Day 32: Today marks one month of the hunger strike.

[annm4peace]

"Recent reports from these prisoners demonstrate that their brave efforts have been made all the more difficult by prison guards who are treating them very harshly. Guards are knocking them into walls, handcuffing them incorrectly to cause suffering and bending their arms to provoke extreme pain. Guards are spitting out racial epithets or deliberately placing an African American prisoner, for example, in a cell with racist graffiti... According to these same talkative guards, this unprofessional behavior is what they were instructed to do to help bring the hunger strike to an end."

August 8, 2013 — Today is the one-month anniversary of a hunger strike initiated by prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison that quickly spread to other correctional facilities across the state of California. To be precise, it is Day 32 of a month-long period without food for hundreds of prisoners.

These are men risking their lives to insist on humane conditions and certain terms for those prisoners who have otherwise been banished to indefinite sentences of solitary confinement in California’s prison system. Many of these men have been isolated for decades with no windows, no contact visits, no time outdoors, and not even a phone call to a family member.

Recent reports from these prisoners demonstrate that their brave efforts have been made all the more difficult by prison guards who are treating them very harshly.

Guards are knocking them into walls, handcuffing them incorrectly to cause suffering and bending their arms to provoke extreme pain. Guards are spitting out racial epithets or deliberately placing an African American prisoner, for example, in a cell with racist graffiti. Guards are also being strategically divisive by tactically treating some prisoners nicely and others in the most demeaning ways, hoping—as the guards openly discussed in front of some prisoners—to create division so the prisoners will begin to fight each other. The guards’ goal: to undermine the hunger strike. According to these same talkative guards, this unprofessional behavior is what they were instructed to do to help bring the hunger strike to an end.

Ironically, those prisoners who have gotten off the hunger strike are also being treated badly. Guards are calling them “cowards” and “bitches” and other demeaning labels.

Meanwhile, the hunger strikers have entered a very dangerous phase of their protest: their health could be permanently damaged by their refusal to eat solid foods; they could even die.

The questions for California Governor Jerry Brown and Secretary Jeffrey Beard of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation are these: How many prisoners have to be harmed by guards and by the prisoners’ struggle for justice before state authorities are willing to consider, seriously, their demands for real change? How many prisoners have to die?

Barbara Becnel
Mediation Team Member

Hunger Strike Mediation Team
Ron Ahnen, California Prison Focus and St. Mary’s College of California
Barbara Becnel, Occupy4Prisoners.org
Dolores Canales, California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement
Irene Huerta, California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement
Laura Magnani, American Friends Service Committee
Marilyn McMahon, California Prison Focus
Carol Strickman, Legal Services for Prisoners With Children
Azadeh Zohrabi, Legal Services for Prisoners With Children
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Call Governor Jerry Brown
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Suggested script: I’m calling in support of the prisoners on hunger strike. The governor has the power to stop the torture of solitary confinement. I urge the governor to compel the CDCR to enter into negotiations to end the strike. RIGHT NOW is their chance to enter into clear, honest negotiations with the strikers to end the torture.

[annm4peace]

1. Sermon from a Cell—Preaching Against America's Prisons

http://www.revcom.us/a/312/sermon-from-a-cell-preaching-against-americas-prisons-en.html

From Stop Mass Incarceration, San Francisco Bay Area:
Sunday, July 28: San Francisco's Glide Memorial is one of the most well-known churches in the Bay Area. They have for decades been known as a church welcoming and serving the diverse population of the inner-city of San Francisco's Tenderloin District. This includes not only the diverse and colorful denizens of the city, but also those who society has cast off—many of them formerly prisoners of this system. When Stop Mass Incarceration Network, Bay Area was invited to bring our message to a special Sunday service, we were happy to accept. So, on July 28, the 21st day of the California Prisoners Hunger Strike, we joined with Pastor Karen Oliveto, as she gave a sermon on America's prisons, including the current prisoners' hunger strike against the torture of solitary confinement.

