So slavery. Let's just arrest and throw people in prison for bullshit reasons to get slaves.
Great.
/s
That's why we have police in the first place. After the civil war the South, in order to covertly recapture as many recently freed slaves as possible, created vagrancy laws, sundown towns, and armed police. In Alabama, where the video is set, the state made it illegal for black people to leave a job, once they took it. The police in the south, especially in Alabama and Louisiana, arrested thousands of former slaves and leased them out to local businesses, in some cases victims of that system would be put to work at the same place, for the same people where they were enslaved prior to the emancipation declaration.
It's one of the most fucked up and evil things America has done. It's made even worse because the practice has been in use for over 200 years and no one, outside a small percentage of Americans even care.
Private prisons and work-release programs need to be ended now.
". . . . except as a punishment for crime . . . ."
Slavery never stopped, it just evolved. There's a reason black men are so overrepresented in the prison system.
The US is a fascist country. If you live here and you don't feel it, you are benefiting from it.
No, I certainly still benefit from it, as do most Americans. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't fight against it.
I think it is time for the state governments of Alabama and Mississippi to be abolished and replaced whole cloth.
Texas checking in, can you Hulk smash my government too, please?
Sorry, best we can do is elect Trump so that project 2025 exports this behavior to all the states. /s :-(
Don't you put that evil on us Ricky Bobby!
Boo this person! Boo! Boo!
Don't jinx us!
The warden of Shawshank blew his brains out when he was caught doing this very thing. Now they're doing it in the open with no consequences
This is how they plan on filling all the gaps left by all the immigrants they want to deport. Next up are new laws that put even more people / groups of people, in prison.
As a prisoner, what happens if you refuse? Like, in that position I’d just say no, then they’d likely throw me in the hole, but that’s a lot better than being a slave from what I can tell.
They could put you in the sun for several hours with no shade, ice, or water then pretend it wasn't manslaughter when you die from heat exposure at 27
There are many ways to gain your "compliance". Prisons must provide basic meals by law, but they can undercut the necessary calories and vitamins, so that if you're not buying food from the prison shop, you're likely to get sick (and eventually die). They can make your work status a factor in whether to grant you parole. They can transfer unwilling folk to the more dangerous units or prisons... So many easy options to gain compliance, if you don't care about human rights.
Cutting my food would just make it more akin to life now, so they won’t have much luck there. Getting parole I generally wouldn’t expect, but when facing a parole board I’d mention that being a slave falls under my own definition of cruel and unusual, so I refuse, and if that doesn’t sway them, I’m likely fucked regardless. Being transferred to a more dangerous unit would likely lead to death, but as I’ve said multiple times in this post, better dead than a slave. Overall, if my choices are slavery that likely ends in being maimed and then death, or not being a slave and then dying, I’ll take the latter any day of the week.
There is some analysis described here: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/us-prison-labor-programs-violate-fundamental-human-rights-new-report-finds
Yeah, as I said in another comment, better dead than a slave.
Is it? At least you would have something to do other than sit there.
This is NOT me saying that this is OK in any way. Just that "the hole" would be fucking awful. Lack of stimulation is torture.
Who need stimulation? Sleep is stimulating enough. Also, I’m pretty adept at creating games and tiny things to occupy my mind and time. Being a kid pre internet with few homies around definitely prepared me for such an occurrence. And I get it, it’d be that but for months on end, but if it prevents me from being a slave, then such is life.
A friend of mine was arrested on felony charges while he was sick, so they put him straight into solitary for medical isolation. Once he had surgery and recovered, they relocated him to the panopticon area. He said it felt like getting out of jail, he was so happy just to not be in solitary anymore.
The slave trade.
Our country is a giant work camp 🎶 👏 🎵
Can ANYONE explain the difference between this, and 1860s slavery besides the lack of a whip?
Well, a lot. Stupid question. Both are slavery, yes, but chattel slavery in the US south was a special type and it really hurts modern slavery causes to equate them. Please stop doing this if you actually care about stopping modern slavery.
First off - when the prisoners have children, the prison doesn't own that child. The child has an opportunity to stay with family. That's markedly different. It's not like generations of prisoners have been born in a prison, lived there their whole lives, and died on that same prison - that happened on plantations. It's not like a prison can take your baby and bait alligators with it. They can't force your child to help them bathe. They can't rape your 15 year old sister, Sally Hemmings, and force her to act as Thomas Jefferson's sex slave for decades.
Prisoners are allowed to read and write and practice their own religions. Prisoners are allowed to learn math.
There are laws meant to protect prisoners from brutality. At the time of antebellum slavery, while it was generally illegal to kill a slave needlessly, it was not illegal to beat or punish them and if they happened to die, that was not usually considered part of that law. LaLaurie in Louisiana is an example of someone who violated that law - it had to be particularly obscene and cruel (note that she was charged previously for cruelty to slaves, probably would have been charged for this, but fled mob justice).
Yes, I agree with you that it's slavery and personally there's a lot more slavery than that here (children are parents' property). I agree that chattep slavery gave birth to this prison system slavery too. I don't think it's helpful to compare it to that specific type of slavery as if it's the exact same.
individuals cannot own the slaves but corporations can rent them.
Easily. Less whips, more guns.
There are still whips.
They were routinely whipped for not meeting quotas while doing brutal and often deadly work.
Colorado passed a state constitutional amendment to ban this practice 6 years ago and it's been tied up in lawsuits ever since
Not that youtube is much better... But here's a non-xitter link:
Invidious link: https://invidious.adminforge.de/watch?v=QDzL_2EP0mU 🤔
Are they being paid? Do they get “good behavior” added to the record and reduced time sentences for working?
You're seeing how the game is played. It's easy to set the system up where refusing to work makes your life significantly worse.
It's a GOOD THING they didn't vote for the Black Rocket Scientist for Governor!
At least they aren't Uighurs. (/s)
