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 outrage and disgust over Georgia’s Arizona-type immigration bills.

As previously reported by Atlanta Progressive News, legislation, HB 87, has already passed the State House. A similar bill, SB 40, has also passed the State Senate.

While the vast majority of protesters at the Capitol were Hispanic, opposition to the bills came from a wide spectrum of constituents including immigrants, students, religious groups, peace groups, veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, Asian groups, GLBTQI activists, labor, artists, musicians, business owners, elected officials, and others.

What’s this got to do with private prisons? Same as we reported back when the VDT first bragged about VLCIA’s bad idea to bring a CCA private prison to Lowndes County. The AJC did report on the rally, or at least carried an AP story, (that’s the source of the pictures of the rally here), but it did not make this connection. The APN story continues:

Often overlooked in the immigration debate is the influence of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) in lobbying elected officials to support anti-immigration bills and in helping to draft Arizona’s SB 1070. APN previously reported on these connections, with CCA lobbyists currently working the halls of the Georgia Capitol.

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

CCA’s profitability depends on increasing numbers of immigrants sent to their for-profit private prisons.

How about do we want dirt-cheap private prison labor to compete with local labor? How about do we want to lock up more people when even Gov. Nathan Deal says we can’t afford it to lock up nonviolent offenders in a time when Georgia already spends a billion dollars a year on incarceration?

To its credit, the VDT does occasionally print something somebody locally says against private prisons, such as Dr. Mark George in January:

“I think we can do better than a generator that burns human waste. I think we can do better than a private prison….”

The AJC quoted John Lewis (picture from the Florida Times-Union):

U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a leader of the 1960s civil rights movement, encouraged the crowd to keep fighting. He noted that he was arrested dozens of times while working alongside Martin Luther King Jr.

“I was beaten, left bloody, but I didn’t give up and you must not give up,” he said to loud cheers.

To my anti-immigrant friends. You don’t want immigrants competing for your jobs, you say. Do you want prisoners competing for your jobs, being paid far less than immigrants?

Yes, we can do better. Si, se puede!

-jsq

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