About a month after Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina, the region remains in acute distress. People in prison were also impacted; four North Carolina prisons are located in hard-hit areas, including Western Correctional for Women, Avery Mitchell Correctional, Craggy Correctional, and Mountain View Correctional. The Intercept reported that 550 men in Mountain View suffered in cells without lights or running water for five days, forced to defecate in plastic bags. Emancipate NC’s Investigator Margaux Lander visited several women at Anson Correctional and learned that the women prisoners were kept shackled on buses over the course of a two-day journey from Swannanoa to Polkton.
Now many Eastern North Carolina prisons are overcrowded from the influx of incarcerated people from out west. Emancipate NC is joining with multiple groups to call for early releases under the Extended Limits of Confinement program to reduce crowding. Incarcerated people are sleeping in gymnasiums with no access to phone or communication, reduced food rations, and extremely slow medical response times. Emancipate NC’s Elizabeth Simpson and Margaux Lander worked with Ben Finholt from the Wilson Center and Luke Wollard from Disability Rights NC to draft the coalition letter.
Meanwhile, Emancipate NC’s Kerwin Pittman and Dedan Waciuri took the five-hour trek to the Western part of the state to bring love and supplies. Along with Philip Cooper and William Castro, they stood shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the people of Western NC. RREPS, NCEO, 260ENC, The Amani Collective, and Emancipate NC contributed to the donations. They expect to return with winter supplies.