I arrived at Chino state prison on June 5, 1985, eager to begin serving my seven-year sentence. As soon as I got off the bus a confrontation started brewing with a Chicano who kept looking at me. We were herded into R & R like cattle. “Nuts to butts” is how the Correctional Officer (C.O.) explained the way he wanted us lined up. I was relieved that he didn’t have a flashlight. We were crowded into a cold, dim room with puddles of water on the floor, as if the ceiling had been leaking.
“All right, listen up,” the C.O. said in a deep baritone that seemed to shake shit loose from the walls. “The first thing I want you to do is take off your wristbands and throw them in this box. Next, I want you to strip naked and have a seat. If you want to send your clothes home, hold on to them. If not, throw them in this cart. Once you’ve stripped naked, we can follow through with the procedure.”
All the while this Chicano kept staring at me. Every time I looked at him he was looking at me. Even when I looked elsewhere, keeping him in my peripheral vision, he was watching me. I had already been briefed on our relationship with the Southern Mexicans: C.C.O. and the Mexican mafia—the Southern Mexican vanguard—were at war.
“If you think one of them has detected you,” Suma had told me on a visit, “take off first.”
Now here was this dude burning holes in the side of my damn head. I played it cool and went through the procedures that the CO. was explaining.
“Put your hands over your head. Let me see your armpits. Open your mouth and wiggle your tongue. Lift up your nut sack. Turn around, bend at the waist, spread your cheeks and give me five big coughs. Let me see under your left foot. Now your right…”
This was nothing new. We had to do this every time we came from court in L.A. County Jail. At first it bothered me a lot. I felt like a diseased piece of meat being examined by some pigs at an auction. A bunch of guys getting their kicks off of watching forty naked men moving into different positions of humiliation at the command of a voice. In all my days, months, and years of being a prisoner, I’ve never seen one of these searches yield anything.
What are they expecting? Some pig says, “Okay, bend at the waist and give me five loud coughs,” and plink! a knife falls out of a man’s ass? Although I know that prisoners do secrete weapons, drugs, and other things in their butts, the pigs haven’t ever found anything on the searches I’ve been involved in. This process is just another ritual designed to degrade.
When I got dressed I started walking over to the Chicano who kept looking at me, but the C.O. asked me where the fuck I was going. I said to the head, to which he replied that it was behind me. And I’ll be damned if it wasn’t. A small urinal hung on the wall, closer to where I was than the Chicano. I acted as if I was using it, then sat back down. I had to be slicker.
But now the Chicano knew I was trying to get to him. To my surprise, he stopped looking at me, and as I looked more and more at him he seemed vaguely familiar. I knew I had seen him somewhere, but because there were no Chicanos living in or around my ’hood, I knew it had to be from a jail. But which one, and when? I continued to eye him, much like he had eyed me. I pulled up face after face, place after place on my memory bank’s screen, but I kept drawing blanks. In my enemy file I saw only the faces of Chicano gang members who had been running with the Sixties and, more than ever, dying with the Sixties. We’ve always tried to be equal-opportunity killers.
“Everybody stand up and follow the man in front of you. You are going to be fingerprinted several times and have your photo taken. One set of prints goes to the Justice Department, one to the F.B.I., one to the State Capitol, one to the…”
I didn’t even try to hear the rest. Hell, I had heard it all before in Youth Authority, where prints are taken and sent to the same groups of people. In youth camps run by the county, you are treated as a statistic by group. But in Youth Authority, which is run by the state of California, you become a potential case study as an individual. The F.B.I. and the rest of the authorities have the names of everyone who has ever been to Youth Authority in a huge data bank in Washington. When you go to state or federal prison, they simply update their data bank. If you get involved in anything they think is noteworthy—and everything is noteworthy to a hunter—they put it in your file in their data bank. They know what you may do long before it happens, as well as what you have the potential to do. Because gang actions are seen as self-destructive and not a threat to the security of this country, it’s not necessary for them to stop you. But if you begin to question the right of those in authority or resist the chains that constantly bind you, then you’ll be elevated as a security risk and more than likely put in the Agitators Index file. I’ve been in the Agitators Index since 1986.
I took the photos and went through the mundane routine of prints. (As if mine had changed since I’d left Y.A.) At my first opportunity I stepped to the Chicano, surprising him.
“What’s up, man, you know me or somethin’? Huh? You got a problem wit’ me?”
He was shorter than I and weighed thirty pounds less, which really didn’t mean a thing, because in prison, fighting was for those you liked. Stabbing was for the enemy.
“Ain’t your name Kody, Monster Kody?”
“Yeah, that’s me. Why? What up?”
“You don’t remember me?”
“Naw,” I said, eyeing him suspiciously. “From where?”
“Juvenile hall and camp. I’m Cooper from El Monte Flores.” And he broke into a wide, boyish grin.
Yes, I did know him! He and I were friends from the seventies. Every time I went to the Hall he was there. When I went to camp, he was there. I missed him in Y.A., but now here he was again in prison.
“Goddamn, yeah, I’m knowin’ you. What up, Copper? How much time you got?”
“Fifteen to life. And you?”
“Just seven.”
“I’ll be here when you get back!”
“Fuck that, I ain’t comin’ back.”
We talked a bit more before we had to break it up. This was not camp or juvenile hall, where our relationships were not governed by politics. This was state prison, where talking to the wrong person could very well get you killed. I wondered if he had gotten hooked up.
The group of us went through a few other stages of questions and answers before having to go get blood tests, immunizations, and physicals. After that we were given our bed numbers. Chino is the reception center for southern California. You go through all your indoctrination there: school testing, health testing, and a visit with a counselor for placement in a permanent prison. One usually stays at Chino for a month or two before being transferred. It is old, dirty, rat and roach infested, and always cold. I was sent to Cypress Hall and put on the third tier. My cellmate was a civilian.
