by Khin Oo, MAFP Advocacy Coordinator
At our 2023 Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians (MAFP) House of Delegates, our policy-setting body, a resolution titled “Abolish Slavery and/or Involuntary Servitude from the Minnesota Constitution” was adopted.
BE IT RESOLVED that the MAFP supports all efforts to remove slavery from our constitution and penal system and supports the passage of legislation prohibiting slavery and/or involuntary servitude as criminal punishment for a crime.
-From Resolution 2023-06, “Abolish Slavery and/or Involuntary Servitude from the Minnesota Constitution” (mafp.org/resolutions-2023)
In the resolution, authors Sally Jeon, Andrea Westby, MD, FAAFP, and Chris Reif, MD, MPH, wrote: “…current day slavery remaining in our constitution and in our prisons are a vestigial extension of systemic racism and oppression that justified genocide and slavery against people Indigenous to this land and people stolen from Africa. As family physicians, we are aware that the generational and systemic trauma of slavery, genocide, racism, discrimination and poverty drives much of the health disparities experienced by people who are Black and Native American. In our responsibility to care and advocate for equitable health of all peoples, the MAFP opposes the existence of these traumatic drivers of health disparities in our constitution and prisons.”
ANTI-SLAVERY RESOURCES
To bring awareness and provide education to MAFP members, a list of resources and articles on the work to remove slavery from the Minnesota constitution follow.
- 2023 Minnesota bills SF 43 and HF 93 propose a constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery or involuntary servitude as a criminal punishment for a crime. The legislation passed two committees and was sent to the Rules Committee in the House but did not get a hearing in the Senate.
- “An Update on Prison Labor in Minnesota,” by Filiberto Nolasco Gomez (Workday Magazine, January 5, 2022), shares research on the working conditions and experiences of the incarcerated in Minnesota prison industries.
- “A Look Into the Issue of Underpaid Prison Labor,” by Zach Courtney (The Minnesota Daily, February 16, 2023), is an opinion piece on underpaid prison labor and the need to recognize the humanity of incarcerated workers.
- “The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons,” by Ashley Nellis, PhD (The Sentencing Project, October 13, 2021), documents the rates of incarceration for white, Black and Latinx Americans in each state; identifies three contributors to racial and ethnic disparities in imprisonment; and provides recommendations for reform.
- Abolition Today is an online radio program with a specific focus on modern slavery as it is practiced through the thirteenth amendment of the U.S. constitution and by private, for-profit prisons worldwide.
ANTI-SLAVERY ORGANIZATIONS
Get connected to these organizations working to remove slavery from the constitution at a state and national level.
- Twin Cities Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee are prison abolitionists working with incarcerated workers to end prison slavery. Listen to their podcast project, “Stories from the Inside,” on SoundCloud.
- Abolish Slavery National Network is a national coalition fighting to abolish constitutional slavery and involuntary servitude in all forms, for all people.