Sodexho
Marriott
Stops
"No
More
Prisons"
Show
at
American
University
--
Event
Was
Planned
to
Highlight
Company's
Ties
to
Private
Prison
Industry
2/18/00
February 15 in Washington DC, two hundred students came to American University's Mary Graydon Center to hear performers featured on the forthcoming No More Prisons Hip Hop Compilation CD. But when they arrived they were informed by employees of Sodexho Marriott Services (SMS), which is contracted to operate the venue, that the show had been canceled. David Epstein, a senior, explains that students had received all of the appropriate authorizations from American University's Office of Student Activities. "Three hours before the event, the SMS manager told us that the university didn't give them time to prepare. They could have worked with us to make the show happen. They refused to do that." Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) and Prison Moratorium Project (PMP), the groups that put the show together with the support of the Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet), have been critical of SMS' close ties to the for-profit private prison industry. According to Kevin Pranis, a Soros Justice Fellow and PMP activist who was scheduled to speak at the event, the French-based Sodexho group, which owns Sodexho Marriott Services, is the largest investor in US private prisons through its 11% holdings in Prison Realty Trust/Corrections Corporation of America. Articles detailing Sodexho's prison investments, and calling on students to put pressure on SMS, have appeared in a number of publications, such as Infusion, which reaches over a hundred campuses throughout the US and Canada. Students have no evidence that these articles influenced the decision to cancel the show, but they find the coincidence eerie. "I don't know that the message had anything to do with it," says Epstein, "but I think it's disturbing that an outside corporation can just shut down an authorized student event. That's something students everywhere should be worried about." According to Marty Leary, a researcher for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE), SMS has a bad record with free speech issues. "It's unfortunate, but I can't say that I'm surprised. This company had a rule preventing its own employees from talking to outsiders about their working conditions." To avoid civil prosecution, SMS recently entered into a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board and agreed to drop illegal work rules. Despite the initial setback, event organizers went into high gear and managed to pull together equipment and transportation for a house party, hosted by junior and President of AU SSDP, Kate Sanders. Sanders explains, "I just felt we owed it to the artists, Apani B. Fly, Lyric and El Battalion, who drove down from New York, and to all the students who showed up to hear a positive and political Hip Hop message." The party drew more than fifty students, and organizers say that the footage will be available online within a week at http://www.zoomculture.com/ssdp/. The No More Prisons show was organized as part of a nationwide effort to protest the growing number of men and women behind bars, projected to exceed two million on February 15, according to a study released by Justice Policy Institute. Pranis says that the next big date will be April 4, 2000, when students at campuses across the country take action against Sodexho Marriott Services. For further information, visit http://www.nomoreprisons.org.
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