"Prisoners in Minnesota are earning less than a dollar an hour making products for Disney. That’s according to organizers and former inmates who gathered at a press conference in December to share what they’ve learned — or experienced firsthand — about the exploitative prison labor system in Minnesota.

Organizers with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee called the press conference last month to update the public about their campaign to end what they call prison slavery.

The Minnesota constitution allows for exactly that – slavery as part of a punishment for a crime. Under article one, section two of the state’s constitution, involuntary servitude is barred unless someone has been convicted of a crime. Under the statute, prisoners can be subjected to unpaid and grossly underpaid work.

Through a subcontractor, Anagram International LLC, Disney has taken advantage of this law to extract nearly-free labor from the state’s inmates, paying them $0.90 an hour to fold large Mylar balloons, according to organizers of the event and two inmates who shared their firsthand experience."

https://unicornriot.ninja/2026/slavery-is-legal-in-minnesota-these-groups-are-working-to-change-that/

#USA #Minnesota #Minneapolis #SlaveLabor #PrisonLabor #WageSlavery

"Prisoners in Minnesota are earning less than a dollar an hour making products for Disney. That’s according to organizers and former inmates who gathered at a press conference in December to share what they’ve learned — or experienced firsthand — about the exploitative prison labor system in Minnesota.

Organizers with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee called the press conference last month to update the public about their campaign to end what they call prison slavery.

The Minnesota constitution allows for exactly that – slavery as part of a punishment for a crime. Under article one, section two of the state’s constitution, involuntary servitude is barred unless someone has been convicted of a crime. Under the statute, prisoners can be subjected to unpaid and grossly underpaid work.

Through a subcontractor, Anagram International LLC, Disney has taken advantage of this law to extract nearly-free labor from the state’s inmates, paying them $0.90 an hour to fold large Mylar balloons, according to organizers of the event and two inmates who shared their firsthand experience."

https://unicornriot.ninja/2026/slavery-is-legal-in-minnesota-these-groups-are-working-to-change-that/

#USA #Minnesota #Minneapolis #SlaveLabor #PrisonLabor #WageSlavery

"Trump has called the idea 'owner responsibility.'

'[T]hey’re going to be largely responsible for these people,' Trump said. This echoes the system legislators set up in the U.S. South during Reconstruction thanks to the fact the Thirteenth Amendment permits enslavement 'as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.'”

#Trump#StephenMiller #immigrants#ICE#ConcentrationCamps#SlaveLabor
/4

"Comparing the detention camps to similar programs in other countries, [Timothy] Snyder warns that incarcerated workers will likely be offered to employers on special terms, a concept Trump appears to have embraced with his suggestion that the administration will figure out how to put workers back in the fields and businesses by putting them under the authority of those hiring them."

#Trump#StephenMiller #immigrants#ICE#ConcentrationCamps#SlaveLabor
/3

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-5-2025