Inmates in Solitary Confinement in California Respond to Prison Policy Reforms

by Sal Rodriguez

http://solitarywatch.com/2012/05/01/inmates-in-solitary-confinement-in-california-respond-to-prison-policy-reforms/  

Prisoners in California’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) have offered their opinions of the recent reforms of the California prison system’s controversial gang validation policies. In correspondences with Solitary Watch, SHU inmates in Pelican Bay and Corcoran prisons have consistently been critical of the reforms, which among other things reform the gang validation point system and introduce a step-down program in which inmates can  transition out of the SHU. Last month a group of SHU inmates, all of whom are labeled as either members or leaders of prison gangs (Aryan Brotherhood, Mexican Mafia, Black Guerilla Family), released a counter proposal in response.

The following are excerpts from letters written by prisoners currently in California’s SHUs.

From Kijana Askari, who has been in the SHU since 1994 after being validated as a member of the Black Guerilla Family:

With regards to the revisions that were done to SHU management gang policies, well, that is exactly what has taken place—”revisions” (e.g. “reform”). Hence, more of the same in that, the revisions have only strengthened CDCR officials power and ability to label and validate every prisoner in CDCR as belonging to a Security Threat Group–e.g. “prison gang.”At the crux of the revisions is a lack of a definitive and “behavioral-based” criteria, as to what actually constitute as being gang activity. Meaning, any and everything can and will still be considered as gang activity, in spite of how innocuous the activity may be.

In addition to this, we still have untrained and unqualified CDCR officers/officials determining and assessing what is “gang activity.” And this point is critical for two very important reasons: 1) There are no qualitative oversight mechanisms in place, meaning there is absolutely nothing to prevent CDCR’s prison guards, gang unit, etc., from being vindictive, retaliatory, punitive, etc., via the application of these “revised” gang management policies; and 2) it has been proven that CDCR’s prison guards and their IGI gang unit staff do not properly investigate the evidence used in each prisoners gang validation–see Lira v. Cate.

And the new revisions do not do anything to correct this.

Kijana Tashiri Askari (Marcus Harrison) #H54077, Pelican Bay State Prison  D3 122 SHU, PO Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95531

From a Pelican Bay SHU inmate who has been in solitary confinement for five years and is currently appealing the gang validation that placed him there:

“We were recently afforded a copy of this proposal. Many of us are getting the chance now to read through and evaluate it. I read through it once and will go through it again. There are many aspects of the step down program that at face value seem to provide far better alternatives to the over 20 year long policy of implementing indeterminate SHU programs. Many of the program objectives and privileges outlined in the proposal at first glance look to be very good and beneficial to a lot of SHU prisoners. However, the gang validation/identification aspect of the proposal continues to present an ongoing issue and problem for many individuals who have been validated and will be validated. Under the criteria that is set forth, it continues to target and identify individuals for long-term SHU placement based on gang affiliation rather than actual gang activity or criminal/illegal conduct.”Which is, has been, and under this proposal will continue to be a significant hardship for many who the CDCR looks to place and keep locked away in the SHU for little to no reason.”

From a Corcoran SHU inmate who has been diagnosed with severe depression:

“We did have an opportunity to see and speak to a couple of representatives from Sacramento who are responsible for crafting language that will reflect the policy change. As we understand there are changes being made to the policy. And the CDCR is in the process of implementing the step down program here at Corcoran SHU. And it is anticipated, according to what we were told, that something would be in place within 60-90 days. At least that’s a target date or time frame.

There was a couple of areas of concern for us. We believe that four years is much too long to be in the step down program. It’s a four year step program, each step is one year. It’s basically an observation program in which you graduate to the next step if you have not been documented as having been involved in gang activity. Just what constitutes gang activity is still being determined.

A lot of guys in Pelican Bay and here have already been in isolation for the past 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 years. Many have been disciplinary free and most were placed in isolation for non-disciplinary reasons. It does not make any sense for guys to have to remain in the SHU.

We believe that those guys that the CDCR (genuinely) intends on placing in general population or non-SHU setting should be placed directly into one.

In light of the struggle (and loss of life) it will be extremely difficult for the CDCR to justify not allowing guys to be released to general population. Or at least be provided some kind of meaningful program in a non-SHU setting.

I was diagnosed with severe depression several years ago.

I don’t know which is worse.

At some point you know that the isolation has affected you. Perhaps permanently. It involves so many different factors. Particularly the isolation itself.

Over the years you have seen other people snap. Human beings cutting themselves. Eating their own waste. Smearing themselves in it. And sometimes throwing it at you. Human beings not just talking out loud to themselves–but screaming at and cursing themselves out.

How could you not be affected by this kind of madness?!”

From a Pelican Bay SHU inmate who has been in solitary confinement since 1988, and participated in the 2011 hunger strikes:

“I fail to see how it is any different from my current SHU term…It did not address the fact that there are prisoners who have been in PBSP-SHU for over 20 years without any kind of serious rule infraction. It is written like every single short corridor prisoner is starting from scratch. In other words, no prisoner should even entertain the idea of leaving SHU for the next four or five years. It sounds like a poorly modified version of the six year inactive status program to me. And the IGI still has control of prisoners’ fate through what is decided through classification, telling them when and where to place us.

Nothing has been gained–they’ve put a different name on the same repressive/torturous measures that have been in effect since the state started locking us up for administrative convenience in extreme solitary confinement isolation. There is absolutely nothing about the step down program that allows a SHU prisoner to work their way out of SHU without the expressed approval of the IGI–the whole program as laid out at present is a bunch of clever words seemingly giving prisoners a way to work our way out of SHU. It’s not! I’ve already been in SHU since 1988, what do I need to work on? What exactly are they going to see in my attitude and actions during the four phases of the step-down program that they haven’t already seen in the past twenty plus years during my extreme isolated confinement for administrative convenience? It just does not make sense.

I feel like the CDCR is clowning us!”

The following is from a Pelican Bay SHU inmate who has been incarcerated for forty years, 35 of which have been spent in the SHU.

“Being a labeled outcast makes it easy to see us no more than a farm animal or dog. Which morally assuages the conscience and culpability of individuals’ roles in our vilification. We are living in the times of the Bogeyman syndrome. The power of fear and mistrust. Suspicion which clouds peoples judgment and common sense. Choosing to be ignorant, unable or unwilling to filter out irrelevant noises and views, they transform into parrots that merely mimic the latest tidbit of information.

I don’t have a positive opinion of the impending SHU policy changes. The basic framework, premise and argument is faulty because phantoms are still used as a justification to subject people to punitive action. I am in SHU for non-disciplinary reasons and have been subjected to punitive isolation based on presumption and fantastic takes sown from the chronicle of the Bogeyman. I have spent 35 years in SHU and I should be unconditionally released to the mainline, especially since I haven’t had any serious rule violation in even twenty-five years except for participation in a hunger strike.”

