Wells Fargo! Dump Your Prison Stock!
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On Tuesday, February 7, 2012, members of Occupy Rochester, Occupy Wall Street, formerly incarcerated people, and community allies demonstrated outside of Wells Fargo in Pittsford, NY demanding that the bank divest all of its holdings in The GEO Group, Corrections Corporation of America, and other companies in the private prison industry.
From the press release:
“They are investing a significant amount of funds in these companies and [shareholders] have no say,” said Reyna Ramolete Hayashi, legal advisor to Occupy Rochester and organizer of today’s event.
Organizers say Wells Fargo makes money from investing in the Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group, Inc., private prison companies that protesters believe separate and imprison families. Ramolete Hayashi said the protest is a forum to talk about what mass incarceration does to the community.
In a letter to Wells Fargo representatives, the groups ask the company to divest itself of any holdings in the private prison industry.
“Our community refuses to support the sinister and violent for-profit prison system that makes billions from locking our loved ones behind bars. We hope you will do the same by divesting from GEO and CCA,” protest group members said in the letter.
The prison companies operate numerous facilities and immigration detention centers across the country, including a GEO-run immigration detention facility in Queens. GEO also operates a detention facility in Brooklyn for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
“The two largest private prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group — lobby for laws that criminalize communities of color, with the perverse incentive of increasing the prison population to increase profit,” Ramolete Hayashi said.
A Wells Fargo spokeswoman denied that they own shares in either GEO Group or CCA.
“Public filings and website listings can give the incorrect impression that Wells Fargo is an owner of a company’s stock — we are not,” said Wells Fargo Northeast Communications Manager Fran Durst in Summit, N.J.
“Wells Fargo & Co. does not own shares of the GEO Group or Corrections Corporation of America, nor have we invested our own assets in either company. Wells Fargo Advantage Funds currently holds a small position in mutual funds that we administer as a trustee on behalf of fund shareholders. Wells Fargo is not the owner,” Durst said.
Durst said protestors would be expected to comply with applicable municipal ordinances and would not be allowed inside the building or to obstruct customer traffic. Wells Fargo Advisors Branch Manager Joseph Tobin could not comment on the protest.
Occupy Rochester representative Ryan Acuff said between 75 and 100 people participate in the protest, which included testimonials from those who have been in the correctional system talking about how hard it is to re-enter society when their sentence is over.
“The idea is to take away the financial incentive for incarceration,” Acuff said. “If we do that we’ll see a very different, fairer system.”
Similar protests have already been held in other cities across the county as part of a National Prison Divestment Campaign, and Ramolete Hayashi said previous efforts were successful in persuading the United Methodist Church to divest its holdings in the two private prison companies.
“We believe corporations that make billions of dollars by locking human beings in cages are morally bankrupt,” she said.
Organizers maintain the amount of money spent on public and private prisons would be better spent on offender rehabilitation, education, health care and jobs programs. Since the divestment campaign began in May, protestors say CCA’s stock value dropped 21 percent and GEO Group stock declined over 34 percent.
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