Part 2: American slavery and the 13th Amendment

It is a common belief that slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment, but a closer look at Section One of this amendment will disprove that idea.

I am not a member of the Black, Indigenous and People of Color community, and would like to acknowledge my privilege as a white person. I have never been impacted in the same way many within the BIPOC community have been by incarceration or forced servitude. But, I want to respectfully shed light on the effects of modern-day slavery on this community.

Slavery has always been constitutionally protected. The Three-Fifths Compromise is an important example of this. The U.S. Constitution allowed for the South to have more members in the federal House of Representatives by counting three-fifths of slaves toward the overall population of the state. The compromise also codified slavery as an American institution, which empowered slave owners.

The first major advancement toward the abolition of slavery was in 1807, when the slave trade was banned. Ending legal trade, however, did not truly impact the institution, as many American slaves remained in bondage and households still relied on their labor.

Traditional slavery continued legally until the 1865 passage of the 13th Amendment, which states that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted is allowed in the United States. So, involuntary servitude aka slavery is still legal for those who are serving time for a crime.

As a result of this amendment, our country still manages to profit off of slavery.

Unpaid labor is rampant throughout U.S. correctional facilities. The Louisiana State Penitentiary, also dubbed Angola, is a perfect example. Once a plantation, Angola is now a prison that forces inmates to work on a large farm, with threats as severe as solitary confinement looming over those who refuse labor.

Even a liberal stronghold like the state of California benefits from the institution of prison labor. Prisoners were paid just $1.45 a day to do life-threatening work fighting the states wildfires their labor was valued over their lives.

The 13th Amendment simply allowed a transfer of slave ownership from the individual to the state. With the highest number of prisoners around the globe, the United States is in turn the largest state-enforced system of modern slavery in the world.

You might be asking why this matters. Why should I care about the plight of the imprisoned?

First, you have to understand that more than 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the U.S. again, the highest number worldwide.

Many of the products you consume were produced by prison labor, and you probably dont even know it. Walmart used prisoners to build a store until 2005, when the company decided it would not support prison labor and even to scrape codes off of products so that they could be resold.

Victorias Secret used prison labor to manufacture its garments and lowered production costs by not adequately paying inmates. TJX continues to exploit prisoners for production and has faced legal ramifications from shareholders, but has since agreed to disclose information regarding its use of prison labor.

What should be done about this issue? Truthfully, I do not know what would reform a system we are so dependent on.

A simple solution is to pay prisoners a fair wage and work on removing the 13th Amendments provision allowing for state-based slavery. But those are just words. We must determine how to deconstruct a powerful American institution so we can enact fundamental change in the criminal justice system.

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Politics Philosophized: The end of slavery Part 2 The Daily Free Press - Daily Free Press

The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis ignited the most widespread series of protests in U.S. history. Working peoplenot only Black, but people of all raceswere the driving force. Even labor leaders who are usually reluctant to weigh in on hot social issues spoke out.

The challenge now is to bring the militancy and energy of this years revived Black struggle into the workplaceamid the coronavirus-driven economic crisis.

A deep look at U.S. labor history shows that labor can make big steps forward when Black workers are in motion in their communities. In our past, a mobilized Black community has brought the energy and self-confidence of powerful collective action in the streets into workplace organizing. Its also brought a grassroots orientation that challenges top-down conservatism.

Will the same be true for unions today?

The potential could be glimpsed in the early weeks of the pandemic, when union and non-union workers alike took action over unsafe working conditions, in worksites ranging from hospitals to Amazon warehouses to grocery stores. Because so many essential workers are Black and Latino, they were often at the center of the action, from Detroit bus drivers to Pittsburgh sanitation workers to Georgia poultry workers.

What makes the Black Lives Matter protests so important isnt just their size. Its the fact that demonstrators are linking the struggle against racist police violence to the whole racist system. The basketball players walkout in August highlighted the connection between racism in society and at the workplace.

Black workers have never drawn a line between civil rights in the community and worker rights on the job. That has everything to do with the central role Black labor has always played in the U.S. economy, from the unpaid labor of slavery to the low wages paid to Black workers by modern industrialists to boost profits.

Labor history shows that Black workers dont protest in the streets while keeping quiet at work.

Black workers were key to labors 1930s upsurge in many industries, particularly in the South, even if many Southern struggles were ultimately unsuccessful. In the Midwest, the steel, auto, and meatpacking industries could not have been unionized had not rank-and-file organizers, including socialists of all currents, taken on the racism of the companiesand often of their white co-workers.

Many workplaces and unions at the time were Jim Crowbarred to Black workers. In New York City, a Black community boycott of two privately owned bus lines in 1941 forced the companies to hire Black workers.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Black workers were the driving force of the Southern civil rights movement. A key strategist of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56the breakthrough struggle of the civil rights movementwas E.D. Nixon, the Alabama president of an all-Black railroad union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Nixon was among those who worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then a dynamic but largely unknown 27-year-old preacher. The Brotherhood was a key connection between Black union members in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland and mostly non-union Southern workers.

The Southern civil rights movement prodded the highly conservative AFL-CIO bureaucracy into supporting it, even as nearly all-white building trades unions kept fighting to maintain a color bar into the 1960s. More generally, the level of mobilization in the Black community and the confidence that came with winning the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reinforced the desire to fight at work as well.

The Southern Black struggle then came North in the form of the Black Power movement. By then Black workers represented big numbers in major industrial unions, such as auto and steel. Black workers were an essential part ofand often a leading force inthe strike wave that began in the mid-1960s.

