We Without Titles

May 10, 2023 by Leave a Comment

We Without Titles

Shall we be Bonnie and Clyde
Barbra Streisand and that Gibb chap Stevie Wonder and Paul Mac
or just plain Ebony and Ivory …

Worlds apart are we
Separated by apartheid decree
Joined by music and poetry
(He has too penned a book or three
A real Sugarman radio veteran is he)

Shiloh Noone the SongCatcher
In his Magic Bus has been around
Yet we are only a few months apart
As I have found

We’re both into chess
And help kids play
But we two
Have yet to enter the fray

My influences are reggae and LKJ
Though to that he might grunt a nay
As does he to that Doobie brother
Who some of us know he’d like
to smother

Here we go then, Shiloh Noone and I
Giving you verses to ponder
Making you wonder
What’s going on
Why do we bother

(This revolution will not be televised)

(By David Kapp)
(Photo Credit: Wikimedia)
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Aisha Cleary’s mother gave birth, alone, crying for help. No one came. HMP Bronzefield … again

May 4, 2023 by 1 Comment

In England, INQUEST “is the only charity providing expertise on state related deaths and their investigation to bereaved people, lawyers, advice and support agencies, the media and parliamentarians.” On Tuesday, May 2, INQUEST issued a media release which begins thus: “Aisha Cleary was born during the night of 26 September 2019. She was found dead on the morning of 27 September after her mother, a highly vulnerable 18 year old care leaver, gave birth alone in a prison cell in HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Surrey – the largest women’s prison in Europe. Now an inquest will open into her death after her mother persuaded the coroner to examine the circumstances of Aisha’s death and whether any failures in the care provided to Aisha’s mother or to Aisha contributed to her death.” Another inquest, another report, another slew of `discoveries’ concerning the abysmal, cruel, inhumane conditions at HMP Bronzefield, the largest women’s prison in Europe. What does it take for the State to admit that a prison is a death sentence and not only should be but must be shut down?

In 2021, we wrote, “ On September 27, an 18-year-old woman, now known as Ms A, alone in her cell, gave birth to a child. The child, now known as Baby A, died. The Director said, “We are supporting the mother through this distressing time and our thoughts are with her, her family and our staff involved.” Sodexo claimed it was “undertaking a review”. At first, the Prisons & Probation Ombudsman, supposedly the agency that investigates deaths in prisons and detention centers, did not conduct an investigation. Surrey Police investigated the death, because it was “unexplained.” End of story. HMP Bronzefield, In Surrey, England, was then and is today England’s and Europe’s largest women’s prison. Last week, two years later, the Prisons & Probation Ombudsman finally issued a report, which demonstrated that absolutely nothing has been learned.”

You know what has been learned in the intervening two years? Baby A was named Aisha Cleary. That’s it. Everything else is opacity, mendacity, cruelty.

In 2017, Petruta-Cristina Bosoanca was pregnant and a prisoner in HMP Bronzefield. Petruta-Cristina Bosoanca gave birth alone, unattended, in her cell. Her child survived. What happened to care provision in the four years since Petruta-Cristina Bosoanca gave birth? Absolutely nothing. In 2010, the Chief Inspector of Prisons found that HMP Bronzefield was a nightmare, especially for women with “complex needs”, meaning women living with drug or alcohol addiction, PTSD, and a long list of other mental and physical health issues. There was no treatment, there was no attempt at treatment, there was only solitary confinement, for years on end. When the Chief Inspector returned to HMP Bronzefield in 2013, he noted, “We were dismayed that the woman who had already been in the segregation unit for three years in 2010 was still there in 2013.” We were dismayed.

In 2021, the Prisons & Probation Ombudsman found “Ms A gave birth alone in her cell overnight without medical assistance. This should never have happened.” The report goes on to describe “wider findings”: “We consider that all pregnancies in prison should be treated as high risk by virtue of the fact that the woman is locked behind a door for a significant amount of time. In addition, there is likely to be a higher percentage of ‘avoidant’ mothers who have experienced trauma and who are fearful of engaging with maternity care.”

