The open event was jointly led by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and the Blair County Branch of the NAACP, with Branch President Andrae Holsey acting as moderator. Panelists included branch historian Harriett Gaston, Gloria Gates Medical Care Community Representative Victor Thomas, community policing advocate and retired law enforcement professional Bill Wilkinson, PHRC Executive Director Chad Dion Lassiter and PHRC Civil Rights Division Director Sheryl Meck.

“We don’t just work on one side of the color line, one side of the gender line,” Lassiter said.

The PHRC is responsible for protecting the rights “in the space of public accommodations, commercial property, education, employment, housing, everything,” for 13 million Pennsylvanians, he said.

Lassiter also stressed that the PHRC is a neutral party, there to listen and gather data.

During the panelist question and answer section, Holsey broached the topic of Blair County’s criminal justice system.

“The people sitting at Blair County Prison right now, despite the fact that it is called a prison, are actually county jail defendants waiting to be sentenced,” Holsey said.

Holsey said NAACP officers were joined by representatives of the PHRC Civil Rights Division in an unannounced tour of the facility last week with “full, face-to-face interaction with inmates.”

“While there, we witnessed gallons of human waste flowing through inmates’ sleeping areas and rodents eating the ceiling tiles over food preparation facilities as we walked through,” Holsey said.

He then asked Lassiter and Meck what the government can and should do to address issues such as these in correctional facilities, to which Lassiter said if they looked at it from a retribution standpoint, “we shouldn’t give a d*** about anything (Holsey) said.”

“But if we see the inherent dignity and worth of a person who is incarcerated, if we see them as human beings … it’s not about what the government should do,” Lassiter said. “It’s those of you who know someone that’s behind those bars, in those dungeons in these conditions that are deplorable. What are you going to do?”

Lassiter advised them to “take it to the top” by reaching out to the United State Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights and writing to elected officials because the PHRC “doesn’t have jurisdiction.”

Meck then took the opportunity to describe her tour of the prison’s G block, describing it as “the worst one.”

She said she couldn’t breathe, that the HVAC system was down and fans were blowing hot air with small, confined spaces containing multiple people. It reminded her of watching “Locked Up Abroad.”

“I saw this area where, when the sewage floods, and how it comes down the hallway, how it can be a horrible mess to clean up, and yet the individuals in the cells had mattresses, a skinny mattress on the floor,” Meck said. “And so I said, when the sewage comes through, does it get this far? They said ‘it goes the whole way.’ Well, surely you get a new mattress? ‘No, we don’t.'”

Meck said Deputy Warden Cory Yedlosky, who took them on the tour, told them “in the winter time, it gets so cold that the inmates risk suffering from hypothermia.”

She also spoke with Warden Abbie Tate and other staff, who “all have desperate thoughts about this place, they all want it to get better,” she said.

“They need help,” Meck said. “They’ve been talking to whoever they need to talk to but there is power, as I mentioned earlier, in community. … The louder you cry, the more people will hear, so I encourage you to continue to do that.”

Further coverage of the town hall will appear in the Saturday-Sunday edition of the Mirror.

Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor is at 814-946-7458.