TEDEX Submission (they may not want to hear this)

https://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=10153097861…

Criminal Justice System

Nothing seems more real than when your life is on the line to become a slave of our criminal justice system. Is it called criminal because its ran by criminals or cause criminals receive their justice for their actions. Justice the reward or penalty for your actions and deeds
JUST-I-Cee-Equality or JUST-ICE. Either way its is weighed based upon truth. If we are guilty of a crime but not of it in the way it is being charged was justice really served?

Prisoners at Pelican Bay and other prisons will resume their hunger strike

Protest in Solidarity with 30,000 California Prisoners on Indefinite Hunger Strike

WHEN: Friday July 12 at 5:00pm, State Office Building on Genesee Street outside
the parole office. And on Saturday July 13 at 12:30pm at Oneida
County Jail, Marcy Correctional Facility and Mid-State Correctional Facility.

A series of protests are planned locally in solidarity with 30,000 California prisoners who are now in their fifth day of an indefinite hunger strike and work stoppage. The prisoner justice group Incarcerated Flavors along with Citizen Action, Occupy Utica and Project SALAM have called for a rally Friday, July 12 at 5:00pm where the local parole office is located at the State Office Building in Utica. A second picket will start Saturday, July 13 at 12:30pm outside Oneida County Jail and will travel to Marcy Correctional Facility and Mid-State Correctional Facility to inform prisoners of the strike in California and to raise awareness of torture and abuse that exist in local prisons.

The strike was launched to encourage the State of California to make much needed reforms in California prisons; key among them is the demand to end long term solitary confinement. The strike follows a wave a prisoner strikes in recent years in several states and multiple prisons. The Center for Constitutional Rights noted that “devastating psychological and physical effects of prolonged solitary confinement are well documented by social scientists” and stated that solitary confinement violates the Eight Amendment and is a form of torture. This is a view that has been echoed by the international community.

“The sole purpose of solitary confinement is to break someone psychologically. This is torture plain and simple. It exists in prisons in California and right here in the Mohawk Valley,” stated event organizer Brendan Maslauskas Dunn. The protestors hope to spark dialogue locally about the US prison system, which is the largest in the world, and the too-often ignored abuse and torture that exists in the prisons. Solidarity actions will also occur across the US and in places as far as Palestine.

Contact:
Brendan Maslauskas Dunn
maslauskas84@gmail.com
315 240-3149

MORE INFORMATION:

http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/

http://ccrjustice.org/solitary-factsheet

http://www.change.org/petitions/support-pelican-bay-shu-prisoners-five-core-demands-hunger-strike

In 2011, prisoners locked in the Security Housing Units (SHUs) at Pelican Bay and other California prisons went on hunger strike to protest the torturous conditions of solitary confinement. During two different waves of hunger strikes at least 12,000 prisoners participated in the strike. The strike received widespread support from outside prisons, and daily national and international media coverage.

Two years later, the brave actions of the hunger strikers and public pressure has helped ignite awareness about torture and solitary confinement inside prisons, and compelled the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to promise meaningful reforms. But the CDCR has failed to make good on its promises. New regulations potentially empower prison officials to use even broader guidelines for locking people in the SHU—possibly resulting inmore prisoners being condemned to horrors of solitary confinement. There is still nothing to prevent CDCR from keeping a person locked in solitary indefinitely.

On July 8, Prisoners at Pelican Bay and other prisons will resume their hunger strike (this time their protests will include work stoppages as well) unless the California Governor Jerry Brown and the CDCR take decisive action to meet their demands. We must pressure the state of California to address the strikers’ demands, and to stop its practice of long-term solitary confinement!

The Pelican Bay Five Core Demands:
1. Eliminate group punishments and administrative abuse.
2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria.
3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons recommendations and end long-term solitary confinement.
4. Provide adequate and nutritious food.
5. Create and expand constructive programming.

CALIFORNIA PRISONERS SET TO HUNGER STRIKE JULY 8
MONDAY, JULY 8, 2013, 11AM

Oakland—Family members, advocates, and lawyers will announce their support for the peaceful hunger strike and job actions beginning today throughout the California prisons starting on Monday July 8. Prisoners have been clear since January that they are willing to starve themselves unless the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) agrees to negotiate honestly about their demands.

On June 20, prisoners being held in solitary confinement at the notorious Pelican Bay State Prison Security Housing Unit describe their actions:

“_THE PRINCIPAL PRISONER REPRESENTATIVES FROM THE PBSP SHU SHORT CORRIDOR COLLECTIVE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT_ does hereby present public notice that our nonviolent peaceful protest of our subjection to decades of indefinite state-sanctioned torture, via long term solitary confinement will resume today, consisting of a hunger strike/work stoppage of indefinite duration until CDCR signs a legally binding agreement meeting our demands, the heart of which mandates an end to long-term solitary confinement (as well as additional major reforms).

Our decision does not come lightly. For the past (2) years we’ve patiently kept an open dialogue with state officials, attempting to hold them to their promise to implement meaningful reforms, responsive to our demands. For the past seven months we have repeatedly pointed out CDCR’s failure to honor their word—and we have explained in detail the ways in which they’ve acted in bad faith and what they need to do to avoid the resumption of our protest action.

On June 19, 2013, we participated in a mediation session ordered by the Judge in our class action lawsuit, which unfortunately did not result in CDCR officials agreeing to settle the case on acceptable terms. While the mediation process will likely continue, it is clear to us that we must be prepared to renew our political non-violent protest on July 8th to stop torture in the SHUs and Ad-Segs of CDCR.

