Writings by Charisse

The following articles were excerpted from The Fire Inside, the quarterly newsletter of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.

If Walls Could Talk | A Fight Against Bitterness | Is Death the Only Way Out? | The Battle Must Go On | The Pros and Cons of Being a Lead Plaintiff | Blaming the Lawsuit | Does Anyone Care | The Community of Women Inside | Homophobia Behind Prison Walls | Women Prisoners Tell It Like It Is | Is Medical Run By the Grim Reaper? |

If Walls Could Talk, June 1996

I, Charisse Shumate, wish I could be there with you because, as you grow in numbers for us behind the walls of CCWF, the big cover up is going on inside. Now, for those who ask why should they care or believe we are asking for "Cadillac care," if we were allowed to have video cameras or tape recorders, the truth could be seen or heard about the junk yeard care we receive. The sad part is why were we, who are mothers, daughters, sisters and grandmothers, compared to a car? Is it because they have forgot we are human? If walls could talk we would not have to beg for help. Please, it could be your best friend that dies behind the walls of CCWF.

We made a mistake, one that we are paying for. But for those who believe we must pay with our lives, may god bless you, because he sees our cries, our pain, how women are locked alone in rooms to lay and no one to check on them or told to go back to their unit, they are not in a life threatening situation. For those who don't know how to help, just pray for us. Once again, until there is no breath in my body, I will roar the words HELP stop the killing because we are the forgotten ones.
 

Thank you so very much for the newsletter and your friendship, love and support. My health seems to be on a downhill stroke. I don't fear death-it's being locked away without anyone you love to look at or try to talk to. There's so much I wanted to say to so may of my family and true friends. Now it's like I know deep inside I will never be able to.

There are a few good staff here who have not forgotten that we are human, who know and see the truth. But I have seen those who try to speak out or make a change get treated just like an inmate, and there are free world staff who are sometimes talked to and treated as if they did not go home at night. The prison system needs a lot of weeding out of the bad apples, just like in the White House. But who has the heart? It's time to not give up making a change. So many paroled but never tell the truth, good or bad. I fight not to become bitter and I want you to know that. When times that I could not hear my mother's voice or be a voice to my one and only son, it's people like you that have helped me to believe I am not lost, forgotten, or a walking dead. Thank you. I am sorry that this is how I had to meet great, caring people like you. But I still thank God each day and night.

I don't believe I will be alive without a hematologist. Thank you for all you have done in my behalf. Please, if I should die let it always be known that sickle cell inmates need a hematologist. If not, you have given them a death sentence. There is another sickle cell lifer who is young. I call her my kid. But I am scared for her. Because she has not been real sick or needed a blood transfusion, they don't try to give her any help, and because she has seen what I went through since 1992 at CCWF, she is scared to even let them know when she is sick.

How can they keep up the lies and the cover-up? They say on the copy of my write-up for the parole board that my institutional adjustment in 1994 was above average even without proper medical, no family support or contact like I could have had if I had been granted my transfer to Illinois. I did not ask to be free or for a compassionate release. I don't think I was to be given anything special. If my mother or son dies, I won't be a part of their funeral, because I can't even live in the closest prison to where they are. So much pain, but I still try to be a positive role model inmate, not to give up.

My last Merced County Medical Center visit was 6/30/96. Admitted with a blood count that I needed 3 pints of blood, but during the first pint I was having pain in my right breast where the blood was going in. When I could make a nurse look at what I was talking about, it was too late. My breast was swollen and a dark purple color. They stopped the blood, never to restart it. I found out that only 1/2 of the pint got into my blood stream. The rest was under my skin, to the best of my understanding. Now I return back to CCWF on 7/30/96. My blood count is still low, but because Merced Medical Center has lost the contract, they did not care about trying to give me the blood that was ordered. My right hand is still swollen.

My pain I am trying to deal with. God only knows what our new hospital doctors will do. I am scared of being locked in the treatment center. I have something bad going on inside of my body, but I don't want them to lock me away, because that's what they will do. It can kill my will. I visited there. They can no longer buy canteen items. They are locked in their rooms. I don't know how much longer I can hold on to my Women's Action Council chairperson job with my health the way it is. I have one more year, but I don't think I can do it. Thank you. I really needed to let you know some of what I feel now.
 

I sit and watch the pain and I ask myself, "Is death the only way out?" Now my concerns are no longer for myself but my sisters who I heard died, whom I have seen die. We look into each others' eyes wondering, "which one of us is next?" Please believe the fear is not how, 'cause we already know it will be alone. Not with one loved one beside you or even a long distance phone call. "No, no, that's against prison rules-must be dead first." No one should be treated like that, but we are 'cause it's the rules...

I look into my little warrior sister's eyes, Patty Contreras, and my insides ache. How can anyone say no to letting her have one day of freedom? Does God want this life for us? How can anyone close their eyes at night knowing the inhumane justice that is going on inside. Please HELP! Why has death alone got to be her only way out? Can't anyone with a heart see even God is saying Patty is free? He has forgiven her. Please write the Bureau of Prison Terms. My sister needs to be free of CCWF. She can no longer harm anyone. Otherwise death will be her only way out.
 

