Tag: Poster 167

Inclusive Language Protocol for Environmental Organizations to Avoid Classist Language

Presenter(s): Allison Ludden − Environmental Science

Faculty Mentor(s): Sarah Wald

Poster 167

Research Area: Environmental Studies

I am part of a team developing a protocol for the environmental organization Bark to check whether they are using inclusive language. I am developing the part of the protocol that will address classist language, including general principles to follow and suggested vocabulary. I will be researching existing protocols and applying them to an environmental context in order to develop a socioeconomic inclusive protocol. Inclusive language is essential for the equal treatment of all groups that have been marginalized because of their ethnicity, culture, race, gender, disability, age, socioeconomic status and more. These groups are especially vulnerable to issues like environmental racism and climate change, yet we fail to see them represented in the environmentalist movement. This protocol will allow organizations to audit their websites, canvassing material and social media in order to adapt their language to reach out and represent these groups.

People Incarcerated Working for Wages keen to Slave Labor within the Oregon Prison System

Presenter(s): Evie Blythe

Faculty Mentor(s): Noah Glusman

Poster 167

Session: Social Activism ARC

When the 13th amendment to the US Constitution was added, it outlawed involuntary servitude for almost all cases. The only exception is punishment for a crime. Today, prison labor generates massive amounts of revenue, upwards of $28 million for prisons in Oregon. Oregon passed Measures 17 and Measure 68 in 1994 and 1999 respectively. Measure 17 required that people incarcerated work 40 hours a week (with the ability to devote half that time to school or other educational purposes). Measure 68 made it so that labor done by people incarcerated could not be in a highly competitive market. Today, people incarcerated in these prisons work in laundry facilities, call centers, textile, metal, and wood shops, and various other menial tasks that both benefit the penitentiary and other companies who are allowed to subcontract prison labor. The University of Oregon contracted Oregon State Penitentiary workers to make most of the new furniture for residence halls. Incarcerated peoples get paid much less than minimum wage, some working for as little as $0.20 per hour. Our research question looked into whether or not it is constitutional and productive to society to have people incarcerated, whose numbers are racially disproportionate due to racism in other sectors of the criminal justice system, work 40+ hours for less than a dollar per hour. The working conditions and wages of prison labor constitute a form of modern slavery. We used articles posted by researchers who went into these prisons and interviewed the people incarcerated who work these jobs. The findings of their research were mixed. Some people incarcerated thought that money mattered less than receiving an opportunity to learn valuable skills and feel as though they were needed. Others voiced their concerns about being taken advantage of. Oregon Corrections Enterprises, who contracts the prison labor, said they could not afford to pay people incarcerated more, even if they wanted to. Regardless, it is still unclear as to whether or not this practice is constitutional. The practice of paying little to nothing for the work of people incarcerated feeds into the argument that mass incarceration is the Jim Crow of our era.