Support the Prisoners Hunger Strike! Who are the Real Criminals?

(Prisoner hunger strike to resume)

From July 1 to July 20, prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison held a three-week hunger strike, demanding an end to the barbaric, inhumane conditions of solitary confinement.(see the article The Prisoner Hunger Strike: A Real Inspiration, A Real Beginning and other Revolution coverage and news from the July strike here) These prisoners set a courageous example and inspired people all over the world. And this heroic struggle of prisoners from the most brutal hellholes of the U.S. prison system continues to be an extremely significant and extraordinary development.

The hunger strike shined a damning light on the fact that prisoners at Pelican Bay are being tortured—kept in windowless cells for 23 hours a day, denied human contact, subjected to routine brutal “cell extractions” where they are beaten down by squads of guards. And because of this, many more people also became aware of the fact that tens of thousands of prisoners in maximum security prisons all over the USA are being subjected to the barbaric cruelty of solitary confinement.

After weeks of refusing to negotiate and insisting the prisoners are less than human, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) was effectively forced to meet with some of the hunger strikers and say they would review the prisoners 5 demands and the prisoners decided to suspend the hunger strike. But in the last two months there has been no indication that the CDCR is going to meet the prisoners’ demands.

On September 1, the San Francisco Bay View newspaper received a letter from Pelican Bay SHU inmate Mutope Duguma saying “we are going forward with our indefinite hunger strike, which will start on Sept. 26, 2011.” Prisoners at Calipatria State Prison have indicated they will also be involved. (Read the whole article here.)