See This

*See This* 08/30/2014

It's crazy. You know?
Like... You got all these people destroyed by this system over and over. Not because they (the destroyed) are anti-system but the opposite. They believe in this system.
Until you turn against Somethin you can't escape it.

A.A. Addicts addicted to the defeatist dogma
Spending entire McDonalds checks on gas for religious classes
Held in holes
Underground
Officiated by the most toothless and
Unsound
Senile

First time prisoners with asscheeks clenched
Begging the oppressor pigs for protection
Snitchin punks seekin homelife released
So mindwashed they tell on their mama
Substance stuck Hitchin rides to classes
Unsound senile weasels

God you got like pigpens blanket
Draggin those in carriages to alters
Copycatting weakness, bullying non-believers
Seeing your son sent missionary style
Fresh-Out-Of-High-School-Know-Nothings
To teach what was taught to as toddler
Like shitting cross country
Two failed
Potty trained juvenile
White Jesus'

Sun laughs at those who turn on family
Stagnant-Space-Stuck spewing guffaw flares
Stars against Bible books never added to
Sizes and colors infinite
Like a Fuck you to
Millionaire, military drunk
Windbag
Finale' empire presidents

I still piss in a fuckin cup beside my bed like id piss in the sink beside my head in prison.

I still am what I was that whole time. I'm against.
Against white pigs holding non-whites in cages. Passing out psychotropics. Collecting suicides.

When you are held down. When three million prisoners are caged and tortured so that three hundred million amerikkans can participate in the caging simply for economic benefit.

When you hold down. When a whole countries military is lower class poor, who join entirely for economic reasons, and are trained to fight poorer peoples in order to take their money and natural resources for those who pay the military.

The millions military oppressing billions for the benefit of the three hundred million. The three hundred million citizens of Amerikka oppressing the three million prisoners, who have nothing to lose but their chains, bills and Pig-Bullets-To-The-Back-While-Unarmed-And-Innocent.

It's seeming uncle sams blanket disintegrates
Wheelchaired senile wannabe white Jesus
Brushing hair of snarly liberty princess
With hand grenade pins

And waterboard

Witness

Blow Me Down

*Blow Me Down* 08/16/2014

I think the worst thing, the most dangerous aspect, and, at times, the only thing getting people through the hardest parts, is that when you are in the throes of insanity / torture / dying / love / lust / oppression / oppressing, you forget how it was before. You can't imagine after either. Total concentration on a single point.

IM caught up in working my job so much that my heart hurts. In solitary confinement I exercised and write so much that my heart hurt. Several girls, this past year, I've put so much of my concentration on, that I've been hurt.

I just drove by one girls house to see another mans truck in the drive. Talk about heart hurt. But I've come so far to even experience that hurt.

I drove a truck I bought, licensed and worked on. Gas in the tank I bought. A drivers license that took me over a grand to get unsuspended.

I've paid the parole people thousands. I paid the drug people thousands to drug test me and force religion on me.
Higher power, they say. Fuck you, I think.

The pigs pull me over religiously on my way to and from work. For no reason. I never do nothing wrong. Completely legal. It's just very...
What's the word?
All - encompassing.

This " doing right" all the goddamn time. And it seems the better I do the more the system presses me.

One year parole is standard and it's what was planned. They say to me now that five year parole will be more likely.

I sat in that solitary cell and changed the lives of people. Those caged beside me. I helped. Those who abused us had to stop.

But it was because I was tunnel visioned. Not because I was something great.

This past year every second has been spent helping my family. As far as I could uplift I've uplifted.

But the tunnel vision of the last year lost me everyone who helped me in solitary. This past year in the media world I've not heard a single story in the news about prison or solitary confinement. Nothin.
Noone cares out here.

I thought people were listening when I wrote about torture. A single person, not people, listened to me. A person or two.

How are we going to put a halt to sensory deprivation torture and the prison reliance we see around us? When everyone is tunnel visioned out here in society? 
Or is that even the goal here?

What happens when the prisons double instead of shrink by half?
Why is it that I am not supposed to make it out here and every possible thing the pigs can do to send me back, the hoops I jump over and over unto blatant disbelief, they do?

I mean, the pigs, the injustice system, is tunnel visioned also. The taxpayer. The prisoners. Tunnel visioned.

Three different, separate worlds in existence in this scenario. The prisoners see the pigs as pigs. Enemies. Because they are oppressed by pigs.

