Dear friends,
The images show people in custody assisting others to obtain medical care in the absence of staff, and of
a man trapped in a decontamination shower for about 24 hours before he was later removed on a gurney due to self-harm.
In addition, pictures of rotting food and crumbling facilities confirm the reports of federal monitors and other visitors to the island.
Let your DA know that you expect them to keep people out of Rikers unless there is no alternative to incarceration. This action is ready-made.
Once again, the conflict over the use of solitary confinement is in the news. The Corrections Commissioner, Louis Molina, insists that there is no solitary confinement in Rikers facilities, which he said accounted for the uptick in violent incidents.
In fact, there are various examples of solitary-by-another-name, including ‘restrictive housing’ and ‘punitive segregation’.
This week, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams introduced a bill to ban solitary confinement and
provide individuals in custody of the Department of Correction due process protections prior to being placed in restrictive housing or continued use of restraints.
Williams and other advocates noted that there were a number of people who recently committed suicide after being held in isolation.
Ask your city council rep to support Int 0549-2022 to end solitary confinement and protect the rights of people who are incarcerated.
The situation of corrections officers will not improve until conditions in the jails improve.
I want to follow up on a few labor-related issues. One concerns home care workers, who are being cheated by insurance companies out of a small raise that was promised to them.
CDPAANYS, an organization that represents people who want to direct their own care, reports that about $200 million of public Medicaid funds has been handed off to insurance companies that pay the wages of care workers, but the Governor has not required them to pass along the funds to workers as a wage increase.
This labor abuse cannot continue.
Join a rally and march in lower Manhattan Friday morning to stop insurers from stealing state funds intended for home care workers and providers. RSVP here.
Pregnant workers in the US face impossible choices between their income and their health because of a lack of labor protections. These folks are often
in low-wage, physically-demanding jobs living paycheck to paycheck,” explained Dina Bakst, [co-president of A Better Balance]. “They want to work, but they also want to be able to follow doctors’ orders and protect their health.”
Call on your Senators to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. If you’re in NYS, add a comment to tell Schumer to bring the legislation to a vote! This quick action is from Moms Rising.
And here’s a repeat action, on behalf of models and other fashion workers:
Tell your NYS representatives that models, stylists, makeup artists, hair stylists, influencers, and other creative artists deserve basic labor protections.
I started today talking about people who are incarcerated and I’d like to bring today’s post full-circle.
In case you missed it, read ‘Slavery by any name is wrong’: the push to end forced labor in prisons.
The piece introduces a man who realized that he had earned millions of dollars for Corcraft, a manufacturing division of New York State Correctional Services, by sewing sheets and pillowcases for as little as 17 cents per hour. He is now a prison reformer.
A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union found about 800,000 prisoners out of the 1.2 million in state and federal prisons are forced to work, generating a conservative estimate of $11 billion annually in goods and services while average wages range from 13 cents to 52 cents per hour. Five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas – force prisoners to work without pay.
This human rights abuse and wage theft is possible only because of the exception tucked into the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states that
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Join the campaign to #End the Exception and pass the Abolition Amendment to end legalized slavery.
with love,
L