Today in Honor of My Mother, I participated in the Cages Kill Freedom Rally in Santa Cruz organized by Sin Barras. Sunny in the low 70s. I stumbled upon the event downtown. Emotional speeches. No police presence. About 50 people started marching in the street and I helped push the Food Not Bombs cart with a bum wheel carrying a pot of beans and rice, old baked goods and organic juice. At least the cart veered to the Left. We obstructed traffic and upset motorists yelled obscenities swerving around us. While we protested in the back of the county jail, female inmates banged from their cells. We clapped and cheered. We Love You. Hang in Their Sisters. The windows were painted military green, but we could see a hand or two waving. Two Santa Cruz County deputies watched from a safe distance, one Latino and the other white. More testimonies of personal incarceration and the reading of a solidarity letter from a Haiti resistance group. I will be back at the clock tower next Saturday to help wheel the food cart. End the Prison Industrial Complex! Power to the People! sinbarras.org/cages-kill-freedom-rally-january-24/ sinbarras.org/tag/santa-cruz/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cages Kill Freedom Rally in Santa Cruz organized by Sin Barras January 24, 2015 | Noon at the Santa Cruz Downtown Clock Tower At least 6 people have died in the county jail while in the hands of the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department and California Forensics Medical Group (CFMG) since August 2012. In April 2013, Sin Barras organized a historic march and speakout, highlighting sheriff violence faced by people inside the County Jail that inspired the Santa Cruz County Grand Jury to investigate the jail’s deadly conditions. The grand jury report named the April 6th demonstration as a primary catalyst for the investigation. In September 2014, the Grand Jury released its Final Report, which included recommendations to improve physical and mental health services in the jail. Nearly all of the research was met with utter denial from the Sheriff‘s Department and CFMG, continuing a trend of disrespect for the community and confirming that they operate with little to no accountability. Sin Barras is organizing a demonstration on January 24th to demand immediate medical and safety measures be met to reduce harm faced by those presently incarcerated. We demand that the County Board of Supervisors cancel its contract with CFMG and refuse to participate in the current wave of county jail expansion. These deaths are an act of collective punishment against people who are most in need of aid, and who are consistently denied community-based resources and drug treatment. While we fight for immediate solutions, we do so with a commitment to dismantling the prison system once and for all, brick by brick, wall by wall. The deaths in the jail are caused by the same pattern of unaccountability that recently allowed Officer Darren Wilson to walk free after killing Michael Brown. From Ferguson to Santa Cruz, it is clear that our criminal justice system targets the most vulnerable members of this society: women, trans and queer people, people of color, people with disabilities, the poor, and the homeless. Without overwhelming pressure from our communities, this pattern will continue.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 01:04:31 +0000
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