B. Cayenne Bird has been a California Journalist for 37 years.  She is the volunteer director of United for No Injustice, Oppression or Neglect and publishes the UNION daily newsletter to advocates, families, legislators and media representatives throughout California.  She also hosts a weekly cable television show "Cayenne Common Sense"

Her experience covers newspapers, magazines, television newscasting spanning nearly four decades.  Her son is incarcerated at CSP Lancaster and has been literally tortured in prison. 

I am the director of the coalition sponsoring today's rally United for No Injustice, Oppression 
or Neglect or "U.N.I.O.N." founded in 1998. Our banner was made by a Head Start Teacher and 
her PreSchool class and has sentimental meaning.  Our name states our mission well. 

I have been a California  Journalist and Publisher for 36 years, and have a statewide television 
show on most of the cable Channels called "Cayenne Common Sense." 

What the UNION is actually is a newsletter, a communications system that ties everyone up and does calls to action that make a difference.  We don't just pass email back and forth on the 
internet, we finance campaigns when we can such as this rally today.  There are many advocates 
of smaller groups in the UNION but almost everyone is related to an inmate in prison, jail or 
juvenile hall. 

I am  a grandmother of four and a mother to a son incarcerated in CSP Lancaster, which is 
located exactly 416 miles from where I live, a transfer which was an act of retaliation and to 
keep me  out of the prisons. 

But that is an impossible thing to do, keep me out of the prisons,  because all of us are tied 
together in the UNION communication network with a daily newsletter that tells you when, 
where, how to fight back for yourself and others.  We are behind the walls and do not operate 
from a position  of fear.  They can't torture us all, although my family and especially my son 
has endured more than our fair share of torture for standing up to CCPOA/CDC and beastly 
wardens such as Michael Knowles. 

It is the people of the UNION who report what is happening behind the walls to the legislators 
and 47 journalists who get the newsletter every day in spite of an unlawful ban to keep the 
media out that  violates the first amendment.  We have defied this media ban since 1998 on a daily basis and cooperate fully with the media. 

Our purpose here is to let the legislators know that we demand the immediate release of non 
violent inmates due to inhumane conditions caused by overcrowding.  We are angry as hell at 
the cruel and unusual punishment inflicted on us through neglect and torture of our loved ones 
in prisons and jails.  We want the legislators to GET SMART ON CRIME. 

Our purpose is to alert you, the   taxpayers related to inmates, that these conditions exist and are being financed with your money. 

We are also here to teach others about our battle plan for real action   We hope to garner enough 
support for a massive class action lawsuit for all the unlawful rules changes, especially those 
around visits.  A few thousand people can get together and easily file lawsuits for about $20 
each.  That's seems to be the only language that legislators and CDC understand. 

What we have in our movement is 500 tiny, fractured groups and too few people doing all the 
work and paying for everything.  This inaction by the 3 million people connected to inmates is 
the only reason in the world we have all these problems. In a democracy rules government, the 
largest, most funded groups of voters put their candidates into office.  That's what we fail to do, even though we outnumber everyone. 

So we are stuck with law enforcement's lawmakers, the ones they put into office and buy off to vote for their special interests. 

But we do not need to have the victim mentality.  We can  fight back  because as a voting group, we outnumber everybody who oppresses us. 

We are asking for 2600 intelligent people to get together and help us pay a law firm with the 
ability to win class action lawsuits instead of busting the law practice of a small pro bono 
lawyer who cannot handle it.  Would groups like AARP depend only on charity  legal and 
advocacy work?  No!  Nor should we! 

We are collecting no money now, but if you will get involved and help make this lawsuit possible please sign up at the table over there with -------------------------- 

Besides the trouble with visits, we need to demand help for inmates who are suffering and 
dying at the hands of our lawmakers. Inmates and their families, foster children who will be 
tomorrow's prisoners, have no place to go for help, even  in life and death emergencies. Nobody 
hears our screams.  If they do, legislators seem powerless to do anything about it. That's how 
terrible conditions are at every level of this prison state. 

Here we are paying out billions on juvenile halls, jails, and prisons and they are operating 
completely out of control of the taxpayers who fund them. 

Inhumanity is conducted as business as usual. We see headlines about all the changes but a simple doctor's visit takes months. 

The attitude here at the Capitol is that the wardens and guards are the good guys and everyone connected to an inmate is a liar. 

The media has been much better this year.  They should not stand by and allow themselves to be banned from prisoner access 

This is how these terrible crimes against humanity are committed in taxpayer financed institutions and are allowed to exist while flying under the radar of public knowledge. 