The taxpayer sees pigs as friend. And the prisoner as enemy.
Then, why doesn't the prisoner see taxpayer as enemy?
Something to chew on here, comrades. Don't you think?

Clock Walk

*Clock Walk* 08/12/2014
Deviance majestic in its pearly camouflage
Every felony earned in August
But one
The single blackout I lost track of time

Hero who overworks unto exhaustion
Hid ten years from his voice
And angry siblings` overcriticisms

Fuckin stupid conversations
Over and over again
Money spent again and again
In order to spend it
Again

Begin pretendin bangin overweight
Seekin somethin odorless
Someone conscious
Enough not to base life on numb
Unconsciousness

Quit texting me
Silence uncomplicates me
You forget I've died a hundred times
As you try to live

Can one ever overcome the childishness
Bitchin about how bad it is
Never enough for those who've had
Their whole lives

Wishing want on those who'll never withstand it
Like loving women addicted to abuse
Hurting them with niceness
Slap, punch, kick her with shyness

You think I quit my politics
Motherfuckers
That I've trashed my freeworld friendships

Forced fraternization with voice
Pen silenced with speech
Practiced phrases repeated
The less vulgar are the more painless

When you want to finish
What you waited so long to start
When she does the unthinkable
To a heart you thought you forgot

Rememberin becomes less the enemy
When you attempt building futures
But seeing too far frightens
Like the serious and silent
Disconcerting the disrespectful
Shittalkers afraid to start

Life based on friendships
Common ground enjoyed around common enemies
Whom, like dolls, clothes switched
Limbs jerked with biting remarks behind backs

Miles walked verses frightened talk
Shoulder worlds or shoulder walk
Eventually grounds shift
When one watches the year hand on the clock

And he who lives with omnigeneration awareness
Leaps your second hand existence
Backbiting. Spoiled. Adult
Adolescents

Hollow Words

*Hollow Words* 08/11/2014

Her grey hair, missing in patches, blows in the muggy , bathroom air as the fan rotates. Click click click Woosh, the plastic blades go. Clearly this woman is dying. Cancer maybe.

She needs to use the bathroom located in the shower; doesn't have the vitality to walk to the other end of the store to the womens room.
" yes ma'am", I say, " you can use this bathroom".
"thank you", she says, as she exits.
"have a nice day", I say.

She notices my hollow words. She thanks me again. I notice ... Her. Hollow words.

In the back of my mind, as I'm cleaning the shower she used, to relieve herself in, I think, " her death now passes to me"...
In the smell of the toilet, as I lean down to wipe it, her death, now my death, passes. Switches hosts.

You can feel it the rest of the day. Your sunburned , thirty year old face, is now grey, deathly.

The pains in your liver intensify. The mind, which I relied upon for so long for succor, has flicked the final switch. Decline. Falling by choice though. I'm done. The lady with the patchy hair, and frightened eyes, is just my excuse.

I was going to wait, hold off, until after my parole was finished, it was only going to be one year of parole, to retreat. Maybe collect disability for a while. Relax. I will not take the inferon, chemo therapy, to (possibly) defeat the hepatitis c virus in my blood.

If you YouTube peoples struggles, see one week, two... Two months, four... You will see why I made this decision.

They become nothing. Deflated. Playacting smiles. Eyes haunted. Like that lady that needed to empty her pain pill and pharmaceutical full bowels hurriedly, in a stinky old truckstop shower. Couldn't wait...
Can't. Wait....

* Attorney Request* 01.27.2014

Seeking legal help on two cases i filed on the Utah State Prison while held captive in its Control unit solitary unit Uintah One from 2003 to 2013. Green v Downs 2:12-cv-00432 deals with Due Process, first amendment violations and cruel and unusual punishmwnt in that i filed many grievances on gaurd misconduct which led to Captive suicides. Documenting abuses like starvation, sleep deprivation and verbal and mental abuse. The caseworker, Downs, useed these grievances againstme when i went to the parole board and i got a bad review. He lawfully cannot do that. Green v Galetka 2:12-cv-00600-cw deals with basically the same as Prison Legal News v Lehman, which is censorship in solitary confinement being against the first amendment. Not related to peneological interest. Please fellow progressive minded individuals log onto pacer and give me any legal help you can, or pointers, anything. Respectfully, I blog at Brandongreensblog.blogspot.com

