Activists kicked off a new push Monday to increase wages for incarcerated New Yorkers and improve working conditions in the state’s prison system.

Organiziations with the Fix The 13th NY campaign — referencing the desire to amend the 13th Amendment — will work with lawmakers and legislative leaders in Albany this session to enact minimum wage for incarcerated people in New York and amend the state Constitution to prohibit prisoners from being forced into involuntary labor, such as making license plates, or state-issued hand sanitizer NY Clean at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is not going to be easy,” said Lisa Zucker, New York Civil Liberties Union’s senior attorney for legislative affairs. “But what structural change has ever been easy to do?”

The 13th Amendment states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Advocates said the six words “except as a punishment for crime” allow for legalized slavery of the incarcerated population and must be changed.

Congress ratified the amendment in 1865, starting the mass incarceration of Black people following the Civil War. Several plantations were purchased and transformed into prisons.

“They bought them and they figured out a way to continue slavery and to make it and to justify it,” Zucker said.

Activists launched the campaign Monday in honor of Martin...

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