Prisoner rights

Why Is Former Guantánamo Prisoner On Hunger Strike In Uruguay?

September 13, 2016 Aisha Maniar, www.truth-out.org/ Resist! Guantanamo Bay, Hunger Strikes, Prisoner rights, Uruguay

By Aisha Maniar for Truthout - Adapting to life after lengthy imprisonment and as a refugee in a strange land are challenges. Coupled with the trauma of years of torture and the stigma of Guantánamo, the challenge is colossal. Nearly two years after being released to Uruguay with five others in December 2014, Syrian refugee Jihad Ahmed Mustafa Dhiab, also known as Abu Wa'el Dhiab, 45, has faced all of these problems. Dhiab spent more than 12 years at Guantánamo after he was sold to the US military by the Pakistani police in 2002.

Chelsea Manning Begins Hunger Strike: ‘I Need Help.’

September 10, 2016 Mollie Reilly, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Chelsea Manning, Hunger Strikes, Prisoner rights

By Mollie Reilly for The Huffington Post - Imprisoned Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has begun a hunger strike to protest what she describes as “high tech bullying” at the hands of military and prison officials. Manning is serving a 35-year sentence for providing a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010. The soldier, who came out as a transgender woman shortly after she was sentenced in 2013, sued the government for access to hormone therapy drugs while in prison so she could transition to living as a woman.

Prison Labor Revolts Shake Foundations Of Corporate State

September 9, 2016 Matt Stannard, www.occupy.com Resist! Prisoner rights, Prisons, Strikes

By Matt Stannard for Occupy - Here’s why the September 9 actions inside and outside of American prisons, undertaken to protest the legalized slavery, dehumanization, and policy failure of correctional incarceration, may be the most important protests of 2016: Prisoners are legal slaves, and as such, whatever is happening to the non-incarcerated in this brutal system is happening worse to the incarcerated. Beyond the 13th Amendment’s approval of prison slavery, there is a mountain of administrative and judicial rulings permitting prisons to suppress any and all organizing activity.

Mumia Abu-Jamal Denied Hepatitis C Treatment

September 3, 2016 Renée Feltz, www.theguardian.com Resist! Mumia Abu-Jamal, Political Prisoner, Prisoner rights

By Renée Feltz for The Guardian - The internationally known imprisoned former Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal has had his request for a life-saving hepatitis C treatment denied by a federal judge. Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, but maintained his innocence and Amnesty International says he was denied a fair trial. After 30 years on death row, his sentence was overturned on constitutional grounds.

Call For International Anarchist Action In Solidarity With US Prison Strike

August 29, 2016 Staff, www.en-contrainfo.espiv.net Resist! Prisoner rights, Prisons, Strikes

By Staff of Contra Info - On September 9th [the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion], prisoners across the United States will begin a strike that will be a general work stoppage against prison slavery. In short, prisoners will refuse to work; they will refuse to keep the prisons running by their own labors. Prisoners are striking not just for better conditions or changes in parole rules, but against prison slavery. Prisoners state that under the 13th Amendment which abolished racial slavery, at the same time it allowed human beings to be worked for free or next to nothing as long as they were prisoners.

Stop Suing Ex-Prisoners For Room And Board

August 26, 2016 Alan Mills and David M. Shapiro, www.chicagotribune.com Resist! Prisoner rights, Prisons, Profit

By Alan Mills and David M. Shapiro for Chicago Tribune - Illinois prisons are in crisis. They are among the most overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded in the nation — but Gov. Bruce Rauner has established himself as a barrier to serious reform. The governor recently vetoed a bill with the potential to reduce recidivism. It would end the state's practice of destroying the finances of former prisoners by going after their assets to recover the costs of incarcerating them. The bill had passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support. Even the Department of Corrections had no objection to it.

Chelsea Manning Supporters Deliver More Than 100,000 Petition Signatures

August 12, 2016 Christina DiPasquale, www.fightforthefuture.org Resist! Chelsea Manning, Prisoner rights

By Christina DiPasquale for Fight For The Future - WASHINGTON, DC––This morning Chelsea Manning supporters delivered more than 115,000 petition signatures to the Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning, calling for him to drop serious new charges faced by Ms. Manning as a direct result of her attempt to take her own life on July 5th. The petitions call for the military to provide Chelsea with adequate and humane treatment for both her gender dysphoria and her suicide attempt.

It’s Time We Recognize Black Lives Matter Behind Bars, Too

August 12, 2016 J. Soffiyah Elijah, www.ebony.com Educate! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Prisoner rights

By J. Soffiyah Elijah for Ebony - Similar to police officers on the streets, violence between guards in jails and prisons is a crucial problem that has gone from brutality to outright homicide. As is the case with police violence, African Americans and other people of color are disproportionately the victims of abuse at the hands of prison and jail officials. Last week, the shocking video footage of Darius Robinson’s April 4, 2016 death while in police custody was released.

