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Tags Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF)

Tag: Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF)

Forcing out two women’s prison wardens is scapegoating, not accountability

On the surface, the recent “retirement” of the wardens from two of California’s women’s facilities appears to be a needed move in an effort to reform California’s violent correctional system. While many Californians are just beginning to agree that our Department of Corrections does more harm than good, many legal advocates and anti-prison activists have been fighting to make that very point from both inside and out of prison for years.

Women prisoners in California are hunger striking in solidarity with detained...

Something very significant is brewing in California right now. Female prisoners in the Yuba County Jail are organizing in solidarity with immigrants in detention. On Monday, Dec. 14, a group of women began a hunger strike, joining hundreds of other detainees taking part in hunger strikes at facilities across the country. The Yuba County Jail hunger strike is led by, and in support of, Rajeshree Roy.

Wanda’s Picks for August 2015

The Third Annual Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey B’Earthday and Community Celebration is Saturday, Aug. 15, 2-5 p.m. Gather at the “Abundant Knowledge” mural at Marcus Books. Please bring your immense wisdom, families, original books by Garvey, red-black-green items and drums. And don’t forget to bring some funds – as each participant will receive a 10 percent discount on every item purchased that afternoon.

Pelican Bay Hunger Strike: Four years and still fighting

Four years ago prisoners in California – led by those in the control units of Pelican Bay – organized a hunger strike to demand an end to the torturous conditions of solitary confinement. Two more strikes would follow, with over 30,000 prisoners taking united action in the summer of 2013 – both in isolation and in general population in nearly every California prison. Current prison organizing continues a historic legacy of struggle.

A village cannot be built in a jail: Why gender responsive...

The issue of “gender responsiveness” as an excuse to open more prisons has been rearing its ugly head lately with the expansion of CDCR’s supposed “reentry hubs” and “community based facilities,” totaling 4,090 new beds altogether. Yet one woman in the new Female Community Reentry Facility (FCRF) in McFarland recently called Justice Now, saying she feels like “they were sold a dream.”

Wanda’s Picks for August 2011

How well indeed the creator saw fit to have the Muslim population worldwide join the hunger strike started by brothers in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay July 1, which continues in other California prisons, including I heard at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF).

Wanda’s Picks for May 2011

Happy Mother’s Day to Yuri Kochiyama! I’d like to also wish the women who haven’t seen their children in a long time, some since birth, a special Happy Mother’s Day. Our prayers are with you even if you feel alone at a time when in America prisons systematically separate mothers from their children, often permanently.

Wanda’s Picks for October 2010

October is Maafa Awareness Month, a time to reflect on recovery from the residual impact slavery had on the Black community and how the centuries of free labor benefited everyone else. The ritual this year is Sunday, Oct. 10, 5:30 a.m., at Ocean Beach, Fulton at the Great Highway, in San Francisco. Maafa is Kiswahili for “great calamity, reoccurring disaster,” a term used to describe the Black Holocaust of the European Slave Trade and how the post traumatic stress syndrome shows up in our thoughts and behavior unwittingly.

The terrible aftermath of Marsy’s Law

Life-term prisoners - lifers - are beginning to experience the effects of Prop 9, Marsy's Law. On Jan. 14, when political prisoner Hugo Pinnell appeared before the Parole Board, he was told to come back in 15 years!

Rally at Chowchilla women’s prisons demands change

Hidden among the almond groves outside of Chowchilla, California, lies the largest women’s prison complex in the world, Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) and Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW), where an estimated 11,000 women are held behind bars. “Conditions are horrible,” said Mary Van Der Horst, a member of All of Us or None, a group of former prisoners organizing for civil and human rights. Van Der Horst said that there is not enough food and hygiene is poor at the two facilities.