Joanna Sanchez

Weekly Article #2

Soc 122

               In the "Kids For Cash" video we see how injustice two Pennsylvania judges were being by sending kids to juvenile private prisons for extra money. Owners of the private prison facilities were giving 2.6 million dollars in kickback to two judge who were unfairly sentencing young adolescents to  their juvenile detention centers. The crimes that these kids committed were petty crimes, it was nothing serious that they should have been sent to jail for. One of the kids spend more than 5 years in and out of jail because one of the judges kept sending him back. In the stories that were featured, it seems that the police department had something to do with it as well. They were telling the families that they didn’t need lawyers and that the penalties that they were going to receive were going to be little to none if they cooperated. It's sad that as Americans we all put our trust into people that are  suppose to "serve and protect" our community but sometimes they seem to be shady as well.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/4/kids_for_cash_inside_one_of

               In this second video we learn about three environmentalist that were convicted for non violently protesting construction of tar sands in Michigan last summer. Three women activist tied themselves to excavators at an construction site to hoping to stall work on a pipeline that had dumped 800,000 gallons of oil in the Kalamazoo River in 2010. More than 300,000 people were impacted by the spill and even kids were suffering from seizures along with other people getting sick off the water. Now the activist are facing up to two years in prison for their actions. This is completely unfair, they were protesting non violently, their actions harmed no one and now they are being unfairly sentenced to do time. It's sad that officials are failing to realize that the actions of these women are to raise an awareness of what spilling oil in the water is doing to the community. Rather than focusing on not letting the issue happen again these three women are being punished for their actions. Another activist decided to ride his skateboard deep through the pipelines of the construction site refusing to come out. Although he was not sentenced to jail for his actions he was speaking up for his actions and the actions that these women took to protest the construction site.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/3/michigan_activists_face_up_to_2