Folks, I need to confess something in the spirit of transparency and accountability. The tea in my spit take is not southern sweet tea, it's Chinese oolong tea because I hate sweet tea. And now I'm going to take a step back and take the time to listen and grow. Thank you.
Firefighter here, did 5 years on a type 2 contracted hand crew before joining an agency. I worked around con-crews alot. CAL-FIRE is about the worst agency I have seen in regards to how they treat thier prisoner crews. From what I saw, I have seen task force leaders send these men along with my crew into straight up death pits. One memory I have that sticks out is when our taskforce gave us an assignment in a draw with visible flame, about 4" all around us with unburned fuel between us and the fire in a chapparall fuel model. They sent us in there without hiking it themselves, told us it was just right there, and when I went back to the rigs to pick up an extra saw on the way back I overheard our taskforce making jokes to division about how they should work us till one of us drops just to see who would call a medic first. When that section of the fire was getting plumed, the CAL-FIRE engine slugs decided they were going to make us and the prisoners carry all the hose and plumbing all while wondering why no one wanted to have a good time conversation with them. I have seen the prisoners being treated like absolute dog shit, we cant talk to them, we cant treat them like people, they cant say no to assignments. thier crew bosses usually are a prison guards, and an inexperienced firefighter. It may have changed now, but i doubt it. Fuck CAL-FIRE and fuck the state of California.
@@ThatDangDad absolutely. One thing I wanna say that is good. Is that the prison crew members tend to have incredible "buy in" with the crew. I think a good conversation to have with prison labor is to take advantage of the time they have in prison to 1 pay them the equivalent wages they would make on the outside for real, give them an education or trade skill and have most of the money not used for commissary saved for when they get out. Give them options for true reform and a career when they get out. Cause they inevitably get out and will be someone's neighbor. My big deal is atleast with Cal-fire golf crews is these men and women are non violent felons mostly drug charges, and kamala Harris extended thier sentences just for the labor and at the same time withheld employment opportunities after encarceration. All because calfire doesn't hire felons. What's fucked up to me is every firefighter who worked under me that came from a con crew was a hard worker and very knowledgeable. In this day and age to waste that and to waste thier lives like that pisses me off. It's a failure of leadership and complete exploitation.
I'm on this fuck calfire rant I need to get this part out. Calfire doesn't sleep in camp. When I was in Chico on the camp fore, I saw fire refugees sleeping in a tent city in a Walmart parking lot. These people lost thier homes and were unable to get hotels all because calfire won't sleep on the damned ground. And to top it all off it took only a year for the city of chico to designate these folks from paradise from refugees who needed help to homeless vagrants and drug addicts who were choosing this lifestyle now.
People being forced to do something live threatening under punishment was the plot of a show I just watched. Just that the reason there was racism and a war. Here it's racism, and money.
@@lotekchapra Honestly it's absurdist that these people who do great jobs aren't hired or given recommendations, being a fire fighter is a good job! If your forcing them to do the work then by the time they leave they should be able to apply for a job related to the field and likely get it
I try to explain this to my European fiance and he straight up doesn't believe me, thinking that no modern society could be that evil. I wish he was right.
How privileged is he? How pro-American? Although, he is right in one sense. America is not a "modern" society, if you think of modernity as genuine improvement.
Europe does have its own evils in similar ways. If he thinks English oppression of the Irish is bad, link it to the colonisation of Australia by convicts. Economic wealth extraction by the English, led to extreme poverty in Ireland (even pre Potato Famine). That led to people committing crimes out of desperation. That led to high prison population. So they started shipping them off to the colonies to use as free labour. Sydney was built by convicts. Lots of Melbourne too. Hobart definitely. Lots of other European countries had similar colonies too. France, Spain etc etc. He's just not equating the violence of the past (which we know was bad) to perpetuating violence.
@@TheShadowChesireCat I mean, yeah... Europe had its own bad stuff with slavery and exploitation, and of course now still profits from exploiting the Imperial Periphery... But for me it was absolutely unbelievable how mask-off the *current* state of exploitation and oppression is in the States. Like, when I came her I just couldn't believe that you could literally die if you didn't have private health insurance. That even with insurance, you have to often pay for a significant portion of your medical bills. That people straight up refuse to get an ambulance ride and dangerously drive themselves to hospitals because ambulances are not a public good... I had heard bad things about prisons, but then realized that the bad stories we used to see in the nineties were just the tip of the iceberg and things have gotten progressively worse from the "heyday" of "progressive prisons" in the late sixties. Solitary confinement is considered torture, as are the 23-hour lockdowns with the lights on so as to disturb sleep, in most of the Imperial Core. People used to be able to get education in prison -- they really can't anymore, except some situations where you pay for it yourself. In most places in the US they no longer offer classes past GED, and will no longer proctor exams for colleges that used to offer correspondence courses. That is just incomprehensible to most of us from Europe -- what do you expect to happen when someone comes out of prison without any tools to rebuild their life, without an education or a useful skill? A perverse result of prison labor is also that many of the jobs they have you do in prison have completely gutted those industries outside of the prison-industrial complex -- so for example, many inmates learn how to sew, but basically all the garment industry in the states is in prisons, so it's not a skill you can use to get a job outside of prisons. Not to mention those jobs, like firefighting, that simply exclude felons from their ranks in the free world. I could go on and on, but my point is that, yeah, many Americans don't even know how bad it is, but definitely for a lot of people in Europe who think America is awful -- it is incomprehensible how American society even functions with all this BS, and why people aren't in a constant state of revolt.
@@mr.badman4578Yeah its actually not coercion though because if u dont work to live what happens? U cant afford a home, food, safety and healthcare does that sound like a life?? The death rate of homeless people is insane. Coercion implies that there is room for a choice and there simply isnt unless u want to be homeless and begging for food or dying from the cold.
Hey mate, disabled/medically retired US Marine here, super appreciate you including disabled folks in the list. I'm incredibly rare and lucky in that most of my disabilities are socially acceptable, but I have quite a few friends who aren't so lucky and will probably spend the rest of their lives struggling to get by through absolutely no fault of their own (or a couple of them, through somebody else's fault). Disabled folks are something of an invisible minority, which is ironic given that health is the one form of privilege that anyone can have and everyone will eventually lose. Cheers, keep fighting the good fight.
Yeah you might see McRuer's Crip Theory behind me on my book display... when he wrote "Disability is the one identity category all of us will assume if we live long enough" it was like suddenly he turned a bunch of lights on and I hadn't realized I'd been in a dark room all this time. Between him and then Stacy Simplican talking about people with cognitive impairments being excluded from democracy, disabled justice is something that is frequently on my mind.
One clear example is getting help like Disability payments. It took years and a lawyer for me to get Disability when I was disabled and the only reason I got it was that I was closed circuit at the time, as in, I was ready to go back to work. My lawyer at the time told me something that's stuck with me; that you'll get turned down the first time you apply. Being turned down is treated like it's just part of the process. I've once again become disabled and this time it's numerous severe disabilities and, once again, I've been rejected and am having to go through the appeals process.
@@mechanomics2649I hope you're getting your payments now. I've had a lot of friends and family end up on disability over the years, and I've had to warn every single one of them to expect to be denied. That at least one denial is just part of the process. The only time I've seen it any different was when there was as lawyer involved, but not everyone has that option. It's insane.
Dude, you're brilliant. After explaining that the US has the most imprisoned in gross than and other country, "Now, do you think we are a culture uniquely prone to antisocial behavior?" I laughed out loud.
No way. You're telling me businesses in one place would use slave labor from another for profit? Wow. Anyways, I here Nestlé has a new chocolate candy coming out.
Wash it down with an ice cold Coca-Cola, a drink that has never involved the company paying paramilitary gangs to execute labor organizers in the South America. Now to take a big drink of Coke and Google what I just said real quick...
@@rickb3650 nope. Not a deliberate reference. It was because Nestlé had used child slaves for chocolate production in places like Mali. The Supreme Court dismissed a case that would allow them to be sued by victims, since it happened outside the US.
@@shanefoster2132 Thank you. That one went right past me. On a brighter note CA has stopped them from taking their water for next to nothing and reselling it at a huge markup, in plastic bottles of course. In 1984, Winston's friend (can't remember his name ATM) at The Ministry keeps telling Winston he's heard rumors that their choco rations are going to be doubled.
Recently someone learning English asked me what the word "loitering" means at the bus stop and I got to give them a little history lesson with regards to racism and criminalization. These are things that are all around us we take for granted.
No one cares about the viability of a slaves nervous system. Pro lifers at least those in the extremist sense want to make sure that nervous system emerges so they can damage it. Mankind is not a disease but there is a disease in mankind.
So instead of giving them the definition of the word, which is what they asked for, you go off on a rant about racism? Yeah, that's seems like the appropriate thing to do...
@@NotThatKindOfKiwi86 just look at the Wikipedia article for that word. It has always trough out history been used to keep the poor and unwanted out of public places. You can't just translate the word without also explaining this foreign american concept. This isn't a normal sign to have in most places of the world. And can you guess what the same signs had written on them pre Rosa Parks? 🤔
Most of the money on my books ended up paying for "medical". I pointed out that my court paperwork said the state of Idaho was responsible for my medical care and medications (at IDOC expense) for the duration of my incarceration. The prison guard and nurse I asked lol'd. The guard said, "If you can afford a team of good attorneys, they might be able to say something about it." They forced me to take medication that was poisonous for the type of epilepsy I have. It caused me to have daily chains of generalized tonic clonic (grand mal) seizures. If they would have done a Google search, they could've found out that they were shaving decades off my lifespan with the medication they prescribed. But they did not Google. They just kept raising the toxic med and charging me for the privilege of nurses checking my vitals after I regained consciousness, choking on my own blood and foam.
Jesus that's horrible and traumatising. I hope you can get the help you deserve after all this. I have medical trauma from neglect, conversion therapy and medication induced medical injury. But I feel like yours was a lot more malicious, and knowing it shaved years off your life, how scary. :( Prisoners shouldn't lose their human rights, they should have movement restricted for the benefit of safety of others if needed but that's it. Rehabilitation should be the key. When they focus on 'punishment' and revel in it, people risk cheering on this kind of abuse and counting it as deserved. It doesn't matter what anyone even did to end up there, that's not ok, ever. Fucking monsters.
I can't say I'm surprised anymore, but I really feel for you. That is awful. I spent a single night in jail and was refused medical care, with the police supposedly calling a nurse who supposedly told them that my life-threatening condition was not life-threatening and that they were just supposed to give me a Tylenol for the pain. When I was on my way to the ER that night, per doctor's orders, because I had a massive ovarian cyst that could at any point cause ovarian torsion or cause me to bleed out. I survived. It was extremely traumatic. And I am absolutely shocked every time I hear a new horror story about healthcare denied in prisons, causing not only long-term effects for the untreated conditions, but also severe trauma from being told to suck it up even when you know it's killing you.
