PRESS ADVISORY
August 13, 2013
CONTACT: Samantha Friedman, West End Strategy Team
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Wednesday: SHU isolation unit to open to visitors outside State Capitol
Clergy, families of prison inmates, Assemblyman Ammiano to call for humane end to California prisoner hunger strike
SACRAMENTO – In support of the California prison inmates who have entered their fifth week on hunger strike, representatives of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture will join tomorrow with the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement (families of inmates who are on hunger strike), and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) in front of the State Capitol in Sacramento to show the public the realities of life inside the SHU.
Inviting the public to visit an installation of a life-size mock Security Housing Unit cell on the South Steps of the State Capitol is part of the groups' ongoing ask of Gov. Jerry Brown and California's corrections secretary, Jeffrey Beard, to meet inmates' Five Demands and bring the hunger strike to a swift and humane end.
The cell will be on display and available for the public to visit from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, August 14.
At 12 p.m., the groups will lead a press conference including participation from prisoners' families, clergy, supporters of the inmates on hunger strike, and human rights advocates, including:
- Rev. Dr. Alan Jones, Senior Pastor at St. Mark's United Methodist Church in Sacramento
- Laura Magnani of the American Friends Service Committee
- Rev. Theon Johnson, III, Associate Pastor at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco
- Dr. Ron Ahnen, a politics professor at St. Mary's College of California, who serves as president of California Prison Focus
- University of California, Berkeley student Steven Czifra, formerly incarcerated in Pelican Bay State Prison SHU
- Dolores Canales of California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement
- J. Tony Serra, who served for 50 years as a criminal defense lawyer
What: Life-size mock Security Housing Unit (SHU) cell / display
Who: Co-hosts include:
Stop Mass Incarceration Network (SMIN)
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano
California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement
National Religious Campaign Against Torture
Where: California State Capitol South Steps
1315 10th Street, Sacramento
When: Wednesday, August 14
8 a.m. to 8 p.m. -- Cell will be on display and available for public visits
12 p.m. press conference
On July 8, 30,000 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.
On July 30, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement together delivered a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown, signed by more than 1,000 clergy and religious leaders from across the country, as well as petitions from partnering groups, asking California officials to meet the core demands of prisoners in the SHU to resolve the hunger strike swiftly.
"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, 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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