caws caws caws

Though they make at least $7.25 an hour, the state siphons 40% off the top of all wages and also levies fees, including $5 a day for rides to their jobs and $15 a month for laundry.

Turning down work can jeopardize chances of early release in a state that last year granted parole to only 8% of eligible prisoners — an all-time low, and among the worst rates nationwide — though that number more than doubled this year after public outcry."

[I]ncarcerated workers typically earn little to no pay at all, with many making just pennies an hour. It is rare that a job pays more than a dollar an hour—even the incarcerated firefighters braving the flames that rage across California’s forests and hillsides year after year are compensated at $1 an hour. Even so, many consider themselves lucky to receive these low wages. That is because, in seven states, incarcerated individuals are forced to work but are paid nothing at all for most jobs. At the same time, incarcerated workers produce real value for state prisons and state governments, the system’s primary beneficiaries. Nationally, incarcerated workers produce more than $2 billion a year in goods and commodities and over $9 billion a year in services for the maintenance of the prisons where they are warehoused. Even though prison labor is not what is driving mass incarceration in the United States, incarcerated workers’ labor does partially offset the staggering costs of our country’s bloated prison system.

Also, fun fact! In 2018 Colorado actually removed the exemption for prison slavery from their state constitution, making it illegal.

In 2023, NPR published this article which revealed that was still occurring in Colorado prisons, and in fact there was apparently no change even five years after banning prison slavery:

After a few months working in his prison's hot and crowded kitchen, Richard Lilgerose noticed he was having trouble sleeping. "I was always anxious about having to go to the kitchen and work under these conditions for hours upon hours and not knowing when I was going to be able to go back to my unit to get some rest," he told NPR in a call from prison. Lilgerose, who has been in prison for 20 years, suffers from PTSD, and says the chaos of the kitchen made it hard to work there. He kept asking for breaks, and eventually the guards stopped making him work. But Lilgerose says they also punished him, moving him to a unit with less access to the outdoors and to phones. He says he also lost "good time," which can determine parole eligibility. [...]

"Unfortunately, here we are five years later, and we have not seen the change happen inside of our prisons. It's been business as usual," says Kym Ray, a community organizer with Together Colorado, a multi-faith community organization. "It was never intended to be a symbolic sort of thing, like we removed it from our constitution with no expectation of change. We actually did, in fact, expect there to be some level of change."

Imprisoned people are often subjected to solitary confinement (which is itself a form of torture that needs to be banned) for refusing to work.

In February of this year (2026), a judge ruled that the Colorado Department of Corrections was violating the state constitution by doing forced labor (by which they mean slavery but we can never just call a spade a fucking spade. if the law itself is about slavery then i'm pretty sure breaking that law should be considered slavery!) Let's look at what they said in their defense!

"We respect the judicial process and continue to evaluate the full legal and operational implications of the court's decision to determine next steps. The Department of Corrections agrees that slavery and forced labor are wrong and illegal and do not believe we have engaged in either," she wrote. "CDOC programs are designed to provide essential skills, vocational training, and rehabilitative opportunities that support successful reentry into the community. The Department remains committed to upholding the Colorado Constitution, and believes we have been despite the ruling. We are also committed to ensuring the safety and security of our facilities, staff, and the incarcerated population." Wallace said in her ruling that CDOC argued that it "merely provides incentives to work, and withholds privileges from individuals who refuse," and argued "there were no disputed material facts to support the claim CDOC subjects incarcerated persons to involuntary servitude." [...] "Governor Polis strongly agrees that slavery and forced servitude are wrong and illegal. The Department of Corrections does not engage in either and is always interested in how prison reforms can better ensure that this never occurs in Colorado. The Governor's Office is reviewing the judge's order to determine next steps."

So, they tooootaalllllyyyy didn't do slavery guys, they LOVE not doing slavery so so much, and they just always want to be making prisons even better so that all the slavery they aren't doing doesn't happen, and they are reviewing the orders given by the judge who ruled that they had broken the law about not doing slavery to ensure they will continue never having done slavery better in the future!

From that first NPR article, this professor put it pretty cleanly:

"It's not clear to me that in any state where that amendment was adopted, that the Departments of Corrections actually said, 'Oh, OK, it's our understanding that we will not force anybody to work again,'" she says.

