This story is part of The Confederate Reckoning, a collaborative project of USA TODAY Network newsrooms across the South to examine the legacy of the Confederacy and its influence on systemic racism today.

The white men stand, immortalized in metal and stone, in parks, public squares and the halls of government.

Statues of prominent figures in the Confederacy are a common sight in the South. But the visibility of their monuments often belie the way their lives and legacies are obscured by myth.

Like other symbols of the Confederacy, such memorials have been defended for generations as pieces of Southern heritage, or simply uncontroversial artifacts of history. But for many people, they are ever-present reminders of racial discrimination and violent oppression that has never gone away.

The removal of statues of Confederate leaders as well as those of others who promoted or profited from slavery and racism has become a focal point of calls for a true confrontation with racial inequality in the United States. As part of that conversation,USA TODAY Network newsrooms across the South are taking a critical look at several such figures to understand who they were and what they believed.

***

For more than four decades, a bronzesculpture of thebust of Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest has been featured prominently in the Tennessee state Capitol.

A statue portraying Forrest was one of three removed in Memphis in late 2017 afterthe city found a loopholeto legally take down the monument that residents widely agreed should not stand in a public park.

But as the fate of the Capitol bust hangs in the balance pending a state commission meeting later this year and after years of debate among Black and white lawmakers, and Democratsand Republicans who was Forrest and why is he so controversial more than 150 years after the Civil War?

Among the most notorious parts of Forrest's legacy is his reported involvement leading Confederate soldiers in the West Tennessee Battle of Fort Pillow in April 1864, which has commonly become known as a massacre of surrendered Union troops, many of whom were Black.

Primary documents from a variety of sources refute argumentsmade by some Forrest apologists including some who have raised the possibility during conversations at the legislature about the bronze bust and Forrest's legacy that he was not responsible for the mass killings at Fort Pillow.

"We've been going through these excuses for Bedford Forrest for the longest while, and none of them are holding up under scrutiny," said Richard Blackett, a history professor at Vanderbilt University.

In 1868, Forrest gave an interview with a Cincinnati Commercial reporter that was widely published in newspapers around the country. In the interview, he said the Ku Klux Klan had "no doubt" been a benefit in Tennessee. While he denied being an official member, he said he was part of the organization "in sympathy," and later when Forrest testified before Congress about the KKK he eventually disclosed that he was familiar with rituals and practices.

Repeatedly in the 1868 interview, Forrest tried to suggest that he had more disdain for white Radical Republicans and Northerners trying to infiltrate Southern politics than he did African Americans, but he still remained fiercely opposed at that point to Blacks gaining the right to vote or having equal standing in society.

"I am opposed to it under any and all circumstances," Forrest said.

"And here I want you to understand distinctly I am not an enemy to the negro.We want him here among us; he is the only laboring class we have."

***

Jefferson Davis was a man of many words. He literally wrote volumes during his lifetime and spent the last decade of his life writing about the history of the Confederacyandan in-depth analysis of the Civil War.

But Davis (1808-1889) most notably is known for his role withthe Confederate States of America, of which he was named its first and only president.

Susannah Ural,professor of history and co-director of the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Southern Mississippi, said Davis seemed to be a natural choice for president of the Confederacy.

Although he did not support secession, he felt duty-bound to represent his state, which voted to secede, and the new government to which he was appointed president. However, he also believed secession was a right afforded tothe states.

Davis wrote in his book,"The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," that slavery "was not the cause of the war, but an incident."

In his preface to the bookhe said,"the States had never surrendered their sovereignty," and that states should be allowed to make their own decisions regarding slavery.

Davis saidthe federal government was usurping its authority by forcing unwanted laws on the states, first and foremost the abolition of slavery, which was an integral part of the Southern states' agricultural economy.

"(Slavery is) the primary cause, but it's not the only cause," Ural said. "When you talk about states' rights, when you talk about what powers the federal government should have versus state authority, one of the centralissues to states' rightswas the right to slavery."

However, she said, determining the Civil War happened because of slavery isn't entirely accurate.

"There's never one cause ofa war, and things thatmotivatepeople to fight in a war change over the course of time," she said. "To boil the Civil War down to slavery is problematic, but the bigger problem was that for decades, we just kind of pushed slavery aside and didn't really talk about it."

***

Even in his last days, Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, had already become a myth a myth that gave a defeated South something to cling to; a means of understanding its defeat.

In 1865, Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. His exploits during the war and his canonization by defeated Southerners have rendered him among the most famous losers in military history.

