Support Hunger Strikers in Corcoran State Prison – SOLIDARITY PROTESTS 2/16 & 2/17

Prisoners are hunger striking against indefinite lockdown and group punishment.

 Corcoran State Prison Protest outside
→ in solidarity with people inside who are peacefully protesting against torture ←

Sat & Sun/Feb 16 and 17
11:00am – 2:30pm (both days)
in front of Corcoran State Prison entrance
Corcoran, CA 93212

Families are mobilizing for this weekend’s protests.
Please participate if you can!!
Contact number:  562.537.7068.

On Jan. 9, 2019, an estimated 250 prisoners went on hunger strike within Corcoran State Prison’s 3C facility in response to an indefinite lockdown. They have asked that this info be made public and that their DEMANDS BE HEARD.

Corcoran State Prison (3C Yrd)
SIX CORE DEMANDS ARE AS FOLLOWS:

1. Lift Lock-Down.
2. Allow Visits.
3. Allow Us To Attend Educational, Vocational & Rehabilitation Programs That We’re Enrolled In.
4. Allow Us To Receive Commissary & Packages.
5. That We Be Given Our Weekly 10 Hrs Of Mandated Outdoor Exercise Yard.
6. That We Are Treated Fairly.

***WE’VE BEEN ON THIS PEACEFUL HUNGER STRIKE SINCE JANUARY 9TH, 2019 AND HAVE YET TO SEE CHANGE… WE WILL CONTINUE THIS HUNGER STRIKE UNTIL OUR VOICES ARE HEARD.

UPDATE: On January 9, 2019, an estimated 250 prisoners initiated a hunger strike within California State Prison – Corcoran’s 3C facility in response to an indefinite lockdown. On Jan 28, after three weeks of refusing food trays, the warden met with representatives, granted full canteen privileges and promised to work out a separate yard schedule. The strikers suspended their hunger strike and were ready to continue negotiations in good faith.

Over the last two weeks there has been NO PROGRESS on receiving full canteen or separate yard time. The warden has reneged on all pledges so the strikers of 3C refused breakfast trays on Monday, Feb 11 and held a day long noise demo banging on doors and windows. The initial demands remain and strikers insist that they be dealt with in good faith.

BACKGROUND: All units within Corcoran’s 3C facility have been on “modified program” for four months now. This essentially means a “lockdown” in all meaningful aspects – no visitation, no canteen, no packages, no educational, rehab or vocational programming, and little yard time.

The pretext for this indefinite lockdown by CDCr of hundreds of prisoners for months on end is an altercation on Sept. 28 which saw three prisoners from their unit attacked and put into the infirmary. Group punishments and indefinite isolation are standard practices by CDCr and must stop.

These practices only escalate trauma and conflict and ultimately only promote violence and destabilization within facilities. The effects are not an accident or “regrettable by-products.” This is how CDCr interprets its mission: control by brutalization and division.

The above info is from the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee.
See more articles and interviews about the strike below.

PLEASE MAKE PHONE CALLS!

The hunger strike representatives have requested phone calls be made to officials in Sacramento to amplify the demands.

Support Operation PUSH Prisoner Strike throughout Florida prison system, initiated on MLK Day

The Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition stands in solidarity with the Florida Prison Strikers.

Stay informed and updated with links below. Please help amplify the striking prisoners’ voices.

These are the strikers’ demands (in their words):
1. Payment for our labor, rather than the current slave arrangement
2. Ending outrageous canteen prices
3. Reintroducing parole incentives to lifers and those with Buck Rogers dates

Along with these primary demands, we are also expressing our support for the following goals:

• Stop the overcrowding and acts of brutality committed by officers throughout FDOC which have resulted in the highest death rates in prison history.
• Expose the environmental conditions we face, like extreme temperatures, mold, contaminated water, and being placed next to toxic sites such as landfills, military bases and phosphate mines (including a proposed mine which would surround the Reception and Medical Center prison in Lake Butler).
• Honor the moratorium on state executions, as a court-ordered the state to do, without the legal loophole now being used to kill prisoners on death row.
• Restore voting rights as a basic human right to all, not a privilege, regardless of criminal convictions.

