So, Covid enters the prison…we warned of this. We lobbied to free people…yet not one precautionary or compassionate release across this whole damned country…wow, it’s really like we are disposable humans…and while I am here….

For those of you consoling yourself that this person with Covid was isolated, I want you to consider how every man and woman inside is feeling right now…

knowing that prison health is completely unreliable and totally inadequate and ill equipped to manage an outbreak inside

And how they feel knowing that like the cruise ship, prisons are a vector for infectious diseases....

& knowing that people in prison form a very vulnerable population just by who we are & where we are located…&because people in prison have a much older health age, &the health problems we face, are substantial - diabetes, asthma, and cardiovascular disease are all high-risk...

...comorbidities for Covid-19 and multimorbidity is normative among people in prison

Prisons and other custodial settings ARE an integral part of the public health response to COVID-19, so what can we do? We can decarcerate. We can decarcerate even as the pandemic appears to be easing in some states…because it’s one way to prevent another death in custody,

...the only way, actually. Because this system kills, and it kills us disproportionately.

But if all of that misery and suffering isn’t enough, and you don’t care about my fellow brothers and sisters in cages because, as many of you are fond of saying, “if they hadn’t done the crime, they would not now be doing the time”…

I want you to know that every single day of every single week, 25,000 men and women across this country move in and out of the prisons into your neighborhoods. They’re called correctional services officers. Covid-19 doesn’t stop at the prison gates,

if there’s an outbreak inside, they will be the unwitting smugglers of the disease to you on the outside...

Do the human thing and stand with us and call to free them.