Fund the Movement to put Heat on Private Prisons

	Dear Kevin, The private prison industry is feeling the heat. SunTrust Bank and PNB Paribas announced last week that they will stop financing private prisons.1,2  And just yesterday, Fifth Third Bancorp announced they will also no longer provide financing to companies that profit from detention centers! This makes for a total of SIX big banks to exit this business of family detention and human cruelty.3 Will you help bankrupt the private prison industry with your contribution?Make it monthly.CoreCivic, one of the world’s largest private prison corporations said, “These banks have kowtowed to a small group of activists rather than engaging in a constructive dialogue.”4  There is nothing small about our efforts. This scale of change comes from more than a year of organizing with thousands of Presente members and hundreds of organizational partners mobilizing public sentiments outraged by escalated human rights violations.  And these companies are feeling the impact of our collective power. Our current data shows that the campaign will pull more than $1.5 Billion in financing out of the industry. That’s huge!5 We are not done here! We’re very close to getting all major banks to stop financing this inhumane industry — let’s make sure we see to it! Support this work with a small donation today.Make it monthly. Presente team members Kelly Ortiz, Matt Nelson, Erick Garcia, and Elisa Last summer, our small and fearless team of leaders convened to best strategize on how to tackle the family separation and detention crisis.  Our mission was to consider eliminating the political and financial incentives in confining immigrant families that would overall dismantle this cruel business model. We shifted the culture in the way we saw and talked about this so-called Trumpian “immigration crisis” that not only existed on the U.S.-Mexico border, but in the very same cages” that locked up men, women, moms with babies, boys and girls who were seeking asylum in the United States.  Real power comes from our communities, not from any one leader or organization. Our movements for justice and equality are strongest when we connect and unite, and stay Presente!Before we knew it, the campaign was born and we began to disseminate and target the corporations tied to criminalizing our communities. We could not have done this alone, this was a collective effort. From our members taking action and showing up to demonstrations outside of these banks, to the 100+ organizations that helped build this movement to what it is today.  All together, our six bank wins represent an estimated $1.93 billion, or 72% of the total current financing available to private prison companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group.6 What an impact!We’re still fighting to end for-profit incarceration, and we need your support to keep the movement powerful, will you contribute? Make it monthly.Victories like these show what is possible; what visionary and transformative progress looks like, in ending private prisons and beyond.  When we are able to support universal causes and build power together, our vision of what our communities can achieve becomes possible. Real winning includes freeing our communities now and for generations to come.  Change starts with us and we are who we organize.  FUND THE MOVEMENT Thanks for all that you do y ¡Adelante!– Matt, Elisa, Erick, Kelly, Erica, Favianna, Reetu, Oscar and the Presente.org team. P.S. Can you donate $5 to support our work? We rely on contributions from people like you to see campaigns like this through. [1] “SunTrust Joins Wave Of Banks Exiting The Private Prison Industry.” Forbes. Jul 8, 2019. [2] “BNP Paribas backs away from U.S. private prison industry.” Reuters. July 12, 2019. [3] “Fifth Third to Halt Future Financing to Private-Prison Firms.” Bloomberg. July 15, 2019. [4] “SunTrust Is Latest Bank to Halt Financing of Private Prisons.” Bloomberg. Jul 8, 2019.  [5] “French Bank Fifth to Pull Out of the Private Prison Industry.” Forbes. July 15, 2019. [6] “As Wall Street Banks Sever Ties, Private Prison Companies Stand to Lose Over $1.9B in Future Financing.” Popular Democracy. July 17,2019.
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