Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1002

Tampons Confiscated, Guns Allowed as Texas Senate Debates Abortion

State troopers confiscated tampons and maxi pads from people entering the Texas Senate gallery on Friday afternoon as senators began debating a controversial new abortion regulations that are almost certain to pass. However, folks with conceal-and-carry permits are allowed in with their guns, as state law allows. It seems like an unusual threat analysis, but things are different in Texas.

The tampon confiscations were initially reported by the liberal Texas blog Burnt Orange Report and others entering the state Senate. (Photos above by Shelby Alexander.) State troopers said they were taking anything that could be thrown at legislators, which included tampons, maxi pads, sugar packets, and condoms. But guns are still a go. When state Sen. Wendy Davis filibustered the abortion bill during the previous special session, uproar from the crowd helped prevent Republicans from passing the bill before deadline. They took several measures to prevent that from happening again. This time, the vote is happening with weeks to spare in the special session, and on Thursday, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said, "We're going to have strict enforcement. If there are any demonstrations, we are going to clear the gallery."

       

Soon There Will Be Google Glass for Everyone and Everything

Now that Google Glass is a much-talked about, much-hyped tech thing, the pseudo-clones have already started to emerge, meaning it's only time before there's a Google Glass variation for everyone and everything. Dogs already have their very own wearable computers, and so do "porn enthusiasts," who need a separate pair because Google has banned sex videos from its version. And this is just the beginning, Google Glass Regular just came out a few months ago and already "companies and researchers are trying to decide what will be the next big breakthrough in wearable technology," Technology Review's Rachel Metz notes. Not all of these things will go on people (or animals or plants) faces, but no doubt we will declare them the Google Glass of ________.

Some of the spawn of Google Glass will indeed look a lot like computer glasses. Like the porn version, which has more of a goggle look, but at least slides onto one's face. Inevitably, however, things that aren't glasses, but some sort of vaguely related wearable tech, will get the association, too—even if it's undeserving. Google Glass for dogs, for example, is a sensor that dogs wear to communicate with their owners. There's nothing really Glass-like about that.

But, since all these inventions want the name recognition and promise that Google offers, some of these things will be a huge reach, both in theory and in name. First, we'll get a lot of useless Google Glasses of ______ that nobody needs or wants. Already Google Glass for "porn enthusiasts" is questionable. Who knows what's next: Google Glass for babies?

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But also, inventions that have nothing at all to do with Google Glass will get the distinction. That's what happens when a new technology all of a sudden gets popular or known. Have you seen what has happened to Airbnb? There's an Airbnb for everything, including home-cooked meals. Sometimes the Airbnb of X really is just like Airbnb, where people rent out their personal things, like cars. And other times, not so much, as Quartz's Christopher Mims pointed out on Twitter. "Got to love how "The AirBnB of [anything]" is mostly about finding efficiency by avoiding regulation." 

       

Most of the Gitmo Detainees on Hunger Strike Ate a Meal in the Last 24 Hours

Following news last night that two Guantanamo prisoners have officially dropped from the list of hunger strikers there, the U.S. military wants you to know that the vast majority of the striking detainees — 99 of 102 — have eaten at least one meal in the past 24 hours. Does that mean the hunger strike is basically over? Not just yet.

It takes more than one meal for the military to take a detainee off the list. Officials need to see "sustained" eating over a period of several days before they'll consider a detainee's hunger strike over — that amounts to 1,500 calories a day, for seven days, according to the Miami Herald. A doctor can also make a case-by-case determination on whether an eating hunger striker is getting enough food or not. Of course, 45 of the 102 prisoners still on strike are consuming something, in the form of force-fed liquid nutritional supplements. Those supplements are delivered to the inmate while he is restrained: Sometimes, that's through a tube entering the inmate through the nostril and winding its way into his stomach. Some detainees may choose to drink a can of Ensure instead of undergoing a tube feeding. Both are categorized as a force feeding procedure. When officials say that prisoners have eaten a meal, this doesn't count. 