Supporters of Operation PUSH march in solidarity with prisoners on Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday, Gainesville, FL, Jan 15, 2018. (Photo from Fighting Toxic Prisons)

Florida Prisoners Are Laying It Down
with a work stoppage, an economic protest

Prisoners’ Statement: FL Prisoners Call for Operation PUSH to Improve the Lives of Incarcerated People and the Communities We Come From (with intro from Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons) https://fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com/2017/12/06/fl-prisoners-announce-operation-push-starting-jan-15-to-cripple-prison-system/

Great Audio Interview: Oakland IWOC speaking on Operation PUSH on KPFA with Cat Brooks Jan 23, 2018 https://soundcloud.com/oakland-iwoc/oakland-iwoc-speaking-on-operation-push-on-kpfa-upfront-with-cat-brooks

Jan 19, 2018 Update on Operation PUSH (originally posted on SPARC) https://fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/updates-on-operation-push-in-the-florida-department-of-corrections/

Are Florida prisons suppressing an inmate strike or just lying about it?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/01/24/are-florida-prisons-suppressing-an-inmate-strike-or-just-lying-about-it/?utm_term=.8b74c32b7067

Florida Officials Deny Operation PUSH Is Ongoing, Even As They Retaliate Against Prisoners https://shadowproof.com/2018/01/25/operation-push-update/

Please stay updated through these sites:

• • • Supporting Prisoners And Real Change (SPARC) https://www.facebook.com/SPARC-133851070619730/
    • Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP)
      https://www.facebook.com/FightToxicPrisons  and https://tinyurl.com/ycxgf66w
    • IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) https://www.facebook.com/incarceratedworkers/ and https://incarceratedworkers.org/openaid-home

Recent Call to Action! Demand Florida DOC Stop Torturing Rashid Johnson

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson (#158039) wrote an article about the Florida prison strike, “Florida Prisoners Are Laying it Down” which was published online on January 9, 2018. The following day warden Barry Reddish retaliated against Rashid’s use of his First Amendment rights, ordering that he be given a disciplinary infraction for “inciting a riot”. Further, on January 19th Rashid was thrown in a cold cell, with a broken toilet, no heating, and with a window that will not fully close, allowing cold wind to blow into the cell. The cell has the same temperature as the outside, where temperatures have been repeatedly at or below freezing.  Kevin “Rashid” Johnson was not allowed communication with his attorney or anyone on the outside for 6 days.

UPDATE: People made many calls to the warden in the prison where Rashid is being held.

Indefinite Solitary Confinement Ends in San Quentin’s Adjustment Center / Death Row

Links to the articles and radio interview in this post:

• Indefinite Solitary Confinement Ends at San Quentin
  Death Penalty Focus article  http://deathpenalty.org/blog/indefinite-solitary-confinement-ends-san-quentin/

• March 15, 2017 KPFA Interview- ‘Up Front’
  CA Death Row – Solitary Confinement, Cat Brooks talks to Azadeh Zohrabi and Dan Siegel about solitary confinement. https://www.freedomarchives.org/audio_samples/Mp3_files/UpFront3.15.17.mp3

• In California Death Row’s “Adjustment Center,” Condemned Men Wait in Solitary Confinement Solitary Watch article (good background) http://solitarywatch.com/2016/04/13/in-californias-death-rows-adjustment-center-condemned-men-wait-in-solitary-confinement/

• Copy of original complaint (lawsuit) in Lopez v Brown, filed 6/17/2015:  http://sfbayview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Lopez-v.-Brown-San-Quentin-Adjustment-Center-class-action-complaint-061715.pdf

______________________

Indefinite Solitary Confinement Ends at San Quentin

on Death Penalty Focus Blog / March 10, 2017

Death row inmates will no longer be kept in indefinite solitary confinement in San Quentin State Prison, it was announced Monday [March 6]. The agreement was part of a settlement of a 2015 lawsuit filed on behalf of six inmates who were held indefinitely in what is called an “adjustment center” because they were suspected of being gang members. When the lawsuit was filed, there were some 100 inmates being held in the adjustment center. Since then, the number has fluctuated from around 10 to 22 inmates.

“Basically, these guys were housed there for 23 hours a day,” says Oakland attorney Dan Siegel, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the six inmates. “They got one hour three times a week in the yard. They had no human contact. The cells were like closed boxes, no windows. And they’ve been there for years and years. It takes a toll — emotionally, psychologically, and physically.”

Honoring Hugo “Yogi Bear” Pinell

Long live Hugo Pinell, who showed us the power of the human spirit, that love can survive and overpower hell on earth.

________________________________________________

Beloved political prisoner Hugo ‘Yogi Bear’ Pinell, feared and hated by guards, assassinated in Black August after 46 years in solitary

August 14, 2015   by Dr. Willie and Mary Ratcliff

Black August adds another hero and martyr to the roll.

From December 1970 to 2014, when he finally had a contact visit with his mother, Yogi was allowed to come out from behind the thick glass in the visiting room and touch a loved one only once: When he married Shirley, they were given 15 minutes together. She later died.

