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Speaker 1: From WNYC and PRX in collaboration with GBH News in Boston, this is The Takeaway with Melissa Harris-Perry in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Melissa Harris-Perry: In Texas, dozens of men incarcerated in the state's prisons are entering the third week of a hunger strike, which began back on January 10th.
Paul Flahive: We're in week three now. They have made their requests known to the public, and there has not been much in the way of conciliation or understanding, or interest in changing their living conditions which is what prompted this. My name's Paul Flahive and I'm the accountability reporter for Texas Public Radio in San Antonio.
Melissa Harris-Perry: The conditions Paul's referring to here include the Texas State prison practice of solitary confinement for men who are considered to be part of a prison gang. Now, evidence of gang affiliation allows prison authorities to segregate and isolate men in conditions that these men decry as torturous.
Paul Flahive: One inmate wrote me that nothing's being done to correct the problem and that they don't have access to showers often. One unit I recall had said that they had not been outside, but three times in five years, they are not saying that they should not be in prison. They're just saying that their treatment needs to change. They're part of security threat groups which is oftentimes a different word for a prison gang, are kept in restrictive housing where they don't have access to the outside, they don't have access to the general population.
They are kept in there all day. Those conditions got dramatically worse according to them during the pandemic and have not seemed to improve. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice keeps about 3,100 men in this captivity. They say it's in order to maintain the order of the prison. They consider these prison gangs to be a dramatic security threat and a threat to the other inmates.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: I know that you've been in communication with some of these folks. What are they telling you about their experience of the hunger strike?
Paul Flahive: They don't talk about the actual physical experience in their emails to me. Mostly what they're talking about is why they're doing it. They seem to be really focused on the why of it all. One just said, "We are treated--" He asked if I had ever been to a kennel and he compared their treatment inside to dogs. As you may not know, many Texas prisons do not have air conditioning which can be a huge issue during the summer. The comparison he was making was even kennels have air conditioning.
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Brittany Robertson: My name's Brittany Robertson with Texas Prison Reform, and I'm working with the men inside the units. For this to be done to maintain the safety and security of the units we've had to follow the mail policy, which is not allowing them to communicate together unless there's a pending lawsuit. Instead, they all communicate with me and we compile the information such as out-of-the-cell time for that month or what State House representatives we should really target and focus on in order to get the best changes in the upcoming session.
We compile it into a monthly newsletter. We give them supporting legal documents. They've basically learned how to become advocates over the last two years. The hunger strike is just a minor result of that. We're trying a multifaceted approach. Not only are we working to change legislation, but we're also working to change policy and the manuals, and also by raising the public awareness for everything that's going on. Then eventually we're going to be filing the lawsuit to move to class action, similar to the California case.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: For Brittany, this fight is personal.
Brittany Robertson: My brother growing up, he was incarcerated. When I see being loud to occur inside the prison system and including to the staff. The effects it has on them to be in a position of power and be so willing to inflict harm on other people and then to know that somebody's paying you to do it, I think is something I should not be okay with as a human. They get put into solitary. It could be reasons as a tattoo regardless of how old that tattoo is. It could be a list of names found inside a cell, which could be anything including gang-related, but they choose to believe it's that and they will send them to solitary confinement.
Once in solitary confinement, you're not allowed contact visits. You don't get phone calls to family unless a loved one passes away. They're just hoping to have some of their daily needs met a bit more but also end the indefinite solitary. Some of the men on my team have been in solitary for 22 years, and it's on a non-violent crime. The deprivation, eventually that man's going to be out and it's going to have taken its effects. I think if in public interest, the best thing is to make sure we minimize those effects the best we can.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: Brittany's role in coordinating the hunger strikes appears to contradict what the Texas Department of Criminal Justice says about just who is directing these actions. Here's Texas Public Radios, Paul Flahive.
Paul Flahive: They have attributed the hunger strike to white supremacist organizers, potentially one in federal prison. They didn't offer any name, they didn't offer any documentation of that. They just said, "Our intel tells us." They don't give much detail besides that. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is not known for its transparency and openness. It is not known as an agency that talks about its business. Oftentimes in the past, it's been going around them, it's been going to the union that represents prison guards.
It's been going to people along those lines. What we know from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is that they believe that there is something afoot that is less than apparent to what reporters are reporting. They still believe that these are violent prison gangs and this their threat to the order and stability of these prisons.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Brittany offered a different analysis explaining the actions of these imprisoned men.
Brittany Robertson: The men have started to go through not only the hunger pains, but they're also suffering from dehydration, sore muscles. There's mental and mood changes as well is to be expected. Ultimately these men are willing to sacrifice their comfort for now, and some of them are willing to sacrifice it as their final act in order to change the generations to come and how they're rehabilitated and returned to the community. They're willing to go through this experience if it means changing something better for the future.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: We need to take a quick break, but stay right there because we've got more on the hunger strike in Texas State prisons. Coming up next, it's The Takeaway.
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You're with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and we're continuing our conversation about the hunger strikes that have entered week three in Texas State prisons. I've been talking with Paul Flahive of Texas Public Radio about just how serious these hunger strikes are for the men involved. People die sometimes on hunger strikes. Is that at all a possibility here?
Paul Flahive: Absolutely. I believe it was last summer when they had a hunger strike. At least one person was hospitalized as a result of a hunger strike here in Texas. I know that they had to get court orders to force-feed folks in California during those hunger strikes last decade. It's very much part of the hunger strike is the threat of hospitalization or death.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, those hunger strikes in California that Paul is referencing, they're part of what serves as precedent for what's happening in Texas right now. See, in 2013, about 30,000 people held in California jails sustained a nearly two-month hunger strike, which led the state to promise legislative hearings about jail conditions. That hunger strike, it was just one strategy in a multifaceted approach to bring about change. At the same time, advocates also filed a class action lawsuit, and that suit settled in 2015. At the time, it felt like victory.
California agreed to end the practice of indeterminate solitary confinement and agreed to no longer use gang affiliation as the sole cause for relegating someone to solitary confinement. All these years later, deep problems persist in California's prison system despite the settlement. In 2022, a federal judge found continuing constitutional violations in California's practices of solitary confinement. Last September, California Governor Gavin Newsom [unintelligible 00:10:06] a bill that would have further restricted solitary confinement.
Still, Texas advocate, Brittany Robertson Takes hope from the example of how those imprisoned in California used collective action, legal action, and legislative pressure to make a change in prison policy. Because, as she says, 80% of the people who are subjected to solitary confinement in Texas are going to eventually reenter communities in the state. She thinks making this change is urgent because again, this fight is personal for her.
Brittany Robertson: The state that my brother was incarcerated in, they provided him programming regardless of any affiliations. It was through that programming that he is now an IT tech and he works on tribal land. I just know what I see in these men, they're capable of that if given the opportunity equally.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Paul Flahive, a reporter for Texas Public Radio predicts that making a change in Texas is going to be an uphill battle.
Paul Flahive: I haven't seen any bills filed to address what these men have brought up. The Texas legislature went into session the same day these men went on strike. I don't know that in Texas this is an issue that resonates with many lawmakers. I think the public cares about how people are treated when they fully understand that. I think the more we report on it, the more they understand it.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, just a note here, we did reach out to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for comment, and they sent us a statement. It reads in a part, "If known prison gang members in state custody do not like their current confinement conditions, they're free to renounce their gang and we will offer them a pathway back to the general population." It's a long statement that we got from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. We'll post the full statement on our website at thetakeaway.org.
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