Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Units Peaceful Protest Hunger Strike Starting July 1, 2011
Mutope DuGuya a/k/a Bow Low (s/n James Crawford)
It is important for readers to understand the cruelty of the policy sanctioned by the state that allows the CDCR to place men/women under an indeterminate SHU program only on the word of a prison informer—where there is no offense, no violence, nor any gang or criminal activity. Yet prisoners who are held in indeterminate SHU are held, well, indefinitely—for the rest of their lives in SHUs and Adjustment Centers across the state, and even on Death Row if validated as a gang member.
The cruelty is a protracted attack against prisoners, their families, friends, and all of their associates who are subjected to investigations for criminal activities. It does not matter if they are into crime or gang activity or not, the objective is to insinuate that they are and to cut off any relationships that may exist with the prisoner. The gang investigation officers manufacture their evidence by using inmate informers to create as assumption of crime to attack our friends and families.
The CDCR’s gang investigators understand that the prisoners held in solitary confinement are being subjected to various forms of torture and are nonetheless able to sustain themselves, even in the face of these ongoing attacks. Prisoners have adapted to maintain their sanity. So the gang investigators take it a step further, beyond the prison walls, where they work to intimidate by way of threats and other means our friends and families, be they children, grandparents, sisters, bothers, parents or whomever—people who are completely innocent of any gang or criminal activity. They intimidate and incriminate people across the board. They run them off in fear of being prosecuted for a crime that does not exist (other than to say they are under investigation). This kind of attack is not only very intimidating for someone who has never even had a traffic ticket, they are actually cruel to those dear to us.
Since 1990 prisoners have been making complaints against abuses by prison guards. Some of these abuses against PBSP-SHU prisoners were addressed in the Madrid case, where the court agreed that guards were responsible for a number of areas of prisoner mistreatment. Because medical treatment was so bad the federal court put the prisons into receivership and appointed a special master to oversee changes. Many prisoners have suffered mental disorders as a direct result of their placement in the Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Units (PBSP-SHU). The overwhelming majority of these men had not mental illness prior to entering the SHU, but rather lost their sanity as a result of their placement in this facility, as a result of the long-term impact of such confinement.
The Madrid ruling was a failure. Prison guards either ignore the court order altogether or implement token rules they do not follow. Nothing the court did persuaded the guard staff or prison administration to change their abusive behavior. This place is a plantation or a prison colony and we prisoners are the slaves (a status legitimized by the 13th amendment to the U.S. constitution). The guards are free to do with us as they please. They have complete control of our medical care, mail, visits, property, supplies, law library access, laundry, yard, isolation, the lights in our cell, family, friends, lock downs, etc. This is an environment in which the prison guards can torture prisoners both physically and psychologically over extended periods of time. One such attack is the dehumanizing yet widely used “potty watch” which is used under false pretenses—not to find drugs, but to humiliate other human beings.
The actual objective or goal of all this is to force every indefinitely held SHU prisoner to “debrief” (to turn rat, snitch, turncoat, however you want do define it). Some SHU prisoners break and give their captors names just to escape the terrible conditions of confinement. These prisoners are rewarded by being placed in Special Need Yards (SNY) where living conditions are better. This has been happening since the 1990s and it continues today. Ninety-five percent of the debriefers lie in order to get out of the SHU and then go on to become lifetime stoolies for the cops.
The CDCR uses every trick they can to force men into debriefing, including every increasing levels of what can only be described at torture. But if you are innocent, or if you are a principled person, they force you to endure every hardship in an effort to break you. It is this ever increasing attack that has forced us prisoners to put aside our historical differences in order to address the protracted attack on our lives and to expose the criminal activities and abuses against all indeterminate SHU prisoners in the state of California. Effective July 1st we are initiating a peaceful protest by way of an indefinite hunger strike in which we will not eat until our core demands are met. This hunger strike will be carried on by all races, New Afrikans (Blacks), Mexicans (i.e. of all walks), whites and others who realize the we are silently being murdered by CDCR/CCPOAA Union as well as the U.S. judicial system who have turned a blind eye while we suffer a civil death at the hands of profiteers.
Therefore we have decided to put our fate in our own hands. Some of us have already suffered a slow, agonizing death in which the state has shown no compassion toward these dying prisoners. Rather than compassion they turn up their ruthlessness. No one wants to die. Yet under this current system of what amounts to intense torture, what choice do we have? If one is to die, it will be on our own terms.
Power concedes nothing without demand.
News from the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition:
- Los Angeles Campaign Launch: This Weekend!
- THIS FRIDAY! Statewide Candlelight Vigils: Stop the Torture
- PANEL This Tuesday! “Pelican Bay Hunger Strike Resumes: The Struggle to End Long-Term Solitary Confinement in California”
- Rally and Court Hearing this THURSDAY in OAKLAND!
- Peaceful Protest to Resume July 8th 2013, If Demands Are Not Met
- JOIN US! Rally & Public Hearing on the SHU in Sacramento 2/25
- SHU Representative Clarifies Cellmate “Rumor”
- Please Support Our Work this Year!
- Prisoners reject CDCR proposal; threaten new hunger strike
- Essay: Solitary Confinement In California
Key Documents
Agit Prop
Letters from Prisoners
Recent News
this will only show the last ten news items, for older items click here.
Support Organizations
Audio
Off The Hour, CKUT 90.3FM, interviews Ed Mead, June 9, 2011
Sojourner Truth Radio, Update on Pelican Bay Hungerstrike, July 6, 2011
July 7 Interview with Canadian prisoner Peter Collins about the California hunger strike, and isolation-imprisonment in CanadaPeter Collins has been incarcerated some 28 years. He is an artist, creating artworks from cartoons to paintings of wildlife to portraits, of which his latest portrait, that of Ashley Smith* the young woman who died in prison while guards watched on and did nothing, was confiscated by prison authorities and written up as a charge of Contraband. Peter is also an activist behind the walls and in 2008 he won the Canadian Award for Action which was given jointly by The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and Human Rights Watch. He is also a prolific writer and has been published in various magazines and blogs and hes also a regular radio commentator reporting on prisoners struggles, the realities of Canadas law and order agenda and the abuses that prisoners are subjected to in prisons in Canada. It is said by his outside supporters that its because of his activism that the Correctional Service of Canada doubly punishes him, by not supporting him for parole and writing up bogus contraband reports, setting up a censorship board for his artwork at the Bath prison, where he is incarcerated and other various forms of oppression. In this interview Peter is asked about his thoughts on the hunger strike which began with the prisoners in the SHU of the Pelican Bay State Prison in California, and his own reflections of what a SHU is like, having been incarcerated in one before in the province of Quebec. (*The inquiry into the death of Ashley Smith is still going on.)
Solidarity Words & Action
Background Material
Outside support work for the July 1st hunger strike is being coordinated by the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity (PHSS) Coalition, based in the Bay Area and made up of grassroots organizations committed to amplifying the voices of and supporting the prisoners at Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU) in their hunger strike to end tortuous conditions. Support is crucial; to get involved check out prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com or telephone 510-444-0484.
A blog has been produced my comrades in Montreal with a focus on support activities in canada: http://www.contrelesprisons.blogspot.com/
i also have a page up with as complete a calendar of solidarity events as i have been able to manage.
The Kersplebedeb website is in support of the goals of the hungerstriking prisoners, and of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, but is a completely separate project, and PHSS and the prisoners in question are in no way responsible for or necessarily in agreement with anything here. If you see any links or resources you think would belong on this page, please get in touch!
