The prison industrial complex is basically the privatization of prisons. The government and prisons are working together to expand the prison population for the sake of profit. And that's basically what it is. What they've done is prisons have been cited as job creators and the use of inmate Labor has kept costs down. That is what they said and they created jobs by imprisoning people and paying slave labor wages.
Music Featured in This Episode:
A Letter to The Judge by Taurus
The prison industrial complex is basically the privatization of prisons. The government and prisons are working together to expand the prison population for the sake of profit. And that's basically what it is. What they've done is prisons have been cited as job creators and the use of inmate Labor has kept costs down. That is what they said and they created jobs by imprisoning people and paying slave labor wages.
Music Featured in This Episode:
A Letter to The Judge by Taurus
Just like hot cheetos and cuchifritos justice is best served when it's served by the people. This is brunch and budget the show about personal finance and racial economic inclusion with your host Pamela Capaled and certified financial planner accredited financial counselor and mom number crunching your budget. Brunch & Budget.com here to take the bite out of your budget. I'm your sound provider dialect and this is your host, Pamela Capaled.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Hi, everybody. Happy Juneteenth. Thank you for tuning in. So our title for the show today is a little rough.
Dyalekt :Well, I mean it's Juneteenth.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :And if you don't know what Juneteenth is Juneteenth is officially when slavery ended in the United States in Texas. Yeah, in Galveston, Texas. It was the day that the last town was told that slavery was illegal in the United States. It took two years after the Emancipation Proclamation for that to happen. But here we are. So Juneteenth. I know a lot of companies this year for the first time ever decided to give their employees the day off for Juneteenth. I guess that's a good sign, right?
Dyalekt :I was just starting to write in a Twitter thread I'm about to put up is like this the first Juneteenth that I didn't have to explain to every white person I know even like, again, like I've been telling folks about it, and then like two or three years later, that's what it is. Because like, it's just reminds us about, like the divide that we really live in. Because Yeah, if you think about the significance of things in America is a very significant American holiday, no matter what your ethnicity is, it shouldn't be important to all of us, but it hasn't been but
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :It hasn't been well. And even though slavery technically ended in the form that it was in, in this country, it hasn't really ended, y'all.
Dyalekt :I mean, you know, we keep talking about how it took till 2013 for Mississippi to finally ratified, right 2013
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah. And that's just like official like slavery ended in the way that we think about an 1800s but today we're going to talk about how slavery didn't really end. We're still experiencing modern day slavery today, and it's through the prison industrial complex in particular.
Dyalekt :if you've been listening to us for a while in episode, was it 50? Yeah. 50-53. 50-53 we did a four part series with Stephanie Damon Moore about the prison industrial complex, and we're gonna talk a little bit more about it and where we're at.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :But first, a baby, a baby.
Dyalekt :Baby, you sit around a little bit, and you're gonna tell them about the prison industrial conplex.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Oh, yes I am. So here's the thing about the prison industrial complex is it's really insidious. The prison industrial complex is basically the privatization of prisons. The government and prisons are working together to expand the prison population for the sake of profit. And that's basically what it is. What they've done is prisons have been cited as job creators and the use of inmate Labor has kept costs down. That is what they said and they created jobs by imprisoning people and paying slave labor wages. Yay, everybody I know. Here's the thing U.S. taxpayer dollars are going to private companies to maintain these prisons and to grow prison population.
Dyalekt :Us taxpayer dollars are going to private prisons? ,
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Well because the private prisons are hired by the US government to run prisons, the US government doesn't have the resources to run.
Dyalekt :Our tax dollars or the resources that made those things run.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :No, no, no, really, though, it's because private prisons run things more efficiently. They've done the numbers, they've seen the numbers. And the reality is the private prison industry makes up only about eight and a half percent of the prison population. But the privatization of prisons have allowed for prison labor to become something that think of a company and they probably use prison labor. We're going to talk about some of the big ones today we have a post on IG about what those companies are, and what you can really do about it.
Dyalekt :Well, and when we're talking about like, the expanded thing with the prisons, and it's sort of like how we're seeing right now. When it comes to private prisons and the way that things are running more efficiently, what she means is they're running like an assembly line. And an assembly line isn't really a good thing for every industry. One of the big problems that a lot of people have with Motown is that Barry Gordy was running that like an assembly line. Oh, if he had too much control over that. Even more importantly, we're seeing in education as we have the standards, people have their standards that are not allowing for these types of things. And even as we talk about prison and police abolition, one of the problems people have with the police that there are too many different services that are being conflated, right? That's one of the big problems with prison is when you conflate a lot of different services that need to be done with people who are incarcerated. That means counseling. That means housing them, education.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Everything, all is supposed to happen under one roof by one company.
Dyalekt :Well, and one company that isn't invested in doing all of those things. They're only invested in having bodies.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :We got the craziest quotes for you all don't even I have we have dug into these company reports. We did it the first time in 2015 We saw with their company reports looked like. We looked at what they look like in 2019. Shit is still awful ya'll. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. So first let's talk about prison as a for profit business, because the reality is violent crimes have actually gone down. About 5% of arrests are violent crime offenses, and only about 1% of those are murders nationwide, nationwide by
Dyalekt :So nationwie 5 percent of arrests are for violent crime?
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yes. So that means 95% of the prison population is in there for nonviolent crimes. So the thing about violent crimes being down is, why are there so many more prisoners? Because what happened is, in the last 40 years, we had a 500% increase in the number of prisoners in United States. We have 2.3 million people who are incarcerated in this country right now.