The end result is that voter financed institutions are doing more to create crime than to prevent it. 
People are returning to their communities much sicker than before their incarceration. Few up here under the big top care. "They are only inmates" most, legislators say. 

Inmate abuse and death rarely even make the news. 

I went before the Senate Rules committee last summer and many times in the past years and 
testified against Wardens who were being confirmed. There was no one else representing inmates there except for me. 

I was treated with derision for voicing but a few of the complaints from inmate families. The 
senators didn't want me there.  They not only don't care about what is happening to inmates, they don't even want to hear about it. 

Anyone who complains is a liar. The truth is offensive to them, confronting the evil of this 
prison system is too much of a stretch for those born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Why 
do we put them into rule over us? 

The UNION is here today because we want to change the unbearable callousness and 
incompetence of our legislators and the court system. The only reason in the world things are 
this bad is because there is no official prison reform group with enough voters and funds to rail loudly enough against these inhumane practices. 

Yes, there is a social justice movement that has been going on for 20 years. God bless every 
activist who has gone broke trying to organize the families of prisoners. So many don't 
understand that they outnumber all these other oppressive groups and their pain is coming from 
nothing but better organized voting lobbies than prisoner families, and those groups use the 
government to do their bidding to promote the prison slave industry. 

The prisoners are the pawns in all these ugly little games and the California human bondage 
industry then becomes the largest growth  industry in the United States. Human bondage is our 
main state product.  "What can I do about it?", you ask with your pockets empty and your heart broken. 

Well, here's the plan:  Excessive sentences, wrongful arrests and conviction, prosecutors who 
distort or withhold evidence and have no consequences to them for doing so, psychological 
intimidation and torture to "break" inmates, visiting restrictions which  which punishes children, 
increases in family restitution to half of what you send to your loved one, forced vendor 
packages, continuing medical neglect and unsanitary conditions which cause disease.......we have THOUSANDS of reasons to sue. 

But we cannot do that unless thousands of people contribute to make this possible. Depending 
on volunteers to do this fierce fighting never works out. It is crippling to take the attitude that 
some lawyer, judge or legislator or group without funds is going to rescue you. 

That is never going to happen. We must organize and rescue ourselves by sharing the load across many shoulders. 

There is only 160 days to gather almost a million signatures in an initiative campaign which is the way you change laws , so you don't begin until the funds and volunteers are together. 

Everyone must be committed, trained and ready to go. Other groups do this everyday.  You can do it too. 

That is what we are doing now, putting together supporters. If everyone here teaches this formula to TEN PEOPLE and signs them up in the UNION and they then continue the process and SIGN UP ANOTHER TEN EACH, we could grow in leaps and bounds. 

Our commitment as U.N.I.O.N. members is to: 

1. Write one ten sentence letter to the editor of a local newspaper every week about a current  prisoner news topic. This provides the public with education. 

2. Show up to important hearings and protests when called or send someone to stand in your place. 

3. Legislators seldom read email or mail or respond to it. They do respond to seeing their names in the newspapers and they note how many people come to a protest. If you are silent, they assume that you are happy with current laws and bills. So silence is the worst possible position to take. 

4. We invest time in finding and educating others who will then also write letters to editors and   show up for protests. 

The formula for success goes like this.....  6500 X 200 each totals 1.3 million, that's enough to finance each campaign. 

Both money and people are necessary to do the right actions and at the right time.....IN UNISON ..so our voices are heard loudly by the lawmakers. 

6500 X 200 signatures on each FORMAL initiative passed through the Secretary of State can 
change ANY law or vote out any bad politician. That totals 1.3 million people which is enough to qualify anything for the ballot in our state. 

So 6500 people willing to work a little, about 2 hours per week, can build the voting group required to change any law. 

Think United Farm Workers or any other labor union, that is what is needed. 

.  . Please see our table during and after these events to subscribe to the U.N.I.O.N. daily 
newsletter for less than 8 cents a day ($30  a year so we may continue to bring education and 
active pressure on our lawmakers together by doing campaigns. 

Everyone in the UNION, including me is an unpaid volunteer.  But campaigns cost money, unlike just passing email back and forth to one other which is what most of these groups do. 

There is a huge difference in taking action and holding the legislators accountable by filing lawsuits and just passing email. 

I would like for us all to walk the halls of the legislature today so that you can see the system at work.  Our legislative sponsor is Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg the Democrat from Los Angeles that  has an excellent voting record on our bills. 

Let's not agonize.....let's organize  ...and sue.