Attend the rally to close the notorious jail marked by violence and corruption and impervious to substantive reform: Close Rikers Island! featuring former inmates and family members of those who are or have been incarcerated on Rikers Island; along with 98 ADVOCACY with speakers including Emily Althaus, actor from Orange Is The New Black; Akeem Browder, Criminal Justice Advocate and brother of Kalief Browder; Daniel Dromm, NYC Council Member; Corey Johnson, NYC Council Member; Aber Kawas, Lead Organizer of the Arab American Association of New York; Glenn E. Martin, Founder and Pres. of JustLeadershipUSA; Vivian Nixon, Exec Director of College & Community Fellowship; Johnny Perez, Appointed to the NYS Advisory Committee to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and many more speak out about the injustices happening every day on Rikers Island. Special performance by the Peace Poets
New York City, held more slaves in the 18th century than any other city except for Charleston. It s no surprise then that many of the buildings, streets, banks, and plenty of other NYC landmarks carry the names of slave owners or slavery supporters. Count Rikers Island city jail among that batch. The island the jail sits on is named for Abraham Riker (or Abraham Rycken), a Dutch immigrant who acquired the land in the early 17th century, and whose family owned it until selling it to the city in 1884. Abrahams descendant Richard Riker was infamous in the 1800s for supporting the Fugitive Slave Act to send (or sell) African Americans in New York to slave owners in the South. This jail is the spider at the center of the web of New Yorks role in the slave trade. Its history threads through its present and supports the cry to Shut It Down!
We ll bring you highlights of the rally to Shut Rikers Down! Johnny Perez, a who is a member of the Jails Action Coalition who experienced solitary confinement himself, Akeem Browder the brother of Kalief Brower, who tragically became the face of everything wrong with Rikers when he committed suicide after spending three years there--two of them in solitary--because his family couldn't afford the bail when he was charged with allegedly stealing a backpack say SHUT IT DOWN!
Kalief's brother Akeem Browder spoke about how his brother refused to take a plea bargain "because he didn't want his words to fall on deaf ears, and since he [Kalief] didn't take a plea bargain, our justice system failed him, our mental health system failed him, our police departments failed him." Protesters also highlighted the gruesome deaths inside Rikers of Bradley Ballard and Jerome Murdough, the high rate of sexual assault against female inmates, and the rampant abuse of adolescents and people with mental health issues. Darren Mack of JustLeadershipUSA was incarcerated on Rikers Island in the early 1990s and called it the "Abu Ghraib of New York City." He said the jail "should be closed immediately to send a message to Americans to let them know that we can't have torture chambers" in this country. A representative from the Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement railed against the bail system that keeps the working poor on Rikers for months and even years on end: "If all the people who couldn't pay bail were let go, the population on] Rikers would likely be the number it was initially designed to hold."
Produced by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash
please notify us if you plan to broadcast this program - knash@igc.org
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