California prisoner advocate groups have raised alarm about a string of suicides in California state prisons committed by inmates who participated in hunger strikes this year to demand an end to inhumane conditions.
In recent months Alex Machado and Johnny Owens Vick, who were both housed in Pelican Bay’s notorious solitary confinement Security Housing Unit, and Hozel Alanzo Blanchard, who was incarcerated at Calipatria State Prison’s Administrative Segregation Unit, all committed suicide. Prisoner advocates say all three participated in a statewide hunger strike this summer to protest, among other things, prison discipline policies intended to identify prison gang members which punish innocent, unaffiliated inmates with decades of confinement to segregated units.
“It is a testament to the dire conditions under which prisoners live in solitary confinement that three people would commit suicide in the last month,” Laura Magnani, the regional director of the American Friends Service Committee said in a statement. “It also points to the severe toll that the hunger strike has taken on these men, despite some apparent victories.”
Details about inmates’ deaths are hard to come by, and what little is known is in dispute because prison officials refuse to be forthcoming about the circumstances of the suicides, prisoner advocates say.
“As far as we understand, these three people were involved in the hunger strike, and as far as we understand, these three people are dead now,” said Isaac Ontiveros, a spokesperson for the Prison Solidarity Hunger Strike Coalition, a network of organizations that advocates for prisoners’ rights.
“The how and the why is a hard thing to say more about, and it’s become more and more devastating when there is such a lack of clear information from the [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation].”
The fight for basic updates and information from the California Department of Corrections is nothing new for prisoner advocates and their loved ones. During the latest round of prisoner hunger strikes, prison officials disciplined those who participated in the strike by limiting inmates’ access to family members and advocates. Even in the wake of a series of suicides, distraught family members are being given very little information about what exactly happened with their loved ones.
Family members were informed of their loved ones’ deaths via automated recordings left on their voicemails, Ontiveros said, and those who have tried to reach out to the CDCR for more information have been rebuffed.
The CDCR did not respond to repeated requests for comment, though their spokesperson Terry Thornton disputed the prisoner advocates’ story in an interview with SF Weekly. According to Thornton none of the three inmates participated in the hunger strikes, and one of the three men died before the second round of the hunger strike began in September.
“It is troubling that this group, which professes to care about inmates, would fabricate information, label it ‘news,’ and discredit the men and women who work for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,” Thornton told the SF Weekly. “Their claim that CDCR is withholding information is outlandish and irresponsible.”
Last Thursday, however, the CDCR boldly announced a fourth suicide. Brandon Wilson, sentenced to death for brutally stabbing a child in 1999, hanged himself in his San Quentin State Prison cell last Thursday.
Reprinted with permission of Colorlines.com. Sign up to receive Colorlines Direct, a weekly email digest of key stories on Colorlines.com. You'll get award-winning news from our multi-racial team of writers covering hot topics and a broad range of issues from a racial justice perspective.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy