a lot of jobs are out of washington d.c. and here is what's coming up tonight the big picture founder and producer of the latino activists site when tommy dot org actual copy out o. joins me for our first half hour conversations with great minds discuss his mission and bringing awareness to latino issues the unholy alliance between the prison industrial complex the republican party and alec leaving get into his take on herman cain's immigration electric fence so-called joke and it looks like president obama will deliver on his promise all the troops stationed in iraq will be home for the holidays so how will the republicans criticize him for the second option.

for tonight's conversations in the great minds i'm joined by axel kabhie out oh he is the founder and producer of wind power and mike when tommy dot org and news and activism site focused on issues of importance to the latino community he also runs these banish language opinion site metaphor of politico dot com as part of the brave new films and brave new foundation team for the past decade axel has used the visual and film campaigns to advocate on a variety of campaign issues ranging from nuclear disarmament and environmental protection to immigration and human rights a particular emphasis on latin american affairs and he's played in cyber role in several electoral teams both in the united states and in mexico he's also served as the media and relays and community relations director for the peace education fund and peace action west is a graduate in political science and international relations as well as law and study and visual arts studies at the university of california in san diego and

received his master's degree in international law and the protection of human rights from the university of in the netherlands axel joins us now from our studios in los angeles actually got them. hi and thank you thank you for having me on today thank you for joining us it's an honor to have you with us what's your story your personal story how did you become an activist what brought you to this moment in time. my personal story i'm originally from mexico from northern part of mexico in sonora i was born and raised my first ten years there but i really am what you would consider a cross border child the new kind of generation that lived in bold size of the border and grew up in both sides of the border my dad's american my mom is is from mexico and i always went back and forth and i saw a lot of the issues that we're fighting for right now particularly within the latino community i saw it growing up while working in restaurants going through

college while doing work at home and seeing friends and family migrated from doing work in arizona even when i was living there and going to high school there and just seeing a lot of my fellow coast today and students in classroom part of the soccer team for example and maybe in to a certain extent impacted in affected by the issues that we are fighting for today so that's i think what at least for me how it started there was a connection both on what i was living what i was seeing and particularly what we could do about it i started seeing that there were opportunities to create change to create and make an impact by really creating strong and powerful visuals and strong and powerful messages that resonated not only with my environment but with the community large and i think that that was a huge part of how i got involved in the first place and. more recently as you got

into these campaigns you just show up and say i want to participate or. you came you came out of college in two. and yeah what happened was once i graduated from from college and i was active policy through through college . and then doing the graduate work particularly human rights i started you know getting very involved with different issues when i got here in los angeles particularly and i got involved with an organization called brave new foundation and brave new films and to work closely with robert greenwald who really had important actions that he was doing particularly through film and i cite immediately the impact that could be done in so year later of working with him and with the organization we kind of gathered what would you would call the latino

intelligentsia with the new foundation a group of folks and individuals that realized that we could use those same tools we can use that same kind of impact it was being had and we can adapt it to would we see in our own environment and kind of create a marriage between the latino community and a lot of the issues that we're already advocating within very new foundation and so what happened was that we decided to create a community a community called. committee for latinos by latinas the really the public in general and that would use video and strong documentary campaigns along with with powerful social media and create a community that was ready to mobilize into action two years ago this is this is what happened to me means tell me your story or count me in and we use visuals and we use particular campaigns an issue to promote the activism not only from

ourselves but also the community that we're involved with as we started with a couple campaigns and then suddenly arizona hit last year as the head and we knew that we have the opportunity cap cause an important impact. we create a campaign called do i look illegal and it was really a campaign awareness but also of the back against what we were seeing is such planned in arizona that later spread out through other states and that immediately went when pretty strongly across online and on the ground we were able to mobilize for example place fifteen thousand t. shirts across the country with people wearing signage to i look illegal and then posting on their twitter side posted on facebook grow rice on their local marches going to their local store with the shirts capturing the images and video and then sending us all that information and then we were able to repose that in create a larger campaign and as we develop more and more we started growing more and we

were able to incorporate a lot more issues not only immigration but economic issues corporate greed issues that were impacted directly and specially getting feedback from our supporters are that's spectacular and thanks for correcting my pronunciation it's one of your problems with one of your maids your little accident yeah. it's not my native language one of your main campaigns is to bring attention to the corrections corporation of america c c a here's a clip one of a little piece or one of the videos you produced educate others about this issue show to our viewers. this tension of migrants is a multibillion dollar industry one in which immigrants are treated like alright and it's there for sale to the highest bidder who benefits and profits corrections corporation of america or c.c.a.

the geo group and the management and training corporation combined a little over two hundred for silly days in the nation with over one hundred fifty thousand volt spaces for a total profit of close to try to arrange dollars private prisons for profit like a hotel the more occupants they go it the more money comes out. to be just like you're still in progress real estate or hamburg private prisons rely on anti immigrant laws that guarantee them access to fresh and he makes here so actual can you explain what the corrections corporation of america is and how it exploits or criminal justice system and in particular to know. well look we started seeing last year it was after after the campaign that i was going to about that a lot of anti immigrant laws were being replicated across the country we saw you have the witch of texas trying to decide georgia and alabama and florida and so

immediately when you see this type of domino effect we know that there's something behind it that there's a driver and that driver was particularly with ideological and what we understood as for profit and what i like to say what we like to say all the time is that whenever there is a social issue like immigration is there's always someone trying to make a buck from it and that's what happened with c.c.a. c.c.a. corrections corporation of america is the largest for prison for profit prison in the united states they currently operate along with the geo group the second largest over one hundred fifty thousand bed spaces in this country and the way they operate is that they said make a facility is the wal marts of prisons and difference in all towns and cities and locales and states and then be dropped contrast contrast with either the county or the state or the federal government the d.h. has the public apartment of homeland security and those contracts of course are

being paid with our own taxpayer money and the way that they do it is they have for example facility in georgia with two thousand bed spaces and so they drive a contract to get paid two hundred dollars a night for any individual that occupies that bed space and so their main goal their main intent is to drive more occupancy like a hotel the hotel has its yearly budget it's a yearly forecast of how many people there are going to of what the percentage rate of occupancy is going to be in their hotels they have the same thing in fact in two thousand and five they had an annual report that said harder harder sentencing harder in fortune and harder particularly around them to. war and drug policy and immigration will drive our occupancy rates higher and that's exactly what they're doing this year they're partnering up with interest groups like the american legislative exchange council with politicians where they're hijacking all of these state legislatures and they're pushing for laws for anti immigration laws and by

far they deny this of course but they're pushing for those laws to make sure that there occupancy rate is high and for that matter to make sure that they make those two hundred dollars a night and then that that is tantamount to the by a billion dollars a year that the industry currently makes it's mind boggling your immigrants for sale campaign also focuses on the role that alex alex plays in the private prison industry here's a quote shot of a piece that you did about this. the american legislative exchange council or alec is an extreme right wing membership organization comprised of state legislators and powerful multinational corporations including the corrections corporation of america. alec emotes octaves. and i was on it's a ski town something that. russell pearce like c.c.a. he's an alec member one with obscure ties to national white separatist neo nazi.

during alec needing c.c.a. and kias back to a model legislation that became almost word for word arizona's eight hundred seventy. nine and as long as they feel that the change is so these four days. months or even years speech when suddenly the new copycat sprouting up across the counter example who think. so actually how does allied get away with this. very easy they have a lot of interest in their own organization their membership organization that is comprised of big corporations not only c.c. and not only for profit corporations we're talking the likes of. wal-mart for

example we're talking the likes of exxon philip morris big corporations that have an interest in some aspect of the corporate legislative process as we call it they also get money from the cold brothers of course to promote a lot of their same same policies around the nation they constantly deny that their lobbying group the time and again we're finding videos hung high in available to everyone where they're proud of saying how they lobby this person or how they live the other person or how they're they're really throwing out money or connecting the corporation with the legislative process and the way they do it is part of their membership is also legislators state legislators as well as federal legislators every year they have conference there's one coming up in arizona in november after thanksgiving and there's another one in d.c. where they get together and they they you know representatives from the corporations and representatives from the different legislative bodies as well as

the different states and locales end up going to the same place and they talk the talk and you can imagine what they talk about they're not going to talk about how you how you're doing and how was the last week for you they're definitely going to talk about legislation and how to push forward their agenda and their agenda is usually an agenda that benefits corporation to put corporations or for profit ahead of people it's it's an extraordinary story and i understand about a third of all state legislators in the country are members of alec and the vast majority of them are republicans. i'd like to get into the this whole concept actually of mr guillermo goma's sanchez with you and. and the issue of actual slavery in america in just a moment we'll be back with more conversations with great minds with actual caballero in just a moment. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who made decisions it's. made

who can you trust no one who sees and you will have noble mission and see where we fighting state controlled capitalism and school satchels we nobody dares to redo our t. question more.

