In Covid-hit India, where are the women? In Byculla Women’s Jail, awaiting trial, awaiting death

February 8, 2022 by 6 Comments

When Covid hit India, the reports, and for some expectation, were that the State would consider pandemic measures, such as the need for social distancing, and would reduce the incarcerated populations. To no one’s great surprise, that did not happen generally, and in particular it did not happen in women’s jails and prisons. For example, the state of Maharashtra has 60 central and district jails. Of them, one, Byculla Women’s Jail, is the only one dedicated for women and children, but that doesn’t mean the conditions are in any way better. Byculla Women’s Jail has always been an overcrowded hellhole for women and children.

But first, let’s consider the national situation. The most recent National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s annual Prison Statistics of India looks at 2020. It finds, first, that, between 2015 and 2020, the prison population increased by 16.4%. In 2020, the number of undertrial prisoners increased by 11.7%. In 2020, there were 1427 women prisoners with 1628 children. 1184 were undertrial, with 1345 children. 214 convicted, w 246 children. Where are the women? In prison, awaiting trial. Occupancy rate for women in all jails at national level was 72.2%, but in many states the rate was much higher. 20,046 women were held in jail, of whom 15.4% were in women’s jails. The number of women in women’s jails increased 3.7% from 2015 – 2020; in Other Jails, 14.2%. Between 2015 and 2020, the number of convicted incarcerated people decreased by 16.1% while the number of undertrial inmates increased by 31.8%. Again, where are the women? In prison, awaiting trial.

In 2020, 4,83,585 were incarcerated: 4,64,260 men, 19,255 women, 70 transgenders were confined in various Indian jails at the end of the year 2020. Of that 4,83,585 population 3,68,381 were remand, awaiting trial. 96% are undertrial. Incarcerated women are disproportionately, overwhelmingly undertrial.

Finally, in 2020, 1,291,504 people awaiting trial were released. In 2019, that number was 1,606,731. So much for pandemic concerns.

Byculla Women’s Jail was at 101.5% of capacity, in the midst of the ferocious first wave that hit India, and Mumbai in particular, where Byculla is located.  On March 31, 2020, held 352 women. Its capacity is 200. That’s 176% occupancy rate.  Last September, when Covid raged through Byculla, the jail held close to 300 women. According to activist Sudha Bharadwaj, recently released, sort of, on bail from Byculla, her unit housed 75 women. It had a maximum capacity of 35. Women slept side by side by side on the floor, each on a mat the “size of a coffin. Overcrowding becomes a source of fights and tensions. There’s a queue for everything – food, toilets.” 24% of the women in Sudha Bharadwaj’s unit were infect with Covid: “The judiciary should consider decongesting our jails more seriously. Even during the pandemic most people did not get interim bail to return to their families.” In April 2021, Byculla accounted for 33% of the Covid cases in Mumbai’s five jails.

Amidst a pandemic and despite promises to reduce the incarcerated populations, why is Byculla Women’s Jail a death trap? Why is the entire prison system, the entire criminal justice system, filling prisons and jails with people who are presumed to be innocent and are awaiting trial? Why sentence people to death or serious infirmity in this manner? We have seen this before, in pretty much every carceral system in the world. Out of sight, out of mind, out of luck, and, soon, out of breath. This is the State of Abandonment: “Zones of abandonment … accelerate the death of the unwanted. In this bureaucratically and relationally sanctioned register of social death, the human, the mental and the chemical are complicit: their entanglement expresses a common sense that authorized the lives of some while disallowing the lives of others.” That original formulation pertained to Brazil, but we have seen it in the United States, England and Wales, South Africa and beyond. What happened in the prisons and jails of India in 2020,  during the pandemic, what happened in Byculla Women’s Jail? Absolutely nothing. Nothing happened … absolutely.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Art Work: Arun Ferreria / Free Them All)

 

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Jocko Graves two: Dreams

February 4, 2022 by Leave a Comment

Jocko as myself

Jocko Graves two: Dreams

Was Jocko Graves real?