*Waiting For* 01.26.2014

Ten years fast-forwarded
Everyones aged but you
Gone, Lost, Stolen, you name it
Everyones lived but you

Seeing those you babysat babysitting
The faces of friends shrunk
Bodies buried, decomposing, decimated
The faces of friends dust

And then you see people strugglin
With life, love and happiness
Cant help but laugh when
One who by all rights shouldnt have made it
Makes it

Bodies caffinated, in cells breaking muscles
Regenerating
Sweat puddles and dust dated
Like the day they layed you down
To the firing squad
Silently celebrated

Warehouses of grease stained cement
Made to forget those who never forget
All comes down to the minute
People envision what its like

One second knowing ten to go
Home becomes the enemy haunting
Becoming uneasy off your matress, out of cage
Fight tooth and nail to remain
Cuddling softly
Comfortable chains

Seeing a female in a photo
You wish you were there
Then you get here and they disappear
Because you were there

To this uneasiness feeling not at work
As if nine and a half hours a day
Moving to the rythems of interstate freeways
Caged mattress-wishing replaced

4:21 a.m. in that cell i trained
Wrote massive 46 page letters
Waiting for my bologni sandwich
Counting the years not the days

4:23 a.m. "The killers" on radio play
Cross legged as always tapping keys
Thoroughly potty-trained by the system
I sit urine-clean of all substance, mind mush from exhaustion
Waiting for payday

*Scared Inarticulate Tongue-Tied Rabbits* #01-12-2014#

Maybe i am that... Now. But it is because i have to be. Im playing along with this free world shit. Going along. And its been six months since i walked out those prison gates, leg-chained and wrists-chained. I must be doing something right by being so wrong in the eyes of comrades.

Theres a cup of extreme caffine cappacino coursing through my veins. I drink coffee at night when i get off work. Usually only on my fridays, my weekends. I got 101 hours on my last paycheck. Thats 21 hours overtime. The DMV 1,000.00 fine is paid off. My 85 chevy has a new windshield, brakes and license plates. I responded to Green v. Downs two days ago. Im not fuckin around. Not a single cigarrette or beer has passed these lips.

I have a smart phone with all these APPs and constantly listen to music, even as i sleep. My nephews jump and holler my name each time they see me. For christmas i put new brakes on my moms car. Im looking to buy a house.

This is impossible, im not meant to make it. The courts actually waited six months to respond to my lawsuits, in hopes id spin out and die or end up incommunicado in some cell somewhere. I responded to this last motion the very next day, after i got off work at midnight to 4 a.m., i hand wrote and hand copied six pages. 

I learned that after i paroled the Disability Law Center filed suit on Uinta One and the Utah State Prison for them using military death gas grenades on solitary, mentally-ill captives. All those i knew in those dungeons still sit tortured, 24 hours locked down. Across the country gay marriage and marijuana legalization has taken hold while the prison system is put to the wayside and forgotten about. These high school kids, whom i work with at my job, part-time workers in their late teens, look at me in disbelief when i say i spent the last ten years in a cell. But the scary thing is their lack of knowledge about amerikkas injustice system.

I told my nephew that amerikkan soldiers are the terrorists. That the only reason we are in the middle east is because corporations want their investments protected. I tell women all the time that no, i do not seek a relationship with you because i dont believe in oppressing you. It saddens them. My nephew wants to be a soldier anyway. Cool weapons, he says. Why are you so cold, she says.

Training i still do every week. Squats and pushups one week. Curls and shrugs the next. No poetry. some part of me is at a loss to develop the three poems a week i used to do. I imagine it is the music i listen to that takes the place of my inner dialogue that used to churn out rhymes.

It is an anniversary of sorts, this day, this moment. 

Completion of everything i said i would do as i sat in that solitary cell looking out that crack they call a window, breathing that smelly, peppersprayed H20 they call air. It could all go to pot at a moments notice. I am super vigilant about whom i affiliate with. Im surprised the pigs havent tripped me up. Each time i hear keys rattle or see a cop car i get a jolt of adrenaline. I believe this will be with me for life.

So im going to set new goals this night, like a passport and pictures beneath the Eiffel Tower. Laying beneath a field of tulips in Holland and running from a red kangaroo in Australlia. Visiting MT. Kilamajaro and swimming in the Yellow River of China. But more importantly watching laws enacted state by state that reform the oppressive prison system. Witnessing the crumbling of the new Great Britain that has become Amerikka and the beginning of a new age...

