On the LAKE Front

Drive Away CCA Today!

Today at 5PM, help Drive Away CCA! Join the motorcade from the private prison site to honk at Valdosta City Hall and march at the Industrial Authority office.

I'll be on Chris Beckham's show on WVGA 105.9 FM this morning at 7:30 AM to talk about it.
Update: audio of the interview.
Update 2: Here's video of the interview.

Here's the case against a private prison:

ACLU and 60 policy and religious groups ask states to reject CCA's prison privatization offer

What do the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, The Sentencing Project, the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center have in common? They all want states to reject CCA's offer to 48 states to buy prisons. Right here in Lowndes County, our Industrial Authority wants to go one better for CCA and help build a shiny fresh new private prison with our tax dollars.

PR from yesterday, ACLU Urges States to Reject CCA Offer to Privatize Prisons,

The American Civil Liberties Union and a broad coalition of 60 policy and religious groups today urged states to reject a recent offer by the nation's largest private prison company to buy and privatize state prisons.

In a letter sent to governors in every state, the ACLU and 26 other organizations said a recent offer by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to buy prisons currently run by state officials is a backdoor invitation to take on additional debt while increasing CCA's profits and impeding the serious criminal justice reforms needed to combat the nation's mass incarceration crisis.

Two similar letters are also being sent today by religious coalitions to governors. One of the letters, sent by 32 faith groups including the United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, the United Church of Christ/Justice and Witness Ministries, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness, says there is a moral imperative in reducing incarceration through evidence-based alternatives to imprisonment and re-entry policies that ease the transition of prisoners back into society. A third letter, from the Presbyterian Criminal Justice Network, argues that the principles of mercy, forgiveness, redemption and reconciliation are largely absent from the private prison industry.

“Selling off prisons to CCA would be a tragic mistake for your state,” the ACLU's letter reads. “[CCA's] proposal is an invitation to fiscal irresponsibility, prisoner abuse and decreased public safety. It should be promptly declined.”

You can help decline CCA's private prison in Lowndes County.

-jsq

The local "unification" attack on public schools is part of a nationwide assault

The "unification" attack on the public schools in Valdosta and Lowndes County, Georgia is part of a nationwide assault on public schools, which has nothing to do with improving public education, and everything to do with private profit and private schools: disaster capitalism right here at home. And it's not government causing our local disaster: it's local business interests. What should we do about that?

Jeff Bryant wrote for Campaign for America's Future 13 October 2011, Starving America’s Public Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates Are Hurting Our Nation’s Students

Critics of America’s public schools always seem to start from the premise that the pre-kindergarten-through-12th-grade public education system in this country is failing or in crisis.

This crisis mentality is in stark contrast to years of survey research showing that Americans generally give high marks to their local schools. Phi Delta Kappa International and Gallup surveys have found that the populace holds their neighborhood schools in high regard; in fact, this year’s survey found that “Americans, and parents in particular, evaluate their community schools more positively than in any year since” the survey started.

The first factor: New austerity budgets passed by state legislatures are starting to have a huge influence on direct services to children, youth, and families.

Well, we don't have that problem in Valdosta City and Lowndes Schools. For example, graduation rates in Valdosta schools have been improving year over year, and both school systems are solvent.

So what happened instead? Why, they made up a crisis instead!

A local business group convinced enough registered voters to sign a petition to get a referendum on the November 8^th ballot to decide whether to abolish the Valdosta City School System, which would force the Lowndes County School System to take it over, and also would result in massively raised taxes, which still wouldn't be enough, so services would have to be cut. Voila! Forced budget crisis! Fortunately, the two school systems have seen through it, and

George Rhynes talks to No Consolidation marchers

Received Saturday. Lots of people from Hahira. -jsq

Valdosta, Lowndes County and other concerned citizens marched from the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce building through downtown to Rev. Martin L. King Jr., Monument. There were many speeches given along with the sharing of ideas at this historic event. The marchers were lead by Valdosta Police Department and eneded in peace as we all expected in our beloved community. Peace!
-George Boston Rhynes

Here's the video:

George Rhynes talks to No Consolidation marchers
No school consolidation,
Vote No for Consolidation March, Friends of Valdosta City Schools (FVCS),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 October 2011.
Videos by George Rhynes for bostongbr on YouTube.

