Hunger Strike by Inmates Is Latest Challenge to California’s Prison System

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LOS ANGELES — Thousands of inmates at prisons throughout California have been refusing state-issued food in a mass hunger strike to protest conditions at the state’s highest-security prisons, where some inmates are kept in prolonged isolation.

The protest was organized by inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison’s security housing unit, where prisoners are kept in isolation more than 22 hours a day. They stopped eating on July 1, and prisoners around the state have imitated their campaign. About 1,700 prisoners in all were continuing to refuse at least some state-issued meals on Thursday, down from a peak of 6,600 last weekend, according to the State Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Although most prisoners have resumed eating, a group of at least two dozen at Pelican Bay, some of whom have been kept in the security housing unit for decades, said they were prepared to starve to death.

“We believe our only option of ever trying to make some kind of positive change here is through this peaceful hunger strike,” Todd Ashker, one of the Pelican Bay inmates who organized the strike, said in a statement conveyed through a lawyer. “And there is a core group of us who are committed to taking this all the way to the death if necessary.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/us/08hunger.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23