‘Purposefully simulating chattel slavery’: Prisoners sue over ‘inhumane’ conditions on Angola’s brutal Farm Line

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars, I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Last year incarcerated farm line workers at Louisiana State Penitentiary filed a lawsuit for better working condition. Louisiana State Penitentiary is commonly called Angola. In the suit. The prisoners was alleging that the conditions they’re now working under are so inhumane that between the heat and the inadequate prevention for the heat caused them to have suffered massive heat strokes or just can’t continue to work. If they don’t work though, however, under these conditions, then they’re threatened with either going being put in solitary confinement if they don’t meet the quota that they’re given, they’re threatened with solitary confinement. If they quit, they’re threatened with solitary confinement leading up to the high heat conditions of the summer. Their attorney filed a mercy appeal in hopes of seeing some of the reforms out of the litigation. Here with us today is one of the plaintiff’s attorney Samantha Pourciau, who is a senior staff attorney with the Promise of Justice Initiative in New Orleans. Thank you for joining me today, Samantha.

Samantha Pourciau:

Thank you for having me.

Mansa Musa:

So as you see, I unpacked some of the things that’s going on so we know that one, the conditions in Angola Prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary, we know that the work conditions as it relate to the farm line is inhumane and causes massive health problems for the workers. We know that from looking at the litigation in and of itself that the threat of not working is real and if you going to work or you going to solitary confinement, but more importantly, introduce yourself to our audience and then give us some insight to what’s going on with the lawsuit

Samantha Pourciau:

My name is Samantha Pourciau. I’m a senior staff attorney at the Promise of Justice Initiative where we represent VOTE, which stands for Voice of the Experienced as an associational plaintiff in this lawsuit. In addition to seven individual incarcerated men at Angola who are seeking to represent a class of all individuals incarcerated at Angola, who currently are or may in the future be assigned to the farm line. And so the crux of a lawsuit is to get the inhumanity of what’s known as the farm line, which is the forced labor in the fields of Angola, which are known as the vegetable picking lines, where mostly black men are forced to use their hands to pick, to weed, to water vegetables, to harvest vegetables. And it’s called a work assignment. But at the heart of the lawsuit is the fact that it isn’t really a job. It’s distinct from other work and other job assignments at the prison.

It is used basically as a tool of social and punitive control, punitive control. It’s the first job assignment most people are given and it is our understanding that it is the first job assignment to essentially break people and train them into realizing that they no longer have autonomy over their physical body because if they stop to break when they no longer can physically labor, they are, as you mentioned, liable to be written up and sent to solitary confinement. So it’s used at the entrance of one’s time at Angola to train into how one needs to behave in order to make their way in the prison system. And then over time people often get off the farm line and get other job assignments that are safer, that are compensated more, that are perhaps more meaningful and an ability to learn a trade and learn a skill that could be used if someone were released in the free world and then at the end of the day they could be sent back to the farm line if they get a disciplinary writeup. And so there’s the threat always of the farm line being sent back to the farm line as a tool that is kept used to keep people in line in how the prison wants them to behave.

Mansa Musa:

And so even by your own acknowledgement that, so the institution is using, basically using the farm line as a form of control for the prison population in terms of when you come in, you going to find yourself on the farm line, if you meet the security criteria or whatever the case may be, or you meet the need of labor, you are going to find yourself on farm. But answer this question. Okay, so I ain’t going to been in existence forever. This practice of the farm line has always been in existence. You go back and look at some footage from the thirties, you go back and look at some footage from the forties, any period, you can always find that the agro aspect of Angola has always existed. So why now do they bring this litigation? When this practice been going on forever, what made the prisoners come to this point where they feel like it’s now that they have to do this or to your knowledge had they filed previous litigation, they just wasn’t successful And this is a continuum of their advocacy.

Samantha Pourciau:

I think people have always fought against the farm line in the ways that they’ve had the ability to, by choosing to not work, even knowing that it was going to put them in solitary confinement. Decades ago there was a protest where people cut their achilles tendon and protest of being forced to work in the field. We aren’t aware of any litigation on this issue prior to the instant lawsuit, but I think that over the past decade or two, criminal justice reform has become more widespread. People, the public understands that not everything that happens in our prison system is okay. And there is I think more openness to examining that. And there is also more openness into learning and tying the direct through line between us chattel slavery and our current system of mass incarceration. We saw the new Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander really was the first big text that came out that educated the public about that connection and how our current system of mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow.

