Protest Deaths at WI DOC

3099 E Washington Avenue, WI Department of Corrections, Madison, 10-11:30 A.M.

This Thursday a variety of anti-prison organizations invite you to join us in confronting the WI Department of Corrections (DOC) Central Office during the open section of the Committee on Inmate and Youth Deaths (COIYD).

We will demand information from COIYD on recommendations they’ve made to the DOC in recent years, and how the DOC has changed policies in response. The COIYD will likely refuse to release any such information (they have in the past).

Then we will then gather for a brief news conference in the lobby or outside the DOC where we will share what we do know about some recent incidents as well as trends of frequent and preventable deaths occurring inside DOC facilities.

Speakers and more details to be determined.

Dress for the weather. It will be cold with a chance of snow.

MORE ABOUT COIYD:

In April of 2001 the DOC created this committee to “provide the
Department of Corrections Secretary and the facilities with an objective review of inmate and youth deaths so as to help the facilities and the Department of Corrections continually improve
the quality of care.”

In recent years, organizers have attended COIYD meetings and found that the committee is mostly composed of DOC employees, doesn’t seem to do much oversight and refuses to share their recommendations or any DOC responses, accountability or policy changes with the public.

We’ve asked the committee questions and they claim all the information is restricted by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other laws protecting the privacy of the dead. We told them we’re not interested in specific people’s private information, but in the COIYD’s recommendations and the DOC’s corresponding policy changes, which they ought to discuss at the public part of their meetings, under WI public meetings law.

They told us the only way we can get such information is to file public records requests. So we did, and only received inadequate and evasive responses. We’re filed more specific requests, citing records they referenced in the little information they did release. We’re awaiting their response to this request.

At the last COIYD meeting (September 2018) we specifically demanded that they share more information at their next meeting. This week, we are asking you to come with to the open session of this committee meeting and back our demand for transparency from the DOC about people who die while held in their facilities.

ABOUT THE NEWS CONFERENCE:

If the COIYD and the DOC continue to refuse transparency, we will report what we do know to the public. We are in touch with family members of two prisoners who recently died while under “observation” (suicide watch) at Columbia Correctional Institution (CCI), as well as with prisoners who witnessed these deaths. If these family members cannot make it, we will share whatever information they wish to release.

We’ll also share prisoner witness stories about an incident in CCI at the end of October where CO Russel Goldsmith, CO Michael Thompson and others attacked a prisoner and then faked that prisoner’s suicide attempt to justify the assault. https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime/columbia-correctional-institution-officers-charged-in-incident-of-alleged-inmate/article_c599077c-e8bd-54e1-ba7d-661ed8005e23.html

The CLOSEmsdf campaign has tracked at least seventeen deaths over 17 years at Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility. We suspect more occurred, but were hidden from public view.

Outside of these violent deaths, death by medical neglect and excessive incarceration are routine in the DOC. We will speak about reforms such as compassionate release, executive clemency, and overhauling the parole board that can reduce the frequency of such unnecessary and cruel deaths in the DOC facilities.

Call to Action

In following the example set by SPARC in calling upon the board of regents to fire the administrative staff at UWSP, and the Portage County Eco-Socialists calling for Greg and Bernie’s resignation, the UWSP Eco-Socialists have taken it upon ourselves to take action.

As students at this university (who are largely pursuing degrees in COLS), and as student who have grown close to many faculty members who now face termination, we want to do everything we can to preserve the integrity of this institution and bring about an end to this act of injustice.

On Wednesday, December 5th, we will be holding a meeting at 7pm in CPS room #210 at UW Stevens Point that we hope you will all attend. At this meeting, we will be filming personal testimonials from UWSP faculty, students and Stevens Point community members not only endorsing the call for for an administrative change but to speak to the importance of the humanities and social sciences at this university. We will then compile these statements into a larger video (along with a petition) which we will distribute on social media platforms and send to the board of regents, the administration themselves, the press, and the community at large.

1-866-832-1560

ALL DAY ACTIONS DECEMBER 3, 2018 AT THE STATE CAPITOL IN MADISON! RALLIES AT 12:30 P.M. AND 5:30 P.M. 

SOLIDARITY SINGERS AT 12 NOON

Shining a Light on the Wisconsin GOP Power Grab

BRING SIGNS, BANNERS, NOISE AND DIRECT ACTION!

____________________

Gov. Scott Walker:
(608) 266-1212, govgeneral@wisconsin.gov, walker.wi.gov/contact-us.

CLOSEmsdf Picket (December)

901 N 9th Street, Milwaukee County Courthouse, 11:30 A.M. – 1:30 P.M.

Why do we picket?
1. To educate people on the inhumane conditions at MSDF
2. To memorialize the 17 people who have died in MSDF since it opened.
3. To let WI taxpayers know that each day someone spends in MSDF for a crimeless rule violation it costs us $100.84 vs $40 to treat that person in the community where their job, housing & support systems stay secure.
4. Former Governer Tommy Thompson has said building MSDF was a mistake. Its time the state corrects that error.

