Prison Medical Crisis Worsens - An Urgent Call to Rally in Sacramento
Dr. B. Cayenne Bird
September 02, 2007
The caring about issues, people, and laws begins with each one of us, for if we do are too apathetic to raise cane with those in elected office, then who else will care, or even know the dangerous conditions that are taking place which affect every member of society, not just the outcasts? If not you, then who? If not now, when?
I have too many reports of suffering and dying inmates whose families are getting no help at all from any bureaucrat in power. They are akin to lambs to slaughter and cannot fathom how people could be so cruel as to deny medical care, information and access to their loved ones in what is often their final days. It is for this reason that I am calling out to everyone with a loved one who is incarcerated in prison or whose loved one works in a prison in any capacity to rally NOW. Please show up here with as many people as you can find.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Sacramento Capitol,
North Side of the building, facing L Street
9 a.m.
The legislators need to see that there are people who care about the prisoners as several critical bills are about to land on the Governor's desk that could ease the preventable suffering taking place at the hands of lawmakers elected by law enforcement labor unions who could care less about the inhumane conditions.
The lawmakers are trying to end this year's business by September 12. There was no other day that I could get a permit but when I saw the MRSA outbreak at Old Folsom, even though I am very busy with responsibilities at the college, I knew that I had to call an emergency rally since this potentially fatal bacteria is most likely everywhere by now. No one would know it due to the media ban. This notice is short so everyone needs to load up their cars and bring people if we are to have a prayer of being heard. A "voice" happens only when there are 500 or more people standing beneath the lawmakers' windows in support of bills that would instantly bring relief to thousands of prisoners and their families. They must see you to respect you, otherwise the assumption is that you are happy with everything. Silence is consent in a democracy and if we choose to be silent right now, more lives will predictably be lost, more families unnecessarily destroyed as the lawmakers climbing to fame on the backs of the poor.
No one is going to rescue us except ourselves through the actions that we take as many individuals united and appearing as a large enough crowd. Individuals do not matter in Sacramento. Only large, funded, groups of writing, suing, voting, protesting citizens who make a lot of noise at the right time for the right bills matter. If you have any doubt about how low lawmakers and prison officials are willing to stoop to hold inmates until their last dying breath even people who didn't have a death sentence, just come to listen to some of the desperate families who will be there to share current experiences with you about their total lack of voice. I assure you that it will be an unforgettable experience.
Please go to this web page, hit print and distribute the rally flyer widely in the prison line-ups this labor day week end, and via email, which is the last chance you have to get out the word to those less educated about what this all means before the medical crisis hits you or someone you know.
http://www.1union1.com/rally_flyer_sept7.html
Everyone in prison reform assumes our UNION will take care of all the problems. There is no doubt we have made a huge difference in getting the current reforms on the table through years of advocacy work, including the 28 lawsuits filed by our families for mostly wrongful deaths. However, we are only as strong as the NUMBER of people who write to editors and show up to Calls to Action.
The prisoners have no one else that cares about them enough to take real action in Sacramento where the war is located in masse except for us. For the past decade, there have only been two other rallies coordinated by someone else that cried out on the inmate's behalf. Both were within the past year and both were small since everyone thinks someone else is going to do their share of the fighting for survival in this crisis, which is a wrong notion that delays the reforms. Crowds are necessary to get attention to the problems and it is a provable fact that there is not one group that can or will call medical emergency rallies on behalf of prisoners except us.
Our UNION has consistently organized rallies at the Capitol and at several prisons since 1998 but only when conditions get too extreme. Our success to draw enough people to be heard on the issues is often diminished by divide-and-conquer agents who do not want media attention to be drawn to the deliberate causes of the problems. The message here is that nothing should be more important for you to do this coming Friday than to help prove that you, an intelligent voter, is indignant over continued neglect, maltreatment of the mentally ill, illegal use of SHU confinement and epidemics raging out of control.
You are the one needed to stand with others of a like mind beneath the windows of lawmakers who represent only the law enforcement agencies that put them into office to do their bidding to support the creation of a sentencing commission, even though the passage of the current bills won't make a difference until 2012. You are the person who is needed to notify and bring others that without enough voices, the Governor will not be influenced to sign the critical bills. It's only about the number of voters with the most dollars that bills are passed or not.
Please do not assume that on this short notice of an emergency that the UNION families who are as broke and broken as everyone else can all by themselves bring the size of the crowd it requires to see that there is a voting block who supports compassionate release, a sentencing commission and a prison cap. The legislators and media do not cover emergency rallies unless the crowd is large, and you are needed to make sure that happens, one car load at a time regardless of whether or not you are a UNION member or just participating in some email group that never even tries to be heard, even in life and death circumstances such as those we are all faced with now.
Here are some of the reasons I feel compelled to call everyone to attend this emergency rally around these human rights abuses which are way out of hand at a time when conditions should be getting better and not worse. When the crisis is on your own doorstep, it's too late to rally together to save yourself or a loved one.
