Hitting Home: International Women's Day.

"Thank you Neuro ICU: We Heart Mom."

Those of you who get these blogs automatically fed to them will recognize that this is a revision of an earlier post. I'm still working this stuff out, and just wanted to clarify where I'm at these days...


This was the thank you that I left on the sidewalk last night at Scottsdale Healthcare's campus on Osborn, where my mother is being treated for an extremely aggressive form of brain cancer. We thought she may have had one or more stroke last month because she suddenly lost her vision in her left eye and began falling a lot, but the CT scan in the ER at the time barely even showed the shadow that consumed her right occipital lobe within just weeks; Mom was diagnosed with a sinus infection and put on antibiotics instead of being sent for an MRI.


Had she not fallen and incurred a new head injury last week, Mom's tumor may not have been discovered in time to do surgery. It has yet to be seen whether or not the surgery was in time to save her life or prevent her from prolonged misery. Because this particular cancer is so devastatingly quick to kill, they're starting her on both radiation and chemo even though they removed all visible traces. I guess no matter how good your surveillance, people and equipment are, by the time you see it again it's generally too late. This is what killed Ted Kennedy.


Some folks may be wondering why I'm still running around protesting and chalking the town while my mom may well be dying - I think I'm just trying to hold on to normal life as best I can through this; I'm afraid that if I put it down I may not be able to pick it up again for a long time. Besides, Mom isn't dying - she's fighting for her life. One of the reasons is so she can continue to be a part of mine. That means I need to keep living it.


My art and politics are a part of me, anyway, not activities I do in my free time. I won't be able to maintain my same level of activism, though - or prisoner support. My mail is flowing again, and I'm back up to my neck in letters from people in trouble. I'll write a post begging the community for more help on that count soon - after which, my blogs may well fall silent for awhile. If you try to contact me from here on out with little initial success, just be persistent. I've got my hands full now, but I'm not planning on going anywhere; I'll still help if I can do so, however this turns out. Mom would want me to.


In the meantime, if you have any good energy to send into the universe for Mom and the people treating her, please do. She's not only a primary source of my own social conscience and fire, but she's generously supported my unpopular causes over the years, even when she barely had enough to live on herself. She's the person that my prisoner friends ought to be thanking and praying for the most today - she helps keep me going when I risk succumbing to both poverty and despair, so that I in turn can be there for them. She is who makes most of my work possible. She saved my life, in fact.


So, my mom, Jean Boatman, is my Woman of the Year. She's a retired teacher from Fountain Hills, and a member of the current school board there. She's actually a registered Republican and has been an officer of the Mayflower Society (yes, I'm a Pilgrim) - but don't let that fool you. She's really an insurgent liberal and lives somewhat vicariously through my radical politics (which the people who love and respect her know already, so her "cover" isn't really blown). Please think good things for us - and do something pro-active to stand up for collective bargaining, public education, and health care rights this week.


Finally, I hope it dawns on Mom's community as they learn of her extraordinary medical needs that if the Republican and Tea Parties had their way right now, she would have been left to die like those AHCCCS transplant patients - and all the other Medicaid patients the state wants to cut off of medical care (but is more than willing to shell out $20,000+/year to imprison). Mom's life would be no less worth saving if she had no health insurance than it is now. Why is anyone else's?


Send that message to the the chair of the Az House Death Panels - also known as the Appropriations Committee - if you're a friend of my mom's. He's the man that Fountain Hills chose to represent their interests: John Kavanagh. Since most teachers are struggling to survive out there - and a lot of kids are hurting, too - I'd say he's doing a lousy job of representing anyone but the rich in that town.


He can be reached at:


John Kavanagh
AZ House of Representatives
1700 W. Washington
Room 114
Phoenix, AZ 85007
Phone Number: (602) 926-5170
Fax Number: (602) 417-3108
jkavanagh@azleg.gov

"Give my Taxes to AHCCCS: Health care is a human right."

Get well card for Mom/1st Amendment lesson for AZ students.
Arizona State Capitol/Wes Bolin Plaza.

Deaths in Custody: Brenda Todd

To the family of Brenda Todd: please contact me ASAP.

To the rest of you: Pay attention to ASPC- Perryville in Goodyear. Marcia Powell isn't the only one who's died out there.


Thanks.

Peggy Plews
480-580-6807
prisonabolitionist@gmail.com

---------------------

Arizona: Mercy, Mercy Me...