He was as real as the meanings of myths and symbols

As real as flags

And paper dollar bills

As real as non-ethnic statues of Jesus
Adorning the churches of Black and Brown People
Who willingly participate in a prayerful contradiction

As real as dreams

As real as The American Dream

What is the difference between a Bitcoin
And a hundred dollar bill?

Can the subconscious mind differentiate between
The real and the imagined?

Do you know who you are in a dream?

Are your dreams and nightmares
More real than mine?

Martin dreamed.

Gene Roddenberry dreamed.

George Washington Dreamed.

A patriots dream
That saw beyond the years
Where alabaster cities gleamed
Undimmed by human tears

Jocko Graves was as real as the patriotic songs I had to sing
To start my day
In elementary school

As real as The Pledge of Allegiance

And The Star Spangled Banner

As real as Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling

And the Diplomatic boycotting of

The 2022 Chinese Winter Olympics

Although we can’t seem to decide when athletic events
And athleticism
Can be allowed to be used
To make political statements

Waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep
We sing
In all three states of mind

But are most creative when we dream

Bring my dreams and songs to me when I awaken
So that I can refine them when I sleep and dream again

Let me inhale my whole day and reforge it as I sleep
And heal myself in the most ancient of ways

As I blissfully inhabit one third of my human life

Let me sing the songs of my childhood again
Because they still work

And now

I better understand their meaning

Master Blaster Curtis Mayfield
D.C.’s own Marvin Gaye

Tell us.

Tell us: What’s Going On.

Tell us: people get ready.

Mercy, Mercy Me!
Everybody
It’s a Future Shock.

Again.

And the world is still so full of WTF!

American miasma
And the mindless chanting of
“Make America Great again, again”

To reaffirm a nightmare

Rather than to refine George Washington’s dream

I mean

That is

If he actually ever had it.

Who broke the unwritten laws
To cause this dark virtueless cloud
To overshadow us all?

COVID-19 proves that separate but equal is still alive and well

As we live and die

In the gigantic shadow
Of the microscopic

Although separate is doing much better than equal

And equal has only ever been an American dream

The difficult conversations that America should have
That we have been having for a long time

Since before Archie Bunker got kissed by Sammy Davis Jr. on national TV
And before George Jefferson got sassed by his Black maid

Because the network wouldn’t let him have a White one

Before Petula Clark held hands with Harry Belafonte
And Sidney Poitier sang Amen to Eastern European nuns.

Swing low sweet chariot

Swing down sweet chariot ship and let me ride

Before Martin Luther King Jr. asked Nichelle Nichols
Not to leave Star Trek

(Because Diahann Carroll in Julia was still two full years away)

And before her character, Lt. Uhura, kissed Captain Kirk on a planet full of
sadistic
decadent
telekinetic
psychic
aliens

Who liked to watch

Before there were three Catwomen and one of them was Eartha Kitt

But she couldn’t kiss Batman
Even though the other two had

And before there were no Blacks in Mayberry RFD

But do you recall any in Friends or on Seinfeld?

Out of 8,000,000 stories in the five boroughs of The Naked City
Quite a few of them were missed

Because even if “you” are one in a million in New York
There should be at least eight of you

Before Granny freely waved the confederate flag on network television on the Beverly Hillbillies

Proving that you could live anywhere in America
As long as you were rich and White

And before there was a Hooterville Junction

Or, an acid trippy Green acres, too.

Before Sticks, one of the few Black men on Happy Days, played the drums
And before he — the actor Jack Baker — actually died of cancer in real life
After a marginal career in golden age pornography

America has needed to have a conversation
That, actually, it’s been having.

And we’re not yet finished talking

Not by a long way.

Because conversations matter.

Hidden under the masks of The Predator
And dancing in the Xenomorph’s black biomechanical prosthetics

We are the voice of Darth Vader

The base voices that make the Klingons menacing

And the voice that invites America to eat at Arby’s, too.

Tell us fairy tales for troubled times
Or, of a past some call “the good old days”

Which weren’t

When George Washington dreamed of a gleaming tomorrow
That has never come

Living in this once upon a time
Called right now.

But, I still like happy endings
Never no tears.

I keep hearing people say that both America
And American Democracy
Are a grand experiment

I ask

An experiment upon whom?

