If you want to buy into the Corrections Corporation of America — at least at the “analyst meeting” the company held yesterday in New York — you’ll have to pay more than you might have bargained for. According to activist Felton Davis, “Any investors attending that meeting had to pass through a line of police officers at the entrance to the hotel, and a group of people chanting ‘Build schools, not prisons.'”
Added Davis:
Several local groups participated in a campaign called “Thirty Years of Private Prisons: Nothing to Celebrate,” culminating in a demonstration in Washington, D.C., earlier this year. Yesterday’s impromptu action at the Hyatt on 42nd Street was a continuation and extension of that effort, conducted at very short notice, and the young people did a fine job, disrupting the investors conference inside the hotel, and briefly blocking the street outside at 9 a.m. rush hour.
Participants reported rough handling by security. “One of the Hyatt security staff grabbed me and pushed me repeatedly, at one point shoving my violently in the face and snapping my neck back,” said Emily Tucker, a staff attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy. “I pointed this man out to a group of policemen. He was standing a few feet away laughing with one of the officers, and the cops I was talking to wouldn’t even look in the direction I was pointing.”
“Hyatt should think twice about hosting prison profiteers in their hotels if they want to avoid disturbances like this in the future,” she said.
At least a small part of the solution may be building relationships between those of us on the outside and those imprisoned. Though I don’t grasp ‘prison abolition,’ Red Bird Prison Abolition is one organization that helps with pen pal arrangements.
Finding common ground with prisoners–many of whom are nonviolent drug offenders and folk who’ve committed ‘crimes of poverty’, and at least a few of whom are political prisoners—is part of undoing the alienation via which ordinary folk are divided and ruled over.
For the most part, those is power don’t rule over us with brutal repression, at least not yet. Their power comes from the fact that we allow it to occur, due to narrow self-interest.
I agree with the young protestors who disrupted these Corpo- Prison thugs by chanting “Build more schools–not prisons!” I would add build more free quality schools, including 2 and 4 year colleges for id a country fails to educate its citizens it falls behind, which is happened to America, while the rest of the world is truly progressing. I do admire the youth of this generation. It’s almost as if they are the children of the activists of the 60s, instead of the grandchildren and, in some cases, great-grandchildren. My mother was a prominent activist of the 60s–for women’s equality, labor issues, and other progressive issues of the times that helped to make this country more democratic. When I became a high-school student and after graduating, it was like 96% of my peers were asleep, politically, and continuously tried to impress each other with wealth they did not have, exaggerated claims of how important they were. In fact, my generation was called the “Me” generation. Often times, I felt like an out-cast in my strong political views (against Regean), where they didn’t have any thing of importance to contribute except character attacks (too old and ugly to be president). I always toted a book around with me, just in case my peers became too boring. As far as the politicians such as from Arizona who are also members of ALEC, having these private prisons built for deportees, they receive nice bonuses and other perks for their corruption. I do wonder if racism is involved and if Europeans were being deported, these same politicians would engage in the same corruption, or if just profits are the only motive or if both factors are motives.