Daily Archives: July 26, 2013

Families of loved ones on hunger strike in Pelican Bay SHU have successfully regrouped and found a new recipient for a campaign to donate their loved ones’ food symbolically: a local soup kitchen in Crescent City. The symbolic donation says a lot to counter the perception they’re all “the worst of the worst.” It shows they’re human beings at their best, thinking of others and being generous even despite their own circumstances.

We want to be counted amongst the thousands (on hunger strike) and also to let the world know that death row has a SHU, though they refuse to call it so. Everyone knows what the Adjustment Center is – a SHU, a prison within a prison – and we’ve been left in here for decades. However, 80 percent of us are still on strike. We lost three, but they were older and they did enough by showing their solidarity.

Mail to the Bay View from the hunger strikers has been very sparse since the strike began with 30,000 participants on July 8. Prison officials may be holding their letters as they did during the 2011 hunger strikes. But yesterday and today the mail brought a postcard and several letters from Bay View subscribers in the Pelican Bay SHU (security housing unit), where these historic hunger strikes originated.