The system criminalizes poor people. Those who use overworked public defenders, can’t afford fines , court costs, restitution, child support, taxes, etc.
Pretty sure Tennessee was gonna make it illegal for homeless people to camp on public property. I feel like the plan was never to abolish slavery but just change the system to make everyone slaves
People get so brainwashed into thinking corporal punishment is an effective way to rehabilitate, or correct bad behavior. Like you said most inmates need mental health care. That coupled with capitalist greed has created this awful system. I didnt realize how much prisoners were exploited for cheap labor until fairly recently. I always had an idea, and Ive never supported the prison industrial complex, but its a huge problem. I love your channel, and love that you speak out about these issues.
They don't think that at all. They don't want these people rehabilitated. They want them gone and kept away from the rest of society forever and suffer.
Corporal punishment works specifically to the benefit of the one perpetrating it. The entire model is designed to create compliance with might and power. It has never been a way of instilling actual social discipline or moral incentive. If that were the case, prisoners would come out of prisons as model citizens, and most don't, because they were beat into submission towards the will of their captors and were never adjusted to return to the world and so return to the world that got them there in the first place. It's a sad world the powers that be have created and maintained; so much potential, so much fertility for growth and improvement washed away. So much unnecessary pain and suffering, futures stolen from people, good futures turned bad, bad futures turned worse.
It's not just that it's a horrible way to rehabilitate people but it also encourages a system that makes unnecessary actions illegal and with stiff penalties. Everyone always says fuck em they broke the law but most of the things they're locked up for shouldn't be illegal and definitely shouldn't involve prison time.
I am not even sure they are really 'brainwashed', they are just horrible people who WANT others to suffer, but only within the context of 'it is ok to hurt these people because they are bad'. If you listen to the law and order crowd, their rhetoric is rooted in the question of 'who are acceptable victims that we can make suffer for our pleasure but still claim moral high ground?'
In some (small) ways, life as a post-war slavery was harsher. "Employers" of prison labor had little or no financial incentive to keep their "employees" safe. They're leased, and the state rarely imposed any consequences to working them literally to death. In chattel slavery, at least the slave owner had a reason to keep their slaves alive and productive.
Thanks for mentioning commissary and phone calls. I worked kitchen in Arapahoe County and we all pushed ourselves really hard through injuries and sickness to avoid losing our good time. Didn't help that they would neglect you medically to the border of death.
I am overwhelmed with disgust, I knew most of this stuff already, but i still look at it helplessly. The recent _Dobbs_ ruling kinda signaled we're entering the _Nuremburg laws_ phase of our fascist takeover. Sadly I fight major depression. I live on Social Security, so I can expect ICE to come for me early.
The bit at 15:55-16:12 was the angriest I've ever heard you sound. The righteous anger of a Dang Dad at a perfidious system of human explanation is a power that cannot be contained. Keep up the great work.
I think one thing that doesn't get talked about enough is how trans people are some of the most vulnerable people within the prison population, especially if they're also some shade of black or brown. And trans women of color in particular face that triple cocktail of transmisogynoir. In most states, trans people will be housed according to their agab, and they face an inordinate risk of being physically or sexually assaulted. Other times, they'll usually be segregated, which usually means being locked in solitary confinement in order to "be protected" or to "protect other people". This includes how trans people are usually treated even if they go to prisons in accordance with their actual gender. Most will be denied gender affirming care, and even then, they can easily be punished for having those hormones. My first thought for both is how personnel treated Chelsea Manning when she was locked up.
Everyone in prison is vulnerable, and unless you’re one of the head honchos of a gang, the chances of being victimized by someone else (guards and other prisoners alike) in prison are highly likely no matter your ethnicity or sexual self-definition. If these people are so upset with how they’re being treated in prison, maybe they should have thought twice before doing whatever landed them in prison.
@@Initial_Gopnik Maybe, and here's a thought, they shouldn't be made vulnerable in these ways. No one should be. The prison gangs form because of the brutal system they are placed under. Drug possession is one of the weakest reasons to put people in jail, same with mental health. But they're pretty common reasons. And what was noted was that trans people are more likely to be victimized in these places from all angles.
@@FarremShamist I once asked a very old prisoner about his views of prison after being incarcerated for over 4 decades, he told me he was guilty of a double homicide in a nasty wreck driving under the influence, and he told me “It took me twenty years to understand this but prison is a place where people like myself who have made others in society feel vulnerable are placed, all of us here have to endure the vulnerabilities that we made others experience, whatever you do kid, dont do something stupid, and end up in here for the rest of your life.” People don’t get put in prison for no reason and no-one is exempt from being treated like crap in prison, I toured San Quentin with the other community school delinquents back in the day and man that really opened my eyes to how much hell goes on in prison and it convinced me of never wanting to end up in one.
As someone with both victims & criminals in my extended family-sometimes both in the same person-& as a “V” myself who’s nevertheless been pro-abolitionist re: prisons + cops for years, I just wanted to point out that so many of us have both in our families. Real justice is pro-accountability, pro-family, pro-community, pro-social, pro-personal thriving & pro-healing. We can do better. All we have to believe rn is we can + must do better. The great thing about collective politics is we don’t have to have the answers alone or do the work alone. (Or that’s what I tell myself to get thru some days.)
So I’m still thinking of this stuff weeks l8r & tho it’s unlikely anyone’ll read this, one of the many old odd memories Phil’s video brought up was a sudden recollection my uncle was Military Police when he did a non-violent crime & his conviction/sentence were career-enders in at least 2 ways after he spent over 4yrs in military max setting then another 2-3 at a less strict facility, for theft of about $1200 from a military business (therefore the military) in 1980s. So I should’ve said many of us have ALL 3 in our families-like mine, the unholy trinity of corrupted justice systems demanding transformation: victims, criminals, & cops. I stand by saying sometimes all of them are the same people. Like my uncle. Bc a Golden Child in an abusive family system nevertheless experiences abuse. Interesting side note: ⚜️quelle surprise🥸the non-violent criminal was not an abusive family member; actually none of the guys who served time afaik were the abusers in a family tree...well, more like a messy family orchard at this point...but in a family stuffed with broken toxic rageful abusers of all kinds spanning 5 generations, whatever arboreal metaphor we use, in a family filled with them, I can’t recall any instances when the people who were in prison (all were guilty, in reality & court, & are relatively open about their responsibility) were accused of abuse. I never saw anything that made me wonder or heard stories of the kind, no side-eye-ing “missing stairstep” warnings we on the Team Victim Whisper Network used to help each other navigate the goddam dangerous haunted messy orchard lol. Yet none of the abusers, not even the SA-era & blatant beaters, were even arrested, as far as I recall. The worst “punishment” I heard about was the time a grandfather got a stern talking-to by his priest & he already said the rosary so much he apparently was square already with his deity of choice. Effing priests🙄ugh, I can’t even with the effing priests + my family. (I know more than I should about the Vatican’s gobsmackingly archaic “justice system”🥺). A family inside joke is the stories I heard from generations before me were so scary that as a child they curled my hair, a Just-So Story for why I’m the only curly haired kid in the genetically enmeshed part of the family. Wild sh*t, that 20th Century, apparently. 😂 this video must be powerful bc so many feelings! Such weird & bad feelings! & as the vaudeville joke spins, “& in such big portions!” * context: in Canada; I’m in the...well, Treaty land, really, in the northern Prairies, with American + Canadian citizens in my fam on both sides of the border, spread across 5 provinces, 1 territory, & 6 states.
I've never been incarcerated but my fiancé currently is stuck in prison in Texas due to your f*cked up plea deal system (I'm thankfully not from the US) my partner doesn't feel it's a big deal but they told me about the hygiene and food conditions in some of the facilities they were in and it's horrendous. They've gone as far as making friends with the mice/rats and bugs living in their cell... Also during heatwaves they either don't have or refuse to turn on the AC which regularly leads to people having medical problems. (they had to take care of another inmate who fainted from the heat because the guards wouldn't and the medical ward was full.
So, I knew a lot of this, but only on a high level. This was well put together and I love how you hammered home how all of our societal ills are connected.
I live in Colorado. 2018 election referendum Colorado residents voted to abolish the part of the 13th amendment allowing for the imprisoned to work while imprisoned to work for free (legalized slavery), I was lucky enough to cast my vote to make this change to the Colorado Constitution. Likewise this past election, 2022, Colorado voters also voted for all School students to receive meals free to them, no matter how rich or poor the kids' parents. Oh, also majic mushrooms in CO are NOW legal along with of course cannabis. Colorado Rocks.
"...if you want to combat ableism, you have to be in solidarity with the fight against racism and colonialism. And if you want to combat racism, you have to be in solidarity with the fight against capitalism. And if you want to combat capitalism, you damn sure better be listening to your Black and Brown and Asian and Indigenous and Immigrant and Disabled comrades. This is all one fight and we either win together or not at all." Incredibly well said my brother. My whole move to the far left started because I started learning about my people's struggles with US Military colonialism in Guam, and that lead me to stand in solidarity with the struggles of all the oppressed. Thank you for this video. Sangan i guaguan, yan saina ma'ase (Speak what is valuable, and thank you)
Also, don't forget how you can be denied housing if you've got past convictions...even if you served your time/fees, in many cases even if you were 'cleared' later--if it's still written that you were convicted, you're a convict. Get arrested & convicted for vagrancy, get released, you're forced into vagrancy again.
I already knew all this but most of it on a more conceptual level. You tied everything together and highlighted how fucked it really all is, and there are _definitely_ a lot of people out there who need to hear this
This is the best youtube channel an ex-cop can make. Thank you sir for being honest and breaking away from the evil government. I greatly appreciate your work. Im taking notes on this to do commentary for my own radio show. Keep up the good work!
I’ll be honest. I expected to roll my eyes a few times about how prisoners were now slaves. I did expect I’d be able to see his point and get a better understanding of some aspects of our society that are darker. What I wasn’t expecting was to be slapped with some hard truths. I’ll never be able to think of prisons and arrests the same way. Mind you, I already thought prisons were way over crowded and police officers were unnecessarily aggressive.
This is giving me flashbacks to "Slavery by another name" By Douglas Blackmon. Hearing turpentine after you described peonage made me feel like I was young again sitting around feeling... unsurprised and becoming progressively more upset about our foreign policy. I really don't know if taking both topics on was healthy, but I'm glad I learned peon was not just a subordinate like I previously thought. Hate to comment early but heard it's best for engagement anyway. 👂
I love the compassionate yet don’t-take-no-more-bullshit-excuses-from-nobody way you educate. I hope that the framing really makes it impossible for those who love to deny the uglier parts of America the “beautiful” to keep denying those uglies and start facing that stuff head on in solidarity, so that we can get to fixing all this nonsense finally. Thanks for doin what you do.