Dyalekt :500% increase. I don't even know if I can fathom over that.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :So over 40 years. That's insane. That's insane. Oh my gosh, yeah. So in 1980 violent crimes constituted 50% of the prison population. And now because violent crimes have been down overall 95% of the prison population is non violent crimes and 5% is violent crimes.
Dyalekt :So are you saying that prisons were doing too good a job of keeping people from coming back? Or getting rehabilitated and they were getting convinced not to go back.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Think about that. In 1980 50% of prisoners were there for violent crimes. In 2019 5% of prisoners were there for violent crimes. Oh, snap. It's Portia. Hello. Yeah. 5% of prisoners are there for violent crime.
Dyalekt :I mean, yeah, and think about the public perception though. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, where everyone talked about prison was the place where everyone was the big murderer and rapist and was going to rape and murder you in prison and the guards are too afraid to stop them because prison is a monstrous scary place full of all monsters and scary people.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :It was in the 1980s. That's how it was. Yeah, it was. Yeah. 50%. The reason how this happened is the non violent offenses are yeah oh snap it's Porsche says exactly what I grew up with. Yep. Yep, it's that perception is still true today even, though violent crimes have gone down.
Dyalekt :You watch a sitcom like I remember like a family matters type of thing they get laughed. At that joke is the giant bubble black dude, I remember that one actor you know that one actor was in every sitcom always that guy dude. It was probably like Harvard educated and all that stuff. That's the only role he ever got.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :It's true. It's true. Oh, man. So here's the thing is how this happened was the war on drugs. Right? I know we all learned what the war on drugs was I learned about in school. The dare program the drug abuse, resistance education. That failed. We are all taught the drugs are bad, right? Drugs are bad, and the war on drugs incarcerated and unprecedented amount of people in this country. And here's the craziest thing. You can look this up on CNN. It is an article that basically says that Nixon's aide admitted to the fact that the war on drugs was meant to imprison black people and hippies. "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to either be against the war or black but by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing them both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night in the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." He said this in 2016. This was formerly classified information that got unclassified.
Dyalekt :Think about when I say hippie, what kind of image comes up in your mind? Some smoker who's a lazy lay and doesn't actually do anything when hippies were activists. They're the ones who were getting stuff done and they were scared.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah, exactly. Oh, I love this. Oh, snap. Unfortunate pot is great. Thank you. blazing fig. A friend of mine spent more than 10 years in jail for selling pot. Yep, we hear that story more and more. And the thing that's been happening is they in the 90s, they also passed the three strikes rule. So if you were imprisoned for three strikes, you're in prison three times, and you could go to jail for 20 years, you could go to prison for 20 years. And here's some crazy stat. So from sentencing project.org, they have this projection that one in three black men born in 2001, can expect to go to prison, one in three black men. Born in 2001, I'm going to say that again, expect to go to prison versus one in six Latino men, versus one in 17 white men.
Dyalekt :I want to say something just very personal. My wife felt the need to raise her voice and the one in three black men thing because you know, this is terrible information to her because she grew up Filipino and hasn't known that her entire life. It's not even a surprise or a shock for me to hear that because I've known that stat. I've been around Yeah, and there's something really sad and scary in that.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah, the stat is terrifying. And that is because I think it's like two out of three prisoners are black or Latinx right now, two out of three prisoners, even when they make up only 30% of the population, so it's nuts. And then life sentences. Here's the thing, when we talk about the war on drugs, when we talk about the three strikes rule, prisoners who have life sentences, about 3,000 - 4,000 people in 1984 had life sentences, about 162,000 people in 2016 have life sentences.
Dyalekt :Grown exponentially.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :And again, I want to repeat non violent crimes of prisoners with nonviolent crime offenses, 95% of the prison population. Only 5% of the prison population is there for a violent crime. So what are they doing there? What are these life sentences for right? And so the only conclusion that we can really come to and we're really gonna go into this is they needed a labor force and they needed a cheap labor force. Corporations, companies, you know, we think about companies sending labor overseas, we always talk about that. We have I feel like oh, China's taking all the jobs, blah, blah, blah, whatever, all these terrible countries, but it's happening right in our backyard. And sometimes literally, for a lot of us, it really is. And so the thing about prison labor in the prison industrial complex and how we rely on it, and how insidious it has been in our country, it's Yes, thank you daily slavery by another name. Exactly. It's straight up slavery.
Dyalekt :So I mean, it's the same thing as when they had the vagrancy laws that happened, I think a year after slavery was officially ended. It was like what 65 and then 66 1866, they enacted the vagrancy laws that said, if you don't have a job, we're gonna lock you up. And if you were formerly enslaved, like last year, you might not have a job. And also, oh, man, it was talked about insidious the way that they defined the jobs. If you were working for some family, and you had some sort of exchange going on, they didn't count that they didn't make money. Well, they're very strict guidelines that they had like they do with things like voter registration and all that. So made it It was very difficult for you to be able to classify and prove that you had a job. They would lock you up your bail would be paid oftentimes by the same family that owned you as a slave. And then you would have to work to pay off that bale.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Holy shit, debt slavery. So modern day slavery has been happening since the end of slavery.
Dyalekt :Yeah, since the next year. The next year of slavery, they really got it together quickly. So the stuff that you're seeing, it's not like it like in 1978 someone was like, what am I going to do with all these black people and hippies? You know, we always talk about this through line, this continuous unbroken line of oppression, and that's every time they have iterated with it. We must not think that that bigots are uncreative just because what they do is irrational. They are very creative and very efficient.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Okay, hold on, let's go to a song. Well, after the song I want to talk about all the corporations that yes, it is a trap. Oh, snap. It's Porsche for real.