That was two years ago. Since then … the refusal to address any of these issues yet another articulation of the spectacularly ordinary cruelty of routine State violence against women. Here’s another example of that cruelty , from the 2021 report: “Ms A did not receive the routine bereavement and practical support that would normally be provided to a bereaved mother by the child death review nurse for Surrey.” Those who have already been stripped, time and again, of dignity do not receive bereavement support. An 18-year-old woman, traumatized throughout her youth and adolescence, abandoned in a cell, the cell covered in blood, received no sympathy or concern. What else is there to say?

What else is there to say? The coroner will determine if there were `failures’. There were no failures. HMP Bronzefield has always worked like this, and continues to do. The failure, if that’s the right word, was sending a pregnant woman to jail. Stop sending pregnant women to detention, to prisons, jails, and immigrant detention centers. At the same time, shut down the prisons, starting with HMP Bronzefield. Begin the journey towards justice by closing the largest women’s prison in Europe.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: SurreyLive)

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Domestic workers are organizing. Call them, simply, workers

May 1, 2023 by Leave a Comment

 

Lebanon 2023

“Yesterday was May 1, 2011. Around the globe, millions marched. Among the workers marching were sex workers, domestic workers, other denizens of the informal economy. Today is May 2, 2011. What are those workers today? Are they considered, simply, workers or are they `workers’, part worker, part … casual, part … informal, part …shadow, part … contingent, part … guest? All woman, all precarious, all the time.” Today is May 1, 2023. What will tomorrow bring for sex workers, domestic workers, care workers, and other denizens of the informal economy? Twelve years later, after so much organizing, where exactly, and who exactly, are we?

Much has happened over the past twelve years, and much has remained the same. Nation-states have recognized domestic workers as formal, or actual, workers. On June 16, 2011, the ILO ratified the ILO Convention Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers, which came into force on September 5, 2013. In 2013, the ILO estimated the Convention could affect the lives of 53 million domestic workers, not including child domestic workers. At that time, the ILO estimated there were 10.5 million children working as domestic workers. Those numbers have only grown in the interim. At last count, 39 countries have ratified ILO Convention 189. Many more have not, including France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Spain ratified this year.

Recently, The Monitor, in Uganda, has been running a series entitled “Maid in Middle East”, focusing on individual stories of Ugandan workers difficult lives, and often tortured deaths, as workers in various countries across the Middle East. From 2016 to 2021, approximately 24,100 Ugandans, mostly women, went each year to work in the Middle East. In 2022, that number was just shy of 85,000. Meanwhile, today, according to The Monitor, seven out of ten employed Ugandans work without a contract or any job security. As Filbert Baguma, General Secretary of Uganda National Teachers’ Union, UNATU, today noted, “We don’t have what to celebrate because workers continue to be marginalised as their employers pretend to be paying them. If you pay me whatever you want and you continue to use words like, you can take it or leave it and go, be patient, up to when?’’ Up to when? Uganda has not ratified ILO Convention 189.

Across the world, workers and allies have protested various forms of abuse, exploitation, and violence. Domestic workers have figured prominently in some of those demonstrations, in others, not so much. In Hong Kong, 340,000 so-called migrant domestic workers have faced abuse and exploitation “for decades”. For decades, domestic workers in Hong Kong have taken to the streets, courts and embassies to demand and seize dignity, respect, autonomy, recognition and power. Women like Nancy Almorin Lubiano, Erwiana Sulistyaningsih, Evangeline Banao Vallejos, and so many others went to court to challenge both employer and State physical, emotional, psychological and structural violence. During that same period, Baby Jane Allas, Milagros Tecson Comilang, Desiree Rante Luis suffered terrible abuse at the hands of employers and State, while, like so many other migrant domestic workers, Sophia Rhianne Dulluog died “under mysterious circumstances.” China has not signed ILO Convention 189.

