Wells Fargo, king of
private prisons, shut down for the day; seven arrested
January 8, 2012
San Francisco BayView
by Adrienne Lauby
Santa Rosa, Calif. – On Dia de Reyes, the Day the Three Kings, a false king was
exposed. Wells Fargo is the king of private prison finance, a king who shows no
remorse as it forecloses on the houses and homes of its victims. But, on Friday
afternoon, Jan. 6, two branches of Wells Fargo in Santa Rosa were closed for the
day and seven people were arrested after they did civil disobedience inside the
banks.
The protest, a collaboration between the immigrant rights community and the
Occupy movement, drew 400-500 people for a march and rally. Their target, Wells
Fargo, is the trustee of a fund that is heavily invested in two private prison
corporations, Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group. These
corporations own a majority of the detention centers that house undocumented
immigrants across the U.S.
These same corporations helped draft the model for the Arizona anti-immigrant
law, SB 1070, insuring a steady stream of immigrant prisoners for their private
detention prisons. Because they contract with the U.S. government at a cost to
taxpayers of $5.5 million a day, they profit from the misery of the immigrants
and their community.
Okili Nguebari, originally from Congo, Africa, spoke at the rally about his
experience in a private immigration prison. Three years ago he was picked up in
front of his home by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and held for three
months in an immigration detention facility owned by Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA) in Eloy, Arizona.
In addition, the protestors challenged Wells Fargo’s practices around
foreclosures and short sales of houses in Sonoma County. In only four years,
foreclosures in the county have skyrocketed from 71 to 4,469 homes – nearly
4,450 families this year have lost their houses and all of their equity because
banks and financiers manipulated the market.
Protestors unfurled a banner in the lobby of the main branch of Wells Fargo
reading, “Homes Not Jails.” Then they read statements about the bank’s financing
of private prisons and stories of people affected by deportations until they
were arrested. Wells Fargo personnel detained at least two of the protestors in
a citizen’s arrest.
“It was empowering to stand there and speak the truth,” Carolyn Epple said about
her act of civil disobedience.
The protestors called on all Sonoma County residents to demand that Wells Fargo
immediately divest from investments in immigrant prisons and declare a
moratorium on foreclosures in Sonoma County. They also asked people to move
their money from Wells Fargo into a local bank or credit union.
Jesus Guzman of the DREAM Alliance at Santa Rosa Junior College called the
protest a “defining moment” for both the Occupy and Immigrant Rights movements.
“It’s about time,” he said and, judging by the cheers, the crowd agreed.
The coalition included the Graton Day Labor Center, the DREAM Alliance of Sonoma
County, MEChA of Santa Rosa Junior College, the Committee for Immigrant Rights
of Sonoma County, as well as Occupy groups from around the county. An Occupy
Petaluma contingent rode bicycles to the rally.
The energetic and colorful march included a contingent wearing bright orange
jumpsuits representing immigration detainees and the Hubbub Club Marching Band.
A troupe of Aztec dancers led the march.
Adrienne Lauby is a Bay Area-based writer and a programmer at KPFA Radio 94.1FM.
She can be reached at
adrienne@sonic.net.
Editor’s note: Private prisons that Wells Fargo invests in also house thousands
of California prisoners moved out of state prisons in response to a federal
court order to reduce overcrowding.
http://sfbayview.com/2012/wells-fargo-king-of-private-prisons-shut-down-for-the-day-seven-arrested/
--
Lois Ahrens * The Real Cost of Prisons Project *
www.realcostofprisons.org *
www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/
"CCA’s 2010 annual
report states categorically that, "The demand for our facilities and services
could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency
in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the
decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our
criminal laws - for instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled
substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested,
convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional
facilities to house them."
‘Profiteers of Misery’: The U.S. Private Prison Industrial Complex
By Kanya D’Almeida
WASHINGTON, Aug 24, 2011 (IPS) - By the end of 2010, the United States was home
to 25 percent of the world’s inmates, with roughly 2.4 million people behind
bars and over seven million under "correctional supervision".
In any given year, 13 million people pass through the U.S. detention system,
which includes federal and state facilities; Native American, juvenile, military
and local jails; U.S. detention centres overseas and holding centres operated by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Elsie Scott, president of the Black Congressional Caucus, said at a press
conference in D.C. earlier this year that the bill for housing prisoners was
astronomical - at nearly 68 dollars a day per person.
In her book ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness’,
Michelle Alexander writes that even with crime rates on the decline, the U.S.
prison population quintupled in just two decades, between 1980 and 2010.
It would seem that the case for reducing incarceration rates could not be
stronger - especially for taxpayers and state and federal governments.