“How you doing, black man?” my cellie said with a big smile.
“Cool, asante.”
“Oh, you speak that Swahili, huh?” he asked.
“A little. My comrades have been teaching me. You?”
“Naw, but I want to learn.”
“Right.”
“Do you smoke cigarettes?”
“Naw, never have.”
“Oh, ’cause I have some tobacco. But if it bothers you I’ll smoke only on the yard.”
“Naw, it’s cool, it don’t bother me,” I replied.
He seemed like a cool cat, right up until he noticed the knife in my hand.
“Man, where you get that? You gonna get us put in the Hole, man!”
He was bug-eyed with hysteria, frantically crossing and uncrossing his arms, and his feet would not keep still.
“I keistered it and brought it from L.A. County Jail. It’s better to be caught with one than without one. We are at war, haven’t you heard?”
“War?!”
“Shhh,” I said and reduced him to silence with a mad-dog stare.
“Look, man,” he began in a lower tone, “I don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout. I ain’t involved in no war. I ain’t got no enemies. I got two years, man, and I want to go home.”
I looked at him and remembered what Salahudin had told me about brothas in the pen.
“Sanyika,” he’d said, which was what he always called me in place of Monster once I’d accepted it, “Afrikans in the pen will use every excuse they can think of to avoid aiding you in a crisis. They will cite the Bible, bad health, the weather, any and everything to get out of having to endure perhaps a little hardship as the expense for saving your life. We are neglectful like that. But let a Chicano give a distress call and you’ll have a hundred of them to deal with.” Prophecy.
“Check this out,” I said to him. “This is my weapon, my beef. I’m not getting rid of it. If you feel safe without one, fine. I don’t. If I had known you was gonna trip out I never would have let you know I had it. I’m a soldier and I ain’t gonna let nobody stick shit in me without me stickin’ somethin’ in them, ya dig?”
“Aw, man, it ain’t like that in here. Everybody cool with one another. Man, we—”
“How long you been here?”
“A week, but I—”
“You been to the pen before?”
“No, but I—”
“Well shut the fuck up then, ’cause you don’t know shit, man. You don’t know nothin’ ’bout the politics here, man, nothin’!”
“Politics?”
“B.G.F., E.M.E., A.B., N.F., C.C.O., U.B.N., V.G., T.S., Four-fifteen… You ever hear of them, huh?”
“Naw, sound like some code or somethin’.”
“Fool, they run these muthafuckin’ places, man. At any time they can have you murdered, man. But you don’t hear me, do you? You think just because there ain’t no guns going off ’round here now that everybody cool? Huh? All it takes is one order and any one of the cool people you kick it with will put a piece of steel right through your neck! Ain’t no ’cool’ in here.”
He was visibly frightened now. I had brought the raw reality of our situation fully down on his shoulders and said, in effect, Carry this! He was already sagging under the weight.
“Let me see that weapon,” he finally said.
The next day I was told to roll my property up and move to another hall. I still don’t know why. I was put in Sycamore Hall in a one-man cell. I was then called to the lieutenant’s office.
Lieutenant Ballard, the gang coordinator, held the briefing. He was a huge, dark-complexioned New Afrikan with a contagious smile.
“Monster Kody Scott,” he began, with a knowing grin. “I been hearing about you. I knew you was coming and I’m supposed to lock you up in the Hole. But seeing how you ain’t done nothing—yet—I got no cause to slam you.”
“Who wants me locked up?” I asked seriously.
“White folks, who else?”
“But for what?”
“You really don’t know, huh?”
“Naw, I just got here.”
“Well, it seems that some of your folks—C.C.O…” and with that he stared hard at me, “… have killed a correctional sergeant in San Quentin. So they want all you C.C.O.s locked up.”
“Oh, is that right?”
“That’s right. But I think the B.G.F.s did it, to tell you the truth.”
“Can I go now?”
“Yeah, Kody, you can go. But there’s one thing I want to ask you. Did Suma hook you up?”
“No, man, I ain’t no C.C.O.”
“But—”
I turned and walked out the door before he could finish. I was told that the only way they could classify you as a member of a prison gang is if you admitted to it or they found a constitution on you. Later I learned that this was wrong.
I went back to my block feeling pretty good about what I’d heard from Ballard. Comrades had put in some work on a pig. Fuck the pigs. I was so full of hatred that I could have been ordered to kill a pig—or anybody—and not thought twice about it.
Back in the unit the homies were playing around, just grabbing each other and stuff, when a pig hollered out the warning.
‘STOP! FIGHT!’
Everyone froze and looked to see where the fight was, not realizing that he was referring to them. The pig came running down the tier like a madman, and when he got to the homies he began to cuff Li’l Man up. Everyone was dumbfounded, but no one said a thing. So I did.
“They was just playin’, they wasn’t fightin’, man.”
“Don’t you tell me, I know what they were doing. Fighting, that’s what.”
“You stupid pig, if I had a gun I’d blow yo’ brains all over that silly-ass uniform you wearin’.”
I constructed my hand like a weapon and aimed it right in his face.
“Boom,” I said.
He continued cuffing Li’l Man and another homie from Hoover and told everyone else to lock it up, which we did. Ten minutes later the pig came back with a sergeant and two other pigs.
“That’s him, sir, the one with the gun.”
“What?” I said.
“Roll your shit up. You going to the Hole,” the sergeant told me.
“For what?”
“Threatening staff.”
When I got to Palm Hall—the Hole—Lieutenant Ballard wanted to see me. His office was actually located in the Hole, so he called me in to see him.
“They gotcha, I see.”
“Yeah, but that’s bullshit, man.”
“Listen to me, Kody. These folks is scared to death of y’all in the first place. And now that you have organized y’all selves, that makes it worse. Anything you do they gonna be on you, man. Anything. You young, black, and strong. That’s why they can’t see you out in the street. In here, you organized, unified, and uncontrollable, so you gotta be put in the Hole. Be cool, man, or you’ll be in the Hole for your whole seven years.”
