September 7, 2007 - Rally at the Capitol, Sacramento

Comments by Rev. B. Cayenne Bird, Director

UNITED FOR NO INJUSTICE, OPPRESSION OR NEGLECT

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Bio: Dr.  B. Cayenne Bird has been a California Journalist for four decades years.  She is the volunteer director of United for No Injustice, Oppression or Neglect (since 1998) and publishes the UNION daily newsletter to advocates, families, legislators and other journalists throughout California.  Her experience covers newspapers, magazines, and television  Her son Eric K'napp, a paralegal,  is incarcerated at CSP Salinas Valley and has been literally tortured in prison.  A movie for the big screen is being made about her son's case and the UNION's work to expose preventable prisoner deaths since 1998.
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My name is Rev B. Cayenne Bird I am the director of the coalition sponsoring today's rally United for No Injustice, Oppression or Neglect or "U.N.I.O.N." founded in 1998. Our banner was made by a Head Start Teacher and her Pre-School class and has sentimental meaning.  Our name states our mission well. I have been a California  Op-ed columnist and Publisher for 40 years. The UNION is a communications system that ties everyone up and does calls to action that make a difference. 

We don't just pass email back and forth on the internet, we finance campaigns when we can such as this rally today.  There are many advocates  of smaller groups in the UNION but almost everyone is related to an inmate in prison, jail or  juvenile hall.   There are 54 of California's top journalists who read my daily newsletter each day and we are very active in furnishing news to the media about disease outbreaks, riots and deaths.

 This is one of the reasons why we formed in 1998, because the media is banned from being able to speak with specific inmates. I am a mother and mother and grandmother who lost a child to the prison system in 1993, a grave injustice from which I will never fully recover. The subscribers of the UNION daily  newsletter are hooked up together as a public education tool that alerts people who are working for prison reform about when,  where, how to fight back for themselves and others.

  We are behind the walls and do not operate  from a position  of fear. It is the people of the UNION who report what is happening behind the walls to the media in terms of riots, disease outbreaks,  deaths, and abuses. The top 54 journalists who read the newsletter depend on the families for tips and information because the media is banned. We have defied this media ban since 1998 on a daily basis and cooperate fully with the media as what goes on in the dark is deadly.

 Our purpose here is to let the legislators know that we demand the immediate release of non violent inmates due to inhumane conditions caused by overcrowding.  We are angry as hell at the cruel and unusual punishment inflicted on us through neglect and torture of our loved ones in prisons and jails.  We want the Governor Schwarzenegger to use Compassion and Common Sense in Corrections.  He needs to know that prisoners are people too and not political pawns. Our purpose is to alert you, the   taxpayers related to inmates, that these conditions exist and are being financed with your money.

We are also here to teach others about our battle plan for real action   We hope to garner enough support for a massive class action lawsuit for all the unlawful rules changes, especially those around visits.  A few thousand people can get together and easily file lawsuits for about $20 each.  That's seems to be the only language that legislators and CDC understand. What we have in our movement is 500 tiny, fractured groups and too few people doing all the work and paying for everything.  This inaction by the 3 million people connected to inmates is the only reason in the world we have all these problems. In a democracy rules government, the largest, most funded groups of voters put their candidates into office.

 That's what we fail to do, even though we outnumber everyone. So we are stuck with law enforcement's lawmakers, the ones they put into office and buy off to vote for their special interests. But we do not need to have the victim mentality.  We can  fight back  because as a voting group, we outnumber everybody who oppresses us. Would groups like AARP depend only on charity  legal and advocacy work?  No!  Nor should we! We  need to demand help for inmates who are suffering and dying at the hands of our lawmakers. Inmates and their families, foster children who will be tomorrow's prisoners, have no place to go for help, even  in life and death emergencies. Nobody hears our screams.  If they do, legislators seem powerless to do anything about it. That's how terrible conditions are at every level of this prison state.

Here we are paying out billions on juvenile halls, jails, and prisons and they are operating completely out of control of the taxpayers who fund them. Inhumanity is conducted as business as usual. We see headlines about all the changes but a simple doctor's visit takes months. The attitude here at the Capitol is that the wardens and guards are the good guys and everyone connected to an inmate is a liar. The media has been much better this year.  They should not stand by and allow themselves to be banned from prisoner access This is how these terrible crimes against humanity are committed in taxpayer financed institutions and are allowed to exist while flying under the radar of public knowledge.

The end result is that voter financed institutions are doing more to create crime than to prevent it. People are returning to their communities much sicker than before their incarceration. Few up here under the big top care. "They are only inmates" most, legislators say. Inmate abuse and death rarely even make the news. I went before the Senate Rules committee last summer and many times in the past years and testified against Wardens who were being confirmed. There was no one else representing inmates there except for me. I was treated with derision for voicing but a few of the complaints from inmate families. The senators didn't want me there.  They not only don't care about what is happening to inmates, they don't even want to hear about it. Anyone who complains is a liar.

The truth is offensive to them, confronting the evil of this prison system is too much of a stretch for those born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Why do we put them into rule over us? The UNION is here today because because this is an Urgent Call for Compassion and Common Sense in Corrections. Yes, there is a social justice movement that has been going on for 20 years. God bless every activist who has gone broke trying to organize the families of prisoners. So many don't understand that they outnumber all these other oppressive groups and their pain is coming from nothing but better organized voting lobbies than prisoner families, and those groups use the government to do their bidding to promote the prison slave industry.

The prisoners are the pawns in all these ugly little games and the California human bondage industry then becomes the largest growth  industry in the United States. Human bondage is our main state product.  "What can I do about it?", you ask with your pockets empty and your heart broken. Well, here's the plan:  Excessive sentences, wrongful arrests and conviction, prosecutors who distort or withhold evidence and have no consequences to them for doing so, psychological intimidation and torture to "break" inmates, visiting restrictions which  which punishes children, increases in family restitution to half of what you send to your loved one, forced vendor packages, continuing medical neglect and unsanitary conditions which cause disease.......we have THOUSANDS of reasons to keep on filing more lawsuits but the time has come to empower ourselves to do initiative campaigns But we cannot do that unless thousands of people contribute to make this possible. Depending on volunteers to do this fierce fighting never works out. It is crippling to take the attitude that some lawyer, judge or legislator or group without funds is going to rescue you. That is never going to happen. We must organize and rescue ourselves by sharing the load across many shoulders. There is only 160 days to gather almost a million signatures in an initiative campaign which is the way you change laws , so you don't begin until the funds and volunteers are together. Everyone must be committed, trained and ready to go. Other groups do this everyday.  You can do it too. That is what we are doing now, putting together supporters. If everyone here teaches this formula to TEN PEOPLE and signs them up in the UNION and they then continue the process and SIGN UP ANOTHER TEN EACH, we could grow in leaps and bounds. Our commitment as U.N.I.O.N. members is to:

1. Write one ten sentence letter to the editor of a local newspaper every week about a current  prisoner news topic. This provides the public with education.
2. Show up to important hearings and protests when called or send someone to stand in your place.

3. Legislators seldom read email or mail or respond to it. They do respond to seeing their names in the newspapers and they note how many people come to a protest. If you are silent, they assume that you are happy with current laws and bills. So silence is the worst possible position to take.

4. We invest time in finding and educating others who will then also write letters to editors and   show up for protests. The formula for success goes like this.....  6500 X 200 each totals 1.3 million, that's enough to finance each campaign. Both money and people are necessary to do the right actions and at the right time.....IN UNISON ..so our voices are heard loudly by the lawmakers.

6500 X 200 signatures on each FORMAL initiative passed through the Secretary of State can change ANY law or vote out any bad politician. That totals 1.3 million people which is enough to qualify anything for the ballot in our state. So 6500 people willing to work a little, about 2 hours per week, can build the voting group required to change any law. Think United Farm Workers or any other labor union, that is what is needed. .  . Please see our table during and after these events to subscribe to the U.N.I.O.N. daily newsletter for less than 8 cents a day ($50  a year, $30 every six months, so we may continue to bring education and active pressure on our lawmakers together by doing campaigns. Everyone in the UNION, including me is an unpaid volunteer.  But campaigns cost money, unlike just passing email back and forth to one other which is what most of the internet groups do. Don't Agonize. Organize.