And how is that different from slavery?
Alabama is forcing incarcerated people to work at hundreds of companies, including McDonald’s & Wendy’s. Unionizing is illegal. The state takes 40% of wages.
Submitted 1 month ago by dazerl@lemmy.world to workreform@lemmy.world
https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/2fecea323b45.mp4
Comments
JustJack23@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
It isn’t, this is how they get around it, and literally wrote into the amendment banning slavery to leave a carve out for prisoners
West_of_West@piefed.social 1 month ago
Could also explain why prisons are such a big industry in the US
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Ledivin@lemmy.world 1 month ago
They get a whole 3/5 of their wages!
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I see what you did there
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 month ago
it is slavery with extra steps, and to say its “not like slavery”
gustofwind@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The constitution makes slavery legal for prisoners
Says so right there literally just read the 13th amendment
FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 month ago
Had a whole civil war over it and still didn't get rid of slavery.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The amendment to abolish slavery enshrines it in the Constitution
gustofwind@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yeah lmao this is the amendment making slavery illegal….~except as punishment for a crime~
Tho I guess in fairness involuntary labor for prisoners is not really like slavery of innocent people but that’s why we have a corrupt criminal justice system to make up the difference 😃
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 1 month ago
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it” - Lincoln
bagsy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Slavery is illegal except for prisoners. Forcing prisoners to work is perfectly constitutional.
The bill of rights is wrong and must be admended. Closing this loop hole will kill the for profit prison industrial complex.
LemmyBruceLeeMarvin@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
The only thing Capitalists love more than wage theft is slavery
Etterra@discuss.online 1 month ago
It’s been that way since the end of the civil war.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It won’t kill the for profit prisons, this is just an aspect of how for profit prisons make profit.
They should ban for profit prisons outright.
Meron35@lemmy.world 1 month ago
More like bill of wrongs amirite
Flames5123@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Btw, the bill of rights is only the first 10 amendments. The 13th is just an amendment.
frostysauce@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Unionizing is NEVER illegal. Source: The thousands upon thousands of people that have died over the years for your right to organize.
grue@lemmy.world 1 month ago
And besides, what’re they gonna do, put them in prison?
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
The video gets into this a bit; what the workers are threatened with for not working is stuff like being put in a more dangerous environment and not being able to see their families.
frostysauce@lemmy.world 1 month ago
lol, right?
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 month ago
for prisoners? pretty sure they cant unionize, and they wont be able to.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Lol. For prisoners; you wanna bet?
BigTuffAl@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Yeah the USA is a slave empire, they have to be stopped.
cranakis@reddthat.com 1 month ago
This is an all over problem but Alabama and Louisiana are so bad I avoid even driving through.
ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Alabama is bad but Louisiana is an absolute shithole state with crooks in the gov. Full of poverty when those should be very rich people. Too bad they didn’t make the oil companies pay taxes for all that oil they drill or spill in the gulf every day.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Man, you are letting Mississippi off the hook here. I used to live in Louisiana but spent a lot of time working in Mississippi and I could not say which state is worse. The only good things about either one are the winter weather and the crawfish.
Flames5123@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
As a Mississippi refugee, Mississippi is worse. We don’t even have a fun city like New Orleans. I do miss the food though. Crawfish in the PNW are so tiny.
MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Slavery.
theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
America never ended slavery.
Felis_Rex@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Y’all really ain’t ready for the slavery in the US agriculture sector conversation. It’s really bad, and this ICE shit is just acceleration
criscodisco@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Or why they have decimated public education in black communities.
OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
And just in general. Black communities were definitely hit hardest and first, but the damage isn’t solely contained there.
Xanthrax@lemmy.world 1 month ago
But those are my Mexicans
frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io 1 month ago
If they're capable of working at these jobs, they don't need to be in prison. Either release them or stop using a system that garnishes their wages.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The more I learn about the US, the more I realise the shining city on the hill I believed in as a child is actually a giant dumpster fire.
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s like Trump being what poor people envision as rich.
America is what other countries view as prosperous, when in reality it’s 10 rich people in a trench coat.
MrSulu@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Slavery never went away. It’s just been rebranded, repackaged and sanitized.
deHaga@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Not American, but isn’t that what the 13th amendment did? Make slave labour legal for prisons?
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
the crazy thing about this story (aside from the slavery) is that the voters of Alabama voted to outlaw that exception at the state level but ever since then, their governor has overidden that effort.
AniZaeger@lemmy.world 1 month ago
As a foreigner, you probably know more about the US Constitution than most US citizens. And I’m saying that as a natural born US citizen.
chicagohuman@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Yep!
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
BussyGyatt@feddit.org 1 month ago
and fugitive slave patrols became police
ideonek@piefed.social 1 month ago
USA - the country that have “except” in thier “no slavery” rule. I’m not even joking. Thats 100% true.
switcheroo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That is slavery.
Hopefully the decent folk in Alabama-- wherever they hide-- boycott the fuck outta those places.
Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 1 month ago
Here’s a reminder that the 13th amendment didn’t abolish slavery. It simply added the “they must be a criminal before you can enslave them” qualifier…
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction
Emphasis mine. Why do you think the model for the modern police force started as slave catchers, and then pivoted hard towards “law enforcement” after the civil war? The US already had law enforcers. They were called sheriffs and marshals. The individual cities and towns didn’t have their own independent police forces until after the civil war… And those new police forces were manned by, you guessed it, former slave catchers. And they never really stopped catching slaves. They just changed what they called it.