A sleep study?

Sleep better by problematizing the word:
“Woke”

While calling yourself contemporary non-religious Mindful Buddhist

Now that he’s dead, Thich Nhat Hanh can roll over in his grave

Jungian analyst say that this chaos is the digestion of America’s Shadow

Bullshit, I say.

It’s the American inability to digest the spicy masala stew
In in its melting pot

(Shout out Kamala Harris)

I say to you, co-opters

Thieves of the worlds great cultures
Ideas
And peoples

You imprisoners of the ancient arts and achievements of:

Persia

Africa

India

China

Japan

and Greece

Stolen treasures housed in Colonial museums
Where Keats contemplated his urn
And wrote an ode

Because contemplations matter

Was Jocko Graves real?

As real as Paul Reveres midnight ride

As real as underground railroads
That had neither trains
Nor tracks

Listen my children and you shall hear

All of it is as real as you want it to be.

And it’s only real when you want it to be.

Real

When we make it real.

The faithful groomsmen

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Art credit 1: Chase Hall / Dazed) (Art Credit 2: Jalen Law)

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For women in England and Wales, `safety in custody’ still means self-harm

February 1, 2022 by 14 Comments

Once upon a time, the word custody meant protection, safekeeping, responsibility for protecting or taking care of. No longer. If one is to take the sorry and sordid output and history of the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice, custody today means the power to cage and code for cruelty. It’s that time of the year again when the Ministry releases its in no way long awaited “safety in custody” reports, and, yet again, one can only look at the numbers and wonder. If this is safety in custody, what would danger look like?

And so, without further ado, here’s the Safety in Custody Statistics, England and Wales: Deaths in Prison Custody to December 2021, Assaults and Self-harm to September 2021: “In the 12 months to December 2021, there were 371 deaths in prison custody, an increase of 17% from 318 deaths the previous 12 months … In the most recent quarter there were 84 deaths, a 29% increase from 65 deaths in the previous quarter … [In the 12 months to September 2021] the rate of self-harm incidents per 1,000 prisoners, which takes account of the reduction in the prison population between this and the previous year, decreased 9% in male establishments but increased 5% in female establishments … The rate of assault in male establishments decreased by 15% from the previous 12 months, while the rate in female establishments increased by 3%. Assault rates for the 12 months to September 2021 were higher in female establishments (327 incidents per 1,000 prisoners) than in male establishments (253 incidents per 1,000 prisoners). The rate of assault on staff decreased by 6% in male establishments but increased by 12% in female establishments compared with the previous 12 months. Assault rates have remained higher in female establishments than in male establishments. In the latest quarter, the number of assaults in male establishments increased by 8%, and the number of assaults in female establishments increased by 21%. In the 12 months to September 2021, the proportion of assaults that were on staff was higher in female establishments (56%) than in male establishments (38%).” This is the latest portrait of “safety in custody”.

Since 2011, the rate of self-harm in women’s prisons in England and Wales has risen 61%. That is the trajectory of “safety in custody”.

In the 12 months leading up to December 2021, deaths in custody rose by 14%. Suicides in custody rose by 28%. More than half the suicides occurred within the first 30 days in custody and the first 30 days in the current prison. Prisoners awaiting trial had the highest rate of suicide. Most of the suicides were by hanging.

Last year was the worst for deaths in custody in England and Wales in recorded, documented history. While some of that is attributed to Covid, much of it is systemic. Why is the rate of violence against self and others rising among women in custody?  Women In Prison,  Hibiscus Initiatives, Muslim Women In Prison, Zahid Mubarek Trust, Criminal Justice Alliance and Agenda: the Alliance for women and girls at risk have spent the last year poring over reports; meeting with everyone, especially  “with women with lived experience on the challenges they face at different stages of the criminal justice system, from policing in the community, to courts and sentencing, to prison, to probation and re-entering the community”, and today they released a 10-point action plan for change to end inequality for Black, Asian, minoritized and migrant women in the criminal justice system. Among the many practical, and often common sensical, actions, the fifth calls for the “use of diversion and out of court disposals and end the use of disproportionate custodial sentencing and remands for Black, Asian, minoritized, and migrant women.” Custodial sentencing. There it is again, custody. They call for “the Government to amend the Bail Act (1976) to make it unlawful to remand people to prison `for their own protection’”. By its own report, the so-called criminal justice system of England and Wales indiscriminately targets women of color, minoritized and migrant women. This is the system designated to protect women who have “exhibited anti-social behavior” … by throwing them behind bars? And then we are surprised that every year, rates of self-harm rise, rates of assault rise?

