Vol. 77/No. 33      September 23, 2013

The decision was made Sept. 4 after prisoners received news that Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and State Sen. Loni Hancock, chairs of the California Assembly and Senate Public Safety committees, announced plans to hold hearings starting in October to address the issues raised by the hunger strikers.

A public statement signed by 16 of the prisoners who helped organize the strike said that, although their main demands have not yet been met, “we’ve gained a lot of positive ground” and “our resistance will continue to grow until we have won our human rights.”

This was the third and largest hunger strike organized by the prisoners over the last two years, reaching 30,000 at the high point. It was also the longest, lasting from July 8 to the end on Sept. 5. Many prisoners lost what was becoming life-threatening amounts of weight.

The actions put a spotlight on the inhuman conditions faced by nearly 12,000 inmates in solitary in California. Prisoners’ demands include ending long-term solitary confinement, abolishing a snitch system that puts inmates accused of gang affiliation in solitary until they finger others, and for the right to phone calls, adequate food and warm clothing.

From the beginning of the strike California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation administrators refused to negotiate with the strike leaders. Instead they punished them, moving them into even harsher conditions in cold cells without TV or radio or adequate clothing. They justified this by characterizing the strike as the work of violent prison gangs, out to terrorize and win power over other prisoners.

In a letter sent out to supporters, Mutupe Duguma, one of the strikers, wrote that on Aug. 23 prison authorities transferred two busloads of strikers from Pelican Bay State Prison, the heart of the strike, on an eight-hour trek to the state prison in Sacramento. No medical personnel were sent to accompany them. Duguma reported he had lost 63 pounds during the strike.

In an unprecedented step, the four strike leaders remaining at Pelican Bay were permitted to hold a meeting of 18 strike organizers in the prison’s law library, Anne Weills, a lawyer for some of the strikers, told a press conference in Oakland Sept. 5. They voted to end the strike. Then they called strike leaders who had been transferred to Sacramento, who organized a discussion there and also voted to end the protest.

Family members and others at the press conference saluted the hunger strikers for their courage and unity in standing up to the CDCR. By the final days of the strike, Weills said, officials had finally contacted the strike leaders and agreed to come to Pelican Bay to discuss their demands.

“I’m proud of my brother’s stance in this cause,” Marie Levin, the sister of Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, one of the strike leaders, told the Militant. “Not just my brother, but the whole group. It’s a team. A unity of the nationalities that has got them to where they are today.”

Levin said that her brother and others in long-term solitary began more than a decade ago to work to unite prisoners across racial lines in opposition to gang violence in the prisons. She said the prison authorities didn’t like this, because it undercut their policy of divide and rule.

“The fact is that Governor [Jerry] Brown and CDCR Secretary [Jeffrey] Beard have responded to our third peaceful action with typical denials and falsehoods, claiming solitary confinement does not exist and justifying the continuation of their indefinite torture regime by vilifying the peaceful protest representatives,” the strike leaders said in their public statement.

“The leaders have their arms locked together,” Levin said. “They are saying we are not about fighting one another. They are saying to the CDCR the violence is something you are perpetuating.”

Some of the organizers of the hunger strike are plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of prisoners who have spent between 10 and 25 years in solitary confinement. The suit argues that long-term isolation in windowless cells, with denial of phone calls and contact visits, amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

Families of prisoners and other supporters have mobilized repeatedly in support of the hunger strike.

Sylvia Rogokos, whose brother has been in solitary at Pelican Bay for over two decades, participated in a vigil in Norwalk Sept. 8 organized by California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement. “The press took the side of the CDCR,” she said. “They get three meals, cable, mail, what are they complaining about? But solitary confinement is real. The mental deprivation is real. And the fight against it continues.”

Another participant was Dolores Canales, a member of the hunger strikers’ mediation team, whose son was one of the hunger strikers in Pelican Bay. “We have to be prepared to mobilize for the hearings in Sacramento so that our side is heard,” she said.

Arlene Rubinstein contributed to this article.  
 
 
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