NJ candidate for governor: For-profit prisons are how US gets away with keeping slavery alive

A candidate for New Jersey governor said this week that corporate for-profit prisons are how the United States maintains its legacy of slavery without consequence or censure from the rest of the world.

According to Salon.com, 2017 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Brennan -- a retired firefighter known for his direct, plain-spoken style -- said at a candidate forum this week that the U.S. prison system exploits the labor of people of color, just like the Transatlantic slave trade did for 400 years.

“We have a Jim Crow system that carries forward,” Brennan said. “We can connect today’s incarceration nation directly back to slavery. It is exactly the reason they’re doing it. We had lease labor after Reconstruction, and what was that? Put black people in jail, make them work, lease them out to their former owners.”

“And what are we doing today? We have the Corrections Corporation of America making money on our misery. And this has got to stop!” he continued before asserting that U.S. prosperity was built on two things: "The genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans.”

Watch the video, embedded below: