Pelican Bay and CA State Prison Hunger Strike
Set to Resume! Monday, September 26
Protest at Obama Fundraiser! Wear Orange!
3pm sharp, Monday, September 26 in West Hollywood
At the House of Blues
8430 Sunset Blvd (Sunset Blvd. & N. Olive Dr.)
Ph 213-840-5348 for information
In an act of tremendous courage, for 20 days, from July 1
to July 20, 6,500 prisoners across California took part in an
unprecedented hunger strike action, crossing racial lines, to
demand an end to torture. On
Monday, September 26, 2011
prisoners in the Security Housing Unit (SHU)
at Pelican Bay
State Prison (PBSP) have declared they will resume their
hunger strike.
As we watch the horror of the execution of Troy Anthony
Davis in Georgia,
where the U.S. Supreme Court and the
President refused to act to stop a
towering crime, who will
now step out to fight to change the entire
direction of society
and the world, and stop the cruel torture regime
inflicted on
prisoners across the U.S.?
We
all got to be in West Hollywood on Monday, September
26 - to say no to
torture of SHU prisoners in CA, no to the
torture of prisoners anywhere
in the USA or around the world.
WEAR ORANGE! Bring your signs in support of the hunger
The resumption of the hunger strike is an extremely significant
and extraordinary development. Many inmates put their health
and lives on the line; many came close to death and experienced
medical emergencies in July 2011. Millions
of people outside
the prison walls in the U.S. and worldwide learned
about the
tortuous conditions these prisoners face and thousands
supported the demands of the prisoners in diverse ways.
Now the hunger strike of prisoners is set to resume Monday,
September 26. What are the prisoner demands? To
be treated
as human beings; to end barbaric, inhumane conditions of
imprisonment - particularly the SHU's -- and to stop long term
solitary
confinement as a form of torture.
The
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
(CDCR) is not
only refusing to meet the prisoner's demands,
it is retaliating against
those who participated in the hunger
strike and mounting a public
relations campaign to defend
the barbaric conditions in the SHU.
We
have a moral responsibility to act in a way commensurate
with the
justness of the prisoners' demands and the urgency
of the situation. A
determined movement outside the walls of
prison is urgently needed to
expose and demand an end to
these high-tech torture chambers called
"SHU's". We aim to
break into the media with this action!
Think
about 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.... All this is what the SHU tries to
extinguish. In
the SHU you're locked up in a small, windowless
concrete cell 23 hours a
day, with minimum human contact and
maximum sensory deprivation. Human rights groups in the U.S
and internationally have documented the inhumane conditions -
these are crimes against humanity. And
the fact is tens of
thousands of prisoners across the U.S. are being
held in the
kind of barbarous conditions the prisoners as Pelican Bay
have
so courageously rebelled against. We need to build
massive
political resistance to the injustice of mass incarceration -
the
outrage of its leading edge targeting oppressed nationality
people
-- and the inhumanity of solitary confinement. Step out
on Monday, September 26 and make a difference!
[Print out the above as a flyer and distribute everywhere!]
__________________________
For information on long term solitary confinement and the S
HU program, the hunger strike, and to get to support websites:
Hunger Strike to Resume September 26 - Support the Just Demands
of the Pelican Bay Prisoners, Bay Area Revolution Writers Group,
Barbarous Confinement, Op-Ed, by Colin Dayan, a professor of
English at Vanderbuilt University, New York Times, July 17, 2011,
Tortured SHU prisoners speak out: The struggle continues, hunger
strike resumes Sept. 26; by Pelican Bay Prison SHU hunger strike
Over 10,000 people have signed the petition to Support Pelican
Bay SHU Prisoners' Five Core Demands (hunger strike),
change.org
Statements
in Support of Prison Hunger Strikers, including ACLU,
Cornel West,
Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, Edward Asner, Ngugi
wa Thiong'o, National
Religious Campaign Against Torture, and
_____________________________________
And check out this article from today's L.A. Daily Journal (9/22/11):
Are Gang Members Special? From the California Supreme Court to
Pelican Bay by Hadar Aivram, read it on the author's blog [here].
