So slavery. Let's just arrest and throw people in prison for bullshit reasons to get slaves.
Great.
/s
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
291 points (99.3% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
9752 readers
1112 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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.
Worlds still hasn't evolved past the 1960s
Progress happens, but it's a far slower process than most people tend to believe.
Because it's dragged down by conservatives and rich people who benefit off regressive policies.
Your statement is akin to "trickle down economics" where the elites control the fountain and gullible people think it's going to reach them up any day 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
Better dead than a slave any day.
Isn't that genocide? You think slavery conditions that are so bad people die is a good thing?
wtf are you smoking? I am speaking from my own personal opinion that I’d rather be dead than a slave any day. If someone else in the system wants to be a slave, that’s on them. But I would rather die than work for pennies or less of compensation just to line the pockets of some already wealthy corporation.
You were speaking about someone else's real death, actually, and saying "better off dead than a slave." It comes across callous.
If everyone lived by your recommendation, all employees would kill themselves because their lives aren't worth living as a slave. Do you really think all employees qualia is so worthless that it's better they kill themselves? They should be further abused by slavery by being denied what joy they can squeeze from it? Don't you think this just helps the people who want to harm us and genocide us?
Don't you find a joy in spitefully opposing capitalists and slavers? Every time you enjoy life without paying a penny for it, you thwart capitalism. Every time you enjoy life outside of capitalist bullshit, you break the trance and lies it's trying to market to us.
Autonomy and power work like roots in a rock. Let the little tiny parts work through and the bigger ones will come too to break it apart. Seize the little powers you can and then work on bigger ones. Use your rights.
I was talking about one single person, myself. I literally posed it as myself being in this situation. You are obviously literate enough to write that whole diatribe that I’m not going to waste my time reading, but you are too stupid to notice that I wasn’t talking about anyone but myself. Get fucked dude lmfao
Gee, it's almost like what you said was really callous and you failed to make your meaning clear as I am not the only one to take issue with it. And now that it's been made clear how fucked up your statement was (since you aren't a slave and since you're alive, have never been a slave), you are refusing to participate. Fine, I accept that you quit and were wrong in how you communicated at minimum.
You say that as an innocent person right? What if you committed a crime and you know you're guilty of it? Would you not just do your time because your own conscience motivates you to do so?
Im going to answer in order- 1. No I say this as someone who never got caught for my shit (not saying it to seem hard or cool, just answering your question) and since everything that I’ve done has no negative impact on others- 2. I know what crimes I’ve committed, and since they never harmed anyone, regardless of how I know I’m guilty of doing them- 3. My conscience would say something to the effect of, “this is absolute bullshit, and I would rather die than become a slave over some bullshit. What I did may not have been even close to worthy of a death sentence, from the sounds of how those who actually do work are treated, it’s likely to be a death sentence regardless (70% working in unsafe conditions, I know how that shit ends). So I might as well die knowing that I’m not being forced into some bullshit that removes all dignity from my existence.”
You're so smart! You solved slavery!
Ok… 👍
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.
You've never been in jail for more than 3 days if you think you can sleep through a multiple year prison sentence.
Once your sleep debt is full your body will not allow you to sleep more without chemicals and they don't exactly provide sleeping aids to you in prison.
No, I haven’t. Like I said in my other reply to you, I was never caught for my shit. I understand sleep debt being full is a thing, but you don’t understand my ability to sleep for lengthy periods. And like I said in my original post, I can find endless ways to entertain myself. Would it be an ideal situation? Obviously far from it, but you work with what you’ve got.
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?
individuals cannot own the slaves but corporations can rent them.
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.
Easily. Less whips, more guns.
There are still whips.
They were routinely whipped for not meeting quotas while doing brutal and often deadly work.
Not that youtube is much better... But here's a non-xitter link:
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.
Colorado passed a state constitutional amendment to ban this practice 6 years ago and it's been tied up in lawsuits ever since
It's a GOOD THING they didn't vote for the Black Rocket Scientist for Governor!
At least they aren't Uighurs. (/s)