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The California Prisoners Hunger Strikers and Justice for
Trayvon Martin
Hunger
for Justice
by MARGARET PRESCOD, COUNTERPUNCH, AUGUST 08, 2013
It never rains but it pours. In the last weeks, two major mobilizations
against racist injustice burst out. Most people were outraged that on
July 13 Zimmerman walked away from having shot teenager Trayvon Martin
dead. The police did not even arrest Zimmerman until his family led a
national campaign which marched and lobbied for Justice for Trayvon. And
the prosecutor, according to at least one juror, did not make the
factual case that would have enabled them to find Zimmerman guilty.
On July 8, 30,000 prisoners across California stopped eating and went on
work strike for a number of demands central to which was an end to long-term
solitary confinement (called Secure Housing Units or SHU as small as 6’
x 7’ windowless cubicles) for months, years, even decades. Some strikers
have been refusing even water, and a week ago one prisoner, Billy
Michael Sell, who asked for and was denied medical help, died in
Corcoran SHU. (Prison officials say he killed himself.) California is
one of 19 states that use long-term, often indefinite, solitary
confinement and has by far the largest numbers of prisoners in solitary
— over 10,000.
The thousands of prisoners who acted despite all kinds of restraints,
including individual isolation, are even more amazing since they have
come together across racial, religious and other divisions. This unity
is hard to find outside and was developed inside beginning with the
Georgia prisoners’ hunger strike in 2010, which was state-wide, and
repeated in the California prisoner hunger strike in July 2011, when at
least 1,035 of the SHU’s 1,111 inmates refused food. That strike spread
to thirteen other state prisons and involved at least 6,600 people
throughout California.
The third hunger strike, in September 2011, spread to twelve prisons in
California as well as prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma that
housed men from overcrowded California prisons. By the third day, nearly
12,000 people were participating. The strike ended after the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) promised a
comprehensive review of all SHU prisoners accused of being gang members
or associates – the handy grounds, of which no proof is needed, that
condemns men to years of the torture of being without society.
Inside Organization Produced Remarkable Organization Outside
When California prisoners renewed their hunger strike in September 2011,
Dolores Canales, whose son has been 13 years in the SHU, and other
family members started California Families to Abolish Solitary
Confinement. “A lot of family members work full-time jobs, so the
organizing is all in our spare time even though we have families, jobs,
etc.” In the Bay Area, Marie Levin whose brother is inside, and a member
of Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, a coalition of lawyers, advocates
and family members, brought a mock SHU to the public in parks,
universities and vigils. This was repeated in protests called by family
members across the state.
The prisoners clearly never stopped organizing. They had no choice. They
have charged that the CDCR has not seriously addressed any of their
demands.
In August, 2012, prisoners from Pelican Bay State Prison in California
who have called for all three of the California prisoner hunger strikes
announced: “Beginning on October 10, 2012, all hostilities between our
racial groups…in SHU, Ad-Seg [administrative segregation], General
Population, and County Jails, will officially cease.” They had made it
possible for the present hunger and work strike to involve every
prisoner. Learning from their having achieved this astonishing unity is
the job of those of us who want to do the same in the society generally,
beginning with bridging the Black-Brown divide which has so undermined
the justice movement every minute.
Putting Justice for Trayvon and the Prisoners Hunger Strike together
Trayvon Martin was simply walking home from getting some snacks when he
was followed and killed. The shock for many was that he was vulnerable
to vigilante violence for simply walking while Black. Yet, even to
understand how that could happen, it was vital for the justice for
Trayvon movement and the prisoner hunger and work strike be brought
together.
When I called family members and other key people to propose an urgent
joint action, bringing together support for the hunger strikers and
justice for Trayvon there was initial apprehension. We discussed it at
length — a wonderful learning experience for all of us. After everyone
agreed, a number of people and organizations came together in a National
Convening meeting; and through phone calls we hammered out issues and
decided to call for a “Hunger for Justice” event for July 31st. One
issue was whether raising the travesty of justice suffered by the
clearly innocent Trayvon would be used to hide or play down the
injustice against the imprisoned men – innocent or guilty – who were
never sentenced to the torture they were being made to endure, which
they were now risking their lives to end; or whether each could be a
strength for the other. Like the prisoners, families and supporters saw
the point in coming together. They attracted others, more than 1,200 to
date who fasted or took other action on July 31st.
In our Hunger for Justice Call we said: “We fast knowing that the
criminalization that killed Trayvon Martin, and the criminalization that
justifies the torture of prisoners in solitary confinement are one and
the same. We fast in solidarity with the demands of the hunger strikers.
And we fast to get justice for Trayvon and for people of every gender,
race and religion who have been killed by state and vigilante violence.”
In such a coming together, we remembered Chicago’s distinguished Black
Panther Fred Hampton who by age 21 was bringing Puerto Rican and Black
gangs together to do anti-racist work instead of less socially
productive actions, and was rewarded by US government bullets riddling
his body as he slept. To cross divides massively is more effective — and
less dangerous.
