“Did you now or did you ever refer to each other as “family?”
“Did you call each other by ‘code names’ like Carnal or Hermano?”
These racist, classist profiling statements were brought to you courtesy of the legal team for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation against George Franco and three other prisoner hunger striker representatives who were part of a powerful group of prison warriors who organized an historic hunger strike to challenge the brutality and inhumanity of endless solitary confinement.
Now, after the state was forced to settle a lawsuit that reformed the solitary confinement policy, Franco and three others are facing a new trial, on charges that they are members of the Nuestra Familia gang and have engaged in criminal activity from behind bars.
Their lawyers say they have been singled out because of their organizing. Most of the defendants are over 50, and some are in their 70s. If convicted, they would likely face sentences so long that they would die in prison.
“This case is absolutely retaliation,” said Jose Valle, organizer and advocate with SV Debug speaking along with George Franco’s cousin Melissa Valdez and Minister King X from Prison Focus and Kage Universal to speak on Poor Peoples Radio about the trial.
I sat listening aghast in the deafeningly silent marble and wood mausoleum known as the United States Federal Court in Oakland, filled with brightly polished floors and wooden church pew-like seats. The surrounding walls were filled with monstrously giant paintings of judges and other colonial ghosts of this system.
In 2012, George Franco and three other Prison Hunger Strikers Rights Movement representatives organized the hunger strike with 30,000 participants. Historically, solitary confinement has been used on incarcerated folks based solely on gang allegations, not conduct, sentencing or due process. In 2015, hunger strikers agreed to a settlement that radically reformed the use of solitary confinement in the California prison system, and a historic end of hostilities of all racial groups in CDCr.
One of the arguments CDCr used for imposing solitary confinement was gang-related racial violence.
The CDCr hunger strikes were part of a statewide campaign that included ending solitary confinement in county jails i.e. Chavez v. County of Santa Clara and the greatest peace efforts in prison history. In addition, criminal justice reform legislation efforts by community organizations i.e. Prop 57, SB 81, SB 1437, AB 333 etc. has massively decreased the prison population and crime rates in communities across California.
California’s legislative prison reform efforts would not be possible without the sacrifices taken by the Prisoners Human Rights Movement.
I sat listening to more arguments and watching more powerpoints that “proved” these men’s relationship to each other in that inhumane and brutal system, I was reminded that CDCr is just one in a long line of institutional systems built by colonization to destroy indigenous values, interdependence and ancestors teachings in communities.
Long before colonizers boxed in, red-lined and ghettoized communities of color in barrios, towns and so-called ghettos, there was family, cliques, grupos and villages. There were lifeways of interdependence which weren’t turned into Codes of Conduct to be deconstructed in a powerpoint. There were elders, and ancestors and ceremonies and care. These were all destroyed to “build” the White supremacy nations we know as the United State and of course the builders, the enslaved, the underpaid and the red-lined needed to “Stay in their place” needed to be silenced and marginalized—and to do that this settler society needed to criminalize and leech the culture and indigeneity from the communities so they could be exploited and extracted from, and ultimately when there wasn’t enough work for all of them, incarcerated.
It begins with the very real school-to-prison pipeline, which I have sadly felt and witnessed firsthand as a houseless child of an indigenous mother and then later a revolutionary teacher and advocate who was able to interrupt the intentional profiling and destruction of multiple indigenous children in poverty lost in the settler colonial system’s grips.
There is no rehabilitation in the r of CDCr, which is why abolitionists say it’s a small “r” but what there is, is intimidation and domination and more colonization.
“The prosecution tried to offer our loved ones inside a sweet deal and thought they would take it—but we said no, let’s go to trial because we knew they had no case and sure enough, this case is turning out to be a sham case and I do see bias from the judge,” said Melissa Valdez about the two month trial that launched in June and is winding down now in closing arguments.
From SV Debug:
In 2016, George Franco was finally released to the general population with good behavior that allowed him to down-class to a level three facility. Franco is one of the four PHRM representatives and we strongly believe that due his influence in ending indefinitely solitary confinement, implementing the end of hostilities, both CDCR and the federal government is retaliating against George and his co-defendants in the form of a RICO indictment for the purpose of job security in the prison industrial complex and inciting hostilities that may result in mass incarceration.
“This case is the example of the CDCr continued attempt to try and stigmatize people with gang affiliation, but what is really being revealed is CDCr’s necessity to maintain racial capitalism and prison commerce,” said Minister X King to Poor Peoples Radio,
“In the end, no matter how many times the settler State tries to deconstruct our community, we will peacefully prevail,” said Brokin Cloud, Afro-indigenous elder formerly houseless resident of Homefulness at the prayer ceremony, organized by SV-Debug and POOR Magazine, that launched the trial in June.
