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This was a result of election night that is underreported, but hugely telling and frustrating.
All this noise about California being liberal, progressive, and the resistance to Trump. But they kept slavery in prison legal. And I think the people who are predicting prison “labor” will be used to replace migrant labor if mass deportation does happen have it right. And California had a chance to make that impossible and decided not to.
Wasn’t the ballot initiative also deliberately confusing? I remember seeing something about it and reading it myself and going “what the fuck is the answer for no slavery?”
No, it wasn’t. It had no argument against, no supporters against, and the text was extremely simple.
Yes/No Statement
A YES vote on this measure means: Involuntary servitude would not be allowed as punishment for crime. State prisons would not be allowed to discipline people in prison who refuse to work.
A NO vote on this measure means: Involuntary servitude would continue to be allowed as punishment for crime.
Although I can’t seem to find if this text is on the ballot to explain it
This is why we need a “New California Republic”, with rangers to protect the population, just don’t listen those anti-mutties bigots…
They also still have the death penalty.
And all because 1950s McCarthyism incepted America with a seed that may eventually destroy it long after the USSR’s dissolution
I’d zoom out, Capitalism has a growth phase and decay phase, we are at the tail-end of the decay phase and need to jump to Socialism. Marx’s analysis makes this more clear, I wrote an introductory Marxist reading list if you want to check it out.
The only thing that pissed me off more than Trump winning, was seeing how many good Props failed, and bad ones passed.
I’m glad we made LGBT marriage part of our constitution, but jesus christ the voting base here is NIMBYs, NeoLibs, and Conservatives.
My guess is that all those people who didn’t show up to vote dem weren’t around to vote for the other dem items.
Can you expand on that? Good news in American politics would be a nice change.
Exactly right
Always enjoy your posts, ozma.
Thank you. I try.
California is the USA in a bottle. You got progressive cities, conservative suburbs, rural areas and industrial hotspots, poor folks as well as the obscenely rich. Ronald Reagan was Governor in California for 8 years before becoming the blueprint of conservative candidates for the presidency.
This. Larger population than all of Canada = smorgasbord of different ideologies and classes.
“Scratch a liberal, and a fascist bleeds.” Makes you question if Californians really care for the marginalized.
I mean given what I’ve seen of their treatment of the homeless it’s very obvious many if them don’t.
Land of the
free
Land of the free is misspelled. It’s land of the three. Trump, Leon, RFK.
Land of the fee,
Home of the slave.
I thought the bear in their logo had two heads
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter
I bet the mutated Canada Geese look the same, they couldn’t get any fiercer
Soon
The bear in the flag was over-hunted and had its habitat destroyed so it’s no longer found in California. It’s a great metaphor.
Same here, the only bears still in Toronto are all on Church Street
That comes after 2077
Why that bear don’t have 2 heads?
Because it isn’t 2189 yet.
Also, please use the spoiler tag.
The urge to re-install New Vegas grows…
Crazy that you uninstalled it in the first place tbh
If I don’t, I can’t remod it fresh and new after seeing all of the wonderful mods coming out all the time these days. Plus, I’d never play anything else!
The American prison system is designed to make money. Prisons get paid based on how many people they house. Making sure people don’t wind up in prison is literally the last thing the warden wants to do. Anybody thinking America is gonna change it’s ways out of the goodness of its heart is fucking delusional.
It’s worth noting that California did abolish private prisons a while ago.
I watched a video of a random streamer who ranted a bit about the elections. He had some great points, and he was basically saying what most people are thinking. He talked about voting and the people that refused to vote. He then added: how can you become president as a criminal but you are not able to vote as a criminal. And then continues with, he agrees that criminals shouldn’t be able to vote, because they are criminals with bad intentions. Fucker, the system is designed that most people ARE criminals. You can go to jail because a copper doesn’t like your face.
Literally every single person is one police encounter away from being a criminal, unless you’re rich that is.
Oh it’s worse than that. California voted to make more homeless people, expand the three strikes system by turning some misdemeanors into felonies, and voted itself a slave state to take advantage of all that new prison population.
All that’s left is to privatize the pipeline.
But it’s okay, they removed the defunct ban on same sex marriage so they’re still progressive! Yay!
One person was arguing that they shouldn’t be able to refuse to do “chores” in prison, but the things they do there are things like making license plates, furniture, and fighting wildfires. A bit far from mopping up and taking out the garbage.