Earlier in the week, the Action Foundation released a report based on the experiences of women sent to the recently built women-only Immigration Centre in Derwentside, which has replaced Yarl’s Wood … for the moment. The study found that women in community do demonstrably better than women in detention. Significantly, community residence costs less than half the price of detention. Detention costs too much, in every sense. Custody should mean protection, safekeeping, responsibility for protecting or taking care of. Community is custody. Nothing else will do.

 

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Infographic Credit: UK Ministry of Justice) (Photo Credit: Action Foundation)

 

 

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In South Africa, a victory for Jane Bwanya, the Constitution, and equality for all!

January 25, 2022 by 1 Comment

Jane Bwanya

South Africa’s Bill of Rights, Chapter 2 of its Constitution, begins its enumeration of rights with Equality: “Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law.” Equality is followed immediately by Human Dignity: “Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.” These are the first articulations of “everyone” in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. Last year, Jane Bwana, a domestic worker, a lifelong partner, a widow, challenged the meaning and substance of “everyone” … and on December 31, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled in her favor, and in favor of equality and Constitutional rights. This is the story of Jane Bwanya.

Jane Bwanya migrated from Zimbabwe to South Africa. In 2014, she was at a taxi rank in the posh Camps Bay neighborhood of Cape Town. She was on her way to send goods to her family in Zimbabwe. She was laden with various boxes and packages, when Anthony Ruch, a wealthy businessman, stopped and offered her a lift. She accepted the offer, and they never separated. Months later, at Ruch’s insistence, Jane Bwanya moved into his Camps Bay residence, although she continued to work as a domestic worker. Jane Bwanya and Anthony Ruch celebrated their relationship publicly, attending social functions together, identifying each in public as life partners. By October 2015, they said they were planning to get married. They were also planning to open a cleaning business together. In November 2015, Anthony Ruch proposed marriage to Jane Bwanya. Anthony Ruch sold property so as to pay for lobola and arranged for a trip to Zimbabwe, to meet the family and finalize arrangements. They planned to marry after the trip to Zimbabwe. That trip was planned for June 2016. On April 23, 2016, Anthony Ruch died. His will named his mother as his sole heir. His mother died in 2013.

Jane Bwanya filed two claims, one for maintenance the other for inheritance, as a permanent life partner. The executor of the estate rejected both claims, basically stating that the Maintenance of Surviving Spouses Act and the Intestate Succession Act did not allow for opposite-sex life partners, and so, with the help of the Women’s Legal Centre, Jane Bwanya sued, arguing that the exclusions were unconstitutional. And so, Jane Bwanya sued for, and in the name of, equality and dignity. Everyone.

Writing for the majority, Justice Mbuyiseli Russel Madlanga noted, the rights, equality and dignity of same-sex survivors had already been established. According to the court, according to the 2016 census, “3.2 million South African were cohabiting outside of marriage and that number was … increasing.” Throughout his opinion, Justice Madlanga insisted [a] that the Court had to look at the world as it is and [b] not accept arguments that “typify what is to be expected in a society that is dominated by men in virtually all areas of human endeavour.”  And with that, the Court ruled in favor of Jane Bwanya, declaring that the exclusion is “unfair discrimination” and ordering the Parliament to fix the language of the two acts within 18 months. That decision was delivered December 31, 2021. Happy new year!

