{"id":377100,"date":"2018-09-13T03:23:41","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T02:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/amika-mota-fought-fires-as-a-prisoner-for-53-cents-per-hour\/"},"modified":"2018-09-13T03:23:41","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T02:23:41","slug":"amika-mota-fought-fires-as-a-prisoner-for-53-cents-per-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/amika-mota-fought-fires-as-a-prisoner-for-53-cents-per-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"Amika Mota Fought Fires as a Prisoner for 53 Cents Per Hour"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We continue our conversation about California\u2019s incarcerated firefighters with a look at the women fighting the state\u2019s climate change-fueled blazes. We speak with Amika Mota, a former prisoner firefighter. She didn\u2019t even make $1 per hour while on duty as a firefighter \u2014 she made just 53 cents. Amika Mota is now the director of prison re-entry at the Young Women\u2019s Freedom Center in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

TRANSCRIPT:<\/h2>\n

AMY<\/span> <\/span>GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> <\/span>This is <\/span>Democracy Now!<\/em>, <\/span>Democracynow.org<\/a>, The War and Peace Report. We are broadcasting from San Francisco, the site of this week\u2019s Global Climate Action Summit. I\u2019m Amy Goodman. We continue our conversation about California\u2019s incarcerated firefighters with a look at the women fighting the state\u2019s climate change-fueled blazes. We are joined now by Amika Mota, former prisoner firefighter. She didn\u2019t even make a dollar an hour while on duty as a firefighter; she made just 53 cents. Amika is now the Director of Prison Reentry at the Young Women\u2019s Freedom Center in San Francisco. Welcome to <\/span>Democracy Now!<\/p>\n

AMIKA<\/span> <\/span>MOTA<\/span>:<\/strong> <\/span>Thank you for having me.<\/p>\n

AMY<\/span> <\/span>GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> <\/span>Well, I\u2019m sure this brought back many memories for you as you saw these young men talking about their experience just yesterday and the day before, fighting fires here in California. How did you end up fighting fires in California in prison?<\/p>\n

AMIKA<\/span> <\/span>MOTA<\/span>:<\/strong> <\/span>I was incarcerated. I began my prison sentence in 2008, and about five years into my sentence, I became eligible for fire camp. I had always kind of had my eye on wanting to make it, to be a prison firefighter.<\/p>\n

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AMY<\/span> <\/span>GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> <\/span>What makes you able to make it, to get to these prison camps?<\/p>\n

AMIKA<\/span> <\/span>MOTA<\/span>:<\/strong> <\/span>You have to be a certain level of security clearance. I started off at a level three security, and I had to work my way down into a level two. So it has to do with security risk, your supervision level, your behavior in prison and the…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We continue our conversation about California\u2019s incarcerated firefighters with a look at the women fighting the state\u2019s climate change-fueled blazes. We speak with Amika Mota, a former prisoner firefighter. She didn\u2019t even make $1 per hour while on duty as a firefighter \u2014 she made just 53 cents. Amika Mota is now the director of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-377100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}