Si Kahn - Hutto

Si has worked for 44 years as a civil rights, labor and community organizer and musician. His songs of family, community, work and freedom such as Aragon Mill, Gone, Gonna Rise Again and Wild Rose of the Mountain have been recorded by over 100 artists. Si has released 15 albums of his original songs, plus a collection of traditional labor, civil rights and women's songs with Pete Seeger and Jane Sapp.

Grassroots Leadership, where Si has served as Executive Director for 30 years, has taken on a national Campaign to End Immigrant Family Detention, the policy made infamous at the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas. Hutto is a former medium-security prison operated by private prison corporation Corrections Corporation of America. Since opening in 2006, the facility has held immigrant children and their families from more than 40 countries and drawn international condemnation.

ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) holds immigrant families at the T. Don Hutto family detention center. Before the successful legal action by the ACLU in the fall of 2007, children wore prison garb, and were denied adequate schooling, health care, and recreation. Despite some important improvements made as a result of community organizing, the fight is not over. Hutto remains a medium security prison managed by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a for-profit adult corrections company. Incarceration of infants and children cannot be allowed-- even with the "privacy curtains around toilets" mandated in the ACLU settlement.

The Department of Homeland Security must adopt humane alternatives for managing families whose immigration status is in limbo and work to incorporate alternatives which keep families intact and that do not rely on incarceration. Alternatives must recognize that these families possess equal and inalienable rights to dignified treatment as members of the larger human family.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Si Kahn
• Hutto
• T. Don Hutto
• ICE
• Family Detention
• Children in Prison
• Private Prison
• Taylor Texas
• immigrant