Community | November 15, 2011 | 29 comments

Occupying A Private Prison: Shut Down Stewart Detention Center

source: http://mycuentame.org/immigrantsforsale/

Buckeye_Bill
A Letter From Robert Greenwald

Correction Corporation of America's Stewart facility in Lumpkin, Georgia is the largest private detention center in the nation. Stewart currently profits close to $50 million a year. As if that weren't enough, CCA often cuts costs by denying basic services to its inmates and by limiting access to their family members.

CCA charges inmates close to $5 a minute to make a phone call. To pay for this, inmates work in the facility and earn a whopping $1 a day. Five days of hard work gives them just enough time for a one minute phone call.

Watch the video and take action to shut down Stewart Detention Center.
CCA's greed knows no boundaries. In the past few years they have spent $14.8 million lobbying for anti-immigration laws, like HB87 in Georgia, to ensure they have continuous access to fresh inmates and keep their money racket going. It's time to put an end to it.

This is why on November 18th, Brave New Foundation's Cuéntame is partnering with a coalition of immigrant and civil rights organizations, in a powerful vigil and occupation outside the Stewart facility in Georgia. The demand: Shut down Stewart Detention Center now.

You can join-in too online! Add your demand message and we will read and deliver it at the action event!

Your voice is the most important tool we need to fight back against the private prison greed and abuse.

Yours,
Robert Greenwald, Axel Caballero and Brave New Foundation's Cuéntame team.

I invite you to join Cuéntame on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

http://mycuentame.org/immigrantsforsale/
  1. groups:
    Community
  2. tags:
    Immigrants,  Prisons,  human beings,  Mistreatment,  1 more
  3.     
    |

29 comments // Occupying A Private Prison: Shut Down Stewart Detention Center // Video

  • Buckeye_Bill
  • Varex_Sythe
    • +2
      Varex_Sythe  

    • Prisons should never be a privately run matter, nor should they ever exist to turn a profit.

      What differences are there between a for profit prison and a typical Southern 1700's plantation, beside the fact that prisoners are (in theory) in a prison because they committed a crime?

    • 6 months ago
  • Buckeye_Bill
    • +2
      Buckeye_Bill  
    • Image
    • Varex_Sythe:

      "What differences are there between a for profit prison and a typical Southern 1700's plantation,..."

      For one, taxpayers didn't have to pay the cost of housing a slave like we do by spending $50,000.00 plus incarcerating human beings - up to $800,000.00 for a "terrorist" @ Gitmo!

      But that's not the worst of it all.

      Just putting a human being into a cage-like cell is inhumane! And for years? Or decades even?

      My ancestors NEVER had a prison or jail. They either banished you or, if you were dangerous to their "society"...the ultimate solution was to end life. Not perpetuate torture for months or years on end.

      And the "White Man" called Native Americans savages!

      PFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTT!

      "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." - Robert E. Howard

    • 6 months ago
  • letsliveinpeace
  • ThirdSection
  • faye59
    • +2
      faye59  
    • ThirdSection:

      I worked for a temp agency a long time ago and one of the supervisors remarked back then that the puny amount they were paying me was much more than they would have to pay prisoners. I assumed they used prison labor to do their work on a regular basis. Now they have put prisoners into the hands of private owners for profit. Remember last summer the judge in PA that was putting children in jail on bogus charges; he got paid to do that. Brewer in Arizona was purported to have made a deal with private prisons in AZ to let them handle immigrants here illegally. Some believe that the changes in immigration laws in Az was to boost the prison profit margin. It stinks, but these people will do anything for a buck.

    • 6 months ago
  • Buckeye_Bill
  • faye59
  • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM
  • faye59
  • Buckeye_Bill
    • +2
      Buckeye_Bill  
    • faye59:

      First comes "privatizing", then comes "monopolies", then comes high prices, which in turn brings on shortages and even higher prices.

      Supply and demand.

      Those in control wait for the demand to rise and then they artificially cause shortages and they then sit on their greedy fists, kicking back on their "privatized" thumbs watching all those profits roll in!

      As We the People get the shaft.

    • 6 months ago
  • faye59
  • Buckeye_Bill
  • faye59
  • NiceN
    • +6
      NiceN  

    • This is what slavery has become, except it is a technicality due to the fact that prisoners get paid a penny or a dollar a day.

    • 6 months ago
  • Buckeye_Bill
    • +1
      Buckeye_Bill  
    • Image
    • NiceN:

      Well, that's one way to compete with Communist China over wage differences, right?

      Riiiiiiiiight.

      I love how some corporations have made internships sound so appealing to so many! Work for nothing but prestige of a title and "experience". Then what was all that time spent in college for?