Dyalekt :So I'm gonna be announcing these songs, we're not gonna be playing them through here to the sound quality and all that good stuff. But when you listen to this in podcast form, we only play independent artists that are super well known by anybody. If you're an independent artist, and you're making songs about finance, about race, about wealth about these things that we have going on, please send them to us. This first one is by Johann Malik from Israel, Egypt. He bounces around is a really great artist. He's got this joint prison industrial complex if you're well and we'll check y'all in a second because we're just gonna keep on the word just gonna keep on moving. doubt
Song :Yourself was thrown in prison because pardon this wife. She hollered frequently knowing that he might die. Although he began to say he became an inmate society couldn't be bothered. He's a disgrace says and they made them blind and grind in the prison house until he cried out to the most high with a shout Daniel. He was No man in the lion's den. I bet you will see this from the hand about the man had rajani custody and cut his head off nowadays even when our hands raised him lead off nowadays is being recorded still with him get off. Oh, you know about that. Tell me what you know about that. Tell me what you think about the prison industrial complex slave labor was the science project. thousands of days later, was the most widely prospect. The Hebrews in the ghettos living under dreadful peril. 25 the light even if he might make a roll, instead of execution, you would rather break his soul into pieces. shattered dreams was left behind the shell of the king. He was before the Roman scheme to swing the guillotine at the poor, righteous man to claim to rehabilitate them all. This is him. financial gains the sum of all my people's pain, multiply that by the fact they stole our legal name. What a shame By the prison industrial complex is a system situated at the intersection of government and private interests and uses prisons as a solution to social, political and economic problems include human rights violations, the death penalty, slave labor, court, immediate political prisoners and the elimination of disease.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :So we talked about how the prison population increased by 500%. There are 2.3 million people who are incarcerated in this country right now. What are prisons doing with all of them? Well, they are putting them to work and who is hiring them? Many corporations that we know and patronize.
Dyalekt :And one of the things about it's like it sounds like on its face like this is a good thing, right? You're giving people job experience and opportunity to do stuff. They're not just sitting around, you're making good use them. This is what rehabilitation should look like.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :I'm really glad you brought that up. Because we had a question from someone in a post that said a question from someone that has no idea how it works. So the question is, where does prison labor intersect with giving prisoners a chance to return to the workforce after their release by giving them training experience while in prison? Or is that just a mass this type of slavery? Are they two separate things? That is a fantastic question. And I think it lends to what I like was saying about the idea of Oh, we should just give them skills. So when they we should give them skills in prison right now, so when they come out, they're able to contribute to society again. able to get a job they able to have these skills that they develop while they were here. They're able to be educated, all that kind of stuff. And oh, thank you Portia is that our baby's adorable?
Dyalekt :And mind you, those things do exist. There are programs, there are people who are busting their butts trying to get people skills.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah, but the prison labor that we are talking about is unskilled low pay or no pay labor.
Dyalekt :Even If it's hard.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Even if it's hard, they call it unskilled labor. Even if it's hard, and you don't get to put this shit on your resume after you don't get to say like, oh in prison, I worked for Verizon. Oh, in prison. I worked for Victoria's Secret. Oh, in prison, I work for JC Penney. That is not how it works, unfortunately. So the corporations that use prison labor, and here's...
Dyalekt :I want to talk about one other prison labor thing that's going on. The wildfires that have been happening in California. If you New Yorkers were around for 911 and remember how much love the hero firefighters got. Remember that these brothers that are out there fighting these fires in California, they're not even gonna get to join a fire department when they get out.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :You remember when Cuomo was bragging about how he made a bunch of hand sanitizer right at the beginning of COVID prison labor. The frickin state of New York use prison labor to make hand sanitizer for the global pandemic. Meanwhile, prisoners are all trapped together susceptible to getting this frickin virus. It's everywhere. It's still happening today. Let's start with and there's two layers. here's the tricky thing about corporations using prison labor is the corporations that are using prison labor directly and directly hiring them and their corporations who are subcontracting so that he can keep an arm's length away from actually using prison labor. So McDonald's and Starbucks have used prison labor to manufacture food,
Dyalekt :Food? They make McDonalds food?
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah, I know.
Dyalekt :I'm just gonna horrified that like what kind of distance does the food have to travel? I'm just thinking of like how far does that food have to go?
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :There are so many layers to this. Listen, Victoria's Secret and JC Penney used prisoners to sew. American Airlines, Verizon and Avis are using prinson labor for call centers. And Walmart's have used prison labor to build Walmart's. Yes, you can use prison labor for all kinds of things.
Dyalekt :Call centers, that means that person that you were annoyed at and maybe even hung up on and we're like, oh, they're wasting my time and harassing me. That's a person who is a prisoner and is getting paid like 10 cents an hour for them.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :They have access to your personal information. They just do. That's what happens. Yeah, no, all the call centers they were paying so inmates are being paid around $120 $185 a month, which equates to about 75 cents an hour for working full time. Right? Yeah. 75 cents an hour. Oh my god, in 1994, a contractor for a GOP congressional candidate, Jack Metcalf hired Washington State prisoners to call and remind voters that he was pro death penalty. Fucking hired prisones to call voters and say, Hey, I'm pro death penalty, by the way. Yeah, this is crazy. The list of corporations is so long that 21 that to lose 21 corporation that we listed is the tip of the iceberg. So let's talk about subcontracting because again, subcontracting prison labor is one way that companies are able to kind of bury the fact that they use prison labor in their practices. So corporations usually use it to manufacture goods here are some companies that have done it. Unicor makes uniforms for the federal government for the military, they use prison labor to make their uniforms. Signature Packing Solutions is a company that uses prison labor, and Starbucks and Nintendo have contracted with them. X Mark Oh is a company that manufactures goods and Microsoft, Costco, jansport, and Dell have used them and hired them. Third generation is a company that manufactures clothing Victoria's Secret, and JC Penney have used them micro jet is a subcontractor of Boeing and they have used prison labor to cut airplane components and, you know what, they paid them $7 an hour, but instead of paying union workers $30 an hour to do it. I was gonna say that sounds like a good gig. Yeah, yeah, like a gig you would want and should be really paying you well. Yeah. Straight up. Yeah. There was also there was this report a while back that California prison put two men in solitary confinement telling journalists they were ordered to replace made in Honduras labels was made in the US labels.