Thus we are presently out of alternative options for achieving the long overdue reform to this system and, specifically, an end to state-sanctioned torture, and now we have to put our lives on the line via indefinite hunger strike to force CDCR to do what’s right.

We are certain that we will prevail…. the only questions being: How many will die starvation-related deaths before state officials sign the agreement?

The world is watching!

While the CDCR has claimed to have made reforms to its SHU system—how a prisoner ends up in the solitary units, for how long, and how they can go about getting released into the general population—prisoners’ rights advocates and family members point out that the CDCR has potentially broadened the use of solitary confinement, and that conditions in the SHUs continue to constitute grave human rights violations. The California prison system currently holds over 10,000 prisoners in solitary confinement units, with dozens having spent more than 20 years each in isolation. Conditions in Pelican Bay State Prison’s SHU sparked massive waves of hunger strikes in 2011 that saw the participation of 12,000 prisoners in at least a third of California’s 33 prisons

Calif. inmates illegally sterilized, new report shows

 

                       

Reuters Photo

An inmate at California Institute for Women state prison in Chino, Calif., hugs her daughter during a Mother’s Day visit.

4 hr ago By Lisa Heinrich of MSN News

Female prison inmates in California were sterilized without state approval in recent years, according to a new report by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

An inmate at California Institute for Women state prison in Chino, Calif., hugs her daughter during a Mother’s Day visit.

Doctors in California prisons sterilized nearly 150 female inmates between 2006 and 2010 without state approval, according to a report.

The Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that doctors at two women’s prisons in California sterilized 148 women between 2006 and 2010 after they gave birth, with as many as 100 more in the years before that and without following proper procedures.

California, which has a long history of forced sterilization, banned the procedure in state prisons in 1979. Because of the state’s grim history, a number of laws were put in place including that state-funded tubal ligations (having one’s fallopian tubes tied) be approved by a medical review committee and that inmates must give consent. Because of this, it would be illegal to pressure a female inmate to agree to the procedure while she is going through labor or childbirth.

But former inmates at the California Institution for Women in Corona and the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla claim they were pressured to undergo the procedure while they were pregnant and in prison. Doctors allegedly targeted inmates they thought were likely to be repeat offenders or already had many children.

Related: 20 best moments in women’s health

According to former Valley State inmate Christina Cordero, 34, the institution’s OB-GYN doctor pressured her to have a tubal ligation.

“As soon as he found out that I had five kids, he suggested that I look into getting it done. The closer I got to my due date, the more he talked about it,” she said.  “He made me feel like a bad mother if I didn’t do it.”

Cordero, who spent two years in prison for auto theft, agreed, but said, “today I wish I would have never done it.”

Equality

Incarcerated Flavors

34 minutes ago

 

The Black AIDS Institute Applauds the Supreme Court Decision Striking Down the Defense of Marriage Act Statement by THE BLACK AIDS INSTITUTE June 27, 2013 -There are moments in our journey through life that we experience as monumental — moments that redefine the very course of our existence as human beings. For many people 10:43 a.m. on Wednesday, June 26, 2013 was one of those moments. When th…e highest court in our land struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, righting an unconstitutional and humanly reprehensible wrong and reversing more than 15 years of same-sex couples’ prohibition from fully affirming their relationships in the eyes of the federal government. The Black AIDS Institute applauds the Supreme Court’s wisdom. “Today the Supreme Court of the United States has put the winds of progress back in the sails of those of us who are dedicated both to the fight against injustice and to stopping HIV/AIDS in its tracks,” said Neil Lowe, Ph.D., chair of the board of the Black AIDS Institute. “I am emboldened in my determination to fight even harder. I am happy for my fellow LGBT veterans and brothers and sisters in the struggle.” The Supreme Court’s decision clears the path for people living in the 38 states that still ban same-sex marriage to force those bans to be reversed, allowing same-gender-loving people living in the Land of the Free to being truly free. Free to love whomever they choose and free to care for their love ones in life and in death, in sickness and health. “Black Americans should applaud this decision as a victory for civil rights that can further help us reduce new black MSM HIV infections and deaths from AIDS,” said Jesse Milan, Jr., the Black AIDS Institute’s chair emeritus and a Black gay man legally married to his same-sex spouse for five years. “Marriage not only encourages fidelity, but opens the door to spousal health care benefits that Black gay couples have had denied to them for too long.” Consistent with this the Black AIDS Institute is committed to a bold yet achievable vision: an AIDS-free generation and complete viral suppression among people living with HIV, by providing both care and treatment and the ability to remain in care without fear of financial ruin or discrimination. None of this is possible in a nation where draconian laws in some states prevent people impacted by HIV/AIDS from expressing basic freedoms and accessing care. Our struggle is not over. We must bring about marriage equality in the remaining 38 states. And with several states wasting valuable resources fighting the proper implementation of the Affordable Care Act and sequestration devastating critical HIV/AIDS services, much work remains to be done. Still, yesterday we moved one glorious step closer to the day when we no longer have to fight for this great Union to do right by all of its citizens. It’s important to mark this pivotal moment. About the Black AIDS Institute: Founded in 1999, the Black AIDS Institute is the only national HIV/AIDS think tank in the United States focused exclusively on Black people. The Institute’s mission is to end the AIDS pandemic in Black communities by engaging and mobilizing Black leaders, institutions, and individuals in efforts to confront HIV/AIDS. The institute disseminates information, offers training and capacity building, and provides advocacy and mobilization from a uniquely and unapologetically Black point of view