California Prison Hunger Strike Ends Peacefully

(Note: This is my fifth and final essay in support of the California prisoners on hunger strike. The first is here. The second is here. OPOL’s wonderful treatment of the situation is here. The third is here. Yesterday’s is here.


SF Gate reports that after three full weeks the California Prisoners’ Hunger Strike has come peacefully to an end. Prisoners across California are now eating:

Inmates have ended a three-week hunger strike in the high-security Pelican Bay State Prison in Del Norte County to protest conditions in isolation units at the facility and what they said were oppressive gang-security measures by prison officials, California prison officials say.

Advocates for the prisoners said they got confirmation late Thursday from the inmates themselves. Meanwhile, some inmates in three other state prisons who were refusing to eat in solidarity with those in Pelican Bay were continuing their strike until they could also receive confirmation, state officials said.

"Most inmates at Pelican Bay started eating again last night, and as of 1 p.m. today they were all eating," Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said Thursday.

"Our staff is now consulting with the prisoners in the other institutions who are still refusing to eat prison-issued food, and we are hoping they start eating again soon," she said.

The hunger strike began at Pelican Bay near the Oregon on July 1 and spread to 6,600 inmates in 13 of California's prisons, according to the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition in Oakland. On the twentieth day, the number of strikers had fallen to between 160 and 400.
As a sign of its willingness to look further into the prisoners’ five core demands, and in recognition of the time it will take to enact structural changes, the Department of Corrections is initially easing restrictions in isolation units so inmates can make phone calls and get calendars and cold-weather caps, as well as expanded educational opportunities. Other reforms—the main demands of the prisoners-- are also being considered.

Inmate leaders said they do not consider their eating the end of anything. They consider it a beginning. Today would have been Day 22 of the prison hunger strike. This may have been the most significant act of prisoner resistance in 40 years, since the Attica Uprising in 1971. And, fortunately, unlike Attica, this phase has not ended in violence.

The main issues, of course, remain. Long term, 23-hour per day solitary confinement continues. But the prisoners managed to bring together Black and Latino prisoners who are normally set against each other. And they managed, despite restrictions on their communicating with each other and with those outside the walls, to assert their humanity and challenge others to reclaim their humanity by standing with them in solidarity.

Thank you for supporting this struggle so far. The march toward humane treatment of prisoners continues in California and across America.

Day 21: Support The California Prisoners' Hunger Strike!

(Note: This is my fourth essay in support of the California prisoners on hunger strike. The first is here. The second is here. OPOL’s wonderful treatment of the situation is here. Yesterday’s is here The take away: California prisoners on hunger strike for 3 full weeks have requested your support in their struggle to end long term, 23 hour a day solitary confinement in California’s Special Housing Units. I urge you to support their struggle to be free from torture.)

Today is day 21 of the prison hunger strike. This may be the most significant act of prisoner resistance in 40 years, since the Attica Uprising in 1971.

Yesterday, I had a conversation in which I was asked (I’m paraphrasing) what the big deal was. Why do I care what is happening to prisoners California claims are the worst of the worst, murderers, rapists, gang members? Why do I care if they are in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day for years at a time? And why do I insist on writing these diaries over and over again, asking for readers to support the Hunger Strikers? It was a fair question. And my answer to it is that nobody would ask what’s the matter if they really understood solitary confinement. If they really understood solitary confinement they would see that it’s torture, and that civilized people do not treat other people as vermin.

There are two ways I can explain solitary confinement. The first is this powerful video from the American Friends Service Committee:



The second is the words and links and photos in an essay I wrote in January 12, 2010, Torture In Your Own Backyard. I admit I was tempted to paste the entire essay here. I won’t. That will make today’s essay entirely too long and unmanageable. Please follow the link.

All of which brings me back to the Hunger Strike. Please forgive me for repeating myself.

There is a story that when Oscar Wilde was first transported to prison, he looked out the train window and said, “Well, if that’s how the queen treats her prisoners, she doesn’t deserve to have any.” How true of California. A rightwing Supreme Court recently ruled that conditions in California’s prisons denied the prisoners freedom from cruel and inhuman punishment. Conditions were that horrible. But the Court did not focus on California’s widespread use of long term solitary confinement. Or its insane policy of holding alleged gang members in solitary confinement for six years or longer if they did not snitch and/or renounce gang membership. And it did not consider the damage to prisoners’ bodies, minds and souls from unremitting isolation from other people. No. The prisoners themselves had to bring that to our attention. And they did so in the only way they possibly could: by starving themselves. This reminds of Bobby Sands. The prisoners had no other choice. And they knew when they began that they had little chance of forcing changes in the barbaric conditions of their confinement unless you, that’s right, you get involved and stand with them and support their struggle to be free from barbaric treatment.

