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ifoma modibo kambon
I Survived Covid-19 at Folsom State Prison
A story of unaccountable action, negligence, deliberate indifference, and deception
Sep 22, 2020
I am a survivor the terrible disease of Covid-19 at Folsom State Prison. I am a survivor of the terrible negligence and deliberate indifference of individuals responsible for my care. This experience reaffirmed for me that our lives simply don't matter. I am one of the voices and numbers assigned to a cage, a cot, a shelf, in my human warehouse. My legal name is Daryel Burnett. My California Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (CDCR) number is B60892. My physical body has been imprisoned for 46 years. But my spirit is strong, free, and resilient. I too laugh, smile, feel, care, and love. I hold a profound respect for humanity. I am a father, son, brother, uncle, nephew, and friend. I dare to challenge people outside these walls to see and judge me through a humanistic prism.
How did this event occur? Previously at Folsom, different buildings were quarantined and isolated as a result of a staff person testing positive. But this time it was different. People said that a staff person who had worked at San Quentin was the host for the spread of the virus. That staff person was released into the general population.
It is easy to give the excuse that custodial and medical staff did the best they could do under the circumstances. But I beg to differ. Days before the outbreak became huge, prisoners were complaining about symptoms they were experiencing: shortness of breath, muscle pain, coughing, loss of a sense of smell or taste. They were simply dismissed and thrown back into their cages. This led to the spread of the virus.
"My physical body has been imprisoned for 46 years. But my spirit is strong, free, and resilient."
What sense does it make for medical and custodial staff to send someone back to their cell who is suffering from all the symptoms of COVID-19? One of these individuals who complained of symptoms was placed in a cell right above me. He was later given a Covid-19 test and the result was positive. He was then placed into tent city, a set of tents for people who tested positive.
I was awakened at 10:00 pm on August 6th to the banter of men saying that they were going to be moved to another part of the prison because they had been exposed to Covid-19. Until I fell asleep, I listened to their fears and concerns. They talked about what they believed was the source of the virus. It didn't take a rocket scientist to reach a scientific conclusion that either custodial, or medical staff, were responsible for infecting us with the virus. By now their neglect and indifference has led to hundreds of men at Folsom State Prison being infected.
On the morning of August 7th, mealtime was announced over the speaker as if nothing had happened. Why wasn't the prison immediately put on lock down after a test came back positive? Why take the risk of more prisoners becoming infected?
In my view these actions were negligence. Common sense should have been exercised, and medical staff should have informed custodial staff of the likelihood of an outbreak. After mealtime, where I probably became infected, I walked down the hallway to receive my morning medications. I asked a nurse whether they were going to test everyone in the building for Covid-19. The reply was, probably not, since it was Saturday and there weren't enough medical staff in the prison. Returning to my cell, all of the prisoners who were certified to work were let out to clean up the prison. This contributed to a massive outbreak of Covid-19. Our lives didn't matter.
Finally, on the evening of Saturday, August 8th the prison was put on lock down. Instead of the hand-crafted masks we had previously been given to wear--now that we had tested positive--we were given medical masks to wear. The building went on total lockdown. Staff were given medical masks and shields to cover their faces.
Finally, on Monday August 10th all prisoners in two buildings were tested. Hours later the exodus began of all those who tested positive to the outside tents that warehoused people. I was one of the first of the men to be moved to tent city. I was there for 14 days of isolation.
There is simply no logical or rational explanation for how in a few hours over two hundred men would be infected with Covid-19. It took seven days for a local news outlet to report on Covid-19 at Folsom State Prison. This made it seem that there was a concerted effort to suppress the information. Seven days later, helicopters were allowed to fly over the prison to see the new tent city.
I am mistrustful of the men and women responsible for our immediate care. Many of them judge our worth as human beings to be no more valuable than that of a chicken or a mule. We are viewed by society through the prism of a cage, a number, a dollar sign, or a statistic. We have been ostracized, degraded, and dehumanized, while we dare to demand to be treated like human beings.
I survived Covid-19 and I survived the incredible neglect of the CDCR. The struggles continue. My small voice is dedicated to all human life which is lost in this wasteland of fragmented minds, lost souls, and defeated spirits. We must remember the old abolitionist Fredrick Douglass' warning that "power conceded nothing without a struggle, it never did an did never will."
May the living be inspired by hopeful vision and the struggle for a new humanity. It is always out of doing that possibilities are created, and strong courageous minds are forged. The prison remains on lock down.
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Bring Back Pell Grants for Prisoners
There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country’s prisons who could benefit from educational opportunities
Mar 13, 2019
When I was in working on my PhD in philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, I paid for part of my education by teaching in prison. For me it was an incredibly rewarding experience. It was great working these students who had time to read and think, and wonder in the deep ways that philosophy encourages. On the first day of my first political philosophy class, as we sat down to read Plato's Republic, I started by saying that the book was about the nature of justice. Within seconds we were off to a serious philosophical conversation with a student asking "What makes you think that justice exists?" So began a deeply engaging, philosophically rich, and intellectually challenging teaching experience.
That program allowed inmates to receive a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts from the University of Massachusetts. The degree did not say anything about prison on it. Administrators for the program claimed that there was a 2% recidivism rate for its graduates. The program was funded in large part by Pell Grants. Pell Grants began in 1965 and they continue to this day to be the core sources of money for college for millions of low-income students. I finished my undergraduate education at UC Berkeley as a self-funded older student, and it was Pell Grants that allowed me to do so.
In spite of its incredible success, UMass' prison education program was ended a few years after I left in 1990.
In 1994, congress outlawed giving Pell Grants to prisoners. This was the height of the "get tough on crime rhetoric," which saw Democrats trying to look as tough as Republicans to play on the racial fears which had been whipped up by the War on Drugs. President Bill Clinton was a leader in that political strategy on the Democrats' side. If you look at the arguments that were made at the time to discontinue offering Pell Grants to prisoners, none of them had to do with the efficacy of the program, in human or economic terms. Rather, the focus was on the fact that it was morally wrong to give money for college to prisoners because they did not deserve those resources.
It turns out that a financial argument could not have been made to cut the program. According to a 2016 study by the RAND Corporation, "Every dollar invested in correctional education saves nearly five in reincarceration costs over three years." The Prison Study Project argues that in addition to the cost savings benefits, prisoners in educational programs are less likely to engage in violence and other destructive actions, and there is a positive effect on the children of those who are incarcerated. The War on Drugs and mass incarceration have been shown to have been fueled by cynical attempts of politicians to whip up fears in the electorate. Now that that fever seems to be subsiding, it is time to restore the ability of people who are incarcerated to receive Pell Grants.
In recent years California has been taking some good steps in educating people in prison. In 2014 California passed Senate Bill 1391 which allows community colleges to offer instruction in prisons, rather than just on line. Cerro Coso College been a leader and has taken up that opportunity with amazing success. According to Gabriel Thomson, in academic year 2018/19 "10 full-time and 36 part-time Cerro Coso instructors will teach more than 1,200 inmates at CCI and another state prison located in Kern County, the California City Correctional Facility...The results have been striking: In the fall of 2018, nearly 5,000 inmates from all security clearance levels took face-to-face college courses."
California's innovation is impressive, but that SB 1391 did not come with extra funding for staff to run the program, and students must pay for their own books, a huge barrier to expansion.
Some progress was recently made in terms of education in Federal prisons with the "First Step Act," one of the few pieces of bipartisan legislation enacted since Trump was elected. According to the Marshall Project, the act requires "the Bureau of Prisons to match people with appropriate rehabilitative services, education and training opportunities There is no limit on how many credits they can earn. Job training and education programs in prison would get $375 million in new federal funding."
While this act is a good "first step," it only applies to Federal Prison, and it only sets out broad mandates. It does not offer funding to pay for educating our incarcerated population.
For the past two years, I have been corresponding with Ifoma Modibo Kambon. He is presently doing a life sentence in California and was in solitary confinement for over 25 years. He and I collaborated on an article published in CommonDreams in 2017, "Holding onto Your Humanity in Solitary Confinement: On the Pain and the Pathology of the Security Housing Unit." In addition to being a writer, and an educator in prison, Ifoma has been working for years to challenge California's overuse of solitary. As a result of a strong prisoner solidarity movement, a successful lawsuit, and a historic prisoner led hunger strike, since 2012 2,500 prisoners have been released from California's SHU. Work is being done to completely eliminate the practice in the state.
