“Ultimamente, ando a sufocar a dor
Deixando à beira de aparecer à
Flor da pele adiadas confissões
gaguejá-las-ei
todas às prestações
Fujo de muros
E espero não ter de pagar,
o resto das prestações em juros
Como eu queria ser mais uma flor
No teu jardim, ai quem me dera mim
Mas eu só sou uma pedra perdida
Que perdes no passo e lentamente me desfaço
Em areia...
Feito uma mosca em teia de aranha que
presa, descansa
aceita, e dança num
Vai vem,
Vai vem,
Vai vem,
Vai vem,
Vai, vem,
Vai, vem,
Vai, vem
Vem.”
Once slavery was abolished in 1865, manufacturers scrambled to find other sources of cheap labor—and because the 13th amendment banned slavery (except as punishment for crimes), they didn’t have to look too far. Prisons and big businesses have now been exploiting this loophole in the 13th amendment for over a century.
“Insourcing,” as prison labor is often called, is an even cheaper alternative to outsourcing. Instead of sending labor over to China or Bangladesh, manufacturers have chosen to forcibly employ the 2.4 million incarcerated people in the United States. Chances are high that if a product you’re holding says it is “American Made,” it was made in an American prison.
On average, prisoners work 8 hours a day, but they have no union representation and make between .23 and $1.15 per hour, over 6 times less than federal minimum wage. These low wages combined with increasing communication and commissary costs mean that inmates are often released from correctional facilities with more debt than they had on their arrival. Meanwhile, big businesses receive tax credits for employing these inmates in excess of millions of dollars a year.
While almost every business in America uses some form of prison labor to produce their goods, here are just a few of the companies who are helping prisoners pay off their debt to society, so to speak.
Whole Foods. The costly organic supermarket often nicknamed “Whole Paycheck” purchases artisan cheese and fish prepared by inmates who work for private companies. The inmates are paid .74 cents a day to raise tilapia that is subsequently sold for $11.99 a pound at the fashionable grocery store.
McDonald’s. The world’s most successful fast food franchise purchases a plethora of goods manufactured in prisons, including plastic cutlery, containers, and uniforms. The inmates who sew McDonald’s uniforms make even less money by the hour than the people who wear them.
Wal-Mart. Although their company policy clearly states that “forced or prison labor will not be tolerated by Wal-Mart”, basically every item in their store has been supplied by third-party prison labor factories. Wal-Mart purchases its produce from prison farms where laborers are often subjected to long, arduous hours in the blazing heat without adequate sunscreen, water, or food.
Victoria’s Secret. Female inmates in South Carolina sew undergarments and casual-wear for the pricey lingerie company. In the late 1990’s, 2 prisoners were placed in solitary confinement for telling journalists that they were hired to replace “Made in Honduras” garment tags with “Made in U.S.A.” tags. Victoria’s Secret has declined to comment.
Aramark. This company, which also provides food to colleges, public schools and hospitals, has a monopoly on foodservice in about 600 prisons in the U.S. Despite this, Aramark has a history of poor foodservice, including a massive food shortage thatcaused a prison riot in Kentucky in 2009.
AT&T. In 1993, the massive phone company laid off thousands of telephone operators—all union members—in order to increase their profits. Even though AT&T’s company policy regarding prison labor reads eerily like Wal-Mart’s, they have consistently used inmates to work in their call centers since ’93, barely paying them $2 a day.
BP. When BP spilled 4.2 million barrels of oil into the Gulf coast, the company sent a workforce of almost exclusively African-American inmates to clean up the toxic spill while community members, many of whom were out-of-work fisherman, struggled to make ends meet. BP’s decision to use prisoners instead of hiring displaced workers outraged the Gulf community, but the oil company did nothing to reconcile the situation.
From dentures to shower curtains to pill bottles, almost everything you can imagine is being made in American prisons. Also implicit in the past and present use of prison labor are Microsoft, Nike, Nintendo, Honda, Pfizer, Saks Fifth Avenue, JCPenney, Macy’s, Starbucks, and more. For an even more detailed list of businesses that use prison labor, visit buycott.com, but the real guilty party here is the United States government. UNICOR, the corporation created and owned by the federal government to oversee penal labor, sets the condition and wage standards for working inmates.
One of the highest-paying prison jobs in the country? Sewing American flags for the state police.
Nationalism suggests everyone in Britain has common interests, yet that only serves to veil deep-seated class conflicts at the heart of society. Ideology maintains social cohesion in the interests of the rulers for most of the time - concealing the interests from behind a mask of truth.
Mike Gonzalez, A Rebel’s Guide to Marx, p12 (via cocainesocialist)
A poesia é uma teia de aranhas
Que busca com sedas diferentes
Criar linhas simétricas às das outras
Para demosntrar que reduzindo cada sentimento
A pararelismos simples
Simplificamos que o que nos faz tecer a nossa história
Apesar de usarmos tecidos diferentes,
surge da mesma energia
Que se agarra,
traço a traço,
Com a mesma força.
A poesia é a desconstrução do sentimento que visa escarnar a unicidade da nossa vontade
É um /materializador romântico da nossa igualdade
Woody Allen is holding a copy of The Bell Jar as he is perusing his girlfriend’s bookshelf: “Sylvia Plath: interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mentality.” Here, Allen seems to be implying that young female readers of The Bell Jar just don’t get it; they misconstrue the actual content behind the novel, and instead come out seeing the book as romantic. The reality, of course, is in fact the opposite. Yes, many young women relate to The Bell Jar and see themselves in the character of Esther Greenwood. Stories about young women within this particular context (that analyze the abusive and sexist ways society treats them, as well as looks into women with mental illnesses) are rare and, as such, it is hardly surprising that women relate to it. Additionally, as I have discussed here, many women also enjoy the novel because they see the level of skill and intellect that was put into it, oftentimes more so than many critics have. Plath herself said that she had no patience for “cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife,” and yet more often than not the actual critics seem to forget this. Instead, they say that because the novel was the autobiographical story of someone with a mental illness, it is allowed to be brushed off and doesn’t merit grand literary analysis. Then, when the novel is popular with the very demographic it is focused on, critics then tell the fans they are romanticizing a tragic story because they relate to it, and then label the novel itself as inferior because of the way it resonates with young women, a group of people that society loves to mock and ridicule. The reality, of course, is simply that in The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath is saying things that are true. She is telling an honest story about her experiences being a woman with a mental illness, and also just a woman in general. And her story isn’t pleasant, or sweet, or any of the things young girls are “supposed” to believe. It’s incredibly unflattering to men at large, as it calls out the multitude of sexist and truly horrible things they do to women on a regular basis. The fact that the novel is autobiographical just makes it that much worse in the eyes of men: she’s not even fabricating these incidents, because they are essentially her real life.
Romantic Misinterpretation: The Bell Jar in Pop Culture (via fairytalephoenix)
Appreciation post for @fade-proof. I’ve known him for like 4 yrs probably. That boy is so gr8 and cool. I think he’s gonna always forever be the coolest person I know.
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