Prisoner At Corcoran Dies, Hunger Strike In ASU Continues

February 13, 2012
Prisoner At Corcoran Dies Hunger Strike In ASU Continues

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity

Oakland – Family members and advocates are seeking information surrounding the February 2nd death of Christian Gomez, 27, a prisoner at Corcoran State Prison. It remains unclear whether or not Gomez was participating in an ongoing hunger strike in the prison’s Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU), or whether his death was related to the strike. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has not disclosed the cause of death saying that they have not yet received an autopsy report.

“Conditions inside California prisons are atrocious, especially when it comes to physical and mental health care,” says Laura Magnani, Interim Regional Director of the American Friends Service Committee and an expert witness during an August 23rd hearing in Sacramento regarding California’s Security Housing Units (SHUs) , “Any time a prisoner dies inside one of their institutions, the CDCR must be held responsible.” California’s prison healthcare system has been under federal receivership since 2006 due to inhumane and deadly conditions caused by severe overcrowding. Federal Judge Thelton Henderson recently announced an imminent end to the oversight.

Prisoners in the Corcoran ASU have been on hunger strike for periods of time since late December of 2011. Their 11 demands include adequate access to the law library and legal assistance and an end to the practice of holding prisoners in ASU after they have served their sentences in the unit. “ASUs are similar to California’s SHUs in that they are often used to punish prisoners who are jail house lawyers or who have organized with their fellow prisoners to make political demands,” says Molly Porzig, an organizer with Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, “Some prisoners are confined in solitary, without privileges afforded in general population such as radios and phone calls for years at a time and without any means to challenge their cases.” A 2009 review by the Office of the State Inspector General of the CDCR’s policies in ASUs found that prisoners in several units had been held for inappropriate lengths of time, violating their due process rights and costing the department of millions of dollars.

It is unknown how long prisoners at Corcoran will keep up their hunger strike, but letters from participants indicate that they continue until the CDCR meets their demands. One prisoner recently wrote, “The struggle that is being fought in this ASU at Corcoran State Prison is only a small part of a bigger struggle that is being fought, and that will be continuously fought, against the oppression that is evident in all parts of the world today.” Two hunger strikes took place in prisons across California last year, at one point involving at least 12,000 prisoners. Last year’s strikes, as well as the Corcoran strike, are unprecedented in the history of the CDCR and have seen unity amongst prisoners across racial and geographic lines.

For more information and updates, please visit www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com.

Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org

A Survivor’s Manual for Solitary Confinement: Self-Destruction to the Reconstruction of Self

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My Path to Redemption

By Kijana Tashiri Askari

2011

“Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.”

-Angela Davis

I’ve been in prison for the past 20 years, 17 of which has been consecutively spent in the security housing unit (e.g. “the SHU”) which is a euphemism for solitary confinement.  However, 20 years prior to my current incarceration, I had also served previous stints in prison, amidst several stints in and out of juvenile hall and the California Youth Authority (CYA). Essentially, a Brotha had embarked upon a path of self-destruction, through the multitude of crimes that I was committing in the community, which were largely against the people of the community and their property. But it wasn’t until the year of 1991/1992, while a Brotha was housed in administrative segregation (e.g. “solitary confinement”) for a manufacturing weapons charge, is when I finally had a serious talk with myself and said: “Self, what is wrong with this picture?”

Because here we are, with the gear shift stuck in neutral, and we’re not making any real progress, with regards to doing or achieving anything of real significance with our lives. And from the look of things, matters will not be getting any better, no time soon, as I was no longer armed with the ability to act upon my negative emotional impulses, as my physical being had been restricted in practically every extreme, due to one’s isolated confines.

So during the course of introspecting self, I had to honestly ask:  “Self, what benefit, if any, would we have in continuing down this path of self-destruction?”  As the solace of my solitude in solitary confinement now enabled me to realize, that my self-destructive ways were only creating a negative burden upon myself from the perspective of harming and preying upon the communities via committing acts of senseless crime/violence on the community, that perpetuated a “domino effect” upon the people and their families within our community.  Because up until that point in my life, I had lacked a complete and true understanding, that prisons were an extension of every poor community within the free societies of the world. But what actually formulates the construct of a community? A community is defined as:

“A social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common political background, and/or cultural and historical heritage.”

Thus affirming, that to harm my community is to harm myself.

So it was right there, during the year of 1991/1992, where I said: “Self, we cannot live like this anymore, as I know that life has got to have more to offer, than all of the negativities that we have experienced/endured thus far.”

Hence, the origins of my path to redemption via the reconstruction of my self-destructive ways, as I’ve now caught a glimpse of my true humanity.  How to go about this redemption process was a whole different story in and of itself. So I had to first find out, what does redemption mean, so that I could constitute the application of redemption within my day to day endeavors, to thus manifest a concrete example of redemption.  Redemption is defined as:

“The salvation of, and the atonement for, guilt; to make amends for; or to make up for.”

Being that it was I, as an individual who was literally terrorizing the community and the people that lived in them, the path of redemption had to start and begin with me, from the perspective of community healing, building and restoration; meaning, that I had to seriously change my attitude, values and the way that I thought and viewed matters, to thus effectuate change in my behavior as it pertains to being a productive member in the community.

Shortly thereafter, I was then released from administrative segregation, and was placed back into the general population mainline at New Folsom state prison, where my path to redemption continued. It didn’t take long for my captors, and their crew of counter-intelligence agents, to now recognize my political transition into a revolutionary, albeit I was still in the embryo stage of development. But nonetheless, in August of 1994, as a Brotha was commemorating my ancestor’s historical legacy of struggle against U.$ imperialism, I was abducted from the mainline under the façade of me organizing prisoners to commit a physical assault upon unidentified prisoners, which subsequently lead me to being relegated to indeterminate SHU status, as an alleged prison gang member.

Once I was sent to the SHU, my path of redemption continued, via the on-going transformation of uprooting the negative weeds of self-destruction that had been planted in my mind and thus my actions. Hence, it was also necessary for me to start re-harvesting my mind with a crop of new ideas, because truthfully speaking, you are what you think and believe in. So I began to study and read, any and all books, newspapers, magazines, etc. that I could get my hands on.

In solitary confinement, we’re not provided with any community based material resources, so I made it my business to constructively utilize any and all community contacts that I had, such as family/friends, in order to negate this void and aid my transition to new redemptive heights.  When asking my family/friends to send me money for canteen, I would make the necessary sacrifices by not putting in for a full canteen draw, so that I would always have money to buy books, newspapers, or magazines with, or I would ask my family/friends to use a portion of the money that they intended to send me, to instead buy me some reading materials, so as to keep the mind stimulated with new and positive ideas. Because it didn’t take long before I realized that access to information is the crucible that sustains/nurtures our humanity, and thus empowers us as individuals.  Because knowledge is power!

Hence, my humanity was further redeemed/restored as I elevated my state of consciousness through the reading of books like:

A Taste of Power, by Elaine Brown

Women, Race and Class, by Angela Davis

The Spirit of Man, by Iyanla Vanzant

The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, by Amy Jacques Garvey.