In 2015, domestic workers in Lebanon organized a union. Today, with supporters and in the midst of national economic and social crisis, they marched through the streets of Beirut, demanding an end to violence against domestic workers. As did their sisters in Bangladesh and Jamaica, along with calling out the violence itself, they noted that many of the so-called protections exist on paper only. There is less than no enforcement; violators and predators are effectively encouraged to go on about their business undisturbed. Lebanon and Bangladesh have not ratified ILO Convention 189; Jamaica has.

For the past twenty years, in the larger DC – Maryland – Virginia metropolitan region, a group of Latin American immigrant women who fled their homes and homelands to escape violence. They are Madre Tierra, Mother Earth, and they have connected around 500 people seeking asylum or legal status with attorneys. They have provided support and community to survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, forced marriages, and persecution for their sexual identities. The group itself numbers around 80. Many, if not most, work as house or office cleaners, at exploitatively low pay. The members realized that for them to address the violence, they had to build power, and that included economic and worker power. And so, they are forming a cleaners’ cooperative, Magic Broom. Magic Broom currently has 12 members. Jean Carla Paloma, originally from Bolivia, explained, “This will allow us to come together and make a living and hopefully get the means to be able to sustain ourselves … [It will] teach women about their rights so they can know when they’re being discriminated against and how to prevent violence.” Consuelo Barboso, originally from Colombia, agreed, adding, “Unification is what brings us power.”

From massive marches to cooperatives of 12, unification is what brings us power. Unification is a process, not a single place nor a single day. Unification means mutual recognition in the formation and sustenance of solidarity. Unification itself is work, as are mutual recognition and solidarity. Unification brings us power; call them, simply, workers.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Bilal Hussein / AP / HJ News)

 

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Your sole is broken

April 25, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Your sole is broken 

A fellow traveller
(a woman to boot)
observes as I stoop
to examine the sole
of an age-old boot

Knee-high they are
rescued me many times
from the searching hands
of apartheid’s police

(contraband stuffed
down my length of leg
the side-pockets usually
filled with meeting notes)

Your sole is broken
couldn’t keep up
with my striding
here there and
whereever too

Your sole is broken
perchance a slip
of the Freudian variety
in these challenging times

(who would have thought
as we are supposed to be
free from all iniquities
post-1994’s Majority Rule

Your sole is broken
can it be fixed
(do we actually want to
and at what cost)
or is it beyond repair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(By David Kapp)

(Image Credit 1: Community Arts Project / UWC Centre for Humanities Research) (Image Credit 2: Community Arts Project / UWC Centre for Humanities Research)

 

 

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No need

April 23, 2023 by Leave a Comment

No need

No need
to do
a “lights out”
celebrating
Earth Day

It is done
by the country’s
service provider
(oh the irony)

No need
to celebrate
either
you’d reckon

We are
“lights out”
in a manner
of speaking

from here
to almost
anywhere

Earth Day
initiated by a US senator
inspired by their anti-war
protests of the 1960s

“Earth Dies Screaming”
as UB40 had it
perhaps there is really
a Planet B to go to
and ruin

Earth Day
comes
and goes

April 22

 

(By David Kapp)

(Image Credit 1: Robert Rauschenberg, Earth Day / Smithsonian) (Image Credit 2: Menashe Kadishman, Cracked Earth / Tate)

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Landmark case: In South Africa, ALL pregnant women, women who are lactating, children under age six are entitled to free health services at any public health establishment. ALL. Period.

April 22, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Section 27 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa states, “Everyone has the right to have access to health care services, including reproductive health care.” Section 28 of that same Constitution states, “Every child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services.” This week, the High Court of South Africa, Gauteng division, confirmed those sections, in no uncertain terms, in a landmark decision brought by the law and advocacy organization, Section27, and three women: Kamba Azama and Nomagugu Ndlovu, denied free health services while pregnant, and Sinanzeni Sibanda, whose child under six was denied free health services. While the judgement is a decided victory, many question why it had to come to this in the first place.

