Tag: Amend The 13th: Abolish Legal Slavery in Amerika Movement

We have options, as expressed fervently by Nube Brown and Joka Heshima Jinsai, in the chorus of the collective voices of the lived experience of transformation on the inside blending with the advocate voices on the outside in harmony with consideration of strategic release to infuse our ailing communities with healing, self-determination and liberation.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates the U.S. capitalist oppressive impact of legal modern slavery on Black communities and shines an even brighter light on the disproportionate distribution of wealth, privilege and opportunity in society.

As I write this article, I am not sure what day the Civil War began or what day it ended. The facts that I do know about the Civil War are not worth repeating here, as that story already occupies plenty of space in American text. My muse, instead, is about the particular vestige of slavery that the Civil War bequeathed to us on Dec. 6, 1865, that now forms the basis of our struggle to end mass incarceration and prison slavery in 2017.

“Prison Lives Matter” and “Amend the 13th: Abolish Legal Slavery in Amerika Movement” are seeking to get the people, i.e., family, friends, inmates and the outside movement, involved in the struggle to raise awareness and fight the cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners, the daily violations of our human and civil rights, and the economic exploitation of our families. Rally Friday, Aug. 11, 11 a.m., outside the Indiana Department of Corrections headquarters.

Working towards the success of the Millions for Prisoners March has been a central theme of the Amend the 13th’s agenda since the outset. In a movement dedicated to not only abolishing legal slavery in Amerika, but transforming the nature and structure of unequal social, political and economic relationships upon which mass incarceration is based, support for the March is of course an obvious priority – but what is not so obvious is why this march is vital to the very future of progressive social change in Amerika.