Tag: administrative segregation (ad-seg)

I especially want to remember the mothers who are not with their families this year due to physical distancing. I hope you are still able to connect with loved ones via technology. We are going to have a special radio show Friday, May 8, featuring Mrs. Sadie Williams, 96, in conversation with other mothers. Listen in beginning at 8 a.m. by calling 347-237-4610.

We are illegally being held in the SHU and Ad-Seg while being subjected to sensory deprivation, both physical and psychological torture, inadequate health care and isolation. PBSP and CDCR officials are refusing to comply with CDCR official policy. It is necessary we prisoners get more involved with our destiny.

We oppose CDCR’s policies and practices relating to our subjection to decades of “status”-based, indefinite isolation; this includes our opposition to CDCR’s proposed policy changes, entitled “Security Threat Group Prevention, Identification, and Management Strategy.” We would appreciate your supportive intervention on this issue.

I refuse to believe that I should be treated like an animal so that prison guards and politicians can line their pockets. The prison system has made solitary confinement a lucrative business. Housing us in solitary confinement costs $30,000 more than housing us in the general population.

Top CDCR administrators admitted several times during our negotiations that the five core demands made by 12,000 hunger striking prisoners were reasonable and would all be addressed via meaningful, substantive changes. Our rejection of CDCR's March 1 proposal is based upon its failure to act in good faith. CDCR is asking lawmakers and taxpayers to allow it to continue to violate thousands of prisoners’ human rights, torturing us with impunity. Our counter-proposal will bring this illegal torture to an end.

At Calipatria State Prison near the Mexican border in the Mojave Desert, the ASU (Administrative Segregation Unit) is so isolated the prison authorities can do anything they want to the ASU inmates without anyone knowing. The men are forced to wear nothing but boxers, and some do not get blankets in their freezing cold cells.

Paul Sangu Jones, who wrote this letter received today, has been locked in solitary confinement for 20 years and has lost over 25 pounds in this second round of the hunger strike. As many as 12,000 California prisoners have participated, along with prisoners around the world. Although some prisoners have suspended their strike pending new promises by CDCR, we need to flood Gov. Jerry Brown with 160,000 calls by Wednesday. Paul writes, "The SHU causes physical and psychological trauma whose end result is a hammer blow to the mind and to the body." Hold Gov. Brown accountable.

With the second phase of a massive California prisoner hunger strike in its third week, prisoners have begun to report grave medical issues. Prisoners at Corcoran have stated, “Due to what they have done here to us, some men have stopped drinking water completely, so we may well be close to death in a few days.”

Solitary confinement in the Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit (SHU) is a reflection of our inhumane treatment and clearly violates our constitutional rights under the First, Fifth, Eighth and 14th Amendments.

This is a call for all prisoners in security housing units, administrative segregation, and general populations, as well as the free oppressed and non-oppressed people, to support the indefinite July 1 peaceful hunger strike in protest of the violation of our civil and human rights here at Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit.