\n![](\"http:\/\/prisondivestment.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/05\/enlace-poster_outline_campaignsmall.jpg?w=150&h=194\")
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\nEnlace, an alliance of low-wage worker centres, unions, and community
\norganisations in the U.S. and Mexico that wage international campaigns
\nagainst “abusive transnational corporations”, is currently embarked
\non a Prison Industry Divestment Campaign to break private prisons\u2019
\nstranglehold on the justice system.<\/p>\n\n“We were initially fighting for the rights of economic refugees who
\nflooded the U.S. to escape the consequences of disastrous banking
\npolicies imposed on Mexico by U.S. banks like Bank of America and Chase
\nin 1995,” Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, the executive director of Enlace,
\ntold IPS. “By raising interest rates in Mexico to astronomical levels,
\nthese banks essentially forced millions of people out of their jobs and
\nhomes, causing them to flee to the U.S. only to find a huge anti-immigrant
\nmovement fuelled largely by for-profit prisons — and behind them, the same
\nfinancial services sector that caused the crisis in Mexico to begin with.”<\/p>\n
\n“Companies like Wells Fargo, General Electric, Fidelity Investments —
\nthese are the major funders of the private prison industry in the U.S.,”
\nCervantes-Gautschi said. “So we are now calling on all institutions
\nboth public and private to divest support from this industry… There
\nis no need for it — incarcerating people for profit is simply not an
\nacceptable business.”<\/p>\n
\n“Most people who have investments — whether through a pension or 401K
\nor church donation — have them in the private prison industry without
\nknowing it,” he added. “So people need to tell their investors to take
\ntheir money out of private prison companies.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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\nDivestment worked for apartheid in South Africa.
\nIt can work against the prison-industrial-complex in the U.S.,
\na country which keeps far more people locked up (total and per capita)
\nthan South Africa ever did.<\/p>\n
\nMeanwhile, we don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.
\nSpend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.<\/p>\n
\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s time to stop private prison profiteering by refusing to take their profit: divest private prison company stock from personal, pension, and church funds. There’s no need to speculate that private prison companies have incentive to keep more people locked up: CCA says so. Kanya D’Almeida wrote for IPS 24 August 2011, \u2018Profiteers of Misery\u2019: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,140,1113,48,40,14,70,19,1381,72,21,22,178],"tags":[8744,1309,8817,3849,3847,1298,3845,77,3848,3850,3846,8701,3391,2002,8709,8830,8730,399,727,2490,75,3335,2489,218,2568,2867,2294,2690,82],"class_list":["post-1547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-alec","category-cca","category-code-enforcement","category-community","category-economy","category-ethics","category-history","category-immigration","category-incarceration","category-planning","category-politics","category-vlcia","tag-alec","tag-apartheid","tag-cca","tag-conviction","tag-cornel-companies","tag-crime","tag-divestiture","tag-drugs","tag-enforcement","tag-enlace","tag-geo","tag-georgia","tag-greed","tag-hb-87","tag-history","tag-immigration","tag-incarceration","tag-investment","tag-jail","tag-parole","tag-prison","tag-prison-industrial-complex","tag-probation","tag-profit","tag-sec","tag-sentencing","tag-south-africa","tag-usa","tag-war-on-drugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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