Slavery ended?
Literally the 13th amendment:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Uh huh…
The last slave as in chattel slave, a person who was owned by another, was freed in the 1940s. Passing a law alone does not end a practice. Hell even outside of prisons we have undocumented immigrants who often have no other choice but to allow themselves to be exploited for their labor or starve. We have immigrant children working in Tyson and Purdue chicken factories not only being paid less than minimum wage but also being severely injured.
“We are all given bathroom breaks at the same time and there are hundreds of us waiting to use them. There are only seven bathrooms,” she said. “They [Tyson] don’t care about the worker. They don’t care if we get sick.”
This was during covid at a Tyson chicken factory primarily staffed by migrants
The plight of Central American migrants in the meat industry was drawn into sharp focus last year when the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agency (Ice) carried out its largest raid in years on four poultry facilities in Mississippi. They arrested 680 undocumented workers but none of the companies, which included the multibillion dollar Koch Foods, faced any charges over employment practices.
“According to a report compiled by Eric Ruark, the director of research at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (Fair), as of 2006, only 27% of workers hired by agribusinesses are American citizens, 21% are green card holders, around 1% are part of the guest worker program … and a whopping 51% are unauthorized immigrants”.
And I cannot stress enough
“When workers arrived, they encountered a situation that a federal judge later called ‘wretched and loathsome’. They were packed in small houses with about twenty other people. Although it was the middle of winter, the houses had no heat, furniture, or blankets. One worker said that his house had no water, so he flushed the toilet with melted snow. They slept on the floor, where cockroaches crawled over them. At dawn, they rode to the plant in a dilapidated van whose seating consisted of wooden planks resting on cinder blocks. Exhaust fumes seeped in through holes in the floor” (Grabell).
Inside of that same plant over the course of seven years
since 2010, more than seven hundred and fifty processing workers have suffered amputations”
Case Farms has built its business by recruiting some of the world’s most vulnerable immigrants, who endure harsh and at times illegal conditions that few Americans would put up with”. And since many of the workers are undocumented, “the company has used their immigration status to get rid of vocal workers, avoid paying for injuries, and quash dissent”.
they were paid “around $2.25 for every thousand chickens
One-third of the Perdue plant’s overnight cleaning crew was made up of children, workers told The Times.
These are not just bad eggs. Our food industry is built on human blood
Even driving by some Tyson chicken factories with a camera will have a security car on your ass immediately asking you to delete the footage. I am not joking
That’s still slavery and involuntary servitude. And all that is needed for greedy, sick, psychotic monkeys to criminalize every little thing. Or selectively enforce criminalization to gain themselves a slave workforce. As they have done.
As others have pointed out, slavery is still used as a punishment for prisoners in most states. The south in particular used/uses it to maintain slavery of african americans through selective enforcement of laws. Human trafficing is still a thing in the US even if it isn’t legal. And the way our economy works can be likened to a form of wage slavery where people often dont have a choice but to work for a specific employer. Especially if they’re undocumented. Apple was caught using the H1B visa program as a means of keeping immigrant employees effectively trapped there. The justice department fined them 25 million dollars. A slap on the wrist for exploiting vulnerable people.
But there already is slavery in US. look into unpaid prison labor
Slavery already exists in the US in various forms, and in greater numbers than prior to the Civil War, but no I would not be surprised if the right wingers legalize slavery again, or if Gilead/Texas tries first.
Either way fuck the Confederate wannabes, we should smash them now so we don’t have to do it yet again later, which is what Grant failed to do during the Reconstruction era.
Sherman was right!
Sherman was a psychopathic mass murderer. Look up his slaughter of American Indians. He was a terrible person who was pointed at even worse people for once and set loose. Don’t idealize him.
What is your definition of slavery that would mean there is more slavery now than before the civil war?
Well there’s absolutely a lot of real and actual slavery across the country, from domestic servants who are being held against their will, to sex slaves, and of course the numbers scale up with our population. So our population during the civil war was 31+ million, with close to 4 million of that being slaves, now we have 331+ million people, if you combine the instances of domestic and indentured servitude with sexual slavery, then add in those wrongfully in the prison system it scales to being much more than the sub 4 million in slavery during the civil war.
I know a lot of people would want to say “but the prison system is prisoners who committed crimes” but a lot of people are in prison because of failed justice, or on poverty based offenses, some of which compile with other petty offenses. Now also another caveat is that prison work isn’t usually compulsory, it’s normally voluntary, but one can argue that it’s the prison that has the leverage over these people volunteering or not.
Overall these statistics aren’t easy to calculate because modern day slavers want to hide and obfuscate their crimes, but it’s there, it exists, and it exists in places you may not expect, like the next time you’re sitting in a park in Manhattan consider the fact that one of the many domestic workers present may in fact be enslaved against their will, and this could be said in LA, Miami, Atlanta, anywhere in the US.
If you aren’t accounting for the change in population and you’re just comparing the estimated number of slaves, then you are definitely correct. However, I think its probably better to measure what percentage of the population is made up of slaves.
I agree, but that’s also what I’m trying to say is that the natural scale of the population increase will still scale out to be a higher slavery total than back then, but that’s total numbers, the percentages would be vastly different, like during the civil war era slaves were about 9.6% of the population of the US, but because of slavery not being tracked so closely now we couldn’t get an accurate total for slavery in the modern era, and there would be nitpicking about what counts as slavery and what does not.
Always loved this logic.
There’s more people enslaved today than there ever has been in the history of the world
No no, let’s not think about it that way -
The percentage of people that are slaves is roughly the same or decreasing 🥰🥰🥰
Obviously there are going to be more total enslaved people now, it scales with the population. The problem with looking at it that way is that it doesn’t actually tell you if the situation is improving. All it tells you is that there are way more people now. That’s why you look at a percentage. That will tell you how bad the problem was, how much better its gotten, and how much better it needs to get.