In recognition of this, prisoners at Corcoran have specifically requested your assistance:

“Our indefinite isolation here is both inhumane and illegal and the proponents of the prison industrial complex are hoping that their campaign to dehumanize us has succeeded to the degree that you don’t care and will allow the torture to continue in your name. It is our belief that they have woefully underestimated the decency, principles and humanity of the people. Join us in opposing this injustice without end. Thank you for your time and support”

This is not about whether prisoners should be released. It is not about whether prisoners should remain in confinement. It is not about frivolous demands for country club treatment. This is not a general debate about correctional policy. This is about stopping the torture of brutal, long term, unremitting solitary confinement. We could understand that when we opposed it in Gitmo. We could understand that when we opposed it in “Black Sites” and Bagram. We could understand it when we opposed it for Bradley Manning. The task now is to recognize that these prisoners, too, deserve to be free from the torture of long term solitary confinement. And to take whatever steps we can to oppose it in California, just as we would anywhere else in the world.

To recap:
The core demands of the prisoners are here with a petition in support of the strikers. I urge you to read the demands, all of which are designed solely to protect prisoners’ from being harmed by abusive solitary confinement, and to sign the petition.

Please call and/or write the Governor and the Commissioner to support the striking prisoners:

Secretary Matthew Cate, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 1515 S Street, Sacramento, CA 95814, Telephone: (916) 323-6001

Governor Jerry Brown, State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814, Telephone: (916) 445-2841

Please speak up for the striking prisoners. Put their struggle on your blog. Put their struggle on facebook. Tweet it. Tell others about the strike. You, if you are reading this, understand the magic of the Internet and its ability to spread important information far and wide. The striking prisoners need you to do that for them. They need you to open your eyes and hearts and mouths and stand against domestic torture. They need your compassion. But they most need your voices.

Only your support can bring their struggle to a safe and humane solution.

Day 20: Support The California Prisoners' Hunger Strike

(Note: This is my third essay in support of the California prisoners on hunger strike. The first is here. The second is here. OPOL’s wonderful treatment of the situation is here. The take away: California prisoners on hunger strike for almost 3 weeks have requested your support in their struggle to end long term, 23 hour a day solitary confinement in California’s Special Housing Units. I urge you to support their struggle to be free from torture.)

Today is day 20 of the prison hunger strike. This may be the most significant act of prisoner resistance in 40 years, since the Attica Uprising in 1971.

This morning’s LA Times Editorial calls for an end to the embargo the State has imposed on news of the strike:

Conditions in California prisons are so bad that a panel of federal judges ruled that they violate the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, but until recently the ensuing protests came mainly from lawyers rather than the inmates themselves. That changed on July 1, when thousands of inmates at one-third of the state's prisons started a hunger strike.


A core group of at least 400 inmates in four prisons continues to refuse food, protesting the way the state treats prisoners deemed to be gang members. The strike began in the Special Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison, where 1,100 inmates are isolated in soundproof cells for 22 1/2 hours a day. Their sole reprieve: one hour a day outside in a small area with high concrete walls.

Prison officials say this treatment is necessary to discourage membership in prison gangs, to obtain information on gang activity and to prevent "shot-calling" — the passing of orders from gang leaders to members in other prisons or out on the streets. Moreover, they say the hunger strike is being organized by gang leaders, and some strikers who would rather not participate are being coerced. Prisoner advocates, meanwhile, say such prolonged isolation leads to mental illness and is tantamount to torture.

So who's right? We might have a better handle on that if prison officials weren't refusing requests by The Times to interview striking inmates. Oscar Hidalgo, spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told Times staff writer Jack Dolan that media weren't being allowed into Pelican Bay "due to security and safety issues." We'd be more inclined to believe that, and not that prison officials were trying to avoid adverse publicity, if California's prisons didn't have such an extraordinary history of shoddy medical care and inhumane conditions. As it is, we think the public has a right to firsthand accounts of what goes on behind the barbed wire.

That’s where you come in. The walls are keeping the prisoners in, yes, but they are also keeping you, your eyes, your ears, your nose, your heart and most important, your conscience out. This puts the prisoners at even greater risk because it fosters prison officials’ ability to act with impunity to break the strike however they choose, to force feed prisoners in secret and to impose even more excessive, even more punitive conditions to break the strike.
Permitting prison officials to control all of the information about the strike encourages further abuse by a prison system that the Supreme Court has already held imposes cruel and unusual punishment on its prisoners.

There is a story that when Oscar Wilde was first transported to prison, he looked out the train window and said, “Well, if that’s how the queen treats her prisoners, she doesn’t deserve to have any.” How true of California. A rightwing, conservative, ideologically driven Supreme Court ruled that conditions in California’s prisons denied the prisoners freedom from cruel and inhuman punishment. Conditions were that horrible. But the Court did not focus on California’s widespread use of long term solitary confinement. Or its insane policy of holding alleged gang members in solitary confinement for six years or longer if they did not snitch and/or renounce gang membership. And it did not consider the damage to prisoners’ bodies, minds and souls from unremitting isolation from other people. No. The prisoners themselves had to bring that to our attention. And they did so in the only way they possibly could: by starving themselves. This reminds of Bobby Sands. The prisoners had no other choice. And they knew when they began that they had little chance of forcing changes in the barbaric conditions of their confinement unless you, that’s right, you get involved and stand with them and support their struggle to be free from barbaric treatment.
In recognition of this, prisoners at Corcoran have specifically requested your assistance:

“Our indefinite isolation here is both inhumane and illegal and the proponents of the prison industrial complex are hoping that their campaign to dehumanize us has succeeded to the degree that you don’t care and will allow the torture to continue in your name. It is our belief that they have woefully underestimated the decency, principles and humanity of the people. Join us in opposing this injustice without end. Thank you for your time and support”

This is not about whether prisoners should be released. It is not about whether prisoners should remain in confinement. It is not about frivolous demands for country club treatment. this is not a general debate about correctional policy. This is about the torture of brutal, long term, unremitting solitary confinement. We could understand that when we opposed it in Gitmo. We could understand that when we opposed it in “Black Sites” and Bagram. We could understand it when we opposed it for Bradley Manning. The task now is to recognize that these prisoners, too, deserve to be free from the torture of long term solitary confinement. And to take whatever steps we can to oppose it in California, just as we would anywhere else in the world.

To recap:
The core demands of the prisoners are here with a petition in support of the strikers. I urge you to read the demands, all of which are designed solely to protect prisoners’ from being harmed by abusive solitary confinement, and to sign the petition.

Please call and/or write the Governor and the Commissioner to support the striking prisoners:

Secretary Matthew Cate, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 1515 S Street, Sacramento, CA 95814, Telephone: (916) 323-6001

Governor Jerry Brown, State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814, Telephone: (916) 445-2841

Please speak up for the striking prisoners. Put their struggle on your blog. Put their struggle on facebook. Tweet it. Tell others about the strike. You, if you are reading this, understand the magic of the Internet and its ability to spread important information far and wide. The striking prisoners need you to do that for them. They need you to open your eyes and hearts and mouths and stand against domestic torture. They need your compassion.

Only your support can bring their struggle to a safe and humane solution.

Day 19: Support The California Prisoners' Hunger Strike!!

(Note: This is my second essay in support of the fasting prisoners. The first is here. The take away: prisoners have requested your support in their struggle to end long term, 23 hour a day solitary confinement in California’s Special Housing Units. I urge you to support them.)

Today is day 19 of the prison hunger strike. This may be the most significant act of prisoner resistance in 40 years, since the Attica Uprising in 1971.

The LA Times reports:

More than 400 inmates at four California prisons are in the third week of a hunger strike to protest long, punitive stays in isolation cells.

Prison officials, who refuse to allow reporters into the institutions to interview the strikers, said 49 inmates who have lost at least 10 pounds each are "being monitored closely," including seven at Pelican Bay, the maximum-security prison near the Oregon border where the hunger strike began. …

Inmate advocates say thousands of inmates have joined the strike, which began July 1. Many are beginning to show dramatic weight loss and collapse with the early signs of starvation, they say.

Dozens have been sent to prison infirmaries because of irregular heartbeats and fainting, according to a statement issued Monday by a group calling itself California Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity, which represents attorneys and family members of inmates. "Most have lost 20-35 pounds," the statement said.

And, of course, whatever is going on inside the prisons in response to the hunger strike will be shielded from direct, outside observation by disinterested parties. The LA Times reports:

Despite repeated assurances that the situation is under control, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation refused The Times' request to visit and interview striking inmates.