By some accounts, it was his first day on the yard after 46 years in solitary confinement when Hugo Pinell, affectionately known as Yogi Bear, was assassinated Aug. 12. The news sparked a victory celebration by  prison guards on social media: “May he rot in hell” and “Good riddens” (sic), they typed. Yogi was the only member of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, and his role in the events of Aug. 21, 1971, the day George Jackson was assassinated, has earned the guards’ incessant enmity ever since.

“This is revenge,” declared his close friend, fellow Black Panther veteran Kiilu Nyasha, on Hard Knock Radio Aug. 13. “They hated him as much as George Jackson. They beat him constantly, kept him totally isolated for 46 years – no window, no sunlight – but they could never break him, and that’s why they hated him.

“The only way he survived was that this man was full of love.” ….
Please read more of this excellent SF Bay View article
which includes “The Black Panther Party and Hugo Pinell”  from The Black Panther newspaper of Nov. 29, 1971

 

Hugo Pinell Presente!

August 14, 2015   by Isaac Ontiveros

….Hugo became a part of the Prison Liberation Movement, which saw the prison as a front of struggle connected to the global upsurge of oppressed people against colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy.  This was a period of intense education, organizing, and resistance among imprisoned people—some locked up as political prisoners, some transformed while inside, nearly all targeted by prison administrations for their political stances and activism.  In 1971, Hugo, along with 5 other prisoners at San Quentin State Prison in California, were charged with raising a rebellion at the facility’s Adjustment Center, during which prisoner movement leader George Jackson was assassinated.  Several weeks later, actions commemorating the assassination of Jackson by prisoners at Attica went on to spark the massive rebellion at that prison.  The story and political trial of the San Quentin Six helped people across the planet to understand the conditions inside prison, the resistance of prisoners, and the connection across the walls that the Prison Liberation Movement was trying to make.

Hugo Pinell in 2001

Hugo Pinell would go on to spend over 40 years in the solitary confinement units used to punish prisoners and break up their social, political, and religious organizations—indeed, Pinell was the longest held prisoner in solitary confinement in California, before recently being released into the general population.  Despite the torturous conditions of solitary, Hugo remained steadfast politically, and tried to stay connected to people and struggle, inside and outside the prison.  Hugo participated in the recent California Prison Hunger Strikes and was vocal supporter of prisoners’ 2011 Agreement To End Racial Hostilities.   In his late 60s while on hunger strike, Hugo talked about his activism with journalist Kilu Nyasha:

I wasn’t prepared for a hunger strike, so I don’t know how well or how long I can hold on, but I had to participate…I don’t even think in terms of doing or saying something wrong, for that would strike against everything I live for: freedom, becoming a new man and the New World. So, Sis, this hunger strike provides me with an opportunity for change while also allowing me to be in concert with, and in support of, all those willing to risk their precious and valuable health.  ….

Please read more of this tribute from Critical Resistance

Hugo Pinell- Rest in Power

August 13, 2015  by Claude Marks

We are saddened by the news of Hugo Pinell’s death. Hugo Pinell always expressed a strong spirit of resistance. He worked tirelessly as an educator and activist to build racial solidarity inside of California’s prison system. ….

….As the California Prisons began to lock people up in long-term isolation and control unit facilities, Hugo was placed inside of the SHU (Secure Housing Unit) in prisons including Tehachapi, Corcoran and Pelican Bay. There, despite being locked in a cell for 23 hours a day, he continued to work for racial unity and an end to the torturous conditions and racially and politically motivated placement of people into the SHU. This work included his participation in the California Prison Hunger Strikes as well as supporting the Agreement to End Racial Hostilities in 2012.

At the time of his death, Hugo had been locked behind bars for 50 years yet his spirit was unbroken.
Please read the full writing, Hugo Pinell- Rest In Power

See Who are the San Quentin 6? flyer (from 1970’s) provided by Freedom Archives

Here is a link to the Freedom Archives San Quentin 6 collection 

brief poem by Luis ‘Bato’ Talamantez

Hasta Siempre Hugo
Solidarity forever
And we are saddened
Solidarity left
You when (it) should have
Counted for something and
What your long imprisoned
Life stood for
Now all your struggles
To be free have failed
And only death an
Inglorious and violent
Death has
Claimed you
At the hands of the
Cruel prison system
La Luta Continua

-Bato and the San Quentin 3

A short poem written by Hugo Pinell from a publication issued in 1995.

No
Matter
How long it takes,
Real Changes will come,
And the greatest personal reward
Lies in our involvement and contributions,
Even if it may appear that nothing significant
Or of impact really happened
During our times,
But it did,
Because
Every sincere effort
Is as special as every human life

-Hugo Pinell (1995)