I had the privilege of interviewing Ryan Flaco about his experiences in prison. Ryan Flaco is a current UCSB student, majoring in Sociology and minoring in Writing and Social Justice. Flaco is also the co-founder of Underground Scholars Santa Barbara, Urban Scholars Union, and #GangstaNerdz.
I interviewed Flaco because I wanted to provide a personal narrative of someone who lived in prison. Often times, society tends to detach itself from prisons. We see prisons as something we never want to be in. Yet that ignores the reality and experiences of the people that are incarcerated. Therefore, this narrative provides a personal face, name, and story to the problems I have discussed in my previous posts. The interview below exposes the corruption in prisons and the inhumane conditions that incarcerated people must endure. Everything below was said by Ryan Flaco and I did not modify his words.
1.What prison were you in and what were the living conditions?
- I started off in Donovan in San Diego. It was a really nasty prison. The makeup of it was really dirty. It was like a reception yard, so they actually had a lot of folks coming straight in from the streets. They had Tuberculosis, [and there was] a lot of staff infection. A lot of nasty medical conditions. So actually, I got exposed to it [Tuberculosis]. Then they moved me to Ironwood where they gave me the test to see if I had been exposed. My test came back and they had me go in, take this medication and all this stuff to make it dormant. You know, I wasn't understanding of all this but now that I'm in college I get it.
Then they transferred me to Ironwood State Prison. It's out in the middle of Blythe, CA- disgusting. They have swamp coolers and all the dust blows into your cell. It's like 110-115 degrees in the summertime. The swamp coolers in the summertime don't work so you are sweating, having to take multiple bird baths to stay alive. It's like being in a sauna all day long. That prison was nasty, a lot of dust, a lot of dust mites. A really dark place. The location sits around native land, so there's a lot of bad energy. The place is really violent too and the conditions were very dirty. They also took away our trade school due to "funding" in the late 90's.
When I was there [Ironwood] I ended up catching another case because like I said, it was really violent. From there, I went to the segregated housing unit, the SHU. That was one of the worst experiences. I came into a very toxic ongoing battle with the correctional officers at the SHU. They weren't giving out toiletries, soap, toothpowder for weeks when I arrived in 2009. It was a really big power struggle. We ended up having to protest. We had to block our doors after a month and a half to two months without toilet paper. We had to use our socks, using stuff that we had, it was disgusting. On top of that, the swamp cooler wasn't working. So we protested and they came in and extracted all of us from our cells and the next day they gave us all toilet paper because we made a big scene. It made the news, it was pretty big.
From there, I got sent to Salinas Valley State Prison, a death octagon. A lot of inmates died there, it's super violent and a level four prison. The correctional officers are so corrupt. They make money by bringing phones, drugs. Whatever you want you can get from a correctional officer. They had us on lockdown a lot and the messed up part about these lockdowns is that the correctional officers feed you. They give you little portions so you are literally starved for 3-4 months. It's like putting a dog in a cage and giving them a little bit [food] and then taking them out to the yard with the other dogs and letting them go. That is how they treated us at Salinas Valley. They gave us little portions of food and sent out to the yard to fight. Right away there would be a violent fight. They used psychological things to us like that to make us violent. This is state-instituted violence to provoke violence inside. We also went on a hunger strike for 13 days. The correctional officers stripped us of all of our food. The level four maximum security was very much different living wise [in comparison to the smaller cells in Ironwood] but the psychological things they did to us were mental games to create violence.
Then I got in a brutal prison riot with the Northerners, so we ended up getting shipped to Folsom State Prison, a level four maximum-security prison. It was in a transition state so they were doing realignment to even out the yards. This was during Ashker V. Governor of California, a lawsuit against Governor Brown that argued that the health and the makeup of the prison system were cruel and unusual punishment. The lawsuit was won. So, the feds stepped in and asked people to be freed because they were above maximum capacity, which was cruel and unusual punishment. The health of people inside was at risk because of this. The feds told prisons to get this done at a certain time or they'd take over the prison system in California. So, what they [prisons] started to do what ship incarcerated individuals out of state to hide them at private prisons. In 2011, the realignment [as mentioned above] was then used to create conflicts and riots. Correctional officers instigated to provoke us and tried to start riots. 45 days after I got there, we got in a brutal prison riot. I almost got shot in the head twice. I almost lost my life. I remember 23 shots. There was one guy that got shot in the stomach but they tried to say he was stabbed. They never told us about his status but I believe he passed away. After that, we were on lockdown for almost two years and that's when I started to receive college courses. In 2013 we went on another prison hunger strike for 33 days. The correctional officers also took away all of our food. We ate cardboard soups to put something in our stomach. This was my last prison but the conditions were horrific. The food was disgusting, health-wise was disgusting.
