Under Lock & Key

I have written and spoken extensively over the last couple years about the impact that recent heat waves have had on incarcerated people housed in non-air-conditioned prisons in Virginia and in the Criminal Injustice System in general. I even drafted and disseminated a proposal for the creation of a state-wide, coalition-based movement to shut these prisons down. As of the date of this writing, none of the so-called prison justice and prison abolitionist organizations I sent it to in Virginia responded or expressed interest in it.

A comrade of mine then created an online petition in 2022 to raise public awareness about this issue and build momentum for shutting these prisons (i.e., death traps) down. Last checked, the petition had 560 signatures. Buckingham Correctional Center alone houses 1,091 people, so there should be more signatures on this petition.

Since I began writing/speaking about this issue, the dissemination of my proposal and the creation of the online petition, historic heat waves have increased exponentially, both in frequency and in record high temperatures. And with these increases must be increased pressure and organizing to shut these non-air-conditioned prisons down.

Since the beginning of summer, the U.$. and most of the rest of the world have been gripped by deadly and historic heat waves. Science and medical experts the world over have warned that deaths caused by extreme heat will only increase each summer without some sort of action to mitigate climate change. They say that elderly people, obese people, and those with diabetes, heart disease and other serious health related issues are the ones most at risk. Time and time again, people confined to prisons, jails and detention centers with poor ventilation, substandard medical care and partial or no air conditioning are left out of the category of those most at risk during these record heat waves.

I just read that in Texas, which incarcerates more people than any other state in the country, the temperature inside its prisons regularly exceeds 120 degrees during the summer and as result, hundreds of incarcerated people have died there from extreme heat exposure in the last few years. Predictably, Texas prison officials have denied the number of deaths and the deaths they have acknowledged they falsely claimed were not caused by extreme heat but by other causes. So, on July 8, loved ones of incarcerated people and other community members attended a rally inside the Texas state capital demanding an emergency session be held to address the issue and for funding to be allocated to install AC units inside all Texas’ prisons. We need similar rallies to take place here in Virginia every summer when it is the hottest and not later in the year or the beginning of the year when the temperature and the issue of extreme heat inside non-air-conditioned prisons both starts to cool down.

SOME ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE NOW:

• Sign and share the following petition to close three main non-air-conditioned prisons in Virginia at: https://chng.it/T5hzhPsJXM

• Call/email Virginia’s Governor, Secretary of Public Safety, and Director of the Department of Correction at the contact information below demanding these prisons be shut down due to the extreme heat suffered by the people incarcerated there and that housing people at the named facilities under those conditions constitutes torture and cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

• Help build a statewide, coalition-based movement specifically to shut these non-air-conditioned prisons down. The proposal for the creation of such a movement can be found on my blog at https://consciousprisoner.wordpress.com/2022/10/01/preliminary-proposal-for-a-statewide-campaign-to-close-shut-down-non-air-conditioned-prisons-in-virginia/.

Please reach out, get involved and help build this movement before incarcerated people in Virginia start dying on a level like they are in prisons in Texas.

I am writing you today in response to an article you published in your Winter 2023 edition of Under Lock & Key No. 80. It’s true grievances don’t work, but it’s not just in Nevada where this is the case – it’s also here in the California Department of Corrections (CDCR). They have become callous and adept in covering up their wrongs; or find some minor significance in order to deny or just throw out our grievance and hold their green line even when they know that it’s a heinous act, which one of their own is committing.

Such is the case here at California Medical Facility (CMF) where C.O. Clark has been subjecting god awful pain and suffering on an aging population by running a gulag with temperatures in the high 30’s and low 40’s throughout the night. Pouring rain and broken windows are in every dorm. C.O. Clark insists on turning off the heater and running the swamp cooler full-blast all night long which has had a detrimental and highly damaging effect on my sciatica. I have spoken to him on numerous occasions but all my talking, explaining, and pleading falls upon deaf ears. What he is in fact doing is operating a gulag here at the California Medical Facility and freezing out the senior/aging population.

This man is a sadomasochist who finds pleasure in inflicting physical and mental pain on the prisoner/patient population simply because he can. I assert that it’s all in retaliation for grievances made last year against Sgt. Perez and Sgt. Huston which I used in support of my thesis of abuse by CDCR under the Color of Law here at CMF in a paper to Solano C.C. in my ENGLISH004 class with Professor Therriault which earned me an A in this course.

All this has resulted in causing me horrific amounts of pain. It’s a tragedy that a man like this should be allowed to wear a badge and be given so much power and authority to torture human beings and unleash such sadistic punishments on a graying population of prisoners/patients such as those of us here at the California Medical Facility. The true guilt and culpability lies with his superiors who are fully aware of his actions and legitimize his narcissism/tyranny. I say this because he has been 602ed for his cruelty of freezing-out the population but staff either cover it up or condone his actions through never acting on said 602 (i.e. Grievance Log #349915/filed 1/9/2023). Both him and his superiors need to be held accountable for their disgraceful actions.

