Vol. 77/No. 30      August 19, 2013

The hunger strike began July 8, with 30,000 prisoners participating, putting a spotlight on the inhumane conditions faced by prisoners in solitary in California.

Now, almost a month later, more than 500 remain on strike, fighting for demands that include an end to long-term solitary confinement and group punishment.

“We’re going to continue fighting to bring more people into this,” Dolores Canales told demonstrators who gathered outside the state Capitol. Like Canales, whose son is on hunger strike at the Pelican Bay State Prison, many were members of California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement, a group that organized the protest along with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

Canales and Maria Levin, whose brother is one of the leaders of the hunger strike in Pelican Bay, delivered petitions with more than 60,000 signatures to Gov. Jerry Brown’s office, calling for an end to solitary confinement.

“The prisoners have forged unity inside the prison. This is a public display of the unity that’s outside, the unity of the families,” Canales said.

The protest in Sacramento was one of many throughout the state and beyond that have helped spread the truth about the brutal conditions faced by the more than 12,000 California prisoners held in solitary confinement, including at least 3,000 in the Security Housing Units (SHUs).

Amnesty International released a statement supporting the hunger strike and calling for an independent investigation of hunger striker Billy Sell’s July 22 death, which the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation termed a suicide.

A 2012 report by Amnesty International titled “The Edge of Endurance: Prison Conditions in California’s Security Housing Units” reported that more than 500 prisoners had spent 10 or more years in the Pelican Bay SHU. More than 200 had spent over 15 years and 78 more than 20 years.

To date, the CDCR has taken a stance of no negotiations with the hunger strikers, claiming that the leadership of the hunger strike is in the hands of prison gangs.

A July 28 article in the Los Angeles Times describes Todd Ashker, one of the hunger strike leaders, as being covered with Nazi tattoos and possibly a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang. Terri McDonald, until recently head of California’s 33 prisons, told the Times that Ashker and other strike leaders are not fighting for rights, but power. “From my perspective, they are terrorists,” she said.

Ashker, who earned a paralegal degree behind bars, has filed or been party to 55 federal lawsuits against the California prison system, winning the right of prisoners to order books. He sent a message to the Times describing the strike as “a collective effort initiated by a multiracial group.”

In August 2012, Ashker and other leaders of the 2011 hunger strike issued an “agreement to end hostilities” between racial groups in the prisons. “We can no longer allow CDCR to use us against each other for their benefit,” the agreement said.

Speaking at the protest here, Daletha Hayden, a nurse whose son is a striker in Tehachapi prison, answered the CDCR’s slanders: “They call them the worst of the worst,” she said. “How can this be true if they come together across racial lines? Doing it peacefully. Asking for education. For food appropriate to making learning possible.”

Prison authorities have also tried to undermine the hunger strike by claiming they have made progress in cutting the numbers in solitary, releasing 208 into the general prison population since the 2011 hunger strike. But prisoners point to the lack of progress on the key issue of thousands of prisoners being held in isolation for long periods in small, windowless cells, with no hope of getting out.

Nor has there been an end to the situation where prisoners can be put in solitary after being “validated” as gang members — not on the basis of any gang-related activity or crime, but on “evidence,” such as possession of art work, a tattoo, a book by Malcolm X, an accusation from another inmate in exchange for their release from SHU or association with another prisoner labeled as gang affiliated.

“Don’t let the support stop,” former prisoner Luis Jaukegui told a rally at San Quentin prison on August 3. “It’s for humanity. We need to put an end to solitary! We need a situation where people can function if they get out of prison! We need jobs!”  
 
 
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