Change Agents 12/1/22: The Plight of Immigrants with Investigative Reporter Seth Freed Wessler

Producer/Host: Steve Wessler

Change Agents: Conversations with Advocates and Social Justice Advocate on WERU FM

This month:
I interviewed Seth Freed Wessler. He is an investigative reporter working with Pro Publica. He discussed his work focusing on immigration including the plight of immigrants in government and non-government prisons in the USA.
1.The mistreatment of immigrants in government prisons and for profits prisons..
2.He discussed his film with immigrants in prison.
3.He discussed his worries that immigration prisons may increase in number.

Guests:
Seth Wessler (son of the host) who is an investigative report with Pro Publica
He discussed his film with immigrants in prisons.
His film can be seen at “Field of Vision”. The name of his film is “The Facility”.

About the host:
Steve Wessler will soon will be starting his 28th year of working on human right issues. He founded the Civil Rights Unit in the Maine Attorney’s Office in 1992 and led the Unit for 7 years. In 1999 he left the formal practice of law and founded the Center for the Prevention of Hate. The Center worked in Maine and across the USA. He and his colleagues worked to reduce bias and harassment in schools, in communities, in health care organization through workshops and conflict resolution. The Center closed in 2011 and Steve began a consulting on human rights issues. For the next 5 years much of his work was in Europe, developing and implementing training curricular for police, working in communities to reduce the risk of hate crimes, conflict resolution between police and youth. He has worked in over 20 countries. In late 2016 he began to work more in Maine, with a focus on reducing anti-immigrant bias. He continues to work in schools to reduce bias and harassment. Wessler teaches courses on human rights issues at the College of the Atlantic, the University of Maine at Augusta and at the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University in northern Virginia.