To Emory Thomas, who wrote "Robert E. Lee: A Biography,"published in 1995, historical evidence shows Lee was a man who lived by a strict moral code, a sense of honor and duty; a great soldier and engineer who rose to the challenges he faced.

He was also a slave-owner and a white supremacist. While Lee believed slavery was morally wrong, he did not believe the abolition of it should come through the works of man, but, instead, the will of God.

In an interview, Thomas referenced a famous letter Lee wrote about slavery in 1857. In it, Lee distilled his views as a slave owner on race.

"In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it, however, a greater evil to the white man than to the black race," Lee wrote. "The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy."

In that letter, and other moments throughout his life, including testimony before Congress after the Civil War, Lee displayed views on race that Thomas described as compatible with social Darwinism a worldview that arose later in the 19th century and early 20th that Western governments, particularly that of the U.S., used to justify colonization, war and imperialism.

In 1862, he wouldfree his father-in-law's slaves, as required by the man's will, a matter of weeks before the Emancipation Proclamation took effect.

"He anticipated social Darwinism In the evolutionary pyramid of human beings, I think he saw white folks like himself at the top. And African Americans somewhere down the ranks, above American Indians whom he really thought were dreadful," Thomas said.

***

Known as the "Boy Hero of the Confederacy," Sam Davis' story was resurrected from obscurity in the late 1800s by journalist Archibald Cunningham, founder of the Confederate Veteran magazine. There are monuments erected in Sam Davis'honor. His boyhood home is on the National Register of Historic Places and operates as a museum.

Barely 21 in 1863, Davis was hanged for his refusal to give Union Army Gen. Grenville Dodge the names of Confederate spies. "I would rather die a thousand deaths than betray a friend," Davis said moments before he was hanged on the Public Square in Pulaski, Tennessee.

Davis wasnt a boy, but a young man whose bravery is immortalized as a symbol of the Confederacy and the Lost Cause, said Brenden Martin, a Middle Tennessee State University history professor. The underpinning of the Lost Cause was that the Confederacy was "right all along" and had a right to secede from the United States.

"All youve got to do is look at the (Confederate) Articles of Secession. The people who brought about the secession (from the United States) made it clear it was about preserving the institution of slavery," Martin said.

Slavery was the backbone of the Southern economy, Martin said.

And the Davisfamily plantation was steeped in that economy.

Data from the American Battlefield Trust notes that Charles and Jane Davis, Sam Davis' parents, originally owned a830-acre plantation located in Smyrna. By 1860, there were 51 enslaved people owned by the Davis family. Sam Davis also had his own slave, named Coleman Davis,who was gifted to him when he was a boy.

***

Anarcha was at least 17 when the doctor started experimenting on her. The year before, she suffered terrible complications during a 72-hour labor that opened a hole between her bladder and vagina and left her incontinent.

The man who held Anarcha in bondage outside Montgomery sent her to Dr. J. Marion Sims sometime in 1845. She was one of at least seven enslaved women sent to Sims by white slaveholders. They had the same condition as Anarcha, known as a vesicovaginal fistula.

Sims wanted to find a way to address it. From 1845 to 1849, the enslaved women became experiments.

By Sims own account, Anarcha underwent 30 operations as Sims tried different approaches to repairing the fistula.

These women could not say no. Neither Sims nor the white men who held them against their will showed interest in their opinions. Deirdre Cooper Owens, a professor of medical history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of "Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology," said if the women protested, they "could get beaten, or they could get ignored."

Anesthesia, Cooper Owens said, was not in wide use at this time.

Despite that, a statue of Sims unveiled in 1939 remains on the grounds of the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery. A bust of Sims also stands in Columbia, South Carolina. New York City officials removed a statue of Sims in Manhattan in 2018.

***

Andrew Johnson considered himselfa champion of the common man but only when those common men were white.

The 17th president of the United Stateswas a common man himself. Born into poverty in 1808, he escaped indentured servitude in North Carolinabefore moving to Greeneville, Tennessee, where he worked as a tailor,owned slaves and launched his political career as a Democrat.

When President Abraham Lincoln died from an assassin's bullet just six weeks after Johnson took office, a fractured countryfound its stubborn new president lacked Lincoln's ability to navigate theend of the Civil War with nuance and sensitivity.

Although Johnson had helped Lincoln end slavery across the land, he nowclashed with the Republican-controlled Congress by planting himself firmly in the way of rights for newly freed slaves. He soon grew widelyunpopular and became the first president ever to be impeached.

