It was Tamir Rice’s death in 2014 that got my colleague and I to stand out in front of the college where we taught, with signs, protesting the death by police of yet another black man. 

#BlackLivesMatter had been a rallying cry for some time in cities across the country and in some smaller towns, but we felt at our community college, the students, immersed in their own struggles, needed to be reminded about a movement that was shaking up the nation. Just a few months before, Eric Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe” had been blasted across our consciosuness. His name too was on our signs. 

A famous video had caught the horrific death of Garner as he was thrown to the ground by Officer Daniel Panteleo.

                                   A screenshot of the tackled Garner by police

It seemed impossible to believe that the Staten Island grand jury did not indict NYPD police officer Daniel Pantaleo on December 3, but then I am a white woman and have not lived with such racist attacks on my body, my family, or my community. Crowds in New York City and San Francisco gathered in protest. I joined thousands in downtown Boston who gathered on the Boston Common, and then marched in the downtown area. Many blocked traffic, trying desperately to bring America’s attention to the injustice of this.

The documentary, American Trial: The Eric Garner Story also tries to show the injustice of this time in our recent history. It calls itself “an unscripted courtroom drama” as it presents the case against NYPD officer Panteleo. It is effective in building tension, making us, the audience want a verdict of “Guilty” but it does not provide an answer. Instead after the trial, it invites the audience to make its own decision. I found this a bit unsatisfying but it’s a good marketing tool, driving an audience to decide.

If you watch the film on the 20-21st, you can vote on the verdict via online ballot here. Results will be announced May 21 during a Livestream Q&A with director Roee Messinger and Esaw Snipes Garner, Garner’s widow. Otherwise, the film has a limited run and you can find event listings here.

But in spite of its open ended approach to the trial that never happened, the documentary is worth watching. It presents an incredibly realistic trial and uses defense attorneys, retired cops, one of the medical experts who consulted on the case, a good friend of Garner’s and a very honest and heart-broken Esaw Snipes Garner. An actor, Anthony Altieri, plays Pantaleo and is fairly neutral intentionally. You don’t hate him exactly but you see how he is part of a larger system that has no interest in justice.

The documentary reminds us of the ways the criminal legal system twists words, justifies actions, and turns truth on its head so easily. Especially when it involves the life of an unarmed Black young man.

Is NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo guilty as charged? Is this really a question?

Today, May 20th, would have been Michael Brown’s twenty-fourth birthday. 

Image courtesy of Change.org

A story that has not gained much coverage this week was mentioned by Michael Cox, director of policy for Black and Pink, Boston. In a press conference held by a coalition including Mass Public Health, Cox was the only participant who mentioned the strike for hunger that is occuring at North Central Correctional Instition in Gardner, Massachusetts (NCCI-Gardner).

According to Deeper than Water, a group dedicated to exposing human rights abuses in prisons, on May 5, more than 40 men refused to eat, protesting the lockdown that had been institututed by the Department of Correction (DOC) across the prison population. Carol Mici, DOC commissioner, said, as part of the Prisoners’ Legal Services’ class-action suit to decarcerate in the time of COVID-19, that she institututed the lockdown in response to the state’s “shelter-in-place order. The lockdown, as of the strike had been for 32 days, where prisoners were locked in for 23 1/2 out of 24 hours. 

Documented by Shawn Fisher of Old Colony Correctional Center (OCCC) here, and at DigBoston, the lockdown, Fisher shed light on the isolation, fear, anger and frustration for prisoners who were forced into this controversial response to the coronavirus.

Prisoners at Gardner said the food was not meeting basic needs, and refused trays slid under their door. They issued demands according to Deeper than Water: 

1. Free them all. All those who currently have the power to release people (Governor Charlie Baker, DOC Commissioner Carol Mici, district attorneys, parole and probation boards, MA Department of Public Health) need to exercise their power to decarcerate immediately.
   
   
2.  Until they are freed, provide healthier, more substantial, and more varied food options. Right now, the DOC is only offering meal options that are woefully inadequate in portion size and alarmingly high in carbohydrates and sodium content. These meals put those who are incarcerated at risk of developing or worsening chronic diseases.
   
   
3. Until they are freed, allow those who are incarcerated time to go outside into the yard. Since April 3, prisoners at NCCI-Gardner have been locked in their units 24/7 with no fresh air. Allowing them to go into the yard once a day for 30 minutes would not present further risk of disease spread, since they would remain with the same people in their units regardless. Being able to breathe fresh air would only improve the health and well-being of those incarcerated.

After the strike began, one of the organizers, Wayland X Coleman and others were sent to the hole (solitary), possibly as punishment for the strike. As of May 7, two prisoners remained in solitary confinement including Jeremy Woodley.

Hunger strikes are in the tradition of prisoner protests when injustice is so intolerable that refusing to eat becomes the only viable option. In California in 2013, 29,000 prisoners went on strike to protest conditions in the prison including the use of solitary confinement. They did get action on their demands and ended the strike after two months.

