🚨READ: Email from Chicago Mayor Lightfoot. Last April. Day after the first person in Chicago jail died of COVID. Shackled to his hospital bed. Cramped. No PPE. Symptomatic caged w/ asymptomatic. Coughing on each other. She calls them "violent offenders." Plots to block releases.
In this letter, Chicago Mayor Lightfoot praises Sheriff Tom Dart. Instead of trying to save lives. Dart runs the brutal COVID infested jail caging thousands. No ability to social distance. Deaths & infections. When a federal judge demanded he improve conditions, he fought back.
Chicago Mayor Lightfoot sent an email plotting how she would keep more people locked up & defend Sheriff Tom Dart just days before Nicholas Lee died. His wife, Cassandra, called Dart *132 times* to try to save his life after symptoms. No response at all.
More from Cassandra Greer-Lee and her fight to save and free thousands of people from the torture of the Chicago jail that Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants to maintain.

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More from @ScottHech

8 May
LISTEN: Taylor was caged for nearly a year in Denton County, TX jail. She couldn't afford to pay restitution for a minor theft case. She told her probation. So they arrested her. "Roaches on the trays. On our meal cart. Inhumane." Texas about to pass a law allowing more of this.
Taylor courageously shared her story w/ @TxJailProject. Wanted to be heard. Last thing in the world Texas should be doing now is passing a law to send more people to this torture. "I am openly gay & everyone in there knew that and they made sure. The treatment was different."
"I guess they kept a little closer eye on me & kept me away from certain people that might have looked gay. We couldn't be in the same bathroom. If I was out on the rec yard, if I were to sit close to somebody, a guard would come out there and tell me to move away."
Read 13 tweets
7 May
THREAD: A bill is now racing thru Louisiana's legislature pushed by this guy. A former prosecutor. To destroy public defender independence, install a "defense czar" beholden to the Governor, & keep public defenders dependent on conviction fees of the very people they represent.
I'll start this story in the summer of 2016. That was when Alton Sterling, a 37 y/o Black man, was shot dead by 2 cops in East Baton Rouge. What does a police murder have to do with public defense funding? Answer should be "nothing." But in Louisiana, it was everything.
Alton Sterling's killing sparked widespread protests and calls for justice & accountability, which lead to even more violence & clashes w/ police. Just one month later, Baton Rouge then endured catastrophic flooding, which caused unprecedented damage.
Read 27 tweets
7 May
When leaders mislead, they must be called out. Rosenblum is Oregon Attorney General. Chelsea Clinton demanded she "use her power to topple a racist law" imprisoning hundreds. Her response sounds good, right? No: Supreme Court *mandated these retrials. She's fighting all the rest.
Most think of the KKK in terms of physical violence. But they also used legal & legislative process to pass laws exacting legal violence. In Oregon they enabled laws to silence Black jurors. To convict who they wanted. "Non-unanimous juries."
Last year, over Oregon AG Ellen Rosenblum's objection, the U.S. Supreme Court *finally* ruled that non-unanimous juries were unconstitutional. Even Kavaunagh acknowledged the law was "rooted in racism." Problem: Decision only applied for those cases on direct appeal or in future.
Read 17 tweets
7 May
HORROR IN TEXAS: "I have a 5 y/o little girl & a 4 y/o little boy. I've lost the rights to them since in jail." Kdee suffers mental health issues & seizures. Caged a year pretrial. Denied medication. Hogtied. Attempted suicide. Texas about to pass a law allowing more of this.
Kdee courageously shared her story w/ @TxJailProject. Wanted to be heard. *Content warning.* Last thing in the world Texas should be doing right now is passing a law to send more people to these torture chambers. "My name is Kdee. I've been here since way before COVID started."
"I'm sitting here in jail since August of last year. It's my first time ever being in trouble. I'm bipolar & I have seizures also. Been like that since the age of 5. They did not ask me any questions about that. I went to general population. I didn't get to see mental health."
Read 15 tweets
6 May
"To me ya'll the same in this jailhouse." What a guard told Willie while assaulting him. Caged pretrial in Texas for *over 3 years.* Tortured. Denied medication. Beaten. "My mom told me I have rights. But I'm behind this door." Texas is about to pass a law allowing more of this.
Willie shared a story of an assault that landed him in solitary. “I was taking my medication. I ran out of water. Told the officer, I need to get some more. As I'm walking next thing you know, he grabbed me from behind. Flung me against the wall. My medication went everywhere.”
“I don't ever do nothing but color. And I stay to myself. So everybody knows that I'm not a problem in this jail house. No, no. This is my first time ever, ever, ever having any kind of trouble like this, in here. Like I don't give them no problems."
Read 17 tweets
4 May
OUTRAGEOUS: Bobby Sneed. 74 year old veteran. Caged in Angola Prison for 47 years. Finally, unanimously granted parole. Then hospitalized. Prison claims it was a drug overdose. It's now over a month after his scheduled release date. They won't let him go. thelensnola.org/2021/05/04/a-m…
Family: “We were planning to meet him in Baton Rouge the day he was released with open arms to welcome him home. He has four children. And they were all ready to come and welcome him home.” 4 days before this date, he collapsed.
Bobby's since recovered & he's now being held in "administrative segregation." A fancy way of saying the torture of solitary confinement.

Next hearing: May 5. "The stakes are going to be whether Bobby dies in prison, or spends the final years of his life w/ his family members."
Read 6 tweets

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