As the pastor began speaking, photos depicting mass incarceration, some from revcom.us, were projected as well, and then, a cage, a cell, was erected around her. From her cage, Pastor Karen passionately addressed the inhuman treatment of prisoners, and acknowledged the death of Billy Sell, the hunger striker who died on Tuesday in the Corcoran State Prison SHU. As she paced back and forth in her cage, she first read the hunger strikers' 5 Demands, and then said, "Men in Pelican Bay are more free than most of us. They may be locked behind doors but they are not willing to imprison their spirits. They know that if they give in and accept the inhuman conditions and harsh treatment of Pelican Bay, then they will truly be in prison. As long as they are working to improve their living conditions, standing up and speaking out for better treatment, they are freer than most of us who accept the way things are as the way things are always going to be."

"The U.S. has five percent of the world's population, but twenty-five percent of the world's prison population. One in three Black males born today can expect to spend part of their life in prison. Two-thirds of former inmates will find themselves back in prison. It is a nation of shame that we have written off a whole group of young men, in the prime of their lives. It is a nation's shame that there is not more outrage in our streets, in our political chambers, and in our churches."
After the sermon many people stopped by our table to get materials, sign up, and become involved in the struggle to end mass incarceration and to support the hunger strikers.
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[annm4peace]

2. The CA Gov, State Senator, State Assembly are Democrats

What are they doing to end the CA Prisoners Hunger Strike?

Do we have to wait till a Green or Socialist is Governor? If Democrats don't change the Prison Industrial Complex then why are we voting for them? If the CA Democrat politicians can get enough of them together to pass a law to change the CA prisons, then why are we voting for them? If they the can't restore some basic human rights.. then why are we voting for them?

[annm4peace]

3. Pelican Bay: Ending Long-Term Solitary Confinement and Racist Policies In California Prisons

http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2013/08/07/pelican-bay-ending-long-term-solitary-confinement-and-racist-policies-in-california-prisons/

The prison hunger strike that has been taking place throughout various state prisons in California for 31 days now originated in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison. The inmates at this facility are held in long-term solitary confinement, under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation. Some prisoners have been held under these conditions for over 20 years.

Recreation Yard.. the 1 hour you get out of your cell with no windows to come in here for 1 hour.

I support the hunger strike because it is an act of resistance by those the system has cast off as less than human and unworthy of human dignity. The hunger strike/work stoppage is a call to action that crosses racial and geographical lines against the torture tactics the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) is inflicting on those it holds in Administrative Segregation (Ad-Seg) and in the Security Housing Unit (SHU). It is also a call to action against the validation process, a racist policy that is used to justify the placement of our brothers in the torture dungeons of Ad-Seg and the SHU.

Imagine having to spend the rest of your life in solitary confinement under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation only because you desire to know the history of your ancestors.


Those serving time in the SHU are placed in solitary confinement without access to constructive programming, the elusive “rehabilitation” that CDCR fails to provide. CDCR claims that it offers rehabilitation. The whole point of rehabilitation is to prepare those who are in prison for their return home so that they can become productive members of their communities. But in the SHU at Pelican Bay State Prison educational and life skills programs (e.g. the Estelle program and college correspondence courses), the rehabilitation program has been cut drastically.


Lastly, before I close I wanted to tell you about the effects solitary confinement has had on me. But I was having trouble describing the effects because after being exposed to those torturous conditions for such a prolonged period of time, the effects seem and feel normal.

The psychological and physical devastation that our brother Heshima describes are real issues that I will have to live with until I find some method of healing that will allow me to be able to overcome the years of psychological, physical and spiritual forms of torture that Ad-Seg and the SHU inflicts on the mind, body and soul.

In solidarity with all struggles for human dignity!

Danny Murillo is a survivor of the SHU. He is currently a student at the University of California, Berkeley. An earlier version of Murillo’s piece was published in LA Progressive.

[roody]

4. I see the headline in a CA paper

invokes the 'gang' participation.