DAY 51: w/o Food, CDCR Continues to Crack Down on Prisoners’ Peaceful Protest, Forcibly Relocates

[annm4peace]

51st Day Without Food, CDCR Continues to Crack Down on Prisoners’ Peaceful Protest, Forcibly Relocate Strikers, Stonewall Mediation Team.

http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/51st-day-without-food-cdcr-continues-to-crack-down-on-prisoners-peaceful-protest-forcibly-relocate-strikers-stonewall-mediation-team/

As prisoners mark day 51 of their hunger strike, lawyers and advocates continue to express outrage at the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) attacks on prisoners’ peaceful protest. After being internationally lambasted in the media last week for threatening prisoners with force feeding as well as ignoring their medical wishes, the CDCR continued to punish strikers by moving as many as 50 prisoners from Pelican Bay to other prisons. The CDCR issued a confusing press release on Monday evening, claiming it had met the demands of the strikers, while also maintaining it did not recognize the legitimacy of their protest, nor would it negotiate with them. Attempts by the strikers’ mediation team to keep open dialogue with the strikers and prison officials have been rebuffed by CDCR.

Lawyers and advocates have just learned that, in an attempt to break prisoners’ hunger strike, prison officials abruptly awakened more than 50 long-term Pelican Bay hunger strikers between 4:00 – 5:00 a.m. last Friday morning and moved them to various prisons around the state.

Anne Weills, attorney for the strikers responded to this news: “Just think of the state of these men, psychologically, physically and medically. The CDCR chose to arbitrarily move these men—many of whom may already be on the a verge of a cardiac arrest—making them get out of bed, chaining them up by the legs, waist and wrists, performing invasive cavity checks, making them march to a van, and then taking them wherever. And then isolating the four representatives who remain in the Stand Alone Administration Building at Pelican Bay.”

“These people are starving for a cause bigger than themselves. They have been very clear that they are fighting so that new prisoners, particularly younger men and women, do not have to suffer what they have had to suffer.” Said Azadeh Zohrabi, spokesperson for the Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. “Instead of going to meet with the prisoners at Pelican Bay, CDCR is governing by fiat–responding in a public statement to prisoners’ demands rather than negotiating with them as human beings. The public should be disturbed by this, to say the least.”

Late last week, as the CDCR was likely planning its early morning raid, strike mediators attempted to meet with both the Department and with strike representatives as a way of exploring options for resolving the crisis. The CDCR refused both attempts.

“Regular dialogue was a common practice during the 2011 strike that led to some moderately constructive discussions between strikers and the CDCR,” said Marilyn McMahon, of the strike mediation team. “Why would the CDCR foreclose on these completely reasonable options? They can either be open to change or continue to cause suffering. They can’t do both.”

“Governor Brown and the CDCR are playing with peoples’ lives to make a point – that they are in control,” said Donna Willmott of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. “They are using their emergency motion for force-feeding as justification to move against the strikers without restraint. Against all human decency, they have used every means at their disposal to destroy this peaceful protest: character assassination, coercion, isolation, and intimidation. And yet the strikers have not been broken.”

Despite CDCR’s apparent attempts to close the issue with its muddled press release Monday, mediators and lawyers continue to try open negotiations between the Department and the prisoners. Supporters continue to urgently request the California Legislature’s Public Safety Committee to convene a special session. Speaking to the strength and resolve of prisoners still on strike, family member and mediator Dolores Canales said yesterday, “I am filled with absolute awe at the strength and character of these individuals who have endured decades-long isolation. And I think it must be hope that fills them with such a determination… hope for long overdue change, hope within a system that has kept them in isolation for decades. And I think of great changes in history that only took place when people did not give up and when the awakening of a moral consciousness was stirred within the heart and soul of the public.”

