This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Vacaville.
Hello,
I received a surprise letter from y’all and I enjoy writing so I figured I’d reply, ‘cause quarantine gets pretty boring. I’m a 27-year-old trans women and non-binary person, I prefer she, her, hers, Mrs. I’m Hispanic. My sexual orientation is pansexual. And I am currently engaged to my fiance who’s incarcerated at CSATF while I am in a single cell at CMF. I’ve been locked up for eight years, since I was 19 on a 15 to life sentence.
I’ve plenty of COVID-19 stories. From March through November, I was at California Institution for Men, otherwise known as Chino State Prison. If you have followed COVID-19 within CDCR, you’ll recognize that I survived the COVID-19 outbreak at the prison with the highest death rate in California. Indeed, as of the day I left, Chino had 1700-plus positives and 26 inmate deaths. I made it out testing negative the whole time, only because I went to the hole, ASU administrative segregation.
I spent 220 days in ASU at Chino, a horribly torturous place. Lockdown 24/7. Yard is offered three times a week but two issues prevented me from using the dog kennel CDCR calls a yard, safely. First to go to yard, one must submit to an unclothed body search, before and after, and be made to walk half naked in their boxers or in my case, a bra and panties, in front of all the inmates, staff and females. I refused to participate in their strip-show and prayed. So I was denied yard for 220 days.
Second, and most importantly, staff amongst many other failures, failed to sanitize the handcuffs and yard cages in between inmate use, even after a positive inmate uses them. You see, Chino like most prisons resort to the horrible practice of using the hole, solitary confinement, as quarantine for COVID-positive inmates. I’m sure one can imagine how such a practice only hinders testing as many inmates would rather tough it out than to go to the hole. No TV, no personal property, 24/7 lockdown, lack of social stimuli. Just you and your boxers, one book, and four walls.
Chino has military-style ISO person dorms, so that some activists and advocates such as myself took to calling Newsom’s COVID death camps. So of course coronavirus had its run of the facility. The day I left Chino, it felt like I was escaping a death camp. Just me, myself, all alone on a state bus, Greyhound style, and a 10-hour drive north to Sacramento. Now I write you from the California medical facility, where the whole prison just went on lockdown for a COVID-19 outbreak traced to a positive correctional officer who worked in my unit about a week ago. And now people in my single cell unit are testing positive. I think over the past two days, I saw five guys escorted out of the building by CRO’s in space suits, my funny nickname for full PPE. Today I took my fourth COVID test this month, thankfully negative each time.
Our program has such a likening to the hole. First solitary confinement. As a trans person, it is certainly the safest housing a male’s prison could offer me, but everyone gets lonely. Twenty-three and a half hour lockdown, half hour given to us daily for a 15-minute phone call and 15-minute shower. No doctor visits, no psych visits. I’ve already been in the hole for seven months, so I’m kind of used to it. My fellow prisoners aren’t. They resort to yelling out of rooms for social interaction and joking about suicide to cope with their depression.
No lie, as I write this, I heard one man say “Man I’m going crazy. I’m going to hang myself.” And another man said “If you do, let me know. I’ll do it with you.” Sadly even though these men aren’t seriously suicidal, if they’d ask to speak with the mental health professional, the best they’d get is a psych tech yelling at them and their unit to ask how they are. Quarantine remember. And no one wants to talk to a psych on the TIAA where everyone else can hear. Today as I write, CMF just locked down, ending out access to phones and showers. We were told a lot of positives came back last night and every CIO that usually clocks out at 10 p.m. was forced to stay till over 1 a.m. to assist in removing positive inmates and placing them in quarantine. I myself started to feel a small tight pressure in my chest today, so I’m praying it’s simply my anxiety.
Where I could go on and on about horror stories of lockdowns, COVID protocol failures, cases, death, as an advocate for social justice, I must look at the bigger picture of what’s happening to the inmate population. While I have done ASU time, plenty of level four lockdowns, I’m now at a level two low security prison where many have not. They’ve never felt solitary time, 24/7 lock downs, no access to education, therapy, self-help groups, job assignments, social or recreational time. Nothing. And I’m starting to see that it takes a toll. Substance abuse is higher, people are losing sober time to the fear, boredom, and uncertainty. The smallest things are triggering pent up anger in everyone. One can smell the fear and depression like a heavy chemical, and some of these prisoners will be released during these times, less prepared than they might have been were they given the proper services and support.
And speaking of releases, Governor-Dictator Newsom fools the public by showing he’s authorized approximately 10,000 prisoners. But if no one diligently researched public info, prison populations’ U.S. capacity, one would see that all of California’s prisons are still above 100% capacity, with some prisons nearing 120% reported capacity. The prisoners that were the majority of those released were young, health short-termers. Most of the CDCR’s elderly and high-risk medically inmates did not, will not, qualify for early release due to Newsom refusing to consider anyone with a serious or violent felony.
In fact, as of 08/19/20, CDCR admitted that out of approximately 6,200 such identified and inmates, it only released 15 inmates. How long? How many more needless deaths within CDCR’s walls until the public realizes the unjust torture that has gone on inside? Until mass incarceration, systemic and institutionalized racism, sexism and classism are all remedied and addressed by the abolishment of the prison industrialized complex, why should the catalyst that is COVID-19 be taken advantage of those of us inside to unify and stand against our oppressors while we have the public support?
To all the inmates, prisoners, convicts, comrades, myself and my fiance have started a grassroots anarchy movement, Bleed the State Anarchy. This is our call for the unification amongst ourselves. Our call to peaceful stance on activism, self-advocacy, and direct action against these highly centralized institutions, an abolishment of slavery and prisons. We’re here to educate you. Our union is more powerful than we imagine, but currently is weak due to the works of our enemies. Did you think I meant CDCR is our enemy? No. Prisoners are a prisoner’s own worst enemy. If only we weren’t at odds with one another, ah what a difference it would make. You must realize that we will allow the pigs to oppress us by dividing ourselves. We do their work for them. No more, now we stand as comrades. We want our freedom. You’ve heard it said in these dark times, if you want peace prepare for war.
