Welcome Elder Sitawa Home: Re-Entry Fundraiser

Sitawa Jamaa is a beloved elder who has served 43 years in prison for a crime that someone else confessed to committing. Despite the injustice of his imprisonment, Sitawa has devoted the past 43 years of his life to creating a safer, more humane prison system in California. These decades have seen a fight against solitary confinement, an interracial commitment to ending prison violence, and the creation of rehabilitative opportunities that were once unimaginable. Each of these advancements towards safety and justice is stamped with the name Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa.

Now, after four decades of activism, Sitawa is finally coming home. Due to a severe stroke in 2019, Sitawa requires 24/7 nursing care to survive. However, many of his medical needs will not be covered by Medi-Cal. Please help his family care for him with the dignity that he deserves. Your donations will ensure that his needs are met and his family is not burdened with expenses, especially as his care needs increase over time (e.g., skilled nursing facilities cost approximately $10,000/month). If you are not able to donate, please share this page (bit.ly/sitawa-jamaa) so others can learn about the incredible person that Sitawa is. Thank you so much for your support.

Picture of Sitawa and his sister Marie, taken before his stroke.

A Wrongful Conviction

At age 22, with no prior criminal record, Sitawa was convicted of murder for the tragic death of a young man. Another person admitted to committing the crime and has consistently maintained that Sitawa was not present for it. Nonetheless, Sitawa remains incarcerated more than 43 years later.

An Activist and Peacemaker in Prison

During Sitawa’s 43 years in prison, he has worked tirelessly to promote nonviolence, rehabilitation, and racial solidarity and justice within CDCR. Through written advocacy, administrative appeals, hunger strikes, and formal litigation, Sitawa has dedicated himself to dismantling prison violence. Even though his advocacy has repeatedly cost him his freedom – and at times, nearly his life – his devotion to justice remains unceasing.

In 1982, less than a year into Sitawa’s incarceration, an officer shot him during one of the largest race riots in San Quentin history. From his political education, Sitawa understood that prisons capitalized on racial hostilities in order to oppress incarcerated people; as a result, he knew that the antidote to oppression was unity, not more violence. Thus, Sitawa responded to the race riot by creating the original New Afrikan Collective Think Tank, an organization dedicated to building bridges between racial groups in prison.

By 1985, 26-year-old Sitawa had earned a reputation as a revolutionary in San Quentin, and was known for educating people about their rights, the Black freedom movement, and racial unity amongst incarcerated people. Prison officials responded by throwing Sitawa into solitary confinement. They classified his politics as gang ideology and claimed that he posed a threat to the institution. When Sitawa encouraged people to read Soledad Brother, the prison insisted it was gang indoctrination. When he wrote a letter to his sister celebrating Black August, the prison charged him with promoting gang activity. The message from CDCR was clear: drop your politics, or stay in solitary.

Sitawa remained in solitary confinement for 30 years, because he refused to give up his belief that prison violence – whether inflicted by incarcerated people or prison officials – must come to an end. He fought for that belief from the depths of a windowless cell, where he was confined for over 22 hours a day. He fought for that belief when the prison buried him in disciplinary reports, hoping he would give up. And he fought for that belief even when it had been decades since he last touched his loved ones, or talked with them on the phone.

California prisons are different than they were 43 years ago, in significant part because Sitawa never gave up. In 2011, when Sitawa was 26 years into solitary confinement, he helped organize a series of hunger strikes challenging CDCR’s use of long-term solitary confinement. Sitawa led the strikes alongside three other people in solitary, all of whom were from historically “rivaling” racial groups. The hunger strikes drew over 30,000 incarcerated participants state-wide and inspired Ashker v. Governor of California, a federal class action challenging prolonged solitary confinement, in which Sitawa was a named plaintiff. During this time, the prison repeatedly charged Sitawa with disciplinary infractions for his advocacy. Still, Sitawa refused to back down. A few years later, a landmark settlement agreement in Ashker dealt a fatal blow to indeterminate solitary confinement in California.

The peaceful, interracial movement against indefinite solitary confinement confirmed Sitawa’s belief that racial unity could overcome oppression. In 2012, Sitawa and the other hunger strike leaders published the Agreement to End Hostilities, a groundbreaking call for the end of interracial violence in California jails and prisons – a call so powerful that it even catalyzed peacebuilding efforts in the streets.

In 2015, Sitawa was released from solitary confinement as a result of the Ashker settlement, and was soon transferred to Salinas Valley State Prison, a notoriously dangerous and racially segregated facility. Confined within a prison so violent that officials had virtually cut off all rehabilitative programming, Sitawa was a recognized peacemaker. His reputation as an advocate for interracial peace preceded him, earning him trust and respect across many racial groups, as well as from prison officials. Associate Warden Rick Mojica recalls how Sitawa’s widespread influence allowed him to “resolve several issues amongst the inmate population that could have resulted in melees or riots. [Sitawa] had a way of resolving issues amongst the population without them having to resort to violence.”

As a peacebuilder within Salinas Valley, Sitawa helped reduce violence so significantly that the prison reintroduced rehabilitative programming to the yard, creating avenues for education, healing, and growth that had once seemed inconceivable. Sitawa engaged deeply with these self-help programs and encouraged others to do the same, regularly holding study sessions to help others achieve higher education and rehabilitation. In the words of Associate Warden Mojica: “I believe [Sitawa] is a model inmate because he is the type of inmate the Department expects all inmates to be, and he sets a great example for other inmates to model.”

While Sitawa’s influence on Salinas Valley State Prison was enormous, his impact was not confined to prison walls. In 2015, Sitawa was instrumental in establishing Life-CYCLE, the prison’s first program dedicated to keeping young men out of prison. Associate Warden Borla describes a seminar that Sitawa facilitated for the group:

"[Sitawa] sat in an intimate setting with the youth in attendance and talked to each child about their goals in life and gave them tips to prevent a future of imprisonment. [Sitawa] fielded many difficult questions from the youth and he provided a positive, carefully crafted response to each question asked. [Sitawa] was the first inmate to interact with the youth on the day of the event and he did an excellent job calming the kids[’] anxiousness of being in a prison as well as making them feel comfortable in talking with inmates."

Through his continuous dedication to the group, Sitawa became certified as a Life-CYCLE Coach, allowing him to establish and run the juvenile diversion program anywhere in California, both inside and outside of prison.

A Debilitating Stroke

In 2019, Sitawa suffered a pontine hemorrhagic stroke when a blood vessel in his brainstem ruptured and bled into his brain. After the stroke, Sitawa could not move any part of his body except for his eyes, a condition called “locked-in syndrome.” While Sitawa’s survival was a miracle, the stroke caused devastating and long-term damage. More than three years after the stroke, and despite Sitawa’s best efforts to regain functioning, he remains unable to walk, stand, bathe, toilet, dress himself, or perform any other activities of daily living independently except for eating.

Unfortunately, there is no meaningful chance of Sitawa ever returning to independent functioning. Nonetheless, we are grateful that he will spend the rest of his days surrounded by those who love and cherish him as a brother, uncle, friend, mentor, and elder. Thank you for your support in making that possible.