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Please join us during the lunch hour on December 20 on the 10th Street side of the courthouse. Partway through the picket we might march over to the state office building on 6th and Wells, where the DOC has offices.

Parking is metered or nearby public lots. If you don’t mind walking a couple blocks, its often easier to find free parking on the other side of the freeway.

We’ve been holding down this monthly picket since the spring of 2017. A coalition of Milwaukee organizations have joined up to shut down MSDF. This facility is a building within a building, where captives have no access to fresh air or sunlight. They are triple bunked in lockdown cells for over 20 hours a day. There is no outdoor rec. The facility was built and is run using funds that should be used for diversionary programs to keep people out of jail, instead it’s being used to keep them on supervision under arbitrary and vindictive probation and parole officers.

We are organizing this protest on every 23rd (unless that lands on a weekend, when there’s less foot traffic). The National Religious Campaign Against Torture has called for actions on the 23rd of every month (to bring attention to 23 hour a day lockdowns). http://www.nrcat.org/about-us/take-action-current-legislation/563-together-to-end-solitary

Can’t come?

SIGN THE PETITION!!!!

If you haven’t signed the petition yet yourself, please do here: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/its-time-to-close-milwaukee-secure-detention-facility-msdf

https://tinyurl.com/yc79gv5b

Listen to the Sat. Dec. 1, 2018 edition of the Pan-African Journal: Worldwide Radio Broadcast hosted by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire. The program features a tribute to the life, times and contributions of former Republic of Cuba President Fidel Castro on the second anniversary of his transition. Join our audience throughout the United States, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Spain, Germany, France, Norway, Australia, Ivory Coast, Libya, Morocco, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa and other geo-political regions throughout the globe in their engagement with this audio news magazine.

DECEMBER 6. 2018: Green Bay: Licencias para Todxs / Driver Licenses for All

DECEMBER 8, 2018: Racine: Licencias para Todxs / Driver Licenses for All

DECEMBER 15, 2018: Waukesha: Licencias para todxs / Driver Licenses for All

https://tinyurl.com/y73qqs2v

Developments in the South and the worsening economic situation portends instability

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Results from the Mississippi Senatorial runoff elections where Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith defeated Democratic candidate Mike Espy by an 11 percentage points margin illustrates the formidable obstacles placed before the opposition party within the United States body politic.

Hyde-Smith was captured on videotape making a macabre joke about being invited to a public hanging. Mississippi is one of the most dreaded states in the country as it relates to racial violence and terror.

Untold numbers of lynchings and other pseudo-legal forms of torture and execution have been carried out in the state since the conclusion of the Civil War over 150 years ago. During the period of Reconstruction after the war, southern planters resisted vehemently the empowerment of African Americans.

Other factors involved in the Hyde-Smith and Espy race was the revelation that the Republican candidate had attended an all-white segregationist academy during the 1970s. These schools were established as private institutions to avoid the federally-mandated desegregation of public education in the aftermath of the Brown v. Topeka Supreme Court ruling of 1954 and subsequent decisions by lower courts and state administrative structures.

Yet this was clearly not enough to convince the majority of whites in Mississippi that such a politician would be bad for the state. The notions of a “new south” seemed to have faded into oblivion of past decades in the aftermath of the turbulent 1960s.

Adding insult to injury was the appearance of nooses on trees outside the capitol building in Jackson on November 26, just one day prior to the runoff election. There were also hand written signs posted which said that things have not changed in Mississippi since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s…

Racism and state repression is on the incline in the U.S. This is compounded by a worsening economic situation as exemplified by the proliferation of sub-standard wage labor; a widening gap between the rich and poor; a burgeoning federal budget deficit due to the corporate tax cuts imposed by the Republican-dominated Senate and House at the aegis of President Trump; the levelling of tariffs against foreign states creating havoc in the agricultural and industrial sectors of the economy; as well as the recently-announced plant closings by General Motors leaving tens of thousands of workers to a future of joblessness and uncertainty.

What is needed is an independent political party of the workers and oppressed in the U.S. which can speak in its own name based upon proletarian economic interests. A party of the workers and oppressed being brought into existence would end imperialist wars abroad and the super-exploitation of workers and the oppressed inside the country.

The Democrats cannot effectively represent the masses in this period of heightening international tensions since the leadership is pro-war and follows the dictates of Wall Street. Only a socialist-oriented party can put forward a program of struggle aimed at seizing the commanding levers of the political structures and national economy, to institute the monumental changes needed to liberate the people from the imperatives of capitalism and imperialism in the U.S. and worldwide.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.