Philadelphia

Participants in a rally and march held in downtown Philadelphia on Feb.8 demanded that Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro declare SCI Fayette as one of two of the state’s 23 prisons he said should be shut down this year. He declared this in his annual State Budget Address. Shapiro is not motivated by any moral or altruistic ideals but by the prospect of saving $110 million.

Around 50 people joined the protest despite the cold winter chill. Following a rally at Love Plaza, the protesters marched to the governor’s Philadelphia office at 8th and Arch streets for a closing rally.

The Toxic Prisons Committee, a branch of the Human Rights Coalition (HRC), has been working to have SCI Fayette shut down since 2014. The facility was built in Luzerne Township, Pennsylvania, in 2003 on part of a Coal Refuse Deposit Superfund site next to a 506-acre coal ash dump. 

The land was declared contaminated and could not be easily sold; however, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections bought it and erected a prison there. The Superfund site was contaminated by 50 tons of coal ash waste, with more being trucked in every day by Matt Canestrale Contracting, which owns the site. 

The incarcerated people in this jail arrived fairly healthy, but within months many were ailing from abnormally high rates of heart and respiratory illnesses, gastrointestinal disease, thyroid disorders, eye infections, chronic skin rashes, migraines and more. SCI Fayette has the largest cancer cluster of the state’s prisons with high rates of premature deaths. Many prisoners have contracted cancer and other diseases. One incarceree has a tumor in his mouth and must be tube-fed. 

Like most state prisons, Fayette is also marked by asbestos, mold, inedible food, roaches, rodents, broken heating systems and poor health care. The water in the showers comes out brown and has caused at least one person to lose consciousness. 

The guards would not drink the water or eat the food prepared there. They were brought in food and were given bottled spring water. The residents of the surrounding town of LaBelle, Pennsylvania, were also being sickened, and the vegetation around their houses affected by a fine oily ash that covered everything. 

Eventually, a lawsuit was filed by the Abolitionist Law Center, and Matt Canestrale Contracting was ordered to stop trucking in new waste and to pay remediations to clean up the mess. The company declared bankruptcy, and the ash still remains. 

When the Committee found out about Shapiro’s intentions they sprang into action and organized a march with banners, signs, a sound system, legal observers, photographic documentation, marshalls, speakers and chants — in four days! Participants included members of the HRC, Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration, Philly Muslim Freedom Fund, Workers World Party, Put People First and Fayette Health Justice Committee. 

In SCI Fayette, every prison sentence is actually a death sentence. Again, systemic racism and classism raise their ugly heads, and again the people push back. Build a Workers World!