Code of Silence about torture in Ca. prisons, press conference

Dec 4, 2009 9:30 am, North Steps of the Sacramento, Ca. state Capitol building, rain or shine
Bring ten people, a crowd is needed.
Our recent wrongful death lawsuit victory deserves for all the details to be told.
There are rides available (share gas and sometimes hotel) from various cities in California.
The flyer is here,
http://www.1union1.com/dec4_press_conf_color.html
This one is in black and white.
http://www.1union1.com/dec4_press_conf_black_white.html

Out of state people (you have loved ones incarcerated in Ca.), this is a way that you can help to make this event a success by donating gas, rental cars, hotel rooms.
email Susan, uniondatabase [at] aol.com to go, to donate, etc.

Another report of swine flu & no water at Avenal
Another legal victory
Rev. B. Cayenne Bird rightor1 [at] yahoo.com

UNION subscribers:

I hope that you all had as nice a Thanksgiving as possible. My visit to Sierra Conservation Center went well. I had an interesting conversation with a prison guard who caught swine flu from an inmate while I was being asked to fill a form about whether I had a cough, fever, or cold.

He said that it was very minor for him because his immune system is strong but that inmates who get it are hard hit due to other illnesses that they have, and that if one case exists at a prison, the entire facility will be locked down.

He told me about a friend of his who is a prison guard nearly dying of Valley Fever at Pleasant Valley. It is clear to those guards who have caught something in the disease-ridden prisons that they are vulnerable to results of the inhumane conditions.

I was happy to cooperate with the screening, people who go to the prisons sick are being very selfish. So don't do that and let's keep the prisoners well.
There is talk of visiting being made available by appointment only and then once every three months only as the budget will be billions short again. It is easy to make cuts off the prisoners because there is no strong, funded lobby to fight for them, there is only the UNION and we need more ACTIVE volunteers since it is difficult to keep up with what we have in progress.

Ignorance of how the system works and apathy are the two greatest blocks to prison reform. It is best not to wait until it is too late to get your writing and recruiting done. I expect more out of state transfers and more cuts in visiting because we are so easy to oppress. What a shame when 3 million people are attached to a state prisoner which could be the largest voting lobby of them all.
Everybody thinks someone else is going to do their share of the organizing work, then it doesn't get done right. What if I had that attitude? We certainly wouldn't have ever been able to get one lawsuit filed, let alone about 100 since 1998, which made all the difference in the world in having our issues in the news and on the table.

Dear Cayenne:
[Attached is] a decision in pdf from the 4th Appellate District issued today, 11/19/09, that validates the 2008 petition I wrote challenging the Clinical Evaluator Handbook as an underground regulation.The appellate court has now upheld the 2008 OAL Determination #19, Office of Administrative Law http://www.oal.ca.gov/Determinations_Issued_in_2008.htm and determined the appropriate remedy for using an underground regulation. I feel good about this, as everything I have been preaching about this issue has now been stated by the appellate court.
This decision now tells those prisoners facing SVP commitment, Sexually violent predator laws which is potentially all sex offenders now in prison and those already facing commitment proceedings, what they need to do to make the State do it right. Previously, the Clinical Evaluator Handbook essentially dictated to the evaluators that everyone met the criteria, and this decision tells how to get those evaluations thrown out. But this must be done pre-trial, or else one must show actual prejudice which is difficult.
--
Tom
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Thanks Tom for all your good work over the years, I have included the attachment below and ask that everyone mail this email to their adopted inmate so that all the jailhouse lawyers can see this victory. I wish that you could join us Tom at the victory celebration next Friday, you certainly have won a number of legal challenges and been an important part of our fight for the past eleven years.
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UNION readers:
There were two courageous inmates who were very instrumental in the outcome of the wrongful death lawsuit which will be unveiled at the press conference next week. They are now out of prison, and I ...want to have them recognized. They mattered very much in how the entire process evolved.

The two capable lawyers are putting the presentation together, our UNION family member who stood tall behind them will be speaking.
Keywords and issues of our press conference: mentally ill, experiments on prisoners, ad seg, dangerous drugging, false reports by state employees, blatant and repeated violations of Coleman, suicide, hot meds, excessive cell temperatures, no or little accountability of state employees who break state and federal laws, the need for cameras in areas where the mentally ill are housed, lies, deceit, withholding, distorting and "losing" records, The Code of Silence and much, much more.
We are going there to hear experts expose it all and to celebrate our victories and the brave men and women who fought so hard to win for us all when the odds are stacked so heavily against any sort of lawsuit win.
Rev. Cayenne