"At this time, we are not allowing media into the prison due to security and safety issues," prison spokesman Oscar Hidalgo said in an email. "This hunger strike signifies a disruption in normal operation of Pelican Bay and our operations staff are focused completely on resolving this issue."

That’s where you come in. The walls are keeping the prisoners in, yes, but they are also keeping you, your eyes, your ears, your nose, and most important, your conscience out. This puts the prisoners at even greater risk because it fosters prison officials’ ability to act with impunity to break the strike and to force feed prisoners and to impose even more punitivie conditions. And it permits prison officials to control information about the strike by preventing prisoners from being heard.

The strike has brought together Black and Latino prisoners who are normally set against each other. They are asserting their humanity and challenging others to reclaim their humanity by standing with them in solidarity.
Some of these prisoners are willing to die unless their demands to end inhuman treatment are met.

Inmates at Corcoran State Prison have issued a statement asking for your help:

“Our indefinite isolation here is both inhumane and illegal and the proponents of the prison industrial complex are hoping that their campaign to dehumanize us has succeeded to the degree that you don’t care and will allow the torture to continue in your name. It is our belief that they have woefully underestimated the decency, principles and humanity of the people. Join us in opposing this injustice without end. Thank you for your time and support.”

 Statement from inmates at Corcoran State Prison


The core demands of the prisoners are in my prior essay and can also be found here with a petition of support.

The prisoners are counting on people of conscience to act now and to show support for the Hunger Strikers.

You can do this by signing the petition.

You can do that by calling the Governor and the Secretary of theDepartment of Corrections (telephone numbers below).

You can do this by writing your own statement of support for the hunger strikers and sending it to the media or posting it on the blogs or the editorial pages. If you do that, please call send a hard copy to:

Secretary Matthew Cate, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 1515 S Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 (916) 323-6001

Governor Jerry Brown, State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814, (916) 445-2841

As important, call for the prison officials to permit the media to enter the prison and to report on the strike. If prison officials can keep the citizenry from knowing that is going on, they are free to act with impunity to end the strike however they choose.

Please speak up for the striking prisoners. Only your support can bring their struggle to a safe and humane solution.

Support The California Prisoners' Hunger Strike

As you read this, thousands of California prisoners are on a hunger strike. Today is the 18th day of the Strike. This may be the most significant act of prisoner resistance in 40 years, since the Attica Uprising in 1971.

By the prison authorities’ own figures, the hunger strike, which began on July 1, has involved 6,600 prisoners at 13 prisons. As of today, many prisoners are continuing the hunger strike at Pelican Bay and other prisons. The hunger strike comes in response to conditions in the Security Housing Units (SHU) of extreme isolation, brutality and deprivation.

The strike has brought together Black and Latino prisoners who are normally set against each other. They are asserting their humanity and challenging others to reclaim their humanity by standing with them in solidarity.

Some of these prisoners are willing to die unless their demands to end inhuman treatment are met.

The prison authorities are meeting with the prisoners, but so far there has been no agreement about anything. The strike continues.

According to Dr. Robert Rosenbloom, an emergency physician,

“It’s typically believed that after two or three weeks without any sugar source, any food source, you start entering a dangerous zone, that you’re actually doing enough damage to the body, that the body may not recover.

You’ll become, weak, disoriented, have trouble moving and breathing. You’ll risk damage to your liver or heart.

"When you digest, for example, heart muscle, obviously your heart is an incredibly vital organ…and so when you start damaging the heart and the muscle wall gets thin, then you can have some pretty serious consequences."

That’s the outcome the hunger strikers are facing, but they insist they won’t eat until they win changes in prison policies that govern Security Housing Units (SHU). Inmates in SHUs spend 23 hours a day locked up, with an hour outside alone for exercise. It is an extremely bleak, isolated, and mind destroying confinement that may continue for decades and irretrievably harms those so confined.

Many of the 3,900 inmates in SHUs are killers or rapists, but most of them – 2400 or so – got “indeterminate” SHU detention for ties to gangs. The hunger strikers say any link to a gang, such as a tattoo or a card sent to the wrong person, could land an inmate in a SHU and keep him there for decades. Many of these people are hardened criminals. But their treatment by California’s prisons, particularly in SHU, amounts to nothing less than torture: 23 hour a day solitary confinement, no contact with other prisoners or staff, no access to sunlight. An unremitting regimen designed to destroy the body, mind and soul of the person confined.

Many of the Strikers at Pelican Bay are already progressing toward organ damage.

