Tag: Man down

The California Code of Regulations, Title 15, Section 3350 (b) (1) defines the standard of care that prisoners are entitled to: “Medically Necessary means health care services that are determined by the attending physician to be reasonable and necessary to protect life, prevent significant illness or disability, or alleviate severe pain, and are supported by health outcome data as being effective medical care.” However, since my arrival to CMF on Sept. 5, 2017, I have witnessed everything but the protection of life, as it relates to the prisoner class.

“Deliberate indifference” is defined as “the act(s) or omissions of a prison official who knows that the prisoner faces a substantial risk of serious harm or significant pain and disregards that risk by not taking reasonable measures to abate it.” But what happens when deliberate indifference is longstanding, pervasive, well documented and expressly noted by officials over the course of time. Yet the state does nothing to correct it?

Calipatria ASU is holding strong and still pushing in this hunger strike. Even though many have resumed eating, approximately 30 men back here continue to push for humane change by starving ourselves. It’s devastating to see our own people fall and bow down to their captors and be a slave to the system. CDCr does not care to meet the five demands or anything else related to humane change.

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.

In the past year we have witnessed a succession of murderous assaults reflecting a common character structure: The authoritarian psychology: Jason Smith beaten to death by racists in Louisiana; Trayvon Martin murdered by a racist vigilante in Florida; Christian Gomez allowed to die on hunger strike by prison guards in California; 17 people, nine of them children, slaughtered in Afghanistan; Kendrec McDade slain by racist police in California; Gerardo Perez-Ruiz murdered by border vigilantes in Arizona.