The food you eat or brush you’re using may have been made by a worker earning less than a dollar an hour — not in the developing world, but in the invisible workforce inside America’s prisons. Share this if you oppose prison labor for profit.
Source: http://ow.ly/iwTlYWhen I was in prison I worked 3 shifts a day, 5 days a week, starting at 5 AM and ending at 8 PM. I was paid $5.25 a month. Pay for the inmates who facilitate UNICOR workers (by making their food, washing their laundry, etc,) is even lower than the wages cited in the above graphics. The prison industry is also a slave industry, and it isn’t just corporations who benefit. All the furniture you see in federal buildings, post offices, DMVs, etc, where do you think it comes from? Prison labor. I think a lot of people know about states that use prison labor for license plates, but fewer people know that the plaques on doors at city halls, and sometimes the doors themselves, come from prison labor. The incarcerated are a hyper-exploited class unto themselves, and almost no one seems to be helping them to organize.
93 cents is a little on the high side. In NYC’s Rikers Island, the largest prison in the world with 11,000 prisoners, raised their prisoners wage to 39 cents per hour during the Sandy recover.
Of the estimated 11,000 inmates, 92 to 95 percent of the Rikers population is black or Latino. Yet whites make up the majority (44%) of NYC’s population.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed (via itsnevertoolatte)
This is absolutely true, however I want to point out that having read this book, it is basically poverty porn and problematic as fuck. So while it makes some interesting points, be aware of that if this quote makes you want to pick up a copy.
(via lozintheory)
Aw fuck, that sucks ><
(via ceasesilence)
This is the way it felt when I took my first job after being laid off that paid FAR below what I was used to. It was like I was always in crisis mode, it was extraordinarily stressful.
(via abaldwin360)The Midwest Drought - From the Air (Taken with Instagram)
This week the Georgia State Legislature debated a bill in the House, that would make it necessary for some women to carry stillborn or dying fetuses until they ‘naturally’ go into labor. In arguing for this bill Representative Terry England described his empathy forpregnant cows and pigsin the same situation.
I have a question for Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and too many others: I have three daughters, two of them twins. If one of my twins had been stillborn would you have made me carry her to term, thereby endangering both the other twin and me? Or, would you have insisted that the state order a mandatory fetal extraction of the living twin fetus from my womb so that I could continue to carry the stillborn one to term and possibly die myself? My family is curious and since you believe my uterus is your public property, I am, too.
Mr. England, unlike the calves and pigs for which you expressed so much empathy, I am not a beast of burden.I am a woman and I have these human rights:
The right to life.
The right to privacy.
The right to freedom.
The right to bodily integrity.
The right to decide when and how I reproduce.great article.
The US began launching missiles at Iraq 9 years ago today.
Iran Wants War! ~ Look How Close They Put Their Country To Our Military Bases … #US #Iran
Yesterday, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released areport chronicling the political strategies of private prison companies “working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.” The report’s authors note that while the total number of people in prison increased less than 16 percent, the number of people held in private federal and state facilities increased by 120 and 33 percent, correspondingly. Government spending on corrections has soared since 1997 by 72 percent, up to $74 billion in 2007. And the private prison industry has raked in tremendous profits. Last year the two largest private prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group — made over $2.9 billion in revenue.
JPI claims the private industry hasn’t merely responded to the nation’s incarceration woes, it has actively sought to create the market conditions (ie. more prisoners) necessary to expand its business.
According to JPI, the private prison industry uses three strategies to influence public policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and networking. The three main companies have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates and over $6 million to state politicians. They have also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct lobbying efforts. CCA has spent over $900,000 on federal lobbying and GEO spent anywhere from $120,000 to $199,992 in Florida alone during a short three-month span this year. Meanwhile, “the relationship between government officials and private prison companies has been part of the fabric of the industry from the start,” notes the report. The cofounder of CCA himself used to be the chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party.
The impact that the private prison industry has had is hard to deny. In Arizona, 30 of the 36 legislators who co-sponsored the state’s controversial immigration law that would undoubtedly put more immigrants behind bars received campaign contributions from private prison lobbyists or companies. Private prison businesses been involved in lobbying efforts related to a bill in Florida that would require privatizing all of the prisons in South Florida and have been heavily involved in appropriations bills on the federal level.
Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI recommends that we “take a hard look at what the cost of this influence is, both to taxpayers and to the community as a whole, in terms of the policies being lobbied for and the outcomes for people put in private prisons.”
And this is exactly why prisons should not be private. Ever.
When you set up a system where profits depend on how many people are currently incarcerated, it’s nearly impossible for them to care about rehabilitation. The way they want things can never result in a better society. They want more people in jail, more people breaking the law, less due process, less possibility of release, less possibility of someone being innocent in court.
It’s a huge slap in the face of “innocent until proven guilty,” because at the end of the day, they’d rather throw someone in jail for a quick buck.
not only prisons, everything that supports or is essential needed in the society [hospitals, childcare, schools, etc.] should not under any circumstances be privatized ~ ever! they are all looking out for profit ~ and nothing else.
love.
from whitehouse.gov:
Feb. 5, 2011 “The two coaches for Sasha Obama’s basketball team couldn’t make it to one of her games, so the President and his then personal aide, Reggie Love, filled in as coaches for this game one Saturday. Here they along with Sasha’s teammates react during the game.” (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
I’m sorry, but it is not possible that we will ever have a more adorable president than we do now.
Komen REALLY Screwed Up!
It’s Time For Mass Resignations!
There I fixed it.
Love it.
Not to mention, Cuba is the only country in Latin America without undernourished children, despite the US trade embargo and despite the collapse of the USSR. Maybe its due their independence from industrial agricultural practices that ended with the USSR. With the collapse of the USSR, they were encouraged to grow their own food, even occupying land that wasn’t in use.
