Trying to follow

The Star Tribune had a very positive article in the paper:

“More than 3,000 trained prisoners are earning $1 an hour, and time shaved off their sentences, for helping fight California’s wildfires.”

The article was extremely positive, interviewing an inmate and how he’s benefited from the experience, as well as well as the department of corrections who point out that it’s “saving state taxpayers an estimated $80 million per year.”
What’s not discussed or addressed, is whether or not the very act of prison labor is ethical. I don’t know if I’ve written about this before, but John Perkins mentioned it a few times at CCDA and it renewed my passion to talk about it.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world with 1.6 million of our citizen’s in prison. It also so happens a disproportionate amount of those prisoners are minorities, you need only look at those exonerated to realize that prejudice and injustices in the system has placed many innocent people in prison as well.

Prison’s are becoming privatized and prisoners are being used to provide sweatshop labor to produce millions of dollars worth of goods for little to no benefit of their own. There is something wrong with that.
We’ve traded a system of blatant slavery for one that fits into our parameters of ‘justice’ and appears on the forefront as appropriate. It is not.

Sources:

• Prison Factories: Slave Labor for the New World Order?
• Prisoner Labor: A High-Growth Industry

I came across a very interesting video on a new friend’s blog the other day, and I wanted to post it for YouTubesday. However, It didn’t really relate to anything I’ve been talking about and I don’t have other videos to go along with it. So, in an effort to be completely un-unified and chaotic, here is a short collection of five videos, with no relation to each other or this post necessarily.

I don’t have anything profound to say today (like most days I guess). I did want to mention a few things I’ve been reading lately. But, first if you weren’t aware of my ‘Required Readings‘ page, you should check that out. It’s not complete, but basically I’m trying to construct a list of books, movies and sermons that would be part of my required reading list for Trying To Follow 101. The goal is for the list not to be overwhelming long, so it’s a work in progress. Anything you think I should add?

I’ve actually gotten myself on a roll reading books, which I hope to continue. I finished With Justice for All by Jonathan Perkins last week, which I would highly recommend if you know nothing of the CCDA philosophy. I also just finished Freakonomics, which I found extremely interesting and entertaining. I’m almost done with Divided by Faith which sheds light on the racial divide in the evangelical church. I had started reading the third Harry Potter book, but stopped because I think it falls into the ‘Redemptive Violence’ category that I’m trying to avoid for at least a year. Not sure what’s next on my list just yet.

And finally, I have a big decision to make. Thursday starts the month of November, which is also known as National Novel Writing Month. Each year a large group of people attempt to write their own 50,000 word novel. I’ve always wanted to write a book, though fiction seems difficult I also think I’d really enjoy doing it. Inspired by Zach’s writing last year, I’d like to give it a shot. However, it would probably mean I write little to nothing on the blog for that month. It’s a busy month, but I might be able to pull it off. I’m thinking I’d write a fiction story about what I think a church really following the teachings of Christ in the USA would look like. I think I’d also write it in a public space (maybe a google document) so others can read it as I go. Or, I guess I could just write it as blog posts each day (would that be overwhelming?).

That’s about it from here. I’d love to hear your input.