Yes we must.

Here's a Blueprint for how to do just that:

www.omnidea.co/p/how-we-bre...

Can we design systems around dignity and pathways rather than just maintenance and control? There aren't easy answers, but I think there are solutions - especially if we design them well from the start.

What would build trust? Show the system strengthens people, not traps them. Smooth benefit cliffs, expand earnings supplements like EITC/CTC - designs that raise work AND cut poverty.

We're all one people, one family. We don't have to compromise independence to provide for the least of these.

I don't think either frame captures the real tension. The current system is brittle and easily captured by partisan interests.

To me, the right balance would be safety nets that meet basic needs while enabling people to push themselves forward - pathways built into law, not just eligibility checks.

Part 4 · Conclusion
Why this line in the Constitution matters, and what role each of us can play to end the exception clause in the 13th Amendment.

#MassIncarceration #SystemDesign #LawAndDesign #Blueprint

Part 3 · Implementation Pathway
How this could actually move: amendment, federal + state routes, enforcement.

#MassIncarceration #SystemDesign #LawAndDesign #Blueprint

Part 2 · The Structural Reforms
Four bills to unwind the pipeline: decriminalization of survival, survival security, detention accountability, and labor abolition.

#MassIncarceration #SystemDesign #LawAndDesign #Blueprint

Part 1 · The Constitutional Fix
What it would take to strike the exception clause and write a clean abolition amendment.

#MassIncarceration #SystemDesign #LawAndDesign #Blueprint

This Part of the Blueprint introduces how to end slavery once and for all in the United States:

✅ Remove exception from the Constitution
✅ Ban involuntary prison labor nationwide
✅ Require fair wages for voluntary work
✅ End policies that incentivize incarceration

This isn't just about history. It's about what's coming.

When crisis comes, if we don’t close this exception, the next one will fill prisons with people who "violated" laws designed to criminalize survival.

As the economy contracts and climate displacement grows, watch what happens.

More criminalization of poverty. More arrests for homelessness. More bodies turned into labor.

The system is designed for this. The exception clause is the mechanism.

Today, over 1.2 million incarcerated people work for pennies or nothing.

They make products you buy. They fight wildfires. They answer calls for state agencies and private firms.

If they refuse? Solitary confinement. Extended sentences.

The 13th Amendment's exception makes this legal.

After the Civil War, Southern states criminalized unemployment, loitering, vagrancy — anything that let them arrest freed Black Americans and lease them back to plantations.

Convict leasing became slavery by another name — legal, profitable, violent.

In 1865, the 13th Amendment "abolished" slavery — except as punishment for crime.

That exception wasn't an oversight. It was intentional.

And for 159 years, it’s been used by governments and corporations to turn incarceration into profit.

#darkdesign of the #USConstitution