[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
Monday, 14 January 2013
Thursday, 25 October 2012
“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.
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.
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Many Limbed Oak
I had this
dream the other night. I’d bought two old ’69 cameros. 350 HP engines. And I
parked them in the drive. I looked over at a huge oak tree. And it had many limbs.
But beyond these lims was a huge trunk twisting lift to right into the sky.
Either it was broken, cut or disappeared in cloud…
Then I went
into the trailer and found the floor flooded. I went to turn off the flooding
water in the bathroom and managed to save the carpet. I then left and returned
later and a big dog was on a chain by the front door. I was supposed to be
scared and I knew if I was scared, the dog would bite me. But I just walked up
to the door. Two enemies I don’t know, just people who wished me harm, were in
the yard. I go in the house and pet this puppy on the carpet, look up, and
there’s my wife or girlfriend and I notice the floor’s flooded again. I stick my head out and ask my enemies if they
know what happened. “Where’s the leak?” They shrug.
I know I’ll
have to cut the carpet at this exact spot and pull all the carpet to save the
floor. Easy, I think. Ain’t nothin’. I
feel she is waiting. Like the form of our relationship isn’t sorted yet. I
stick out my head and ask them what food they want. KFC and some other stuff. I
come back in, let you choose which camero you want. Give you those keys to
keep. Say: “Please go get us food, flatscreen TV, DVD player, DVD’s, etc. while
I clean up this carpet mess.” I hand her a bunch of money. I “give her” and I “do”.
I am a man.
And then it
comes back to the oak tree in the distance. The many limbs in the foreground
and the huge trunk in the background.
I’ve been a
man before like that. Up before the sunrise for work. Nodding off on the drive
home.
If I get
out and work, she will come. If I get it straight again she will be there. But
I don’t want her. I want ‘she-who-will-be-here-now.’
When I am not a “man” in the usual sense.
She who
will recognize that what I’m doing, and have done thus far, is what a true man
can only do. But what a work-a-day man can do is what any ol’ man does.
No female
sees this struggle – I’ve purposively placed myself into for a reason – no female
respects it because they’re blinded by the mainstream man. They see the many
limbed oak and don’t look past the acorns and leaves to the huge trunk
zig-zagging into the sky (or into nothingness?) in the background.
I could
still be at my job on the streets but it’s I had to do these things, all this
had to be accomplished, even if she never presents herself at least I’ve found
the real me in it. It’s a gamble. And I hope she comes…
In Strength
(but…) Love and Struggle,
B.
8-23-12
Keep spinnin’
They break
the law to punish law breakers.
Unconstitutional
conditions and censorship policy.
They give
us four envelopes a month.
Expecting
our return to society be successful with no one.
They create
these dungeons punishing anti-social behavior.
Been alone
so long with no telephone, mind and family gone.
They
wrestle out of our hands razors, stealing our nooses,
Yet selling
us medications causing stroke, dementia, delusions.
They look
into my face and consider me crazy ‘cause I smile,
Wondering
why I act childish, live naked and… smile.
They believe
they are God’s chosen and we are Satan’s spawn,
Going home
to beat wives, child pornography and manicured lawns.
They mourn
nine eleven like we didn’t deserve it.
Sending
sons and daughters off terrorists hunting patriots.
They hate
prisoners, Blacks, Latinos and First Nations.
White “Dark-Night-‘killer’”
deserving of understanding and forgiveness.
They wonder
why the world hates them beyond words.
Military
bases spread like cancer the earth over.
They seem
so pretty, smart, happy and photogenic,
Just the
rich man’s puppets on Broadway, Hollywood, Pennsylvania Avenue.
They frown
on dirty language, negative thinking, and atheists,
Dropping
bombs on Nagasaki, Hiroshima, unmanned drone celebrations.
They have
native sons slowly spinning their destruction.
It’s gonna
come from inside, motherfuckers, have patience,
They are
depressed, suicidal, owning it all and more.
Better
bloody your threshold beast, prostrate yourselves on carpeted floors.
They could
come in the morning and shoot me like a dog.
But it’s
not going to save them, we will never stop.
They just
shone their flashlight and it’s twelve o’clock.
My
thirteenth Revolution ‘round Sun anniversary as pig keys walk.
They can
convince you to play their lame mind games beside them.
Try and
turn me snitch by compliance, you know who you are.
They’ve got
you simpering, curtsying, you’re not even tortured.
Rock Solid
Revolutionary expecting world to turn on me.
8-20-2012
Who’s who
Does Al-Quaeda have military bases
In Salt
Lake?
But we do
over there.
Who’s
terrorist
If I stole
your mail out of your mailbox?
That’s a
federal offense.
My mail’s
stolen and tampered with daily.
Who’s the
criminal?
The
Department of Corrections institutionalized
My brother,
my father and myself.
My nephews
now are being inculcated outlaws.
Who pushes
propaganda?
Ten years
ago I was arrested with dope.
So skinny I
slipped my handcuffs.
Ten more
years to go for a bag of dope.
Liberty and
Justice for whom?
Slowly my
liver shuts down.
I’m dying
from a curable disease
Because the
prison wants to save money.
Profit over
people - who’s diseased?
My hair
drags on the floor when I sweep it.
My beard
enters mouth with bologni and I chew it.
Five years
since I’ve visited or telephoned.
Who’s in
debt to society?
