The Trajectory of justice, Halley’s Comet and the Mexican
n 1853, a young black man named Warner T. McGuinn became the first African American to be admitted to Yale. A child of freed slaves, he had no way to pay for his tuition and it appeared that he would have to abandon a promising future.
Except that a man who had tethered his life to a passing comet decided to take him under his wing and pay for his tuition. The name of this white man who was born the day Halley’s Comet first passed through our small planet’s stratosphere, was Mark Twain. This student went on to graduate first in his class and he became a successful attorney.
A decade later, Mr. McGuinn met a promising black student who like him could not afford to go to school. Mr. McGuinn took this promising young student under his care. This young student in turn graduated from law school, became a successful attorney and eventually went on to become the first black Supreme Court Justice. He went on to defend and rule on landmark cases which resulted in desegregation in our schools, giving millions of young men an opportunity for an equal education. His name was Thurgood Marshall.
What does this have to do with Mejicanos, se preguntan? It is relevant because it is a reminder of our delicious, inescapable interdependence.
You see, while coming back from a business trip from Tejas, I was stopped at the airport by immigration agents, who for no reason, other than the color of my skin, decided to detain me. I became, for what seemed like an eternity, a person without status. My humanity and dignity stripped away from me by the descendants of European Immigrants on our indigenous, ancestral lands.
Isolated and without legal status, I was treated as chattel to be herded, managed, guarded against. My very existence regarded as crime and punishment.
I was not only shaken by this experience but was reminded of what happens to our brothers and sisters who are not as fortunate as I. The answer is that they are sent to for-profit detention centers where they have limited access to due process, limited access to their families and where a system which profits by their prolonged imprisonment does everything possible to lengthen their stay. Where family members have to travel hundreds of miles to visit with their loved ones and are forbidden to bring in food and toiletries for their relatives. And can only leave behind money where inmates are forced to purchase everything at the prison owned general store.
I began to research this for profit prison industry, which imprisons hundreds of thousands of our men and women in a kind of legal limbo. I discovered that this has become a multibillion dollar industry with well paid lobbyists and paid legislators to protect them. An example of one of these for profit detention centers is Corrections Corporation of America. Looking at their tax records and filings I found out who sits on these boards which profit from our human suffering.
One name in particular stood out to me on this list of Board Members. You see, it turns out that on the board of one of the largest for-profit prisons in the U.S., sits the son of Thurgood Marshall. According to documents filed with the SEC, Mr. Thurgood Marshall Jr. is a director serving on the board of Corrections Corporation of America, the largest commercial vendor of federal detainment and prisoner transport in the United States
http://www.elhispanicnews.com/2013/12/05/trajectory-justice-halleys-comet-mexican/
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