Ifoma has worked hard to gain an education for himself while incarcerated in California, and he was done a lot to educate others. He is currently work on his AA. Here is what he says about the importance of education in prison:
Education is Freedom. Education in prison provides the opportunity for men and women across every region of the country to embark on a transformational process that enriches the soul, creates vibrant spirits and most importantly makes fertile the minds of the landscape for planting seeds of hope, mental liberation, rehabilitation, redemption, and compasses to guide direct and shape one's humanity.
It took me many years to discover the power of education as a viable solution to the problem of being victimized by ignorance, illiteracy, dumbing down, lack of self-respect, pride, complacency and a host of self-manufactured excuses for self-imposed limitations. I learned that it is always by engaging in reflection that we can discover our potential, possibilities and worth. Education has put me on a path of rebirth as a human being. When I began my education, I began to explore and discover a whole new world. No longer was I like the frog who accidentally fell into a well, and looking upwards, imagines the size of the world to be the circumference of the well.
Growing up I was trapped by my own environment which stunted my development and growth. I came to see education as more than rote memorization of dates, and dates, and names. It was a journey to discover self and the world. Books became my windows to learning about self and the world.
In prison there is a saying that the best place to guard a secret is to put it in a book. But for me, books became food for my soul, sustaining me during all of the chaos that occurs while doing prison time. Each page kindles my curiosity and imagination. I became an explorer. Books help me to account for my past and present motivation and shortcomings.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X was my inspiration to learn in prison. It demonstrated for me the possibility of change and redemption. So far, my education meant change through self-reflection. I began to see myself under the wider rainbow of humanity. I tried to tell people about abolitionist Frederick Douglass' desire to read and write when it was a crime to teach a slave. I reminded prisoners of the many people who died or were beaten so that they could read.
I was a high school dropout and received my high school diploma in prison. Four decades later I was allowed to sign up for college classes. And yet after that, year after year, I was denied access to college. At the age of 63 I have tried to be a beacon of light as a positive example. I have been instrumental in teaching people how to read and write. The problem with the college system is the cost. Most of us come from poor neighborhoods and are unable to afford to buy books. There would be more prisoners in school if we had better access to opportunities to study.
There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country's prisons who, like Ifoma, could benefit from educational opportunities. And most of them will be released back into society at some point. Removing the limitation on Pell Grants and allowing the funding to be used for funding programs and materials, as was the case before 1994, would make an incredible difference in the lives of people incarcerated across the country. It would save money, it would have a positive impact on the devastated communities from which most of our nation's incarcerated people come from, and it would lead to the human development of some of the most oppressed people in our society.
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Holding onto Your Humanity in Solitary Confinement
On the pain and the pathology of the Security Housing Unit
Nov 07, 2017
Introduction:I first met Ifoma Modibo Kambon through my friend Sharon Martinas. Sharon is part of PLEJ (Power, Love, Education and Justice), a project of Human Rights Pen Pals. PLEJ is a collaboration between incarcerated people in California and allies on the outside, to bring the wisdom of incarcerated people to classrooms.
I correspond with Ifoma and read his letters to my classes at De Anza College. Recently he sent me a piece of writing he did about the struggle to maintain his humanity while in solitary confinement, called the SHU (Security Housing Unit) in California.
Long term solitary confinement is being increasingly seen as a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and as torture. California has been notorious for its levels of mass incarceration and for its overuse of solitary confinement. As a result of a strong prisoner solidarity movement, a successful lawsuit, and a historic prisoner led hunger strike, since 2012 2,500 prisoners have been released from California's SHU. Work is being done to completely eliminate the practice in the state.
As you will see in his essay, Ifoma was first sent to the SHU for a minor infraction. Once a person is in the SHU, it is extremely difficult to get out without becoming an informant for the system. And so Ifoma was in the SHU for 38 years.
If you are interested in connecting with Human Rights Pen Pals, you can go find them at humanrightspenpals.org/plej/. If you'd like to write to Ifoma, you can reach him at:
Ifoma Modibo Kambon
[Daryel Burnett]
#B 6089
CSATF SP C3 -218
PO Box 5246
Corcoran, CA 93212
Prison mirrors society, surrounded by a landscape of electrified barbed wire fences, warning signs for trespassers and gun towers are concrete structures of pathological incubators which breed psychological trauma. This experience was especially true for thousands of men subjected to decades of prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation in a restrictive environment. Not a single individual was unaffected or immune from the state's repressive program of behavior modification. In its extremity, the mind is decapitated from the body, the body decapitated from the spirit. 'Pathology of the SHU' is based on my personal observations and reflections on the systemic mental incapacitation of other human beings. Borne out of the initial shock of imprisonment, a dehumanizing process set in motion an idea that regarded some human beings' worth or value to be less than other human beings.