Johnson believed in what's called "herrenvolk democracy" the idea that the lowest white man in the social hierarchy should beabove the highest Black man, said Aaron Astor, ahistory professor at Maryville College who researches the Civil War-era South.

In 1860, the year before the Civil War broke out, Johnson said white Southernersfelt so threatened by the prospectof Black freedom that poor men would unite withslave ownersto exterminateslaves rather than see them freed.

***

Albert Pike is a name well-known in Arkansas history as both a Civil War general of Native American troops and a newspaper editor.

Although Pike was known nationally after the Civil War for his involvement with the Freemasons, he gained national attention again on June 19, 2020, when a statue dedicated to him in Washington, D.C.,was toppled by a group of Black Lives Matter demonstrators. The monument to Pike was the only one of a Confederate Civil War general in the District of Columbia.

Pike was a Boston transplant to Arkansas who initially resisted secession, but followed the lead of his fellow Arkansans in fully supporting the Confederacy and even servedas an appointed brigadier general in at least one battle in Arkansas.

By the end of his life, Pike had risen among the highest ranks of the Freemasons.

Before the Civil War, he had moved from the Fort Smith area to Little Rock to pursue a career as a journalist. He eventually became editor and owner of The Advocate where he reported on the Supreme Court of Arkansas.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Pike was called up to be a brigadier general over a troop made up of several Native American Tribes. He was cited as being an advocate for Native Americans and the wrongs they suffered at the hands of the white man.

When it came to African Americans, however, Pikes view of slavery was one that claimed it was a "necessary evil." He claimed that slaves would not be able to hold any other job and that they were treated well by their masters. He even admitted to having his own slave for "necessary" work.

***

Gen. Alfred Mouton has become one of Acadianas most polarizing historical figures. His statue, standing on city property in the heart of downtown Lafayette, has been the focus of public outcry, protest and legal battles for decades.

As support is increasing to remove the statue, most of the controversy over Mouton has focused on the fact that he owned Black peopleas slaves and fought for white supremacy during the Deep South's most oppressive era.

While Mouton is hailed by some as a hero from Lafayette's oldest family who fought to defend his hometown from Union forces during the Civil War, the famous son of former Gov. Alexandre Mouton helped wage another civil war here.

Mouton, along with his father, trained the "Vigilante Committee" in Lafayette Parish, a group that would carry out their own form of violent justice against Black residentsthrough whippings, expulsions and lynchings.

From the late 1850s to the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, Mouton-backed vigilantes fought against other groups in Lafayette Parish's own civil war.

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Confederate monuments: What the men honored by statues did and believed

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Confederate monuments: What the men honored by statues did and believed - Destin Log

By ROSE BRENNAN

The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement has seemingly created gaps between various institutions and law enforcement, whether justified or not. Schools are ending their relationships with local police departments amid calls to cut budgets. And mass incarceration is facing renewed criticism for its role in racial injustice.

While the countrys prison population is currently the largest its ever been with as many as one in every 100 American adults behind bars its still seemingly an issue, which disproportionately targets Black communities. As many as a third of Black men can expect to be incarcerated at some point in their lives, according to the NAACP, compared to 1-in-6 Latino men and 1-in-17 white men.

And while mass incarceration might not be a predominant issue here at home, it could feel like it. One giant in the prison industry is making its way to the neighborhood, albeit not without a fight.

Manhattan College will depend on Aramark Corp., for its dining needs beginning this fall. The Philadelphia-based company will replace both Gourmet Dining and Sodexo, beginning first with managing dining and non-residential custodial services on campus. Eventually, its responsibilities will also include facilities, energy management and residential custodial services.

The company maintains a large roster of clients employing more than 200,000 people and earning billions each year. But Aramark is probably more commonly known for its contracts providing similar services to prisons.

And thats proven to be unpopular among students who took time to research the company over the summer. As one of the largest food providers to American prisons, Aramark also is entrenched in various other controversies when it comes to employees and the inmate population of those prisons.

Aramark is known to be (a) union buster, said Brandon Martinez, a senior communications major at the school. When Aramark takes over, its only a matter of time until they try to bust the Manhattan College physical plant union.

Manhattan Colleges physical plant and residence life housekeeping employees are members of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, with Local 153 serving the tri-state area.

In an email announcing the deal earlier this month, Manhattan president Brennan ODonnell reassured students and union members Aramark will recognize unionized physical plant and housekeeping employees, ensuring theyll retain certain benefits theyve acquired in past collective bargaining, like free tuition.

