Raising Cain...

Tell Secretary Napolitano to Abolish Solitary Confinement - Physicians for Human Rights

Thought I'd share this petition link from Physicians for Human Rights asking Janet Napolitano to abolish solitary confinement for people detained in immigration facilities:

Thousands of people awaiting immigration hearings in the US detention system are routinely held in solitary confinement. We know that this cruel and unusual practice causes serious and lasting psychological and physiological harm. The sometimes irreversible consequences — including panic attacks, paranoia, hallucinations, weight loss, and self-harm — are exacerbated for people who have endured torture, which is common among immigration detainees who have fled violence or persecution in their home countries.

Placing anyone in solitary confinement for prolonged periods is an outrage — in some cases even torture — but this practice is especially abhorrent in the immigration setting, where detainees are not being held as punishment for a crime and are usually unable to challenge their detention.

Urge Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to end solitary confinement in all immigration detention facilities. By ending this practice, the United States would send a strong signal to the international community that it does not tolerate torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading practices in its detention policy.

Sign the petition at secure3.convio.net

 

PHR has also published a report on the negative effects of solitary confinement:

Buried Alive: Solitary Confinement in the US Detention System (pdf download page)

 

Related articles

Solitary Confinement Report Puts Immigration Advocates In Tough Spot

Immigrants Held in Solitary Cells, Often for Weeks

Solitary confinement isn't the solution for immigrant detainees - latimes.com

Caribbean immigrants frequently held in solitary confinement in US

U.N. Expert on Torture Calls for Investigation of Use of Solitary Confinement

Treating immigrants civilly

Jeff Biggers: Arizona's "Barrio Defense" Rises for SCOTUS Decision on SB 1070

Jeff Biggers writes a lot about environmental justice issues related to coal mining, but he also has ties to Arizona and has been contributing a lot of articles for the past couple of years. Here's one on resistance efforts in Latino communities to SB 1070 and its impacts...

With defiant Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer growing more emboldened as the Supreme Court readies to unveil its ruling on the state's SB 1070 "papers, please" immigration law, Arizona human rights group Puente and their national allies are bolstering their "Barrio Defense Committees," as "neighbors link with neighbors to learn their rights and make collective plans to defend themselves."

They are also asking their fellow Arizona neighbors and politicians to take a stand.

"Within Arizona we're ready to pose the question to every individual and institution, police department and school district, what side are you on?" Puente executive director Carlos Garcia wrote in an email. "SB 1070 can only function if individuals allow undocumented people to be singled out, if school districts allow their security guards to double as immigration agents, if businesses refuse to offer us safe haven, and ultimately if Obama's administration agrees to deport whoever Arpaio turns over to ICE."

Read the rest of the story at www.huffingtonpost.com

Los Deportados: the power of stories to get to the heart of a serious human rights issue

 

 

See also:

Los Deportados: Stories from the Other Side (website)

US Policies Separate Families, Kill the Sick and Create Havoc on the Mexican Border (article at Truthout)

Los Deportados on Facebook

Maria Hinojosa: Lost in Dentention (PBS documentary)

Maria Hinojosa's documentary -- Lost in Detention -- airs Tuesday, October 18th on the PBS series, Frontline. From the press release:

Hinojosa tracks the enforcement sweep from the neighborhoods of Illinois to the expansive Willacy Detention Center in south Texas. Immigration detention has become both a vital tool and a lightning rod for the administration’s immigration strategy.

Using a network of 250 detention facilities across the country, ICE is able to ensure that undocumented immigrants will not slip back into the population in a game of “catch and release,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “That’s unacceptable if you’re going to have an immigration system that is taken seriously—seriously by the public or seriously by the illegal immigrants themselves.”

During a yearlong investigation, FRONTLINE uncovered a troubling picture of abuse inside immigration detention facilities, including more than a dozen allegations of sexual abuse at Willacy, as well as alleged cases of beatings, racism and management cover-ups. Dr. Twana Cooks-Allen, former mental health coordinator at Willacy, told Hinojosa that the detainees she saw inside were not the border-crossers who she expected. “They were people who had been established, who had children here, who had businesses, who had attended school.”

 

It's way past time for a jail break...

...and by that I mean that we need to break with business as usual in the American prison system and get on with immediate and comprehensive reform.

