Virginia town hall dissolves into chaos over immigration - Polidicks

Legislative town hall in Arlington dissolves into chaos over imm.. A town hall with local Virginia lawmakers dissolved into chaos Saturday and police were called after Latino activists confronted Del. Alfonso Lopez (D-Arlington) about his previous consulting work for a private company that operates detention facilities for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The activists, who have dogged Lopez for the last six months, demanded Lopez apologize, promise to not do the work again and return the money he earned. As the meeting got more boisterous, security officers for Arlington’s Central Library appeared then called local police. When the verbal tumult continued, the sponsor of the event, Indivisible Arlington, cut the session short about 3 p.m. The activists, organized as La ColectiVa, have objected to Lopez, who reported in state financial disclosures that he was paid more than $5,000 in 2014 and $10,000 in 2015 and 2016 by the Immigration Centers of America (ICA), which operates a detention center in Farmville, Va. They unsuccessfully attempted last December to persuade Democratic leadership in the Virginia House to strip Lopez of his role as the minority whip.

Huh, I came in here expecting the opposite, angry conservatives protesting about immigrants taking their jobs. I even got the South Park "dey took urr juuurbs" video ready to paste.

I just love the idea of a legislator going to a town hall all pumped up and ready to answer questions, and then in the distance he sees a group of people with signs that have been pestering him for 6 months and he's like "Oh fuck these guys..."

Huh, sounds like relatively complicated stuff for a single place. Did not expect this, good thing I quit playin Farmville years ago before any of this started

Why in the fuck are we using private companies to handle detention facilities for illegal immigrants. Its like hiring a private company to handle disaster refugees.

Or like hiring a private company to manage prisons. These companies have no intention of doing anything that means their services are no longer needed. Perverse incentive and all.

Unfortunately, in both cases, the state sees 'I want more money for services/allies' and can't find any left in the system available to them -- so they consider going outside the system and seeing if they can get companies to do it for them in exchange for kickbacks and political support. It's also a 'win' for them because if anyone wants to sue them, it's money that's not out of the pocket of the state because they're not state-run facilities. It's pretty much a 'to a hammer everything looks like a nail' situation where they're mainly only being interested in the reduction of expenses in their budget while securing money to run their future campaigns. Under such a lens, it's a pretty no-brainer decision to say 'yes' to private prisons of all sorts.

Private prisons are a fairly integral part of the south's economy. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/US_Incarceration_Rate_per_100%2C000_Inhabitants_by_State.png/1024px-US_Incarceration_Rate_per_100%2C000_Inhabitants_by_State.png

Looks like they never could give up slavery, could they

ya except they just don't do town halls anymore. Mine certainly hasn't, he does scripted online ones where all questions are pertaining to how awesome trump is.

The South is particularly stubborn to change.

And has had a fairly shitty economy probably since the Civil War.

if you want to see some truly fucked up stuff, look up how they treat black prisoners in louisiana

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. its still legal under the 13th amendment and businesses dont really care about ethics anymore so

businesses dontbusinesses dont never really cared about ethics anymore so

Yeah a good chunk of the richest counties in America are all in Virginia, and a couple are from Maryland too: The D.C. suburbs dominate the list of wealthiest U.S. counties