As Fires Devastate Southern California, Inmates are Fighting the Flames For Just Dollars a Day.

Slavery is alive and well in the US.

In a state that prides itself on progress and fairness, it is shocking and unacceptable that California still allows the forced labor of its incarcerated people. As wildfires rage across the Los Angeles area, inmates are being put in immeasurable danger fighting to save lives and property from the flames, all while being paid mere dollars a day -- between $5.80 and $10.24 to be exact.

While the firefighting program run by the California department of corrections is technically voluntary, state law dictates that inmates are required to work in some way, almost always for mere pennies an hour. This is merely the illusion of choice. Incarcerated people cannot choose to focus on their rehabilitation when in prison. Rather, they get to 'choose' which inhumane work they'll be severely underpaid to do.

In 2024, California's Prop 6 aimed to end this exploitation by amending the state constitution to remove the provision that allows forced labor as a part of punishment. You see, when slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment, lawmakers snuck in language that would still allow slavery "as a punishment for crime."

That's right -- slavery is still alive and well in the U.S.

in the form of forced prison labor like California's. But the state's attempt to end this cruel exploitation failed in November 2024.

Just months later, prisoners' lives are being put in horrific danger fighting the LA wildfires because this loophole still exists and lest we forget, they are not trained fire fighters yet put in front of the worst fire imaginable.

This is modern-day slavery and is hosted by the government / state / politicians and officials.

I appreciate under the circumstances the state is burning and the fire fighters need all the help they can get, but using slaves - making inmates risk their lives and it would be different if it bought time off their sentence, it doesn't.

There are - currently - more slaves alive in the current time than there was throughout the slave periods of the past. We think we have moved beyond, but we haven't, not at all.

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