The hunger strike at Guantanamo became more complicated (for officials, anyway) with the approach of Ramadan, a month-long Islamic holiday that requires adherents to fast, from both food and water, until nightfall each day. Ramadan began on July 8. For some prisoners, that's meant a schedule change for their force-feedings — they're now night-time ordeals. For others, according to Jason Leopold, that's meant a choice: prisoners can either continue to strike, or return to a more desireable communal living situation: 

GTMO officials returned some prisoners to communal living. Those prisoners must agree to quit hunger strike. Abt 100 in communal living now

— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) July 12, 2013

Communal living has been a huge sticking point with detainees for the past few months: detainees who had previously been living communally were forced into individual cell blocks last April, a move that officials say was prompted when the detainees covered most of the cameras monitoring their space. 

Fifty-six of the 86 inmates cleared for release form Guantanamo can't go home, because they're from Yemen. And even though Obama announced that he'd lift a restriction barring their release to the country in May, no one has made moves to actually begin that process, yet. Detainees are desperate to see some movement on their cases, some of which have been in a state of limbo for years. Other inmates — there are 166 in total — allege that the guards there have disrespected their Quran, and taken personal items from them. 

       

Your Sure-Fire Guide to Becoming a White House Intern

Congratulations to the 2013 White House summer interns, emerging victorious from a rigorous application process involving the submission of a résumé, letters of recommendation, and, ideally, being related to a former member of the president's cabinet.

This is an exaggeration, of course. Of the 148 interns selected (full list here), only one is the child of a former cabinet member. As the Washington Post noted, that lucky intern is Harry Summers, son of Larry Summers, who will spend his merry summer patrolling the same halls his father once did. (It's not clear if Harry Summers would have been as successful had he been born female.)

All of the other 147 interns got there without knowing anyone special. Except the sons of staffers for Vice President Joe Biden and President Bill Clinton. And the children of megadonors Steven Rattner and Timothy Broas. And the son of the owner of the Nationals and the son of a major contributor to disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Everyone else though, probably totally got in through grit and hustle. (Two interns have parents on city councils in Atlanta and Concord, Mass., but that probably didn't do a whole lot.)

So, fine, only nine of the 148 have been connected to people of influence. Still a larger percentage than the population at large, probably, but not completely unacceptable. If you really want to know the keys to getting into the White House internship program, here they are:

Be from New York

The Empire State is the home of 13 percent of the interns. In third place, behind California—Maryland, perhaps suggesting more subtle forms of influence playing a role.

Or: Be from the Boston-New York-D.C. Corridor

All New Yorkers / Marylanders are not created equal. If you live within short driving distance of the Acela, the White House internship program is for you.

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Go to a fancy Ivy League school

One-fifth of all of the interns went to fancy-schmancy Ivy League schools. That's the blue slice at right. (Of those 40 interns, nearly a third went to uber-schmancy Harvard.)

The second most common college conference for interns? The Big Ten, represented by the red slice. The plurality of them went to Michigan. (None went to Ohio State, for those keeping score.)

Have a last name that starts with C, M, or S

Nearly a third of all the interns have last names that start with one of those three letters. How this influences the White House staffers making these decisions is unclear, but it does.

So in summary: Your best bet is to be from the Acela corridor, an Ivy Leaguer, with a last name starting with those letters. If you only have two of the three, like young Harry Summers, attendee of Bowdoin College, see if maybe your father's work history might help.

Photo: An intern that broke all the rules. (AP)

       

Some Questions for 'Pacific Rim'

There's an admirable formula goofiness to Guillermo del Toro's new monsters vs. robots action flick Pacific Rim. He's taken various parts of other films — of course Godzilla's Asian city destruction, but also some of Independence Day's odd mix of kookiness and rabble rousing, and Top Gun's dudes-in-training swagger — and mashed them into an omnibus of tropes and familiar plotlines. The movie is entirely predictable — you know exactly who is going to die and when (and even how) — but there's something cozy about that. Pacific Rim is comfortable in its cheese, its genre trappings, its basic and inelegant structure. Which is respectable! But unfortunately it makes the movie kinda boring, too.