Davon's clemency board hearing was yesterday - the decision to turn him down was clearly made before we walked into the room, however. The chair made only passing reference to the thick stack of mail that had arrived in support of Davon's application, and cut me off when I was speaking on his behalf. He made a special point of reading things into the record to justify their determination against him. The county attorney's office can be expected to oppose such applications, but they went out of their way, it seems, to damn him - which was precisely what the board needed and asked for. Not that I'm accusing them of any impropriety - I'm sure they did what they felt was right - just as I'm doing. We just come from different places, and they don't know Davon like I do. As evidenced by their decision yesterday, They don't know him at all.


Pardons in Arizona have nothing to do with mercy or grace, by the way - or even justice for that matter, even when sincere people try to deliver it. Look at what our good governor did to Bill Macumber, the innocent man who has already spent 35 years in prison for murder and may well die there. Convinced beyond any doubt that his conviction was based on perjured testimony and manufactured evidence, the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency unanimously recommended him for a full pardon, which would have gone into effect if Brewer had simply left it alone for 90 days. Instead she quashed it, in the interest of her kind of "justice". Affirming Bill's innocence would have implied his ex-wife's guilt. As she worked for the Maricopa County Sheriff's office at the time she framed him, I suspect Brewer was doing someone with history there a favor. But what do I know?



Sadly, despite his story saturating the media across the country before November 2, the voters in Arizona elected that woman anyway.



As for Davon: the outcome of his hearing was no surprise, really - probably least of all to him - but it was still a disappointment; his little sister left the room abruptly in tears. We did, however, raise awareness about the prosecution of the seriously, mentally ill for their symptoms rather than their criminality, and built a network for prisoners with Hep C and their families. We also entered our objections to the prison industrial complex into the public record (that was the part I think they didn't want to hear). One of our legislators even turned out to corroborate Davon's mom's assertion that Arizona's prisoners aren't getting the medical care they need in there - and that came from a self-described "conservative Republican". I suspect he will pay a price for having done that, which is why I won't name him here. I doubt he would endorse my own take on the system, but he's still one of the few politicians I've ever met with real integrity. I can't think of a single Democrat in this state who would put themselves on the line like that for a convicted violent, crazed felon seeking mercy - much less another Republican.



I'm convinced that clemency boards exist largely to reinforce the illusion that the system we have of doling out punishment in our country is a "just" one that serves the best interests of society at large. By allowing room for pardons and commutations, we suggest that the legal system we live under, as a rule, delivers justice to criminals and victims alike, and that any abuse of power or injustice perpetrated by the state in the process is an exception that needs to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. If that was the reality, however, our prisons would not be packed almost exclusively with the poor - most of whom have the least ability to do great harm. In a truly just and morally evolved society it is the money-lenders, warmongers and rogue sheriffs of this land who would be doing time for exploitation, mass murder, and kidnapping - not making the rules the rest of us have to live by. They certainly wouldn't be retiring with honors and drawing down our collective dime.



But ours is neither a just nor a moral society - it isn't even a democracy. It is a capitalist republic in which the wealth and power of the few still depends on their ability to co-opt, terrorize, and restrain the many. We literally replaced our plantations with prisons when overt slavery went out of style. America's governments exploit and injure far more innocent and vulnerable people than all our lone criminals combined do. We've even made the perpetuation of victimization and crime an attractive, acceptable industry from which savvy investors can profit.



Thanks, everyone, for all your support through this. Stay with us, please - this fight is much bigger than one young man, and has only just begun. Keep an eye on what's happening with Davon for awhile longer - he went further out on a limb in the interest of prisoner rights and health care than any of the rest of us had to - and risks paying a much higher price now than the one extracted from him at sentencing. We'll see if he's allowed to keep his good time - and make it successfully through the 4 years of probation he has yet to serve -in light of his and his mother's public defiance. I guess we'll also see if the Arizona State Legislature shows any mercy for the honesty and courage of one of their own.

Scott Watch: Please help pardon the sisters.

This in from Free The Scott Sisters Wednesday. Thursday was the 16 year anniversary of their incarceration. Please write letters on their behalf ASAP - they do make a difference.

-------------------------------

Mrs. Rasco would like to inform everyone that Jamie was taken to the doctor yesterday and given medication thanks to all phone calls and e-mails. The doctor seemed to think that she has a sinus infection. The doctor was not able to check her ears as all machines for making ear examinations are broken.

THANK YOU ALL!

Please continue to send e-mails and faxes to the board of Pardon's and Parole and express your support for their release. You may include points such as their accomplishments in prison.
Jamie and Gladys both have completed training courses. Gladys is a great seamstress and completed this program in prison. Jamie has completed several courses as well. Both Jamie and Gladys have assisted numerous inmates in learning to read.

Your letters will mean a lot to the board in making their decision for a pardon with an EXPUNGED record.

