Press Advisory/demand letter/call to action

Another example of State Murder

Dennis Jenkins, 45 yr. old inmate at Mule Creek Prison, Ione dead November 27

After a recent heart attack, he went to the prison clinic and begged for help THREE TIMES A DAY for the past five days. The pharmacies are not working.

At 6 am on ll/27 his cellmate screamed and screamed for help. It took 15 minutes for an MTA to arrive and another hour for a doctor to arrive.

A limp-wristed form of cpr was performed on Jenkins until the doctor arrived. His hands were in a clawed position and purple, he was dead according to inmate witnesses I interviewed.

Some 50 deaths happen each month. We must take action, see our demand letter below and get involved with us.



Every inmate must be alerted not to riot, not to go on
hunger strikes. What is necessary is that they send
their families to help us bring at least 1000
picketers to the Capitol to back up these demands.
Inmates are missing the point that it is their
families - not themselves - who have the power of the
vote and must be ACTIVE with our calls to action if
reform is ever going to happen. This will have press
coverage this week, but we must prepare to create the
necessary crowd so that it has EXTENSIVE press
coverage and those at the top, including DAVIS, can
see that we mean business. Mail this inside to five
inmates, I have addresses if you don't. It is a
crisis, there will be even more bloodshed if we don't
ACT now. We must get the word inside before more
riots happen. Everyone support our U.N.I.O.N. and
find ten who care enough about their loved ones to
picket soon. We must cover this and cover this well
or sit and suffer in our stupid silence.

Burton has proposed releasing non-violent inmates, we
need to support that and worry about smallpox
vaccinations since the war will likely be fought on
our soil. We must organize right now before more
lives are lost.

B. Cayenne Bird
UNION Director
rightor1 [at] aol.com
http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/parliament/2398/lockdown_index.htm


United for No Injustice,Oppression or Neglect
U.N.I.O.N.
B. Bird, Journalist,
P.O. Box 22765
Sacramento Ca. 95822-0765

November 19, 2002


U.N.I.O.N. Grievances/Proposed Solutions

Mr. Robert Presley, Secretary
California Adult and Youth Correction Agency
Sacramento, CA
Dear Mr. Presley:

Because you are the executive at the top reporting
directly to Governor Gray Davis, the man he appointed
as Secretary of the Agency for Adult and Youth
Corrections, the Senate Rules Committee has made it
clear that our grievances can only be settled by you.
We've been told that what happens inside California
prisons is ultimately your responsibility. I have
prepared this letter for the special Warden meeting
you've called which proposes solutions and our
collective serious objections and capabilities.

For the wardens who have yet to meet us, here's a
little history. Over the past five years, we have
united in a statewide communication system and daily
newsletter to report to California media and
legislators the tragic fiscal and human loss happening
in voter-financed penal institutions. As you know, our
action system is called United for No Injustice,
Oppression, or Neglect (U.N.I.O.N.) We consist of a
coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated
to reforming the criminal justice system from arrest
through parole. Additionally, thirty six publishers
and journalists subscribe to the newsletter and
consider it a very reliable news source in California
for what is really happening behind the walls.

We have 6,000 subscribers to the newsletter who are
inmate families, groups, lawyers, authors, legislators
and other alarmed citizens. Many are in the helping
professions. We have been focused on building a voting
lobby large enough to change any law or recall any
politician through the initiative process. We are
pastors of large congregations, priests, social
workers, public defenders, civil and defense lawyers,
educators, physicians and nurses - humanitarian
organization leaders, families of inmates from every
imaginable occupation. Somehow the arrests crossed
over into the middle and upper middle class. It isn't
just family members of the poor and uneducated that
you have caged. We know the formula for successful
organizing and each and every U.N.I.O.N. subscriber is
committed to reach our goals for reform through
ACTION.

I should also mention that our U.N.I.O.N. coalition
gathered 66,000 signatures even after coming in at the
last minute to the Amend Three Strikes petition
campaign this past summer.

The point is that we are intelligent and we do know
how to organize, write letters to editors and author
stinging books. We are skilled at giving speeches and
appearing on television and radio. We know how to draw
crowds and picket to draw attention to injustice and
inhumane treatment of U.S. citizens mistreated daily
in California's prisons and jails. We know how to
organize initiative campaigns and recalls and are
experts in how to deal with onerous bullies and thugs.
We do not operate from a position of fear.