I write this in solidarity with my brothers in Nevada: you are not alone in this struggle. And we also have been dealing with oppression and marginalization by Euro-Amerikan subjugation being subjected to through the so-called self-help groups such as RISE run by LSA (Life Support Alliance). It’s all the same oppressive conditions which are a result of the constitutional based involuntary servitude issue (all which is used with bias) that the legislature and repressive justice system refuses to address. This is negatively effecting the lives of ALL incarcerated people.

MIM(Prisons adds): We received a series of grievances and responses from multiple comrades at CMF regarding this issue of the swamp cooler being used to freeze out prisoners. The response from Reviewing Authority D. Hurley was that this never happened. The comrades then submitted grievance petitions to the department documenting staff “reporting deliberate false information (DOM §31140.6.1).”

The USW campaign to “Demand Our Grievances are Addressed” began in California and continues in California and in many states across the country. The question is can the imperialist United $tates ever provide a functioning grievance system to the people it holds in captivity? The majority of the people being of the oppressed nations occupied by imperialism means the ability to abuse with impunity is part of the ongoing repression of those who have fought for freedom from U.$. imperialism for hundreds of years. The fight for grievances to be heard, as is the fight for national liberation, is a fight to end these oppressive conditions.

Revolutionary greetings and Happy New Years to everyone listening to this recording at the Virginia Prison Justice Rally on the 14th day of January, 2023. I am a 46-year-old New Afrikan that has been in prison here in the belly of the beast in Virginia for 27 consecutive years. I am a core organizer along with my comrade to organize Virginia’s Nottoway, Buckingham and Augusta Correctional Facilities due to extreme heat conditions being worsened by climate change. Last checked the petition was at 516 signatures. We need more.

If you are listening to this speech it is now January so the temperatures in non air conditioned facilities is now bearable because we can always add layers of clothes to cope with the chilly weather. During the hot summer months however it is a very different story. A different reality. Because each of these non-air conditioned prisons become so unbearable, it is torturous and is expected to get worse due to global warming. I am currently incarcerated at Dillwyn Correctional Center which has A/C. Or better known as temperature control, but when I was held at Buckingham Correctional Center during the past summer, I experienced firsthand how the record heat waves that have swept the country, have caused the heat and humidity inside the facilities to become so intense that it felt like we were literally being baked in there. Because the heat exacerbates medical conditions and can cause a heat stroke in medically vulnerable prisoners I witness how this crisis had more of a detrimental impact on elderly and medically vulnerable prisoners.

Many are diabetic, have high blood pressure, have heart disease, and are still suffering from the side effects of long Covid, like so many of you out in the free world. The so called free world. Many of us experience labored breathing, we are sweating profusely. Some of us are experiencing blurred vision, increased heart rate, and are having difficulties falling asleep at night we means many are sleep deprived. Many of the administrative mitigation of these effects of extreme heat didn’t work. The bags of extra ice when we did receive it did not work. The small fans sold in the commissary did not work because many people can’t afford them. The extra fans placed in the pod did not work, but did succeed in blowing the hot air around from one place to the other. These ineffective mitigation practices didn’t work because these places by design are virtual death traps. They are overcrowded, have poor sanitation, poor ventilation and poor medical care. Poor meals we are fed and the tap water we are forced to drink are making us sick.

The dominant culture in these prisons is marked by complacency, passivity and fear. Fear of retaliating and fear of being labeled a snitch by prison guards and fellow prisoners for filing grievances and speaking out. So it is not unusual for the bulk prison populations to not sign these petitions no matter how extreme or how deeply inhumane the conditions are. The U.$. supreme court ruled all the way back in 1987 in the case of Turner v Safley that “prison walls do not separate prisoners from the protections of the Constitution.” So despite this dominant culture, the VDOC is prohibited by the Supreme Court from subjecting incarcerated people to conditions that amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

The Virginia DOC has a history of minimizing the issue of extreme heat inside these prisons, and has led me to believe it is necessary to organize an online petition to raise awareness about this statewide issue among the people, and to build a statewide abolitionist movement to shut these prisons down.

A comrade of mine will be handing out fliers with the QR code that will take you directly to the online petition which you can share and leave a comment. You will also have a QR code that will take you to a second draft of a proposal for a statewide campaign to shutdown non air conditioned prisons. Because the history of the criminal, torturous and exploitative nature of the prisons and the jails, it is going to take a statewide movement of the people and the communities most affected by mass incarceration to force the DOC to shut these modern day slave camps down. We can pressure them to start releasing elderly and medically vulnerable and other incarcerated people for 30 or 40 years for crimes committed in our youth. There will be mass casualties behind these walls and that is because in these last summers deadly heat waves caused by climate change have been becoming more frequent, intense, and as the climate is changing, these non-air conditioned prisons will keep getting hotter and hotter until the inevitable happens.

Thank you for taking the time to listen and if you want to keep up with my reading, prison conditions or political commentary in general, please visit my website at consciousprisoner.wordpress.com. My Twitter page is @justiceforuhuru. My instagram is @justiceforuhururowe

All power to the people till we see freedom