Below is a video showing the Folsom Prison riot.
2. Did you experience polluted air and/or water?
Yes. The water was set up so that they [prisons] could kill any inmate in Ironwood State Prison. They have a plant that recycles water, like all the toilet water, that undergoes a filtration system. However, if they don't want to filtrate it and want to let the bacteria come in, they can ultimately kill everyone. It is set up by design like that in case they want to kill everyone. It also allows them to add chemicals in our water. Water-wise, the prisons are set up to kill anyone if they want to. The air is horrible and full of dust. You have to clean your cell every day, at least three times a day. At every prison I was in, every time I wiped my cell down, I had a whole entire towel full of dust. The towel was full of grey tar-looking dust. You continuously must clean your cell to stay alive. A lot of us would rather take bird baths all day than to have the vents open. A lot of us put cardboard on the vents to stop the dust from coming in. We'd rather not have any air conditioning and suffer than to deal with something that could kill us from the vent. There are a lot of folks that do not clean their cells and I watched them get sick and pass away. I saw a lot of folks die due to what is in the air. Also, prisons are positioned next to toxic sites. For example, Salinas Valley State Prison is right next to agricultural fields where they spray pesticides that blow into the prison yard. The pesticides fall on to the people outside in the yard. But this is by design to make us sick. I saw a lot of guys develop rashes and a lot of other skin conditions that result from the pesticides being sprayed next to the prisons. I also started to get dry ears and I recognized rashes coming on my skin. But the doctors neglected us and did not test us. They did not give us the treatment that we needed.
3. Did you hear complaints from others about prison conditions?
I saw a lot of folks die. Prison is no place for diabetics. I saw diabetics die in there. One of my friends had diabetic attacks all day long and because of medical negligence, his cell partner became his doctor. I heard a lot of people complain about throat issues and cancer. One of my homies caught cancer behind his eye while in prison. He did not know where it came from. They sent him to a medical facility to get surgery but he probably died. Also, medical facilities are disgusting. Everyone is crammed together.
4. Would you say prison impacted your health?
I had a lymphoma growth in my head after prison. I thought it cancerous because a lot of people at that time were getting cancerous tumors. I still deal with dry ears and I feel like that was from the pesticides coming in through the vents in Salinas Valley. My message to everyone reading this is to take care of your health [because] your body is your temple. Don't abuse your health. Don't procrastinate on your health because your health is what you need every single day to heal this world while you're here.
5. While you were in prison did you feel like you were frequently sick?
There was a point where I lost a lot of weight. Also, I got sick a lot in Spring for at least a week. I would be dead on my bed.
6. What other injustices related to prison conditions did you experience?
The correctional officers used psychological warfare and state-instituted violence. [For example] They turn people on the yards. They used confidential informants and given them complete immunity in the prison yards. Confidential informants are involved in prison politics and set people up for them to get an add charge. So, they supply people with homemade knives and tell on them. The person then could get another 2-5 years added to their case. It's like a little scheme where confidential informants are able to do what they please as long as they create criminal cases. The confidential informants really created the crimes. The district attorneys depend on in-house cases to exist for budget money. First-hand, I caught an in-house case because of a confidential informant (yard snitch). A lot of people are serving life sentences because of confidential informants setting them up. The state creates violence, drugs, and crime in order for them to increase their budget. They create misery on marginalized communities for their financial gain so that they [can] buy a house and live this lifestyle of middle-class or whatever they want to call it. They keep the marginalized communities as the burden bearers of their success as they step on us and destroy our families.
We need to get rid of capitalism, it's done nothing but divide and conquer all. It's a class war against the poor.
7. Prior to being incarcerated, would you say that you in a community that faced environmental injustices?
Most definitely. This whole entire world is polluted. The water quality is disgusting, especially in inner cities. The air is out of control. We are just not taught how to take care of the world and that should be the #1 teaching. That was the #1 teaching with the indigenous for example; we have to respect this, take what we need. Unfortunately, that isn't taught to us. We are taught "mass consume, eat, eat, throw away this and that." We are not taught how to live off the land with what we need. We are not taught how to take care of the land.
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