THREAD. This is one of the most disturbing stories I have seen in a long time: a huge corporation that profits from separating parents from their children and then charging monopoly prices for jail phone calls is partnering with Sesame Street.
The company is GTL. Along with Securus, it dominates the profiting off mass human caging. GTL and Securus worked with jails to end in-person visits so that people too poor to pay bail cannot see or hug their kids. Why? Because then they spend more $$, with kickbacks to the jails.
Now, using the very money it extracted from some of the poorest families in our society--families too poor to buy their loved ones out of jail--GTL is laundering its reputation by partnering with Sesame Street to teach children about "coping with incarceration" of their parents.
Although this disproportionately affects Black people and immigrants, and although Securus (the leader in this broader market) is owned by the billionaire owner of the NBA's Detroit Pistons, we haven't heard a single peep from the NBA players or their racial justice consultants.
Rarely does a single story capture so perfectly the brutality and greed of carceral capitalism combined with the cynicism of corporate and non-profit image cleansing. Shameful by @sesamestreet. Read more about who is harmed and who is fighting against it:
https://twitter.com/BiancaTylek/status/1443620774846210053
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