[Caution: Contains spoilers.]

It shouldn't be boring. I mean, the movie is about giant monsters crawling out of an inter-dimensional fissure at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and the enormous robot suits that humans use to fight them. That's the dream of any child smashing two toys together, imagining a battle on a gargantuan, epic scale. And yet, after the first such clash of the titans, everything else feels pretty repetitive. Turns out, once you've seen one fight between impossibly large monsters and robots, you've seen 'em all. There's also a long, way too long, stretch in the middle of the film when no battles are happening, it's all a bunch of hokey scientific discovery and muddled character development. Though the robot thrashing does eventually get dull, by that point we've really only seen one such battle. But we're made to sit and wait for what feels like an hour before we get another, the movie instead trying to immerse us in its world of mind-melds — two people control each big robot, cerebrally linked to move as one — and monster bone dealers and various intra-soldier social tensions. But the movie is too disjointed to be immersive — del Toro's olio of different movie parts is a detriment here. And so Pacific Rim lurches on awkwardly, with some juddering moments of excitement but the total picture feeling increasingly leaden.

At this point in the review, I could talk about Charlie Hunnam's terrible American accent. Or the fact that Idris Elba deserves far better material than this. I could say that the film displays a good deal of invention in terms of creating its world. That last one wouldn't be true, though. Because while there are elements of Pacific Rim that feel original and thoroughly thought-out, a lot of it just doesn't make any damn sense. Pacific Rim is yet another big action movie that breaks its own rules or creates new ones whenever it's convenient. To that end, I'm going to, Mama-style, pose some questions for the filmmakers, or anyone else who's seen the film. Maybe you can help me figure things out.

1. So, these giant robot suits. They're cool and all, but are they really the most practical weapon? They load the robots with missiles that seem to work pretty well, so why not just shoot the monsters with the missiles? Like, from the ground. I know, I know, that's a fussy question to ask — they're big freaking robots, who cares why they're there! — but given that the entire film hinges on the existence of these robots, it doesn't seem unfair exactly to point out that they're not necessarily, well, necessary.

2. That said, the robots do exist. Given that, a question about how they are used: Toward the end of one of the big monster fights, I believe it's the second, our lead robot, piloted by Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi, suddenly produces a sword that rips right through the big monster thing (that's flying, by the way — it's never mentioned again that these things can freaking fly). So why not use the sword always? It seems pretty effective! I ask because, as is, it seems that maybe the sword was invented just for that moment? Granted, it is used again, but prior to that there is no evidence that there is a really useful sword component to the gigantic robot suit. Seems funny to me.

3. Charlie Day plays a scientist in the movie, a nerdy guy who's obsessed with the terrible monsters to the point of having some strange respect for them. He eventually comes to discover something crucially important about the monsters and where they come from, essentially helping to save the day. So, wait. You're telling me that monsters have been ravaging the planet for decades now but the only guy who thought to do this one experiment was some crackpot who nobody likes using homemade equipment? Seems awfully convenient, doesn't it?

4. The movie spends a number of scenes telling us that the bond between robot co-pilots — excuse me, Jaeger copilots — is extremely important. You have to be compatible to "drift" with someone, that's why so many siblings do it. There's a whole thing about Charlie Hunnam finding a copilot that involves fighting with sticks and stuff. And yet! Toward the end of the movie one guy is without a copilot and so Idris Elba is like "Oh I'll do it" and everything's fine! Granted the guy says something along the lines of "Wait, but what about being compatible and stuff?" but Idris Elba just brushes it away like it's nothing. So what's the deal here? Surely it can't be a bunch of plot-filler hokum that's casually tossed away so Idris Elba can get in on the action. That couldn't be.

