Exploring the great wastedlandz.

Today I drove in a convoy of cars from Fort Benning to Lumpkin, Georgia. Lumpkin is a beautiful but economically depressed small southern town. We all met at the courthouse square, 1,000 of us marched in rows of six people each through the neighborhoods and out to the edge of town. On the edge of town is a corporate for-profit prison. 2,000 people are held in the space. They are all undocumented immigrants. They have no rights and could be held for 1 year, 3 years, 5 years. No one knows. No one has access to a lawyer. They are transported chained at 5 points on their body. Uniforms they are forced to wear are color coded to create tension. Loved ones - these are people living normal lives in the US - have nowhere to stay in the town when they visit so an organization from Atlanta has one of the last houses along the way which is set up as a hospitality center and free place for them. We marched up a long road towards the prison. 1,000 protesters filled the road leading up to the prison. Empty land all around us. Nothing. Nowhere. Just a for-profit indefinite detention site making money for the financial elite. It’s sickening. Barack Obama owns full responsibility for ICE - the department detaining tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants. He says ICE has been reformed. I saw a frightening example of how inhuman the US has become. As a speaker who fought to get her husband released said, crying, “They said ICE was reformed a while ago. There is no reform..” - Obama is a cold liar. Anyone who would create these horrific spaces for humans has no hear.