I’m
supposed to be weak and crazy.
Yet I have
stretch marks on muscle.
Two
lawsuits on unconstitutional conditions and policy.
Who’s
anti-social?
I hear
voices gibbering on medications,
See body
bags and stretchers coming and leaving.
Prison says
ignore stretchers and take medications.
Ad you can
go home - who’s crazy?
All this is
comedy of the darkest stripe.
All one
must do is see through the insanity.
All I ask
is you listen carefully - don’t trust me
All alone
who’s who is good guy camouflaged enemy?
The worst
part in all this is I lack a harbor.
My sails
snap and moan pulling on this anchor.
The worst
thing is knowing you know and do nothing.
Knowing by
me letting you know all this.
I should
feel sorry.
8/9/12
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Heart eater
Disclaimer to readers: This is not a call for money.
Repeat. I do not want to eat your heart and hurt you.
One of my captors is always telling me I’m one of the
smartest “felons” he’s ever met. And that I’m better than this place. He says
he has faith in me and trusts me to make something of myself. I chewed on this
and decided if I was to say: “send me $1,000.00 and I’ll pay you back when I
get on my feet. Feet you believe will stand.” He’d never do it. No one would.
My own mom took my pay checks away from me on payday and if that didn’t crack
my will to stand… You see?
And this is why recidivism is so high. It’s this
simple. Captives become worried about $20.00 here and there, never shooting for
the $1,000.00 trust, as no one trusts $1,000.00 worth anymore. Captives fool
themselves into the stereotype that society believes of them. That they use and
are parasites. We become parasites. It is like a bad acid trip on a macro
scale. All it would take for parolees to succeed is not a $100.00 ‘gate-money’
pay check ad the door. But $1,000.00 and a lease on an apartment paid three
months. That would solve almost all recidivism, as trust would be there.
Captives’ “something-other-to-lose-than-freedom” would be there. We need trust.
This chapter in this book had a soldier who was
confronted with the wife of one of his soldiers’ troops who died under his
generalship. She had a sword. A blood price was her due. He dropped his sword,
bared his chest and said: “Take what you will.” She put the blade to his heart
and spoke: “I loved him. He was my life.” She then put the blade to his hand
and sliced his hand. “The debt is paid,” she said.
Everyone thinks prisoners will take hearts from
people, when all we need is someone’s bared chest to show the reflection of
ourselves in. “Human nature” isn’t going to take hearts. But “human” and
captive/parolee/probationer/prisoner doesn’t meld well. It’s the not knowing on
both sides that fucks up everything. We ourselves, captives, fear we may just
take hearts. How would we know otherwise without the opportunity? Everyone sees
us as heart eaters so we become heart eaters, without even eating a single
heart. We put on the heart eater mask and society covers their hearts. Ad it’s
not even going to stop.
It’s so fucked up to say this but I believe what
happens is these outcasts after decades learn to turn the table and call
society heart eaters. Then justify the heart eating that a revolution causes.
As the old heart eaters, who never ate hearts, eat the new heart eaters’ hearts
to prevent heart eating. And I want out of it now. I want someone’s heart bared
so I can prove to myself, and that someone, that I’m not a heart eater. And
then I need that someone to be there as I live around a society with metal
plates on their chests. Metal plates as protection but a protection that is
only a target to those who have never beheld an exposed heart.
Right now 7.4 million U.$ captives / parolees /
probationers seek hearts. When all religious, mass media, Hollywood, educational
institutions, home life family settings, teach how to sport pretty chest
plates. The shinier, more protective chest plates become, the more dangerous
does the table turning scenario become. On a grander scale all amerikkans have
these silvery chest plates as the world looks on. Looks on with their hands
gripping the table. Waiting.
On a smaller scale captives sit cemented their whole
lives spinning tables on each other day and night. The revolution pops off each
hour of every day using sharpened plexi-glass from windows, wire-mesh taken and
sharpened off our cages fences, pencils, pens, razors and boiled grease, locks
in sacks. The chest plate wearers have manufactured a way to halt the tables
being turned on them both internally and externally.
To know this fact is dangerous and this is the reason
lethal injection, gallows, firing squad and electric chairs, sensory
deprivation exist. By me wanting to eat your heart I. on a micro level, smash
the whole ’spin-the-bottle’ bullshit ass game.
I’m willing to prove that I will not eat your heart. But you’ll never
give me your heart no matter what I do. No matter how good or “realized” you
are or become.
You, society, face the biggest letdown out of the two
of us in this situation. It is easier to face the fact that jumping the Grand
Canyon isn’t possible because others won’t provide the tools, than to believe
your whole life that you’ve jumped it hundreds of times. Only to be told you
never did. Only dreamed it. Captives need someone’s everything. Every person
who’s ever done anything worth doing had other’s everything. Without someone’s
heart we become content to spend the rest of our lives knowing we’ve never had
anyone’s everything. And we accomplish nothing, happily, because we know the
deck is stacked against us. And our story, my story, is the story of every age.
A system, a government, discovers chest plates and
stereotypes, then creates an enemy to use them against. Then all the
creativity, progress, beauty in life becomes wasted forging chest plates. In
building and maintaining enemy stereotypes.
Doomed, stale, stagnant, stereotypical, categorized, buried,
civilizations.
In Strength (as the tables turn) Love and Struggle
B.
6/26/2012
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