response? What do you do? What do you say?

Personally, i refused and was denied my law library privilege and given a disciplinary report, in which said officer failed to mention what he had said to me. So, i followed up with a staff complaint against the officer, which was dismissed by the appeals coordinator, claiming i abused the grievance system and that what the officer said was perfectly respectful and justified. Next, i sent the complaint to the Ombudsman, who responded by basically saying i violated the rules by not following the officers orders to "point that thang at him" and should get over it! i can't help but wonder what she'd have to say if one of her supervisors told her "bend over and point that thang at me!" Sexual harassment perhaps!

So, in trying to figure out why the prisoncrats who regulate the interaction between guard and captive would habitually ostrich-up when they are informed of such potentially volatile actions, I was driven to my Oxford Amerikan dictionary/thesaurus to look up the word 'rehabilitate.' It says
1. restore to effectiveness or normal life by training.
2. restore to former privileges or reputation or a proper condition.

However, the answer didn't fully come to me until i read a proposal given to the administrators here, by some of the elder captives who they've erroneously and vindictively labelled prison gang leaders.

This proposal would have ended the racist violence that plagues california's prisons/jails and has now spread out into the 'free' community with the murder of 14 year old Cheryl Green on December 15th, 2006.

The reality is they don't intend to, nor do they want to stop the violence, much less create or keep any kind of peace in california prisons or poor communities. Why? Because, failing schools, drug addiction, petty criminality, joblessness, homelessness, untreated mental illness etc etc. habilitate people to be violent and/or nonviolent products that lead to the astronomical profits the prison industrial complex makes.

You know the saying, "don't bite the hand that feeds you!" Well the corrections business is feeding a whole lot of people and their children, which reminds me of something a mentor told me before he was moved: "you can't fix this system, because it's not broken! It's working just as it's intended to!"

Double talk, little white lies, myth and all!

push up. push out. push back.
a