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PLEASE READ: Every day, I speak to people who are held captive by @MDCCorrections. Every day, I talk to their loved ones. I cannot continue to silently bear witness to the cruelty that people endure in our jails. @KathyFndzRundle, as your constituent, I have a message for you. 1/
@KathyFndzRundle, I'm sick of hearing you justify your failure to take swift and mass action by paying lip service to “public safety.” The safety of incarcerated ppl IS public safety. When your prosecutors oppose their release, you subject them to utter cruelty in our jails. 2/
@fempowermia bonded out 10 ppl who didn't have $100-$500 to buy their own freedom. We have many more requests pending. We are talking to sick ppl with technical violations of probation who can't get out b/c you have been nonresponsive or opposed reinstatement of their bail. 3/
These examples are important b/c they demonstrate that your public statements are full of hot air. BUT, we refuse to make distinctions between “nonviolent” and “violent” offenses, people with money bonds and people whose bonds were revoked. All people deserve dignity and care. 4/
Every time you oppose release, you let people remain in jails that subject them to abuse and humiliation. The suffering you cause reverberates through families, through communities. We can't “stay safe together” when you separate parents from children, people from communities. 5/
@KathyFndzRundle, please read the following accounts of the conditions that you are forcing people to suffer through in our county jails. 6/
FILTH: I visited my client at TGK, where I found her laying on a cot with flies buzzing around her, the stench of urine making me want to vomit. She was paralyzed & had sores from not being moved. She was incarcerated for wks, until I found someone to pay $150 for her freedom. 7/
Holding cells smell like “human sweat” and “piss,” with “flies and bugs.” People don’t have anything personal to clean with, nothing to wipe down their bunks, no gloves. “I would see poop in the showers from people defecating, and it wouldn't get cleaned up for days.” 8/
“They don’t clean the showers [in the medical and psych ward] at all. Guards put different inmates in & out of those showers, make them use the bathroom in [the shower]. Then they bring new inmates to that same shower without even cleaning it." 9/
ABUSE. People are at the complete mercy of guards who humiliate and sometimes injure them. I met someone who was beaten black and blue by jail guards right outside of the view of cameras, because he misunderstood a direction that was given to him. 10/
I talked to another person who was punched in the stomach by a guard, because he couldn't stop crying when the guard told him to. Said a parent of someone else, “There is a dose of evil, a cheap thrill that they get from the power to hurt someone, to humiliate someone.” 11/
EXTORTION. @MDCCorrections provides insufficient meals, effectively expecting people to fill their stomachs by buying food from overpriced commissary and iCare packages. The lucky ones have family members who can afford to feed them. The unlucky ones trade services for food. 12/
I’ve talked to people who, when laundry machines are broken in their cell, they hand wash their cellmates' clothes in exchange for food, sometimes for months. Yesterday, I talked to someone who trades his meager meals for phone calls to talk to his loved ones on the outside. 13/
SEPARATION. @Fempower is finding housing for someone locked up for 5 mo, whose motion for release to house arrest was finally granted. During this time, DCF put his baby in foster care, b/c his caretaker was gone. Why wait to release til after he lost his house and his child? 14/
I could go on & on abt the cruelty of incarceration. @MDCCorrections says they’re treating ppl right, but we know the truth. A mother told me, “These are the crimes that call out to God for vengeance. There is a special place for those who prey on the weak, the imprisoned.” 15/
@KathyFndzRundle, if the humanity of people who are incarcerated, the depravity of the jail system run by @MDCCorrections does not move you to release people immediately and en masse, never forget, every person who is incarcerated is someone’s child, is loved by someone. 16/
Their partners, siblings, and children are calling us, crying for the release of their loved ones in response to COVID-19. We are organizing ourselves and the loved ones of people your office has advocated to incarcerate. Remember who has the power to vote you out. 17/
