12,000 California Prisoners Protest Living Conditions With Inmate Hunger Strike

[tawadi]

Source: IBTimes

12,000 California Prisoners Protest Living Conditions With Inmate Hunger Strike

By IBTimes Staff Reporter | October 4, 2011 10:12 AM EDT

Thousands of inmates confined in California prisons have been engaging in a hunger strike since Sept. 16 in an attempt to call attention to poor prison conditions, particularly the inhumane treatment of inmates who are housed in solitary confinement, according to multiple reports.

The strike is the continuation of a previous strike in July that was suspended after the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) agreed to a policy review of its solitary confinement cells -- also known as Security Housing Units (SHU) -- and offered to provide inmates with warm hats, wall calendars and watch covers.

Despite the small concession, at least 6,000 prisoners in eight different state prison facilities have once again taken up the cause, claiming the CDCR did not address their five core demands, according to a Sept. 30 report from the Los Angeles Times. However, on Saturday the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity (PHSS) reported that nearly 12,000 inmates, including some housed out of state in prisons located in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma, are participating in the hunger strike.

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/224733/20111004/california-prisoner-hunger-strike-12-000-prisoners.htm

[ileus]

1. They'll get over it or they'll starve....that sould save taxpayer money.

[NOLALady]

2. Less prisoners

will put a lot of people out of work. We also need the cheap/free labor of the prisoners.

[backscatter712]

4. The teabaggers hooting & hollering at the GOP debates are right with ya!

[EFerrari]

3. K&R

[Tsiyu]

5. Are these corporate, for-profit prisons?

Some are known to starve the inmates.

In many jails, the sheriffs get a food budget. The Sheriff gets to keep what's left over. No incentive to starve people there.

Hatred for the imprisoned is a base, primitive-brained instinct. Intelligent people know that anyone, at any time, can become one of the imprisoned. Even if you're so pure your asshole smells like rose petals, you might be mistaken for a murderer, or be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or have your fingerprints traced back to a weapon used in a crime, or have someone do thousands of dollars of damage with your car.

Maybe you'll only be held in jail for a day or a few hours, but that doesn't mean you should be treated like refuse. We sentence people to incarceration as punishment, and to remove them from society to reflect on their crimes, not as a way to break people down into ragged, starving animals.

We'd like to send inmates back into the world - after their eleven months and 29 days - as socialized human beings able to function in society. Why would some be so lizard-brained and drooling at the mouth over incarcerated people really suffering, as if it is amusing to them to imagine? Where is their ability to see the "cause and effect?" Was it spit out in that PBR can between their knees?

[annm4peace]

6. this needs to be on Keith Olbermann, Ed Shultz, Al Sharpton

and RAchel maddow. this is major. the previous hunger strike was incredible. this one even more.

sadly I sure some will die before the mainstream media picks it up.