Monday, March 18, 2024
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Tags Class action lawsuit

Tag: class action lawsuit

Soledad raid: Black prisoners brutally attacked file class action against California’s...

The racist prison system flexes its power over helpless captives inside when the masses outside protest too much.

No more sacrifices

Tsukuru Fors' teen years in Hiroshima and subsequent young adulthood in San Francisco inextricably bonded him in solidarity with the Bay View Hunters Point people suffering in a parallel nuclear legacy.

Never out in the sun: City fights order that SF County...

As the penal systems continues to use all efforts to maintain its power over Black, Brown and poor people, weaponizing all available opportunities like the COVID-19 pandemic, civil rights attorney Yolanda Huang exposes the audacity of the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department and the City and County of San Francisco to appeal a magistrate judge’s order to provide fresh air and sunlight to prisoners.

Raw sewage spills at SF Bryant St. jail making prisoners sick...

Raw sewage overflows since January 2017 at the San Francisco’s main 850 Bryant St. jail are making prisoners sick, according to a class action lawsuit asking for $150,000 or more in damages filed July 30 against the City and County of San Francisco, the Sheriff and other law enforcement personnel. The raw sewage spill was reported in the District Attorney’s Office in January 2017 but not in the jail.

Deadly extreme heat and deliberate indifference inside Texas prisons

A settlement has been reached in the Pack Unit lawsuit, and air conditioning will be installed temporarily during the summer months, until the Texas legislature allocates funding for the installation of permanent AC units. Last year, I attempted to file a motion on behalf of myself and all Texas prisoners who are similarly situated to the prisoners at the Pack Unit. The Texas Civil Rights Project, based out of Houston, requested that I withdraw the motion because it had the potential of delaying relief for Pack Unit prisoners.

Hunger strike at Polk supermax in North Carolina

By the time you receive this, many of the prisoners housed on H-Con supermax at Polk Correctional Institution will have started a hunger strike in protest of our conditions of confinement. Being that we are imprisoned, it is sometimes easier for society and executive management at the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS) to view us as sub-human, forget about us and assume that we are receiving quality care. This is not the case.

Glenn Dyer Jail hunger strike: ‘We have people that are only...

In mid-October, 125 prisoners at the Glenn Dyer Detention Facility in downtown Oakland – over 30 percent of the prisoners housed there – participated in a five-day hunger strike to protest what they say are abusive conditions of isolation and poor healthcare in Alameda County jails. On Oct. 17, over 30 supporters rallied outside of the Alameda County administrative building, where the county supervisors’ offices are located, to draw attention to the striking prisoners.

Rising temperatures can kill Texas prisoners. Corrections ignored that, says federal...

A federal judge in Houston ordered a geriatric prison in Texas to help inmates overcome extreme heat and rising summer temperatures, referencing climate change in a groundbreaking ruling this week. U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison deemed it cruel and unusual that state corrections are aware of dangerous and lethal heat risks – at least 23 men in Texas prisons have died from the heat in the last 20 years – yet have failed to impose safeguards.

A solitary distinction

Since our historical release from solitary confinement, many of us have been bombarded by the same question: How did you (we) survive decades of being in solitary confinement? This is not a question of simplicity, it is only a quali­tative and quantitative prelude into an analysis rooted in a historical mater­ial construct which would require a compartmentalization of the particulars which are conducive towards providing an accurate response to the above quest­ion with both clarity and purpose.

Alabama prisoner commits suicide just weeks after testifying in federal mental...

Last week, an Alabama state prisoner who had testified in an ongoing federal trial over the state of mental health care in state prisons was found dead, apparently of suicide. According to the Alabama Department of Corrections, he was found unresponsive, hanging from a piece of cloth in his cell. The state’s attorney said, “Jamie’s case is emblematic of the utter neglect and mistreatment of people with serious mental illness in ADOC prisons.”

Gracias for the anti-solitary class action settlement from a named plaintiff

Can you please give me a little space in Bayview, so that I can say gracias – thank you. I’m one of the named plaintiffs in our class action lawsuit, Ashker v. Brown, at Pelican Bay SHU. By now you have all heard that it was settled Sept. 1, 2015. I’m happy for all of us in the SHU. For now we must enjoy this ONE victory of many more to come. It’s just the beginning.

Who gets hepatitis C drugs? Who pays?

“Who gets treated for hepatitis C?” is a medical decision for infectious disease specialists, not a question of “ethics, costs or access” for well-meaning executives. “Who pays?” depends on measuring the real social costs of failing to treat a national epidemic and cannot be measured by the limited considerations of private entities and public agencies in a single state, or even several states.

Good men, not worst of the worst

We are coming up on three years since the End of All Hostilities with all races has been implemented. I’ve been seeing people from all walks of life and groups observing the Agreement to End Hostilities. What CDC could not do in 20-30 years, these brave men in the Short Corridor prison collectives accomplished in just a short period of three years. Yet CDC continues to label them “worst of the worst.” That’s complete bullsh-t!

Four years since our hunger strikes began, none of our core...

We prisoners need to prepare for a massive peaceful protest and work stoppage if prison officials don’t change 1) The culture to which prisoners and their families are subjected: so much mental and physical torment; 2) End long term solitary confinement, as they promised; and 3) Implement our five core demands. Too many humans are suffering who don’t need to be suffering.

The way forward to end solitary confinement torture: Where’s the army?

I snapped to the fact that once we successfully exposed this torture program to the world, making the people aware, at least some of the responsibility shifts to the people to hold the lawmakers responsible. It’s unbelievable to me to see the numbers of people out there who are aware of the continued torture we are subjected to, and yet they’ve failed to take any action to hold those responsible accountable.

CDCR’s new con game to undermine our class action suit

In order to successfully advance in each step of CDCR’s newly enacted Step Down Program (SDP), prisoners are expected to fill out and complete a series of thought policing or brainwashing workbooks. One such workbook is entitled “The Con Game” and purports to elucidate for the prisoner via “self-directed journaling” the ways in which he either consciously or unconsciously is a con artist and criminal.

Chess vs. checkers

Life is like a game of chess and checkers. Many of us play checkers. And many of us think we’re playing chess, but, in practice, we’re actually playing checkers. So it should be of no surprise to any of you when I say, most poor people play checkers, prisoners in particular. Now what does this analogy im­ply? Most people make decisions in life without thinking ahead or assessing the ramifications of their decisions, especially prisoners!

Prisoners’ families and advocates to speak out at legislative hearing Feb....

Family members, advocates, lawyers, activists and others from across California will travel to Sacramento on Monday to speak out against the state prison system’s continued use of solitary confinement. Hundreds are expected to gather for a rally outside the Capitol Building and will then attend a California State Assembly Public Safety Committee oversight hearing, convened to review the CDCR’s “revised regulations” of its notorious SHUs. Rally starts 11:30 Capitol West Side.

Report from North Kern: Progress and chaos on the road to...

They released about 30 of us back to the general population yards here at North Kern State Prison and transferred a lot of people as well to various prisons. The end of hostilities is working so far. I had a study session on my tier with Southern and Northern Hispanics, a few whites, and both Crips and Bloods on the importance of unity within this mass struggle for liberation.

Reflections on our accomplishments so far – no more suffering in...

Though we have yet to obtain our Five Core Demands, no one can deny how much we have achieved since our initial July 1, 2011, hunger strike. For the most part our movement for human rights has made much progress, but patience is required, for we are engaged in a protracted struggle that demands our resilience.