Nude, drenched in 2 types of riot control gas from my head to my ankles (even my genitals and anus are burning - it is agony!) Locked in a freezing cage without a stitch of clothing or property. This is what happens on Texas death row when one demands that his human rights be respected. You get treated even more so less than human.

6 ½ years ago Texas death row prisoners were transferred from Ellis 1 Unit to Polunsky Unit due to an escape attempt on Thanksgiving of 1998. The work program was indefinitely suspended. I remember the transfer clearly. Being handcuffed and escorted to an outside part of the back of the prison in nothing but a pair of boxers.

As we walked cuffed we came outside to a mass of men being stripped and shackled. It was a painful sight to see us being stripped in broad daylight in front of 50-60 officers (not to mention the other men and women doctors and assistants who were there viewing the process.)

The idea of treating us like humans never crossed their minds. If it did it was quickly erased, thus the perverted scheme to make us feel less than human was carried out meticulously as they smiled, laughed and ridiculed.

As my hands were re-cuffed that day (March 3, 2006), so were my feet. Then they were basically tied together. It came close to a “calf-tie”. You know how the cowboy jumps off his horse, runs down the calf, slams him and ties the calf’s 4 feet together as quickly as possible? Well, this is basically how it was, surprisingly without the slamming, although I’m sure they would have loved that. Reminds me of what comrade Haramia said that day. “I guess they thought it was a rodeo!”

Once oppressively secured in the confines of the Polunsky Unit, more was taken from us: Group recreation, TV’s, Arts and crafts program, postage recession from 50 stamps every 2 weeks to only 30, recession in what writing supplies we are allowed to order from outside vendors for the sake of making it harder to fight for one’s life and to exploit us by forcing us to purchase those needed items of inflated prices from the prison store. The list goes on and on (see the DRIVE Handbook for the list.)

In these 6 ½ years of complete isolation, single man recreation, sensory deprivation, no educational system, no TV to keep up with world affairs, lack of medical and psychological care etc. We prisoners have utilized the grievance system to complain (but to no avail). We’ve prepared solutions that we petitioned to the administration on Polunsky Unit and to the Texas Board of Criminal Justice that would not cost the system any financial burden but instead would make them money (they nevertheless refused.) We suggested solutions to these problems that would also ensure no breaches in security. Still they refused.

After 5 ½ years of trying every systematic procedure there is in TDCJ (and even a few of our own with outside support) a group of us realized that we’d exhausted all remedies and were left no other alternative than non-violent protest. Hence, DRIVE was conceived and born and we began protesting on November 1st, 2005.

Certain times began getting better: the food got just a little better, the SSI’s cleaned better, and the administration told us that they realize things could be better and are willing to work with us to better these things. We had meetings with Captain Dickens, Major Nelson and Sergeant Brown and other ranking officials. The administration asked us if we’d stop protesting and give them the opportunity to fix these problems that they could fix. We gave them from March 2006 until October 9th 2006 - that was 7 months. Once we stopped the administration went back to their old ways: being indifferent refusing to talk to us - and just flat out lying to us and not keeping their word (yet expecting us to keep ours.) We kept ours and gave them an opportunity to rectify the problems existing here under their jurisdiction. After all, we’re men of peace, patience and understanding who seek peace and justice. So of course we were willing to work with the administration. The administration has done nothing to rectify any problems, nothing.

Once we saw that their request for us to stop protesting to give them opportunity to rectify problems was a sham to simply stall us for as long as they could for whatever diabolical reasons, we saw it was time to go back into action and show the administration we mean business about out human rights.

In these 7 months nothing has changed except gotten worse: food is bad, medical attention is still being denied, and recently I discovered through another prisoner here that medical and psyche records are being falsified so as to keep authorities higher-up in the Huntsville, Texas thinking that everything here is fine and that prisoners are mentally and physically healthy, when in fact many are mentally and physically deteriorating from complete isolation, sensory deprivation, lack of proper physical activity. Psychological abuse from the guards, indifferent medical nurses and psyche department counsellors who are to supervise and ensure prisoners physical and psychological well-being, abuse of authority of ranking officials, dropping prisoners to level 2 and 3 for false charges and without due process, lying to visitors and not allowing them to visit their loved one under some pretence, gassing prisoners with 2 different chemical agents that can kill a person when mixed, continued delays in incoming/outgoing mail, unsanitary showers, dayrooms and dirty mildew state clothes, psyche patients being starved by guards who refuse to feed and shower them and recreate them etc. That was enough patience!

I began preparing to protest on 10-09-06 I went to recreation first round for one hour. When it was time to go back to action first round I refused to vacate the dayroom in protest. Sgt Tolly came to speak to me and I addressed everything: conditions and their abuse of authority. Lt Bryant came to then speak to me and I addressed him as well. He left to go suit up the “5-man extraction team.”