Their personhood became less valuable than a chimpanzee imprisoned at the local zoo. Stripped of the moral or ethical values of our human identity, our lives became viewed from within the prism of a concrete cage. The moral justification in considering prisoners as less than a human person is based on the pseudo-science of criminology. This is the same science that determines what constituted criminology by the measurement of a person's skull or smile. We became 'worst of the worst' without any redeemable qualities.
Decades of being warehoused inside an unnatural environment produced unnatural thoughts and behavior. Captivity robs us of identity. Think for a moment about the common threads between prisons, circuses, and zoos. Such an approach will provide a better understanding of how many men lost their human spirit. The commonality between the three is the feature of denaturing. People by their very nature are social beings. Both their individual and collective identity is formed through their interaction with other people within a social context. What this basically means is who we are as human beings is forged by the reciprocal nature of our basic needs, wants, and desires. How we work and play with each other, how we cooperate with each other in building networks, families, and other types of relationships. So it's easy to see how this environment breeds internal emotional conflicts and psychological damage. Its effect on humans is the transformation of some men into a domesticated, docile, passive new species.
Imagine living in an unnatural environment where any social interaction doesn't produce experience or knowledge that has some utility or value. Experience is only limited to the past in the form of meaningless, senseless stories with no productive value. Our individual struggle is how to make ourselves meaningful and relevant both inside and outside these walls, especially when our physical, social, mental, and spiritual needs are controlled by administrations of these human warehouses. My struggle is maintaining my self-respect, respect for others, dignity and integrity when everything around us stinks of broken minds and rotting flesh.
So my story is about how human beings became invisible and different. It wasn't until my experiences at Folsom and San Quentin that I began to seriously take note of the psychological effects prison life was having on other prisoners. I began to reflect on all the horrors I personally observed. I concluded that the dependency complex is the source of the psychosis. At times this complex borders on anxiety, stress, mild depression, frustration and alienation. Often the cause of the complex is putting up with the constant bullshit and denials. How do we cope with the denials and responsibilities of being men, fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins and friends?
The dependency complex also creates disappointment and anger. These reactions were the result of promised visitors that didn't show up, mail that's never received or answered, money orders that were never received, and other bullshit denials. The disappointments led to mood swings, loss of interest and restlessness. Some individuals became so lethargic they took on the behavior traits of a pigeon: eat, sleep and shit in order to pass the time. Others felt hopeless and helpless, losing their spirit to fight. Some chose to deal with their pain by suicide, others chose self-mutilation. I also heard the deafening screams, cries and incomprehensible mutterings of men's minds succumbing to madness. They became victims to the pathological incubator.
In order to talk about my 38 years of being warehoused inside the security housing unit (SHU), I was given a 9 month SHU term for a rule infraction, ultimately being warehoused in SHU indefinitely. I was told by the administrators of these golden gulags that I was a threat to inmates, staff and the security of the institution.
I am always asked how did I survive decades of solitary confinement. The SHU back then was structured like a university or school of higher learning. It was an environment that gave me guidance, direction and purpose. It was during this era that gave birth to a new political conscious. I began to learn about human rights, liberation movements, history, world events, justice, racism, women's rights. etc. The environment was conductive to learning and teaching, because each one of us was held accountable for our actions. During day time hours, we had quiet periods in which no talking over the tier was allowed. This time was used for self-reflection. There was a quiet period for both study and exercising. No time was loud, disrespectful conversations permitted over the tier. We existed as a community. It was here I rediscovered my humanity, and it was here we practiced community values. I was introduced to the book Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcom X showed me the possibility of change, transformation and redemption. The possibility of rebirth.
My early education in SHU challenged me to think before acting, and made me understand that our strengths and courage are forged by our willingness to not be afraid or undaunted by challenges or difficulties.
But this is not to say I was unaffected by the psychological sufferings of other prisoners. The continued years in SHU produced migraine headaches, for others it marked the endless engagements in self-dehumanizing acts. I can recall waking up some mornings so stressed out that the veins in my head were fighting over the flexing championship of my mind. Physically I was beginning to undergo internal changes that neither 'will' or 'determination' were able to resist. Some prisoners who were experiencing the same impulses acted differently. They reacted by throwing food, feces, urine and kicked on the cell doors, exemplifying the behavior of a caged animal who is now on display at the local zoo.