The Destruction of The Black Civilization, by Chancellor Williams

Vision for Black Men, by Na’im Akbar

The African Origin of Civilization, by Cheikh A. Diop

The mis-Education of the Negro, by Carter G. Woodson

Black Men; Obsolete, Single, Dangerous, by Haki R. Madhubuti

The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon

Just to name a few.  These beautiful New Afrikan Black Sistas/Brothas, shined a ray of light on the historical materialism, as to the atrocities, that the U.$. imperialists were, and remain committing against the Nation of New Afrikan Black People, which only reaffirmed my commitment in serving and aiding all oppressed people.

Pursuant to Penal Code Sections 2600 and 2601, we prisoners are allowed to share reading materials with one another, and I would encourage this practice, as it gives you access to more positive information and allows you to build upon a sense of community in your locality, with and in addition to, the possibility of sharing and developing positive ideas with each other from this practice. But in addition to this, the newspapers/magazines also gave me another medium, as to how to stay connected to the community, to thus negate my isolation from being held in solitary confinement (e.g. “the SHU”), as the newspapers/magazines contain information/addresses about various community resources, events, organizations and programs that I was now able to reach out to and get involved with.

Through initiating and developing the necessary discipline, character and resolve so as to remain steadfast/committed to the practice of studying and reading any and all books, newspapers, magazines, etc. that I could get my hands on, I was then able to discover a new found ability to write about all of the things that I had been reading and studying. In other words, one constructive outlet repeated another medium for me to not only sustain my humanity, but to also express my humanity, while relegated to indefinite solitary confinement status. And before  you knew it, I no longer had the time or desire to either think, act or behave in a negative and self-destructive manner, as my thoughts were, and remain, focused on the positive reconstruction of self via my path to redemption.

There is a positive to every negative, but the individual just has to take the time to identify the positive in every perceived negative situation, because the negative only exists when you allow it to. You always have the option of turning sour lemons in to lemonade by disciplining yourself to the practice of reading, writing and studying, as it gives you a real purpose; allows you to use your inner creativity; it redefines your faith in self, so that you can become a better person in the interest of the community; as every process of change starts with the individual and thus the community. It also gives you a new self-determination that would enable you to help save/rebuild our communities that we once took part in terrorizing through our self-destructive ways; and it also provides you with several additional principle variables of character building, which you may not have been aware of prior to this transition.

Our struggle for New Afrikan Black Liberation must be defined and constructed under qualitatively developed principles, that will ensure/sustain our propagated existence, as a nation of New Afrikan Black People that are struggling for real freedom!!  Here is a core listing of principles that we must continue to build upon and utilize as our guide, so that our ultimate goal of real freedom is achieved:

* Our goal is to unify ourselves politically, socially and culturally, economically, etc. and to maintain unity from this perspective, through the re-construction of our family and community values.

* Our self-determination is our ability to define our propagated existence for the sole purpose of redeeming ourselves and thus our communities.

* Our goal is to establish a mode of collective work and responsibility in our communities, by functioning as a collective body with one voice, and to thus make the problems of each Sista/Brotha in our community our problem, so that we can work together as a community by finding/developing community based solutions for our problems.

* Our goal as a community, is to establish a functional model of cooperative economics, which entails pooling our resources together, so that we can build our own institutions of business and thereby shop at, and buy from, our own stores, food markets, etc.

* Our purpose is to make our collective vocation the building of our community, to restore our humanity back to traditional greatness, and to create a social climate where each member of the community can consciously contribute to the rebuilding of our community. Our inner creativity is to do as much as we can to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it, which will test and enhance our creativity.

* Our faith is to believe with our hearts that our every action will be a manifestation of righteousness, which will be guided by our humanity and love for the people in our community.

Here are a few questions to test and advance your understanding on the materialism of what you just read in this pamphlet. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, as Freedom Is A Constant Struggle!!

1. What does Unity mean to you?

2. What have you determined yourself to do or become?

3. What does Community mean to you?

4. What does Redemption mean to you?

5. How can you redeem yourself for the sake of redeeming your community?

6. What is your purpose in life?

7. Who or what do you have faith in?

8. Have you identified your inner creative self yet?  If so, what is it? And how can you apply it?

For additional reading of my pamphlets and initiatives, you may write to:

South Chicago ABC Zine Distro

C/o Anthony Rayson

P.O. Box 721

Homewood, IL  60430

 

Ask for the following pamphlets and initiatives:

The Series, Volumes # 1-4

Evidence of Corruption, Genocide and Neo-Colonialism

The New Afrikan Anti-Alcohol Initiative 101

New Afrikan Physical Fitness 101

The New Afrikan Domestic Crisis Intervention

 

Chief Facilitators and Supporters

Chief Administrator:  Ms. Hannah Bastienne

www.myspace.com./dare2struggle

Midwest Regional Facilitator/Coordinator:

South Chicago ABC Zine Distro

C/o Anthony Rayson

P.O. Box 721

Homewood, IL  60430

Southern California Facilitator/Coordinator:

University of California Riverside

Dylan Rodriguez

Ethnic Studies Department, #3602 – HMNSS

Riverside, CA 92521

Northern California Facilitator/Coordinator:

Legal Services for Prisoners With Children

Carol Strickman

1540 Market Street, Suite 490

San Francisco, CA  94102

For more information, contact me at:

Kijana Tashiri Askari

Marcus Harrison    H54077

D-3-122   PBSP SHU

P.O. Box 7500

Crescent City, CA  955322

The Struggle Continues !!!

Kijana Tashiri Askari

What is the meaning of the California prisoner hunger strikes? A statement in support of the hunger strikers

December 16, 2011

BY KEVIN RASHID JOHNSON

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” – Frederick Douglass

Six thousand six hundred California prisoners participated in a 3-week-long hunger strike in July, seeking relief from unjust and inhumane conditions. In the face of California Department of Corrections (CDC) officials failing to honor settlement negotiations, the hunger strike resumed on September 26^th, with nearly 12,000 prisoners participating in thirteen of that state’s prisons.

It is a truism that oppression breeds resistance. Indeed, the U.S. Declaration of Independence enshrines the right and duty of the oppressed to resist their oppression.

In this era of capitalist oppression on a global scale, the hunger strike exhibits the very same humyn spirit, courage and outrage that drove millions across North Afrika and the Middle East this year, to take to the streets in protest against oppressive governments. U.S. rulers, in the face of pretending to champion and support human rights, democracy, and the demands for basic rights by people half a world away, can’t admit they practice abuses just as vile against their own subjects – right here in Amerika.

Hosni Mubarak, the U.S. puppet and Egyptian dictator who was driven out of Egypt by mass protests this year, was notorious for torturing his own people. But so too are U.S. officials. Indeed, one of the key protest issues of the California prisoners is the acute psychological torture of sensory deprivation in the CDC’s Security Housing Units (SHUs) – Pelican Bay’s SHU in particular. This torture can’t be honestly denied.

It has long been the game of U.S. officials, especially since the 20  Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib torture scandals, to pretend that psychological torture isn’t really torture at all. However, they secretly know the exact opposite to be true. According to torture experts, psychological – or ‘clean’ torture – is the most destructive, sadistic and inhumane type of torture. Among the most proven effective methods is the very sort inflicted by design in the isolated cells of the SHUs, namely sensory deprivation.