The Five Core Demands of the strike are:

1. End Group Punishment & Administrative Abuse – This is in response to PBSP’s application of “group punishment” as a means to address individual inmates rule violations. This includes the administration’s abusive, pretextual use of “safety and concern” to justify what are unnecessary punitive acts. This policy has been applied in the context of justifying indefinite SHU status, and progressively restricting our programming and privileges.

2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria -
▪ Perceived gang membership is one of the leading reasons for placement in solitary confinement.
▪ The practice of “debriefing,” or offering up information about fellow prisoners particularly regarding gang status, is often demanded in return for better food or release from the SHU. Debriefing puts the safety of prisoners and their families at risk, because they are then viewed as “snitches.”
▪ The validation procedure used by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) employs such criteria as tattoos, readings materials, and associations with other prisoners (which can amount to as little as greeting) to identify gang members.
▪ Many prisoners report that they are validated as gang members with evidence that is clearly false or using procedures that do not follow the Castillo v. Alameida settlement which restricted the use of photographs to prove association.

3. Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement – CDCR shall implement the findings and recommendations of the US commission on safety and abuse in America’s prisons final 2006 report regarding CDCR SHU facilities as follows:
▪ End Conditions of Isolation (p. 14) Ensure that prisoners in SHU and Ad-Seg (Administrative Segregation) have regular meaningful contact and freedom from extreme physical deprivations that are known to cause lasting harm. (pp. 52-57)
▪ Make Segregation a Last Resort (p. 14). Create a more productive form of confinement in the areas of allowing inmates in SHU and Ad-Seg [Administrative Segregation] the opportunity to engage in meaningful self-help treatment, work, education, religious, and other productive activities relating to having a sense of being a part of the community.
▪ End Long-Term Solitary Confinement. Release inmates to general prison population who have been warehoused indefinitely in SHU for the last 10 to 40 years (and counting).
▪ Provide SHU Inmates Immediate Meaningful Access to: i) adequate natural sunlight ii) quality health care and treatment, including the mandate of transferring all PBSP- SHU inmates with chronic health care problems to the New Folsom Medical SHU facility.

4. Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food – cease the practice of denying adequate food, and provide a wholesome nutritional meals including special diet meals, and allow inmates to purchase additional vitamin supplements.
▪ PBSP staff must cease their use of food as a tool to punish SHU inmates.
▪ Provide a sergeant/lieutenant to independently observe the serving of each meal, and ensure each tray has the complete issue of food on it.
▪ Feed the inmates whose job it is to serve SHU meals with meals that are separate from the pans of food sent from kitchen for SHU meals.

5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates.
Examples include:
▪ Expand visiting regarding amount of time and adding one day per week.
▪ Allow one photo per year.
▪ Allow a weekly phone call.
▪ Allow Two (2) annual packages per year. A 30 lb. package based on “item” weight and not packaging and box weight.
▪ Expand canteen and package items allowed. Allow us to have the items in their original packaging [the cost for cosmetics, stationary, envelopes, should not count towards the max draw limit]
▪ More TV channels.
▪ Allow TV/Radio combinations, or TV and small battery operated radio
▪ Allow Hobby Craft Items – art paper, colored pens, small pieces of colored pencils, watercolors, chalk, etc.
▪ Allow sweat suits and watch caps.
▪ Allow wall calendars.
▪ Install pull-up/dip bars on SHU yards.
▪ Allow correspondence courses that require proctored exams.

Not one of these demands is frivolous. All of them are consistent with avoiding the deterioration, mental, physical, and spiritual, that results from long term, indefinite solitary confinement in the bleak conditions in SHU in California.

Inmates at Corcoran State Prison have issued a statement asking for your help:

“Our indefinite isolation here is both inhumane and illegal and the proponents of the prison industrial complex are hoping that their campaign to dehumanize us has succeeded to the degree that you don’t care and will allow the torture to continue in your name. It is our belief that they have woefully underestimated the decency, principles and humanity of the people. Join us in opposing this injustice without end. Thank you for your time and support.”

-- Statement from inmates at Corcoran State Prison

The prisoners are counting on people of conscience to act now and to show support for the Hunger Strikers.

You can do this by writing your own statement of support for the hunger strikers and sending it to the media or posting it on the blogs or the editorial pages. If you do that, please send a hard copy to:

Secretary Matthew Cate, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 1515 S Street, Sacramento, CA 95814

Governor Jerry Brown, State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814

Please speak up for the striking prisoners. Only your support can bring their struggle to a safe and humane solution.