Supporters,
A recent New York Amsterdam News OP-ED, “In New York, slavery still shapes who gets paid,” reminds us that history still lives in modern systems. In Connecticut, wrongful convictions continue that pattern by stealing time, wages, family connection, and freedom from people who should be home.
That is why FreeAbdus matters. We are calling for truth over technicalities and real pathways to justice.
I cut some important highlights below:
“…After Emancipation, newly freed Black workers were locked into no-wage and low-wage labor. In the hospitality industry, employers refused to guarantee wages, shifting responsibility to tips from white customers. The subminimum wage for tipped workers was not an oversight — it was a deliberate structure, designed to deny Black workers a guaranteed wage at all…
Similarly, the line from slavery to today’s brutal and exploitative prison labor system is direct and clear. The 13th Amendment (https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/)abolished slavery with one exception: for those convicted of crimes…
Incarcerated workers make furniture, eyeglasses, and other goods sold to state and local government entities…
The state’s prison industry program, Corcraft, generates roughly $50 million a year in revenue. During COVID-19, incarcerated workers produced 11 million bottles of hand sanitizer — without protective equipment, and barred from using the product they made. Families on the outside absorb the cost: One in three is driven into debt by supporting an incarcerated loved one, while commissary prices have surged and wages remain frozen at rates set in 1993…a reminder that [incarcerated persons] labor [has] no value. [Ismail] can not send money home to [his four children. He can not afford basic hygiene products — worse for menstruating persons. $28 a month] makes it impossible to be a provider, a parent, a person with responsibilities beyond the walls…
…end all subminimum wages — including for incarcerated workers and workers with disabilities, and index wages to inflation. Not gradually. Not with carve-outs. For all workers across the nation. ..”
Please feel free to read the entire OP-ED by DONNA HYLTON and Robert Jackson April 2, 2026