Well over ten thousand adult prisoners are currently being held in some form of solitary confinement in California prisons – 80,000 in total across the United States.
Among the worst form of solitary confinement is the indefinite and long‐term, extreme isolation of the Security Housing Units (the SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison, California’s “supermax”. Locked in a 11’7” x 7’7” windowless concrete box/cell for at least 22 ½ hours a day, day in day out, year after year, prisoners endure without sunlight, fresh air or human touch. In contrast to every other system in the United States, prisoners can’t even receive a phone call unless a family member has died.
Over 500 prisoners have been locked down in the Pelican Bay SHU for over 10 years. About 80 of them have been in solitary for over 20 years and at least two prisoners have been isolated for over 40 years. This is a policy that condemns to permanent life long isolation.
Extended solitary confinement is globally recognized as torture. Cut off from any normal human interaction, enduring sensory and physical deprivation, many prisoners describe their lockdown in the SHU as being “buried alive”. The State of California asserts that solitary confinement is not a form of punishment, but rather an “administrative assignment” to insure the safety of the prison and the public. These conditions of torture will not make anyone safer, or prepare men subjected to such dehumanizing conditioning for eventual release.
We stand together against these shameful practices and consider them extensions of the same inhumanity practiced at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. In defense of the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we, the undersigned, call on Governor Jerry Brown to end this torture at Pelican Bay and all California Prisons immediately.
Bishop Diocesan
Los Angeles Episcopal DioceseMichael Ratner
President Emeritus
Center for Constitutional RightsFr. Greg Boyle
Founder – Homeboy Industries, authorMichelle Alexander
Author, The New Jim Crow
Professor of Law, Ohio State
Robert Thurman
Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies
Columbia University
Quinn Delaney
President
Akonadi Foundation
Angela Davis
Author, Scholar
Distinguished Professor Emerita, UC Santa Cruz
Noam Chomsky
Emeritus Professor MIT, Linguist
Political Critic
Gloria Steinem
Feminist, Journalist
Reverend Jesse L. Jackson
Founder and President
Rainbow PUSH Coalition
Peter Coyote
Actor/Author
Georgia Kelly
Founder and Director
Praxis Peace Institute
Earl Katz
Activist/ Executive Producer
President Emeritus, Board Public Interest Pictures
Loïc Wacquant
Professor of Sociology
UC Berkeley
David Fathi
Director, National Prison Project
ACLU
Rick Goldsmith
Documentary Filmmaker
Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Chancellor’s Professor
Medical Anthropology
UC Berkeley
Rabbi Michael Lerner
Founder and Editor
Tikkun Magazine
Anthony Arnove
Writer and Producer
Dirty Wars
Megan Comfort
Author Doing Time Together:
Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison
Don Paul
Author, Performer
Producer, Runner
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Author, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus,
Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California
Mavis and Jay Leno
Activist and Entertainer
Vanita Gupta
Deputy Legal Director
ACLU
Cornel West
Philosopher, Public Intellectual
Bonnie Raitt
Singer, Songwriter
Cheryl Saban, Ph. D.
Philanthropist
Founder
Cheryl Saban Self-Worth
Foundation for Women & Girls
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
The Shalom Center
Luis Valdez
Playwright, Actor, Film Director
Cindra and Alan Ladd
Producers
Rev. Peter Laarman
Executive Director
Progressive Christians Uniting
Susan L. Smalley, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Psychiatry
UCLA School of Medicine
Ed Asner
Actor, Activist
Sarah Shourd
Former U.S. Hostage in Iran
Susan Bay and Leonard Nimoy
Activist and Actor
Lawrence Bender
Producer and Activist
Joseph Margulies
Author, Guantanamo
and the Abuse of Presidential Power
Northwestern University School of Law
Mike Farrell
Actor and Activist
Barbara Ransby
Author, Historian
Harriet Beinfield
Efrem Korngold
Authors, Chinese Medicine
Donald Goldmacher M.D.
Co-Producer
Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?
Rick Cluchey
Director andCo-Founder
San Quentin Drama Workshop
Haskell Wexler
Cinematographer, Director
Vincent Warren
Executive Director
Center for Constitutional Rights
Kate Harrison
Owner/Principal
Kate Harrison Consulting
Walter Parkes
Laurie MacDonald
Producers
Doris La Frenais
Philanthropist, Activist
Susan Sarandon
Actor
Elliot Currie
Professor, UC Irvine
School of Social Ecology
Author
Daniel ‘Nane’ Alejandrez
Founder and Executive Director
Barrios Unido
Carol Bondi
Advocate Juvenile Justice
Marjorie Cohn
Thomas Jefferson Law School
Dr. Linda Gaither
Episcopal Peace Fellowship
Sandor and Faye Straus
Progressive Activists
James Duff
Writer, Producer, Director
Tom Morello
Musician, RAM
Jill Stoner
Chair, Graduate Program Jewish Studies
UC Berkeley
The Rev Jessie Vedanti
Episcopal Peace Fellowship
The Rev Allison Liles
Episcopal Peace Fellowship
Kevin Wall
Producer, Activist
Karen Bernal
Former Chair, Progressive Caucus
California Democratic Party
Sandra Fluke
Attorney, Social Justice Advocate
David Meggyesy
Board Chair
Athletes for Peace
Lewis Sawyer
Radio Producer, Host
Bill Zimmerman
Political Consulting
Dr. Murray Korngold
Psychologist, Chinese Medicine
William Gazecki
Independent Documentary Filmmaker
Jamie Cromwell
Actor and Activist
Ann Philbin
Director
Hammer Museum UCLA
Jonathan Simon
Professor of Law
UC Berkeley
Sign the letter here: http://www.change.org/petitions/governor-jerry-brown-stop-the-torture-in-california-2