11/15/2024
HOLD LMDC ACCOUNTABLE: JAIL DEATHS ARE UNACCEPTABLE
November 8, 2024
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Angie Reed Garner, Buddhist Justice Collective
Phone: (502) 303-7259
Email: buddhistjusticecollective@gmail.com
November 8 - Louisville, Ky. - The Community Stakeholders for Change at LMDC and partner organization the Buddhist Justice Collective will co-host a vigil on Wednesday, November 13 from 5:00-6:00 pm on the southwest corner of Injustice (Jefferson) Square Park, opposite the LMDC building.
The event will include speakers from the Community Stakeholders for Change at LMDC, a reading out of names of persons who have died in the care of since the work of the Stakeholders began, and silent sitting and walking.
Shawnta Hughes, age 53, died on Wednesday in the care of LMDC. LMDC’s rated detention capacity is 1,353 people. On Wednesday when Shawnta Hughes died, 1,409 people were detained at LMDC. We have seen that when overcrowding and understaffing become ordinary, people lose their lives.
We suspect there are dangerous gaps in medical care inside LMDC, and that there is understaffing even for the rated detention capacity. It is vital to have a physician on site, every day and at all hours.
The confirmed speaker list includes:
DeAndrae Hughes, Shawnta Hughes’ son
VOCAL-KY (Ronnie "Pony" Morris, Civil Rights and Homeless Organizer for VOCAL-KY, Shameka Parrish-Wright, Executive Director for VOCAL-KY)
Amber Duke, Executive Director ACLU-Kentucky
Rev. Shanea Fields-Leonard, Pastor & Activist
Rebecca Cavalcante, artist and community organizer
Kyle Ellison, researcher, educator and writer on the Kentucky prison and jail systems
Steven Gardiner, member at large of Veterans for Peace
Chanelle Helm, community organizer
About our vigils:
We gather to mourn the seventeen lives lost at LMDC since we began our work in November of 2021: Kenneth Hall, Rickkita Smith, Stephanie Dunbar, Gary Wetherill, Keith Smith, Leslie Starnes, Moman Anderson, Jr., Barry Williams Sr., Norman Schekles, Thomas Bradshaw, Buddy Stevens, Bashar Ghazawi, Ishmael Worth Puckett, Miguel A Gudino Resediz, Thomas Simpson, Richard Graham, Shawnta Hughes.
We take action for every incarcerated community member who has died, holding their stories at the core of our collective action for the sake of their families, our communities, and our future.
Paraphrasing Lama Rod Owens… systems of violence have co-opted the work of goodness to keep people from disrupting systemic violence. In this sense, goodness is understood to be an expression of virtue if it does not challenge the power imbalance and does not make people who benefit the most from it uncomfortable. This logic powers the PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Good people get care, not-good people don't deserve it. They become recipients of violence masked as justice.
We who are gathered here today abhor this logic and the prisons that it fuels. For us, goodness is the choice for freedom for all people.
Carol Miracle, Buddhist Justice Collective organizer
###
The Buddhist Justice Collective (BJC) is a partner organization with the Community Stakeholders for Change at LMDC, consisting of Louisville-area Buddhist and mindfulness practitioners (and friends) who believe that Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color especially suffer on account of White supremacy, economic exploitation and violence. BJC holds that these systemic factors are impermanent, and we can transform them. BJC offers activist support and conducts vigils for racial justice and public safety reform. All are welcome.
For more information about the Buddhist Justice Collective:
www.buddhistjusticecollective.org
The Community Stakeholders for Change at LMDC is a group of partner organizations and individuals pooling together resources and power in response to the recent rise in deaths at LMDC. Since November 2021, FOURTEEN of our incarcerated Community Members have died while in the care of LMDC. In December 2021, a small group of Community Stakeholders gathered to speak out against inhumane treatment and conditions at LMDC. We demand sustainable change from local city officials.
For more information about the Stakeholders:
https://sites.google.com/view/lmdc-stakeholders/home
art: Rebecca Cavalcante
