Why are They Rounding Up Tookie Williams' Friends?

[Wind Dancer]

Crackdown Inside San Quentin

For many years, Tookie Williams participated in a study and writing group with Steve Champion and Anthony Ross, both men also former Crip gang members awaiting execution on San Quentin's Death Row. All were, and the latter two continue to be, passionately dedicated to their own and others' education, creative expression, and peaceful self-transformation.

As the editor of Steve Champion's still-unpublished prison memoir, I have over the last three years corresponded extensively with him. In the spring of 2005, I spent three and a half hours with him at San Quentin. I have also recently edited other work-an inmate self-help pamphlet and a chapbook of philosophical aphorisms-co-authored by Tookie, Steve, and Anthony. This work emphasizes non-violence as a necessary pre-condition to personal and social change of any kind.

It was therefore shocking for me to learn in a December 21 letter that Steve had been "peremptorily uprooted from East Block and put in solitary confinement at the Adjustment Center" on grounds that he may have been involved in a conspiracy to retaliate violently for the loss of his friend. "Nothing," he tells me in the correspondence, "could be further from the truth."

Steve reports that on December 16th he appeared in front of the Institutional Classification Committee (ICC), at which time the warden informed him that the "incident is pending investigation" and that he would be placed on "property control for 90 days." This means he has no access to his personal belongings, including books and writings, which are precious to him.

-snip-

American prisons supposedly act on American citizens' behalf. We need continually to remind prison administrators, especially those who administer the death penalty, that a lot of us-not just family and friends--pay attention to the way our fellow Americans, our fellow human beings, are treated when in their custody.

Please write or call San Quentin (see contact information below) and express your civic interest in the fair and humane treatment of Steve Champion, Anthony Ross, and the other eight men currently being held under investigation in solitary confinement concerning an alleged conspiracy to incite a riot on the occasion of Tookie Williams' execution.
San Quentin Contact Information:

Mr. Steven Ornoski, Warden
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin, CA 94964

Phone: [phone].

Ombudsman's Email: [e-mail]

Tom Kerr teaches writing and rhetoric at Ithaca College. He may be reached at [e-mail].

http://www.counterpunch.org/kerr01212006.html

[nofurylike]

1. this is just wrong! thank you for posting this information,

FrustratedDemInNC.

i will write and call tomorrow.

i hope others will too!


peace and solidarity, always!