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Vol. 75/No. 38      October 24, 2011

 
Prisoners in California
resume hunger strike
 
BY BETSEY STONE  
SACRAMENTO, Calif.—For the second time this year, prisoners are on hunger strike in California.

As with the three-week hunger strike in July, this action was initiated by prisoners in the Special Housing Unit at Pelican Bay in northern California and spread to other prisons. According to prison figures released to the press, nearly 12,000 inmates were part of the strike September 28, including inmates from California who are now imprisoned in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

The prisoners decided to renew the strike when it became clear that, despite initial promises by prison authorities, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was not acting on its promise to meet prisoners’ demands.

The action has taken the form of a rolling strike, with some inmates resuming eating to regain strength. This, along with the fact that information on the strike is filtered through prison authorities, makes it difficult to tell how many are involved in the action.

The hunger strikers are demanding an end to long-term solitary confinement. In the Special Housing Units, prisoners are locked in windowless cells for 22 or more hours a day. They are allowed out only to shower or exercise alone. At the Pelican Bay SHU, more than 500 have lived in these conditions for 10 years or more, 78 for 20 years or more.

The prisoners also call for ending group punishment and punishment for refusing to inform on other prisoners, for improvements in abysmal medical care and food, the right to wear warm clothes, a wall calendar, and the right to take correspondence courses.

“We are fighting for the prisoners’ just demands,” says Kendra Castañeda, whose husband is one of hundreds of prisoners who began the strike on September 26 at the Calipatria State Prison in southern California near the Mexico border.

Prisoners at Calipatria are asking that they be allowed to have TVs and radios, which are denied since they are supposedly there temporarily on a waiting list to be sent to the Special Housing Units in Pelican Bay.

Prison officials are cracking down on this hunger strike more harshly than in July. A memo signed by Corrections Undersecretary Scott Kernan and distributed to inmates warned that the department is treating the new hunger strike as a “mass disturbance,” saying any prisoner who joins the protest will be subject to disciplinary action.

Two of the prisoners’ lawyers, Carol Strickman and Marilyn McMahon, have been barred from the Pelican Bay Prison on the basis that they are being investigated for violating laws governing “the safe operations” of the facility.

At an October 5 rally here of close to 50 supporters of the hunger strikers, Strickman reported that Annie Weills, a lawyer who traveled to Pelican Bay to meet with five clients, was allowed a brief meeting with only one, Todd Asker. Weills found that Asker, one of the leaders of the hunger strike, had been moved to a cold cell, with inadequate clothing.

Rally speakers described other retaliatory actions against the prisoners, including withholding of medical care and cell searches. Irma, who has two sons in the Pelican Bay SHU and asked that her last name not be used, said that the hunger strikers are not being allowed family visits.

“How can you call a hunger strike a mass disturbance when it’s not violent, when it’s peaceful,” she said.

According to the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity website, the numbers of hunger strikers began to drop after the California Department of Corrections intensified its crackdown. At Calipatria, prison authorities at first denied liquids to the hunger strikers, despite their filing medical requests that this be done. Then they began to serve the liquids on food trays and counting those who took them as not being on strike.

Prison authorities have tried to undermine the impact of the action by charging that the protests are the work of prison gangs. Prisoners and their supporters continue to point out that the unity achieved in the strike across racial lines refutes this claim.

“It’s the opposite of gangs. It’s unity for human rights and decency,” said Elizabeth Valencia, a teacher in Los Angeles whose friend is in prison.

“We all stand strong together and we all strive for the rights of not only Pelican Bay and Calipatria but for ALL PRISONERS IN OUR SITUATION,” a group of Calipatria prisoners said in a letter sent to the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition in Oakland.

Information on future actions in support of the hunger strike can be found at prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com.

Arlene Rubinstein contributed to this article.  
 
 
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