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| California inmates resume hunger strike |
| By peoplesworld.org - Dan Margolis |
| Published: 10/05/2011 |
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"Some of the men said they're prepared to die this time, because they feel that they're being killed slowly anyway." The above quote comes from a supporter of Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, a coalition set up in alliance with the striking prisoners in California's prison system. The prisoners re-started a temporarily suspended hunger strike Sept. 26, now in its second week. "This is the largest prisoner strike of any kind in recent US history," says Ron Ahnen of California Prison Focus in a press release, "The fact that so many prisoners are participating highlights the extreme conditions in all of California's prisons as well as the historic opportunity the state has been given to make substantial changes." Indeed, reports indicate that the prisoners are becoming more militant. In the July wave of the strike, an estimated 6,600 prisoners participated. Now, during the first week of the renewed strike, more than 12,000 were reported to have participated. The strike started in the notorious maximum security Pelican Bay State Penitentiary - specifically its SHU, or Secure Housing Unit - and spread across the system, to 13 out of 33 prisons, as well as to private, contracted out-of-state jails. The inmates first started their hunger strike July 1 to protest "cruel, inhumane and tortuous conditions of their imprisonment [and] to improve the treatment of SHU-status prisoners throughout California." "For the past 10-40 years," said a press release from the solidarity coalition, "thousands of California prisoners have been confined in [Secure Housing Units] indefinitely based on status [E.G., a gang label - active gang classification, based on innocuous association activity, and allegations from confidential inmate informants] - wherein, they have been demonized as the worst-of-the-worst, in order to justify decades of human rights violations - including state sanctioned torture for the purpose of breaking the prisoners, and coercing them into becoming known informants for the state - thereby placing such prisoners, and their families in serious danger of retribution." The strike's five "core demands" include the ending of group punishments for rules violations by a single prisoner; abortion of policy in which inmates were forced to "snitch" on each other and the detention of prisoners in the SHU for perceived gang activity; an end to long-term solitary confinement; "adequate and nutritious food" and "constructive programming and privileges," such as weekly phone calls, one photo per year, education and so on. Read More. |
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