Authorities Set to Torture Striking Prisoners: Judge Allows Force-Feeding
September 1, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Editor's Note: On August 19, a federal judge ordered that hunger striking California prisoners can be force-fed by prison medical staff if they are "at risk of near-term death or great bodily injury." This Order specifically declares invalid any "do not resuscitate (DNR)" orders the prisoners have signed shortly before or during the strike. The reason the judge gives is that the hunger strikers "may have been coerced into participating in the hunger strike."
Last week the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture said, "it is not acceptable to use threats of forced feeding or other types of physical or psychological coercion against individuals who have opted for the extreme recourse of a hunger strike."
The language in the Order about inmates being coerced into hunger striking, or signing a DNR against their "free will" is a response to claims by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) that this hunger strike is a "ploy" by gangs. CDCR Deputy Press Secretary Terry Thornton repeated these claims last week on Democracy Now!, saying that the CDCR "Inmates are being coerced by gangs—not all of them, but some of them—to participate in this hunger strike. It should also be noted that the hunger strike leaders are all leaders of prison gangs, as well. This whole action, this hunger strike, which is the third one in the last two years, is being driven by gangs."
But prisoners have taken the extreme course of starving themselves precisely because of the coercion exerted by the prison authorities, the decades spent in the living tomb of solitary confinement with no meaningful human contact, and denial of basic rights, and even decent food.
Revolution received this letter from a reader on how the prison authorities are once again invoking "gangs" to justify repression of the hunger strike, and to seek to isolate the prisoners, and render people outside of prison silent:
From a Reader
On August 19, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson issued a court order approving the force-feeding of California prisoners, who have been on a hunger strike to stop the torturous conditions of solitary confinement in the prisons' Security Housing Units (SHUs). His order was based on the assertion by California prison authorities that some striking prisoners have been coerced to participate in the hunger strike. This was laid out in the Los Angeles Times on August 6, 2013, where Jeffrey Beard, head of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), argued that the hunger strike is not about protesting living conditions that constitute torture, but instead is prison gangs attempting to "restore their ability to terrorize fellow prisoners, prison staff and communities throughout California."
This is all we've ever been told by the cops, the courts, the judges, the government, and the prison authorities: "It's because they are gang members", which is to be translated that they are the worst of the worst. This is what they tell us—"we arrest and incarcerate them because they are gang members; we put them in the SHUs because they are gang members; and now we will force feed them because of the gangs."
Here's what they don't tell you. They don't tell you that the skyrocketing growth of gangs in the urban centers of this country is tied to the loss of jobs in those areas. In the 1960s and 1970s, thousands and thousands of jobs left Los Angeles in the chase for cheaper labor and greater profits. In the 1950s, Los Angeles assembled more cars than any city except Detroit, made more tires than any city except Akron, made more furniture than Grand Rapids, and had the largest garment industry other than New York.
Of the crack epidemic in the inner cities, revcom.us has written: "Factories producing goods were moved first from the inner cities to the suburbs and then to other countries—while the masses of Black people remained locked in those urban cores due to continued housing segregation and deprivation. Simultaneously, the inner cities were deprived of funds and allowed to become economic and cultural dead-zones. The drug trade and the gangs involved in that trade to a certain degree arose spontaneously—but they were also systematically manipulated and in some cases promoted to fill the economic and political void left in the ghettos and barrios by economic abandonment and counter-revolutionary suppression of the movement. That escalated in the 1980s, as the CIA orchestrated the funding of pro-U.S. Central American terrorists (the "Contras") through the sale and distribution of drugs through gangs in the inner cities of the U.S."(See "The CIA/Crack Connection: RW Interview with Gary Webb," at revcom.us.
But people say Black and Latino youth could have chosen not to enter the gangs. Bob Avakian gets into the choices youth in the ghettos and barrios have available to them in his very important piece that everyone needs to read in its entirety, "More On Choices...And Radical Changes," Revolution newspaper, January 28, 2013, and at revcom.us:
"Okay, so you can rob somebody, right? Now am I saying it is right to rob somebody? Absolutely not. But what I'm saying is if you're influenced by the way that the culture and all the popular stuff on TV and the music and everything tells you you ought to be trying to get rich and get over on other people. If you get influenced by that and you say that's the way the game is played, so I'm going to do my thing in it, right, then you are going to do what you can do. If you can't be a stockbroker... if you can't be some other person, a banker, who loans money to somebody to buy a house knowing that they can't pay back the loan, and then forecloses on the house and sells it again, does the same thing again and again... If you can't make your money that way, but you got the idea in your mind from the whole culture out there that the thing to do is to get over on other people, and get money any way you can, then you'll do what you can do, which is to stick up somebody, or to sell some drugs, or to pimp out a woman and beat her down when she tries to get out of it, and so on."
