The past week and a half has been pretty chaotic.
On Monday I jacked the hallway and made them carry me back to my cell on the stretcher. At the same time, Mike (Steven Mike Woods) jacked the handcuffs and locked himself to the inside of his cell door. Everyone from the Captain on down came to F-Pod and maintenance arrived about 3 hours later. Seconds before they cut the cuffs off with a welding torch, Mike slipped his hand out of the restraints. I heard someone down the run imitate the Simpson’s character Nelson with a “Haaahh-haaa!”
Tuesday night I woke up to the fire alarm going off and the exhaust fans kicking on. Several people in F-section lit fires because a particularly sadistic officer came to the pod and started harassing people for no reason. About 2 hours later at 9:27 pm a gang of officers came on the pod, including the Emergency Response Team in full riot gear and all of the rank with the camera rolling. Hank Skinner was in front covered in bright red chemical gas. I catch a lot of retaliation because of the grievances I file and the direct action I provide. But, Hank has been on Death Row a lot longer than I have so the staff treats him worse than me. After Hank was done coughing, sneezing, and wheezing because of the excessive amount of gas that was used on him, I asked what happened…
The ever so perpetually sly Major Miller has been having Hank moved every few days so he faded the team in protest. Frequent moves: another retaliatory tactic used by prison staff to oppress and harass. Hank’s injuries can best be described by quoting the nurse: “Jesus Skinner! It looks like your nose is broke and you look like shit…”
The next day, Wednesday, they brought in Ronald Hamilton with the incident camera rolling. I’ve known “Boo” since the first day he came to death row. He’s never had a write up before so I was surprised to see him.
Earlier that morning over on E-Pod, Officer Caine decided to play the “jacking people for recreation” game. When an officer wants to decrease his or her work load, they can simply choose not to recreate people. (This is also a common retaliation tactic.) Of course that’s completely against policy but it has become a much more common occurrence. Major Miller arrived. The officers know that with him running things, they can do damn near “whatever”. Well, Boo requested to see a Sgt. because his rec. was jacked. A Sgt. finally came and informed Boo that he was going to Level 3 for “threatening an officer”. Caine wrote him a fictitious case because Boo followed procedure and requested the presence of a ranking officer. Isn’t that fair? Try to abide by the rules and go to the disciplinary pod for a minimum of 4 months!
Not wanting to go to F-Pod for an unwarranted reason, Boo heated up a liquid concoction and threw it on Officer Caine. Sometimes, evasive action is the only way we can get a sadistic officer to leave us alone. The rest of the week was constant fires, floods and other forms of direct action. During a cell search my daily notes magically disappeared. But, I can’t forget to include two other incidents: Mike “jacked" the attorney booth and made the E.R. Team come in and get him. Then, myself, Clinton Young, and Mike all jacked our trays because Officer Hendry didn’t feed Mike his lunch tray in retaliation for a fire he lit. We made the team “suit up” and all the rank came down including the duty-warden – Warden Alford (from population). A ranking officer said he'd remedy the situation so we gave up our trays. I appreciate everyone’s comments and suggestions about not fading the team or doing anything else that could possibly be interpreted as violent protest. I’ll try to follow those suggestions and see what 1. I’m in 73 cell now and on food loaf and maxed out on restriction. Mike is up in 84 cell on complete property restriction with nothing in his cell save a pair of boxers and shower-shoes.
Our level of motivation and enthusiasm rises with the level of oppression so it’s all good
Merry Christmas in the spirit of Christ as non-conformist and revolutionary!
Robert
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