What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Los Angeles is at a turning point. We are living in a defining moment. What happens next is up to us. Over the past few years, problems and challenges have shaken this city -- and tremendous opportunities for change have presented themselves. How do we rise to this moment and emerge a better place to live? What will it take to create a more just and a more equitable community? Working together, how are we going to create a stronger, forward-thinking Los Angeles? Mike Bonin, writer, teacher, progressive activist and former City Councilmember, looks at the issues and problems facing Los Angeles, examines ideas, and talks with the people who will lead us to a brighter future.
Produced in partnership with LA Forward.
What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Prop 6: Ending Forced Labor in CA
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One hundred sixty years after the abolition of slavery, California voters will decide whether to ban forced labor in the Golden State. That's what Proposition 6 on the state ballot is all about. And that's the topic on this episode of What's Next, Los Angeles.
https://voteyesprop6.com/
https://voteyesoncaprop6.com/
CalMatters on Prop 6
Ballotpedia on Prop 6
CA Legislative Analyst on Prop 6
LA Forward Voter Guide
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
160 years after the abolition of slavery, California voters will decide whether to ban forced labor in the Golden State. That's what this election's Proposition 6 is all about. We will discuss on this episode of What's Next, Los Angeles. Hi everybody and welcome. It's Mike Bonham. Thank you so much for joining me. Consider this. There's a group of tens of thousands of people who are forced to take jobs that they do not want. They get little or no training. They are exposed to dangerous conditions. They get paid pennies an hour. And they are subject to harsh discipline if they refuse to work. No, this is not some sweatshop in a foreign country. This is right here in California, with the consent of and under the direct authority of our state government. How is this happening? Well, both the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of the State of California prohibit forced labor except and this is a big loophole as punishment for a crime. And so, in California prisons, some 60,000 people are doing forced labor. The jobs include construction and yard work, cooking, cleaning, making furniture for state offices, stamping license plates, digging ditches, debris cleanup, and fighting wildfires. Many of these people toil in extreme heat and they work with dangerous machinery. And most of these prison workers earn less than 74 cents an hour. Failure or refusal to work could result in punishment like solitary confinement, denial of family visits, and even the denial of parole. These work assignments often prohibit inmates from accessing rehabilitative services, such as AA meetings, substance abuse treatment, anger management classes, trauma awareness sessions, college courses with opportunities to learn a degree, and even victim impact classes that teach people about the harms they've caused. Now keep in mind when considering this that the prison population in California is also disproportionately people of color. While black residents make up just six percent of the state's overall population, in prisons they make up twenty-eight percent of the population. And civil rights leaders, criminal justice reformers, and historians will all tell you there is a direct line from American slavery to Reconstruction era black codes and convict leasing to the war on drugs and our modern prison system. California is just one of sixteen states that still allow forced labor in its prisons. So in June, the state legislature passed the End Slavery in California Act, and that put Proposition 6 on the ballot. Proposition 6 would amend the California Constitution to prohibit the state from punishing inmates with involuntary work assignments and from disciplining those who refuse to work. The measure is backed by the ACLU, the California Democratic Party, the Teachers Association, the State Labor Federation, and the California League of Women Voters. It is also a priority for the California Black Legislative Caucus. Now, joining me today to discuss this further is a member of that caucus, State Senator Lola Smallwood Queves. She represents the 28th District, which stretches from South Los Angeles to the west side of Los Angeles. She was one of the leading advocates for the End Slavery in California Act, and she is a supporter of Proposition 6. Senator Lola Smallwood Quuevas, thank you for joining me on What's Next Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you so much for inviting me, Mr. Bonin.
SPEAKER_00It is uh great to have you here. And after the elections, I want to get together with you and do a uh a deep dive interview with you about uh your biography and your agenda and and talk about everything you're doing. But uh today we're focusing on on uh uh proposition six, which is uh on the ballot in November. Its official title is The Remove Involuntary Servitude as Punishment for Crime Amendment. You've been uh pretty engaged uh in this issue, as have a number of uh your your your colleagues. Um tell me, what is the uh what is the case behind Prop 6? Why is it important?
