Pelican Bay SHU Struggle Continues!

Pelican Bay SHU Struggle Continues!

The hunger strike among California prisoners, consigned to perpetual solitary confinement in Security Housing Units (SHU), was suspended July 20th. The conditions that drove many prisoners to severely endanger their health by not eating for three weeks persists. Prisoners declared there will be renewed action unless promised reforms are made soon.

The strike drew widespread attention to the torturous isolation from which SHU prisoners have no exit, caught in a hell in which there is no way to overcome their "validation" as a "gang member". Prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation forced on prisoners are in fact internationally recognized as torture. Dorsey Nunn, an ex-prisoner who testified before a specially called legislative hearing on the Pelican Bay SHU, caught essence of the multi-racial, non-violent strike when he said prisoners were demanding to be "validated" as human beings. Urszula Wislanka, who visited several hunger strikers including some of the strike representatives, will report on the strike and the meaning the prisoners and supporters see in their actions.

Urszula Wislanka is a Marxist-Humanist philosopher and activist, who has been active with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners for 15 years and is now their representative at the Pelican Bay SHU Hunger Strike Support Coalition.

Sunday, September 18, at 6:30 pm, at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, Ca. Sponsored by Bay Area News and Letters Committee