An excerpt from her book It Takes a Village has social media buzzing with the revelation that Hillary Clinton used unpaid prison labor to work in the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion.
Clinton said the workers were typically super-predators “African American men in their thirties who had already served twelve to eighteen years of their sentences,” and who worked on the grounds without compensation.
It “was a longstanding tradition” that “kept down costs,” Clinton explained.
The excerpt was posted to Twitter by an apparent Black Lives Matter and Bernie Sanders supporter.
Maher said “house n*” and Clinton used prison labor at her mansion for ten yrs bc it was “a longstanding tradition which kept down costs.” pic.twitter.com/EXPrVRjJ7G
— Jeanette🌹Corbynista (@JeanetteJing) June 6, 2017
Clinton described her unease at having the prisoners in her home.
Visiting criminals in jail “was not the same as encountering a convicted murderer in the kitchen every morning,” she explained.
You can even hear these comments in her own words:
For ten years in the AR governor’s mansion, @HillaryClinton used prison labor: “a longstanding tradition which kept down costs.” pic.twitter.com/QjcB6i1iow
— Jeanette🌹Corbynista (@JeanetteJing) June 6, 2017
Even Newsweek couldn’t help but notice the outrage that ensued:
Twitter users have reacted with surprise and fury over excerpts from Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book It Takes A Village. On June 6, Jeanette Jing, an activist with over 33,000 followers on Twitter who supports Clinton’s Democratic opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders, shared two pages of the work in which Clinton reminisces about the black prisoners who worked in the Arkansas governor’s mansion she shared with her husband, Bill Clinton, who led the state from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992.
“When we moved in, I was told that using prison labor at the governor’s mansion was a longstanding tradition, which kept down costs,” Clinton writes. She adds that most of the workers were convicted murderers and she became friendly with “a few of them, African-American men in their thirties who had already served 12 to 18 years of their sentences.”
She later called the prison labor at the mansion competent, but likely “emotional illiterates.”
Critics were quick to pounce:
haven’t been super online today but I see that uhhhhh (checks again) Hillary Clinton had slaves
— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) June 6, 2017
look, is hillary clinton perfect? no. did her war in libya lead to slave markets? yes. did she use slave labour in her own home? again, yes
— Sam 🐫 Kriss (@sam_kriss) June 7, 2017
Clinton has long struggled to establish a positive relationship with the African-American community, despite being married to the “first black president.”
What do you think of Hillary’s use of prison labor to spruce up her mansion? Share your thoughts below!