In 2020, the Gauteng Department of Health issued the Policy Implementation Guidelines on Patient Administration and Revenue Management, which was written and interpreted to allow Gauteng public hospitals to deny free services to pregnant women, lactating women, and children under six. Hospitals began charging exorbitant fees up front before offering any services. They believed provincial policy superseded the national Constitution; effectively, they believed the Constitution was, at best, an interesting document. Section27, Kamba Azama, Nomagugu Ndlovu, and Sinanzeni Sibanda said NO! to that policy and notion, and took the Health Department to court.

Over the last three years, reports of such abuse have increased. For example, “Julian” and his wife and child moved from Maratane Refugee Camp, in Mozambique, to South Africa, seeking, among other things, health care for the infant daughter, who lives with cerebral palsy. As an undocumented resident, “Julian” found only impediments: demands for identity documents, demands to pay upfront as a private patient. Today, he and his family struggle with the R40,000 debt that was imposed on him. Suffer little children …

“Grace Jean”, an asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo was eight months pregnant and suffered from high blood pressure. After consulting a clinic, she was referred to Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital. She went twice to the hospital. Each time, she was told to pay R20 000 to obtain a hospital file number and be treated. Unemployed, Grace and her husband could not come up with the money. She lost the baby.

“Fezal Blue”, an asylum seeker living with HIV, was in labor. She approached three hospitals. None would take her, because she couldn’t provide South African identity card and wasn’t carrying her asylum seeker permit. “Fezal Blue” gave birth in the back of a car, going to a fourth hospital. Mother and child survived, and the baby did receive nevirapine, preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

In his decision, Deputy Judge President Roland Sutherland declared Gauteng’s policy to be inoperative and generally an incoherent mess, not to mention a violation of the Constitution. Additionally, he gave all health establishments, across South Africa, until July 17th to post in a clearly visible place, the following: “ALL pregnant women,

ALL women who are lactating, and

ALL children below the age of six

Are entitled to free health services at any public health establishment, irrespective of their nationality and documentation status.”

ALL is capitalized in the Judge’s orders.

The Gauteng policy targeted the most vulnerable: asylum seekers, undocumented persons and persons who are at risk of statelessness. It did more than declare them persona non grata, it declared them nonpersons, unworthy of rights, dignity, or simple human decency. As Mbali Baduza, legal researcher at Section27, explained, “The effect of this court order is that it applies across the country… Medical xenophobia or health xenophobia has been on the rise in certain provinces, and this court order makes it clear that all pregnant women and children under six — regardless of their status — can access hospital care for free… and that’s an important precedent”.

Sharon Ekambaram, head of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights and a spokesperson for Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia, Kaax, noted, “It is concerning that our government needs to be reminded of their constitutional obligations as set out in our Constitution and in our policies. This situation is but one component of a much broader crisis of institutionalised xenophobia”. Dale McKinley, also of Kaax, added, “We should be angry that we’ve had to go this far and that we have to continue to force our government to do the most basic things in terms of what our law says”.

Medical or health xenophobia is nationwide, across South Africa, as it is worldwide, and it’s spreading. Celebrate the victories, such as this landmark decision; and be concerned and angry. Part of the decision was to enforce the rule of law and the power and responsibility of the Constitution, and aprt of the decision was to emphasize the map. No assault on persons’ dignity is unique or individual, they are always part of a pattern of viral growth, and so every response must also be expansive. What happens in Gauteng does not stay in Gauteng.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Jana Hattingh / Spotlight) (Image Credit: Section27)

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Where are the women? In Ireland, and beyond, incarcerated and sleeping on the floor

