In the past, I interviewed a woman who repaired the industrial-sized laundry dryers at the California Institution for Women in Chino while incarcerated. While teaching at Vacaville’s California Medical Facility, I met a man who did landscaping in front of the prison’s religious buildings. There’s a meat cutting facility at Mule Creek State Prison, and a poultry processing enterprise at Avenal State Prison.

Behind bars in California, people make everything from socks to American flags.

There’s plenty of potential occupations for people who are incarcerated. Some jobs are underpaid, and some don’t pay at all. But legally, every able-bodied person is supposed to work. It’s written in the state’s constitution as a form of “involuntary servitude” — or, as many see it: slavery.

This fall, if passed by voters, Prop. 6 would amend the state’s constitution to no longer require people who are incarcerated to work. Finally, 160 years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, we have the opportunity to put an end to a direct remnant of this country’s most inhumane system.

How did we get here? Let’s start at the top: the federal government. As you might have learned in history class, the 13th Amendment ended slavery, right? Well, no.

It states:

​​Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

That exception (“except as punishment for crime”) creates a loophole for states to force people who are incarcerated to work without compensation.

The application of this exception varies from state to state. California is one of eight states where involuntary servitude is still a legal form of punishment for a crime. (There are eight other states where it’s explicitly stated that “slavery,” verbatim, is a legal punishment for a crime.)

With nearly 200,000 people behind bars, California has the most populous incarceration system of all 16 states where this form of punishment is legal. That massive amount of people working for free, or in some cases a few cents per hour, plays a valuable part in the Golden State’s economic system — one that generates the third-highest GDP in the United States.

Now consider that African Americans account for nearly one-third of all incarcerated people, but only 5% of the state’s total population. Do you start to see how slavery, far from being abolished, is actually alive and well?

“W

e’re not just simply trying to change the language,” says Paul Briley, Executive Director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, of involuntary servitude. “We want to change the practice.”

During a recent video chat, Briley gave me a bit of a history lesson on the roots of the issue in California.

It starts with California’s first governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, a noted racist and slave owner originally from Tennessee. Burnett got into California politics on the tail end of the Gold Rush, after leaving Oregon, where he was also politically involved. While in Oregon, he helped the state legislature establish a lash law, which required people of African descent to leave the state or else face punishment in the form of whippings.

“(Burnett) wanted to create a white-only west,” says Briley, adding that Burnett also advocated for California’s Fugitive Slave Law, which put Black residents who’d escaped slavery at high risk of being sent back to Southern slave states. The underlying ambition of the law, Briley says, was to keep this new state’s Black population to a minimum.

In 1852, the same year California passed its Fugitive Slave Law, the state also established its first mainland prison, San Quentin.

“There’s a direct correlation between slavery and mass incarceration,” notes Briley. And so — aiming to abolish not just the language but the practice — “that’s at the core of our mission: dismantling the entire prison industrial complex.”

As University of California students return to school this week, UC President Michael V. Drake has instructed chancellors at all 10 of the school’s campuses to enforce rules banning protests that block walkways, protest encampments and the use of masks that conceal identity.

A similar policy has been announced for the California State University system.

The new policy attempts to limit the kinds of protests against the war in Gaza and American support for Israel in that war seen at college campuses across the country last spring.

“Freedom to express diverse viewpoints is fundamental to the mission of the University, and lawful protests play a pivotal role in that process. While the vast majority of protests held on our campuses are peaceful and nonviolent, some of the activities we saw this past year were not,” Drake wrote in a letter made public Monday.

“I hope that the direction provided in this letter will help you achieve an inclusive and welcoming environment at our campuses that protects and enables free expression while ensuring the safety of all community members by providing greater clarity and consistency in our policies and policy application,” Drake said also.

The news comes one week after a U.S. district judge ordered UCLA to protect Jewish students in areas of campus where protests against the Gaza war are held.

UCLA was the center of a particularly violent incident on late April, after anti-Gaza war protesters erected an encampment on the school’s centrally located Royce Quad. The entrances to the encampment were guarded, and reportedly, passersby were only allowed to enter if they wore a wristband that indicated they supported the protests.

On April 30, a group of counter protesters, who appeared to consist mainly of right wing activists who did not attend UCLA, attacked the protest encampment with fireworks, tear gas and pipes. The response from law enforcement, particularly UCLA police and security guards but also LAPD was heavily scrutinized after it took more than three hours to quell the attack and the attackers were allowed to leave without being arrested. The chief of the UCLA police department subsequently faced calls to resign.

The ruling against UCLA came as part of a lawsuit from three Jewish UCLA students — Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum and Eden Shemuelian — who say they faced religious discrimination because they have a religious obligation to support the Jewish state of Israel. Because of Royce Quad’s location, the encampment made it more difficult for students who supported Israel to get to class.

The encampment was evicted on May 6.

A teacher is accusing the Oakland Unified School District’s water supply of “poisoning” students in California after staff learned that lead amounts far surpassing legal limits were present in the district’s water supply.

Reports documenting the lead amounts were allegedly available in the spring, KRON4 reported, but the district didn’t notify teachers and parents of the situation until this month, meaning that some students—such as those present in the schools for summer classes—were exposed to the water.

Teachers are now questioning why it took so long to notify the impacted parties about the dangerous water and demanding that OUSD remedy the situation.

“How could we be poisoning our students for so many months?” teacher Stuart Loeble said, according to the KRON4 report.

Loeble went on to say it was “criminal” that students were exposed to lead without knowing, and the district admitted to poor communication in a message sent to district families on Monday morning.

“Despite our attention to detail and care for our sites, we did not communicate effectively to the members of each school community as the testing launched, as we received the results, and as fixes were being implemented,” the district said. “We are putting systems in place to ensure a lack of effective communication does not occur again, and that school communities receive quick notice when this kind of testing is taking place on their campuses.”

When reached for comment, an OUSD spokesperson directed Newsweek to the district’s message. In it, OUSD encouraged parents to send their child to school with a reusable water bottle to use at filtered water stations.

The statement also explained that the district’s limit of allowable lead concentration in water is much stricter than state and federal limits.

“In most cases, the fixtures tested under the District’s limit,” the statement said.

More than 10 percent of the district’s water fixtures—such as faucets and water faucets—tested below the state limit but above the district limit. More than 6 percent of fixtures tested above the state limit. Any fixtures testing under the district’s limit remain in service, with all others taken out of service until repaired and retested.

“A total of 61 fixtures have been fixed so far, and are now waiting to be retested before being brought back on line,” the district said. “We anticipate that remediation process will take approximately three weeks.”

The concerning discovery comes several months after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced an additional $3 billion from President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda to aid states and territories in identifying and replacing lead service lines. The project aims to prevent exposure to lead in drinking water.

“Lead can cause a range of serious health impacts, including irreversible harm to brain development in children,” the EPA announcement said. “To protect children and families, President Biden has committed to replacing every lead pipe in the country.”

In 2023, the EPA released data that shows Florida as having the most lead service lines in the country at 1.16 million lines, more than 12 percent of the total number of service lines in the state. Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and New York also have a higher percentage of lead lines.

California, however, tested as one of the states with the least percentage of lead service lines, according to the EPA data. At that time, there were 13,476 lead service lines, accounting for .15 percent of the total number of service lines in the state.