      Indentured servitude = 21 Century slavery.

      NLOL

    • 6 months ago
  • Leen61
  • Conniepae
    • +5
      Conniepae  

    • Yes, yes, yes! Private Prisons steal more than money! They are using people for profit. That's worse than bankrupting a person. That's just cruel to the max. No one should profit from prison. That's just part of the Republican up is down, wrong is right world. It's time to get back on course and exposing the wrongs of people for profit is a good place to start.

    • 6 months ago
  • Frosty46
    • +6
      Frosty46  

    • A true vendetta of profit, by and for the good ol boys. I am deeply saddened by the coarse our once proud nation has undertaken with Republican/Religious fanaticism------

    • 6 months ago
  • nardo1224
  • Buckeye_Bill
    • +6
      Buckeye_Bill  
    • Image
    • nardo1224:

      But Rethuglicans have NO PROBLEM funding prisons! There's ALWAYS money in the Treasury for things like those "social programs"!

      But not for "widders & orphins"!

      Why, Michele Bachmann came right out and said so the other day!

      No work, no food...no matter that there AREN'T any jobs to work for a fair wage!

      AND getting rid of food programs...and Aid For Dependent Children!

      The Republicans are absoluetly PRO-LIFE...UNTIL you're born! Then you're on your own!

      Sick!

    • 6 months ago
  • noxidereus
    • +5
      noxidereus  

    • There are instances in which profit should never occur. Imprisoning people is one of them. This contributes to the fact that the United States imprisons more people than any other country in the world. Another instance in which the notion of profit should never occur is health insurance. Also, war. A system such as capitalism that rewards the greediest among us, the inevitable outcome is that we will be ruled and controlled by the worst excuses for human beings produced by this nation.

    • 6 months ago
  • noxidereus
    • +3
      noxidereus  
    • noxidereus:

      If we are to have capitalism, it must be heavily regulated by the people for the people, or else we lose our humanity. This notion is why the free market ideals of libertarianism fail.

    • 6 months ago
  • Buckeye_Bill
  • noxidereus
    • +4
      noxidereus  
    • Buckeye_Bill:

      Yes I think you are right. I couldn't agree more.

      It just seems like the minority of people who value profit over actual human beings are rewarded for that despicable trait and ushered into positions of power. They are not better or more talented than other people as they would like to think. They just have no morals or empathy to get in the way of their ambitions, so they tend to succeed -- ruthlessly. They don't care about people. They care about money and power, and they are rewarded for it.

    • 6 months ago
  • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM
  • noxidereus
    • +1
      noxidereus  
    • COMMONSENSEFORCOMMONGOOD_COM:

      That's a moot point. That's the kind of free market idea I'm talking about as a failure. A truly free market would be even worse than what we have now. There is this myth/lie that somehow the free market will fix everything. Well, as we can plainly see the profit motive doesn't automatically lead to good things. It's still a system in which the most greedy are rewarded for exploiting consumers and workers.

      A free market in which there are no regulations or consumer protections would truly be a disgusting thing. Capitalism, which rewards greed, ruthlessness, and exploitation (not innovation, talent, or hard work) can only work if it is heavily regulated by the people for the people to set boundaries to protect actual living breathing human beings from the profit-bloodlust of the worst among us.

    • 6 months ago
  • Buckeye_Bill
    • +4
      Buckeye_Bill  

    • Our government AND corporate business is doing this in OUR NAME!

      This is disgusting that anyone would allow this to happen to human beings in the 21st Century!

      Are we not civilized?

      Have we lost our moral compass as a Nation?

    • 6 months ago
  • Des_Akkari
    • +1
      Des_Akkari  
    • Buckeye_Bill:

      ah my friend, allow me to answer. No, the US is not civilized.....closer to an African dictatorship. no offense African dictators ;-)
      The people who vote for Paul Ryan, Bachman, Orin Hatch..... don't KNOW what a compass is because, well, magnetism is a "theory" and not proven yet. Second, they have JESUS, who is a capitalist and hates the poor.

      MOVE WHILE YOU CAN!!!

      Just joking but, this has been going on for so long and in broad daylight, I am starting to think Rick Perry is right!!! PLEASE OH PLEASE LET THEM SECEDE!!! The sane people and then the other country run like this one. We only need a couple of states....say New Mexico and surrounding states plus SoCal. We go progressive and they go extinct in about 20 years. Why fight these assholes? They told me if I don't like it move....they were right I have to say!!! Never been happier and US politics is a show like the Colbert Report, right? I cannot tell the difference anymore.

    • 6 months ago
more from Community:
from the community

top videos