And so I think that now is the time for the courts to hear this argument, to understand that the farm line is operating on top of a former plantation. Louisiana state Penitentiary was a plantation, it’s known as Angola because the plantation owner thought that the best slaves came from that country in Africa. And so this litigation really seeks to connect the dots and talk about how part of the psychological harm and the dignitary harm of the farm line is that it is purposefully simulating chattel slavery. And I think the public and the courts are ready to hear about that. I don’t know, I don’t think the case law has been established on that point, but this is a landmark case seeking to make that argument and show that it is cruel and unusual punishment to force people to basically replicate chattel slavery on the grounds of a former plantation.

Mansa Musa:

Right. Okay. Let’s unpack some of the things that goes on on the farm. One, how much money are they being given? What’s the rate? And two, do they get days off? What’s the hours that they work? And more importantly, do they have the right if they are sick, do they take that in arbitrary, say they’re trying to get off the farm line and put ’em in solitary confine. In your investigation, have you noticed the abuses to the extent where you don’t have a right to nothing other than come out, go to work and go back into your cell?

Samantha Pourciau:

So on the issue of pay, when someone first enters the prison system, they aren’t paid anything at all. And because the farm line is the first work assignment for the majority of people, that means for the most part, when people start working on the farm line, they receive no pay at all. Eventually they can start earning between two and 4 cents per hour. It tops at 4 cents an hour. So no one on the farm line will be making more than that. And in terms of the hours that people are forced to labor, they usually call work call at around 7:00 AM and bring men, line them up out the gate to bring them to the field starting around seven 30 or 8:00 AM in the morning. In the past there were two shifts in the morning and in the afternoon since we started this litigation, they’ve not been bringing out the afternoon shift in the summer and recognition that it is dangerously high heap during that time that isn’t technically in their policy that they don’t need to do that. And so that is part of what an argument we make in the litigation that all of the changes that they have been making in response to this litigation need to be documented in their policy so that they don’t just change ’em back at the lawsuit is over, but they work a full day during the non-summer. Then during the summer months it’s usually half of a shift. In terms of the, I think you were asking about medical care,

Mansa Musa:

Right? And what type of, because we already, it’s evident that they want to make sure that the men are always working and the threat of not working is solitary confinement. But I want to know in your investigation, have you seen where people have actually had medical problems but they still was forced to go out there and work? Or do they all lot for a person to say, I got a medical condition, I can’t work this day, or I’m unable to work at all even though I might have been working like a month.

Samantha Pourciau:

So the men are able to make what’s called a self-declared emergency in the field. If they are saying they can’t work because they’re having some medical issue and a medical provider will come out to assess them, what we’ve seen is that the majority of people who make those sick calls one are charged for them. It’s not free, it’s supposed to be free under their policy if it’s an illness related to your work assignment. But

We haven’t been able to get any evidence to show that they’re actually categorizing these kinds of sick calls as related to work assignment. And so people think that know that when they call for that medical call, they are liable to get charged for it. And so even if they end up not charging them at the end of the day, that is a barrier to calling for sick call when you make 4 cents an hour at most. And the sick call costs $2 and so they can make a sick call and if the provider comes out and believes them then they don’t have to continue working. But in the majority of cases we’ve seen the notes reflect that the person was assessed and the provider said they were fine and they could just take a quick break and then go back to work. And it does seem like the mentality of the providers is to get people back to work and not to issue what’s known as a duty status that it can accommodate some issue that they’re having so they aren’t forced to go out and work.

Mansa Musa:

Alright. Talk about the products. Where do the produce go that they manufacture? Do they go to feed the prisoners? Do they go to feed the guards or are they being sold in society or is it a combination of all three?

Samantha Pourciau:

So the farm line, that’s the subject of the litigation. The prison’s stance is that it only goes to feed the people in prison. It’s not sold on the open market. There are other agricultural operations at Angola that are run by the Department of Corrections for Profit branch known as prison enterprises. And those are more commonly sold crops in the open market that usually are used for animal feed. And so that’s the market that they’re looking into. For the farm line, it’s all vegetables that are harvested that are used in the kitchens at the prison. There’s a processing facility that it’s sent to onsite that other incarcerated people work to freeze some of that to build up the storage for over the winter months. But we’ve also heard reports of some of the produce going to the guards. There’s an area at Angola known as the Beeline, which is also very reminiscent of its plantation history. It’s a section of the prison where people who work there can live and they have homes, parks, recreation centers. I think at one point they had a school, I don’t think it’s operating currently. And there are reports that the Bline folks can access the food that is harvested on the farm line. Though we haven’t discovered that in this litigation

Mansa Musa:

Yet. First of all, did they get class, did they certified as a class action or is it still the seven plaintiffs and whoever else was in there? And second, what are they asking for if you can list some of their demands or the cause of actions?

