Community, Commitment-Keepers, Common Causes, Comrads, Companions & Commandeerers
Delaware Online: COVID-19 case spike hitting Delaware prisons
I don’t commandeer movements. I’ve sacrificed for the good. I’ve received punishment for anything I stole. After I got released from the hole in 2008 I just went to school and work and then had to pay the price again when the law caught up with me after I tried to get ahead by committing another felony- thinking I was too smart for my own good.
I lost alot that I thought meant everything at that time. I don’t grade myself by what I have anymore but by what I do. We are not Human-Havings. We are Human-Beings and I am a Human-Doing everything I CAN to serve others.
3 challenging things I learned Friday night:
1. Men are being sent to the hole for asking for masks.
2. A 26 year old who has served 8 years and only has 6 months left on his sentence is still locked up.
3. A 15 year old girl is being tried as an adult for a gun charge. It wasn’t her gun but the gun was recovered from the car she was in with other Adolescents (wrong place at the wrong time).
And just this morning a Riverside resident whose husband is in James T. Vaughn Corrections in Smyrna Delaware told me that the water on his tier was shut off at 6PM Friday night.
I logged into the DOC Budget Hearing that was broadcast on Webex the Thursday before Thanksgiving and was lied to about the conditions in the prisons by the Commissioner after I made the only public comment.
Hearing from the families of the people imprisoned around the state last week via social media was enough for me to say something more must be done. We made noise with over one hundred people rallying and screaming for justice and it felt like one thousand cars honking horns for hours and I’m sorry but we must do more.
I do fear further retaliation on the men and women locked down is to come if we continue to make noise and I know they’re going to fight back too. I don’t want to see anyone hurt. I have an uncle who is a corrections officer in Delaware and when Stephen Floyd was killed in the line of duty at James T. Vaughn in 2017 I thought it might have been him.
I thank God that it wasn’t my family. We are not perfect. We are often prisoners of circumstance and victims of trauma ourselves. The conditions in the prisons here in Delaware are much worse than they were when the Delawareonline article shared above was published.
This email was sent by:
American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware
100 W. 10th Street, Suite 706
Wilmington DE, 19801
12/10/2020
As COVID-19 cases continue to be at all-time highs in Delaware, our correctional facilities are facing a crisis that advocates have warned about since March.
On December 7, the Department of Correction reported 574 positive cases in DOC facilities between incarcerated people, correctional staff, and contracted staff. Stakeholders have received reports of infirmary overflow, mail blocking, lack of hygiene items, and safety protocols not being followed every day since the numbers inside DOC facilities have started to climb again.
Eleven people have died from the virus under the care of the Department of Correction — the third-highest rate in the nation — and with current infection rates sky-rocketing, we know that number is in serious danger of rising quickly.
We need your help to save those lives.
We sent a letter to Governor Carney and DOC Commissioner DeMatteis asking them — again — to take necessary steps to protect those living and working in Delaware’s correctional facilities.
Show Governor Carney and Commissioner DeMatties that you care about what happens to the people living and working in our correctional facilities: send a letter asking them to act immediately on the recommendations we sent in our letter to reduce the spread and save the lives of incarcerated people and DOC staff.
Thank you for standing up for the people living and working in our prisons,
ACLU of Delaware
Davon D Marque Hall
@dmarquehall
@iamblackamerica
We all have to be strong and work together to plan and be strategic.
Whose expertise is this?
Raise your hand.
Together we are stronger than we are apart.
Who has money?
I don’t have alot so please raise your hand.
We must all be a part of this movement for the better treatment and release of men, women and children imprisoned across the state and call attention to the courts and corrections and the state officials perpetrating.
The ones we know who we call on like a Christian calls on Jesus were not in that budget hearing and that is a sad fact and I did not see any Friday night either.
We need our own media coverage, our own technology and equipment and our own leaders to stand together and back one another.
I ran for District 3 City Council to represent the men at Ganderhill and everyone effected by this flawed injustice system that is violent and criminal and takes lives everyday.
The 3 Solutions that we came up with as a team including Local Black Lives Matter and other Community leaders include
- Safety for those still locked down. Provide all people behind bars with everything needed to be safe in a public space.
2. Freedom for all the non-threatening with short-time especially for crimes committed at such a young age.
3. Fix the courts. Stop giving the most vulnerable populations of people (children, the poor, people with disabilities) unfair sentences.
—
“And the Glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be One, just as We are One”- John 17 : 22
WE ARE ALL REMARKABLE!
Attachments area
Recap and Look Forward After First Freedom (FREE THEM) Friday rally/march/protest at Howard R. Young
Preview YouTube video Conditions in the prisons in Delaware
Conditions in the prisons in Delaware
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