Thursday Noodles 2/1/24

Investigative Reporting and Complicity edition

Happy February, everyone!

This week’s noodle returns us to the U.S. carceral system.

Did you know the U.S. still allows enslaved labor?

Of course you do, because you’re smart cookies and you’ve read the 13th Amendment.

"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."

-13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified 1865

That “except” does a lot of work in a country that convicts and imprisons more people than any other country on earth. (The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, 716 per 100,000 of the national population.)

Did you know that every time you shop at a U.S. grocery store, you’re almost certainly buying products made with labor from enslaved neighbors?

Did you know that every time you sit down for a meal in the U.S., at home or in a restaurant or fast food joint, you are likely eating food cultivated by enslaved neighbors?

If you didn’t, you do now, thanks to good investigative reportage from AP reporters Robin McDowell and Margie Mason.

This click is worth your time.

And before you click, take a moment to reflect on the still image below.

What do you see? Who do you see?

Make you think of anything? From U.S. history?

Yeah.

Enslaved labor always has been and continues to be interwoven into the national and global supply chain.

Unless you grow 100% of the food you eat (and make your own license plates), it’s nearly impossible not to be complicit in benefitting from the enslaved labor of neighbors.

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.

-Dorothy Day

Not a feel-good noodle today.

But sometimes it’s important — vital — to sit with our discomfort. Our complicity.

Be uncomfortable. Be convicted. Get mad.

And ask ourselves, “What now?”

XOXO

P.S. Huge thanks and big welcome to Ellen K., who joined our paid subscriber community last week. Thank you, dear Ellen!