Noted psychologist and torture expert, Dr. Albert Biderman, long ago found as to sensory deprivation, “the effect of isolation on the brain function of the prisoner is much like that which occurs if he is beaten, starved or deprived of sleep” [1]. The very same U.S. Central Intelligence Agency that employed Biderman as one of its torture researchers and experimenters, encoded these findings in its 1963 “Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation” torture manual, confirming that:

1. The deprivation of sensory stimuli induces stress;
2. The stress becomes unbearable for most subjects;
3. The subject has a growing need for physical and social stimuli; and
4. Some subjects progressively lose touch with reality, focus inwardly, which produces delusions, hallucinations, and other pathological effects.

What’s more, over a century ago the U.S. high court found and denounced the same in U.S. prisons, in the face of In Re Medley, 134 U.S. 150 (1890) [2]. These findings have been repeated in U.S. courts today in response to the conditions of SHUs and super-maximum security prisons that have swept Amerika since the 1970s, alongside massive imprisonment of the poor and people of color. In one case concerning Pelican Bay’s SHU, the California federal courts found “many, if not most, inmates in SHU experience some degree of psychological trauma in reaction to their extreme social isolation and the severely restricted environmental stimulation in SHU.” Madrid v. Gomez, 889 F. Supp. 1146 (1995).

So it’s no wonder thousands of prisoners have been driven to starve themselves in desperate efforts for exposure and redress, and to show they are worthy of basic humyn rights and dignity.

But the typical response of officials is to discredit the resistance of those who suffer at their hands by villainizing (or “dirtying up,” as Johnnie Cochran used to called it), the victim. It was done to Civil Rights activists from the 1950s-1970s who opposed and exposed racism – U.S. officials projected them as fronts for foreign communists, and denounced as “Soviet propaganda” graphic photos of Southern lynching that appeared in world media.

Whatever happens to be the popular official enemy and bogeyman of the day, is the label used to discredit those who resist official oppression. During the Cold War, the ‘enemy’ was communists. Then it was terrorists. In the era of mass incarceration and ongoing persecution of Black and Brown youth, it’s gangs. These labels are used to provoke visceral reactions in the population at large of fear, hatred and consequent disregard for and alienation against the oppressed. And true to form, the hunger strikers have been “dirtied up’”as the work of prison gangs:

“The CDCR has continued to lie about the hunger strike – saying it was organized by gangs and attacking representatives of the strikers and others, depicting them as the ‘generals’ of the prison gangs and the ‘shot callers’ who order other prisoners to engage in gang violence.

“Dolores, whose son has been in the SHU for 10 years, said “If that is their [the prisoners’] way of thinking, then why did they just conduct a hunger strike willing to risk their own lives, to suffer on a daily basis in a nonviolent demonstration that spread across California prisons involving thousands and thousands of men crossing all racial lines? It’s because they are human beings. They do have dignity, and they want to be heard.” [3]

Not coincidentally, another of the hunger strike’s main protest issues is the CDCR’s labelling prisoners as gang members upon the flimsiest grounds, then confining them in SHUs until they “debrief” – that is, finger other prisoners as gang members to be thrown in the SHU. Thus the only way to leave SHU is as a known informant to be ostracized and targeted as such by others.

The Real Purpose of SHUs and Super-maxes

The true purpose of SHUs isn’t to control gangs and racial violence. In fact, the CDCR has long instigated and facilitated prisoner-on-prisoner violence. From the notorious ‘gladiator fights’ – where guards at CDCR’s Corcoran State Prison set up prisoner fights, gambled on the outcomes, and then shot the prisoners for fun, killing 8 and shooting 43 just between 1989 and 1994 – to massive numbers of prisoner-on-prisoner clashes instigated and manipulated by the notoriously corrupt California prison guards’ union, to generate public support for building more prisons to increase prison jobs and dues-paying membership.

In 1999, prisoners at the New Folsom Prison went on a hunger strike protesting being forced onto prison yards with rivals. CDOC Ombudsman Ken Hurdle rejected negotiations, stating “Then you’d have two groups normally aligned on the yard together. They would have only staff as their enemy” [4]. This admits officials deliberately facilitating prisoner-on-prisoner violence as a technique of prison control. This is what they fear in the unity shown by the hunger strikers. And it undermines the disunity they need to project them as animals.

Officials welcome and incite gang violence. It creates jobs, justifies their oppression, and enhances their ‘control.’ Even Crips co-founder Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams, who was killed by the CDCR exposed this [5].

More revealing is that then-California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, rejected massive international pleas to stay Tookie’s execution on grounds that Tookie dedicated his book, Life in Prison, to Black revolutionary George Jackson, who was murdered by CDOC officials in 1971. Schwarzenegger said the dedication “defies reason and is a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed.” Which brings us closer to exposing the real reasons SHUs exist.

The actual “leaders” officials fear, and who are the prime targets of SHUs and super-maxes are those who are politically conscious and prove able to unite prisoners across racial and other lines.

The proliferation of SHUs and super-maxes began with the Marion Control Unit, which opened in 1972, following the murder of George Jackson and the peaceful 1971 Attica uprising that officials ended with the coldblooded murders of 29 prisoners and 10 civilians, and systematic humiliation and torture of hundreds of prisoners, provoking international outrage. Like the brutal government responses to mass protests in Asia and Afrika this year, when the prisoners of Attica took to the yard in protest, with grievances articulated and represented by politically conscious prisoners, the official response was murder and torture, then high security torture units. In one of the few admissions on record, Ralph Arons, a former warden at Marion, testified in federal court: “The purpose of the Marion Control Unit is to control revolutionary attitudes in the prison and in society at large” [6]. Yet U.S. officials deny confining or persecuting people for political beliefs.

In fact, Pelican Bay officials recently banned my own book, Defying the Tomb, as “gang material,” a book of political writings and art, which many readers and reviewers have compared to George Jackson’s writings, whose books CDOC banned in the 1970s as well. And with the resurgence of prisoners’ political consciousness, they’ve recently begun confiscating this book as “gang material.” Like Nazi book burnings and concentration camps, the object is to censor and persecute political consciousness and revolutionary culture amongst the most oppressed peoples. And ‘gang’ labels are used to “dirty up” the people, practices, and ideas they seek to repress.

Just as I am confined in a remote Virginia super-max, under ‘special’ conditions of a SHU because of my political beliefs and having co-founded the New Afrikan Black Panther Party as a Party of the oppressed, so too you’ll find in these units across Amerika those who hold and practice revolutionary political views and affiliations that are supposed to be constitutionally protected, not persecuted. As the high court once proclaimed:

“Our form of government is built on the premise that every citizen shall have the right to engage in political expression and association. This right was enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Exercise of these basic freedoms in America has traditionally been through the media of political associations. Any interference with the freedom of a party is simultaneously an interference with the freedom of its adherents. All political ideas cannot and should not be channelled into the programs of our two major parties. History has amply proved the virtue of political activity by minority, dissident groups…” [7]

But contrast these political ideals with the political reality that such parties face at the hands of officials, as admitted by Justice Hugo Black: “History should teach us…that…minority parties and groups which advocate extremely unpopular social or governmental innovations will always be typed as criminal gangs and attempts will always be made to drive them out” [8].

