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Deaths

It’s Known As ‘Death By Incarceration’; People Want To End It

February 12, 2024 Victoria Law, Portside. , , , ,
“My life is either going to be a testimony or a warning,” said Derek Lee. Lee was speaking on a video chat from behind the walls of SCI Smithfield in central Pennsylvania. Now 35 years old, Lee has been imprisoned since he was 29. If nothing changes, he will grow old and die in prison. In 2016, a Pennsylvania court sentenced Lee to life without parole for a burglary two years earlier that ended with his accomplice fatally shooting the homeowner. Lee was not involved in the killing, but he was convicted of second-degree or felony murder—an unintentional death that happens when the defendant is committing a felony. In Pennsylvania, that means an automatic sentence of life without parole (LWOP).

Activists Protest Jail Deaths, Demand ‘Care Not Cages’

December 2, 2023 Martha Grevatt, Workers World. , , ,
Cleveland, Ohio - Four people have died inside Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County Jail in 2023 — Nathan Myers in July, Elving Lopez in September, Freddie Tackett in October and most recently Rogelio Cubano on Nov. 16. Myers and Cubano were still in their mid-20s. Lopez was supporting a two-year-old daughter and Tackett had five children and three grandchildren. Myers reportedly suffered a drug overdose, and the other three supposedly died after experiencing a “medical emergency.” However, the Cuyahoga County Jail Coalition issued a statement after Tackett’s death raising the possibility of foul play, calling for an investigation.

Drone Attack On Syrian Military College Leaves Dozens Of Casualties

October 6, 2023 News Desk, The Cradle. , , ,
Dozens of casualties have been reported in Syria's central Homs governorate following a deadly drone attack that hit a military college after the end of an officers’ graduation ceremony on 5 October. In a statement released by the armed forces, authorities said the attack was conducted by “armed terrorist organizations supported by well-known international parties." The statement highlights that women and children are among those critically injured. No official death toll has been released as of press time, however, local reports say the number of dead could surpass 50, with over 150 injured.

Be Their Voices Presser: ‘No More Jail Deaths!’

October 6, 2023 Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
St. Paul, MN — Five years after losing her son Hardel Sherrell to medical malpractice and improper care while in a Minnesota jail, Del Shea Perry leads another protest against in-custody deaths. At least 15 people have died this year while inside Minnesota jails and at least 65 since 2018, according to Be Their Voices, Perry’s non-profit. A press conference titled No More Jail Deaths! organized by Be Their Voices took place on Oct. 4 at noon central in front of the Minnesota Department of Corrections building in St. Paul. In a media release about the press conference, Perry says: “The Hardel Sherell Act was passed in 2021 to give the MN Department of Corrections greater oversight of county jails, especially over medical care.

Unlocking The Black Box Of In-Custody Deaths

September 6, 2023 Chris Blackwell, The Appeal. , , , ,
Arrest and incarceration are uniquely dangerous experiences, regardless of where they take place. People die every day in law enforcement custody. In jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers. On sidewalks, city streets, and in their homes. From violence, neglect, and suicide. Despite the frequency of in-custody deaths, their exact scope remains unknown and data is often intentionally obfuscated by the refusal of states to comply with federally mandated reporting requirements. More than two decades ago, Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA), requiring states to report the number of people who die in custody or during arrest.

Two Degrees Of Warming Could Cause One Billion Deaths Over Next Century

August 31, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , , ,
A new study by Joshua Pearce of London’s Western University and Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz in Austria has found that, if global heating reaches or surpasses two degrees Celsius by the year 2100, there is a high probability that over the next century humans, mostly the wealthiest, will be responsible for the deaths of approximately one billion mostly poorer humans. Many of the most powerful and profitable businesses on the planet are part of the oil and gas industry, which is both indirectly and directly responsible for over 40 percent of carbon emissions, which impact billions of lives in some of the world’s most remote communities that have the least resources, reported Western News.

West Virginia Rally Condemns Jail Deaths

July 19, 2023 Otis Grotewohl, Workers World. , , ,
Beckley, West Virginia - Nearly 100 prison abolitionists and family members of jailhouse murder victims rallied in Beckley on July 15 to raise awareness of the growing number of deaths in jails throughout West Virginia. In the last couple of years, the deaths have become epidemic, with dozens of incarcerated workers murdered at the hands of guards throughout the state. Appropriately dubbed “Handcuffs Shouldn’t Kill You,” the event was organized by the West Virginia Poor People’s Campaign and co-sponsored by the West Virginia American Civil Liberties Union and the Beckley chapter of the NAACP. Community and union activists from the area attended.

Report: Over 4.5 Million People Killed In Post 9/11 Wars

May 17, 2023 News Desk, The Cradle. , , ,
A new study from the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute estimates that over 4.5 million people have died from wars launched by the west in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks. The study estimates that between 906,000 to 937,000 people have been killed as a direct result of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia. “These countries have experienced the most violent wars in which the US government has been involved in the name of counterterrorism since 2001,” the report highlights. Moreover, 3.6 million people are estimated to have died indirectly from the effects of western wars, including economic collapse, food insecurity, destruction of public health facilities, environmental contamination, and recurring violence.