But im afraid these laws wont occur, that its going to have to grow, maybe double in size and calamity before any Highschoolers notice, before marriage and recreational use of substances can be overshadowed with the main, true issue afflicting this country, the world. I.E. Solitary Confinement and the Death Penalty used as a tool to silence those who choose not to remain quiet. Dissenters forgotten and villified with "criminal" stigmas. Made less than human in the eyes of the world. So those in control, the bourgeois military complex and oil corporations twiddling the strings of each and every politician and president; The banks and genetically modified poison food buisnesses who control what goes in our mouths and pockets... Can control. Can Kill slowly with APR, warmongering, miles per gallon, flouride, and flouresant oranges.

There is this game that a Highschooler showed me that you can download onto your smart phone. It consists of an unseen energy that emits from historical sites all across the world. The Enlightened and The Resistance seek to control this energy. One to use its power to change Humankind, the other to contain this energy and keep it from affecting our species. for fear of what could happen. 

GPS is used to pinpoint your precise location and nearness to portals. You are supposed to go and set up force fields at certain locations and protect them from the other side. People travel across states to each town to set up these cordons and return home and control them.

When i saw this kids eyes light up at the actions hed taken to uphold these imaginary beliefs in an imaginary war, imaginary worlds created by the oppressor, like Facebook and PS2 war video games, i felt extreme concern and sadness for the species, for our future. He doesnt realize this game is real and the portals are Prison Gates and Police Acadamies. That the enlightened are in chains or in hiding or buried in pine boxes in forgotten graves, veins filled with Sodium Penathol, hearts with 30.30 holes from Firing Squads.

The resistance controls the television and minds of the world. Republican Or Democrat, millionaire both. Our food, our air, resistance tainted. Our lives planned before we are even born, to live and die a slave to timeclocks, bills and stale dreams of Freedom and Happiness.

Our hutches filled with Flatscreens, our pockets emmitting squeeks, clips of country songs as ring tones and radiation. Chewing on our glowing carrotts, growing cancers inside that will leave our grandchildren paying medical bills. We put up our seasonal decorations that signify the best this society has to offer. To consume to the tune of our doom. Dumbed down, lop-eared, idiot rabbits waiting for the baseball bat to the back of the head. We sit, huge eyed, staring at the bars of our cages, wondering...

Whens the Savior going to return, which plants can we legally burn and can Jim and Joe be sealed in the church, sharing tax returns.

Death row captives eyes reflecting the flames of the Amerikkan dream as their breathing stops in front of packed bleachers of witnesses. The slow, painful heartbeats of all solitary captives sweeping floors for the fifth time this day, so many psychotropics coursing through their veins that they wish the pig, who murdered his neighbor the day before, good morning, as he serves him his 4500-th bologni sandwich.

Champagne toasts to state murder are testament to the deterioration of this society. Suicides in the military and the minds broken from solitary confinement. But some of us squeeze through the bars, broken bones and all, and manage to avoid the weasels. Wearing the fur of the enemy one can blend in...

To all those sleeping beneath the hallogens this night, on fifteen minute suicide checks, starved, atrophied, hopeless. Taped shut, stapled alive.

         You are smarter than the oppressor and stronger. Keep that in mind. 

          Fearless Intelligent Articulate Enlightened Rise Up!

          We will win!

          And until then we will smile slyly at you beneath your skin...

            

           

          

          

          

             

*HUMANIST HIGH-GROUND* 12.09.2013

you know, this feeling is death
like an assassinated presidents
brains sitting in the lap of his wife
still warm, exciting, like
where you been

you know, this well-being feeling is illusion
like a country worm eaten
with prisons and mass caskets waiting
cities stricken, S.W.A.T. cordoned
crack quieted, as the countryside sits awake
months, spun, pigs and horses

you know, the feeling i felt in that cell
that never could anything ever work out
that some basic thing inside was broke
that THE MAN was out to get
and i would die all alone hepatitis sick

pulled back from this by a bracelet
of rosemary in the mid-east
walking back and forth on pristine cement
to crunching home in 15 below
you know a part of you, but which?
survived it

so today im to the library, to the mountain
this body that has held his nephew
and a womans body smelling of expensive perfume
this body that performs same exercise
same sets, same sweat

you know, ive stumbled politically because
so much here vying for attentions
ill admit to entertaining the consumerist
sex sparkled, side tracks
but i was given life because of politics

a revolutionary death, buried in red flag, hated
by the labor aristocrat amerikkan
spit upon by the four hundred pound
embraced by the ninety
this ones for the 500 million starved annually
first world casualties

facebook stupid, pornography jaded
bullshit propaganda couched in sarcasm
motherfuck your cliches and moral high-grounds
your repetitive rich puppet elections
from deify to hated
again and again...

