Rebuilding an economic self-empowerment movement after more than 30 years in solitary

by Yafeu Iyapo-I

On Feb. 19, 2016, I was finally released from the Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) out to this fake general population (GP) unit. I’d spent well over 30 years in wholly false and illegal solitary confinement.

After several weeks of careful observations and inquiries about this experimental concentration camp – or neo-non-GP program – I was somewhat shocked to learn that in general population, a) there were almost no stable prisoner operated cultural, historical, social, political, religious nor other educational self-help programs. And b) in particular, there were almost zero self-help economic survival programs or prisoner operated mutual support networks on behalf of both those Black new arrivals to the PBSP’s non-GP units, as well as those still captive Black activist men who were now being released from these extremely isolated human torture chambers.

It will soon become easier and faster for me to help rebuild a far, far, far more effective model of both self-help educational and economic problem solving strategies. Because in reality, some of our own still captive Black men have already spent the past 10, 20, 30 or 40 years being privately mentored to understand why and how best to help free all of our people’s minds from the separate, unequal and knowingly false shackles of white supremacy, institutionalized racism and all other forms of mental bondage or economic neo-slavery.

I need to do some final ink work for a new series of prison-related T-shirt designs and several other proposed fundraising campaigns that I’ve been laboring to self-develop on behalf of our California-based areas of self-help family rebuilding goals. So let me bring these updates to a close.

To the Bay View, thank you for sharing my enclosed thoughts, concerns and other key examples of long neglected and long overdue economic self-empowerment movement rebuilding solutions. I look forward to these good faith opportunities to add my talents and voice to our never-ending struggles for a true sense of racial, social and economic justice.

Join Team Yafeu! Visit www.FreeYafeu.com. Team Yafeu wants you! Enjoy the visual artwork, the books, the movies in the economic self-empowerment movement. I am one of the original members of the New Afrikan Collective Think Tank (NCTT) and an elected Black representative of the Prisoners Human Rights Movement (PHRM). I am also the founder of the Art of Resistance Movement.

Send our brother some love and light: Yafeu Iyapo-I (Leonard N. Alexander), B-72288, PBSP A2-113, P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95532-7500.