FOR-PROFIT JAIL BATTLE HEATING UP IN MEMPHIS
Facing South
Last week, we gave you a run-down on the Correctional Corporation of America and their plans to build the world's largest privatized, for-profit jail and "penal farm" in Shelby County, Tennessee.
In addition to putting a huge jail in the hands of a corporations with a scandalous record, the move by the majority-white county commission also puts 1,500 jobs at risk -- mostly African-American members of AFSCME Local 1733, the same union Martin Luther King, Jr. was marching with when he was shot in Memphis in 1968.
Now the battle is heating up, and activists fighting the massive jail-for-money need your help.
Our friends at
Grassroots Leadership, who are leading the charge against the facility, are calling on everyone to write to the Shelby County Commission, and tell them that people all over the country don't want to see Memphis create the largest for-profit jail in the world.
Write your letters to:
Michael Hooks, Chair of the Shelby County Commission: mhooks@co.shelby.tn.us
Also cc your letter to:
Commissioner Walter Lee Bailey, Jr.: wbailey@co.shelby.tn.us
Gail Tyree, Grassroots Leadership Organizer: gtyree@grassrootsleadership.org
For more about the Shelby County case, read this excellent piece by Si Kahn of Grassroots Leaderhip.
From Facing South, blog of the progressive South:
http://www.southernstudies.org/facingsouth