Archive for November, 2006

paper due on LR AR monday night

November 30, 2006

using the topic as stated in the syllabus – then for Sunday this week we will be reading Prisoners Wife j

prison fieldtrip

November 30, 2006

Ryan, Missy, Shanea and Jade- dont forget

this friday. meet me at the san quentin museum at 1:00 PM

there are to be no bare bodies nothing blue or red no jeans no raggedy sportswear. no purses or cell phones just your id and your car keys. We meet Lt Crittendon at 1:15 and then we have a tour of the prison

we will be done by 5PM

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here is whats up

November 27, 2006

thank you for posting anyway you could

thank you to those who wrote to give me help accessing the blog from out of the country. I have read all of last weeks posts and will try to get to your new posts in a timely manner. unfortunately while i was gone, and before my son got up to stay here, someone broke into the house. There isnt much “damage” but i lost a huge amount of things that are valuable so today is a police day and perhaps tomorrow. yeah they were here before but my son couldnt remember where i had things that are now in the street for sale- unless the robber had the smarts to keep what he took since most of it cannot be replaced So that is my reason for being a flake- pawsaving, out of the country and robbed should be enough eh? thanks for your patience j

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going to jail

November 15, 2006

as of this minute we are down to just a couple of online folks for the field trip.

I got a call from the LT yesterday saying he had a problem with the date but I think it will still fly. I am submitting names and info tomorrow so if you want to go you can\.

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news from the front

November 14, 2006

I have been limited, by my doctor, to three hours a week of typing so i would appreciate it if your questions can be answered by reading a blog post or another savvy student.

It may make me a bit slower but i will do my best to keep up

thanks for your patience J

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prison field trip

November 13, 2006

I have gotten only a few emails with soc sec num and cal id for the prison field trip.

I have info for Ryan, Jade, Missy

are any of the others of you planning on going? this is three out of 14 requests send an email by monday night or i will just leave your name off the list

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what does this mean?? more to do

November 11, 2006

I know that the issue at hand is Columbus and Kincaid but few of you mentioned something in chapter 3 which is very important.

What does Trouillot mean on page 84 when he says Built into any system of domination is the tendency to proclaim its own normalcy.

How is this achieved?

He goes on to illustrate by saying: To Acknowledge resistance as a mass phenomenon is to acknowledge the possiblity tha something is wrong with the system. He is speaking about slavery but the statement can be applied theoretically to many incidents. Where has this been seen in our current history ie events?

Most of you skirted the idea of the IMPOSSIBLE HISTORY and i want you to go back to it also.

What for Trouillot is a formula of erasure? another useful theoretical concept. pg 96 What happens in a formula of erasure??

What does Trouillot mean when he writes that Effective silencing does not require a conspiracy not even a political consensus its roots are structural.

Until you understand these ideas we are not going anywhere so strap down and start grappling

On pg 114 he writes It is a product of power whose label has been cleansed of traces of power. What does that mean and what is its significance

Somewhere along the way Trouillot muses that once the event has lost its processual character it becomes a fact and becomes for want of a better word, sterile. What is he talking about there. What does this have to do with the past being a position?

I think it is worthwhile to create a list of all the words you didnt know and submit it- for the whole book with definitions. It will help you i think

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columbus and the worlds fair

November 9, 2006

where the was a link there is no more which means that you do not have to sweat that part of the assignment

what remains is Trouillot and Jamaica Kincaid and SJ Gould for sunday nite

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the problem with the gradebook

November 9, 2006

The system does not accept anything but number grades

I have put your grade in the text and hopefully it will stay there

Some folks i have not finished yet. I promise to get to them asap

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NYT on Texas prisons read me

November 8, 2006

To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>

From: <SageWriters@comcast.net>

Subject: [prisonersfamilies] Texas prison hunger strike

November 8, 2006

Texas Inmates Protest Conditions With Hunger Strikes

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, Nov. 7 — Likening themselves to prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, a dozen inmates on death row in Texas have staged hunger strikes over the last month to protest what they call abusive conditions, including 23 hours a day of isolation in their cells.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said that the first inmates began refusing food Oct. 8 and that two were still on hunger strikes in the Polunsky prison unit in Livingston, about 45 miles east of the execution unit in Huntsville. The Polunsky Unit houses death-row inmates until their executions. As of Tuesday, one inmate had missed 35 consecutive meals and one 17 meals, but no one has yet been force-fed, said a department spokeswoman, Michelle Lyons.