“I’ll try, man.”
I wanted to say more but couldn’t articulate it. I wanted to know why “white folks” hated us so much, were so afraid of us. I had a thousand questions, but Ballard was still a pig, New Afrikan or not.
I was put on the first tier in the last cell. My neighbor was Chocolate from Four Tray Hoover. He was also a C.C.O. member, as well as one of the Hoovers who had stabbed the East Coasts in 4800. He had two knives. I told him what they had me for and we talked about other things. I asked if he felt that he’d be in trouble with the organization for participating in tribalism. He said that he didn’t know, but that he had been worried about it. He had a pretty good grasp on Kiswahili and said he’d help me with mine.
Not an hour later, after Ballard had gone home, an American pig with an enormous belly came to my cell.
“Scott?”
“Yeah.”
“We made a mistake by putting you over here, you belong in Cypress Deep Seg, so—”
“Deep Seg?” I said in a what-the-fuck-is-that voice.
“Aw, cuz, it’s fucked up in Deep Seg,” Chocolate said. “Man, why y’all doin’ him like that, he don’t belong in no damn Deep Seg,” he said to the pig.
“Get your shit together, Scott,” the pig ordered, ignoring Chocolate. “We’ll be back in five minutes to get you.”
He walked away.
“Eh, comrade, what is Deep Seg?” I asked, perplexed.
“It’s only four little tiny cells way in the back of Cypress on the first tier. It’s fucked up back there. It’s for total fuck-ups.”
“Damn! I don’t know why they trippin’ on me like this. Talkin’ ’bout a mistake. That’s bullshit!”
“Scott, you ’bout ready?” said the pig, who had returned and was standing in front of my cage. He’d been gone for forty seconds.
I didn’t say a thing, just backed up to the bars so he could chain me up for the escort across the hall to Deep Segregation. The pig tried to make small talk, but I didn’t respond. How could he make conversation, and expect a response, with a man he was putting in a Hole inside a Hole?
I was marched through so many gates and doors that I felt like Maxwell Smart. It was depressing. When we finally got to the small cage—and I couldn’t believe how small—I was made to strip and go through the degrading motions. One last stab at my humanity. I was locked behind a series of bars, then a door with a heavy plate of steel that, when closed, could isolate me from any light whatsoever. There was no light in the cell. There was an opening in the upper left corner, and from the back of the cell an outside floodlight stuck through, protected by wire mesh. The bed was a hard, concrete slab no wider than a child’s little red wagon. The sink and toilet were attached together and both reeked with atrocious fumes of bile, defecation, urine, and God knows what else.
Before he left I asked the pig if I could have some cleaning material for the cell, and he replied that I wouldn’t be able to see anything no way and that I’d get used to the smell in a few days. And with that he closed the big door and let down the heavy metal covering over my window, leaving me in total darkness.
“Hey,” I hollered, reaching for the bars in front of me. “Hey, turn on the lights. Hey! I know you hear me!”
But I got no response.
I felt my way over to the bed and sat down. I thought long and hard about what Muhammad had called repression, about what Elimu had taught me about resistance, and what Ballard had said about the white folks’ fear of us. I thought that I hadn’t even resisted yet, but still I was being treated like this. Little did I know that I had been resisting all my life. By not being a good black American I was resisting. But my resistance was retarded because it had no political objective. I was an unconscious resister.
Repression is funny. It can breed resistance, though it doesn’t mean that the resistance will be political, positive, or revolutionary.
So I sat there in total darkness, in total silence, repressed to the max. I had nothing to feed on that could explain this level of action to me. There was no mattress on the concrete, so I lay back on the hard slab and went over the words in my head that, while unconnected, didn’t have any meaning to me whatsoever. As I lay there I remembered my mother coming to Y.T.S. to see me, crying and shaking her head.
“Baby, I got something to tell you. Something you are old enough to know now.”
“What is it, Mom?”
“Scott is not your father. Baby, your last name isn’t supposed to be Scott. Oh, Kody, I… listen, do you remember seeing this book?”
In her hands she was holding a blue-and-white book with a football player in uniform on the cover.
“Yeah, I’ve seen that book around the house.”
“Well, this is your father, baby. His name is Dick Bass. He played football for the Rams.”
“Wait a minute, Mom, I’m confused here. Who is Scott, then? I mean whose father is he?”
“He’s Shaun, Kerwin, and Kendis’s father. Kevin and Kim have the same father, but he’s not Scott.”
“But…”
“Wait, let me explain. When I was pregnant with you, Scott and I were not getting along. Dick and I had met through your godparents, Ray and Della.”
My godfather was Ray Charles, the famous musician.
“Dick was there when I needed him,” she went on. “Scott knew you were not his child and asked me to get an abortion, but I refused. I wanted you, Kody. This is why he and I would fight all the time. He hated you, baby.”
“That’s why he never took me anywhere like he did Kerwin and Shaun?”
“Yes, baby.”
“So, where is… Dick?”
“I don’t know. He…”
“Mom, I’m not even gonna worry about it ’cause I’m a man now. I don’t need no daddy. For what?”
“Kody, I have tried my hardest to raise you guys up right. But I had to work hard every day just to feed you by myself. You know Scott and I got a divorce in 1969 and there has not been a man in your lives since. I wonder if that’s how I lost you and Shaun to the streets. You guys have turned from my darling little ones into savage little animals and I just don’t know what to do no more. I really don’t.”
“But Mom, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault,” I said over and over.
