this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.

Most jobs are inside facilities, where the state’s inmates — who are disproportionately Black — can be sentenced to hard labor and forced to work for free doing everything from mopping floors to laundry. But more than 10,000 inmates have logged a combined 17 million work hours outside Alabama’s prison walls since 2018, for entities like city and county governments and businesses that range from major car-part manufacturers and meat-processing plants to distribution centers for major retailers like Walmart, the AP determined.

https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-alabama-3b2c7e414c681ba545dc1d0ad30bfaf5

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[–] LateGreatHannibalLecter@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 10 minutes ago) (1 children)

Alabama is a very cruel and inhumane place full of borderline retarded sociopaths. And stupid-ass rednecks and women who look like a 5 but think they're a 10. Mouth breathing morons in pickup trucks. A baptist church on every corner. Bojangles. Arresting people for smoking THCA that was legally bought from a gas station and charging them with marijuana possession and posting their mugshot all over the internet (happened to me). Cops who've known each other since kindergarten who peaked in high school and think at a third grade level. Hostility towards outsiders wrapped in a thin veneer of southern "hospitality". Backstabbing gossipy little bitches, men included, everywhere you look. Nobody means what they say. If they act nice to you, it means they don't like you. Many of them get off on taunting and tormenting other people. Football. Trees, lots of trees. There are diseases lurking you would expect to find in a developing country. The state is third world tier all around. The people are fundamentally malicious. Let's see what else.... Oh yeah they all look inbred as fuck.

[–] nadiaraven@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Ok, so many things to unpack here. First, it's important to remember that these kinds of issues are very much systematic. You can't point your finger at one person or even one state and say that they are the issue. The issue here is deep seated racism in the United States, legalized slavery that is literally written into the US constitution. And Alabama being a poor state filled with uneducated people is not those people's fault. It again comes back to racism and other huge issues of inequality. It's best to have some curiosity. Why is Alabama full of these issues? Is it because people are different there? Probably not, it's not like evolution works that fast on a geographic area that isn't isolated. So you have to ask why, and look for the self perpetuating power dynamics. Second, insulting one group of people by referencing another group using a slur damages both groups. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities are vulnerable to discrimination and exploitation. Let's not try to solve the problem of racism by deepening the problem of ableism. We have to work on it all at the same time. Power structures arise because one group exploits vulnerabilities in another. When you put down a whole group of people, it is likely because you feel that lack of powerlessness that comes with being in a hierarchy, and you're acquiring power for yourself by rendering others less powerful than you. This isnt a moral failing on your part, instead, I would say that it's an ineffective strategy that only serves to further entrench the hierarchy and your place in it. Instead, let's work to equalize everyone, lifting up everyone to the same height.

OK thanks for listening.

[–] LateGreatHannibalLecter@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Oh, you want to lecture me huh? Alright, well I guess it's easy to take the moral high ground when you aren't the one trapped in a small town where everybody is playing a game of telephone and you're the target. I'm well aware of the systemic issues and it only makes me hate them even more knowing that the vast majority of them perpetuate the injustices that I am now a victim of. When I see these people smiling and laughing with their families I know that just beneath that there is a viciousness that could just as easily be pointed in my direction depending on the context. They have no empathy or awareness for the collateral damage their insular "society" inflicts on me, just insults and mockery. Absolute vileness. These people make my life a living hell every time I leave the house. They are like a bottomless well of venom and malice and they always have a way of making it known to me in the subtlest and most passive- aggressive ways. Let me tell you, I did not know the meaning of hate before I came here. I do now. They taught me very well.

And you know what? Trump will give them everything they deserve. I think I'm starting to warm up to the guy for that reason alone. 30 days, assholes. Tick tock.