April 16, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Dóchas Centre

Perhaps April is indeed the cruelest month, but when it comes to prison overcrowding, abuse, and general disregard for human dignity or life, it’s just another month. Take Ireland, for example. Reports started circulating at the beginning of the month that Irish prisons were dangerously overcrowded. On April 10, The Irish Times reported, “Fourfold increase in prisoners sleeping on floor as officials warn of safety risks in Mountjoy”.  Since the beginning of the year, the number of prisoners sleeping on the floor has increased by 400% … in a mere three months. The pandemic must be over, and this must be what `return to normal looks like’. The epicenter of this increase is Mountjoy Prison, which is at 110% capacity. In response, prison administrators are planning to buy bunk beds. That should take care of the problem, right? No. People sleeping on the floor presents a safety hazard to both incarcerated people and staff, according to an internal memo. But here’s the thing. This article is 20 short paragraphs long. It isn’t until the seventeenth and eighteenth paragraphs that the reader learns who exactly is being endangered: “Overcrowding is worse in the Dóchas Centre women’s prison which, with 172 prisoners, is operating at 118 per cent capacity. Limerick men’s prison, which was recently expanded, is at 130 per cent capacity (274 prisoners) while Limerick women’s prison is at 175 per cent (49 prisoners).” Where are the women? Sleeping on the floor and reduced to the margins of their own stories.

As of the most recent prison census, on April 13, Dóchas Centre, the women’s section of Mountjoy, remains at 118%. The Limerick women’s section is currently at 179%. Bunk beds won’t fix that, and everyone knows as much. Building more jails won’t address the situation either.

Chaplains who service Ireland’s prison release regular reports. The most recent one for Dóchas Centre, in 2020, reported, “Most recently a prisoner was remanded to the Dóchas Centre after having spent over a year in a psychiatric facility. The prisoner was clearly unwell and confused to the extent that after a few days in custody the prisoner wanted to know what hospital she was in. From as soon as she arrived in the Dóchas Centre the prisoner remained in bed all day. Prison was obviously not the place for that prisoner, yet the prisoner had been charged, arraigned in Court and remanded to prison. After considerable intervention by the Governor and Health Care Staff, the prisoner was removed back to the psychiatric facility that she had come from …. While Staff were dealing with this prisoner two other prisoners on the same landing were even more difficult to deal with: both were self-harming and both were violent. Both of the prisoners had been treated for mental illness before coming to prison. One of the prisoners had been brought to the Dochas Centre infected with Covid 19. The other prisoner was returned to the psychiatric facility where she had been a patient. That prisoner however was returned to the Dochas after she behaved in the same violent way that she had behaved in when she was being held in the Dochas previously. Obviously she had been referred to the psychiatric facility for specialist treatment. How was she expected to receive that treatment when she was returned to the Dochas? This is a clear example of the Dochas being used as a dumping ground.”

 “The Prison Service is too well aware of how prisons are constantly being used as the dumping ground for other agencies’ problems. Offenders whose offence is rooted in mental illness invariably get sent to prison because the State cannot accommodate them elsewhere. This imposes a duty of care on the Governor and his Staff which the normal exercise of their duty was not designed for. Prison Officers are not trained to handle psychiatric cases …. Covid has preoccupied all our thinking for almost a year. Hospitals filled to capacity are part of everyday discussion. At this time of terrible fear and anxiety in the community, no one is going to be surprised to hear that the Central Mental Hospital has no bed space available either. The difference however is that the CMH had no available space before the Covid 19 pandemic. Most prisons have prisoners suffering from mental illness who have been waiting for a bed in the CMH for over a year.” According to the Chaplain’s Report, the situation is “soul destroying. No one seems to care.”

The Chaplain concludes, “Government could find the resources to rescue the collapse of the banking system. Government could find the resources to pay workers to stay at home during the pandemic. Government could find the resources to protect the vulnerable from a life of addiction, homelessness and petty crime. Government instead sends the weakest and most vulnerable in society to prison at the cost of the taxpayer and the fabric of society.”

