Dear Supporters in Massachusetts:
Thanks for all of the support and sharing you have been doing for this petition. Now in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, here is an urgent action that is needed on Beacon Hill right away.
Thank you,
Mary King
Calls are needed immediately urging your Massachusetts State Legislators to Support HD4963 An Act Regarding Decarceration and COVID-19.
THE VOTE IS SCHEDULED FOR TODAY March 27!!
THE LINK TO THE BILL IS BELOW:
YOUR ACTION IS NEEDED RIGHT AWAY.
An Act regarding Decarceration and COVID-19
https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/HD4963 (If this link doesn't work for you then copy and paste it in the URL space above)
Contact your legislators (Reps and Senators) and ask them to sign-on NOW. If you do not know who they are or how to contact them, go here: https://malegislature.gov/search/findmylegislator (If this link doesn't work for you then copy and paste it in the URL space above)
AFTER contacting your legislators, forward to others.
An Act regarding Decarceration and COVID-19
THIS IS EMERGENCY LEGISLATION JUST FILED BY REPS LINDSAY SABADOSA AND NIKA ELUGARDO.
HOUSE DOCKET, NO. 4963 FILED ON: 3/19/2020
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An excerpt from Prison Radio (forwarded on Sunday March 22nd) provides facts on why this legislation needs to be passed into law:
"All of our lives are at stake: guards, prisoners, and our loved ones both inside and outside.
We share a lot more than is often acknowledged. Guards are working class people, mostly from poor communities. They, too, spend their daily lives inside prisons, and they too suffer daily degradation and moral injury from their sustained contact with the carceral state.
Separation is an illusion. Now, today, during this burgeoning pandemic, our shared humanity is apparent.
Earlier this week, an investigator with the New York Department of Corrections died after testing positive for COVID-19.
Employees of state and federal prisons and jails in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York, California, New Hampshire, Georgia, New Jersey, and Alabama have also contracted the virus.
We are not two separate communities, “inside” and “outside” the prison. We are all one community, in one ecosystem. When a virus enters the prison, it spreads among prisoners and employees alike.
In this moment of crisis the prisons will act as an incubator for COVID-19. If we want to protect the entire country from this disease, we must empty the prisons.
Warehousing of people in overcrowded jails and prisons must end immediately. Advocates have been leading this work. Simply, many hundreds of thousands, should not even be in jail or prison. Now is the time for us all to take action!
More Calls to Action:
Allegheny, Pennsylvania: Join the Abolitionist Law Center to get Allegheny Jail shut down.
California: Call Newsom’s office to demand emergency decarceration! Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning at 9am.
The Justice Collaborative has letters you can send demanding the release of prisoners from their overcrowded facilities. These letters can be sent to every level of government from federal to local.
New Jersey- Drive to Save Lives Hudson Correctional Center
New York: Rapp Release Aging People in Prison
Everywhere you live, find your local decarcerate opportunity, from Hawaii to Tennessee.
Victories!
Los Angeles, California: LA county has just reduced its inmate population by 600, with more to come home soon.
NYC, New York: New York City is releasing those medically at risk from city jails. “In the next 48 hours, we will identify any inmates who need to be brought out because of either their own health conditions — if they have any pre-existing conditions, etc. — or because the charges were minor and we think it’s appropriate to bring them out in this context,” Bill De Blasio, Mayor of NYC.
Cuyahoga, Ohio: Cuyahoga County in Ohio has also released hundreds of prisoners.
Berkeley/Oakland, California: Alameda County released 300 people.
Santa Clara, California: Santa Clara County is reducing its jail population to 2700. Chicago, Illinois: Cook County Jail in Chicago has been ordered to be release folks.
Advocacy works.
More must and can be done. Every day that passes in an overcrowded prison heightens the risk and increases the casualties of COVID-19. "(forwarded on March 22, 2020).