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.
Action Alert: We need a Emergency Hearing to address the Hunger Strike
Action Alert: HEALTH CARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT — EVEN FOR HUNGER STRIKERS

[annm4peace]

1. the 5 demands

The prisoners' unmet demands are simple, and they are open to negotiation:

1. Eliminate group punishments for individual rules violations.

2. Abolish the debriefing policy, and modify active/inactive gang status criteria.

3. Comply with the recommendations of the 2006 US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement.

4. Provide adequate food.

5. Provide and expand constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates.

[annm4peace]

2. Sarah Shourd: What Everyone Ought to Know About Angola 3 and Solitary Confinement

Sarah Shourd is an author and contributing editor at Solitary Watch currently based in Oakland, California. She spent 410 days in solitary confinement while held as a political hostage by the Iranian Government in 2009-2010. Before being captured, Shourd was living in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Damascus, Syria working as a journalist and teaching for the Iraqi Student Project.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amnesty-international/sarah-shourd-what-everyon_b_3817338.html


Until recently, both Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox had been held in solitary confinement for 4 decades in Louisiana - longer than almost any other known prisoner in recent U.S. history. It's long enough for one's body to forget it ever knew anything else but four white walls and for the mind to be reshaped by extreme isolation. Juan Mendez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, says that after 15 days, further isolation can cause permanent psychological damage and constitute torture.

Herman has just been diagnosed with stage 5 liver cancer. Unless Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana grants him clemency, he may likely die in prison.

After decades in isolation, people experience hyper-anxiety, paranoia, insomnia, hallucinations, emotional detachment, panic attacks and uncontrollable rage. Many start fights with guards just for human contact. Others cut themselves just to be taken out of their cells for a few days in the prison hospital.

I spent over a year in solitary confinement when I was held as a political hostage by the Iranian government from 2009 to 10. I experienced all of these reactions at various times throughout my isolation. In some cases, these symptoms have increased since my release. Almost three years later, I am still trying to shake the mental damage and loss that was inflicted upon me during those 410 days.

After spending nearly 41 years in a cramped cell, the cancer diagnosis led prison officials in July to transfer 71-year-old Herman to a ten-bunk prison dorm.

"He can now open a door," says Marina Drummer, who has been advocating on his behalf for the past 15 years. "He can walk from the dorm room into the dayroom without being shackled."

After spending 23 hours a day isolated in a small cell akin to a coffin, this change is monumental.

In 1972, Albert and Herman, two young black men, were charged and convicted of the murder of prison guard Brent Miller, despite the fact that no DNA evidence linked them to the crime. They were locked in solitary: 23 hours a day alone in a small cell, and were denied any meaningful review of their continued isolation.

In the decades after the trial, significant flaws in the legal process have come to light. Evidence suggests that the key eye-witness was bribed by prison officials into giving statements against the men and that the state withheld evidence that pointed to Herman and Albert's innocence. Potentially exculpatory evidence mysteriously went "missing" before the trial and more witnesses later recanted their testimony.

After Herman's diagnosis became known, human rights groups around the country - most notably Amnesty International - have called for his release on compassionate and medical grounds. More than 46,000 people in the U.S. have called on Governor Jindal to release Herman Wallace in the months since his diagnosis; tens of thousands of appeals have also poured in from around the world.

Herman is not a dangerous criminal - he is a 71-year-old cancer patient who has already survived an unthinkable nightmare. His continued imprisonment serves no purpose: prison records demonstrate that he is no threat to himself or others. As his conviction continues to be challenged before the courts, his cancerous tumor continues to grow. Despite treatment, he does not have much time left.

I recently turned 35. Herman Wallace has survived more years being psychologically tortured in our prisons than I've even been alive. I think about him still waking up every morning, tired and sick, but still fighting for his life and his long-deserved freedom. As Herman's health fails, we have to fight for him - and there's not much time left.

Sarah Shourd is an author and contributing editor at Solitary Watch currently based in Oakland, California. She spent 410 days in solitary confinement while held as a political hostage by the Iranian Government in 2009-2010. Before being captured, Shourd was living in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Damascus, Syria working as a journalist and teaching for the Iraqi Student Project. She's written for The New York Times, CNN, Newsweek's Daily Beast and has a blog on Huffington Post. Her memoir, Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran, will be published by Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt in March 2014. Please visit sarahshourd.com and solitarywatch.com for more information and follow Sarah on Twitter @SShourd.

[Mnemosyne]

3. Will call again tomorrow, thanks for the reminder, Ann. Their treatment has been heinous and it

must seem that it will never end.

As ye' treat the least of these...