Check out this video from Cuéntame:

 

From their website:

TOP 3 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PRIVATE PRISONS

1) The victims: Private prisons don't care about who they lock up. At a rate of $200 per immigrant a night at their prisons, this is a money making scheme that destroys families and lives.

2) The players: CCA (Corrections Corporation of America), The Geo Group and Management and Training corporations - combined these private prisons currently profit more than $5 billion a year.

3) The money: These private prisons have spent over $20 million lobbying state legislators to make sure they get state anti-immigration laws approved and ensure access to more immigrant inmates.

TAKE THE PLEDGE:

I stand with Cuéntame's "Immigrants For Sale" campaign and be part of the nationwide network of Prison Watchers that will follow and expose the players, the money and the victims in this corrupt money making racket.

 

READ MORE:

Visit Cuéntame's Facebook page. (You can use the linked image in the sidebar as well.)

Darkness at Noon: Georgia Dumps Peaches for Prisons With Immigration Law Today (May 13, 2011, Jeff Biggers at Huffington Post)

Governor signs Arizona-style immigration bill into law (May 13, 2011, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The perverse incentives of private prisons (August 2010, The Economist)

Private Prisons Found to Offer Little in Savings (May 19, 2011, NYT)

A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin (March 25, 2011, NYT Editorial on ALEC's meddling in higher education)

Roberto Lovato: Que Viva el Primero de Mayo!

For some years now, Cinco de Mayo has been a day that I usually go out for Mexican food and, while I eat, think about the personal and collective karma I have to come to grips with as a white person (with mostly European ancestors) in relation to people with roots in América Latina.

Today I got a couple of awesome links that have stirred some reflection, and I decided to share them here. One is an article at Colorlines today by Roberto Lavato: Cinco de Mayo, Primero de Mayo and the Birth of the United States of América. Here's an excerpt:

With notable exceptions among the more thoughtful Cinco de Mayo organizers around the country, event organizers no longer tell us that we’re celebrating the victory of the badly-equipped, but inspired Mexican guerrilla army that fought and defeated the far better-equipped forces of Napoleon III’s decaying French Empire. Cinco de Mayo’s loss of electricity has itself become a Latino-“American” sign of imperial malaise.

Instead, our electricidad has migrated to Primero de Mayo (May Day). Born in the U.S., after immigrant and other workers protesting in Chicago’s Haymarket Square were killed by police in the late 19th century, Primero de Mayo was, until very recently, a largely forgotten commie affair. Today, Latino workers, specifically immigrant workers, march against the militarized immigration forces of President Obama, and these workers are powering May Day back to relevance in a decaying empire that tries to border itself off from the rest of the working world by celebrating “Labor Day” in September. The day connects us to people marching throughout the hemisphere and the entire world; it previews and makes palpable the bottom-up borderlessness that is the only salvation for this extremely troubled planet.

via colorlines.com

 

The other link was to a YouTube video of the only known voice recording of Mother Jones, recorded on her 100th birthday, May 1, 1930:

 

 

Que viva el Primero de Mayo!

 

On International Migrants Day, Take the Pledge to Drop the "I-Word"

This Saturday, December 18th, marks the 10th anniversary of International Migrants Day and the 20th anniversary of the passage of the U.N. Convention to Protect Migrant Workers.

One of the ways you can celebrate is to take the pledge to "Drop the I-Word":

 

 

Here's a longer video with activist and writer Pramila Jayapal (see link to an article below the video) who gives her unique perspective on new ways to think about immigration, migration and movement. She challenges xenophobia and discrimination, and advocates for embracing migration:

  

 

Right now there are a billion people or more on the move around the planet. They are often the target of abuse, expoitaion and hatred. Here are some other links with information on the challenges they face:

Rising Hate for Migrants Worldwide Starts with Criminalizing Them, by Pramila Jayapal

We Stand in Solidarity with Migrant Workers, by Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO

The Global Campaign for Ratification of the Convention on Rights of Migrants (website)

Invisible Victims: Migrants on the Move in Mexico (pdf, 982kb), Amnesty International (April 2010)

Rights Group Finds Abuse of Migrants by Ukraine (Boston Globe, December 17, 2010)

Flawed Policies Expose Migrants to Abuse (Human Rights Watch, December 11, 2010)

Rights on the Line:Human Rights Watch Work on Abuses against Migrants in 2010 (Report released December 11, 2010 by HRW covers rights violations in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.)

Call to Action on International Migrants Day 2010, US Human Rights Network