That period saw a massive expansion of public sector unionism, with Black workers a key component. The welfare rights movement in New York City, with Black women at the center, is one example. That movement was linked to social workers unionization efforts in the Social Services Employees Union, an independent organization that struck in defiance of the law and got the support of King and other civil rights leaders as well as community groups. SSEU helped open the way for AFSCMEs recognition and formal public sector bargaining rights in New York.

The assassination of Dr. King led to street rebellions across the U.S. in 1968. Three months later, in auto, Black workers Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) led a 1968 wildcat over speedup and discrimination, which spurred similar organizations and strikes elsewhere in auto and in other industries. The workers also took on internal struggles in the United Auto Workers. The UAW had been willing to support the Southern civil rights movement and the 1963 March on Washington, but it sought to suppress Black members demands internally.

The 1970 national postal wildcat was strongest in the big cities of the Northeast and Midwest, strongholds for Black workers. Black workers were the absolute majority of postal workers in Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Detroit. That job action was likely the largest-ever Black participation in a strike.

Labor struggles of the late 1960s and 1970s were widespread and certainly not limited to Black workers. But the militancy of Black workers was an essential ingredient. Could that same dynamic emerge today?

Potentially. But this time Black workersand their Latino, Asian, and white co-workerswill have to undertake the basic task of union organization on a much greater scale. In 1970, more than 24 percent of workers belonged to unions. The Black Power movement could therefore find a connection in heavily Black unionized workplaces in auto and the post office. Today the path from protest to the workplace is more difficult.

But the same dynamic still exists. The Fight for 15 movement, even though it did not result in union contracts, won a $15 minimum wage through legislation in some states and cities in large part because of the participation of low-wage Black workers. And Black workers are more likely to be in unions than any other group.

Certainly, Black workers have lost important footholds in the unions over the last few decades, with plant closures and shifts of production to the largely non-union South. And now the pandemic economic shutdown has hammered the hospitality and service economy, leading to layoffs in union hotels that hit Black and Latino workers particularly hard.

But Black workers are still a strong component of labors remaining base in the private sector, such as auto and UPS, and in the public sector, where they are 20 percent of the total. That means Black workers have an outsized role to play in any resistance to pandemic-driven government budget cuts.

The Chicago Teachers Unions strikes of 2012 and 2019 showed how a bold union can win public support for demands that address racist realities. The CTU fought for The Schools Our Children Deserve, for Black teachers facing job loss, for rent control and sustainable housing and services for homeless students, and against evictions. The potential for such connections is much wider after the anti-racism protests of 2020.

Its a huge fight. But it always has been. The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 give labor activists the opportunity to revive that tradition.

Tim Schermerhorn is a retired transit worker in New York City and a former vice president of Transport Workers Union Local 100. Lee Sustar is a journalist in Chicago and member of the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981.

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The Movement for Black Lives and Labor's Revival - Labor Notes

On October 16, New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein issued a new defense of the 1619 Project in which he now argues that its best-known claimthat the year 1619 and not 1776 represents the true founding of the United Stateswas a metaphorical turn of phrase not intended to be read literally. Further confusion is attributed to an editorial error arising from the difficulties of managing a multi-platform media operation. Published under the title, On Recent Criticism of The 1619 Project, Silversteins essay is a convoluted lawyers argument that attempts to palm off historical falsification as merely minor matters of syntax, punctuation, and a somewhat careless use of metaphor.

When the 1619 Project was published in August 2019, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first African slaves in colonial Virginia, no historical claims were too grandiose for Silverstein and lead writer and project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones. The 1619 Project, the Times proclaimed, would reframe all of American history to show that the past and the present can only be understood through the prism of slavery and the endemic racial hatred of whites for blacks.

In supporting this larger claim, the 1619 Project asserted that the events of 1776 were, in essence, a preemptive counterrevolution aimed at thwarting a British plan to end slavery in North America. Then, in the aftermath of the separation from Britain, black Americans fought back alone, the Times asserted, to make America a democracywithout the assistance of abolitionists, the Union army, Abraham Lincoln, or any other white person, all of whom benefited from slavery and white capitalism.

Furthermore, according to Hannah-Jones and the Times, true history had been suppressed by dishonest white historians hellbent on maintaining their racist founding myth of 1776. After two centuries of a historical narrative centered on the false elevation of 1776, the 1619 Project declared that it was finally time to tell our story truthfully.

In spite of Silversteins deletion of the true founding claim and his other word changes, the Times essential position remains the same: The American Revolution was a retrograde event, in which the defense of slavery was the critical motivation. Yet, to this day neither Silverstein nor any other defender of the 1619 Project has bothered to confront the obvious historical questions that this position raises in relationship to both American and world history:

If the American Revolution was a reactionary event, why was it hailed by contemporaries beyond the shores of the United States as the dawn of a new democratic age? Did the American Revolution play no role in the chain of events that produced the French and Haitian revolutions, as well as the industrial revolution, the working class, and socialism? Why was Tom Paine made an honorary citizen of the new French Republic? If the proclamation of human equality in the Declaration of Independence is only a founding myth, and not a discovery whose revolutionary meaning tears through all subsequent history, how do we explain the fact that every progressive social movement has inscribed this maxim on its banner? How was it that the United States developed, within a generation, a mass anti-slavery movement, and within four score and seven years a great Civil War that destroyed slavery? Were all those who identified the American Revolution with the cause of freedom, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King included, merely dupes of the American founding fathers?

