“We supposed to be six feet away – you can reach over and touch the next bed...Yesterday the water was brown. Some days there’s a real bad smell like sewage...The water you wash your hands with, the water you shower with, the water you drink. I mean that’s all the water we have.” – Randy, incarcerated at Parchman Prison

Dear John,

Tonight, join the Poor People’s Campaign co-chairs Rev. Dr. William Barber, II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, along with the Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition, advocates from across the nation, and incarcerated people, for an online town hall on the state of the country’s incarceration crisis amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Facebook Live event, “Parchman Is Everywhere: We Demand an End to the National Crisis,”

refers to the Mississippi State Penitentiary known as Parchman,where a deadly riot broke out at the end of 2019, and will livestream at 7pm ET/4pm PT from FB.com/MSPRC/live.

The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival demands that states across the country protect prisoners and staff from COVID-19 by releasing inmates and by providing all with testing and protective gear.

Call to Demand Mississippi Governor Reeves Release Vulnerable People from Prison.

We demand the release of all juveniles, elderly and medically fragile people; all people who have been granted parole and are awaiting release; all people with fewer than two years remaining on their sentences; all people being held on immigration charges. We also demand that the state provide testing to all those incarcerated and staff, along with free protective gear and proper medical treatment.

Join us tonight at 7pm ET at fb.com/msprc by clicking here.

“Prisoners in facilities across the U.S. are living in deplorable, unsanitary conditions without access to medical and mental health care,” wrote the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign in a statement. “This is unacceptable under any circumstances, but during a global health pandemic, these conditions are a potential death sentence. What is happening in Parchman is happening in other prisons across the state of Mississippi and across this nation. Parchman is everywhere.”

Even before the pandemic, prisoners had described “inhumane and dangerous conditions that have them fearing for their lives, including overflowing raw sewage covering their cell floors, lack of access to showers for weeks and deadly gang violence,” CNN reported.

The Facebook Live event is sponsored by the Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition, led by the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign. Other coalition sponsors include Color of Change, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Until Freedom, One Voice, Fwd.us, the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, and the People’s Advocacy Institute.

Viewers can watch the discussion here: https://www.facebook.com/MsPRC/live/

Forward together,

Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

P.S.: Please join the Poor People’s Campaign for a Digital Town Hall with MoveOn.org on Thursday, May 14th at 8pm, to launch a national campaign to oppose reckless reopening of states. We are calling for people to "Stay in place! Stay alive! Organize!" Tune in at FB.com/ANewPPC/live