Your question was, "What is this about grooming that you are protesting?" So first let me clarify, I was on C-status as a "Program Failure" for 2-years until last November when I cut my hair because my Mom was going into the hospital for a heart valve operation. When you're on C-status it's spelled out the exact privileges you loose "Books" are a guaranteed right not a privilege. "Paper" is a right not a privilege, we adjudicated the access to the exercise equipment before and won--someone new comes in and they don't have the authority to change it, but they do it anyway, etc. 

What I was protesting was "prison-conditions" (described in that Habeas Corpus) that were implemented to promote a violent atmosphere by Departmental Staff. The "Grooming Standards" was the last straw, so here comes the short version from the first straw: 

In 1992 I broke my foot and was made to walk around on it for ten days before it finally seized up and I had to be carted off to the clinic where they finally x-rayed it. I was so pissed off about it because I wouldn't treat another human being that way--not even someone I thoroughly disliked--and definitely not an animal that way. It's what my old cellie and I dubbed "Subhuman" treatment, for only the "Subhumans" that would treat inmates that way. 

That was a Level III prison and even back then we could feel that the system was about to change for the worst: As early as 1988 it became clear that the prison expansion wasn't being met with a proportionate budget to maintain even the minimum needs guaranteed to inmates by law; the first thing CDC (California Department of Corrections) took was prison pay numbers so inmates didn't have to rely on their friends and loved ones for personal care products--not provided by the state--and a few goodies purchased at the inmate canteen; this has slowly driven a wedge between inmate and family over the years. As inmates became burdens on them to get the up to $140.00 (now $180.00) a month we were allowed to purchase each month. 

As I was mad about the broken foot taking ten days to get medical attention, I tried to get my parents to find a lawyer to help me file on it--they were ruined by the recession. A fellow inmate had a lawyer friend I contacted--he claimed a conflict of interest; but soon after the officers began searching my cell, strip-searching me on the yard, messing with my mail, and the phone started being mysteriously cut off while I was talking to family. 

I didn't know what it is inside me, but when I feel I've been wronged I will fight without regard for my life; a fellow convict knew I was getting ready to fight the system and gave me the truth of the matter, he said point blank "they will kill you!" To which my immediate reply was something to the effect of, "then they kill me!" He meant the cops. 

This man was a true convict--he'd been incarcerated over 20 years at that point when prison was at it's worst. A true convict is someone that schools new arrivals on how to stay alive in this hell. It's simple really: Mind your own business, always make sure you are respectful of every prisoner, and if for some reason there is a race riot (mostly over respect issues), then you fight like the devil if you're jumped on because it's easier to stab a stationary target and I've seen more often than not those people die." 

So, I knew when the convict told me the Cops would kill me for fighting the system, he was speaking from experience--and that was before the "Corcoran Shootings," happened in 1994 and the media on 60 Minutes exposed them in 1997 or 98; I wish I could say I was this brilliant minded man that knew exactly where I would be at in the fight right at that day and moment, but I here and now and I still don't know where I'm at in the fight; or exactly the path my steps would fall on in the fight to the point where I am now, but if my eloquence equaled my arrogance, I can tell you where I thought I'd be. Unfortunately my ignorance was beyond my arrogance by far, and I was sure I would be through in two or three years flat. I quickly learned from a series of impenetrable obstacles just how stupid I was and how long that what I've been trying to accomplish will take. 

It was then that I believe God stepped in--shoved me down the path I'm on. From all the searches/strip-searches, etc. I got fed up and said, "I was just strip-searched coming out of work (normal), stopped and searched during the last half-hour of yard, and finally, while I was waiting for the legal mail list to be posted, they wanted to search me again and I called them on it--they called it "resisting staff." I went to the "hole" and six months later I was at New Folsom B. facility--one of the most violent yards in the state. After I filed enough paperwork, gathering information and evidence--they got fed up and shipped me down here, to try and give me skin cancer some six years later. 

While there, I learned exactly what the convict was talking about and how they could kill me if they wanted to. In 1994 I was in the "Hole" and saw the truth of how it was done. Place convicts on the same "Hole Exercise Yards" that you know will result in a fight, (On an all concrete floored and walled 60' by 30' area) and shoot at them with 9mm rifles because they are fighting; but it gets more sick than that. A convict came down from Pelican Bay State Prison--the most violent prison in the state at the time--and described something that should make any human being sick to their stomachs. (Please note convicts aren't what you might think--they are quite honorable, any average citizen can live in prison without fear of being preyed upon); this man explained the lawsuit he came down for discovery on. The claim was that officials were running what they called a "restraint yard" the same concrete exercise yards. That's where convicts were leg shackled and handcuffed to belly chains; I know it's stupid, but sometime respect issues cause a lot of fighting, so it is certain that the fights will happen even on the "restraint yards," but the man got shot with a lethal weapon. Whey when they are restrained so, the man was interviewed by "Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes," and he was told of the "Killing Fields." By what the man accounted to me, which I've said to you and Mike Wallace covered it up, or let his CBS Corporation cover it up and never exposed CBS. 

How can human being with the name like "Mike Wallace" not report this right then and there? No, they cut out that part of the interview and left snippet questions, and one parting question of why the man was in Pelican Bay to contrast the "Medical Staff forcing a mentally unstable prisoner into a whirl-pool that had water so hot it bubbled skin right from his body." Wallace grew a conscience later and exposed Corcoran. I wrote a petition to the Eastern District Federal Court on how CDC could kill inmates systematically--and they dismissed it. I challenged how CDC gets the State Attorney General at the taxpayer expense as personal counsel in defending against legitimate lawsuits--when by federal statute that only can happen if the U.S. Attorney General investigates a prisoner's claim. The Federal Court never rendered an answer; and I exposed how CDC is stealing or mismanaging taxpayer dollars in relation to prison industries, and our food--providing solid documentary evidence that the minimum 2,700 calories a day required by U.N. Treaty wasn't being met and that a 60 or 80 calorie 4 oz. serving of apple juice was inflated on CDC's document as 234 calories. The Federal Court dismissed the lawsuit on the State Attorney General's summary judgment motion, and those same judges block my Criminal Complaint to the U.S. Grand Jury of their covering up for CDC. 

God's hand can be seen in leading me back to a Level IV hard core institution, where I was able to witness the "Killing Field" operation first hand, so I can explain how CDC premeditatively sought to shoot inmates, which resulted in untold deaths. Plus God keeping me safe and alive when the odds were against it that it could miss me. 

[Excerpted from a letter dated September 19,2002.]