By Justin Berton
The San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — Hundreds of inmates in five state prisons ended the second week of a hunger strike to protest living conditions Thursday, in what has become the largest coordinated protest by state inmates, officials said.
Prison administrators said the 676 remaining inmates who have refused meals since the strike began July 1 probably synchronized their statewide effort through organized criminal networks.
“This goes to show the power, influence and reach of prison gangs,” said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “Some people are doing it because they want to do it, and some are being ordered to do it.”
Activists who support the strikers dismissed the gang ties, and said the other inmates had rallied to support a group of 150 prisoners who started the protest inside the Secured Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison near the Oregon border.
The core inmates described the conditions inside the prison’s highest-security special isolation wing as inhumane. Among five key demands, the Pelican Bay strikers called for an end to isolation units and the abolishment of “debriefings” — lengthy interviews that prison officials use to determine inmates’ gang member status.
The prisoners say the debriefing process can result in an inmate being incorrectly labeled a snitch, making those inmates targets for violence.
“I don’t think this is something that represents gang control,” said Carol Strickman, an Oakland attorney who is working with the hunger strikers. “This was an unusual example of unity among groups within the CDCR, and that’s knocked them back in a way. Here, the CDCR has managed to unite the groups - inmates are seeing their enemy is not the brown person across the way.”
Hayward resident Irma Hedlin said her two sons, both serving life sentences for murder at Pelican Bay, are participating in the strike. She said 35-year-old Shawn Hedlin and Brian Hedlin, 32, are not gang members, but had joined the movement to call for an end to use of the 6-by-10 foot isolation cells at the prison.
“They’re human beings, too,” Irma Hedlin said. “They made their mistakes in life, and they’re paying for it. But just because they’re there, you just can’t throw them into a hole and forget about them.”
At a news conference Wednesday in San Francisco, supporters of the hunger strikers said the health of some inmates had deteriorated to critical levels.
Nancy Kincaid, spokeswoman for federal prison health care receiver J. Clark Kelso, said nurses were making four cell checks per day on the hunger-striking inmates at Pelican Bay and other prisons.
Kincaid said one inmate required fluids and had been treated for dehydration, yet none had fallen gravely ill.
Doctors will not force-feed striking inmates, all of whom reserved the right to refuse meals and medical treatment, she said.
“They have the right to choose to die of starvation if they wish,” Kincaid said.
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