As I lay on that slab I now said it over and over to myself. “It’s not your fault.” And I hated that muthafucka Scott and Dick Bass. What could Mom do? She could only be our father for so long. I do remember not being taken on any trips like the others and being treated differently by Scott. When the others were on trips, I would be alone and sad. Sometimes Della would come and take me to different places, or I’d spend the weekend at Ray and Della’s house. My only consolation for not being treated like the others was that Ray Charles was my godfather, so I’d always have new toys, new bicycles, and Hot Wheels.
Mom would pretend that the reason I couldn’t go on the trips was that she wanted me with her because I was her favorite. She tried very hard to keep my spirits up, even when hers were down. Scott would take the others to Houston to visit his mother, their grandmother. But I was an illegitimate child and he was ashamed of me, hated me, Mom said. I never met my grandmother.
I fell into a rough sleep and don’t know how long I’d been out when someone started beating on the steel covering over the window in my door.
“Get up,” said the voice, distinctively American. “Get up!”
Irritated by being awakened, and generally mad, I shouted back. “What, muthafucka, what?”
“Hey, I got some paperwork for you to sign, Scott.”
“I ain’t signin’ shit, and my name ain’t no fuckin’ Scott!”
“Are you refusing to sign?”
Not only did I refuse to sign, I refused to talk anymore. Why? What else could they do to me if I didn’t? I stretched my sheets out as best I could and tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and I could at least see my hand in front of my face, though barely. As I lay there I could hear rats scurrying across the cell floor. It sounded like there were a lot of them. I cursed the pigs under my breath.
The next night I was given a mattress. When the lights came on, ten rats darted for cover. The only reason I knew a whole day had passed when they brought the mattress was that they’d brought me three meals before that. The pigs expected me to beg or snivel about the conditions, but when they opened the door, I walked to the bars to receive the paper plate of food they slid under the door and took it without saying a word. Can’t stop, won’t stop.
I fed myself on the strength of the C-Nation, on seeing and knowing of the existence of a unified, organized Crip Nation. I tried to feed on what Muhammad had taught me, but it was too complicated. The words were too political, so I went with what I knew best and had seen for most of my life. And I endured.
I was kept in that cell, in the dark—except when they brought meals—for a week. One morning an American pig came to feed me and when he turned the light on I gave an involuntary moan.
Since I was always in the dark, the bright light hurt my eyes. It hurt so much that I couldn’t open them to get my meals. After three days of ice-pick pain through my brain from the stabbing light, I’d decided it was better not to try to adjust to it. I knew that to stand straight up, turn ninety degrees to my left, and take three steps would put me at the bars. I’d feel my way down the bars until I’d find the paper plate, and then I’d retrace my steps to the bed. Most of the time they’d turn the light off immediately after they’d closed the door. I’d eat with my eyes closed till they doused it. They wouldn’t say anything to me and I wouldn’t say anything to them.
But on this day, I had been caught with my eyes open, and the light blasted my brain into little pieces. The pain was overwhelming, and I moaned in response to it.
“Hey, Scott, you all right? How long you been back here?”
I didn’t say anything. I just walked blindly to the bars, retrieved my paper plate, and ate with my eyes tightly closed. He stood there and watched me. I knew he was there, I felt him in my space, looking, thinking. But there was no room in my space for him. He was an intruder, a violator. He had to be expelled.
“What you lookin’ at, man?”
Startled, he stammered and said, “How’d you know I was here if your eyes were closed?”
“I feel you. Will you leave now?”
“I’m gonna get you outta here, Scott.”
I gave no reply and waited for him to leave before I continued to eat.
I finished my meal and took my morning walk—three steps to the front, turn, four steps to the back. I’d repeat this for a few hundred steps, then sit back down for an hour or so and listen to the rats eat the remains of my food. We had come to an overstanding, the rats and I. When I was on the floor the rats yielded. Like in Congress: the rats yield the floor and recognize Monster Kody from the Crips. And when I got on my red-wagon slab bed, I recognized the rats from Deep Seg. I like it like that—mutual respect.
Suddenly the rats stopped abruptly and darted for cover. This told me someone was coming. Sure enough, the spear of light shot out like some damn lightning bolt, but I’d prepared for it and it missed me.
“Scott,” said the voice of my earlier invader, “gather your things, bud, you’re outta here.”
“Can you turn the light out when you leave?”
“Leave? No, Scott, we are letting you out of Deep Seg and putting you in Palm Hall.”
I sat there and waited for the door to close, a cruel joke played on a repressed man. But it didn’t. He was still standing there.
“Who is that with you?”
“It’s me,” said a female voice, “the M.T.A., Scott.”
This was the prison nurse.
“Am I really leaving here?”
“Yes, Scott, you been back here too long.”
I gathered my things: two sheets and a worn blanket. I rolled them, sleeping-bag style, and backed to the bars to be chained up. I was escorted slowly across the hall to the normal Hole. The nurse examined me, telling me to open my eyes to let them adjust to the light. When I did, the pain was not as intense as it had been in Deep Seg. The floodlight in that tiny space was one thousand watts—deliberately so. I hadn’t been in prison two weeks and was already subjected to this type of treatment. From the start there was perfect hate. I was grateful for a shower and a change of clothes.
From Chino I was sent to the prison at Soledad. I was taken off the bus and put directly in the Hole. I was put in the cell with my li’l homie, Li’l Rat. I taught him the small amount of Kiswahili that I knew. He asked if I was hooked up and I told him I was. He was curious and wanted to be in the organization, but I told him to be certain that it was what he wanted to do. Just because I was in didn’t mean he should be in. I told him to think about it.
That day I was let out to the general population. Li’l Spike, C-Dog, and Rattone from the set were out on the mainline and greeted me cordially. We talked and kicked it about old times, but they sensed something wasn’t right when they found me reluctant to speak on the war between the Sixties and us. I told them I wasn’t into the set tripping—tribalism thing anymore. I told them that it was now all about the unification of the C-Nation under the government of the C.C.O. They freaked.
