Private prisons shook after Denver city council NUKES contracts

[Lion Heart 15,041]

TWO FOR-PROFIT prison companies have lost major contracts in Denver over their work in immigrant detention, as backlash to President Donald Trump’s immigration policy continues to mount.

The stunning $10.6 million rebuke to the two firms, CoreCivic and the GEO Group, was led by newly elected city council member Candi CdeBaca, who won in June on a radical platform backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. CdeBaca’s stand on Monday against the firms was her first major effort since being sworn in, and she expected to be a lone vote of dissent.

Instead, moved by the plight of those kept in camps run by CoreCivic and the GEO Group, and galvanized by opponents — organized by CdeBaca — at the public meeting, the council delivered an unexpected 8-4 rejection, ending the firms’ contracts to run halfway houses on behalf of the city.

CoreCivic and the GEO Group run the bulk of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention centers. The GEO Group also runs an immigration detention center in Aurora, Colorado, which has become a source of local controversy. The disturbing images beaming from the border, and pressure from repeated protests outside the detention center, persuaded council members that their financial support of for-profit companies made them complicit in ICE abuses.

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FOR-PROFIT PRISON COMPANIES have become an increasingly ripe target for criminal justice reformers and are beginning to have their status as ethically neutral, profit-seeking corporations challenged in mainstream circles. In July, ahead of a critical hearing before the House Financial Services Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and boasts a number of high-profile progressive Democrats, SunTrust Bank announced it would no longer finance private prisons or immigrant detention centers. In 2018, organizers affiliated with the Democratic congressional campaign of Jess King blocked an effort by the city of Lancaster to outsource its prison reentry program to the GEO Group. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent GEO Group and CoreCivic’s share prices on a nosedive in June when she tweeted a plan to end for-profit prisons.

https://theintercept.com/2019/08/08/private-prisons-contract-denver/?comments=1#comments

[HBDYWM Stan 885]

Thanks for sharing! Good to see! I actually moved from TX to CO (Aurora actually) this year. 

[Lion Heart 15,041]

CdeBaca put her radical politics up front during the campaign. At a candidate forum, she bluntly spelled out her opposition to the current capitalist framework. “I don’t believe our current economic system actually works,” she said. “Capitalism by design is extractive and in order to generate profit in a capitalist system, something has to be exploited: that’s land, labor or resources. I think that we’re in late-phase capitalism, and we know it doesn’t work, and we have to move into something new. And I believe in community ownership of land, labor, resources — and distribution of those resources. … I’m excited to usher it in by any means necessary.”

[Reginald 13,843]

YES!!@!!@!!! 

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

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