Samantha Pourciau:

Sure. So the case has not yet been certified as a class action. We just had last month from April 22nd to 24th, a three day evidentiary hearing for the court to hear evidence about why we believe it should be a class action. And the court has asked for us to summarize and put in writing post that hearing why it should be certified, which will be due on June 2nd, 2025. So we hope and anticipate that the court will make a ruling on that during the summer of 2025 and the ability to make it a class action obviously as a huge change of the relief we can seek in that case. Although we do have an associational plaintiff vote, which stands for Voice of the Experience, they’re a local nonprofit at the organization in Louisiana founded by formerly incarcerated people from Angola. And so even if for some reason the class isn’t certified, they still represent their members who are currently incarcerated at Angola. So we still can seek relief on behalf of a group of people, but we hope that the court will certify the class this summer. In terms of the relief that we are seeking, the case is broken down into two primary claims. We have an eighth amendment cruel and unusual punishment claim and within that we have theories of harm related to the heat. And then we have theories of harm related to the psychological harm and dignitary harm that is happening on the farm line all of the time, not just in the summer.

And then the second claim we have in the case is that the operation of the farm line violates the Americans with Disabilities Act or the A DA and that is on behalf of a subclass and a number, not all seven of the named plaintiffs fit into that category, but some of them do. And that is for folks who have medical conditions or prescribed medications that make them even more susceptible to heat illness. And so we are asking the prison to provide further accommodations for them to be brought in once the heat index reaches 88 degrees and to be given what the prison calls a heat precaution duty status. So those are some of the specific reliefs we’re requesting.

Mansa Musa:

And you know what, I’m listening to what you’re saying and I recall I did 48 years in prison prior to getting out, but in the summertime and in the wintertime they had the heat index. They wouldn’t let us go outside if it was a certain degree, it was automatic, y’all was suspended because of the heat. And then in the wintertime, same thing. If the temperature dropped below a certain degree, we couldn’t go out and this was something that was state regulated. But they don’t according do they have that same mechanism? Do they have a heat indicator that say that under these conditions can’t nobody go out in the yard or work or they do the exclusion or exception when it comes to the farm line?

Samantha Pourciau:

So before we filed the lawsuit, there was no upper limit when they would not make people go out to work in the high heat because of the litigation. The prison has updated what they call the heat pathology policy

And they have created that upper limit of 113 degree heat index. We think that’s far too high. And so we are seeking for that number to be brought down to 103 degrees, which is still very high. But within the scientific literature is a more reasonable number that we think would provide safety and take down the risk of harm that people would have being forced to go out at that high heat. In terms of a lower limit, the prison has said that they don’t send folks out if it’s below freezing, but that isn’t written anywhere in policy. So that is also something we would want them to put in policy to put in writing.

Mansa Musa:

To your knowledge, is this something that y’all would want to include? Did they be given minimum wage for the work that they do on the farm line? This is the reality of prison. Prison’s going to work, prisons want to work, they give in prison, they give different incentives to work. Unlike Louisiana, like in Maryland, they give you incentives and you working just as inhumane conditions as anybody else, but they give you the incentive is that you get an extra five days off your sentence a month. I can break that down to less than four and a half years or four years or three and a half years. And I’m saying all that to say if the litigation is survived and y’all get the belief that y’all want, will it eliminate the farm line or will it make the farm line more, give it more regulatory, which would be still up to them to enforce the regulation. Talk about that.

