Tag: slavery

Fashion Brand That Vehemently Supported Black Lives Matter Faces Slave Labor Scandal

Fashion brand Boohoo, which vehemently expressed its support for Black Lives Matter in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, is now embroiled in a slave labor scandal.

US Customs and Border Protection has seen enough enough to launch an investigation into the company after campaign group Liberty Shared exposed how the company “is not doing enough to stop forced labour in the Leicester factories which make many of its clothes,” reports Sky News.

“The evidence of Boohoo and forced labour is quite compelling. I think it will be a wake-up call for British institutions about how they’re handling modern slavery enforced labour, particularly in a community like Leicester East,” said Duncan Jepson.

A report last year by lawyer Alison Levitt QC found that the allegations against the company, which centered around illegally low wages and poor working conditions, were “substantially true.” Employees were also made to work through lockdown, potentially exposing them to COVID-19.

Any potential US ban would cost the company more than a fifth of the company’s total revenue.

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Reparations Don’t Buy Justice, Dignity or Freedom

The problem with the idea of reparations is it redirects attention away from exactly where attention is needed: on individuals’ personal responsibility for their own unique lives.CARTOONS | MICHAEL RAMIREZVIEW CARTOON

And it redirects attention in such a way to encourage individuals to believe that some abstract, collective entity from the past is the cause of all their individual problems in the present.

Compensation for damages is a basic legal principle.

It’s about personal responsibility. Individual A sues individual B for damages caused. Exactly what the damages were and exactly how B injured A must be shown in a court of law.

Today, only a small fraction of our population has ancestors who were around before 1865 when slavery was legal. The idea of collective guilt, with no specific individual identified as causing the damage and no specific individual showing how he or she was damaged, doesn’t fly.

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