Tag: slavery

Four States Voted to End Slavery — But Not Louisiana. Here’s Why.

Voters in Vermont, Tennessee, Oregon and Alabama amended their state constitutions to abolish slavery and indentured servitude this week — but a similar initiative failed in Louisiana, garnering embarrassing headlines for a former slave state that remains infamous for modern mass incarceration and forced prison labor.

Louisiana voters rejected an amendment to the state constitution aimed at outlawing slavery and involuntary servitude on Tuesday, underscoring the challenges faced by a growing movement to abolish slave wages and coerced labor inside prisons nationwide. Activists campaigning to end prison slavery say the vote was mired in confusion and misinformation after Rep. Edmond Jordan, a Black Democrat and sponsor of the amendment in the state legislature, advised voters to reject its compromise language and send it back to the drawing board.

However, Amendment 7’s passage would have been at least a symbolic victory for formerly and currently incarcerated organizers in a state known for the Louisiana State Penitentiary, home to the notorious Angola prison farm located on a former antebellum plantation. Activists cite Angola as a well-known example of “modern-day slavery,” although coerced and extremely low-paid prison labor is pervasive far beyond rural Louisiana.

“We knew the amendment didn’t go far enough, but we need to start somewhere,” said Morgan Shannon, director of partnerships at the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, in an interview. The social justice group is one of several that campaigned in support of the amendment.

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Walmart, GM Lobby U.S. to Hide Import Data that Could Reveal Slave, Child Labor

The Associated Press (AP) reported Tuesday that a coalition of major U.S. companies, including Walmart and General Motors, is quietly lobbying the government to make certain import data confidential — a change that would make it much more difficult for journalists and human rights activists to link imported goods to abusive labor practices abroad, including forced labor in China’s Xinjiang province and child labor in Africa.

Human rights lawyer Martina Vandenberg called the closed-door proposals “outrageous” and said American corporations should be “ashamed that their answer to this abuse is to end transparency.”

“Curtailing access to this information will make it harder for the public to monitor a shipping industry that already functions largely in the shadows,” agreed University of British Columbia professor Peter Klein, a prominent analyst of global supply chains.

In essence, the corporate executives who make up the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee proposed “modernizing” import/export procedures in a variety of ways, one of which would make “data collected from vessel manifests confidential.”

This would frustrate the current practice of journalists using shipping manifests to determine where goods manufactured or harvested with abusive labor practices were sent, a key tactic in pressuring U.S. companies to stop allowing forced labor into their supply chains.

As the AP pointed out, this seems directly contrary to CBP’s commitment to “boost visibility into global supply chains, support ethical sourcing practices and level the playing field for domestic U.S. manufacturers.” Corporate public relations departments have also been assuring American consumers they wish to cleanse their supply chains of forced labor and child labor.

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Anti-Historical ‘The Woman King’ Lies About Africa’s Slave Trade

“The Woman King,” a new “historical action epic” starring Viola Davis, has been treated to laudatory reviews by the corporate press. It has been called “indelible and truly inspiring” in an ABC News review which features the subhead “Black women only — no white saviors need apply.” The Daily Beast labeled it “an absolute blast of a cinematic experience,” praising its “thick layers of history.”

Set in 1823 in the West African kingdom of Dahomey (modern Benin), the movie pits the innocent Dahomans, protected by the elite all-female Agojie army, against the evil Oyo Empire, which operates as a brutal arm of the European slave trade and wishes to force Dahomey into providing slaves. Dahomey is portrayed as a kingdom that only wishes for peace and autonomy, whose king, Ghezo (John Boyega), is looking for alternatives to the awful trade in which his tribe has been reluctantly forced to participate. Besides manfully defending the citizens and king of Dahomey, the Agojie, under their leader Nanisca (Davis), are also proponents of ending the slave trade and replacing it with the cultivation of palm oil.

Throughout the film, Dahomey is presented as a small, put-upon kingdom that only seeks harmony and desires the destruction of the evil trade in human bodies — led by greedy Europeans — which plagued the region. In the words of the Los Angeles Times, “The Woman King” is an “incredible true story” about “this amazing group of female soldiers who caused such an act of resistance that slavery paused for a time.”

The problem? Almost none of this is true.

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‘Crime Against Humanity’: UN Finally Confirms China’s Forced Labor Camps For Uyghurs

A U.N. investigation led by the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Tomoya Obokata, found it “reasonable to conclude” that China is subjecting the Uyghur ethnic minority group in Xinjiang province to forced labor.

China presents the state-mandated labor programs, where subjects are involuntarily transferred to “low–skilled and low–paid employment,” initiatives to alleviate poverty and provide vocational training to Uyghur, Kazakh and other minority groups residing in the semi-autonomous Xinjiang province, but an independent analysis of available information points to forced labor, the report, dated July 19, states.

Allegations of forced labor rose in 2018 when the U.N. and others said China’s “re-education camps” in Xinjiang violated human rights of the Muslim minority group, The New York Times reported, but the U.N. has not yet likened practice to slavery

“The Special Rapporteur considers that indicators of forced labour pointing to the involuntary nature of work rendered by affected communities have been present in many cases,” the report stated.

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Push To Ban ‘Assault Rifles’ Like Fight To End Slavery, CRT Backer Ibram X. Kendi Tells CBS News

The ongoing effort to ban so-called assault weapons is similar to America’s bloody fight to end slavery, a CBS contributor and chief proponent of Critical Race Theory (CRT) said Sunday.

In a segment commemorating Juneteenth, Ibram X. Kendi told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan he teaches his young daughter that the struggle for emancipation continues today. Kendi, the network’s “Racial Justice Contributor,” said “freedom” today means liberation from poverty and guns.

“I’m actually going to teach her that … throughout this nation’s history, there’s [sic] been two perspectives on freedom, really two fights for freedom,” Kendi said. “Enslaved people were fighting for freedom from slavery, and enslavers were fighting for the freedom to enslave.”

“And in many ways that sort of contrast still exists today,” he continued. “There are people who are fighting for freedom from assault rifles, freedom from poverty, freedom from exploitation. And there are others who are fighting for freedom to exploit, freedom to have guns, freedom to maintain inequality.”

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MSNBC Guest Declares Original Purpose Of Second Amendment “Was To Preserve White Supremacy And Slavery”

Just as sure as the sun comes up in the morning, MSNBC will broadcast another feature about everything being white supremacy.

That’s exactly what happened Thursday as unhinged race baiter Elie Mystal was brought on to discuss the Second Amendment. And guess what… yep, that’s right, it’s white supremacy.

The host Mehdi Hasan turned two Mystal and said “In your book Elie, you argue that an individual right to self-defense with a gun was not provided by the Second Amendment but by the conservative Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment in its Heller decision.”

Hasan then read a quote from the book that claimed “There was an original purpose to the Second Amendment, but it wasn’t to keep people safe. It was to preserve white supremacy and slavery.” 

Mystal then proclaimed “this is what those white guys said when they were debating the Second Amendment. They said that they needed a Second Amendment because they needed the armed disciplined, that was their word, militia to put down slave revolts.”

He continued, “They were worried that under the original constitution the federal government had all of the power to raise the militia right?”

“The southerners needed the militias to put down slave revolts because you know Mehdi it’s a little bit difficult to hold people in bondage against their will,” Mystal added.

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