PART II
By Reality Check
If you have no family support you suffer.
By state law, bleach is to be delivered to each prison dorm daily for the cells (which house two men each) and dorm which house 224 men living in close quarters, along with the showers 224, men use 16 showers, to be thoroughly disinfected daily.
In an effort to save money at the expense of our health, the bleach, pre-corona days, was so watered down you could drink it. So before corona, our cells were always filthy, showers visually clean but filthy after being clean with watered-down bleach.
Ourselves and showers often feel like war zones. Bacteria and filth being the enemy.
Imagine going to a hotel and stepping into a shower that was used by 20 previous guess and the showers were clean with water down bleach in between each guess.
We have to buy pure bleach from the inmates who work in the area where real bleach is stored.
How do the poor, corona sanitize themselves; they share with other men.
Last week an officer took my real bleach out of my position and in my presence gave it to his coworker and told him to use it to clean the offices bathroom. I paid five dollars for it.
Since the Coronavirus the quantity and quality of our bleach has not improved.
First, in the kitchen, 1200 men come to the kitchen to eat daily. 150 men enter the area in each cycle. There are 300 cups, 300 spoons which are washed and reuse four times during each meal. So each spoon is used three times, three different men put their mouths on each spoon each meal, nine different men use the same spoon in one day.
The spoons and cups by state law should be washed in water over 100° hot. The dishwasher don’t work and the bleach used is water down. Pre-corona there is daily anger at the filth and thick grease on the spoons.
No changes have been made.
Imagine in this corona era, going to a restaurant and being given a spoon six different strangers already used which was then washed in dirty water before being given to you.
Florida has the nation’s third largest prison budget, yet men’s lives are risked to cut corners on soap and bleach. This is dangerous.
There is a screening of all reporters who enter the press room at the White House they are required to first have their temperatures taken before being allowed in the presence of the president. They say the measure of a society’s greatness is weighted by how it treats the elderly and the most vulnerable of its population. Yet though the only way for men in prisons to catch the virus is from staff members. The screening of staff before they enter the facility is nonexistent.
In the kitchen, instead of allowing us to eat one at a table, they seat a man three feet away from you to breath and cough over your food as you eat.
Whenever outside inspectors come to the prison, the officers give us raw bleach make us walk eight feet apart and act concerned until the inspectors leave.
I asked an officer why he felt like they had the right to sabotage policies that would make us safer. He told me, “white privilege.”
Filthy living conditions, filthy shower areas, dangerously filthy cups and spoons, no basic screening of officers entering facilities, it’s as if its true sabotage. They’re trying to jeopardize our life to this virus Period. White privilege he said.
Secretary Marc Inch is really trying. In corporate America when the CEOs policies are intentionally disobeyed by employees they call it administrative resistance. In prison they call it the DOC Way.
To have survive first, knife fights, prison riot, police abuse then to potentially lose your life due to administrative resistance/white privilege that sabotages potentially productive preventive methods that’s tough.
There is a cloud of hopelessness hanging over prisons, it feels dark in here, we are in a dangerous situation. I’ve seen the police come in here and kick a man to death then tie a sheet around his neck and say he hung himself and get away with it.
How much easier it is it to create conditions for a virus to take the lives of those on the other side of white privilege&,
Next to God only you and Society can prevent that, it is your display of concern that protects us. Nevertheless, there is no rainbow without the rain. So as a people we will continue to press on confident that God has already delivered to us the potion of strength needed for this season of adversity.
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