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California, national people of faith and families of inmates on hunger strike ask Gov. Brown for a just, humane end to prison inmate hunger strike
SACRAMENTO – In support of the California prison inmates who are on a hunger strike, representatives of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture today joined with California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement (families of inmates who are on hunger strike) in Sacramento to ask Gov. Jerry Brown and California’s corrections secretary, Jeffrey Beard, to meet inmates’ demands and bring the hunger strike to a swift and humane end.
On July 8, prisoners throughout California began a peaceful hunger strike to protest the inhuman conditions of long-term solitary confinement. In California, nearly 12,000 people in prison are held in solitary confinement for 23 to 24 hours a day in small, windowless cells without sunlight, fresh air, meaningful human contact or constructive activity for many years, even decades.
People of faith and the California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement gathered today at the State Capitol and together delivered a letter to the Governor, signed by more than 1,000 clergy and religious leaders from across the country, as well as petitions from partnering groups, which ask California officials to meet the core demands of prisoners in the Special Housing Units (SHU) to resolve the hunger strike swiftly.
“Thousands of California prisoners are engaged in a hunger strike, not because they want to commit suicide, but because they have no other way to protest the egregious conditions of prolonged solitary confinement,” said Rev. Richard Killmer, executive director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. “The experience of indefinite solitary confinement is so harmful that in California, thousands of prisoners continue to risk their lives to call us to attention.
“This is a matter of faith because God has endowed human beings with dignity and worth, which are violated by the experience of isolation. Consequently, more than 1,000 clergy and other religious leaders in California and across the country have come together in signing a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown asking him to honor the reasonable core demands of California prisoners in Security Housing Units -- some of whom have now faced decades in indefinite solitary confinement.”
The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) is a membership organization committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Since its formation in January 2006, more than 320 religious organizations have joined NRCAT, including representatives from the Catholic, evangelical Christian, mainline Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Quaker, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Baha’i, Buddhist, and Sikh communities. Members include national denominations and faith groups, regional organizations and local congregations.
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