On Saturday, I was lucky enough to attend the Detention Watch Network member conference. I was guest-speaking on a panel about storytelling and social media. I arrived at the conference early and was lucky enough to observe the attendees debriefing after their lobby day spent talking to elected officials on the Hill.
Here is a rough video of the final day of the conference [full disclosure: yours truly appears ever-so-briefly...]
These activists and advocates spoke thoughtfully and powerfully about their meetings. Not only were they aware of the political realities of the situation, but they were engaged in thinking deeply about how to move their issue forward and how to connect it to the broader fight for social justice.
For those of you who don’t know what the Detention Watch Network is:
The Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition of organizations and individuals working to educate the public and policy makers about the U.S. immigration detention and deportation system and advocate for humane reform so that all who come to our shores receive fair and humane treatment.
The conference itself was for members to meet and strategize about how to create a successful campaign for immigration detention and deportation reform. This is a topic that often gets overlooked in the broader fight for reform and immigrant rights, but the truth about the immigration detention system is shocking.
By the end of 2009, the U.S. government will hold over 440,000 people in immigration custody – more than triple the number of people in detention just ten years ago – in a hodgepodge of approximately 400 facilities at an annual cost of more than $1.7 billion.
The prison-industrial complex is alive and well in the immigrant detention “industry”, with many facilities opting for more expensive procedures rather than less costly alternatives. Don’t be fooled, it does take taxpayer money to run these facilities, but many of the corporations contracted out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement are for-profit multi-billion dollar operations. The more beds they fill, the more profit they make. Not to mention the inhumane standards and lack of access to adequate medical care facing many immigrant detainees.
To find out more about this issue, visit the Detention Watch Network’s website. And to check out videos from the other two days of the DWN conference, click here and here.
Also, check out a new post from Becca Sheff at Immigration: It’s our community, titled “400,000 reasons to care about detention reform”.
Special thanks to Will Coley of Aquifer Media for the invite to speak at the conference and for his great work on these videos!