Dyalekt :We're messing up people's they're like,
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :I'm sorry, Adam. It's so
Dyalekt :Super Mario Brothers three is the best one too.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :I was just texting with a friend about this. And she said, What does this mean? Do we have to make our own computers? Like we have to sell our own clothes? And here's the thing, the tough part is one it's it's so systemic, right? It's in so many corporations that we use, and sometimes you don't have a choice not to use, right. But the solution isn't to stop shopping at these corporations because the corporations are using prison labor because there's prisoners the solution is that we need to know have so many prisoners and have an available workforce that actually is getting paid a living wage. Yeah, the thing about prison labor and the thing about the availability of cheap labor is, corporations are going to be assholes. They're gonna find cheap labor wherever they're gonna find cheap labor. But the fact that this country, and the government has set up a system where you can hire prisoners to work for these companies, that's the root of the problem, right? That's the root of all of it.
Dyalekt :People who are all into capitalism and all that, sure seem to allow for a lot of cheating. And I think the whole thing with Oh, well, if we pay our workers more, then we're gonna have to charge more. And if we do this, then it's gonna be more expensive and less people gonna have it and maybe the businesses won't be able to exist. Well, if your business can't exist without things like prison labor, you don't have a good business.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Your business shouldn't exist. Porsche did not realize how deep this one, it goes so, so deep, and the thing is, if we didn't have prison labor, if we didn't have cheap labor, you know, just like Dyalekt said. Maybe your company shouldn't be in business and maybe our stock will cost more. But maybe we should just have less stuff, right? Like maybe our stuff needs to cost more.
Dyalekt :What is enough? That's the thing we always got to ask ourselves. In this capitalistic system in this world, not only in terms of material possessions, but in terms of the degrees we get the places we go with the stuff that accolades you feel we need to have. Yeah, we often talk about how revolution will give us things. But for a lot of us, especially those of us who are floating above certain areas, mostly those who are not in the global south, there are things we got to give up.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah, exactly. Maybe we need to reevaluate we put value in Yes, yeah. Thank you. Exactly. Oh, snap. It's Porsche. It's worth it to cost more. Yes. Agreed. Yeah, it's okay. If I don't have five of something and I could only buy one of something right? Maybe I just need one of something Monica said so true. Who is determining the value in wide daily asking all the deep questions Who is determining the value? Because here's the thing. If we think about Walmart, we're talking about different kinds of slavery today, right? We're talking about prison labor time in the prison industrial complex. Like Dyalekt mentioned debt slavery that a lot of the formerly enslaved were caught in, when they had to post bail for vagrancy laws and things like that they were indebted to the same people who enslaved them. And so we're also talking about especially when it comes to our stuff and how cheaply it's manufactured. We're talking about wage slavery too. The thing is a company like Walmart, not only is using prison labor to build their Walmart's but they're underpaying their workers to the point where their workers have to go on welfare. This shit is costing us money anyway ya'all. Maybe we're paying the cheapest price at Walmart, but our tax dollars are going to welfare payments because Walmart is not paying their employees enough.
Dyalekt :We talked about this the other day, but it's also pertinent. Wage theft is the number one type of theft in America. Yeah, and it is not a criminal offense. Most of the thefts most of the times when money is taken from people forcefully, it is businesses and individuals not paying their workers or not paying their workers enough. This is literally not a criminal offence. If you want to get Your money back you have to sue for it.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :And you have to sue the corporation in a civil suit. No one goes to prison. Maybe you get your money.
Dyalekt :You can't even call the cops on them, like hey, they didn't pay me and I need to pay rent. Nope.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Exactly, exactly. That's the other thing. So wage theft and wage slavery are other forms of slavery in this country. And a lot of people feel beholden to these jobs because this all it's available in their town. That's all that's available, where they are, whatever it is. And so the thing about wage slavery is wage slavery is costing us even though we think we're getting a deal at Walmart or we're getting a deal on Amazon or whatever it is. And I say this having shopped at all of these places, and a huge number of these places, and even after I found out the US prison labor again, where else you're gonna go right now?
Dyalekt :I mean, if you're on the road trying to get gas and BP is the only one for miles you're gonna get BP.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Oh, yeah. Speaking of BP, they used prisoners to clean up their oil spills in 2010. Yeah, if you didn't think they were horrible already. They're horrible.
Dyalekt :Beyond petroleum. It's only petroleum.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Petroleum. Well, that's the other crazy thing again is it's so entrenched in our system that how do we come out from under it? And really, we have to figure out what the root of the problem is. And figure out it's not about boycotting companies necessarily, or feeling bad about shopping at these places. It's about figuring out how we can abolish prisons. How we can defund the police. How we can shop with our values. How we can pay a little bit more money to shop with the mom and pop because we know that they're paying their workers a living wage.
