Of Prison Bondage by Jose Villarreal

Today’s social reality for the oppressed under Amerika continues to sport a paint job dripping from a colonizer’s brush of centuries past. Our deluge of oppression has reached a stage of sophistication where even many of the left have become hoodwinked into the myth of a “colorblind” era where even the highest seat of Imperialist power comes in off white. The truth is far from what the bourgeois media attempts to pass off as impartial news. In fact what society, particularly in Amerika, has entered in recent decades is not a “colorblind” era but an oppression-blind era.

The old slave code and Jim Crow laws were simply transformed into a war on poor people, this war was initially constructed and draped in camo as a “war on drugs” which worked to first flood the barrios and ghettos with dope and then arrest and impose outrageous prison sentences, in some cases life in prison, for drug crimes.

But this was nothing but an extension of national oppression which some have confused with the “prison industrial complex” (PIC). Those of us resisting this offensive on the streets and prisons located in “ground zero” of the prison boom (California, which has 33 prisons and 5 SHU’s almost all of which are State-run) see this phenomenon much different: we have identified the prison boom as a renewed and recycled effort by the State apparatus to unleash national oppression on the mostly Black and Brown peoples. It is a genocide by other means which has been reignited partly because of the advances in technology and the large population of what capitalist-imperialism deems the cast offs or unprofitable population, those potential revolutionary segments of society which are ensnared in the criminal injustice system, which becomes a big whip for the State to use liberally for population control.

Amerika today holds more prisoners than any country in world history, this is about a quarter of the world’s current prisoners. Today in Amerika 1 in 15 Black men is behind bars, 1 in 35 Latino men is behind bars and 1 in 105 white men is behind bars ((ACLU.)) and yet whites remain the majority of the Amerikan population today. If the motive was simply profit for this mass criminalization, why wouldn’t the State target more of the white population, particularly poor whites? Because profit is not the reason for this phenomenon.

History has proved that a weapon is only bad when it is held by an aggressor. Just as a gun is not inherently bad, it is a bad thing when held by an oppressor but becomes a device for liberation when held by the people, so too do prisons follow in this tradition where they are used for repression and torture by the State and when held ideologically by the people they become tools for liberation where fields of revolutionaries are nourished and cultivated and seeds of resistance are sown. What we are beginning to see across Amerika is this phenomenon where prisons are transforming – to the State’s horror – and prisoners are beginning to develop consciously even under the most brutal existence and within the most horrible torture facilities.

This transformation was reflected initially in the 2011 hunger strikes that swept Amerikan prisons, even spilling over into Canada and beyond. This united front was the first shot in the anti-imperialist prison movement which was heard in many countries around the world, it was a formal introduction for people around the world to Amerika’s prisons and specifically the torture chambers also known as SHU. The fact that thousands in California SHUs are kept in solitary confinement is now known to the world. This use of isolation for years and decades in some cases was enough to have prisoners rise up and resist this torture. Had the State provided us with just a minute amount of dignity it may have prevented such results so the ultimate fault lies in the State whose repression knows no limits. What has been gleaned from the strikes in 2011 was that our torturous conditions here in Pelican Bay were not distinct and that prisoners across North America have been suffering for many years as well. What has been discovered is that prisoners not only have an unused voice but that torture or dehumanizing treatment does not have to be tolerated. This was finally realized and was reflected in the thousands of prisoners who jumped in to join this peaceful protest for human rights! This was a beautiful development and just the beginning to an untapped reserve of struggle. It has even been discovered that women have it worse than men in many cases where they are suffering the same torturous conditions as male prisoners only to also suffer patriarchal oppression on top of that!

