Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands
🗞️The goods these prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Coca-Cola and Riceland rice. They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods. And some goods are exported, including to countries that have had products blocked from entering the U.S. for using forced or prison labor.
🗞️Many of the companies buying directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of such labor. But it’s completely legal, dating back largely to the need for labor to help rebuild the South’s shattered economy after the Civil War. Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned – except as punishment for a crime.
🗞️“I was in a field with a hoe in my hand with maybe like a hundred other women. We were standing in a line very closely together, and we had to raise our hoes up at the exact same time and count ‘One, two, three, chop!’” said Faye Jacobs, who worked on prison farms in Arkansas.
🗞️Jacobs, who was released in 2018 after more than 26 years, said the only pay she received was two rolls of toilet paper a week, toothpaste and a few menstrual pads each month.
🗞️Former Angola prisoner, Curtis Davis, talks about his time at the Louisiana State Penitentiary during a 2021 interview near a former antebellum slave plantation near Angola, La. The Myrtles, as the antebellum home is known, sits just 20 miles away from where men toil in the fields of Angola.
🗞️“Slavery has not been abolished,” said Davis, who spent more than 25 years at the penitentiary and is now fighting to change state laws that allow for forced labor in prisons. “It is still operating in present tense. Nothing has changed.”
📌WARNING: If you still don't think we are EXACTLY where Germany was in the early-1930s, you need to immediately read one of these history books the fascist GOP is so eagerly trying to ban ...
📌The parallels are absolutely chilling, and obvious.
📌And with the orange traitor's Hitler-esque vermin speech, these fascists are no longer trying to hide it.
📌They are appealing to the 40% of America who actually find authoritarianism appealing.
You read that right.
📌Our media and our "justice" system continue to fail us mightily in this country.
📌They are acting as if we should not believe what is right in front of our eyes, and what is going into our ears.
📌They are essentially gaslighting us. And, man, is THAT dangerous.
📌A few words about the duplicitous phony, and lifetime political loser and grifter, Steve Schmidt.
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📌Lately, Schmidt has been hearing those voices in that empty, round planet that sits atop his neck.
📌Schmidt knows better than I do that those voices always lead to trouble and the certain demise of whatever political poison he's out there pushing.
📌Problem is, he just can't stop himself. He's addicted to the thrill of believing he's smarter than everybody else in the room, and has the answers to the questions nobody is asking.
📌You need to understand — I mean REALLY understand — what is going on in Wisconsin right now:
In April, we elected Janet Protasiewicz (pictured) to the Supreme Court by 11 points. This was a crushing landslide in an otherwise close swing state.
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📌One of the reasons she won so handily, is because the vast majority of this state is tired of our gerrymandered government, and want FAIR MAPS to FINALLY be drawn.
📌Protasiewicz’s win gave the Liberals a long-sought 4-3 advantage in the Court ...
📌... and the expectation that we will get these fair maps.
📌Despite the fact Democrats outvote Republicans by approximately 53%-47% in this state, Republicans hold close to 70% of elected offices.
📌On this day 59 years ago, these three young men disappeared near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. They were Freedom Summer civil rights workers
📌They weren't found until August 4, when the FBI exhumed all three bodies below an earthen dam on a local farm.
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📌Throughout the fall of 1964, the FBI continued investigating the case. State and local law enforcement DID NOT PURSUE IT, claiming insufficient evidence.
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📌Truth is, many in Mississippi law enforcement were with either Ku Klux Klan members or knew somebody who was.
📌Over the course of the summer of 1964, members of the Klan burned 20 black Mississippi churches, and staged 61 cross burnings in the state.
📌I was tempted to spike the ball on this Garland news, but deleted it. Yes, I think he has done an appalling job dealing with the attempted coup and attack on America.
📌What most concerns me, though, is this notion that we should not criticize people in our own party.
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📌There is a real danger in not forcing our representatives in power to account for themselves -- no matter who they work for, or were appointed by.
📌NOBODY deserves a blank check.
📌While there have always been ardent partisans, this is a fairly new phenomena.
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📌I reckon this was spurred by the election of the racist traitor, Trump, which is completely understandable.
📌It seems like there has been a misguided notion that if we criticize anybody on our "team" we were criticizing the entire team in general.