The “fascism” that many are finally seeing first hand has been apparent to a lot of us for quite some time. My grandmother used to offer water to “road gang” convicts repairing the road in front of our family farm. I remember “helping” her deliver water (I carried the dipper) to those men (though she often cautioned me to “not get too close”). I remember the smell of the tar they laid on the road and the sweat pouring off them and the gratitude in their eyes.

For a long time, like a lot of people, I assumed that they “deserved” the punishment they were getting when oftentimes their only “offense” was “not having a job”.

We’ve had “gulags” for a minute, y’all.

“Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor that was practiced historically in the Southern United States before it was formally abolished during the 20th century. Under this system, private individuals and corporations could lease labor from the state in the form of prisoners, nearly all of whom were Black. Prisoners today produce products that have been bought by companies like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States#:~:text=States%20leased%20out%20convicts%20to,labor%20with%20very%20little%20oversight.