I have a piece in the New York Times on the prison strike and the historical context of white coercion of black labor that has never ended. The Civil War may have ended chattel slavery, but the 13th Amendment had a fatal flaw, allowing for...
prison labor
Just last week, I profiled the 1978 Ellis Prison strike against their exploitation by the state that forced them to pick cotton on state-owned prison farms for no wages. They.
On October 4, 1978, nine Ellis Prison inmates in east Texas went on strike against the unpaid labor they had to do every day, refusing to pick cotton in hard.
On July 20, 1891, militia forces guarding a stockade at a mine near Briceville, Tennessee surrendered to miners during Coal Creek War to keep convict laborers from competing with free miners. This was one of several tense moments in the larger struggle in the post-Reconstruction...
I don't see how we in this nation can claim that slavery no longer exists. Because a state with 140,000 prisoners is forcing them to work for free without the.
Inmates from a La Fourche parish jail on a work release program fill giant sandbags in Port Fourchon, Louisiana May 11, 2010. U.S. Army National Guard.
There's no good argument to be made that the United States can't get a handle on the global exploitation of labor by placing bans on products made under certain conditions or from nations and companies that don't open their factories to international inspectors. You can...
Michelle Alexander has called the prison system The New Jim Crow for how it replicates the racial discrimination of the past. That's only part of it though becuase a racist.
Even if you think that prisoners are better off doing work outside than being stuck in their cells, I hope we can all agree that prisoners being paid 20 cents.
Prison labor not only takes jobs away from non-prisoners who earn wages, but it is a corrupt system that does not save the state money, as the Seattle Times reports. There is also no evidence this unpaid labor creates skills for prisoners they can use...
The California Attorney General's office opposed the release of inmates because the state wanted to use them as cheap firefighter labor. Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that attorneys.
In yesterday's post on prison labor and cheese making, Happy Jack left this amazing powerpoint presentation by Colorado Correctional Industries, the private prison mafia. Entitled, "Motivating Prisoners to Become Business.