Translator: Isla van der Heiden Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
While we all face personal barriers in our lives,
our democracy also faces a massive barrier that needs to be overcome.
It has an impact on every facet of our lives and our political system.
The barrier that I am talking about, you might have heard about
during the 2016 presidential election: money in politics.
It's a system that we have in place that corrupts our politicians
corrupts our lawmakers
and corrupts the system that is supposed to represent us.
Bernie Sanders famously said, various times,
"I think many people have the mistaken impression
that congress regulates Wall Street.
The truth is that Wall Street regulates congress."
When he makes those statements,
he's talking about the reasons why our banking systems
have a lack of regulations.
He talks about why it is that some of the big players of Wall Street
can lead to the meltdown of our economy,
and face no criminal charges or no retaliation for what they did.
But there is also another element that money in in politics impacts,
that I feel very passionately about, and that's our justice system.
Our justice system has been influenced by corporations
that donate unlimited sums of money to our politicians,
and that, in turn, has an impact on who gets incarcerated,
what gets criminalized,
and how many people we put behind bars.
It's ironic that we refer to the United States
as "the land of the free,"
when in reality, we incarcerate more people per capita
than any other country in the world.
The reason for that is because of the emergence of "private prisons."
Right now in the United States we have two major corporations that run facilities
under a private umbrella,
that is Corrections Corporation of America and Geogroup.
To understand why private prisons with a with a profit motive have come about
you need to look at the history of the United States
and some of the fear-mongering that took place under certain administrations
that led to the criminalization of things that might need rehabilitation
as opposed to punitive actions, okay?
So, we need to look back at the Reagan administration to start.
Under the Reagan administration, reefer madness started, right?
We currently have four States in the US with legalized recreational marijuana,
we have dozens of states that have legalized it for medicinal use.
However, the federal government has listed marijuana as a schedule one substance
indicating that it is one of the most dangerous things
that someone can put in their bodies.
It has no medicinal use according to our federal government.
Now, under the Reagan administration,
there was this amplification of the war on drugs,
but the Raegen administration specifically focused on marijuana
and criminalizing those who were either trafficking or in possession of the drug.
So, if you look at the numbers , you'll notice that in 1980,
we had around 50,000 individuals incarcerated
for non-violent drug offenses.
These were people who got caught with some marijuana, some drug.
Maybe they were addicted to certain drugs,
but they didn't get rehabilitation, they got thrown into our justice system
and they were incarcerated.
Fast forward to 1997, and that number went up to 400,000.
400,000 non-violent drug offenders in our prison system.
Now, business-minded individuals realized:
"Hey, you know what" All of these State and Federal prisons are full to the brim.
Wouldn't it be awesome if we could make some money out of this?"
And that's when for-profit prisons, private prisons, came about.
It's very symbolic, because you notice an explosion of these facilities in 1984.
It's very Orwellian when you think about it.
In 1984, all of a sudden you see private prisons popping up,
and they go to these State lawmakers, in some cases Federal lawmakers,
and they tell these politicians:
"Hey look, we know how burdensome it is
to have all these inmates in these prison system.
We know that these states might not even have the resources necessary
to imprison all these people.
So, we can provide a solution: You just give us some tax-payer money,
we'll build our facilities and we'll house all these non-violent offenders."
And that is exactly what happened.
Now, as a result of private prisons,
what you notice is we do incarcerate more people per capita
than any other country in the world.
Eric Holder gave a speech about this back in 2013.
He mentioned that even though the USA accounts for 5% of the world's population
the US actually accounts for 25% of the world's incarcerated individuals.
That's an insane disparity. So, why is that happening?
Well, when you have a prison system that has a profit motive,
that seeks to turn a profit off inmates,
they want to criminalize more of our behaviour
they want to make sure that we don't pass laws that are tied to common sense.
They don't want the studies proving that there is a medicinal use for marijuana,
they just want to criminalize as much as they can
so there is a steady flow of inmates into our prison system.
And that's exactly what happened.
Now, there has been a private prison boom.
If you look at the numbers,
you'll notice that we have about 130 private prison facilities
throughout the United States
and they have the capacity to hold 160,000 individuals.
The federal prison population has more than doubled between 2000 and 2010.
