Liberate the Caged Voices: Social Media Campaign to Liberate Our Caged Elders by Nube Brown

As abolitionists and supporters of prisoner human rights recognizing the illegitimacy of the capitalist state, we work in solidarity with and seek guidance and understanding from the men and women experiencing the continuation of this crime against humanity called modern-day slavery and continuing to hone their skills to facilitate its demise. 

Liberate the Caged Voices, a program of California Prison Focus, provides a platform to hear directly from our caged community members, their families and loved ones to inspire engagement with the local community, while exposing the truth of the toxic conditions and abuse experienced by California’s prisoners and the impact on their families and our communities. Adding art and culture, the idea is to build awareness, solidarity, and human relationship amongst community members on both sides of the wall and take action towards our collective liberation. 

With the undeserved title as “progressive,” California is home to hundreds of elder prisoners subjected to state sanctioned cruel and unusual punishment by indeterminant sentencing equaling civil death, decades of the torture of solitary confinement and California Department of Corrections and rehabilitation’s (CDCr) dehumanizing tactics used to also punish the family and loved ones suffering alongside them. And now, to add insult to injury, these elders are being subjected to another potential death sentence by Covid-19 and CDCr’s and the Governor’s failure to release them. 

Out of love and respect we will focus on this class of tortured elders. 

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.” George Jackson

These enlightened elders carried on the legacy of George Jackson’s historic strategy by organizing the largest hunger strikes in California’s history culminating in over 30,000 prisoners participating in 2013 and creating one of the most important documents of the past half-century – the Agreement to End Hostilities to end indefinite solitary confinement – yet they continue to be caged by a habitual neglect from a long line of governors now inherited by Governor Gavin Newsom.

These men who are now elders, have also suffered a decades-long public lynching by CDCr guard gangs, public officials and criminal justice operatives, i.e., prosecutors, judges, etc. claiming that these men were the worst of the worst because they dared to be revolutionaries, humanitarians and activists fighting for their self-determination, freedom and protection of their communities, terms never given to prisoners – nor the people – resisting their oppression and ultimately, their enslavement. Let’s hear from them:

“There are New Afrikans throughout this nation who believe in a New Afrikan ideology that can liberate our people from the malignant American socio-culture, politics and economic system. They have the solutions to our problems. Rather than keeping them in back alleys and prisons, we need to listen and begin to put these theories and concrete solutions into effect.

Ask yourselves why it is that so many of the New Afrikans who have a strong political line just happen to be locked up in solitary confinement units. We know they are not terrorists; we know they are not gang members and we know that they are not criminals,” Mutope Duguma, 2011.

“On Oct. 10, 2012, the Pelican Bay D-Short Corridor Collective, men from various cultural groups and walks of life, put into effect the historic ‘Agreement to End Hostilities,’ perhaps the single most significant “door to genuine freedom” opened in American society in recent human history. What makes it so significant is not simply its motive force but, more importantly, its true potential for our collective liberation as a society.

The next logical step is to move to reclaim our humanity and reorganize the social life of ourselves and our communities in such a way that it serves our interests. The Agreement to End Hostilities has provided us with the impetus to organize ourselves to abolish not only indefinite SHU torture, but the “slavery” provision of the 13th Amendment upon which the civil basis of our dehumanization rests.

Doing so would ensure we reclaim our humanity and become self-actualized human beings with the right to influence our world and participate in the social processes of life. To do this we must not only ensure the Agreement to End Hostilities succeeds here in the kamps, but we must extend the Agreement to End Hostilities to the streets,” Michael Zaharibu Dorrough, J. Heshima Denham and Kambui Robinson, NCTT Corcoran SHU, 2014.

They will not be forgotten or silenced! And we demand their release now!

Join the Liberate Our Caged Elders social media campaign – CALL: Gov Newsom 916-445-2841, Demand he release our elders; SHARE: using #LiberateOurCagedElders; VISIT: tinyurl.com/liberatecagedvoices.