Art Shell's Big, Fat, Hot Tears of Shame, Regret and Failure
skepticl1
Replacing Immigrant Labor with Slave Labor
Last summer, the Colorado legislature passed a vicious package of
state laws aimed at immigrant workers. The new laws denied many state
social services to immigrant families who do not have legal residency
papers. They required very strict documentation in order to get
Colorado drivers licenses. And the laws pushed to have state and local
police turn over arrested immigrants to federal immigration agents.
Similar repressive laws have been proposed in a number of states
across the U.S.-at the same time as federal immigration police are
also escalating their raids of workplaces and arrests of undocumented
immigrants.
Faced with such persecution, significant numbers of immigrant workers,
including many farm workers, left Colorado and stayed out of the state
when the 2006 harvest time arrived. Crops rotted on farms across the
state-without many of the immigrant workers who have previously picked
the melons, pumpkins, onions, peppers and other cash crops.
Colorado farmers used to employ tens of thousands of undocumented
migrant workers during the growing season-and many workers returned to
the same farms over many years. This year, as many of half of these
workers are not expected to return as usual.
Colorado officials have been working feverishly to come up with a plan
to overcome this sudden "labor shortage" in their state. In February,
they rolled out their new proposal: Replacing immigrants on the farms
with prisoners working as slaves! Specifically, the state's prison
authorities plan to hire out work crews of prisoners to farmers. The
prisoners would perform the backbreaking labor of cultivating and
picking the crops under armed overseers.
Though the details have not all yet been finalized, the current plan
is for farmers to pay the state about $10 an hour for each prisoner,
while the prisoners themselves would get only 60 cents a day as base
pay. The rest of the money would be pocketed by the state as profit
and as payment for providing the armed guards. According to the
Colorado Prison Justice Reform Coalition, Colorado's state prisons are
over 50 percent Black and Latino.
Colorado prison authorities hope to have 100 prisoners working on five
or six Colorado farms by May. This plan could quickly extend to many
more farms this year since state authorities are worried that farmers
might choose not to plant crops if they are not reassured that the
state will help provide a workforce in the fields to help harvest
them. "We're very excited about it," a Corrections Department
spokeswoman said. "We probably have 4,300 to 4,500 inmates who would
qualify for this."
These authorities treat farm workers as criminals for arriving without
documents, but they clearly believe it is quite fine for themselves to
offer work crews of slave laborers to those same farms! The Colorado
prison authorities sound like the Southern slave owners of the past
when they try to argue that this degrading and oppressive slave labor
is an "opportunity" for the prisoners themselves! Ari Zavaras,
director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, claimed, "They
won't be paid big bucks, but we're hoping this will help our inmates
pick up significant and valuable job skills."
Human slavery was abolished in the U.S. in 1865-when the 13th
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed right after the defeat
of the Southern slave owning class in the Civil War. But the 13th
Amendment inserted a carefully written exception right into the U.S.
Constitution: It said slavery was not abolished for prisoners. In the
deep South, this loophole was immediately used to create a system of
prison chain gangs. Large numbers of Black people were railroaded into
prison, often for the pettiest of crimes, and forced to work as slaves
in the construction of railroads, highways and river levees. Many were
even "hired out" by the Southern state governments to the owners of
plantations and timber companies.
As the historic struggle of Black people arose in the 1950s, this
chain-gang form of slave labor was suspended for the time being. But
prisoners have been routinely forced to work virtually without pay
within U.S. prisons. And prison chain gangs have been brought back
with a vengeance in recent years.
Now Colorado's government proposes to bring back open slave labor
outside prison walls on the state's farms. And this is unlikely to
stop in Colorado. Iowa's Department of Corrections is preparing a
similar program, and the director of Iowa's prison industries program
reports he is already getting calls from farmers, including one
request for 200 prisoners.
(For more on the overall attacks on immigrants, see "Mass
Deportations, Vigilantes, Government Suppression: STOP the Fascist
Assault on Immigrants!" in Revolution #80, online at revcom.us.)
