Region-wide Protest! Citizens Bank: STOP Financing ICE Prisons

Saturday,  3/7, at 12:30 pm 

Organizer: Brattleboro Indivisible 

Location: 894 Putney Road Citizens Bank 

Let’s do it again! Your help has made a difference! We call you again to stand up in solidarity with groups at over 50 Citizen Bank branches across the region as we continue to send them a clear message: financing The GEO Group and CoreCivic is bad for business.

Citizens Bank professes a commitment to strengthening communities. Since 2019, as nine other prominent Wall Street banks have ceased financing private prisons like CoreCivic and the Geo Group, Citizens Bank has deepened their funding relationship. Public outcry continues over inhumane situations, reports of abusive and dangerous conditions in both previous years and currently due to ICE and CBP detentions. Citizens Bank supports this misery.

These notorious for-profit prison companies are part of an unprecedented expansion in capacity as part of the current administration’s mass detention, deportation, and surveillance policies. As the system grows, Citizens continues to finance the private prison & ICE detention companies that are harming our communities. They are poised to make huge profits.

We won’t quietly stand by.

Our voices matter: the 2019 exodus of banks from the private prison industry in response to activism is a reminder.

Now it’s time to use them.

On Saturday, March 7 from 12:30 – 1:30pm EST we’ll stand together on the public sidewalk on Putney Road near the Citizens Bank with signs and informational leaflets. We will urge Citizens Bank customers to contact their local branch managers and relevant executives of the bank about the possibility of closing their accounts due to the bank’s investments in ICE. Non-customers can contact Citizens executives and spread the word.

Please bring only signs specific to this Citizens Bank action, such as:
– Citizens Bank: Stop Financing ICE Prisons!
– ICE Cages Aren’t Communities
– Strengthen Our Communities
– Citizens Bank: Cut Ties With ICE.

Click here for the Mobilize link for 3/7 Putney Road action here, but there is no need to register.

More information is available here, also: https://www.boycottcitizens.org/ and https://www.de-icecitizensbank.org/

An interactive map of participating locations is available here.

A core principle behind all Indivisible Brattleboro events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values.

Contact: indibrattleboro@gmail.com