In January, 200 prisoners went on a courageous hunger strike at the Rikers Island jail in New York City—alerting the world about their intolerable situation and refusal to be denied basic human rights. Since then even more has come out about the dangerous conditions they face, including three people who have died at Rikers already this year.
But before getting to these new horror stories, we gotta talk about who presides over all this.
When he campaigned for NYC mayor last year, Eric Adams backed a plan to supposedly close Rikers Island. But Adams’ promise—if it even ever meant anything—is in conflict with his overall fascist plan to “crack down on crime” in the name of “ending gun violence,” which will put even more people behind bars, including through the use of “stop-and-frisk” against Black and Latino youth. As we’ve said, Adams should be called the “Black Giuliani.”1 (See “Eric Adams’ War on Crime Is A WAR ON THE PEOPLE”)
Adams has long supported—and been supported by—the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association (COBA), the union of guards who administer the beatings and torture at Rikers. In 2018, as the Brooklyn borough president, Adams joined the head of COBA to advocate for continued use of solitary confinement—against prisoners ages 21 and under. (Prolonged solitary confinement even of adults is considered torture under international law.) One of the most heartbreaking examples of the victims of this torture is Kalief Browder, who was traumatized by three brutal years at Rikers, including two years in solitary confinement—and after getting out, committed suicide at age 22. (For more on Kalief Browder, see revcom.us interview with his brother, Akeem Browder.)
The Party of Piggery
Adams calls himself “the Biden of Brooklyn,” proudly reaffirming he is part of the Democratic Party of Piggery whose response to mass protest against police brutality and murder has been to turn up the volume on support for pigs—made clear by Biden when he declared during his State of the Union speech (to “bipartisan” applause), “The answer is not to ‘defund’ the police, it’s to fund the police… fund the police… fund the police.” Some in Congress urged Biden to do something about the situation at Rikers, and public defenders called for him to visit Rikers when he came to NYC this February. But Biden refused to do so and instead toured NYPD headquarters with Adams and the Democratic governor of New York state, Kathy Hochul.
The Horror that Adams and the Democrats Oversee
Rikers houses more than 4,800 detainees. Ninety percent are Black or Latino. Many face low-level misdemeanors. Many suffer from mental illness. Many haven’t been convicted of any crime but can’t afford bail. And for some, being sent to Rikers is a death sentence.
From 2017 to 2019, there were a total of 17 in-custody deaths at Rikers. In 2021 alone, 14 people died at Rikers. And so far this year: 38-year-old Tarz Youngblood, 49-year-old George Pagan, and 52-year-old Herman Diaz have died at Rikers.
Tarz Youngblood Photo: Twitter
Prisoners injured at Rikers (in altercations between prisoners or from guard violence) have to wait, on average, two hours before getting medical care. Injuries are downplayed in official reports or not even reported. The abuse of prisoners at Rikers has long been known and documented. But it has now come out that the levels of brutality against detainees over the past year might have been even worse than previously known because so many incidents have been covered up, purposely not reported, or under reported. Just to give two examples:
Khaled Eltahan lay in a fetal position on the floor after being beaten by another detainee. He begged the guards for help but nobody came. One prisoner reported that after five hours, guards with helmets and batons filed in. Eltahan was finally taken to a hospital, paralyzed from the neck down, with broken ribs and collapsed lungs. There was no official record of this beating.
José Matías suffered severe injuries and seizures after being beaten by another detainee. At the hospital, doctors removed a chunk of his skull to ease swelling in his brain. He spent six weeks in a coma and had to relearn how to walk and talk. The report from guards said Matías only had a fractured eye socket and swelling of the head and that no hospitalization had been required.
There is no end to the horror stories about this hellhole. This is an indictment of the top pigs that oversee this, like Eric Adams, the Democratic Party of Piggery and the whole system that keeps sending people to its dungeons and keeps subjecting them to torture.