Death of an inmate from ruptured ectopic pregnancy inspired her latest protest.
View full sizeKathleen Rumpf is living in a self-imposed jail cell next to the Justice Center in Syracuse for a week to protest jail conditions. Syracuse, NY -- Almost 18 years ago today, protester Kathleen Rumpf set up a makeshift cage outside the Public Safety Building on South State Street. She lived in the small wooden structure for one week, protesting conditions in the jail. Today, Rumpf is protesting for the same cause at the same location. This time, the cage is made of black PVC piping.
Rumpf has a permit to live outside, between the Justice Center and the PSB, for seven days. During the day she will write letters, read magazines such as The New Yorker and talk to anyone who stops by, Rumpf said. At night she will sleep on a mattress that barely fits inside the cage. “I could stay home and be comfortable but sometimes you have to go out there and stand with the issue and try to do the best you can,” Rumpf said.
Rumpf has not visited a jail in about eight years because the level of abuse was too much to handle, she said. Instead, she avidly reads stories involving the jail system. The death of Chuniece Patterson, a pregnant woman who died from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy while she was held last November in the Justice Center, was an important source of inspiration for the protest.
“I was horrified,” Rumpf said. “The last picture that will ever be taken of her is her mug shot. ... People need to start taking this seriously. We’re losing our humanity, we’re losing our soul when we ... treat them this way.”
On the front of the cage are two small signs that have been duct-taped to the piping. They read, “The Poor have suffered enough” and “Low income housing.” Rumpf hopes that her demonstration draws attention to “a jail fraught with mismanagement which refuses to acknowledge or correct long standing abuses,” she said in a statement that she will hand out to people. One place to start making changes, Rumpf said, is to encourage the Onondaga County Sheriff candidates to address the problems in the jail system. “I want justice for all,” Rumpf said. “I want everybody protected and treated humanely.”
Rumpf has been on the Syracuse protest scene for more than two and half decades.
On Thanksgiving 1983, she and six other “peace felons” sneaked onto Griffiss Air Force Base and hammered dents into a B-52 bomber. She spent 18 months in jail for that offense. After the Plowshares 7 were convicted, Rumpf persuaded the FBI to return to her the hammer she used.
In 1989, Rumpf braved temperatures in the low teens as she staged a four-day hunger strike outside the James M. Hanley Federal Building to protest Congress’ approving $85 million in military aid to El Salvador.
On Jan. 16, 1992, the anniversary of the start of the war on Iraq, she was arrested at the federal building on a trespass charge after she refused to leave the U.S. attorney’s office.
Fernando Alfonso III can be reached at falfonso@syracuse.com or 470- 6078.