The most obvious error made by the 1619 Projectthat the American Revolution was waged to stop British abolition of slaverybecame indefensible after the Times own fact checker, Leslie Harris of Northwestern University, felt compelled to admit that she had vigorously opposed it. Silverstein tried to manage this exposure of the Times dishonest suppression of the fact-checkers objection with a clever cut and paste modification of Hannah-Jones false claim. The original categorical denunciation of pre-1619 Project historiography had read:

Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. [Emphasis added]

Silverstein added two words so that the amended version now reads:

Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons some of the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery. By 1776, Britain had grown deeply conflicted over its role in the barbaric institution that had reshaped the Western Hemisphere. [Emphasis added]

In the original version, the defense of slavery is presented as one of the primary reasons the colonists decided for separation from Britain. In the 1619 Project version 2.0, the concern over the fate of slavery motivates only some ofHow many? Who? Where?the colonists. Presto! Problem solved. Or so Silverstein thought. But the modified statement is still false. Far from being conflicted over slavery, until 1833 the British Empire maintained its own lucrative slave plantations in the Caribbean, where Loyalist slaveowners fled, human property in tow of His Majestys Navy.

As for the Projects quietly-deleted true founding thesiswhich was emblazoned on the Times website and repeated again and again by Hannah-Jones on social media, in interviews, and her national lecture tourSilverstein now claims that this was the product of nothing more than a minor technical error, the sort of snafu that is an inevitable outcome of difficulties for modern-day editors, such as himself, in managing a multiplatform publication and figuring out how to present the same journalism in all those different media. With all of these formats to tend to, the beleaguered editors of the Times just couldnt get the story straight! Silverstein does not seem to grasp that the criteria of objective truth do not change as one moves from printed newspaper to website, or from Facebook to Twitter. What is a lie in one format remains a lie in another.

In addition to chalking up the mistaken true founding claim to his far-flung editorial responsibilities, Silverstein attempts to defend Hannah-Jones by implying that readers failed to appreciate the sense that this was a metaphor. He should have been more attentive, he says, to online language [that] risked being read literally. This is among the most inspired of Silversteins excuses. From here on in, whenever Times correspondents like Judith Miller are caught lying, its editors may claim that the journalists are writing in metaphors that are not to be read literally.

Silverstein cites the original, metaphorical, version of the 1619 Project. This is the version that was sent out to school children. It read, with emphasis added:

1619 is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our countrys history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nations birth. What if, however, we were to tell you that this fact, which is taught in our schools and unanimously celebrated every Fourth of July, is wrong, and that the countrys true birth date, the moment that our defining contradictions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619?

He then quotes the revised passage, that has been made to the online publication only:

1619 is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our countrys history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nations birth. What if, however, we were to tell you that the moment that the countrys defining contradictions first came into the world was in late August of 1619?

Perhaps Silverstein hopes his readers will carelessly jump over this scissors-and-glue work. He writes that the difference in the two passages is to the wording and the length, not the facts. But actually, there to be read literally in black and white, the first passage refers specifically to an allegedly false fact. If a metaphor is being employed in the original version, it is very well concealed.

Silverstein repeats Hannah-Jones conceit that historians have ignored the African American experience. Such a claim exposes both Silversteins and Hannah-Jones ignorance of historical literature. The 1619 Project is as much a falsification of historiography as it is of history.

In Depth

The New York Times 1619 Project

The Times Project is a politically-motivated falsification of history. It presents the origins of the United States entirely through the prism of racial conflict.

Since the 1930s, an enormous body of scholarship has developed on the periods of American history that the 1619 Project breezes through as so many turnstiles in the unfolding history of white racism: the colonial era and the emergence of slavery; the American Revolution and the entrenchment of slavery in the antebellum South with the development of cotton production; the development of the free labor North, antislavery politics and the destruction of slavery in the Civil War; the struggle for and ultimate failure of Reconstruction; and the replacement of slavery by sharecropping, Jim Crow segregation, industry and wage labor. These vast subjects have attracted the attention of significant historians, and fascinating and intense debate among them and their studentsW.E.B. Du Bois, Eric Williams, Kenneth Stampp, Stanley Elkins, C. Vann Woodward, Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, Eugene Genovese, Don Fehrenbacher, David Potter, James McPherson, Herbert Gutman, David Montgomery, Eric Foner, David Brion Davis, Ira Berlin, Barbara Fields, and James Oakes, to name only a few.

This scholarship has been ignored by the 1619 Project. There is no evidence that Hannah-Jones passing acquaintance with American history extends beyond her reading of two books by the black nationalist Lerone Bennett, Jr., the longtime editor of Ebony magazine.

In an attempt to buttress the claim that the 1619 Project is finally bringing to light suppressed history, Silverstein cites a recent study of US history textbooks by the Southern Poverty Law Center that found popular history textbooks do not provide comprehensive coverage of slavery and enslaved peoples. As if it aids his cause, he points to one of the studys key findings, that only 8 percent of high school seniors were aware that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War.

No doubt it is true that American students know little about slavery and its centrality to the Civil War. But this speaks to a larger crisis of historical consciousness. The public schools, starved of funding, have shifted limited resources away from social studies and the arts to practical pursuits, a process pushed forward by Barack Obama, who said in office that folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree. The same shifting of resources away from history has taken place at the universities. There were over 19 million Americans enrolled in college in 2017, but only 24,255 graduated with degrees in historya 33 percent decline since 2001while 381,000 degrees were awarded to business majors.

