mental health – ABOLISHmke

Ep. 21- Governor Tony Evers Could:

This is an audio version of “Governor Tony Evers could:” published at ABOLISHmke.com on October 10, 2021.

Governor Tony Evers could:

The governor, surrounded by his prisons.

…solve Wisconsin’s spiraling prison population crisis!

On the campaign trail, Tony said he would cut Wisconsin’s prison population in half. Instead, it slowly, but steadily rose under his administration until the courts closed due to COVID19. Now it’s rising again, and faster.

…pardon and release elderly and low risk people from prison!

The Wisconsin state constitution gives the governor very broad pardon power. Tony loves to talk about how he’s pardoned so many people, but NONE of those pardons are of people currently serving sentences. A fact that he cowers away from. He chose pardon criteria that exclude everyone until 5 years after they completed their sentence. That will restores some rights to some individuals, but do nothing to reduce incarceration.

Episode 1: Joint Finance Funnies…

So, here’s how Marklein’s “normal legislative process” works: popular, well-crafted, bipartisan reforms get squanched by republican leadership in favor of unpopular, slip-shod, and logistically impracticable bills designed as veto-bait to rile up the party’s base with racially coded messaging. Calling that “good” is hilarious. Howard Marklein wins king of comedy in this session.

This is an audio version of the ABOLISHmke article titled Joint finance funnies: the prison budget debate that wasn’t.
Joint Finance Funnies… describes a hearing and prison related policy decisions of the WI state legislature’s joint finance committee in June 2021.

Music is from The Only Rational Response by local screamo band snag.

Joint finance funnies: the prison budget debate that wasn’t

Empty seats in the joint finance committee.

On Thursday June 10, the budget of Wisconsin’s prison system (DOC) went before the joint finance committee and, despite statements of broad bipartisan support for shrinking the system, lawmakers passed a budget that expands prisons and will kill people. The atmosphere was one of jovial comradery as issues of life and death were raised, silenced, and voted on.

This legislature is so gerrymandered, broken, and corrupt that even members of the ruling party can’t help but make jokes at their own expense. Apparently there was some kind of dysfunction going on with republican members of the committee. They delayed their June 8 session more than 5 hours and started Thursday’s session 90 minutes late. Even then, all of the republican senators other than the senate chair, Howard Marklein (r- Spring Green) failed to appear, prompting Jon Erpenbach (d- Madison suburbs) to jokingly remark “I don’t know what you did to your team, Howard,” during roll call. Marklein laughed and joked back: “I’ll need your vote, Erpenbach.” Everyone laughed.

Horrible Treatment at Columbia CI

Columbia CI staff after assaulting Kuan Barnett in October 2018

by Christopher Dawson at Columbia CI.

The way staff at Columbia CI (CCI) treat us with such disrespect is out of control. One will never actually know how we get treated without being here in real life to see for yourself. I’ve been in CCI for over 2 years now out of the 9 years I’ve been incarcerated. This is the worst I’ve ever seen. The staff will lie to you or to the higher-ups when brought to their attention. They will yell at you as if you are some animal and not a person, even if you’re not in the wrong and they are. It’s their way or nothing, like it or not, right or wrong. They do not care. They have the worst communication skills I’ve ever experienced in my entire life, not only in prison but EVER.

Guards go out of their way to make it hard for us. They abuse their power in so many ways. The things they do are so confusing to us, but who are we to try to ask a question?? All we get is total disrespect and told in an aggressive tone “GO LOCK IN NOW”.