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News of Note: Occupy Joins the Fight Against Private Prisons

“Yango, a middle-aged African-American DC native active in both Occupy DC and the prison divestment movement, spent over a decade in Rivers Correctional Facility, a private prison located in Winton, North Carolina, 251 miles outside DC….

“Yango described his time there as “a horror story” marked by inedible sludge and negligent medical treatment, although he emphasized that the worst aspect was, “There are no programs for men who are housed there which means that when a guy comes out of Rivers, he is not prepared to come back to his community to make a positive contribution…

“According to the DC Department of Corrections, African-Americans make up 92 percent of the city’s prison population compared to just 55 percent of the overall DC population. With this in mind, it comes as a shock to many that GEO knowingly built the prison on the former site of one of North Carolina’s largest slave plantations. The symbolism of making a profit from jailing black nonviolent offenders atop the remnants of a plantation their ancestors were forced to labor on was not lost on the crowd.”

I’m so glad to see the Occupy movement still making headlines. Raising awareness about private prisons and the connections they have with big banks is an incredibly noble and valuable feat. These prisons are for-profit businesses that bribe their way into filling every single bed with anyone they can, farming human lives for tax dollars. Do I need to remind you that America has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world? We should be outraged. This life destroying charade must come to an end.

 *Creative Commons image by Casey Serin