Arizona Prison Watch (retired): Solidarity with Snowbowl Resisters: ADEQ Protest.

Retiring Arizona Prison Watch...

This site was originally started in July 2009 as an independent endeavor to monitor conditions in Arizona's criminal justice system, as well as offer some critical analysis of the prison industrial complex from a prison abolitionist/anarchist's perspective. It was begun in the aftermath of the death of Marcia Powell, a 48 year old AZ state prisoner who was left in an outdoor cage in the desert sun for over four hours while on a 10-minute suicide watch. That was at ASPC-Perryville, in Goodyear, AZ, in May 2009.

Marcia, a seriously mentally ill woman with a meth habit sentenced to the minimum mandatory 27 months in prison for prostitution was already deemed by society as disposable. She was therefore easily ignored by numerous prison officers as she pleaded for water and relief from the sun for four hours. She was ultimately found collapsed in her own feces, with second degree burns on her body, her organs failing, and her body exceeding the 108 degrees the thermometer would record. 16 officers and staff were disciplined for her death, but no one was ever prosecuted for her homicide. Her story is here.

Marcia's death and this blog compelled me to work for the next 5 1/2 years to document and challenge the prison industrial complex in AZ, most specifically as manifested in the Arizona Department of Corrections. I corresponded with over 1,000 prisoners in that time, as well as many of their loved ones, offering all what resources I could find for fighting the AZ DOC themselves - most regarding their health or matters of personal safety.

I also began to work with the survivors of prison violence, as I often heard from the loved ones of the dead, and learned their stories. During that time I memorialized the Ghosts of Jan Brewer - state prisoners under her regime who were lost to neglect, suicide or violence - across the city's sidewalks in large chalk murals. Some of that art is here.

In November 2014 I left Phoenix abruptly to care for my family. By early 2015 I was no longer keeping up this blog site, save occasional posts about a young prisoner in solitary confinement in Arpaio's jail, Jessie B.

I'm deeply grateful to the prisoners who educated, confided in, and encouraged me throughout the years I did this work. My life has been made all the more rich and meaningful by their engagement.

I've linked to some posts about advocating for state prisoner health and safety to the right, as well as other resources for families and friends. If you are in need of additional assistance fighting the prison industrial complex in Arizona - or if you care to offer some aid to the cause - please contact the Phoenix Anarchist Black Cross at PO Box 7241 / Tempe, AZ 85281. collective@phoenixabc.org

until all are free -

MARGARET J PLEWS (June 1, 2015)
arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Solidarity with Snowbowl Resisters: ADEQ Protest.

If you knew how many Indigenous people we were imprisoning these days - many far from their homes - you'd know why it's so important to the fight for prison abolition to respect sacred places...their struggle for Indigenous rights, free exercise of religion, and to defend Mother Earth - without being marginalized or branded as eco-terrorists in the process - is also ours. We must stand in solidarity with them before they are imprisoned...

As asked by one defender of the San Francisco Peaks last week: How can the Dine' and other Indigenous peoples be trespassers on their own Holy Land?

Join us in Phoenix on Friday, June 24 at 7:30am to stand in solidarity with Indigenous resistance to the destruction and desecration of the Sacred: Demand that Arizona Department of Environmental Quality Change its Permission Allowing Wastewater to be Used for Snowmaking.

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PROTECT SACRED SITES!

DEFEND THE PEAKS!

Friday, June 24th 7:30-9AM

Arizona Department of Environmental Quality

1110 West Washington Street

Phoenix, Arizona 85007

On Thursday, June 16th six people were arrested for halting the construction of a water line, which would pump Flagstaff waste-water up to Snowbowl on the sacred San Francisco Peaks.

We’ll be showing up in front of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) office to stand in solidarity with those arrested, demand that ADEQ change its permission for allowing wastewater to be used on the San Francisco Peaks, and with all indigenous people who hold the Peaks holy.

ADEQ has never held any meaningful public process when it initially decided to allow wastewater to be used for snowmaking. Whose interests are they serving?

One of the protesters who locked themselves to the excavator on Thursday said “Snowbowl plans to spray millions of gallons of waste water snow, which is filled with cancer causing and other harmful contaminants, as well as clear-cut over 30,000 trees. The Peaks are a pristine and beautiful place, a fragile ecosystem, and home to rare and endangered species of plants and animals.”

Another person who locked down said the “action is not isolated, but part of a continued resistance to human rights violations, to colonialism, to corporate greed, and destruction of Mother Earth.”

Arizona Prison Watch (retired)

Retiring Arizona Prison Watch...

INDIGENOUS ACTION MEDIA

Taala Hooghan Infoshop

Kinlani/Flagstaff Mutual AID

MASS LIBERATION AZ

Black Lives Matter PHOENIX METRO

BLACK PHX ORGANIZING COLLECTIVE

BLACK PEOPLE's JUSTICE FUND

PHOENIX: Trans Queer Pueblo

COVID Mutual AID PHOENIX

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Solidarity with Snowbowl Resisters: ADEQ Protest.

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