$27,000 Needed by early July, 2013

“People who are locked down in segregation units of this society’s prisons, condemned as the “worst of the worst,” are standing up against injustice, asserting their humanity in the process. We must have the humanity to hear their call, and answer it with powerful support!”

Emergency Call! Join Us in Stopping Torture in U.S. Prisons!

Dear Friend,

We are writing to ask you to sign the Emergency Call to Stop Torture in US Prisons and make a generous financial contribution to help get it published as an ad in the Los Angeles Times. And we ask that you circulate the Emergency Call to others and encourage them to sign it and contribute to its publication too.

People in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison in CA have announced they are prepared to re-start their Hunger Strike on July 8, 2013. They are encouraging prisoners nationwide to join them in acting to shine a spotlight on the horrific conditions faced by those held in long term solitary confinement; and in acting to STOP them.

More than 80,000 people in prison in the US are held in long term solitary confinement. They spend 22 hours or more each day in small, windowless and sometimes soundproof cells. No judge sentenced them to solitary confinement. They are placed there arbitrarily and have no channels to challenge being put there. Many are denied human contact for months, years or even decades. These conditions fit the international definition of torture, and studies have found that these conditions can drive people insane.

12,000 California prisoners stood up to change these conditions by going on a hunger strike in 2011. They suspended that hunger strike when the authorities agreed to improve conditions. But authorities haven’t followed thru on their agreement, and the prisoners have declared they will once more put their lives on the line.

WE MUST HAVE THEIR BACKS! Long term solitary confinement is a horrific injustice. United Nations experts on torture have called on all countries to end it, but the US has arrogantly rejected these calls.

The authorities hope to isolate the prisoners and crush their hunger strike. We must not allow this to happen. We must reject the authorities’’ justifications for the horrors they are perpetrating - that these prisoners are brutal thugs, “the worst of the worst,” and deserve the treatment they are subjected to and that these conditions are required to keep society safe. And we must reject the morally unconscionable stance of doing nothing while this torture is happening because it isn’t affecting “us.” Instead we must stand with the prisoners who are standing up.

The publication of the Emergency Call in the Los Angeles Times will expose this torture to many more people. Its moral clarity on the utter unacceptability of torture must reach millions. Help raise the $25,000 needed to get it published by early July, 2013.

The widespread torture in US prisons MUST END! Will you join us in standing up to it? Will you spread the Emergency Call to others? Will you make a generous financial contribution to publish the Emergency Call and encourage others to do so as well? Will you join Cornel West, Luis Valdez, Cynthia McKinney, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Chuck D, Marjorie Cohn, Carl Dix, Peter Schey, Robin DG Kelley, Blase Bonpane, Wayne Kramer, Rev. George F. Regas and scores of others to Stop Torture in U.S Prisons?