“We’re Still in Stress Mode”: North Lake Hunger Strike Recap

Prisoner in Michigan discusses recenter hunger strike at the North Lake Correctional Facility.

In a phone call from Tuesday afternoon, April 21st, a participant in the second hunger strike in the North Lake Correctional Facility’s Special Housing Unit describes the reasons for the strike and its outcome. The strike is over for now—and the warden has promised to provide more phone time, increased access to the commissary, and a written explanation for the decision to confine this group of predominantly Black men to the SHU for over a month after an altercation in which they were not involved—but they may begin striking again if the warden doesn’t fully honor the demands.

The striker told us they were all ‘still in stress mode, still in agony’ over what they had experienced, and still in need of support even though the strike is over. It took 46 days of confinement in the SHU, and two separate hunger strikes, to get any response to their request for better treatment.

He also told us that the second strike started on Friday night partly in response to the warden’s attempt to move more people into the SHU as part of a quarantine procedure, rather than into a separate unit. These were understood to be incarcerated people who had either tested positive for COVID-19 or been directly exposed to it, and the men already in the SHU were terrified of getting sick: “Put them in the same place where you just brought those other guys, the other people that’s quarantined. You don’t bring them down here. […] I just never seen no prison like this, man. Never seen it.”