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SEQUENCE:18847365
CREATED:20130811T140000Z
DESCRIPTION:The Stop Mass Incarceration Network and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, in 
 support of the California prison hunger strikers and their five demands, 
 invite the public to visit an installation of a life-sized mock Security 
 Housing Unit (SHU) cell on the California State Capitol South Steps in 
 Sacramento.\n\nThe cell will be on display – and you can walk right in to 
 see how it feels – from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 14. A press 
 conference, featuring Assemblymember and Public Safety Committee Chair Tom 
 Ammiano, the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, people formerly incarcerated 
 in California Department of Corrections (CDCR) SHUs, SHU prisoners’ 
 families, and other voices of support and conscience will be held at 
 noon.\nMock SHU cell by Stop Mass Incarceration Network\nWalk into this 
 cell and imagine the heavy steel door slamming behind you, locking you into 
 that tiny space that prisoners call a concrete coffin indefinitely – for 
 weeks, months, years and decades – the only way out to snitch, parole or 
 die. For as long as you survive – and many do not – you are treated 
 worse than an animal in a cage, which is what you have become to the only 
 people you ever see, guards and medical professionals, all of them hostile 
 or indifferent. If you oppose spending your tax dollars on torturing people 
 like that, tell Gov. Jerry Brown to negotiate with the hunger strikers and 
 meet their very reasonable demands, an outcome promised them two years ago. 
 Go to http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php for Gov. Brown’s phone and 
 email.\nThis stark multimedia installation will allow visitors to acquire a 
 tactile and visceral understanding of the reality of solitary confinement 
 that over 4,000 California prisoners have endured for years and decades, 
 and why this is cruel and unusual punishment deemed torture by the U.N. and 
 human rights groups. The installation includes images of SHU cells and 
 prisoners and moving testimony from prisoners and others.\n\nThe families, 
 Assemblyperson Ammiano, and SMIN invite Jerry Brown and Jeffrey Beard to 
 visit the SHU and to state why this is not torture.\n\nOn July 8, 2013, 
 30,000 California prisoners began a hunger strike to end the torture of 
 solitary confinement and for their basic rights and humanity. Their central 
 demand is “comply with the recommendation of the U.S. Commission on 
 Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to long-term solitary 
 confinement.”\n\nNow, hundreds of prisoners have gone over one month 
 without food and many more in many prisons have supported the strike and 
 gone on and off the hunger strike since its beginning. Millions throughout 
 society support the prisoners, including prominent voices such as Jay Leno, 
 Danny Glover, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Bonnie Raitt and Gloria 
 Steinem.\n\nYet Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Department of 
 Corrections refuse to meet their just demands, have retaliated against the 
 hunger strikers, and have publicly vilified the prisoners and the hunger 
 strike. In an Aug. 6 opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, CDCR Secretary 
 Jeffrey Beard claimed that the notorious SHU “is not ‘solitary 
 confinement.’”\n\nOn July 5, Amnesty International stated that 
 “rather than improving,” conditions in California prisons “have 
 actually significantly deteriorated.” On July 22, 2013, Amnesty 
 International called California Prisons and the CDCR’s response to the 
 hunger strike an “affront to human rights.”\n\nThe Stop Mass 
 Incarceration Network states: “This is an EMERGENCY! One hunger striker, 
 Billy ‘Guero’ Sell, has already died. Many more people need to stand 
 NOW with the prisoner hunger strikers!”\nGov. Jerry Brown and the 
 California Department of Corrections refuse to meet their just demands, 
 have retaliated against the hunger strikers, and have publicly vilified the 
 prisoners and the hunger strike.\n\nThe families, Assemblyperson Ammiano, 
 and SMIN invite Jerry Brown and Jeffrey Beard to visit the SHU and to state 
 why this is not torture.\n\n“A hunger strike is not taken lightly by 
 us,” a prisoner wrote on the first day of the strike, July 8, to the 
 Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. “We are not suicidal; rather 
 we hope to save lives.\n\n“We may not be able to save our lives. But we 
 have come to identify our existence in SHU as a conveyor belt leading into 
 an oven of inferno. And we may indeed be strapped onto this conveyor belt 
 with no way out, as we have continued for years to watch our comrades fall 
 into the abyss of the oven in psychosis, suicide or other chronic 
 illness.\n\n“And we may not be able to stop our ride from dropping us 
 into the abyss but we will stop this conveyor belt for future generations 
 to come. Today this ride stops!”\n\nCall D’Andre Teeter at (510) 
 926-5207 or email stopmassincarcerationbayarea@gmail.com to speak, get 
 involved or support. \n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/08/11/18741353.php
SUMMARY:Isolation Cell Replica at CA State Capitol & Press Conference
LOCATION:Sout Steps of the California State Capitol Building, 11th and "N" St. 
 Entrance, Sacramento
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/08/11/18741353.php
DTSTART:20130814T150000Z
DTEND:20130815T030000Z
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