Formerly Incarcerated Advocates Speak out At
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Number 51 Winter 2017 Serving The Interests Of Prisoners And Their Loved Ones On The Outside For Twenty Five Years FORMERLY INCARCERATED ADVOCATES SPEAK OUT AT CALIFORNIA PRISON FOCUS’S 25TH ANNIVERSARY EVENT By Kim Rohrbach n November 12, 2016, California Prison Focus held its 25th anniversary commemoration at Othe First Congregational Church in Oakland. The highlight was a panel discussion with Watani Stiner, Mianta McKnight, Troy Williams, and Raymond Aguilar—all formerly incarcerated Californians. Together, their experiences span a significant half-century in this nation’s history, from the Civil Rights Movement through what’s being called the New Jim Crow era. Bato Talamantez, a founding member of CPF who was absolved in the 1971 San Quentin Six trial reflected on the origins of the organization: “Everything about California Prison Focus started around Pelican Bay a hell of a long time ago. We didn’t have a name at first. We just responded to our friends inside. We had a lot of friends and still do. And they were the ones who ultimately led the Hunger Strike twenty years later: they figured out that it’s do-or- die time.” Sharing his recollections of Holbrook Teter, a former activist with CPF who passed in 1999, Talamantez continued: "He told us he had been around the world where people had been tortured, and what was happening the war in Vietnam.” Watani enrolled at UCLA where he nonviolence themselves. at Pelican Bay [long term solitary confinement) was discovered and joined the Us organization, founded by Before long, when Williams was 13, he found himself torture. The constitution does not apply at Pelican Bay,” Dr. Maulana Karenga - also the founder of Kwanzaa - on confronted by six grown men who insisted that he fight. the heels of the Watts Revolt. Watani was drawn to Us, he concluded. Well aware that he couldn’t fight six men, he ran and was finding a stronger sense of his "culture, identity and a way Each ot the panelist had experienced firsthand the torture chased. “I didn’t make it.” Williams remembered, “I got of resisting oppression”. Both Us ands the Black Panther stomped out … beat up with chains and all that. And, guess that Talamantez described and had himself experienced— Party at UCLA were involved in efforts to establish a Black who came to my rescue?" three of tfour had spent in solitary confinement as juveniles. Studies program. “A rival gang showed up and ran the guys off. Next Following introductions, Roberto Monico, a CPF Stiner’s life was soon to change again because of a 1969 thing I know, I got thirty muscled-down men around me activist and a graduate student in San Francisco State shoot-out at the UCLA campus, in which he was wounded telling me how they got my back. Givin’ me some attention University’s Ethnic Studies Department, facilitated the and two Black Panthers (Bunchie Carter and John that I wish I would have gotten in the household, but I discussion. Huggins) were killed. “At the time,” Stiner said about the didn’t get.” The panelists’ backgrounds shoot-out, “I didn’t know about Cointelpro, and how they So began William’s involvement in “the lifestyle.” Two The senior member of the panel, Watani Stiner, informed instigated and … turned that whole incident into a violent 1 years later, he was in juvenile hall for murder. the audience that he refers to himself as a Cointelpro thing, where it caused the death of two human beings.” He Williams explained that he has been in the hole countless survivor, instead of a former “political prisoner”. The and his brother were tried and convicted for the murder. times, including multiple times as a youth. term “Cointelpro survivor,” he noted, acknowledges the They were sentenced to life and sent to San Quentin, then After his release from juvenile hall, Williams government’s role in his incarceration. escaped and fled to Guyana in 1974. About twenty years became a youth counselor and returned to school for Stiner spent his early childhood in the Jim Crow south. after that, out of concerns for his family, Stiner finally cinemaphotography. Maxine Waters, then Representative He remembered separate water fountains, separate beaches turned himself in to the US Embassy and landed back in for California’s 35th Congressional District, sponsored the and having to enter the grocer’s through the back door. San Quentin, where he was immediately placed in solitary organization he was working for as counselor. When he was seven, his mother moved his family to confinement for an entire year. When he was released from Around that time—1996—Maxine Waters was calling Watts, California. Watts was “a whole different world” San Quentin in January 2015, he hadn’t walked