EMERGENCY ACTION ALERT: over 5 months of sleep deprivation in Pelican Bay SHU

Please make calls (and keep calling!) to demand a STOP to the 30 minute “checks” in Pelican Bay SHU:

• CA Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Secretary’s Office: 916-323-6001
• Kelly Harrington, CDCR Director of Adult Divisions: 916-445-7688
• Senator Loni Hancock, Senate Public Safety Comm. Chair: 916-651-4009
• Assembly Member Bill Quirk, Assembly Public Safety Comm. Chair: 916-319-2020
• CA Governor Jerry Brown: 916.445.2841

Suggested script for calls:
Begin with your name and the city and state where you live. Tell them all: “Stop the so-called ‘welfare’ checks in the SHU at Pelican Bay State Prison. Sleep deprivation is torture.”

 

Send emails to CA elected officials:
Click this link from Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) to email the message to STOP the ‘checks’!  http://tinyurl.com/ztjcos3

 

Join the fight against the checks!:
Find out how here! http://wp.me/P1BB1k-28B

 

Share this YouTube Video far and wide!
“Sleep Deprivation” from Liberated Lens Collective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjWF3OtGSkQ

Background info:

Beginning the night of Aug. 2, 2015 people in Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit (SHU) solitary units have been awakened by guards every 20-30 minutes, 24/7. These loud so-called “security/welfare” checks are constant and unavoidable torment.

Every 20-30 minutes, prisoners in solitary are subjected to:

• reverberating noise of the steel doors to units opening and slamming closed,
• stomping of guards through the pods, up and down the stairs,
• jangling of keys,
• banging Guard One metal pipes on the cells,
• beeping of Guard One metal pipes on metal buttons,
• guards shining their flashlights into the prisoners’ eyes.

Prisoners are sleep deprived and are suffering severe stress, weight loss, dizziness, nausea, headaches, eye problems, stomach and bowel problems, faintness, depression, and fast heart rates.

Prisoners cannot concentrate, exercise, read, do legal work – the things that help them survive – and they can’t sleep!

CDCR claims these “checks” are necessary to prevent suicides. Instead, this cruel sleep deprivation, day and night, is causing serious psychological and physical harm.

STOP the torture now!

Support prisoners’ human rights!