Last Call to Freedom: Statement of Support by Paul Redd

Published first in CA Prison Focus, issue 60 (30 May 2020)

I am Paul Redd/Abbas, one of the original hunger strike representatives and signees of the historical document “The Agreement to End Hostilities.”

I find it an honor to be amongst this class of solid members who continue to refuse to compromise or/and debrief under any circumstances nor allow our minds to play tricks on us. It has been a continuous struggle fighting against the obstacles CDCR officials, IGI, ISU, SSU alike with their SNY’s now referred as designated program yard in attempt to derail positive progress.

Now we are up against an even more deadly beast called COVID-19 that data showing it is largely attacking and killing the Afrikan American and minority population that’s at a higher risk who suffering from hypertension, diabetes, cancer, sleep apnea, etc. Many of us like myself suffer from all these diseases listed as a high risk under COVID-19.

A lot of prisoners here including myself recently had our CPAP machine confiscated due to the COVID-19 virus. It’s being a lot of hype from some politicians lifers convicted of a violent offense should not be released under COVID-19.

Governor Newsom must be reminded of the longstanding undisputed data (record) elderly 60 & over serving a life sentence only has a 1% recidivism rate of returning. The older you are make us less likely to reoffend and less of a danger to public safety.

Here something overlooked or/and being ignored by CDCR/Board.

All of us released from the SHU by DRB under Step 4 and Step 5 were documented by DRB / Classification as inactive under a 12-months observation. Inactive is defined by CDCR officials as not being involved in criminal gang activities. Even when they later changed it to current activities. It still meant not involved in any current criminal gang activities. Their own language and definition make us a low-risk to moderate.

Let’s take it a step further at one time when some prisoners were completing the earlier step down programs. CDCR officials were handing out Rehabilitative Certificates stating folks completed their step down.
Those were certificates printed up by CDCR officials.

Next point: many of us under our sentences already got our max time served, which means, legally the board has no authority to hold us past our maximum term, which means: a period grossly disproportionate to his or her individual culpability for the commitment offense.

Case in point: the California Supreme Court in Danneberg has acknowledged:

“Section 3041(b) can not authorize such an inmate’s retention even for reasons of public safety beyond the constitutional maximum period of confinement.”

Turn to in Re Palmer II 33 CA, 5th 1199 (April 5, 2019), the court said prisoners may bring claims directly to the court through petitions for habeas corpus if they believe because of the particular circumstances of their crimes, that their confinements have become constitutionally excessive as a result. We can presently cite in Re William Palmer II 33 CA 5th 1199 as precedent in the pleadings.

There’s no time under COVID-19 to go through normal habeas corpus channels. Food for thought here under compassionate release provision section PC 1170(e)(a) read in part, the court shall have discretion to resentence or recall if the court finds that the facts described in subparagraph (a) and (b) exist.

The prisoner is terminally ill with an incurable condition caused by an illness or disease that would produce death within month as determined by a physician employed by CDCR.

Now the court said in order to ensure that such cases may be resolved fully and expeditiously we urge any party or counsel appealing under section 1170(e) to advise the appellate court at the earliest possible time of the nature of the issues on and date which a medical professional determined the defendant had no more than six months to live and to seek calendar preference (Cal. Rule of Court Rule 8.240).

My point for bringing this up, under this COVID-19, we can use to expedite hearings and releases for all of us meeting the high-risk of this deadly COVID-19 deadly no curable virus. Our fight continues. Each one, teach one.

Your brother in arms, Paul (Abbas)

 

Prisoner Human Rights Movement BLUE PRINT

(FULL BLUE PRINT pdf- all docs-284pgs)

Overview
Table of Contents
Blue Print core document
Appendix

BLUE PRINT 

The declaration on protection of all persons from being subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution 3452 (XXX) of December 9, 1975. The Declaration contains 12 Articles, the first of which defines the term “torture” as:

“Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining his or a third person’s information or confession, punishing him for an act he has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating him or other persons.”

FREEDOM OUTREACH PRODUCTION
December 1, 2015

 

PRISONER HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT
#1 Blue Print Overview

California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation (“CDCr”) has systemic and dysfunctional problems that run rampant state-wide (within both Cal.’s Women and Men prisons), which demand this California government to take immediate action and institute measures to effect genuine tangible changes throughout CDCr on all levels.

The entire state government was notified and made aware of this “Dysfunctional” CDCr prison system in 2004 when its own governmental CIRP blue ribbon commission (authorized by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger) reported this finding and fact. (See http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/CAGOV_US/C040600D.pdf; also see Prison Legal News article, “CA Corrections System Officially Declared Dysfuntional.”)

However, this CDCr state of “dysfunction” was not new to the massive number of women, men and youth being kept warehoused in CDCr, because they face it daily. (See Cal. Prison Focus News, 1990s-Present, Prisoner Reports/Investigation and Findings; San Francisco Bay View News Articles; ROCK & PHSS Newsletters, etc.)

During the historic California Prisoners’ Hunger Strikes (2011-2013), tens of thousands of men and women prisoners in CDCr’s solitary confinement torture prisons, as well as a third of the general population prisoners, united in solidarity in a peaceful protest to expose this dysfunctional system officially reported in 2004 by the CIRP.

