Hello John,

It was his first day in prison and 115°F in the barren Sonoran Desert of Buckeye, Arizona, the home of the Arizona Department of Corrections’ Lewis Complex. Dream.Org would like you to meet our Digital Campaigner, John Fabricius, as he details his lived experience being incarcerated in Arizona, and how climate change has made life in prison more dangerous.

In this story, John details his first assigned job in prison working on the “afternoon rock crew,” raking rocks for $0.10 an hour in the direct sun of the unforgiving Arizona desert. It’s a story about the intersection of mass incarceration and climate change, and the danger our society faces by failing to act on either.

Photo credits Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry and Tom Tingle/The Republic

Read John’s Powerful Story Here

Right now across the country, the men, women, and children held in our prisons are on the front lines of the climate crisis — feeling the record high heat with little or no opportunity for shade, water, or rest. State and federal prison facilities are often constructed for government efficiency to warehouse humans with little to no thought to the effect environmental conditions have on the humans inhabiting these facilities. Moreover, these facilities are oftentimes built on government lands otherwise inhospitable to residential or commercial construction.

Stories of exposure, heat stress, inhumane conditions, and forced work in extreme environments are far too common in our prisons all around the country. As we begin creating more protections for workers in response to the dangerous effects of climate change, we must also demand that our elected officials and policymakers think of the tens of thousands of our citizens held in prisons around the nation and the impact that climate change has and will continue to have on this marginalized population.

Please join us at Dream.Org as we work to end mass incarceration and build a green future for our country.

Click Here to Read John’s Story