This is the function of the SHUs like those that California’s prisoners are protesting, and the ones used as a weapon to censor and repress political consciousness.

Resistance to the oppression of these units is the meaning of the hunger strikes. Amerika’s oppressed and disenfranchised victims of modern penal enslavement and the New Jim Crow, are struggling like those of generations past for recognition and respect as humyn beings. As a Party of the oppressed, especially the imprisoned, the NABPP-PC stands in unity with the heroic struggles of California’s entombed, and call on all freedom-loving people everywhere to take up their cause.

Dare to struggle! Dare to win!

All Power to the People!

Notes

1. Albert D. Biderman and Herbert Zimmer, eds. The Manipulation of Human Behavior (New York: Wiley, 1961), 29.
2. The court found under conditions of solitary confinement “A considerable number of prisoner fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to remove them, and others became violently insane; others still committed suicide, while those who stood the ordeal better were generally not reformed, and in most cases, did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.”
3. “Hunger Strike to Resume September 26 – Support the Just Demands of the Pelican Bay Prisoners,” Revolution #243, September 25, 2011.
4. Quoted from Sacramento Bee, December 8, 1999.
5. “Yes America, as unbelievable as it may seem, ‘hood cops, with impunity, commit drive-bys and other lawless acts. It was common practice for them to abduct a Crip or Bounty Hunter and drop him off in hostile territory, and then broadcast it over a loudspeaker. The predictable outcome was that the rival was either beaten or killed on the spot, which resulted in a cycle of payback. Cops would also inform opposing gangs where to find and attack a rival gang, and then say ‘go handle your business.’ Like slaves, the gang did exactly what their master commanded. Had they not been fuelled by self-hatred, neither Crips, Bounty Hunters, nor any other Black gang, would have been duped: “The ‘hood cops were pledged to protect and serve, but for us they were not there to help, but to exploit us – and they were effective. With the cops’ Machiavellian presence, the gang epidemic escalated. When gang warfare is fed and fuelled by law enforcement, funds are generated for the so-called anti-gang units. Without gangs, those units would no longer exist.” Blue Rage, Black Redemption (2004).
6. Stephen Whitman, “The Marion Penitentiary – It should be Opened-Up Not Locked-Down.” Southern Illinoisan. August 7, 1988, p. 25.
7. NAACP v. Button. 371 U.S. 415, 431 (1963).
8. Barenblatt v. U.S., 360 U.S. 109, 150 (1959) (J., Black, dissenting).

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Revised announcement for call-ins for Hunger Strike and Leonard Peltier

CORRECTION FOR CALL IN TIMES in previous announcement: It should be 10am-2p for PACIFIC, and 1-5pm for EASTERN.

FYI: Pelican Bay prisoners have ended their hunger strike, but Calipatria, Corcoran and Tehachapi state prisons remain on strike.
See http://ymlp.com/z7Uytf and http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/

I have created a revised announcement below, calling for people to call-in EVERY Thursday and Friday until the demands are met:
========================================================================================

FORWARD, REPOST, CALL!

This coming Thursday and Friday

Call for the CA Prison Hunger Strikers and Leonard Peltier!

Open the Cages!
—————————

THURSDAY- Call for the CA Prison Hunger Strikers!
10am-2pm Pacific (1pm-5pm Eastern)

Prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State
Prison (California) began a hunger strike on
July 1, 2011 to protest the cruel, inhumane and tortuous conditions of
their imprisonment. At least 6,600 prisoners across the state of CA
have joined them in solidarity with their demands. Though Pelican Bay
prisoners have accepted an offer from the CDCR which grants night caps
(beanies), wall calendars, and some educational program opportunities,
the rest of their demands have not been met and hundreds of prisoners at
Calipatria, Corcoran and Tehachapi remain on strike.

Support the hunger strikers by contacting the CDCR and urging them to
negotiate with the prisoners and honor their 5 demands!

http://prisonerhungerstrik ​esolidarity.wordpress.com/

Make Calls to:

Secretary Matthew Cate, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Phone: (916) 323-6001

CDCR Public Affairs Office: (916)445-4950

CA Governor Jerry Brown: (916) 445-2841

Sample Script for Phone Calls:

“Hi my name is _________ . I’m calling about the statewide prisoner
hunger strike that began at Pelican Bay and continues today at
Tehachapi, Corocoran and Calipatria. I support the prisoners &
their reasonable “five core demands.” I am alarmed by the rapidly
deteriorating medical conditions of the hunger strikers. I urge you to
make sure the CDCR negotiates with the prisoners who continue to hunger strike,
immediately & in good faith, before prisoners are force-fed or even die, and I urge you to ensure
that the CDCR keeps good on the offer it has made to Pelican Bay prisoners. Thank you.”

http://prisonerhungerstrik ​esolidarity.wordpress.com/ ​take-action/cdcr-and-calif ​ornia-elected-officials-co ​ntact-informaion/
http://www.nytimes.com/201 ​1/07/08/us/08hunger.html
http://www.change.org/peti ​tions/support-prisoners-on ​-hunger-strike-at-pelican- ​bay-state-prison
—————————————————————————— ​———————————————————————

FRIDAY– Call for Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier!
10am-2pm Pacific (1pm-5pm Eastern)

(Info below abridged and adapted from alert launched into cyberspace
by Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee)
http://www.whoisleonardpel ​tier.info/alert.htm

On June 27, the 66-year-old Leonard Peltier was thrown in “The Hole”
at USP-Lewisburg where he purportedly will stay for the next six
months. According to what is currently known, Leonard’s cell was
searched that day. A guard allegedly was shocked by a wire(s) in the
cell. The guard claimed “assault.” Leonard wasn’t present during the
search, having already been removed to “The Hole”.

Reference “Leonard Peltier #89637-132″ being unfairly put in
(administrative) segregation or detention– and for an unfairly long
amount of time.

Call USP Lewisburg at 570-523-1251 and ask for Warden Bledsoe

Dr. Thomas Kane, Acting Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)-

(202) 307-3250 (Director)

Or (202) 307-3198 (Switchboard)

———————————
Call every Thursday and Friday until the demands are met! Call other days of the week too and don’t limit yourself to calling!

See http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/take-action/demonstrations-actions-events-in-the-us-canada/ for demonstrations/events near you!

Barbarous Confinement

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/opinion/18dayan.html

Barbarous Confinement
By COLIN DAYAN

Published: July 17, 2011
MORE than 1,700 prisoners in California, many of whom are in maximum isolation units, have gone on a hunger strike. The protest began with inmates in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison. How they have managed to communicate with each other is anyone’s guess — but their protest is everyone’s concern. Many of these prisoners have been sent to virtually total isolation and enforced idleness for no crime, not even for alleged infractions of prison regulations. Their isolation, which can last for decades, is often not explicitly disciplinary, and therefore not subject to court oversight. Their treatment is simply a matter of administrative convenience.

