1 August 2011. A World to Win News Service. Thousands of prisoners in the US state of California launched a hunger strike on 1 July.
This protest was spearheaded by hundreds of inmates at Pelican Bay State prison subjected to inhumane conditions of solitary confinement in the the Security Housing Units [SHU]. Although these prisoners began taking food again in the third week of July, thousands of people in other California prisons also began a hunger strike in support of the demands of the Pelican Bay, which they share, for adequate food and warm clothing, an end to almost total solitary confinement for decades and collective punishment, phone calls and photos and even the right to have calenders to keep track of time in their windowless cells.
In short, their demand is that they be treated as human beings.
While some success has been achieved and core demands acknowledged by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), there is great concern that prison authorities may retaliate against individual or groups of prisoners, families of prisoners and their attorneys and representatives.
The US is a global fortress of injustice. It is infamous for its prison camps, from Bagram in Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo in Cuba, where thousands of captives have been systematically tortured and subjected to extreme abuse. American ships are still functioning as off-shore torture centres. Further, Washington is the world leader in the outsourcing of repression, not only continuing to "render" its captives to allied governments to be tortured and sometimes killed, but also backing and often commanding regimes that imprison, torture and murder on a mass scale to put down movements that threaten imperialist domination.
The other side of the coin is what the rulers of the US do to people in their "homeland". While the number of political prisoners there is far smaller than in some countries under the American boot, figures like the Native American leader Leonard Peltier and the African-American journalist and activist Mumia Abu Jamal have been kept in dungeons for decades in retaliation for the mass revolts of the 1960s and 70s and as a warning to people today.
The repression against ordinary people in the US who are not political prisoners, however, is no less telling about the fundamental nature of American imperialist rule. With 2.3 million people behind bars, the US has both the world's largest number of prisoners and by far the largest percentage of its population in prison. China is second to the US with 1.6 million prisoners even though it has over four times the population. The majority of US prisoners are Black and Hispanic, far greater than their proportion of the population, reflecting the oppression of minority peoples within the US as well as repression against poor people in general. In Washington D.C. three out of four young Black men are expected to serve some time in prison, while in other major US cities 80 percent of young African-Americans now have criminal records.
Following are edited excerpts from recent articles on this struggle in Revolution, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (revcom.us ).
The prisoners at Pelican Bay are heroically taking a stand, in the most isolated, inhumane conditions, to refuse to be treated like animals. Because of this, a light is being shined on the torture and inhumanity going on behind these prison walls.
The hunger strike started 1 July – demanding an end to what amounts to torture and brutally inhumane conditions. The weekend of 2-3 July, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) reported that 6,600 prisoners, in 13 different prisons, refused food in solidarity with the strike.
From the very outset, the hunger strike has inspired and tapped into a deep well of sentiment of people outside the prisons who have come together in growing numbers to initiate actions of solidarity. Press conferences, demonstrations, solidarity hunger strikes and more have occurred in several cities in the US and a number of cities internationally. Family members of prisoners; religious leaders; people from the inner-city communities where mass incarceration is a crime of epidemic proportions; organisations that have been working to assist prisoners and their families during and after incarceration; researchers and investigative reporters who have documented the magnitude and depth of the state-sanctioned torture taking place inside prisons throughout the country; and radical and revolutionary forces have come together and taken action on the prisoners' behalf.
The 13th day of the strike, alarming, urgent reports started coming out that the medical condition of some of the prisoners was at a severe crisis. Mediators in contact with prisoners reported that some of the strikers had lost 25-35 pounds [11-15 kilos]. According to a 13 July press release from Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, a source with access to the medical condition of the prisoners said the health of the hunger strikers was quickly and severely deteriorating – that some were in renal failure and had been unable to make urine for three days; and some had blood sugars measuring in the 30 range, which can be fatal if not treated. Legal representatives who visited prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU on 12 July reported that many prisoners were experiencing irregular heartbeats and palpitations, dizziness, shortness of breath and other respiratory problems; some were suffering from diagnosed cardiac arrhythmia. There were reports that prisoners at Calipatria State Prison and Corcoran, on a hunger strike in solidarity with the prisoners at Pelican Bay, were also in a dangerous medical condition.
