Abolition of Slavery

California Moves To Ban Forced Prison Labor

July 11, 2024 Giuliana Perrone, Inequality.org. Create! Abolition of Slavery, California, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Slavery

If you’re looking for a rare bit of good news, look no further: California is finally taking steps to abolish slavery from its constitution by banning it in state prisons. On June 27, 2024, the state legislature passed the End Slavery in California Act, teeing up a statewide vote this fall on whether to end forced prison labor in the Golden State. As of now though, California remains among the 16 states that allow the forced servitude of its prisoners. California’s Constitution, like the 13th Amendment, bans involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime. This new amendment would remove that exception, often dubbed the “slavery loophole.”

Slavery Was On The Ballot In The US Midterms

November 10, 2022 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Create! Abolition of Slavery, Ballot Initiative, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Slavery

As children in the US learn in schools, slavery was abolished over 150 years ago during the nation’s Civil War in 1863. And yet, on the November 8 2022 midterm elections, five states, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Louisiana, and Alabama, voted on ballot measures that would end slavery in those states. How is the US still be contending with slavery in 2022? The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery. However, it contained a powerful exception—slavery would be legal as punishment for a crime. As a result, hundreds of thousands of prison workers are held in involuntary servitude, often unpaid and always below minimum wage. Tennessee, Vermont, and Alabama voted yes on ballot measures that would end all exceptions to involuntary, forced, and unpaid labor within prisons within their respective state constitutions.

In Landslide Colorado Voters Abolish Prison Slavery

February 21, 2019 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Create! Abolition of Slavery, Prison Strike, Prisoner rights

Last November, Colorado became the first state to abolish prison slavery. Colorado voted overwhelmingly in favor of abolishing slavery and forced servitude as punishment for a crime. Abolish Slavery Colorado‘s co-chair Jumoke Emery said: "Regardless how people feel about the criminal justice system, the ultimate outcome is that it shouldn’t be slavery." The victory for prisoner rights comes at a time of resistance by prisoners. Abolishing prison slavery was the second demand of the national prison strike.

What You Still Don’t Know About Abolitionists

June 20, 2016 Manisha Sinha, www.time.com Educate! Abolition of Slavery, Slavery

By Manisha Sinha for TIME. History is shaped by actors great and small. When most Americans hear about the destruction of slavery during the Civil War, they think of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. But on the anniversary of Juneteenth—the day former slaves in Texas celebrated emancipation, on June 19, 1865, when the Union Army reached them—it is important to recall the central place of the enslaved themselves in the movement to abolish slavery. Thousands of slaves ran away to Union Army lines from the very start of the war and helped initiate the process of emancipation. They were simply doing what runaway slaves had done before the war: voting with their feet for freedom. Fugitive slaves radicalized abolition by their tactics, contributing to the growth of the Underground Railroad. The abolition movement was an interracial radical social movement of disfranchised people, men and women, white and black, free and enslaved. Slave resistance lay at its heart. On this Juneteenth, it is important to recall that African Americans were not passive recipients of the gift of freedom but architects of their own liberation.

Daily movement news and resources