Solitary confinement has been transmuted from an occasional tool of discipline into a widespread form of preventive detention. The Supreme Court, over the last two decades, has whittled steadily away at the rights of inmates, surrendering to prison administrators virtually all control over what is done to those held in “administrative segregation.” Since it is not defined as punishment for a crime, it does not fall under “cruel and unusual punishment,” the reasoning goes.

As early as 1995, a federal judge, Thelton E. Henderson, conceded that so-called “supermax” confinement “may well hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable,” though he ruled that it remained acceptable for most inmates. But a psychiatrist and Harvard professor, Stuart Grassian, had found that the environment was “strikingly toxic,” resulting in hallucinations, paranoia and delusions. In a “60 Minutes” interview, he went so far as to call it “far more egregious” than the death penalty.

Officials at Pelican Bay, in Northern California, claim that those incarcerated in the Security Housing Unit are “the worst of the worst.” Yet often it is the most vulnerable, especially the mentally ill, not the most violent, who end up in indefinite isolation. Placement is haphazard and arbitrary; it focuses on those perceived as troublemakers or simply disliked by correctional officers and, most of all, alleged gang members. Often, the decisions are not based on evidence. And before the inmates are released from the barbarity of 22-hour-a-day isolation into normal prison conditions (themselves shameful) they are often expected to “debrief,” or spill the beans on other gang members.

The moral queasiness that we must feel about this method of extracting information from those in our clutches has all but disappeared these days, thanks to the national shame of “enhanced interrogation techniques” at Guantánamo. Those in isolation can get out by naming names, but if they do so they will likely be killed when returned to a normal facility. To “debrief” is to be targeted for death by gang members, so the prisoners are moved to “protective custody” — that is, another form of solitary confinement.

Hunger strikes are the only weapon these prisoners have left. Legal avenues are closed. Communication with the outside world, even with family members, is so restricted as to be meaningless. Possessions — paper and pencil, reading matter, photos of family members, even hand-drawn pictures — are removed. (They could contain coded messages between gang members, we are told, or their loss may persuade the inmates to snitch when every other deprivation has failed.)

The poverty of our criminological theorizing is reflected in the official response to the hunger strike. Now refusing to eat is regarded as a threat, too. Authorities are considering force-feeding. It is likely it will be carried out — as it has been, and possibly still continues to be — at Guantánamo (in possible violation of international law) and in an evil caricature of medical care.

In the summer of 1996, I visited two “special management units” at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. A warden boasted that one of the units was the model for Pelican Bay. He led me down the corridors on impeccably clean floors. There was no paint on the concrete walls. Although the corridors had skylights, the cells had no windows. Nothing inside could be moved or removed. The cells contained only a poured concrete bed, a stainless steel mirror, a sink and a toilet. Inmates had no human contact, except when handcuffed or chained to leave their cells or during the often brutal cell extractions. A small place for exercise, called the “dog pen,” with cement floors and walls, so high they could see nothing but the sky, provided the only access to fresh air.

Later, an inmate wrote to me, confessing to a shame made palpable and real: “If they only touch you when you’re at the end of a chain, then they can’t see you as anything but a dog. Now I can’t see my face in the mirror. I’ve lost my skin. I can’t feel my mind.”

Do we find our ethics by forcing prisoners to live in what Judge Henderson described as the setting of “senseless suffering” and “wretched misery”? Maybe our reaction to hunger strikes should involve some self-reflection. Not allowing inmates to choose death as an escape from a murderous fate or as a protest against continued degradation depends, as we will see when doctors come to make their judgment calls, on the skilled manipulation of techniques that are indistinguishable from torture. Maybe one way to react to prisoners whose only reaction to bestial treatment is to starve themselves to death might be to do the unthinkable — to treat them like human beings.

Colin Dayan, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, is the author of “The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons.”

Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org

Protests Grow in Solidarity with California Prisoners as Hunger Strikes Enter Third Week

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to California, where thousands of inmates in at least 11 prisons across the state’s troubled prison system have been on hunger strike for almost two weeks. Many are protesting in solidarity with inmates held in Pelican Bay State Prison, California’s first super-maximum security prison.

The hunger strike began on July 1st in the Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit, when inmates began refusing meals to protest what they say is cruel and unusual conditions. Prisoners in the units are kept in total isolation for 22-and-a-half hours a day, a punishment some mental health experts say can lead to insanity and is tantamount to torture.

Democracy Now! obtained a recording of an audio statement that one of the Pelican Bay inmates, Ted Ashker sic, made to his legal team in the secure prison’s Secure Housing Unit, which is referred to as the SHU. You will need to listen closely as he explains his reasons for joining the hunger strike.

TODD ASHKER: The basis for this protest has come about after over 25 years—some of us, 30, some up to 40 years—of being subjected to these conditions the last 21 years in Pelican Bay SHU, where every single day you have staff and administrators who feel it’s their job to punish the worst of the worst, as they’ve put out propaganda for the last 21 years that we are the worst of the worst. And most of us have never been found guilty of ever committing an illegal gang-related act. But we’re in SHU because of a label. And all of our 602 appeals, numerous court challenges, have gotten nowhere. Therefore, our backs are up against the wall.

A lot of us are older now. We have serious medical issues coming on. And we believe that this is our only option of ever trying to make some kind of positive changes here, is through this peaceful protest of hunger strike. And there is a core group of us who are committed to taking this all the way to the death, if necessary. None of us want to do this, but we feel like we have no other option. And we’re just hoping for the best.

JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Todd, not Ted, Todd Ashker, one of the prisoners in Pelican Bay’s Secure Housing Unit who is on hunger strike. California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesperson, Terry Thornton, responded to the hunger strike, saying, quote, “This goes to show the power, influence and reach of prison gangs.” A prison guard told MSNBC that prisoners are kept in the SHU for their own safety.

PRISON GUARD: Inmates that were placed into the SHU housing unit were placed in here, for the most part, because of violence, and that violence could be against other inmates or against officers.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, activists who support the strikers dismiss allegations of gang ties. They describe the conditions inside the prison’s highest-security special isolation wing as inhumane.

In May, the federal Supreme Court ruled that California must reduce its prison overcrowding to be able to provide inmates with adequate healthcare. In a five-to-four ruling, the court said conditions in California’s prison system are, quote, “incompatible with the concept of human dignity, causing needless suffering and death.”

Supporters of the hunger strikers protesting these conditions say, as the prisoners continue to refuse food, their health has deteriorated to critical levels.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by three guests. In Oakland, California, we’re joined by Dorsey Nunn, who is co-founder of All of Us or None. He’s also executive director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children. Nunn was incarcerated from 1971 to ’82 at San Quentin. He’s one of the mediators between the prisoners on hunger strike and the California Department of Corrections.

Also joining us from the University of California, Berkeley, is Molly Porzig. She’s a member of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition and a spokesperson for Critical Resistance.

And in Arizona, we’re joined by Desiree Lozoya. She is the niece of a prisoner participating in the Pelican Bay hunger strike. She went to the prison last weekend and visited her uncle.

Desiree, let’s start with you. Tell us what your uncle explained to you, why he’s on hunger strike, and what’s happening at Pelican Bay.

