In the wake this partial victory for Mumia Abu Jamal and his supporters, Dr. Johanna Fernandez, assistant professor of history at Baruch College of the City University of New York and member of Educators for Mumia Abu Jamal, speaks to "On The Block Radio" about the significance of the decision and what's next for Mumia supporters.
On September 26, 2012, prisoners in California resumed a hunger strike that had been suspended at the end of July after receiving statements by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that prison officials will meet some of prisoners' demands.
The hunger strike was initiated in the middle of this past summer in protest of what prisoners have described as the cruel and unusual conditions endured by inmates in the state's prisons. According to Laura Magnani, a member of the team mediating on behalf of prisoners with CDCR officials last summer, while some positive movement by CDCR officials has been made in the last few months in meeting the intial demands of inmates, "it is painfully slow for people who have lived under conditions of torture for years, and often decades in California's prison system. While the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation tries to paint the prisoners as nothing more than 'dangerous gang members,' we see this strike as a courageous effort to work across all cultural and ethnic divisions through time-honored non-violent actions."
Isaac Ontiveros of the Prisoners Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, reports that based on accounts from family members and unconfirmed sources for the Coalition, the strike resumed on last Monday with 6000 prisoners taking part.
"On the Block" speaks with Isaac Ontiveros about the recent developments.
On Friday, September 26, 2012, Cynthia McKinney spoke at to an audience at Philadelphia's Calvary United Methodist Church about a trip she took to Libya earlier this year. Above is a recording of her presentation.
On the heels of Mayor Nutter's address at a West Philadelphia church in which he spoke out against recent waves of youth striking out violently at folks walking down the street and gang robbing stores, a diverse group of Philadelphia residents sat down to share their perspectives on what has been described by some as "flash mobs" and by others as youth uprisings.
The roundtable participants were:
Keturah Caesar.
Activist and organizer of the Philadelphia Coalition of the Heart and the Hip Hop Party for the People.
Tommy Joshua.
Organizer and executive director of
Diop Olugbala.
Philadelphia's independent mayoral candidate for 2011.
Professor of education at Drexel University and director of the Center for the Prevention of School-Aged Violence
Dessi.
An urban youth and a member of
Jaquel.
An urban youth and a member of
(download)
On August 4th in the Tottenham section of London, 29 year-old Mark Duggan was killed by a police officer after the cab he was riding in was stopped. What followed within hours was a wave a violent attacks on property spilling into several sections of London and lasting for several days.
London community activist Stafford Scott explains that after waiting four hours for the police to make a statement about Duggan’s death to a crowd that had gathered around the Tottenham police station, the congregation of people began to leave in frustration. Moments later, with the torching of police cars, the peaceful gathering had turned violent.
“It was…an outburst…spontaneous outburst, because people saw, we’ve been here for four hours. Women were leading the demonstration. When the women said, ‘Look, four hours. Our kids are now tired, we’re going home.’ When the guys saw the women leaving, that’s when the guys said, ‘Wow, we’ve been here for four hours and nothing’s happened. Nothing’s changed. They haven’t come to speak to us.’ And then when they saw some police cars—which for some reason were just parked up, unmanned—that was like a red flag to a bull. And they just had their go.”
Darcus Howe, Trinidadian-born columnist and broadcaster, in attempting to place the events in the context of current racial dynamics in London, explains, “In England right now, black boys are seen by the police as pests.” For the past 2 years, he says, young Black Londoners have been subjected to being stopped and searched by police in the street without being given an explanation of reasonable cause.
As well, Howe argues that recent cuts in public spending have resulted in increased lawlessness among youth in London.
“And then came the cuts,” he explains, “There are no youth clubs. Nothing for young people. And everything is going up….[T]he cuts in public spending…locked the fridge. You get one meal a day. That is the poverty that is taking place in this country. And so they’re out on the streets in Putnam. If you had walked around that day [the day of Duggan’s death]…you will see four guys leaning on a lamppost…where usually they would have been in a youth club paid for by the local government. …Supervised, areas for sporting activities, and then there in another area you do your homework. [T[hey have been so ignored, that they will sit in your class at school, and you can’t, as we say, read the play. You can’t know what is going on with them….Watch it. Watch how his eyes start to dart around….and wanting to tell you the teacher, ‘Fuck off….’ And that’s been going on under their noses, beneath the surface; and it exploded on that fateful day when Mark Duggan was executed.”
Included in the acts of violence that communities of color are dealing with in London is Black on Black violence, Howe adds. But the wave of civil unrest that moved through the streets of London last week represents a shift--predicted decades ago by the Afro-Caribbean intellectual Franz Fanon--in the way that social unease is manifested by Black youth, Howe argues. “I am sure now, as Franz Fanon warned us, this internecine strife—killing each other—sometimes it reaches a stage where it turns against something else. I promise you, Black on Black violence is going to fall considerably in the next few months….The energies are targeted elsewhere. The energies are targeted against the police.”
