From: kowen@american.edu
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 18:04:06 -0400
PRESS RELEASE - For Immediate Release: April 9, 2000.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Adam Choka: Cell: 973.454.1845, h: 202.364.6939
Kevin Owen: Cell: 202.271.2114
Kevin Pranis: Cell: (917) 860-4635.
Students Succeed: For-Profit-Prison Conglomerate Kicked Off Campus at American University
In the latest of a series of successful student campaigns to kick private prison profiteers off campus has prevailed at American University. In a letter sent via-email to all AU students today, Don Myers, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer announced that the contract with Marriott Food Services will end this year, and that the "social responsibility" of the multinational corporation played a role in the administrations decision to severe ties with the Correctional Corporation of America's (CCA) parent company. On April 10, the university administration at Oberlin College, in Ohio announced that they to would end their contract with Marriott Food Services.
"We've shown that student activists can hold prison profiteers accountable," says Adam Choka, who was part of the student effort at AU to dump the private-for-profit prison's parent company. "People who profit off of people's misery in private prisons will pay a price in lost student meal plan contracts."
Background: The Campaign to rid U.S. Campuses of Prison Profiteers.
On March 28, 1998, the French multinational Sodexho Alliance (SA) took over the North American operations of Marriott Management Services from the Marriott Group, making it the largest institutional provider of food services in North America, with $4.5 billion in annual revenues. The merger also tied student meal plans at the nations largest college campuses to the incarceration of people for profit, as Sodexho Marriott owns the largest block of stock in CCA: the Correctional Corporation of America. Private prisons have been condemned for being poorly managed and largely unregulated, while private prison guards are underpaid, unorganized and minimally trained. As a consequence, mistreatment of prisoners and escapes are all too common. In Youngstown, Ohio, mismanagement of D.C. prisoners have led to a series of scathing reports that have been issued by Congress, and local corrections officials.
For the last two years, students cross the country have been part of a national campaign to kick Marriott foods off their campuses. The Not-With-Our-Money campaign have organized students to reject Marriott food meal plans, and have sponsored sit-in and protests across the United States, Canada and Europe to compel universities to end their contracts with the private-for-profit prison company conglomerate. To learn more about the national Not with Our Money Campaign, visit their website at http://www.nomoreprisons.org/nwom.htm, or contact Kevin Pranis at (917) 860-4635.
[posted 6/10/01]
Join Refuse
& Resist!
305 Madison Ave., Suite 1166, New York, NY 10165
Phone: 212-713-5657
email: info@refuseandresist.org