Samantha Pourciau:

Yeah. We are seeking an end to the farm line because of the non heat related claims, the claims around the psychological harm and the dignitary harm, we think there really isn’t a way to reform the farm line. It is a message of US child slavery that just needs to end. And so that’s the relief we are seeking. I can speak to the Louisiana incentive pay system if you want to hear about that, but we aren’t seeking a change in the incentive pay

On the farm line and part of that is based in the claims that we are bringing. And then also part of that is in the ability to succeed on those types of claims because the reality is the 13th amendment exception clause makes it so that you don’t have to pay anything to incarcerated workers. And so the incentive pay system that exists in Louisiana today is designated by statute and it would be legally very hard to be found unconstitutional because it is above nothing. And for that reason, we aren’t attacking the incentive pay system directly. We are attacking the overall farm line and how it operates within the system. And the lack of compensation beyond pennies is a part of how it works as a whole. But we aren’t attacking exact that specific provision within the lawsuit it

Mansa Musa:

And that rightly so. Right, because slavery by any other name is slavery and they use the 13th Amendment to rationalize and justify getting slave labor out us without giving us dignity and wage. But talk about the stats of the case now, did y’all file a TIO temporary restraining order? What’s the status of the temporary restraining order?

Samantha Pourciau:

Yeah, so we filed a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction last summer in advance of the high heat season and we were able to get it granted in part we had asked for the court to just bring in order the prison to bring in the farm line anytime the heat reached or exceeded 88 degrees. And the court did not go that far. But he ordered the prison to put up shade structures, make sure that there were more frequent and longer breaks, make sure that they had access to water at all times, things like that that we don’t think go far enough, but we’re something more than what they were currently getting. And so then in advance of this next heat season, summer 2025, we filed a second preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order asking for some of those same things but also different things because in the intervening time the prison has changed their heat pathology policy in some ways for the better.

They’ve expanded the list of medications and medical conditions that would give someone a heat precaution duty status, which would allow them to be brought in once the heat gets too high. But unfortunately, the prison has also increased the heat index threshold that allows for folks to come inside and allows for all of those protections to kick in. So it used to be 88 degrees, now it’s 91. And so we are seeking for this current summer for that number to go back down and for some other relief that can make it better for this coming summer before we’re able to get to trial and get a final judgment on the merits in this case.

Mansa Musa:

And I think for the benefit of our audience, we’re saying 91 degrees… The reality is that the person’s not out there one day, the person’s out there every day when the sun come up, they’re out there every day under these audience and inhumane conditions. So it’s not a matter of like, oh, well there’s not even one degrees out here today. Don’t let ’em work. They’re working all the time in these inhumane and he related conditions. But talk about this if you can, the plaintiffs and the expert compared the farm line to shadow slavery and Nazi concentration camp. So they basically saying that the same way the Nazis inflicted slavery on Jews, same way people in this country inflicted slavery on black people, that it’s a comparison to that and Nazi Germany, to your knowledge, can you expand on that or do you see any semblance to that or is that just beating the drum real loud to try to get attention to the issue for lack of a better word?

Samantha Pourciau:

So Dr. Hammonds is one of our expert witnesses in the case and she is a professor at Harvard who studies African-American history, American history, the history of science and the history of medicine epidemiology. And she was the one who testified at our class certification hearing about the comparison between the farm line and US shadow slavery and the farm line and Nazi Germany and the parallel she was drawing specifically, I think US shadow slavery is very easy for everyone to understand and see it is the modern day version of slavery. What is happening on the farm line? I think the Nazi Germany comparison requires some more explanation and so I’m happy to provide that. But she was opining about was the way the medical care operated within the concentration camps and how there were medical providers. But all of the medical treatment was really focused on getting people back to work.

And she was talking about in the labor camps how the medical providers were not assessing a person to really get at the illness or what medical ailment they were having but was trying to get them back to labor. And so she had reviewed deposition transcripts from the case where we deposed some of the medical providers at Angola and she saw similar characteristics of the medical providers opining that most of the incarcerated people lie about their sickness and they’re really just trying to get out of work and they’re not truthfully coming to them with the medical issue. And so she was drawing that comparison of the tendency to not believe people and to just focus on wanting to get them back to work and thinking that they were only complaining to get out of work was the comparison she was drawing that she saw in her review of the evidence in this case.

Mansa Musa:

And that right there in and of itself is a powerful testament to the severity of the farm line because we know from our history in Nazi Germany, everybody was complicit with the regime. It wasn’t a matter of like I’m in this space and I got an opinion on how these people should be treated. I’m complicit. I’m in compliance with everything that we’re doing here. The attitude and when you first said it, I reflect on most of ’em are private contracts. They became privatized. So most of them are contracts and in order to maintain their contracts, they have to provide a certain amount of services, but when they bid, they underbid to get the lowest possible service to us. And so when this entity come into play, very rarely do you find the medical going to go against the prison administration or the department of credit because they get their monies from them.

