Losing lives while gaining profit: 4 deaths in 2 months is business as usual for CCA prison

Published in the SF Bay View on February 26, 2015

by Anthony Robinson Jr.

“It should never be easy for them to destroy us.” – Comrade G

In the last two months – from Dec. 27 to Feb. 10, 2015 – four prisoners have died here at Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, a private prison California uses to relieve its prison overcrowding; it is owned and operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, CCA. These lives were lost due to indifference, unprofessionalism and lack of adequate training.

The families of all four of these California prisoners had to pay to have the bodies of their loved ones shipped back from the prison in Mississippi to California. Neither CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) nor CCA would foot the bill.

Steve Lee was an Asian American man around 56 years of age who had spent over 15 years in prison and was due to be released in April 2015. He lost his life because a correctional counselor by the name of Strong gave him a directive to prop some chairs on top of a flimsy table to take down some Christmas decorations.

In the process of taking down the decorations – unsupported by a ladder or another human being holding the chair – Steve Lee fell as a result of the chair slipping back and cracked his head. He had to be placed on life support until it was decided to pull the plug.

Tyrone Madden, F-92969, was an African American man intending to play a pick-up game of basketball and collapsed due to a seizure. The medical staff’s response was so inadequate due to indifference and lack of training that after fumbling with their oxygen tanks and other equipment and finally arriving on the scene, they were not even equipped with the knowledge that during a seizure Tyrone had to be placed on his side so that he wouldn’t swallow his tongue. It was a lieutenant who finally placed Tyrone on his side after the prisoners were yelling for medical staff to do so. How is it that a lieutenant who isn’t properly trained in medical responses is even involved with medical emergencies?

These lives should not be written off like some tax ledger expense or covered up through corporate PR and misinformation. As Ho Chi Minh stated: “Even the prisoner can get out and help build up the society. Adversity is just a measure of one’s fidelity.” These men were fathers, sons, brothers, uncles: important pieces to the structure of someone’s life. They had the potential to get out of prison and be pillars for their communities.

These lives were lost due to indifference, unprofessionalism and lack of adequate training.

For too long, the measure of human lives from poor demographics or environments such as prison has been cut off from the metrics of humanity – and we have all suffered for it. When you have developed such a cavalier lack of concern for the life of another human being, then you begin to suffocate your own humanity. Mumia said, “I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about freedom.”

As evidence and an admission on their part of the wrongful death of Steve Lee, CCA tried to bribe the Asian Americans and others from N Building A Section with a chicken and pizza feast, which I am proud to say that they denied with a rebel yell that spoke volumes to the fact that incarcerated lives matter. Can you imagine being offered chicken as recompense for the wrongful death of a fallen brother?

This was a blatant attempt to pay off witnesses and buy silence by a corporation that has been exposed for its intent to put profits over humanity (see “Two slaves for the price of one” articles, Parts 1, 2 and 3). We must understand that the structured forms of protesting that we have been practicing have not yielded the humane results that we seek but have only reinforced the plurality of conditions suffered by not making the proper rebuttals to the systemic causes of our oppression.

This was a blatant attempt to pay off witnesses and buy silence by a corporation that has been exposed for its intent to put profits over humanity.

To the people of true humanity and civil merit and to those individ­uals, organizations and firms who profess to work towards the civil rights of humanity: We need your work, assistance and efforts now! Will you be on the wrong side of history?

We need a mobilized, con­crete effort to accompany your protest signs and hands up movements. If the only expense you are willing to afford to this civil rights struggle is the cost of paint and markers used to decorate your signs, then your movement has failed before the paint smeared on your hands dries.

At Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, CCA is in violation of numerous human rights and prisoners’ rights and regularly commits fraud and contractual negligence violations. We need lawyers and paralegals willing to take on CCA and CDCR for their federal 1983 civil suits and tort claims violations.

One of the reasons CCA and CDCR have been so emboldened in allowing such gross negligence and these violations to parade throughout their institutions is that the cost effective tactic to make a profit is measured against what they deem as the expense of true rehabilitation. This has become embedded more staunchly as civil rights and pro bono lawyers have shied away from prisoners’ lawsuits. The powers that be see that as permission to oppress and do away with an already out of sight, out of mind “underclass.”

These profiteers make the proper “adjustments” only when their eco­nomic bottom line is adversely affected. We must make the consequences of violating prisoners’ rights more expensive than the money they make or save by cutting corners and siphoning off rehabilitation efforts.

