Hunger strike at Georgia (USA) Prison

I remind that the prison system in the USA is particularly oppressive, unjust, racist and above all a form of slavery.

From Black Agenda Report:

Starving For Change: Hunger Strike Underway In Georgia's Jackson State Prison, Day 15

by BAR manging editor Bruce A. Dixon

18 months ago, black, brown and white Georgia prisoners staged a courageous protest demanding wages for work, educational opportunities, transparency in probation reviews and more. State officials unleashed a wave of exemplary brutality that continues to this day, away from the eyes of the public. It's time to turn our eyes where they belong --- at the crimes committed with our money and in our name, in our prisons and jails. And think about a fast on the outside, July 2, in solidarity with the hunter strikers inside Georgia's prisons.

Starving For Change: Hunger Strike Underway In Georgia's Jackson State Prison, Day 15

by BAR manging editor Bruce A. Dixon

Some of the protesters

Since June 10, according to accounts from prisoners and their families and Rev. Kenneth Glasgow of The Ordinary Peoples Society and the Prodigal Child Project, an undetermined number of prisoners at Georgia's massive Diagnostic and Classification Prison near the city of Jackson have been on a hunger strike.

Back in December 2010, black, brown and white inmates in several Georgia prisons staged a peaceful protest remaining in their dorms and cells rather than go to meals or work assignments. Their reasonable demands included wages for work, speedier and more transparent status reviews, decent food, real medical care, a more sane visitation policy and the availability of educational and vocational programs behind the walls. State corrections officials responded with temporary cutoffs of heat, water and electricity in some buildings, along with an orgy of savage assaults and beatings across multiple institutions statewide. In one instance, corrections officials apparently conspired to conceal the whereabouts and condition of one prisoner who lingered near death in a coma for most of a week while they shuffled him hundreds of miles between prisons and hospitals.

State corrections say they rounded up 37 whom they believed were the strike leaders and put them under close confinement at Jackson, the same prison where Troy Davis was executed last year. Most of these prisoners have remained there in close confinement, with severely restricted access to visits, communication and their attorneys, and without medical attention for the past 18 months.

... continue reading at BAR.