Dyalekt :I want to reiterate a thing we talked about a lot. When we talked about what the mom and pop shop, you're not going to be able to do all of them at once. We've been we've been dealing with that ourselves that we've been trying to pull ourselves away from.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :We actually just went through this thing. We needed to get washcloths for the baby. And my first thought was okay, we're stopping using Amazon, which we talked about on another episode, but our goal for this pandemic was like, let's see if we can stop using Amazon period. And that's it. And like, Whatever happens happens after that. But I was like, ok lets buy wash cloths at buy buy baby and Dyalekt was like, Okay, let's take it a step further and see if we can find a black owned business that sells washcloths. And we spent an hour trying to find a black owned business that sells washcloths. We just got tired.
Dyalekt :Yeah, I mean, we never like expanded beyond black owned. We're just looking for small businesses, and a lot of the simple textile type things you can't really find.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :You can't find them anymore because they're so cheaply made elsewhere.
Dyalekt :Yeah, the whole monopoly is just like laboring under the monopoly in another name because they're not technically monopolies. Yeah, don't really have a choice.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Well, here's the thing, the definition of a monopoly, the reason why Amazon has an ending for being up late, I got this from Hassan Minaj, a show on Netflix, which is amazing. But the reason why Amazon has not been deemed as a monopoly in a lot of these companies is if it does not harm the consumers wallet, then it is not considered a monopoly. So if Amazon still remains the cheapest place to get goods, then they are not considered a monopoly. We also need to redefine what monopolies mean in this day and age as well. Because Amazon will never get dinged for being for being a monopoly even though they really are right? I want to go back to....
Dyalekt :Do you remember that Parker Brothers stole the game of Monopoly from Mary Pilon.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Oh yes, shout out to Mary Pilon the monopolist. Coaching, is wage theft, like just straight up not paid at all or their full salary. I've heard of also not paying for overtime and stuff. Is it even more than that? Yeah, it's uh,
Dyalekt :I mean, that's the type of.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Not paying overtime, not paying your full salary. any situation where you're getting less than what you were supposed to receive is considered wage theft. And the problem with that is again, because it's not a criminal offense, companies can just do it get, you know, sued in a civil lawsuit if the employee even has the resources to do that, and then just settle on it. Yep. So no one goes to jail. No one goes to prison for any of that. Um, oh, Monica, good question. Do you have a list of alternative places that aren't exploitative to shop?
Dyalekt :We're building it.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :We're building it. We should start one. One place that I would follow is the Vitamin M box. Shout out to Carrie who runs the vitamin Mbox, which stands for the M stands for melanin, and she has a subscription box that features black and POC owned businesses. So that might be a good place to start if you're just trying to expose yourself to different businesses.
Dyalekt :They are having a Juneteenth celebration on their Facebook right now.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yes, they have a Facebook group black owned things go look for it. They're having a Juneteenth celebration right now. Dyalekt's gonna be in it.
Dyalekt :Yeah. And about like the like, Oh, do I need to separate myself or do I need to be with people like I had issues with Facebook and got like my account closed. I was like, You know what, forget it. I'll just won't mess with Facebook. But there are a lot of people were like, that's the only thing they have access to. There are places around the world where they have Wi Fi access only for Facebook. You can't get on and check your email, but you can go there and you can check Facebook. Cambodia, no means people are going to use that so that they can connect so you got to use what we have right now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we build you know, the new stuff.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah, exactly. AMA photography. I didn't use Amazon at all, but it's an active effort. It is. Yeah. Especially Especially right now when you know stores are open when delivery is the only option for a lot of us. I mean delivery is the only option for us with a baby you know.
Dyalekt :Mostly baby stuff that comes up like right now our baby came a month early and we did buy a lot of stuff off Amazon because we had a baby, Pam couldn't even walk and we were like a we weren't ready, so we just had things delivered.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Again, it's a monopoly in the spirit of monopolies. Right? It's the only option right now. And then Porsche said, Oh, I use Amazon all the time. Porsche. I admitted this on the show before I am straight up addicted to Amazon. This is so hard for me to not actually shop on Amazon. There have been times where like a packaging come from another place and I would look at Dyalekt and be like, Can we just get it on Amazon? Yeah, I know. It's there. I know. It's gonna be on Amazon. So that's the other thing. Oh, and then I love this comment from Lizzie AMA photography. Black businesses also need to diversify too many barber shops and salons but not enough grocery stores laundromats etc. Yeah.
Dyalekt :Which which which requires investment also does Yeah, giving folks incentives Yeah. But I appreciate that that's really one of the big things.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :That is really one of the big things. Do you want to talk about how desegregation just like, never got finished? Yeah, give me the baby. Because I think EMA photography, this lends to your comment in a very real way, the reason why black businesses are beauty products, their salons, they're like these, this like niche of categories is because...