What has happened in the intervening three years? Women are no longer dumped into beds. Now, they’re dumped on the floor. Further, women have been even more deeply erased from the public record. They’re there, somewhere near the end of the rare account, as an afterthought. Where are the women? Dumped on the floor, dumped from their own stories. The Prison Service is too well aware …

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: Irish Examiner)

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Tennessee: Walking in Nashville and the Illusion of Decorum

April 8, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Tennessee: Walking in Nashville and the Illusion of Decorum

Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson
Where will you be in 3 years 5 months And 2 days of this life?

Save us from the illusion of decorum
And the tired fear filled old men
Who want to take us back to the thrilling days of yesteryear
When we were all “Crimson and Clover” and “Chantilly Lace” and “Hi ho Silver, away”

When dance proctors at sock hops separated the dancers
By putting rulers between the boys who wore blue and girls who wore pink
And women weren’t supposed to have orgasms, either

Where post sex Coca-Cola douching supposedly prevented pregnancy
And they didn’t know that there were more than just two sexes
Or, that the world was about to dramatically change for everyone

Go walking in Nashville
In a time before Al Green had screamed
Either like his lover had just deeply satisfied him
Or, had just thrown hot grits on him in a bathtub

Before he was reverend Green who was glad to meet you when you didn’t have a prayer

Well, do we have a prayer in Nashville?

I saw the ghost of Jim Crow walk on MLK Blvd.
Walk up to the gates of the state house where he was greeted with regard
Now security definitely saw him
A walking corpse exhumed
That ugly zombie being
That Killed Martin Luther King
When America wouldn’t make room

Now I’m marching in Nashville

Forget history then repeat it ; amnesia is a little death

And be careful Obama babies because your struggles are just beginning

If you weren’t there; then you don’t remember;
And if you don’t remember; then, this is new to you.

Pay attention.

I’ll take you to another time,
A different name but the same place
The place is Charlotte Avenue
That MLk’s name has replaced

50 years after his death but only 5 years ago
And now America wants to Arrest its Development.
Old tired fearful men afraid of being replaced like street signs

And who don’t realize that the world is about to dramatically change for everyone.

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit: Kehinde Wiley, Mary, Comforter of the Afflicted II, 2016 / Art Basel)

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A Western Australia prisoner transport van forced Anna to endure hours in urine-soaked clothes. Why? Because she’s Aboriginal.

April 6, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: first as tragedy, then as farce.

                                                            Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

According to a report, “The transport of regional and remote prisoners”, released Monday, April 3, by the Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services of Western Australia, history repeated itself recently. The report describes “Anna’s journey”, a “transport welfare fail”. It then notes that the exact same failure happened to another incarcerated woman … two weeks earlier. The report opens, “This review was prompted by a few recent incidents that raised questions for us about the conditions under which prisoners were being transported across regional Western Australia. It was also undertaken against a historical backdrop of the tragic case of Mr Ward who died during a prisoner transport in 2008. We set out to seek assurance that the gains made since 2008 have been sustained.” The report ends, “There is a clear gap in the monitoring of … movement services at regional locations, which should be addressed by the Department. This aligns with the findings of the Coroner following the death of Mr Ward, and a recommendation for the Department to conduct regular reviews of transport contractor services in regional locations (Hope, 2009).” What does it mean that a failure in 2022, reported in 2023, “aligns” with findings and recommendations, issued in 2009, concerning an incident in 2008?

In 2022, Anna entered Greenough Regional Prison, for the third time. The staff at Greenough knew Anna. Flagged as living with schizophrenia, Anna was known to have an extensive psychiatric history, including frequent episodes of self-harm and suicidal behavior. This time, in her first week or so, Anna was reported twice for uncooperative and erratic behavior. She stopped taking her medications. Despite her non-compliant and erratic behavior, it was decided to move Anna to Bandyup Women’s Prison. The pre-transfer report described Anna as “satisfactory – no major concerns”. When staff tried to place Anna on a plane headed for Bandyup, Anna urinated on herself in the transport vehicle and refused to wear a mask. The trip was cancelled. As Anna was being returned to Greenough, staff issued a new plan, with no mention of schizophrenia or any other issues. The new plan was to transport Anna by van the 400 some kilometers to Bandyup.