Previously, in the 1980s, London also grappled with a series of insurrections in communities of color in response to police abuse of power. What distinguishes these two periods of civil unrest, Howe opines, is the body of intellectuals that shaped the social awareness of the two sets of youth.
“There has never been at anytime until 1981 a mass consciousness informed by the songs of Jamaica, by the Malcolm X autobiography, by Franz Fanon, by C.L.R. James, series of writings. And then they’d have the Panther newspaper here. Stokely came through and he gave lectures and stuff….That made the foundation. Huge intellects like CLR James and younger ones from India and Pakistan. We weren’t looking like lost children. [We were] full of energy and well-read; and trying to build a base for new ideas. [Rather] than simply saying, ‘No, no, no.’”
On this edition, we speak with columnist and broadcaster Darcus Howe about the recent acts of disobedience by youth in the streets of London.
Hill International has been awarded a 14 million contract to oversee the building of the new prison. That is a fraction of the 400 million dollars of Pennsylvania state funds slated for various aspects of the new Graterford Prison construction project. According to Dan Berger of Decarcerate PA, the larger aim behind the August 17 rally is the reprioritization of Pennsylvania’s social agenda.
“We are going to be out there rallying against the proposed construction of a new prison at Graterford…and really demanding that the money—the 14 million dollars that Hill has been given in various contracts so far and the 400 million dollars that the Graterford Prison is supposed to cost—not go into prison construction, and instead be spent on schools, jobs, healthcare and things that will actually sustain our communities,” Berger says.
According to the recent Sentencing Project report “On the Chopping Block: State Prison Closings,” 13 states in 2011 have either closed prisons or are considering doing so, creating the potential for a total decrease in prison capacity nationwide of up to 14,793 beds. Pennsylvania’s 400 million-dollar new Graterford prison construction project, however, is a move in a different direction.
We speak with 3 members of the Decarcerate PA Coalition--Dan Berger, Joshua Glenn, and Omar Shabazz--about the relationship of the Hill International contract to the larger issue of the social costs of the growth of the prison industrial complex.
Corrections.
1. In the interview, an incorrect meeting spot was given for the Decarcerate PA Coalition. The correct meeting location is: 21 South 12th Street, 7th floor.
2. In addition, in the interview it was stated that Hill International had built only a few prisons in the United States. After further exploration of the Hill International website, however, Dan Berger discovered a list of more than 30 jails and/or correctional institutions that Hill was involved in constructing.
On this edition of "On the Block Radio," we speak with Laura Magnani, regional director of the American Friends Services Committee (AFSC) and one of the five mediators who communicated with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) on behalf of striking prisoners during the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike that began on July 1st.
She discusses the lead up to the end of the strike and the work that former SHU hunger strikers and their outside supporters will be engaged in since the ending of the strike in the interest of bringing change to what they consider to be oppressive conditions in California State prisons.
We speak with Terry Thorton, spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (the California Prison System) about the hunger strike launched on July 1st by Pelican Bay State Prisoners housed in the prison's Security Housing Unit (SHU).
In a statement published under the byline SHU Short Corridor Inmates, Pelican Bay Prison, in the summer 2011 edition of California-based Prison Focus, the following demands were listed as goals of the hunger strike:
--Individual accountability.
--Abolish the Debriefing Policy, Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria.
--Comply with the U.S. commission 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement
--Provide Adequate Food
--Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates
Prison Focus, Summer 2011.
Thorton responds to the demands and recent reports on the deteriorating health of hunger strikers.
Below is an excerpt from a pamphlet published by the Committee to Free Andre Jacobs:
Andre is a 29 year old Black man unjustly imprisoned and heavily targeted for his filing of grievances and lawsuits in defense of human rights inside the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. We seek to build a network of civil and human rights organizations, human rights defenders, legal associations, and concerned citizens in order to provide financial, media, legal, and popular support for Andre. By highlighting Andre’s battles against wrongful convictions and solitary confinement, we aim to bring greater public awareness to the injustices of the U.S. criminal justice system.
Andre Jacobs’s childhood was plagued with abuse and alcoholism in his immediate family. In 1997, when he was only 15 years old, Andre was first sentenced to prison for non-violent offenses. In 2001 Andre was placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for a lawsuit he had filed after being assaulted by a guard, and the PA DOC illegally suspended his court-ordered mental health treatment. Andre remains in solitary confinement to this day.
In 2005, at the Federal Courthouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andre was dragged onto an elevator by U.S. marshals in front of his grandmother and beaten unconscious after the completion of a civil rights suit he had brought. Federal marshals conspired to frame Andre for assaulting them, despite his being cuffed and shackled at the time, and he was sentenced to an additional 17 years in prison as a result.
