Explain, evade, and rationalize appears to be the chosen strategy of Mayor Tishaura Jones’s administration when addressing the six deaths of inmates at the St. Louis City Justice Center (CJC). This may be difficult for the public to perceive. Especially, when the St. Louis Prison Reform Coalition, those who claim to protest, apparently are a loyal opposition to the mayor. Equally preposterous to Mayor Jones’s counterinsurgency strategies, her wish to contain the legitimate outrage in the city as her administration tramples on our people, is how the city’s activists for the government pretend to be militant, while making demands on nobody. Mayor Jones ran for office feigning opposition to the system, the same one the activists for the government who rally around the slogan “Black Lives Matter” claim they wish to abolish. Is Mayor Jones’s vitality the only Black life these activists wish to see survive and thrive?
Recently, Mayor Jones trotted out her Public Safety Director, Dan Isom and St. Louis Corrections Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah to do damage control in the aftermath of three recent deaths of inmates on Mayor Jones’s administration’s watch. Unfortunately, for Mayor Jones’ regime, they just did more damage by exposing that although these jail administrators are deemed progressive, the system continues to subordinate and degrade those it is charged with warehousing.
In a recent Aldermen’s public safety committee meeting on October 5, Isom and Clemons-Abdullah tried to pass the buck of accountability from Mayor Jones’s regime. Like worms removed from soil, they tried to squirm and wiggle their way out of responsibility by offering excuse after excuse as to why the inmate’s deaths were out of the administration’s control. Isom expressed that the municipal government was upset and concerned about the number of deaths at the jail. This was nothing more than an attempt to appear humane and caring while overseeing one of the most acute forms of barbarism — jailing and warehousing people. Imagine a plantation overseer standing on the porch of the big house telling those still being exploited and degraded how much he is upset by yet another death of another enslaved person. Nobody would take such a thing seriously and would see such pronouncements as insincere and self-serving. However, now that the police-state is Black-led should we identify with it and retort to critics, “let them people do their jobs”?
“Don’t Even Look at Me”
It has been announced by the hierarchical government that out of the six people who died in custody at the CJC two died of drug overdoses, three died of pre-existing conditions, and one committed suicide. This is Mayor Jones’s administration’s way of saying “don’t even look at me, you don’t have permission to look at me, you talk when I say you can talk.” Does the daily abuses, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, and adequate medical attention and care at CJC have nothing to do with the six deaths at the jail. Does the mayor take us all for fools?
It is not surprising that individuals, who are overwhelmingly Black and impoverished, charged with crimes and detained at CJC would have drug addictions, long-standing health problems, and suffer from various forms of mental health issues. What is quite appalling is the jail administration’s announcement of the causes of death of detainees as if it exonerates them of maintaining a dungeon of doom that exacerbates whatever problems detainees arrive with.
Maintaining A Dungeon of Doom
The jail should be well aware when people come in with pre-existing medical conditions because all detainees are supposed to be examined by medical personnel upon admittance into CJC. The problem appears to be that there is very little if any close monitoring of detainee’s medical conditions after they are admitted. If medical examinations pinpoint pre-existing medical conditions of detainees, what, if anything, is done to ameliorate such medical conditions?
“It’s Nothing We Did”
Clemons-Abdullah claims that if the detainees were at home, their medical condition would not have been detected. This may be true, but the reality is that they were not at home. They were in the custody of the jail that has a medical staff that should be able to help people and not just allow them to die because of lack of diligence. The reality is that jails are not medical facilities, they are warehouses that hold people and treat them as such. They do just enough to keep the warehoused alive and when they fail at doing so, they attempt to rationalize as to why the jail administrators are not at fault to avoid legal liability. People don’t have to succumb to pre-existing conditions while in jail. When they do, jail administrators cannot just throw up their hands and proclaim “it’s nothing we did.” The truth is that it is what they failed to do that resulted in the deaths of detainees.
The fact that two detainees died of a drug overdose should not be surprising. Recently, it was reported that a corrections officer at CJC was charged with smuggling 30 fentanyl pills into the jail. I seriously doubt that the officer was bringing them in for personal use. More than likely, she was bringing them in to sell to inmates at the facility. Although jail officials make it appear that such individuals who are caught smuggling drugs into jails are an aberration, this is not the case. It is well documented in jails and prisons throughout the U.S. that drugs are smuggled in to these facilities for sale and trade. The officers who are caught could not do this alone. It is very likely there are collaborators who are not caught and continue to get drugs to detainees. Clemons-Abdullah’s answer to this problem is to secure a body scanner to conduct more searches of those coming in and out of the jail. This scanner will likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So much for “defunding” the police state. The activists for the government talk “abolish” today, “defund” tomorrow, and “give me my money” for getting out the vote for the mayor after I denounced “the system” the next.
