Two hundred people - with about a hundred police following, observing or hidden out of sight - rallied and marched in downtown Oakland on Saturday in support of the Prison Hunger Strikers, now in their 50th day protesting against arbitrary solitary confinement and demanding humanitarian changes when so confined.
This rally was special. I'm sorry I got there a bit late but I think I caught the best of the best. It isn't often that rally speakers are totally captivating, but this was the exception. There were two incredibly moving speeches.
One by Tiffany Tran, describing her experience some years ago being tossed into solitary confinement in a local jail before even being tried. She was left naked in an underground cell with a small blanket she could either wrap around her or use to protect her from the cold cement floor (they said she was a suicide risk); surrounded by prisoners with mental health issues constantly screaming and flushing toilets; having no sense of time or space. (Tiffany was more recently arrested for "lynching" in another travesty of justice.)
Another superb talk by Laleh Behbehanian, a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley and activist, described more abstractly how solitary confinement is being abused across the country. It is used to house transgender individuals and those with mental health problems and to punish anyone the corrections system power structure doesn't happen to like. She expounded on how it is a completely arbitrary and capricious extra-judicial punishment, whose exericisers are answerable to no one and nothing. She told how this system has expanded, not just in California (where up to 10,000 inmates are kept in state penitentary solitary, and more in county and juvenile facilities), but across the country and in federal institutions. (Laleh is the spokesperson at the beginning of the above video).
I wish I had these speeches on video, but after more than a day of inquiries nothing has turned up. Here's some of the beautiful artwork created for the rally.
After the speeches protesters marched to the County Jail in downtown Oakland, proceeded and followed by what must have been every on-shift OPD officer. This was the most efficient use of police resources that OPD's management could come up with on a Saturday evening when the weekend before Oakland had been rocked by a series of twelve shootings resulting in three deaths and the community was (once more) up in arms over gun violence. Come to think of it, the officers probably felt a hella lot safer marching in ranks near protesters than in pairs out on East Oakland streets...
There are over two hundred inmates still participating in the hunger strike, which began on July 8th and is now in its forty-ninth day. No other hunger strike in recorded history has gone on so long with so many participants. Not even close. Even one hundred people on hunger strike for forty nine days is unprecedented. What makes these people continue? Maybe stuff like this.
...a guard stepped aboard to give us his speech: '...Look to your right, left and behind you. See them trees in the hills? This will be the last time you'll see a tree. Look at the ground, see the dirt? This will be the last time you see dirt of this earth.'"
In 2001, ... Ronnie set about trying to donate a kidney to our sister, Carol. He ... was a compatible donor, but the prison would not allow him to make the donation. For years, Ronnie fought for permission to save his sister. Carol died in 2010, in a puddle of blood, bleeding out after a dialysis treatment.
The only ways to get out alive is to inform on other prisoners -- even if you have no information to provide, even if you risk violence by doing so, even if doing so puts your family in danger.
Maybe a sense that there is no other means of redress. Maybe a hope that others in the future won't suffer quite as much, for quite as long. I don't know what makes someone refuse food for fifty days.
The news blackout about the extent and even existence of the hunger strike is impressive, if not unexpected. (e.g., there were no news articles about the hunger strike in any of Sunday's LA Times, San Francisco Chroncicle, San Jose Mercury News or Sacramento Bee). Just yesterday I met someone who wanted to get involved in activism in Oakland who had no idea the hunger strike was occuring.
Despite statements such as these...
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, today urged the United States Government to abolish the use of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement. There are approximately 80,000 prisoners in the United States of America who are subjected to solitary confinement, nearly 12,000 are in isolation in the state of California.
"Even if solitary confinement is applied for short periods of time, it often causes mental and physical suffering or humiliation, amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and if the resulting pain or sufferings are severe, solitary confinement even amounts to torture."
Jerry Brown, who has attempted to squash every attempt at prison reform in California (see You will Never Find a More Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy and CA Gov. Brown Smacked Down (Again) By Federal Judges... And About to Face Yet Another Prison Crisis for background) refuses to even mention the hunger strike and James Beard (California's new Commissioner of Corrections) refuses to negotiate.
They have mastered the art of telling the "Big Lie," repeating it over and over until the general public has no room to believe anything else. To wit: "The prisoners on hunger strike were coerced by gang leaders. This is all a plot by incarcerated gang leaders in solitary to get out and regain power. We have already implemented the reforms the prisoners asked for in their last hunger strike." And of course most of the public believes them.
In the lastest attempt to squelch the hunger strikers, through skullduggery and betrayal, the State of California managed last week to get a Federal judge to allow the force-feeding of hunger strikers. I'll cover that in Part II.
For the nonce, here are some tweet-photos from the march and rally.