During the past five years, we have brought to
everyone's attention in CDC and the legislature
thousands of instances of unbearable incompetence
which result in needless suffering and dying and
lawsuits costing taxpayers millions, if not billions
of dollars which could better be used to actually
rehabilitate and/or to prevent crime from ever
happening.

For awhile it seemed that conditions were improving.
Admittedly it required a legal settlement of $123
million per year in additional inmate medical care to
make the point that abusing and medically neglecting
peoples' family members is unacceptable. Not to
mention virtually thousands of inches of articles and
letters to editors so that the voters could see what
they were buying with their tax money. We have learned
that just asking nicely without noisemaking and
activism doesn't work.

We have witnessed some improvements but they are so
miniscule in proportion to the size of the problems
that we are compelled to take a stronger stand against
practices that you and the lawmakers accept as
business as usual.

I have detailed the preceding so that it is clear we
have the numbers, the education and the ability to
fight back in a meaningful manner which all of the
Wardens and rogue CCPOA members need to fully
comprehend.

Our eyes and ears are everywhere, inside every jail,
every prison and every juvenile detention facility. We
cannot be deceived with public relations cover ups,
lied to, or convinced that we shouldn't put an end to
this needless suffering and dying. We're here to stay
and we're growing daily with ACTIVE WORKERS who are
not afraid to fight back for the safety and well being
of their loved ones.

That said, we can either engage in an all-out battle
where we outnumber all of you, since there are at
least three million people hurt, or you can accept
that we are dead serious about the following items and
set about to make changes. We're way past being merely
fed up. This is what we want to see NOW, not six
months or years from now - but NOW! We've been
waltzing with concepts and empty promises for five
years. It is past the time for us to actually see
these reforms take effect.

1. This fact is foremost. There are too many people
in prison. Conveyor belt laws such as Three Strikes
need to be eliminated and non-violent offenders need
to be released. Such conditions endanger the public
safety as people are just becoming sicker due to
inhumane treatment. There are many forms of
alternative sentencing at the court level. While it
may be CDC's job to warehouse human beings sent to
them by the court, some adminstrator needs to exhibit
the courage to say "HALT! We have too many people in
custody and we're not going to accept anymore
non-violent inmates because we cannot properly care
for them within the current budgets." Anyone who buys
into this mistreatment by continuing to accept
non-violent inmates is just as guilty of crimes
against humanity as Gray Davis.

2. The mentally ill only become distraught and
depressed in the hostile environment of prisons and
jails. Careless double celling of 18,000 mentally ill
inmates with light offenders is causing murder and
mayhem, and unnecessary lockdowns.

A. Special, accommodations such as hospitals should be
provided for the mentally ill so that they can be
healed instead of psychologically intimidated,
victimized, robbed, raped and physically tortured or
murdered in vicious prison and jail settings.
Retribution style justice makes "custody" the opposite
of "healing." The current methods are not a solution
to crime and the mentally ill should not be punished,
nor should innocents be exposed to their demented
disorders.

B. The mentally ill are never going to be able to
follow "rules" - that's what distinguishes them as
"menntally ill." Mentally ill inmates have no business
in prison at all. End the practice of using pepper
spray on the mentally ill to get them to come inside
from the walk alone cages.

3. The practice of continuous lockdown in whatever
form, whether it is "modified programming", "full
lockdown" or "fog alerts" that last all day needs to
end. Putting two men in a cell the size of a bathroom
for days, hours and weeks on end is just wrong. Guards
are made more vulnerable to violence when people are
so severely mistreated. Here's what we know about a
better way to handle people who need more help than
anyone else in prison - young gang members. These
mostly young people might also be tremendously
mentally ill, or they may be under-educated. The power
struggle doesn't work to help them to recover. Medical
and psychological tests should be administered on
every prisoner when they are committed and then
routinely conducted every year afterward.

. a. Never mix three gangs on the same yard. NEVER.

b. Southern and Northern Hispanics shouldn't even be
at the same prison, let alone the same yard.

1. Whites and Southern Hispanics can live fairly well
together.

2. Blacks and Northern Hispanics can live fairly well
together.

3. Blacks and Whites are also fairly compatible.

4. Eliminate any combinations of THREE races or gangs
on any one prison yard which is something that most
CDC administrators already know. Provoked riots is a
way that CCPOA justifies itself to the public but
we're wise to this game and we're not going to stand
for it any longer. Two compatible races/gangs on each
yard will GREATLY reduce violence. This is only common
sense.

c. Hold only the people responsible for disturbances
accountable instead of blanket punishment lockdown for
thousands of men.

The mental breakdown from isolation and continuous
lockdown is severe and there is no real treatment,
except to offer mind-numbing drugs instead of
stimulation of the mind by educational opportunities,
some sun and exercise in good air. This should be
done in compatible small groups. Military studies show
that group punishment and isolation simply do not
work.

Guard overtime is costing the taxpayers hundreds of
millions of dollars according to the Legislative
Analyst. It shouldn't require weeks on end to search
the cells looking for contraband. We believe this is
an inhumane ploy mostly designed to benefit the
guards. It is unacceptable to us that this continue.

*********

Psychological intimidation, limited access to legal
libraries, interference with mail and packages and
retribution for filing complaints against Guards are
unacceptable to the people of the U.N.I.O.N.

We believe that prison guards intentionally create
lockdowns by provoking through psychological
intimidation temper outbursts from men who are already
emotionally broken people. We have reports of social
gatherings, pot lucks, training meetings and other
guard fun going on while inmates are cruelly caged for
hours, days, months and years.

Often, the guards believe they are above the law and
want to justify their jobs and overtime to the voters.
They get bored with routine and tranquility. Many have
retribution-style training and enter this occupation
with only a high school education to live out a
"wanna-be" cop fantasy. Some are fearful that the
inmates they kick around and psychologically torture
with constant cell searches, destroying pictures and
legal material, and a thousand other taunts might
fight back with physical violence. They go to great
lengths to create lockdowns over minor situations such
as a cell phone found or a plastic cafeteria tray
missing. We're not referring to one or two days but
months, years and excessive punishments which gives
the inmates no quality of life.

Individual wardens and their employees are making up
the rules as they go along, completely disregarding
the inmate's Title 15 and D.O.M. which should be used
as the final authority. The "system" is out of control
and the inmates have nowhere to turn for help. The
media is banned, the guards exercise retribution if
they file a 602 or a lawsuit. Medical care is withheld
as a "punishment" for months and years on end if
inmates even dare to speak out. CDC MUST enforce these
two sections of the penal code and provide serious
consequences to Wardens and Guards who deviate from
your own rules.

Penal Code §147. Every officer who is guilty of
willful inhumanity or oppression toward any prisoner
under his care or in his custody, is punishable by
fine not exceeding four thousand dollars ($4,000), and
by removal from office.

Penal Code §149 Every public officer who, under color
of authority, with out lawfull necessity, assults or
beats any person, is punishable by a fine not
exceeding ten thousand dollars.($10,000), or by
imprisonment in the state prison, or in a county jail
not exceeding one year, or by both such fine and
imprisonment.

We believe that administrators should have no less
than a Master's Degree in criminology and that guards
should have a minimum AA degree which includes basic
CPR and some courses in teaching and social work.
Everyone would be better off if you sent the bar
bouncer types back onto the streets and hired someone
besides the present bullies and thugs.

********

Food

The new heart healthy diet is causing needless hunger
among inmates. This diet might be practical for people
who can eat anytime they want since carbohydrates are
known to burn up quickly. But for inmates who are
given three eating periods with one of those
consisting only of a cold, mystery meat sandwich at
lunch, the hunger is intolerable. Mystery meat full of
sodium and nitrates is not heart healthy.

We want real meat back on the menus because protein is
more filling and nutritious. The word protein is Greek
for "first importance" because every function of the
human body depends on adequate amounts of PROTEIN. For
those people who want protein alternatives to meat due
to religious reasons and/or special diets, we support
that position too.

The majority of the inmates want REAL poultry, beef,
pork, chicken, fish and decent quantities food so that
they are not continually suffering symptoms of
starvation.

Some people do not metabolize carbohydrates well at
all and this creates a medical condition known as
hyperinsulinism, written about extensively by Dr.
George Atkins whose 30 year studies (and 10 million
books sold) are widely used by thousands of American
physicians. A carbohydrate-based diet creates a
pre-diabetic condition which ultimately develops into
diabetes for many people.

Inmates are human beings and deserve fresh fruits,
vegetables, meat and starches in greater quantity and
quality served in a SANITARY manner. God help the
thousands of inmates who do not have family to send
them money for canteen so they can pay exhorbitant
prices for junk food to stave off the hunger pangs.
It's outrageous and very likely contributing to the
present violence throughout the prison system.

Blood sugar regulation is different for everyone and
when it gets low or is deprived or shockingly
contaminated, nothing but chaos will result. The
heartbreak of families witnessing their loved ones
underfed is unnecessary. As you know, we UNION people
have a way of turning heartbreak into lawsuits.
Cutting food will no longer be a cost-savings. We will
name individuals responsible for this insanity in
lawsuits from the lowest aid to the top callous
legislators who sit idly allowing this great abuse.
It's a promise we can and we will keep! Cease the
heart healthy starvation diet immediately.

***************

We believe that many jail suicides are either
homicides or caused by extreme psychological
intimidation. Jailers should be neutral instead of
voicing degrading opinions to people who may not even
be guilty. It seems that there is no justice in the
courts and that the prisons are filled with innocent
and/or mentally ill people who deserve to be treated
with more respect. Our files are full of abuse at all
33 prisons, all the jails and all the juvenile
detention facilities.

This all comes back to a testosterone-driven revenge
mentality which endangers guards, inmates and the
public. This red-neck attitude may be rooted in
tradition but this is the year 2002. Restorative
justice techniques will stop the never-ending cycle of
revenge. Murders, beatings, injustice in CDC's
kangaroo courts are causing a strong reaction from
people who are already downtrodden and hopeless. Not
one U.N.I.O.N. subscriber has any trust whatsoever in
our criminal justice system. That's because it is
totally corrupt and ineffective. Instead of cutting
back on fair trial expenditures, we should be
increasing budgets in this area. Ultimately, the
taxpayers pay dearly for what is meted out in the name
of justice. People begin to take the law into their
own hands - both inside the prisons and in the
neighborhoods. A little street sense would go a long
way toward reducing violence. We want the degradation
of our loved ones to stop.

Conditions where 600 men are living in a gym at Mule
Creek prison with exposed pipes and bunk beds stacked
three high are just as cruel as continuous lockdowns.
For ten toilets shared by 600 men to be spaced 12"
apart and offer no privacy dividers is an affront to
common decency.Human waste on the walls, floors,
poisoned water supplies, filthy kitchens and showers
endangers the public safety since there are highly
contagious diseases such as Hepatitis and Tuberculosis
to name a couple which can be transmitted to families.


Clean up ALL the hellholes to reduce the costs of
rampant disease. California prisons are on a par with
those in Tijuana and are an international disgrace.
We've had it on this point! When did it become
acceptable for a minor violation to result in a deadly
disease due to administrative callousness and
ignorance? You are not dealing with herds of
livestock, these are the loved ones of California's
voters. Many are veterans. Many are simply addicts who
need rehabilitation, or geriatric seniors who are well
past the point where they are a threat to society. Too
many are even innocent or over-sentenced. We are dead
serious on this point - clean it up or we'll clean you
out through the power of the vote.

**************

Visiting is inexpensive therapy and gives hopeless men
and women a reason to live. Yet even after we
testified on March 8 by scores we are still
experiencing intimidation of families who attempt to
visit.

We know that the legislators failed California when it
violated our State Constitution by ending all visits
in 1997. But the people of the UNION also know very
well how to bring 6500 people together to raise money
for lawsuits and initiative campaigns. We are not
morons incapable of collecting 200 signatures each to
change any law, recall any politician or file a class
action lawsuit. If rehabilitation, education and
healing are the goals then visiting must be viewed in
a completely different light. The families of
prisoners are innocent victims and to mistreat
devastated people is not only cruel and unusual, but
certain to bring about violence in the institutions
and neighborhoods. It's a downright stupid action.
Overnight family visits should be restored and used as
a reward system. This would certainly give incentive
to rehabilitate.

We have posted at our website a complaint submitted
against Mule Creek Prison which details 22 pages of
problems. It was composed by 87 inmates. At least 90%
of the problems described in this document apply at
all prisons, jails and juvenile detention facilities
in California. There are many proposed solutions in
that document as well. We have it posted online at
this website address:

http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/parliament/2398/mulecreek.htm


Our general website address containing a collection of
our published articles, campaigns and subscriber
complaints, as well as informative studies and books
authored by our subscribers can be found here.

http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/parliament/2398/index.htm


The human bondage industry cannot continue to operate
in its present manner without a tremendous response
from the families connected to hundreds of thousands
of people victimized by these inhumane practices and
failure to adhere to laws. Enough said.

Most sincerely,

B. Cayenne Bird, Journalist
Volunteer Director
U.N.I.O.N.

Back to the Lockdown Index

http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/parliament/2398/lockdown_index.htm