Celebrating the People's Victories Against Constitutional Slavery
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle in the US congratulates the organizers of the years-long campaigns against constitutional slavery. We particularly want to highlight ILPS member Decarcerate Louisiana for their tireless organizing to make this a national mass movement issue.
This election cycle, five states voted on the slavery loophole in their state constitutions – language mirroring the 13th Amendment of the US constitution that permits slavery, or forced labor, as punishment for a crime. Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont voted to disallow slavery as punishment. Louisiana voted against making changes to their constitution, leaving penal slavery legally intact.
The victories are a testament to relentless, on-the-ground work and the will of the people to combat the brutal ongoing legacy of slavery in the United States. The movement-building undertaken in Louisiana demonstrates a powerful change in consciousness of the masses, regardless of the “No” vote. Let the defeats fuel the ceaseless struggle for justice and liberation.
Despite ballot initiative wins in most states, the results expose further evidence of the United States’ reactionary monopoly capitalist character and deeply ingrained white supremacist culture and social system. In Vermont alone, the state with the strongest anti-slavery ballot language, over 23,000 people voted against the measure prohibiting “slavery and indentured servitude in any form.” The Oregon Sheriffs’ Association, campaigning against their state’s anti-slavery measure, wrote in the Oregon voters’ pamphlet that prison labor programs “incentivize good behavior,” a backwards argument that the slave owning class used to justify keeping slaves in bondage for centuries. In California, The Newsom regime opposed adding an anti-slavery amendment to the ballot over concerns that paying prison laborers minimum wage would cost the state too much money. Under capitalism, human rights and racial justice are secondary to a corporate-skewed “balanced” budget.
Systems, not just phrases, are the enduring legacy of racial and class oppression in the US. The contemporary exception that legalizes slavery as punishment for a crime corresponds to the anti-Black foundation of the US. After the Civil War, which was won with the help of thousands of armed Black people fighting to emancipate themselves, the 13th Amendment was passed, which outlawed slavery except as punishment for a crime. So-called “Black Codes” were enacted to create the crimes that would racially target Black people, forcing them back into legal slavery. Today, monopoly corporations make use of this same system as racist policing overwhelmingly imprisons people of color in the US.
Though we view the passage of these amendments as a step toward racial justice and human rights, we recognize that the system that produces prison slavery and mass incarceration cannot simply be voted away. Nearly 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the US, the vast majority Black, Brown, Indigenous, and working class. This is the result of an exploitative economic system that creates massive inequality, particularly along racial lines, a brutal criminal system that punishes poverty and squashes dissent, and an absurd social system that naturalizes these injustices. Fundamental changes to this system were not on the ballot.
The new ballot initiatives may provide opportunities for legal challenges that could materially improve the conditions of incarcerated workers, as demonstrated by pending litigation in Colorado. However, we know the imperialist legal system is not built for the common people. Any legislative victory within a system based on the exploitation of the broad masses of people is only temporary. Real power is built from the ground up. A complete change in the social, political and economic system that governs the US and the world is what will bring an end to the conditions that lead to prison slavery. As we build the mass movement to make that change, these electoral results serve as a powerful indicator: the people demand the abolition of slavery.
Passing these constitutional amendments in 4 of 5 states is a peoples’ victory. It proves that a well-organized group of community organizations can unite with hundreds of thousands to build a national movement on a progressive issue. The ruling class would love for the fight to end at the ballot box, but we are not done. As we move toward a new year and US imperialism desperately tries to hold onto it systems of exploitation against the most vulnerable within its borders, ILPS-US calls on its members to link arms with all those fighting to end white supremacy and slavery and to build a better world; one of peace and international solidarity. Only a wide-ranging united front of all the oppressed and exploited with working people at its core, incarcerated and not incarcerated, will end the dying, desperate US empire once and for all.