Dyalekt :Those are the businesses that you didn't get squashed. They didn't get squashed whenever you tried to build them. Just like you know, I was having a conversation with a youth earlier today where we're talking about how we have empathy for people in the black community these days who are anti intellectual because we come from people who were brought up to believe and to know that if you learn to read you'd be killed. And that all trickles down because you know, good things never deal with the bad things always do. And similarly, when it comes to desegregation, you'll hear a lot of older black folks talk about segregation was a bad thing was segregated and you'd like to come on pops you're not you're talking about now we want to be around people socially. Yes. desegregation has been a good thing. It's good that we all know each other and who each other are but economically, desegregation didn't happen. What happened was black folks were now free to go and visit the white barbershop, the white electronic store, the white grocery store, and like good Americans, they spread their money around like they were asked to. But when businesses were desegregated, the white people at the time in large numbers did not do their part. They didn't patronize the black grocery store. The black grocery stores shut down because capitalism, right, they just weren't making enough money. This was the most insidious in schools where parents did not want their kids going to schools where there were black teachers, particularly black male teachers. It's why black male teachers I think are about 2% of the teaching population right now. Shout out to all my black men who are teaching out there. It's one of the things that I think is always really important for us to continue to have that presence as educaters. But we have so few of them. And after all of these things shut down. And you know, when you hear about Tulsa and black Wall Street, that's not the only place where there were thriving black communities that were firebombed, that were taken down by angry mobs of white folks. And so the businesses that were left were the ones that were thriving in our communities. And those were the beauty salons and the barber shops and the clothing stores. And it's why even today, I think what like half the time when I talk to someone who's an entrepreneur who's black, it's something like a barber shop or a clothing store. It's like in like five or six different categories, because those are the ones that haven't been blown up or burnt down or defaced. Those are the ones that are left alone, and we're left to get a little bit of something. But you're right, we do need to build more, and we need to find all of the reasons and all the factors that are taking it from us and making it impossible
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Well, and we can't expect um, we can't expect that black people fund this themselves, right? We we took it away from them.
Dyalekt :You know the thing, the thing, these white businesses didn't either. Yeah, and many of these white businesses got a lot of their money even if they don't do it now, they got it from slavery. New York Life Insurance Yep.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :They issued policies to insure slave masters slaves.
Dyalekt :And that's how they built up their base of wealth and that's why if you want to start an insurance company you can't mess with them because they've got excellent slavery money Yep, they've done nothing to atone for that they've done nothing to help build up a black owned insurance business to create you know, the competition. That's supposedly the good thing and capitalism anybody says they want but doesn't want to invest in. That's the thing about capitalism it must be invested in or else it's not really going anywhere. The government invested in businesses the government invested in banks recently out some too big to fail. The government is currently investing in small and big businesses. That's what these loans that we're talking to y'all about the please go and get them if you haven't.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :If you are a small business owner, get it PPP alone, they're supposed to prioritize minority owned businesses to do it. I want to share this comment with inner beauty and why too many of us would like to diversify our businesses. We are not getting investors and funding. Exactly. And I think if we can figure out how to continue I mean, we're not prioritizing minority owned businesses right now but how to how to encourage minority owned businesses to be funded. Whoops There you go. Um, that's the next step. That's the next step to really ending desegregation. Let's see what else we got.
Dyalekt :Oh, yeah. Delhi talking about the highways that were built through.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :For real for real and then ema photography learn. My dad's High School in South Carolina was built as an equalization school because South Carolina didn't desegregate until they were forced to.
Dyalekt :My family in South Carolina, more just recently visited the grave site and my family from the old plantation still has segregated graves. We have the black graves and the white graves. So yeah,
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :And then on paper black schools were supposed to get the same level education, but that definitely didn't happen.
Dyalekt :Yeah. And what's funny about these stories that you guys are sharing, I like to talk a lot about how art and culture affect how we see things. I have seen movies and TV shows about all of this stuff. Except it was always a white family. Yeah, I remember specifically, what was this? The the story that you were saying about? Which story?
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Oh, about her dad. Yeah.
Dyalekt :I've seen that same story. Yeah. But about a white family. Yeah, I've seen the same stories about like, oh, here's these hard working poor folks who were doing their thing and they had stuff taken from them. But it's always been a white family with all the stories I've seen.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Okay, let's go to a song because after this, I want to talk about private prisons because this is something that we can figure out how to stop sooner rather than later. Like private prisons are eight and a half percent of the prison population and they are some of the worst run and most insidious corporations in our country.
Dyalekt :I'm going to Chi City for an artist named Taurus and he's got a song called a letter to the judge from his album prison art. I don't know for sure if he went to prison himself or if he's telling stories about folks he knew, but it's some really good stuff. So check that out.
Song :Find my cinema since remember the Aran brotherhood treated me like I wasn't a made man. I still owe the junk to four to five. For what I did to him, they gave me 15 more years. This I just want to say I just want to say I just want to say I just want to say people first Post knighted states versus stolen some ofoma everytime caught in the shadows prosecutors in the lawyer suckered him both capital dip asst cut the cord from a little baby naval things Platinum to me at that defense table course on omit mama sheep in kitchen stiff Cassie quinces Circuit Court. Investigations lab reports Mr. Singh scam for whatever it was my life threatening going Rick is going. Total I can vouch for the murder, so probably Watson shot in juvie shouting Next, the father made use of social services. I just want to say I just want to say I just want to say I just want to say. 20 years play and see what happens if my charges week count one class deep Why didn't you offer me a place to stay status? quo probable cause catch a murder you get famous. Manipulation is crucial why'd you win custody you fight to hold on to your scruples significant sniffing in depth chains queasy or lacks your blood and bones to be in seventh grade in wax liquidators in the crime lab. Internal organs day and shipping Eagle lady, she's passionate degrades, your whimper, fixes explosive Boiling in rage heat stroke from the poison, most embarrassing moments, traumatizing when gaffin installed the fixing yo escape route the strategy failed to break down. I just want to say I just want to say I just want to say I just want to say paraphrases truancy problems. kingpin, superficial when the bat seems to easily busted court official practice law to do justice to practice stands in the slammer fleeing childhood and drifting close to losing a lot of judges for receiving the low fat man to stand up on my toes in fact, my lifestyle Nipa Ella misses citizens guidelines to correct corrections through my trips to South Beach in the hamper you're on a ball and don't eat just because you send him to my recollection go to see hardly exist. Hey, this infinity straddles both sides. In the presence of me. I just want to say I just want to say I just want to say I just want to say.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yes, oh, Bjorn. They always want to hijack our stories. Yes, it's amazing and then pass them off as their own.