It’s not a part of the state. When you was a part of the state then it was a different thing because now you had a different standard that you could track and say, well this is and all this is the farm line, the medical, the ward and everybody associated with it. Here you have a private medical institution got going from prison to prison to prison throughout the United States. And as they got sued and they left, they got kicked out, they just went to another and they swapped out like that. So it’d be interesting to see who is responsible for this, but talk about the status of the case and I get off my so box, talk about the status of the case right now, Samantha.

Samantha Pourciau:

So right now we are awaiting a ruling on that second preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order for the summer of 2025 and we just submitted our post argument briefing on Friday, May 16th. And so now the court has all of the briefing that is requested and hopefully should be making a ruling any day, hopefully today so we can get some relief because we are in the height of the heat season. The temperature this past weekend in Louisiana exceeded a hundred degrees on the real feel heat index and we’re really getting to the point where it’s getting dangerous for folks to be out there. So we’re hoping the court rules imminently and grants us some temporary relief while we are continuing to work on a final judgment in this case related to ending the farm line generally because of its psychological and dignitary harm for those who are forced to labor on it at all times, at all seasons. And so we’re awaiting that ruling. And then as I mentioned, we are still awaiting a ruling on whether the class action can proceed as a class action not just on behalf of individuals and the associational plaintiff vote. And so we expect that ruling to come through at the end of this summer and then once that ruling comes through, the court will implement a new scheduling order and hopefully set a trial date for probably 2026. But we’re awaiting when that will happen.

Mansa Musa:

Is there anything else that we did not cover that you would like our viewers to know?

Samantha Pourciau:

I think I just feel like I always want to lift up our who we represent. I get to be here and talk about the case because I am an attorney and I’m not incarcerated, but I wish it could be them that we’re talking about the case and

Mr. De Jackson and one of the named plaintiffs was able to come for the three, the class certification hearing for the three days we were in court and sit at council table and participate and testify. And it was the first time the court was able to hear directly from an incarcerated person forced to labor on the farm line. And that changes how one thinks about this when you can hear about it directly from the person experiencing it. So even creating that opportunity to allow incarcerated folks to come out to the public, to the courtroom, to a public space and tell everyone what is happening in these places where we try to disappear people. Angola is two and a half hours away from New Orleans. It’s in a remote location that is hard to access. It’s at the end of a very long railroad that you have no cell phone reception when you’re going up there. And so I think getting folks outside of that and into the public to talk about the truth of what we’re doing, this modern day slavery is essential

Mansa Musa:

And how do our audience stay in touch or get more information or be able to track this if they want to stay on top of it and insert themselves in whatever advocacy y’all are soliciting from people.

Samantha Pourciau:

Yeah, I would recommend that folks sign up for the Promise of Justice Initiatives newsletter. If you go to promise of justice.org on our website, you can sign up there and then follow us on social media to get updates as they’re coming out. Justice Promise is our tag on Instagram and you can find us on Facebook and Blue Sky and x and that’s where we’ll post live updates as they’re happening.

Mansa Musa:

Thank you Samantha. Samantha, you rattled the bars today. We can hear the bars coming loose and the voices of those that are incarcerated or in prison or in chattel slavery, we can hear their voices being echoed through you. So we take heart at that and we recognize what you’re saying, that it would be more appealing to have the people that’s suffering this to be present. But at the same token, if we don’t have people like yourself, we ain’t have William Kler, we ain’t have Charles Gerry, we ain’t have Thurgood Marshall, and we didn’t have people like yourselves in this space willing to go. I ain’t go willing to ensure that the information is being gathered and presented to the court willing to pursue justice at all court if we didn’t have this and we would be, this is what we would have. We used to have a farm line, a graveyard and Lords coming out to ensure that you have endless slave labor.

So we thank you for that. We ask our audience to continue to support and rally in the bars in the Real News. We ask that you support us by giving your feedback on these type of podcasts or these type of interviews that we are conducting. If you have an opinion about chattel slavery, if you have opinion about slavery, if you have opinion about concentration camps being ran in the United States under our species of being a prison, and if you have an opinion about genocide, if you have an opinion about anything relative to social conditions and injustice, then we ask that you give us your views and give us your feedback. It’s important for us to hear these things because your views are what help us shape the direction we are going in in terms of educating and exposing information. We don’t give you a voice, we just turn up the volume on your voice.