One man at Salinas Valley Prison is facing amputation of his feet due to mismanaged diabetes within that prison and yet his family has not been allowed to visit him for five years, since he began to deteriorate. I cannot imagine anyone being in the predatory environment of prison with no feet. There is no excuse for not allowing his family to visit him during this nightmare probably caused by a system that routinely refuses to take care of diabetic prisoners, a pattern that I've witnessed many times over the past decade of reading letters from 33 prisons. The separation of families from their loved ones if they go into any sort of infirmary or outside hospital is cruel to everyone connected and we need to speak out strongly about this horrible practice.
The family of Jamel Walker, who was shot by a prison guard during the Susanville riot at High Desert Prison, was never even notified of the incident or his subsequent hospitalization. They are all still being denied visits to him, even though Walker's injuries are reportedly so serious from the "rubber bullet" that he may permanently lose the use of his leg. Walker's family members were notified of his injury via an inmate who called. His anxious mother reports that to this day, no one from the prison will give them any information or allow them access to visit him. This happens too often to be an isolated case of callousness, it's cover up and protecting themselves from legal exposure. There are grave questions about why this shooting was not reported right away.
In another case, the State does not have the ability to give Mark Grangetto the medical care that he needs, they refuse to put him in a long term care facility or to release him to his mother who has the financial means to pay for the treatment he needs. Rather than continue to watch her son suffering without proper medical care and barely hanging on in great pain, Nora Weber has asked that all forced medications be halted so that her son's torture of denied medical care will come to an end. It is simply outrageous that Hanford Judge LaPorte caved into special interests instead of getting Mark Grangetto the medical care that he needs. It is unfathomable that Judge LaPorte would not allow the trial to go forward when I witnessed solid documentation of ongoing abuse and neglect that one would never imagine could take place in an American prison, yet it continues. Nora Weber will be one of the speakers at the rally to tell this story in person.
Additionally, I was floored to see headlines screaming throughout California this week about an outbreak of MRSA at Old Folsom Prison. MRSA, a potentially fatal flesh-eating bacteria which is right up there with Meningitis in seriousness, was reported to the health department in April, 2007 and had already infected a number of prisoners, medical workers and staff. Why in God's name did the families of the prisoners who contracted it never report it to the media so that lives could be saved and more infections prevented?
We know why the prison guards union CCPOA and the medical workers would want to keep something like this quiet. The current existence of a medical crisis so great that there are several life-threatening epidemics taking place in prisons such as Hepatitis, TB, AIDS and MRSA is one of the reasons why people do not want to work as nurses and guards. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCr) because rehab is non-existent, cannot have this type of news reaching the voters when empire-building is taking place for political reasons, which always trumps the importance of saving lives.
But for the family members of at least 40 prisoners who have contracted MRSA not to have made even one telephone call to alert the media that a deadly, volatile epidemic was flying under their radar just bewilders me beyond description.
We saw the Norovirus infect approximately 1500 prisoners in less than two weeks last summer, one of the many preventable filth diseases that are considered business as usual by the State and even Robert Sillen, the federal receiver. With the news media shut out of the prisons and the families not having the compassion for their loved ones and/or the common sense to notify the journalists to report cases, nobody can really tell how far it has already spread throughout the system and even via transfers to out-of-state prisons.
My educated guess is that since MRSA has also been spreading like wildfire at the jail levels, that people at every facility are already infected. 8500 cases have already been traced to the Los Angeles County Jail alone since 2002. I have always reiterated that knowledge is power, but today knowledge can mean survival of your loved one who lives, works or even visits prisons or jails. Please go to these links, read and print off some basic survival information and mail the information into at least one prisoner. We are all connected so whatever takes place behind the walls leaks out to the public.
http://www.tpchd.org/files/library/2357adf2a147d1aa.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5241a4.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/hip/aresist/mrsa.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070815163226.htm
There is much more to write about as the rally draws nearer, but I wanted to give you a chance to fight back by distributing the flyer at all the prisons and spreading the word to inmates to send their family members to show up on their behalf.
The prisoners cannot fight for themselves without terrible consequences. They have only the vote and the strong will of their family members to save them. Too many people are in denial until disaster hits their own loved one. I doubt that we will see the present bills on the table for consideration in the future.
Typically the legislators are not in their offices on Fridays but the risk of veto is more likely to come from the Governor and they all see what is in the media. Writing to legislators is almost a total waste of time, as it is not unusual for them to get 8,000 or more letters a day from other voters. They read the newspapers, and the newspapers respond to large crowds of voters who have problems with taxpayer-financed institutions. That's how it all works, but not without your active presence and participation, especially with short notice and in an emergency.
The California nurses will be speaking at the rally about their risks, the mother of Timothy Souders is flying out after her mentally ill son was killed in prison and the video was shown twice this year on 60 Minutes. UNION family members will describe their experiences and issue pleas for help and support via speechettes and they deserve an audience, they deserve for you to be there and to bring others to help us make An Urgent Call for Compassion and Common Sense in Corrections
Prisoners are People Not Political Pawns - Epidemics Are Spreading Everywhere
Rev. B. Cayenne Bird
UNION,
P.O. Box 340371
Sacramento, Ca. 95834
rightor1@yahoo.com
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