Under these conditions, is it really any wonder that high school seniors know little about the causes of the Civil War or even precisely when it took place? But what share of American high school and college graduates can explain the causes of either World War I or World War II, or even correctly identify the years during which these wars were fought? What percentage of American students could state with even approximate accuracy the years of the American involvement in Vietnam, let alone explain the reasons underlying its intervention?

The lack of knowledge is even greater when it comes to the subject that is virtually absent from public discussion in the United States: the history of the working masses and the class struggle that they have waged against American capitalism. This is a subject that involves the fate of the vast majority of the population, including the countless millions of impoverished immigrants who arrived on the shores of America and then fought to raise the dignity of labor, to use an old phrase. This history finds not the slightest echo in the 1619 Project, which does not acknowledge the existence of class struggle in the United States.

There is plenty of oppression and suffering in the history of what John Brown called this guilty land to go around. The United States has long been the country with the most powerful and ruthless capitalist class on the planet. Before that it was home to the richest and most powerful slave owning class. But the explosive development of industrial capitalism in the aftermath of the Civil War gave rise to the most polyglot working class. Under these conditions the great challenge confronting the socialist movement has always been to unite workers across innumerable racial, national, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and regional barriers to confront their common antagonists.

The 1619 Project has been a case study in historical ignorance and dishonesty. Silversteins latest exercise in self-justification continues the pattern of falsification and evasion. When the 1619 Project was criticized as poor journalism, Silverstein claimed it was history; and when it was criticized as bad history, he claimed it was mere journalism. Now, when it is proven that the 1619 Projects central thesis is false, Silverstein announces that the argument was merely metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally.

In the end, the New York Times argument is a variation of a crooked politicians age-old evasion: We know that you think you know what we said. But what you read is not what we meant.

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It is all just a metaphor: The New York Times attempts yet another desperate defense of its discredited 1619 Project - WSWS

Its clear how the Republicans intend to steal the election. To paraphrase James Carvilles oft-paraphrased line, Its the courts, stupid! The pathetic Judiciary Committee hearings supposedly intended to test Amy Coney Barretts fitness for the Supreme Court were conducted with all the smug Republican aplomb of bureaucrats who knew the fix was in. The real prize for the extremists has always been the courts. Ever since the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education decision ushered in the era of desegregation, and Roe vs. Wade in 1973 effectively legalized abortion, the extremist right has fought to implant the courts with fanatics, reactionary white males, homophobes, racists, and misogynists, and blatantly un-American theocrats who want to impose their own narrow, often lunatic beliefs on the rest of the country.

The Republicans know they cannot regain the House, at least not unless millions of electronic voting machines are hacked (which with Russian help could happen) and paper ballots dumped. And if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris win convincingly, Republicans may well concede the presidency. However, even if the Democrats to win the Senate, key races will be very close.

Lets say five seats are won by the Democrats by 3% or less, i.e., 51.5%-48.5%. Immediately, Republicans claim mail-in ballot fraud. Al Gore and the Democrats did the nation a tremendous disservice in 2000 by not fighting the stealing of the election in Florida; John Kerry followed suit in 2004 by ignoring the highly suspect Ohio returns. Today, if an election in Red-Land is remotely close, we expect the Republicans to steal it. Texas, in fact, is not a red state: it is deep purple but between voter suppression, gerrymandering, and local good ol boy manipulation, Republicans control the legislature and the electoral votes. Florida is a blue state; not by much, but it is. Suppression of black voters has a long history in Florida; Florida police are supposedly taking steps to prevent the Trump campaign to intimidate voters by showing up at the polls armed to the teeth. On the national level, the Republican campaign to suppress the vote is backed by many of the partys major funders. It is a racially driven policy to undermine our basic electoral rights and install the right wing as the permanent party in power. It can only succeed if the courts, and Supreme Court especially, are on board.

Race. Abortion. Gay marriage. Those are the red flag issues. Guns get the loonies all worked up but racism, misogyny, and homophobia mobilizes the Republican rank and file. And that hatred drives the extremist takeover of our judiciary. Strip away the coded language and the cries of save the babies and at bottom, its about hate.

The media has been forced by the Black Lives Matter movement to address racism more openly than at any time since the heyday of the civil rights movement, 1954-1965. After the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed in 1964 and 1965 a century after the Civil War, many Americans felt we had turned the corner on racism. The laws were steered through Congress by a Texan, President Lyndon Johnson, and a leading member of the House of Representatives, Harlems Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., known for his militant stands against racism and segregation. America basked in the liberal afternoon warmth of FDRs legacy, the victory over fascism in World War II, the tragically lost dynamism of the Kennedy years, and LBJs smashing presidential victory over Barry Goldwater in 1964. What could go wrong?

A lot, actually. The Vietnam war had its genesis in a deeply held American racism that equated whiteness with superiority and the right to raise the worlds backwardprimitivesavage brown, black, and yellow people to the level of our enlightened free market, wage-slave, finance-driven civilization. The indiscriminate bombing and napalming of villagers in Korea and Vietnam would likely have been immediately decried were the victims white Europeans (World War II excepted). Racism is not simply a cancer in our society, it is knit into the fabric of our domestic policies and foreign relations.