5. Was it necessary to give a certain character cancer when he was clearly going to die fighting monsters anyway? I'm not sure it was.

Those are my big Pacific Rim questions. There are many others, but those are the ones that have stuck in my head all week. Which isn't to say that the film is memorable. It clunks along gamely for a bit — pretty much everything before the opening credits — but it quickly loses itself to its own outsized dimensions. It got too big, and, well, it failed.

       

'Arrested Development' May Get Another Season on Netflix

For those of you who already binge-watched the fourth season of Arrested Development currently streaming on Netflix, fear not. It looks like the Bluths will be back again, at least in some capacity.

Brian Grazer, the co-chairman of Arrested Development's production company, Imagine Entertainment, confirmed at the Sun Valley Conference yesterday that he's planning for a new season.

We are in conversations with them to do another. They are interested in doing that.

Netflix being the "they." Netflix CEO Reed Hastings originally said Arrested Development would be a one-season deal, but viewing numbers for the fourth season exceeded his expectations (by how much, we don't know). Hastings has already signed off on second seasons for Netflix originals Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards. Even Hemlock Grove is getting a second season. Has anyone seen Hemlock Grove? If that's the bar, we'd hope Michael and the gang will get back together again, at least one more time.

Michael Cera commented to MTV, however, that an Arrested Development movie might be easier for the cast and crew to accomplish than a fifth season.

I think a film would be a little more manageable for him [AD creator Mitch Hurwitz]. He was writing and directing this season. I don't know how he did that. He was just living and breathing it the whole 24 hours. He's got two daughters and a wife. I think it really takes over his life for nine months or something. It's got to be hard. A movie, I think, would be a little more livable.

No official deal has been made yet for a movie or a continuation of the show.

       

The Beauty of Eating at the Bar

Reservations are cumbersome. Waiters aren't always the nicest. Getting drinks faster is always better. Eating by yourself at a table looks lonely. These are among the reasons some people, like myself, prefer to eat at the bar. 

Not that this should change your mind or influence you in any way, shape or form, but I ate at Basta Pasta's bar for two weeks in a row. A week before that, I had a burger at Joe Allen's bar. And sometime within the timeframe of my last credit card statement, the Meatball Shop by my apartment was packed, but had plenty of bar seats available—so I snagged one.

I enjoy eating at the bar, okay? But there are people still questioning the practice. "Do you expect the same service eating in the bar as in the dining room? Especially when they have the same menu," a reader wrote to  Michael Bauer at Inside Scoop SF, the San Francisco Chronicle's blog devoted to that city's restaurant news. Bauer replied with an answer I fully endorse: 

In fact, I generally get better service at the bar than at a table; it seems someone is always in front of you and can — and does — monitor your progress. Obviously something went terribly wrong at this Top 100 restaurant.

This back-and-forth made me wonder why people eat at bars — and why they don't.

I put the question out there, to friends, family, coworkers, and former coworkers. Atlantic Wire alum John Hudson pointed me to this illuminating debate on Seinfeld about bar-eating etiquette: 

In a completely non-scientific and purely anecdotal survey, the majority of people to whom I spoke were supportive of bar eating. Here are the reasons why: 

The Bar Seat Takes Away the Loneliness of the World

"It's less depressing eating alone at the bar. When you're eating alone at a table with only an empty chair to look at, you have visual proof of how lonely and cold this world is. The bar gives you a brief distraction from this depressing reality," Dan Chung, a Chicago-based journalist who worked at The Associated Press, told me. Visual proof of the loneliness of the world—that's the empty chair. Not only does an empty chair sitting there staring at you remind you that you are eating by yourself, but it also announces to everyone else in the dining room that you're flying solo.  

"Eating alone at the bar is, for some reason, infinitely better than eating alone at a table," another friend added, while Joe Tacopino, a reporter for the New York Post, described a sensation even sadder than Chung's:  

Every time a waitress walks over to my table and feigns an interest in me (when I know full well she'd rather be texting her boyfriend while smoking a cigarette next to the dumpster in the parking lot) I'm reminded of how uninteresting I am and how old and boring I have become.

