America today: On tiptoes, in the dark, and drinking sewage water
New Orleans prisoners left to drown after Katrina struck: "“I thought I was going to die in that jail,” Kunkel wrote. “I was locked down in a cell made for two, with five people, no working toilet, no food and no protection. People were panicking, breaking windows, setting fires—anything to try to get someone’s attention from the outside. No one knew if we were forgotten. Three days later, they cut the jail bars and let us out.”
He continued, “The water was up to my chest. I was drinking that water for a day and a half. It was filthy and contaminated. But I did not know what else I could do. I wanted to live.”
The trauma for the inmates did not end when they finally made it out of the prison. Boats were used to move them to the Broad Street overpass. The Post-Gazette cited a letter from Robie Waganfeald, a friend of Kunkel, who wrote to his father, “I sat in the sun from 8 am to 6 pm—10 hours—[with] no water and with National Guardsmen threatening to shoot people. Some [prisoners] got hit with rubber bullets, others with pepper spray. It was the most humiliating, unjustifiable thing I’ve ever seen.”
While Waganfeald was moved to another corrections facility, Kunkel was taken to a fenced-in field in Elayne Hunt Correctional Centre in Harrisonburg, a six-hour ride from New Orleans, where he was held for another four days along with several thousand other prisoners. He gave the following description of the conditions there:
“We lived in 90-degree-plus sun with no protection from the elements. One day it poured, and the ground was wet and muddy. We were given one blanket, and we were freezing at night... Inmates were stealing blankets, and convicts were armed with homemade knives. There were no sanitary facilities. It was like a concentration camp. I [was] very afraid.”
Cynthia Meyers, Kunkel’s friend, commented that the two prisoners “were part of a number of people who didn’t do anything serious but were left to drown."
Link...
He continued, “The water was up to my chest. I was drinking that water for a day and a half. It was filthy and contaminated. But I did not know what else I could do. I wanted to live.”
The trauma for the inmates did not end when they finally made it out of the prison. Boats were used to move them to the Broad Street overpass. The Post-Gazette cited a letter from Robie Waganfeald, a friend of Kunkel, who wrote to his father, “I sat in the sun from 8 am to 6 pm—10 hours—[with] no water and with National Guardsmen threatening to shoot people. Some [prisoners] got hit with rubber bullets, others with pepper spray. It was the most humiliating, unjustifiable thing I’ve ever seen.”
While Waganfeald was moved to another corrections facility, Kunkel was taken to a fenced-in field in Elayne Hunt Correctional Centre in Harrisonburg, a six-hour ride from New Orleans, where he was held for another four days along with several thousand other prisoners. He gave the following description of the conditions there:
“We lived in 90-degree-plus sun with no protection from the elements. One day it poured, and the ground was wet and muddy. We were given one blanket, and we were freezing at night... Inmates were stealing blankets, and convicts were armed with homemade knives. There were no sanitary facilities. It was like a concentration camp. I [was] very afraid.”
Cynthia Meyers, Kunkel’s friend, commented that the two prisoners “were part of a number of people who didn’t do anything serious but were left to drown."
Link...
posted by A. J. Franklin @ 11:50
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