Pelican Bay - Support & Resistance Expand

August 1, 2011 by prisoner hungerstrike solidarity

Hunger Strike Supporters everywhere are gearing up for the legislative hearings to begin on August 23rd in Sacramento, CA by holding lead-up events in the weeks before the 23rd.

Today supporters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago and New York are holding rallies and speak-outs as part of a national day in support of the hunger strike, asking for all five core demands to be met, and for no retaliation against any and all prisoners who participated in the strike.

Supporters are also continuing to show support by participating in rolling fasts, writing letters to legislators, and words of encouragement and support to prisoners. Last week, more than 150 religious communities of Roman Catholic nuns mailed in letters of support of the prisoners’ requests to the governor of CA. The communities ranges from the Congregation of St. Joseph to the Loretto Sisters to the Sisters of Mercy. Each religious community represents from 100-18,000 nuns nationally and internationally. These representatives say: “We are with each of the prisoners and their supporters and loved ones in this struggle and extend our prayers of love, peace and support.”

Tactics of extreme isolation, social deprivation and torturous conditions are used throughout the US. [At least 60 super-maximum security prisons are operated in 44 states of the US]. People locked up throughout all prisons continuously resist repression and torture everyday, often working together in forms of both spontaneous and well-organized massive resistance.

Days within the Hunger Strike in CA ending, the Department of Corrections in Indiana put all the state prisons on lock-down in response to a stabbing no doubt instigated by guards. Prisoners in Indiana’s SHU joined together in resistance once the prison administration cut off all electricity and water in the prisons. Supporters are calling for an emergency call-in day today & tomorrow in solidarity with the Wabash protesters.

As we approach the 40th Anniversary of the Attica Rebellion this September, we’re reminded of the decades before us of prisoners working together across prison-manufactured racial divisions, resisting brutal conditions of isolation, torture and imprisonment. We’re reminded of the long and tireless fight for humanity to be recognized. The hunger strike that started at Pelican Bay and swept across CA’s prisons system has rejuvenated years and years of anti-prison and human rights’ work throughout the US and internationally, galvanizing support and collaboration inside and outside prison walls.

Cruel Isolation

August 1, 2011 New York Times

For many decades, the civilized world has recognized prolonged isolation of prisoners in cruel conditions to be inhumane, even torture. The Geneva Conventions forbid it. Even at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where prisoners were sexually humiliated and physically abused systematically and with official sanction, the jailers had to get permission of their commanding general to keep someone in isolation for more than 30 days.

So Americans should be disgusted and outraged that prolonged solitary confinement, sometimes for months or even years, has become a routine form of prison management. It is inflicting unnecessary, indecent and inhumane suffering on tens of thousands of prisoners.

The issue came to the fore most recently because of a three-week hunger strike by inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison in California near the Oregon border that began on July 1 in the Orwellian Security Housing Unit, where inmates are held in wretched isolation in small windowless cells for more than 22 hours a day, some for many years.

Possessions, reading material, exercise and exposure to natural light and the outside are severely restricted. Meals are served through slots in steel cell doors. There is little in the way of human interaction. Returning to the general prison population is often conditioned on inmates divulging information on other gang members, putting themselves in jeopardy.

How inmates in these circumstances communicated to organize the protest is unclear, but it quickly spread to other California prisons. About 6,600 inmates participated at its peak. California’s huge prison system is dysfunctional in so many ways. In May, the Supreme Court found conditions at the overcrowded prisons so egregious that they violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and ordered the state to cut its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates. The case did not address the issue of long-term solitary confinement.

With their health deteriorating, those inmates continuing to fast resumed eating after state prison officials met a few modest demands. Inmates in Pelican Bay’s isolation unit will get wool caps for cold weather, wall calendars to mark the passing time and some educational programming. Prison officials said current isolation and gang management policies are under review. But the protest has raised awareness about the national shame of extended solitary confinement at Pelican Bay and at high-security, “supermax” prisons all around the country.

Once used occasionally as a short-term punishment for violating prison rules, solitary confinement’s prevalent use as a long-term prison management strategy is a fairly recent development, Colin Dayan, a professor at Vanderbilt University, said in a recent Op-Ed article in The Times. Nationally, more than 20,000 inmates are confined in “supermax” facilities in horrid conditions.

Prison officials claim the treatment is necessary for combating gang activity and other threats to prison order. It is possible to maintain physical separation of prisoners without ultraharsh levels of deprivation and isolation. Mississippi, which once set the low bar for terrible prison practices, saw a steep reduction of prison violence and ample monetary savings when it dramatically cut back on long-term solitary several years ago.

Holding prisoners in solitary also is very expensive, and several other states have begun to make reductions. In any case, decency requires limits. Resorting to a dehumanizing form of punishment well known to induce suffering and drive people into mental illness is beyond them.