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    BiturbowagonAngela Helm
    2/26/19 1:30pm

    For those reading this, who do not understand how this could happen in America:

    “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.” (Thirteenth Amendment, Section 1, U.S. Constitution) (emphasis mine)

    So, what was done in the South after the War of Southern Treason?

    Whites arrested, tried, convicted blacks, then put them to work as de facto slaves.

    Indeed, it was slavery by another name.

    The bolded text is a loophole ripe for exploitation, and exploited it was.

    Thank you for your work on this

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      Raineyb1013Biturbowagon
      2/26/19 7:14pm

      The bolded text is a loophole ripe for exploitation, and exploited it was.

      It still is.

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      BiturbowagonRaineyb1013
      2/27/19 1:15am

      Michelle Alexander, “The New Jim Crow.” It’s an excellent read. 

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    BensonDuboisAngela Helm
    2/28/19 3:06pm

    I bought Douglas Blackmon’s “Slavery by Another Name” back about 10 years ago. It wasn’t until then that I saw the documentation and re-legalization of slavery through prison conscription. Prisons are the most insidious profit centers that remain off the radar screens of most people when they discuss wage reform and wealth creation for poor people.

    If anything, the prison industrial complex of Wackenhut, the Geo Group, PRIDE (Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises), etc. is the chief reason that wages are low for unskilled labor in non-union states, not immigrants. This is especially true in all the “right to work” states in the southern US. Why hire a company to mow medians and clear train tracks when you can rent prisoners for a fraction of the cost? Prisoners get paid $2 per day, get taxed on it and get charged for the privilege of being able to leave their cells and toil for 15 hrs a day. You want to find out how much money the prison industrial complex makes, just try giving money to an inmate’s commissary account, sending items like calling cards, socks, underwear, feminine hygiene products, toothpaste, soap or the like and see how much they charge the inmate to receive those items. I paid 40% on the dollar to send my cousin money in prison in Florida; up to 60% of a calling card’s value would be stolen when the call originates from a prison phone. Prisoners have to pay outrageously inflated prices for clothes, shoes, toiletries, ramen, snacks, etc. from prison stores.

    All legal, brought to you by lobbyists and callous politicians who take their money to file bills that help them look tough on “law and order”. Many of these cretins (especially in the South) then have the unmitigated gall to call themselves “Christians”. Must be talking about Christian Bale, not Jesus Christ.

    Don’t get me started...

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    HuskyBroAngela Helm
    2/26/19 12:25pm

    I remember you from PBS Slavery By Another Name. That was some eye opening work. I totally agree with you that this chapter of our history has been greviously (is that a word?) hidden away for far too long and because these people were prisoners, the collective have been conditioned to be ashamed of them, by default.

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