Tacopino and Chung are actually fun meal-mates. I promise. But they're hitting on something real here, as evidenced by the attention given to Dutch Designer Maria van Goor's pop-up restaurant, which only took solo reservations.

"While solitary eating is generally regarded as a sad ritual of refueling—a symptom of anomie in a busy, crowded, and uncaring world—fine dining can be another matter altogether," wrote The Daily Beast's Christopher Dickey, highlighting the very real stigma solo diners feel, but also the growing acceptance of it in fine dining establishments. Eating at the bar, I'd argue, is part of that acceptance. 

Bartenders Take Away the Loneliness, Too

Logistically, it makes sense that the further away you are from something, the longer it will take for you to get to that something. Apply that to restaurants and alcohol, and science says that you should be getting your drinks faster if the bartender is also your waiter. That's a big plus. And there's also the concept of buybacks, as our contributor Jen Doll told me. 

Think about it: there's probably more of a chance a bartender will remember you than there is of a waiter or waitress doing the same. If you drop in for a bite, you could be placed in any random zone, served by any random waiter. A bartender's domain is the bar. If you want to be a regular and do your part in visiting the restaurant often and nabbing a seat at the bar, there's more of a chance you'll run into the same person. And more of an opportunity for free booze! Factor in that you're probably talking to a bartender more than to a server, even if it is just for drinks, and there's an even greater opportunity that you'll be considered a regular and given all the benefits afforded to that caste.

With all that personal contact, you could make friends with a bartender and maybe even date a bartender (if that is your wont), but that's not recommended unless you are okay with the idea of never eating at that bar again. 

You Get to Take Your Time

A couple of friends, as well as my own sister, mentioned the idea that sitting at the bar doesn't feel rushed, with no pressure to leave so another group of diners can sit down. Others mentioned they love eating at the bar because they don't feel the pressure to order main courses from the waitstaff. Being a fast eater and non-lingerer, I don't usually feel the rush from the wait staff—but I can empathize. 

The Same-Side Couple

"You can eat comfortably alone, but if you are with someone, it makes it easier to talk/watch the game without having to be one of those 'same-side-booth' couples," my friend Stephanie Driscoll told me. That makes sense. Couples who, given the option, choose to sit on the same side of the table are a point of debate, generally greeted with an eyeroll or a smirk. I think there's something intimate there, but I, too, would do a double-take if I saw a same-side-sitting couple in my general vicinity. A bar allows you to do that since, depending on the bar, everyone is on the same-side. And you and your loved one can enjoy the pleasures of same-side dining without the judgment that practice usually carries. 

The Little Things

Among the other reasons I was given for the pro-bar side were (in no particular order):

Better views of the action Better view of the television Better view of the bartender The option to give fake identities Makes you more attractive High stools "Some people have invited me to their table." No obligation to talk to people Speed— think of a "dinner quickie" And When You Shouldn't Eat at the Bar

All those reasons for eating at the bar aside, I did hear two stories that might change my dining habits. The first doesn't affect me personally, but, apparently, there are people in the world who ate at the bar when they were children. The trauma of seeing other kids eat at tables is something such bar-eating children carry into adulthood. "[My mother] loved it because she liked to talk to all the people at the bar and she said we got our food faster. Also, I used to live in a snooty neighborhood and kids made fun of me for sitting there because all of their families sat at tables," a friend and opponent of bar-eating told me. 

The other injunction against bar eating is for when you're dining with more than one person. One person dining at a bar is great. Two is fine. Three, as Seinfeld showed us, gets a little awkward. Plus, you should be getting reservations anyway.  

       

The Art World Is Obsessed With Cats

Cats have already taken over the Internet, and now they're headed for the art world. But this isn't some online meme, like the tumblr that puts cats into old famous paintings. No, a new exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will heavily feature our feline friends as cultural pieces of art—and it's not alone.

