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American slave workers are going on strike


Starkiller

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/20/prison-labor-protest-america-jailhouse-lawyers-speak

 

On Tuesday, America’s vast army of incarcerated men and women – at 2.3mof them they form by far the largest imprisoned population in the world – will brace itself for what has the potential to be the largest prison strike in US history. 

 

Nineteen days of peaceful protest are planned across the nation, organised largely by prisoners themselves.

 

 

 

The strike is being spearheaded by incarcerated members of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a group of prisoners providing mutual help and legal training to other inmates. A few days ago they released an anonymous statement setting out their reasons for calling a protest that carries the risk of substantial penal retaliation.

 

“Fundamentally, it’s a human rights issue,” the statement said. “Prisoners understand they are being treated as animals. Prisons in America are a warzone. Every day prisoners are harmed due to conditions of confinement. For some of us it’s as if we are already dead, so what do we have to lose?”

 

Organizers have put together a list of 10 national demands. They include improved prison conditions, an end to life without parole sentences or “death by incarceration” as the authors call them, increased funding for rehabilitation services and an end to the disenfranchisement of some 6 million Americans with felony convictions who are barred from voting.

 

One of the most passionately held demands is an immediate end to imposed labor in return for paltry wages, a widespread practice in US prisons that the strike organisers call a modern form of slavery. More than 800,000 prisoners are daily put to work, in some states compulsorily, in roles such as cleaning, cooking and lawn mowing.

 

The remuneration can be as woeful in states such as Louisiana as 4 cents an hour.

 

The idea that such lowly-paid work in a $2bn industry is equivalent to slavery is leant weight by the 13th amendment of the US constitution. It banned slavery and involuntary servitude, with one vital exception: “as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”.

 

Prisoners, in other words, have no constitutional rights and can be blatantly exploited.

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Right. The idea that prison labor is part of a rehabilitation system or civic improvement system is an absolute joke. We have a system right now where there is incentivization to increase the prison p

Honestly, I’m fine with prisoners being forced to work in kitchens or cleaning up roadsides or whatever. That really doesn’t bother me. That should be the way it is.    What bothers me is th

17 minutes ago, begooode said:

wtf slave workers?  Prisoners, prisoners are going on strike.

Yes, prison slave workers.

 

The idea that such lowly-paid work in a $2bn industry is equivalent to slavery is leant weight by the 13th amendment of the US constitution. It banned slavery and involuntary servitude, with one vital exception: “as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”.

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4 minutes ago, Starkiller said:

Honestly, I’m fine with prisoners being forced to work in kitchens or cleaning up roadsides or whatever. That really doesn’t bother me. That should be the way it is. 

 

What bothers me is that it is largely being done in support of a for-profit prison system. And the idea that they are cheap labor for businesses like telemarketing and manufacturing.

https://www.cagedbirdmagazine.com/single-post/2017/03/28/50-Companies-Supporting-Modern-American-Slavery

This is also my main issue in the whole thing. For profit prisons alongside Republicans pushing the drug war while most Dems stand silently by have led us to having the largest per capital prison population in the world. It’s crazy to hear all of the platitudes about how great our country is and how it’s the land of the free when it jails more of its population than communist dictatorships. 

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3 minutes ago, Bink said:

Right. The idea that prison labor is part of a rehabilitation system or civic improvement system is an absolute joke. We have a system right now where there is incentivization to increase the prison population in these institutions as much as possible so industries can make a profit from the labor. Why wouldn't you push for harsher penalties for minor drug offenses? Especially when social stigma/the prison experience increases recidivism. Constant churning wheel of cheap labor. 

 

This is just one aspect of the multitude of ways policing as capital is fucked up in this country. Defense contractors arming police stations with surplus military gear to turn SWAT teams into war ready battalions. Civil forfeiture where any item used in a crime is actually tried by the government and confiscated. Prisons with quotas and contracts with public institutions to purchase whatever the produce (I'm sitting in a prison made chair as we speaking). All the way down to shit like redlight cameras. 

 

That this taints and corrupts the American idea is lost on a lot of people who essentially don't care what happens to prisoners. Let's be honest, most Americans get caught up in a lot of bullshit and only really care/learn about an issue when it directly fucks them over. 

I think a lot of people care because a lot of people are affected by it, but the United States as a whole is so far down the rabbit hole of what Bill Maher referred to as issue burn that it cannot formulate a coherent voice in the face of these mechanisms.

 

Any movement has to start at the grass roots level and eventually tie each side together. The problem is the freedom loving people on the right have slanted very far from the tea party days while the freedom loving left has strayed from the Occupy days and is obsessed with identity politics. 

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26 minutes ago, Starkiller said:

Honestly, I’m fine with prisoners being forced to work in kitchens or cleaning up roadsides or whatever. That really doesn’t bother me. That should be the way it is. 

 

What bothers me is that it is largely being done in support of a for-profit prison system. And the idea that they are cheap labor for businesses like telemarketing and manufacturing.

https://www.cagedbirdmagazine.com/single-post/2017/03/28/50-Companies-Supporting-Modern-American-Slavery

That’s my problem with it. The for-profit prison system is a really bad problem in this country. 

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Dell is a competitor of my old company and where we had established an elaborate recycle and sustainability program for PC hardware returns, Dell at the time used cheap prison labor and obsessed on minimizing their current costs.  In an industry with razor thin margins, that makes a big difference as well as constituting an ethical environmental breech, imo.

 

Put me down as a hater of the practice.

Edited by begooode
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36 minutes ago, begooode said:

Dell is a competitor of my old company and where we had established an elaborate recycle and sustainability program for PC hardware returns, Dell at the time used cheap prison labor and obsessed on minimizing their current costs.  In an industry with razor thin margins, that makes a big difference as well as constituting an ethical environmental breech, imo.

 

Put me down as a hater of the practice.

Right. How do you compete with being able to pay someone 4 cents and hour? 

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2 minutes ago, PetroleroTitanico said:

I have no issue with prison labor, but it should be constrained to public works such as roads, etc. Absolutely no private enterprise should be involved.

 

 

Therein lies the problem. Too much money to be made. You think that genie is going back in the bottle? 

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It's retarded that folks who are critical of "socialism" as wrongheaded and ineffective because of simple psychology and motive don't at all apply critical thinking on issues like for profit prison and for profit healthcare and turn a blind eye to how the profit motive fucks shit up in those industries. 

 

Just another example of weaponizing language. "Capitalism" = good, "Socialism = evil" etc.

 

Systems just are, their implementation can be pragmatic and effective or ineffective and all levels in between. Most people don't know that. They think a particular word is either good or evil and everything exists in a vacuum. 

Edited by 'Nator
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32 minutes ago, 'Nator said:

It's retarded that folks who are critical of "socialism" as wrongheaded and ineffective because of simple psychology and motive don't at all apply critical thinking on issues like for profit prison and for profit healthcare and turn a blind eye to how the profit motive fucks shit up in those industries. 

 

Just another example of weaponizing language. "Capitalism" = good, "Socialism = evil" etc.

 

Systems just are, their implementation can be pragmatic and effective or ineffective and all levels in between. Most people don't know that. They think a particular word is either good or evil and everything exists in a vacuum. 

Right. When someone uses a term like capitalism or socialism in casual American political conversation they almost always are generalizing and mischaracterizing these massive political structures to do basic bitch virtue signaling. Of course healthcare and prisons shouldn't be designed to generate profit from shareholders! WTF! 

 

 

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