[Ppnews] Bonnie Kerness Speech at Stopmax Conference

[Political Prisoner News]

via: Bonnie Kerness
===============

AFSC Stopmax Conference
Plenary Session
Temple University
May 31-June 1
Bonnie Kerness, AFSC Prison Watch Project

I want to thank the AFSC for renewing its 
commitment to issues of isolation and torture in 
US prisons; the AFSC Healing Justice staff for 
their collective brilliance and spirit and Naima 
Black and the Stopmax Team for organizing this extraordinary community.

In the mid 80’s I received a letter from Ojore 
Lutalo who had just been placed in the Management 
Control Unit at Trenton State Prison. He asked 
what a control unit was, why he was in there and 
how long he would have to stay. At that point, we 
knew little of control units, except for the 
ground breaking work of Nancy Kurshan and Steve 
Whitman of the Committee to End the Marion 
Lockdown (CEML) and the many prisoners who 
reached out to the AFSC, which, in 1985 produced 
a pamphlet called “The Lessons of Marion”. We 
began hearing from people throughout the country 
saying that they were prisoners being held in 
extended isolation for political reasons. We also 
heard from jailhouse lawyers, Islamic militants 
and prisoner activists ­ many of whom found 
themselves locked down in 24/7 solitary 
confinement. The AFSC began contacting people 
inside and outside the prisons to see who was 
interested in working specifically on control 
unit isolation issues, and in 1994 (after eight 
years of organizing) we hosted the formation of 
the National Campaign to Stop Control Unit 
Prisons. This was done with the help of CEML, 
Komboa Ervin, who was one of the Marion Brothers, 
Corey Weinstein of California Prison Focus, 
Alejandro Molina from the Puerto Rican Cultural 
Center, students from Oberlin College, young 
people across the country who belonged to the 
Anarchist Black Cross, the United Church of 
Christ, Yaki Owusu of Spear and Shield, the input 
of the women held in small group isolation at 
Lexington, Ky. and many others who gave strength 
and purpose to the work. Some of these people 
were actively involved in the different political 
movements of the 60’s and 70’s and understood how 
control units were being used against us all. 
Getting issues of isolation and torture into the 
light has been a long road and I bow in gratitude 
to those inside who so gracefully and patiently 
mentored those of us on the outside.

In 1996, the National Campaign held four Regional 
Hearings across the country, giving voice to 
people in prison, ex-prisoners, family members, 
advocates, lawyers and others whom were impacted 
by the use of isolation. In 1997 we came out with 
the Interim Report which held data on the 
emergence of over 45 control units or supermax 
prisons in almost every state. We matched inside 
and outside monitors in each state and formed the 
testimonies we received into a Listening Project 
called “Testimonies of Torture” and the 
“Survivor’s Manual”. In 1998, the National AFSC 
folded the work of the Campaign into Newark, NJ’s 
Prison Watch Project of the New York Metropolitan 
Regional Office. During the four years of its 
existence, NCSCUP trained dozens of students in 
organizing principles, including helping to 
develop about half a dozen campus Prisoner 
Awareness groups. Many of those former students 
are still working for social change today.

The history of the National Campaign to Stop 
Control Unit Prisons really began with the 
movements of the 60’s and 70’s. My generation 
belonged to a society where we genuinely believed 
that each of us was free to dissent politically. 
In those years, people acted out this belief in a 
number of ways. Native peoples contributed to the 
formation of the American Indian Movement 
dedicated to self determination; Puerto Ricans 
joined the movement to free the island from US 
colonialism; white students formed the Students 
for a Democratic Society and other groups, while 
others worked in the southern Civil Rights 
movements. This was also a time that the New 
Afrikan Independence Movement reasserted itself, 
the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was 
formed, as well as a time where there was a 
distinct rise in the prisoner’s rights movement. 
It was time when television news had graphic 
pictures of State Troopers, Police, the FBI, and 
the National Guard killing our peers. It was a 
time when I saw on the evening news the bullet 
holes fired by police into Panther Fred Hampton’s 
sleeping body, a time when young people 
protesting the Viet Nam War died on the Jackson 
and Kent State campuses killed by the National 
Guard, a time when civil rights workers were 
killed with impunity, and a time when we felt as 
if there was no opportunity to stop mourning 
because each day another activist was dead. These 
killings and other acts of oppression led to 
underground formations such as the Black 
Liberation Army and the Weathermen Underground.

