FCI Elkton Food Strike Update #4

Three updates about last May's Food Strike at FCI Elkton.

1. Our FOIA request appeal has been accepted! The Freedom of Information people will be forcing the prison to hand over reports and information about the food strike and protests at FCI Elkton last spring.

FCI Elkton Food Strike Update #3

Letter I wrote to the guy who dismissed my FOIA request:

August 8^th, 2011 Henry J Sadowski
US Department of Justice
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Northeast Regional Office
US Custom House – 7^th floor
2^nd & Chestnut Streets
Philadelphia, PA 19106 RE: Freedom of Information Request No. 2011-08416
 Dear Henry,
 I trust you know that your response was not responsive to my request. Nevertheless, I am very dissatisfied with this response. I requested shift logs and incident reports from specific days. Nothing you say can convince me that there were no shift logs or incident reports for those days. If there is a criminal investigation going on, the sensitive information could be redacted from those logs and reports.
 You are lying to me. I do not appreciate it. Do you know what “freedom of information” means? Are you trying to prove to me that we do not live in a country that is at all responsive to or respectful of it’s citizens? If so, you are doing a good job. I have to admit I’m not surprised, I've been on to you all for a while. I expect I’ll soon verify my suspicion that the bureaucrats in the appeals process share your disdain for the citizens you allegedly serve.
 Have a nice day, you authoritarian paper pusher.

Next I'll write a letter to the attny general appeals process, but that one will be dull. When i get a dismissive response from those fuckers, i'll share my snotty retort.

In other news on this subject, kate's working on publishing an OP ED article from our penpal at Elkton about their lighting policy. 

News Updates- FCI Elkton and Pelican Bay

FCI ELKTON- Been calling to check up on the FOIA request every couple days. They're still processing it. If you'd like to help pressure them to take this more seriously, please see this post.

We also received a letter from an inmate at FCI Elkton, who wrote an article about the 24 hour lights-on policy which he says inspired the protest. We're working on publishing the whole article, but here's an excerpt about the food strike: "On May 18th, 2011, the majority of the inmate population at Elkton participated in a "food strike" where they refused to attend the meals offered at the chow hall in protest of a variety of newly imposed policies (constant lighting at nighttime being the most significant). The protest lasted about a week.

FCI Elkton Food Strike Update #1

A few weeks ago we learned that there had been a mass protest demonstration in FCI Elkton. More about that here.

We've been pursuing information about this and unfortunately, we haven't got much to report at this time. Either something big went down or they're really paranoid about sharing any information at all. I expect the latter.

After calling almost daily for over a week, as media, because I was planning to write an article for Street Speech I finally got through to the PR person. He simply told me he doesn't think Street Speech fits his criteria for being media and therefore he would not talk to me.