Rajeshree Roy with Carolyn Miller, a close friend, on a visit at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF).
IN SOLIDARITY
Something very significant is brewing in California right now. Female prisoners in the Yuba County Jail are organising in solidarity with immigrants in detention.
Yesterday (Monday 14th December) a group of women began a hunger strike, joining hundreds of other detainees taking part in hunger strikes at facilities across the country.
You may or may not have heard about the fasting and hunger strikes going on in immigrant detention facilities across the country. Up and down the country–in the Hutto Immigrant Detention Center in Texas; in an immigrant detention center in the high desert city of Adelanto, California; in the Krome Service Processing Center in Florida; and in Alabama, in El Paso, Texas and in Lasalle, Louisiana, too.
Vikki Law has covered these as a trend. And they are. Collectively, the strikes are known as the #FreedomGiving Strikes and they were launched on Thanksgiving by hundreds of South Asian and African detainees at three separate facilities. The movement has grown.
Never before (to my knowledge) has the political resistance of detained immigrants run in cohort with the political action of citizens in county or state facilities. The Yuba County Jail rents space to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain people. For the first time, women in criminal custody are fasting with detainees in immigration custody as an act of solidarity. Phenomenal. Principled. Inspiring.
The Yuba Co. Jail hunger strike is led by, and in support of, Rajashree Roy (above). You can read a longer detailed account of Roy’s journey here.
To be brief, Roy faces deportation back to Fiji where she has not lived since she was 8-years-old. As a child, Roy suffered sexual abuse and upon relocation to the United States never received counseling or help. By the time she was in her teens she was both attempting suicide and robbing and beating people. She was very troubled and the undelrying causes had never been addressed.
Sentenced as an adult at age 16, Rajashree spent 17-years at Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF). Nine years later, struggling to survive and feed her children while in an abusive relationship, she stole a garden hosepipe from a store, a misdemeanor petty theft.
Due to her priors, the District Attorney set bail at $1million and offered a 25-to-life sentence. In 2011, Roy accepted a plea bargain of seven years. In November 2014, she qualified for release under Prop 47. When Rajashree Roy stepped foot out of CCWF, she was picked up by ICE and slated for deportation back to Fiji, away from her children.
After years of silence due to shame and stigma as an abuse survivor and ‘criminal’, Rajashree Roy has gained confidence through peer and advocacy support and decided to be public with her story and fight for herself and others.
“We are locked up together and refuse to be divided into immigrants and citizens. None of us belong in this cage separated from our families. We join the brave immigrant hunger strikers across the country in fasting to force recognition of our humanity,” says the staement of Roy and her fellow hunger strikers at Yuba County Jail.
WHAT TO DO
- Join community organizers at ASPIRE, the nation’s first pan-Asian undocumented youth-led group, at a fast in solidarity outside Yuba County Jail.
- Support the #FreedomGiving strikers by signing the petition.
- Help raise funds for Rajashree’s $10,000 bond.
- Write letters of support to the women on hunger strike:
Rajeshree Roy
Booking No. 229860
Yuba County Jail
P.O. Box 1031
Marysville, California 95901
Jessica Bullock
Booking No. 235161
Yuba County Jail
P.O. Box 1031
Marysville, California 95901
Tisha Sartor
Booking No. 233892
Yuba County Jail
P.O. Box 1031
Marysville, California 95901
Kyra Beckles
Booking No. 234664
Yuba County Jail
P.O. Box 1031
Marysville, California 95901
Juanita Thomas
Booking No. 235553
Yuba County Jail
P.O. Box 1031
Marysville, California 95901
Ana Marquez
Booking No. 235550
Yuba County Jail
P.O. Box 1031
Marysville, California 95901
6 comments
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December 16, 2015 at 6:24 am
claudette hubbard
I can most definately feel all those women detainees there in Yuba County jail and yes if I was still there I would be doing the same exact same thing. I spent quite some time in immigration custody and that jail was the first place I was detained and the worst out if them all, it’s a great cause and I commend them for what they are doing there’s absolutely no doubt ICE will eventually get the message and stop isolating soooooo many people from their families, keep up the excellent work ladies and men in all the detention centers.
December 17, 2015 at 2:09 am
Take action: Women prisoners in California hunger striking in solidarity with striking detained migrants | Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
[…] following is reprinted from Prison Photography, in support of the California women prisoners and the striking detained […]
December 17, 2015 at 10:46 am
sonniq
There is so much injustice in the world and the center of it is the United states.
December 17, 2015 at 10:58 am
sonniq
There is so much injustice in the world and the center of it is in the United states. Many people in this country are snowed. They think we are a generous country who wants to help free people around the world from tyranny. But as is seen today, the kind XCristian people are not so kind after all and they are cheering on the corrupt GOP leaders as they attempt to use the inciting of fear to become our next president. God help us all – a worthless phrase, because if there were a God, and he was trying to make us in his image he would look at us as a total failure. There are truly people who need our help yet we turn out back as we prepare for the season that says says, “Peace on earth and goodwill… ” Damn, the old Xristmas record I always played just broke into tiny pieces.
December 23, 2015 at 11:03 am
VICE News: Immigrant Detainees Accuse US of Using Sleep Deprivation During Hunger Strike - San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium
[…] detention center in Miami. Women incarcerated at the Yuba County Jail in California also began refusing food last Monday in solidarity with the immigrant […]
April 7, 2016 at 4:27 pm
Ready for a National Prison Labor Protest? | Prison Photography
[…] and at Red Onion Prison in Virginia flew under the radar of mainstream press. In December, women prisoners at Yuba County Jail in California joined a hunger strike in solidarity with women held in immigrant detention centers in California, Colorado and […]