On May 8, DOC Commissioner Mici posted a notice in all Massachusetts prisons that people who are incarcerated would be allowed back outside into the yard “starting next week.” According to Shawn Fisher, on Monday, OCCC “started letting 10 guys go to the court yard for one hour of recreation.” He had no idea if this would continue.

      At a time when anti-immigrant vitriol substitutes for US immigration policy,
     No Option  But North deftly blends heartbreaking accounts of the journey
     north with cogent insights into the systemic causes that make the trek north
     an almost impossible option if you’re poor and from south of the border.
     Essential reading for anyone who cares about the human rights implications
     of US immigration politics.
                             ―Antonio Villaraigosa, 41st Mayor of Los Angeles

At a time when the only thing anyone is talking about is COVID-19, I took a break to read Kelsey Freeman’s astute look at the struggles of migrants to cross the border, recently published by IGPublishing. 

“Migrants will risk everything because their alternate options for survival and decency have run out,” writes Freeman, and with urgency, she shows us portraits of the people who want more than anything to escape the violence in their countries and make better lives for their children.

There’s Roberto who had to pay “rent” to gangs because he had a business before he “look[ed] for a border.” There’s Evelia who made it with her children to Oregon through detention centers and immigration authorities, but lost her husband, who became one of the “disappeared.” There are those that hop the train, and those that get caught, sent back, and try to come again and again to the US seeking a better life.

Some of the stories are brutal and important to share especially for the author who admits her privilege and attempts to use her own experiences (sometimes sucessful, sometimes not) to bring us into the pain of what the migrants endure. The kidnapping of Abrahám seems impossible to understand when so little money could have ever come from him but Freeman tells it unsentimentally as she shows how powerful the drug cartels are. The fact that Fernando was tortured on his journey north, needed to take six months to recover, and returned again to cross the Sonoran Desert shows the desperation felt by so many. As Freeman writes, “Migration, regardless of the numerous perils it held, was still his best choice….The more they try, the more likely they are to get through.”

The book also touches on the brutality of Donald Trump’s policies and his horrendous denial of humanity of anyone who seeks asylum in the United States. Although the book was written before Trump’s complete failure as a president during the coronavirus pandemic, it is easy to see how statements he has made (such as how loss of life is insignificant) are similar to his administration’s cruelty towards migrants. In a news conference in March, 2020, Trump said that a final US coronavirus death toll somewhere in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 people would be a sign that his administration has “done a very good job.” And equally cruel, according to Truthout, the courts are still not freeing migrant children, in spite of COVID-19.

Freeman’s writing is best when she is deeply moved by the people in the community of Mexico where she has gone to teach, and with a Fulbright grant comes to write this book, embarking on learning about the migrants and their lives. 

          There was beauty in the woman who spent her days sitting outside her corner
          store, her pudgy legs sprawled out over the edge of the sidewalk…There was
         beauty in the house a few doors down that left its doors open so that the
         chickens could roam freely into the street. And there was beauty in the old
         man who always seemed to be asleep in his chair, his chin folded into his
         collar.

It’s a book worth reading to get a glimpse into a world many of us are far from. Freeman’s intention is to share stories, as she says, “not because migrants are incapable of powerfully crafting their own narratives” (i.e. The American Dirt controversy). Freeman’s aim is to call for a “more sensible, decent approach to immigration policy,” which as she says, and this reader firmly believes, should not fall only on immigrants, but on all of us.

At today’s press conference, Commonwealth Magazine asked Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker about how he is doing with prisons. Here’s how he answered (It starts at 45.12). 

Q. “I was just curious, almost every day I get something, a lawsuit, or advocates asking for the release of prisoners, or more testing of prisoners. How do you think it’s going? I see that there are 7 deaths and several hundred cases, but [INAUDIBLE] it doesn’t seem as severe as the nursing home situation. How do you think the state prison system is doing in dealing with COVID-19?”

A. “Well the state prison system spent a tremendous amount of time with the public health folks in developing their strategies, both for, uh, what went on inside the prisons and what went on outside the prisons as well, before people showed up for work and all the rest. Um, I think the long story short is that they are in constant contact with the Department of Public Health around the policies and protocols that they’re using, whether it’s related to hand sanitizer or uh, testing protocols or almost everything they’re doing with respect to disinfectant and visitation and everything else. And I think that’s going to continue to be the way they go about doing their work. Um, but this was obviously something that from the very beginning we took really seriously. The conversations between the Public Health and the Department of Corrections literally started, those might have started in early March, right? (to Secretary Sudders)”

Q: “Do you think they’re handling it pretty well?”

A: “Um, I think generally speaking they are following the guidance that they are getting and have benefitted from that. But I think there’s always going to be room for improvement on all this stuff, and I think we constantly try to make adjustments based on the data and information that we gather as we go.”

___________________

And no, we’re not doing fine. Prisoners’ Legal Services, the Committee for Public Counsel Services, The American Civil Liberties Union of Mass., and Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys have all sued the Governor, the Sherriffs the Department of Correction, Parole, and/or the Executive Office of Public Safety. Read my article about it all here.