The Met's exhibit, titled "Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations," features the paintings of Balthus, the French modern artist and self-titled "Thirteenth King of Cats." Balthus basically painted in the 20th century what is now the entire purpose and content of the internet: cats and girls. These cats may be cute, but their primary function in his works was as a voyeur, peeking under suggestively-positioned girls' skirts to see their, well, cats, to put it nicely.

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(Balthus, Thérèse Dreaming, 1938, oil on canvas. Courtesy the artist and Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection 1998.)

Hence the "Provocations" part of the exhibit's title. So it's no surprise that his art is making a comeback, the first U.S. exhibition of his works in 30 years. The Met's exhibit also coincides with the release of the book Balthus and Cats, written by a friend of the now-deceased Balthus.

The presence of cats in art isn't new, but it is newly relevant. Art News has published an extensive piece on the growing cat-art craze, and it's really getting out of control: the Brooklyn Museum will present "Divine Felines: Cats in Ancient Egypt" and its cat goddesses galore; The Internet Cat Video Fest—yeah, that's a thing—drew 10,000 fans in Minneapolis last year and is on a world tour, currently in Jerusalem; and finally, the West Village's White Columns hosts "The Cat Show," in which adoptable cats lounge among cat-themed works by Andy Warhol, among others. And why shouldn't these exhibits be popular—look how cute this little guy is!

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Jonathan Grassi/White Columns

 

Our furry pets can make for great subjects in art, such as C.M. Coolidge's famous paintings of dogs playing poker. But those works are mostly famous for, in the words of poker player/art critic Jim McManus, "how funny it is. ... And contemporary artists love its kitsch, which has a lot to do with the fact that it’s so God damn bad as a painting.” 

No, the newfound love for cat art is not due to that mock art appeal, and Art News declares we should be "Taking cat art seriously." Cat skeptics, it looks like it's time to give up and accept it—it's a cat-lover's world out there, and you're just living in it.

       

Soon It Will Be a Little Harder for the Justice Department to Snoop on Reporters

Attorney General Eric Holder will release new guidelines for investigating reporters' communications, The New York Times' Charlie Savage reports. The new rules address two controversial Justice Department moves revealed in May: obtaining the records of more than 20 Associated Press phone lines without the organization's knowledge, and naming Fox News reporter James Risen as a possible co-conspirator in order to secretly get his emails in an investigation into North Korea leaks. Holder's guidelines would block the FBI "from portraying a reporter as a co-conspirator in a criminal leak as a way to get around a legal bar on secret search warrants for reporting materials," Savage reports. And they would make it harder to get reporters' phone records without notifying the news organization.

Update: The new guidelines will say media organizations must be notified of subpoena requests unless it would "pose a clear and substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation," Reuters reports. And the attorney general would have to sign off on the danger threat, which would give the justice department 45 days. After that, the attorney general would have to renew his signature, The Washington Post reports.

Since the May revelations, Holder has tried to make nice with reporters. That's been met with mixed success. The Daily Beast reported that when the justice department's actions were made public, Holder began "to feel a creeping sense of personal remorse." Despite his remorse, several news outlets boycotted an off-the-record meeting Holder held to discuss the leak investigations. A justice department official told the Times that this is as far as Holder can go until Congress passes media shield law.

       

The California Prison Strike Is a Reminder That U.S. Prisoners Can Be Force-Fed

More than 12,400 inmates across California have been fasting since Monday, to protest solitary confinement and call for improved prison conditions. The strike, involving roughly two-thirds of the state’s prisons, is one of the largest in California history.

So far no prisoners have been force-fed, and the Corrections Department says they have no current plans to do so. “Hopefully no one will get to that point,” said a spokesperson for California’s corrections department. During a similar strike in 2011, the chief of the state’s prison system said he planned to seek court permission to force-feed inmates. (The strike ended before he did so.)

