Starving to control

It shouldn't surprise me, or the people who have been reading some of these chapters the kind of crap they can come up with to screw over the prisoners. It's crazy the the lengths they will go to and the absolutely ridiculous ideas they implement. Anyone with half a brain would say this stuff is retarded. And if it was anyone besides the Puppetmasters running this crazy, dysfunctional system, they'd be fired on the spot. Let me give you some examples.

They came up with this thing many years ago called the "semi-annual shakedown". Each prison in the state of Texas has two major lockdowns every year. These shakedowns are useless and stupid, It truly makes me wonder if the puppetmasters have too much in-breeding.

Of course, to let them tell it, the safety and security of the whole universe would utterly collapse if they didn't have these shakedowns, but as usual, it's something they say to justify continuing with unnecessarily brutal and degrading treatment of their charges. Look, I'm stuck in here. If any one is concerned about the safety of the inmates, it's me! But these yahoos always take something way too far, and in this case, it's not even something that is useful a tall.

Here's how it works: At some point, when morning shiftchange occurs, the officers will do their count, and instead of opening our cell doors so the slaves can go to work, they inform us that we are on lockdown. The whole prison is kept in their cells while the officers go to the gym and set up tables and prepare to start bringing prisoners in. One of the cell blocks will be told to pack, up- everything they have, and it's usually the trustee dorm, first, because that way, at least the prison will have some of their slaves back to work.

Now, most of the prisons in the system are going to be locked down for this bullshit anywhere from a half a month to a month or longer. This is how this form of mental and physical abuse begins. During the weeks of lockdown, prisoners will usully get two pancakes, a piece of bread that's made of pancake batter that looks like a piece of cornbread, one little packet of sugar-free syrup, and, on a good day, a little bag of raisins or a few prunes.

For lunch, we usually get one, plain bologna sandwich with a slice of meat so thin, you can see light through it. Also, one peanut butter sandwich. Dinner might be a burrito and a peanut butter sandwich. This is how they feed the population for days, weeks, or even months on some units. Also, the peanut butter sandwich won't have enough peanut butter to even spread across the bread,so basically,it's just two pieces of bread with a smudge on it.

One plain bologna sandwich and a peanut butter sandwich. One corn dog and a peanut butter sandwich. One salami sandwich and a peanut butter sandwich. They serve this over and over again until you are sick of it. Can anyone imagine what this does to our digestive system? After only a few days, our bodies start becoming sick. After a week to ten days, it's almost impossible to swallow it. By the third and fourth week, you just about need a hand grenade just to break it loose when you eo to the bathroom. To cope, most people just stop eating all together. There are some units that will not even vary the menu this much; they'll feed nothing but bologna and peanut butter sandwiches for the duration.

Like any other state in the U.S., Texas is required by law to feed all prisoners a diet that is adequate in calories, and nutritional value. There have even been court cases requiring the prisons to serve a reasonable variety in the diet. I'm no doctor, of course, but I'm willing to bet that one bologna sandwich and a peanut butter sandwich with a smidge of spread twice a day, and a pancake-cornbread thingy with a packet of sugar-free syrup is not even close to meeting the 2,000 calorie a day diet the law requires. I'm willing to bet the whole farm that it's damn sure not a balanced or nutritional diet. As a matter of fact,my late mother spoke to her personal physician about this diet, and he said it would be "insane" to consider eating a diet so ridi culously foolish. Also, my mom was able to look online and see what the terrorists down at Gitmo were eating. Remember, these are in prison because they've been captured while engaging in activities like blowing up innocent civilians with homemade bombs or running over crowds of people with their Mac trucks. But these people are being fed better than United States citizens being held in Texas prisons. How many American soldiers have these animals shot and killed, and they eat better than we do?

I'm at a prison now where the lockdowns are only a week, but this is unusual. The majority of unit stake at least 15 days to a month.So,to see if this is justified,let's look at the Puppetmasters reasoning for these lockdowns.

To let them tell it,it's supposed to be a search for illegal contraband. Trust me, I will blow holes so big in that idiotic statement that you could drive your car through it. The Puppetmasters once again have taken something as simple as a search for contraband and turned it into a tool to starve the prisoners in their care. Once again, they lock the whole prison down to search the entire place. Well, since all of the prisoners now KNOW we're about to be shaken down, what do you think is going to happen? Let's say someone has some drugs. Well, since they know it's shake down time, what do they do? They use it up of course, or sell it to someone else to use. Or, if it's time for them to go out the door to the gym, they'll just simply flush it down the toilet. If they have some other type of contraband, they just throw it away. Man, to put all the prisoners through this starvation twice a year, for NOTHING, is insane. And, as I always say, if a man sitting here in prison can see this crap, don't you think they can see this, too? Of course they can.

