40 prisoners, 520 million dollars in taxpayer money. Guantanamo bay is infamous for tourture and abuse towards their prisoners and yet Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it open indefinitely. Why? A recent whistleblower report came out stating that the financial reports saying that Guantanamo bay costs 520 million taxpayer money is false and that it is actually over 1 billion dollars. Now this has not been confirmed by the government so we should not go off of that. The president claims that it would be too dangerous to transport these prisoners but that just isn't true. How would it be dangerous to transport them to a maximum security prison if the only people told are high ranking officials and the people who will be transporting them. Having prisoners from Guantanamo Bay at a maximum security would just make so much more sense. It would save about 500 million dollars and since it is on US soil there are many more rules in regulations to combat against the torture that goes on there. In 2004 Guantamo Bay was accused of torture such as solitary confimenet, extreme temperatures and even forced positions. In 2003 alone there were 350 incidents of self harm. In late 2003 23 detainees tried to hang themselves. This kind of stuff does not go on at normal high security prisons, and to be honest no one really knows what goes on at Guantanamo Bay. It is doing much more harm then it is good. I believe that the time has finally come to close Guantanamo bay.
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Imagine this. You are put in a prison for x amount of time with little to no knowledge of the outside world and any of your assets and then one day you are thrown back into the world and essentially told good luck, I hope you make it. That is what every single inmate who is released feels. There is no plan or system in place for inmates who are released and that needs to change. 60 - 75 percent of inmates find themselves jobless after a year of being released and 50,000 inmates a year enter homelessness almost immediately after being released from prison. There is nothing being done for ex inmates in America and that needs to change immediately. Ex - inmates are already at a disadvantage when applying for jobs because of their record. Then if they want to apply for a loan to possibly start their own business or buy a house it is likely that they will be denied for their record as well. Now I am sure that there are success stories coming from ex inmates but it is very rare. They are at such a disadvantage after being released from prison and it is completely out of their control. These people have served their time and followed the rules. They shouldn't be put back into society and seen as second class citizens because of something that they did in the past. Now I am not sure if there is a solution to this problem and I am not sure if a solution will be found soon but we need to start working towards a solution. 1,350,000 ex convicts are unemployed because of something that they did in their past. How is that fair? With that being said you need to ask yourself, does the sentence ever really end?
What happened was wrong and there is no other way to put it. I am glad that all four officers were arrested and charged. I don't want to spend lots of time on that because we all know that it was unlawful and incorrect. Sadly there are people who are trying to justify this and bring other races into the argument. A common argument to this situation is well oh if George Floyd was white these protests and riots wouldn't be happening. Well that is true you also have to ask yourself would the arrest have gone the way it did if George Floyd was white. There will always be scrutiny against protesting, no matter what type of protest it is and it has always been like that. There are major differences between protesting, rioting and looting. Peacefully protesting is right that you are given when you become a citizen of this country. It is a first amendment right. As MLK once said “Rioting is a language of the unheard”. These people are scared and they don't know what to do so they are taking to the streets. It is a shame that people are getting hurt and it should have had to be that way but sadly that is what it took for the president to acknowledge the injustice going on in the United States. This isn't a political problem. This is a human rights problem. Thus I think it is very unfair for white people to be criticizing these riots because they do not understand. They don't understand what it is like to get pulled over and fearing for their lives. They don't understand what it is like to have to fear if they make one wrong move during an arrest their life can be over. They don't understand what it is like to fear for your life on a jog as Ahmuad Arburry did. 232 years and America had finally elected an African American president and now it seems as if we are going backwards. It is going to take a while for people to understand. It took 4 years for people to finally realize why colin kaepernick was kneeling and who knows how long it will take for people to understand the injustice that is going on in america. It may take years but I do believe that we will get there eventually. To the people who are protesting I condemn you. Thank you for doing your part.
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