As lawmakers call for an end to the force-feeding of Guantanamo detainees, the California strike serves as a reminder: inmates on U.S. soil can ultimately be given the same treatment.

While there is no national data available on the prevalence of force-feeding in U.S. prisons, a number of cases have been documented in recent years, largely after appeals to stop the process were rejected by state courts.  The courts have typically ruled that prisons can force-feed an inmate without their consent if it’s needed to maintain the safety and security of the prison. 

Connecticut inmate William Coleman, who is hunger striking over what he says was a wrongful conviction, has been force-fed since 2008. The Connecticut Supreme Court has sided with prison officials, who said that Coleman’s strike could threaten the prison’s security and lead to copycat strikes.

More recently, New York inmate Leroy Dorsey was denied the right to refuse feeding in May, when the New York Court of Appeals ruled the prison could continue to restrain and feed him with nasogastric tubes.

Bioethicist Dr. Jacob Appel, who opposes the practice, says he believes that court rulings have resulted in more prisons turning to force-feeding in response to hunger strikes. “It’s a little bit of bad press if you force-feed inmates,” he said. “It’s a lot of bad press if you have a lot of protesting inmates and one of them dies.”

California is one of only three states whose courts have ruled against force-feeding. In 1993, the state Supreme Court ruled that one a paralyzed inmate had the right to “decline life-sustaining treatment, even if to do so will cause or hasten death.”

But the judges in that case noted that prisons could use force-feeding if a hunger strike was a threat to order in the prison and the safety of other inmates. “We do not preclude prison authorities from establishing the need to override an inmate's choice to decline medical intervention,” the judges wrote.

California prison policy says that inmates can refuse medical treatment as long as they’re conscious and able to do so. Prisoners can also sign statements that say they cannot be administered treatment, regardless of their condition. “Force-feeding inmates is not part of our medical protocol,” said Joyce Hayhoe, Director of Legislation for the California Correctional Health Care Services.

But in 2011, the former head of California prisons said he thought those prohibitions against force-feeding could be overruled with a court’s approval. To do so, the Corrections Department would have to prove that force-feeding was in the state’s interest to maintain a safe prison environment for other inmates.

The department never actually sought court permission, as officials agreed to meet with inmates and said they were reviewing the state’s solitary confinement policy. The two strikes in 2011 ended after three weeks.

The prison system did revise its solitary confinement policies in March, but inmates now striking say the changes do nothing to limit the length of solitary confinement sentences, which can continue indefinitely. Inmates are also calling for an end to “group punishment,” such as race-based lockdowns that restrict an entire race of inmates for one prisoner’s violation. The California Corrections Department is facing federal lawsuits over both practices.

“At this point, it is clear to us that the [Corrections Department] has no intention of implementing the substantive policy changes that were agreed to fifteen or sixteen months ago,” organizers said in a press release, announcing plans to renew the strike.  

Hunger strikers at Pelican Bay prison have released a list of five demands, which inmates in other prisons have expanded.

Corrections officials have announced that inmates will face consequences for participating in the strike, ranging from being denied family visits to being put in solitary confinement. “It is against state law to participate in disturbances such as mass hunger strikes,” said corrections spokesperson Jeffrey Callison. “Eventually participants will be issued rule violation reports.”

Dolores Canales’s son, an inmate at Pelican Bay prison, is striking for the third time in two years. She is worried prison officials may be less willing to work with inmates this time around. “They’re going to let them go God only knows how long without eating,” she said.

Canales has lead efforts to organize other family members in support of the strike. She, like many family members she knows, has avoided discussing force-feeding with her son. “I don’t want to know,” she said. “If it were up to me I would say do whatever it takes to have him live.”

Isaac Ontiveros, a spokesperson with the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Network, hopes the size of the strike will push corrections officials to consider inmates’ demands, and make it harder to crack down on the protest.

As far as force-feeding, “It doesn’t need to come to that,” Ontiveros said. Prison officials “can end this very, very simply.”