The US thrives on slavery, even today, with private prisons as the modern slave owners.
ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Normalize refusal to do business at places who use prison labor.
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Normalize burning those places to the fucking ground.
yakko@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Slavery under the 13th amendment has been quietly accepted for over a century. Maybe normality itself is to blame.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 1 month ago
This is the future of MAGA America. Imagine how much more profitable corporations could be if 90% of their workforce is AI, Robotic, or Federally-provided Slave Labor, privately managed by a Trump-owned company?
What do you think all those new regional concentration camps and an enormous paramilitary organization are going to do when the “immigrant problem” has been largely handled? Trump and Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller and Trump are getting into the slavery business.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
This crap predates MAGA by a long long time - after all, as somebody else pointed out, the 13th Ammendment of the US constitution explicitly allows slavery for those convicted of crimes.
Obviously MAGA is going to abuse the shit out of this, but this kind of infrastructure for Fascism has long been in place and was already used even before MAGA was a twinkling in the eyes of whatever Koch Brother’s Funded Think Tank employee who came up with it.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Valid, the 13th Amendment is an abomination, but it was mostly used as a rationalization to suppress wages in prison workshops, and exempt them from minimum wage. It was never intended to be the foundation for establishing a new system for our entire nation’s entire economy.
But we are approaching a labor crossroads in this country, and while MOST American workers haven’t been paying much attention to the upcoming revolutions in AI and Robotics, Sociopathic Oligarchs and the Corporations have been laser-focused on it for a few decades, and their objectives are finally at hand.
As if replacing much of their workforce with tireless tools like AI and Robotics wasn’t wonderful enough for their profits, now MAGA is dangling a shiny bauble that only the most psychopathic of Ferengi Oligarchs could dare to dream about - a return to literal slavery, a nearly free labor pool of workers who can be treated in any way. No worries about rights, benefits, safety, regulations, etc. Imagine how much more profitable they could be?
angband@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang All day long they work so hard Till the sun is goin’ down Working on the highways and byways And wearing, wearing a frown
hamburgers@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Trump did say they are teaching about slavery wrong, they are too negative.
Paranoidfactoid@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The 13th Amendment allows for forced labor in prisons. This is how Trump and the GOP will reinstitute slavery in the USA.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s been a feature of the US prison system since the end of Reconstruction. This isn’t something Trump invented.
Bright Blue California rejected a measure to ban prison slavery just a year ago.
Sharkticon@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
They weren’t suggesting Trump invented it. They were suggesting Trump plans to expand it, nationalize it, and institutionalize it.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 1 month ago
According to the AP article it isn’t forced per say, but it is highly leveraged onto inmates using early release/parole.
Turning down work can jeopardize chances of early release in a state that last year granted parole to only 8% of eligible prisoners — an all-time low, and among the worst rates nationwide — though that number more than doubled this year after public outcry.
Sharkticon@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
I would say threatening someone with more prison time absolutely counts as “forced”.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 1 month ago
“Land of the free” fucking lol
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Definitely “Home of the Brave” though. You’d have to be brave to want to live there.
zikzak025@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Another reminder that private prisons (>10% of prisons in the US) are not the end-all be-all of everything wrong with the US justice system. The public side of things is messed up enough on its own.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Remember kids, if the republicans start complaining that someone is stealing their money, it means the state is.
Alabama ranks at surprising 10th in most money taken from the state at 61%
Note: No. 1 means most dependent. wallethub.com/edu/…/2700
choui4@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
This is slavery under Neo-Liberalism
whitecollarcry@lemmy.world 1 month ago
you’d think that companies directly stealing from people would have better economic standing, what with the literal theft, but these southern states stay poor, stay shitty, and stay ignorant. those welfare queens sure do know how to be loud cunts without any fucking utility or solutions, but have a proven track record as parasites
ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
They need to be killed. There is no other way. We are all so fucked.
locahosr443@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Offered to non violent misdemeanor offenders… First person has 15 year sentence…
Literally slavery, what a 3rd world country
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Driving Uber, I hear so many stories like this. For example, I never knew you paid for this “privilege,” and apparently you PAY TO BE ON PROBATION!? Among so much other insane bullshit.
DevotedShitStain69@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’d sabotage those companies if I were forced to do anything other than my time.
vpol@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Future of the United States?
sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
That was hard to watch. Jesus christ. This damn country is so fucked up.
teslekova@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
The formerly enslaved people willing to speak out and use their names on camera for this doco are incredibly brave. They are going to be targeted for this, and they know it. The system does not want to stop making money, and it will do anything to protect the cashflow.
SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
And coincidentally, there will be a call to “crack down” on smaller crimes, make it easier to do time.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Man that sure is close to only leaving them 3/5ths…
kylie_kraft@lemmy.world 1 month ago
holy shit yikes
FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 month ago
If this was fiction I'd be complaining about how on-the-nose it was.
kureta@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Holy shit! The ratio is really 3/5! wtf!?
frostysauce@lemmy.world 1 month ago
jfc
pfr@piefed.social 1 month ago
Sorry for my ignorance, but can someone please explain 3/5ths to me like in 5
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 month ago
youtu.be/YSWwWdAw-h8
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_Compromise
en.wikipedia.org/…/Original_Sin_(disambiguation)