Most folks I know are closer to the bottom than the top, but they still feel they got enough buffer. Rugs about to get pulled out from under just after the prisons for profit have been set up and it has become more criminal to be poor or off the grid. Every time a zero gets added on top it pushes most of us down.
We're going to see a spike in folks giving birth in jail hospitals after being caught ordering misopristol, and I'm betting they won't get twelve weeks of maternity leave from their work details
If anyone's interested, I would recommend the book "Slavery by another name." My high school history teacher had us read it in class. I'm still fucking baffled how so many of my peers stayed either reaganite conservatives or became members of the alt right. Guess it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a kid from a wealthy privileged family to become a class traitor. 🤷♂️ Just goes to show how brutally effective U.S. schools are at mass rightwing indoctrination of students, including those most impacted by the current U.S. slavery system.
I mean they make y'all pledge allegiance to a flag every day, on behalf of all the other countries I assure you this is not normal and incredibly fascist, we're a lil worried about you America
@@Lincoln_Bio at my school they actually did it twice a day--once in the morning, and then once after lunch. They said it was because some kids picked schedules that meant they didn't have to come to school until the afternoon, but none of us bought that excuse 🤷♂️
Wait, you're from kentucky? Hell, I've been in a kentucky jail. I know exactly how extortionate those prices are. I explicitly told my family NOT to donate money to me while I was there specifically because it was a total scam.
i had a history teacher my senior year who told my whole class with confidence that slavery does not exist anymore. when i asked about the 13th amendment and the way its written he just said "its changed since then". thats it. thats what happens when you give a football coach history classes ig.
The fact that you can sum up prison abolition down to "shit hasn't changed for centuries... how's that working out for you?" is the sort of reductive brilliance that might even have a shot at convincing hardcore conservatives.... maybe... *shrugs blankly* Amazing work again. Youre on fire lately. I have been loving your stuff so much this last year. keep up the fantastic content you beautiful dang dad
Im an excon. If convict workers went on strike, then the govt would be forced to hire outside workers to replace them. I always wondered if the huge increase in cost would be enough to force them to implement reforms to reduce the size of the prison population? There are around 100-150 kitchen workers alone at an average sized facility.
I'm am so disgusted that California keeps doing this shit. Last week I was driving along and hit some road construction. It's like 105 degrees and there is this crew laying hot patch all along this rural road. I say to my friend, "that looks fucked up, I hope they are making jack." It looked like Hellish work. Who wants to work in that? Then we get to the end of the road construction and see the Sheriff dept. van and we both go "ohhhh." And the Sheriff deputy, sitting under the shade...that guy looked like an extra from "The Heat of the Night." I'm just driving by slave labor and there is nothing I can do about it.
And probation--a lot of people think it's 'just show up every so often.' No, it's a fine you have to pay on a regular basis. Fail to pay for any reason? You're in violation of your parole. And that's without the rampant abuse by parole officers.
I already knew most of this, but I know most people have no clue. So thank you for making this video! I shared it on my public media of choice and I hope that helps spread the word ♡
Also I've been incarcerated bc I got deported , people don't realize how dehumanizing it is . Nearly broke me and I only stayed locked up for 2 months before I got deported
I'd play a game made by incarcerated people if they got to choose to do it and it was a way for them to express their thoughts, feelings and experiences. I feel like we could get a lot of really cool art/message games that way from a population that is basically always cast as villainous or, at best, violent asshole antiheroes, especially in video games
So I knew of all of this, but seeing it broken down this way was a good thought refresher. See also 'knowing better's' video on chattel slavery, which did not end in the 1800's.
@@yeanah2571 He has a great channel, and his examination of book vs. film Starship Troopers is incredibly good. I used to be a book fan (because powered armor and oo-rah space marines), and then I got older and wiser and now I'm a movie guy because 'yikes silly space fascists' (that scene where children stomp bugs in a propaganda film inside the film is brilliant). It helps to contextualize and examine fascist propaganda and Paul Verhoeven is ever more a genius director/filmmaker in my estimation.
Aramark is a fucking blight on humanity. I remember living in area where they paid state minimum using "out of district contracts" as the 28% employer IN that external area where the district minimum was almost twice the state minimum. And they used holdings company to have people on ~35 hours a week per job across three. Fuckers make ERCOT look ethical.
At least slavery is explicitly protected in the Constitution. Wouldn’t want the SC to get rid of that and luckily they can’t! When a prison system provides incentives to increase incarceration rates it has gone so wrong that anyone with a moral compass should be able to tell. It’s devastating that politicians can still talk about the US „justice“ system like it‘s normal and necessary. No, it is exceptional. Exceptionally fucked. By the way, thanks for talking about RTJ the other day! I didn’t even know them before and now they might become my favorite group.
Another great video. Like the war itself, the 13th was specifically written to maintain the (relatively new) tradition of government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. Prior to the revolution most states had prison system that would not even be recognized as prisons today. 70 years later the Civil War was fought over slavery, but neither side fought for the slaves. In the times around the Declaration of Independence the ruling class learned a hard lesson. When you get people to follow you by promising them freedom and liberty, the people tend to want liberation and freedom. This caused dozens of mostly ignored uprisings and rebellions in all the colonies, and far more of what became the foundations of our nation are about keeping power away from the people than we are comfortable knowing.
Thank you for acknowledging the Taíno pple. They rarely ever are and are almost always left out of the conversation about Native Americans. Same for most central and south American natives. At least that’s the impression I get.
On a long enough timeline every cop lies on police reports. Weather it's omision of vital information or flat out lying. ( I know it's a little off topic)
And by "long enough timeline", I'm assuming you mean an eight hour shift. When my mother was a cop, she would tell me about busting someone at 11:15pm, and if they had drugs on them, those went straight in the toilet. She got off at midnight and didn't want to deal with the paperwork. If, on the other hand she busted you at 4:30pm, you were in for a long evening in the station with her.
If we did away with Prison labor, would as many people would be arrested? Many thing that when someone goes to prison, they just sit around "rot in jail" so this is a great informative video!
I mean, considering the statistics given in-video about the increase in prison population...no, not nearly as many people would be arrested. Or convicted, or sentenced to prison, or kept in prison longterm. There'd also be a big shift in the definition of 'criminal behavior' if there's less incentive to keep prisons full.
@@cam4636 I was thinking the same thing. Since there is an Incentive to put people in Prison. If that was removed then I don't think the establishment would bother with trying to get people arrested. I can imagine how so many laws would change with that incentive gone.
This is something I used to discuss as a civil war reenactor for the 15th Alabama infantry. You always wind up having to deal with that age old argument that leads to "a state's rights to what" and the answer, unfortunately, is industry, an industry reliant on slaves. The south relied on it, the north relied on it. It's wrong to own people, and those who do are evil. This isn't the same as saying the war was fought over slavery, but rather who owns them and under what conditions. From chain gangs to American folk tales like The Real McCoy, to the high rate of black prisoners through the privatized prison system that turns them out for labor for pennies on the hour. Considering all this with the fact that Lincoln RELUCTANTLY abolished slavery as a means to win the war, not out of humanitarian duty, and stated that if he could have won the war without doing so, he would have. So with all this in context in our American history, I want to ask what in God's name happened if the good guys won the war on slavery, why did it then persist under the legal system for the sake of building the railroads that Lincoln served as a lawyer? See, we hadn't yet pushed west as a country, but we were getting ready to... ahem... manifest a little destiny, if you will. Civil War got in the way during preparation, but it only held it up for 4 years or so before the gold rush was announced to migrate the people west. There's a logistical problem here, you see, plantations and railroads are competing for all the same resources: large tracts of land and vast quantities of cheap, hardy labor. Plantations are just eating up all the labor and will force railroads to spend exorbitant fees to weave around the massive plantation realestate. This is the biggest difference between southern and northern economies driving the war: the north is industrial and the south is agricultural, but the north is also where the country's capitol is, so everything the city decided was good for the country was enforced whether it be to their detriment or not. This also caused as imbalance of resources being funneled to the capitol while everything away from the capitol was working its benefit more than their own. With outright chattel slavery banned and the war won, the north is now left with prisoners and feel-good propaganda like McCoy, Chinese indentured servants, and the "gingers", who were seen at the time as more worthless than a black slave because they weren't seen as hardy and hard working in comparison, to the point that there were people breeding the two together for a midway alternative slave (where we get Mellado from) until the practice was outlawed. So this "better than nothing" alternative slave crew was sent out to blast themselves to smithereens in constructing the glorious American railways before the craftsman came in to do the labor they actually have to pay for. We can play "lesser of two evils" until the cows come home, but nobody came out of that war in a clean pressed suit, nobody escaped free of the mark of evil. This is why we need to remember that part of our history instead of spreading memes about how Phinneas and Ferb are a bigger part of our nation's history than the confederacy and the civil war, because it's discounting one of the bloodiest conflicts of American history and dismissing the past so that we might repeat it. The issue isn't with the written laws, it's with how they're inforced and who enforces it from on high and who they make exemptions for and who they throw the entire book at. There are people still in office today who voted in favor of racial segregation back in the days of Rosa Parks, and he's the current standing president whose justification for being there was "at least he's not a racist like Trump"... with a vice president perpetuating the enslavement of the black populace through unfairly harsh sentencing for black men for even a little bit of weed? World's been screwed, your foundation is fine, it's who you let control the whole thing that became the issue, because s#$& floats to the top no matter what power structure you try to put into place. You can phrase it as equally as you like, but you have to have it enforced by its word instead of a biased interpretation thereof. We're so lost as a people.
Hey, I just wanted to let you know I appreciate the subtitles, man! Also, yeah I did learn more than something new. I’m sure this will live on as one of those videos that still exist rent free in my head even aeons later. Truly enlightening. THANK YOU
I wonder if 'That Dang Dad' takes stories about unfair imprisonment. I've got one, and Frankly I'd like to see if there's any recourse for the victim as it seems shady as shit on the entire Police & Legal Department's part.
@@ThatDangDad Well, I guess to stop being Vague about it, as I wanted privacy, but I also would like the injustice to be known and perhaps some idea how I could do something. It was me, roughly 7 to 8 months ago I was attacked in my own home, I broke free from it using minimum amount of action needed, and quickly called police after fleeing the building. Police arrived, heard story, seemed to doubt I owned the house, refused to look at the deed and arrested me after I wrote my statement saying 'There's plenty of marks on them, but not on you' in places that didn't even make sense. I was held in prison for 45 days, half of that time with a bail of $0. (This was actually lied about outside of prison I found as my bail was still listed and quite high when I got out.) As far as I know, the charges were quote "Rejected". However, entire situation was wrong, and while I was in there I experienced/witnessed many injustices, and I catalogued as much as I could while in there in writing. (with my limited money I bought a pad and pen.) I could go on, However I have a bad habit of info dumping, and there's a lot more. I'm already sure a dedicated enough individual could probably discover who I am from this information.
