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Slavery

Asheville Approves Reparations For Black Residents

July 16, 2020 Joel Burgess, Asheville Citizen Times. , , ,
Asheville, NC - In an extraordinary move, the City Council has apologized for the city's historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants. The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14. "Hundreds of years of black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today," said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body and the measure's chief proponent. "It is simply not enough to remove statues. Black people in this country are dealing with issues that are systemic in nature," Young said. The unanimously passed resolution does not mandate direct payments. Instead it will make investments in areas where Black residents face disparities.

Toppling Statues As An Act Of Historical Redemption

July 15, 2020 Onur Acaroglu, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
The brutal murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police set off an unprecedented wave of protests. In a highly publicized, graphic execution, Floyd was killed in broad daylight for possession of an alleged counterfeit bill. The ensuing rebellion of global dimensions is undoubtedly fueled by the exposure to uncertainty, stress and anxiety that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated. In the United States and beyond, frustration and anger at unprepared and incompetent governments overlap with the pressures of systemic racism, seen in sheer wealth gaps and repressive state practices. Across the pond, protests have also erupted in Britain. In a context of recession and repression, it is common for widespread rebellions to flare up at instances of injustice.

Remembering The Greatest 4th Of July Speech Of All Time

July 5, 2020 Alan Gilbert, www.democratic-individuality.blogspot.com , , ,
Frederick Douglass' speech is one of the 5 or 10 greatest American public speeches (enslaved and escaped, Douglass was a brilliant writer and speaker). Here is one vivid paragraph: "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour."

Would Slavery Have Ended Sooner If British Had Defeated Colonists’ Bid For Independence?

July 4, 2020 Keith Brooks, www.blackagendareport.com ,
Historians have long grappled with the contradiction of a revolution under the banner of "all men are created equal" being largely led by slave owners. Once free of England, the U.S. grew over the next 89 years to be the largest slave-owning republic in history. But the July 4th 1776 Declaration of Independence (DI) was in itself a revolutionary document. Never before in history had people asserted the right of revolution -- not just to overthrow a specific government that no longer met the needs of the people, but as a general principle for the relationship between the rulers and the ruled: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

Rethinking 4th Of July With Historical Truths

July 3, 2020 Bill Bigelow , www.huffingtonpost.com , , , , , , ,
Ray Raphael offers some context for the Declaration of Independence: In 1997, Pauline Maier published American Scripture, where she uncovered 90 state and local "declarations of independence" that preceded the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The consequence of this historical tidbit is profound: Jefferson was not a lonely genius conjuring his notions from the ether; he was part of a nationwide political upheaval. Similarly, Raphael reports: [I]n 1774 common farmers and artisans from throughout Massachusetts rose up by the thousands and overthrew all British authority. In the small town of Worcester (only 300 voters), 4,622 militiamen from 37 surrounding communities lined both sides of Main Street and forced British-appointed officials to walk the gauntlet, hats in hand, reciting their recantations 30 times each so everyone could hear. There were no famous "leaders" for this event. The people elected representatives who served for one day only, the ultimate in term limits. "The body of the people" made decisions and the people decided that the old regime must fall.

Why Just Statues? Why Not Topple the US Constitution As Well?

June 28, 2020 Dan Lazare, Strategic Culture. , , ,
There’s no point toppling slaveholders without toppling what slaveholders wrought, up to and including their greatest achievement of all – the U.S. Constitution. This is the document that not only governs life in the United States down to the tiniest legal detail but, thanks to America’s global hegemony, undergirds the international system as well. Yet the Constitution is a plan of government created by slaveholders for slaveholders in order to maintain their wealth and perpetuate their grip on power. Of the 55 delegates to the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention in 1787, twenty-five were slaveowners, which was more than enough to give them an effective veto over the proceedings as a whole. Slaveholders were economically predominant in six of the thirteen states – Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia – which was more than sufficient to stop the constitutional process in its tracks since Article VII stipulated that nine had to approve the new constitution before it could become law.

US Racism’s $13 Trillion Legacy Is Just The Start

June 20, 2020 Anna Szymanski, Reuters. , , ,
New York - Around the time the United States formally abolished slavery in 1865, African Americans owned 0.5% of the United States’ wealth. Today they own under 3%, even though around 13% of the population is defined by the U.S. census as “black or African American.” This isn’t an accident of history – it’s a result of government policies and institutional bias. The interest keeps compounding. The value of income lost during slavery is staggering. The U.S. practice lasted for nearly 250 years – almost equivalent to the time from the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 until today. University of Connecticut Professor Thomas Craemer estimates the present value of unpaid wages for just the 89 years after independence to be nearly $20 trillion using a 3% interest rate.

