Families of incarcerated people, advocates, and community organizers held a press conference Wednesday to shine a light on the intersecting crises of racism and COVID-19 in Washington State prisons. The press conference, organized by Seattle COVID-19 Mutual Aid and Columbia Legal Services, denounced the Department of Corrections’ (DOC) handling of the pandemic, saying its response has been inadequate, negligent, and harmful.
As a resident of Forks, WA, I am encouraged to see that our community has been proactive in taking steps to minimize the impact of COVID-19 when it comes to our town. We closed parks, are staying at home, and made changes to our hospital and pharmacy protocols to limit contact.
But I am worried that we are not taking into account a large population that is within our community and currently incarcerated. As of May 5, 24 incarcerated people in Washington have tested positive for COVID-19, along with 36 prison staff members. Only twenty incarcerated people at Clallam Bay Corrections Center (CBCC), one of the local prisons on the West End of the Olympic Peninsula, have been tested.
At precisely noon last Thursday, under quiet blue skies, a line of cars pulled up to the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Purdy and jolted the day awake. “Free them all! Free them all!” yelled protestors, honking their horns while maintaining a safe distance from each other. Bewildered guards stood by the prison parking lot as protestors shouted through a bullhorn, held protest signs out of car windows, and even blew a trumpet. Simultaneously, protests were also taking place in Olympia, outside the Governor’s mansion, and outside the Monroe Correctional Complex.
Every day, Dave M. works in the Washington Corrections Center kitchen. He stands right next to fellow inmates, all of whom are currently without masks, to make meals for the rest of the prison’s population. He says nothing in the kitchens have been moved or changed to make it safer for himself and his fellow kitchen workers. All the measures the Department of Corrections has announced its prisons are taking? He says they’re just for show.
After weeks of protests, the Washington Department of Corrections lifted a ban on used books that had been quietly implemented in mid-March. The ban blocked nonprofits who sent books to prisoners. The policy reversal followed an onslaught of news coverage, including a report from the Seattle Times that found that the DOC’s claims that the books were used to transport contraband were untrue.
Last year my son, Willie Nobles, got the chance I want for every family in Washington state. Having served 22 years in prison of a 96-year-sentence, a compassionate judge reviewed Willie’s case and said he couldn’t, in good conscience, keep him in prison.