bourgeois weaken as my nephews
strengthen
die a martyr or lie bloody
felled by your own people for imperialist corporations
bloody puppet brains useless
like your nation of white supremacist
labor aristocrats on vicoden
anti-psychotics and anti-depressants

*Story Truth* 11.14.2013

Once upon a time these simian earthlings evolved from trilobites into amazing creatures that knew rockets, nuclear fission and genomes. But the stupid creatures allowed degenerate rulers to mindwash them and keep them as sheep; to halt evolution of the mind. With things like drugs, religion and fear.
           
The rulers made relationships so futile and unsatisfying that the sheeple suffered more than any other time of their existence. This pain clouded the vision of the populace and left them seeking Mr right or Ms perfect instead of rising the fuck up for the sake of future generations. If people progress the pigs take them out. Solitary confinement, lethal injection and pariah status. Like working mcdonalds.

The point is to find those who wish to dedicate theirselves to evolution and the human species as a whole. the point is to begin what our children must finish.

*Discard* 11.09.2013

caffine , sugar and solitude
loose sweats, shaved head, oldies

paying these fines and attending these classes
sleeping sleep slowly, living life finally

the funny thing is these enemies
who are your friend only if

the scary thing is breeding, matrimony
easing the boredom of being

remember the chains scraping on cement
screams of those lost, anti psychotic

you can see me mopping floors at mcdonalds
hear the plastic scraping cement

one day i will just be wind
pushing the sand dunes as i was meant

listen to the stars asking illusion
feeling the madness, dancing friendships
with those still taking serious
animated stardust

old folks homes, solitary cells
plastic mcdonalds tables

billions served similar cartons
used seconds
disposed automatically

chew, flush, swipe card, forget
that when you believe in nothing but quickness
taste and colorfulness

life becomes point a, point b
empty
purposeless

*Fairy Tale* 11.05.13

the day i was released, my mama didnt recognize me

and a comrade offered to take me to dennys 

for breakfast. we ate mcdonalds. both ashamed

corporate salads and quarter pound meat

sitting in my first real seat in seven years

i watched selena gomez. amazed that

such beauty beside such ugly 

pop comedy

keepin up with my lawsuits

sleepin, wakin to leg cramps

clockin into work with a smile

dyin inside wanting to cry

planning for the day the prison needs feeding a constant

how long could a human live on pine nuts, in a tree hut

stomach bleeding to the tune of squirrel chirping

is it safe to caliber imagined shootouts

cant vote. cant possess weapons

cant miss a piss test or its 2023

can you believe surviving solitary confinement

anti imperialist 

employed by a corporation. entranced by patriarchist, degrading

female hip twists

watched needles break skin, breaths emanate alcoholic beverage

seen the fatal societal pariah status lift and lock

barely released meat prized

by the stale, needy no longer around me

but by me the many

body bagged

solitary

in front of me those who believed

humbly

i make believe

Greetings world

*Lehmans cave* 10.27.2013

....  been like this since birth. tough love tough life
when all along looking for a reason in real eyes....

did it. here. this side of the fence
wake up. sleep. to the tune of dead presidents

looking into the eyes of judgemental cowards
snickering females that dont know what real man is

a month ago i ceased my train
in order to lower myself and dull the sharpness.
desensitize my mind. become one
with those i freeworld do time

as the sweat dripped into carpet this afternoon
and my nephew giggled watching you tube
peanut butter jelly time cartoon

my voice lightened like yellow leaves falling
and laughter, colors... i wondered why i would
lower myself to please those diseased

cant connect. see eye to eye
out here its what now, this second, can get us by
but death in numbness equals no life

visits to the graveyard feel like coming home
tapping texts that suck my soul from the bone

seven seventy five an hour
three hundred dollar bi weekly paychecks
spent buying ammunition for parole officers gun
paying off the beast smiling like its fun

body that sat a decade in a hole
wrapped in mcdonalds belt
wiping tables, breaking down boxes
smiling like its fun

you want it to stop but it never does
paycheck to paycheck
bells tolling, rubber thinner
home. work. dinners done

dressed in black, back to a tree, gravestone surrounded
cars circling roads around markers, not even getting out
dont want to leave surround-sound for one second
uncushioned existence awkward. change the station

double meal. happy nuggets
fighting the fuck its
the what if blues and what is
disbelief

you say you are happy
car door slam. car door shut
but i can smell your pains emanating
like grease behind the fryers stalagmites

staligtites dripping. smiling, smiling,
wired to feel happiness
detached....

