We UNION families have filed lawsuits, attended legislative hearings and for the entire course of the decade-long Plata lawsuit were the only group of people showing up in support of the courageous and capable Prison Law Office. You can google up some of our work on the internet.
The families in our UNION communications network have filed about 100 wrongful death and abuse lawsuits against state employees who have been deliberately indifferent to repeated pleas for help.
We have posted comments daily at the news sites to educate the public and the editors who are banned from being able to interview specific prisoners. We spent money out of our empty pockets to produce television shows that aired on 100 community channels statewide.
We have opened our personal cases up to the public, including the National Prison Commission and the lawmakers.
Every year for more than a decade we held at least one rally at the Capitol over prisoner medical neglect. We even rallied out at the prisons. You can see our past rallies at the website, and some of the very real faces of grieving moms who continue to fight for everyone, even after their own loved one has died.
http://www.1union1.com/about_UNION.htm
We have worked and are working very hard. Our jailhouse lawyers are suffering extreme retaliation for filing complaints and legal actions. It's as though organized crime is in charge of our government instead of public servants.
Educated people know that there are only three ways to change the laws.
1. Electing the right people in the first place. UNION members went into poor neighborhoods and registered the poor to vote which dramatically changed the voter base. Everyone should be registering voters on a daily basis who wants reform. If the poor all voted and backed up candidates with a little money and bringing people to the polls, we would have almost none of our problems.
2. Initiative Campaigns - No group in California has the 6500 trained working volunteers it takes to actually be able to win an initiative campaign. We cannot force changes in the laws until the volunteers and funds are lined up in advance. Most groups out there who do this via initiative campaigns pay the signature gatherers. The deadline is too short to rely upon volunteer work alone.
3. Lawsuits - we certainly have filed scores of lawsuits and plan to file more in the future. Our UNION families have sued at least 1000 prison guards, administrators and unfortunately, some bad apple health care workers for deliberate indifference.
In spite of our own major challenges and empty pocketbooks we never dropped the ball in being there to expose the holocaust that has been happening in the prisons. The state cannot make a profit on the human bondage industry unless they deny prisoners education, rehab, medical care and a proper diet. Lawmakers put into office by law enforcement labor unions are never going to represent the three million people attached to a state prisoner.
Now comes the time to battle out Plata.
This will probably be our last chance for prison reform as Judges Henderson, Karlton and Rhinehardt are a dying breed and the public outcry (mostly law enforcement caring more about their jobs than they care about people) - so whatever happens here is a consequence that will last forever.
With an estimated 30% of the veterans coming home from the war in Iraq with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the passage of Prop 9 (read about that at www.prisonlaw.com), the prisons can only become more and more overcrowded.
Nobody cleans up their drug habits in prison. The guards bring in any drug or contraband the prisoners want. Prisons are giving us little or no value for our taxpayer dollar and they are not healing places.
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