Tag: slavery

Judge Orders Colorado to Stop Throwing Prisoners in Solitary for Refusing to Work

In 2019, while incarcerated at the Centennial Correctional Facility in Colorado and assigned to shifts in the kitchen, Nadia Reed refused to work for two days in one month. All incarcerated people in Colorado are required to labor, and are typically paid mere cents an hour. Her punishment for that decision was being confined to her cell alone for 23 hours a day for 30 days, unable to interact with any other incarcerated people, not even during the hour she was allowed out for exercise and to shower. She was also denied the ability to talk to her loved ones. In court testimony, she described the isolation as “very depressing,” leading her to self-harm. 

The following year, after Reed completed her assigned shift in the kitchen, she was ordered to stay longer to do additional work. She refused, for which she was handcuffed, shackled, strip searched, put in solitary confinement and once again confined to her cell for 23 hours a day, according to her testimony. As a result of the incident, Reed was reclassified from medium security to a higher level, and she says she was sexually assaulted when she was moved into that part of the prison.

Experiences like Reed’s are common in Colorado, with Bolts reporting in 2023 that incarcerated people there are routinely subjected to solitary confinement and other punishments for refusing to work. But that could soon be a thing of the past. In a groundbreaking ruling last month in a lawsuit filed against the state by Harold Mortis and Richard Lilgerose, men who were punished for refusing to work in crowded prison kitchens during the COVID-19 pandemic, a state district court judge found that Colorado is violating incarcerated people’s rights by the way it punishes them for refusing to work. 

The judge ruled that Colorado has failed to abide by a change voters made to their state constitution in 2018 that erased language allowing “slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.”

While the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery at the end of the Civil War, it included a carveout that sanctions it as punishment for people convicted of crimes. Many state constitutions include the same loophole, which has allowed prisons to force incarcerated people to work under threat of discipline, often for little pay; seven states don’t pay anything for most prison jobs. 

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Calls for Reparations and Claims Restaurants Are Tied to Slavery in Bizarre Rant 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is currently embroiled in some sort of feud with the city council over a raise for tipped workers and it’s not going the way he wants so he is lashing out.

This week, while he was remarking on the situation, he suddenly veered into the topic of reparations and then claimed that the restaurant industry has ties to slavery.

How was this man elected mayor of a major city? It really seems like there’s something wrong with him.

FOX News reports:

Chicago mayor links restaurant industry to ‘slavery’ as tipped wage fight intensifies

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson linked the restaurant industry to “slavery” Wednesday as he defended his push to eliminate the tipped wage, doubling down after surviving a City Council effort to block the policy.

Johnson’s remarks came after the Chicago City Council failed to override his veto of a measure that would have halted the city’s phaseout of the subminimum wage for tipped workers — a policy set to raise base pay to the full minimum wage by 2028 that is opposed by restaurant owners who warn it could drive up prices and cut jobs.

He called on Chicagoans to “challenge city council not to do stuff like take wages away from Black and Brown people,” saying that most workers in the service industry who rely on tips are minorities.

“You just watched the entire city council, in transparency, try to take wages away from the very people who are part of an industry that has its ties to slavery is hiding from that,” Johnson said. “I am boldly declaring that we need reparations in this city, and that’s why I’m funding it.”

What is he even talking about?

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Louisiana advances bill to funnel homeless people into forced treatment and unpaid labor

Yesterday, the Louisiana House of Representatives took the dangerous step of voting in favor of a truly disgusting anti-homeless bill. This bill is an extreme take on the already extreme copy-paste legislation peddled by the Palantir-funded, billionaire-backed Cicero Institute. In addition to making it a crime to sleep outside, this bill forces homeless people charged with a crime to make the false choice between jail or at least one year of forced treatment. 

But it gets worse.  

This bill requires homeless people to pay for the very treatment they are forced into. And if the person cannot pay the cost of treatment, this bill requires them to perform unpaid labor for the government or a community organization to pay off their debt. Louisiana has a long history – and present – of chain gangs, prison labor, and entrenched white supremacy. This bill clearly evokes debtor’s prisons, convict leasing, and the ugliest day of Jim Crow.   

We can all agree that the creation of a two-tiered justice system, where people are punished differently for the same crime depending simply on whether or not they are homeless, is just too extreme.  

Louisiana Governor Landry cites Donald Trump’s anti-homeless policies to justify his support of this heinous bill.  But this is not just about Louisiana – it reveals just how far many states might be willing to go to align themselves with Trump’s extreme, anti-homeless agenda. Politicians from Donald Trump on down would rather blame homeless people than use their power to address the sky-high rents that are the leading cause of homelessness.  

