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California enslaves 400 prisoners to fight wildfires.
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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So I think enslaves is a bit much here.
This is a voluntary program, and I'm not getting the impression it's the do this or we punish you voluntary either.
Meanwhile there are actual prisons that will force labor or severely punish you for refusing. That's enslaved.
It's also possible that the fire fighting is voluntary, but if not this, it would have been other mandatory slave work.
Yes there are slaves in prison, I'm just not entirely sure this specific circumstance is it. They are getting slaves wages though.
America incarcerates people for a ridiculous time and then lets them 'voluntarily work to shorten their sentence'. It's slavery with a little semantics.
As long as it's not forced (truly voluntary with no punishment otherwise) it's still not enslaving them.
I'm not saying it's good, but the title has an agenda.
Edit: Actually, the POSTER has the agenda, not the article. OP used the world enslaves. The actual article title is ‘Essential’: nearly 800 incarcerated firefighters deployed as LA battles wildfires. This is why a lot of places have no editorializing the titles rules.
What do you think about indentured servitude being called slavery?
I agree that's slavery.
There is slavery in the US prison system as well.
These prisoners are supposedly doing this specific job voluntarily, with pay. That is not indentured servitude.
Voluntarily risking their life for 5 to 10 bucks a day. Suuure.
If you'd like to provide any proof that these fire fighters are not doing this voluntarily and are coerced into it with some sort of punishment if not, please go ahead and provide it. Specifically this job, not others.
Also, you do realize that many fire fighters across the world are voluntary, in some cases the entire fire department is voluntary. People do risk their lives for this job for free.