NZDude
> Colorado's Farm Plan:
<deleted for brevity's sake>
>
> http://rwor.org/a/082/colorado-en.html
Ya know the part that doesn't wash Skep. They are not here legally.
These folks have no legal standing in this country. Rounding them up
and sending them home is EXACTLY what they should be doing. Both
sides of my family are immigrants, I have been an immigrant and my
wife is currently an immigrant here in the USA. I have zero problem
with LEGAL: immigrants. However I loathe the illegals and the
intrinsic costs they bring with them. EG. In the county I live in,
elderly. veterans and long standing citizens may or may not qualify
for any assistance. An illegal however is not only acquitted every
benefit known, they are guaranteed their anonymity, up and inlcuding a
person who walks in and says "I am Osama Bin Laden, I need housing
help and food stamps and plan to use these welfare checks to kill
Americans" All a county human services worker here could do is shrug
and process them, and get them their assistance. I personally know of
verified stories of people coming from China and the Phillipines and
going straight to Human Services from the Airport. So please, while
some may be exploited, plenty more are finding ways to eploit the
bleeding heart generosity of this country.
NZD
Arkansan_Raider
---Jeff
skepticl1
One of the best factors for revolution in this country is the
immigrants, who came out in the streets in the millions this year to
protest the racist attacks against them. Fuck Borders. The United
Snakes attacked Mexico and stole the South West and California, after
murdering many Mexicans. Fuck the USA. I'm an Internationalist. I'm on
the side of regular people and don't give a fig about your legal
quibbles supporting injustice against basic people. Just as you are
against Immigrants today NZD, if you were old enough to have a clue
what was happening during the Civil Rights era, you probably would
have been on the side of the status quo then too. Jim Crow was morally
wrong. Being against Illegal Immigrants is morally wrong today. Hitler
made it 'legal' to round up Jews in Ghettos too. If you loathe our
brothers and sisters on the bottom of social scale who don't have
their proper papers then you alienate yourself from a whole section of
humanity. No human being is illegal NZD.
NZDude
You are so full of crap and so able to make ad hominem attacks that
have nothing to do with the point at hand that it boggles the rational
mind. I am for personal liberty and individual rights. However,
rewarding someone with freebies (health care, housing assistance,
medical care, etc) when they have no legal standing in your society is
ludicrous. Particularly when viewed against the backdrop of all of
our legal citizens who's aid is either severely limited or not given
at all, even tho they have paid into the system via taxes.
You once again attempt fallaciously to paint me as a racist. You also
falsely try to equate not wanting illegals to be rewarded with
privileges and monetary assistance with Nazism. Your embrace the
world faux communism may make youy feel good and righteous, however
there is no other country in the world as accommodating to immigrants
(legal and illegal) as the USA has been in the past 30 years. You
would be hard pressed to find another nation that would offer amnesty
on 2 separate occasions to illegals. Also I doubt you could find any
other country that provides for and guarantees the rights of non-
natives up to and including having to provide assistance to them in
their native tongues. Try going to Indonesia, China, El Salvador,
Brazil, etc etc and tell them you don't speak the language but you
want some cash and humanitarian aid. After they stop laughing at you,
you'd be as likely to jailed as a vagrant as deported.
This is not about injustice to basic people. The real injustice is
that working legal citizens and immigrants and resident aliens are
footing the bills for large numbers of people with no legal right to
be here. The real inequity is that these people have a lobby in DC
despite having no legal standing in this country. Sure some folks are
exploited, but many more exploit the system. And now, they are
demanding rights that they have no claim to. The only right they do
have IMO is the right to be transited back the border.
NZD
skepticl1
Skeptic Responds:
NZD, you take the position of a certain class. Your outlook is petty
bourgeois, the outlook of the small elite. It is an worldview of an
exploiter. 'Liberty and individual' rights to exploit. It's better to
be on the side of the people of the world and not a class of better
off people in one Nation. What is good for humanity? Not making
money.
however,
> rewarding someone with freebies (health care, housing assistance,
> medical care, etc) when they have no legal standing in your society is
> ludicrous. Particularly when viewed against the backdrop of all of
> our legal citizens who's aid is either severely limited or not given
> at all, even tho they have paid into the system via taxes.
