First
Anniversary – Tuesday 8 July 2014
Remembering
the Great Hunger & Work Strike
of California Prisoners
Against the torture of solitary confinement
London
events highlight UK prison and detention strugglesof California Prisoners
Against the torture of solitary confinement
Mon 7pm – Tues 7pm:
24-HOUR FAST in Support of Prisoners
Tues 5-6.30pm: PROTEST outside Holloway Prison. Parkhurst
Road, N7 0NU
Tues 7-9pm: BREAKING the FAST with FILM
of mothers and relatives of prisoners in struggle.
California Families Against Solitary Confinement,
the Dallas 6 campaign, Donna Hill,
mother of a woman in prison for 30 years for killing her attempted rapist.
Crossroads
Women’s Centre, 25 Wolsey Mews, Kentish Town, NW5 2DX
Soup & sandwiches
Soup & sandwiches
Background
On 8 July 2013, 30,000 prisoners in California,
USA, began their 3rd hunger strike – the largest and longest in US
history – to end the torture of solitary confinement for years and even decades,
improve their inhuman living conditions, and as an “act of solidarity with oppressed people around the world”.
One
prisoner did not survive, and after 58 days the prisoners suspended their
strike to avoid further deaths. But they had already won a lot:
the
release from solitary of over 500 people extended
visits with loved ones public
legislative hearings access
to canteen food (a crucial alternative to food contaminated by guards who
piss and even defecate in it) and
more . . .
Prisoners came together across race and other divides
In
August 2012, after a previous hunger strike, prisoners issued an
extraordinary Agreement to End Hostilities.
It said that: “All hostilities
between our racial groups will officially cease.” This set a new standard
for unity within movements for justice inside and outside prison walls.
Family members ensured prisoners’ voices were heard
Mothers,
daughters, partners, wives have worked tirelessly to prevent a blackout of
the strike, gathering support for their loved ones, explaining the conditions
inside, and what their demands are.
In London we held two protests outside the US embassy. The strikers received messages
of support from around the world, from Ireland to Palestine where Palestinian prisoners, including children,
are routinely detained for years without charge or trial. The day after
the California hunger strike began in 2013, Palestinian Sheikh
Khader Adnan, who had been on hunger strike for 66 days
in 2012, sent his support. Dozens of Palestinians ended their 63-day
hunger strike
on 25 June this year – the longest in the history of the Palestinian
prisoners’ movement.
In London we will highlight:
·
The growing number of women in prison,
mainly mothers who are inside for non-violent crimes of poverty, their
children deprived of their care.
·
The 30 women a year who are
sent to prison after reporting rape. Women Against Rape
says that many are victims of a miscarriage of justice following negligent and
biased police investigations, prosecuted with more zeal and resources than
rapists.
·
The targeting of Black people so they are five times more likely to be
imprisoned, while the number of Muslim people inside has doubled in the last
decade, many of them teenagers.
·
The hunger strikes held by
asylum seekers in detention centres in the UK
(women in Yarl’s Wood,
men in Harmondsworth),
and the 56-day hunger strike by immigrant workers detained in Tacoma,
Washington (US) and elsewhere.
·
The more than 1,000 African asylum seekers
who went on hunger strike in Israel this week, to protest their illegal
"inhuman and unlimited" detention in the Negev Desert.
·
The anti-war protest of Margaretta D’Arcy
in Ireland, due to be imprisoned again on 9 July. She has refused for the
second time to sign a bond to stay away from Shannon, a civilian airport used
by the US military, breaking Ireland’s constitutional neutrality. She intends
to “abstain from food during her two-week detention”.
Join
us to work out how the California prisoners’ strike can be a lever against
miscarriages of justice and inhuman conditions in prisons and detentions centres here in the UK. We want to spread information
about prisoners organizing and the Cessation of Racial Hostilities in our
communities.
