What is the significance of the section of the California Constitution that states, “Involuntary servitude is prohibited except to punish crime?” This roundtable with formerly incarcerated organizers, lobbyists, teachers, and students will discuss and debate the notion of “prison slavery,” with specific attention to a mounting campaign to abolish the “exception clause” from the California Constitution. What are the possibilities and pitfalls of an organizing project that focuses on involuntary and/or virtually uncompensated prison labor? What lessons can be learned from nominally successful efforts to eliminate prison slave labor in other states? Does the struggle to pass ACA 8 (a proposed Constitutional amendment) help or hinder efforts to decarcerate and/or abolish the California carceral regime? 

Join activists from All Of Us Or None, Starting Over, Legal Services For Prisoners With Children, and other organizations for this urgent discussion. 

Free, online, no registration required

Join Stream

Roundtable participants:

Jeronimo Cuauhtemoc Aguilar (Legal Services For Prisoners With Children)

Bobbie Butts (All Of Us Or None)

Fidel Chagolla (Starting Over, All Of Us Or None)

Shaun Leflore (All Of Us Or None)

Laine May (Starting Over)

Henry Ortiz (Legal Services For Prisoners With Children)

Facilitated by Dylan Rodriguez, Professor (Departments of Black Study and Media & Cultural Studies), Co-Director of Center for Ideas and Society

Co-Sponsored by UCR Underground Scholars, the Decolonizing Humanism(?) Programming Stream at the UCR Center for Ideas and Society, and the UCR Health Humanities and Disability Justice Initiative