welcome back to drivers asians of great minds tonight we're speaking with progressive activist and human rights advocate axel. so axel in a recent article you tell the story of you had a role for him as sanchez who ended up spy serving two years enter detention facility owned by the gresham corporation of america you also profiled him in a short documentary here's a here's a quick excerpt for our viewers. you hit on the. whole morning of the way you. live on the border he gave a kid could not go. along. minimal you have an awful lot of her in a predicament would have a right to know. if you happen to none of it when you're going to. do it i don't. now if i defied

a lot of and you know who you. know horrible i thought he would i will. kill me which people. get me get me to go to jail. he should be in the community. i would want someone so i suspect he went in front of an immigration judge within a month immigration judge realized there was issues. need to be changed whether it was even competent to hop on his own here and she wanted immigration authorities to come to see about it wish immigration authorities asked for the court to close the proceedings temporarily meaning there would be you know what you're hearing until the evaluation was concluded and immigration authorities to put up a valuation done they forgot about c.c. certainly profit from her and. it was you can look at you. is not going to. be able to get one of these ways that.

so actual brilliant filmmaking by the way you're doing audio production video production rather or whatever however you would describe it how prevalent are cases like that of mr gomes hunches. they're widespread and in this particular case is a really sad and infuriating story going the songes is a fifty year old man that has a mental disability. and really a gray of issues that he has and so he's and he doesn't understand a lot of the processes that happened around here i'm sure he is a legal resident he has documents here in this country as well as his mom what happened was he was at a convenience store and he has a two hour to take a couple of tomatoes to the attendant there and she didn't know what to say this is

such that yeah go ahead take it a couple minutes later the owner of the store followed and then they got into a snarl dispute and somebody called the police and he ended up being arrested for those charges but what happened there is. a double jeopardy that's happening in our immigration system because the first thing that happened you see goes into our criminal system and immediately you know there's there's there's no understanding of his mental condition there's no understanding of his ability to communicate effectively and so he's sentenced to two a year in prison he spends a year in prison so what happens when you have legal a green card as you call it is that when you are accused or convicted of a particular crime in this case the crime was that public disputes you then go into an immigration system but now would what happens is that our immigration system is a criminal system is no longer just an immigration system but is it's another

criminal penitentiary system so he then goes into that system and he's transferred over to private prison corporation like c.c.a. who doesn't have the slight is need to tell people that this person has a mental this capacity an illness and that he should be treated in a different manner. why why should it be because every night that he spends in that cell it's two hundred dollars that they bank and so he ends up spending about two years there after already having served where was one year and in between another two years in total he was five years that he was in prison for dispute over tomatoes and that is what is happening in our system right now that our immigration system is leaving a void there is no real policy in place and because there is no real policy in place corporations are taking advantage of it they see the opportunity to make money as is the case with c.c.a. and guillermo's case is emblematic of many cases that are happening across the

country there are cases in georgia where stewart facility is the largest c.c.a. facility in the nation the house over two thousand detainees there's multiple cases there of abuse of stories that you couldn't even think about in fact every day on any given day there's about thirty five thousand immigrants behind bars in the detention center but it doesn't mean that there's that's the only number that means that on any given day the amount in this country meaning that some leave after being better months sometimes years and then a new flock of prisoners come in and their sole purpose is sometimes is because they got detained they didn't have a driver's license and other cases like that he had no was that he was a dispute over tomatoes or they didn't have proper documentation at the border there's multiple cases and on any given day you have all of these folks that are filling cells to fill your bed spaces and dads making the strong amount of money

for c.c.a. and the geo group it's extraordinary by the way their stock prices are the high is that they've ever been. currently for example wells fargo manages forty million of their shares and each share is an approximately around forty dollars so that's a person one hundred. sixty million dollars the just the shares that will starve americans imagine you know just in general the amount of money. and on top of that we think that slavery ended in the united states of the civil war but you suggested we have a clip but i'm not i'm not going to play the clip here i'd rather just get your take on this and you suggest that slavery is actually making a comeback thanks to these harsh new anti immigration laws and prison labor tell us about this. well this is what would solve the happening what we're seeing with the old georgia and alabama particularly alabama as of late as we know that particular