It doesnt take a malicious majority to destroy a nation or any community. A neighborhood with 5% of its people engaged in some form of violent crime would in effect be a war zone (1250 of 25,000 inhabitants). If a significant percentage of Americans are racist, whether aggressively so or in a more passive-aggressive manner, the impact on our society will be immense.

The lynch mobs of the first half of the 20th century comprised the children and grandchildren of those Confederate soldiers who, by the Civil Wars end, were massacring freed slaves and assassinating black leaders who took Emancipation and Reconstruction seriously. Racism never died, it didnt even go underground. Once Reconstruction ended in 1877, the white South turned to figuring out how to impose slavery within the law. (Not to mention widespread racial discrimination in the rest of the country). They came up with feudal tenant farming; the theft of more than one million farms from southern black owners; minimal appropriations to infrastructure and services in black communities; prison chain gangs for the most minor offenses; and unrestricted violence against black men and women and, yes, children too.

Those who devised the strategy for the rights resurgence kept their eye on the prizethe courts. And now with the Supreme Court tamed, with three awful Trump appointees finally turning it into an extremist rubber-stamp that can overturn elections, weve reached the natural outcome of a nation that never gave up hatred as a driving engine at its core. Most of us may not hold these beliefs, but enough do to create a critical mass of fanaticsthe zombies of TV-landwho can destroy a nations culture the way a violent mob can destroy a community.

Lets say those five hypothetical Senate races mentioned above mean the difference between the Senate being 52-48 Democrat versus 53-47 Republican. They are challenged through various judicial channels, each court like a gate on a computer chip. Whenever an impartial judge blocks the challenge, it is routed on to the next gate until an amenable judge upholds it. Meanwhile, Republican state legislatures go through legal contortions to declare the election already decided for their candidates. Finally, all five challenges reach the Supreme Court. As a tactical ploy, the Court decides early for one Democratic candidate. See how impartial we are! But then in rapid succession, it upholds the four remaining Republican challenges by throwing out hundreds of thousands of votes. 52-48, Republicans. They can live with that.

And what will we do? What if Biden and Harriss election is stolen as well? No semblance of American democracy will remain.

The only thing that can work against a hijacked election is mass citizen action. A General Strike. Millions laying siege to statehouses and D.C. With all our purported freedoms, Americans have allowed unions and strikes to fade into a quaint relic. Along with strike- and union-busting, restrictive laws against unions, and a steady stream of anti-union propaganda denouncing them, nothing worked better than shipping manufacturing jobs overseas. Americans in the service economy view themselves as powerless or, if higher up the ladder, privileged. They are oblivious to the immense benefits unions brought to their grandparents and parents. But we dont have time to revive unions per se. If the election is clearly being stolen, Democrat leaders should declare a General Strike and they should be prepared to lead mass demonstrations.

Bring it all to a screeching halt. Let Wall Street plunge and freak out. Let the billionaires watch their fortunes evaporate. Let the supply chains dry up and inventories disappear. Force the generals to decide whether they will kowtow to illegitimate power or do their jobs and protect democracy. Scare the bastards so bad that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Barrett will be summoned to a meeting of the real honchos and told its time to stop the charade. Then have Biden lead the charge for a thirteen member Supreme Court with 18 year terms; term limits on judges throughout the judiciary; a major recall campaign for the most law-abusing judges; and a restoration of a semblance of law and order to our legal system. Then we may have a fighting chance against racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other malicious biases, because that hatred, along with untrammeled greed, is whats driving the Republican agenda. Without resistance, were finished.

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Save the election, resist the hate - NationofChange

Politics

29 Oct, 2020 12:09 AM5 minutes to read

Act leader David Seymour wants the Human Rights Commission abolished. Photo / Michael Craig

Act leader David Seymour wants the Human Rights Commission abolished because of its "left-wing manifesto".

"The Commission is a hard-left organisation masquerading as a government department," Seymour said.

The Human Rights Commission today called for the new government to honour human rights and laid out 39 issues it wants politicians to adopt.

Included are creating a written constitution that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi, makes the minimum wage the living wage, creates more employment opportunities for disabled people, builds decent and affordable homes and a formulates national action plan against racism.

It also wants a national strategy to deal with family violence, an end pay discrimination, for police to collect hate crime data and to make the health and disability system work for all disabled people.

Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt said successive governments had made these promises over many years and it was time for the new government to deliver them.

"Human rights place responsibilities on governments. They also place responsibilities on individuals to embrace diversity, support vibrant communities and not be racist or homophobic."

Seymour said the manifesto showed the commission was "no longer interested in helping real people with actual human rights issues, but simply advancing a left-wing agenda".

"The commission has become irrelevant, and even dangerous, when it cannot defend our most basic human right.

"The commission has become a highly politicised, left-wing organisation, and when it comes to actually helping people with human rights, it doesn't help at all.

"Act sees no purpose for it and would abolish it completely," said Seymour.

