I spoke with men incarcerated at Oregon State Penitentiary, who are stuck in overcrowded facilities in the fire zone + have repeatedly been pepper sprayed. They're begging for help.

Here's a short thread with audio from my prison calls, shared with their permission.

LISTEN

Parker, 23: "Pepper spray got on everyone, everyone was coughing and sneezing. I couldn't even take a drink of my water. There was so much in the air. I still have lasting effects. I was scared. I didn't think they would put us in that situation. DOC is supposed to protect us."

John, 44: "It's smoky in here. It's horrible in here. Some of these inmates are elderly, some have heart problems + respiratory problems. This is no place for them. What you're brewing is a perfect storm for violence and pandemonium. How do you plan on protecting these inmates?"

More from John, an evacuee to OSP: "Some inmates have COPD. They have heart conditions. They are in this smoke, and Covid is a potential death sentence. You've got them in a bunk six inches from the next guy. All it takes is one person to spread through the whole population."

Bryan, 32, said when he was hit by pepper spray he had to wash his face off in a sink: "It is a very very nasty agent. I got whiffs of it through the air in a room and my nose was running, my eyes were burning. My skin, it just burns. It's hard to breathe."

Bryan said guards are deploying pepper spray whenever fights break out: "You have a lot of people in here who had nothing to do with the violence that are just breathing it in because we're in an enclosed space in a chow hall. People with asthma are having a hard time breathing."

Bryan said he knows some people who are avoiding chow hall and meals altogether: "They're scared to go down there and just breathe in that agent. If they go down there and there's another fight and the OC spray is sprayed, it takes them 6-8 hours to regain normal breathing."

These men were evacuated to a prison that has had 143 Covid cases. At OSP, four different prison populations have since mixed due to fire evacuations. Advocates fear this will be a "superspreader" event worse than San Quentin in CA. Six have died of Covid so far in Oregon prisons

"I don't wanna be one of them. I don't want one of my friends [to die]. There's a large chunk of us within a year of release. It's going to be absolutely sad to know that a gentleman who was 6 months from release got Covid because of this + died, which is a strong possibility"

All of the folks who called me from behind bars said they recognized that retaliation was a risk, but that they wanted to speak out anyway because they are desperate for people to know how horrible the conditions are. They want the @OregonGovBrown to help and release more people.

Here's my story: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/14/oregon-prison-evacuations-pepper-spray-wildfires

also thank you to my wonderful filmmaker friend Chisa Hughes for turning my audio into video clips so I could tweet them