For Immediate Release – July 21, 2011
Press Contact: Jay Donahue
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity
510-444-0484
Oakland – The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) prematurely announced an end to the Pelican Bay hunger strike today. The strike is protesting conditions of confinement international human rights groups have called torturous and inhumane. Lawyers and mediators in contact with the strikers, however, have not received confirmation from the hunger strike leaders that the strike is over. “We would like to hear directly from the men at Pelican Bay that they have resumed eating and what demands, if any, have been met,” says Carol Strickman, a lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.” At this point, “Strickman continues, “we have not been able to ascertain what concessions may have been granted.”
Supporters of the strikers say this issue is not resolved. “The CDCR has used deceptive tactics throughout this strike to try to overcome prisoner resistance,” says Taeva Shefler, a member of Prison Activist Resource Center and Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity. “In order to break the strike, the CDCR has regularly underestimated strike participation and withheld information regarding the health of striking prisoners. Prisoners not yet in solitary have been placed in Administrative Segregation or Security Housing Units as punishment for protesting. These are the very issues this strike aims to change in the first place.”
Information coming from Pelican Bay and other prisons has been sparse at best over the last three weeks, as CDCR has declined to grant media access to the prisoners on strike and letters sent by family members have been returned by the prison. “There’s a reason this department is mired in multiple court orders, receiverships, and other monitoring processes,” says Molly Porzig of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, “The lack of reliable communication today simply underscores the core of this crisis.”
Supporters continue to urge the public to call Governor Brown’s office asking him to exert pressure on the CDCR to meet the prisoner’s demands. For updates, please visit www.prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com.
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity 
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as a regular visitor to Pelican Bay State Prison SHU, I can and will continue to inform the truth of what is or is not being reported as fiction… the strike is NOT over and will not be until the state and CDC accept the demands as non negotiable
The call for a workstrike through the state’s prisons is still very much an active and ongoing way for all prisoners to ensure they can support the changes required to peacefully end the hungerstrike and have a guarantee they will never face indeterminate SHU sentencing in the future. Ending indeterminate and cruel SHU policy and making debriefing (which is no guarantee of a return to mainline) obsolete is what the strike is about.
No amount of BS from the officials will be bought by anyone but the naive and misinformed malcontents who think “tough on crime”: isnt hurting anyone but “criminals” (we wont even get into the wrongfully convicted)…but it does, especially the taxpayer.the tax payer who suffers first… and the prisoners who pay for this roughshod attempt at the very absent so-called “REHABILITATION” known as mental torture.
Hi.
Thanks so much for your honest reporting. I’m just wondering how its going now? Is it over at all? There have been many reports now that it is over at Pelican Bay at least. I don’t know anyone personally so I can’t say but I do want to say I hope they eat because sacrifice of their health or life is not great, and the hope ideally should be to do it without hurting themselves. I hope everyone makes it. Thanks, Anna R.
no it is NOT over…They are eating but they sought mostly public awareness and got it.. the battle is now in the hands of attorneys and we the free public need to stay AWARE and MAKE SURE CDC does not try to downplay their promise to fulfill the first three demands.
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