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Florida officials warned to avoid reparations-style effort as state gears up to restrict DEI even further

Leon County, Florida, wants to address “historical harms” like many other local municipalities, cities and states, but was warned against it.

The Leon County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday in Tallahassee to revive a measure that would address historical harms by conducting a study of the past and providing some sort of compensation.

However, county leaders must also comply with the new incoming state law, SB 1134, banning Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across public institutions and local governments. The Florida House in March approved legislation to ban local governments from funding, promoting, or taking official actions related to DEI initiatives.

Commissioners changed the language of the county’s initiative to avoid any state or federal law violations by slashing all references to slavery, DEI and reparations.

According to the Tallahassee Democrat, Leon County government staff asked commissioners to avoid the measure as they risk losing $16.8 million in grant money and potentially being removed from the board.

“SB 1134, in part, prohibits the County from funding, promoting, or taking any official action related to DEI and creates a cause of action that may be brought by a resident against a county that violates the bill,” staff reportedly wrote in the agenda.

“The bill also provides that a member of a county commission acting in his or her official capacity who violates the prohibitions commits misfeasance or malfeasance in office and is subject to removal.”

Beyond Florida, reparations have been a growing trend by lawmakers at the local to state level. Similar to Leon County, local municipalities and states have adopted or are considering adopting task forces to study historical harms of slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining policies that led to housing discrimination. 

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Trump Administration Wants to Make It More Difficult to Evade a Military Draft

The Selective Service System, the government agency that keeps a list of draft-eligible American men, will begin automatically registering names later this year, abandoning a decades-old process in which young men self-registered.

“This has been in the works for quite a while,” a U.S. government official told The Intercept, noting that the Selective Service System — which is separate from the Defense Department — had been pressing Congress to revamp the registration process. The official referenced “sliding numbers” of men registering on their own and the potential of war with a near-peer power like China. The official also mentioned a Trump administration “obsession” with creating “comprehensive federal databases.”

Men ages 18 to 25 who are eligible to be drafted have been required to register with the government since 1980. Failure to do so is a felony, which bars unregistered men from most federal jobs, eligibility for student loans, and carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

More than 100 million men have registered in the last 46 years. But according to the Selective Service, just 81 percent of eligible men registered in 2024, a 3 percent point drop from the prior year.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump “keeps his options on the table,” when Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked her about the possibility of a return of the draft. But Trump would be required to get approval from Congress to enact a draft, which was last used during the Vietnam War.

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African Descendant Claims British Threatened Her Ancestor, Then Learns He Was a Slaver Trying to Keep Brits from Ending Slavery in City He Ruled

Normally, we shouldn’t have to care about Ọmọba Antoinette Oyínkánsọ́lá Fernandez, better known as Antoinette Fernandez.

Her major claim to fame was that she was the Green Party candidate in the 2024 United Kingdom General Election for the parliamentary seat in Hackney North and Stoke Newington. She finished second, with 23 percent of the vote to 60 percent for the Labour Party candidate.

However, the Green Party — which has become a radical identitarian party that panders to the worst elements of Britain’s Islamic community — has seen a dramatic rise in its fortunes in the past few years, including winning a by-election in February that augurs poorly for Labour going forward. Fernandez, therefore, has a good chance of becoming a member of the U.K. Parliament in the not-too-distant future.

Second, Fernandez is profoundly ignorant and is willing to use that ignorance as a cudgel to make you think that she’s owed deference because of Britain’s colonial past. She is of Nigerian descent, and as she claims, her great-great-grandfather — a king — was overthrown by the Brits to avoid his people being massacred.

Just one problem, as users on social media pointed out: If her story is true, the British Navy overthrew her great-great-grandfather to stop the slave trade, which he was facilitating.

Talk about an unforced error.

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Baltimore Creates $35 Million Reparations Fund But None of the Money Has Been Paid Out Because Everyone is Fighting For Control Of It

When the state of Maryland legalized the sale of marijuana a few years ago, they decided that they would set aside a few dollars from each sale to go into a reparations fund which would pay for all sorts of social programs.

Now the fund has $35 million in it but almost none of the money has been paid out because pretty much everyone involved is fighting for control of the fund. Who could have predicted that such a thing would happen?

It’s probably safe to assume that lots of people are going to be very disappointed when this is all finally sorted out and decided.

The Baltimore Beat reports:

Baltimore has received more than $35 million in cannabis reparations money, but none of it has reached residents

In the three years since Maryland legalized recreational cannabis, Baltimore has received more than $35 million in tax revenue to reinvest in communities devastated by the War on Drugs. To date, not a single dollar has reached the people it was meant to help, and the first round of funding may still be a year away.