SPEAKER_01Uh the case behind Prop 6 is really uh about California and who we are moving forward. And as what I like to say, the the shiny state on the hill, as we push for progressive um leadership in our country uh around issues of climate change, around issues of workplace, um around issues of criminal justice in terms of our movements, we have to address the legacy of slavery, right, in California. And, you know, that history includes, you know, the exploitation of indigenous people. It includes um, you know, from the Spanish missions to the forced labor of black people. I think about Biddy Mason and her walking behind the carriage of her slave owner as the first uh black resident um of Los Angeles to partition for her freedom here in our county and in uh the Golden State. And Prop 6 basically says we are going to remove the stain of slavery from our constitution. Um, we are uh one of 16 states that still have this language of legalized uh uh forced servitude. Um it is uh constitutional slavery, and we're lagging behind the rest of the country. And I think for us to truly lean into the progressive state that we proclaim to be, um, we have to make sure that our constitution from 1849 not only prohibits slavery and involuntary voluntary servitude in the area where it relates to the punishment of crimes, we have to remove that history and legacy and make sure that we are doing all that we can to live up to our values as a state that is a free state and a state that values the labor of all of its people. And so that's really for me what Prop Six is all about. It's about, you know, making sure we remove the stains of the past that have been left in our constitution that continue to harm people today, and we create um a real values-driven um system that says every human being in the state deserves to be free of forced labor?
SPEAKER_00So let's let's take a step back for a second for the typical voter who may be wondering a little bit more about what problem Prop 6 is trying to solve. Uh when somebody's convicted of a crime and and they've sent to prison under the current system, uh, what sort of involuntary labor are they assigned? How are they assigned? Do they get paid at all? How does that work?
SPEAKER_01So the way it works now is um incarcerated workers are forced to perform labor um with no time off. Um and when they uh, for whatever reason um miss work, um they also face very harsh punishments, including, you know, denial of family visits, phone calls, solitary confinement, and write-ups that can lead to even to sentence extensions. Um and, you know, too often, um, the way that the system is set up, these four sort of work schedules collide with things like therapy appointments, the alcohol anonymous meetings to deal with substance abuse disorder, um, educational programs. And so those workers who are wanting inside, who are wanting to really take advantage of rehabilitation too often can't because um they are forced to work in these schedules and don't have um options um in terms of being able to manage. The other, I think, really the for the for those of us outside the direct connection is that there are multinational companies that work and operate inside our prison industries. And when we have a worker, you know, I had the um opportunity to spend time with a young man who was repairing toilets in the prison, um, doing plumbing work. When I asked him about the plumbers union, um he didn't know anything about it. Um, but he did say he was making about, you know, 75 cents an hour to do the work of what a plumber would be making outside of the prison in sort of a plumber's union, right? Where you know the pay is about $80 an hour when you factor in the health and welfare. So when we have forced, you know, prison labor, really institutional slavery inside of our prisons, it undermines the wages and the working conditions, you know, of all of us. And, you know, because, you know, in that case, this young man didn't know anything about the the plumbers union, was not getting hands-on training as, for example, uh a paid apprentice who could have a learn and earn opportunity, you know, that worker inside is also not learning these transferable skills and receiving the certification that they would need to be able to do that same work on the outside and to contribute in a way that would allow them to sustain themselves and what I say further reducing recidivism. So, so this this this historical stain on our California Constitution also has very contemporary challenges, right? As we think about our workforce and what we mean by a rehabilitative system. Uh, and and so, you know, lagging behind the rest of the country by holding on to slavery and forced labor, um, California is really doing a disservice to all of us.
SPEAKER_00And some folks don't even make near 75 cents an hour. I've read of cases people making 17 cents an hour.
SPEAKER_01And I want to say that's very true in the women's prison, where a lot of the work is just very, you know, um uncertified, no skill type of work that that is really difficult for folks to translate into any kind of skill, right? Coming on the outside. But I just wanted to mark raise how women are also further disenfranchised inside.
SPEAKER_00And and folks don't have the same health and safety protections uh that they would in an outside job.