While they were suiting up I began to prepare myself. I wet a sock and rang it out. I put a piece of cut plastic over my eyes to protect my eyes from the gas and then began tying a long sheet around my head and face taping the bottom of my plastic prisoner-made gas mask to my face so the gas won’t keep in through the bottom of my mask. I placed the wet sock over my mouth and the nose and finished tying the sheet around my head and face to hold the sock and mask in place so I can see and breathe through the gas. I looked like one of the comrades from the Zapatista guerrillas in beloved Mexico.

The team showed up with Sgt Tolly and Lt Bryant with 2 types of gas, riot gear and shield. I grabbed the 2nd sheet I’d brought to the dayroom, squatted down in the corner by the dayroom toilet and desk and held the extra sheet over my face. Sgt Tolly gave me 2 orders to submit to a strip search, hand restraints and vacate the dayroom. I refused. Sgt Tolly shot a grenade of riot control gas into the dayroom on me with a 37mm rifle. The gas is actually called “Orthochorbenzalmalonoitrile.” In low concentration, ranges of effects appear in 20 to 60 seconds; it causes tears, sneezing, skin irritations, coughing. Irritation of nose and throat, sinus and nasal drip, tightness in the chest, difficulty in breathing, and burning and pain in the eyes that prevents their opening. As concentration goes higher, it causes increased nausea, vomiting, vertigo and complete helplessness and immobility within 60 seconds, requiring assistance in moving from area. Exposure can be lethal if individual is left in high concentration for too long. 5 minutes went by and I was ordered to submit to dehumanization again. Seeing that my spirit was determined and withstood the first grenade, Sgt Tolly shot a 2nd and more concentrated grenade into the dayroom at me. They popped the dayroom door as if they were going to run in and assault me. Knowing their routine, I stood up as I snatched off my mask and ran to the middle of the dayroom to meet the team and break their momentum and impact so they can’t run into me full speed. They got slick.

As I'm running up to meet the team to break their impact Sgt Tolly blasted me with a long burst of LE-10 riot control gas to my face and right side of my body. I could not see and my eyes were burning and hurting. I stripped and came out of the dayroom. Though I submitted to the strip search they refused to give me my clothes back. I was cuffed nude. As always, they do that for discouragement and degradation purposes. After getting cuffed I laid on the floor nude, drenched in gas burning and refused to walk in the spirit of resistance, in solidarity with those murdered, in solidarity with those resisting. As they shackled me and carried me nude I began my speech against the death penalty, against cruel and unusual punishment of conditions which is a constitutional violation of our 8th amendment right. A human right violation.

Despite the burning and attempts to discourage and dehumanize me, I felt truly inspired, strong and liberated. I felt so inspired I recited a spoken-word poem on resistance called “Resist” on camera. Imagine me nude being carried like a hunter’s kill, bound hands and feet, burning from 2 types of riot gas that when mixed can possibly kill me, mucus dripping from my nose, my oppressor trying to break me; and I start reciting a poem on resistance in defiance! I’d give anything to have seen their face. The following is the poem:

“RESIST!”

I’m creeping, creeping creeping

On a come-up

Conscious, resistance and freedom in my eyes

While these dead-men sleep walking

Keep sleep walking to their murders and...

Omari said complacency is a motha-fucka

Zombies colluding with oppression for pacifiers

Instead of “resisting,” makin’em suit it up

And setting fires.

RESIST!

I AM RESISTING!

I AM RESIST!

MY LOVE AND REVOLUTION IS TOO STRONG!

I AM DRIVE!

I DRIVE ON!!!

Short and to the point. After the poem I let my oppressors know that as long as there is no justice, “we will not stop!”

I was carried off of E-pod and laid on my side in the hallway while a guard went to get a gurney so they could roll me down the hallway to D-pod. I continued with my resistance speech. The gurney arrived, I was lifted, laid on my side on the gurney and fastened with belts to the gurney and rolled to D-pod.

Once on the gurney, they called themselves having a bit of decency and laying a sheet over my middle to cover my penis and buttocks. They didn’t have to leave me nude after I stripped out. I was complying at that moment, so why did they keep my clothes and keep me nude? For degradation purposes and they know it. They did not have to keep me nude for security reasons. I had no weapons as they saw, and I was secured with cuffs and shackles.

In prison, a prisoner is stripped nude every day for various reasons. The most common excuse is for security reasons. They want to look up your anus for weapons (as if someone would actually hide a weapon in their anus.) More times than not that is not the case. When any human being is constantly stripped nude, asked to go through such a degrading process while being verbally or physically assaulted, it makes that person feel less than strong, and that is the goal at hand during this process. During slavery, slaves were often stripped naked while being beaten and verbally assaulted and ultimately lynched - because their mind was not clear enough to think; they automatically became self-conscious. Death row is a remnant of slavery.