Skeptic responds:
I could see a situation where a genuine Socialist society might try to
limit the movement of peoples for a time. Say there is a revolutionary
war going on and the State is in a crisis for its very existence they
may put up borders for awhile. But in a situation where the society is
established, and the State is not threatened, then the State should
work towards abolishing borders. Nationalism is wrong. My country is
better than your country, etc. Of course, a burgeoning reactionary
police state, like the United Snakes, doesn't deserve to these things.
And your position is you want to make the USA even more reactionary,
cruel and unfair.
>
> You once again attempt fallaciously to paint me as a racist.
You are siding with the status quo against the people. Racism might
not be the first thing on your mind, or you may have Libertarian
delusions about how Capitalism works. You arguments stand linked arm
in arm with Racist goon groups like the KKK and the Minutemen. You may
dislike these groups. You may feel a little guilty about your position
too and not want to be linked with hate groups. I don't feel sence of
guilt about my position because it is the just and moral on on the
side the most abused people and firmly taking a stance against the
bullies and hate groups. My suspicion is that it is your delusions
about how things work that are really holding you back and not a real
'loathing' against beat down people. NZD, the core of what Capitalism
is about (and must be about) is exploitation. Let's get rid of
Capitalism in a brown wave of revolution.
You also
> falsely try to equate not wanting illegals to be rewarded with
> privileges and monetary assistance with Nazism.>>
Prejudice and rounding up people, or working them past the point of
endurance for slave wages are the same methods the Nazis used, which
ultimately resulted in genocide. The United Snakes does two genocides
every morning before breakfast. Read the article that started this
thread about Colorado Slave labor, it's just like Nazism. Immigrants
are fighting for basic human dignities, not special privileges and a
free ride. Words like 'Privileges' and 'entitlements' are the
jingoistic slogans of the David Dukes and William F. Buckleys.
Communism in the Soviet Union and China was the opposite of what the
Capitalists do. Communists are for all people of every color to work
together to build a better world.
Your embrace the
> world faux communism may make youy feel good and righteous, however
> there is no other country in the world as accommodating to immigrants
> (legal and illegal) as the USA has been in the past 30 years. You
> would be hard pressed to find another nation that would offer amnesty
> on 2 separate occasions to illegals. Also I doubt you could find any
> other country that provides for and guarantees the rights of non-
> natives up to and including having to provide assistance to them in
> their native tongues. Try going to Indonesia, China, El Salvador,
> Brazil, etc etc and tell them you don't speak the language but you
> want some cash and humanitarian aid. After they stop laughing at you,
> you'd be as likely to jailed as a vagrant as deported.
Just because these Capitalist countries are fucked up doesn't make the
progroms and Gestapo round ups and detention centers right. The USA in
the last twenty years has gone on the biggest prison building progom
in the history of the world. What was Nazi Germany but a sea of
prisons, detention camps, and torture chambers. That is what the USA
is now. The USA is the worst because they control other countries like
El Salvador, with their deathsquads and military spending. I want to
build a better world, a world where people of all class stature are
treated fairly, and where the rights are better than the ones people
have now. You seem to be calling for a darker vision for humanity. You
should feel guilty every time you see illegal workers on a street
corner getting kicked around by cops, or you hear a radio news blurb
about another immigrant death on the border. Last year 400 people died
on the border due to the United Snakes cruelity and vile system of
exploitation. This suffering is on your hands because of the poltical
stance you take. Look around you, on your side is the cracker police,
the goon prison guards, vigilanties, hate speech talk radio perverts,
and reactionary politician millionaires. On my side is the basic
people, hungry men, women and children; the sea of people Marching
against batons, attack dogs, water hoses and bear repellant,
pepperspary in the Civil Rights era or in recent marches of hundreds
of thousands in street protests. Don't think of yourself first NZD.
Don't you want to draw a clean, fresh breath without the poison of
reactionary politics and selfishness? C'mon get on the side of the
people. You can do better than 'me first.' Nationalism backwards.