I wanted to share some information about an action being organized by our friends at the Ames Catholic Worker house:

the Ames Romero House Community has decided to organize sacred activism surrounding the federal executions that have happened this last 2020. It is a significant concern and a great act of injustice to human dignity. Moreover, we are standing up for our brothers and sisters in prison who have had terrible conditions during the COVID pandemic, and requesting their prioritization in vaccination. We want to raise awareness about it and show we stand for restorative justice, personalism, and mercy.

Date: Jan. 9
Alternate day in case of bad weather: Jan. 10
Place:
First Christian Church (if there is any change, we will let you know in advance)
Time: 9am-3pm
30 min slots for sit (people can sign up for more if they want)

text from pamphlet for tomorrow's vigil:
Since July of 2020, The United States Department of Justice has federally executed ten people and plans to execute three more in January of 2021 before President Trump leaves office. This has come after a seventeen-year halt to federal executions in the United States and at a time when the majority of Americans do not support the death penalty.

Furthermore, these federal executions have taken place in the middle of a global pandemic. Incarcerated people are at a higher risk for Covid-19 due to cramped facilities, inadequate medical care, and a disproportionately high rate of underlying conditions. Prisoners in the U.S. have an infection rate four times that of the general public and a mortality rate 45% higher. In Iowa two in five prisoners have been infected with Covid-19 (Dec. 18th report). Prisons and jails have been the epicenters of some of the largest outbreaks during the pandemic due to communal living situations, yet many prisons in the country are not prioritized to receive the vaccine.

We at the Ames Catholic Worker Community believe that federal executions and the disregard for prisoners’ health indicate a societal sin of viewing the imprisoned as subhuman. No matter how horrific a person’s crime, we at the Catholic Worker believe what sages like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. affirmed: violence only begets more violence.

We believe in the possibility of a restorative justice that brings healing rather than retribution; a justice that reflects the Divine Mystery in whose image every human being is created. It is because of this conviction that we hold vigil for the victims killed either through neglect in this pandemic or through a political agenda of those in power who seek a garment of “law and order” that perpetuates hate instead of healing.

Today we hold vigil for all those touched by this malignancy and oppose its effects upon the human person.

Some more thoughts about the situation in our prisons from Alice:
The US has one of the highest (maybe this is just the highest) rate of incarceration of any country.
And of course, the racism entrenched in our criminal justice system means that POC are incarcerated at much higher rates.
and then prisoners are more likely to be infected with covid-19.
Infected prisoners are more likely to die.
Why is it ok to disregard the humanity of prisoners? Some of them have committed serious crimes; some of them have committed petty crimes; some of them have committed no crimes at all. But they are all human beings, and they are powerless to take the simple steps that we have all been asked to take to protect the health of ourselves and others. They can’t social distance. Often they do not have access to face masks or even soap.

"From the earliest days of the pandemic, public health experts called for widespread prison releases as the best way to curb virus spread behind bars. In October, the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering released a report urging states to empty their prisons of anyone who was medically vulnerable, nearing the end of their sentence or of low risk to public safety.

But releases have been slow and uneven. In the first three months of the pandemic, more than 10,000 federal prisoners applied for compassionate release. Wardens denied or did not respond to almost all those requests, approving only 156—less than 2 percent."

an article to read:

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/12/18/1-in-5-prisoners-in-the-u-...