[Marxism] Further information requested

[Ruthless Critic of All that Exists]

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:24 AM, Mark Lause <markalause at gmail.com> wrote:
> Cynthia McKinney's claim that 5,000 prisoners were executed in
> Louisiana at the time of Katrina
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nc-DouFzYM
>
> I've never heard anything about this.  Can anybody provide further
> information on it?

<http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/22/usdom11773.htm>

Some inmates from Templeman III have said they saw bodies floating in
the floodwaters as they were evacuated from the prison. A number of
inmates told Human Rights Watch that they were not able to get
everyone out from their cells.

Inmates broke jail windows to let air in. They also set fire to
blankets and shirts and hung them out of the windows to let people
know they were still in the facility. Apparently at least a dozen
inmates jumped out of the windows.

"We started to see people in T3 hangin' shirts on fire out the
windows," Brooke Moss, an Orleans Parish Prison officer told Human
Rights Watch. "They were wavin' em. Then we saw them jumping out of
the windows . . . Later on, we saw a sign, I think somebody wrote
`help' on it."

As of yesterday, signs reading "Help Us," and "One Man Down," could
still be seen hanging from a window in the third floor of Templeman
III.

Several corrections officers told Human Rights Watch there was no
evacuation plan for the prison, even though the facility had been
evacuated during floods in the 1990s.

"It was complete chaos," said a corrections officer with more than 30
years of service at Orleans Parish Prison. When asked what he thought
happened to the inmates in Templeman III, he shook his head and said:
"Ain't no tellin' what happened to those people."

"At best, the inmates were left to fend for themselves," said Carey.
"At worst, some may have died."

Human Rights Watch was not able to speak directly with Orleans Parish
Sheriff Marlin N. Gussman or the ranking official in charge of
Templeman III. A spokeswoman for the sheriff's department told Human
Rights Watch that search-and-rescue teams had gone to the prison and
she insisted that "nobody drowned, nobody was left behind."

Human Rights Watch compared an official list of all inmates held at
Orleans Parish Prison immediately prior to the hurricane with the most
recent list of the evacuated inmates compiled by the state Department
of Corrections and Public Safety (which was entitled, "All Offenders
Evacuated"). However, the list did not include 517 inmates from the
jail, including 130 from Templeman III.