WHERE: Entrance, Las Colinas Detention & Reentry Facility, 451 Riverview Pkwy, Santee, CA 92071. Cars can park along Magnolia Ave and participate in their cars or on foot. People gathering together at the entrance will follow CDC guidelines for outdoor assemblies.
WHO: Peace Resource Center of San Diego, Community Advocates for a Just and Moral Governance, Participatory Defense San Diego, Dede McClure Community Bail Fund.
Prison cannot be a death sentence.
This in-person vigil is part of the PRC commitment to and collaboration in #SetThemFree. From Bergen, New Jersey to San Diego, California, community and family demand “Set Them Free”. Democracy Now reports – as of 12/9/2020 – over 2200 people have died from COVID in our California jails and prisons.
We know that a prison sentence should not be a death sentence. COVID-19 is sweeping through San Diego jails, detention centers, prisons and nursing homes, putting thousands of people at risk. While the state has prioritized prisoners for the COVID-19 Vaccine, San Diego County is not vaccinating the people under its jurisdiction. The ACLU of San Diego/Imperial Valley has filed a lawsuit to compel the county to follow the state mandate to vaccinate people under its control.
The COVID Pandemic is a challenge and an opportunity to provide medical care for all, and to change how we punish in the United States. COVID-19 has entered San Diego jails, spread by the overcrowding and lack of PPE equipment. There are better alternatives to incarceration, from better responsive social systems to restorative justice to a “no bail” approach.
The PRC is a fiscal sponsor for the Dede McClure Community Bail Fund, which collects money from the community to bail out people unable to pay the unreasonable bails and fees. Laila Aziz, a founder of the Community Bail Fund, sees the Bail System as oppressive because it enforces indefinite incarceration on innocent people unable to pay the bail. “We challenge the paradigm that people belong in cages with our Bail Fund.” She believes that by looking at harm “at its foundation, we can become preventative and build a community on love and accountability without dehumanization.”
Connor Robinson volunteers with Community Advocates for a Just and Moral Governance (MoGo). He spells out the long-term impacts of our bail system: "Spending a single night in jail impacts a person’s health and future. When forced to endure the indignity and inhumanity of detention, more than 90% take plea deals to obtain freedom that should already be theirs. That’s not justice. That’s coercion. No one should ever be in jail simply because they cannot pay bail."
#SayTheirNames.
Jeovani Jackson, Pelican Bay; Jordan Jackson, New Folsom Prison. Both these men were suffering from a mental health breakdown when arrested. Now convicted, they receive little counseling in prison. Instead, one has been beaten at least twice by prison guards. The mother of these two young men, Cheryl Canson, sees the criminal justice system as a mental health problem, where staff intentionally trigger mental stress. “We don’t want to actually help people and alleviate their suffering in the prison system, she explains, “it is much easier to lock them up in solitary than to provide mental health counseling.”
We lift the names of these two young men separated from their mother - because of the collision between police and people with mental suffering. We lift the presence of thousands more locked away in our state prisons, detention centers, juvenile halls, metropolitan jails, re-entry facilities.
Locked away and at the same time locked in with COVID-19.
COVID 19 is in full swing across the prisons, carried in by guards and prisoners. COVID-19 at last count has infected over 22,000 prisoners in the extensive, crowded California incarceration centers. Youth brought into juvenile hall are isolated from almost all social contact for two weeks. This isolation is particularly punishing when incarcerated. This is the time to rethink our criminal justice system and its addiction to incarceration.
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A Call To Action: A Vigil at Las Colinas to #SetThemFree
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