Thirty-thousand inmates held in prisons across California have taken the first steps towards engaging in what could become the largest hunger strike in state history.
Prisoners at 11 state facilities began refusing meals early
Monday after months of plotting a demonstration that they hope
will bring change to a number of longstanding grievances held by
inmates against the California Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation, particularly the practice of indefinitely housing
some detainees in total isolation.
In a letter obtained by the Los Angeles Times, protesters
reportedly demand that the state retire its current solitary
confinement policies and let inmates accused of prison gang
involvement spend a maximum of only five years in isolation.
Currently there is no limit to how long inmates thought to be
connected to internal gangs can spend in Segregated Housing
Units, or SHUs, and the Times claim 4,527 inmates at four state
prisons are living like that now, including 1,180 at Pelican Bay
State Prison in northern California where the latest
demonstration was first hatched.
“The principal prisoner representatives from the PBSP SHU
Short Corridor Collective Human Rights Movement do hereby present
public notice that our nonviolent peaceful protest of our
subjection to decades of indefinite state-sanctioned torture, via
long term solitary confinement will resume today,” reads the
letter as it appears on the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity
website, “consisting of a hunger strike/work stoppage of
indefinite duration until CDCR signs a legally binding agreement
meeting our demands, the heart of which mandates an end to
long-term solitary confinement (as well as additional major
reforms).”
According to the Times, the inmates are also seeking education
and rehabilitation programs and the right to make monthly phone
calls.
Prisoners in California have held similar protests before,
including a hunger strike in 2011 that also originated at Pelican
Bay and eventually accumulated the support of 6,000 inmates
across the state.
That hunger strike eventually led to a class-action lawsuit to be
filed against the corrections department which has recently
entered a mediation phase. Two years after that action sent a
message to the state, though, prisoners still aren’t satisfied
with the response they’ve received.
“While the CDCR has claimed to have made reforms to its SHU
system – how a prisoner ends up in the solitary units, for how
long, and how they can go about getting released into the general
population – prisoners’ rights advocates and family members point
out that the CDCR has potentially broadened the use of solitary
confinement, and that conditions in the SHUs continue to
constitute grave human rights violations,” reads their latest
letter.
Officially the state does not recognize a hunger strike until
participants have refused nine consecutive meals. On Monday,
corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton told the Los Angeles Times
that 30,000 prisoners skipped breakfast and lunch, putting them
on course to launch an actual strike by the middle of the week.
Despite gearing towards what could become the largest hunger
strike in state history, however, Thornton said, “Everything
has been running smoothly.”
“It was normal. There were no incidents,” she told the
Times of Monday’s protest. But according to the paper’s Paige St.
John, around 2,300 prisoners have taken the protest beyond the
realm of refusing to eat and have also started to skip work and
class.
Ms. Thornton did not immediately respond for comment when
approached by RT about the status of the budding strike early
Tuesday.
According to the inmates, the California prison system currently
holds over 10,000 prisoners in solitary confinement units,
including dozens who have spent more than 20 years each in
isolation. Gabriel Reyes has spent 16 years in the SHU, and in a
letter published this week by Truth-Out, writes, “I understand
I broke the law, and I have lost liberties because of that. But
no one, no matter what they’ve done, should be denied fundamental
human rights, especially when that denial comes in the form of
such torture.”
Reyes is currently serving a sentence of 25-years-to-life for
burgling an unoccupied swelling. He says that the prison’s
determination of a “gang affiliation” has left him
spending 22.5 hours a day in isolation.
Republished with permission from: RT