![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athousanderrorsvia https://ift.tt/38bHmxP
exigencelost:
exigencelost:
exigencelost:
Someday a child will learn about this year and ask “but if there was an epidemic killing people, and crowded spaces made it spread faster, why didn’t they open the prisons and detention centers and let the people inside go home? why would they leave people in there to die?” and their teacher or parent will feel the way we do, when a child asks how slavery or the Holocaust was allowed to happen: unable to explain in any way that makes sense, and trapped in the knowledge that history cannot forgive us
This is not normal. Mass captivity is not normal. A structure premised on the assumption that maintaining that captivity is more important than anything, more important than preserving life, is not normal. Writing people off in the millions is not normal. We’ve made it normal. We’ve suspended the basic human impulse for community and decency, but that suspension won’t last forever. The prison won’t exist forever, and when it’s gone, our grandchildren will not be able to understand how we could do this.
70% of the inmates at Lompoc Federal Correctional Institute in California tested positive for COVID-19 last week.
70%. Seventy. Percent.
OUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL NOT BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND HOW WE COULD DO THIS.
I keep trying to write something here about the outbreak in San Quentin* and I keep having to stop because my heart is breaking. I can’t remember a time in my adult life when I have felt this afraid. Someone I love is in San Quentin. He hasn’t called in two weeks; we’re pretty sure the prison’s gone into lockdown. If he gets COVID and dies from it, it could be without us ever hearing his voice again.
Like I said, I’m finding it hard to write about this, so I’m just going to link the article above and say, if you’re in the United States, whatever state you’re in, call your governor right now and tell them “Let everyone out right now.” Use the Justice Collaborative’s resources.
We have two choices: we release at least half of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States right now, or we watch tens of thousands of them die, and then we watch hundreds of thousands more people die when the second wave of the epidemic strikes us from the prisons which it will do because that is how epidemiology works but I should not have to mention that because the people inside the prisons are people and their lives have fucking value whether they endanger the rest of us or not.
And I will say this part again, because this is what a fucking death camp looks like when it happens in your backyard, and your great-granddaughter will know it even if you don’t:
OUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL NOT BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND HOW WE COULD DO THIS.
*As of June 25 the number is up to 505 cases, not counting staff. The article linked is a couple days old but the more recent articles have paywalls. The case numbers are doubling every few days.
(Your picture was not posted)
exigencelost:
exigencelost:
exigencelost:
Someday a child will learn about this year and ask “but if there was an epidemic killing people, and crowded spaces made it spread faster, why didn’t they open the prisons and detention centers and let the people inside go home? why would they leave people in there to die?” and their teacher or parent will feel the way we do, when a child asks how slavery or the Holocaust was allowed to happen: unable to explain in any way that makes sense, and trapped in the knowledge that history cannot forgive us
This is not normal. Mass captivity is not normal. A structure premised on the assumption that maintaining that captivity is more important than anything, more important than preserving life, is not normal. Writing people off in the millions is not normal. We’ve made it normal. We’ve suspended the basic human impulse for community and decency, but that suspension won’t last forever. The prison won’t exist forever, and when it’s gone, our grandchildren will not be able to understand how we could do this.
70% of the inmates at Lompoc Federal Correctional Institute in California tested positive for COVID-19 last week.
70%. Seventy. Percent.
OUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL NOT BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND HOW WE COULD DO THIS.
I keep trying to write something here about the outbreak in San Quentin* and I keep having to stop because my heart is breaking. I can’t remember a time in my adult life when I have felt this afraid. Someone I love is in San Quentin. He hasn’t called in two weeks; we’re pretty sure the prison’s gone into lockdown. If he gets COVID and dies from it, it could be without us ever hearing his voice again.
Like I said, I’m finding it hard to write about this, so I’m just going to link the article above and say, if you’re in the United States, whatever state you’re in, call your governor right now and tell them “Let everyone out right now.” Use the Justice Collaborative’s resources.
We have two choices: we release at least half of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States right now, or we watch tens of thousands of them die, and then we watch hundreds of thousands more people die when the second wave of the epidemic strikes us from the prisons which it will do because that is how epidemiology works but I should not have to mention that because the people inside the prisons are people and their lives have fucking value whether they endanger the rest of us or not.
And I will say this part again, because this is what a fucking death camp looks like when it happens in your backyard, and your great-granddaughter will know it even if you don’t:
OUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL NOT BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND HOW WE COULD DO THIS.
*As of June 25 the number is up to 505 cases, not counting staff. The article linked is a couple days old but the more recent articles have paywalls. The case numbers are doubling every few days.
(Your picture was not posted)
