April 10, 2004 - The United Front to Shut Down the Security Housing Units (SHU) held its second state-wide organizing meeting in Oakland. People representing some of the participating organizations attending the meeting included African People's Solidarity Committee, Justice for Palestinians, Maoist Internationalist Movement, Proyecto Common Touch, Revolutionary Anti- Imperialist League, African People's Socialist Party, and the Barrio Defense Committee. Also participating were activists from Santa Cruz (Cal State Monterey and UCSC), Oakland community activists, and a Los Angeles prisons activist. Many of the participants are also friends and family of prisoners locked up in the SHU.

The meeting started with an overview of the SHU from a MIM activist giving the basic facts about incarceration in California and the reality of torture in the SHU. Many people participating in this campaign are spending time on the streets collecting petition signatures and handing out literature. This means we have to be prepared to talk to people about the SHU and prisons in general. The presentation included material available on MIM's website devoted to shutting down control unit prisons.

Like other control unit prisons across the country, the SHU are prisons within a prison. They are solitary confinement cells where prisoners are locked up 23 hours a day for years at a time. The one hour a day these prisoner sometimes get outside of their cell is spent alone in an exercise pen not much larger than their cell, with no direct sunlight. This long term isolation causes serious mental and physical health problems for many prisoners. And these torture cells are used to target politically active prisoners using a system of classification that makes it impossible for prisoners to appeal their assignment.

One point raise in the presentation was the similarity between administrative segregation units in California prisons and the Security Housing Units. They are both long term isolation, a form of torture targeting politically active prisoners. While our campaign is to shut down the SHU, we can not let people think that these unofficial SHU cells are a better alternative. Several people in the meeting with personal experience with these segregation units spoke up about the need to shut them down as well.

After the presentation the question was raised: how do we to respond to people who say that prisoners committed crimes so they deserve to be in the SHU. It was agreed that first we need to be clear that being locked in the SHU has nothing to do with the crime committed. And second we should also state that we do not think torture is right regardless of the reason someone is in prison. It is the prison system, and particularly the guards, that create dangerous conditions within the prisons. They force prisoners to identify as gang members based on nationality and where they are from, set up fights between prisoners, brutally beat prisoners, deny them their legal rights, and then use these conditions as an excuse to lock some prisoners (usually the activists) in long term isolation.

A large part of the meeting was devoted to organizing a protest for April 26 at the Federal Court house where there will be a hearing on the Castillo case which is challenging the SHU classification system. While we recognize that the courts are not going to shut down the SHU, and in fact are a part of the same government that uses different kinds of institutions to control the oppressed, we use this as a forum to struggle and expose injustice and attempt to win some reforms. The protest is scheduled for 8am at 450 Golden Gate Ave and will include a set up of the SHU replica. Our goal is to get 50 people out and meeting participants made commitments to attend the protest and bring others. To bring the protest inside the courtroom participants decided to wear t-shirts reading "SHU=torture".

The meeting included an overview of actions taken in cities across the state. It has been two months since the start of our state wide protests the first Saturday of every month. These protests have been staffed by various groups and individuals active in each city. It has become clear that it only takes one or two people to staff a protest site and so our goal of expanding to other cities should be easily attainable. In some cases activists have used the opportunity to distribute literature about other work they are doing around the criminal injustice system and police brutality while also publicizing the SHU campaign and collecting petition signatures. There are many connections to make about a country that uses SHU torture cells in prisons and the other injustices perpetrated by Amerika at home and abroad.

In Santa Cruz student activists have been on the streets for the two Saturday protests and have also gathered petition signatures on campus at UCSC. They are working on building a replica of the SHU for use at the protests. They have also applied for a weekly show on the SHU on a local pirate radio station.

In the Bay Area, San Francisco protests have been held downtown on the first Saturday of the month. In addition activists from MIM and RAIL have been out in the Mission every Thursday tabling and collecting petition signatures. The California Prison Focus local weekly radio show (on KPOO) invited a MIM activist to participate in one of the programs which included a large segment on the SHU campaign. The goal expand our organizing work in the Oakland area was discussed with members of the African People's Solidarity Committee, the African People's Socialist Party and the Revolutionary Anti- Imperialist League all committing to make this happen next month.

In the Los Angeles area one campaign activists has found significant support in the San Fernando Valley where she collected 150 petition signatures at the Saturday protest in April. In the future there will be protests in the city of Los Angeles and in the Valley the first Saturday of every month.

In San Jose the SHU replica has provided a stark example of the torture cells that we are protesting. The first Saturday protests for the past two months were held at a local flea market. This provided a good opportunity to talk to interested people and hand out literature, but the light foot traffic will lead activists to try local parks and other areas for future protests.

Sub-groups reported on activities since the last meeting. The media committee is working on a list of all media contacts to get press releases, event announcements, and articles into progressive media as quickly as possible. Currently articles and press releases are being posted on indymedia, and MIM Notes and the Bayview both ran large ads for the April 10 meeting. Press releases will also be translated into Spanish and put out to the Spanish media.

Plans for future actions were discussed. Continuing our protests on the first Saturday of every month, we are working to expand into several new cities: San Diego, Monterey, Oakland and Berkeley are our first targets. Ideas were discussed for a demonstration centered around delivering the many thousands of petition signatures we are gathering. One idea is a several day walk from San Francisco or a prison in the area to Sacramento where we could deliver the petitions to Senator Romero (chair of the committee on prisons) and Governor Schwarzenegger. More research will be done on this idea. We also discussed planning a SHU event around Black August.

The next meeting of the United Front to Shut Down the Security Housing Units will be held Saturday, June 12, 12-2pm in Santa Cruz.