As the US celebrated Juneteenth—the day Union troops finally arrived in Texas to free black people from slavery—black people still forced to do free labor for corporations while locked up said they’re still wondering when the Union army is going to finally show up and do the same at U.S. prisons.
“They’re already like 161 years late, but better late than never,” said Jerome Hollingsworth, a prison laborer who’s been locked up in Washington state longer than he can remember just for selling homegrown marijuana, a substance that’s been legal to use in the state for more than a decade. “When you’re locked up in places like Washington state, you lose ‘good conduct’ points if you don’t ‘voluntarily’ agree to slave labor that made the Washington Department of Corrections $133 million in service and manufacturing sales last year—I’m sorry, I’m supposed to call it ‘coerced labor’ that pays $1 an hour before deductions so I can eventually save up to buy some $8 toothpaste, not slavery. So anyway, where are the Union troops? If they’re stuck at a GAP clothing factory in Bangladesh or an Apple cobalt mine in the Congo trying to end child slavery first, I totally get it—I can wait a little bit longer I guess.”
Washington state politicians who have mostly done nothing to stop slavery in local prisons despite them being disproportionately full of people of color admitted inmates like Jerome might be waiting a while longer.
“Omg, how awkward—did no one tell them? They’re not coming because there’s a loophole in the 13th Amendment that ‘abolished slavery’ which straight-up allows slavery to still be legal as we’re talking about prisoners,” said Democrat and Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson. “The reason slavery still exists in Washington state prisons isn’t because the majority of Democrats who represent Washington at all levels of government are a bunch of fauxgressive frauds, though—it’s because of the state’s minority of Republicans—grr! It’s somehow all their fault even though Democrats have controlled the state’s legislature for all of recent memory—dah! Remember to vote blue no matter who this November so that people like me can keep trying to do jack squat about things as heinous as not only slavery but also genocide.”
At press time, the Washington Department of Corrections again refuted Jerome and the Attorney General’s claims that slavery happens at its prisons because some of their prison jobs pay a national high of $2 an hour, allowing prisoners to buy their own hygienic luxuries like soap, shampoo, toothbrushes and food with any actual nutritional content.
