Part of the Series
The Road to Abolition
As I write this, I am sitting in a tiny, unventilated cell five stories high at Stateville Correctional Center, a prison located about 30 miles southwest of Chicago. It is a decrepit, 100-year-old prison deemed unfit for human habitation. When the temperatures outside rise into the mid-90s, which has been occurring repeatedly this summer, the heat index in my cell rises to at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
Breathing is difficult. Sweating is constant. Staying hydrated is a battle. The sink water is likely contaminated with heavy metals, especially lead, as well as Legionella. I am forced to ration what bottled water I can afford to purchase from week to week. Every sip goes down hot and dry. I fight off the urge to drink more. What will I do if I run out? The first day of summer was just two days ago. The thought of four more months of this makes me anxious, so I focus on being still. I feel like I am in hell.
On June 19, roughly 72 hours before I started drafting this piece, fellow prisoner Michael Broadway died in this hell, just two cells down from mine. He was only 51, just eight years older than me. Last year, he graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor’s degree, published a book and beat stage four prostate cancer, among other feats. Who knows what else he could have accomplished if only a slight degree of humanity had prompted our captors to respond to his pleas for help with some sense of urgency?
Michael had severe asthma. He had a medical permit requiring him to be housed in a lower gallery where it is less hot and easier for staff to respond in the event of an asthma attack, but staff placed him on nine gallery, where the oppressive heat put his life in jeopardy. On June 19 at 4:10 pm, he called out to a fellow prisoner that he couldn’t breathe, then collapsed unconscious. We screamed and yelled at the top of our lungs for medical attention, but staff ignored our pleas.
Finally, after at least 10 minutes had passed, an officer came up to Michael’s cell to see what was going on. Seeing Michael unconscious on the floor, he radioed his fellow staff, and a few minutes later two more officers showed up. One of them called a “Code 3” (medical emergency) on his radio. Several more security staff showed up. They went into his cell and tried to get him to wake up, but their attempts were to no avail.
More time passed and a nurse finally got to the cell house, but instead of coming up to administer aid, she radioed security staff to ask if they would bring him downstairs to her because it was too hot for her to come all the way upstairs. After another couple of minutes went by, security staff had to order the nurse to go upstairs to check on Michael. When she finally got to his cell and couldn’t get any response from him, her only treatment was to inject him with Narcan, even though there was no indication that he was experiencing an opioid overdose. In fact, fellow prisoners were informing her that he was asthmatic, but she gave him Narcan anyway, more than once.
Eventually, more nurses showed up. They spent a few precious minutes trying to figure out how they were going to get him onto the collapsible stretcher they’d brought with broken straps and carry him down five flights of stairs without dropping him. The prisoner in the cell next door told them to open his door, and he took the sheet off his own mattress and helped roll Michael onto it.
The sink water is likely contaminated with heavy metals…. I am forced to ration what bottled water I can afford to purchase from week to week.
Then they all carried his body off the gallery and down the stairs. Michael folded up like a sack of potatoes. When they carried him past my cell, I looked down at his face and I knew he was gone. His eyes were closed, and he had a look that was too peaceful to be in pain. By the time they got him outside the building, it was nearly 5:00 pm. I heard the sirens from an ambulance growing nearer, and the image of his peaceful face hung in my mind’s eye, reminding me of my own mortality. This is what death by incarceration looks like. No matter how oppressive the conditions are in this hell, all you can do is endure… until you can’t.
This morning, I watched a story on CNN about Paul Whelan, a former U.S. marine who has been unjustly imprisoned in a remote Russian prison camp for 2,000 days. The story focused a lot on the harsh conditions of the prison: bad food, unhealthy drinking water, nonexistent health care, lack of ventilation and unsanitary living conditions. Whelan criticized the president for not doing more to bring him home. The story was clearly meant to evoke sympathy and concern for Whelan and put pressure on officials to do more to get him out. As they should.
I wondered, though, if anyone watching that story knew that men are dying in those same kinds of conditions right here in Illinois in their own backyard, behind the walls of Stateville prison? Would they even believe it? Would they care? I thought to myself: If only Michael Broadway’s life was worth as much as Paul Whelan’s to those in power, maybe he’d still be alive. Maybe someone would listen to our pleas for help.
If only we were seen as human.
Note: The Illinois Document of Corrections has confirmed to multiple media outlets that Michael Broadway died in custody on June 19 but has repeatedly declined to comment further because the investigation into his death is ongoing. Truthout offered the Illinois Document of Corrections the opportunity to comment on the specific assertions made in this piece but received no response by press time.