email info@socialistviewpoint.org

Behind Bars

Pelican Bay

By Kevin Cooper

Throughout the history of this world all people have had to fight at one time or another for their survival. Not to do so would be to go against nature. Remember, the number one law of nature is survival!

Certain people, especially those who are hell bent on “oppressing, regressing, depressing, and out-right undressing” the people that they are oppressing, seem to forget this fact. So whenever poor people stand up for their right to be treated as the human beings that they are, and not the animals that they are told that they are, there seems to be a problem!

As Frederick Douglass once stated, “Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them: and these will continue until they are resisted.”

As long as the oppressed prisoners in Pelican Bay did nothing, said nothing, and ate their nasty prison food like good little prisoners, “Everything was fine,” in the eyes of the oppressors! But as soon as they said, “No More,” then something was terribly wrong!

Historically, certain people, regardless of their skin color, culture or religion have shown us that if they were going to die at the hands of their oppressors, or be treated so badly that they wished that they were in fact dead; then they would die fighting for something that is much bigger than the oppressor, and that something is “Humanity.” If a person has nothing in life to die for, then they truly are not living. For one’s life to have meaning, a purpose, one has to get involved with something that is also bigger than oneself, and fight for their “Human Rights” and by doing this the “Struggle will continue....”