“Sooner or later nearer to house.” These had been the phrases etched on the wall above the bunk mattress in cell 212 at Dekalb County Jail. They had been the very first thing I noticed once I awakened between 3 and 5 a.m. for the primary meals supply of the day. They had been additionally the very last thing I noticed round 10 p.m., as I meditated on all who had laid within the bunk earlier than I used to be arrested — an arrest that felt extra like a kidnapping within the forest — and compelled myself to sleep by protecting my face with a blanket, shielding my eyes from the omnipresent lights.
I got here to Atlanta to camp among the many swaying pines of the Weelaunee Forest in solidarity with the folks of Atlanta. I answered the decision to assist Cease Cop Metropolis. If two days of public testimony to the Atlanta City Council overwhelmingly rejecting the proposal to construct Cop Metropolis didn’t cease the undertaking, maybe my becoming a member of the camp would present these in energy {that a} totally different future is desired by all. I got here to Atlanta as a result of I didn’t need the NYPD to have a policing playground by which they’d be indoctrinated even additional to see the folks of NYC as enemy combatants. I got here to Atlanta due to the calls demanding that neighboring Black communities be heard of their rejection of the proposed Cop Metropolis — and their want to rename Intrenchment Creek Park to honor Indigenous nations and illuminate the manipulation of metropolis processes by company pursuits. I got here to Atlanta as a result of the police assassinated Tortuguita, a forest defender, and tried to cowl it up by posting photographs on Twitter of an ordinary police-issued handgun “discovered” on the location.
I got here to Atlanta as a result of it’s the place I used to be born. I grew up between there and Murfreesboro, Tennessee within the Nineteen Eighties. Each units of my grandparents had been from Atlanta. My father’s household settled in Avondale Estates within the Nineteen Forties, and my Grandfather Grim was a lecturer within the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech within the ‘60s and ‘70s. My mom’s dad and mom moved to a home on Diamond Head Circle in Decatur within the Nineteen Seventies, following my mom to her new house and fleeing the unrest of New York Metropolis. It was their second new house after that they had each left Puerto Rico to flee colonialist violence by the hands of the USA.
My Abuelito would insist that my brothers and I get up at 7 a.m. to climb into his automobile crammed with our towels, snacks, and toys for journeys to the now-closed seashore at Stone Mountain. Being Puerto Rican, he would at all times discover a seashore or beach-type place wherever he landed. Whereas at Dekalb County Jail, I might watch the dawn over the mountain within the mornings from my slender cell window and bear in mind Abuelito’s smile and hugs. I might bear in mind our journeys to the Worldwide Meals Market and nights of unending domino video games, whilst my ideas had been disrupted by the loud banging of steel doorways slammed shut or of individuals screaming from their cells, determined for anybody to note their ache.
Lashawn Thompson, the person revealed to have been eaten alive by bugs in Fulton County Jail final 12 months, will not be the one one who suffered from torture by the hands of jailers within the Atlanta space. 31 days in Dekalb County Jail had been sufficient for me to offer eyewitness testimony of this torture. Whereas in my podcage within the girls’s part of the jail, 4 Southeast, I noticed six folks locked into cells 24/7 due to their psychological well being classification, considered one of whom tried suicide throughout my time there. One other one of many six folks didn’t have operating water in her cell, so others used saved baggage from meals deliveries, filling them with water and sliding them underneath her door to cease her from consuming her urine to outlive. One other lady discovered herself on everlasting lockdown after she began operating across the frequent space bare. After days of screaming to be set free, she knotted a mattress sheet and tried to hold herself. Others watched her via the clear glass of the door. When our podcage comrades yelled on the guards to come back assist her, the guards laughed and slowly strolled over. After they took her to medical, a sergeant arrived and advised us that the complete podcage was on lockdown. We had been collectively warned to not trigger “additional hassle.”
As an alternative of our jailers, who selected to lock in and isolate a lady in her cell as “psychological well being care,” it was we who had been blamed for her suicide try. Half of the folks within the podcage witnessed this suicide try, and as a substitute of grief counseling, we had been locked into cells — most of which had damaged bathrooms and no operating water — for the next 4 hours.
After I first arrived, all I wished to do was to take a bathe and lie all the way down to sleep. My first cellmate was, like many in jail, with no house and incarcerated due to issues that occur when you don’t have any house. She had only some days to go on her nine-day-long sentence for alleged trespassing, which she was charged with after not ready to go away a hospital earlier than she was effectively. She tried to acclimate me to jail life. I paid consideration and tried to recollect all the guidelines for cleansing and sustaining the cell. The painted cinder block partitions jogged my memory of public college buildings and state college dorm rooms. I questioned if the identical folks constructed these buildings.
Screams usually erupted from the decrease stage of the cell rooms.
“She’s a ‘22,’” Raja tells me, explaining that individuals with excessive psychological well being challenges are labeled as such and locked into their cells 24/7.
“How do they obtain medicines or remedy?” I naively requested. Raja shrugged. New screams from the decrease stage of the podcage reverberated off the partitions to tell us that lunch “sacks” of bologna sandwiches had arrived. She remarked that the meals arrived early, probably due to the opposite activists and myself. I realized she was proper. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than we had been again to the traditional shifts of receiving meals simply twice a day, each 12 to 14 hours, relying on the moods and temperaments of the guards on shift.