Silent No More

March 28, 2023 Stewart Acuff, Stansbury Forum. , , , ,
Under a sky spitting freezing rain with a cold whipping wind, Kimberly Burks, the mother of Quantez Burks, helped assemble the 150 marchers and stepped us off from the home of Quantez Burks at noon. We marched through the neighborhood and out to well-travelled thoroughfares and around the Beckley Police Station. We then lined a block of the main street through town holding and waving signs, some folks crying, others remembered the two men and the shock of their deaths. Josh Eagle, a friend of Burks, held a sign that read: “What if Quan was your son? Brother? Father? Husband? Friend? Uncle? We want answers. We demand justice.”

Harris County Jail Crisis In Houston, Texas Kills Dozens

February 12, 2023 Arturo Dominguez, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Houston, Texas – The Harris County Jail is the third-largest jail in the U.S. and the largest jail in Texas. Located in Houston, it also confines the most people with mental illness in the state. Despite its complicated history, the public is largely unaware of the myriad issues at the jail. This report covers how the massive backlog of felony cases and pretrial detention contribute to the deaths of dozens **of detainees amid overcrowding, medical crises, and a lack of mental health services. Multiple times between September and January, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) slapped the jail with notices of non-compliance.

US Ranks Last Among Peer Nations For COVID-19 Mortality

November 27, 2022 Matthew Rosza, Truthout. , , ,
American citizens pride themselves for living in a country that most of them believe is superlative — freest, most powerful, most entrepreneurial. Yet despite the spheres where it has high standing, the United States ranks dismally among its peer nations when it comes to deaths from COVID-19. “Dismal” might not be a strong enough adjective, actually: the U.S. ranked dead last among its peer nations, with the most deaths per capita. The data comes from a new study published in the medical journal JAMA, which also analyzed state-by-state vaccination and public health data. Alarmingly, researchers noted that if every state in the United States had the same vaccination rates as those states with the highest vaccination rates, more than 100,000 lives would have been saved.

Groups Urge UN To Call For Abolition Of ‘Death By Incarceration’

September 16, 2022 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , , ,
Several human rights organizations submitted a 31-page complaint to United Nations experts today, alleging that the United States is committing torture and violating the prohibition against racial discrimination by condemning people to death by incarceration through extreme sentences including life and life without possibility of parole (LWOP). The groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Drop LWOP Coalition and the Abolitionist Law Center, are urging the UN to call for the abolition of all death by incarceration sentences. “Death by incarceration is the devastating consequence of a cruel and racially discriminatory criminal legal system that is designed not to address harm, violence, and its root causes, but to satisfy the political pressure to be tough on crime,” the complaint states.

Universal Health Care Could Have Saved US Lives During COVID

June 14, 2022 Rachel Nuwer, Scientific American. , , ,
Americans spend more on health care than people in any other nation. Yet in any given year, the piecemeal nature of the American medical insurance system causes many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs. Not surprisingly, COVID-19 only exacerbated this already dire public health issue, as evidenced by the U.S.’s elevated mortality, compared with that of other high-income countries. A new study quantifies the severity of the impact of the pandemic on Americans who did not have access to health insurance. According to findings published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, from the pandemic’s beginning until mid-March 2022, universal health care could have saved more than 338,000 lives from COVID-19 alone.

US Deaths Among Those Without Housing Are Surging

February 11, 2022 Erin Mccormick, Portside. , , ,
The number of Americans dying while homeless has surged dramatically in the past five years, an exclusive analysis by the Guardian in conjunction with an academic expert at the University of Washington has shown. An examination of 20 US urban areas found the number of deaths among people living without housing shot up by 77% in the five years ending in 2020. The rise from 2016 through 2020 was driven by many factors, including ever-rising numbers of people living on the street and the growing dangers they face, such as violence, untreated disease and increasingly deadly illicit drug supplies. From 65-year-old Randy Ferris, killed when a car veered into a California sidewalk encampment, Justine Belovoskey, 60, who died alone in a tent during a Texas cold snap, and Anthony Denico Williams, stabbed to death at age 20 in Washington DC, to scores of young people succumbing to overdoses on the streets, their stories reflect the harrowing tragedy of an epidemic of homelessness.

There Really Were Only Two COVID Deaths In Mainland China In 2021

January 11, 2022 Rosa Astra And Benjamin Zinevich, Liberation News. , , ,
As the Omicron variant causes record levels of infection in the United States, the end of the pandemic seems as far away as ever. But far from preparing a robust response to defeat the virus, the Biden administration is preparing to surrender and encourage the public to “learn to live with” COVID indefinitely. When the Party for Socialism and Liberation pointed out the fact that China has in fact succeeded at virtually eliminating deaths from the virus, we were attacked by far-right pundits like Ben Shapiro – who took the position that such a feat is essentially impossible and asserted that China’s achievement was just a massive falsification. In the United States, which has seen more deaths from the disease than any other country on Earth, there were 476,863 new deaths in 2021, up from 370,777 in 2020.
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