The Black New Yorker Who Led The Charge Against Police Violence In The 1830s

June 19, 2020 By Jonathan Daniel Wells, TIME. , , ,
At the apex of the kidnapping club were two members of the New York police force, Tobias Boudinot and Daniel D. Nash. Both had grown up in or near Manhattan and they shared a deep disdain for Black people. Like all members of the police force, Boudinot and Nash were poorly paid, inadequately trained, and largely uneducated. Boudinot in particular was constantly in debt, sued by creditors and desperate for the extra money he could make by capturing runaway enslaved people who had managed, against tremendous odds, to escape southern bondage and forge new lives in New York. The nation’s founding document, the Constitution, required free states to return runaways to southern masters, and Boudinot and Nash were all too willing to comply. The police with the explicit approval of Wall Street financiers and merchants dependent on slave-grown cotton, terrorized the 15,000 or so Black residents who called New York City home in the decades before the Civil War. Seizing Black men, women and children off the streets and arresting them as fugitive slaves who needed to be returned to southern masters.

Black Lives Extinguished, Black Ancestors’ Bodies Desecrated

June 7, 2020 Marsha Coleman Adebayo, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
This week, the progressive community is deeply traumatized over the slaughter of innocent Black people and the determination of ruling elites in politics, media and civil societies to patch up a deprived, debased and white supremacist system. One prime example is Minneapolis officials charging Officer Derek Chauvin with 3rd degree murder and manslaughter.  Is this charge a revisiting of the idea that Africans are 3/5th human?  White supremacy fault lines have intentionally deepened and the murder and incarceration of young, primarily black men, is the norm -- in fact, it is expected. Black leadership, usually channeled through corporate sponsorship called the Democratic Party, has completely failed. 

Capitalism Is Responsible For The Deaths Of Millions Of People

March 8, 2020 Solomon Comissiong, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The United States' corporate media is a well-oiled machine, engineered to effectively distribute misinformation to masses of politically domesticated Americans. Like apex predators, they feast upon the minds of those who are gullible enough to believe anything their pundits spew from their duplicitous mouths. Many of the corporate media talking heads are highly skilled in the art of deception. They regularly champion convenient narratives given to them from various departments within the United States' government. This is routine regardless of the cable network. If the greatest trick the devil ever played was to convince humankind that he didn't exist, then the corporate media's greatest trick may have been convincing Americans that there was a huge difference between the likes of Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, ABC News, and the like.

A Community Fights The County To Show Black Ancestor’s Lives Matter

January 22, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Clearing the FOG co-hosts Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese interviewed Dr. Marsha Coleman Adebayo of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition about the struggle in her community to reclaim an African cemetery currently buried under a parking lot. Since discovering the cemetery, residents of Bethesda have uncovered the brutal treatment of Africans who lived there starting with being worked to death on a tobacco plantation that later turned to forced sexual exploitation and breeding for profit. Once they were freed, African residents set up a thriving community that was then taken over through gentrification. It is an amazing story of fortitude for those who lived through it and for the community that is now fighting the county to honor the memory of what happened.

How An African Cemetery Under A Parking Lot Galvanized A Community To Fight White Supremacy

January 20, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
The United States still has a long way to go to come to terms with its history of being founded on genocide and slavery. In recent years, we have heard about efforts to take down monuments to those who perpetrated these crimes. What we rarely hear are the stories of how that genocide and slavery have been covered up and how even today there are barriers to those who seek to expose them. One such effort is taking place right now in one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. Dr. Marsha Coleman Adebayo tells us the riveting story of her discovery of an African Cemetery under a parking lot. She has led a community effort to stop a building from being erected on the site, which has unearthed a horrific past experienced by former residents of that land and has become a struggle against gentrification and white supremacy.

America’s Last Slave Ship Could Offer A Case For Reparations

October 10, 2019 Jay Reeves, Apnews.com , , ,
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — Alabama steamship owner Timothy Meaher financed the last slave vessel that brought African captives to the United States, and he came out of the Civil War a wealthy man. His descendants, with land worth millions, are still part of Mobile society’s upper crust. The people whom Meaher enslaved, however, emerged from the war with freedom but little else. Census forms that documented Meaher’s postwar riches list them as laborers, housewives and farmers with nothing of value. Many of their descendants today hold working-class jobs.

400 Years After Slavery’s Start, No More Band-Aids

September 10, 2019 By Jessicah Pierre, Inequality.org , , ,
Four hundred years ago this month, the first enslaved people from Africa arrived in Virginia. Slavery is often reduced to a crime of America’s long-ago past. But enslaved labor created the backbone for America’s capitalistic economy, allowing it to grow into — and remain — the world’s leading economy today. The effects of this reliance on unpaid African slave labor is still felt in America’s current racial wealth divide. Today the racial wealth divide is greater than it was nearly four decades ago, and trends point to its continued widening.

400 Years After Slavery’s Start, No More Band-Aids

August 24, 2019 By Jessicah Pierre, Otherwords.org , ,
Four hundred years ago this month, the first enslaved people from Africa arrived in Virginia. Slavery is often reduced to a crime of America’s long-ago past. But enslaved labor created the backbone for America’s capitalistic economy, allowing it to grow into — and remain — the world’s leading economy today. The effects of this reliance on unpaid African slave labor is still felt in America’s current racial wealth divide. Today the racial wealth divide is greater than it was nearly four decades ago, and trends point to its continued widening.
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