Dyalekt :I was just telling him about the kung fu series that Bruce Lee created for himself that they gave to a white dude. He didn't know karate.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :No, it's his first Juneteenth everybody. Yay. Okay, so on Juneteenth,
Dyalekt :We're saying this heavy stuff. Remember that, Juneteenth is a celebration. Yeah, real celebration. And it's not that we got totally free, but it's a step. We got to celebrate these steps. These small victories. Yeah, and then buildon them.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah, for real. Okay, so I'm gonna go into the private prison conversation because this is something that's been going on since the 1980s. And the private prison industry has profited from prisoners for the last 40 plus years. So the two big ones are the GEO Group and Core Civic. Core Civic actually rebranded. I don't know if you've heard of the Corrections Corporation of America, CCA. That is now called core civic as of 2016, I guess they didn't like the whole Hey, we're a Corrections Corporation. Maybe they got a bad name because they're doing horrible things to their prisoners. But they rebranded the GEO Group, um, is another big one, the two, those two big prison corporations make up 75% of the private prison industry. So they are everywhere. And here's the thing, again, we've dug into their annual reports. And they're really really awful guys. They're really awful. I don't even know how to say it. So I'm gonna start with the 2011 and 2012 annual reports. We also went through this in our four part series on the prison industrial complex. GEO Group is in Florida. Oh my gosh, yeah, they're making bit so if you want to know exactly how many billions do group last year, may $2.48 billion in revenue last year in revenue. That's just that's not what their stock is worth or anything like that. That's how much money they made from private prisons. The insidious part about both of these groups is they're considered real estate companies. They are considered real estate investment trusts. They reorganized back in like the early 2000 10s, to be considered real estate investment trusts so that they could separate the actual real estate that they own up from the service of actually managing these private prisons so that they could make more profit from it
Dyalekt :REIT, real estate investment trust. Yes, we talked about that. If you've been listening to us for a while.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yes, exactly. And in 2012, in a statement for their shareholders, the Corrections Corporation of America or core civic, as they were known, referred to the prisoners as a revenue stream, and a unique investment opportunity. This is in their annual report in March 2012. A CCA investor presentation boasted that their incarceration creates Predictable Revenue Streams. cites the demographic trends in CCS favor, nearly half of all individuals from prison end up returning to prison. So recidivism rates are actually rates that they look to to decide whether or not their prisons are going to be profitable. That is the scariest thing. A lot of private prisons actually are incentivized to have prisoners come back. Again, I just want to repeat in case I didn't go through that in 2012. A CCA investor presentation actually bragged about incarceration being a predictable revenue stream because nearly half of individuals who ended up being released from prison actually end up returning to prison within three years.
Dyalekt :The dumbest thing about capitalism and business is that it's not even about big money. It's about predictable money. Yep. Businesses predicate everything on being able to predict stuff. You wonder why they tell you don't go into the arts and the arts isn't a good thing, because it's not Predictable Revenue wise.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So they said this in 2012. In 2011, what do they say the demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts. They straight up said that they're like, you know, our profits are in danger. If they stopped arresting people for things, they don't need to be arrested for. Thats straight up what they said in 2011. In 2008, they basically did a study that found that the inmate populations continue to grow during past recessions, and they anticipate that that's going to continue to happen through this recession. CCS growth has benefited from the significant number of new beds. This is how they talk about it that have been added in recent years to attract state and federal customers requiring additional bed capacity. Can I say this is why governments have hired private prisons because they haven't been able to build prisons fast enough for the prison population.
Dyalekt :Can tell you a personal story Pam? I was arrested in Brooklyn for a speeding ticket I had paid a year prior. The guy who was in the back of the car with me so that he was arrested on foot for a speeding violation. I was put in jail. And when I was going through processing and central booking, I overheard the police talking to each other. And they said, Man, I don't know if we're gonna get our bonuses this year. What do we need? He said, We need a crime wave this year. Oh, well, we're gonna have a crime wave. Wow. That's just my story. That's just what happened to me.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah, you and millions of other people.
Dyalekt :Well, happened around me, but yeah, there was a lot of us in there.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Oh my gosh. So fast forward to 2019. We looked at their most recent annual reports, and now they're bragging about the fact that they are figuring out how to be socially responsible.
Dyalekt :You mean like they are eco friendly?
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah. ESG is stands for environmental, social and governance. And both GEO Group and core civic or corrections corporation of america put out a report their first ESG report this year talking about how they are environmentally, socially, and governing wise, I guess better than other prison corporations, Thats a low bar, Limbo low bar. So the reason why that they wanted to put out the ESG report is because socially responsible investing has become trendy in the last several years. People are divesting from corporations that are not creating sustainable practices. They're not treating the environment. Well, they're not treating their employees well. And so it's degrees, its degrees, but they wanted to put out an ESG report to be able to not have their companies divested from the stock market. So they had incentive now to actually serve the public good is the type of language that they're using right now. The whole beginning of their annual report in 2019. And annual report in 2012. mentioned this Not at all, but the whole beginning of both of their annual reports in 2019. mentioned specifically that they were working on their environmental, social and governance practices within the private prison Corporation. Oh, Oh and get this Hold on. I just found this tidbit to be really hilarious because I was like they have a thing for this. So the part that's hilarious
Dyalekt :is whereas it were hilarious or very bleak,
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :it's gonna be very bleak.
