On November 18th Brave New Foundation’s Cuéntame and a coalition of
organizations along with families and friends of victims of for-profit
detention will be occupying with a powerful vigil the outside of the
largest private detention facility in the nation – Corrections Corporation
of America’s Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.
You can join them virtually — your voice is our most
important tool in fighting back — by leaving your own
name and a powerful message which will be read and/or written on a wall
at the event & in memory of:
George Rhynes’ video of the last two citizens speaking at the
7 November 2011 County Commission meeting has
interesting closeups on the county staff while
the Chairman was answering Matt Portwood.
Then at 1:35 Tony Daniels answered the request for “any other business”
by walking up to the podium and talking.
He cited life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
from the Declaration of Independence:
How can we pursue happiness when we don’t even have a job?
I believe the city and county and Industrial Authority and the Chamber of Commerce
need to work more together to create an atmosphere of trying to bring more
industry inside the city.
We have highways coming through Valdosta.
I hope to see in the near future that the county and the city and the
Industrial Authority and the Chamber of Commerce
work like brothers and sisters.
Because you know and I know that you are elected by the people
of the people and for the people, and I’d like to see that….
Because we need more entrepeneurs, we need to see all governments
in this area promote that….
I was approached after the meeting and informed that the
Industrial Authority intends to invite communal leaders like
myself to brain storming sessions in the future, although I
do not know yet the design for such a forum, nor have I
received any invitations as of today. Still, if there is one
thing that has again become clear in the context of the
consolidation issue, our community desperately needs
structures that a) allow for more transparency and b) forums
in which we can take advantage of the creative energy that
exist in our community, INSTEAD of trying to shut people
out, to hide information from them, or to push through
divisive agendas.
It is my hope that the leaders of the Industrial Authority,
as well as the City Council, the Lowndes County Commission,
and the Chamber of Commerce for that matter, understand the
opportunity we have: to turn a weakness (as exposed by the
way we handled biomass, and are currently handling the
consolidation issue) into a strength … via communication
and cooperation … as is appropriate for a true community.
Perusing the
Community Assessment for Lowndes County
sponsored by Georgia Power and prepared by Janus Economics
for the Industrial Authority, I noticed on page 28 under Recommendations:
There is a plan for a public transportation system
in Valdosta-Lowndes
County but it currently lacks funding for implementation. Under current
budget constraints it will be difficult to implement such a project,
but businesses in the industrial parks and outlying areas may want to
implement a limited transportation system if they discover that employee
attendance is an issue.
Update 3:45 PM 3 November 2011: Better transcript and pictures. See also what happened after the meeting.
Dr. Michael Noll, longtime opponent of the Industrial Authority’s formerly
proposed biomass plant, asked that same board at their most recent meeting:
What can we do as a community to better cooperate, to better communicate?
What can we do as a community to better cooperate? –Dr. Noll
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,
Andrea Schruijer Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Project Manager,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 18 October 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Dr. Noll sent an edited transcript removing some of the repetition
to clarify what he was trying to say:
Continue reading →
Here’s yet another reason the 1% owning and controling everything is
bad for everyone.
Guess which country is the most unequal in income of big countries?
That’s right, the one with by far the most prisoners: the U.S.A.
Prisoners are shown on a log scale, so that’s not just a little bit higher,
it’s about three times higher than Canada or UK.
Why is the USA so high?
It’s not more crime, of the violent homicide and robbery variety.
It’s harsher sentencing, especially for drug-related crimes.
That’s one of many points Richard Wilkinson makes in this
TED Talk from July 2011,
in which he uses hard data to tie income inequality not only to imprisonment,
also to child conflict, drug abuse, infant mortality,
life expectancy, mental illness, obesity, high school dropouts,
teenage births, and social mobility.
The most socially mobile country? Denmark.
The least?
The USA.
Oh yes: we don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia
to make a few CCA executives and shareholders richer at the expense
of the rest of us.
Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.
For the first time ever, a majority of Americans favor legalizing marijuana use,
which is one of the major dangers to CCA’s private prison business plan,
according to CCA itself.
The latest Gallup poll shows a record high of 50 percent of Americans
in favor of legalizing marijuana use. This follows a consistent upward
trend, picking up speed in 2006 when 36 percent of Americans favored
marijuana legalization.
Yes, it’s CCA, the same company that wants to build a private prison in
Lowndes County, Georgia, sued for sexual abuse at its immigration
detention center in Taylor, Texas.
CCA runs the ICE center in Georgia, too.
More than 180 sexual abuse complaints have been reported in immigration
detention centers since 2007, according to government documents obtained
by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a class-action suit
filed this week….
All three women in the ACLU lawsuit were held for a time in the T. Don
Hutto Residiental Center in Taylor, Texas, a 512-bed detention center
privately run on a government contract by private prison giant Corrections
Corporation of America.
The suit targets Corrections Corporation of America along with three
ICE officials, a former facility manager of the Hutto facility, and a
former Hutto guard named Donald Dunn, who was charged last year with
assaulting five women and has been accused of abusing more.
This is also the same CCA that runs a prison in Idaho
commonly known as
Gladiator School because it has twice the rate of assaults
as other prisons in that state.
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.
Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.
Dear Andrea, We spoke not long ago by phone. I just want to let you know
that plans to bring in a private prison here are not going to sit well with
many of us. In fact, it will most likely bring about a repeat of the recent
Biomass issue. I don’t mean we are opposed to it. I mean we are vehemently
opposed to it. It seems that Allen Ricketts and the other Board members
don’t understand that Valdosta’s citizens don’t want to be informed of, for
example, what finished products and raw materials will be stored in the
distribution center slated to locate in Valdosta AFTER the contract has been
signed. We have a right to know beforehand what kind of facility it is and
what will be stored there. Informing us after the fact is not transparency.
This is an issue that will continue to be revisited as long as the VLCIA
continues to act unilaterally without considering the wishes of those who
live here. We don’t want to be presented with a fait accompli. Also, the
VLCIA is really not doing due diligence when it continues to court
businesses that raise concerns over the ethical standards of the Board
itself. Thanks. Matt Flumerfelt
have never heard of it,
and many of them want to know where they can find out more.
Linked from
the front page of the LAKE website
is
the letter to the Industrial Authority people are signing,
which in turn has links to
an online petition
and
a large amount of background material.
