St. Louis, MO: Emergency Heatwave Protest to Shut Down the Workhouse!

Join us for an emergency protest against current heatwave conditions of the St. Louis Workhouse (a medium security jail) on Friday the 21st at 7pm. Bring pots and pans to bang on, or anything that will make a loud noise so folks can hear us. It’s going to be hot, but it’s the least we can do to support folks on the inside who are even hotter. BRING WATER. PARK AT THATCHER AND HALL ST.

Our family, friends and others who are currently locked up awaiting trial or serving short sentences in the Workhouse are right now inside a literal tinder box because of the heat wave. Temperatures are reaching 105-115 inside and there is no air conditioning or ice to cool folks down. They are literally screaming for help from the windows. The city refuses to help, seeing those inside as merely expendable. If they’re hot, we’re hot too!

Shut down the workhouse, the torture has gone on long enough. The jails and prisons we so often find ourselves in are created to keep the poor separated. Breaking up families, gouging us out of our hard earned money that we give to our loved ones commissary so they can buy overpriced necessities inside, etc.

The disparity of those who do and do not go to jail most often falls along the line of race and class. You rarely see the rich in such torture chambers. Those who can’t afford bail are left to cook inside, sometimes waiting years to see trial. These types of jails and prisons they lock us up in originate from the same people who would of justified slavery in the 1800s. Let’s break the separation and let people know on the inside that we aren’t gonna just forget them.