A week later, Anna was bundled, shackled and handcuffed, into the security pod of an escort van, and off they went. The journey was 4 hours and 35 minutes. During that trip, early on, Anna, still handcuffed and shackled, urinated. There was no CCTV footage or cell phone call recordings. There was no documentation of anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps that’s because there was nothing out of the ordinary. Two hours in wet clothes, shackled and handcuffed in a so-called security pod. All in a day’s work … if the person is an Aboriginal woman.

Anna’s story ends in redundancy: “Prior to Anna’s transfer, another female prisoner departed Greenough in early April 2022 and urinated in the vehicle. Upon arrival to Bandyup, staff were made aware that this prisoner had urinated in the pod during the journey. Many of the issues we identified with Anna’s experience were also present in this earlier case …. It is concerning, and disappointing, that staff failed to learn from this earlier incident and implement measures, such as bringing a change of clothes or a towel, that would have helped protect the dignity and welfare of Anna during her journey a few weeks later.”

It is concerning and disappointing, and altogether predictable. Staff did not fail to learn, they did not even have to refuse to learn, because there has been no reason to. Throughout the report, the Inspector invokes the tragic case of Mr. Ward, who died in a prisoner transport in Western Australia. In January 2008, Mr. Ward, 46 years old, a respected elder, was taken on a 220 mile ride across the blistering Central Desert to face a drunk driving charge. Mr. Ward had represented the Ngaanyatjarra lands across Australia and at international fora. The people who drove Mr. Ward threw him into the back of a Mazda van, into the security “pod” with metal seating and no air conditioning. All male remand prisoners are considered dangerous, or “high risk”. That Mr. Ward was known to be cooperative and congenial was irrelevant. For his own safety and welfare, he had to go in the back. The trip took almost four hours. The temperatures that day were 40 degrees Celsius, 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Mr. Ward died of heatstroke. He died with third degree burns. Mr. Ward cooked to death, slowly and in excruciating pain.

In a 2001 government study, identical Mazda `pods’ were described as “not fit for humans to be transported in.” They were seen as “a death waiting to happen.”  In the intervening decade, there were other major reports, two in 2005, in 2006. In 2008, Mr. Ward was dumped into the oven of the back of that Mazda. When asked about the implications of Mr. Ward’s story, Keith Hamburger, the principal author of the 2005 report, responded, “That’s a matter of great concern because this is not rocket science, we’re dealing here with duty of care.”

A duty of care. In 2022, that duty of care meant two Aboriginal women, separately, abused. The list of Aboriginal women who died in custody, in Western Australia alone, is long: Maureen Mandijarra, 2012; Ms. Dhu, 2014; Cherdeena Wynne, 2019; JC, 2019. Many die in police custody, others in prisoner transport vans, others in their cells. Year after year, the Inspector of Custodial Services for Western Australia has described Anna’s ultimate destination, Bandyup Women’s Prison, the only women’s prison in Western Australia, as a hellhole. Speaking of Bandyup, the Inspector said, “I wanted to know how such an event could occur in a 21st Century Australian prison and to prevent it happening again.” First as tragedy, then as farce does not mean the second time is funny. For those forced to suffer, the pain is new, and yet not new, each time. The farce is in the expressions of surprise, discovery, concern of the perpetrators. It is concerning and disappointing … and happening somewhere right now.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Ngayarta Kujarra by Jakayu Biljabu, Yikartu Bumba, May Chapman, Nyanjilpayi Nancy Chapman, Doreen Chapman, Linda James, Donna Loxton, Mulyatingki Marney, Reena Rogers, Beatrice Simpson, Ronelle Simpson, and Muntararr Rosie Williams / The National Gallery of Victoria)

 

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Nostalgia: For Gil Scott Heron and Afrofuturist Voices

April 2, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Nostalgia: For Gil Scott Heron and Afrofuturist Voices

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit: Sankofa Bird / Jeffrey Waller / Greene County African American Museum)

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