Tag: Fight Toxic Prisons

Unconscionable, inhumane, violently genocidal is the reality this story by Victoria Law for Truthout informs with reports by women incarcerated at FMC Carswell about what clearly is deliberate indifference to deadly conditions putting residents’ lives in danger, validating the consideration so stated: ‘If they can’t take care of us, release us.’

Code Tenderloin has been meeting the people where they are at for about seven years, providing day-to-day, real life, in the moment necessities to the community. Embodying a paradigm that at least emotionally eliminates the red tape, folks are receiving help without burden of shame and dehumanization. They’re getting love and compassion instead.

The ongoing reveal of the life-threatening contaminants plaguing the residents of the Bayview Hunters Point community was further enhanced by a recent virtual tour by Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai and Dr. Mark Alexander imparting first-hand knowledge to attendees, including first-year UCSF medical students. Information focused on the toxic elements adding weight to the body burden as revealed by the biomonitoring program testing being done within the community.

Mandatory quarantine is a requirement for all the prisoners who arrive here at USP Pollock and all prisoners who are preparing to leave – and that means me. I am soon to be released and on my way to San Francisco and transition into accepting the baton of editor of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, like many Republican governors across the United States, followed the lead of President Donald J. Trump and pushed to re-open states before the science confirmed that it was time to do so.

Call Warden McConnell at 318-765-3119 to demand that David Sumera, who suffered a seizure and physical assault by guards, be transferred to an appropriate medical facility and that abuser Lt. Rene be held accountable!

Periodically I will be conducting interviews and conversations with change makers, influencers, activists, celebrities, sports stars and bona fide servants of the people. This first interview is with my sister in struggle, Tia “Mz. Konnoisseur” Hamilton, the CEO of State vs. Us Magazine.

“If you do not understand white supremacy (racism) – what it is and how it works – everything else that you understand will only confuse you.” – Neely Fuller Jr. (1971)

April 18, 2020 – Like many of you in the free world, I have been monitoring closely the daily COVID-19 briefings broadcast from the White House. I have also been observing and analyzing the propaganda disseminated by the mainstream media in regard to the deadly pandemic.

As this story is posted, another death of a prisoner is reported at Oakdale. Officials of the guards' union there describe the prison as "ground zero" for the coronavirus outbreak in the federal prison system.

“Dear U.S. Attorney General: For over 100 years, citizens born and naturalized in the U.S. who have been convicted of crime have endured the inhumane indignity of being stripped of our citizenship and right to vote through felony disenfranchisement by way of the United States Constitution’s 13th Amendment. Additionally, citizens who have been arrested or continue to be housed in jails and prisons nationally in all 50 sovereign states have been subjected to the conspiratorial practice of police and/or prison officials who violate our First Amendment right to free speech as well as political association through on-going censorship practices that limit what we can read or write and to whom.” – Excerpt of grievance crafted by North Carolina Department of Correction prisoners Randy Watterson and Joseph “Shine White” Stewart

In early December 2019, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said, “There’s no chance the president’s going to be removed from office.”

Comrade Keith ‘Malik’ Washington discusses the State of Texas’ systematic attacks on Black people and prisoners, and the collusion, corruption, and bigotry that create and manage the State’s carceral politics of death.

I feel like Schleprock, the character on “The Flintstones” with the dark cloud following him around! The U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has chosen to transfer me to USP Pollock in Louisiana, whereas I’d requested transfer to California, where a home and job are waiting.

These drastic changes like video visits and lockdowns are being gradually introduced and are creating a more inhumane environment. Will this stop the drugs and violence? I think not.

Prisoners who, like me, are trapped in federal and state prisons in close proximity to these toxic chemical plants rely on free world people to confront these violators of the public’s trust. Don’t be silent.

In April, the US Department of Justice issued a scathing report on Alabama prison abuse and promised to sue. Six months later, with no lawsuit filed and Alabama prison abuses worsening as the state proceeds with plans to build more prisons, advocates braved arrest and brutality to bring Alabama prisoners’ demands to the officials who can stop them.

Lorie Davis has created a culture within TDCJ by which jailhouse lawyers, also known as “writ-writers,” are subjected to manifold reprisals for their peaceful and legal activities. Activities which are supposed to be protected under the U.S. Constitution’s First and 14th Amendments!

What I have discovered is that the state of Texas has conspired with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to downplay and cover up toxic and contaminated water supplies in state-run prisons as well as the rural communities which have found themselves in close proximity to these toxic sites. It is not just the prisoners in Texas who are suffering the ill effects. I have also discovered that what is happening in Texas is not unique.

It’s been a hard silence for the past five days since Operation PUSH launched a statewide prisoner strike in the Florida Department of Corrections prison system (FDOC or FDC) coinciding with Martin Luther King Day. Information from prisoners is coming in at a much slower pace than people on the outside had anticipated, but reports are slowly and steadily making their way through the walls, despite many obstacles.