Filling Jails Fills Rich Pockets



The poem on the Statue of Liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”  Those are words Americans have lived by for a long time.  They tell the world who we are.  We are the nation that does not turn her back on people.  We are the country where people who are escaping persecution can live free.  It is how our nation began, a nation of immigrants.

At least that is who we once were.  There have always been bigots who disliked immigrants.  Those other immigrants, not themselves.  But we have become a nation of hate.  What do you do with the people you hate?  The people you want to throw out of your country?  First you dehumanize them.  Call them criminals and animals even though most of them are women and children fearing for their lives.  Then you lock them up.  That is what the owners of private prisons want us to believe is the answer and they have been very successful in their campaign to get us to believe it.

We are becoming really good at locking people up.  The private prison owners are overjoyed at how rich they are becoming.  We lock up our poor and our mentally disabled.  We lock up people of color for minimal infractions.  And now we are ripping children from their parents and locking them up like animals.

Did we ever believe we would see a prison bus for babies?  Did we know that the government would care so little for the safety of children that they would put them in the care of foster families without even doing background checks and now a year later, discover that some of those people were actually human traffickers?  #wherearethechildren

We’re supposed to be a civilized country.  Jails are a necessary evil.  They are needed but not anywhere near the levels that we use them.  It’s time for good people to stand up and say something.  Stand up for the poor.  Stand up for the mentally disabled.  Stand up for people of color.  And especially, stand up for the children.  None of us are animals.  We are all humans who are yearning to breathe free.

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