After a series of very narrow victories over Bernie Sanders March 15, Hillary Clinton returned to what she does best – raising enormous amounts of money from the most reprehensible people in society.
As part of an eight-day blitz of fundraisers, Clinton will attend an event hosted by Lyndon Rive, the CEO of SolarCity. SolarCity, which makes and installs solar energy panels, portrays itself as a progressive, “green” business, but the reality is quite different.
In 2012, SolarCity made a deal with the University of Oregon to build two large solar energy installations. As part of the deal, the company received a nearly 12 million dollar subsidy in the form of tax credits from the Oregon Department of Energy.
After taking the public money, SolarCity had the job subcontracted to prison labor. Prisoners were paid less than a dollar an hour – effectively slavery. Normal pay for workers who are not imprisoned range from $27-$70 an hour.
Lyndon Rive is a monster, and Hillary Clinton is glad to accept his and his friends’ money.
Clinton claims to be a friend of the labor movement, but she clearly has no problem with the super exploitation of an extremely vulnerable section of the working class.
She claims to be a committed fighter against racism, but still welcomes the support of someone who participates in one of the most vile aspects – forced, virtually unpaid labor – of the racist prison system.
But Gloria La Riva and Eugene Puryear, Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, take a militant stand for prisoners’ rights. The campaign’s 10-point program is clear:
“More than 2.2 million people are behind bars in the largest prison complex in the world. Mass incarceration of our youth is the real crime. End the mass incarceration of oppressed communities.”
