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Comment by whataboutdgaf | Hacker News Reader

> Here's just a few of the corporations that exploit prison (slave) labor:

> (list)

> Source: http://affinitymagazine.us/2017/06/29/heres-a-list-of-corpor....

That article is an absolute joke. Its underlying sources too. So incredibly lacking in evidence or data to support such a huge accusation.

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At a glance the underlying source list seems quite thorough and well research, it's available here (below) and every company points to a document that proves it. It's regularly updated.

Can you expand on your complaint?

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Corporations

Because they are two entirely different things. It is 100% complete and total bullshit to say that a corporation who has some, often extremely tenuous, relationship with ALEC "profits from prison labor". There's plenty of real bad stuff going on that needs revealing without resorting to lying.

Ok, so your saying this article is misusing it's source list, not that the underlying source list is an absolute joke like the original throwaway I replied to is?

The underlying source is an absolute joke as well. Whether ALEC somehow benefits from prison labor or not, just because these companies may have a relationship with ALEC doesn't mean they benefit.

The source we are talking about says nothing about benefiting from prison labor, either for ALEC or the corporations that have a relationship with ALEC, so I don't understand your complaint.

Yes, that's the point. I should have been more clear. It is a joke to use it as a reference to support the claim about benefitting from prison labor since it doesn't have any information on it. It may well be an accurate list of companies that have some relationship with ALEC.

I really, sincerely hope you will consider educating yourself on what ALEC is about.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/hidden-history-ale...

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/alecs-horror-show-is-comin...

I'm not defending ALEC, but ALEC supporting something isn't evidence that Walmart benefits from it. You have to show me Walmart is using prison labor directly or indirectly. What specific products and vendors.

You may not like the ALEC list but in some form most of the major US corporations that have existed for sometime have benefited from slavery.

It’s a fact that a number of American and European institutions benefited both directly and indirectly from former and present day slavery. Some have even admitted as much.

If you don’t want to read, here’s another short list: AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Brooks Brothers, Aetna, Lehman Brothers, Domino Sugar, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Princeton University, Columbia, Harvard, Brown, Georgetown,

- https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=154386... - https://time.com/5013728/slavery-universities-america/ - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247

This is about prison labor, not historical slavery.

The two are very related. You may want to read up on the period of Reconstruction. The southern states moved to use of prisons and sharecropping/terrorism to maintain their hold on cheap labor.

There’s too many studies and books on this topic so I won’t post them. Instead, I’d recommend reading more about the parts of American history not called out in your standard high school text books.

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