“Hunger Strike Follow-Up: Demand Number One,” recorded August 19th, 2026.
As you know, I entered into a hunger strike on July 6th, 2026, which ended August 5th — for 30 days — because after 10 years of screaming with pen and paper, with my voice on podcasts and on Prison Radio, I had come to the very real conclusion that the only way to really draw attention to the need for changes in the Virginia DOC and Virginia entire was some form of direct action. Let me be clear, not only do I believe that only direct action will force Virginia to rein in its violent Department of Corrections, but I believe it will take actions just as extreme as my hunger strike. This is a result of the complete lack of any accountability and proper independent oversight of the Virginia DOC. That is why my first demand was about creating a citizen inspection group.
The citizen inspection group should be made up of two randomly chosen members of the General Assembly, two volunteer Virginia citizens drawn from the same pool as jurors, a journalist from one of the local Virginia stations, and an advocacy group member. It should be governed by itself and no other entities. It should be provided with a state vehicle and driver. The group will select one of 37 prisons at random that it will visit unannounced and unhindered. It will interact with both staff and Virginia DOC captives, including eating lunch at the prison, the same food as captives. It will document everything and at the end of the inspection day will be a dinner in a conference room where all of the footage will be turned into three video montages of one hour in length, 30 minutes in length, and a three-minute news piece for the journalist to put on whatever station they’re from. All of this will be archived to be reviewed upon request by any citizen at any time, or a General Assembly member at any time. It can also be used to inform legislators, and there should be at least a 10 inspections should per year.
The corrupt Virginia DOC did not agree to such a solid path to redemption for its administrators in Richmond and Regional, and why would they when they literally aid and abet their subordinates who commit all manner of fraud, racketeering, and other assorted crimes? They harbor them, in fact, allowing them to hide behind a desk until whatever wrongdoing is covered up and forgotten. But the Virginia DOC did, in its disgraceful dishonesty and dishonor, attempt to steal and grossly pervert my idea. It’s called the Citizens Academy Behind the Walls. It’s a four-week course they recently announced that is designed to further pollute the truth about its value to society and the excessive drain on resources it engages in.
The first week is, quote, Headquarters and Executive Operations, where people like Director Walters and Deputy Director Beasley, surrounded by sycophants, engage in a disgraceful act of self-aggrandizement. Week two is where, “participants will get an inside look and be immersed in correctional operations and public safety functions, including a guided tour of a correctional facility.” You can be 110% certain that citizens will be shown a pre-planned and scripted dog and pony show that will, in every way, obfuscate every failure of the Virginia DOC, a list that is growing by the week. Week three and four will revolve around padded numbers and more scripted acts meant to convince Virginia citizens that reentry and community corrections are more than statistic-based money grabs and that the staff they hire are not, mostly, the worst sort of humans in the state, which is a generally accepted fact, though there are the occasional exceptions as I have previously, however rarely, reported.
This is the usual modus operandi of the Virginia DOC. They lie and cheat to hide the cascade of failures, the growing number of dead captives, the complete lack of any real control over information, the endless parade of cover-ups so the truth about the corruption is no longer exposed. The Virginia Model that destroyed Indigenous peoples, Black and Brown peoples, mentally ill peoples; that same Virginia model that gave Hitler his ideas for a Final Solution; the Virginia model that takes another person’s ideas to solve problems by drawing citizens in to provide true accountability and oversight and corrupts it into a perverse plan to once more attempt to dupe the very people whose taxes pay the costs for an institution that every study and every report explicitly states is not needed, as and is in fact, the root of too many problems, and is, likewise, not a single aspect of any of the solutions.
In days past, such foul dishonor was met with harsh and severe repercussions. I would suggest that were we to become a truly civilized country, we must either abolish these failed institutions that we literally do not need and hold those in power to the most severe account for their destructive dishonor, or we implement a real citizen group that is beholden to itself, the truth, however raw, and nothing besides, and whose sole purpose is to expose, for all to see, the truth of the Virginia DOC. Every day that passes without one of these options in play is one more step to a darker nightmare in Virginia and the United States entire.
Now, as an aside, for my supporters, you can follow me here at Prison Radio, on Substack.com, and you can sign up via ViaPath and GTL’s GettingOut app to email with me. Also, contact local Virginia media and demand to know why they would ignore this event, which made national news all around the country—and I know this from the amount of mail I got—and the same of Virginia politicians: How could they ignore this? Finally, also, I answered a lot of mail this past week from all of you people who supported me and sent me letters. I hope it arrives to all of you who took the time to write me in support. You are absolutely awesome. My name is David Annarelli. You can check me out on Substack. You can find me at Instagram, david_annarelli, and as always, you can Google me. Peace.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