As the lead plaintiff of Shumate v. Wilson, I fight hard trying to receive the proper medical care for myself as well as each and every woman here at CCWF, as it seems medical care is on the very back burner of the California Department of Correction's (CDC) list. We now have what is known as the Chronic Care Program here at Central California Women's Facility (CCWF). They are trying to show that they are doing something. We the inmate population ask, "trying to do WHAT? Put us on another waiting list?" If and when you see a doctor he tells you he can only talk to you about whichever of the three chronic care clinics he has been appointed to work that day, so it's still no hematologist for those of us who may suffer with sickle cell, lupus and other blood diseases. The faces keep changing in the medical department. It seems no one is here to stay.

Now ask me why is the battle so important to me and I ask you, is life not important to each and every one of us? What I see within the CDC medical care is a living nightmare that must be changed. For all of those who have helped to try to get this changed, please DON'T give up. For all of you who want to help, please join in. We need you. And for all of those who feel we have nothing coming, I stay in prayer for you to have a change of heart.
 

I write from my heart and the experience of a battle that I took on knowing the risk could mean my life in more ways than one.

First of all, have an open mind and trust in God to give you the wisdom and strength. As lead plaintiff, staff will very seldom have any thing good to say to you or about you. Medical staff will feel like you are a threat only when they know that they are not doing their jobs the way they should. So you are labeled as a trouble maker. Now your peers with medical concerns will want you to be able to get them immediate help.

Beware that you have all the facts and as much proof as you can get your hands on. Never give up your only copy of anything and keep close records because CDC also labels you as a liar. Now please don't give up. When times get rough hold your head up and know that you may be free or dead if you have acute medical needs yourself before you see the change that we fight so hard for. But stay in peace with yourself that you are doing the right thing. It's not a me thing; it's a we thing, and together with the Dream Team and the help of CCWP there is light at the end of the tunnel.

And yes, I would do it all over again. If I can save one life from the medical nightmare of CCWF Medical Department then it's well worth it.
 

Why do so many things seem to have gotten worse? I, Charisse Shumate, took part in this battle because it's something I believe in. As I look back on when this case was first accepted in the court in April 1995, up to this day, what have I seen that would make me stop my protest against what I and any other human being knows is wrong? Let's talk about the Shumate settlement:

Terms Met. The only term that they have met is the lock box system for confidentiality and it is a Catch-22. The co-payment forms seem to vanish when we, the prisoner population, need them to go to a clinic. Ask for one and we are told it's up to the housing unit to provide us with the form-another way to pass the buck and another way that seeing the doctor or nurse is made more and more difficult.

Terms Not Met. RN has to respond to two yards (a total of eight housing units with at least 800 women on each yard). We have one ambulance to serve two prisons-Valley State and CCWF. It has to be on 24-hour call and must serve almost 7,000 women. That means we are still understaffed as well as without enough working equipment.

The vehicle used by the RN, a rover, may work three days at the most in one week. Each facility clinic should have at least two wheelchairs for prisoners' temporary use. Instead, a prisoner who needs to be transported to a clinic or the emergency room has to ask another prisoner to use her wheelchair. That prisoner may need the wheelchair because it's the only way she can get around due to a handicap, and if she lends her wheelchair to her sick peer, she may not get it back because the sick prisoner may be sent to the hospital or the Skilled Nursing Facility (prison infirmary). The medical department does not care whether that chair is returned to its rightful owner.

Diagnostic follow-up - When a doctor at CCWF orders a test, there is no guarantee it will happen. No one follows up, so the prisoner must start all over again with a co-payment form to try to see the original doctor to find out why the test wasn't performed. If the prisoner is lucky enough to get the test done, she will still have to fill out a co-payment form or write to the medical records office to see her own chart. If she does get the chart, she may not understand it and no one will be available to explain it to her. A doctor may ask to see a prisoner, but she may not be told that, and so she will have to start all over again.

The new Chronic Care Program (CCP) is a joke. A prisoner may have more than one chronic medical condition. When she sees a doctor she cannot discuss her other chronic condition, but it may very well be the same doctor she will see in the next month or so for the other condition. If she asks why, she is told to thank the Shumate case. There are many prisoners who are still experiencing life-threatening delays in refilling already prescribed medication. Why? They say, "the Shumate case"! Before the case was filed these problems were outright neglect. Now they use the Shumate case as the excuse for the very same neglect and lack of standard medical treatments.

They always compare our care to Kaiser care, but we don't even get the care that a person without medical insurance would get at a county hospital. You may have to sit all day at a county hospital, but at least you are seen that same day. No prisoner here is seen the same day unless she is not breathing, she's bleeding, or (the newest RN statement) she is blue-because if her fingertips are pink it can wait!

