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Minerva Carcaño: Is this an immigration rally
or is it a prisons rally? It is a justice rally.
(Crowd cheers)
Minerva Carcaño: "It is a justice rally.
Jen Tyler: We are on the patio at the 2012 General Conference of The United Methodist Church.
We are here today to gather to talk about immigration and to talk about detention.
Julius Trimble: 2.3 million people in prison in this country alone.
Sixty percent of those persons are persons of color.
Minerva Carcaño: About half of the immigrants held in detention have no criminal record at all.
Yet they're being held in these 'for profit' prisons.
Owen Kross: We've seen a lot of these anti-immigration bills that are going through different
states that are seeking to put more persons in jail which puts more profit in their pockets.
Julius Trimble: Something is wrong, friends, when a Floridian can go to the University of
Southern Florida for about 21,000 dollars, but the U.S. government is willing to pay
as much as 48,000 dollars a year to incarcerate, to detain someone in prison.
Jill A. Warren: We were also celebrating the fact that the
United Methodist Board of Pension and Health Benefits put in a new investment screen
that says, 'We will never again invest in private prisons.'
Barbara Boigegrain: After very careful and prayerful discernment,
our board of directors decided to add a sixth investment screen,
screening out private prisons from the United Methodist pension fund.
(Crowd cheers)
Jen Tyler: I think that for me, as a person of faith,
I think the most important thing to remember is that Jesus was a migrant.
Jesus was someone who traveled from place to place and who
not only was a migrant himself but who welcomed migrants.