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Chelsea, I saw this article and I just thought this is something that we have to talk about.

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And obviously it's not going to be good news, but has that ever stopped us?

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Not you.

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And I think only sometimes is the answer. And that is not one of those times.

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So Chelsea, we know the Civil War in the US, it outlawed slavery, right?

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Yeah, right. Yeah, we did that.

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The 13th Amendment.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, exactly.

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There is actually a loophole in the 13th Amendment, which is...

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I'm sorry, there's a loophole?

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Yes.

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Okay.

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And I know we were just talking about free men, but this is not one of those loopholes.

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It is, except as punishment for a crime, slavery is abolished.

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Right. I did know that, like prisoners, right?

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Yeah.

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And this article comes from the Associated Press, AP News.

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It was posted on January 29th, 2024, so incredibly recent.

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And it was written by Robin McDowell and Margie Mason.

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Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands.

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What?

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A hidden path to America's dinner table begins here at an unlikely source,

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a former southern slave plantation that is now the country's largest maximum security prison.

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Unmarked trucks are packed with prison-raised cattle,

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roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary,

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where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work for pennies an hour,

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or sometimes nothing at all.

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After rumbling down a country road to an auction house,

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the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by the Associated Press,

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another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chain for giants

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like McDonald's, Walmart, and Cargill.

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Why is this not surprising?

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Intrafit invisible webs, just like this one,

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link some of the world's largest food companies and most popular brands to jobs performed by

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US prisoners nationwide.

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According to a sweeping two-year AP investigation into prison labor that ties hundreds of millions

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of dollars within agricultural products to goods sold on the open market.

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They are among America's most vulnerable laborers.

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If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment

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like being sent to solitary confinement.

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They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers,

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even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job.

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The goods these prisoners produce wind up in the supply chain of a dizzying array of

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products found in most American kitchens.

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From frosted flake cereal and ballpark hot dogs to gold, metal, flour, Coca-Cola, and rice

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land rice.

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They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger's,

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Target, Aldi, and Whole Foods.

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And some goods are exported, including two countries, that have had products blocked

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from entering the US for using forced or prison labor.

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Many of the companies buying directly from prisons are violating their own policies against

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the use of such labor, but it's completely legal, dating back largely to the need for labor and to

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help rebuild the South's shattered economy after the Civil War.

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Entrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned,

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except as punishment for a crime.

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That clause is currently being challenged on the federal level, and efforts to remove

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similar language from state constitutions are expected to reach the ballot in about a dozen

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states this year.

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Some prisoners work on the same plantation soil where the slaves harvested cotton, tobacco,

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and sugarcane more than 150 years ago.

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With some present-day images looking eerily similar to the past, in Louisiana, which has

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one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, men working on the farm line will

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stoop over crops stretching far into the distance.

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And I don't think I need to tell everybody, but I probably should.

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Most of these people who are doing the work are black.

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I was just gonna say they're probably all black because of...

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I mean, it's a huge problem.

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The cycle of all this.

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Poverty and crime cycle is pretty terrible.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Is this done?

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No, it's a lot more.

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I just want to read a few more paragraphs and I'll be done because I...

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You should go read it as a huge article.

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Willie Ingram picked everything from cotton to okra during his 51 years in the state penitentiary,

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better known as Angola.

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During his time in the fields, he was overseen by armed guards on horseback and recalled seeing

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men working with little or no water passing out in triple digit heat.

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Some days he said workers would throw their tools in the air to protest,

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citing knowing the potential consequences.

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Quote,

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They come maybe four in the truck, shields over their face, billy clubs,

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and they beat you right there in the field.

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They beat you, handcuff you, and beat you again.

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Said Ingram, who received a life sentence after pleading guilty to a crime he said he didn't commit.

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He was told he would serve 10 and a half years and avoid a possible death penalty,

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but it wasn't until 2021 that a sympathetic judge finally released him when he was 73.

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So he was 22 when he went to jail.

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The number of people behind bars in the United States started to soar in the 70s,

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just as Ingram entered the system, disproportionately hitting people of color.

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Now with about 2 million people locked up,

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US prison labor from all sectors has morphed into a multi-billion dollar empire,

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extending far beyond the classic images of prisoners,

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stamping license plates, working on road crews, and battling wildfires.

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And I think that's as far as I'm gonna go.

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There's a lot more.

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I highly recommend reading it.

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It implicates a lot of the products that you know and at least consume.

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That made me very uncomfortable to say.

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I'm glad you read it.

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I had never thought about it because obviously I knew about it with prisoners,

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but my thoughts, I don't feel like this is right at all.

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And you said that this law was initially, and this is the thing with laws.

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I mean, things change over time.

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They said that it was to rebuild the economy in the south after the civil war, right?

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Yeah, which do you know?

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I don't know if you know this Chelsea, but that was over 150 years ago at this point.

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So obviously not a thing any longer.

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And now you have big corporations taking advantage of this and making slavery a thing again,

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to parts of society that are more prone to that cycle of poverty and being put into prison

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and stuff like that in a country where having like a gram of weed is going to put you in jail.

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And the jails are like pack full in the United States because it's a business.

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Yeah.

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And they need that cheap labor.

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This is infuriating.

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And it's the big corporations that are taking advantage of a loophole in a slavery.

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And to put it bluntly to the public, not us because we're not American,

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but the public pays to house, secure, clothe and feed these people.

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And the corporations get basically work for nothing.

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They don't do anything for these people.

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Like it is literal slavery.

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I can't even.

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This makes me so angry.

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Yeah.

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Anyhow, please go read that article.

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It is very interesting and there's a lot more to it.

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So that will give you guys something to do over the next 48 hours.

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Yeah.

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Be angry.

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And then I'm going to hear this again and be angry all over again.

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I guess that's good.

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I have to keep being angry about this.

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Yeah.

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And that's the one thing that's super important is don't let this go away.

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Just like they said, this is on the ballot in a lot of states.

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So maybe we'll see some change with this one.

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But who knows?

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The big thing is just don't let it go away.

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Anyhow, bye.

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Bye.