Mon Sep 02, 2013 at 07:39 PM PDT
"It Gets Very Depressing in These Holes." A Letter from Hell.
by jpmassar
*Trigger Warning*
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/02/1235755/--It-Gets-Very-Depressing-in-These-Holes-A-Letter-from-Hell (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/02/1235755/--It-Gets-Very-Depressing-in-These-Holes-A-Letter-from-Hell)
Following are excerpts from a recent letter from Eva "Amazon" Contreraz, a transgender California inmate, to her supporters. Like many transgender and mentally ill prisoners, she has been taken in and out of solitary confinement by the system "for her own safety.", and was recently sent "into the hole" again. This instead of being given the medical and mental health treatment she needs.
People make the mistake of believing that solitary is confined to those "who deserve it." Beyond the fact that no one deserves to be thus treated for years, sometimes decades, with no means of redress - that this kind of barbaric treatment is not what we sentence people to as restitution for their crimes - many are thrown into solitary confinement arbitrarily. They are thrown back "into the hole" by guards getting back at prisoners, or for political views taken on and books read while incarcerated, or because the system cannot handle the needs of those in desperate shape.
This is what the California Prisoner's Hunger Strike, now in its 57th Day, is about, no matter what the mainstream press and California's officials may tell you.
Parts of the letter were read out on Saturday, August 31st, at the Hunger Strike solidarity rally in Oakland, CA.