Straight From an Inmate’s Mouth
Todd Ashker, a prisoner in solitary confinement at California's Pelican Bay Prison, speaks to "Democracy Now!" via recording Friday about the conditions in which he's being held.
Todd Ashker, a prisoner in solitary confinement at California’s Pelican Bay Prison, speaks to “Democracy Now!” via recording Friday about the conditions in which he’s being held. California Correctional Health Care Services spokeswoman Joyce Hayhoe and Azadeh Zohrabi, a member of a number of groups sympathetic to prisoners, speak to conditions as well, days after a federal judge approved the force-feeding of hunger-striking inmates statewide.
Ashker says:
Greetings. My name is Todd Ashker, and I am from the Pelican Bay State Prison Short Corridor Collective Human Rights Movement. I am a principal representative of all similarly situated prisoners subject to long-term solitary confinement.
Our core demands are centered on: A, an end to indefinite solitary confinement based on innocuous associational behavior and/or confidential information intelligence from prisoners tortured to the point of serious mental illness and agreement to become state collaborator informants.
Additionally, CDCR’s STG pilot program is not responsive to our demands. It continues to base indefinite SHU solitary confinement upon confidential information intelligence without any requirement for any formal charge being filed and adjudicated for due process due to the California Prison System’s preponderance of the evidence standard.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.‘Democracy Now!’:
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