Part One:
DETAINED IMMIGRANTS & NON-VIOLENT PRISONERS ARE AT GRAVE RISK OF COVID-19
We speak with Marcia Brown, reporter for The American Prospect, who has written several articles about the prison pandemic. In jails throughout the country, the dense population and the non-exemplary sanitary conditions are prime locations for breakouts of the coronavirus. Social distancing is essentially impossible. Hot water and soap are in short supply.
More and more inmates are coming down with the disease – even though there are insufficient tests available for anyone to have a full sense of how widespread it is. Efforts to segregate infected inmates aren’t necessarily adequate reflections of who is sick and who isn’t. Correctional officers and staff constantly enter and leave and move around the entire facility. Then they go home where they unwittingly expose their families and their community. Medical personnel are afraid to go to work and risk grave illness. Yet they need the income to support their families and, of course, the inmates are desperately in need of medical support.
Similar situations exist for people who’ve fled violence in their home countries, sought asylum protection in the United States, and been detained in jails or jail-like settings while they wait for their asylum hearings. They face the same risks because of the density and unsanitary conditions of the congregate environment. And many jailed immigrants are also getting sick, and, if they can get tested, are found to have COVID-19. But again, these inmates – and the other inmates and guards who are in close contact with them – are in danger of getting even sicker (or dying) and spreading the illness to many other people.
Because of the risk of contagion, advocacy groups and lawyers for the asylum-seekers and the inmates are urging the government to release as many inmates as possible – for public health reasons – as long as they are not violent or dangerous to the outside community. Many of these folks have families or friends out in the community with whom they could live until they get back on their feet. Of course, former detainees would have to remain quarantined somewhere for at least 14 days until they were no longer contagious.
Part Two:
TWO SUPREME COURTS MAKE US CHOOSE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY & DYING
We speak with Harold Meyerson, executive editor of the American Prospect, about the blatantly partisan rulings by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. The latter forced voters to decide whether to forgo their constitutional right to vote in state elections – held yesterday – or instead risk exposing themselves (and their families) to COVID-19 and possible death.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling voided the Governor’s directive extending by one week the deadline for voters to submit absentee ballots. Because of the pandemic, state election officials had not even sent voters their blank ballots, so it was impossible for anyone to fill it out and return it by yesterday’s deadline. The state court decision thereby disenfranchised a large portion of the electorate, literally rendering it impossible for them to cast their votes.
