we have to take care of each other but we're. a whole lot of things mean to each other you need to eat when you live. in you. have to make money so you try to figure out where to go. we have to. take to washing your old clothes on your. put your clothes in a bag. you take them to the laundry and. you don't know which. you might or might. be not good at all. in the prison she is coming to. you bring you to be in the field. a lot of people.

even and the unit to be the newest the most modern unit is still crumbling the infrastructure is crumbling and it's visible to anybody who even walks. normally when you go to a visit on unit $29.00 it's going to be going to be cold either it's going to be extremely cold outside or is going to be extremely hot inside normally in temperatures in excess of 100 degrees there's no active there's no air conditioning . in a ventilated area. and in the actual pods in the sales at home guys they have no circulation at all which you normally would. and they're laying on the cold for because you know it's when the man is in. a hole in either cool air they hold it so. they're holding it. so the gas just lay. bare. tested on the

floor it's not uncommon to see 5 or 6 guys just laid out in a sale on the floor vironment is visible in the visiting. rats roaches spiders. and little fire fighters mosquitoes the fast. waltz any you want to see in the corners of the facility and these are areas where the public are. allowed i mean there's nothing new about what's happening in march and i would say in very recent history i think 2 summers ago in august there was basically every other day most of them parchin and in a little bit further back history if we look at the 1970 s. there's this successful suit that they are sort of people win against the state that leads to the end of the trustee system and that was around cruel and unusual punishment so as long as the prison has existed there have been these sort of cruel

inhuman conditions and what we're going to continue to see and have seen in the past is these episodic. periods where the state violence is sort of most apparent to us but for people who are incarcerated that state violence every day. i would never drink the water or i don't like to wash my hands in the bathrooms because when you turned water on it's literally the color of my water fountains when they were the same way they were they come out the water fountains you're too scared to drink the guards will tell you not to drink guards give me about water because i didn't have any they went to water but my clients want that water out of the water barriers between 2 ways it's either to chlorinate it or it smells like sewage and so all the pipes leak right so the gas had their socks around the leaky pipes and so if that's not so brand. they know not to drink the water if the socks are why they know koreans in the water we can wash our clothes and that if you don't enter into water you're going to drink it at that time period if there is

a border notice in the area the guys will get by the water there are still forced to drink that water they take their medication with water that smells like sewage they take medication in water that visibly if you put it in a cup and they think as well take it they let the water sit in they let all of the soil and all of the particles go to the bottom and then they just drink the water that is clarified on top. conditions at parchin have been this way for. behind me is the mississippi state penitentiary known locally as parchment prison where an astounding 9 individuals have died in the past month alone since the start of the new year reports of everything from fights and fires and suicides to insufficient food and water supplies power outages and individuals sleeping on the floors have been reported and a mountain of human rights abuses are allegedly going on behind these walls we

traveled here today to speak with locals activists politicians celebrities and everyone in between and to try and figure out why these things are happening here parchment and what can be done to fix the problem in order to understand the current crisis inside parchment you have to go way back in history and understand the prison's roots of former governor of mississippi and open my supra mrs james k. vardaman was instrumental in creating the mississippi state prison he believed that the money made from convict leasing and chain gang should go to the state instead of private entities and those of the mississippi state penitentiary was born the prison itself is a reform so parchment prison comes about at the turn of the last century as a as a way to sort of. undo what some people are see as the problems of the comically system and in particular governor the governor at the time james vardaman who is an unapologetic white supremacist actually runs on a campaign of white supremacy. believes that the problem with comic leasing was not

really the sort of. human rights abuse that it was but rather that he saw it as sort of lining the pockets of the plantation class that he was a white supremacist populist and believe that this sort of state run plantation style prison would instead be a way of sort of socializing african-americans to their place which he saw as. manual labor the reform that led to the establishment of parchment was also white supremacist in its intent. as i mentioned james james vitamins the person who established. parchment and he used to actually incarcerated people on the grounds of parchment with bloodhounds for sport so if you think about that kind of context in which this place is born there's really no some training white supremacy.

