Today// Rally August 17 to demand NO NEW PRISONS

[John Leslie]

RALLY AUGUST 17th to DEMAND NO NEW PRISONS! 5pm at Hill International 15th and Chestnut bring some NOISE!   While budgets for education and human resources are being slashed left and right, Pennsylvania is spending $685 million in new funds for prison expansion. Two of these prisons are being built on the grounds of SCI Graterford in Montgomery County.  The expansion will double the current size of Graterford prison at a projected cost of $400 million, and includes the construction of a 100 bed death row and a women’s unit.  From now until August 30th, the state is accepting bids for who will actually build these projects, but multinational corporation Hill International has already been selected to manage the construction.  They will receive $14 million from the state of Pennsylvania to assist in the building of these new prisons.  We believe that this is an outrage, and that public money is better spent on education, job training and placement, drug and alcohol treatment, economic assistance, affordable childcare and non-punitive programs that address the root causes of violence in our communities. Join us Wednesday, August 17th to demand no new prisons! Join us to demand that Corbett fund education, not incarceration.   Join us to demand that Hill build communities, not prisons. DecarceratePA is a coalition of organizations and individuals seeking an end to mass incarceration and the harms it brings our many communities. DecarceratePA seeks mechanisms to establish and maintain whole, healthy communities and believes that imprisonment exacerbates the problems we face. DecareceratePA  therefore seeks an immediate and lasting moratorium on all new prisons: no new prisons, no new county or city jails, no prison expansions, no new beds in county jails, no immigrant detention facilities, no private prisons. Such steps are necessary to secure socially responsible, personally secure, and economically viable communities in our state.   contact us at decarc...@gmail.com For more information or to get involved, see decarceratepa.info

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Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace el camino al andar.

Searcher, there is no road. We make the road by walking. --Antonio Machado