anti immigration law their age fifty six is the worst in the country and it really criminalize is not only your status but it criminalizes your transaction interaction with a person that doesn't have documents and that creates a huge problem in fact one of the things that we saw as part of this segregation that is happening is that you know if you want water service is you have to prove that you're. in a legal manner as you're going to get your water cut off that's just the one part of it the second part of it is that you're taken into prison and what is happening there is that a lot of a lot of places that had a lot of migrant labor documented or undocumented like farms like a lot of processing plants among other areas they're losing their employees at a record number i mean we're talking thousands and thousands that have fled to the states and so they're leaving the whole problem for

a lot of farmers in particular and there is a need to build out or elles their crops are rotting so what is happening is that even the secretary of agriculture in the states the agriculture commissioner suggested john millen should suggest that well you know if you need labor then we're going to go to the prisons to get the labor for you i don't know where else or what other name to call but slavery because you're in prison in the same people that are picking up your crops you're putting them behind bars and then you're making them work for free or for pennies so if that is not slavery that i don't know what it is and did i correctly understand something i read any websites that c.c.a. will pay these people a very very small amount for the work that they're doing and then if they want to make a phone call to somebody they have to pay five dollars a minute to use the phone and thus they suck the money back out of these people. yes in fact we can we have a video coming up next week and. i believe it's mid-week that focuses on store

detention center and what we're hearing is that individuals who want to call their family for example outside they have to pay ahead of time and most of them don't have money inside of the prison or their families can't get to them because their prisons are really far away and so what ends up happening is that they have to work they have to work within the facility whether it is cleaning. toilets whether it is sweeping or mopping and they make a couple bucks an hour at most sometimes i believe it's something like ten dollars a day depending on the work that they do it's happening is that if they want to make a call they have to buy these cards and each card has certain amount of minutes and each minute the card cost an amount is like ten fifteen dollars just to get the card to purchase the card and then to make a phone call and each minute cost five dollars so an average ten minute call can

range anywhere between fifty and seventy five dollars that is more than they would make in a week's pay there at the facility so a lot of the times is it all the work pay that they're doing they're doing it for college outside and this is the good sad about this is that these this without trying to separate the the inmates per se or the reason why they're behind bars but this is our immigration policy right now this is this is folks that they only came here to look for a better life for better circumstances and they're put in the because you know they're. put behind bars and making them pay for services that should be allowed just for human decency and to communicate and not only that but to communicate with lawyers for example to to fix their cases. also of course for a private corporation can make more profit we have just

a little less than three minutes left and i bunch of questions i want to get into with you let me just toss a couple at uni you can pick which ones you want to the dream act and curious your thoughts on that it seems in some ways that this is like yeah you can become a citizen if you become cannon fodder i'm also curious about your thoughts you were part of the occupy fox news protest in los angeles today l.a. movement your thoughts on that take a shot at all. with the dream act it's it was heartbreaking the last year to get so close at the end of the year and then to have the whole barrage of media just pounding the tag the bremer movement specially young kids eighteen sometimes even younger than eighteen that are out there that are out there on the street fighting for their own survival and they're having bad really using ben as the scapegoats of something that is that is wrong intrinsically wrong and broken in our political system is just this is a mistake in

a huge mistake because they are the future they are the future in a lot of our constituents a lot of our cities and a lot of our states we're seeing positive steps like it was in california with the california dream ad god pass and we know we need to believe that after they have passed there was positive outcome out of it so so we believe that in this state's approach this might actually this might actually work but we're still i think the organizations in general still fighting for for federal legislation that they would really make this. a sensible policy more so as far as occupy l.a. because it was very powerful today the different groups different organizations and individuals individuals that were from the occupy movement showed us. outside of thought studios to demand a couple of things in particular the support for the one percent versus the ninety

nine percent bad is that is a crucial thing when our media is standing behind those corporate interests and are using the airwaves to attack and in particular our migrant community to blame our migrant community to blame latino's for everything that is wrong in this country and then go ahead and say what will who's right is these corporations then they're not doing their job they're not doing their job as you're out of still that is the non-christian and it seems like it's also pervading now the republican debates and everything else axelrod of times thank you axel caballero thank you so much for being with us tonight thank you so much for having me on and i encourage everyone to visit facebook dot com slash ok you got it thank you very much to watch this conversation again as well as other conversations with great minds go to conversations with great minds. coming up on the big picture of president obama and i was.