Early this morning, a group of protesters descended on CoreCivic's Green Hills headquarters and declared an occupation of the entrance to the private prison company's offices. Police are on the scene as of this writing, but the demonstrators say they're not going anywhere.
CoreCivic, the largest for-profit prison operator in the country — which changed its name from Correction Corporation of America last year, rebranding in an effort to refresh its public image — runs seven prisons in Tennessee and also has contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The company's Tennessee facilities have been repeatedly exposed as sites rife with understaffing, poor conditions and mistreatment of prisoners and visitors. For years, it has paid a squad of lobbyists to patrol Tennessee's state legislature and been a big donor to state politicians.
Jeannie Alexander of the No Exceptions Prison Collective, which advocates on behalf of and in collaboration with prisoners and their families, tells the Scene's Megan Seling that the group is protesting in solidarity with groups occupying ICE offices across the country.
“But what’s unique about Nashville is that we’re the only city in the United States that has the headquarters of CoreCivic," Alexander says. "ICE is their biggest customer. And the way the prison industrial complex continues to grow and [what makes] targeting immigrant families so much easier is that corporations like CoreCivic are building internment camps and they’re profiting off of it.”
Later, she adds: "CoreCivic is a human rights disaster."
One protester, Julie Henry, is livestreaming the demonstration while perched atop a large wooden tripod designed to make it more difficult for police to remove her.
Ashley Dixon worked for seven months as a correctional officer at CoreCivic's Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility in Hartsville and says what she witnessed there was "horrific."
"I witnessed two people die due to medical neglect," she says. "One of them was only 25 years old, and I listened to him scream in pain for three days. I tried to get him help and the higher-ups just told me, ‘He’s just faking it, don’t worry about it.’ ”
See photos of the ongoing demonstration below:
Photo: Megan Seling
