[nevaehtyler]

This is important.

[asgardreid-deactivated20180407]

It’s not a “loophole” it’s explicit within the text of the amendment

[asgardreid-deactivated20180407]

“Loophole” lmfao like it’s a fucking accident, like it wasn’t purposefully structured to reclaim and expand a source of free labor

[stele3]

We never outlawed slavery in America. We simply transferred ownership of slaves from individual landowners to the government and large corporations.

Other fun facts about prison labor corporations:

-Federal and state-run prisons usually pay their slaves minimum wage; some states, however, like Colorado, pay $2/hour.

-Private prisons pay $.17-.50/hour. The highest paying private prison is in Tennessee, which pays $.50/hour for “highly-skilled labor.”

-You think that hasn’t affected wages in the US? You think that hasn’t removed manufacturing jobs from the economy?

-Companies that contract with private prisons for their slave labor include: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores. Many, many products that say “Made in USA” were made in prison.

-Private prisons often have quotas with the states, wherein the states contractually guarantee that they will provide a certain number of prisoners to fill the beds of a private prison, and if they don’t then they owe the private prison millions of dollars. I’m not making this up. It happened in Colorado after they legalized weed.

-States have a financial incentive to lock up their citizens.

-All of the above corporations have a financial incentive to see citizens get locked up.

-This is why Jeff Sessions is going after weed. The prison industrial complex needs slaves.

-To the shock of absolutely no one, private prisons have even more disparate racial demographics than federal/state prisons.

-Where do you think they send undocumented immigrants who have been rounded up? That’s right, private prisons. That’s why so many of them are in the South. So they take immigrants who are earning some kind of comparable wage and paying income tax to the government, and put them in prison where the wages are absurdly depressed and the prison pays virtually nothing in taxes.

-Oh yeah: private prisons pay virtually nothing in taxes. Because they technically manage real estate (prison as housing), they get all sorts of tax breaks and subsidies.

Tl;dr the prison industrial complex removes jobs from the economy, depresses wages, cheats the tax system, and ENSLAVES PEOPLE, usually people of color.

Sources:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occupancy-quota-cca-crime

http://mfgtalkradio.com/s7-e15-manufacturing-jobs-lost-prison-slave-labor/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/private-prison-quotas_n_3953483.html?1379606057

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/13/289000532/why-for-profit-prisons-house-more-inmates-of-color

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/02/27/immi-f27.html

https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/wyden-introduces-bill-to-stop-private-prisons-from-exploiting-tax-incentives-for-profit

[strengthins0lidarity]

For reference, they’re referring to the clause that goes, “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.”

[somnulentia]

[the-absolute-best-gifs]

Surely you must know it was all for you. (Pride and Prejudice, 2005)

[heavyweightheart]

in addition to the fact that people just have different natural rhythms, a big reason why we can’t seem to go to bed as early as we “should” is that nighttime is, for many of us, our safest and most fulfilling time of day. we don’t have to work, we won’t be contacted by bosses or insurance companies or collection agencies or other suffocating life business… we’re likely only to be contacted by our friends, or by no one at all. night time is release; it’s ours. we can rest or recreate. we can do things we actually want to do. who would choose to cut that short?? just to usher in the next morning when our lives are not our own again? nighttime is precious and nothing could be more normal than the desire to embrace this

[closet-keys]

My brother was diagnosed with depression years before I was, and because of that he started therapy years before I did.

I still remember when I was a young teen and he was playing a Nirvana song and he stopped it at this one line: “I miss the comfort of being sad”

He told me that when you start to get better, there’s a part of you that misses being sad and that if you start feeling that way you have to be extra extra aware and careful because if you indulge the feeling you’ll go down a self-destructive spiral

And even though that was years and years ago, I think about it all the time. Especially when I’m reading discourse on the idea of getting so attached to mental illness as an identity that you don’t want to improve things because you feel safe in it and don’t know who you are without it

I always think of that line “I miss the comfort of being sad” and my brother’s warning

[sun-liightt]

[vangoghld]

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”

— Maya Angelou (via goodreadss)

[takeitaway-penny]

[thegoodvybe]

[dangdfeng]

[90377]

[blossomfully]

“I knew we were temporary,“ she said. “Sometimes people come into your life and all you can do is appreciate them while they’re there, and try not to get attached to the way they bring light into your life; and try not to miss them when they leave.”

— Sue Zhao // Nothing but Strawberries #7

[different-landscapes]

[ulco-deactivated20130820]

[pchcrew]

[babyanimalgifs]

Baby Chinchilla

[justthedesign]

[caliviibes]