What’s been going on? Most recently, No Cages, in partnership with TCDSA and the Women’s Prison Book Project, sent over 750 mailers with hand-written notes and a document with frequently asked questions* about the COVID-19 vaccine to help folks make the best decision for themselves related to the vaccine.
Right before this, we were pushing for equity in the vaccine rollout for incarcerated and detained people in MN, including initiating an open letter addressed to the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and the governor’s office. We had some partial wins with 400 doses allocated to incarcerated folks who are high-risk and the general prison population strongly recommended as part of Phase 1b #2 (currently the state is in Phase 1b #1) in the minutes of the most recent meeting of the Vaccine Allocation Advisory Committee. We’ve heard anecdotally that some folks who are not medically high-risk have been offered to receive the vaccine, but this has only been at some and not all MN prisons.
*For our first mailing, we used an FAQ developed by the Deeper than Water coalition in MA focusing on the Moderna Vaccine and for our second mailing, we used an FAQ developed by the Marshall Project focusing on all three vaccine types.
How can I get involved?
As we are starting to get responses back from folks on the inside, there have been some requests for finding pen pals. If you are interested in regularly writing with someone on the inside (at least monthly) and developing a relationship with them, please reach out to us at nocagesmn@gmail.com.
We are also hoping to relaunch our newsletter and new member outreach in the near future. Stay tuned for more updates if you’d like to get more involved with No Cages activities!
Who are we?
No Cages MN focuses on the intersection of anti-ICE and prison abolition. Some of the things we do: organize direct actions, support people incarcerated or detained in MN, and promote political education about these topics. TCDSA is a coalition organization of No Cages, so some of our members are part of TCDSA, but not all are.