Transcript
A Bag of Rags Please, Governor In this time of the Coronavirus pandemic sweeping our country and the prisons in it, I find that it goes against common sense to clean less and take away cleaning rags in which prisoners use to clean their cells and help prevent the spread of Covid-19. I work in the Mauve section of the Jameson Annex of the South Dakota State Penitentiary. The bottom tier is all A&O inmates, new inmates brought in from the outside and most likely to bring in the Coronavirus, also known as Covid-19. I would make sense to me to clean more not less to help prevent spread of Covid-19 from these new inmates. Recently I actually had my cleaning rags, laundry bags, and mop head, dry mop head, etc taken from my section. I went without it for about 2 weeks. I just recently got my laundry bags back and mop, dry mop heads back. A laundry orderly got it for me as the laundry staff supervisor personally locked everything from my section in a locker only he had the key for out of retaliation for my requests for cleaning rags and written cleaning schedule, for which a bag of rags needed Monday and fridays. 1 I did the proper thing by doing the administrative remedy all the way to the Warden. The response I got from Correctional Officers, Unit Manager, Warden was I don't need cleaning rags. This was done to retaliate against me for my legal work/activity, and bag of rags request I wrote the Governor of South Dakota who contacted the Secretary of Corrections. I ended up getting an opened letter from him that the prison staff are not retaliating against me and the governor got my letter concerning a bag of rags and he is looking into it, but won't comment on it. I ask you, the reader, how has it come to this? Why do I have to do a prison grievance, ask multiple prison staff, and write all the way to the governor of South Dakota for a bag of rags to combat the Covid-19 pandemic by cleaning the prison? I would really like to get the publics opinion on this, as I think it is common-sense to clean more with cleaning rags and germicide in a close-contact environment such as this prison. What is your opinion? Are we American citizens or disposable forgotten people?
