We Have A New Project!

Happy Monday, Activists! 

We hope you had a fantastic weekend.  Please pardon the Monday newsletter but it's devoted to a new project we wanted to take the time to describe.  And I saved the best part for the end. 

In case you missed it, check out  last Friday's newsletter at this link for more information about the important Calls to Action and the many upcoming events. 

The genesis of this new project sprung from a post by Timothy Snyder several weeks ago.  He gave the history of countries that had concentration camps and how they invited companies in to use and abuse the labor of the people in the camps. 

Now, we have detention camps springing up all over the country, increasing their numbers as a result of the obscene amount of ICE funding from the Trump regime.  Numerous companies already use prison labor.  But there is a big difference between prison labor and detention camp labor.

The language of the 13th Amendment abolishes slavery except for prison labor:  “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”  The labor of a “duly convicted” person is constitutional - and widespread.  However, most of the immigrant detainees abducted from our communities have had no such due process, if any at all.  So they do not fall within the slavery exception in the 13th Amendment.  To be very clear, our project is not centered on prison labor.  Changing the 13th Amendment is an entirely different matter.

Professor Snyder strongly recommends that we need to write to companies and ask them to pledge not to use detention camp labor.  And that’s our mission on this project  -- indeed, the core part of this project.  But there are some companies clearly on the wrong side of this moral issue already. 

We are not ready yet to ask you to sign up to write to companies to make the pledge but we will soon.  We have a team of researchers to find the pertinent facts about hundreds of companies and then we will ask you to write to them, a few per week.  We don't quite have the infrastructure ready to go but we'll be able to start writing very soon.  And we do have something you can do right now, below.

On the wrong side

Two major companies with government contracts to run private prisons and detention centers are GEO Group and CoreCivic.  They both have caused widespread, documented harm to the people in their facilities, as there have been years of allegations of forced labor, healthcare neglect, and other abuses.

Here in Pennsylvania, GEO operates the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, where we protested a couple of weeks ago. It’s the largest ICE detention facility in the Northeast and, when people in our communities are abducted by ICE they are usually taken to Moshannon.

Here’s where we come in. 

The largest lender to companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic is Citizens Bank. In 2019 most lenders backed out of these relationships but not Citizens.  So we will protest outside the Citizens branches in our area – there are 32 branches in Philadelphia alone.  In fact, we have a statewide initiative started among Indivisible groups to have our first protest across the state this coming Saturday, September 13th.  In Philadelphia we will protest at two locations – 1700 Walnut Street and 1515 Market Street, from 10:00 to 11:30 AM.  We'll add other locations in the weeks to come. 

We will educate passersby about this relationship with handouts and also ask Citizens to end their relationship with these companies that cause the cruelty. 

Sign up here for the 1515 Market St location

Sign up here for the 1700 Walnut St location

Here is the best part!

We invited Professor Snyder to speak to our group to describe the importance of this project and he said yes!  He is thrilled we are doing it and he will be on a zoom meeting with us on September 17th at noon.  We will record it in case you can’t make it but if you come, you can ask questions. 

So sign up here!

And One More Thing:

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