Inadequate Mental Health Services for those Detained
Detainees committing suicide inside of jails is not a novel problem. What many overlook is the fact that the degrading and oppressive conditions used to maintain subordination inside of the carceral state is many times the reason for the deterioration of detainee’s mental health. Additionally, the onset of the reality that they will lose everything and have nothing by the time their case is resolved is enough to send detainees into depression and suicidal thoughts. Add to this the fact that CJC is not a mental health facility and it doesn’t have mental health staff around the clock. With nobody knowledgeable about mental health consistently on-site you have a recipe for disaster. Even by Clemons-Abdullah’s own admission, CJC is woefully understaffed. This means that the staff that is employed do not have the capacity to monitor inmates with mental health problems. Do those who are employed as corrections officers (modern-day slave drivers) have the capacity to detect when detainees have an onset of depression or suicidal thoughts?
Tears Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Arrogance of the Mayor
It is clear that Mayor Jones’s administration cannot ensure the safety and health of detainees at CJC. What Isom and Clemons-Abdullah’s recent remarks about the deaths of detainees at CJC exposes is a desire to control the narrative of what is happening to detainees while dodging any accountability for the degradation and death that detainees are constantly subjected. However, the arrogance of the Mayor goes further. When St. Louis police recently killed two Black men, remember Mayor Jones cried tears of a clown, using her identity as a Black mother of a Black son, to show her apparent compassion? Why no tears for those who died in her custody at the CJC? Why this attitude of “it ain’t my fault?”
Message to the Grassroots: The Mayor’s Government Is Out of Control
May I have a word with you, grassroots St. Louis? The people who are dying in CJC and being tear gassed and trampled upon there have mothers, are sons and have sons. We understand for some of our own relatives are in the jail and prison system. We also have known victimization by police, white and black, and by criminals, white and black. There have been many social explosions that the Mayor has ignored inside the CJC.
The administrators she has chosen are “progressive” enough to admit that the system is out of control. They don’t have the resources to maintain the health of those jailed who are not even clashing with the police. How could we not anticipate future clashes inside the jails and outside in our streets? We need to rethink what our people’s identification with Mayor Jones has meant. She wishes to perform compassion one minute, and administer subordinate and degraded lives the next. Many identify with the mayor’s ascendancy as our people’s empowerment. But look how she treats our people?
Now, while some activists claim to be fighting for reform of the jail conditions at CJC, it is clear that their efforts expose that they are not against Tishaura Jones’s government. In fact, they are a loyal opposition to it. Such people have stood on the side of Mayor Jones and have offered very little if any public criticism of her during her tenure as mayor. Some of these activists of the government even stood with Mayor Jones when she, Corie Bush, and the jailer-in-chief Kim Gardner went into the Workhouse and CJC under the guise of an “investigation,” to listen to detainee’s grievances. However, what the jail tours were about was suppressing the self-directed liberating activity of detainees that had reached a fever pitch. How can such people who stood with the government now claim to be a part of a coalition making “demands” on the government?
Understanding Coalition Politics
A coalition is usually a convergence of organizations who identify as having a common cause or objective. Most coalitions come together in a moment of crisis and do not exist past the immediate issue that brought them together. A coalition can include or exclude the government or others in hierarchical power. In the coalition advocating for reforms at the jail, it is clear that the coalition views Mayor Jones’s administration as partners in their coalition that they seek to provide advice to ensure that it maintains its legitimacy.
Running Out of Fingers: The Mayor’s Body Count Is Now Eight
It appears that the “activist” organizations in the coalition view Mayor Jones’s regime as “progressive,” as partners in “struggle” despite the fact the city government has the power to address issues at the jail, but continue to do nothing but offer excuses for the death and degradation that continues unabated at CJC. The CJC now has killed at least six people on Mayor Jones’s watch and her police killed two people in our streets. The Jones’s administration’s body count is now 8 deaths under her law-and-order regime. For those who need to count on their fingers, we only have two hands.
The activists for the government in the coalition claim to be making “demands.” Demands imply an uncompromising stance that will be joined with further mobilization, direct actions and disobedience, if such demands are not complied with. The coalition does not propose further action if Mayor Jones’s administration does not comply with their demands. Therefore, such demands are merely suggestions or requests meant to provide advice to the government on how it can maintain its legitimacy in the face of potential rumblings or uprisings among the oppressed. Furthermore, the demands of the coalition are not clearly directed at anyone in power. It is not clear whether they are speaking to the jail administration, Mayor Jones, the Circuit Attorney, or judges. What is clear is that the coalition is not serious about mobilizing against those in power. Perhaps in a few days they will have a march or rally for “prison reform,” and forget the mayor’s name, as they give speeches denouncing “the system.” Who knows they may even invite Mayor Jones or her administrators of the dungeons of doom to speak out against the system?
Demands Are Not Requests: Uncompromising Grassroots Political Force Needed
A political force must emerge that is uncompromising and independent from the government and the police state. Such a force will not make requests, but will make it clear that the next stage of struggle will be to disturb those in power and arrive on their own authority independent of those who are a part of the ethnically plural police state. This includes viewing Mayor Jones, Public Safety commissioner Dan Isom, and Corrections Commissioner Jennifer Clemons-Abdullah as the agents of repression and misdirection that they are. If our struggles against the police-state are to be successful, we must discard those who seek to suppress our better instincts toward liberation regardless of the race or sex of those who rule above society.
This post was reposted from Stories by Adofo Minka on Medium
