Imagine you're locked inside a metal cage in Texas. It's summer. The temperature is over 100 degrees, sometimes over 130 F. You're forbidden to shade your window. You're drenched in sweat all day and night. There's no air conditioning. There's tap water but it smells like sewage. There's water in plastic bottles (because what does Texas care about the Earth?) but the prisons have addressed the current crisis by increasing the price for those bottles.

The problem has been getting worse for years. Prisoners have died. The public has screamed. It's an international scandal. But instead of meeting its own temperature guidelines, Texas raises the price for bottled water. What excuse can there be? Surely the entire state government cannot be overworked chasing Latin American refugees into the desert heat.

Click here to add your name to a petition we will use to demand answers.

A 2022 study by the Journal of the American Medical Association found 271 prisoner deaths in Texas facilities without air conditioning between 2001 and 2019 may have been attributable to extreme heat days. For years, the Texas legislature has rejected a bill to air condition prisons.

Prisoners describe heat rash, dizziness, nausea, dificulty breathing, fainting, and no medical services. According to one prisoner's account of these conditions, "Guards don’t come into the cell blocks when it gets this hot. With their thick uniforms, many succumb to heat exhaustion."

The senseless cruelty sometimes verges on the comical, without ever ceasing to be tragic. Climate collapse has brought grass fires to the vicinity of prisons:

"These fires typically go unnoticed until the smoke drifts over to the building. Then, guards start yelling for help and run to the burning grass, where they begin stomping like an uncoordinated cowboy Riverdance troupe. Eventually, someone comes out with a fire extinguisher and sprays chemical foam on the ground. The guards who have ruined their shoes finish their shifts in their socks. The administration tries to blame these fires on us. How could we start a fire outside from within our cells, you might ask? Better not to ask questions like that in prison."

The deaths have been mounting in recent weeks, the loved ones have been wailing, and somehow the water bottle price hike isn't solving the problem.

CLICK HERE TO HELP US FIX THIS.

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-- The RootsAction DIY team

Background:
>> Texas Public Radio: "Texas charges prisoners 50% more for water as heat wave continues"
 

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