initially. after the timeline of so there were about 4 or 5 it's within 3 or 4 days between december 29th and january 2nd either on january 2nd in the o.c. issued a statement stating that everything was under control however on january 3rd 2 more people died as a result of the incidents that occurred with. one of the indio see it was still a tease throughout the state we did a timeline breakdown of everything that was occurring once we did that time last week we deployed the article on twitter facebook all of our platforms and certainly it began to go really viral we posted a video image of that that was sent to us of several being being housed in a in a unit 32 of parchment unit 32 a question that has been condemned and closed down since 2009 says 2000 that

offered for over 10 years and that was closed down when a.c.l.u. into than agreement with the city state prison for parchment to close it down the reason it was closed down was because it was a hellhole the. essential it was it was a place where where 6 of the people that were being housed there it was the different facility it was the place where where people who were very sick was also being housed but it was also a. a place that was a violent place to say the least essentially the a.c.l.u. decided. this facility should no longer be open so for 10 years this this place had been closed down and this was the place that. these incarcerated people were moved to this facility now is flooded it has black mold in it they have no mattresses it basically has not been maintained in 10 years it was continue to be able to years ago but we have video surfaces of these men inside of this facility and we had

already told the story that no other new site was telling with regard to those men being in unit 32 nobody else had disclosed it because they didn't have the inside information once we got it we shared it and we share the video and the video went viral on twitter it was shared by. many hip hop artists and it's heinous on twitter and instagram can people like t.i. david banner and big create a thing even so a lot of rappers have really been vocal about it parchment is located at least 2 hours away from any major cities making it difficult for lawyers family members and having kids to visit in recent months incarcerated people have used contraband cell phones to share videos and photos of their conditions on social media a risky act and it's news to force transparency in a deadly situation one of the prison officials allege that prison gangs are to blame for the mounting debts the merged many are pushing against that narrative

stating that the inhuman conditions are driving people beyond sanity i think now with all of that. technology that now we're going to have people are now going to be able to see inside and i think that's what's threatening to. the people that are supposed to be in charge of the prisons now disappoint i think this is was threatening to warm because you can't you get so many people and so much of that is around so much contraband they were going there you can't you can't really control and find out who were to get retrieve this from who. and so it's going to continue to leak we're going to change the more things that continue to slip because people are getting bold but now people are also coming up here the main way their prisons have been able to skirt any type of regulation authority around issues involving prisoners and litigation pretty much came out of the night and if i'm in congress passed the prison litigation reform act and what that was is that

at that time congress was seeing in prisons we're seeing a large number of prisoners filing suits about the conditions that they lived in and it was causing a backlog in the backlog in. in the system and so congress has wanted a way to limit the rights of prisoners to bring federal lawsuits about the conditions that they were being complied and so what the p.l.r. a does is that it basically calls for or prisoners to allow their captors time and notice to fix issues that are conditions based so basically which you have to do is that you have to say you have to say to the people who are holding you in these conditions hey. this is why artist smells like for this water tastes like chlorine and then you have to give those people a reasonable amount of time to address the issue before you can move on. to even falla lawsuit against the president.

and we're going to fulfill the true purposes of politics to the people and come out you know we've all pots to. be. pretty. pretty rare per. hour you want to 1st. know.

