TX Observer: “Hunger strikes remain one of the primary ways people can call attention to conditions inside prisons, short of a federal lawsuit (which, after 1990s legislation, became much more difficult).
Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire, said multiple factors can lead prisoners to engage in what we might call extreme methods of protest. Intensive dehumanization, a lack of redress within the system, and a dearth of interest from people outside prison walls. “They have no legal rights, total dehumanization, they’re in completely hierarchical institutions, and nobody cares. It’s those kinds of conditions that lead people to throw feces and urine, to hunger strike, to injure themselves—or to commit suicide,” Perkinson said.
Texas prisons have reached this boiling point before, though few strikes have brought results.
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In Texas, many people are still put in solitary confinement indefinitely, despite a growing body of evidence that says solitary confinement can cause irreparable damage, as the Texas Observer has reported.
Hunger strikes in particular remain a crucial tool for prisoners in administrative segregation. They don’t hold jobs, so work stoppages are out of the question. They aren’t permitted to communicate with other prisoners regularly, so group actions like sit-ins become untenable. All they have left is the deeply personal act of refusing to eat.”