How do you incarcerate culture?

The CDCr case against the prison hunger striker peaceful warriors

by Lisa ‘Tiny’ Gray-Garcia aka povertyskola

“Do you now or did you ever refer to each other as ‘family’”? “Did you call each other by ‘code names’ like Carnal or Hermano?”

These racist, classist profiling statements were brought to you courtesy of the legal “team” for the California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation against George Franco and three other Prisoner Hunger Strike representatives who were part of a powerful group of plantation prison warriors who  organized a historic hunger strike with fellow inmates to end indefinite solitary confinement in the California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation (CDCr). I sat listening aghast in the deafeningly silent marble and wood mausoleum known as the United States Federal Court filled with brightly polished floors and wooden church pew-like seats. The surrounding walls were  filled with monstrously giant paintings of “judges” and other colonial ghosts of this system.

“This case is absolutely retaliation,” said Jose Valle, organizer and advocate with SV Debug speaking along with George Franco’s cousin Melissa Valdez and Minister King X from Prison Focus and Kage Universal to speak on Poor Peoples Radio about the trial. 

“The strike led to the creation of the Agreement to End Hostilities – a historic agreement between all prisoners of all cultures and communities realizing that their only true opposition was in fact the CDCr (California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation), aka the system,” concluded Jose.

In 2013, George Franco and three other Prisoner Human Rights Movement (PHRM) representatives organized the aforementioned hunger strike with 30,000 participants to end the inhumanity and brutality of indefinite solitary confinement in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Historically, solitary confinement has been used on incarcerated folks based solely on gang allegations, not conduct, sentencing or due process. In 2015, hunger strikers agreed to a settlement (Ashker v. Governor of California) that radically reformed the use of solitary confinement in the California prison system. In 2012, they had issued the historic Agreement to End Hostilities, in effect a peace treaty among and within all racial groups in CDCr.

The CDCr hunger strikes were part of a statewide campaign that included a successful end of hostilities between all racial groups, solidarity efforts to end solitary confinement in county jails, i.e. Chavez v. County of Santa Clara, and the greatest peace efforts in prison history. In addition, criminal justice reform legislation efforts by community organizations, such as Prop 57, SB 81, SB 1437, AB 333 etc. has massively decreased the prison population and crime rates in communities across California. 

California’s legislative prison reform efforts would not be possible without the sacrifices made by the Prisoner Human RIghts Movement.

As I sat listening to more inane arguments and watching more powerpoints that “proved” these men’s relationships to each other in that inhumane and brutal system, I was reminded that CDCr is just one in a long line of institutional systems built by colonization to destroy indigenous values, interdependence and ancestors’ teachings in communities – to label, criminalize and codify the lifeways of community and connections that have existed long before the settler colonial lies came to this stolen indigenous land and imposed a reign of genocide and criminalization. 

Long before colonizers boxed in, redlined and ghettoized  communities of color  in barrios, towns and so-called ghettos, there were family, cliques, grupos and villages. There were lifeways of interdependence which weren’t turned into Codes of Conduct to be deconstructed in a powerpoint. There were elders and ancestors and ceremonies and care. These were all destroyed to “build” the white supremacy nations we know as the United Snakes and of course the builders, the enslaved, the underpaid and the redlined needed to “stay in their place,” needed to be silenced and marginalized and to do what this settler society needed to criminalize and leech the culture and indigeneity from the communities so they could be exploited and extracted from and ultimately,  when there wasn’t enough work for all of them, incarcerated for those same lifeways.

Beginning with the very real school to prison pipeline, which i have sadly felt and witnessed firsthand as a houseless child of an indigenous mother and then later a revolutionary teacher and advocate who was able to interrupt the intentional profiling and destruction of multiple indigenous children in poverty lost in the settler colonial system’s grips. 

There is no rehabilitation in the r of CDCr, which is why abolitionists write it with a small “r,” but what there is, is intimidation and domination and more colonization.  

Criminalizing of cultures and family and values 

“The prosecution tried to offer our loved ones inside a sweet deal and thought they would take it. But we said, “No, let’s go to trial,”  because we knew they had no case. And sure enough, this case is turning out to be a sham case and I do see bias from the judge,” said Melissa Valdez about the two month trial that launched in June and is winding down now in closing arguments. 

SV-deBug reports: “In 2016, George Franco was finally released to the general population with good behavior that allowed him to downclass to a Level 3 facility. George Franco is one of the four PHRM representatives and we strongly believe that it is due to his influence in ending indefinite solitary confinement and implementing the end of hostilities that both CDCr and the federal government is retaliating against George and his co-defendants in the form of a RICO indictment for the purpose of job security in the prison industrial complex and inciting hostilities that may result in mass incarceration.”

“This case is the example of the CDCr’s continued attempt to try and stigmatize people with gang affiliation, but what is really being revealed is CDCr’s necessity to maintain racial capitalism and prison commerce,” said Minister King X to Poor Peoples Radio, 

“In the end, no matter how many times the settler state tries to deconstruct our community, we will peacefully prevail,” said Broken Cloud, Afro-indigenous elder and formerly houseless resident of Homefulness at the prayer ceremony, organized by SV-Debug and POOR Magazine, that launched the trial in June.

One of the things I felt was most ironic listening to the “prosecution’s” thin case against these resistors, is the very things they are being “prosecuted” for. These very same values of family and community are the things we work so hard to lift up and live by at Homefulness, a homeless peoples solution to homelessness. We as Black, Brown, Houseless, Disabled and Pan-Indigenous criminalized  peoples work really hard to bring back all of the deeply important values of family and community for our children and our elders. 

Just like the PHRM, we do all of this to bring peace to all of our broken colonized selves, living inside this very hard, system abused krapitalist reality on stolen land. Like the brave hunger strikers, we lift these values up for peace, to end hostilities, to end the fake wars the system wants to impose on us and to accuse us of. Peace. 

Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, aka “povertyskola,” is a poet and teacher and the formerly houseless, incarcerated daughter of Dee and mama of Tiburcio, author of “Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America” and many more and co-founder of Homefulness, a homeless people’s solution to homelessness. Reach her at www.lisatinygraygarcia.com or @povertyskola on Twitter/X.

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