@@ChaoticJanzo not saying shake it off, cuz fighting those turds is always worth while, but I did 18 months before ever seeing a judge, when I did it was dismissed and I was kicked loose, got a smug apology from the judge. If you didn’t have teeth knocked out, break a bone or incur a head injury or get sexually assaulted, be thankful, but depending on where in the world you are, I’d look into some advocacy and not necessarily the kind lawyers provide. They should be called out whenever possible, just don’t hold high hopes, and good luck.
@@mr.badman4578 it's less about me and more other stuff I saw in there, though it's to be expected. Stuff like throwing a Trans woman in men's 'dorm', faking aggression to excuse tazing prisoners at any turn, and intentionally infecting all the prisoners with covid. Last one may sound a stretch but I think with my notes I can reasonably prove it. Edit: not a conclusive list
@@ChaoticJanzo I had a trans woman as a celmate for 14 months! Saw an 18 yo get their face melted off, but the worst cruelty by far was done by the screws! I saw them intentionally spread an out break of necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating disease) I’d be surprised af if they weren’t using Covid as a weapon any chance they get. Stick it2da Man Janzo
This is a weird comment to make, but I started tearing up before you even said a word. The opening music that you chose activates the same part of my brain as 'Leaves from the Vine'
A couple years ago, I got really into finding old 1920s and 30s recordings of bluegrass and other mountain music and remixing it into ghostly versions - soundcloud.com/mary-helen-604958613
This video is effing based, and it's almost a direct response to Peter Boghossian's latest propaganda video named "Students Try to Explain Why America is Systemically Racist".
I think a big problem as well is that my abuser DID NOT go to prison or was treated like a criminal by police for the things they did. 5 different victims including myself and police were like 'didnt happen at the school can't do nothing about it'
Yes, I'm not entirely for prison abolition. But they ought to be humane places for those few who have to go, more like a college campus, and degrees should be offered. There should be very few that need to go. And forced labor is cruel.
@@commieswine both rehabilitation and improvement. Shifting the focus of prisons from giving businesses free labor to improving society would, well, improve society.
Please keep doing what you’re doing. Your videos are so concise and easy to follow, I really appreciate all you do and your very honest point of view. Thanks for leaving the police force- It’s amazing all the work you do against the opinions you grew up with.
One thing you didn't talk about here was that another way people get trapped in the prison system is background checks for employment. Employers are allowed to discriminate in hiring on the basis of your criminal record. If you have a felony conviction, especially if it is within a few years, most jobs are completely unavailable to you. This contributes to recidivism because people get desperate and return to what they know: selling drugs, involvement in organized crime, and stealing. And speaking of drugs, the prohibition of drugs is the biggest contributor to the convictions that put people in prison in the first place. The immediate and complete decriminalization of all drugs could cripple this prison-slave labor system virtually overnight.
Great point! That was a big issue in California with the incarcerated fire fighters, we pushed them into grave danger, they saved lives in their community, but when they were released they couldn't get firefighting jobs because of background checks. Absolute cruelty.
So the American Civil War was not about Freedom from slavery. It was rather about Northern Businessmen wanting in on it, and the Southern ones not wanting to share.
WAY WAY WAY off topic, I'm only 20 seconds into the video, but I just NEED to comment on your voice in conjunction with my new audio settings for my 3 subwoofer sound system. absolutely sublime, I'm pretty sure I could play a looping clip of you humming, every night at bedtime and never have a bad sleep ever again. [i just switched my audio eq app to "low shelf filters" instead of the peak filters it comes with as stock settings, for my sub150hz ranges{peters eq apo+peace gui}]
Just came across your Chanel. I think you showed up on my RUclips home page because I watch and subscribe to similar topics as this video. Thanks for spreading great content. I liked and subscribed.
Thank you TDD! I hope this video reaches people who are unaware and who's ears you have and inspires a complete dismantling of the US Justice system (or, at least, an overhaul) Capitalism and Racism are twins that were born in the same instant. The move away from class reductionism is the most important development in anti-capitalist thought, maybe ever?
I learned a lot of this from knowing better but you added a few things and I enjoyed your take also seen your recommendation for another channel earlier today and for that I say thank you
I was aware of a lot of the individual details you presented in this video, but you painted the big picture that all those details combine to create. Thanks for another enlightening video! And as for the tea -- surely sweet-lea lovers can take comfort in knowing you didn't waste any?
I was familiar with a lot of the subject matter. But I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation of it, and there were a lot of little contemporary details I was unaware of. Angela Davis already radicalized me but your content is helping to keep the fire alive. I loved your closing speech on intersectionality and camaraderie. None are free unless all are free.
i was just put on probation, and the officer assigned to me was my old drug dealers girlfriend. imagine that, just three years ago i was buying drugs from her, we broke bread, i ate fuvking burger street with their family, and now shes threatening to lock me up on a monthly basis, i help pay her salary with my monthly payments, and i have to bite my tounge as we act like we dont know each other so i dont start a conflict of intrest and get transfered to another officer. im so fucked up about this idk what to do or how to feel
im totally not trying to compare my situation to slavery, but there is a fucked up power dynamic going on and its been fucking with me mentally. ive just had to write her off as a former victim in an abusive relationship, and she just happens to be my probation officer now, and that seems to be working out for me so far
I really love your videos - highly educational, thought provoking content - I also think you have a super soothing voice, which is quite a contrast to the subject matter.
U often seem to be apologetic for your past as a police officer. As a former, long term addict and multiple felon, lemme tell you that WE ARE NOT OUR PAST MISTAKES.
Thank you for the closer about how the system we have now creates the type of anti social behavior we have now, how that system is failing everyone. I've had that idea brewing for a few years now and haven't been able to articulate it clearly.
solid video as always. more facts and events to compile for my class. Also the music is awesome. It is very reminiscent of Disco Elysium's soundtrack, if that's what you were going for, you nailed it.
I love how people go over the fact of why slavery started. The workers of a plantation went on strike and then the owner went to slavery. Slavery is built on the idea of a cheaper worker. If we want to overcome this great evil, we need to band together. Worker and worker, side by side forcing the owners to test them fairly.
Okay this comes off as aggressive towards dang dad, not my intention and I should have worded it differently. You didn’t go over the fact, however it was not the focus of the video(which is fine, history is fucking huge). Just I am going to start being load about it. And we have to realize that the owners have always been what that unknown evil throughout history. Someone wanting to extend their reach, power, and/or money(and never just one person, always more than a few)
Great video! In the state I live right now we have measure to abolish slavery in Oregon. Many Americans are uneducated on the 13Th amendment and what is really says. The system is working as intended, if less people were in prison capitalist would lose free labor. We can’t fix the problem of slavery, crime and punishment without abolishing capitalism!
There used to be a company called UNICOR Prison Industries. There workers manufactured auto parts and aeronautical parts. These types of jobs were union jobs before those industries moved to prison laborers. UNICOR paid profit sharing dividends to law enforcement agents and officers. Some prisons were competing for private contracts, then if they did not have enough staff, police would raid public housing facilities and arrest every male 18 and older. Hold them without charge until the contract was completed. It's a deep dark rabbit hole and a problem created due to the US addiction to enslaved laborer profits.
Well, my experiences are with the Orange County Sheriff and the LA County Sheriff, some of the most deeply corrupt sheriffs in the state of CA at the time. Small-town sheriffs also often reflect local bigotries and corruptions. As an abolitionist, I don't believe anyone should have the powers a sheriff does. We need a new model.
@@ThatDangDad Yuuuuuup, right there with ya. I had my own harrowing experiences with the El Paso County sheriff’s department in Texas back in the early 80s, and a few years afterwards heard from a friend (I’d long since fled to the left coast and never looked back) that a pretty sizable uproar happened when the magnitude of their corruption could no longer be hidden. Jobs lost, speeches made, blah blah politicscakes… but I doubt the department today is significantly less harmful than it was then. They all gotta go.
Folks, I need to confess something in the spirit of transparency and accountability. The tea in my spit take is not southern sweet tea, it's Chinese oolong tea because I hate sweet tea. And now I'm going to take a step back and take the time to listen and grow. Thank you.
It's ok sweet tea is highly overrated. Basically noncarbonated soda.
@@lopezjr42 you take that back
Sweet tea is disgusting so I think you dodged a bullet tbh
@@lopezjr42 Exactly.
Petro's chili and chips sweet tea might change your mind
Firefighter here, did 5 years on a type 2 contracted hand crew before joining an agency. I worked around con-crews alot. CAL-FIRE is about the worst agency I have seen in regards to how they treat thier prisoner crews. From what I saw, I have seen task force leaders send these men along with my crew into straight up death pits.
One memory I have that sticks out is when our taskforce gave us an assignment in a draw with visible flame, about 4" all around us with unburned fuel between us and the fire in a chapparall fuel model. They sent us in there without hiking it themselves, told us it was just right there, and when I went back to the rigs to pick up an extra saw on the way back I overheard our taskforce making jokes to division about how they should work us till one of us drops just to see who would call a medic first. When that section of the fire was getting plumed, the CAL-FIRE engine slugs decided they were going to make us and the prisoners carry all the hose and plumbing all while wondering why no one wanted to have a good time conversation with them.
I have seen the prisoners being treated like absolute dog shit, we cant talk to them, we cant treat them like people, they cant say no to assignments. thier crew bosses usually are a prison guards, and an inexperienced firefighter. It may have changed now, but i doubt it. Fuck CAL-FIRE and fuck the state of California.
Yikes, thank you for sharing, I didn't realize just how bad it could get out there
@@ThatDangDad absolutely.
One thing I wanna say that is good. Is that the prison crew members tend to have incredible "buy in" with the crew. I think a good conversation to have with prison labor is to take advantage of the time they have in prison to 1 pay them the equivalent wages they would make on the outside for real, give them an education or trade skill and have most of the money not used for commissary saved for when they get out. Give them options for true reform and a career when they get out. Cause they inevitably get out and will be someone's neighbor.
My big deal is atleast with Cal-fire golf crews is these men and women are non violent felons mostly drug charges, and kamala Harris extended thier sentences just for the labor and at the same time withheld employment opportunities after encarceration. All because calfire doesn't hire felons.
What's fucked up to me is every firefighter who worked under me that came from a con crew was a hard worker and very knowledgeable. In this day and age to waste that and to waste thier lives like that pisses me off. It's a failure of leadership and complete exploitation.
I'm on this fuck calfire rant I need to get this part out. Calfire doesn't sleep in camp. When I was in Chico on the camp fore, I saw fire refugees sleeping in a tent city in a Walmart parking lot. These people lost thier homes and were unable to get hotels all because calfire won't sleep on the damned ground. And to top it all off it took only a year for the city of chico to designate these folks from paradise from refugees who needed help to homeless vagrants and drug addicts who were choosing this lifestyle now.