“The whole block is transferring otherwise ‘cuz of y’all,” she drawled. Later, my final cellmate Dulce confessed that when she noticed a bunch of youngish white girls, she thought that we had been all intercourse employees, however our look confused her as a result of we didn’t appear to be the same old kind. One of many girls we had been within the holding cell with throughout processing, Divinity, advised the others about our home terrorism expenses. One after the other, we began to make associates as we shivered within the podcage, which was saved underneath 60 levels always.
I used to be particularly delicate to those temperatures as a result of I’m perimenopausal and have a tendency to have a really excessive physique temperature. My time in jail is the primary time in 5 years that I’ve been actively chilly for an prolonged time frame. I preserve my Brooklyn bed room round 60 levels all 12 months spherical to keep away from scorching flashes. The podcage was a lot colder, and I shivered to sleep for per week earlier than receiving thermal underwear that I needed to buy via the commissary. Till we organized our podcage mates to submit grievances in regards to the chilly local weather, which we did via the jail’s third party-monitored grievance system, further blankets had been forbidden. I noticed various further blankets violently taken and thrown out of cells in a sadistic ceremony.
Mates shared their struggles. The struggles I heard about and skilled satisfied me that the state of Georgia doesn’t run county jails — it runs focus camps that it calls county jails. The final native seat of duty for these county jails appears to be the elected “Chief Govt Officer” of the state’s counties. All of our grievances are linked to the unusual and merciless company buildings discovered within the elected places of work of the USA of America.
Our new comrades had no concept that the speed of native incarceration was decrease in different main cities, or that serving two days to per week in jail due to a visitors violation is remarkable in locations like NYC. The opposite activists and I spoke in regards to the motion to abolish jails, prisons, and police. We talked about different options each in improvement and in desires of changing this method. We had loads of time to speak about loads of issues, as we had been hardly ever taken into the out of doors recreation space — an space that we might see from the podcage.
In my 31 days in Dekalb County Jail, I and the others in our caged neighborhood solely obtained three hours of daylight and contemporary air within the out of doors recreation space. The inmate handbook, obtainable in a digital kiosk on the wall, acknowledged that we had been entitled to 5 hours per week. Dulce had been incarcerated with no formal cost for over 15 months. She acknowledged she might rely on her arms the hours of daylight she skilled in jail. Throughout her time there, she was held for seven months in a windowless room in medical solitary confinement as a result of she was pregnant when arrested, couldn’t pay her bond, and had such hypertension that the jailers had been afraid she would have a stroke, killing each her and her child of their cage.
Through the second week, we had been caged, our comrade Myla woke with an excruciating toothache. She tried to persuade considered one of us to assist her pull it out of her mouth. On additional dialogue, all of us determined it might be higher to file as many grievances as doable, see who had Tylenol to share, speak to the guards, and file a medical request. She needed to wait three days earlier than the jail’s dental staff noticed her. They put her on Tylenol with Codeine and gave her an appointment with Grady Hospital to tug her tooth. It was presupposed to occur in 4 to 6 weeks, however I spoke to Myla just lately — it has been three weeks, and she or he nonetheless has not had her tooth handled, nor has she been scheduled for remedy. She continues to be on Tylenol with Codeine, nonetheless brushing her enamel always to sluggish the inevitable compacted an infection and defend herself from it turning lethally septic.
A brand new jail is not going to repair the issues of Atlanta’s jails. The folks of Atlanta know {that a} new jail will not be the answer as a result of so lots of them have frolicked in Fulton and Dekalb County Jails. How will a brand new constructing remedy the issues of jailers who see inmates as bugs? How will a brand new constructing remedy the issues of individuals with psychological well being points attributable to a lifetime of financial disaster? How will a brand new jail remedy the issue of tens of hundreds of individuals being caged for essentially the most minor of infractions?
In 2008 the city of Cincinnati closed down a city jail, the Queensgate Correctional Facility. What occurred? A massive drop in arrests and violent crime. Officers with little mattress house now not used arrests as a default response to calls. Misdemeanor arrests dropped by over 30 %, and felony arrests dropped by over 40 %. At this time, lives have been saved, the neighborhood is safer, and crime rates have continued to drop. The constructing of the jail is now being renovated to carry small companies and artist studios.
The one approach ahead is to shut down the jails of Atlanta, cease Cop Metropolis, and start treating the folks of Atlanta as if they’re members of the beloved neighborhood. From NYC to Atlanta, we all know that it’s caring for one another — not brutality, cages, or cop cities — that can preserve us collectively protected.
Scalawag is a journalism and storytelling group that works in solidarity with oppressed communities within the South to disrupt and shift the narratives that preserve energy and wealth within the arms of the few. Learn extra tales from Atlanta organizers featured in Scalawag’s A Week of Writing: Stop Cop City.
Contribute to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund to help the authorized protection of Forest Defenders going through home terrorism expenses, and learn more in regards to the ongoing combat to #StopCopCity and defend the Atlanta forest.
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