SPEAKER_01Correct, correct. And and what does that mean? Um, like so many things, when a person is behind bars, um, then it becomes the responsibility of the taxpayer to address, you know, what at the state prison levels, you know, some would say 130, I've seen as high as $160,000 a year to incarcerate someone. Um, when we think about the health care and the shortage of health care provision inside of our prisons, you know, these kinds of industries that also, again, when they are not regulated, when workers are making cents on a dollar and injuries are happening, again, that is another drain on the taxpayer. So there are many reasons why we want to look at this topic. Um, and it's not just to feel good, um, it's fiscal, fiscally responsible. And it really is about what I see as the long-term benefits of really creating opportunities for folks inside to learn real transportable skills and to be paid a fair wage. Why is that important? You know, I think about, you know, our men who were in prison and my work before joining the legislature as uh founder of the Black Worker Center, and how many men came to the Black Worker Center with their child support in arrears, for example? Um and when they tried to work, they owed so much in child support because they had been incarcerated with no wages that they couldn't actually bring home any, they were garnishered and couldn't bring enough money home to feed themselves or for housing. So just think about the possibilities of paying incarcerated folks to do real apprenticeshipable type of work where they learn a skill, where they earn a fair wage, they can pay their child support, take care of their families, and also be able to pay restitution and those sorts of things in terms of the victims of crimes. This is the system, this is a win-win where we can actually begin to normalize what it means to contribute to society, rather prisons being a place of extraction, of deficit. Let's think about the whole picture. And I think uh Prop Six does that.
SPEAKER_00One of the things that has always struck me is one of the most glaring uh injustices of this injust system is the situation with firefighters. We're seeing half the state uh you know go up in flames right now. And what a lot of folks don't realize is the people who are on the front lines of these fires, uh, so many of them are from the firefighting units that come out of our prisons. They get paid next to nothing. They're risking their lives in horrible, horrible conditions. And when they get out, when they've served their time and they get out, they are not legally allowed to even apply to be a firefighter.
SPEAKER_01It is a travesty. And that just shows the disconnect, again, in how we're defining rehabilitation and why Prop 6 helps to shine a light on this issue and really forces us to think about new ways to build the kinds of rehabilitative centers that addresses issues like that. Look, those young men and women who are on the front lines in these fire camps, they're making $10 a day and they're risking their lives. Um, and it is unconscionable that they would save whole neighborhoods and communities and then not be able to get a real career in these same departments that they stood shoulder to shoulder with fighting fires. You know, we've got to think about ways to address our shortages. You know, when I talk to firefighters, when I talk to the building and construction trades, when I talk to our medical, you know, dental hygienists, et cetera, all of them are talking to me while I'm on the business and professions committee about worker shortages, the hard it is to find people, about how do we do training. I mean, imagine if we really were intentional about dealing with the issues of poverty, which really is the driver of incarceration. When we think about nonviolent crime, when we think about, you know, crimes of property, these or crimes that are related to substance abuse disorder, much of the time these are crimes of poverty. So imagine if we see Prop Six and the opportunity here to reimagine rehabilitation and what it means to normalize training, work, pay, and a responsibility, what it what it would mean to address what is in our economic situ uh uh crisis right now outside, you know, this whole need for a workforce that is trained, skilled, and ready to go to work. These are the things we should be normalizing. And I think that's what Prop 6 gets at. It's like we have to let go of our, you know, our 18th century thinking, our 19th century thinking, and we've got to step into the 21st century and really shift the paradigm and how we think about this. And, you know, as you gave the firefighters example, one of the things I remember at the Black Worker Center, the challenges that we face in some of these places that we don't have black and brown workers, right? The workforce of the future in these spaces. And we're trying to figure out ways to also, you know, address this issue of equity and diversity. And I think these are some of the places where we can look at a policy in a proposition like Prop 6 and get at the intersections, which help us get to a deeper impact in terms of our fix. So I'm really excited about this initiative. I was excited to carry uh the ACA 8 and get it through uh the Senate with the author um uh Assemblymember Wilson. Um, when we got this through the Senate, there were just so many cheers in the gallery and fists in the air because of this victory, because it's been a long time, a long time coming. Um, not only the generations of families who paid the ultimate price of this kind of forced labor and servitude and slavery. Um, it's also the lawmakers who have been pushing and pushing and pushing. And I think about Congresswoman Sidney Kamblager, who first introduced this ACA3. Um, and unfortunately, we couldn't get it, you know, out uh into uh out of the house and over to uh the governor's desk. But here we are. Um so it is an exciting time. I think it's a testimony to all of the hard work, both from community and from policymakers, the administration, to get to this point. Uh, and I think the voters um understand that, you know, crime is down in our state, but the way we continue that trend is to make sure we are creating opportunities for folks to get the rehabilitation that they need, the skills that they need, the network and particularly industry networks that they need to be able to come out into California's economy. And we know this is a tough economy to come out and to be able to contribute. And this is the beginning of that process.