The Prisoner Human Right’s Movement (PHRM) Blue Print is essentially designed to deal with identifying and resolving primary contradictions by focusing on the various problems of CDCr’s dysfunction, including (but not limited to) the following areas… [read full OVERVIEW Here]

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS for Blue Print

• OVERVIEW by Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa

• Prisoner Human Rights Movement BLUE PRINT

Prisoner Human Rights Movement (“PHRM”)

PHRM Principle Negotiators, Reps, Plaintiffs, Local Councils

I. Monitoring Reports on 33 State Prisons

II. Monitoring Implementation of the Ashker v. Brown Settlement Agreement

III. Instituting the Agreement to End Hostilities

IV. Legal PHRM Political Education

V. Freedom Outreach

Conclusion

• APPENDIX

All Appendices can be found at www.prisonerhumanrightsmovement.org

#1 – (A) Five Core Demands; &
(B) Agreement to End Hostilities

#2 – Second Amended Complaint, Ashker v. Brown

#3 – Supplemental Complaint, Ashker v. Brown

#4 – Settlement Agreement, Ashker v. Brown

#5 – PHRM’s Principle Negotiators’ Statements on 2nd Anniversary of the Agreement to End Hostilities

#6 – (A) Example Monitoring Report w/ Exhibit; &
(B) Example Monitoring Record

#7 – (A) CA Assembly Public Safety Committee Legislative Hearing on CDCr SHU policy, 8/23/2011
(B) CA Joint Legislative Hearing on CA Solitary Confinement, 10/9/2013

#8 – Mediation team publications

(A) Mediation Team Memorandum on Meetings with CDCr Officials, (3/26/12)
(B) Mediation Team Memorandum on Meetings with CDCr Officials, (3/15/13)
(C) Mediation Team Memorandum on meetings with CDCr Officials, (2/20/15)

#9 – PHRM LEGAL PRISON ACTIVISM EDUCATION Packets*:

(A) LEARN TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS
(B) MEMORANDUM ON UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF CDCR’s STG/SDP (Feb. 2015)

* To receive Educational Materials (Appendix #9), please write and send, for the cost of the mailing, either eleven dollars and fifty cents ($11.50) or the equivalent in postage stamps to:

Freedom Outreach/PHRM
Fruitvale Station
PO Box 7359
Oakland, CA 94601-3023

 

PRISONER HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

We are beacons of collective building, while clearly understanding that We, the beacons, must take a protracted internal and external retrospective analysis of our present-day prisons’ concrete conditions to forge our Prisoner Human Rights Movement (PHRM) onward into the next stage of development, thereby exposing California Department of Corruption and Repression (CDCr)/United States Prison System of Cultural Discrimination against our Prisoner Class. This is why our lives must be embedded in our determined human rights laws, based on our constructive development of the continuous liberation struggle via our scientific methods and laws. Therefore, through our Prisoner Class, the concrete conditions in each prison/U.S. prisons shall be constructed through our Prisoner Human Rights Movement.

Solitary Confinement: A “Social Death” – NYT on “Shocking” Data from CCR Case

A video the New York Times published, accompanying the article Solitary Confinement: Punished for Life (August 3rd, 2015, by Erica Goode) shows Todd Ashker, George Franco, Gabriel Reyes and Paul Redd talking on camera about solitary confinement, being locked down without any hope, with no ending in sight:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/bcvideo/1.0/iframe/embed.html?videoId=100000003831139&playerType=embed

---

This comes from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and it is about the Case Ashker v. Brown, in which the New York Times used research, including the 10 expert reports and a video with 4 of the class action representatives (Todd Ashker, George Franco, Gabriel Reyes and Paul Redd).

August 4, 2015

Today’s New York Times science section features a front-page piece about the research that CCR commissioned and compiled for our ground-breaking challenge to long-term solitary confinement. “Solitary Confinement: Punished for Life” introduces to the public the 10 expert reports we submitted to the court in Ashker v. Brown, the class-action lawsuit on behalf of prisoners in solitary in California’s Pelican Bay prison. Together, this research presents an unprecedented 360-degree look at the science behind how and why solitary confinement causes irreversible physical and mental harm.

According to the expert reports, prisoners subjected to prolonged solitary experience a form of “social death” that is not cured upon release, but rather lingers as a “post-SHU syndrome” characterized by social withdrawal, isolation, and anxiety. One researcher said it was “shocking, frankly” that some prisoners endure decades of isolation. The Science Times piece is accompanied by a moving video of our clients.

The reports also provide evidence that the profound impact of solitary is not just psychological; SHU prisoners experience unusually heightened levels of hypertension, placing them at risk for serious health consequences. The international and domestic experts agree that such prolonged isolation is not only unnecessary for prison security, but actually counter-productive, as well as a violation of international law.

The expert reports – by leading scholars in psychology, neuroscience, medicine, prison classification, prison security, international law, and international corrections – are part of the discovery phase of our case. They are critical to our argument that prolonged solitary confinement violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

But the reports do more than support our case. They help the growing national movement to end solitary. By bringing public scrutiny to the severe physical and psychological harm our clients and so many others are suffering as a result of their isolation, we hope to continue turning the tide against this form of torture until it is eradicated from the U.S. once and for all.