However, one group of people has a vested interest in keeping prisons as full as
possible - the private prison corporations and their shareholders.
According to a recent report by the Justice Policy Institute, the U.S.’s two
largest private prison companies - Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and
GEO Group - pocketed collective annual revenues of 2.9 billion dollars at the
close of 2010.
The report, called ‘Gaming the System’, also found that since 2000, the number
of prisoners held in private federal facilities increased by 120 percent, while
those detained in private state facilities shot up by 33 percent - even though
the same time period showed a mere 16 percent increase in the total prison
population.
The report states, "While private prison companies may try to present themselves
as just meeting existing ‘demand’ for prison beds and responding to current
‘market‛ conditions, in fact they have worked hard over the past decade to
create markets for their product… As revenues of private prison companies have
grown over the past decade, the companies have had more resources with which to
build political power, and they have used this power to promote policies that
lead to higher rates of incarceration."
Prison corporations make no secret of their strictly business approach to the
justice system or the victims of its harsh penalties.
CCA’s 2010 annual report states categorically that, "The demand for our
facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of
enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing
practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are
currently proscribed by our criminal laws - for instance, any changes with
respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect
the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially
reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them."
CCA continues, "Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that
could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates
eligible for early release based on good behaviour, (while) sentencing
alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation who would
otherwise be incarcerated. Similarly, reductions in crime rates or resources
dedicated to prevent and enforce crime could lead to reductions in arrests,
convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities."
In effect, the private prison industry creates both demand for and supply of
prisoners in order to sustain an ever-expanding market for their "products and
services" - all the while raking in enormous profit - at the expense of
primarily minor offenders who might otherwise be granted a second chance at
freedom.
Given that a full 50 percent of the U.S.’s prisoners are jailed for non-violent
drug-possession charges - most of them young African American men - while one
million immigrants have passed through ICE’s detention and deportation systems
since President Barack Obama came to power in 2008, racial justice and immigrant
rights groups are at the forefront of the struggle against private prison
systems.
In May, when the governor of Georgia passed Senate Bill 87 - its version of
Arizona’s notorious anti- immigration law - rights groups were quick to point
the finger at for-profit prisons and their lobbyists for sponsoring what many
experts have called some of the harshest, most racially charged immigration
legislation in recent history.
At the time, Larry Pellegrini, executive director of the Georgia Rural Urban
Summit, noted that CCA had a strong lobbying presence in the Georgia
legislature. He added that passage of Senate Bill 87 was part of a national
effort brought together by the conservative American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC) - a task force that included a representative from a private
prison company and was instrumental in drafting Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070.
Meanwhile, the report found that in 2010 alone CCA, GEO and Cornel Companies -
the third largest prison corporation - doled out over two million dollars on
state politics, including monies to senators, federal candidates and members of
the House of Representatives.
While rights groups and advocacy organisations are largely powerless against the
bulging wallets of the private prison lobbyists, a new strategy has emerged to
fuel the movement against corporate greed.
Enlace, an alliance of low-wage worker centres, unions, and community
organisations in the U.S. and Mexico that wage international campaigns against
"abusive transnational corporations", is currently embarked on a Prison Industry
Divestment Campaign to break private prisons’ stranglehold on the justice
system.
"We were initially fighting for the rights of economic refugees who flooded the
U.S. to escape the consequences of disastrous banking policies imposed on Mexico
by U.S. banks like Bank of America and Chase in 1995," Peter Cervantes-Gautschi,
the executive director of Enlace, told IPS. "By raising interest rates in Mexico
to astronomical levels, these banks essentially forced millions of people out of
their jobs and homes, causing them to flee to the U.S. only to find a huge
anti-immigrant movement fuelled largely by for-profit prisons - and behind them,
the same financial services sector that caused the crisis in Mexico to begin
with."
"Companies like Wells Fargo, General Electric, Fidelity Investments - these are
the major funders of the private prison industry in the U.S.,"
Cervantes-Gautschi said. "So we are now calling on all institutions both public
and private to divest support from this industry… There is no need for it -
incarcerating people for profit is simply not an acceptable business."
"Most people who have investments - whether through a pension or 401K or church
donation - have them in the private prison industry without knowing it," he
added. "So people need to tell their investors to take their money out of
private prison companies."
"Just like people all over the world joined the divestment movement against
apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, we are building support to bring an (end)
to a system that is costing tax payers millions, while at the same time causing
a huge amount of suffering - and this is really indefensible," he concluded.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104877
--
Lois Ahrens * The Real Cost of Prisons Project *
www.realcostofprisons.org *
www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/