SPEAKER_00There's been a lot of scholarship, and then of course, there's uh you know, the compelling uh documentary by Ava Devernay 13th back in 2016, um, that that that sort of took people on sort of the the pathway from slavery to forced labor. Still a lot of people who don't know what that trajectory was. For those who aren't familiar, can you talk a little bit about how where we were and where we are is so directly connected?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And and what a great piece of art that educated us um in terms of 13. And I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to watch it. Um essentially it's slavery by another name. Um, and we know we have um some very dark history um in this country as it relates to um black Americans uh and the role that slavery and terrorize uh racial terror played in our in our communities, in our in our country. Uh and as abolition took hold and as the movement for freedom took hold, there was also a movement to figure out really the economics of slavery, because at the end of the day, slavery was an economic policy, right? It was our first foray into globalization, right? And so as the social movements were about ending slavery, the economic movement was about figuring out ways to keep this labor and manpower um under lock and key so that the ownership society could continue to benefit while everyone else in the country um uh became more and more and more um uh in unable to sustain themselves and their families. It sounds very familiar. It's you know, our economic system grew from this, and so we deal with a lot of it today in terms of the rich and the poor, the 1% and the 99%. But in that era, um, as we were coming into uh emancipation, um, the powers that be came out with a series of codes that began to turn, you know, just simple acts of, you know, walking down the street from one neighbor's house to your home into a crime and began sweeping up black men and women and children into uh what they would call this law and order society. So as you saw um uh more and more black people become free and move across the country, you saw more and more laws being passed um about crime and what is crime, and certainly it seemed like everything that a black person did, um, uh getting a glass of water, uh walking on the wrong side of the street suddenly um became a crime. And you saw the swelling of America's carceral system, um, certainly in the Jim Crow South, but then into um northern cities as a way of controlling the labor. Uh and and fast forward, you know, into the 90s, you know, where we saw some of the most outrageous crime bills passed to increase into the millions of people working every day, but getting not one um shred of certification um or ability to come out of the system with an opportunity. And, you know, what what what essentially happened is that we ended slavery, but then we began to um uh build this incarceral system that basically said, yes, we've ended slavery, except if you have been convicted of a crime, then you can be enslaved. And so that is the the history um of this very terrible um policy. And and that's why it is absolutely time in this era of technology and progress in this 21st century to let go of that horrible, dangerous, terrorizing past and to begin to bring um in new ways of addressing um our communities behind bars so that when they come out, they're better neighbors. And that's exactly what our system should be doing. Um, in other parts of the world, we're creating the theme, for example, in Norway. I had the chance to go and visit um their prison system, which has been reformed for decades. And, you know, their motto is prisons are designed to create better neighbors. That is the purpose, not to punish. And I think, you know, we have got to move into that 21st century model of reimagining what this could be. And Prop Six helps put us on that path.
SPEAKER_00All right. Thank you. Uh, Senator Lola Smallwood-Quevas, thanks for joining me. My thanks to Senator Smallwood Cuevas for joining me today. If you'd like more information on this or any of the other ballot propositions, I have helpful links in the show notes, including to the official Secretary of State Voter Guide, the official ballot arguments, and other resources, including this year's Progressive Voter Guide from LA Forward. Check it all out in the show notes. That does it for this episode of What's Next Los Angeles. My thanks to my friend Marta Ivery for sound editing, my thanks to LA Forward for partnering with me on this podcast, and my thanks, of course, to you for listening. Until next time, thank you. Peace and take good care.