“Cuz, you hooked up?” Rattone asked. He’d been down since he and my brother had been captured in 1981 for the payback killings in response to my shooting.
“Yeah, I’m in. You?”
“Naw, never was my style. I know all of them, though. Where they hook you up at?”
“The County.”
“Damn, cuz,” said Li’l Spike, “why you go out like that?”
“What you mean out like that?”
It was the first time I’d heard someone say anything remotely against the C.C.O.
“I mean, the set is the only organization you need,” he continued. “It held you fine till you came to prison. So why it won’t hold you now?”
“I ain’t left the set, I just think that we could be stronger combined as a nation than as a little set. After all, we all Crips.”
“I kill Crips,” Li’l Spike declared. “I’m a gangsta.”
“He’s right, Monster,” added Rattone. “Remember what Rayside used to tell us ’bout that—”
“Fuck Rayside!” I exploded. “Where is he now, huh? That shit was cool out there as long as we had guns in our hands and dope in our systems. But that Sixty, Nine-O killa shit ain’t gonna work for us here, cuz. It ain’t gonna work! We got too many other enemies to be trippin’ on one another. Too many! Until Rayside come to prison and walk on the yard and see what we gotta deal wit’ daily, monthly, yearly, cuz can’t tell me shit!”
“I don’t know, homie,” C-Dog said. He was the youngest of us all.
“How many Sixties here?” I asked them.
“Three.”
“How many Nine-O’s?”
“None.”
“How many Mexicans from the south, and how many Nazis?”
“Shit, ’bout three hundred or so, but—”
“You see?” I said.
“But they ain’t killed no Eight Trays,” Rattone countered.
“They’ve killed black people… they’ve killed Crips. It’s just a matter of time, Ratt. You been down five years. You know!”
“Yeah, you right.”
“I’ll always be from Eight Tray, that’s my neighborhood. But I was born black.”
“Monster, you trippin’,” Li’l Spike said.
“Naw, Spike, you trippin’! I ain’t ashamed of being black, I know I come from Afrika. I am a soldier for my people, all citizens of the C-Nation.”
“Yeah, all right, Monster. We gonna see how long you think like that,” Li’l Spike said, looking over the top of his Locs at the others.
“Yeah,” I said, standing to walk away. “You’ll see.”
My commanding officer was Kidogo—Whiskey from Santana Block—who I had known from the county jail back in the early eighties. But the line was being run by Drack from Six-Deuce East Coast. He had been there two or three years. There were thirteen of us—C.C.O.—in Soledad. I was in charge of C-wing. It was my duty to make sure that no Crips came out on the tiers with shower thongs on, because this was a security risk. One couldn’t very well defend himself in shower shoes. I had to make sure that there were at least two knives out on the tier and available whenever we were out in the wing or the dayroom. I designated two people to carry the weapons. Any time one of us took a shower, the area was cordoned off and secured. A quiet period was designated from eleven P.M. till seven A.M. Every Saturday was mass exercise day. All two hundred and twelve Crips would form three huge circles on the yard and go through the routine.
Kidogo was dissatisfied with Drack and petitioned the Central Committee to remove him. He had to go to Folsom for court in a stabbing incident and said he’d handle it down there. I was left second in command. When Kidogo returned, Drack was removed for ineptitude and poor leadership. Kidogo and I forged ties with the other new Afrikan groups there—U.B.N., Vanguards, B.G.F.s and 415s. We networked with communication, military intelligence, and in some cases, weaponry. We got our hacksaw blades from the 415s who worked as plumbers. I had Crips in C-wing cutting steel off of everything to make weapons. There was never a shortage of knives or people to make them.
One afternoon I came into the wing from the yard and found Red from Shotgun showering with no cover. I went in the dayroom, and there was Shark from Harlem watching soap operas! I asked him who had security and he said he did. I told him to go and cover Red in the shower. But Doc from West Covina, who was on the disciplinary crew—those who were used to stab and beat law breakers—said he’d supply cover for Red. Well, that wasn’t his job. So I again told Shark to go handle it. When he left I called over Zacc from Hoover and began discussing the lax atmosphere. Unexpectedly, Shark came stomping back into the dayroom saying how tired he was of being a security guard and how he wanted some action. I asked him where Red was. He said he had left him in the shower.
I exploded and slapped him hard across the face. He responded by reaching for his waistband, where he kept the knife. But before he could draw it, Doc stepped up and put his knife to Shark’s throat. I disarmed Shark and slapped him again.
“If you would have pulled the kisu out I would have killed you! Now get yo’ sorry ass outta my face!”
He staggered out of the dayroom, holding his face.
I gave the kisu to Zacc and he took up the slack at the shower. Doc stayed by me.
That evening I held a meeting in the back of the unit to explain the importance of security.
“Today we had a problem with our security,” I began, looking disgustedly at Shark, “that we shouldn’t have had. Don’t y’all know what’s going on in Folsom and San Quentin? War, that’s what. And it’s just a matter of time before the Surrats try to strike at us here. We gotta be ready! They ain’t gonna walk up to our face and stab us. They gonna bring they sneaky asses up from behind and stab us in the back! So we have to watch out for each another. Secure one another, dig? And another thing, I want to apologize to the community for disciplining Shark in public when I should have taken it to a discreet area. It won’t happen again.”
A few others spoke and the meeting was adjourned.
The next day I was given orders by Kidogo to plant one in a renegade from Folsom. The following week G-wing erupted in an all-out knife fight. The Southern Mexicans attacked the Northern Mexicans and the pigs started blasting away. The Americans were herded into the dayroom. Since the Southern Mexicans and the Americans were allies and the New Afrikans and Northerners were allies, the New Afrikans attacked the Americans, stabbing seven of them. One prisoner was shot and killed.