Aramark is no stranger to the controversy surrounding the companys name. In fact, the company website has an entire page titled Get the Facts addressing those controversies and clarifying the role it plays in prisons.

While we understand and respect the passionate debate around our nations prison system and its disproportionate impact on Black and other non-white populations, we disagree with how Aramark is being characterized and cast as part of the problem, according to the website. We are actually part of the solution with a strong commitment to rehabilitating incarcerated individuals so they can transition back to their communities.

The page lists several of these rehabilitation efforts, including providing vocational training, scholarships and trust accounts for inmates efforts Aramark claims reduce chances inmates will return to prison by at least 30 percent.

Martinez, introduced a resolution in Manhattan Colleges student government calling on administrators to cease contract negotiations with Aramark. It earned the support of more than 500 students and alumni, and more than a couple-dozen faculty members.

Although the company has a reputation with prisons, Aramarks new relationship with Manhattan College is far from unique. The company says its partnered with 500 other colleges and universities, impacting more than 3 million students.

It also will launch something it calls Create Kitchen, where its on-campus chefs will teach students how to make their own meals.

And with students expected to return in the fall in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Aramark also says its implementing a set of social distancing and sanitation procedures it calls EverSafe.

Still, having a contract with Aramark is directly contradictory to the message of social justice the college preaches, Martinez said.

It goes against all the things were taught at Manhattan College, especially the Lasallian core principles, he said.

Since the Institute of the Brothers of Christian Schools better known as the Lasallian Brothers, after founder St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle began establishing schools worldwide, its emphasized five core principles in its pedagogy: Faith in the presence of God, respect for all persons, concern for the poor and social justice, inclusive community and quality education.

Guelybel Capellan hasnt been a regular fixture on Manhattan Colleges campus since earning her masters degree last year, yet believes Aramark profits from mass incarceration, something she has described as modern-day slavery.

Aramarks response has been that they help some prisoners by giving them an education, Capellan said. Basically, youre profiting from slavery and then youre saying, Oh, but we help some of our slaves, and thats not the response people are looking for.

Those claims stretch back to the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery, except as punishment for a crime. While inmates do often receive some compensation for jobs they hold behind bars, its a far cry from the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. In 2017, inmates received typical wages ranging from 63 cents to $1.41 per day, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

We recognize that we need to work with Aramark over the coming weeks to represent the fuller story with respect to these allegations, ODonnell wrote in his email announcing the Aramark deal. This will include opportunities for members of our community to meet with Aramark leadership to discuss these concerns.

Aramark says it will form a dining committee that will meet regularly, providing real-time feedback both in-person and through digital surveys.

Martinez plans to organize protests against the Aramark contract once students return to campus in the fall.

Our voice isnt going to be pushed to the side, he said. Something like this isnt going to be just swept under the rug.

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Will eating at college be more akin to prison fare? - The Riverdale Press

After three years of being raped, starved and passed between families like a possession, an enslaved Indian domestic worker finally seized her moment and fled the 2 million home that had been her prison.

The woman, 40, had tried to flee before but her pleas for help had been ignored and she had been sent back to her abusers.

This time, her support team of lawyers and charities took her to a police unit specialising in human trafficking.

Everybody was speaking for her, said Kevin Hyland, then the head of the unit run by Londons police force.

I just told everyone to stop and asked her what she wanted.

She said: I just want them to go to prison. Thank you for listening to me, and she started crying.

Nobody had actually taken the time to tell her that everybody worked for her.

The case was a formative experience for Mr Hyland who after a successful police career became the UKs first anti-slavery commissioner and an advocate for its voiceless victims.

The position was created in 2014 when the UK, under prime minister Theresa May, introduced what it claimed was the first law in Europe to address slavery and trafficking in the 21st century.

It was designed to help protect victims, make it easier to prosecute traffickers and hold to account businesses that failed to ensure workers were not being abused, while reaping the profits of exploited labour.

Its limits came to light last month when reports exposed how workers in the cut-price garment trade in the central English city of Leicester were being paid below the statutory minimum wage.

Some of the citys garment factories, which employ 10,000 people, had few measures to protect against the spread of Covid-19.

The biggest loser was cut-price chain Boohoo, which after conducting its own investigation dropped two suppliers and pledged 10m (Dh47.2m/$12.8m) to tackle malpractice by its suppliers.

Its share price fell sharply but is still higher than a year ago.

