 |
Add to My Group
4
3
1
View Ratings |
Rate It
Inmates Forced to Drink Poison Water - No Place to Go for Help
By Dr. B. Cayenne Bird (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)
When living without air conditioning, water becomes a life or death matter. The summer I was at DVI, several people collapsed from the heat; three others died at Vacaville, a prison not far away. There is absolutely no excuse for not having reverse osmosis units attached to the drinking fountains in the dorms and cell blocks. It isn´t done because no one in authority thinks that the prisoners need or deserve unpolluted water. There is no public outcry, therefore no reason to care.
In one 214-person minimum security ranch dorm where I was housed, two people died in the space of 6 months because the guards simply would not call the paramedics even though it was obvious that one man was having a stroke, and the other had fallen out of his bunk and was unconscious. Instead, the guards called for a pickup truck to take them to Mainline Medical, which took 45 minutes to arrive. They had to drag the poor men out on a blanket because they had no stretcher or any emergency equipment that paramedics would have normally brought. The prisoners died in Mainline Medical, and their families were told it was due to "natural causes." It was, however, simply cold, callous neglect.
Daniel Zuma
DVI Y Dorm
This is Y-Dorm at DVI. I lived in Z-Dorm which is on the other side of the back wall partition. It is twice the size but there are only 14 working toilets for 300 people. Prisoners are issued one eating utensil and one cup, but there are only two sinks (adjacent to the toilets), and no hot water or dish soap. Notice the lack of places to sit and write letters. Prisoners have to sit crouched or lay or their bunks upwards of 20 hours per day, causing all sorts of back and neck problems. There is no air-conditioning or ice here, and temperatures regularly climb into the 100s in the summer.
Sources:
The media is banned from California´s prisons which is outrageous when a full blown humanitarian crisis is taking place out of public view, which I believe is the reason that journalists can´t interview specific inmates and often have their notes seized. There are four journalists with loved ones in prison in our group, and hundreds of family members who refuse to cooperate with this unconstitutional media ban, even though there is severe retaliation against those who file lawsuits and report the news from inside. There is less retaliation against the family members for reporting the news, since there is no way for the wardens and guards to know the source of information. Every effort is made by CDCr and state employees to cover up wrongdoing, which doesn´t work when people are educated and courageous patriots who will write and make comments at the news sites.
The UNION´s jailhouse lawyers are suffering increased and severe retaliation during the final phases of the Plata trial in a concerted effort to silence them. There is very little help coming from the State lawmakers and officials to do anything to stop the deliberate physical and psychological torture being inflicted. I will be writing more on this topic soon and have been invited to be a guest on a national talk show to discuss the fact that there is no one who will assist families or inmates with real intervention even in life and death emergencies, unless they are able to write big checks or have a friend in office, which is rare. Losing a loved one to Prison is emotionally and financially devastating, which is why there are no large public outcry ad campaigns.
On February 4, 2009, we are planning to rally outside the Federal Courthouse at 450 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco at 9 am. In order to get national media involved, at least 500 folks need to be there to stand up against medical neglect and continued abuse of the mentally ill in California's horrific prisons. While more than 100 family members attended our Nov 21 rally, we need five times more than that to make a stronger point that no one is addressing folks who are suffering and dying right now. Many are inmates who could be released right now to save the state billions and give some relief to the parents who are out of their minds with sick worry as an inmate dies daily. Many more will die before this gets resolved, but each of us must be the public outcry and fill up our cars for this historic day. Go here, hit print and mail 50 copies into an inmate to help spread the word, we are all unpaid volunteers in the UNION and cannot afford large mailings. This is a way everyone can help, we need crowds to bring in the national media so the lawmakers will do something to prevent more deaths which are highly visible right now.
Here's the flyer for Feb 4, when closing arguments before Judges Thelton Henderson, Lawrence Karlton and Stephen Reinhardt will take place in the Plata case. The power of noisy numbers is the only solution, suffering in silence doesn't work.
Over the last decade, I have published in my columns and editorials information about poison water at most of the prisons. The first time I encountered the problem was when I visited Calipatria State prison in 1999 and saw warning signs posted in the waiting room to the visitors that the water was dangerously contaminated and not to drink it. Alarmed, I contacted Sen. John Burton´s office about the inmates being forced to drink this water even with public safety notices, and his aide, Nettie Sabelhaus, assured me that the water was safe, in spite of the signs.
When one of our UNION journalists whose sister in Norco came down with H-pylori, we were able to convince the Riverside Press Enterprise to do an investigation, but prison officials were able to slide out of having to correct the problem. That story is in their news archives, so when the second flare up of h-pylori was discovered, the evidence is there that we tried very hard to get assistance in 2004, which never came.
http://www.1union1.com
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
 Contact Author |
Contact Editor |
 View Authors' Articles |
$5.95
Number of pages: 3
Publisher: Thomson Gale
by Mark A. Graber
$26.95
Number of pages: 349
Publisher: University of California Press
by Nan Levinson
$18.95
Lowest New Price $10.14
Number of pages: 374
Publisher: University of California Press
by Robert Post
Number of pages: 26
Publisher: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley
| 7 comments |
Want to post your own comment on this Article? 
|
||||
|
||||||||||||||
Well Said (0) 
Touching (0) 
Funny (0) 
Supported (1) 
Interesting (0) 
Inspiring (0) Tell a Friend:
|
Copyright © 2002-2009, OpEdNews |
