Tag: Burl Cain

On the morning of Tuesday, June 19, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights is having an important public hearing on “Reassessing Solitary Confinement.” This Senate hearing comes on the heels of widespread prisoner hunger strikes that have made the use of solitary confinement a central issue.

Prisoners in the Security Housing Units, SHUs, at Pelican Bay and Corcoran state prisons in California are beginning an indefinite hunger strike on July 1, 2011, to protest the cruel and inhumane conditions of their imprisonment in what is being called “an unusual show of racial unity.” Breaking news: Prisoners at Centinela have joined the hunger strike. A prisoner there reports: “Only a few inmates are walking the yard. No Blacks or Hispanics have left their cells. No one has gone to work. He said all the races are united in this fight.”

An 18,000-acre complex that still resembles the slave plantation it once was, Angola Prison is where Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3 has served nearly all of his time in solitary confinement - 36 years, 2 months and 24 days.

Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace are about to begin their 37th year in the dungeon of the old slave plantation, Angola. A crucifixion. Where is the public outrage that will resurrect them?