In 2008, Andre was awarded $185,000 by a jury in a civil rights suit after they determined that PA DOC staff had violated his rights. This was one of the four civil suits Andre has brought to trial from his solitary confinement cell, where he is held 23-24 hours per day in conditions of extreme social isolation, sensory deprivation, and subjected to constant acts of retaliation.
Against all odds, Andre has persevered through the torture, received a degree from Blackstone University, and is now a certified paralegal. Because of his talents as a jailhouse lawyer and his uncompromising defense of his rights and the rights of all prisoners, Andre has become a frequent target of racist guards and ranking officials and repeatedly subjected to assault, destruction of property, unlawful confiscation of legal mail, food tampering, withholding of medical care, starvation and deprivation of water, and placed on indefinite/permanent solitary confinement status by the secretary of the PA DOC.
Andre's resilience and refusal to submit to arbitrary, racist, and lawless authority has placed him in harm's way repeatedly and transformed him into an exceptionally talented and committed human rights defender. His story needs to be heard, his rights protected, and his cause championed.
"I am being killed psychologically. I've never had a chance at life and here people are conspiring to take my future from me. This is my first time in prison and it is truly a nightmare! I call on every organization, attorney, and member of society to assist me in educating the world in what goes on behind prison walls in America."--Andre Jacobs.
We talk with Elizabeth Springer, the grandmother of jailhouse lawyer Andre Jacobs. Andre has been locked up in Pennsylvania correctional institutions since he was 15 years old. Ms. Springer talks about his early childhood, his experiences with harassment while in prison, developments with his appeal on federal charges of assault against prison guards, and the federal civil rights lawsuit he filed this past December against the PA DOC.
Thanks for checking in for another edition of On The Block Radio, the show that takes a critical look at the criminal justice system. On today's show:
PA Prison Report Headlines.
-Action Alert for racial death threats at SCI Forest
-SCI Huntingdon represses protests against the starvation of prisoners
-End of "freezing cells" hunger strike at SCI Albion
Interview.
A new trial has been set for Pittsburgh resident Terrell Johnson during which new evidence will be presented that supports his claim that he is innocent of the murder of government witness Verna Robinson in 1994. The trial was originally scheduled for February 28th; however, a recent decision was made to postpone it until April 2011.
Based largely on the testimony of Evelyn "Dolly" McBryde, Johnson was convicted of Robinson''s murder. However, the use of McBryde's testimony during the trial has raised questions about whether Johnson received a fair trial. One of the reasons being that McBryde waited two weeks after the murder of Robinson--after she had been charged with theft and faced up to 50 years in jail--to tell police that she had been a witness to the murder of Robinson, according to the Innocence institute of Point Park University. As well, her trustworthiness as a prosecution witness has been called into question because of her long line of run-ins with the police for her alleged involvement in drug use, theft, and prostitution of herself and her children.
In August of 2009, based on the statements made by Anthony Robinson, who said that McBryde was smoking crack with him at the time that she had originally said she had witnessed the Verna Robinson murder, Johnson was granted a new trial.
In September of 2009, Terrell Johnson was offered his freedom in exchange for pleading guilty to a lesser charge. He refused, choosing to risk continued incarceration for a chance to be completely exonerated of all current charges against him in relation to the Verna Robinson killing.
His new trial will take place on this coming Monday, February 28th, at the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh.
Terrell Johnson's wife, Saundra Cole, was interviewed earlier this month for On the Block Radio. She provides important background information and explains recent developments in the case.
For more information on this case, listeners can link to the Justice for Terrell Campaign at www.justiceforterrell.blogspot.com.
Special Thanks.
The PA Prison Reports are compiled by Andy, Bret, and Amanda of the Human Rights Coalition based on the accounts of prisoner correspondents and the investigations of HRC members. From the compiled data, the reports are re-written by Andy into the narratives you hear on "On The Block Radio." Tonight's report was read by Hannah of the HRC. Many thanks. To access written transcripts of the PA Prison Reports, please go to: www.hrcoalition.org.
On January 15, 2011, members of the Askia Coalition Against Police Brutality convened a tribunal to address the incidents of police brutality in Philadelphia. This 17-minute radio piece contains excerpts from the testimony of expert witnesses and victims of police brutality (Basiymah Muhammed, Abdus Sabur, Annette Dickerson, among others); as well as interviews with members of the Askia Coalition Against Police Brutality.
The Askia Coalition Against Police Brutality was formed in the wake of the attack against Askia Sabur in West Philadelphia on September 3, 2010 as a vehicle for putting an end to the phenomenom of police brutality in Philadelphia.