It was during this time that the New Afrikan community at Soledad began to get flack from one particular pig. That one particularly racist guard was attacked. I was implicated in the accident and three days later, Buck, Zaire, and I were locked in solitary confinement for the incident and given forty-eight months in Security Housing Unit (S.H.U.). Buck and I were sent to San Quentin and Zaire was sent to Folsom. We appealed the decision to put us in the Hole based on confidential information, but the appeal was denied. They did, however, reduce our sentence to twenty-eight months.
I cannot begin to describe how I felt as the prison bus rolled through the massive gates at San Quentin. An incredible sense of destiny seemed to overtake me. And with each successive foot the bus moved forward, additional layers of the “old me” seemed to peel away. When the bus swung around the lower yard and I saw the Native Nation—American Indian—tepees and sweat lodges enclosed by a chainlink fence, I sat upright in my seat.
“This is the house that George Jackson built,” Buck said. He had been here several times. “You’ll feel the comrade strong here. Bro, you’ll read books here, see things here that are gonna change the way you walk, talk, and think. This is the best place for an aspiring young revolutionary. This is repression at its best.”
We filed off the bus under the watchful eye of gunmen with mini-14s. The shotgun had been phased out because it failed to disable attacking prisoners. The mini-14 is an assault weapon. It shoots a .223 round, as does the M-16 and the AR-I5. We moved from the bus to R & R, guards on the huge industrial wall’s catwalk watching us from above.
San Quentin is one hundred years older than Chino, and it shows. As soon as we got inside of R & R, the pigs took Buck to the Adjustment Center, which is like the triple-max unit. I would be spared this time and only put in double-max. I was being sent to East block, and two others—a Chicano and a Native brother—were being taken to North block. They were escorted out first. Ten minutes later I was taken out of R & R in leg and wrist chains, marched up across the upper yard and into East block.
When I stepped in I was astounded. I was dwarfed by the unit. It looked like a huge slave ship. There were five tiers, and they were so long that if you were at one end it would be impossible for you to recognize someone at the other end. I was put in a holding cage and stripped. The chains were removed, and I was handcuffed. The awesome size of the block continued to blow me away. I was apprehensive, as well. Damn, this was the major league, the big house, the real penitentiary. It was the ultimate test of faith, courage, and strength.
I was taken up two flights of stairs to the second tier and walked down. I got mad-dog stares from every occupant in the tiny cells along the way. New Afrikans, Chicanos, and Americans, all in single-man cells. I was put in 2-East-26. My neighbor in 25 was an American, and to my right in number 27 was a Chicano.
Once I got in my cell the handcuffs were removed. There was a bed—with bedsprings that could be used to make ice-pick knives—a sink, and a toilet. There were two circular vents, one above the sink and another below it.
The American and the Chicano were talking to each other, seemingly about nothing in particular. But just by hearing them talk I knew that the Chicano was a Southern Mexican and the American was a Nazi (the Unholy Alliance). I began to feel around under the bed for loose metal, something I could pull or yank out that I could fashion into a weapon for spearing. Might as well start my time here off right. One of these cats is going to get speared.
I found a piece of metal loose enough to get my hand under, so I slid halfway beneath the bed, braced my foot against the wall, and began to pull violently. Heave-ho, heave-ho. Back and forth I pulled until it moved with ease under pressure. Just a few… more… plink! And I had it—a piece of bed railing eleven inches long. Now I had to sharpen it, get some newspaper, and roll me up a spear. I’d attach the blade and then just wait for either the Surrat or the Mzungu (European) to come out.
“Hey, twenty-six?”
The American and Chicano went silent.
“Hey, twenty-six?”
Twenty-six… that was me. Someone was calling my cell number.
“Hey, twenty-six?!”
“Yeah.”
“Get that line in front of your cell.”
I looked out on the tier and a clear medicine bag with a white, thin line attached to it was in front of my cell, so I retrieved it.
“Pull it,” said the sender.
Attached to the line was a kite. I opened it and read.
Salamu Ndugu,
Where did you come from? I am Li’l Bit from Bounty Hunter. Next to you is an A.B. and on the other side is an E.M.E. Stay up, stay alert.
Blood Love,
Li’l Bit
“Hey, Li’l Bit.”
“Yeah?”
“I need a pen to get back.”
“All right, pull the line.”
I retrieved the pen and wrote back telling him that I was Sanyika from C.C.O. and that I came from Soledad. I told him of his people from Bounty Hunter who were down there and I added that I planned to bust on my neighbors at the first opportunity. He wrote back telling me to hold on that, he had to get to his tier captain. He withdrew his line from my cell and flung it down the tier toward the front with an ease that came from experience. When he pulled his line back, there was another line attached to it. He told me to grab it. I was now plugged into the tier captain. He told me to pull, and I reeled in his line. There was another kite attached to the end. It read:
Hujambo Sanyika,
I am Italo from the Black Guerrilla Family. Perhaps you know some of my tribesmen? All your people are in the back. We, B.G.F. and B.L., have a peace treaty with the A.B. and E.M.E. on this tier. I suggest that you get at your folks about a cell move.
In struggle,
Italo
Peace treaty? What was that? I wrote him and said that I overstood about their agreement with the Brands and the Flies, but C.C.O. ain’t got no treaty with them. But out of respect for the brothas on the tier, I wouldn’t jeopardize them. He then sent me Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, which was no good to me because I couldn’t read that well. And at that time, Franz seemed very, very heavy to me. I tried, nevertheless, and continued to fashion my weapon.
Three days later I was moved to the back bar, where my comrades were. I was put in cell 2-East-54. All around me were comrades and allies. My neighbor in 53 was Lunatic Frank from Rollin’ Sixties. Lunatic and I were in the Boy Scouts together in ’73. He and I were friends. We had saved each other’s lives during our participation in the war.
