Last week’s election revealed that California is so blue, it left me seeing red.
Turns out the country’s loopy far out state is so liberal that voters are cool with slavery.
Sorry. Didn’t mean to harsh your mellow. The term on the ballot for Prop. 6 was “involuntary servitude,” referring to incarcerated prisoners. Similarities to slaves who came to this country to work of their own volition are purely coincidental.
Fifty-three percent of the state’s voting population— 7,078,853 people—are OK with forcing inmates to work for free or for cents per day in jobs they did not select.
In San Diego County 726,826 neighbors, friends and relatives wanted to keep slavery—er, involuntary servitude—compared to the 593,537 who wanted to abolish it.
But again, this isn’t slavery Prop. 6 proponents will tell you. Slavery happened to Black folks. And in California the largest ethnic group in prisons is Latinos. Black people are only the second most represented demographic in the state’s prison system. So how can it be slavery if it’s affecting mostly Latinos?
Incidentally Latinos are about 40 percent of the state’s free population, followed by 35 percent white, with about six percent of the state’s residents being Black or African-American.
Locally Chula Vista’s parallel population is about 60 percent Latino, 40 percent White and 5.2 percent Black. In National City it’s 64 percent, 44 percent, and 4 percent respectively.
The rejection of this proposition coincides with passage of Prop. 36 which changes some crimes from misdemeanors to felonies. Sixty-five percent of voters in the county want to see your brothers, sisters, cousins, moms, and dads go to prison for drug offences or stealing material items like clothing and jewelry. Don’t worry, Prop. 36 will also sweep up the homeless for the same offenses so the streets will be safe from them as well.
Interestingly, voters also soundly rejected an increase in the minimum wage, so the working class who are lucky enough to have a job will still have to scrape by until their job outsourced to Artificial Intelligence, overseas operators or inmates.
But don’t worry, anyone who complains of not being able to find a job might be able to find one in prison.
