Incarcerated Workers in Alabama File Lawsuit to End Involuntary Servitude | Black Agenda Report

Incarcerated Workers in Alabama File Lawsuit to End Involuntary Servitude

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley

10 May 2024

🖨️ Print Article

Black Agenda Radio · Incarcerated Workers in Alabama File Lawsuit to End Involuntary Servitude

Six incarcerated people in the state of Alabama have filed a lawsuit against their governor and the Commissioner of Corrections. Alabama’s prison system is the most overcrowded in the country, where Black people make up 26 percent of the population, but 53 percent of the prison population. Following a successful labor strike by incarcerated workers, Alabama voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that expanded the ban on slavery and involuntary servitude to prison. With their state court lawsuit, the plaintiffs seek enforcement of the amendment. Jessica Vosburgh is a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights which represents the plaintiffs. She joins us from Birmingham, Alabama.

Prison Labor

Alabama prison strike

Center for Constitutional Rights

More Stories

T.J. Coles
Using and Abusing Djibouti: How the US Transformed a Tiny African state Into a Hub of Imperial Aggression
04 Jan 2022
From Djibouti, the US trains proxies and bombs strategically-important countries in the name of democracy and counterterrorism.
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Why We Must Defend Julian Assange
14 Dec 2021
Julian Assange is one of the political prisoners that the US claims not to have.
Black Agenda Review
Essay: Lynch Law in America, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 1900
14 Dec 2021
Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s “Lynch Law in America” remains a compelling account of white violence as both savage and systemic, and of the US as irredeemable.
Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
On the Fundamental Differences Between Capitalist “Democracy” and Socialist Democracy
14 Dec 2021
The United States recent democracy summit would have been laughable if its implications were not so serious.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Humanitarian Hawks Demand War on Ethiopia, National Guard Deploys to the Horn
14 Dec 2021
News of the deployment of National Guard troops to an unspecified location in the Horn of Africa is an indication that US interference in the region will continue.