He and his homies, Pie Face and Ronnie Pace, had caught China and me on Denker and Seventy-fourth Street one night when I was not strapped. We had been at my house making love and she wanted to go home. I was walking her there, pushing Li’l Monster’s bike as we went, when they rolled up on us in Pie’s Monte Carlo.
“Damn, Sixties,” I whispered to China. “Just be cool.” They jumped out of the car.
“Well I’ll be damned,” said Pie Face. “If it ain’t the Bonnie and Clyde of Eight Tray—Monster Kody and China.”
“What’s up, Pie?” I said. I knew all of them.
“Monster, you packin’?” asked Lunatic.
“You know I am,” I shot back, lying.
“Cuz, that nigga ain’t got no gun. Let’s smoke these tramps and get outta here,” Ronnie Pace said vehemently.
“No, wait, hold it. I got a better idea,” added Pie. “Let’s take China from Monster.”
“Let her go, man, she ain’t got nuttin’ to do wit’ what we got goin’ on,” I said.
“Fuck that—” began China, but was cut off by Lunatic.
“Man, this bitch been puttin’ mo’ work in than a li’l bit. If we take her we can’t leave Monsta.”
“So what’s up?” asked Pie.
“Let’s do ’em, man,” said Ronnie Pace, looking around nervously.
“Naw, I’ll tell you what. You and Monsta go head up, Ronnie.”
“What?” said Ronnie, as if not hearing right. “Head up? This nigga didn’t go head up wit’ our homies he caught slippin’. Ain’t no head up in war,” he shouted and drew his weapon. “And he ain’t got no gun, ’cause he would have already shot us.”
Ronnie was scared to fight me, and I zeroed in on that and used it.
“Yeah, I’ll go head up wit’ cuz,” I said.
“I’m a killa, not a fighter,” he shot back. “Now either we kill these two—”
“Let’s go,” said Lunatic, interrupting Ronnie. “You owe me one, Monsta… you too, China,” he said over his shoulder. And they got in the car and drove off.
China and I did an about-face, went back to my mom’s house, and constructed a plan of attack.
Not three weeks later, Tray Stone came around the corner on Eightieth and Halldale with Lunatic on the barrel of his gun—a prisoner of war. Tray Stone was the happiest I had ever seen him. He wanted everyone to see his prisoner.
“Let him go, Stone,” I said grudgingly.
“What?!” said Stone, not believing he’d heard correctly.
“I owe cuz one. Turn him loose.”
“Damn, cuz, but this Lunatic Frank.”
“I know who he is. Let him go.”
“Can I just shoot him in the leg, or knock his teeth out?”
“Naw, he let me and China pass one night, so I owe him.”
“Shit!” exclaimed Stone. And that was that.
Now, six years later, he was my neighbor. He went by the name Akili Simba and was C.C.O. On the other side of me was a Northern Chicano named Curly.
That first night Akili and I talked all night long on the “telephone,” which was made out of a television cable. He had pulled all the wiring out of the black rubber skin, and we used it for private conversations between cells.
The next day I had to turn my paperwork over to the intelligence officer of C.C.O. so he could make sure I wasn’t a rat. To those I didn’t know I introduced myself as Sanyika, and I instructed those who knew me as Monster to call me by my Kiswahili name. The transformation had begun, and I made a conscious effort to make attachments, connections.
Akili and Kubwa Simba—Leebo from Front Hood, and my closest comrade—helped me sharpen my Kiswahili to a fine point. Within nine months I had a small class of my own. My education at San Quentin was made easy because there were New Afrikans who cared. Asinia taught me the necessity of mathematics, Taliba taught me to recognize our culture as being distinct from Americans, and Zaire (not the same man as my co-defendant) taught me to be scientific. These brothas were Crips—C.C.O., scholars, and theoreticians.
No English was spoken over the tier after six P.M. No foul language was permitted or used in reference to New Afrikan women or men. We had a mandatory study period from seven A.M. to twelve noon. The study period was also a quiet period where no talking was allowed. Seven A.M. also heralded the “alert” period, when every soldier was to be up and out of his kitanda (bed) and dressed. At nine P.M. the alert period ended.
Around this time, Tamu had somehow tracked down Dick Bass, and he’d given her his address to pass on to me. I tried to write to him, but found the pain too great. I began the first page with the normal greeting, but then, naturally, the questions started to surface: Where have you been? and Why did you abandon me? Eventually it came to I needed you, man, and you weren’t there for me and It’s people like you who contribute to the destruction of people like me. As the questions flowed, so did the pain, heart-wrenching pain that made me feel emotionally unstable. I didn’t know how to write things down at the time, to communicate my feelings.
I wasn’t able to finish the letter, just mailed it half-finished, like his fatherhood had been to me. He never wrote back, which didn’t surprise me at all. Through this I learned that I had to be a real father to my own children, no matter what. The pain I was experiencing because of my parents’ promiscuity and father’s lack of responsibility was not something I wanted my children to feel.
Blue June was slated as a month to remember the fallen soldiers and citizens of the C-Nation. We went to the small S.H.U. yard three times a week—mandatory for all soldiers—and ran while doing the Universal Crip cadence. Then we’d exercise and fall into our classes. Only after this could we play basketball or lift weights. After ten months I began to lead the exercises. I quickly made the transition from soldier to sergeant of arms to intelligence officer.
I believed in what we were doing. I was introduced to Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-tung, Amilcar Cabral, Ho Chi Minh, Kim II Sung, and George Jackson. My reading picked up, and so did my writing skills. We were given a test on the contents of each book we read and were expected to write a book report about it. The reviewers were stern, and there was no favoritism. I failed so many times that it’s not even funny. I kept at it, though, and in time became one of the sharpest in the cadre.
Muhammad kept writing and sending me literature, which helped a lot. He sent one pamphlet called Were Marx and Engels White Racists?, which I thought was outstanding. Here were Marx and Engels, blowing about internationalism while neglecting to include the majority of the world’s people, who were of color.