Some prisoners, not all, begin to feel the repression more and more, with more feelings of repression. More resistance comes as the reality of the situation sinks in more and more. Some of the resistance makes prisoners politically conscious and they begin to understand the political nature of their imprisonment. The next time guards look forward to the confrontation, like a bee looks forward to honey. Sometimes the words that are exchanged intensify to a new level. The guards may scream: “I said strip and spread your cheeks punk.” It’s a subliminal psychological game of emasculation because what the guard is actually saying is: “strip and spread your cheeks so I can fuck you in your ass and take your manhood, you homosexual!” No, it’s not a literal physical rape, but guards understand that emotionally/psychologically that’s how a prisoner feels when that is done to him.

Sure enough, the prisoner gets tired and reply’s “fuck you pig! I ain’t doing shit! I’m tired of showing you my ass and nuts. Do you like watching dick and nuts, or what the fuck?” and although it is a no-win situation for the prisoner, he retains some dignity. The physical beatings will certainly come, but sometimes retaining a little bit of dignity is better than having nothing at all. As Emiliano Zapata once said: “Mejor morir en pie que vivir en rodillas.” (“It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”)

We arrive to D-pod and they rolled me into F-section so I could decontaminate from the gas. They roll me on the gurney all the way to the shower, unfasten the restriction belts, I sit up, get off the gurney and step into the shower. A guard on the team pushes the shower button and I rinse off. Actually the hot water only enflames the gas. They put me in 76 cage on D-pod F-section. They laid me on the cage floor, uncuffed and unshackled me, told me to remain lying on my stomach and backed out of the cage. They closed the cage door and asked me if I wanted to file an incident report, I did. I asked for the solution for my eyes to be decontaminated from the gas - and the nurse refused.

That made me angry, and to anger me more, as I stood there naked trying to decontaminate my eyes, Sgt Tolly stood there taking photos of me as though I were some freak sideshow at a zoo.

Here, under this deplorable system, the deeper one encounters the truth and tries to expose it and resists injustice, the more brutal they treat you and the more obstacles the state and its organs, including the corporate media, place in the way. It seems that the more one perceives the truth and the more one’s ability to articulate that evil and resist the evil the state represents, the more marginalized and oppressed one becomes, until the most profound and deepest thinkers and critics are left mumbling in the wilderness like modern day John the Baptist.

No, the next revolution will not be televised!

Over time the terror and killing machinery of the state has created a revolutionary and revolutionary writer out of me. I am now, and shall always be, a revolutionary, persuaded onto the revolutionary path not so much by the eloquent arguments of the Che Guevara or Huey P. Newton or Karl Marx, but by the apathy and inhumanity of the current establishment who fails to respond to the constitutional and human rights abuses: I have been convinced by the courts that interpret laws to the benefit of the rich and powerful. Protecting the greedy from the hungry; the wealthy for the poor.

I have become a revolutionary by process of elimination, from my personal encounter with the machinery of the state, and discovering the depth and breadth of its inherently evil and murderous nature, absolutely insufferable.

I find myself contemplating the possibility of absolute censorship. As one famous dead man once observed, assassination is the most extreme form of censorship and the most permanent. But unlike the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, where the state has attempted unsuccessfully several times to hurriedly execute a living testament to the states corruption and inherent dishonesty, with me, though I'm sentenced to death wrongfully, the state has no justification to legally execute me (there’s never justification for execution.) However, some facing the murder gurney who resist this murderous system are vulnerable to premature staff-induced murder via paying another prisoner to shank you, or guards staging a fabricated suicide - the most common method used by apartheid forces in South Africa, when freedom fighters like Steve Biko were too often found swinging from bed sheets in Soweto jails, and coroners ignored the bruises on their wrists. Never believe them when they call it suicide!

I encourage those of you reading this to join this struggle for justice and human rights, file complaints, write a comrade, go to the media, contact your local state and federal officials responsible for ensuring justice and human rights on death row, refuse to take no for an answer and make them do what you gave them power to do with your vote: Instil Justice!!!

In closing, I commend all those who have the courage to resist this oppression through the self-sacrifice of a hunger strike. I extend my solidarity, strength and support! How saddening those human beings have to sacrifice themselves in this manner because things are so bad and inhumane here. No human should be pushed to that, but injustice creates resistance, and the depth of the oppression dictates the form of resistance. In revolution it’s said you either win or die. These courageous men came to win and are willing to die. Not because they’ve lost hope, but because they refuse to accept being treated and living as less than a human. For this reason they live and are willing to SACRIFICE!

Venceremos!

Undaunted and stiff resistance

Gabriel

D.R.I.V.E.

DEATH Row INNER-COMMUNALIST VANGUARD ENGAGEMENT