Is that person wrong though? Would they be able to refuse “chores”?
Edit: This is not a rhetorical question. I want to know if they are factually correct or not.
They’re in prison. Forcing them to do anything is wrong. We’ve already taken their freedom. Using them as labor is morally wrong. Especially when you look at the punishments like solitary.
I’d argue that simple chores can be used to help inmates get used to structured work as part of a reintegration effort. Of course that only makes sense if reintegration is the main goal of the prison system, which isn’t the case in the United States.
In any way, if inmates were to do labor, they’d have to be subject to labor law including worker protections and minimum wage provisions. That would probably require the United States to abolish slavery first, which isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
If it’s not against their will. Sure.
A guy I knew once that I definitely wouldn’t call a friend, used to say, “the only way you can change a man is if he’s in diapers.”
And in a lot of different aspects that has resonated with me, in this case, if you’re forcing a person to do labor in order to make that a better functioning member of society… It’s not going to work. They may just do the work they are forced to do without changing at all. Or they just cause trouble. OR, you hire prisoners to do the job that they need and then substitute labor that they can’t hire within. But the logic or forcing someone into submission just will never work, that’s definitely a reason why the recidivation is high.
Man…. The disconnect here
Prisons are almost entirely run by prisoners. There are no “labor laws”
Prisons are almost entirely run by prisoners. There are no “labor laws”
That’s what they’re saying.
If prisoners are to do manual labor, labor laws should apply, but that would require the USA to abolish slavery.
Nonsense. Of course abolishing prison slavery would be a good thing. But the alternative, should such involuntary servitude remain, would be to impose humane regulations on such labor.
A lot of these folks in prison were raised “free range” or completely feral and thus were never taught even the most basic elements of home care and cleaning. Knowing how and when to do those “chores” is essential should any of them want to reintegrate into society as any sort of a functioning person. Like the military will show recruits basic hygiene because some of these recruits were never taught it.
Oh wow, we are doing these savages a service! Now, go put out that wildfire, unclean one /s
Jesus, this sounds like Europeans landing at whatever they colonized centuries ago
That was not a rhetorical question. I am asking if that argument is or is not factually correct.
They can’t refuse any job short of firefighting. They will be punished for doing so. Reports from former inmates indicate punishments range from solitary to beatings.
Let me rephrase: would the proposition, if it had passed, prohibited prisons from requiring prisoners to perform domestic duties within the prison?
See that’s still too vague. Cleaning the bathroom is a domestic duty and yet is something a janitor does in this context. I would say that’s probably the dividing line, if it’s something you’d pay someone to do then they would be banned from requiring it.
I guess I’ll put my personal opinion on the record here. I think that penal labour is generally an exploitative industry, if you want to call it that. And I do think that prisoners who perform work should be paid for that work. At the same time, I’m also sensitive to the fact that it costs a great deal of money to pay for room and board and security for prisoners, and that it’s also fair that their labour be used to offset some of the cost of their own imprisonment rather than laying the burden entirely on the public purse.
So while I don’t support solitary confinement as a punishment (for anything), I do think that prisoners should have to at a minimum cook and clean for themselves. If they don’t want to cook, then nobody else should have to do it; they just won’t have dinner that night if they don’t cook and serve it themselves. If nobody wants to wash the dishes, then it’s not the administration’s problem if there aren’t any clean plates to use for the next meal. If nobody wants to clean the shower, then it’s not the administration’s problem if grime starts to build up on it. The State should not force the prisoners to work, but it also shouldn’t be the State’s responsibility to provide janitors or cooks to look after them.
Which means I agree that “extra” work beyond what’s necessary to maintain the basic needs of the prisoners should be paid and optional. “Optional” meaning there’s no punishment if you choose not to do it, but if you don’t, you won’t have money to pay for services like postage stamps, extra phone calls, or the prison commissary. Even if prisoners are only paid half of minimum wage, that’s still an improvement, because it recognises that their labour has value and this money can also be used to pay for fines and restitution. A pretty common problem among the newly-released is that they are saddled with an obscene amount of debt because the State makes them pay court costs, room and board, fines, parole monitoring fees, and restitution but only pays them fifty cents an hour for their work, meaning they leave prison thousands of dollars in debt with the threat of parole revocation if they can’t pay. That just drives people to resort to crime in order to find the money.
