Sign the Petition: OPEN HARVARD’S DORMS TO INCARCERATED AND FORMERLY INCARCERATED

The COVID-19 crisis kills. This new virus is highly contagious and deadly, and it will kill incarcerated people if members of the Massachusetts community, such as Harvard University, do not act quickly. We demand that Harvard open its now-vacant dorms to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.

COVID-19 is already spreading through jails and prisons. Five MA prisoners have already died, at least 170 have been infected, and there are more to come if there is no immediate action to decarcerate. Prisoners have no ability to socially distance. They are in dirty cells without proper access to hygiene. The guards and jail staff spread the infection into jails and prisons, and then back home to spouses, children, and grandparents. 

Many prisoners are aging and therefore especially vulnerable to the coronavirus. Many also have pre-existing medical conditions which make them particularly susceptible. Harvard’s own medical professionals have called for immediate decarceration to protect prisoners’ health and public safety, with 75 faculty members of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School sending a letter to Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker urging an immediate reduction of the incarcerated population. 

NONE of us are safe when the most vulnerable of us are in danger. This public health crisis demonstrates just how dangerous prisons have always been. Prisons are death traps. Now is not the time for us, as a community, to rely on policing, imprisonment, and punishment as a means of control.

Some of Massachusetts’ District Attorneys have argued that prisoners should not be released because prisoners have nowhere to quarantine once released. Prisoners need safe housing to go to upon release. Harvard holds the literal keys to the solution to this problem. 

Harvard has the ability to immediately open its vacant dorms to the vulnerable and incarcerated people in the area. Harvard pays no land taxes and recently received $8.7 million in COVID-19 relief. Just two years ago, Harvard raised a record-smashing $9.6 billion in capital.  It certainly has resources at its disposal to provide basic housing to those who are fundamentally in danger and stuck behind the brutal conditions of the cage. 

Furthermore, Harvard owes prisoners because it continues to profit from their incarceration; its $40 billion endowment is invested in companies that profit from prisons. The Harvard Prison Divestment Campaign has uncovered $3 million of Harvard investments in the prison-industrial complex. Harvard owes reparations to the Black and brown communities harmed by mass incarceration, and providing life-saving housing to people released from prison would be a partial repayment of this moral debt.    

When President Bacow contracted COVID-19, he received testing, excellent medical care, and was able to socially distance while staying at a home paid for and owned by Harvard University. We demand that he give prisoners a shot at doing the same. In coordination with government officials and specifically Governor Baker and Massachusetts Department of Corrections Commissioner Carol Mici, President Bacow must OPEN HARVARD’S DORMS NOW!

Sign this petition now to let President Bacow know that Harvard should be caring for incarcerated people. Tell the President that he has the ability to save lives, especially the lives of prisoners! To keep his dorms closed is to turn his back on the lives of our friends and loved ones who are trapped behind bars. President Bacow, do not sentence our friends and loved ones to death. Open up the Harvard dorms now!