Free Ramsey Orta!

For the last two or three years, I have been corresponding with a young man named Ramsey Orta via old-fashioned letters sent in the mail. We don’t use email as he is an inmate in the New York State prison system. He is moved around constantly, and his latest address is the 10th state “correctional facility” to which he has been shipped. I’ve been sending letters to at least five of them.

Ramsey’s name is not a household word, but he is in prison due to the case of Eric Garner, which is. Garner was the 43-year-old African-American who was strangled in 2014 by an NYPD officer using a prohibited chokehold. The arrest was for the alleged crime of selling single cigarettes. A cellphone video of the arrest shows Garner saying “I can’t breathe” 11 times, which did not stop the chokehold that eventually killed him. You can find it easily on YouTube.

Ramsey Orta is the bystander who filmed Garner’s death and posted the video. He’s also the only person connected with that incident ever to spend a day in jail. The cop who caused Garner’s death, Daniel Pantaleo, was never charged and continued to receive his NYPD salary for five years while an “internal investigation” dragged on. Finally, Pantaleo eventually was removed from the force (which caused howls of outrage from the police union). Another officer who stood by and did nothing while Garner died lost a few vacation days; no one else suffered disciplinary action.

Of course, the charge that sent Orta to prison was not “causing embarrassment to the police.” In the summary and call to action below, the history of his video and the NYPD reaction is outlined in more detail, and I won’t repeat that in this introduction. (This 2019 article from The Verge has more.) What I will say is that though I have never met Ramsey in person, I have found him over the years of our communication to be serious, valiant, determined, frank, and resilient far beyond what most of us could manage under similar pressures.

I began to write to him as a show of support for someone whom I consider to be a prisoner of conscience. I believe the details of the specific offenses with which he was accused to be irrelevant. He turned a bright light on NYPD practices, and they are predictably furious about it; prison guards are also cops. Therefore, he needs protection from retaliation, and using an old Amnesty International technique, I began to send him letters to demonstrate that he had people on the outside concerned about his well-being. Amnesty knew that a prisoner facing dire conditions in the world’s dank dungeons were strengthened by the arrival of letters addressed to them from around the world. I used to send letters to South Vietnam, Argentina, Uzbekhistan, Nigeria, and South Africa. Now I send them to upstate New York.

Ramsey answered, and we began to share regularly. I also send him books, and he reads them.

Ramsey’s term is up in July, but according to his testimony some prison guards are unhappy that he may soon slip from their control [see below]. Given the new threat of coronavirus that can thrive in the Petri-dish conditions of a prison, we are calling for people to demand Ramsey’s immediate release. Please read what follows, take the action requested, and pass on this alert to your own networks. Thanks!



Free Ramsey Orta

Ramsey Orta’s life in in imminent danger in New York State prison. Ramsey is the citizen journalist who video recorded the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD. His courage in releasing the video, which went viral, made him a target of the world’s largest militarized police force. Ramsey is the only person connected with Eric Garner’s murder to go to jail, a clear message to whistleblowers. In prison he has been singled out for intimidation and abuse. Now guards are openly threatening his life, saying they will make sure he gets COVID-19 and dies before his July release date. They are also denying him food. Ramsey has fallen sick. We must NOT let them make good on their threats.

Please contact Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has the power to grant Ramsey’s release. Phone: (518) 474-8390 or email here.

Demand: Ramsey Orta’s “immediate release without supervision.”

Background:

Why “Immediate”?

This is a life or death situation. Prison officers have threatened to give Ramsey COVID-19 through an infected guard. They have deprived him of soap, showers, tissue, and cleaning supplies for his cell, even removing his sheets so he has to sleep on a vinyl mattress, on which COVID-19 can live for days. Ramsey was recently in the prison infirmary with a fever, then was returned to his cell where guards have escalated their threats. They have deprived him of food, showing him a food tray and asking him, “Are you hungry?” then saying, “Well eat my d-ck, you m----er f---ing n--er” and taking away the food. They accuse him of being a “snitch” because his Facebook support group is posting about their threats; they have promised he “won’t make it out alive.”

Why “without supervision”?

Ramsey merits prompt release: while in prison, he completed his GED and received certification for a parenting class. He wants to be a good father to his two daughters so that they do not make the mistakes he did, having been raised with grandparents involved in drugs and prostitution. He enrolled in an anger management program and applied for a college program, neither of which he was able to complete because he has been transferred from prison to prison repeatedly and regularly placed in solitary confinement.

Ramsey is quite likely innocent of the main charge against him, weapons possession. He took a plea deal to that charge based on highly suspect evidence: the gun had no bullets or fingerprints, which is inconsistent with the police claim that they caught him placing it into the waistband of a 17-year-old girl. Ramsey wanted to go to trial but was cornered into taking a plea when police threatened to jail his mother, whom the family believes was set up: not only did he fear that she could not endure jail time, but he knew that as an ex-offender, she would be ejected from her home in a public housing project when she got out.

Third, “supervision” would necessarily involve the NYPD, which has targeted Ramsey since he made the video of Eric Garner’s death. Police subsequently surveilled his every move and arrested him on seven occasions, on five of which he was released for lack of evidence. Their influence has reached into the prison system where Ramsey has been under threat from the start: at Riker’s Island, for example, he was offered food containing a greenish-bluish substance that later was tested and found to be rat poison. It is reasonable to conclude that Ramsey’s life will continue to be threatened by the NYPD upon release.

Ramsey’s story must not end in prison. His courageous act enabled an explosion of support for Black Lives Matter and the movement against police abuses. His personal resilience in the face of ongoing harassment is an inspiration. Please email Governor Cuomo here and leave a message at (518) 474-8390 to insist that Ramsey Orta be released.

Tell your friends and networks!