Just because the radical AG says a ballot measure is to ban slavery, that does not mean it bans anything. In fact, NO one in prison are slaves—they are criminals being punished for their crimes.
This is about paying criminals for doing work while the taxpayer pays $60,000 and more to house, cloth and feed them.
“A ban on slavery and involuntary servitude seems like it should be an easy sell in a progressive state like California.
So why does it look like voters may reject Proposition 6 next week?
The measure, which would amend California’s state constitution to ban involuntary servitude in an effort to eliminate forced prison labor, faces no formal opposition. But its backers are struggling to explain it to voters with limited resources at their disposal. Their efforts are complicated by a louder debate about another crime-related measure, Prop 36, on which voters appear inclined to back a tougher approach.
If you agree being a prisoner is being a slave, the logic step is to step jailing criminals. That is how nutty California has become.
A California ballot measure wants to ban slavery. Why is it losing?
Proposition 6 would close a loophole allowing involuntary servitude in prison. Its backers face an uphill battle in explaining it to voters.
By Emily Schultheis, Politico, 10/28/2024 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/28/california-slavery-ban-prop-6-00185942
A ban on slavery and involuntary servitude seems like it should be an easy sell in a progressive state like California.
So why does it look like voters may reject Proposition 6 next week?
The measure, which would amend California’s state constitution to ban involuntary servitude in an effort to eliminate forced prison labor, faces no formal opposition. But its backers are struggling to explain it to voters with limited resources at their disposal. Their efforts are complicated by a louder debate about another crime-related measure, Prop 36, on which voters appear inclined to back a tougher approach.
Prop 6 would eliminate the so-called “slavery loophole” in California’s constitution. Like the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, it bans slavery and involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime, a provision that has allowed prisons to force their inmates to work.
California inmates can currently be required to take on jobs ranging from kitchen and janitorial work to making license plates and fighting wildfires. Around 40,000 of the 90,000 people in California prisons work, and they typically earn less than $1 per hour. Turning down those jobs can come with serious consequences, including delayed parole eligibility and denial of certain privileges while in prison.
The measure is part of a national movement to ban involuntary servitude. Seven states have already passed similar constitutional amendments, and Nevada is voting on the issue this fall as well.
Backers of Prop 6 argue it’s both a moral issue and a public safety concern: By forcing incarcerated people to work, prisons are keeping them from participating in the kind of rehabilitative programs that will help ensure they don’t end up back in jail after being released.
But public polling finds the California electorate skeptical. Only 41 percent supported Prop 6 in an early October survey from the Public Policy Institute of California, down five points from PPIC’s September poll. In the October survey, 56 percent were opposed.
“It’s been late and slow — we’re now seeing some campaigning, but there wasn’t really an effort to explain to people: Why are we voting on this now, why is it important and what is it going to do?” said Mark Baldassare, the survey director at PPIC. “If you don’t know what it’s about, you go with the status quo and you vote ‘no.’”
The title and summary drafted by the attorney general’s office — which includes the phrase “involuntary servitude,” rather than “slavery” — makes that task harder, said Esteban Núñez, who runs communications for one of the Yes on 6 committees. Voters understand what slavery means, but involuntary servitude ends up confusing many of them.
“Once [voters] understand what the initiative does, they completely agree with it,” Núñez said. “It’s just a matter of getting them to understand what involuntary servitude is.”
As a result, the Yes side realizes its best chance at victory is to explain the measure to as many people as possible. Formerly incarcerated “ambassadors” are sharing their own personal experiences in prison and making a pitch to voters in the hopes that concrete examples will get their point across.
Sam Brown, who drafted what became Prop 6 while he was serving a life sentence in prison, tells the story of being forced to keep his job sanitizing hospital facilities in the harrowing early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Missing even one shift, he explains, would have resulted in a disciplinary citation that could delay his chance at parole by as much as 15 years.
“That wasn’t my first negative experience of involuntary servitude, I had others as well — it’s just that one was like life and death,” said Brown, who was released nearly three years ago and now runs an emotional literacy program for incarcerated people and others. “I got involved with [what is now Prop 6] because I have a really intimate understanding of it.”
Brown spoke with POLITICO in one corner of a city council candidate’s campaign office in Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon, at tables covered with t-shirts reading “Yes on 6: End Modern-Day Slavery.” Around 15 volunteers had departed to canvass around LA and another two dozen were making calls virtually; just Brown and one other volunteer remained at the office.
MOST READ
At the next table over, Jose Gonzalez, a volunteer for Yes on 6 who works for a local state senator, smiled wearily as he concluded a half-hour call with one Orange County voter. “It started out as a Prop 6 call and became a Prop 36 call,” he said.
Gonzalez’s experience illustrated a difficult truth for Prop 6. Hanging over the entire campaign is Prop 36, the high-profile initiative that would increase penalties for repeat offenders of certain theft- and drug-related crimes. Even though the two measures aren’t explicitly connected, Prop 36’s strong support among the electorate suggests California voters are stepping back from the interest in decarceration that helped make the state a leader in criminal-justice reform during the 2010s.
Prop 6’s backers say supporting it and Prop 36 aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but worry their measure gets swept up in the tough-on-crime rhetoric of the Yes on 36 campaign.
“I am not overly excited about how they became intertwined — any time you hear someone say Yes on 6, then they also say in the same breath, No on 36,” Brown said. “And I don’t know if that really serves Prop 6 really well because of how well Prop 36 has polled, due to all the attention and the money that’s behind it.”
Money has posed another challenge to Prop 6. Neither of the two committees supporting Prop 6 has much cash to fund a statewide voter education campaign. They’re running digital ads featuring another ambassador, Yannick Ortega, who says forced prison labor delayed her becoming a drug counselor after her release from prison. “There are more people like me who can become contributors instead of re-offenders,” she says in the ad. The campaign also plans to launch a Spanish-language ad this week.
The two main committees backing Prop 6 had raised a combined $1.3 million as of Oct. 19, according to campaign finance filings, and had about $675,000 cash on hand for the final weeks of the campaign.
“We’re working off of a shoestring budget and we’re trying to stretch every dollar we have,” Núñez said. “In an ideal world, if we had more money, I think this would be a lot easier.”
