My name is Joadanus Olivas, I call this “Slave Labor.”
So I’m recently placed in a prison job assignment. The assignment is an ADA wheelchair pusher. I assist the disabled prisoners here with various things, such as cleaning their cells, and helping them write, read, or do math, and a myriad of other things they may or may not be adequate in doing alone. I love to assist my fellow prisoners with disabilities. I feel very good.
Let’s be honest, I know that I’m basically a slave to the Department of Corrections here in California. The pay number I have is just 15 cents an hour. That’s about $48 a month. But I owe restitution, so that leaves me at $24 a month after 50% reduction. Involuntary servitude is still in California’s Constitution’s verbiage. If I refuse to come out and work, I’ll be punished.
If slavery didn’t exist anymore in California, then its prisoners would be able to earn minimum wage for our occupations. But, because of our confinement, we are no longer citizens of the United States. In our chattel property, the state owns this. Gavin Newsom has the ability to sign this into law and give us minimum wage. So they do what they please, so we’re slaves.
How do you support yourself in the penitentiary making $24 a month during an inflated economy? What do you do? You commit crime, sell drugs, stab people for money in here just to support yourself with hygiene, edible food, clothing, writing material, and a myriad of other necessary items. Above all, how does one save enough money to pay for a lawyer to appeal one’s case? Also, where are our inflation tax, us working in such jobs as a wheelchair pusher, as myself, generates wealth for the state taxpayers, pay the state who gives prisoners as myself a micro percentage of the gain. What it is [inaudible] in this prison industrial complex, Slave Labor.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio
