Prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) are resuming their heroic hunger strike on Monday, September 26th. They are demanding to be treated as human beings; to end barbaric conditions of imprisonment, and to end long term solitary confinement  – internationally recognized as TORTURE.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is not only refusing to meet the prisoner's demands, it is retaliating against hunger strikers and mounting a public relations campaign to defend the conditions of torture in the SHU.

We have a moral responsibility to stand with the prisoners and their just demands.

Determined mass support outside the prison walls is urgently needed.

Films from the early 1990's.  Mumia has since been moved to a different prison in Pennsylvania, SCI Greene. The Governer of PA is now Ed Rendell who was the Philadelphia DA during the 70's. No longer are pictures or video allowed to be taken of prisoners in PA.  Interviews are not allowed in CA prisons. All photos of Mumia are now at least a decade old.  Learn alot watching these.

http://www.youtube.com/my_favorites

From Our Friends at the US Human Rights Network and the Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners’ Rights:

 "The Coalition is raising concerns about the potential cover up of an attempted murder and the refusal, to date, of the prison to identify the missing 37 or more inmates deemed “conspirators” by the Department Of Corrections."

UPDATE: A spokesperson for the Scott Sisters, Nancy Lockhart, announced tonight, Wednesday, January 5, that the Scott Sisters will be released from prison on Friday to start their lives on parole.  (read article "Haley Barbour to Free Scott Sisters: Beyond Race to the Bitter Aftertaste"in comments)

Mississippi Gov. Barbour Suspends Scott Sisters' Sentences: 

Gladys Scott To Donate Kidney To Jamie Scott

Scott Sisters are Freed! <http://solitarywatch.com/2010/12/29/scott-sisters-are-freed/>

New research shows precisely how the prison-to-poverty cycle does its damage.

By Sasha Abramsky, Posted Friday, Oct. 8, 2010

Forty years after the United States began its experimentation with mass incarceration policies, the country is increasingly divided economically. In new research published in the review Daedalus, a group of leading criminologists coordinated by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (which paid me to consult on this project) argued that much of that growing inequality, which Slate's Timothy Noah has chronicled, is linked to the increasingly widespread use of prisons and jails.

Please join Redwood Curtain CopWatch for a free double-feature film screening of "Safety Orange", an insightful film which "looks deep into the culture of the American criminal [in]jusice system,"  and "Operation Small Axe," a recent documentary centered around the police assassination of Oscar Grant in Oakland, and the people's movement against police terrorism that has strengthened since then.

WHERE? at Peoples' Action for Rights and Community [PARC] in Eureka

WHEN? Friday, October 15th, 7pm

Snacks and good discussion also!

PARC is located in the Q Street Alley between 3rd and 2nd Street, toward the Samoa bridge.

[article in The Economist!]

Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little

Jul 22nd 2010 | Spring, Texas

THREE pickup trucks pulled up outside George Norris’s home in Spring, Texas. Six armed police in flak jackets jumped out. Thinking they must have come to the wrong place, Mr Norris opened his front door, and was startled to be shoved against a wall and frisked for weapons. He was forced into a chair for four hours while officers ransacked his house. They pulled out drawers, rifled through papers, dumped things on the floor and eventually loaded 37 boxes of Mr Norris’s possessions onto their pickups. They refused to tell him what he had done wrong. “It wasn’t fun, I can tell you that,” he recalls.

Rough Justice [article in The Economist!]

America locks up too many people, some for acts that should not even be criminal

Jul 22nd 2010 | Spring, Texas

IN 2000 four Americans were charged with importing lobster tails in plastic bags rather than cardboard boxes, in violation of a Honduran regulation that Honduras no longer enforces. They had fallen foul of the Lacey Act, which bars Americans from breaking foreign rules when hunting or fishing. The original intent was to prevent Americans from, say, poaching elephants in Kenya. But it has been interpreted to mean that they must abide by every footling wildlife regulation on Earth. The lobstermen had no idea they were breaking the law. Yet three of them got eight years apiece. Two are still in jail.

[Read here about CMU's- CMU:  Communications Management [Prison] Unit
or download this flier about CMU's]

After spending nearly a month in segregation at the Federal Corrections Unit in Waseca, MN, Marie has been reclassified and transferred to the female CMU in Carswell, TX. Helen Woodsen has been imprisoned there for many years.

As of August 6, 2010, Marie Mason is at the federal prison in Carswell, Texas.

Bradley Manning is the U.S. soldier now in a US military prison in Kuwait who has been arrested and charged with two violations for releasing classified information (the Wikileaks "Collateral Murder" video) and facing 54 years in prison. He is being held in isolation from the outside world - with no contact with his civilian attorneys working to defend him.

If the allegations are true, Bradley Manning is a hero for bringing to light the realities of the crimes being committed in the U.S. occupation.

We call for his immediate release and that his attorneys be allowed to talk to him.

  Sign-On In Support of Bradley Manning & His Right to Counsel

ONA MOVE!  I’M SENDING THIS EMAIL OUT TO INFORM YOU OF A VERY SERIOUS SITUATION HAPPENING WITH OUR BROTHER, CHUCK AFRICA. THIS FALLS ON THE HEELS OF US EXPOSING PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER COLUMNIST, MONICA YANT KINNEY AND ALL OF THE INFORMATION WE WERE ABLE TO PUT OUT DURING MEDIA INTERVIEWS MARKING TWENTY-FIVE YEARS SINCE THE BOMBING.

http://www.prisonactivist.org/archive/pps+pows/MOVE/debbi-sims-africa-st.html

[Editor's note: Since this statement was written, Merle Austin Africa joined the ancestors. She died in prison, March 13, 1998.]

Excerpts from John Africa's Teaching (in italics):

MANY ARTICLES IF YOU CLICK HERE

Behind the Redwood Curtain, ICE (Dept of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has terrorized many individuals and families.  Even before the creation of ICE, cruel U.S. policies and U.S. invasions throughout the world  have paved the way for local toxic industries (for example: cut flowers-Sun Valley Floral Farms and corporate logging using pesticides-Simpson, Sierra Pacific, Pacific Lumber) to exploit the labor and hurt the lives of many people who have migrated to the North Coast from all over the world. 

Read (or Download)

Over Raided, Under Seige

U.S. Immigration Laws and Enforcement Destroy the Rights of Immigrants

New Film on Angola 3  

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, of the "Angola 3" have been in solitary for 37 years and a new film has now been made about them and is due to be released later this month. Robert King, one of the Angola 3, was finally released in 2001. These three men have all been activists behind bars.

People in the Humboldt area and wherever you are!  Please mobilize rallies, media, strikes, shut downs, walk outs, etc to save Mumia Abu Jamal.  If you've never spread the word before, spread it NOW!!  Pass this email on to all of your lists.  AT LEAST SIGN THE PETITIONS!!  Listen to Mumia's radio commentaries from Death Row, and fight for his life!!  There are many links at the bottom of this message.

And put MUMIA messages on your MYSPACE, FACEBOOK, etc!!

* Parole Update *

via Freedom Archives

Leonard Peltier's parole hearing has been changed to July 28.

To be considered by the commissioners, your letters of support must arrive at the U.S. Parole Commission no later than July 1.

Not a lot of time left.  Folks, get out there on the streets and get folks to sign as many letters as possible.  For a sample letter, visit < www.FreePeltierNow.org <http://www.freepeltiernow.org/>

>.

April 24, 2009: Mumia Abu-Jamal's 55th Birthday!!

Birthday Greeting to Mumia Abu-Jamal   from Assata Shakur