being. a polling coming. blushes and thank you to the chico to mourn the closeness for each team you'll be set it's. always shifting against. you know you've done. beautiful girls you know i said. you needed at least then you're a loser that i was called but i've done counting that's been the scheme to do so. for the moment you leave your families. in

the us but to the south korean his are still empty come for you summed up all. the money approachable british mr bush cuts imo sure but the school. system is working let's just be clear it's not

a broken criminal justice system the criminal justice system is door what it was designed to do steal kill and destroy. cage people this work and what needs to happen with the system is tear the system apart. that's what needs to happen because if we don't repeal it with some lousy we're going to keep this repetitive cycle. that only rubio will you bring different people to the table would do for the absolute and the would be mississippi you would always have been the good old boy rule right but i believe that this generation lose. the good old world won't work for them it's not the gang leaders who are feeding them only one meal a day it's not the gang leaders who are not repairing the. plumbing where they can get water i mean more than just one water bottle a day it's not

a gang leaders who are leaving trash everywhere i mean this is obviously a problem with the state of mississippi when we think of prisoners we don't think humans we think criminals we think gang members we think murderers rapists we don't think that over half the population in prison are in there for victimless crimes we don't think that these are indeed humans who deserve human rights. we want to think that they're terrible people so whenever the state tells us that they're terrible people we feel like it's ok that they get treated terribly and that's just not the case most prisoners are not in there for any other reason than possibly smoking a plant or doing some other victimless crime harshman for example you have the a.a.r.p. process which is called the administrative remedy process and the way it's supposed to work is that there is supposed to be a box at each unit on each zone needs 2 years and they're supposed to be these little forms that you can fill out in the end it has to in you can only bring up one at a time and it has to be so specific as to give the m.t.o.

3 reasonable notice in time to fix your problem before you can move on and so if this is a 3 step process you feel that they are p. and you tell them what your complaint is and you put it in the box and you hope to get a response. if you don't get a response within 30 days you move on to the 2nd step and the 2nd step is i did not get a response as they all want to respond. you put that in the box they have 30 days to respond and then and only then if you have gotten no response in 60 days then if you can find somebody to file a lawsuit on your behalf against in the o.c. to do so it makes it virtually impossible to file to get any kind of remedy legally for prisoners who don't have any. solutions to the problems of parchment are difficult but they do exist holding elected officials and prison officials

accountable is on the lips of everyone i spoke with as well as creative solutions to addressing the issue people that are making decisions about what should happen with prisons. have not a clue what's really going on you've got the wrong people at the table you know you need those who play at the table that really care people that are connected to the issue at hand people who have had pamela members behind you know the bars how can you really connect how can you really see what you're willing to see and be human and see people as human if you have not been through the experience one way or the other whether you've been a family member if you had a family member in there or locked up to hold somebody accountable for what's happening you almost have to do. go back so far it didn't just or. it didn't just happen you just keep getting people in position to not change and it is the problem but in order to deal with hold of somebody accountable you gotta go

way back so was ham you got to actually have legislators and people actually going to the facility actually talking to people like they're people and not just walking me and ignoring them like you're looking at the paint on the wall but actually human as i'm bring them me and you know find out the day ask them them name you know make them human because they can help you solve the problems they can tell you is needed they can fix it guess guess who bow light on this not us not any other organization not even the state of mississippi the inmates the prisoners are 100 percent in charge 100 percent in show it. out of the media attention has pressurize out the more the abuse the abnormal use behind the walls we live behind the wall and you going to have offices

this going to say oh. yeah relive a yaml today you get channel 3 for fat. guy washington whoever here and guess would they go now and you last shall i will when i say you can shall. you go eat when i say you can eat and dance would i say take your reckon take it now that's the reality it was going on behind the a while in prison with luck bound and in lockdown in this in a state but especially in mississippi is a time for dio say out to more to allow staff of our way to be an overworked. to have time off. is a lot. less going out even more pressure rises a pressure situation. we want you to 29 should we want any brothers or sisters as

inside you need 32 to be our unit 32 we were partially shut down in the interim. immediately what we want is for those brothers and sisters aside to have better food better health care better mental health care we want them to be treated like human beings we want them to be able to have access to their family existed to their representation because these are things that they're being done now right now just this year value of which you have to try and do in this year manage time and the amount of money that it takes to even to file any litigation is about conditions we can take the alabama department of corrections case as an example that's a 6 year lift. you know organizers and have attorneys see to even get it to a point to where they can bring alabama department corrections to the table in mississippi. question when he let the health department last week the reason is the health department is can deal with them before. but since that time they refused to