So the problem keeps getting worse and worse; what's at play?
Why is it that these individuals, these CEOs for these for-profit prisons
are able to sway these politicians so easily to criminalize behaviours
or fight for sentences for crimes that don't really make sense?
Now, if you look at what these private prisons talk about when they get together,
when they have their reports, when they release their reports,
you can see that they're very transparent about what they're trying to do,
Corrections Corporation of America releases a report in 2014
and it said the following:
"any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances,
or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested,
convicted, and sentenced,
thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them."
So, they see that focusing on rehabilitation,
that changing our laws and reforming things like illegal immigration,
will possibly lead to a violation of their bottom line.
They are very much concerned that if we legalize marijuana, for instance,
what are we going to do about the inmates?
we need to have people in our facilities in order to make money.
So, they go to the politicians, they take advantage of legalized bribery,
here in the United States.
In 2010, there was a supreme court ruling known as "Citizens United."
Citizens United allows corporations to act as individuals with constitutional rights.
The supreme court decided that if you are a corporation, you are protected,
you are protected and you have political speech,
so you have the ability to donate as much money as you want
to political action committees.
When you do that, maybe politicians will be swayed in their decision making, right?
So, if they are receiving money from any corporation, any donor,
well, that donor's voice to going to be a little louder,
a little more persuasive than anyone else's.
So, you look at the money, again,
and you notice that since 1989,
private prisons have donated a whopping ten million dollars to campaigns.
These are very specific politicians that they seek out
and they realize that they can persuade with these dollars.
So, that's exactly what they do;
they give them this money and it has an influence on the laws that they pass.
Then there is lobbying.
They spent 25 million dollars on lobbying since 1989.
How is that different from campaign contributions?
Well, what they do is they work with lobbying groups
to fight for 'tough on crime' legislation,
and they want these politicians to pass the legislation,
because they know that if we have 'tough on crime' laws,
more and more people are going to be funneled into the prison system
and their investors will turn a nice profit.
So, there are results, there is a lot of success
that these private prisons have gotten.
I am going to give you some examples right now.
One example was Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio is a senator in Florida,
and he is one of the largest recipients of money from private prisons, okay?
He received $40,000 in campaign donations from Geogroup
which is the second largest prison company here in the United States.
He also received $6,480 from the CEO of Geogroup.
Now, there was a direct result from receiving all that money,
Florida, Marco Rubio specifically from Florida,
awarded Geogroup a $110 million contract to build a facility in Florida.
So, they get their facilities,
they lobby hard, they get that money from tax payers,
and they build their facilities.
But it gets worse than that.
They want to make sure the contracts they sign with these States
are as sweet as possible so they can make their money,
So usually, they'll have something known
as a "minimum occupancy rate" in their contracts.
A minimum occupancy rate ensures that these prisons have their beds full.
They are essentially telling lawmakers in these states:
"You know what?
Once we sign these contracts,
you have to ensure that 80 - 100% of the beds in our facilities are full."
What kind of message does that send?
People might wonder what happens if we don't have enough
so-called-criminals to put into the prison system?
Tax payers end up paying for it anyway since it's part of the contract;
even if those beds are empty tax payers pay for it
Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?
Before I get to all the different things that impact us personally
as a result of this corrupt justice system,
I want to talk about how much money these institutions make.
So, Geogroup makes a whopping $77 million in profit every year.
Corrections Corporation of America makes a whopping $163 million every year.
And that's in profit, not in revenue.
So, after they pay their employees, after they pay for everything,
all their overheads,
they have $163 million to work with.
So it is a very, very lucrative scheme.
So, it has had an impact on our drug laws.
Let's talk about that a little bit.
So, why is it that we have, right now, 3,000 individuals in our prison system
that are serving life-sentences without the chance of parole
for non-violent offenses, many of which are drug crimes.
These are people who did not rape, they did not kill,
they didn't harm anyone.
They're non-violent offenses
and they are serving life behind bars for that crime.
It also has an impact on our immigration laws.
Whenever there's an election, we hear politicians talk about immigration reform;
they really care about immigration reform, they are very concerned about it.
