Blas Sanchez was nearing the end of a 20-year stretch in an Arizona prison when he was leased out to work at Hickman’s Family Farms, which sells eggs that end up in the supply chains of huge companies like McDonald’s, Target and Albertsons. While assigned to a machine that churns chicken droppings into compost, his right leg got pulled into a chute with a large spiraling augur.
“I could hear ‘crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch,’” Sanchez said. “I couldn’t feel anything, but I could hear the crunch.”
He recalled frantically clawing through mounds of manure to tie a tourniquet around his bleeding limb. He then waited for what felt like hours while rescuers struggled to free him so he could be airlifted to a hospital. His leg was amputated below the knee.
Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of prisoners are put to work every year, some of whom are seriously injured or killed after being given dangerous jobs with little or no training, The Associated Press found. They include prisoners fighting wildfires, operating heavy machinery or working on industrial-sized farms and meat-processing plants tied to the supply chains of leading brands. These men and women are part of a labor system that – often by design – largely denies them basic rights and protections guaranteed to other American workers.
I guess not. I thought that I remembered an old AP article online about this from the 1980s about a police raid at a farm compound somewhere in Alabama. However, I cannot find the original source for this claim anywhere! So either all evidence of this event has been scrubbed from the internet, or I have misremembered the event. I consider one of these more likely than the other.
From what I remember of the story, this family had basically just kept their slaves hidden away on their small plantation during reconstruction, then just kept them hidden away from the rest of society by not allowing them to leave the compound. Someone finally escaped during the 1980s, was discovered, and eventually taken into police custody. This eventually led to the raid on the compound and the AP article that I remember.
I remember doing a lot of research into neoslavery right around when this video from Knowing Better and this video from All Gas No Brakes came out. Both videos talked a lot about slavery after the Civil War (The AGNB video was more indirect, but an interviewee in the video name-dropped a lot of stuff that I was ignorant about), which is what piqued my interest. I guess that I must be conflating a couple of different events despite my vivid memory of the article. If anyone else remembers reading the article, or the event occurring (because again, 1980-something is not that long ago), please let me know!