A white doctor based in Colorado has teamed up with a conservative legal group to sue the online directory, “Find A Black Doctor,” for allegedly discriminating against physicians based on their race. The lawsuit was filed May 19 in a Manhattan federal court by dermatologist Dr. Travis Morrell and Do No Harm, an organization founded in 2022 that publicly condemns DEI. The complaint accuses the directory of excluding non-Black physicians by restricting eligibility to “Black physicians and dentists in active clinical practice.” The suit also alleges that the online platform “robs” non-Black physicians of “advertising exposure” and promotes “racial concordance,” the notion that patients receive better care from doctors of the same race. “Find A Black Doctor indefensibly robs some physicians of valuable advertising exposure and deprives patients of the opportunity to discover capable providers without regard to race,” reads a statement from a Do No Harm rep in a press release. According to the complaint, Morrell, a double board-certified physician and member of Do No Harm, says he applied to join the directory on Dec. 23, 2025. However, he didn’t receive a response and followed up by email months later, but was met with silence. The suit, which targets the website and its founder, claims Morrell’s application was “constructively rejected because he is white.” “Do No Harm and Dr. Morrell are entitled to relief,” reads the legal complaint.

Also links for those studies mentioned in the screenshots:

Physician-patient race-match reduces patient mortality

This paper assesses the impacts of physician-patient race-match, especially Black patients paired with Black physicians, on patient mortality. We draw on administrative data from Florida, linking hospital encounters from mid-2011 through 2014 to information from the Florida Physician Workforce Survey. Focusing on uninsured patients experiencing unscheduled hospital admissions who are conditionally randomly assigned to physicians, we find that physician-patient race-match for Black patients reduces the likelihood of within-hospital mortality by 0.28 percentage points, a 27% reduction relative to the overall mortality rate. An alternative identification strategy relying on instrumental variables provides a similar finding.

Black Representation in the Primary Care Physician Workforce and Its Association With Population Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates in the US

@/smoke_nd_pearlz "💕Doll Face✨" (blue checkmark) replies "In 2012 i was diagnosed with a deadly blood disorder known as TTP. I was in the hospital for a month. A white nurse almost killed me because she thought i was drug seeking. I kept telling her my central line in my groin was hurting& she wouldn't give me any morphine just Tylenol.

I went septic later on that night because of the central line. I went into SVT and had to go to cardiac ICU for a week. I was 18. My TTP flared up again in 2016 and i went to the ER. I told the (white) doctor that i had TTP and that i needed to be admitted. He had my records right in front of him. I was just there 4 years earlier, the same hospital diagnosed me.

He told me that i didn't have TTP...i had ITP. He sent me home with steroids and pain meds. I cried and cried and sat at home all weekend until i could get to my hematologist. I called them and they had me come in immediately. Got labs drawn...my hemoglobin and platelets were VERY low. They did a direct admit: I had to get 14 bags of platelets and 3 bags of blood. My hematologist and his NP told me if i would've waited any longer i would've died.

More recently in 2022 i went to a freestanding ED because i thought i had the flu. I was in pain, my blood pressure was elevated, i had a fever. I told the black NP that i have TTP and asked them to do a cbc and ADAMTS13 level if they could. I got pain meds, waited for the (white) doc to come and see me. He told me ny labs were "fine" and that i just had a stomach virus. I didn't believe that so i asked him what my platelet count was. He told me 30k (normal platelet count in non chemo patients are 150k-400k) i almost lost my shit on him.

He went back and further with me for 10 minutes about how i wasn't having a TTP flare up and i told him to call the fucking hospital that I'm usually treated at and find me a bed. He begrudgingly did it. He came back not even 10 minutes later and said that the hospital i usually go to was full (it was around Christmas time) but after the on call hematologist at the level 1 trauma center downtown saw my blood work they wanted me to come in IMMEDIATELY. Hematologist told me if i would've waited any longer i would've been dead before Christmas.

Every time that I've almost died it was either at the hands of a white nurse or doctor. They don't take our pain or complaints seriously! They think we are drug addicts. I literally became a nurse because of this. We need black doctors. That lawsuit is just a bunch of fucking racists who are mad. Fuck them."]

[Two screenshots of two more replies to the original post by Black Enterprise, which say:

@/emmanuelfelton "Emmanuel Felton":

A peer-reviewed study found Black patients matched with Black doctors were 27% less likely to die in the hospital. A separate study found Black residents live longer in counties with more Black primary care physicians. "Find A Black Doctor" exists because the disparities are real

attack on @phi-guy of his oc Manta !! first artfight attack, went looking through the star wars tag and just stumbled upon him aha, really like his vibes !!!