Europe
The Global Women’s Strike made the action global. An informal network of
people in Europe, who know very well how dominant prison is in life in
the US and especially in the lives of people of color, acted and are
still acting in tandem with what we in the US organize. One figure —
Mumia Abu-Jamal – more than any other has through his struggle against
the death penalty informed the world about the role of mass
incarceration in repressing all social movements and institutions of US
society. His support network is emerging in support of all prisoners now.
Women
Women in prison are far less subjected to the torture of the SHU (though
some are). Many of the women have been involved in collective action of
many kinds which sexism ensures gets little or no publicity, or outside
support. Many are fasting every Friday to show their support for the
men. Many are no doubt hoping that the present spotlight on prisons will
begin to make visible the particular burden of guilt and torture of
women (single mothers are the fastest growing population of those going
to prison) whose incarceration condemns many to losing their children to
adoption, and in any case to losing their ability to care for those they
love most and who are most dependent on their care. This never leaves
them.
And then there are the mothers, daughters, partners, sisters, wives,
aunties, grandmothers – from Palestine to Haiti, Guantanamo to Colombia,
China to Sri Lanka, Mexico to California and across the United States –
who do most of the justice work for loved ones locked away in prisons.
It’s mainly women who travel long distances to visit, who work to ensure
that prisoners stay connected with children and grandchildren, who fight
for adequate health care and decent food inside (two of the present
demands), who are a support for prisoners struggling to keep health and
sanity and for those with ill health, like Lynne Stewart, to get
compassionate release, and who consistently fight to get justice for
those wrongly incarcerated, beaten and raped in police cells, and shot
by vigilante guns or more official weapons.
Betrayal or accountability
The United States has the distinction of having the largest prison/detention/jail
population per capita in the world. Every single issue prisoners face
exposes the ways in which US society is shaped by prisons: from
expensive phone calls (private contractors make a mint by providing
phone services to prisons); to the lobby for prisons of private
corporations; to the torture of solitary confinement; to union busting
by prison labor; to desperate unemployed workers being hired as prison
guards often the only available job because the prison industry is the
only one growing; to the inaction (at best) of those in positions of
power.
But now the California Hunger Strike has forced prisons and prisoners
onto the US political agenda with the force of 30,000, from the very
bottom up. They remind us that the movement of the 50s and 60s was
betrayed by those who rose all the way to the White House while
neglecting the many down here continue to be shot, or left to rot in
prisons.
Mass mobilizations are necessary because those who were elected or
supported to defend and protect us have got on just fine with our
jailers. The US scandal is not only that Trayvon was killed, but that so
many of the earlier victims were not taken up by elected officials and
those who claim they are our leaders. Rhetoric they have in abundance,
but they will not stand with the grassroots between elections. They cash
in on our suffering to get positions from which they silence us and
undermine our struggle.
Over the past few decades, increasing numbers of Black and Brown people
have entered the halls of power, some coming from poverty and happy to
“move on up”. Yet, this has mostly been at the expense of those left
behind who remained impoverished and continued to be ground down. Some
expected that being part of the professional or political classes would
give them a protective shield from the most blatant and violent racism;
they were stunned when Trayvon from a gated community was racially
profiled, hunted down and murdered. A twenty-first century lynching.
In this anniversary year of the Emancipation Proclamation and the
50thanniversary of the March on Washington, we would betray the legacy
of the civil rights movement if we neglected to acknowledge the
leadership coming not from above but from those at the grassroots. The
extraordinary prison hunger strikers dissed as outside of society who
are risking all to teach us that we are all prisoners of injustice and
that we cannot escape unless we all fight together to get out.
Stop Press: Undocumented youth and women on hunger strike at ICE
Detention Center
A group of 9 undocumented young people, now known as the Dream 9, went
to visit their families in Mexico and then returned to the US at a
border patrol station in Nogales . It is reported their intention was to
get into the notorious Elroy Detention Center in Arizona where earlier
this year two people were found dead hanging in their cells, and where a
US vet and father of eight went on hunger strike. The Dream 9 began a
hunger strike soon after being detained at Elroy, six of them were
placed in solitary confinement where as of the time this was written two
of them remain. There are reports that 70 other women at Elroy detention
center have joined the hunger strike.
Margaret Prescod is an immigrant from Barbados now living in city
Los Angeles. Trained in the civil rights, Black and welfare rights
movement, she is a co-founder of the Every Mother is a Working Mother
Network, Black Women for Wages for Housework, and Women of Color, Global
Women’s Strike and is the author of “Black Women: Bringing it All Back
Home” which was published in the UK. She is the host of “Sojourner Truth”
heard on Pacifica Radio’s KPFK and WPFW.
Source :
Counterpunch
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