Shut Down The Prison Industrial
Complex
From August 11 through August
15, the members of the American Correctional Association
(ACA) will hold their annual conference in Philadelphia.
A diverse coalition of groups has come together to
organize grassroots opposition to their annual meeting.
This August, local activists will host a convergence
of ex-prisoners,
families of prisoners, activists,
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No one is free when others are
oppressed!
What does the US Prison
System
and the School of the Americas
have in common?
CONTROL
+ VIOLENCE + REPRESSION + TORTURE + EXPLOITATION + RACISM
+ MURDER + THE WAR AGAINST THE POOR + DEHUMANIZATION +
INJUSTICE + HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS + CORRUPTION +
CORPORATE GREED + BRUTALITY + WAR AGAINST DISSENT +
MISERY + OPPRESSION + PROTECTION OF THE STATUS QUO + THE
"WAR ON DRUGS"
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The School of the Americas and
the Prison Industrial Complex
- Protecting an Economic System
that Puts Corporate Greed Over Human Need
The attacks carried out by SOA trained militaries against
people’s movements in Latin America are part and
parcel of the same system that criminalizes communities
of color and poor working class communities in the United
States.
The
corporate driven US foreign policy has created growing
profits for the US and unendurable poverty for the Latin
American majority.
To maintain US dominance the School of the
Americas trains the military muscle that is used to exert
control over the people in Latin America.
SOA graduates are playing key roles in
current civilian-targeted warfare campaigns against poor
and indigenous communities in Chiapas and Colombia, who
won’t submit to an exploitative system that views
them as expendable.
The
demographics of the US prison population show that here
at home the poor, working class and people of color are
disproportionably targeted by the prison industrial
complex, which is used to exert control over these
communities.
The loss of
jobs in the United States through the implementation of
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the
cut of social services and welfare programs are directly
linked to the rapid growth of the US prison industry.
Hundreds
of thousands of young people of color are
"disappearing" into US prisons for nonviolent
offences under the guise of the "War on Drugs"
– the same "War on Drugs" is used as
justification for the SOA backed US assault on the poor
and indigenous communities in the Andean Region in South
America.
Download this information
on a flier in PDF format
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SOA Prisoners of Conscience
While
those who are speaking out for the rights of the
poor in Latin America are getting tortured and
killed by those trained at the SOA (unionists, religious
leaders, critical journalists and student organizers are
consistently in the hair-cross of SOA repression), the
criminal INjustice System and the Prison Industrial
Complex is used here at home as a tool to silence dissent
(Over 20 activists are currently in prison for
nonviolent protests to speak out against SOA violence -
they are part of hundreds of political prisoners in the
US)
Support the Prisoners
Over the past decade, 70
activists have been incarcerated for nonviolent
civil resistance actions on the US military base Fort
Benning. Their sentences - ranging from 1 month to
1,5 years in federal prisons across the US - are an
attempt to intimidate the movement and to prevent
others from speaking out.
Come to Fort
Benning, GA November 16 - 18, 2001
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and
concerned citizens to protest the expansion of our
country's racist prison industry.
This convergence will include an educational counter
conference (August 10-12), permitted demonstrations, and
direct action.
SOA Watch/NE is endorsing
the convergence because of the close connection between
the resistance against the prison industrial complex and
the campaign to close the SOA.
Counter
Convergence
Calendar of events
Violence
and Repression has been used since 509 years to suppress
social movements throughout the Americas.
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