People being forced to do something live threatening under punishment was the plot of a show I just watched.
Just that the reason there was racism and a war. Here it's racism, and money.
@@lotekchapra Honestly it's absurdist that these people who do great jobs aren't hired or given recommendations, being a fire fighter is a good job!
If your forcing them to do the work then by the time they leave they should be able to apply for a job related to the field and likely get it
Slaver owners : "what if we just.. SAY they're not slaves, but then lock up all of their fathers for misdemeanors?"
Corporations : "brilliant idea"
And somehow, white people never caught on. And people continue to just ignore this fact.
I try to explain this to my European fiance and he straight up doesn't believe me, thinking that no modern society could be that evil. I wish he was right.
How privileged is he? How pro-American? Although, he is right in one sense. America is not a "modern" society, if you think of modernity as genuine improvement.
Europe does have its own evils in similar ways.
If he thinks English oppression of the Irish is bad, link it to the colonisation of Australia by convicts. Economic wealth extraction by the English, led to extreme poverty in Ireland (even pre Potato Famine). That led to people committing crimes out of desperation. That led to high prison population. So they started shipping them off to the colonies to use as free labour.
Sydney was built by convicts. Lots of Melbourne too. Hobart definitely.
Lots of other European countries had similar colonies too. France, Spain etc etc. He's just not equating the violence of the past (which we know was bad) to perpetuating violence.
tell him the nazis aspired to become like americans and he's alive right now because the Soviet Army broke their fucking backs to stop it
@@TheShadowChesireCat I mean, yeah... Europe had its own bad stuff with slavery and exploitation, and of course now still profits from exploiting the Imperial Periphery... But for me it was absolutely unbelievable how mask-off the *current* state of exploitation and oppression is in the States. Like, when I came her I just couldn't believe that you could literally die if you didn't have private health insurance. That even with insurance, you have to often pay for a significant portion of your medical bills. That people straight up refuse to get an ambulance ride and dangerously drive themselves to hospitals because ambulances are not a public good...
I had heard bad things about prisons, but then realized that the bad stories we used to see in the nineties were just the tip of the iceberg and things have gotten progressively worse from the "heyday" of "progressive prisons" in the late sixties. Solitary confinement is considered torture, as are the 23-hour lockdowns with the lights on so as to disturb sleep, in most of the Imperial Core. People used to be able to get education in prison -- they really can't anymore, except some situations where you pay for it yourself. In most places in the US they no longer offer classes past GED, and will no longer proctor exams for colleges that used to offer correspondence courses. That is just incomprehensible to most of us from Europe -- what do you expect to happen when someone comes out of prison without any tools to rebuild their life, without an education or a useful skill? A perverse result of prison labor is also that many of the jobs they have you do in prison have completely gutted those industries outside of the prison-industrial complex -- so for example, many inmates learn how to sew, but basically all the garment industry in the states is in prisons, so it's not a skill you can use to get a job outside of prisons. Not to mention those jobs, like firefighting, that simply exclude felons from their ranks in the free world.
I could go on and on, but my point is that, yeah, many Americans don't even know how bad it is, but definitely for a lot of people in Europe who think America is awful -- it is incomprehensible how American society even functions with all this BS, and why people aren't in a constant state of revolt.
And now we got that Gazs mess, and prison Slavery sounds like a sunny Day on the Beach.
Wage slavery is still in existence
Debt slavery too.
Having to work for survival is coercion. Wage make slaves of everyone who does not hold the capital.
LOL
@@mr.badman4578Yeah its actually not coercion though because if u dont work to live what happens? U cant afford a home, food, safety and healthcare does that sound like a life?? The death rate of homeless people is insane. Coercion implies that there is room for a choice and there simply isnt unless u want to be homeless and begging for food or dying from the cold.
All my life.
Hey mate, disabled/medically retired US Marine here, super appreciate you including disabled folks in the list. I'm incredibly rare and lucky in that most of my disabilities are socially acceptable, but I have quite a few friends who aren't so lucky and will probably spend the rest of their lives struggling to get by through absolutely no fault of their own (or a couple of them, through somebody else's fault). Disabled folks are something of an invisible minority, which is ironic given that health is the one form of privilege that anyone can have and everyone will eventually lose. Cheers, keep fighting the good fight.
Yeah you might see McRuer's Crip Theory behind me on my book display... when he wrote "Disability is the one identity category all of us will assume if we live long enough" it was like suddenly he turned a bunch of lights on and I hadn't realized I'd been in a dark room all this time. Between him and then Stacy Simplican talking about people with cognitive impairments being excluded from democracy, disabled justice is something that is frequently on my mind.
One clear example is getting help like Disability payments. It took years and a lawyer for me to get Disability when I was disabled and the only reason I got it was that I was closed circuit at the time, as in, I was ready to go back to work. My lawyer at the time told me something that's stuck with me; that you'll get turned down the first time you apply. Being turned down is treated like it's just part of the process.
I've once again become disabled and this time it's numerous severe disabilities and, once again, I've been rejected and am having to go through the appeals process.
@@mechanomics2649I hope you're getting your payments now. I've had a lot of friends and family end up on disability over the years, and I've had to warn every single one of them to expect to be denied. That at least one denial is just part of the process. The only time I've seen it any different was when there was as lawyer involved, but not everyone has that option. It's insane.
Dude, you're brilliant.
After explaining that the US has the most imprisoned in gross than and other country, "Now, do you think we are a culture uniquely prone to antisocial behavior?" I laughed out loud.
No way. You're telling me businesses in one place would use slave labor from another for profit? Wow. Anyways, I here Nestlé has a new chocolate candy coming out.
Wash it down with an ice cold Coca-Cola, a drink that has never involved the company paying paramilitary gangs to execute labor organizers in the South America. Now to take a big drink of Coke and Google what I just said real quick...
@@ThatDangDad i think i'll take a pepsi instead
Sorry for asking, social media ya know. Was this a deliberate reference to 1984?
@@rickb3650 nope. Not a deliberate reference. It was because Nestlé had used child slaves for chocolate production in places like Mali. The Supreme Court dismissed a case that would allow them to be sued by victims, since it happened outside the US.
@@shanefoster2132 Thank you. That one went right past me.
On a brighter note CA has stopped them from taking their water for next to nothing and reselling it at a huge markup, in plastic bottles of course.
In 1984, Winston's friend (can't remember his name ATM) at The Ministry keeps telling Winston he's heard rumors that their choco rations are going to be doubled.
Recently someone learning English asked me what the word "loitering" means at the bus stop and I got to give them a little history lesson with regards to racism and criminalization. These are things that are all around us we take for granted.
No one cares about the viability of a slaves nervous system. Pro lifers at least those in the extremist sense want to make sure that nervous system emerges so they can damage it. Mankind is not a disease but there is a disease in mankind.
So instead of giving them the definition of the word, which is what they asked for, you go off on a rant about racism?
Yeah, that's seems like the appropriate thing to do...
@@NotThatKindOfKiwi86 just look at the Wikipedia article for that word. It has always trough out history been used to keep the poor and unwanted out of public places. You can't just translate the word without also explaining this foreign american concept. This isn't a normal sign to have in most places of the world. And can you guess what the same signs had written on them pre Rosa Parks? 🤔
@@NotThatKindOfKiwi86 is discussion and conversation not allowed anymore
@@gentrelane No, because his feewings huwt and the weftists have to pay for this cwime!
Most of the money on my books ended up paying for "medical".
I pointed out that my court paperwork said the state of Idaho was responsible for my medical care and medications (at IDOC expense) for the duration of my incarceration.
The prison guard and nurse I asked lol'd. The guard said, "If you can afford a team of good attorneys, they might be able to say something about it."
They forced me to take medication that was poisonous for the type of epilepsy I have. It caused me to have daily chains of generalized tonic clonic (grand mal) seizures. If they would have done a Google search, they could've found out that they were shaving decades off my lifespan with the medication they prescribed.
But they did not Google. They just kept raising the toxic med and charging me for the privilege of nurses checking my vitals after I regained consciousness, choking on my own blood and foam.
Jeez, how awful! You didn't deserve to be treated like that
Jesus that's horrible and traumatising. I hope you can get the help you deserve after all this. I have medical trauma from neglect, conversion therapy and medication induced medical injury. But I feel like yours was a lot more malicious, and knowing it shaved years off your life, how scary.
:(
Prisoners shouldn't lose their human rights, they should have movement restricted for the benefit of safety of others if needed but that's it. Rehabilitation should be the key. When they focus on 'punishment' and revel in it, people risk cheering on this kind of abuse and counting it as deserved. It doesn't matter what anyone even did to end up there, that's not ok, ever.
Fucking monsters.
I can't say I'm surprised anymore, but I really feel for you. That is awful.
I spent a single night in jail and was refused medical care, with the police supposedly calling a nurse who supposedly told them that my life-threatening condition was not life-threatening and that they were just supposed to give me a Tylenol for the pain. When I was on my way to the ER that night, per doctor's orders, because I had a massive ovarian cyst that could at any point cause ovarian torsion or cause me to bleed out. I survived. It was extremely traumatic. And I am absolutely shocked every time I hear a new horror story about healthcare denied in prisons, causing not only long-term effects for the untreated conditions, but also severe trauma from being told to suck it up even when you know it's killing you.
The system criminalizes poor people. Those who use overworked public defenders, can’t afford fines , court costs, restitution, child support, taxes, etc.
Pretty sure Tennessee was gonna make it illegal for homeless people to camp on public property.
I feel like the plan was never to abolish slavery but just change the system to make everyone slaves
peonage and serfdom by any other name
Don't forget how, depending on state, a felony conviction can eliminate your right to ever vote again!
In America at least, it’s been true from the very beginning that poor people aren’t people, they are just another exploitable resource for the rich.
“Forced labour” in American films has always been a bizarre sight.
People get so brainwashed into thinking corporal punishment is an effective way to rehabilitate, or correct bad behavior. Like you said most inmates need mental health care. That coupled with capitalist greed has created this awful system. I didnt realize how much prisoners were exploited for cheap labor until fairly recently. I always had an idea, and Ive never supported the prison industrial complex, but its a huge problem.
I love your channel, and love that you speak out about these issues.
They don't think that at all. They don't want these people rehabilitated. They want them gone and kept away from the rest of society forever and suffer.
Corporal punishment works specifically to the benefit of the one perpetrating it. The entire model is designed to create compliance with might and power. It has never been a way of instilling actual social discipline or moral incentive. If that were the case, prisoners would come out of prisons as model citizens, and most don't, because they were beat into submission towards the will of their captors and were never adjusted to return to the world and so return to the world that got them there in the first place. It's a sad world the powers that be have created and maintained; so much potential, so much fertility for growth and improvement washed away. So much unnecessary pain and suffering, futures stolen from people, good futures turned bad, bad futures turned worse.