Two other prisoners who had not eaten since Oct. 8 began taking food Oct. 27 and Nov. 4, Ms. Lyons said, and others abandoned their protests after a short time.

But Vickie McCuistion, program coordinator of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said some inmates had been reported as eating when they were still refusing food. Ms. Lyons said that a prisoner needed to miss nine meals to be considered on hunger strike and that some who had refused meals had eaten snacks at visiting sessions.

“Either conditions will improve, or we will starve to death,” vowed one of the first hunger strikers, Steven Woods, in an Internet posting put up by groups opposed to the death penalty. Since death row was moved from an older and more open facility in 2000, he said, “We lost all our group recreation, art programs, and supplies” in addition to “work programs, televisions and religious services.”

Because the inmates are not allowed to have contact visits, “the only physical contact we’ll get until they kill us is when the C.O.’s hold our restrained arms while escorting us,” he wrote, referring to corrections officers.

The protests are the latest disruptions at the nation’s busiest execution complex, where 23 inmates have been put to death by lethal injection so far this year and another is scheduled to die Wednesday. Although California leads the nation in prisoners on death row, Texas executes them far more frequently, with 378 put to death since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1982. Virginia is second with 97.

Prison officials say the harsher conditions on death row came in response to a notorious escape in 1998 and a move to the more secure Polunsky Unit. Ms. Lyons said Mr. Woods had refused meals the longest but began eating again on Saturday.

Mr. Woods, 26, was convicted with a co-defendant of killing a man and woman in a robbery north of Dallas in 2001.

The hunger strikes in the Polunsky Unit were already under way when Michael D. Johnson, a 29-year-old convicted killer protesting his innocence, used a razor blade to slash a vein and an artery on Oct. 20, committing suicide in his cell hours before his scheduled execution for the murder of a convenience store clerk. He used his blood to scrawl a message on the wall: “I didn’t shoot him.”

John Moriarty, the inspector general for the prison system, said an inquiry was continuing into how Mr. Johnson had secreted the blade and used it in the 15 minutes between checks by officers on “death watch.”

The longest-striking inmate still refusing food, Ms. Lyons said, is William M. Mason, 52, who was convicted of murdering his wife and dumping her body in the San Jacinto River after he complained that she had played the radio too loud. After refusing 35 meals over 17 days, Ms. Lyons said, Mr. Mason has lost 20 pounds and now weighs 239.

Also on a hunger strike, Ms. Lyons said, was Larry Estrada, 27, who was convicted with a co-defendant of killing a Houston convenience store clerk and shooting another during a robbery in 1997. Mr. Estrada has refused 17 meals over a week, she said. But she said neither inmate was at the point of needing to be force-fed, a determination made by doctors from the University of Texas Medical Branch.

Mary Felts, a civil lawyer in Austin who helps the inmates with wills and other personal legal services, said she found many of the complaints valid. “Sensory deprivation is the worst kind of abuse,” Ms. Felts said. “If I were the warden I’d want the men to have TVs; the women have TVs. It would cut down on mischief.”

Ms. Lyons, the prisons spokeswoman, said that while television sets could alleviate the monotony of solitary confinement, there was no place to hang the sets outside the cells where the men could see them. The old Ellis Unit, where death row was housed from 1965 to 1999, had a wall opposite the cells where the sets could be installed.

“It’s not something we’ve made a priority,” she added. “We have not sought funding, and not many taxpayers would approve.” Prison activists say the state has rejected offers of donated sets.

Ms. Lyons also said the inmates “have not made any formal request” to have grievances heard, “so there’s no formal response.”

Most of what officials know about the complaints, she said, “we’ve gleaned from the antideath-penalty postings.”

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