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.
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
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Work Reform
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Found this bad boi a while back and applied personal boycotts. Assume that it's still accurate after five years but haven't found an updated version. Prison labour is slave labour by another name.
Yeah the USA is a slave empire, they have to be stopped.
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
But those are my Mexicans
Or why they have decimated public education in black communities.
And just in general. Black communities were definitely hit hardest and first, but the damage isn't solely contained there.
The Right essentially decided to destroy public education in response to desegregation.
The district I worked for was excellent in the 50’s and 60’s. Now, the only high school that isn’t a failure is the application school all the white kids get into.
The 13th Amendment allows for forced labor in prisons. This is how Trump and the GOP will reinstitute slavery in the USA.
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.
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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.
I would say threatening someone with more prison time absolutely counts as "forced".
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USA - the country that have "except" in thier "no slavery" rule. I'm not even joking. Thats 100% true.
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.
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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. https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700
Slavery never went away. It's just been rebranded, repackaged and sanitized.
Not American, but isn't that what the 13th amendment did? Make slave labour legal for prisons?
and fugitive slave patrols became police
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.
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Offered to non violent misdemeanor offenders... First person has 15 year sentence...
Literally slavery, what a 3rd world country
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.
The only thing Capitalists love more than wage theft is slavery
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And how is that different from slavery?
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
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The constitution makes slavery legal for prisoners
Says so right there literally just read the 13th amendment
Had a whole civil war over it and still didn't get rid of slavery.
The amendment to abolish slavery enshrines it in the Constitution
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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.
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Normalize refusal to do business at places who use prison labor.
Unionizing is NEVER illegal. Source: The thousands upon thousands of people that have died over the years for your right to organize.
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America never ended slavery.
That is slavery.
Hopefully the decent folk in Alabama-- wherever they hide-- boycott the fuck outta those places.
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 (county), troopers (state), and marshals (federal). The individual cities and towns didn’t have their own independent police forces until after the civil war… Instead, the county sheriff would deputize people to enforce laws in the individual cities on the sheriff’s behalf. And those brand new city-level 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.
Slavery.
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.
Even more insane is prisoners (and their families) end up paying for their incarceration. When you consider that 40% of African American men are under some form of penal supervision, this goes a long way to explain why so many seem to be in a perpetual state of poverty.
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This is an all over problem but Alabama and Louisiana are so bad I avoid even driving through.
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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.
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