Reddit reviews One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928

> Still you have to give it to the propaganda team inside Hollywood/Main stream media in the "land of the free" horseshit.


America hurts my brain. We're talking about a nation that banned pinball for being immoral.

> The USA is a society that imprisons more people per capita than any society on earth.

Not prison, slaves. When the US "ended" slavery they instantly brought in the chain gang as a replacement. To keep the numbers available they passed a whole bunch of laws to make sure black folk could be arrested and sent to work in the fields come harvest time.

When those laws were struck down following the civil rights movement they then started the drug wars.


Refusing to work results in torture such as solitary confinement with no basic hygiene facilities. With no prison income you cannot even buy toothpaste. Last I heard they were considering extending this to toilet paper as well.

Here's what they have them do:

> One report[19] detailed a FPI operation at a California prison in which inmates de-manufactured computer cathode-type monitors. Industry standard practice for this mandates a mechanical crushing machine to minimize danger from flying glass, with an isolated air system to avoid releasing lead, barium, phosphor compounds to the workplace atmosphere. At the FPI facility prisoners demanufactured CRTs with hammers.

In addition the government makes extensive use of this slave labour to keep the military supplied with various forms of equipment. They even used to have a law forcing them to try to make use of prison labour first before being allowed to ask the private sector. Car license plates are usually made by them as well, so every time you see an American car it's worth reminding yourself that it's in-part built by slavery.

Thanks, ill be sure to send you a link once I finish the project this summer. The project is my chosen thesis project for graduate school and my professor is thrilled someone is finally making the case that the convict lease system and southern chain gang systems in many ways represented Soviet Gulags, from the death rates and conditions found in prison mines, prison plantations, road and forrest camps, etc to the role such penal projects played in infrastructure development. I've found numerous newspaper articles and convict interviews from the late 1800s and early 1900s and reading them, there are so many overlaps with Soviet Gulag memoirs.

I really dislike how Reagan focused so much on the Soviet Union as being an "evil empire" while he himself built up a massive prison industrial complex. Solzhenitsyn and Reagan were close friends and while they were correct to denounce the abuses that went on under communism, they have done a lot of damage in distorting American history and culture. State capitalism in America has done equally horrific things to what the Soviet Union did just like the Bush's, Clintons, and Trump have done equally bad things to what Putin has done.

Here's some sources you might find interesting. Top one is a documentary slavery by another name and then there's a bunch of books

https://vimeo.com/78437511

https://www.amazon.com/Twice-Work-Free-Labor-Political/dp/1859840868

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Prisoners-Their-World-1865-1900/dp/0813919843/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=black+prisoners+and+their+world&qid=1550435064&s=gateway&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/One-Dies-Get-Another-1866-1928/dp/1570030839/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=one+dies+get+another&qid=1550435037&s=gateway&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans/dp/0385722702/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=2AVK8K7PCQ5GM&keywords=slavery+by+another+name+book&qid=1550435091&s=gateway&sprefix=Slavery+by+anothe&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Chained-Silence-Convict-Justice-Politics-ebook/dp/B00VKMOP94/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=black+women+georgia+convict+lease&qid=1550435149&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr0