FIVE DAY VIGIL TO EXPOSE PRISON TORTURE

On October 31, 2002 at 12 midnight, Halloween Night, Quetzaoceloacuia of the Barrio Defense Committee and All People’s Coalition Against the U.S. Occupation and Terror will begin a 5-day vigil and hunger strike on Powell and Market in downtown San Francisco calling for the abolishment of torture inside the California prison system. Quetzaoceloacuia, mother of Jose Luis Aviña, will spend 24 hours inside a replica of a California Corrections Department "Security Housing Unit" or SHU to bring public attention to the sensory deprivation tactics that her son is subjected to inside of Corcoran State Prison. Other activists from the member organizations of the All People's Coalition will spend 24 hours inside the "SHU" to expose the slow death of prisoners who have been put in the SHU because they have spoken up against the U.S. prison brutality.

According to his mother, Aviña is losing his eyesight and has developed arthritis as a result of being held in a six by nine foot cell and having only two hours of sunlight every two weeks. Security Housing Units are being utilized to deny prisoners the right to their five senses of sight, sound, taste, space and human touch. Aviña, along with other Raza prisoners, staged a hunger strike in November of 1999 to expose the brutal treatment of prisoners inside New Folsom Prison. As punishment for speaking out, Aviña and other prison activists were shipped to Security Housing Units in Pelican Bay and Corcoran State Prisons.

The All People's Coalition to Stop US Terror and Occupation is organizing this campaign to expose the governmental and corporate profits from prison-building and prison torture. Today, people are being massively criminalized for insignificant reasons and then locked up in U.S. prisons. Incumbent Governor Gray Davis has received millions from the prisoner’s union to build more prisons in California. Gray Davis was responsible for putting 7 hunger strikers that were protesting prison brutality back in 1999. Today, all of the prisoners are suffering from the loss of eyesight, developing arthritis from the lack of space. We want to show the horrors of torture committed inside the Calif. prisons by war criminals like Gray Davis. Call (510) 569-9620 or (408) 885-9785 for more information.