Yesterday our Journal had the pleasure of hosting UC Hastings' 1st Annual Social Justice Panel Series on the Pelican Bay Hunger Strikes that resumed yesterday. The idea for the panel was conceived just two weeks prior to the event when a couple of us who are working with the Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition saw the urgent need to bring this issue to law students. Despite, the short timeline we had to work with, many of you put a lot of time and effort into making this event possible. From the students who put their academic work on the back-burner to make and put up flyers, contact panelists and do extensive outreach, to the faculty and panelists who rearranged busy their schedules to make sure they could be there, it really took a community to make this event happen. THANK YOU Hastings Prisoner Outreach, La Raza, BLSA, NLG, SSDP, HCLS, HRPLJ, Brooke McCarthy, Eli Contreras, Whitney Larson, Caitlin Henry and Professor Aviram for your tremendous help in establishing this new tradition at Hastings.
Below are Professor Aviram's opening remarks as posted on her site and here is a link to Democracy Now's coverage of our press conference.
Good afternoon,
Don’t you know? Talking about a revolution, it starts like a whisper. But this panel is much more than a whisper. It is a strong, loud cry against a dehumanizing, cruel incarceration regime that demeans our society in its entirety. To shed light on these practices, a number of Hastings student organizations have invited former inmates, family members of inmates, and legal professionals, who will discuss this afternoon one of the most exciting and electrifying instances of protest against the evils and inadequacies in our correctional system.