In March 2021, the Constitutional Court rendered a landmark decision in favor of five women who had been excluded from inheritance on the basis of gender. In December 2021, the Constitutional Court rendered a landmark decision in favor of survivors, the majority of whom are women, excluded from inheritance on the basis of formal rituals. Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law. Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Times Live)

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Boys will be boys, girls will be jailed, and then they will die at an early age

January 23, 2022 by Leave a Comment

Detention harms children and youth, all children and youth. In fact, it leads to greater likelihood of early death, according to a recent study: “In this cohort study of 3645 previously incarcerated youths, the all-cause mortality rate was 5.9 times higher in previously incarcerated youths than the rate observed in general population, Medicaid-enrolled youths.” Given that on any given day, the United States holds more than 50,000 children and youth in juvenile detention center, that ratio should give pause. Of course, any ratio of childhood and youth mortality should give pause. Sadly, tragically, such is not the case. Further, “Of particular significance was the mortality rate in previously incarcerated females … The all-cause mortality rate among females was nearly 9 times that of the Medicaid comparison group …. Formerly incarcerated females were at a considerable higher risk of early mortality compared with female Medicaid-enrolled youths. Research shows complex histories of trauma contribute to females in the juvenile legal system to a much greater extent than males. Incarceration can exacerbate the adverse effects of these experiences.” Though shocking, none of this is new. Sixteen years ago, a study reported, “The mortality rate among female youth was nearly 8 times the general-population rate.” Sixteen years later, here we are, from eight times the general population to nine times.

Just prior to the pandemic, reports were that juvenile detention was dropping, but not as much for girls. Last year, the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Prevention reported, “Male and female juvenile arrest rates have declined in the last 10 years; however, the relative declines have been greater for males than for females across many offenses. As a result, the female share of juvenile arrests has grown since 1980.” According to another recent report, during the pandemic, in urban areas, the number of boys in juvenile detention has dropped 41%; the number of girls dropped 37%. In rural areas, the number of boys dropped 30%, girls dropped 23%. What’s going on?

Two years ago, a study in Virginia found “that girls, especially girls with school conduct problems and no documentation of structured activities were treated more punitively at both intake and adjudication.”

Girls are criminalized for `misbehaving’, boys aren’t. Running away, skipping school, disobeying a parent sends girls, and not boys, to juvenile detention It’s been like that forever, and it continues, especially for girls and gender expansive youth of color. Year after year, for the last decade, reports have noted, and decried, the alarming rate at which girls are entering into the juvenile `justice’ system. The only problem is that, apart from the usual suspects, such as the Vera Institute, no alarm has been raised. Three years ago, the Vera Institute launched the Initiative to End Girls’ Incarceration. They do great work, both nationally and in respective states and municipalities, and yet, as the same time, girls `enter the criminal justice system’ in disproportionate numbers and, as a result, die at a young age in disproportionate number. The time for discovery is over. It’s time, it’s way past time, to stop the slaughter of girls and gender expansive youth.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Richard Ross)

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The Legend of Jocko Graves: The [I] Wonder [where we were] Years

January 21, 2022 by Leave a Comment

The Legend of Jocko Graves: The [I] Wonder [where we were] Years

In my Summer of Soul I listed to the Keats-ian Grasshopper
Of sweet soul music that would become the soundtrack of my life

That was the same week Woodstock was held

And that Americans landed on the moon

We were singing in Harlem in spite of all

And everything

Contrary to popular belief
James Brown did not teach us that we had Soul

But he definitely confirmed it
And he had a lot of co-signers

Now in my Keatsiian autumn I listen at the crickets
In the resounding silence coming from America’s second political party
As they Whitewash 1/6/2021
That sees the attempted coup as just another day in our country
America

And maybe it was
just business as usual
From the usual American suspects

I juxtapose the Pulitzer Prize winning 1619 Project
To Ahmaud Aubrey’s dead murdered body with sock less feet
And “long dirty toenails”

To an 18 year old White boy made a spokesman for The Right

Embedded with the conservative press

And offered jobs in congressional offices
Shown more deference and respect than an adult Black man

First running for his health
Then running for his LIFE

Not given the benefit of doubt
Had he resisted, three murderers
Would have gone free

People like to tell me that things have changed a lot since my summer of soul

Because we’ve had a Black-ish President
And a Black-ish Vice President

What they mean is
that it has changed for them

I’ve always had Black He-roes and Black she-roes

(and I’m looking at you here PAM GRIER)

They didn’t just show up
It’s just that now
They are widely seen
And others are aware of them, too

I have always been able to “say to myself what a wonderful world”

And I didn’t learn that at a mindfulness meditation retreat

Or from a Jungian analysts either

A nation of millions can’t hold us down
Nor COVID-19
Nor Neo-Nazis
Nor gerrymandering
Nor voter suppression

Will it all be better now just because
The Rolling Stones will no longer sing and play Brown Sugar?
Without asking the question:
Why were they singing in it so loudly and for so long?