As for assessors coming to see what's happening here, what good is that when the department is notified before they arrive? They clean up their acts on that one day, so it looks like they are really trying. MTAs and RNs are told to be on their best behavior on those days. When will the assessors talk to the prisoners who put their life on the line to keep an eye on California Department of Corrections? Do they really want to know the truth, or do they just want to blame everything on the Shumate case?
 

We as parents have to protect our family, make sure they are safe. All my life I had heard that the children suffer the most. Once I was married and had my own child, I started to understand what this saying really meant. Because of my own mistakes I have not seen my one and only child since he was 12 years old. On 9/17/98, he turned 22. I have been incarcerated all this time.

We were a poor family. My mother raised my son so he would not have to go into foster care. All my family live in Chicago. Now I am the grandmother of two. I sit and think about them each day and night. I pray that I get a chance to be a part of their lives.

God gave Teresa Cruz a blessing to go back home and try and rebuild a family that she has only been able to keep together with His help alone. I and every woman that knew or heard about her freedom was so happy for her. It also gave us as lifers a dim light at the end of the tunnel to know that there is still hope. Then to hear that after 19 days of being a mother, sleeping, eating with your children, thanking God that the living nightmare of prison walls is over, she was to be rearrested and taken back, snatched away from your children, as if it hadn't happened! Has any member of the Bureau of Prison Terms or Gov. Pete Wilson thought about what this has done to the minds of those children?

How much longer do they have to pay for their mother's mistake of trying to protect herself and her kids? Teresa Cruz has paid with her life and the lives of her children. Can anyone understand their pain? Please allow her to be reunited with her family. Let their nightmare end.

How much longer do they have to pay for their mother's mistake of trying to protect herself and her kids? Teresa Cruz has paid with her life and the lives of her children. Can anyone understand their pain? Please allow her to be reunited with her family. Let their nightmare end.
 

When my crime took place, I was driven with guilt, I believed that I was not worthy of love and that I could never ever love again. I could not stand for anyone to touch me. I held everything inside, not knowing who I could talk to or if I could trust anyone. After the third year of my 17-to-life sentence, I started to try and open up in one-on-one therapy. I knew I needed help but did not know how to ask for it. Then my sickle cell disease caused me to be housed at an outside hospital, cut off from the little mental support that I had just started to receive. I was forced to stay there even though I was not sick because of being at high risk for sudden death.

After nine months of being housed at a hospital, I was transferred to the new state-of-the-art medical facility at CCWF. We lifers are all on different yards and units so lifer support is cut off. There were no self-help groups when I first got here, so some of us got together once a week on the main yard and started our own battered women's support group.

For the first time in five years I could open up and talk about the pain. I met other prisoners who shared the very same pain and we learned to heal together. There I met a woman by the name of "Mary S." For the next three years we shared our deepest, darkest secrets as well as our hopes and dreams for ourselves and our families. Mary is a peer counselor for the HIV women. There is no one that she does not greet with open arms and a prayer. She has been an ear to always listen and a shoulder to cry on. She is a God-sent angel right here behind prison walls. Now if I had not come to CCWF, I would never have met Mary who I now call my sister. Thank you Lord and thank Mary for being just as you are.
 

I am sitting here and thinking back on all the things my eyes have seen and my ears have heard since the first day of my incarceration. Prison staff are quick to label you if you are an inmate-we call it putting a jacket on someone. Once you have this jacket, you never live it down and very few of these labels are good. Some women come into prison already gay. It was their lifestyle on the streets. Others just try it to try and fit in. There are women who, out of pure loneliness, have turned to another woman and found someone to share good times and the bad ones. After a while sex might have happened, but not always. So you start to eat together, share your canteen and maybe even be roommates, never being disrespectful to each other or to staff. But now you find out you have a label as a homosexual. You or your friend are moved to a different room, unit or yard.

Male or female staff come to work here married, single or divorced. They meet one of their peers and maybe start going to eat, drink or shop after work. They become involved. Maybe they get married or they tell a family member how to get a good job with CDC.

An inmate may get in some kind of verbal disagreement with a staff member, but the inmate is not always wrong. So she uses her right to appeal and wins. Now she is retaliated against by the wife, brother or sister of the staff she just won an appeal on. This is outright nepotism! That is not supposed to be going on any more than homosexuality is, but no one separates staff and sends them to work at another prison. CCWF refuses to help mothers, daughters or sisters live in the same room or unit. What can we do to stop this unfair treatment?
 

This is not about me. This is about we. As I sit here trying to express these sad but true facts about the issues at CCWF...First of all, thanks to an inmate named Joann Walker, may she rest in peace, who put her life on the line to make the California Department of Corrections know how important it was to reach other inmates about the hard cold facts of HIV behind these walls. She spoke out loudly and clearly. She was a "we" person, not a "me" person. ... When I first came behind prison walls at the California Institution for Women (CIW), lifers worked in unity. They were big sisters to each other. We fought for the betterment of all inmates. We explained to the short timers on parole violations the importance of helping one another. ... Charisse Shumate knows no other way but "we." Will you please join the we and get the hell off of me. The real warrior is on a never ending battle. Pray for us as our lives are on the line.