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Advocates use personal storytelling to call for criminal justice reform amid COVID-19 pandemic

In front of the Texas State Capitol building on Saturday, people called for prison reform by telling their own experiences in the prison system.

AUSTIN, Texas — According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), 162 offenders and 21 employees have died from the coronavirus. Forty-five deaths are still being investigated.

On Saturday afternoon, advocates for criminal justice reform gathered between the Governor's Mansion and the Capitol Building in Downtown Austin with the message there are too many COVID-19-related deaths within TDCJ. These same advocates marched together back in May when there were 36 offender deaths, zero employee line-of-duty deaths and 22 deaths under investigation.

"There's still people in there that have been approved for parole and still not released, let alone people that are eligible for parole, even nonviolent, that are still not [released]," Lovinah Igbani, the organizer of Saturday's and May's marches, said. "They need to be released. That's the only way. There's no other way to create the space needed to socially distance inside."

Saturday's rally focused on storytelling. Speakers provided personal details of their time in prison in the hopes of swaying state leaders to change TDCJ policies.

"When I was in prison, I would dream of a day like today, when the air would not be thick with iron, when the only screams would be those of children chasing each other in play and the only cries would be those only of a community being born," Jorge Renaud, founder of LatinoJustice, said. "A thousand voices that would scream, 'No more!' to a system that feeds only on punishment and pain and ignores reconciliation, redemption and the possibilities of love. That is what I dreamed when I was in prison."

"I've never heard the number 801851 said to me with love," David Johnson, founder of Texas Advocates for Justice, said of his own inmate number. "It is one criminal justice system that is set to draw wealth and prosperity from the bodies of our loved ones, our community members like it's oil from a fracking site."

In May, Igbani clarified these calls are not to release every prisoner – just the ones eligible for parole. 

“We're not just saying open up all the prisons in Texas and let everyone out,” said Igbani said in May. "In prison, there's no way for them to socially distance. Prisons are already overcrowded. It's impossible for them to be 6 feet. They mandate that we were 6 feet and have us going through certain phases to reopen. But for them, how can they protect them? ... So basically, they're just waiting to die." 

Igbani said the personal stories bring a sense of gravity and reality to conditions in prison. She hopes the advocacy on Saturday helps spur some change, if not immediately, during the next legislative session in 2021.

"They say, 'I was here. I was there. I was one of them,'" Igbani said. "They're allowed to really tell the conditions inside. It's real. They should become now real to everyone. Even for people that don't have a loved one inside that's incarcerated, many families don't necessarily have someone incarcerated, but hopefully hearing our stories can make then that the need for change even just magnified."

Some of the specific solutions these advocates called for included regulating air conditioning units between 65 and 85 degrees, proper nutrition and parole reform. In terms of parole reform, Igbani and other advocates want state leaders to allow parolees to vote if they are paying taxes.

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