What’s more the reasons for this mass protest in 2011 and the 5 demands here in SHU have not been met – two years later and our demands have not been met! This is unacceptable and thus the renewed peaceful protest set for July 8^th 2013. This effort will include prisoners around the world and will be a louder shout to the world of the denial of human rights in Amerikan prisons. This effort will include not just a hunger strike but a work strike as well and will include men’s and women’s facilities everywhere, once again the state, through their reluctance to show even a minute amount of humanity, will create the conditions where prisoners will have no choice but to lay our bodies on the gears of the beast. The prolonged use of solitary confinement has been known to induce psychosis and yet the State continues this torture with malice and forethought. The vast majority of those held in SHU in California are Chicano, we have identified this process as institutionalized oppression where almost every Latino prisoner is labeled a gang member or associate simply from where one resides on the street. When Russian courts found 3 members of the “Pussy Riot” band guilty of hooliganism for performing a protest song in a church received 2 years, Amerika released a statement saying “The sentence was disproportionate.” Ha! ((BBC World News, 8-17-12.)) Disproportionate! When many of the prisoners in California mostly Brown and Black receive life in prison for as little as stealing a slice of pizza out of hunger!

What our bondage in this beast has taught us is that our oppression in prison has a direct link to U.S. Imperialism. This is another development that has been born out of our struggle for human rights in these dungeons, we are learning that our torture is reflected around the world where Imperialism also sinks its fangs into Third World peoples and that the oppressed everywhere struggle for what’s just, as we are doing. The State of Israel continues to occupy Gaza; Chicanos understand and empathize with the Palestinians because Aztlán is also occupied by a settler state. Indeed, Amerika continues to occupy Aztlán’s land, sea and borders as well as our socio-political and economic power. Like in Gaza, this occupation is enforced by a settler military, prisons, bullets and the vast brainwashing of the public. Prisoners in Amerika empathize with the prisoners in Gitmo who most, like us, are held not for actions they have taken but for thought crimes. The renditions are here in Amerika where poor people are ripped from their communities and locked in dungeons, migrants are snatched out of their family unit and sent to ICE torture centers where women are raped and there is next to no oversight, children even stuffed in ICE concentration kamps, herded like cattle. We struggle for those people as well! We struggle for the juveniles who are given life sentences and for the mentally ill who overflow in prisons everywhere! We struggle for oppressed people everywhere who dare to struggle against Imperialism in all its rotten forms!

But it’s also important to see the stirring of a fascist environment which exists without many even realizing it. This is seen in the link between corporations and the state, from the “ALEC” group which is a combination of corporations and bourgeois politicians who design laws that are later passed into legislation, to the lobbyists flooding millions into the halls of congress, to even smaller relations involving state government.

Taser International donated $300,000 to the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), ((Kevin Johnson, “Police organization gets $300K from group tied to stun gun maker,” USA Today, 10-22-12.)) which is the pig organization’s philanthropic arm. This “donation” was given after the IACP long endorsed stun gun use by pigs, which has gone up. These are the kind of kickbacks and marriage of corporations and the State where essentially the corporations and the State support the institutionalized oppression that exists. The realization of what we as prisoners are really up against changes the spectrum in terms of how we are to live our lives and most importantly which ways will we proceed in our future efforts for prisoners’ rights.

We sit in these cells and see Amerika in action, banning Chicano books from schools, shooting down Black and Brown youth, incarcerating millions in prisons, polluting First Nation land and overthrowing governments around the world, and we say we want no part of it! Amerika does not care about poor people, there are 18.4 million empty homes today in Amerika ((National Coalition for the Homeless, 2012.)) whether it is foreclosed homes or vacant dwellings, that’s enough for a house for every homeless person in Amerika and still we would have plenty empty! But the homeless are like those who end up in prisons: we are seen as surplus population by our oppressor because for the most part our existence does not add to the GDP, that is to say we are not profitable.

We know true liberation will only come from revolutionary collective struggle and this realization is beginning to stir in every dungeon in North Amerika, where prisoners are analyzing their own oppressive conditions and creating their own demands in the name of peace and freedom and will step on to the world stage shackles ripped from the cinderblock cage in full understanding that before we can taste real freedom we must first realize we are oppressed only when one understands they exist under the heel of a brutal predator will one remove the boot from one’s neck. Let freedom reach every dungeon in the world as we dare to struggle!

Jose Villarreal is currently a prisoner in Pelican Bay SHU. He can be contacted at:

Jose Villarreal H84098
Pelican Bay State Prison C-11-106
P.O.Box 7500
Crescent City, CA
95532-7500