If you live in Tennessee, slavery (underpaid coerced prison labor) is on the ballot. Early voting has already started! Vote yes on amendment 3!

It seems that what this addition says is that convicts will be allowed to have jobs only if they want, but they will not be forced. This seems to be a step in the right direction.

Walmart pulls Milwaukee Tool gloves allegedly made by Chinese prisoners

almart has removed Milwaukee Tool work gloves allegedly made with forced prison labor from the retailer’s third-party platform, blocked future sales and said it does not sell the implicated gloves in its stores or on its website.

by Zhen Wang / Wisconsin Watch, Wisconsin Watch July 17, 2023 Click here to read highlights from the story Walmart has removed Milwaukee Tool work gloves allegedly made with forced prison labor from the retailer’s third-party platform, blocked future sales and said it does not sell the implicated gloves in its stores or on its website.   The Congressional-Executive Commission on China is…

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Dragging invisible chains.

Prisoners sue Alabama state government for 'modern-day slavery'

[T]he infamous Diable (Devil’s Island) [...]. Seventy thousand convicts were sent to French Guiana between 1852 and 1938. [...] Alongside deportation of political prisoners [...], a [...] convict population [...] was sent to the bagne (common parlance for the penal colony) [...] as a utopian colonial project [...] via the contribution convict labour would make towards colonial development in French Guaina. However, [...] French Guiana [...] was predominantly used as a depository for the unwanted citizens of France and its colonies. The last remaining French and North African convicts were repatriated in 1953, whereas the last Vietnamese prisoners were not given passage home until 1954 [...].

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[T]he same form of built environment and carceral technology [...] structures found on Con Dao [French prison in Vietnam] and [French prison in Guiana] [were] built at almost the same time [...] to house the same convict populations (Vietnamese implicated in anticolonial struggles) [...].On Con Dao the preservation of the [...] cages complete with mannequins emphasizes the use of such technologies of confinement and torture within a relatively recent history. Their presentation is also quite deliberately juxtaposed with the American camp located about a kilometre down the road [...], making the point that similar technologies of punishment were employed by the different occupations. Old world colonialism is thus displaced by new world imperialism. Both rely on the prison island and its cellblocks. [...]

The carceral continuities [...] throughout France’s penal colonies are supplemented by legal exceptionalism which works to redefine colonial subjects within shifting political contexts. [...]

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Many of the Indochinois convicts transported to the forest camps of French Guiana in 1931, including the Bagne des annamites, had originally been classed as political prisoners. The transfer was intended in part [...] to remove a number of anticolonial actors from Indochina. [...]

As political deportees sent to French Guiana were usually exempt from labour according to the political decree of 1850, this status had to be revoked to ensure the maximum labour force possible.

Consequently, those arrested on suspicion of specific acts of violence or property damage were reclassed as common criminals. Described by Dedebant and Frémaux (2012, 7) as “little arrangements between governors,” this was not simply a sleight of hand but written into legal codes. [...]

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[M]any of the Vietnamese sent to French Guiana had to wait until the 1960s to be repatriated. [...] After their sentences were completed, convicts were not simply repatriated to France or other colonies. A system of “doublage” intended to shore up colonial development meant they had to serve the same length of their sentence again on the colony. For those condemned to eight years or more, this became life. Opportunities for sustainable livelihood were limited in a territory possessing swathes of free convict labour. Worn out and sick from their time in the bagne, most of these men were unfit to work and relied on charity to survive. [...]

[T]he last living convict [of the Guiana penal colony] [...] died in Algeria in 2007 after being repatriated to Annaba. In an interview given in 2005, he claims that every night he dreams he is back in Cayenne: “when I think about it, I get vertigo, I spent my life there” [...].

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Text by: Sophie Fuggle. "From Green Hell to Grey Heritage: Ecologies of Colour in the Penal Colony". Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies Volume 24, Issue 6. 2022. Published online 8 April 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

Li Shimin must be having the worst emotional whiplash ever like god damn

(via Cartoon: Forced labor funnies)

DESPERATELY want to write a breakdown of the Canon Inquisitorius—its members, what we know about it, some reasonable extrapolations about how things like training and recruitment work—but nobody cares and I don’t want to actually spend time researching, so instead I ponder the legal status of the inquisitors when I should be cleaning my room

Workplace at a factory. Remains from previous workers.

The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps that operated in the Soviet Union from the 1930s until the 1950s. The system was initially established to imprison and punish political opponents of the Soviet government, but it was expanded to include common criminals and others deemed to be enemies of the state. The conditions in the Gulag camps were notoriously harsh. Prisoners were forced to work long hours in extreme weather conditions, with inadequate food and medical care. Many prisoners died from malnutrition, disease, or exhaustion, and others were executed for various offenses. Watch Full Video and subscribe channel

you ever talk to someone and you just know they would be a resident of markarth

Reduced to a slave by the law.

seeing news that the guy who most famously foresaw and profited from the 2008 financial collapse has now put over half of his investment firm’s holdings in prison stocks has added a new, higher pitched klaxon to the constant litany of GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE alarms playing in the back of my head

incarcerated people are shutting down Alabama prisons and asking for your solidarity

Alabama prisons are the deadliest and most crowded prisons in the US. Their violence extends to gas chamber executions and illegal organ harvesting. The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is currently facing two federal lawsuits: one for enslaving Black detainees by denying them parole and leasing out their forced labor and another for targeting strike organizers. ADOC rakes in more than $450 million annually in profits from forced labor, and that's not including the profits incarcerated people generate for private corporations such as McDonald's and Raytheon. In response to these abuses, and in particular the horrific beating of six handcuffed detainees by Lt. Edmonds at Donaldson Prison on February 22nd, the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) has organized a minimum 90-day statewide prison shutdown/work stoppage. They are calling on supporters outside the prison walls to show solidarity. If you're located in or around Alabama, show up to the protest at St. Clair Prison in Springville, AL on Saturday March 2nd. For rideshare coordination contact the Tennessee Student Solidarity Network on IG or by email: [email protected] "Outside support for us starts at the prisons. That's where we need people. Come to one of the protests, show your face, and tell us that you support us. That's how we know that you support us. Outside support is the first step." - FAM

Everyone in the US, call Donaldson Prison at (205) 436-3681 and ask them to fire Lt. Edmonds for his brutal violence against incarcerated people.

Debate club is the place where people express their most unethical ideas and are forced to reconsider, where you learn how to argue civilly and listen to other people, and where you learn that Victoria’s Secret uses forced labor of prisoners

This is what the secret of Vectoria’s Secret is

I know the secret

I shall spread it