-jsq

Count the Vote No Marchers

Some said 200, others 250, others 300, for how many marchers following this banner Friday:

Here is the entire march southbound crossing the tracks.

Here's Video 1 of 3:

VDT announces anti-consolidation march

Brittany D. McClure wrote for the VDT today, Consolidation opponents to march Saturday

Organizers expect hundreds to gather this weekend in front of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce for a march opposing the consolidation of city and county school systems.

Scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, the march takes the stand that “our children are not for sale.”

“We intend to put hundreds of people in the streets,” said the Rev. Floyd Rose, president of the Valdosta-Lowndes County chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “We know and they know that this has never been about consolidating the school system.”

Interesting that the VDT neither contradicts that nor finds a counterview to publish. Maybe since the VDT did an about-face about consolidation, it's been able to see more clearly....

The march will be led by Rose, Sam Allen, former Valdosta City Schools superintendent, and Leigh Touchton, NAACP president. Other community leaders and representatives from both Lowndes and Valdosta high schools will be present.

9AM Saturday at the parking lot across from the Chamber of Commerce.

-jsq

Pardons board rejects clemency for Troy Davis

So now it's down to Gov. Deal.

In the VDT via AP today:

Georgia's pardons board rejected a last-ditch clemency plea from death row inmate Troy Davis on Tuesday despite high-profile support from figures including the pope and a former FBI director for the claim that he was wrongly convicted of killing a police officer in 1989.

Davis is scheduled to die Wednesday by injection for the killing of off-duty Savannah officer Mark MacPhail, who was slain while rushing to help a homeless man being attacked. It is the fourth time in four years that Davis' execution has been scheduled by Georgia officials.

Steve Hayes, spokesman for the Board of Pardons and Paroles, said

CCA really doesn't like community opposition, so apparently it works

Private prison company CCA, which in conjunction with ALEC promotes laws in dozens of states and nationally that lock up more people for CCA's private profit at taxpayer expense, really doesn't like community opposition to siting private prisons in their communities. Hm, why would CCA hate community opposition so much, unless it works?

Not quite rolling his eyes when she mentions visiting communities, CCA's video pair disparage community opposition to private prisons on their own web page, When Corrections Meets Communities:

Question: There are Web sites and blogs that are adamantly opposed to your company and industry, and they provide negative information about you. Why?

Hm, you mean like some of the material on this blog?

Answer: CCA and all corrections companies recognize the ongoing efforts of local, loosely formed grassroots groups and national, well-funded associations that jointly oppose the establishment of partnership prisons, many for self-serving reasons. Such groups go to great lengths to attack, criticize and misrepresent the entire industry. They make false allegations and often rely on hearsay and unreliable sources. Regrettably, these biased groups often resort to misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric to turn isolated incidents into broad generalizations about the corrections industry as a whole.

Well-funded? Har! OK, not this blog. That plus we provide evidence, like

NAACP on MLK on War on Drugs

I hate to repeat a preacher, but it's Sunday, and Robert Rooks wrote for NAACP 24 August 2011 U.S. Approach to War on Drugs Ignores Dr. King’s Lessons on Justice, Compassion.

After forty years of the war on drugs, America continues to have laws that stratify society based on race and class and continues to ignore Dr. King’s lessons on justice, compassion and love.

My favorite quote from Dr. King speaks to the heart of the problem with America’s criminal justice system. "Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."

America’s criminal justice system is reckless and discriminate. America has five percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Blacks are incarcerated at four to five times the rate of whites for drug crimes, even though the majority of those who use and sell drugs are white. The majority of those incarcerated are people who have a history with mental health and substance abuse.

Not only does incarceration impact individuals but it undermines families,

NAACP paradigm shift

Why does it matter that the NAACP wants an end to the War on Drugs?

Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote for the Miami Herald 30 July 2011, NAACP’s paradigm shift on ending the Drug War

Here's why this matters. Or, more to the point, why it matters more than if such a statement came from Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. The NAACP is not just the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. It is also its most conservative.

Conservative as in:

...denoting a propensity toward caution and a distrust of the bold, the risky, the new. And that's the NAACP all over.

...there has always been something determinedly middle class and cautious about the NAACP. This is the group whose then-leader, Roy Wilkins, famously detested Martin Luther King for his street theatrics.

For that group, then, to demand an end to the Drug War represents a monumental sea change.

How monumental?