It's not just that it's a horrible way to rehabilitate people but it also encourages a system that makes unnecessary actions illegal and with stiff penalties. Everyone always says fuck em they broke the law but most of the things they're locked up for shouldn't be illegal and definitely shouldn't involve prison time.
Instead of correcting bad behavior, it seems that our system models bad behavior.
I am not even sure they are really 'brainwashed', they are just horrible people who WANT others to suffer, but only within the context of 'it is ok to hurt these people because they are bad'. If you listen to the law and order crowd, their rhetoric is rooted in the question of 'who are acceptable victims that we can make suffer for our pleasure but still claim moral high ground?'
In some (small) ways, life as a post-war slavery was harsher. "Employers" of prison labor had little or no financial incentive to keep their "employees" safe. They're leased, and the state rarely imposed any consequences to working them literally to death. In chattel slavery, at least the slave owner had a reason to keep their slaves alive and productive.
Something to keep in mind whenever the U.S government accuses another nation of 'dumping' goods below the cost of production.
Thanks for mentioning commissary and phone calls. I worked kitchen in Arapahoe County and we all pushed ourselves really hard through injuries and sickness to avoid losing our good time. Didn't help that they would neglect you medically to the border of death.
Woof, sorry you went thru that :(
I am overwhelmed with disgust,
I knew most of this stuff already, but i still look at it helplessly. The recent _Dobbs_ ruling kinda signaled we're entering the _Nuremburg laws_ phase of our fascist takeover.
Sadly I fight major depression. I live on Social Security, so I can expect ICE to come for me early.
The bit at 15:55-16:12 was the angriest I've ever heard you sound. The righteous anger of a Dang Dad at a perfidious system of human explanation is a power that cannot be contained. Keep up the great work.
It makes me angry but I *sounded* angry because I was trying to say it all in one breath lol
@@ThatDangDad I kinda figured that was the case but it added a great touch of anger nonetheless!
My uncle is a cop. I live with him. I’d like to show him these vids but I don’t want to get shot.
I think one thing that doesn't get talked about enough is how trans people are some of the most vulnerable people within the prison population, especially if they're also some shade of black or brown. And trans women of color in particular face that triple cocktail of transmisogynoir.
In most states, trans people will be housed according to their agab, and they face an inordinate risk of being physically or sexually assaulted. Other times, they'll usually be segregated, which usually means being locked in solitary confinement in order to "be protected" or to "protect other people". This includes how trans people are usually treated even if they go to prisons in accordance with their actual gender.
Most will be denied gender affirming care, and even then, they can easily be punished for having those hormones. My first thought for both is how personnel treated Chelsea Manning when she was locked up.
Yeah that's a really great point, thanks for bringing it up!!
Everyone in prison is vulnerable, and unless you’re one of the head honchos of a gang, the chances of being victimized by someone else (guards and other prisoners alike) in prison are highly likely no matter your ethnicity or sexual self-definition. If these people are so upset with how they’re being treated in prison, maybe they should have thought twice before doing whatever landed them in prison.
@@Initial_Gopnik Maybe, and here's a thought, they shouldn't be made vulnerable in these ways. No one should be. The prison gangs form because of the brutal system they are placed under.
Drug possession is one of the weakest reasons to put people in jail, same with mental health. But they're pretty common reasons.
And what was noted was that trans people are more likely to be victimized in these places from all angles.
@@FarremShamist I once asked a very old prisoner about his views of prison after being incarcerated for over 4 decades, he told me he was guilty of a double homicide in a nasty wreck driving under the influence, and he told me “It took me twenty years to understand this but prison is a place where people like myself who have made others in society feel vulnerable are placed, all of us here have to endure the vulnerabilities that we made others experience, whatever you do kid, dont do something stupid, and end up in here for the rest of your life.” People don’t get put in prison for no reason and no-one is exempt from being treated like crap in prison, I toured San Quentin with the other community school delinquents back in the day and man that really opened my eyes to how much hell goes on in prison and it convinced me of never wanting to end up in one.
As someone with both victims & criminals in my extended family-sometimes both in the same person-& as a “V” myself who’s nevertheless been pro-abolitionist re: prisons + cops for years, I just wanted to point out that so many of us have both in our families.
Real justice is pro-accountability, pro-family, pro-community, pro-social, pro-personal thriving & pro-healing. We can do better. All we have to believe rn is we can + must do better. The great thing about collective politics is we don’t have to have the answers alone or do the work alone. (Or that’s what I tell myself to get thru some days.)
So I’m still thinking of this stuff weeks l8r & tho it’s unlikely anyone’ll read this, one of the many old odd memories Phil’s video brought up was a sudden recollection my uncle was Military Police when he did a non-violent crime & his conviction/sentence were career-enders in at least 2 ways after he spent over 4yrs in military max setting then another 2-3 at a less strict facility, for theft of about $1200 from a military business (therefore the military) in 1980s.
So I should’ve said many of us have ALL 3 in our families-like mine, the unholy trinity of corrupted justice systems demanding transformation: victims, criminals, & cops.
I stand by saying sometimes all of them are the same people. Like my uncle. Bc a Golden Child in an abusive family system nevertheless experiences abuse.
Interesting side note:
⚜️quelle surprise🥸the non-violent criminal was not an abusive family member; actually none of the guys who served time afaik were the abusers in a family tree...well, more like a messy family orchard at this point...but in a family stuffed with broken toxic rageful abusers of all kinds spanning 5 generations, whatever arboreal metaphor we use, in a family filled with them, I can’t recall any instances when the people who were in prison (all were guilty, in reality & court, & are relatively open about their responsibility) were accused of abuse. I never saw anything that made me wonder or heard stories of the kind, no side-eye-ing “missing stairstep” warnings we on the Team Victim Whisper Network used to help each other navigate the goddam dangerous haunted messy orchard lol.
Yet none of the abusers, not even the SA-era & blatant beaters, were even arrested, as far as I recall. The worst “punishment” I heard about was the time a grandfather got a stern talking-to by his priest & he already said the rosary so much he apparently was square already with his deity of choice. Effing priests🙄ugh, I can’t even with the effing priests + my family. (I know more than I should about the Vatican’s gobsmackingly archaic “justice system”🥺). A family inside joke is the stories I heard from generations before me were so scary that as a child they curled my hair, a Just-So Story for why I’m the only curly haired kid in the genetically enmeshed part of the family. Wild sh*t, that 20th Century, apparently.
😂 this video must be powerful bc so many feelings! Such weird & bad feelings! & as the vaudeville joke spins, “& in such big portions!”
* context: in Canada; I’m in the...well, Treaty land, really, in the northern Prairies, with American + Canadian citizens in my fam on both sides of the border, spread across 5 provinces, 1 territory, & 6 states.
@@picahudsoniaunflocked5426 The unholy trinity, you've gave it a good name!
I've never been incarcerated but my fiancé currently is stuck in prison in Texas due to your f*cked up plea deal system (I'm thankfully not from the US) my partner doesn't feel it's a big deal but they told me about the hygiene and food conditions in some of the facilities they were in and it's horrendous. They've gone as far as making friends with the mice/rats and bugs living in their cell... Also during heatwaves they either don't have or refuse to turn on the AC which regularly leads to people having medical problems. (they had to take care of another inmate who fainted from the heat because the guards wouldn't and the medical ward was full.
So, I knew a lot of this, but only on a high level. This was well put together and I love how you hammered home how all of our societal ills are connected.
I live in Colorado. 2018 election referendum Colorado residents voted to abolish the part of the 13th amendment allowing for the imprisoned to work while imprisoned to work for free (legalized slavery), I was lucky enough to cast my vote to make this change to the Colorado Constitution. Likewise this past election, 2022, Colorado voters also voted for all School students to receive meals free to them, no matter how rich or poor the kids' parents. Oh, also majic mushrooms in CO are NOW legal along with of course cannabis. Colorado Rocks.
Plus you guys have amazing mountains
"...if you want to combat ableism, you have to be in solidarity with the fight against racism and colonialism. And if you want to combat racism, you have to be in solidarity with the fight against capitalism. And if you want to combat capitalism, you damn sure better be listening to your Black and Brown and Asian and Indigenous and Immigrant and Disabled comrades. This is all one fight and we either win together or not at all."
Incredibly well said my brother. My whole move to the far left started because I started learning about my people's struggles with US Military colonialism in Guam, and that lead me to stand in solidarity with the struggles of all the oppressed. Thank you for this video. Sangan i guaguan, yan saina ma'ase (Speak what is valuable, and thank you)
Even vagrancy as a crime is part of it. The thing is, homelessness is primarily caused by how high the rents are in an area.
Also, don't forget how you can be denied housing if you've got past convictions...even if you served your time/fees, in many cases even if you were 'cleared' later--if it's still written that you were convicted, you're a convict. Get arrested & convicted for vagrancy, get released, you're forced into vagrancy again.
I already knew all this but most of it on a more conceptual level. You tied everything together and highlighted how fucked it really all is, and there are _definitely_ a lot of people out there who need to hear this
This is the best youtube channel an ex-cop can make. Thank you sir for being honest and breaking away from the evil government. I greatly appreciate your work. Im taking notes on this to do commentary for my own radio show. Keep up the good work!
I’ll be honest. I expected to roll my eyes a few times about how prisoners were now slaves. I did expect I’d be able to see his point and get a better understanding of some aspects of our society that are darker. What I wasn’t expecting was to be slapped with some hard truths. I’ll never be able to think of prisons and arrests the same way.
Mind you, I already thought prisons were way over crowded and police officers were unnecessarily aggressive.
This is giving me flashbacks to "Slavery by another name" By Douglas Blackmon. Hearing turpentine after you described peonage made me feel like I was young again sitting around feeling... unsurprised and becoming progressively more upset about our foreign policy. I really don't know if taking both topics on was healthy, but I'm glad I learned peon was not just a subordinate like I previously thought. Hate to comment early but heard it's best for engagement anyway.
👂
Thumbs up for the federalist society dig alone.
I love the compassionate yet don’t-take-no-more-bullshit-excuses-from-nobody way you educate. I hope that the framing really makes it impossible for those who love to deny the uglier parts of America the “beautiful” to keep denying those uglies and start facing that stuff head on in solidarity, so that we can get to fixing all this nonsense finally. Thanks for doin what you do.
Most folks I know are closer to the bottom than the top, but they still feel they got enough buffer. Rugs about to get pulled out from under just after the prisons for profit have been set up and it has become more criminal to be poor or off the grid. Every time a zero gets added on top it pushes most of us down.
This adds a whole new level to recent attempts to outlaw certain medical procedures.
"They" apparently need more slave labor.
Heck yeah it does
Prison... _labor._
Unpaid forced labor, indeed.