But, the reality is one of the reasons why
nothing really gets done about reforming immigration
and making sure that we create a path to citizenship,
is because detaining immigrants has become
a very lucrative thing for these private prisons.
So, in Arizona, a few years ago, there was a proposal known as SB1070.
It was known as the "show me your papers" law.
It unfortunately passed, but if you do a little investigating
you figure out who was working behind the scenes
to make that law come into fruition,
you realize that it's the for-profit prison industry
that worked with lobbying groups like ALEC
to draft that legislation, to push for that legislation
and lobby for it aggressively enough to the point where is becomes a law.
And so what happens is we arrest undocumented immigrants
and you would think, "Okay well, we're going to deport them,"
but, instead of deporting them, we put them in these detention centers
that are owned by the private prison industry
and we keep them there for years in some instances.
So, the big argument when it comes to undocumented immigrants
is, "Oh my god, they're such a huge financial burden for the taxpayers."
Well, isn't it a financial burden when we arrest them
and detain them in these private prisons for years before we deport them?
When we detain them keep in mind that nine out of ten
of our ICE detention centers are owned by private prisons.
That is our tax-payer money.
They say that they are private prisons but they are funded by us.
Finally, there is an issue with sentencing.
So, in various states we have things like "three strikes and you're out" laws.
We'll have a person who steals a slice of pizza and that's their third crime
and then all of a sudden they are serving a life sentence for that crime.
The reason why that's happening
is because those are the types of strict sentencing laws
that are lobbied for by private prisons.
You also have mandatory minimums,
where if you get caught with possession of certain drugs,
a judge absolutely has to sentence you to a minimum sentence.
Again, that is another thing that these private prisons fight for.
They fight for ways to criminalize our behavior,
to make us victims of this system so they can turn a profit.
When you have a system that has a profit motive, it's a disaster.
And the only reason why they have this much sway,
this much political influence, is because of money in politics,
because of rulings like Citizens United.
Now, that's apparent, you guys all know about this at this point,
but is there a solution to it?
And luckily there is.
Now, there are various ways to solve this problem.
One way of doing so is through legislation.
You can push for congress to draft legislation to get money out of politics.
But why would members of congress,
the same individuals that are benefiting from this corrupt system, want to do that?
So, there is a political action committee referred to as "Wolf PAC,"
and the reason I know so much about it is because my boss, the CEO of TYT,
is the person behind this, he is the person who came up with this idea.
He realized, there is a way for us to take back our democracy,
to get rid of a corrupt political system.
So, what he did is, he realized,
"We could have a constitutional convention leading to a constitutional amendment
that will permanently take money out of politics."
It's an ambitious thing to do,
especially considering the fact that
politicians hate constitutional conventions,
they feel very shaky about it,
and historically, every time we're about to have a constitutional convention,
members of congress will freak out
and they will pass legislation that will appease people anyway.
So, what we're going to do with Wolf PAC, and it has been pretty successful so far,
is lobby in all the states in the US
and try to get at least 34 of them to agree to propose and pass a resolution
that will lead lead to a constitutional convention.
Once that constitutional convention takes place,
as long as 38 states ratify a solution to take money out of politics,
it will become part of our constitution,
it will be an amendment in our constitution.
Again, it's very ambitious.
But, since Wolf PAK started, we succeeded in getting at least four states
to not only propose the resolution, but pass it.
California is one of them; Illinois, New Jersey, and Vermont.
No one thought we were going to get Vermont to pass this resolution,
and they did it.
And so, we have tens of thousands of volunteers
that feel passionately about this.
They're not all Democrats.
They're not all Republicans.
They all have different political views.
But the incredible thing about it is this is a non-partisan issue.
And everyone realizes that we need our representatives to represent us,
not to represent big business,
not to represent corporations,
not represent a system that incarcerates people and ruins their lives
for the same actions that our politicians have taken when they were in college.
And I love it; I love seeing a bi-partisan effort to take back our democracy.
I hope that you make the decision to take our democracy back
and to fight and get political corruption taken care of
because in reality, I want us to be "The land of the free."
I want us to be proud of the country we live in.
But when we have a country and a government
that does not represent us and represents big business instead,
that's referred to as fascist.
And I'd like democracy a little more than fascism.
Thank you.
(Applause)