The Human Rights Commission's 39 human rights issues were collected from all four commissioners and are:

Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt

Everyone should have a warm, dry, safe, decent home Look after the environment as kaitiaki (guardian) for our children and grandchildren We not only have rights, we also have responsibilities to our communities Rainbow communities can express who they are and be respected and safe A community-based health system (physical and mental health) for everyone Public officials must respect the human rights promises governments have made toall of us The welfare system should ensure a secure and dignified life for everyone Honour and implement the growing partnership between kwanatanga (Crown) andrangatiratanga (hap and iwi) Establish a Human Rights Commissioner for Older People Getting the balance right between freedom of speech and the right to be safe Treat people who are deprived of their liberty with respect A written Constitution that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi

Disability Rights Commissioner Paula Tesoriero MNZM

Respect for disabled people by upholding our dignity and celebrating ourcontributions Give disabled young people a fair go in our education system Make houses, transport and public places accessible so everyone can use them Services respect and work in partnership with tngata whaikaha (Mori disabledpeople) More and better employment opportunities for disabled people Better services for those experiencing violence and abuse Make the health system work for all disabled people Public information provided in ways, such as te reo Mori, NZ Sign Language, andbraille, so that everyone can understand Collect better information about disabled people so services can be better designedfor them

Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Saunoamaali'i Dr Karanina Sumeo

Ensure government contracts have job targets for Mori, women, disabled people,55+, vulnerable youth, Pacific Peoples and ethnic minorities End pay discrimination Free early childhood education Establish fair employment contracts for all Make the minimum wage a living wage Establish a safe and trusted process to deal with sexual harassment and bullying Eliminate modern slavery and exploitation in the workplace

Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon

A National Action Plan Against Racism Teach Te Tiriti o Waitangi, local histories and human rights in schools Police to collect hate crime data Make government systems work for Mori e.g. health, justice, education, OrangaTamariki, welfare and housing A public anniversary to commemorate the New Zealand Wars Support Mori to take part in the political process Equal rules for creating general wards and Mori wards Establish a national action plan for the implementation of the UN Declaration onthe Rights of Indigenous Peoples Appoint an Indigenous Rights Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission A government Ministry for ethnic communities Develop a national strategy to deal with family violence

The Human Rights Commission's call was welcomed by the Public Service Association, the Child Poverty Action Group, the Citizens Advice Bureau, the Disabled Persons Assembly and Community Housing Aotearoa.

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Act's David Seymour calling for 'hard-left' Human Rights Commission to be abolished - New Zealand Herald

Following the sentencing of his wife Sharmistha Barai, to more than 15 years in prison, Satish Kartan, 46, of Sacramento, was sentenced Oct. 22, 2020, to 15 years and eight months in prison for forced labor violations, the same term as his wife.

In addition, U.S.District Judge Morrison C. England Jr. ordered $15,657 be paid in restitution to three victims, all workers brought from India as domestic labor, in part to cover their back wages and other losses.

On March 14, 2019, after an 11-day trial, a federal jury found Kartan and Barai, 40, guilty of conspiracy to obtain forced labor and two counts of obtaining forced labor. Kartan was also found guilty of one count of fraud in foreign labor contracting. On Oct. 2, Barai was sentenced to 15 years and eight months in prison for forced labor violations.

Kartan earned his sentence by the systematic abuse and exploitation of vulnerable women for the benefit of his wife and family, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California McGregor W. Scott is quoted saying in the press release. He verbally abused multiple victims, withheld basic sustenance from them, and physically intimidated them. Todays sentence will send a loud message to others engaged in human trafficking and labor. Moreover, it will give Kartans victims the peace of mind that he will never be able to abuse them again.

The United States abolished slavery and involuntary servitude more than 150 years ago, said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division. Yet, inhuman forced labor and deprivations of liberty and dignity persist because human traffickers proliferate modern-day slavery, and endeavor to exploit their fellow human beings for profit and other gruesome purposes.

Those engaged in the heinous crime of forced labor will face severe consequences for their actions, said Special Agent in Charge Matthew Perlman of the Diplomatic Security Service, San Francisco Field Office. The Diplomatic Security Service and our partner agencies will continue to aggressively pursue and prosecute those who commit visa fraud to exploit others for their own personal gain.

Authorities appealed to the public to report alleged human trafficking to law enforcement or submit a tip to tips.fbi.gov.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, between February 2014 and October 2016, Kartan and Barai hired workers from overseas to perform domestic labor in their home in Stockton. In advertisements seeking workers on the internet and India-based newspapers, the defendants made false claims about the wages and conditions of employment, the press release said.

Once the workers arrived at the defendants Stockton residence, Kartan and Barai compelled them to work up to 18 hours a day with limited rest and nourishment. Few of them were paid any wage. As part of the conspiracy, the couple kept the domestic workers from leaving and coerced them to continue working by threatening them, by creating an atmosphere of fear, control, and disempowerment, and at times by physically hitting or burning them. When a victim resisted or expressed a desire to leave, the threats and abuse became worse, the court documents quoted in the press release said.

This case was the product of an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the FBI, and the State Departments Diplomatic Security Service.

The Eastern District of California (Sacramento) is one of six districts designated through a competitive, nationwide selection process as a Phase II Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team, through the interagency ACTeam Initiative of the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Labor, the press release said.

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Husband sentenced to more than 15 years for mistreating workers from India - newsindiatimes.com

Whoever wins the November 3 presidential election has an opportunity and a responsibility to help the United States move forward by making human rights a priority in the next administration. This includes ending policies that undermine the rights of people in the United States to live in dignity, speak their opinions, have families as they please, put sufficient food on the table, see a doctor without fear of financial ruin, and feel safe in their own skin. For far too long, many people in the country have faced systemic racism and discrimination, often at the hands of their own federal government.

An urgent human rights agenda awaits the next administration. Regardless of who wins the election, Human Rights Watch urges the next administration to take the following priority steps in US domestic policytoward advancing a future of dignity and respect for the rights of all.

