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Indybay Feature

EMERGENCY PROTEST Against 30 Minute Checks/Sleep Deprivation

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Date:
Monday, November 30, 2015
Time:
10:00 AM - 2:00 PM
Event Type:
Protest
Organizer/Author:
Verbena
Location Details:
in front of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation HQ, 1515 S St, Sacramento, CA 95811

rideshare from MacArthur BART in Oakland at 8:00am

We are mobilizing an EMERGENCY PROTEST at the CA Department of Corrections in Sacramento on Monday, Nov 30th. This is serious.

People in solitary confinement have been loudly awakened by guards every 30 minutes 24/7 since the night of August 2nd, almost 4 months! Please participate in an emergency protest in Sacramento to stop these every 30 minute so-called “security/welfare checks” being done in the Pelican Bay SHU and other solitary units in CA prisons. Sleep deprivation is torture, and that is what these loud, intrusive checks are causing. For people in solitary cells 23-24 hours a day, the noise and disruption every 30 minutes is unavoidable, endless torture. They are experiencing severe stress, weight loss, dizziness, nausea, headaches, eye problems, stomach and bowel problems, faintness, depression, and sped-up heart rates. They cannot concentrate, exercise, read, do legal work- the things that help them survive- and they can’t sleep!

An emergency demo is warranted. 119 days and nights of torment!
Please help make this a powerful convergence in front of the California Department of Corrections in Sacramento.

Protest at 1515 S St, Sacramento, CA 95811 from 10am to 2pm. Rideshares will leave from MacArthur BART in Oakland at 8am. To offer or find rides from Oakland or other CA locales, please call Verbena at 510.426.5322 or email phssreachingout [at] gmail.com


Media Advisory Here: http://wp.me/P1BB1k-265
Added to the calendar on Fri, Nov 27, 2015 12:00AM
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Print these out and spread them on social media. Hope to see many people standing up for folks in solitary experiencing MONTHS of sleep deprivation.
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Below is a letter that has been circulating, getting signed all over CA, and being sent to government. Monday in Sacramento, we will be LIVE-- PEOPLE POWER and PRESSURE at CDCr.


To the CA Senate Public Safety Committee, Assembly Public Safety Committee, and Governor Brown:

Please take immediate action to stop the dangerous practice in California prisons of guards doing so-called “security/welfare” checks every 30 minutes, 48 times a day. These checks are only being done in the isolation units, causing ongoing sleep deprivation for those prisoners. The checks are particularly distressing for prisoners in Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit (PB SHU) and women's death row. The purported intent of the checks is to improve mental health care and prevent suicides. Instead, these checks are causing serious psychological and physical harm. Sleep deprivation and relentless exposure to loud noise are known methods of torture that can quickly cause mental and physical impairment. Every 20-30 minutes, prisoners are subjected to the reverberating noise of the steel doors to units opening and slamming closed, the stomping of guards through the pods and up and down the stairs, the jingling of keys, the beeping of the Guard One System metal pipes on metal buttons, and the banging of metal pipes on the cells. Making matters worse, guards sometimes shine their flashlights into the prisoners' eyes. The people who are suffering these so-called security/welfare checks spend 23-24 hours a day in solitary cells, so the noise and intrusion is unavoidable, endless torture. Please end it. In PB SHU, the men have been sleep deprived since 10pm, Aug. 2, 2015.

Prisoners report the ill effects of these disruptive checks: severe stress and irritation, weight loss, dizziness, headaches/migraines, eye issues, stomach and bowel problems, faintness, depression, nausea, and inability to focus. Sleep deprivation puts people at high risk of stroke and diabetes, can cause brain deterioration and permanent cognitive issues, increases the risk of certain cancers and of developing or dying from heart disease, can contibute to bone weakness and osteoporosis, and rapidly shorten one's life-span.

The undersigned demand that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) immediately stop the so-called security/welfare checks. The so-called security/welfare checks are causing sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is torture.

"Research over the past 20 years has finally begun to provide at least a partial explanation for why we must sleep.  The clearest finding is that sleep does not serve just a single purpose.  Instead it appears to be needed for the optimal functioning of a multitude of biological processes----from the inner workings of the immune system to proper hormonal balance, to emotional and psychiatric health, to learning and memory, to the clearance of toxins to the brain. ….[A]nyone who lives for months without sleep will die." Robert Stickgold: Sleep On It!, neuroscience article in the October 2015 issue of Scientific American.

cc: CDCR Undersecretary, Atty. Jules Lobel, Atty. Michael Bien, Prison Law Office
§FACEBOOK EVENT for Emergency Protest
by Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition (phssreachingout [at] gmail.com)
Nov 30th EMERGENCY PROTEST Against 30 minute checks- Sleep Deprivation

https://www.facebook.com/events/1184525938228920/

Comments (Hide Comments)
by animal
interfering with an animal sleeping is an act of animal aggression as it would be in ''nature''.so it's not just sleep deprivation,it's animal aggression like entering lions den or bear cave. police act out K9 animal training aggression on humans who don't have paper money. you have animal right to resist.
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