What a crock of shit from another career bullshit artist. First of all Hart
Island is not in Long Island sound, it actually is in the East River, which in
reality is not a river but instead a estuary between Long Island sound and the
Atlantic ocean. Where this wacko piece of sensationalist crap comes from and
what the author is not telling you is Hart island (and the adjacent small
islands) are part of the systems of "Potter's fields". That is where the poor
and diseased of NY City are buried. If you die poor in NY City or die from a
contagious disease you are buried there. My paternal grandfather was buried
there because he died broke. All of the labor is performed by inmates from
Rikers island. Every day the ferry from Rikers comes and brings inmate labor to
burry the dead and maintain the grounds. As a kid we used to row over there
from City Island and sneak ashore. This article tries, in vain, to imply that
there will be something unusual done if Corona victims die in NY City, that is
just plain yellow journalism. For instance in the 80's AIDS patients were
buried there, including the first baby to die of AIDS in NY City. Those islands
of the coast of the South Bronx have a dark and murky past, for instance google
the wreck of the passenger ship "General Slocum" and you'll see what happens to
a mass tragedy of poor people, instead of the glitzy tragedy of the Titanic.
Yes, Hart, North Brother, South Brother, Rat, and a few other islands are
generally unknown to the public unless you are a resident of the poor South
Bronx. I am old enough to remember when there was still juvenile unit at Rikers
and I can give you some more tales of those islands.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, March 2, 2020 3:51 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] In Case of Deadly Coronavirus Outbreak, New York
Plans To Use Prison Labor to Dig Mass Graves
Coronavirus Dead
LATE STAGE CAPITALISM
In Case of Deadly Coronavirus Outbreak, New York Plans To Use Prison Labor to
Dig Mass Graves "The city has plans to send corpses to Hart Island in the Long
Island Sound where, in the late 19th century, yellow-fever patients were
quarantined.
Prisoners from Rikers Island would be ferried over to do the digging."
by Alan Macleod
March 02nd, 2020
By Alan Macleod
Two dozen new cases of Covid-19, a deadly strain of novel coronavirus, were
detected in the United States over the weekend, bringing the total to 42, with
47 more U.S. nationals infected either in China or aboard the Diamond Princess
cruise ship. Included in the 42 is New York City's first case; the patient in
question is currently confined to her Manhattan home.
"There is no cause for surprise - this was expected. As I said from the
beginning, it was a matter of when, not if there would be a positive case of
novel coronavirus in New York," said Governor Andrew Cuomo, who last week
called for the state legislature to pass $40 million in emergency management
funds to confront the outbreak. Yet even with the extra money, it seems clear
that the city would be almost completely unprepared to handle a crisis on the
scale that much of the media is hyping it up to be.
A new report by New York Magazine, based upon information from the Center for
Disease Control (CDC) and a 2008 New York City pandemic response plan, shows
the Big Apple would be overwhelmed in the case of a Spanish Flu-like epidemic.
Last week Mayor de Blasio announced he had set aside an extra
1,200 hospital beds in case of need. But a truly serious outbreak could see as
many as 26,300 new patients per day arriving at hospitals. Furthermore, the
city has barely one sixth of the ventilators it would need in that situation,
with medical masks also in perilously short supply.
Perhaps the most notable information from the report is that if the city's
crematoria are overrun, New York intends to use prison slave labor to dig mass
graves:
The city has plans to send corpses to Hart Island in the Long Island Sound
where, in the late 19th century, yellow-fever patients were quarantined.
Prisoners from Rikers Island would be ferried over to do the digging."
This policy is based on a document authored during Michael Bloomberg's tenure
as mayor, one that saw a more authoritarian approach taken to crime and
policing. Bloomberg is currently running for the Democratic presidential
nomination.
The Media's Deafening Silence on Mike Bloomberg's Ties to Epstein and Other
Criminals Billionaire "Democratic" candidate Mike Bloomberg has ties to Harvey
Weinstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffery Epstein among other notables.
MintPress News | Whitney Webb | Feb 28
Yet while the prospect of Harvey Weinstein and other inmates of the infamous
prison being forced to come into contact with contaminated corpses might raise
some eyebrows, New York prisoners already bury thousands of poor, homeless or
unidentified people in deep, mass graves containing up to 1,000 bodies on Hart
Island, being paid $0.50 per hour for their labor. More than one million people
have been interred on the desolated island off limits to the public. In the
past, it has also been used as a quarantine station and a prison.
While the Chinese government has drawn praise for mobilizing its considerable
resources, building multiple hospitals in a matter of days to house the
infected, and effectively quarantining entire municipalities, the American
response has been less impressive. President Trump, who attempted to cut the
CDC's budget in February, proposed a tax cut in response to the virus. The
majority of American cases are located in the Pacific Northwest, with
Washington state governor Jay Inslee, himself a former Democratic presidential
candidate, declaring a state of emergency on Saturday.
In the United States, prisoners are leased out across the country to large
corporations, who use their artificially cheap labor to reap huge profits.
Everything from McDonald's uniforms to expensive lingerie to car parts to
Starbucks cups are manufactured by prisoners, who have little option but to
give their labor for as little as $0.12 per hour. Meanwhile, many firefighters
who tackled the California wildfires were actually incarcerated inmates making
$1 per hour risking their lives. And while governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton
used prison slave labor in and around his mansion to "keep costs down."
As Coronavirus Spreads So Does Anti-Chinese Racism Similar to how Ebola was
racialized as a distinctly African illness, news of the coronavirus has led to
an outbreak of anti-Chinese racism.