Texas Prison Objects To Ruling That It Must Provide Arsenic-Free Water

July 6, 2016 Kit O'Connell, www.mintpressnews.com Create! Prisoner rights, Prisons, Texas

By Kit O'Connell for Mint Press News - AUSTIN, Texas — As summer sun sends temperatures soaring across much of the country, a federal judge has ordered the Lone Star State to stop giving poisonous drinking water to some of its most vulnerable prisoners. On June 21, U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison gave prison officials 15 days to replace the arsenic-laden water supply at the Wallace Pack Unit, a minimum security facility northwest of Houston that houses mostly elderly and chronically ill inmates.

Forget Hunger Strikes. What Prisons Fear Most Is Labor Strikes

June 9, 2016 Raven Rakia, www.yesmagazine.org Strategize! Prisoner rights, Prisons, Strikes

By Raven Rakia for Yes Magazine - On May 1, prison labor came to a halt in multiple prisons in Alabama, including Holman and Elmore prisons. Starting at midnight that day, prisoners stayed in their dormitories—refusing to show up for work at their assigned posts: the kitchen, the license plate manufacturing plant, the recycling plant, the food processing center, and a prison farm. The prisoners’ demands were pretty simple: basic human rights, educational opportunities, and a reform of Alabama’s harsh sentencing guidelines and parole board.

Freedom From Violence: Lessons From Black Prisoner Organizing

June 1, 2016 Dan Berger, www.truth-out.org Strategize! Prison abolition, Prisoner rights

By Dan Berger for The University of North Carolina Press - Collective rebellions are episodic. Expanded technologies of control and limited leftist movements on the outside have made such rebellions even rarer in prisons. But the long-standing black critique of the American criminal justice as a system of racial dominance continues, aided and abetted by the existence of resurgent opposition to prisons beginning in the late 1990s and with added ferocity since the economic collapse of 2008. In 1998, two organizations formed with direct connections to the previous generation of prison protest.

Prisoners Met With Legislators On Reform, Put In Solitary

May 31, 2016 Staff, www.solitarywatch.com Resist! Massachusetts, Prisoner rights, Solitary Confinement

By Staff of Solitary Watch - Three men incarcerated in Massachusetts who were working with a prison reform caucus of state legislators have been thrown in solitary confinement, in an apparent retaliation against their activism and an attempt to disrupt further communications. In the middle of the night on March 23, 52-year-old Timothy Muise, 44-year-old Shawn Fisher, and 39-year-old Steven James were taken from their cells at the medium-security prison MCI Shirley, handcuffed, and transported by van to three separate prisons spread across the state..

Striking Prisoners Accuse Officials Of Using Food As Weapon

May 13, 2016 Alice Speri, www.theintercept.com Resist! Alabama, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Prisoner rights

By Alice Speri for The Intercept - ALABAMA PRISONERS WHO have been on strike for 10 days over unpaid labor and prison conditions are accusing officials of retaliating against their protest by starving them. The coordinated strike started on May 1, International Workers’ Day, when prisoners at the Holman and Elmore facilities refused to report to their prison jobs and has since expanded to Staton, St. Clair, and Donaldson’s facilities, according to organizers with the Free Alabama Movement, a network of prison activists.

Gutting Habeas Corpus

May 7, 2016 Liliana Segura, www.theintercept.com Educate! Bill Clinton, Prisoner rights

By Liliana Segura for The Intercept - ON THE EVE OF the New York state primary last month, as Hillary Clinton came closer to the Democratic nomination, Vice President Joe Biden went on TV and defended her husband’s 1994 crime bill. Asked in an interview if he felt shame for his role passing a law that has been the subject of so much recent criticism, Biden answered, “Not at all,” and boasted of its successes — among them putting “100,000 cops on the street.” His remarks sparked a new round of debate over the legacy of the crime bill, which has haunted Clinton ever since she hit the campaign trail with a vow to “end the era of mass incarceration.”

Obama Commutes Sentences Of 58 Federal Prisoners

May 6, 2016 Timothy Gardner, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Barack Obama, Criminal Justice System, Prisoner rights

By Timothy Gardner for Reuters - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama has commuted the prison terms of 58 people, nearly a third of whom were serving life sentences, the White House said on Thursday. Most of the convicts who will be freed early were non-violent drug offenders. Obama said in a blog post that “it just doesn’t make sense to require a non-violent drug offender to serve 20 years, or in some cases, life, in prison.”

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