Dyalekt :Um, the jubu published their first ever Human Rights Report, right industry, Lehman Brothers, oh, they received the innovation in corrections award from the ACA, the American correctional Association in 2018.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :They bragged about receiving an award from the corrections Association on innovation in corrections.
Dyalekt :And I wonder what these awards are based on one thing I do know about the correction standards is that there's been a lot of lobbying by prison wardens to lower the need to have fealty to the standards. Basically, it's a thing where it's okay if you get a D+, you can still pass as long as you know your prisoners are still alive. When they get out for the most part, but they're asking that we relax it more so that they can allow more upgrades and it's still okay. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Okay,
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :So that's the private prison industry. It's a mess. It's a mess. What do you do about this? We got like five minutes left and picks a dialect.
Dyalekt :Yes, I'm, you know, when we're talking about what we're doing here in Juneteenth, when it comes to our emancipation or actual emancipation, we have to know what's going on and know what we're doing. We have to see what's been presented as our options. We need to talk to folks who have expertise about creating the new options, and then go with it.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah, I want to go to now from Kansas left a good comment. I feel like any prison can easily get an award for any relatively positive change from that organization. Yeah, that's so true. And I think the fact that they felt like they could brag about that and they felt like that that was an accomplishment for them is a sign that the bar is too low, right? Any positive change any like, Oh, we move needle a little bit not, it doesn't hurt our profits at all or anything, we're not going to actually move the needle in a real way. But hey, we just this thing, we kind of innovated on a thing. We're doing something different,
Dyalekt :You know, talking about different and talking about definitions. When people say prison, just like when people say police, we mean a lot of very different things. A conflete a lot of stuff. I remember when I was back home in St. Croix working in a youth prison, and I spoke to the warden in there. And she said that one of the things that they try to do is to keep their kids in the youth prison as much as they end as long as they can. Because oftentimes, when they lose them to the streets, they don't see them again until they're after 18. And that's when they go to the adult prison that doesn't care about them. This youth prison despite you know, the standards that are low, was working thier behind off to actually help out kids. And I want to tell you guys that every corrections officer just like every cop doesn't go into it for like this greedy profit thing. There are people who do want to help folks, but these systems are in place and are in such a way that it really doesn't create a lot of room for help.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :The people making the profit or not the people are doing direct service for the prisoners.
Dyalekt :And that's the thing of it just like how we talk about abolishing the police, because the police are too many different types of jobs. What we call prison is too many different types of services. Yeah. And we need to be able to separate those. For all of those nonviolent offenders, they may need to go to a place where they receive counseling, where they receive support. I'm sure that a number of these non violent things if they are not marijuana or other like schedule one, because of what people are trying to say and trying to push people away types of things, their dispute related, they're like fist fights or arguments have spilled over to larger things. And these are things that in many cases in your white collar areas, that's moderation and mediation. Yeah, it's not incarceration.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yeah. So you get to go to rehab, right? You get to go to rehab and rehabilitate. I want to not from here send another great comment.
Dyalekt :Can you read it? No. Yeah. If you look at prisons in other countries, right, they broke focus more on rehabilitation than containment. Some of these countries are second countries. Mm hmm.
Pamela Capalad, CFP, AFC :Yep. That's right. That's right. Well, that's all we got.
Dyalekt :That's all we got. For this time. I want to talk a little bit more about Juneteenth and supporting black businesses. Yeah, talking about the desegregation, I would didn't really work. And that's the reason why we're asking. I'm gonna keep saying this as long as necessary. This is why we're asking people to look more at black owned businesses. Look more at POC owned businesses and small businesses in general, but in particular, black owned businesses, because when we were desegregated socially as a country, we weren't desegregated economically. And that's with the people. So we asked everybody of all backgrounds to focus on these black owned businesses, in particular to see if we can get to a place where we can desegregate and actually have an America that celebrates Juneteenth, Christmas, Hanukkah, EAD, all of the things that make up what we say when we say we love America. And that's gonna be that we got one more song on that tip. We got to go to family. You know, my brother in yours mega cipher. He's got a song produced by Steve Wallace called no fear now. That's what sound check your next time Happy Juneteenth.
Song :wash your hands, get it right good hygiene to save your life. Keep your hands out your face, especially in a public place now please the last. Take that classroom site save a life take. No way you said I know a kind of nice clothes or what pathogens we can inject Someone can make the chain look correct when in fact you can be affected impact your loved ones. Let's face it the President's basic unlike his office's needs respect, and you my freedoms, defend our rights and I'll tweet it to let you know what's a post on the gram long form on facebook youtube with the live show show. material form in the spiritual fitness physical flow. Don't sit back and watch we get some marks and let's see how far we go stop spreading misinformation about hydroxychloroquine in close contact and bumping into me in stores things happen. I'm not dying for a country that just sees me as a good again. They don't need to see me unless it's because of them. You bris makes us vulnerable, also quite intolerable. Oh thinking we the best suppose oh well over these vegetables. I live in miserable racing hate and invisible, taking the invisible why my rights? Mr. King is capital queen is Corona. If he holds the crown, she is the owner. Who is the master? Who's the controller? Can he give it up? Well, she passed us over You want diamond Oh? What a sound Platinum I got laying around gold power to behold sauce Kofi to rare to be found diamond Oh, what a sound Platinum I got laying around gold power to behold saws coal v2 rare to be found I want love, no fear now speak love no fear now