The US should act swiftly to address economic impacts resulting from public health measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The Covid-19 pandemic has both highlighted and exacerbated poverty and inequality in the US, disproportionately impacting low-income and informal workers, racial and ethnic minorities, undocumented people, and people already living in poverty. The next administration should work with Congress, state and local governments to adopt comprehensive and effective policies to address unemployment and structural inequalities, including with regard to access to food, housing, quality education, affordable health care, and extended unemployment benefits through the crisis, as well as combat the impacts of excessive and predatory debt and abusive debt collection.

For more on poverty and inequality priorities.

Harms resulting from US policies at the federal, state, and local levels continue to disproportionately impact Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and low-income communities, posing grave dangers to their social and economic well-being. The next administration needs to confront the US history of systemic racial discrimination and support laws and policies that protect the rights of all people and address racial disparities in health, education, housing, employment, and the criminal legal system. The next administration should take all necessary measures to address the serious threat posed by white supremacist extremist groups. It should seek to remove obstacles to accountability for incidents of racial violence, and support reparations to communities most impacted by slavery and ongoing systemic racism.

For more on racial justice priorities.

The US needs to vastly reduce the number of people behind bars many of whom are detained or imprisoned because of racist laws and policies that for decades havedisproportionately affected Black and brown communities. Following the elections, the administration should get behind meaningful criminal legal system reforms that go well beyond those proposed thus far. These need to include reforms that reduce the role of police to address societal problems; investments in communities to advance public safety and equal rights; and independent accountability and oversight mechanisms that advance justice.

For more on criminal legal system priorities.

The next administration should promote laws, policies, and practices seeking gender equality. Historically, many women and girls have been left out of US successes on rights, especially women of color, women with disabilities, Indigenous women, and female immigrants. Systemic racism, economic and immigration status, age, and ones address can lead to unequal access to health care, paid family leave, and services for survivors of domestic violence. The next administration should make gender equality and justice a priority, create positions and interagency collaboration to support gender integration, and take specific actions to advance womens rights to health, economic justice, and a life free of violence.

For more on women's rights priorities.

People fleeing their homes in search of safety have a right to seek asylum, and the US has a long history of helping refugees. The next administration should oppose a deterrence-focused strategy toward migrants that has led to family separations, harsh detention conditions for adults and children, and a dismantling of the US asylum and refugee system. The US should limit excessive surveillance and data collection to enforce borders and should advance reform of an immigration system that has resulted in serious abuses under previous administrations.

For more on immigration and border policy priorities.

Discrimination against LGBT people remains a serious problem in the United States. The next administration should support the Equality Act, which would expressly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in education, housing, public spaces, federally funded programs, credit, and jury service. It should also support reauthorization of an LGBT-inclusive Violence Against Women Act that is intersectional and comprehensive and best serves communities at risk. The administration should swiftly reverse the discriminatory ban on transgender people in the military, ensure that sex discrimination protections are LGBT-inclusive and enforce them accordingly, and make certain that religious exemptions are not applied in a way that deprives LGBT people and others of their rights. It should also ensure that LGBT people fleeing persecution in their countries of origin can file asylum claims, in accordance with US and international refugee law.

For more on LGBT rights priorities.

The US should act urgently to realize access to affordable, reliable, and quality internet for all. The Covid-19 pandemic laid bare that the internet is essential to exercising a range of human rights, including freedom of expression and access to information, and to education and an adequate standard of living. The new administration should develop policies that rein in abusive and discriminatory practices by technology companies. It should require greater transparency and hold companies accountable for abuses that result from their practices and underlying business models, while respecting human rights and preserving a free, open, and secure internet. The next administration should give priority to promoting the adoption of a comprehensive data protection law, the absence of which has left peoples data vulnerable to exploitation by government, private companies, and foreign actors, in violation of peoples privacy rights. The new administration should ensure that efforts to automate social protection programs and other facets of public life using data-driven technologies protect welfare rights.

For more on technology and human rights priorities.

The next administration should significantly expand US efforts to address the climate crisis, the impacts of which pose an unprecedented threat to human rights around the world. It should reverse the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and adopt and support ambitious measures to transition away from an economy built on fossil fuels to one built on cleaner, low-emitting energy sources. The administration should also reverse rollbacks of and strengthen regulations that protect people from toxic pollution. And it should prioritize support to marginalized populations most affected by climate change and other environmental harms.

For more information on environment and human rights priorities.

The health, safety, and education of millions of children in the US are at risk due to inadequate access to education; outdated laws that result in hazardous child labor; overly punitive juvenile justice systems; and immigration policies that include detention, family separation, and summary expulsion. The next administration should take steps to enhance childrens education by prioritizing digital literacy and universal and affordable internet access, strengthen laws to protect their data privacy, and, when it is safe to return, ensure children stay in school. It should update child labor regulations and work with Congress to amend outdated labor laws that allow children to engage in hazardous work. It should also work with states to reform juvenile justice systems. Additionally, it should end the detention of migrant children, facilitate family reunification, and support legislative reforms that include strict protections for children.

For more information on children's rights priorities.

The US should take decisive steps to reverse decades of erosion of workers rights protections and implement comprehensive policies to protect the rights of workers to a safe and healthy workplace, a living wage, and overtime; as well as to organize and bargain collectively. Due to inadequate regulation and enforcement, many essential and other workers have faced unsafe working conditions without adequate labor rights protections during the Covid-19 pandemic. In some sectors, particularly in agriculture and food production, disproportionate numbers of workers have contracted the virus and died. The new administration should ensure effective oversight byand seek adequate funding for enforcement agencies, promote standards and binding rules that meet international norms, and prioritize the hiring of staff who are experts in workplace safety and workers rights.

