Cages Kill-Freedom Rally in Santa Cruz

 

 

On Jan. 24 2015, a warm and sunny Saturday, a mixed race crowd of over 200 elders, students and some children – women, men, and transgender; straight and LGBTIQ – gathered at the Clock Tower in downtown Santa Cruz for the Cages Kill-Freedom Rally.

Read report by Courtney Hanson and Willow Katz of Sin Barras, Santa Cruz

Sin Barras organized the Cages Kill-Freedom Rally to save lives after six people locked up in the Santa Cruz County Jail have died since August 2012, declaring, “These deaths are an act of collective punishment against people who are most in need of aid, and who are consistently denied community-based resources.” – Photo: Denica De Foy


Statement by Payday

Payday, an international and multiracial network of men working with the Global Women’s Strike, sends our greetings and support to the Cages Kill - Freedom Rally today in Santa Cruz. The great range of local, national and international groups supporting the rally speaks to the stake we all have in holding officials accountable for murder and torture, wherever they or we are.  The power of your actions in Santa Cruz strengthens campaigns of which we’re part: in Pennsylvania in support of the Dallas 6 – prisoner whistleblowers who are fighting “riot” charges for exposing gross prison abuses, including coerced suicide and use of a torture chair; and in the UK in support of Kevan Thakrar, a wrongly convicted immigrant prisoner held for years in solitary confinement, the form of torture favored by US and increasingly UK prisons.

We have been working for justice and in support of military refusers and whistleblowers – among them Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange - and other prisoners. (Our website is refusingtokill.net).   Our experience is that the women family members are the mainstay of campaigns for justice the world over. We also take our lead from the great California Prisoners’ Hunger Strike and its deeply anti-racist Agreement to End Hostilities, which made the strike possible, and which is a challenge to us on the outside to cross the divides among us as effectively as the prisoners have. The Cages Kill - Freedom Rally has taken this to heart and deserves our every support.

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