In an act of tremendous courage, prisoners in the Security Housing Unit [SHU] at Pelican Bay State Prison in California are beginning an indefinite hunger strike on July 1, 2011. This hunger strike is demanding an end to the horrendous and dehumanizing conditions imposed on prisoners at Pelican Bay. People everywhere must come to their aid and support their demands. Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) is a super-maximum security prison located in an isolated part of northern California, twenty miles from the Oregon border. There are more than 3,000 prisoners confined at this prison. More than a thousand prisoners are locked down in the SHU at Pelican Bay, where they are subjected to isolation, maximum sensory deprivation, and brutality.
SUPPORT THE HUNGER STRIKE AND JUST DEMANDS OF PRISONERS AT PELICAN BAY STATE PRISON
(Clyde Young, revolutionary communist and former prisoner)
In an act of tremendous courage, prisoners in the Security Housing Unit [SHU] at Pelican Bay State Prison in California are beginning an indefinite hunger strike on July 1, 2011. This hunger strike is demanding an end to the horrendous and dehumanizing conditions imposed on prisoners at Pelican Bay. People everywhere must come to their aid and support their demands.
Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) is a super-maximum security prison located in an isolated part of northern California, twenty miles from the Oregon border. There are more than 3,000 prisoners confined at this prison. More than a thousand prisoners are locked down in the SHU at Pelican Bay, where they are subjected to isolation, maximum sensory deprivation, and brutality.
Imagine being confined to a tiny, bare, tomb-like, windowless cell for 23 hours a day, robbed of sensory stimulation and without contact with anyone except guards. Imagine being in a cell hardly larger than a small bathroom, containing only a toilet, a sink and a slab of metal protruding from the wall serving as a bed. Imagine guards cavity searching you and cuffing you before you can take a shower or get out of your cell for exercise in a bare concrete space. Some prisoners at Pelican Bay have been confined under these circumstances for over 20 years.
Long-term isolation can and does have a devastating effect and is nothing less than mental abuse. Many prisoners are driven insane as a result of long-term isolation, and it is especially cruel when prisoners who are already suffering from mental illness are subjected to such confinement. In California, approximately 5 % of the total prison population is locked down in isolation–but 70% of prisoner suicides occurred in these units in 2005. Tens of thousands of prisoners are confined to isolation units throughout the country. Isolation over long periods of time and sensory deprivation violate international anti-torture laws.
The following core demands are being circulated in a “final notice from prisoners on D-Corridor at Pelican Bay: 1) End “group punishment” where an individual prisoner breaks a rule and prison officials punish a whole group of prisoners of the same race. 2) Abolish “debriefing” and modify active/inactive gang status criteria. False and/or highly questionable “evidence” is used to accuse prisoners of being active/inactive members of prison gangs who are then sent to the SHU [Security Housing Unit] where they are subjected to long-term isolation and torturous conditions. One of the only ways these prisoners can get out the SHU is if they “debrief”–that is, give prison officials information on gang activity. 3) Comply with recommendations from a 2006 US commission to “make segregation a last resort” and “end conditions of isolation.” 4) Provide Adequate Food. Prisoners report unsanitary conditions and small quantities of food. They want adequate food, wholesome nutritional meals including special diet meals and an end to the use of food as a way to punish prisoners in the SHU. 5) Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates–including the opportunity to “engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other productive activities…” which are routinely denied. Demands include one phone call per week, more visiting time, permission to have wall calendars, sweat suits and watch caps (warm clothing is often denied event though cells and the exercise cage can be bitterly cold.
The prisoners who have called for this strike have made clear that they are uniting across racial lines, an extremely important development, given racial divisions in prison, which are often exploited and promoted by prison officials. And they have called on prisoners throughout the California prison system, including prisoners who are “suffering injustices in general population, administrative segregation and solitary confinement,” to join them in the strike.
The inhumane and dehumanizing treatment of prisoners in the SHU at Pelican Bay State Prison are totally unacceptable and the prisoners there are showing a lot of courage and determination in standing up and demanding to be treated like human beings. Their example of standing up in this way has the potential to inspire millions.
They are risking their health and their lives in going on an indefinite hunger strike. They are raising demands that are entirely just and legitimate. This is a serious situation. Prison authorities will go to extremes to stop a struggle like this one from developing and from drawing support from those outside the prison walls. The prisoners are shining a spotlight on the horrific and unacceptable conditions existing inside the corridors of Pelican Bay State Prison; they must not be allowed to stand alone. People throughout the state of California and beyond must urgently come to their aid and support, standing firmly in support of the hunger strike and supporting the just demands of the prisoners. The system has cast aside masses in the inner cities all across this country; the system has demonized and criminalized and incarcerated hundreds of thousands and millions of them and they have no role for them under this rotten and putrid system. But I’ll tell you one thing: there is a place for them and there is a role for them in the revolution; large numbers of them can and will be brought forward, together with people of all nationalities and from all strata, as emancipators of humanity and will join the monumental struggle to change the face of the entire world.
Clyde Young served time in juvenile facilities as a teenager. His transformation from a life of crime to a revolutionary communist, while serving a 20-year prison sentence for armed robbery, is chronicled in an interview in The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members & Their Affiliates, Edited by Louis Reyes Rivera and Bruce George, with a Foreword from Jim Brown (Soft Skull Press, 2008).
I wholeheartedly support the prisoners’ demands for change. So modest and minimal, these changes, if enacted, would improve our society as a whole, since we are all connected, and what you do to others, you do to me. This level of cruelty indicates how the criminal justice system is too punitive to be just and must end. As a former prisoner, I know how easy it is to buy people off & snitch others off, using racial antagonisms and extreme deprivation to perpetuate these ghastly conditions.
The website Care2 has a slew of petitions it puts out there, including encouragement of do-it-yourself start-your-own petitions. It might be a way of spreading the word about the hunger strike to natural allies and giving it some legs before someone dies of hunger…and no one outside the walls knows.
Something with simplified information and names of relevant officials to contact could make a dent. Color of Change has had an effect in the issues they have taken up. Getting their support would mean something usually hidden would be exposed to a huge body of supporters…world-wide. pt
I give the prisoners at Pelican Bay prison my full support.
my name is Deanna,and the prisoners @ Pelican Bay have my full support
I AM IN COMPLETE SUPPORT OF OF THE PRISONERS AT PBSP . I VISITED ON THE 4TH OF JULY WEEKEND AND WAS TOLD WE WERE NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT THE HUNGER STRIKE OR THE VISIT WOULD BE CANCELLED , SO CAN WE ADD HERE THAT PRISONERS ARE ALSO LOSING FREEDOM OF SPEECH ??? I WILL CONTINUE TO SHOW SUPPORT ANYWAY I CAN IN A QUIET MANNER , AS I WANT NO ILL AFFECTS ON MY LOVED ONE .
hey linnea… i agree i was there that weekend… by any chance do you know anything about that support group for our loved ones in PBSP??? can’t find it on line.. thank you
I COMPLETELY SUPPORT these prisoners in their quest for better conditions and treatment. If these were animals treated this way, someone would report them to the authorities! I believe that they weren’t allowed to talk about the strike, they aren’t even allowed to WRITE about it! If something isn’t done quickly, these men will lose their lives. Please people, make some noise about this!!!!1
Hebrews 13:3 Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies.sage here.
YOU HAVE OUR COMPLETE SUPPORT….I WANT MY LOVED ONE HOME ALREADY….
FORGOT TO POST MY LOVED ONE HAS BEEN DENIED YARD SINCE THIS STARTED…. SO HE’S 24/7 IN A BOX…. AND MY MAIL IS TAKING 2WKS TO REACH HIM….
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Thanks a end
Martin Bayless
We are humans and we make mistakes. Ones worst than others but God told us to forgive. Giving this kind of treat to inmates are cruel. They are humans it doesn’t matter what they did. They are been punished been in prison. Prison doesn’t mean that needs to be a cruelty place. Where’s all the money we pay for the CDCR to give rehabilitation to the inmates? How authorities think that a inmate can be rehabilitated giving this psychological treat. Inmates are released with mental illness due to the fact of prisons. Prisoners deserves a fair treat they FEEL, they are HUMANS. Be an authority does make you better than inmates? Please support this hunger strike. INMATES ARE JUST ASKING FOR SIMPLE THINGS LIKE FOOD, HAVE CONTACT WITH THE EXTERIOR WORD. Please help them because they need us. Some of the inmates are looking for change inside that darkness.