The courageous prisoners of the Pelican Bay State Prison in its Secure Housing Unit
went on hunger strike July 1 to protest inhumane treatment, living
conditions and indefinite isolation. The Party for Socialism and
Liberation stands in solidarity with the hunger strikers. Solidarity
activist Manuel LaFontaine, of All of Us or None, stated in the press
release: “The prisoners inside the SHU at Pelican Bay know the risk
that they are taking going on hunger strike … the CDCR [California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] must recognize that the
SHU produces conditions of grave violence, such that people lose
their lives in there all the time.”
Prisoners at
PBSP are organizing across ethnic boundaries, defying the racism
among inmates that is encouraged by guards and administrators. Their
demands are:
-
End
“group punishment”: This is when an individual prisoner
breaks a rule and prison officials punish a group of prisoners of
the same race. (Such punishment was outlawed in international law
under the 4th Geneva
Convention in August 1949.) -
Abolish
“debriefing” and modify active/inactive gang status criteria:
False and/or highly questionable “evidence” is used to accuse
prisoners of being active or inactive members of prison gangs. Those
accused are then sent to the SHU, where they are subjected to
indefinite isolation sentences. One of the only ways these prisoners
can get out of the SHU is if they “debrief”— – that is, give
prison officials information about gang activity, thus becoming a
“snitch.” -
Comply
with recommendations from a 2006 U.S. commission: “Make
segregation a last resort” and “end conditions of isolation.” -
Provide
adequate food: Prisoners report unsanitary conditions and small
quantities of food. They want adequate food, and wholesome
nutritional meals including special dietary meals and an end to the
use of food as a way to punish prisoners in the SHU. -
Expand
and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU
prisoners: Such programs would include the opportunity to
“engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other
productive activities …” which are routinely denied. Demands
include one phone call per week, one photo per year, two packages a
year, more visiting time, permission to have wall calendars, and
sweat suits and watch caps (warm clothing is often denied even
though cells and the exercise “dog run” can be bitterly cold).)
Pelican Bay
opened in 1989 as California’s first supermax prison and is
explicitly designed to keep prisoners in long-term solitary
confinement under conditions of extreme sensory deprivation.
U.S. and
international human rights organizations have condemned SHUs for
having cruel, inhumane and torturous conditions. As Karen Shain, a
lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, points out:
“People who are in prison are already being punished. They are
still human beings and should not have to lose their civil and human
rights.”
SHU prisoners
are kept in windowless, 6 x 10 foot cells, 23 ½ hours a day, for
years at a time. They are given only 30
minutes a day to stretch in the “dog run”; and lights remain on
24 hours a day in each SHU cell.
The CDCR
operates four Security Housing Units in California. The wardens have
no intention of rehabilitating inmates in the SHU, and political
prisoners are disproportionately sentenced to the SHU. SHU terms can
extend prisoners’ sentences and prolong parole options, arbitrarily
set by the prison gang units and their “debriefings.”
Some prisoners
at California’s Corcoran State Prison SHU will be on hunger strike
too in solidarity with the demands of the PBSP hunger strikers.
The
prison-industrial complex
The United
States has the largest prison population and imprisons the largest
percentage of its citizens in the world. Over 7 million people—3
percent of the population—are incarcerated, on probation or on
parole. The overall U.S. incarceration rate is 25 percent higher than
that of any other country in the world, according to the Sentencing
Project, a prisoner advocacy group. (2006)
The working
class—especially workers from oppressed nationalities—suffer the
most under the U.S. prison system. African Americans and Latinos make
up nearly 60 percent of prison inmates—40 percent and 20 percent,
respectively—while whites are 35 percent.
From 1960
through the mid-1970s, the prison population ranged from 200,000 to
215,000—one-tenth of what it is today. But by the late 1970s, the
high-tech revolution and declining profitability of U.S. industry saw
the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs and a shift from manufacturing
to low-wage domestic service jobs.
The trend toward
outsourcing higher-paying jobs to low-wage countries has increased
unemployment for U.S. workers. The masses of the unemployed were then
(and still are) funneled into prisons by the ruling class as a
pressure-release valve to prevent massive rebellions due to
unemployment and lack of resources. Thus, the creation of the
prison-industrial complex has led to the replacement of decent-paying
jobs with a new kind of semi-slavery.
The number of people in prison rose
dramatically. People in the prison system, meaning those in prison,
on parole or on probation, more than doubled from the 1960s to 1980.
In 1980, the number of people in prison
or jail totaled 503,000. By 1990, this number had doubled to over 1
million. By mid-2002, the number had doubled again to over 2 million
and is still on the rise.
This is no mistake. The criminalization
of a large section of the working population serves certain class
interests. The spending increases for prisons and cops bolster the
repressive capitalist state apparatus. This also translates into far
less money allocated to meet social needs such as education, housing
and jobs.
Hunger strikes
have historically been used by prisoners to fight for human and civil
rights. On Oct. 19, 2002, 60 convicts at PBSP went on a hunger strike
to demand correction officials change how they identify and punish
gang members in California’s penal system.
Recently, in Ohio gains have been won for prisoners who went on a
hunger strike.
Solidarity
actions for the PBSP hunger strikers are being held in San Francisco
and Los Angeles on Friday, July 1. A support action will also take
place in San Francisco July 9 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at UN Plaza.
Other actions will be held in New York, Washington and Virginia and
in Canada.