The School-to-Prison Pipeline
The "war on drugs" became the government's program to mass incarcerate millions, to get those, who had the potential to become conscious revolutionaries in opposition to their system of capitalism-imperialism, off the streets and into their prisons. While out in the streets the only future these youth face is mass unemployment, an education system that is a pipeline to prison, and harassment, brutality, and death at the hands of the cops. In prison, their oppression takes on another dimension.
Once incarcerated, the authorities segregated the prisoners by race. The guards promoted and organized fights among prisoners. The Revolution article made the point, "What is Actually Revealed in the California Prisoner Hunger Strike? Responding to Jeffrey Beard's Los Angeles Times Op-ed makes the point that in the late 90s it was exposed that in the Corcoran SHU they were organizing 'gladiator days' where prisoners from different gangs were put into the exercise pen and told to fight each other, with armed prison guards watching and betting on the outcome. They foment and enforce these divisions and then set people up to go at each other." The prison system itself continues to reinforce the existence of gangs.
Further, in California, the prison authorities have instituted a "validation" system where they determine who supposedly is a gang member by using bogus evidence, like tattoos, or what they are reading to prove that someone is a gang member. Once the authorities validate a prisoner as a gang member, they are placed in solitary confinement in a SHU cell. (We have written many other articles detailing how this is a form of torture).
The only way to get out of the SHU is to be debriefed, which is a process of telling the authorities everything you know about gangs and its members. In other words, snitching. You would think that all the prisoners would jump at the chance of being debriefed in order to get out of the SHU. Of course they would, we are told, because they are gang members, they are the worst of the worst, and all they care about is themselves and no one else. Of course they would because this system promotes "look out for number one at the expense of others." But guess what? Most are not going for being debriefed, and it is not for the reason that they are being coerced by other prisoners as the prison authorities would have us believe. Prisoners are saying that they have a code of ethics where one does not bring the heat down on others just to get the heat taken off you.
In August 2012, the prisoners in the Pelican Bay State Prison-Security Housing Unit Short Corridor issued a historic "Agreement To End Hostilities" to all California prisoners and others concerned calling for an "end to hostilities between our racial groups." These prisoners have raised their heads and shown their humanity with this statement and with their hunger strike which they say is not necessarily for them but for future prisoners. And what has been the response to this by the authorities? More gang labeling, moving striking prisoners to Administrative Segregation, which are worse than their SHU cells, disciplinary measures, and force-feeding despite the fact that the prisoners signed a "do not resuscitate" statement, which, in California, is supposed to be a legally binding document.
Take a Stand with the Prisoners!
This broken record of labeling young Blacks and Latinos as gang members has to be rejected by those who can recognize the truth: it is the system that has created these gangs and that despite being treated like animals, some of these prisoners are trying like hell to rise above that and must be supported in their efforts to do so.
Listen to what a striking prisoner has written to the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund that was printed in Revolution newspaper:
"What seems to anger the state the most is that we have broken with reactionary views and have taken on a more revolutionary stance in our struggle for human rights behind prison walls. We have come to see that the ruling class has pitted us against one another within prisons but this wasn't the first time. For hundreds of years the state has found ways to use divide and conquer tactics to keep us unable to come together for a resolution to our common oppression."
Now think about how those who are being labeled gang members by the authorities are rising above that and demanding, and showing, their humanity.
People outside of prisons cannot be deluded, or delude themselves by the distortions, lies, and slanders of the prison authorities who are enforcers for a system that has consigned millions and millions of people to a future without hope, and then has locked them up in the most barbaric conditions. Speak up! Spread the word about what is going on. Post and share this and other materials from revcom.us. Demand of prison authorities that they not force-feed hunger strikers, and that they meet their just demands.
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