How come it tasted so good?

Is Sir Paul MacCartney right?
Were The Rolling Stones just a Blues cover band?

Yeah, yeah, yeah — OOOOOOOOOO!

Cause representation matters.

I’m to old to swing
And so I sing
Sing to younger people with stronger arms and more nimble minds

So that you can swing for me
And swing for yourselves

Representation matters

Growing up we wondered how many times Charlton Heston could save the world:

Free the slaves from Pharaoh

Conqueror the Moors while dead on horseback

Set off the Alpha and Omega bomb on a planet of apes

And be the last man standing in the Omega Man

Until they would pry his gun from his cold dead hands
As he lay in a fountain dying like sci-fi Jesus

Like Rocky, I guess 75,000,000 American voters thought that
That bullshit was real

Ali, boma ye
Ali, boma ye
Ali, boma ye
Ali, boma ye
Ali, boma ye
Ali, boma ye

Shaft came just at the right time,
Just when everybody needed him

Smooth, Leather clad and funky
With his own theme song
Righting all the wrongs
Saving Hollywood and movie theaters
Because no one was believing Charlton Heston’s bullshit any more.

Sing  of Urban Myths and the reclamation of Jacko Graves

The inspiration for lawn jockeys

Teenage hero of the revolutionary war who froze to death
Faithfully holding George Washington’s horse
As the pre-first President crossed the Delaware River
To ambush and murder Hessian soldiers in their sleep

It was a myth that became so pervasive, That our neighbors painted their lawn jockeys white in protest

That is
Before the White flight made them move out of the city
And into the cloistered suburbs
To hide behind gated communities

This poem is for
The Legend of Jacko Graves
and
“The  [I]  Wonder [Where We Were] Years” between my Summer of Soul
And my contemplative autumn

But before my winter of discontentedness

‘Cause everyone wants to go to Heaven
It’s just that nobody likes to die.

 

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit 1: Betye Saar, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima. The Berkeley Revolution)

(Image Credit 2: Chase Hall, Jocko Graves (The Faithful Groomsman), Jenkins Johnson Gallery)

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“…As a child I spoke as a child

January 16, 2022 by Leave a Comment

“…As a child I spoke as a child

Thought and understood as a child

But when I became a woman

I put away childish things

And I began to see though a glass darkly…”

Joni Mitchell’s adaptation of Corinthians

With apologies to Jasper John’s Mirror.

I think that we all are looking into “dark mirrors” as we enter the third year of the pandemic and growing American polarization.

And I’m lookin’ at you Texas Synagogue terrorist and MAGA NATIONALIST!!!!!

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image 1: Amanda King, (Untitled) Prayer Rug, commemorating the 16th Street Baptist bombing. Credit: Cleveland.com / Rustin McCann)

(Image 2: Jasper Johns, In Memory of My Feelings—Frank O’Hara. Credit: Whitney Museum of Art / Art Institute of Chicago / Jamie Stukenberg)

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From Grenfell Tower to Philadelphia and New York to … the fire next time

January 10, 2022 by Leave a Comment

In 2017, 72 people died and 70 others were injured in the Grenfell Tower fire.  Afterward the British government extended benefits to the injured and displaced, terminated the management company’s contract, and began addressing similar flammable cladding hazards at other buildings. The British government’s response to Grenfell may not have been enough, but it was at least something.  And it should have been a wakeup call to the United States, which has neglected its crumbling public housing infrastructure for decades. Estimates of the cost to fix up our existing public housing stock now exceed $70 billion after prolonged disinvestment.  Much of the needed funds would have been included in the Build Back Better Act that Senator Manchin torpedoed just before the holidays. Now we have seen two fires in HUD-subsidized properties within a week.  12 perished in the Philadelphia fire and 19 died in the fire in the Bronx, in New York City.