We're going to see a spike in folks giving birth in jail hospitals after being caught ordering misopristol, and I'm betting they won't get twelve weeks of maternity leave from their work details
If anyone's interested, I would recommend the book "Slavery by another name." My high school history teacher had us read it in class. I'm still fucking baffled how so many of my peers stayed either reaganite conservatives or became members of the alt right. Guess it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a kid from a wealthy privileged family to become a class traitor. 🤷♂️ Just goes to show how brutally effective U.S. schools are at mass rightwing indoctrination of students, including those most impacted by the current U.S. slavery system.
I mean they make y'all pledge allegiance to a flag every day, on behalf of all the other countries I assure you this is not normal and incredibly fascist, we're a lil worried about you America
@@Lincoln_Bio at my school they actually did it twice a day--once in the morning, and then once after lunch. They said it was because some kids picked schedules that meant they didn't have to come to school until the afternoon, but none of us bought that excuse 🤷♂️
Wait, you're from kentucky?
Hell, I've been in a kentucky jail. I know exactly how extortionate those prices are. I explicitly told my family NOT to donate money to me while I was there specifically because it was a total scam.
i had a history teacher my senior year who told my whole class with confidence that slavery does not exist anymore. when i asked about the 13th amendment and the way its written he just said "its changed since then". thats it. thats what happens when you give a football coach history classes ig.
The fact that you can sum up prison abolition down to "shit hasn't changed for centuries... how's that working out for you?" is the sort of reductive brilliance that might even have a shot at convincing hardcore conservatives.... maybe... *shrugs blankly*
Amazing work again. Youre on fire lately. I have been loving your stuff so much this last year. keep up the fantastic content you beautiful dang dad
I've seen a ton of shit that's made my blood boil, but this is making it evaporate. I fucking hope your channel explodes in popularity.
Key "they both serve the same master"
Im an excon. If convict workers went on strike, then the govt would be forced to hire outside workers to replace them. I always wondered if the huge increase in cost would be enough to force them to implement reforms to reduce the size of the prison population? There are around 100-150 kitchen workers alone at an average sized facility.
Thank you for doing this. My dad is a cop and very much lost in the sauce. It's very healing to hear you speak and know you got out of it.
My mom was a cop (retired now). I went 25 years no contact with her because I couldn't stand it. And even now we text maybe twice a year.
I'm am so disgusted that California keeps doing this shit. Last week I was driving along and hit some road construction. It's like 105 degrees and there is this crew laying hot patch all along this rural road. I say to my friend, "that looks fucked up, I hope they are making jack." It looked like Hellish work. Who wants to work in that? Then we get to the end of the road construction and see the Sheriff dept. van and we both go "ohhhh." And the Sheriff deputy, sitting under the shade...that guy looked like an extra from "The Heat of the Night." I'm just driving by slave labor and there is nothing I can do about it.
I did road and bridge it was terrible but I did it during winter so it was not too bad. What bullshit it's a way to degrade people.
Also ,the bail system. Can’t pay bail, stay in jail.
And probation--a lot of people think it's 'just show up every so often.' No, it's a fine you have to pay on a regular basis. Fail to pay for any reason? You're in violation of your parole. And that's without the rampant abuse by parole officers.
@@cam4636 yep. And if you don’t pay fines, court costs, and restitution you don’t get off probation.
I think about prison labor when I see a "Made in the USA" label.
And you are absolutely correct.
I guess that what it means for a product to be American. It has a long way to go before it gets away from its past.
I already knew most of this, but I know most people have no clue. So thank you for making this video! I shared it on my public media of choice and I hope that helps spread the word ♡
Also I've been incarcerated bc I got deported , people don't realize how dehumanizing it is . Nearly broke me and I only stayed locked up for 2 months before I got deported
I'd play a game made by incarcerated people if they got to choose to do it and it was a way for them to express their thoughts, feelings and experiences. I feel like we could get a lot of really cool art/message games that way from a population that is basically always cast as villainous or, at best, violent asshole antiheroes, especially in video games
So I knew of all of this, but seeing it broken down this way was a good thought refresher. See also 'knowing better's' video on chattel slavery, which did not end in the 1800's.
OMG yes, knowing better was so passionate about it too.
@@yeanah2571 He has a great channel, and his examination of book vs. film Starship Troopers is incredibly good. I used to be a book fan (because powered armor and oo-rah space marines), and then I got older and wiser and now I'm a movie guy because 'yikes silly space fascists' (that scene where children stomp bugs in a propaganda film inside the film is brilliant). It helps to contextualize and examine fascist propaganda and Paul Verhoeven is ever more a genius director/filmmaker in my estimation.
Terrific essay, man. Hopefully it reaches. Its hard to stay sane anymore.
Aramark is a fucking blight on humanity. I remember living in area where they paid state minimum using "out of district contracts" as the 28% employer IN that external area where the district minimum was almost twice the state minimum. And they used holdings company to have people on ~35 hours a week per job across three. Fuckers make ERCOT look ethical.
At least slavery is explicitly protected in the Constitution. Wouldn’t want the SC to get rid of that and luckily they can’t!
When a prison system provides incentives to increase incarceration rates it has gone so wrong that anyone with a moral compass should be able to tell. It’s devastating that politicians can still talk about the US „justice“ system like it‘s normal and necessary. No, it is exceptional. Exceptionally fucked.
By the way, thanks for talking about RTJ the other day! I didn’t even know them before and now they might become my favorite group.
Another great video.
Like the war itself, the 13th was specifically written to maintain the (relatively new) tradition of government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. Prior to the revolution most states had prison system that would not even be recognized as prisons today. 70 years later the Civil War was fought over slavery, but neither side fought for the slaves.
In the times around the Declaration of Independence the ruling class learned a hard lesson. When you get people to follow you by promising them freedom and liberty, the people tend to want liberation and freedom. This caused dozens of mostly ignored uprisings and rebellions in all the colonies, and far more of what became the foundations of our nation are about keeping power away from the people than we are comfortable knowing.
Thank you for acknowledging the Taíno pple. They rarely ever are and are almost always left out of the conversation about Native Americans. Same for most central and south American natives. At least that’s the impression I get.
On a long enough timeline every cop lies on police reports. Weather it's omision of vital information or flat out lying. ( I know it's a little off topic)
And by "long enough timeline", I'm assuming you mean an eight hour shift. When my mother was a cop, she would tell me about busting someone at 11:15pm, and if they had drugs on them, those went straight in the toilet. She got off at midnight and didn't want to deal with the paperwork. If, on the other hand she busted you at 4:30pm, you were in for a long evening in the station with her.
This might be one of the most honest discussions about consent I've ever heard. Thank you so much for making this.
If we did away with Prison labor, would as many people would be arrested? Many thing that when someone goes to prison, they just sit around "rot in jail" so this is a great informative video!
I mean, considering the statistics given in-video about the increase in prison population...no, not nearly as many people would be arrested. Or convicted, or sentenced to prison, or kept in prison longterm. There'd also be a big shift in the definition of 'criminal behavior' if there's less incentive to keep prisons full.
@@cam4636 I was thinking the same thing. Since there is an Incentive to put people in Prison. If that was removed then I don't think the establishment would bother with trying to get people arrested. I can imagine how so many laws would change with that incentive gone.
I knew all of this intuitively, but you put up the facts and I salute you for taking the time to do that
Thank you
This is something I used to discuss as a civil war reenactor for the 15th Alabama infantry. You always wind up having to deal with that age old argument that leads to "a state's rights to what" and the answer, unfortunately, is industry, an industry reliant on slaves. The south relied on it, the north relied on it. It's wrong to own people, and those who do are evil.
This isn't the same as saying the war was fought over slavery, but rather who owns them and under what conditions. From chain gangs to American folk tales like The Real McCoy, to the high rate of black prisoners through the privatized prison system that turns them out for labor for pennies on the hour. Considering all this with the fact that Lincoln RELUCTANTLY abolished slavery as a means to win the war, not out of humanitarian duty, and stated that if he could have won the war without doing so, he would have.
So with all this in context in our American history, I want to ask what in God's name happened if the good guys won the war on slavery, why did it then persist under the legal system for the sake of building the railroads that Lincoln served as a lawyer?
See, we hadn't yet pushed west as a country, but we were getting ready to... ahem... manifest a little destiny, if you will. Civil War got in the way during preparation, but it only held it up for 4 years or so before the gold rush was announced to migrate the people west. There's a logistical problem here, you see, plantations and railroads are competing for all the same resources: large tracts of land and vast quantities of cheap, hardy labor. Plantations are just eating up all the labor and will force railroads to spend exorbitant fees to weave around the massive plantation realestate. This is the biggest difference between southern and northern economies driving the war: the north is industrial and the south is agricultural, but the north is also where the country's capitol is, so everything the city decided was good for the country was enforced whether it be to their detriment or not. This also caused as imbalance of resources being funneled to the capitol while everything away from the capitol was working its benefit more than their own. With outright chattel slavery banned and the war won, the north is now left with prisoners and feel-good propaganda like McCoy, Chinese indentured servants, and the "gingers", who were seen at the time as more worthless than a black slave because they weren't seen as hardy and hard working in comparison, to the point that there were people breeding the two together for a midway alternative slave (where we get Mellado from) until the practice was outlawed. So this "better than nothing" alternative slave crew was sent out to blast themselves to smithereens in constructing the glorious American railways before the craftsman came in to do the labor they actually have to pay for.
We can play "lesser of two evils" until the cows come home, but nobody came out of that war in a clean pressed suit, nobody escaped free of the mark of evil. This is why we need to remember that part of our history instead of spreading memes about how Phinneas and Ferb are a bigger part of our nation's history than the confederacy and the civil war, because it's discounting one of the bloodiest conflicts of American history and dismissing the past so that we might repeat it.
The issue isn't with the written laws, it's with how they're inforced and who enforces it from on high and who they make exemptions for and who they throw the entire book at. There are people still in office today who voted in favor of racial segregation back in the days of Rosa Parks, and he's the current standing president whose justification for being there was "at least he's not a racist like Trump"... with a vice president perpetuating the enslavement of the black populace through unfairly harsh sentencing for black men for even a little bit of weed?
World's been screwed, your foundation is fine, it's who you let control the whole thing that became the issue, because s#$& floats to the top no matter what power structure you try to put into place. You can phrase it as equally as you like, but you have to have it enforced by its word instead of a biased interpretation thereof.
We're so lost as a people.
So...who was it who instilled in me when I was a kid that some people like going to prison because it's free housing?
Capitalists
Hey, I just wanted to let you know I appreciate the subtitles, man! Also, yeah I did learn more than something new. I’m sure this will live on as one of those videos that still exist rent free in my head even aeons later. Truly enlightening. THANK YOU
I wonder if 'That Dang Dad' takes stories about unfair imprisonment. I've got one, and Frankly I'd like to see if there's any recourse for the victim as it seems shady as shit on the entire Police & Legal Department's part.
