NOVEMBER 14, 2006 -DISCIPLINARY HEARING

On 11/13/06 I was served a write-up for the 11/10/06 Use of Force when I protested Shannon’s murder and conditions here. The lady who notified me I had been written-up asked me if I wanted to co-attend the hearing. I said yes. The next day I was called for the hearing because it was classified as a major case the hearing is recorded by audio. Captain Bailey was the presiding officer over the hearing.

I get to the hearing and he turned on the recorder and went into his procedure of who was present before him and for what infraction. When he asked me if I had been served the write-up on the previous day (11/13/06), I told him, “yes”. He looks up at me and says “When you address me, call me sir”.

I said, “No I will not. I’m not disrespecting you. I’m not being hostile. I am answering you yes or no respectfully. Now I will call you sir if you will call me sir.” He tells me he doesn’t want to argue with me and that I can either address him as sir or leave the hearing. Again I told him I’ll call him sir if he calls me sir. That I am not inferior and he is not superior. We’re equal and if he wants a certain treatment that he has to give the same. He told me again that if I don’t call him sir I can leave. I left the hearing.

By rule we are supposed to address officers by sir or ma’am when speaking to them, and by officer or their rank or last name when we call them. I always try to remember their names and call them by their names just like I like to be called by my name. After all I am a human being not just an execution number.

Reading this you may be asking your self why I didn’t just call him sir because it’s no big deal. Well, for me it is a big deal because this system is built on inequality. Basically, the rules here are never allow a prisoner to feel equal to their keepers, to never feel fully human. Their rules are designed to always make a guard feel superior and make a prisoner feel inferior. This is why by rule we are to call officers sir or ma’am when we are speaking to them, yet they are not forced by rule to call us sir or ma’am. They have the choice of calling us offender, our number or our last name. Captain Bailey chose to call me offender. Yet, he wants me to call him sir. Do you see what I am saying? I am called something negative while by rule I am to acknowledge him as some type of superior figure of the existing order. I refuse. I believe in equality. He calls me sir and I’ll call him sir. I’m lowering to nobody. I’m inferior to nobody – and I will never embrace an inferior role nor participate in the systematic psychological implementation or making me feel inferior and making the staff here feels superior.

I believe this is one of the reasons why so many here refuse to protest. Not necessarily because they don’t realize that to not protest is to participate in their own oppression and state-sanctioned murder, but because the superior/inferior relationship between officers and prisoners is so deeply ingrained that they don’t realize they fear the system or feel they can’t win against someone they have come to believe through years of programming be superior to them.

Others I believe realize it but make excuses because to realize, or rather to admit the truth of the reality is to either be forced to take action or admit their cowardice for not doing so. Either way, this is one man who will never participate in my oppression in any form. Not physically, not psychologically or in any other form that I am aware of that is used to oppress and murder and destroy human beings. As one of my favorite quotes says from the great late Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata: “Mejor murir in pies que vivir en rodill” “Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

UNBREAKABLE RESISTANCE...

Gabriel Gonzalez

D.R.I.V.E.

DEATH Row INNER-COMMUNALIST VANGUARD ENGAGEMENT