“HB 211 is a debt trap. It creates a population of people who are, by definition, unable to pay. And then converts that inability into a labor obligation,” Michael Ryan, a finance expert and founder of MichaelRyanMoney.com, told Newsweek. “The ‘streets to success’ framing is deliberate misdirection. No legitimate treatment program requires the patient to work off their bill under threat of incarceration."

I’m morbidly fascinated by how carefully this article avoids using the obvious term. But slavery. It’s slavery. It is a bill that would literally, legally, enslave a population (of predominantly Black men, fucking surprise) for the “crime” of being poor.

  • Freeposity@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I can’t find the new article now, but a few years back I remember a prison warden in Louisiana grousing about the possibility that pot would become legal saying, “We don’t want that, marijuana offenders are the best workers. They’re not violent, don’t cause trouble and do good work.”

  • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    You mean the current prison system in the South, but expanded so that anyone without the ability to pay rent is a criminal? Yes, but call it slavery 3.0. The guys doing 20 years on chain gangs for pot possession would be slavery 2.0, which started basically as soon as OG slavery was made illegal. It’s never gone away. Rebranded.

  • KelvarCherry [They/Them]@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    7 days ago

    “indentured servitude”, which is what this is, is slavery; especially when the costs are forced upon you. This was a common method of immigrating to the USA back in the, like, 1800s; but that debt was taken by willing people who had the option to walk away.

    And the crime is sleeping. Jesus fucking Christ USAmerica has gone from a prison state to a torture state.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Mississippi manages to consistently undercut the rest of the nation, with states like South Dakota, West Virginia, and Alaska running tight behind.

        But a lot of that is relative. You can live in a big rich blue state - like New Jersey or California - and still be confined to a miserable ghetto or desolate rural backwater by the racist policies of the ostensibly liberal state leadership. States love to concentrate wealth inside certain high profile urban and wealthy suburban enclaves, then gate these locations off with high rents and transit costs.

        What you have in the Gulf Coast is this policy split between states. So Florida and Texas aggregate enormous amounts of wealth. Then they outsource the dirties and most miserable aspects of the shipping/refining industry to the middle states - Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. By contrast, you’ve got cities like Vernon in California and Eugene-Springfield in Oregon and Akron in Ohio that do this kind of dumping in-house.

  • Tiral@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    They already do this with teachers lol. Most work 2-3 hours unpaid every day. And no, they pay themselves over the summer and breaks because their check is stipend, they don’t get “free money m” on breaks and summer.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    Then the third choice would default to a last chance power drive of political violence.