I’m not trying to argue that everything is ok because a smaller percentage of people are enslaved now. A percentage is simply the more useful method of measuring how common slavery is and comparing it to different times.
As several people in this thread have pointed out, some forms of slavery do exist in the US. For example, prison labor, sex trafficking, and other forms of coerced labor.
However we do not have chattel slavery, where you can actively buy and sell other humans as property. I would be extremely surprised if that ever made a comeback.
I’m not at all convinced this is true. My kids - one of their friend’s families had a live in cook and nanny servant who they thought was likely a slave, and one of my friends said when she told her friend in passing she needed household help, the friend told her she could get her someone, that she could buy a person.
I think it’s more underground but no way is it gone, not even here. I wish I could believe it was gone.
What do you think allowed for it in the past?
Worse societies and tradition.
Our society is inherently better? What about it? What about it that prevents slavery?
You didn’t ask what prevents chattel slavery now. That would be the laws passed by victorious abolitionists. You asked why it happened in the past. It happened in the past because it had always existed and nobody had put a stop to it yet.
It’s still happens, in the world.
Are you trying to be difficult? Your original post was about the US. Every reply you make you change the context.
Well their username checks out.
Obviously. But it ain’t legal, mostly.
Slavery never went away.
There are lots of legal slaves in the US. They’re just in prisons so out of sight, out of mind. It’s constitutionally legal.
When the government ran most prisons many would pay them a couple of dollars an hour or something to make it seem more like work. Now many for profit prisons either pay pennies an hour or nothing at all, and many require you to work either directly or by making the meals low in nutrition or completely inedible so they have to buy their real food. And this isn’t like working by cleaning or laundry or whatever, this is making products that the prisons sell. Much of the stuff labeled “Made in America” is made by slaves.
There are also lots of illegal slaves hidden away. Mostly immigrants who couldn’t afford the thousands of dollars to apply for legal status before their visas ran out or who were carried across the border as babies and had to hide it their whole lives or other similar circumstances.
Yes because modern slavery is much more effective. Make people take over debt and then pay them the minimum, barely enough to survive, and they will do whatever you tell them to do. You don’t need guard or weapon although a little bit of propaganda and no union, because union are communism and communism bad m’kay.
All forms of slavery
Then it never stopped, question is irrelevant.
Is working 2 full time jobs just to be able to afford rent and utilities considered slavery?
No, you are not a slave. 🙄
Let’s see. What are the alternatives?
…not having to work 2 full time jobs just to be able to afford rent and utilities? 🤨
I mean, are you free to live a happy healthy life if you chose to leave your current job(s)? Is there a reasonably achievable and accessible pathway to a higher salary job?
(Disclaimer: I’m mostly going to be talking about the U.S. here.)
I’m not even quite sure what you’re getting at here but a higher minimum wage is the obvious answer.
I also think you’re taking too narrow a view by thinking just about “jobs.” Consider the option of a UBI for instance.
There’s also “abolish the profit motive” and “to each according to need,” of course. But you did say “reasonably achievable and accessible”, which probably excludes this option for the moment.
But I still don’t feel like I’m answering quite the question you’re asking. Seems like your questions are aimed more at the reader personally rather than at “society”. So just answering literally what you asked, no I’m not free to live a happy healthy life if I choose to leave my current job (unless I were to get another job, of course.)
And I personally have a high-paying job and have the luxury of being picky about my working conditions beyond just whether I get enough money out of it to be able to eat and keep a roof over my head, so I’m not personally in need of a higher paying job. But that’s not the norm (in the U.S.) Not everyone can just get a higher-paying job. (In fact, it’s more the exception than the rule, I’d say.) And I’m very much in support of measures to improve conditions for most people.
Maybe what you’re getting at is that “if you can switch jobs, then it’s not slavery.” In which case we’re having a pointless argument of definition as to what qualifies as “slavery” and what doesn’t. What matters to me is that the current state of the U.S. is unacceptable. Using the term “slavery” to refer to it makes an impact rhetorically. Emma Goldman is known for having used the term “wage slave” in the 1920s.
(It honsestly gives me pause considering what victims of chattel slavery would think of me using the term “slavery” to refer to my high-paying desk job. I tend to use the term “gilded cage” instead.)
Whether having to work two jobs to afford food and rent qualifies as “slavery” or not, employment is not (often) voluntary, it enriches someone else much more than it enriches the employee, and it maintains societal inequality. It fulfills many of the same purposes that chattel slavery did/does for the powerful.
Sorry if you misunderstand. I’m not arguing the con I am only hoping to further the discussion because it is easy for people to brush off the idea of wage slavery and just say, “well you can quit your job so you’re not a slave” or “you can find a better one.”
I didn’t mean to challenge you but I appreciate your response.
Wage slavery exists because of the illusion of freedom. Its like you’re driving on an endless bridge with no gaurd rails. When you ask to stop because you’re dozing off you’re told you are free to drive off the edge anytime you want.
I want to say yes, but aren’t some (all?) prisons slavery?
Yes? What kind of stupid question is this? I’d take to the streets.
Then take to the streets. Slavery is legal in prisons.
I have been. What have you been doing about it?
At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Cthulhu himself rose from Lake Michigan and started a slow trek south, gathering followers and accepting sacrifices as he goes.
You can see the bottom of lake Michigan on a clear day.
Superior he could hide in. That one is deep, though we still have nothing on lake Balakai
Apparently this didn’t hit your news feed over the last few days.
Slavery has been legal in the United States since 1789.
Chattle slavery? Certainly but slavery never left, it just changed
Prison.
