As the for-profit prison corporation GEO Group held its annual shareholder meeting in Boca Raton, Florida on Wednesday, human rights organizations calling for an end to incarceration converged on the company’s headquarters to demand accountability and divestment from the prison industry.
The prison-industrial complex “not only profits off the imprisonment of of America’s most vulnerable, but also corrupts our system through draconian legislation and our education system,” said one activist, Joshua McConnel, who joined the march organized by Dream Defenders, Prison Legal News, Grassroots Leadership, SEIU Florida, and other groups.
Taking up the call for other institutions to divest from the prison industry, McConnel continued, “My own university, the University of Central Florida… takes my tuition dollars and so many others and invests in companies just like GEO Group and CCA [Corrections Corporation of America].”
Documenting the action on Twitter, organizers made clear how they see GEO Group’s role in the industry, adding #Slaveholders to numerous posts. The action itself was dubbed, “Expose the Slaveholders.”
“Opportunities for Black and Brown communities have been intentionally thwarted through intergenerationally maintained oppression. What drives this? The same institution that has fueled this country since its birth—slavery,” reads a blog post by the civil rights group Dream Defenders. “Through the proliferation of prisons for profit, the United States is a slaveholder, and private prisons are the cruel overseers who go through extreme means, including documented physical and sexual abuse, lobbying for increased mandatory minimums and fraudulent reporting, to maximize profit.”
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