Your voice today is needed to contact Thurston County Commissioners, to oppose expanding prison infrastructure.

Background: Our Thurston County Commissioners are deciding this Thursday morning (April 23), whether or not to proceed with a zoning change to allow additional acres to have prisons built on them. Adding your voice today can help steer tax dollars away from expanding prison infrastructure.

ACTION TO DO ideally by Wednesday April 22 but better late than never:   

Leave a message for your County Commissioner. If you are one of our houseless loved ones, you could contact 1 or more commissioners.  If you have an address, to find out who your County Commissioner is, you can go here & enter your address:  https://www.co.thurston.wa.us/...alookup/default.aspx  If voicemail is full, please leave an email.   

Commissioner District 1: John Hutchings  (360) 357-2470 email:  http://www.thurstoncountywa.go...ult.aspx?List-ID=287

Commissioner District 2: Gary Edwards  (360) 786-5747 email:  http://www.thurstoncountywa.go...ult.aspx?List-ID=286

Commissioner District 3: Tye Menser (360) 786-5414 email:  http://www.thurstoncountywa.go...ult.aspx?List-ID=256

SCRIPT:

• Hello, my name is _______.
• As a resident of Thurston County in your district for  ____ months/ years, I strongly oppose Code Amendment A.9, Title 20, Adding a Special Use Permit to Chapter 20.54. I oppose expansion of prison infrastructure! 
• Please remove A.9 from the Preliminary docket.
• Fight to redirect resources away from incarcerating people and toward basic needs like housing, healthcare, income support, child care, transportation, education, etc.
• Thank you

Then if you want, private message them on facebook by Wednesday saying, "Stop expansion of prison infrastructure! Drop A.9 from the docket!"

Thanks to No New Women's Prison for important insight! nonewwomensprison.com, and Olympia Chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org