*He's back*

i have been out of prison a few months now, employed doing maintanence at mcdonalds, and generally avoiding sticky people and situations. i met and peacefully broke up with a kind woman and the heartache feels very human and good after that ten year solitary numbness. my lawsuits, green v downs 2:12-cv-00432 and green v galetka 2:12-cv-00600-cw, are still very much active. i pay supervision fees. i comply. im out.....

i have a cell phone and a laptop. very little time to write or think out here. i am hoping to get back into the mix here and this is my first attempt, tapping a keyboard instead of gripping a control unit flexi pen. . . there is very few real people out here in this "freeworld". my family and a handfull of comrades and the rest.... its how it feels to me.. . .the rest seem to be at the earlier stages of discovering what living means and is for. i, like i said, steer clear of these blazing personal trails.

all the people i corresponded with in prison, they and i have struggled to maintain closeness, i think this is normal in transition. i would like to contribute to the struggle to reveal the torture going on across amerikka in sensory deprivation control units. i invite people to ask any questions they might have and am seeking ways to help get the word out about this oppressive injustice system.

i have the coolest two nephews, the smartest most kind little sister, and a big brother i respect wholeheartedly. my mother is the glue that keeps us all together and i hope she knows how much we all love her. extended family, father and grandmother etc, on the sidelines ready to help each other out. its beautiful to be back in this loving family, i appreciate you all....

but my experiences with the prison system have changed me. i am not looking for a wife and bowling. im wanting to dedicate my life to fighting oppression. but, this much everyone knows...

                      so, im here. im back. out of the cages. getting footing. standing....
                      i wasnt supposed to make it. we aint supposed to survive to tell the tale.
                      :]
                      but aint aint a word. . .

     in struggle,
                brandon

Brandon's writings on website Between the Bars

Since some months, Brandon's writings have appeared on the website called Between the Bars. They scan his writings and post them there. You can comment also to them there. We did not know they were doing this until a friend found the site and told us. We are glad he is sending them his writings, but we like to have known. Still! We will post a few of the writings here when we can.

Here is Brandon's profile on Between the Bars, and here is his essay called Mama Told Me (March 3rd 2013):

 

Here is Brandon's All Alone Amnesia (written March 10th 2013)

Brandon Green Re-entry Fund

[updated Feb 23rd: Chipin will discontinue its services soon]

Greetings friends, strangers and supporters of Brandon Green!

Since this coming Spring, the possibility is reasonably high that Brandon will be paroled (he writes us that he was taken from the supoermax unit and that he will be placed in different units each 30 days up to his parole): we know it is serious.

Brandon has told us that he will go to the halfway house in Utah upon parole.

He needs some funding to put his life together again: clothes, books, maybe even telephone cards and bus tickets, internet access to find a job, all of these need to be paid for when he emerges.

Here is the link to a Chipin we made for this purpose:

[Note on feb 23rd: Chipin is going to discontinue its services! So we have to take down the Chipin!]

You can of course also send Brandon donations via the way Utah DOC says here: http://corrections.utah.gov/administration/inmate_accounting.html

Now is our chance to show Brandon we want to help him with concrete donations. If you cannot donate monetary funds, keep in mind if you can donate something to him that is useful and that you want to give. (clothes, books, an old phone or laptop, etc). Once we know he is being paroled, we will try and organize an address where you can donate things to for him.

If Brandon will not be paroled this time, we will use any money gathered to help him pay off his Civil Lawsuits and get him some books and funds for his canteen, which he can now have! sent into the prison.

THANK YOU!!

