REMARKS
Council Member Diana Ayala Shares Personal Testimony Against Solitary Confinement
0:13:27
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3 min
Council Member Diana Ayala delivers a heartfelt testimony about her brother's experiences with incarceration and solitary confinement, emphasizing the destructive impact on his mental health and overall well-being.
She criticizes the system's failure to provide necessary resources for rehabilitation and underscores the need for systemic changes to address mental health issues within the carceral environment.
Speaker 1
0:13:27
Seeing oh, council member, Ayala.
Speaker 5
0:13:29
Thank you.
0:13:30
I just wanna really just acknowledge how big of a deal this is.
0:13:37
I've been very vocal about My own family's personal struggles and and I have a a little brother who's a you know, I don't know how many of you have little have have younger siblings, but he's like my son, my basically raised him.
0:13:51
And he was since very early on diagnosed with mental health issues.
0:14:01
And by the time that he was eleven years old, he was incarcerated because the local drug dealers would have him sell drugs for them because he was eleven years old and he couldn't get in trouble.
0:14:15
And it started a cycle that lasts it so literally a couple of weeks ago when he was released for the last time.
0:14:21
And my brother spent a lot of his time in incarceration insolidary confinement or whatever it is that, you know, we wish to call it.
0:14:32
That mental illness became progressively worse as a result of that.
0:14:36
Because we're no longer treating individuals that are suffering.
0:14:40
We're incarcerating them without the resources they need to lead successful lives.
0:14:45
And so when I look at my baby brother today, I don't recognize that individual anymore because there's nothing there.
0:14:58
The humanity in him has been stripped away.
0:15:01
And all he knows, and the the place that he feels the most comfortable in is in a cage.
0:15:07
And that should speak really loudly to folks.
0:15:11
Now, it doesn't negate the fact that we have a responsibility to keep our workforce wherever you may be.
0:15:18
Safe, and we take that very seriously.
0:15:22
But what we're saying is there have to be other ways to accomplish that goal that don't compromise the mental health of black and brown men and women that are entering our jails unnecessarily because we lack the mental health treatments.
0:15:45
That they need.
0:15:46
So with that, I wanna thank you, madam chair, and I wanna thank you, Jamani, for you know, I remember when I came into the council, so Jamani is the trouble But he's he's still a troublemaker, but he's good trouble, and he's good people.
0:16:00
And I I trust him wholeheartedly.
0:16:04
Because I know that he cares about these issues, and I know that he cares about both sides of the issue.
0:16:10
Nothing is black and white.
0:16:12
There's a lot of gray, and I know that he considers that.
0:16:15
So thank you for being such an outstanding colleague.
Speaker 1
0:16:21
Thank you deputy speaker Ayala for sharing and for reminding us that this body and reminding everyone that this body does know what we're doing.