the streets for investigations by the D.O.J. and the House Judiciary than the one he’d previously known. In the south, it had of the US as a free man since 1969. Committee into journalist Gary Webb’s revelations been a “sin” in the eyes of a Catholic-raised child such as ♦♦♦♦♦ published in the San Jose Mercury News. Webb had he to drink from the whites-only fountain. Restorative justice advocate, journalist and filmmaker exposed that: (1) the CIA-backed Contras in Nicaragua As a young adult in California, Stiner married his Troy Williams who recently turned 50, was just a toddler highschool sweetheart and landed a well-paying job at an were using profits from cocaine trafficking to fund their during the heyday of resistance and self-determination aircraft company. But in 1965, Stiner’s life was changed guerilla effort to overthrow the (left-wing) Sandinista organizations like the Black Panthers and Us. forever by the Watts Revolt. At that time of the revolt, government; (2) this had been going on for the better part Williams and Stiner both remarked on how the disruption Stiner explained, “Young people across the country were of a decade, with the US government’s knowledge and and decline of the Black Power Movement created a breaking through racist barriers; we were raising questions tacit support; and (3) the cocaine being trafficked was vacuum that gave rise to gangs.2 "I was sucked into that about the unequal distribution of power and wealth … and being sold to the Bloods and the Crips in Los Angeles by world, even though 2 the tons, leading to the crack cocaine epidemic that had I didn’t want to be,” spread from L.A. across the urban U.S.. explained Troy. “I was there when Gary Webb broke the story about Indeed, when Williams Cointelpro and all the drugs coming into the community,” first learned from his Williams said, “and I understood what had happened.” brother at age ten what _________________________ Crips and Bloods were, 1 The FBI states on its website: “The FBI began COINTEL- his response had been: PRO—short for Counterintelligence program—in 1956 “That’s dumb. Like, to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the why we fightin each United States. In the 1960s, it was expanded to include a number of other domestic groups, such as the KKK, the other? That don’t make Socialist Workers Party and the Black Panther Party.” May sense to me.” Yet, the 5, 2011, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro. reality was that violence was everywhere around 2 Stiner expounded on this theme, “Once you create a him and supposed role vacuum, that vacuum is filled by something.” This phe- models, who preached nomena, he noted, can be seen at even the international nonviolence, did not level—whether with the US in Iraq, or what's happening in Syria or Libya. necessarily practice Panel guests and facilitator: Raymond Aguillar, Roberto, Troy Williams, Mianka and Watani Stiner CPF Anniversary Event ....................Continued on page 12 (4) Fill out and file a Prop 64 Petition Form. As part offenses in Penal Code § 667.5(c), and the eligibility of PROPOSITION 64 of your application, contact the court in the county of second and third strikers. The CDDA campaigned against REPORT conviction to determine if the county will be holding 57 on the basis that crimes such as Assault with a Deadly formal hearings on Prop 64 petitions. By Tom McMahone Weapon (ADW) and Domestic Battery (DB) will not be (5) This is a filing with the court so you must also file a n one of the many world-changing decisions made included. Proof of Service and serve a copy to the district attorney by voters on November 8, 2016, California joined However, it is likely that the following “violent” felonies (DA), city attorney, or other prosecuting agency; several other state jurisdictions that have legalized listed in Penal Code § 667.5 will not be included: murder; I (6) Prepare for and attend the hearing. attempted murder; voluntary manslaughter; mayhem; recreational use of marijuana by passing Proposition 64, Under the requirements of Prop 64, the judge is required the “Control, Regulate and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana forcible sex offenses; rape in concert; robbery; arson; to presume that you qualify for belief unless the DA proves Act,” commonly known as the “Adult Use of Marijuana kidnapping; carjacking; certain gang offenses; first degree by “clear and convincing evidence” that you do not. If Act” and refered to below as "The Act". The passage of burglary where a victim is present; any felony punishable released, you may still be subject to parole, probation, or Proposition 64 represents a major change in marijuana by death or life in prison; any felony where great bodily another form of supervised release.