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The “Amend the 13th: Abolish “Legal” Slavery in Amerika Movement” is an all-inclusive, coalition-based national campaign and community-based organizing effort which is determined to remove the “legal” and social basis for the dehumanization of those subject to the judicial machinery of the United States – and finally abolish slavery in Amerika once and for all. The movement has three basic aims:
To amend the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to remove its “legal” slavery provision for all persons: including those found guilty and sentenced for a felony offence. To abolish and/or repeal all “civil death” and social containment statutes and ordinances which do not afford prisoners, ex-offenders and their communities full human, political, economic and participatory rights in social life in Amerika that derive their power from the 13th Amendment. To develop and implement as quickly as possible autonomous community-based economic, political and social infrastructure capable of eliminating, mitigating or diminishing to the greatest degree the negative impact of mass incarceration, criminalization and “legal” slavery on our communities. |
To truly Abolish Legal Slavery in Amerika, mere modification of semantics is not enough. The legal slavery provision of the 13th Amendment could be wiped from the U.S. Constitution today, but if the civil death statutes which act as a barrier to everything from employment to housing, and U.S. policies of social containment which criminalize basic aspects of social life for non-whites and the poor endure, then Legal Slavery in Amerika will endure. Genuine Abolition of Legal Slavery in Amerika means ending the poverty to school to prison pipeline at it's ROOTS: Our Communities. It is Our Communities and our People which are criminalized, and it is this policy of criminalization which is at root if legal Slavery in Amerika. WE have it in Our power, through our Unity and Social Cooperation to end Our collective disenfranchisement and underdevelopment by forging Our Own Autonomous community based Infrastructure capable of feeding us, employing us, educating us, defending us, and empowering us. The State has demonstrated it's socio-economic and political interests lie with mass incarceration and legal slavery in Amerika, NOT with its abolition. No one is coming to save us. We can't vote away institutional racism, capitalist exploitation or national policies of social containment. They are structural aspects of this system. What we CAN DO is build an alternative to it. One based on cooperation, not competition; on Unity, not division; on the People, not corporations.
