Vol. 78/No. 35      October 6, 2014

BY BETSEY STONE
OAKLAND, Calif. — More than 70 people came together at Mosswood Park here Sept. 6 for a picnic to commemorate last year’s statewide hunger strike by prisoners protesting solitary confinement and other abuses.

The event, sponsored by the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, honored the hunger strikers who put a spotlight on the conditions faced by tens of thousands of workers behind bars held in some type of isolation across the U.S.

The most recent hunger strike, which took place from July 8 to Sept. 5 last year, was the third such action since July 2011. At its height it involved some 30,000 prisoners across the state. Some 100 determined inmates were still refusing food at the end of 60 days.

“The hunger strike won some things,” Bertha Ramirez, whose son is in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay State Prison, told the Militant. She came with other members of California Families Against Solitary Confinement who drove up from Los Angeles.

Ramirez, who has to drive 14 hours to see her son, said visiting time was increased from one hour to three hours as a result of the protest and the solidarity it received.

“We have to keep fighting, to raise our voices higher” to extend the victory on visiting hours to other California prisons, she said.

Dolores Canales, a leader of California Families Against Solitary Confinement, spoke at the picnic, noting the recent victory of supporters of prisoners’ rights in pushing back attempts by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to tighten censorship of literature prisoners can receive. Under proposed “Obscene Material Regulations” prison officials sought to ban a range of reading material, including publications that “indicate an association with groups that are oppositional to authority and society.”

Some abuses pushed back
According to Laura Magnani, a member of the prisoners’ mediation team, Michael Stainer, CDCR Director of Adult Institutions, informed mediators that the censorship regulations were put on hold as a result of an outpouring of opposition to them. “It doesn’t mean a similar proposal won’t come around again,” said Magnani, “but it shows we had an effect.”

Under the pressure of three hunger strikes, state prison officials conducted a “review” and released nearly 70 percent of those in solitary confinement to the general population. Prisoners at Pelican Bay, however , say that the Special Housing Unit cells have been filled with new inmates as fast as they were emptied.

Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, a central leader of the hunger strike at Pelican Bay, reports that conditions in solitary units at Tehachapi State Prison, where he was transferred after the last hunger strike, are worse than they were at Pelican Bay.

A central demand of the hunger strikers was to end placement of prisoners in solitary for being “validated” as gang members. This was based on tattoos, possession of banned books or Aztec drawings, alleged association with gang members or the snitch system that puts inmates accused of gang affiliation in solitary until they finger others. Other demands included the right to phone calls, adequate food and warm clothing.

A strike anniversary statement by hunger strike leaders Todd Ashker, Sitawa Nantambu and Arturo Castellanos printed in the August San Francisco Bay View points out that California prison authorities continue to keep prisoners in long-term solitary, arbitrarily isolating prisoners based on their supposed associations, not their behavior.

“The conditions of isolation remain torturous,” the statement says. “Only by a strong growing movement of those of us inside and our supporters outside do we have any hope of making all the changes that we need.”  
 
 
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