Until we see a CEO in the courtroom facing the jury, then there will always be excuses, Mr Hyland said.

And of course, some of these companies have very wealthy legal teams.

Mr Hyland has been lobbying for companies to be banned from securing public contracts if their suppliers are found to be tainted by labour abuse.

He highlighted the action taken after two 737 Max planes crashed in 2018 and 2019, leading to a crisis for aircraft maker Boeing.

The whole fleet was grounded, the chief executive was fired and legal action is running into billions of pounds.

That was because of 346 lives, Mr Hyland said. Its estimated that about 22,000 children lose their lives in bad working conditions every year but theres no sanction.

The failure of companies and states to live up to their pledges rankles with Mr Hyland.

His tenure as commissioner included the flight of millions from war and poverty in the Middle East in 2015, which contributed to the exploitation of migrants.

Mr Hyland told the UN Security Council in 2017 that conflict was a major driver of modern slavery around the globe.

Terrorist organisations openly advocated slavery as a tactic of war. ISIS used minority groups for forced labour and sexual exploitation.

Mr Hyland said extremists established slave markets where women and children are sold.

He told the Security Council of meeting a girl, 15, at a reception camp on the Italian island of Lampedusa.

She had fled conscription in her native Eritrea before being held in Libya where she was sexually abused daily for three months.

Then her captors deemed that she had earned enough for a place on an inflatable dinghy across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

Halfway across the migrants fired a flare and waited for rescue.

She talked to me about bodies floating in the Mediterranean, Mr Hyland said.

Six months after his address, his message was reinforced with the death of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi during a failed attempt to reach Europe.

A photograph of his lifeless body lying on a Turkish beach captured headlines around the world.

The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared that humanity has drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.

The French government called for a Europe-wide mobilisation and Irelands prime minister Enda Kenny spoke of a human catastrophe.

Where are these people now? Mr Hyland asked. Where are the leaders?

At the height of the crisis, he travelled to the Greek city of Thessaloniki where he met a Syrian family who had fled war and were living in an aircraft hangar in one of 1,500 tents.

The family was sharing their accommodation with another who had a six-day-old baby.

The father was a civil engineer while his wife was a newly trained doctor, and they had a young child with them.

He was reduced to earning 10 a week from gang masters who took advantage of his stateless situation.

I want to go home, the man told Mr Hyland. I just want to keep my child breathing and my wife breathing, and thats why Im here.

Forced labour brings annual profits of about $150 billion, the International Labour Organisation says, but convictions are shockingly low and efforts to tackle the problem are going backwards in some countries.

Mr Hyland resigned his role in 2018 and now advises governments and the G20 group of nations to try to persuade them to address the issue.

He said there were too many vested interests.

Businesses are saying we're fighting this, but then on the other hand they're profiting from it, Mr Hyland said.

He said he had tried to calculate how much industrialised nations had put into battling the trade and concluded that it was less than 1 per cent of the $150bn.

That compared woefully to the sums ploughed into tackling climate change, the ill-fated war on drugs, and the response to the Black Lives Matter campaign after civil rights protests.

The death of unarmed African American George Floyd at the hands of white Minneapolis police was a moment where every business, no matter what business you were, felt compelled to make some statement and to take some action", Mr Hyland said.

If you're comparing it to Black Lives Matter, if you're comparing it to the environment, we're a long way off of that.

We need to start talking about this for what it is. This is child abuse. These are child soldiers.

"These are children dying down mines. These are men and women who are being exploited.

Mr Hyland gave the case of the Indian domestic worker whose abuse he investigated.

She had on 12 occasions appealed to police and other organisations before her story was taken seriously.

Mr Hyland and his teams investigation led to the successful convictions of three people responsible for her abuse.

We should be convicting more now, he said. We know that is one of the biggest problems that the victims aren't getting a proper response.

"We always talk about listening to victims but nobody is really listening.

Updated: July 28, 2020 12:22 AM

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UK's first anti-slavery commissioner: There will be no change until a CEO is in the dock - The National

The scandal of working conditions at a Leicester factory used by clothing giant Boohoo made many people sit up. But we all have a stake in this

Most of the brands that line our high street and internet shopping baskets dont own the factories that make their clothes, author Lauren Bravo points out in her book published in January, How to Break Up with Fast Fashion. As a result they often wash their hands of responsibility for how they are run. We didnt know, comes the response every time some terrible truth is revealed about pay or conditions, she writes.