For more information on workers' rights priorities.

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The Next President Should Protect Human Rights in the US and End Abuses - Human Rights Watch

As Republicans ram through Trumps third Supreme Court nomination with an election underway, Democrats are increasingly contemplating expanding the court. But rather than cover it with the objectivity they claim to strive for, the countrys dominant media outlets have adopted a right-wing frame of the issuecalling it court packingthat delegitimizes court expansion.

Ruth Bader Ginsburgs Death Revives Talk of Court Packing, announced a New York Times headline (9/19/20). What Is Court Packing, and Why Are Some Democrats Seriously Considering It? asked the Washington Post (10/8/20). In that piece, the Posts Amber Phillips explicitly acknowledged the bias inherent in the phrase, yet presented it as practically official:

Expanding the Supreme Court to more than nine seats sounds like a radical idea, and the term for it, court packing, sounds derisive because it has created controversy every time it has come up.

In typical corporate media style, such articles often present the issue as a he said/she said dispute. In the WaPo piece, Democrats are frustrated that the Supreme Court could get even more conservative, while Republicans paint that as sour grapes; over at the Times, Democrats characterize court expansion as a defensive move against Republican actions, not a unilateral power grab, while Republicans have called the idea radical and undemocratic.

In these formulations, one side must win and the other lose. But the reality they gloss over is that those arent the real teams here. The struggle over the Court is at heart a struggle between anti-democratic forces and the interests of the vast majority of people in this country.

In recent years, massive amounts of corporate money have been directed toward efforts, led by the right-wing Federalist Society, to capture the US courts for corporate interestsdismantling voting rights, favoring corporate rights over individual rights, and stripping the power of government to regulate corporations (CounterSpin, 10/16/20). By framing the issue as one of Republicans vs. Democrats, media ignore the more important threat to democracy as a whole. And by accepting court packing as the term for expanding the court, journalists lend a hand to those anti-democratic forces.

The phrase court packing isnt new. President Franklin D. Roosevelts opponents coined it to delegitimize his plan to expand the court after it repeatedly struck down parts of his New Deal in the name of restraining government power (federal andin some cases, like the courts rejection of New Yorks effort to set a minimum wage for womenstate). In the end, FDRs plan languished in the Senate, but the president won the war; in the wake of his public campaign against it, the court began issuing rulings more favorable to the New Deal and other economic recovery plans. One of the conservative justices retired, giving FDR the opportunity to swing the balance back in his favorno thanks to the media, which ran predominantly unfavorable stories about FDRs plan.

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The circumstances are different this time around, with Republicans on the verge of installing a 63 conservative majority, and none of the conservative seats likely to open under a Biden term; the oldest conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, is just 72, and hasnt given any indication that hes interested in retiring. Plus, its unlikely Biden would push forcefully for a court expansion the way FDR did, putting pressure on the court to temper its rulings. But the rampant journalistic use of the biased term court packing hasnt changed.

A Nexis search of US newspapers for the past three months (7/24/2010/24/20) turns up 244 headlines with some version of the phrase court packing (including, e.g., pack the court or packing the court). Less than half as many, 98, used a version of the more neutral court expansion (such as expanding the court), and almost half of those (48) also used the phrase court packing within the article.

Its also noteworthy what that these court packing stories highlightand ignore. In arguments about court expansion, the right tends to focus on ideas of tradition (like the false claim that adding justices would be unprecedented) and the culture wars (like Roe v. Wade). Democrats often lean on the Republican hypocrisy of blocking Obamas nomination of Merrick Garland to fill Antonin Scalias seat in 2016, when the GOP insisted, eight months before an election, that the voters should have a chance to weigh in before a new justice was confirmeda principle instantly abandoned when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died seven weeks before an election.

The role of corporate money and the Federalist Society, and the threats they pose to democracy, often go unmentioned by both sides. In the last three months, newspaper stories that mentioned court packing also mentioned Merrick Garland 358 times and abortion 337 times; Roe v. Wade made 159 appearances. But these stories mentioned the Federalist Society only 33 times; of those, only seven mentioned corporate or corporation.

In the end, its unlikely that even ifand its a big ifDemocrats take the presidency and the Senate, there will be enough agreement within the party to expand the Supreme Court. But thats also not the only way to counter the corporate takeover of the court. In the face of an intransigent pro-slavery court, Lincoln and his anti-slavery allies recognized that their most powerful and effective strategy was not to try to add enough justices to gain the upper hand within the court; it was to undermine the false image of an impartial, democracy-protecting court that must always have the last word. As Matt Karp writes in Jacobin (9/19/20):

Lincoln persisted in rejecting judicial supremacy and also the basic idea underlying it, that law somehow exists before or beyond politics, and thus it was illegitimate to resist the proslavery court through popular antislavery mobilization. We do not propose to be bound by [Dred Scott] as a political rule, he said. We propose resisting it as to have it reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule established upon this subject.

Others have advocated for a similar approach today: marginalizing rather than trying to capture the court (e.g., New Republic, 10/13/20). Neither task would be easy, but getting journalists to talk more directly about the true problems with the court is a critical step along the way.

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Journalists Pick Sides When They Call Adding Justices 'Court Packing' - Common Dreams