My comments sections frequently have people telling their stories about unlawful imprisonment. This is the place to talk about it!
@@ThatDangDad Well, I guess to stop being Vague about it, as I wanted privacy, but I also would like the injustice to be known and perhaps some idea how I could do something. It was me, roughly 7 to 8 months ago I was attacked in my own home, I broke free from it using minimum amount of action needed, and quickly called police after fleeing the building. Police arrived, heard story, seemed to doubt I owned the house, refused to look at the deed and arrested me after I wrote my statement saying 'There's plenty of marks on them, but not on you' in places that didn't even make sense. I was held in prison for 45 days, half of that time with a bail of $0. (This was actually lied about outside of prison I found as my bail was still listed and quite high when I got out.) As far as I know, the charges were quote "Rejected". However, entire situation was wrong, and while I was in there I experienced/witnessed many injustices, and I catalogued as much as I could while in there in writing. (with my limited money I bought a pad and pen.) I could go on, However I have a bad habit of info dumping, and there's a lot more. I'm already sure a dedicated enough individual could probably discover who I am from this information.
@@ChaoticJanzo not saying shake it off, cuz fighting those turds is always worth while, but I did 18 months before ever seeing a judge, when I did it was dismissed and I was kicked loose, got a smug apology from the judge. If you didn’t have teeth knocked out, break a bone or incur a head injury or get sexually assaulted, be thankful, but depending on where in the world you are, I’d look into some advocacy and not necessarily the kind lawyers provide. They should be called out whenever possible, just don’t hold high hopes, and good luck.
@@mr.badman4578 it's less about me and more other stuff I saw in there, though it's to be expected. Stuff like throwing a Trans woman in men's 'dorm', faking aggression to excuse tazing prisoners at any turn, and intentionally infecting all the prisoners with covid. Last one may sound a stretch but I think with my notes I can reasonably prove it. Edit: not a conclusive list
@@ChaoticJanzo I had a trans woman as a celmate for 14 months! Saw an 18 yo get their face melted off, but the worst cruelty by far was done by the screws! I saw them intentionally spread an out break of necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating disease) I’d be surprised af if they weren’t using Covid as a weapon any chance they get.
Stick it2da Man Janzo
This is a weird comment to make, but I started tearing up before you even said a word. The opening music that you chose activates the same part of my brain as 'Leaves from the Vine'
A couple years ago, I got really into finding old 1920s and 30s recordings of bluegrass and other mountain music and remixing it into ghostly versions - soundcloud.com/mary-helen-604958613
@@ThatDangDad I will definitely check that out once the profound internal apoplexy of your video wears off
This video is effing based, and it's almost a direct response to Peter Boghossian's latest propaganda video named "Students Try to Explain Why America is Systemically Racist".
I think a big problem as well is that my abuser DID NOT go to prison or was treated like a criminal by police for the things they did. 5 different victims including myself and police were like 'didnt happen at the school can't do nothing about it'
Yes, I'm not entirely for prison abolition. But they ought to be humane places for those few who have to go, more like a college campus, and degrees should be offered. There should be very few that need to go. And forced labor is cruel.
Yeah the Nordic model is a good place to start in my opinion. We need to shift our focus from punishment to rehabilitation
@@commieswine both rehabilitation and improvement. Shifting the focus of prisons from giving businesses free labor to improving society would, well, improve society.
Please keep doing what you’re doing. Your videos are so concise and easy to follow, I really appreciate all you do and your very honest point of view. Thanks for leaving the police force- It’s amazing all the work you do against the opinions you grew up with.
We need massive prison reform. There is no justification for this.
One thing you didn't talk about here was that another way people get trapped in the prison system is background checks for employment. Employers are allowed to discriminate in hiring on the basis of your criminal record. If you have a felony conviction, especially if it is within a few years, most jobs are completely unavailable to you. This contributes to recidivism because people get desperate and return to what they know: selling drugs, involvement in organized crime, and stealing. And speaking of drugs, the prohibition of drugs is the biggest contributor to the convictions that put people in prison in the first place. The immediate and complete decriminalization of all drugs could cripple this prison-slave labor system virtually overnight.
Great point! That was a big issue in California with the incarcerated fire fighters, we pushed them into grave danger, they saved lives in their community, but when they were released they couldn't get firefighting jobs because of background checks. Absolute cruelty.
So the American Civil War was not about Freedom from slavery. It was rather about Northern Businessmen wanting in on it, and the Southern ones not wanting to share.
Both sides.
WAY WAY WAY off topic, I'm only 20 seconds into the video, but I just NEED to comment on your voice in conjunction with my new audio settings for my 3 subwoofer sound system. absolutely sublime, I'm pretty sure I could play a looping clip of you humming, every night at bedtime and never have a bad sleep ever again.
[i just switched my audio eq app to "low shelf filters" instead of the peak filters it comes with as stock settings, for my sub150hz ranges{peters eq apo+peace gui}]
"if you're in favour of like, a little bit of slavery, you're pro slavery my dude"
this!! this is the line I'm gonna play on soothing repeat
you can't spell "audiophile" without Phil
Damn TIL John C Calhoun was almost a dialectical materialist...
Just came across your Chanel. I think you showed up on my RUclips home page because I watch and subscribe to similar topics as this video. Thanks for spreading great content. I liked and subscribed.
"Bury them in bricks until they beg us to use ballots." I'm gonna remember that for a long time, I think. Excellent video.
This is incredibly well done! Bravo!
Please include the fight for Bodily Autonomy & Culture Crimes next time, thank you!
Thank you TDD! I hope this video reaches people who are unaware and who's ears you have and inspires a complete dismantling of the US Justice system (or, at least, an overhaul) Capitalism and Racism are twins that were born in the same instant. The move away from class reductionism is the most important development in anti-capitalist thought, maybe ever?
Labrees bakery (A factory in Old Town Maine) uses prison labour its not all of there labour but they make them do the worst most dangours jobs
I learned a lot of this from knowing better but you added a few things and I enjoyed your take also seen your recommendation for another channel earlier today and for that I say thank you
I was aware of a lot of the individual details you presented in this video, but you painted the big picture that all those details combine to create. Thanks for another enlightening video!
And as for the tea -- surely sweet-lea lovers can take comfort in knowing you didn't waste any?
I was familiar with a lot of the subject matter. But I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation of it, and there were a lot of little contemporary details I was unaware of. Angela Davis already radicalized me but your content is helping to keep the fire alive.
I loved your closing speech on intersectionality and camaraderie. None are free unless all are free.
Yay another video, I am excited to learn ^_^. Even if this is a bit if a heavy topic 😅
i was just put on probation, and the officer assigned to me was my old drug dealers girlfriend. imagine that, just three years ago i was buying drugs from her, we broke bread, i ate fuvking burger street with their family, and now shes threatening to lock me up on a monthly basis, i help pay her salary with my monthly payments, and i have to bite my tounge as we act like we dont know each other so i dont start a conflict of intrest and get transfered to another officer. im so fucked up about this idk what to do or how to feel
jesus, that's really messed up.
im totally not trying to compare my situation to slavery, but there is a fucked up power dynamic going on and its been fucking with me mentally. ive just had to write her off as a former victim in an abusive relationship, and she just happens to be my probation officer now, and that seems to be working out for me so far
I really love your videos - highly educational, thought provoking content - I also think you have a super soothing voice, which is quite a contrast to the subject matter.
Doing the gods' work.
I see what you did there, and I approve.
U often seem to be apologetic for your past as a police officer. As a former, long term addict and multiple felon, lemme tell you that WE ARE NOT OUR PAST MISTAKES.
Thank you for this. Most people remain willful ignorant about the prison industrial complex and it’s effect of the entire population.
This is a beautiful, brilliant video.
Thank you for the closer about how the system we have now creates the type of anti social behavior we have now, how that system is failing everyone. I've had that idea brewing for a few years now and haven't been able to articulate it clearly.
solid video as always. more facts and events to compile for my class. Also the music is awesome. It is very reminiscent of Disco Elysium's soundtrack, if that's what you were going for, you nailed it.
I love how people go over the fact of why slavery started. The workers of a plantation went on strike and then the owner went to slavery. Slavery is built on the idea of a cheaper worker. If we want to overcome this great evil, we need to band together. Worker and worker, side by side forcing the owners to test them fairly.
Okay this comes off as aggressive towards dang dad, not my intention and I should have worded it differently. You didn’t go over the fact, however it was not the focus of the video(which is fine, history is fucking huge). Just I am going to start being load about it. And we have to realize that the owners have always been what that unknown evil throughout history. Someone wanting to extend their reach, power, and/or money(and never just one person, always more than a few)
Great video! In the state I live right now we have measure to abolish slavery in Oregon. Many Americans are uneducated on the 13Th amendment and what is really says. The system is working as intended, if less people were in prison capitalist would lose free labor. We can’t fix the problem of slavery, crime and punishment without abolishing capitalism!
Wow wow wow,. Great job pulling this all together in one succinct video. Excellent.
I did know about it but is always good to be reminded of the details.
This video is… just so well done. So well formulated and to the point.
Amazingly put together video that deserves more attention. You earned yourself a sub from me easily
There used to be a company called UNICOR Prison Industries. There workers manufactured auto parts and aeronautical parts. These types of jobs were union jobs before those industries moved to prison laborers. UNICOR paid profit sharing dividends to law enforcement agents and officers. Some prisons were competing for private contracts, then if they did not have enough staff, police would raid public housing facilities and arrest every male 18 and older. Hold them without charge until the contract was completed. It's a deep dark rabbit hole and a problem created due to the US addiction to enslaved laborer profits.
As a puertorican i can say that the spanish destroyed us.
What do you think about sheriffs, which under my understanding, are usually elected and local?
Well, my experiences are with the Orange County Sheriff and the LA County Sheriff, some of the most deeply corrupt sheriffs in the state of CA at the time. Small-town sheriffs also often reflect local bigotries and corruptions. As an abolitionist, I don't believe anyone should have the powers a sheriff does. We need a new model.
ACAB even the elected ones! but I do wonder what he thinks too
@@ThatDangDad Yuuuuuup, right there with ya. I had my own harrowing experiences with the El Paso County sheriff’s department in Texas back in the early 80s, and a few years afterwards heard from a friend (I’d long since fled to the left coast and never looked back) that a pretty sizable uproar happened when the magnitude of their corruption could no longer be hidden. Jobs lost, speeches made, blah blah politicscakes… but I doubt the department today is significantly less harmful than it was then. They all gotta go.
Our sheriff is gay and this pride I made sure lots of people ask themselves the question "will gay cops enforce sodomy laws?"
Thanks for the video. Interesting perspective. It is easy to criticize but hard to develop and implement effective solutions. Best wishes !
I know you have gotten flack from people for the soft voice, but it makes it easier to listen to what you are saying for me. These videos are perfect.