Fast forward to July and Boohoo has expressed shock at the findings of an undercover report by The Sunday Times alleging a Leicester factory, used to manufacture many of Boohoos garments, pays workers less than half the minimum wage.

In a statement on its corporate site the online retailer, known for its 5 bikinis and ultra-fast turnover of stock (which netted it 4.6bn last year) said: if [the conditions] are as described by the undercover reporter, [they] are totally unacceptable and fall woefully short of any standards acceptable in any workplace.

Meg Lewis, campaigns manager for Labour Behind the Label, which believes no one should live in poverty for the price of a cheap T-shirt, says brands have hidden their supply chains for a long time, distancing themselves from the conditions in which their clothes are made.

Influential Instagrammers denounced Boohoos practices, and its share price plummeted

With evidence of illegal wages and conditions of modern slavery in [Boohoos] supply chain, this should be a big wake-up call for the industry as a whole to commit to transparency.

She believes there needs to be better government regulation of the industry.

But it should also be a wake-up call to us complicit compulsive internet shoppers to hold brands that are squeezing their supply chains to account.

We are increasingly shopping without thinking. In the last 15 years, clothing production has doubled, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, but UK adults wear only 44 per cent of the clothing they own, says WRAP, the Waste and Resources Action Programme.

The way we shop has made it easier to disconnect from how products we buy are made: on our phone, when were bored, via an Instagram link with one eye open. We dont even need to wait for payday. Most fashion brands now offer several buy-now-pay-later options at the checkout. Boohoo has three including Klarna, Europes most valuable fintech start-up last year, worth $5.5bn, which has thrived during lockdown.

The obvious solution is to avoid impulse-buying cheap clothes that were going to chuck away after a couple of wears, behaviour that drives the ultra-fast fashion market. But it is not that simple.

Fast fashion has democratised access to stylish clothes during a time of austerity, and more people are going to be struggling with living costs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. There is also a huge amount of pressure on young women in particular to care about how they look and dress when everything is photographed and documented online.

More expensive doesnt guarantee better treatment of those working in garment factories, anyway.

Luke Smitham, of sustainability consultancy Kumi, says many brands claim they have audited suppliers and factories, but many of the audits are not fit for purpose. Hes visited factory sites that have passed audits but, within minutes of walking through the door, he could tell there are serious issues with the way theyre run.

DID YOU KNOW

Our vendors buy every copy of the magazine from us for 1.25 and sell it on to you for 2.50. Which is why we ask you to ALWAYS take your copy of the magazine. We believe in trade not aid.

Labour Behind the Label does not advocate boycotting companies whose supply chains exploit workers, unless the workers themselves have called for it, warning boycotts lead to workers losing their jobs.

But we should expect transparency and ask difficult questions, publicly. Lewis warns that if something is unrealistically cheap, there is a high possibility of exploitation within the supply chain.

Look at the impact of the scandal on Boohoo so far. Influential Instagrammers denounced its practices, and its share price plummeted. It now has a financial incentive to reconsider its model, as long as we keep up the pressure.

We should also engage more with how we might be inadvertently supporting exploitative business practices with our savings.

Do you know where your pension or Isa is invested? Many of us will own tiny slices of fast fashion companies. As Laura Suter of investment company AJ Bell says, if you are a shareholder in a company you believe is making profit through unethical behaviour you can lobby for change. Investors only need to own one share to be able to attend an AGM and while there they can ask questions of company management and start debate in the room.

Be distrustful of any brand that declares its ethics based on a third-party audit of its suppliers, says Smitham, and support innovative brands.

Rapanui, for example, which sells T-shirts from 12, believes lots of companies cut costs by cutting corners. Instead it keeps costs low with a circular model. All Rapanuis clothes are made to be sent back via freepost if you no longer wear them (with a 5 credit for doing so) and it makes new products from the materials it recovers. This saves money that it invests in things that other companies may consider uneconomical, including more rewarding jobs for those who make its clothes.

The high street is struggling to survive the impact of lockdown and needs our support, but we all have a responsibility to rein in the urge for a next-day delivery dopamine hit, and question where our clothes were made.

Laura Whateley is a journalist and author of Money: A Users Guide

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Laura Whateley: our slow realisation to the flaws of fast fashion - Big Issue

By Paul de Lacvivier, The Remnant, July 22, 2020

I am always surprised to note how often mediocrity is praised as though it were absolute truth. Today it is racism, tomorrow it is democracy, the next day it is eco-theology. It never ends.