We all considered ourselves communists in the C.C.O. Once, when I asked the unit if communism wasn’t actually a Eurocentric philosophy, they jumped all over me as if I had committed blasphemy. As I learned, communism as practiced in the Soviet Union was Eurocentric, and Soviet internationalist duty was looking more and more like imperialist conquests.
But I still wanted to know what movement we were attached to, and I complained to the cadre commanders about it. What was our goal as an organization, and who were we trying to liberate? This is where their knowledge fell short. No one was thinking that far ahead. No one realized that the future was three minutes ahead of us, not light years away. As Tamu says, with everything I do I try to do my best, and rightfully so. I am an extremist, so I took our revolutionary premise seriously.
As I grew and my consciousness expanded I began to see cracks and faults in our structure. We were making the same mistakes that the Black Panthers had made. We were importing revolutionary ideals, trying to apply them to our setting. In this light, those who could quote Marx, Mao, or Comrade George the most were the sharpest. It began to irritate the hell out of me. Nothing was corresponding with concrete conditions, and we had no mass appeal. On top of this, our troops sent back out into Babylon were falling prey to parochialism and tribalism.
One such case that caused a problem was that of Mumbles from the Sixties. He was supposed to try to get his homies to stop clockin’ our ’hood, in an attempt to slow down the war. But Mumbles fell back into bangin’ and was clocked on Florence and Normandie. The homies stepped to him and he dissed the ’hood. He was executed.
In response, my young homie Joker’s door was kicked in, and his innocent sixty-five-year-old mother and fourteen-year-old brother were deliberately murdered. Because Mumbles was C.C.O., they put a blue light on Joker, who had supposedly executed Mumbles. I argued that C.C.O. couldn’t blue-light any uncultured Crip for killing a comrade who was in the wrong. Joker was involved in the war and had no idea of what C.C.O. was at that time. He was not responsible to us, but Mumbles was. Mumbles was out of bounds, clocked and tagged in a free-fire zone. If anyone should have been blue-lighted it was the cowards who murdered Joker’s people.
It was things like this that caused me to question the leadership of the organization. Also, we had to contend with the new Crip organization—the Blue Notes. They saw themselves as traditionalists and saviors of the Crip culture. The organization was started on death row by Treacherous and Evil from Raymond Avenue Crips, and was supposedly headed by Tookie. B.N.C.O. (Blue Note Crip Organization) gave uncultured Crips an alternative to the rigid, more disciplined organization of CCO., which they accused of being too much like the B.G.F.’s. They further accused the C.C.O. leadership of abandoning the protocols of Crip terrorism for some unattainable revolutionary utopia. The B.N.C.O. blossomed quickly, because it appealed to the patriotic sense of Cripping. They also had such stalwart generals as Tookie, Treach, and Evil, who are all extremely smart and courageous.
Other maladies befell the leadership at Folsom, where the Mexican mafia was winning the war. Two Hoovers were stabbed for bringing unsanctioned weapons to the yard. Tony Stacy charged the Central Committee with tribalism and called for all Hoovers in the state to resign from C.C.O. That was a big blow to the organization. Imagine all the Americans pulling out of the Democratic party. The fatal blow came when the Central Committee agreed to a peace treaty with the Mexican mafia, then turned around and declared war on the Blue Notes. The Hoovers sided with the B.N.C.O. and shit began to fall apart.
San Quentin was exempt from none of this. The B.N.C.O. took off and stabbed Kidogo, Rabbit, and Roho. The Hoovers stabbed Notchie and Taliba. The C.C.O. struck back and stabbed Glen, Kencade, and Spark. Shit got crazy, fast. I cut my bed up for weapons with a hacksaw blade but was caught by a snooping pig. They charged me with destruction of state property and billed me $180 for the bed.
I went to my hearing the same day the pigs killed Weusi, a Blood from Pasadena, for defending himself against a Southern Mexican, who was also shot and killed. I refused to sign the trust withdrawal to pay for the bed by saying, “I don’t make deals with terrorists who shoot and kill Afrikan people.” The pig turned dark red and told the escort pigs to lock me up.
The most important connection I made was through Muhammad, with the New Afrikan Independence Movement. I received the New Afrikan ideological formulation material and it redeemed me. It gave me answers to all the questions I had about myself in relation to this society. I learned about how our situation in this country was that of an oppressed nation, colonized by capitalist-imperialists. The science was strong and precise. I saw then that all the talk of the C-Nation was actually an aspiration of our nationalistic reality. Once I overstood the New Afrikan ideology and pledged my allegiance to the Republic of New Afrika’s independence, I began to see Cripping in a different light. There was a faction in C.C.O. at the time claiming to be revolutionary Crips, but this was contradictory and could not be attained without transforming the criminal ideology of Crip and its relation to the masses of people. So the debate was on.
In 1987 we disbanded the C.C.O. in San Quentin. It had failed to evolve because the leadership had failed to realize that real revolution is futuristic, not static. Muhammad came to see me and we had a good visit. I believe he was seeing my growth. My test would come in the real world of society.
In 1987 I met a sister named Akiba Dhoruba Shakur, whom I affectionately called Adimu. She was a student at Cal State, Long Beach, and an aspiring revolutionary. Muhammad had introduced us through the mail, and she and I began to write and discuss politics and the future. All of my influences were positive. Those that were not, I excluded.
That same year I was let out of the Hole and sent to Folsom. All the generals and Central Committee members were there: Askari, Suma, Imara, Tabari, Sunni, and Talib. The Crip population was totally antagonistic toward them, with the exception of Talib, who became my confidant. He saw things as I did, so I turned him on to the New Afrikan Independence Movement.
After six months of ideological struggle with the others, trying to get them to make the leap with us, Talib and I left the Crips and threw our lot in with the Independence Movement.