Last year, 51-year-old Michael Broadway published a book, graduated from Northwestern University, and beat stage four prostate cancer - all while behind bars. Then, in an Illinois prison under the blazing summer heat, Broadway's life was taken.
From 100-degree heat to hurricanes, the prison system forces incarcerated people to weather climate change without agency and necessary resources. Many purchased water bottles with their rations to avoid drinking contaminated sink water. Authorities nailed windows shut with plywood. They padlocked a fan. Broadway’s severe asthma required him to be housed in a cooler place, but they put him in one of the hottest cells.
When Broadway became overheated and collapsed, his imprisoned neighbors yelled for help that arrived too late. Instead of treating his asthma, staff injected him with a drug overdose medication. Even the stretcher was broken - so friends carried him out in a bedsheet.
In 2008, Eugene Blackmon brought awareness by suing Texas prisons for inhumane heat conditions. Nearly 13,000 people have died behind bars in the summer heat over the past twenty years. And it’ll only get worse - for all of us.
Broadway’s death was preventable. So are the deaths of unhoused and working-class Black people living in urban heat islands. Prisons themselves also significantly increase carbon emissions. Corporations and political greed continue to stoke the flames of climate change. Heat deaths aren’t simply accidents. They’re often exploitative and neglectful anti-Black violence.