On the racism front, the time has come to make clear some historical facts and Catholic common sense about race and slavery. The truth may be surprising to some.

In all of human history, only the Catholic Church teaches unequivocally that there are no longer Greeks or Romans, Jews or Gentiles, men or women in the economy of salvation. It doesnt depend on what you look like or what is stamped on your passportevery human being, without exception, is called to eternal life and can achieve it through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

In all of human history, only the Catholic Church teaches unequivocally that there are no longer Greeks or Romans, Jews or Gentiles, men or women in the economy of salvation. It doesnt depend on what you look like or what is stamped on your passportevery human being, without exception, is called to eternal life and can achieve it through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The talk about Christs skin color is blasphemous and also theologically nonsensical. God makes no distinction among anyone on the basis of any criterion other than holiness in His Son, the Head of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. This is in the Creed that Catholics recite at every Mass. It is recited by Catholics of every conceivable skin tone in every corner of the world. Christ died for all of us, period. My brothers and sisters in the faith and I are one in the Person of Our Lord.

Another fact we must remember is that, apart from Christian Europe, nearly all civilizations have instituted slavery as a legitimate system of labor provision and social control. There are still slaves in Muslim countries, following a very long tradition of slaving and slave-holding in Islam. The Egyptians enslaved the Hebrews. The Greeks and Romans enslaved virtually everyone they conquered in their endless wars. Native Americans enslaved one another. Sexual slavery is a scourge on every inhabited continent. Historians in China and Japan dont often mention it, but slavery was legally recognized in those places, too. The untouchables of India have been civilizationally enslaved since time immemorial.

The pagans have been, and continue to be, profligate slavers and enslavers. If we are going to judge civilizations for slavery, let us apply the judgment evenly and fairly to all.

Not only did Christendom never legally institute slavery, it also is the only religion to have eradicated it. It took the Church nearly ten centuries, through a cautious apostolate, to have the practice outlawed, but eventually, thank God, the breakthrough was achieved. It is only the West that considers slavery morally repugnant, and this is due entirely to Christianity.

It is only the West that considers slavery morally repugnant, and this is due entirely to Christianity.

What took the Church so long, you might ask? Pagan practices are deeply rooted, and eliminating evil from society is a never-ending task. Also, the Church is not a social justice organization, but a mission to save souls. By civilizing men in the Faith, the Church attained to the ancillary benefit of freeing them from Hell and from the hell they create on Earth by offending against one anothers imago Dei. Only Christianity did this. No other religion was able to render the horrors of slavery unthinkable to an entire civilization. No other religion upended a culture to put the human person, made in Gods image and likeness, at the top of the civilizational hierarchy.

The fight continues today, against abortion and other sins against Gods loving creation, but the Church does not yield to temporary setbacks. Grace is working on fallen humanity through the Person of Jesus Christ, and this will go on until the end of time.

Slavery in the New World was less an export from Christendom than a lapse into the sins of old pagan Europe and a tragic adoption of the ways of the Indians themselves. The Church, weakened by the Protestant heresy at home, was forced to do battle in Europe as well as in European holdings in the Americas and in Africa. People in those places were already selling human beings. Corrupted Christians bought those human beings, a terrible testimony to the fallenness of mankind. The Church strove mightily against sin wherever it arose, whether in the Americas and Africa or in the Lutheran states in Europe.

There is also the fact, which almost no one today speaks of, that the Church has always been more interested in souls than in bodies. The Church wants to save the souls of everyone, regardless of whether he or she is or was master or slave. Unable to eradicate slavery right away, the Church concentrated on persuading masters to allow the Sacraments to be administered to their slaves, and to treat the slaves as human beings, providing them with an education for instance. And of slaves the Church asked that they offer up their sufferings in communion with Jesus Christ, Who alone has the power to overcome the evils of the world, the evil that men do to one another and in their own heart of hearts. The slave can imitate the poor, broken Christ, due to the slaves terrible condition on earth. The fact is that ours is a broken humanity, and we are all born to suffer and die.