Fax: (601) 576-3528 -- Ms. Warnock --swarnock@mdoc.state.ms.us

Board Members - Fax: (601) 576-3528
Bobbie Thomas - Board Member
Clarence Brown - Board Member
Betty Lou Jones - Board Member
Danny Guice - Board Member

State of Mississippi Parole Board
660 North Street
Suite 100A
Jackson, MS 39202

In Solidarity,

Nancy Lockhart, M.J.

State of Arizona Health Care: Killing us Softly.

Once in awhile someone at the Arizona Republic writes a decent editorial. This is one of those times. For anyone who has any doubt about the selfishness and brutality of our current Arizona legislature and governor - the Republican Party elite - read on.

The Governor just signed a new bill this week, by the way, that restores some of the other health care funds that the legislature cut this spring. The legislature reversed itself only because the feds required it in order for them to keep getting medicaid funding - not because they were concerned about all those sick citizen children they screwed.

The long and short of it: these people have very little regard for life, American or otherwise. They would kill us by withholding medical care just as readily as they would leave migrants in the desert to die, all for the sake of protecting their own assets - while levying even more taxes on ours.

Happy Hepatitis Awareness Month, by the way, dear Governor. And tomorrow begins Women's Health Care Week. These Americans - and many more in this state - will suffer terribly and die because of you and your party. Even your NRA membership can't cover up your betrayal of our citizenry - much less the rest of humanity.

Please, America:
Nothing but grief trickles down in this state, and
they're going to criminalize and kill us for resisting anyway.

BOYCOTT ARIZONA. 
Kick her out of the union, if possible,
for treason against the People.

-----------------------------

Some budget cuts are death sentences

by E. J. Montini - May. 7, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

 

One of the strongest arguments for immigration reform is that Americans must take care of Americans first.

So why aren't we doing it?

Some of the best doctors in Arizona told state legislators that if they cut transplant services from the AHCCCS budget, hard-working Arizonans will die.
 

The legislators cut the services.

The doctors and the people who work with their patients tried a different tack, pointing out that the cost of keeping sick patients alive until they die is more expensive in the long run than providing transplant services.

The legislators cut the services.

The doctors were from University Medical Center, Banner Good Samaritan and the Mayo Clinic.
They laid out their case in coldly understandable terms, writing, for example:

"As of 19 April 2010, there are 51 AHCCCS patients on the liver transplant

wait list with Hepatitis C. Of those patients waiting, approximately 17 of those patients will die this year if transplantation is not a covered service. Based on the current average reimbursement rate for transplantation ($149,670), the estimated cost savings to AHCCCS will be $2,544,390."

That is the short-term saving.

It is difficult to determine the long-term cost to the state of caring for patients who slowly wither away. It could take years.

The doctors ran to same numbers for heart-transplant patients, lung-transplant patients, pancreas-transplant patients.

The legislators cut the services.

And Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill into law, eliminating AHCCCS coverage for the operations.

Before all this occurred, I wrote a column about one of those patients, a man who has been receiving medical treatment under AHCCCS, Arizona's Medicaid program.

"I can't work anymore and we ran out of coverage a while back," he told me. "It's terrible needing help. It's not what I wanted. But when you run out of money, what can you do? If I don't get a transplant, I guess the state won't have to pay for me or worry about me until I walk into an emergency room close to dying. They can't turn me away then."

People like Charlie Thomas, a transplant social worker, have been dealing with the threat of these cuts for years, always managing to stave them off. Until this time.

This time, legislators needed a quick fix.

"The people who benefit from these transplant services are people who were working, paying taxes, being good citizens and then got sick and lost everything. They're us," Thomas told me.

Still, the services were cut.

The transplant physicians and hospitals are hoping they'll have a second chance to make their case before the new rules go into effect in July. Before people die who could otherwise be saved. They believe they have the scientific data and the economics on their side.

One of those hoping to get the Legislature to reconsider is Leo Corbett, a former state senator and one-time Republican candidate for governor who knows what it means to make tough budget decisions. He's also a heart-transplant recipient.

"I'm not sure that legislators got all the information they needed to make an informed decision," he told me. "It seemed to have been in the hands of the bean counters rather than the policy makers. I believe this can be resolved in a fiscally sound manner that still serves the need of these patients. I hope so, anyway. I believe, like a lot of people, that a society or a state is judged by how it treats its poor people. For most of these folks, the illness took all they had."

Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

California: Stop Murdering Prisoners

California activists for women prisoners have been fighting for years to improve medical care. An excellent documentary on prisoner organizing around this issue is "Charisse Schumate: Fighting For Our Lives."

This banner appears to have been placed just outside the perimeter of a prison.