At the center of the delay is an escalating dispute over who controls the money: City Hall or the Baltimore Community Reinvestment and Reparations Commission, the 17-member body established in November 2024 to oversee how the funds are distributed. City Hall says the mayor has final say, while commissioners maintain the body was created to independently manage the funds.

That holdup means that while Maryland’s legalization of cannabis in 2023 led to over $1.1 billion in sales over the following year alone, even as Black communities continue to be targeted by the drug war, none of it has helped repair that damage…

State Senator Mary Washington, who sponsored SB0894, told the Beat that the law was not intended to give local elected officials control over how the money is spent, and argued Baltimore City’s interpretation is out of step with how the law has been understood elsewhere in Maryland.

“The money was never intended to be a slush fund for a county executive or mayor,” she said. Instead, she said, it was meant to reinvest in communities impacted by the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, which continue to face disparities in homeownership, wealth-building, and life expectancy.

This has disaster written all over it.

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Automatic registration for US military draft to begin in December

Eligible men will automatically be registered into the military draft pool by December as part of an effort to streamline the previous process of self-registration and save money.

The Selective Service System (SSS) — the government agency that maintains a database of men to be called up to serve in the case of a national emergency — submitted a proposed rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on March 30, according to the office’s website.

Most men between the ages of 18 and 25 are already required to register with the Selective Service, but automatic registration was mandated in December 2025 as part of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

The change, which was meant to save money, “transfers responsibility for registration from individual men to SSS through integration with federal data sources,” according to the website.

The proposed rule is currently under review by the regulatory affairs office and awaiting finalization.

The U.S. has not had a draft since the Vietnam War, with military service being voluntary since 1973. 

But former President Jimmy Carter in 1980 reinstated the Selective Service in the event of a “national emergency,” where the registry could be used to “provide personnel to the Department of War and alternative service for conscientious objectors, if authorized by the President and Congress.”

Many have questioned whether a U.S. military draft could take place amid the war in Iran, which is currently in a tenuous two-week ceasefire. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in March said that while a draft is “not part of the current plan right now,” President Trump “wisely keeps his options on the table.”

Trump alone cannot bring back the draft through executive action, as Congress would need to pass legislation to amend the Military Selective Service Act to authorize the president to induct personnel into the military.

Still, failure to register in the draft is considered a crime and can prevent people from receiving state-funded financial aid and employment in numerous states, cause ineligibility for many federal employment opportunities and job training under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, and can carry a fine of up to $250,000 and jail time for up to five years.

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Chicago moves toward reparations with bus tours and town halls as $150M deficit looms

Chicago took its first step after establishing a reparations task force two years ago.

Now, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson plans to hold a public engagement forum called Repair Chicago to “gather lived experiences of harm of Black Chicagoans” in an effort to provide reparations for Black residents.

“Your experience is evidence, and we’ve placed it at the center of our work,” Johnson said. “By engaging directly with residents, we are grounding this work in the voices and lived realities of the people it is meant to serve.”

The first event took place Tuesday, and two more events are scheduled through April.

Johnson’s office announced the Repair Chicago effort would involve “bus tours, panel discussions, town halls and hearings,” helping the task force members gather input for the administration’s reparations study. 

“The community engagement process will gather input from Chicagoans across the city to better understand Black Chicagoans’ experiences across generations and how systemic racism has shaped their lives, opportunities and well-being,” Johnson said.

The move comes two years after Johnson named his chief equity officer, Carla Kupe, to lead the reparations task force with $500,000 in funding. 

In 2024, Johnson signed an executive order establishing a reparations task force of 40 members that addresses “historical harms committed against Black Chicagoans and their ancestors through the form of reparations.”

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U.N. Passes Resolution Demanding Countries Linked to Slavery Pay Trillions in Reparations

The United Nations General Assembly has adopted a resolution calling on Britain and other countries involved in the transatlantic slave trade to enter talks on reparations.

Campaigners say potential payouts could run into the trillions of pounds.

The motion, introduced by Ghana on behalf of the African Union, describes the slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity.”

It calls for “good-faith dialogue on reparatory justice, including a full and formal apology, measures of restitution, compensation.”

The non-binding resolution passed 124 votes to 3. The United States, Israel, and Argentina voted against.

The U.K. abstained, alongside 52 other countries, including all European Union member states.

In supporting the resolution, member states s affirmed “the importance of addressing historical wrongs affecting Africans and people of African descent.

It also meant accepting that “claims for reparations represent a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs.”

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