If your measure of humanity is more than mere lip service and your faith more than a mere apology, then contact me so that we can prove to the corporate profiteers that Incarcerated Lives Matter!

There are enough prisoners willing to stand up for their human rights once they know that the public is willing to stand up and recognize them as human. There are enough good people working here at TCCF willing to testify to the policies and illegalities of CCA regarding the inhumane treatment they are trained to perpetuate against us prisoners once they know that organizations and lawyers are willing to stand up and recognize that Incarcerated Lives Matter!

A man can be measured by the possibilities he seeks in himself and others. All power to the people who are not afraid to fight for their freedom for fear of losing their chains!

I pray that you not allow another human life to pass here at TCCF while supporting through inaction CCA’s cavalier “business as usual” attitude in regards to human suffering and death!

Send our brother some love and light: Anthony Robinson Jr., P-67144, TCCF MC 67, 415 US Hwy 49 N., Tutwiler MS 38963.

Inside a CCA private prison: Two slaves for the price of one – Pt 1

Published on March 3rd 2014 in the SF Bay View

by Anthony Robinson Jr.

“We will now criticize the unjust with the weapon.” – Comrade George Jackson

Anthony Robinson Jr.

I write this essay with a gripping ambivalence: Admittedly I am both haunted and inspired, desperate for solutions, yet hopeful. I am a new found political prisoner within the grips of one of CCA’s slave camps, Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, here in Tutwiler, Mississippi. [CCA, Corrections Corporation of America, is the largest private prison owner in the U.S. – ed.]

For years now I’ve known that prisons are the new legalized plantations wherein the institution of slavery is celebrated. The 13th Amendment states in part: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist, except as punishment of a crime.” But CCA has trumped the 13th Amendment by creating “employment opportunities” and policies that implicitly state: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist except as punishment for a crime or desperation for employment.”

As the sister Michelle Alexander so eloquently stated and proved in her book, “The New Jim Crow”: the system of slavery has always been about cheap labor rather than race! CCA, knowing this in the fullest extent, has purchased two slaves for the price of one.

Their contract with CDCR allows them to earn about $23,000 for each “inmate resident,” as they have coined it. In addition to the $23,000 they receive for inmate residents, they profit inordinately by marking up commissary prices, serving cheap byproducts of food in scanty portions with little or no nutrients, using run down facilities with haphazard utilities and, most of all, employing cheap labor.

CCA, especially here at TCCF, has mastered the art of purchasing two slaves for the price of one – the two slaves being the inmate residents and the bottom rung correctional officers, providing cheap labor at minimum wage.

“The entire colonial world is watching the Blacks inside the U.S. wondering and waiting for us to come to our senses. Their problems and struggles with the American monster are much more difficult than they would be if we actively aided them,” wrote George Jackson.

“We are on the inside. We are the only ones who can get at the monster’s heart without subjecting the world to nuclear fire. We have a momentous historical role to act out if we will. The whole world for all time in the future will love us and remember us as the righteous people who made it possible for the world to live on. If we fail through fear and lack of aggressive imagination, then the slaves of the future will curse us, as we sometimes curse those of yesterday.”

So from the inception of this facility, created according to the blueprints of the plantation, CCA sought to exploit warehoused commodities legally designated as chattel – at the same time seeking an opportunity to exploit cheap labor in the form of poor, disenfranchised Mississippi residents desperate for employment. In perfect similitude with plantation dynamics, CCA has cast the “inmate residents” as the field nigga and the correctional officers, sergeants, lieutenants and captains as the house niggas who will put their lives and livelihood on the line to oversee what CCA has trained them to secretly consider us, the “inmate residents,” as their true interests.

When I arrived at this facility on Aug. 8, 2012, pulling up to the institution – plantation – I could see the confederate flag proudly flying high over the front lawn. My disbelief at such a blatant showing of racist, oppressive, emblematic colonialism made me attempt to create a mythical rationalization for the reality I was facing: “Maybe I was seeing things; they’ll probably take it down in the morning,” I tried to reason through my confusion.

But the reality is this: CCA knows exactly what it intends to convey by making an employee population composed of 90 percent Black workers salute a confederate flag every day they drag their poor spirits in poor bodies in poor health to work in assisting tradeoffs of humanity for minimum wages. As Michelle Alexander observes in “The New Jim Crow”: “Before democracy, chattel slavery in America was born.”

