Protesting prisons-for-profit that prey on the poor, powerless immigrant detainees

Occupy Wall Street groups march on Wells Fargo bank in Harlem

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 4:00 AM

Updated: Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 4:00 AM

Handout

More than 200 members of Occupy Wall Street groups rally outside a Wells Fargo bank branch in Harlem to protest investments in prisons-for-profit.

Incarcerating poor, powerless people for profit is a despicable business, but it sure is profitable.


“Hello Harlem, we’re here to help” reads an unintentionally ironic sign in a Wells Fargo bank, a major investor in two private prison companies, the GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) that in 2010 made a whopping $2.9 billion in profits.


On Monday 200 people took to the streets to protest the scandalous connection between investment in private prisons and the mass jailing of prisoners and immigrant detainees for profit. The demonstration was organized by the Occupy Wall Street Immigrant Worker Justice working group and the OWS Prisoner Solidarity working group, "[For these corporations\] the more people in prison the better it is for business,” said Mariano Muñoz of the Occupy Wall Street Immigrant Worker Justice working group.


Not surprisingly, both GEO and the CCA spend a pretty penny lobbying at both the state and federal level for laws like the infamous Arizona and Alabama anti-immigrant legislations.
“[Those laws\] place greater numbers of non-U.S. citizens in the immigrant detention and deportation system,” Muñoz added. “And that’s good for business.”


Private prison corporations that profit from detention and deportation policies make tons of money by locking up poor, powerless immigrants for months and even years with little federal supervision. One of these jails is located in Springfield Gardens, Queens, and many voices have been raised in protest.


A spokesman for Wells Fargo denied the company owns shares of GEO or CCA or that it is invested in either company. "Wells Fargo Advantage Funds currently holds a small position in mutual funds that we administer as a trustee on behalf of fund shareholders. Wells Fargo is not the owner. Public filings and website listings can give the incorrect impression that Wells Fargo is an owner of a company’s stock – we are not. These shares are owned by various Wells Fargo mutual funds. Wells Fargo is not a beneficial owner of these mutual funds, but serves as an adviser,” he said.


The rally last week focused on the role those private prison companies have played in supporting anti-immigrant policies, leading to record detention and deportation rates.


The rally began in front of the Lincoln Correction Facility in Harlem, one of the city’s many African-American neighborhoods devastated by the explosive growth in prisons over the past few decades. From there, protesters marched to a Wells Fargo bank branch.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/protesting-prisons-for-profit-prey-poor-powerless-immigrant-detainees-article-1.1026328#ixzz1nLZXHy4B


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/protesting-prisons-for-profit-prey-poor-powerless-immigrant-detainees-article-1.1026328#ixzz1nLZL5UJr

Occupy movement stages day of protests at US prisons

via: theguardian

Occupy demonstrators participated in a nationwide day of action to protest against the US prison system on Monday, with demonstrations carried out at over a dozen sites across the country, including prisons in California, Chicago, Denver and New York.

The call to protest was issued by activists with the Occupy Oakland movement and was co-ordinated to coincide with waves of prison hunger strikes that began at California's Pelican Bay prison in July. Demonstrators denounced the use of restrictive isolation units as infringement upon fundamental human rights. The hunger strikes followed a US supreme court ruling in May which stated that overcrowding in the California prison system had led to "needless suffering and death." The court ordered the state to reduce its overall prison population from 140,000 to 110,000, which still well-exceeds the state's maximum prison capacity.

Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer – the American hikers who were held for over a year by Iranian authorities – took part in demonstrations outside San Quentin prison in Marin County, California. Addressing the crowd, Shourd described the psychological impact of solitary confinement, saying her 14 and a half months without human contact drove her to beat the walls of her cell until her knuckles bled. Shourd noted that Nelson Mandella described the two weeks he spent in solitary confinement as the most dehumanising experience he had ever been through.

"In Iran the first thing they do is put you in solitary," Fattal added.

Bauer said "a prisoner's greatest fear is being forgotten." He described how hunger strikes became the hikers' own "greatest weapon" in pushing their captors to heed their demands. According to Bauer, however, the most influential force for changing their quality of life while being held in Iran was the result of pressure applied by those outside the prison. It was for that fact, Bauer argued, that "this movement, this Cccupy movement, needs to permeate the prisons."

Occupy supporters are calling for a fundamental change in the US prison system, which today houses one quarter of the planet's prisoners; more than 2.4 million people. As of 2005, roughly one quarter of those held in US prisons or jails had been convicted on a drug charge. Activists point out that in the past three decades the nation's prison population has increased by more than 500%, with minorities comprising 60% of those incarcerated. The number of women locked up between 1997 and 2007 increased by 832%.

Demonstrators are broadly calling for the abolition of inhumane prison conditions, and the elimination of policies such as capital punishment, life sentences without the possibility of parole and so-called "three strikes, you're out" laws.

Some demonstrators were also demanding changes in their own specific states. Activists in Columbus, Ohio, for example, highlighted the fact that their state is second only to Texas in rates of capital punishment and planned to deliver letters to several elected officials, including governor John Kasich.

Ben Turk, an activist with Red Bird Prison abolition, noted that rising prices in prison commissaries have also been an issue with many Ohio prisoners. According to Turk, prices at the commissaries where prisoners purchase food and other amenities have risen, while the amount of money prisoners are able to make have largely remained the same.

"We work with prisoners and ask them what their grievances are," Turk said. "A lot of them talk about how commissary prices have been continually rising for the last couple of decades, while state pay remains the same."

At least 20 prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary chose to fast for the day in solidarity with Monday's action.

In Washington DC, demonstrators protested new prisoner visitation policies that will include the installation teleconference TV screens in place of glass partition.

In New York City, Mercedes Smith, a Brooklyn mother, took the streets along with roughly 250 others who marched from the Lincoln Correctional Facility through Harlem. Smith said she and her 21 year-old son had both been personally impacted by the criminal justice system. Smith said her son had been stopped and searched by the police throughout his life and is now incarcerated.

Smith carried a sign that read "End the War On Drugs". She said that people who were addicted to drugs had a "sickness" that was "not a reason to put them in prison."

"This war is costing more money. All the money that they using to keep this war going on, they could open up more centers, more programmes to help people," Smith told the Guardian.