There is an Incarcerated Workers’ Organizing Committee action ongoing right now (April 17th) in front of the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, Florida
One IWOC (Incarcerated Workers’ Organizing Committee) member has already been arrested. Keep an eye on this situation, and please donate to support bail/legal fees if you can.
People are already dying in jails and prisons all over the country. Incarceration should not be an automatic death sentence!
At the demonstration an activist chained themself to barrels reading “End the Massacre” and “Free Prisoners Now” beneath a banner that read “Desantis and Inch, 1000s Will Die, COVID = Death, Act Now!”
This protest comes on the heels of news that for over a week the FDOC hid the deaths of two prisoners from COVID-19 at Blackwater River Correctional Facility (My Panhandle). Meanwhile, neither FDOC Secretary Mark Inch or Governor Ron DeSantis have taken any substantive steps to release or protect prisoners, indeed only hastening the guaranteed infection of tens of thousands behind bars by reinstituting transfers of prisoners between prisons within the last week.
Prisons and jails are unique in their ability to rapidly spread COVID-19. New York City jails have reported an infection rate nearly 10 times higher than New York State as a whole, and 18 times higher than the rate in Italy. With this rate of infection a projected 100,000 prisoners across the country will die from COVID-19 if releases do not happen. In Florida alone we can expect to see the deaths of over 7,500 people in prisons and jails (Business Insider).
Friday’s protest comes as the latest in a series of demonstrations across the State that started with car caravans engaging in various “honk-out” protests against the inaction of county jails and state prisons around COVID-19. On Monday, groups from across Florida converged in Tallahassee and surrounded the Capitol building and the FDOC building to bring these demands directly to DeSantis and Inch (Tallahassee Democrat).
Everyday DeSantis and Inch fail to take action guarantees an ever growing number of people behind bars will die. Blood is already on their hands but they still have the power to prevent, or perpetrate, a massacre. The choice is theirs.