Brandon's friends in the USA and in Europe

“Waiting For The World To Give Us A Reason To Live”: Solitary Confinement in Utah

From: SolitaryWatch, Oct. 24th, 2012
By Sal Rodriguez

Utah State Prison’s Uinta 1 facility serves as the prison’s super-maximum security unit, where inmates are held in solitary confinement. Inmates in Uinta 1 may be there for disciplinary infractions, notoriety reasons, protective custody, or because they are security/escape risks. The unit is divided into eight sections with twelve inmates in each section, for a total of 96 maximum inmates. Currently, there are 90 inmates in Uinta 1. The Utah Department of Corrections, in response to a government records request by Solitary Watch, claims it has no records regarding its use of segregation.

Several inmates have recently written Solitary Watch about the conditions in Uinta 1.

L., who has been in Uinta 1 for five months and previously served 28 months there, reports that he is only able to leave his cell three days a week, for a shower and 1 hour alone in a concrete yard. He reports that, in being transported to a 15 minute shower, “we have to wear a spit mask over our faces and handcuffed from behind with a dog leash hooked to us.”

“The rest of the time except on the shower days we are locked down in our cells with the door window closed so you can’t see out,” he writes.

A., who has been in Uinta 1 for a year, adds that, “just the other day, the [Correctional Officers] came and shook our cells down and took away all of our hygiene. They took away shampoo, lotion, conditioner, everything…they also don’t give us anything to clean our cells with.”

A. is in Uinta 1 for his own protection, following what he says was a decision to leave gang life after much “self-study.” Despite this, he says, he is treated as if he committed a  serious offense.

Inmate Brandon Green, who has frequently written on the conditions of Uinta 1, describes the environment in Uinta 1 as reinforcing a vicious cycle in which inmates placed in solitary usually end up back not long after they are released. Green, who has been in Uinta 1 for five years, previously served 18 months in Uinta 1 before a brief period on parole before returning to Utah State Prison. He has been held in Uinta 1 following an escape attempt and refusal to take psychiatric drugs, which he says will only harm his health.

“So alone. So much internal turbulence with nothing like T.V., radio, magazines or conversation to hide [this pain] beneath,” he writes, “a man leaves this place to go to general population or to a less secure facility where you have electronics and a cellie. You can just count down the months before he will return…We learn we can do without anything. And we become content with nothing. The more they take away from us year after year, the more family disappears, the more one doesn’t want to go home, doesn’t want a wife and a job and bills and an Amerikkan future…It is like waiting for the world to give us a reason to live. But the world just keeps giving us reasons to not give a shit.”

This situation leads many inmates to report severe mental health problems that are aggravated by the long-term isolation. The prison routinely responds to such crises by placing suicidal inmates in a strip cell, where they are to be alone in a cell with  and checked every fifteen minutes. Included in many of these cells are cameras.
L. writes that “if someone is gonna kill themselves they take them and out to a strip cell and you sleep on the hard floor and treated like a dog.”
A. reports that “if I lose control because of something I have no control over, they’ll punish me and put me on strip cell for three days…when a mentally ill inmate feels suicidal, they send us to the infirmary to be on suicide watch…then we get from suicide watch back to Uinta 1 and the staff put us back in the strip cell when we get back to Uinta 1.”

In Uinta 1, suicide is not an uncommon occurrence. In 2009, two prisoners in Uinta 1 committed suicide. One was Danny Gallegos, who was found hanged in his cell in June. Another was a friend of Green, Spencer “Spider” Hooper, a “Pink Floyd fan and singer on medications for schizophrenia and depression.” Months after a previous suicide attempt, Hooper was found dead in February 2009, hanging in his cell.

A. and L. also independently confirm that sandbags at the cell doors of inmates gather bugs, which enter their cells. “They got sandbags around all the cells but never pick them up and clean under them so there’s all kinds of bugs and dirt that comes right under our doors,” A. writes.

Green also writes about the declining array of services provided to Uinta 1 inmates. “Years ago indigent captives received five envelopes a week. Now its one. We had five outside contacts a week. Now one. We used to be fed enough to stay full. Now we are starved. We used to have shampoo and lotion. Now we don’t. We grumble for an hour each time something is taken from us. Then move right along to inventing the creative willpower to survive with no penpals and mail, a full stomach or clean hair. Moving right along. We expect tragedy.”

Solitary Watch will continue to report on Uinta 1 as more information becomes available.

Brandon Green welcomes letters. His mailing address is:
Brandon Green #147075, Uinta One 305, Utah State Prison, PO Box 250, Draper, Utah 84020. His blog, updated by an outside supporter, can be seen here.