The government, in response to this massive 
outcry against social inequities and for national 
liberation, utilized an FBI Counter Intelligence 
Program called COINTELPRO, which had as its 
objective the crippling of the Black Panther 
Party and other radical forces. Over the years 
that this directive was carried out, many of 
those young people who weren’t murdered were put 
in prisons across the country. Some, now in their 
60’s and 70’s are still there. Those directives 
are still being carried out, only now we have an 
entire office of Homeland Security monitoring 
what it calls “radical prisoners”.

While the US denied that there were people being 
held for political reasons, there was no way at 
the time, to work with prisoners without hearing 
repeatedly of the existence of such people, 
including individuals who clearly fit the United 
Nations definition of political prisoners and 
prisoners of war ­ and the particular treatment 
they endured once in prison. As early as 1978, 
Andrew Young , who was US Ambassador to the 
United Nations, was quoted in newspaper 
interviews as saying that “there were hundreds, 
perhaps thousands of people I would describe as 
political prisoners” in US prisons.

Across the nation, we saw an enhanced use of 
sensory deprivation/isolation units for such 
people, and it was this growing “special 
treatment” which we began monitoring. At the 
time, Ralph Arons, a former warden at Marion, was 
quoted at a congressional hearing as saying, “The 
purpose of the Marion Control Unit is to control 
revolutionary attitudes in the prison system and in society at large”.

For those of us who have been in the struggle for 
decades, the deliberate use of long term sensory 
deprivation is haunting. People that we’ve known, 
worked with and loved have been, and some still 
are, being held in this manner. Some of those are 
people in the audience today. The names ­ Ojore 
Lutalo; Sundiata Acoli, who the Management 
Control Unit in NJ was built for in 1975; Assata 
Shakur, who was held for over five years in 
isolation. Marshall Eddie Conway, Albert Nuh 
Washington, who died in prison; Geronimo Pratt; 
Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Mumia Abu 
Jamal; Leonard Peltier, David Gilbert, Marilyn 
Buck, Sekou Odinga, Ray Luc Levasseur, Kazi 
Toure, Masai Ehehosi; Leonard Peltier, Oscar 
Lopez Rivera, Alejandrina Torres, Dylcia Pagan, 
Bashir Hameed, Standing Deer and Sekou Odinga, 
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin; Richard Williams, Tom 
Manning, Merle and the rest of the Africas, 
Africa, Susan Rosenberg, Laura Whitehorn, Linda 
Evans, Marilyn Buck, Sylvia Baraldini, Mutulu 
Shakur, Imam Jamil Al-Amin - these names and 
dozens of others ­ haunt the spaces of every 
control unit, SHU, DDU, ad seg unit and special 
housing unit in the country. No matter what name 
they are given, their purpose is the same as it 
is in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo ­ the breaking of 
minds. For every name I’ve read, there are a thousand more.

For people of my generation, this work is done 
with a compelling and lifetime passion and an 
understanding that the work is not risk free. 
We’ve made a promise to those dead and alive to 
abolish these torture chambers. People throughout 
the world are beginning to understand what the 
prisoners have been saying to us for decades 
about the oppressive tactics of the US 
government. The department of corrections is more 
than a set of institutions, it is a state of 
mind. It is that state of mind which has expanded 
the use of isolation, the use of devices of 
torture and the Counter Intelligence Program, as 
part of Homeland Security, against activists, 
both inside and outside the walls. Ojore Lutalo, 
the man who first contacted us in 1986, was 
released from the control unit via litigation in 
2002 after 16 years in isolation. In 2004, he let 
us know that he had been placed back into the 
Management Control unit with no charges pending 
or any explanation. When I called the Department 
of Corrections, it took many conversations before 
I was bluntly told that this was upon the order 
of Homeland Security, that he is one of a number 
of prisoners across the country who they have targeted in this way.

