State prisoners should be among those who get pandemic vaccine quickly

I agree that hospital and other health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities should get priority for receiving the new COVID-19 vaccine. But let us not forget the 40,000 people crammed into Illinois prisons and the prison staff, plus the thousands more in county jails all over the state.

Illinois has abolished the death penalty but these men and women are facing death from this pandemic; it is raging through facilities where social distancing is not a choice they can make, and where testing, masking and cleaning supplies are not readily available.

This is not only a moral and human rights crisis. It’s a public health crisis. Prison staff go home every day carrying whatever they have contracted inside. Prisoners are released at the end of their sentences every day and are cast out into a world that is hostile to them, often with little or no available health care or social services. Employment, housing and medical care are not assured, and some become homeless.

From both a public health and a humanitarian perspective, prisons and prisoners should be near the top of the list of those to receive the new vaccines.

Ted Pearson
Co-Chairperson, Emeritus
Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression
Chicago

AOC got it right on Rahm

As much as I hate to agree with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, she nailed it in her statement opposing the appointment of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to any position of public trust, since he squandered it by his handling of the Laquan McDonald video.

Some have come forward to argue that he worked hard, was devoted to our city and got a lot of good things done. So did the Chicago Police officers who responded on the night in question. Their exemplary records notwithstanding, all of them will spend the rest of their lives being defined by bad choices made under pressure in a tense situation.

The mayor who chose to cover up the Laquan McDonald video should be judged no less harshly.

David L. Milligan, Portage Park