If it doesn’t kill you, it only makes you stronger, right, Senator Jensen?
Senator Phil Jensen, a Rapid City Republican, said the chances of people dying from COVID-19 were “extremely minimal” and said it wasn’t a death sentence [Bob Mercer, “Legislators Want Answers on Covid-19 Infection Outbreak in S.D. Women’s Prison,” KELO-TV, 2020.09.24].
Senator Jensen was responding to testimony from several tribal members who told the State-Tribal Relations Committee yesterday that the coronavirus outbreak at the women’s prison in Pierre shows the state’s continued “negligence and incompetency” in protecting Native people and the community at large from the pandemic.
Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux tribal member and Representative Tamara St. John (R-1/Sisseton) appears to recognize that we don’t need mass death to take a problem in our prisons seriously:
Representative Tamara St. John, a Sisseton Republican and member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, said she’s had “numerous conversations” with people about their families’ members who are in the women’s prison. She said the surrounding Pierre-Fort Pierre community could be affected.
St. John said a former inmate told her about conditions that made isolation “impossible” in the prison. She said the women have complained about “a real lack of communication” in a pandemic where there is “a lot of confusion” [Mercer, 2020.09.24].
Bad high school debaters sometimes try to reduce every policy argument to a simplistic question of number of deaths. If a problem doesn’t result in the extinction of our species, they argue we don’t need to act. Like a bad high school debater, Senator Jensen appears to be excusing inaction from Corrections officials while failing to recognize that, even if no one else joined the 210 South Dakotans who have died from coronavirus, the spread of coroanvirus among prisoners, prison staff, and the family, friends, and community members who come in contact with those insufficiently protected prison populations brings more physical suffering, more health care costs, more closed schools and businesses, and more overall disruption to our economy and our community.
A high school debater once told me that the difference between Lincoln Douglas debaters and policy debaters is that policy debaters can kill millioins and still win, but LDers lose if they kill one person. I thought that was funny, but it does point out that many issues we face involve life and death, and how we deal with those issues says a lot about us even if it doesn’t necessarily flow through a debate.
Stalin and Jensen seem to have a lot in common. Who cares if there are deaths in the gulag? The risk to privileged white men is low so why concern ourselves with those who aren’t?
Has anyone asked about ventilation or air filtration in the prison? Hand-washing and even pretty good mask wearing aren’t going to matter if the women and the staff are spending nearly all their hours in poorly ventilated spaces.
Not to mention that even before COVID-19 inmates weren’t allowed sufficient sanitation supplies (including Kotex) because they might do something illegal with them…
Not a death sentence? Something sure is up besiders drumpf’s daily body count….
2 moar new milestones reached today.
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
7,219,463
Deaths:
208,063
This really ought to help science….
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/minnesota-halts-covid-19-study-reports-intimidation-73247079
Study surveyors were hit with racial and ethnic slurs as they went door to door..
Mike, parts of rural Minnesota are caught in the cult. Their fear, racism and ugliness are on full display. It’s so sad to hear about.
Blame drumpf for fanning the flames of racism and hate. Blame wingnuts who have refused, at every opportunity, to put a stop to the hate and fear and criminal activity that he shoves up under their noses and dares them to do something about him.