The latest progression of control units are 
called “security threat group management units”. 
This is particularly egregious because it is the 
government which gets to define what a “security 
threat group” is. According to a national survey 
done by the Department of Justice in 1997, the 
Departments of Corrections of Minnesota and 
Oregon named all Asians as gangs, which Minnesota 
further compounds by adding all Native Americans. 
The State of NJ DOC lists the Black Cat 
Collective as a gang. The Black Cat Collective is 
my free foster son along with two friends who put 
on Afro-Centric cultural programs in libraries. 
Because my own background stems from the Civil 
Rights Era, I am very mindful of who is 
considered a “security threat” to this country and how they are treated.

Prison gang policies occur within the context of 
larger society and the wider criminal justice 
system, and the growth of security threat group 
management units are part of the larger policy 
agenda regarding US prisons. One of the standards 
that the federal government sets in order for 
states to receive prison construction subsidies 
is to mandate the building of supermax prisons or 
security threat group management units.

One of the things that makes this such an 
exciting time to re-new our efforts through 
Stopmax, is that we now have the growing 
understanding of the validity United Nations 
international law. The Convention Against 
Torture, the Convention on the Elimination of All 
Forms of Racial Discrimination, The UN Convention 
on Political and Civil Rights and other 
international and regional treaties help give us 
a new set of legal, educational and organizing tools for social change.

Our work this weekend is very rooted in struggle 
against the system and political oppression. It 
is deeply touching to me to have representatives 
of so many long time political formations 
present. Those of us in AFSC rooted in these 
issues, continue to hear from prisoner activists, 
the mentally ill, people charged with being gang 
members and thousands of others ­ all being 
housed in extended isolation where devices of 
torture are used with impunity. After each 
Homeland Security Code change, Prison Watch is 
flooded with calls from people reporting loved 
ones with Islamic names being placed in solitary without charges.

Our work this weekend is a time when the building 
of new relationships and the broadening of our 
base can truly create social change. I think we 
all need to be mindful of the deep sense of grief 
that many of us feel as it impacts on our work 
and interactions. There may be groups here who 
need to work through differences with one 
another. There may be groups here who can form 
working alliances no matter what those 
differences are. Our priority has to be to work 
cooperatively to shut down these torture chambers.

I want to honor our foremothers and forefathers 
in this movement for abolition of prisons, 
isolation and torture with a poem of Assata 
Shakur’s called “No One Can Stop the Rain”, which 
reminds us that no one can stop a righteous 
movement. We, all of us, are a powerful community 
of resistance, and this is a dream come true for me.

Watch, the grass is growing.
Watch, but don’t make it obvious.
Let your eyes roam casually, but watch!
In any prison yard, you can see it, growing.
In the cracks, in the crevices, between the steel and the concrete,
Out of the dead gray dust,
The bravest blades of grass shoot up, bold and full of life.
Watch, the grass is growing.
It is growing through the cracks.
The guards say grass is against the Law.
Grass is contraband in prison.
The guards say that the grass is insolent.
It is uppity grass, radical grass, militant grass, terrorist grass,
They call it weeds.
Nasty weeds, nigga weeds, dirty, spic, savage indian, wetback, pinko,
Commie weeds ­ subversive!
And so the guards try to wipe out the grass.
They yank it from its roots.
They poison it with drugs.
They maul it.
They rake it.
Blades of grass has been found hanging in cells, covered with
Bruises, “Apparent suicides”.
The guards say that the “GRASS is UNAUTHORIZED”.
“”DO NOT LET THE GRASS GROW:”
You can spy on the grass. You can lock up the grass.
You can mow it down, temporarily.
But you will never keep it from growing.
Watch, the grass is beautiful.
The guards try to mow it down, but it keeps on growing.
The grass grows into a poem.
The grass grows into a song.
The grass paints itself across the canvas of life.
And the picture is clear and the lyrics are true,
And the haunting voices sing so sweet and strong
That the people hear the grass from far away.
And the people start to dance, and the people 
start to sing, and the song is freedom.

Watch the grass is growing.

Thank you.



Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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