Tag: Detroit Free Press

With seemingly intentional disregard by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and abettors, MDOC Director Heidi Washington and Warden John Christiansen, for the safety and well-being of prisoners and communities, finally ice the state cake by coercing prisoners to sign “waivers of liability,” should they contract COVID-19 while in the care of their oppressors.

Aramark serves pre-cooked, freeze-dried, dehydrated, processed and mechanized meals and uses the DOC offenders to operate its company with free labor. The offenders cook, serve and clean under DOC’s supervision and Aramark maintains a skeletal staff of less than five employees in total, and one at any given time. The prison recently had an audit, which it failed in its food service department.

Not since the 1980s, when the state of Michigan simultaneously ratcheted up “tough on crime” laws and eliminated good time credits, have Michigan’s prisons been so overcrowded and seething with so much discontent. Crammed into overcrowded prisons, underfed, denied proper medical care and programming while forced to work for declining slave wages as commissary prices rise, no wonder Michigan prisoners are rising up! The only question is, Why did it take so long?

Hundreds marched in the streets of downtown Detroit on July 18 to protest water services being shut off for thousands of residents too poor to pay their utility bills. Nurses organizing the demonstration declared a public health emergency and called for a moratorium on the water shutoffs, a violation of human rights. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department announced a brief reprieve.

Controversy about the new ABC cop series, Detroit 1-8-7, has swirled in the wake of the May 16 killing of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones by Detroit police. They shot her in the head after throwing an incendiary grenade into her home, as TV cameras from A&E’s The First 48 were rolling.