Now, before these idiots can say it's for "the safety and security of the unit", I want to show you how easy it could be to search for the contraband without starving every one until they're sick. No one's saying they don't need shakedowns. Of course they do. There is dangerous stuff out there that needs to be gotten rid of, like the welding rod shanks they provided all the prisoners at the Terrell Unit. But is the lockdown the best way to get rid of it? Hell, no. Wouldn't it be better to not lock down the whole unit, but go ro one building in the morning unexpectedly, and shoot everyone to the gym. This way, no one is prepared, and the law would have a better chance of finding what they're looking for. And, BONUS, no one starves for weeks or months. They could still search every building twice a year. They'd even free up more security resources, because they wouldn't be stuck down there in the gym with the inmates for all t h i s t i m e .

A long with the cells, they search the factory,the library, and other places the inmates have access to. These facilities could be searched by the night shift or on weekends. Whatever their reasoning is behind the way they do it now, I assure you, there HAS to be a better way that doesn't deprive the prisoners of food rations for days on end.

There is a reason for it, though. And it makes me sad, because it again shows how little the Puppetmasters think of human life. One of the reasons for the way they do it is that it's a product of the mentality from the days when they still had the power to beat us, when they had the turnkeys doing their dirty work, when they were killing us. It's that old bossman/slave thinking that Texas cannot for some reason let go of. Even if the Puppetmasters are shown there's a better solution to do something, it won't matter, because they understand the effect one piece of corn bread pancake and one pack of diet syrup is going to have on the inmate physically. Mor importantly, to them, the Puppetmasters understand the psychological effects it has on us when they do this. In fact, it's why they do a lot of the crazy shit they do. They know that feeding us like this week after week will, of course, tax our bodies, but their goal is to tax our minds, as well. They desire to break us down to the point where we become sad, depressed, and give up mentally and spritually. It's a form of slavery and torture that has been used on oppressed people all over the world. The masters beat their slaves both mentally and physically, worked them until they dropped, and, finally, starved them. It's insane.

A lot of people who are reading the madness I've wrote about have to be thinking, How could something like this be happening in America? I mean, the evilness of how the Puppetmasters have ALWAYS treated their prisoners is some thing you would never imagine could happen in this country, but it is all very real, and it continues to this very day. It's been allowed to happen for so long now that the only way to stop these sadistic criminals is for the federal government to come back in and again take control over the state prison system. Everyone that has anything to do with the running or controlling of the Texas prisons needs to be fired or retired. The new administration will have to retrain all the guards and set a new system for rehabbing the inmates. Why? Because even the present "good" wardens or directors in the. system, know, absolutely, what is going on in the system RIGHT NOW, and they've chosen to remain silent, even if they haven't personally participated or condoned such practices.

In my later chapters, I am going to write about some things I believe will help the Texas prison system, and, more im portantly, I believe will start cutting back on all'these prisons around the state. Something needs to happen, because of all the things that drain government offers, the prison system shouldn't be the biggest one, or even a significant one. It doesn't have to be this way. But it won't happen as long as the same old Puppetmasters are pulling the strings. As long as they're running things, they'll never let the tax payers take away their free slave labor. That's the last thing they'll want to hear about-closing prisons. But it's time to start imagining a future where we can take over 160,000 inmates currently in the system, and cutting that i n h a l f .

There are solutions to this problem, and to all the problems I've presented in these pages, but the ONLY way to start getting somewhere with the solutions is to take the TDCJ out of the hands of the people who are currently running the system, and if that means the feds have to come back in, so be it. The Puppetmasters have shown without any doubt whatsoever that they will never change. If they even get a foot in the door, they'll continue to con,lie,manipulate and do their best to kill,steal,and control the lives of the prisoners and the lives of those who care about them by draining every nickel they can from their pockets on outrageously priced phone calls and price-gouging commissary so their starving incarcerated lovedone can at least eat a decent meal.

I want to close with this. What do yoti think happens to all that food that DOESN'T get cooked up while the prisoners are on lock down? This will probably shock the hell out of you, but the prisoners sure don't get it!

 
The Attorneys
  • Francisco Hernandez
  • Daniel Hernandez
  • Phillip Hall
  • Rocio Martinez