End the Slavery Loophole in America
Legal slavery still exists in the USA. It can be easily fixed by spreading awareness and popular support to change the federal law. It is achievable, there is broad support. It is an easy sell with a little bit of education. We can solve this problem this very year.
I was taught that slavery was ended in 1865 in the United States. However, I learned recently that this isn’t true. In fact, there was a loophole created that allows for slavery for prisoners. This loophole is exploited, to this day, to enslave largely Black and minority populations in our overcrowded prisons.
13th Amendment: Section 1. 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.
This creates a perverse capitalist incentive for increased policing (often in Black communities), increased justice system biases, and private prisons. It is not a coincidence that prisons are overfilled in the US with Black citizens, while they are simultaneously exploited for slave labor.
Black Lives Matter, and we can truly make an impact by eliminating this loophole with a popular amendment. Every red state or blue state citizen I talk to who did not know about this loophole is in support of closing it. We have hundreds of years of education now to the point where we all agree that slavery is wrong. The solution is to talk to people on the ground 1 by 1, generating messaging, pitches, memes, videos, and phone calls to educate everyone about this moral legal loophole.
Congress proposed a bill in 2020 to amend the constitution to fix this problem, which we can get over the finish line if we increase education. People merely need to know that this exists. This is solvable soon once we have the grassroots momentum. New amendments happen frequently (17 in less than 200 years) with the most recent just a couple of decades ago, and many in the last 60 years. Amendments happen when nobody has any strong reasonable arguments to oppose them.
About $2 billion of slave labor is benefitting Americans, so there will be some financial resistance and lobbying against this, but that is also not a very large number compared to the total economy. It can be absorbed and the moral obligation to end slavery is large and agreed upon. Even those directly benefiting will be forced to admit this should be eliminated.
The only argument I have seen in support of the prison labor is that the prisoners enjoy contributing to society and saving a little bit of cash. But that is along the same kinds of immoral arguments for slavery, and a better outcome for the prisoner is not to have been unfairly incarcerated at all by the systemic incentives that caused imprisonment. Or at the very least they can have a voluntary fair wage.
California uses slave labor. Colorado used slave labor. New York does it. It is not just red states. Slaves farm tilapia, make hand sanitizer, manufacture LED bulbs, and many other things. Many things you unwittingly purchase come from prison slave labor. It’s abhorrent.
We can and must end this moral stain on our country, finally, once and for all. There must have been a compromise reason in 1865 to get the 13th amendment passed, but it is only inertia and ignorance that has kept the loophole there. And there is easy popular supermajority (maybe not 100% but supermajority once awareness is educated) who support the end slavery in the US.
In 2022, 4 states voted to abolish slavery including red Tennessee and Alabama. This is doable quickly, even this year.
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