allow those brothers access to the necessary thing and we want people out of there ultimately we want them to immediately reinstate parole for those who have the ability to have access to parole we want them to mediately released those who have been killed on the love on the finances on drug offenses to de coster rate this system also really. just with your goal is to abolish the system started over you know what i mean like reboot because we've never had a say in this process whether this is that nobody had a say in this process but this process has always come down on us is very defensive . we demand that whatever changes come in a transformative way the the problem of the prison and prison organizing has remained the same over time which is visibility it's how do you draw attention to these dark sites across the country when they're specifically designed to sort of

prevent the public from understanding and empathizing in and knowing how to. address the problem so i think a starting point for all of these campaigns is greater connectivity between people outside and inside so we make sure that we are responding to people's needs inside and also aware of the conditions and creating sort of networks. so that when we have these episodes of extreme violence were able to better address the sort of everyday violence as well as it gets more and more attention and we get more and more leaders stepping up who are using their voices and using their their power 70 or their power to create a voice for. for the incarcerated we're still trying to be centric on the voices of the actual prisoners i know they're there bringing in celebrities who are taking their own actions and what not but our thing is we're talking directly right now to incarcerated people and to direct family members of people who are incarcerated

because when we look at the root cause and the root solutions of what needs to be done these are the people who are closest to the issue and they're going to know what they need done a thing a lot of time people who will tune in to speak almost who didn't have a wall were because they have knowledge or heard someone else speak about it they may feel it was deliverable voice book into you won't do much. argue you were in the right it's hard to explain to people. you it expert if you went to school to learn criminal justice reform or you went to law school or you now been elected june june now this you you want to be the expert you want to have the answers you pay this price of educating yourself to be the expert and then when you have some magic come allow you did to time in the prison. now

tell you what you need this is what you need and that's a lot of. the criminal justice system in what's happening here in mississippi is happening because we have deafen our sadness the voices of the people they need to be heard because here we are 30 plus years in the gang and we still haven't been heard although i hope that we are being heard you heard us your ear. if our state has heard us desta key because we can have people come from all over the world even local give media attention to it but the only way we know that we've been hurt is because chang starts to care. but it's a cause for pride pressure conditions. it's a pressure like water. a water pipe if you put too much pressure on it and. everything is happening. right now and disappoint you say it.

lives a loss. for no reason. people in sales. are not supposed to be. doing it's not good. not good it's called is this cause of death. to prison and you want to go imprison me. go to prison you own. but not to disc a pass to. this is the worst ever heard. i will say to my brothers and my sisters get out. of your pain. and we have a stout from the day we. to the current moment and we just asked him stand down is strength in the was. dead a week in areas where you can stab valla stab us you can encourage to.

do they just like you would embrace want the glow on the inside like you would if you want out sad unlike you desirable means. and to know that you have people on your work in a way to for you to. be .

oh fred the super cool porsche look at all the little plastic and use new york at the salon in china the stuff in shirts for the cheapest we just look you just feel and i mean the streets full well for your clothes would not only do it is made for bush but i will push for so-called bush are going to kill us no. instruction if. you are no offense but you no longer a young woman in fact you are one of the last living survivors of the nazi ellis asked am aware of it. and leave for

a day. all your life. you can never forget they are gone now auschwitz was really like to be inhaled because he would never believe it want a human candle to have as a hobby of course for 30 years and most of the cover of it it all seems so a lot offered by the side to make it feel good when i get out on the farm saw you don't want to take my song to their next the oh so he can listen and hopefully bless my heart hurts.

donald trump invokes a wartime law as an emergency response to the. break forcing american companies to production of vital equipment. the e.u. shuts its borders to limit the spread of. measures in the blog correspondent reports from paris. believing that the team is also being told that the meat. has to stay. on the world health organization urges countries to follow beijing's example on impose tougher restrictions.