{"id":2244,"date":"2011-04-01T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/private-prisons-and-az-style-anti-immigrant-bills-in-georgia.html"},"modified":"2011-04-01T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-01T12:00:00","slug":"private-prisons-and-az-style-anti-immigrant-bills-in-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/private-prisons-and-az-style-anti-immigrant-bills-in-georgia.html","title":{"rendered":"Private prisons and AZ-style anti-immigrant bills in Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/a>
\nWhile
\n
\na private prison is top of the news<\/a>,
\nyou’d probably never know what it has to do with this if you didn’t have the Internet,
\n
\n8,000 Rally against Georgia Anti-Immigrant Bills<\/a>,
\nby Gloria Tatum in Georgia Progressive News:<\/p>\n

\nOver 8,000 activists rallied outside the State Capitol on Thursday, March
\n24, 2011, to show their outrage and disgust over Georgia’s Arizona-type
\nimmigration bills.<\/p>\n

\nAs previously reported by Atlanta Progressive News, legislation, HB 87,
\nhas already passed the State House. A similar bill, SB 40, has also
\npassed the State Senate.<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nWhile the vast majority of protesters at the Capitol were Hispanic,
\nopposition to the bills came from a wide spectrum of constituents
\nincluding immigrants, students, religious groups, peace groups, veterans
\nof the Civil Rights Movement, Asian groups, GLBTQI activists, labor,
\nartists, musicians, business owners, elected officials, and others.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s this got to do with private prisons?<\/p>\n


\nSame as we reported
\n
\nback when the VDT first bragged about VLCIA’s bad idea to bring
\na CCA private prison to Lowndes County.<\/a>
\nThe AJC
\n
\ndid report on the rally, or at least carried an AP story,<\/a>
\n(that’s the source of the pictures of the rally here),
\nbut it did not make this connection.
\nThe APN story continues:<\/p>\n

\nOften overlooked in the immigration debate is the influence of the
\nCorrections Corporation of America (CCA) in lobbying elected officials to
\nsupport anti-immigration bills and in helping to draft Arizona’s SB 1070.
\nAPN previously reported on these connections, with CCA lobbyists currently
\nworking the halls of the Georgia Capitol.<\/p>\n

\n“The private prison corporations that make money off of immigrants
\nare behind these bills,” Azadeh Shahshahani, Director of the National
\nSecurity\/Immigrants’ Rights Project of American Civil Liberties Union
\nof Georgia, said. “Do we want Georgia to be known as a state friendly
\nto CCA or a state friendly to immigrants?”<\/p>\n

\nCCA’s profitability depends on increasing numbers of immigrants sent to
\ntheir for-profit private prisons.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How about do we want dirt-cheap private prison labor
\n
\nto compete with local labor<\/a>?
\n
\n<\/a>
\nHow about do we want to lock up more people when even
\n
\nGov. Nathan Deal says we can’t afford it to lock up nonviolent offenders<\/a>
\nin a time when Georgia already spends
\n
\na billion dollars a year on incarceration?<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nTo its credit, the VDT does occasionally print something somebody
\nlocally says against private prisons,
\nsuch as Dr. Mark George in January:<\/p>\n

\n“I think we can do better than a generator that burns human waste.
\nI think we can do better than a private prison….”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The AJC
\n
\nquoted John Lewis<\/a>
\n(picture from
\n
\nthe Florida Times-Union<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nU.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a leader of the 1960s civil rights
\nmovement, encouraged the crowd to keep fighting. He noted that he was
\narrested dozens of times while working alongside Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n

\n“I was beaten, left bloody, but I didn’t give up and you must not give
\nup,” he said to loud cheers.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To my anti-immigrant friends.
\nYou don’t want immigrants competing for your jobs, you say.
\nDo you want prisoners competing for your jobs, being paid
\nfar less than immigrants?<\/p>\n

\nYes, we can do better.
\nSi, se puede!<\/p>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While a private prison is top of the news, you’d probably never know what it has to do with this if you didn’t have the Internet, 8,000 Rally against Georgia Anti-Immigrant Bills, by Gloria Tatum in Georgia Progressive News: Over 8,000 activists rallied outside the State Capitol on Thursday, March 24, 2011, to show their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,140,14,1381,72],"tags":[1011,1124,4803,4801,8817,1872,2858,8704,4805,8701,2002,4025,4800,847,4799,4804,2552,3330,4802,8742,8749],"class_list":["post-2244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-alec","category-economy","category-immigration","category-incarceration","tag-ajc","tag-arizona","tag-atlanta-progressive-news","tag-capitol","tag-cca","tag-civil-rights","tag-corrections-corporation-of-america","tag-economy","tag-florida-times-union","tag-georgia","tag-hb-87","tag-hispanic","tag-immigrants","tag-jobs","tag-john-lewis","tag-mark-george","tag-prisoners","tag-protesters","tag-sb-40","tag-vdt","tag-vlcia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244","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=2244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}