California Prisoners' Hunger Strike

Here's a statement from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network:

As California prisoners' massive hunger strike against long-term solitary confinement, group punishment, and other cruel and inhuman policies of the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) enters its second week, Governor Jerry Brown is on a two-week vacation to Germany and Ireland.  To add insult to injury, it includes a visit to the Dachau concentration camp.

It is shocking for the Governor to have chosen this time to go on vacation while the CDCR refuses to meet the hunger strikers' five just demands that would end the torture of prisoners in the state he is supposed to be responsible for governing.  The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network is outraged that Brown dares to exploit the Nazi genocide to distract from his complicity in the repression and racism against prisoners, disproportionately people of color and low income people, women and transgender people, in order to make money for the lucrative prison industry in California. 

The racism that allows Brown to be silent about a massive hunger strike is the same racism that allows for the massive and disproportionate incarceration of Black and Brown people in California and nationwide. "No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its Black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid." To bring these statistics closer to home, "In Washington, D.C. ... it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison."

The rest of the statement is on the IJAN site.