From the beginning, the CDCR refused to even consider any of the demands of the prisoners.
The prisoners want an end to long-term solitary confinement where they are kept in windowless cells with no human contact for 23 hours a day, in some cases for decades. They want an end to collective punishment, and the practice of "debriefing", which amounts to forced interrogation on alleged gang affiliation. They are asking for decent food, rehabilitation and education programs, one phone call per week, one photo per year, two packages a year, more visiting time, permission to have wall calendars, and warm clothing.
The CDCR argues that these prisoners are the "worst of the worst" and deserve what they are getting. But as human beings, we need to be clear: nobody – no matter what they have done –deserves to be tortured. Nobody deserves to be put in such extreme conditions of isolation where prison guards try to extinguish everything that makes you human, that keeps you physically and mentally alive, that connects you with the world and other people, that gives you a reason to live, to love, to learn and think.
What would it mean if people on the outside don't stand up and do everything they can to make sure these prisoners don't die, to really fight for these prisoners to be treated like human beings? What would this say about our humanity? But also, what will it mean if hundreds and thousands of people do stand up together, wage a determined struggle for the just demands of these prisoners, and in this way, assert our own humanity?
As a statement from prisoners in Corcoran Prison put it: "It is important for all to know Pelican Bay is not alone in this struggle and the broader the participation and support for this hunger strike and other such efforts, the greater the potential that our sacrifice now will mean a more humane world for us in the future."
Close your eyes and imagine you're in a cell that's 8 x 10 feet [7.5 square metres] with no windows, no air, just concrete walls all around you. This tomb includes a slab of cement to sleep on, a toilet and sink. That's it. You’re deprived of human contact. Your food is shoved through a slot in the door. You can’t take a photo of yourself to send to your family. Maybe once a day, but maybe not, you are let out of this cell for one hour, into a space a little bigger, with a little bit more air. You are denied medical care. And if the guards decide you're not cooperating – for something as minor as not returning a food tray or banging on the door – a team of them, in full riot gear, with batons, handcuffs, will "extract" you from your cell, hogtie you and beat you with no mercy. You have been in this cell, subjected to this torture, for five years, or 10 years, or maybe 30 years, deprived of human contact, never feeling the sun, never seeing the sky or a blade of grass, never hearing a note of music.
This is life – or more accurately, a slow death – for 70,000 men and women who have been put in maximum security units in prisons all over the USA. This kind of solitary confinement stands in violation of international human rights standards, including the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This kind of sensory deprivation and lack of human contact is known to create severe psychological disorders, to literally drive people crazy. Putting an end to all this is what the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay State Prison are willing to die for.
Think about how prisoners in these conditions are on a hunger strike. Many of them have no way of even knowing what is happening outside of their cell. They have no way to communicate with each other and no way – or very limited ways – to talk with friends, family and supporters on the outside. Meanwhile prison officials have tried all kinds of ways to sabotage the strike – including lying to prisoners, telling them the strike is over, and trying to create divisions among the prisoners.
Prison officials say this hunger strike just goes to show that these prisoners should be in the SHU. Terry Thornton, spokesperson for the CDCR, said, "That so many inmates in other prisons throughout the state are involved really demonstrates how these gangs can influence other inmates, which is one of the reasons we have security housing units in the first place."
But even the mainstream press has reported on how this hunger strike has united prisoners across different nationalities and other divisions which prison officials have always used to set prisoners against each other. The New York Times reported, "The hunger strike has transcended the gang and geographic affiliations that traditionally divide prisoners, with prisoners of many backgrounds participating."
The SHU at Pelican Bay is a super max prison within a prison. In fact, a huge percentage of prisoners are in the Pelican Bay SHU simply because prison officials have decided to "validate" them as affiliated with a gang. A prisoner can end up in the SHU because he has a certain tattoo or hangs out with someone who guards say is a gang member. A prisoner in the SHU can target another prisoner as a gang member – whether it is true or not – in order to get out of the SHU. A prisoner can end up in the SHU because they are rebellious, because they dare to think. A letter from a hunger striker at Pelican Bay to the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF) said:
"Just being a rebellious or progressive prisoner gets one targeted and labelled a 'gang member' and sent to Shu. The Shu is made out as a big stick to intimidate the prison population into passivity, (think deportation threats to migrants or the whip shown to the slave). It doesn't mean it's going to be used but the thought of it existing is enough to control a large portion of the prison population so it becomes a tool not used for rehabilitation but for social control... It is these conditions where even reading material such as philosophy or history is censored. Pelican Bay SHU is designed to control, nothing more. We have seen even Revolution newspaper being censored and banned from this prison at one time. How would you feel about the system that upholds the actions of these officials?"
Since the end of the strike the transition to eating food again has been brutal and confusing.
After not eating for four weeks, it is very hard to begin eating solid food again right away, so many prisoners are in need of more medical care than the prisons can provide. Medical staff at the prisons were already overwhelmed by general conditions of overcrowding, and have been even further overwhelmed by this massive protest. While the medical staff supposedly need to follow certain protocols assisting hunger strikers' transition to eating solid food, provision of basic medical care is unreliable and ineffective.
Family members and supporters are anxiously waiting confirmation on whether or not prisoners are continuing the strike at other prisons. Prisoners at Calipatria have explained that they joined the hunger strike specifically in protest of the torturous formal and informal policies of group punishment, gang "validation" and debriefing – practices also imposed at Calipatria. Prisoners at Calipatria are now transitioning to eating food again, according to family members of prisoners participating in the hunger strike.
While the initial concessions to the strikers made by CDCR may seem too small to claim a victory, it's important for people outside prison to understand the significance for prisoners who have been held in the SHU for decades to now have warm clothing, and to be able to keep track of time since they have no windows and the fluorescent lights are on 24 hours of every day. The courage of thousands of prisoners risking their lives effectively pressured the CDCR to sit at the same table and bargain, after refusing to negotiate for weeks and insisting prisoners are less than human.
Supporters continue to discuss how to keep pressure on the CDCR to implement the necessary changes brought to the world's attention by the strike. Many supporters are coordinating (inter)national days of action throughout the next few weeks. People from all over the world have been sending statements defending the just demands of the prisoners. For updates or to add your support, go to revcom.us/s/pelicanbay-hungerstrike-en.html
The US: 5 percent of the world’s population – 25 percent of the world's prisoners
The bigger context for the inhumane conditions in maximum security units like the Pelican Bay Prison SHU is that this system, with its police, laws, courts, and prisons is using mass incarceration to enforce oppressive economic and social relations, especially in terms of the systematic subjugation of Black people as a people.
This system of U.S. capitalism, from its very inception, has, in large part, been built on and developed by carrying out the most brutal oppression of Native Americans, Black people and other people of colour.
This oppression has been woven into the whole fabric of US society, from the days of slavery until today. It has been and is an integral part of the economic and social structure in this country. White supremacy has and continues to maintain Black people in a subjugated position in every aspect of society. And all this has created, and today still maintains a "master class" of white people and a "pariah class" of Black people.
In this way, the systematic oppression of Black and other people of colour has been, and continues to be, part of the very glue that holds U.S. society together, even as it has gone through different changes and been enforced in different ways. The outright ownership of Black people under slavery gave way to Jim Crow segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror. And now we have what has been called "the new Jim Crow" of police brutality and murder and the mass incarceration of hundreds of thousands of Black people.
The subjugation of Black people is a pillar of this system, a part of the economic and social relations in society, and white supremacy is a key element in the dominant ideology. And this is why this system cannot get rid of the oppression of Black people, because to do so would mean tearing up and undermining the whole economic, social and ideological/culture basis of US society. The United States claims it is the "leader of the free world" and protector of democracy and human rights. But the prisoners' hunger strike has objectively exposed the complete illegitimacy and hypocrisy of this system.
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