CCA has positioned itself nicely in gaining a controlling interest in one of the oldest businesses in America, i.e., slavery through cheap labor. And the icing on the cake for them is that they get two slaves for the price of one: one to be kept chained and the other grateful for the opportunity to watch, control and oppress the first.

The downtrodden must be careful not to be so caught up in their gloom that we can’t organize within our own conscience the tools needed for our own self-determination. We have depended and continue to depend on a system which sets the parameters of our freedom by criminalizing our acts of defiance and demands for social equality.

If they can convince you that speaking out against injustice is against the law, then they have effectively turned the law against you. And a people who are raised with the belief that the law works against them will break themselves against it in a rebellion out of the desperation of seeing no other option for salvation.

“You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the Blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to,” said President Richard Nixon.

As God is my witness, as many times as I’ve read over the above quote by Comrade George, it never impacted my spirit so hauntingly until I witnessed the context of that quote in the actions of these correctional officers here in Tutwiler, Mississippi. I’ve been in prison 15 years and have never witnessed such unprofessional indifference and incompetence. I’ve been in the world 33 years and I had no idea that Black people could be so uncouth, ignorant and vile. I’m talking about the behavior of the majority of employees here at TCCF – not all, but the majority.

There is such a culture of Black ignorance and uncouth behavior that you would wonder how a corporation would allow such a dynamic in the work environment. Upon my arrival here in Tutwiler, the first person I heard use the word “nigga” was a correctional counselor. The first groups of people that I ever witnessed literally shooting dice on their knees with money on the ground were correctional officers. I promise you, the reality here at TCCF is so devastatingly colonial that I can’t make this stuff up.

Beyond being embarrassed and shocked by the behavior I’ve witnessed on the grounds of this plantation, a question began to burn in the revolutionary canals of my spirit. How can Corrections Corporation of America not know of the devastatingly virulent behavior of its employees? And upon knowing of such behavior, why doesn’t CCA take active measures to change the environment?

Then I came to realize that CCA allows such a vile work environment to exist for two reasons: One, 90 percent of the employees here are Black and CCA has never utilized resources to save Blacks from acting out the haunting behavioral narratives of slaves; two, CCA keeps cheap laboring slaves as employees by allowing them to create a subculture of conduct that is familiar to them so that not only do they stay happily – although not very gainfully – employed, but they recruit their family and friends into the haunting gates of the plantation as well.

Mississippi is one of the poorest states in America. The poorest in health, poorest in education and, although in the Bible belt, poorest in spirituality. From the vantage point from which I am able to view the actions of many residents of the state of Mississippi, I can honestly say that it is no wonder Mississippi is failing not only in the areas that make a state prosperous, but also in the areas that history has proven are essential for a people to have any chance at self-determination and a progressive vision.

I think we can all agree that CCA expends a lot of research before they allocate millions to build their prison industrial complex plantations. So I’m sure CCA knew Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the union. Tutwiler is in an area not only poor in education, health and resources, but it also lacks opportunities for employment, especially gainful employment.

The prison industrial complex plantation has become that system. And CCA and CDCR not only recognize and pay homage to such a system, but recruit, employ and train neo-slaves – i.e. cheap labor – to guard and perpetuate such a system.

Ignorant parents will most likely raise ignorant kids; and an ignorant Black man or woman in America is a death toll waiting to be rung. Will we as Black people not wake up and demand back our inheritance of self-determination before it is too late?

“Blacks here in the U.S. apparently do not care how well they live,” George Jackson wrote, “but are only concerned with how long they are able to live. This is odd indeed when considering that it is possible for us all to live well, but within the reach of no man to live long!”

We must reverse this genocidal mentality by seeking first to live well amongst each other and refusing to live long enduring lives of imprisonment, suffering and self-hate. Black history is not a month; it is a lifestyle that can’t be paraded on screens and transfigured on posters. It must be lived and lived well within the mind, body and soul of each of us who will see the progress of humanity.

Send our brother some love and light: Anthony Robinson Jr., P-67144, TCCF G12-212, 416 US Hwy 49 North, Tutwiler MS 38963.

Also, Anthony is an outstanding poet and the author of “Incarcerated Tears: Book of Poetry, Vol. 1,” which can be purchased from your local Black book store or on Amazon, at http://www.amazon.com/Incarcerated-Tears-Book-Poems-Vol/dp/0741455390.