Mass-casualty are extreme examples but substandard housing kills constantly.  Often it’s the child electrocuted by bare wires or the elderly person whose lungs can’t handle the mold or the fall from the porch that finally gives way. This is to say nothing of the untold numbers of non-fatal, yet serious injuries that unsafe housing causes.

The dangerous condition of much U.S. housing stock in the 1920s and 1930s was a major catalyst for the original development of public housing.  Now we are seeing it again – dangerous housing for lower-income households, whether publicly-owned or private.

If some good came come out of these fires, perhaps we will finally see the much-needed investments in public housing capital improvements that we have needed since the 1980s.  And perhaps building inspectors will start taking their duties more seriously. But if we do nothing, then the next fire is on you, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

 

(By Eric Dunn) (Eric Dunn is Litigation Director at National Housing Law Project. He writes here in his own capacity)

(Infographic Credit: National Low Income Housing Coalition)

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In the Nova Institution for Women, Canada’s special hell for women, COVID runs rampant

January 7, 2022 by 2 Comments

In 1995, Canada opened the Nova Institution for Women, in Truro, Nova Scotia, and it’s been a hellhole for women ever since. In 2015, Veronica Park died of pneumonia, after begging for days for health care, to no avail. Three months later, Camille Strickland-Murphy, after a series of incidents of self-harm and suicide attempts, none of which were attended to, killed herself. Earlier, in 2006, Nova Institution was the first station in Ashley Smith’s journey into suicide. In 2019, Samantha Wallace-Parker died of pneumonia, after begging for days for health care, to no avail. In 2020, Lisa Adamsexperienced Nova’s dry cell, a cell without running water or toilet, for 16 days. These are just the best known stories, all of which end up in court. But that was all `prepandemic’. 2022 opens with COVID running rampant through the Nova Institution for Women, and the thing is, all of this was predictable, everyone in charge knew, and they did nothing, worse than and less than nothing.

Today, Martha Paynter, who is “a registered nurse who researches prisoner health, and as a community advocate for people in prisons for women”, wrote, “The news that 49 people (24 prisoners, at least 25 staff) have now tested positive for COVID-19 at the Nova Institution for Women, a federal prison in Truro, brings a nightmare we foresaw … into reality … Federal prison is a $2.4 billion/year operation. We need to stop throwing money at this system and redirect it to meaningfully address the trauma and poverty that drives criminalization. The horror of mass infection at the Truro prison must finally change our thinking.”

Again, all of this was foreseen. In 2020, Martha Paynter wrote, “Prisons are petri dishes. Hundreds of people are under one roof with poor ventilation, barriers to health services, substandard nutrition, limited participation in exercise and time outdoors and inadequate information provision.”

What else is there to say? The petri dish has done what it’s designed to do. Advocates, like Martha Paynter, are calling on the State to release the women. The State has responded with lockdown. In one day, the cases jumped from 8 to 38. There’s less testing in federal prisons than in the general population, to no one’s surprise. In 2020, a study found the following: “There were 59 cases of COVID-19 in women’s penitentiaries. These represented 31% of all cases in federal penitentiaries, suggesting that women, and women’s penitentiaries, are over-represented among COVID-19 cases inside federal prisons. COVID-19 prevalence was 8 times higher among women’s prisons (8% prevalence) than prisons for men (1% prevalence) and 80 times higher than in the general Canadian population (0.1%).”

