Forwarded message: Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 23:04:00 CST Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sender: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: Jim Davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: The impact of prison labor 'SLAVERY IS ALIVE AND WELL IN AMERICA': THE IMPACT OF PRISON LABOR By Ali K. Abdullah, Prisoner #148130 JACKSON, Michigan -- The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution was supposed to have abolished slavery. The Civil War was supposed to have shown us that we as a nation cannot disregard the human rights of others without it causing some horrendous effects. In the year 1995, I am seeing slavery taking place right before my eyes. I am seeing the 13th Amendment trampled on, but in a subtle way. I am seeing the Civil Rights Act tossed to the side and laughed at in secret. And I am seeing the same propaganda being spoken, only on broader scales as the propaganda was once spoken which caused the nation to plunge itself into the Civil War. Slavery is alive and well in America today. It is thriving under a new name, a new face, a new approach, and is widely accepted under the untrained eye of the masses. This new slavery is taking place in today's prisons across this nation. Prisoners are working at slave labor and for slave wages while, behind the scenes, "someone" is profiting. My African American forefathers were once subjugated to the harshness of slavery. Living under horrendous conditions and hardships, they could not enjoy the freedoms offered by the Constitution and by those who were not slaves. In 1995, we find the same thing happening but in a more modern way. How can a so-called society justify allowing prisons to operate slave labor camps where they have men and women working in the prison factories, laundries, and kitchens, making such wages as 50 cents per day, 80 cents per day, and, if you're lucky, $1 a day? And who ever asks the question, "Where does the money go from the various products prisoners make in the prison factories? Who gets the real money?" It should be painfully obvious that someone of political power is getting their pockets greased off the backs of prisoners, just as slaveholders and politicians of that era were getting fat pockets off the dehumanizing sight of slavery. If you, America, do not see anything inherently wrong with this, then I fear we have only begun to see the worse to come. Open your eyes, America! +----------------------------------------------------------------+ 'Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS 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 added.) ---13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, enacted 1865. 1995 marks the 130th anniversary of the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. In fact, the 13th Amendment only transferred the operation of forced servitude directly to the government and, in the United States today... Unpaid and low-paid convict labor is currently moving into almost every sector of American economic activity. Convicts manufacture clothing (including workshirts marketed by the late Sears Catalog) shoes, optical lenses, chemicals, computer and machine parts. Convicts also work in mines, agribusiness, construction and allied trades... On August 1, 1989, members of the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades established picket lines along the Long Island Expressway in New York to protest the giving of their $18 an hour highway painting jobs to Rikers Island prison inmates who received 40 cents an hour... By October 5, 1991, New York Mayor David Dinkins' administration had already laid off 40 percent of the city's unionized painters and replaced them with welfare recipients, jail inmates in work release programs and ex-offenders... Reported cases under this prison-labor system show prisoners have been physically discouraged from exiting prison when there is a heavy production schedule, as key workers in the prison factory who would normally be eligible for parole find themselves mysteriously denied a release date. ... The Thirteenth Amendment did not simply eradicate slavery. It kept slavery intact as punishment for crime, transferring the right to own, hold and work slaves to the federal and various state governments... "Free" labor must help end prison slavery today for the same reasons it supported abolishing chattel slavery during the first American Civil War... This process is not new and may be seen in the penal methodology of feudal Europe and in the infamous "Black Codes" of the South during the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. The historical records of [feudal Europe] include instructions from the monarchies to the courts of this period to speed up the number of arrests, convictions and commutation of death to life at slavery in order to meet such labor needs of the feudal state as the rowing of galley ships... The federal and state governments of the United States currently hold more than 1.2 million prison slaves or involuntary servants in actual confinement and 4.5 million under their jurisdiction. "Free" labor must help end prison slavery today lest they be enslaved tomorrow... (All quotes on this page are excerpted from "Caged Labor," a comprehensive article that appeared in Volume 3, No. 8 of The Commemorator, published by the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California.) ****************************************************************** This article originated in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition), Vol. 22 No. 11 / March 13, 1995; P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654, [EMAIL PROTECTED] For free electronic subscription, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Feel free to reproduce; please include this message with reproductions of this article. ******************************************************************
