San Jose prides itself on progressivism, innovation, inclusion and justice for all. Yet, behind this image lies a quieter contradiction: our continued investment in a carceral system built on the same forced labor that the 13th Amendment never truly abolished.

When voters rejected Proposition 6, which would have ended prison labor in California, we upheld that legacy. Our jails and prisons remain sites of human bondage disguised as rehabilitation.

This pattern didn’t emerge by chance. After the Civil War, Black men were criminalized to replace enslaved labor, a cycle confirmed by new research from the University of Gothenburg. Black people simply walked off the plantation and into a jail cell, a chain gang and prison work camp.

Today, that legacy echoes in places like Santa Clara County

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