Chris Hedges: Prison State America: Corporations Use Inmates Like Slaves

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Jan 14, 2015

For-profit prisons have created a “neo-slavery” in the US, according to award-winning journalist Chris Hedges. Inmates work eight hours per day for major corporations such as Chevron, Motorola, Nordstrom’s and Target, yet only have the possibility of making up [to] $1.25 an hour. In addition, companies that provide services like phone calls overcharge prisoners on even the most basic services, making hundreds of millions in profits annually. RT’s Ben Swann speaks to Hedges, who explains how this shadowy system came into existence.

Chris Hedges: How Prisons Rip Off and Exploit the Incarcerated, Part 2

Image by Kaytee Riek via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Jan 7, 2015

Eddie Conway and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges continue their discussion about the forms of slavery and exploitation thriving in today’s U.S. prison system

Chris Hedges: How Prisons Ripoff and Exploit the Incarcerated, Part 1

Image by UMWomen via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Jan 5, 2015

Eddie Conway and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges discuss the forms of slavery and exploitation thriving in today’s U.S. prison system.

How Is a Prison Like a War? by David Swanson + Chris Hedges: Poverty, Racism & Policing, Mass Incarceration, Resistance and Social Transformation

Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr

by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
Nov. 13, 2014

The similarities between mass incarceration and mass murder have been haunting me for a while, and I now find myself inspired by Maya Schenwar’s excellent new book Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better. This is one of three books everyone should read right away. The others are The New Jim Crow and Burning Down the House, the former with a focus on racism in incarceration, the latter with a focus on the incarceration of youth. Schenwar’s is an overview of incarceration in all its absurd and unfathomable evil — as well as being a spotlight leading away from this brutal institution.

The US Imprisons 2.2 Million People–Incarceration Is Big Business by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
July 29, 2013

Noam Chomsky: Prison Industrial Complex (clip from Long Distance Revolutionary) + Mumia and The Black Panther Party

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Noam Chomsky

mumiathemovie·Jan 23, 2013

Long Distance Revolutionary opens NYC February 1, 2013
Opens Seattle February 22, 2013
Opens LA March 1, 2013

Obama and Romney: Start Debating the Prison-Industrial Complex, by Ralph Nader + Professional Prisoners in Russia

Dandelion Salad

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
July 25, 2012

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Ever visit a major prison? The vast majority of Americans have not, despite our country having by far a higher incarceration rate per capita than China or Iran. Out of sight is out of mind.

Imagine the benefits of the average taxpayer touring a prison. The lucrative prison-industrial complex would definitely not like public exposure of their daily operations. Prison CEOs have no problem with a full house of non-violent inmates caught with possession of some street drugs (not alcohol or tobacco). Our horrendous confinement system cannot change when it clings to perverse practices such as cruel, costly, arbitrary, mentally destructive solitary confinement (again, the highest in the world, see: Solitary Watch). Corporate profits drive the prison system’s insanity.

The crime of privatized prisons by Lamont Lilly

Image by Wellick via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

By Lamont Lilly
www.workers.org
Jan. 5, 2012

Here in the U.S., our “land of the free,” there are approximately 130,000 inmates now housed in privately owned prisons. It‘s a foul stench within a justice system that leads the world in number of people incarcerated within a state, federal or private institution. The latest tally of 2 million equals 25 percent of the globe’s incarcerated population.

Prisons for Profit By Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
January 25, 2011

The United States, according to the New York Times , has 5% of the World’s population and 25% of all people incarcerated on the planet! In reality, in the United States, one in every hundred people are in some kind of incarceration. One may ask why we have so many of our citizens behind bars? There is no simple answer, but all of the answers point to money. Incarceration is big business in the United States.

The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?

Dandelion Salad

by Vicky Pelaez
Global Research, March 10, 2008
El Diario-La Prensa, New York

Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

The Prison-Industrial Complex By Eric Schlosser

Dandelion Salad

By Eric Schlosser
04/01/08 “The Atlantic”

Correctional officials see danger in prison overcrowding. Others see opportunity. The nearly two million Americans behind bars—the majority of them nonviolent offenders—mean jobs for depressed regions and windfalls for profiteers