UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Unbroken Spirit: Pelican Bay, California Prisoner Hunger Strikes, Family Uprisings, and Learning to Listen A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies by Angelica Camacho September 2017 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Dylan Rodríguez, Chairperson Dr. Fred Moten Dr. Andrea Smith Dr. Damien Sojoyner Copyright by Angelica Camacho 2017 The Dissertation of Angelica Camacho is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: First and foremost, I’d like to thank Creator. While I definitely put in work to get this thesis done, those little miracles along the way came through. A mis padres y familia, que han sido mis mas grandes maestros y ejemplos de fortaleza y perseverancia. Gracias por todo su apoyo. Espero que en mi, con gran alegria, encuentren el fruto de su labor. I especially want to give thanks to one of the first to believe in me and push me to pursue a Ph.D., Dr. Clyde Woods. You are greatly missed, and I have delivered my promise. While you are no longer here physically, I always carry the wisdom you shared with me. Further, Daniel Olmos, who’s been taking my abrupt phonecalls, breaking down theory, and listening to me rant since my youngin days as a freshman at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Thank you for the friendship, endless support, and patience. Others, who before I even embarked on this Ph.D. journey, I looked up to and inspired me to teach Ethnic Studies: Manuel Callahan, Cesar “Che” Rodriguez, Steven Osuna, Chela Sandoval, Teresa Gaye-Johnson, George Lipsitz, Cedric Robinson, Diane Fujino, Matef Harmachis. There is also a long list of people that I hold dear to my heart, and have contributed to my successful completion of this thesis, but remain unlisted. All my danza family, my spiritual guides and mentors. You know I love you. Everyone in California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC), your love and embrace gave me the sustenance and courage to follow through and finish this Ph.D. I am especially grateful to all that have been part of my life in graduate school and helped me make it through the dailies of PhD life: Dora Elia Alvarado, Marlen Rios, Yesica Hernandez, Lizette “Lucha” Arevalo, Arifa Raza, Alejandro Villalpando, David iv Chavez, Kehaulani Vaughn, Charles Sepulveda and all of the Ethnic Studies Graduate Student Collective. All staff and faculty of the Ethnic Studies Department at UCR. Thank you to Gretel Vera-Rosas for reviewing parts of my second chapter. The Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, UCR Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies, Center for Ideas and Society Humanities Research Grant, Cardenas Scholarship, UCR Chicano/Latino Alumni Scholarship, UCR Chicano Student Programs. Lastly, a million thanks to my dissertation committee. This could not have been done without your mentorship and guidance. Dylan, thank you for seeing this through with me until the end. The way you pushed me as a scholar truly challenged and helped me grow. I could not have asked for a more patient, rigorous, and intellectually stimulating mentor. I feel blessed and lucky to have been your student. Professor Moten, there are no words to express how fortunate I am to have had you on my team. Always on point. You not only inspired me, but also restored my joy for learning and thinking. Your presence and word reassured me that we do not have to embody and emulate these neurotic institutions to persist as scholars. Andy, your incredible feedback made this dissertation possible. In my biggest moments of confusion and self-doubt you were there to help me gain the clarity I needed to move forward. Your approach to teaching and mentorship affirmed that Critical Ethnic Studies could be a praxis not just a theoretical framework. Damien, you have been there with me since day one. Thank you for encouraging me to get out there, and opening doors for me. Your realness was everything. It meant the world to know that no matter what, I always had a friend I could count on. v DEDICATION: Para Felipe, Robert, y Johnny. Gracias por haber compartido su luz, amor, y sabiduria. Para todo los camarad@s detras rejas, que este libro sea un orgullo – y que les trasmita esa misma fuerza y esperanza que ustedes me han brindado. “But it is not so easy for neoliberal globalization, because the exploited of each country become discontented, and they will not say well, too bad, instead they rebel. And those who remain and who are in the way resist, and they don't allow themselves to be eliminated. And that is why we see, all over the world, those who are being screwed over making resistances, not putting up with it, in other words, they rebel, and not just in one country but wherever they abound. And so, as there is a neoliberal globalization, there is a globalization of rebellion. And it is not just the workers of the countryside and of the city who appear in this globalization of rebellion, but others also appear who are much persecuted and despised for the same reason, for not letting themselves be dominated, like women, young people, the indigenous, homosexuals, lesbians, transsexual persons, migrants and many other groups who exist all over the world but who we do not see until they shout ya basta of being despised, and they raise up, and then we see them, we hear them, and we learn from them.” -Ejército Zapatista Liberación Nacional, “La Sexta Declaracion de La Selva Lacandona,” June 2005 vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Unbroken Spirit: Pelican Bay, California Prisoner Hungers Strikes, Family Uprisings, and Learning to Listen by Angelica Camacho Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Ethnic Studies University of California, Riverside, September 2017 Dr. Dylan Rodríguez, Chairperson Unbroken Spirit: Pelican Bay, California Prisoner Hunger Strikes, Family Uprisings, and Learning to Listen is a full-length study of the 2011 and 2013 California (CA) prisoner hunger strikes that emerged from Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP), California’s heaviest monitored maximum-security prison. The California prison hunger strikes animated a new criticism of inhumane prison conditions that was articulated through the analytical and critical frameworks of incarcerated people, sparking a new set of public debates about human rights, incarceration and state priorities. Through an interdisciplinary analysis of the Pelican Bay and California prison hunger strikes, An Unbroken Spirit embraces multiple methods to document the socio-political consequences of Security Housing Units (SHU) on both those incarcerated within Pelican Bay and the “free world” communities they come from. This project provides the first sustained engagement with the historical conjunctures, textual archives, film and popular vii cultural contexts, policy implications, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork that specifically addresses the emergence of PBSP-SHU and the hunger strikes. Utilizing an expanding body of scholarship in the emerging field of Critical Ethnic Studies, and informed by a radical prison praxis, this dissertation departs from traditional disciplinary approaches to social movement theory by methodologically and theoretically centering the organizational, intellectual, and political labor of incarcerated strikers and their families. My dissertation primarily asks, “How might the actions propelled by the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike help enrich or critically inform existing academic, policy, and community-based discourses of violence, harm reduction, social justice, and community health in communities of color experiencing the effects of mass incarceration?” An Unbroken Spirit examines how the logics of the prison apparatus are uncovered through the contested politics of the prison hunger strike and its support networks. I argue that this prisoner-led movement, and the proposed models of organizing by families, provides direction toward alternative social and cultural relations necessary to recompose power. Importantly, their theorizing around criminalization offers us transformative visions and strategies for anti-prison organizing. As we learn the importance of listening, they disrupt the troubling ways human value is ascribed by a criminalizing national culture, and remind us of the sacredness of life. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction…………………………………………………………………………......... 1 Chapter 1. I’d Rather Starve to Death……………………………………………………………… 47 Chapter 2. The Worst of the Worst: The Rise of Pelican Bay State Prison and the Moral Panic of the Mafioso………………………………………………………... 97 Chapter 3. The 5 Core Demands and Pelican Bay’s Torture Chambers………………………….. 156 Chapter 4. Unbroken Spirit: SHU Prisoner Hunger Strikes and the Promise of Rebirth……….… 217 Chapter 5. Hungry for Justice and Full of Spirit: California Families Against Solitary Confinement……………………………………………………………….. 227 Chapter 6: Sacred Connections: Social Transformation and the Reshaping of Life and Value Through Listening…………………………………………………. 271 Conclusion. …………………………………………………………………………… 284 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………... 298 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Pelican Bay Express Prisoner Drawing……….…………………………… 129 Figure 2. Still Images of Operation Pelican Drop…………………………..................136 Figure 3. Still Images of Operation Pelican Drop…………………………..................137 Figure 4. Still Images of Operation Pelican Drop…………………………..................137 Figure 5. Families March to LA County Jail…………………………………………. 235 Figure 6. Dolores