In order to cope with the stress, I adopted a vigorous program of exercise, meditation, reading and playing chess. As time passed, even the infallible prisoners who through using constructive physical and mental exercises in restraint, found themselves expressing bitterness and anger. My only way of doing time had been interrupted, my tolerance snapped. I began hollering at those who I classified as fools, telling them to shut up or hang themselves. The noise was nerve-racking and disruptive to say the very least. Somehow my own humanity was under assault. I became argumentative with folks suffering mental problems. Instead of separating people suffering from mental trauma, the administrators mix them in with other prisoners. No one became immune from the psychological incubator.
The past always informs the here and now, so I am never forgetful of the horrors at Vacaville State Prison, where medical experiments were conducted on human bodies. Prisoners became guinea pigs for drug research and testing. Years later, these experiments took on a new form: behavior modification. It became a manufactured virus that was unleashed in the prison environment which produced mindless zombies, broken bodies. After being targeted and selected for extreme psychological torture, I was sent to Pelican Bay. The germ unleashed into the environment was called Boogey Man. It was based on fear-mongering that led to the moral justification to subject human beings to solitary confinement and sensory deprivation. Their strategy was to break the minds and spirits of men viewed as a threat to inmates, staff and security of the institution.
The classification committee's job it is to determine whether a SHU prisoner is eligible for placement in general population. The only possible eligibility for placement in the general population placement was our willingness to submit to the classification terms for release. These terms are anchored to a process which entails informing (snitching) on prisoners by prisoners. Information may not be new or true. Year after year, decade after decade we were exposed to pathological conditions that ruin hundreds of minds.
Can you imagine being invisible, without a voice?
Can you imagine being constantly told that the only way to gain relief from these conditions is if we debrief by becoming informants?
Hundreds of men chose this path rather than suffer prolonged isolation, for others it meant becoming invisible. It meant having shit and piss thrown on you by men whose minds succumbed to madness. It meant the screaming and yelling of broken minds. It meant mail never received in its real time and space, because of the gang censors. It meant presumption and fear-mongering became the new regulations. It meant parole denials because we refuse to become rats. It meant the constant bullshit of denials one puts up with daily. It meant no human contact with family or friends. It meant no telephone calls to family and friends. It meant living in a dungeon for decades. It meant being told that the only way to better health care is if we debrief. It meant that we were allowed only a l5-minute phone call when our family member passed away. It meant 15 goddamn minutes to express condolences, listen and talk to people for the first time in decades. It meant living in a prison hundreds of miles from home. It meant having to share a jacket with other prisoners. It meant having to us a dog toothbrush because regular toothbrushes were security threats. It meant constantly appealing to the courts for relief, but being denied time and time again. It meant visitors behind glass, and visitors being subjected to the disrespect of the guards. It meant little children unable to embrace their daddies.
I became tired of being so tired, but kept on pushing. Culture and prison activism were criminalized. It meant the criminalization of dissent. It meant the criminalization of art. It meant the criminalization of assembly, speech and association. It meant through dehumanization we were 'the worst of the worst'. It meant walking everywhere in your shorts or having to squat and cough to go to the yard by yourself. It meant the state paid psychologists supporting the inhumanity of solitary confinement. It meant overwhelming stress from the violence of gun shots and stabbings.
It meant hearing your father's voice for the last time. It meant feeling the guilt of not being there for family and friends in a meaningful way. It meant no phones while you awaited the news no one wants to receive: death phone calls. It meant after a year of not hearing from my mother and when I hear some news about her, she was given two weeks to live, but dies days later. It meant the enormous grief, pain and resiliency of watching my father, mother, sister, son, brother, all die in consecutive years.
This story is about struggle, pain, hope, suppression. Most importantly it is about the men whose spirit, minds, and bodies survived. It was the bond that we had with each other that helped forge the courage and strength to resist the campaign to destroy our minds, bodies and spirits. This story is not only about me, but rather the community of men who understood that there's strength in our commonality of struggle. We put aside our artificial differences and answered the revolutionary call to organize, to put aside our differences and build collective will and purpose. This is for the men who maintain their self-respect, dignity and honor.
In kindred spirit,
Ifoma Modibo Kambon
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