End Slavery. No Exceptions.
Slavery
is Still Legal in Virginia
Did you know...
13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1865
That slavery was never actually fully abolished?
1865: BLACK CODES AND CONVICT LEASING
In the wording of the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution lies a loophole that would come to be known as the 'Exception Clause'. It states:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
That loophole let the South rebuild slavery almost overnight. States passed "Black Codes" criminalizing things like homelessness or not carrying proof of employment, then leased the newly "convicted" — overwhelmingly Black Americans — to plantations and corporations as forced labor. It was profitable for everyone but the people doing the work.
THEN: MASS INCARCERATION
Convict leasing eventually officially ended, but the incentive to arrest and incarcerate marginalized populations at increasingly alarming rates never did. The War on Drugs, mandatory minimums, and three-strikes laws kept the same labor pool flowing through mass incarceration.
NOW: IMMIGRATION DETENTION
Today that logic reaches immigration detention. According to data cited by the Commonwealth of Virginia, approximately 70% of people booked into immigration detention centers in Virginia from January 2025 through March 2026 had never been convicted of any crime, yet they are pressured to work inside detention facilities for as little as $1 a day, under threat of isolation, punishment, or loss of basic necessities (Commonwealth of Virginia, Executive Order 16, 2026). Detention centers thrive on forced labor and the warehousing of the bodies of vulnerable populations. Meanwhile, the same corporations notoriously profiting from incarceration—and associated with inhumane detention conditions and serious abuses—continue to profit from immigration detention: CoreCivic projected roughly $40 million in annual revenue from Virginia’s Farmville Detention Center alone. One exception. One unbroken line. Learn more about how mass incarceration, immigrant detention, and the prison-industrial complex are connected, and why confronting any one of them means confronting them all. [here]
One exception. One unbroken line.
writing freedom into Virginia's constitution
To this day, Virginia's constitution is silent on slavery, leaving its residents prey to the federal constitution's Thirteenth Amendment exception clause. Because of this, slavery is still legal in our state.
We plan to change that by adding a constitutional amendment prohibiting all forms of slavery in the Commonwealth, without exceptions.