COVID-19 prevalence was 8 times higher among women’s prisons than prisons for men and 80 times higher than in the general Canadian population. That was two years ago. Today, the situation for women held in prison is worse. This is not failure, this is petri dish public policy, designed for incarcerated women. Don’t fix it, shut it down.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Saltwire / Chelsea Gould)

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Domestic work and the global: Sri Yatun’s story

January 5, 2022 by Leave a Comment

Sri Yatun cooking at home

The story of Sri Yatun illustrates the resilience and courage of domestic workers, while revealing the corrupt global networks of shared reproductive labor that harm low-income female migrants and make their lives increasingly precarious. It also demonstrates how ‘the global’ facilitates the exchange of migrant domestic labor as the underpinning of a globalized capitalist economy; in doing so, it suppresses the voices and experiences of migrant domestic workers. To understand the experiences of domestic workers we must ask: Why are their experiences rendered invisible? How is this invisibility intentional and constructed? Sri’s story is equally devastating, instructive, and revolutionary. The details of her life demonstrate how the ‘global’ leverages migrant domestic workers’ state of precarity to silence them. Experiences like those of Sri are not unintended side-effects of State Department programs; rather they are intentionally crafted, sociopolitical notions of whose lives matter and whose do not.

For migrant domestic workers, like Sri, precariousness is an embodied state of being through their experience of liminal legality: they are aware their residency in the US is fragile and potentially fleeting. As such, they embody a liminal space and a physical precarity that colors their everyday interactions, duties, and behaviors. Notions of belonging, as codified through national identity, enforce precarity in the lives of migrant domestic workers. The fear of deportation places them in an incredibly vulnerable position in employer-employee relationships, promoting their silence in the face of exploitation. For Sri, the interplay between her status of liminal legality, the powerful status of her elite diplomatic employers, and the invisibility she faced in the home, obscured the abuses she faced at the hands of Cicilia and Tigor. She was afraid to speak out, depowered by the very system that relies on her labor to function.

Sri is a survivor of mental and emotional abuse at the hands of her employers. Despite caring for their family–raising their child–Cicilia and Tigor treated Sri as a slave, frequently beating her and verbally berating her. The house in which Sri lived and worked was also the sight of a daily war, one in which she was depowered, vulnerable, and exposed. Sri was an outsider in the home she maintained. She had no way to protect or defend herself, an especially violent social existence, akin to Mbembe’s concept of the death-world. The article notes harrowingly that, “Wearing [Tigos’s] son provided a measure of protection against his outbursts.” Even this limited sense of security, however, dwindled throughout the years as the son became less reliant on Sri’s care. This utilization of the body and mind as the tools of labor, also left significant consequences for Sri’s health. She notes in the article that she “has pain in her back and knees. ‘Little things to remind me,’ she says.” Her body, then, is a tangible reminder of the verbal and physical abuse she faced at the hands of her employers–each ache, sore, and crack, a remnant of her years of exploitation.

Sri was a caretaker for many years, raising children who were not her own. Given that experience, one may assume she would be an expert in all forms of caring. Sri was not prepared, however, to be a caretaker for someone she knew affectionately and intimately. Sri’s experience caring for ‘mama’ in her old age illustrates a divide between caring as a profession and caring for your family. Her multi-faceted experiences of giving and receiving care elaborates upon the grief and loss inherent in every step of her life. As excerpted from the article:

“Sri had taken care of so many people, but it felt different to look after Mama. She’d started her career in caregiving with strangers who had felt entitled to extract what they wanted from her; she’d also cared for kind and generous people, and everyone in between. She’d mastered the domestic worker’s art of invisibility: the ability to take in everything in a home and render her own self unseen to avoid disrupting her employers’ perception of their privacy. So none of her experiences could prepare her for what it was like to care for — and potentially lose — the woman who had found her, who had truly seen her, at a gas station 14 years earlier.”

Grief shapes the lives of domestic workers in many ways: grief for elders who pass, grief of a child who moves on, grief of the family you thought you were a part of. Some workers grieve alternate employment prospects, or a stable wage. Others experience grief as they care for children a world away from their own. Many grieve the life they should have had. As such, grief cannot be disentangled from domestic work. For years, Sri’s desire to grieve–her jobs, dreams, the children she cared for a long the way–was suppressed in favor of economic survival. She had to keep going, working, and fighting for a better life. Finally, after years of this precarious struggle, Sri found someone to take care of her in her grief–the community–a radical act of communalized care in an undervalued community.

(By Alex Groth. Alex Groth believes everyone should be cared for.)

(Photo Credit: Washington Post / Barbara Davidson)

 

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