In the early to mid-1980’s the United States saw the sweeping privatization of its prisons. The for-profit model led to the incarceration of 2.3 million people from 1980 to 2011, ravaging low-income and minority communities. But prison-building was also sold to economically hard-up communities as a way to stimulate their economy and create jobs. What Marc Mauer and others have called a "race to incarcerate" followed.

Today millions of Americans, disproportionately African American men, are incarcerated. As Michelle Alexander has told us, “there are more African-Americans under correctional control — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.”

At the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention last week, pres. Richard Trumka denounced mass incarceration as a barrier to shared prosperity. The nation's largest labor federation then considered a resolution on the topic, which passed with support even from unions which represent prison guards and workers.

That union prison workers should support such a resolution doesn't spell the end of the prison industrial complex immediately, but it is as a very big deal.

Lee Saunders, President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees came by the GRITtv stage in the Convention Hall to talk about what it means for coalition building -- and the future - as public workers face the need to build public support and pull together against austerity and the looming budget battle this fall in D.C.

The Laura Flanders Show, a project of GRITtv, has been reporting on the 2013 AFL-CIO Convention all week with interviews featuring Ai-Jen Poo of National Domestic Workers United, Bhairavi Desai of the Taxi Workers Alliance, Pres. Trumka, Rev James Lawson and Karen Nussbaum of Working America. Distributed by OneLoad.com