DESIREE LOZOYA: Well, basically, just as Todd had explained in his video clip, they’re just wanting to be treated better. They’re cold. They’re losing weight. And like he had explained, a lot of these prisoners are trying to be—basically gang-labeled. However, there’s nothing to be labeling them for. For instance, my uncle was an interstate transfer to Pelican Bay. He was supposed to be transferred closer to home. However, he was still transferred 17 hours away from us. And then, as soon as they saw a tattoo on his hand, they labeled him right away. Although he has had no write-ups, has gotten into no trouble, they automatically put him in the Ad-Seg, which is now called the new SHU. They are now expanding that. And so, that’s where he sits.

AMY GOODMAN: Because they said the tattoo indicates he’s a member of a gang?

DESIREE LOZOYA: Yes. And the tattoo, he ended up getting when he was a teen. He was only 18 years old when he received the tattoo. It was in no gang affiliation whatsoever.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And we’re also joined by Molly Porzig. She’s a member of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition. Molly, talk about how this has spread to the rest of the California prison system.

MOLLY PORZIG: Right. So, on the first day of the hunger strike, thousands of prisoners across the state of California, more than 6,600 prisoners that we know of across at least 13 prisons, joined the hunger strike in solidarity with the prisoners at the Pelican Bay SHU and their demands. What’s really significant about that is that people are risking their own lives in joining this action, while being in very similar, or even the same, brutal conditions as the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay. And that speaks to the fact that while this struggle speaks to particular conditions at Pelican Bay and in the SHU, it’s also part of the larger system within California, which was just mentioned that has been condemned by the Supreme Court as inhumane and cruel, due to severe medical neglect and overcrowding.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering, Dorsey Nunn, co-founder of All of Us or None, if you could explain how this strike has spread and how you are negotiating between the prisoners and the prisons.

DORSEY NUNN: I think this strike has spread, just like anybody else that supports injustice. So for them to consider—I heard in your clip when he said the 6,000 people that’s supporting this strike is—demonstrates the influence of gang leaders. I think it demonstrates the need for justice. Just as Martin marched and people followed Martin, people followed Gandhi, people are actually striking because they are being tortured. So I think that this strike has spread because torture is a threatening thing to anybody in the California Department of Corrections.

People are being tortured. Some parts of what I know, as a formerly incarcerated person who have did time within the California Department of Corrections, that they are guilty of torture. It’s like being locked—it’s not “like.” People are being locked up in the bathroom for 23, 24 and 30 years. It may not have been torture maybe the first 30 days or the first 60 days, but when you start getting into multiple decades, then we can call it torture.

When you start extracting information in Pelican Bay or Guantánamo Bay, the purpose is the same. You’re torturing people. And I think under international standards, it can be referred to as that. I think the thing that is troubling, that this thing is happening on the shores of the United States. We never did have to get into renditions if we were going to allow torture in northern California.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Dorsey—

DORSEY NUNN: So this thing is spreading.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Dorsey Nunn, what’s been the response of prison officials or government officials? Have they attempted to negotiate or mediate through you or with the inmates?

DORSEY NUNN: I think that we entered discussions. I wouldn’t necessarily call it “negotiating.” We entered discussions, you know. So I guess if I was in a cage with a 600-pound gorilla, you couldn’t necessarily call it a dance.

AMY GOODMAN: And where do you—

DORSEY NUNN: You know, so I—you know, what you—

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead, Dorsey.

DORSEY NUNN: You know, what brings me into this studio this morning at 5:00 in the morning is that I’m scared people are going to start dying. You know, the only model that these guys got left is the model of Bobby Sands and the Irish strike. That’s their model. So these guys—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean by that.

DORSEY NUNN: You know, somebody needs to think about what would drive human beings—yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Dorsey, you’re talking about—you’re talking about fasting to death, if you’re talking about Bobby Sands.

DORSEY NUNN: Yeah, that’s what they’re talking about. And that’s what they’ve been like—that’s what I’m frightened of. So what brings me into your studio is, I think they’re betting on the compassion of people who live in the state of California, people who live in the United States. And what’s frightening to me is that I don’t know if that compassion really exists.

MOLLY PORZIG: I mean, just to add to that, to back up to the question of what has the response of officials been, I mean, it’s very, very clear that the CDCR is more than willing, if not wanting, people to start dying. They want this to go away quickly and quietly. They pride itself on Pelican Bay being the end of the line, not only for people in California, but to be a model for the United States, and really the world, in terms of how to repress political organizing and resistance and any sort of defiance to any sort of establishment.

And I think that, you know, what the challenge is for supporters outside of prison is that we need to be tirelessly working at, in a very urgent way, taking the risks that we can to match the courage of these hunger strikers, because, like Dorsey is saying, people—it’s not just that we’re afraid of in a few weeks people dying. People are getting to that point now. And we need to be acting more. You know, historically, people have used civil disobedience to prevent mass death. And that’s exactly the moment that we’re in right now. That’s exactly what these hunger strikers and thousands and thousands of prisoners across the state of California are doing. Some prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary are also joining this. You know, so this is really, really huge.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there.

MOLLY PORZIG: And if people start dying, if it gets to that point—OK.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there, but I thank you so much, all, for being with us. We will certainly follow this hunger strike. We’ve been joined by Dorsey Nunn, co-founder of All of Us or None, by Molly Porzig with Critical Resistance, and thank you to Desiree Lozoya, who joined us from Arizona.

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Support Pelican Bay State Prison Hunger Strikers! Solidarity Picket – Saturday, July 9

Support Pelican Bay State Prison Hunger Strikers!
Solidarity Picket – Saturday, July 9
1-2 PM
Harlem State Office Building – NYC
(corner 125th Street & Adam Clayton Powell Blvd., Harlem)

Come out to the Harlem picket on July 9. One NYC activist will also be holding a solidarity hunger strike locally. Prisoner solidarity actions will be held in the Bay Area, Toronto, Montreal and elsewhere.

Endorsed by (list in formation): Campaign to End the Death Penalty-NYC, Campaign to End the New Jim Crow, Center for Constitutional Rights, Criminal Justice Committee NAMI NYS, Free Mumia Coalition-NYC, Milk Not Jails, National Lawyers Guild-NYC Chapter, Prison Strike Action, VOCAL-NY, Laura Whitehorn, former political prisoner, Women Rising Up Telling Her Story (WORTH)

Go to http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/ for more info. Contact nyc@nodeathpenalty.org about NYC action and to endorse
Sign the petition! http://www.change.org/petitions/support-prisoners-on-hunger-strike-at-pelican-bay-state-prison

