Newsom, Stop The Executions! Rally & Caravan to End the COVID Deaths in Prisons

[Photos by Stephanie Mohan, Pro Bono Photo. Please credit the photographer]

95,000 people in California are currently caged in state prisons. Every state prison is responding to a wave of active cases of COVID-19. The state has failed to reduce its prison population to the minimum level required to socially distance. Nine prisons remain at over 120% capacity and 7,000 people in county jails await transfers to state prisons.

These groups organized a January 31 rally and caravan to call for the mass release of prisoners in California: Critical Resistance, No Justice Under Capitalism, Prisoner Solidarity Committee of Workers World Party, and Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice.

Prison resistance organizers demanded that Governor Newsom take immediate action to release prisoners and stop COVID-19 deaths. They want the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCr) and Governor Gavin Newsom to not only grant mass releases but to immediately rehouse incarcerated persons including the elderly, immune-compromised, and trans people.

Speakers said through megaphones that thousands of incarcerated in California face a potential death sentence amidst the spread of COVID-19 and that UCSF public health experts’ recommend the CDCr reduce its current prison population by at least 50%.

The rally was held at the Port of Oakland; a lively car caravan of enthusiastic activists then made its way across the Bay Bridge to the city of San Francisco.