Tonight at the Cedar Rapids City Council meeting I met a young African-American woman. She was there to tell her story about the flood. She was timid and wasn’t sure she would be able to read it. I told her I would read it for her. This is what she wrote:
“On June 11th 2008 I was a Linn County jail inmate on a probation violation. As the water started rising we said to the guards are we gonna go to safety and they said it won’t hit the jail and if we have to we will move you to the next floor. We was watching the water go up and up. We all was praying and freaking out that we wouldn’t be stranded on Mays Island. They didn’t let us see if our family was alright. I couldn’t sleep cuz I was scared I was gonna die in jail and not be able to see my family before that happens. I watched the water go over the wall by Smulekoff and up the 4th Ave block by block the lights went out. That was the most scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life time. I watched the Smulekoffs van float down the street . The guards came in and told us about 5:30 AM the 12th and told us we would be leaving the Linn County jail. The guards moved their cars and mattresses before us. They left us in the building all night with a gas smell that was making me dizzy and sick. We had wristbands with our number on it to identify our bodies. And handcuffed 2 people together and shackled our legs. We went to the first floor and the water was to my knees. The guys and girls were all together on the 1st floor. The guys were put in moving vans piled up. We had around 40 women on one city bus. The bus I was on was full of water almost to my knees> The buses barely made it over the bridge. The guards wouldn’t even tell our families the truth about us. They told my mom and family that they moved us 2 days before they really did. We didn’t even know if our family was dead or alive. Then after the flood all I got was $65.00 for my things. I had a $100.00 shoes and a jacket. We wasn’t even allowed to bring our stuff such as pictures when we was moved to Oakdale we ate peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and dinner every day. Nothing to even almost fill us up. I didn’t get to take a shower or brush my teeth for 3-4 days.”
Who treats people like this? Shackled together in a flood? That’s stupid and cruel. In movies you always see those horrible prisons that are in Louisiana or Texas, just somewhere down South. All I have to say is, that’s a movie. This is real life in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Oh, I did ask her why she was in probation to start with. Forgery. Not a crime worth a chance of an accidental death by drowning.