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/us/08hunger.html?_r=1&hp

July 7, 2011
Hunger Strike by Inmates Is Latest Challenge to California’s Prison System
By IAN LOVETT
LOS ANGELES — Thousands of inmates at prisons throughout California have been refusing state-issued food in a mass hunger strike to protest conditions at the state’s highest-security prisons, where some inmates are kept in prolonged isolation.
The protest was organized by inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison’s security housing unit, where prisoners are kept in isolation more than 22 hours a day. They stopped eating on July 1, and prisoners around the state have imitated their campaign. About 1,700 prisoners in all were continuing to refuse at least some state-issued meals on Thursday, down from a peak of 6,600 last weekend, according to the State Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Although most prisoners have resumed eating, a group of at least two dozen at Pelican Bay, some of whom have been kept in the security housing unit for decades, said they were prepared to starve to death.
“We believe our only option of ever trying to make some kind of positive change here is through this peaceful hunger strike,” Todd Ashker, one of the Pelican Bay inmates who organized the strike, said in a statement conveyed through a lawyer. “And there is a core group of us who are committed to taking this all the way to the death if necessary.”
The hunger strike is only the latest problem for a state prison system that has lurched from one crisis to another in recent years. In May, the United States Supreme Court ordered the state to reduce the population of its overcrowded prisons by more than 30,000 inmates; and in 2005 a court appointed a federal administrator to take control of the faltering prison health care system.
Most of the prisoners who remain on hunger strike are in security housing units like the one at Pelican Bay, where they are kept alone in windowless, soundproof concrete cells. To communicate, they have to yell from one cell to the other, although prisoner-rights activists in contact with the prisoners did not know if this was how they had organized the strike. The lack of human contact often leads to depression and bouts of rage, psychologists say.
Prisoners and activists say that such conditions are cruel and unusual punishment. Most inmates end up in these extreme isolation blocks because of ties to gang activities. To get back into the general prison population, activists say, they are pressured to divulge information about other gang members in prison, a process known as “debriefing,” which can jeopardize their safety.
“We do see this long isolation and debriefing process as torture,” said Carol Strickman, a staff lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, an advocacy group in San Francisco. “These are inhumane conditions designed to extract information from someone.”
But a Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman, Terry Thornton, said that the restrictive conditions at Pelican Bay had been litigated numerous times.
A federal judge appointed a court monitor in 1995 to oversee changes at the security housing unit, including the removal of mentally ill prisoners from the block and an end to the use of excessive force. But he did not order changes to day-to-day conditions there.
Ms. Thornton said the department had received the prisoners’ list of demands, which was being “reviewed and evaluated very thoroughly,” and administrators met with Prison Focus, a prisoner-rights group, on Thursday. But she added that gang members were leading the hunger strike, which only showed the need to separate them from the general prison population.
“The department is not going to be coerced or manipulated,” she said. “That so many inmates in other prisons throughout the state are involved really demonstrates how these gangs can influence other inmates, which is one of the reasons we have security housing units in the first place.”
The hunger strike has transcended the gang and geographic affiliations that traditionally divide prisoners, with prisoners of many backgrounds participating.
But not all were prepared to take the protest as far as Mr. Ashker. All have continued to drink liquids, and some have refused to eat the state-issued food but have drunk Ensure or bought food from the canteen.
Still, if the strike continues — even if only among a handful of inmates at Pelican Bay — doctors may soon have to decide whether to force-feed protesters.
About 2,000 inmates are being medically monitored, with nurses conducting cell-to-cell rounds. At Pelican Bay, most prisoners have refused to meet with doctors.
Every inmate has the right to decline both food and medical care, and he can issue a directive to a doctor not to force-feed him even if he later becomes delirious from starvation. If he does not issue a directive, however, doctors must make judgment calls.
“Doctors have strict ethical guidelines they have to follow about making sure the patient has given informed consent,” said Nancy Kincaid, a spokeswoman for the federal health care administrator. “But if they never said, ‘Don’t feed me,’ they have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis.”

California’s Pelican Bay prisoners plan hunger strike

California’s Pelican Bay prisoners plan hunger strike
Published Jul 4, 2011 9:20 PM

Prisoners in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit plan to go on hunger strike beginning July 1 to protest the cruel, inhumane conditions there. The following excerpted call for support was written by prisoner Mutope Duguma. For more information, visit www.prisons.org.

This is a call for all prisoners in Security Housing Units (SHUs), Administrative Segregation (Ad-Seg), and General Populations (GP), as well as the free oppressed and non-oppressed people to support the indefinite July 1 peaceful Hunger Strike in protest of the violation of our civil/human rights here at Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit, short corridor D1 through D4 and its overflow, D5 through D10.

It should be clear to everyone that none of the hunger strike participants want to die, but [the] state of California has sentenced all of us on Indeterminate SHU programs to a “civil death” merely on the word of a prison informer (snitch). The purpose of the Hunger Strike is to combat both the Ad-Seg/SHU psychological and physical torture. Those subjected to indeterminate SHU programs are neglected and deprived of the basic human necessities while withering away in a very isolated and hostile environment.

Prison officials have utilized the assassination of prisoners’ character to each other as well as the general public in order to justify their inhumane treatment of prisoners. The “code of silence” used by guards allows them the freedom to use everything at their disposal in order to break those prisoners who prison officials and correctional officers (COs) believe cannot be broken.

It is this mentality that set in motion the establishing of the short corridor, D1 through D4 and its D5 though D10 overflow. This mentality has created the current atmosphere, in which COs and prison officials agreed upon a plan to break indeterminate SHU prisoners. This protracted attack on SHU prisoners cuts across every aspect of the prison’s function: food, mail, visitations, medical, yard, hot/cold temperatures, privileges (canteen, packages, property, etc.), isolation, cell searches, family/friends, and socio-cultural, economic, and political deprivation. This is nothing short of the psychological/physical torture of SHU/Ad-Seg prisoners. It takes place day in and day out, without a break or rest.

The prison’s gang intelligence unit was extremely angered at the fact that prisoners who had been held in SHU under inhuman conditions for anywhere from 10 to 40 years had not been broken. So the gang intelligence unit created the “short corridor” and intensified their attacks on the prisoners housed there. The object was to use blanket pressure to encourage these particular isolated prisoners to debrief (i.e., snitch in order to be released from SHU).

The COs and administrative officials are all in agreement and all do their part in depriving short corridor prisoners and its overflow of their basic civil/human rights. None of the deliberate attacks is a figment of anyone’s imagination. They are deliberate and conscious acts against essentially defenseless prisoners.

It is these ongoing attacks that have led the short corridor and overflow SHU prisoners to organize themselves around an indefinite Hunger Strike in an effort to combat the dehumanizing treatment we prisoners of all races are subjected to on a daily basis. Therefore, on July 1, we ask that all prisoners throughout the state of California who have been suffering injustices in General Population, Administrative Segregation and solitary confinement, etc., to join in our peaceful strike to put a stop to the blatant violations of prisoners’ civil/human rights. As you know, prison gang investigators have used threats of validation and other means to get prisoners to engage in a protracted war against each other in order to serve their narrow interests. If you cannot participate in the Hunger Strike, then support it in principle by not eating for the first 24 hours of the strike.

I say that those of you who carry yourselves as principled human beings, no matter your housing status, must fight to right this and other egregious wrongs. Although it is “us” today (united New Afrikans, Whites, Northern and Southern Mexicans, and others) it will be you all tomorrow. It is in your interests to peacefully support us in this protest today, and beware of agitators, provocateurs and obstructionists, because they are the ones who put 90 percent of us back here because they could not remain principled even within themselves.
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