Lawmakers mark Juneteenth with talk of 'abolition amendment'
Source: AP
As the nation this week made Juneteenth a federal holiday, honoring when the last enslaved Black people learned they were free, lawmakers are reviving calls to end a loophole in the Constitution that allowed another form of slavery — forced labor for convicted felons — to thrive.
Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Georgia Rep. Nikema Williams told The Associated Press they will reintroduce legislation to revise the 13th Amendment, which bans enslavement or involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. That exception, which has been recognized since 1865, has led to the common practice of forced labor by felons.
Social justice advocates say it created generations of Black families touched by mass incarceration and poverty and that the ramifications are still being felt today. Juneteenth seemed like the appropriate time to address this “huge piece of systemic racism in the middle of our Constitution,” Merkley said.
“At the moment that we are celebrating, if you will, the 13th Amendment and the end of slavery and its eventual announcement ... we should at the same time recognize that the 13th Amendment was flawed,” Merkley said. “It enabled states to arrest people for any reason, convict them and put them back into slavery.”
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/lawmakers-mark-juneteenth-with-talk-of-abolition-amendment/ar-AALbOwv
Remember all the old movies showing people in chain gangs? That was this sort of thing.
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