Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, August 05, 2011

New Exposé Tracks ALEC-Private Prison Industry Effort to Replace Unionized Workers With Prison Labor

Many of the toughest sentencing laws responsible for the explosion of the U.S. population were drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which helps corporations write model legislation. Now a new exposé reveals ALEC has paved the way for states and corporations to replace unionized workers with prison labor. We speak with Mike Elk, contributing labor reporter at The Nation magazine. He says ALEC and private prison companies, “put a massive amount of people in jail and created a situation where they could exploit that.” Elk notes that in 2005 more than 40 million pounds of beef infected with rat feces processed by inmates were not recalled in order to drawing attention to how many products are made by prison labor.

Video
Source: Democracy Now! 
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