- 52 years old
- 28 years of incarceration
- Currently at SCI Coal Township
- Sentenced to life without the possibility of parole
Table of Contents
Commentaries
Contact Info
Smart Communications
Bryant Arroyo, CU1126
SCI Coal Township
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Support Info
Genesis Hernandez: ghernandez2@lghealth.org
Ray Arroyo: ray_arroyo15@ymail.com
“This is survival mode. When you’re backed into a corner, you fight to live.”
Bryant Arroyo
Biography
Bryant Arroyo is currently located at SCI Coal Township. He is, according to friend and mentor Mumia Abu-Jamal, “the world’s first jailhouse environmentalist.” He earned that title after successfully organizing his fellow prisoners against the construction of a $400 million coal gasification plant that was slated to be built 300 feet from SCI Frackville—a plant that would have poisoned the environment around the prison and the nearby community. Because of his fearless activism, the project was ultimately scrapped.
Sentenced to life without possibility of parole for a crime that he did not commit, Arroyo has since fought tirelessly for the betterment of himself and his fellow prisoners. With educational materials for English language learners nearly nonexistent, he tutors his fellow Spanish speakers using the Workers World newspaper. He has spoken at Harvard University and Haverford College, testified at a roundtable discussion on prison conditions in Center City Philadelphia, and been the keynote speaker at the 2018 Yale Environmental Forum. He is currently fighting against the for-profit privatization of the prison mail system, encouraging his fellow prisoners to boycott the mail service entirely since the 2018 implementation of draconian new policies in which inmate mail is sent to a for-profit third party where it is opened, photocopied, and stored on private servers.
Gallery
![Prison Radio is sharing an abbreviated version of a press release covering recent racist incidents at SCI Rockview in PA and the organizing to demand accountability. We are reaching out to people incarcerated at Rockview as well as recently transferred folks, inviting them to call, in hopes of hearing commentaries from them.
Benner Township, PA.-
On November 24th, 2023, imprisoned people at SCI Rockview found two nooses hanging in the CO’s office, displayed visibly for many prisoners to see. When the prisoners asked the staff why the nooses were hung, they were told it was a joke.
By December 4th, prisoners filed a grievance to document what they saw, noting that the hanging of the nooses was “unethical, racially motivated, hateful, [a] deliberate debasement of black inmates" and “unsafe for inmates, staff, [and] the whole prison in general.” In the grievance, they demanded that Sgt. Mosser and CO Richard be fired and investigated for a hate crime, and for CO Kirchner to get therapy. Captain Andrews, the head of security, denied the grievance.
The sergeant and COs are still working in the prison to this day, with no repercussions...
As of March 10th, prisoners have reached out to Pennsylvania officials at the Dept. of Corrections in a letter campaign, sending 100 copies of the grievance. Copies of the letter also were mailed to Governor Shapiro, Senator Fetterman, Senator Street, and various advocacy groups. The demands for relief in the original grievance have now become the platform of demands for this campaign. About 20 of the 100 letters were withheld by the prison.
Activists on the outside are joining forces with prisoners to elevate their demands, flooding the phone lines of DOC offices, assisting with outreach to media, and circulating the stories of prisoners who have found unity in opposition to the facility's virulent institutional racism.
In any other workplace, hanging a noose would be grounds for immediate termination. However, Nicki Paul, the superintendent's assistant and "grievance coordinator" informed the public that they self-investigated their staff and found they did nothing wrong.
Read the full article at i
https://conta.cc/4ayDxlB](https://www.prisonradio.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)