The Church went into the world as it found it, and aimed at the core of man, his immortal soul, hoping to win for him eternal life despite the horrors of the fallen state in which we all find ourselves.slavery 1

Slavery is not intrinsically bad, then? The hard truth is that it is not. There is no perfect condition on earth. Of course all prefer to be free. Consider the opposite problem, which is the same: those who run wild, whose freedom enslaves them like bondage of labor never could. Look at the world todaythe devils who cry freedom and who destroy their souls in their endless sinning. Me, I would infinitely rather be a slave, crushed and scratching at the dry ground in forced servitude, and yet holy and offering my life up to God, than a libertine and a criminal, a freedom-worshiping idolater with hatred in my heart and pride before my Creator. What we have today is much worse than slavery. What we have is willingness to sin, enthusiasm for it. This is worse than slavery ever was, because the sinner will die eternally, while the slave may die and be saved. Lets also remember that there are degrees of slavery, and that all of us, in one way or another, are enslaved.

But only faith in Christ allows people to really assume true freedom of the soul. This is shown most by the witness of the martyrs, who gave up everything preferring holiness and God. Many martyrs have been slaves. There has never been a martyred libertine.

Here is the very harsh reality: we are all slaves!

Masters of old were slaves as well. Of their pride, of their superstitions, of their ambitions and desires, of their domination over others. There is no one so enslaved as a slavedriver. No one is so thoroughly roped to his sin.

Slavery is a kind of social order. It is fit for pagans, who know nothing better. Only Christians have been exempted from slavery as a public institution. Why? Because only faith makes people free.

But even this doesnt mean that we have no bounds. On the contrary. Christians demand good boundaries, such as monks and nuns demanding the boundaries of the religious life, or couples demanding heartful boundaries of the marriage, or children who crave the boundaries provided by the family and society. Give anyone unlimited freedom, and he or she will be miserable. It is the boundary that makes us happy.

But we are throwing off all this wisdom even as we speak. Our age is apostate, and quickly going to pagan seed. Slavery is coming back into the world because we would have pagan unfreedom rather than Christian freedom in charity and Truth. It is a kind of natural law.

Look at the economy, for example. Wage slavery is not a euphemism, it is a real thing. So is the corruption and petty patronism that are now dominating commercial interactions among people. We are treating each other as objects again, and not as persons created by the Living God.

As for me, as a Catholic, I am proud to say that I am a slave. I am the slave of Jesus Christ, true God and true man. It is precisely because I am slave of Jesus Christ that I am free. That is true freedom, the only freedom worth anything in the end.

Secular freedom is not possible. The fall has undone us. We are weak and we tend toward sin. Our center of gravity is off, and we easily fall again, just as our first parents did. Only the charity of the Faith can restore the natural hierarchies that help us live full and holy lives without the rough aspects that those hierarchies assume in the pagan world.slavery 2

Among the pagans there is justice, to be sure, but no charity or mercy. This is what we are seeing again today. Our modern age denies charity and has therefore abandoned true justice. The result is disorder and chaos. Just turn on your television if you dont believe me. Or, for many, just open your curtains and look outside.

Such disorder cannot last long. A new order is coming. If this order is not nourished by Faith then it will be harsh, as in pagan countries. And if the order is against nature, it will be tyrannical, illegitimate, and also not last long. The cycle of violence and domination will continue, and worsen. There will be some kind of order. But if it is solely of human devising, then it will be an order that exploits and destroyslike slavery.

Lets pray to become everyday more and more the slave of our Lord, to do what He wills for salvation. And lets not forget St. Pauls order, to respect authorities even if they persecute us. But let us also remember that respect towards authorities doesnt mean surrendering to them in mind or spirit. We must always speak the truth, we must never just accept the wrong that we see. If doing this leads to our martyrdom, then let us give thanks to Almighty God and ask him for the Grace to endure what He sends our way, and to testify to the Truth that we might meet Him in the Heaven He created for us.

This article first appeared HERE.

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Slavery, Racism and the Church - Catholic Citizens of Illinois

Snap inc., the social media company behind Snapchat, has been facing pressures to release a diversity report and offer transparency of the companys makeup for years now. The companys CEO, Evan Spiegel, informed employees in a meeting this past June that releasing the companys diversity report could perpetuate the belief that Silicon Valley companies arent diverse.

According to The Verge, these comments by Spiegel were prompted by a Mashable report that outlined the claims that Snap is not at all inclusive, and that the popular social media company in fact breeds a racist and sexist environment. The report contained statements from employees that claimed a manager had told them that a story was too black-heavy and requested that some snaps containing Black faces be replaced with people of other races.

Though Spiegel was concerned of his workplaces stats perpetuating stereotypes, the company has finally succumbed to such pressures and decided to release its first diversity report and to no surprise, the numbers are staggering.

The report reveals that out of the 3,195-person company, only 4.1% are identified as Black and African American and only 6.8% are identified as Hispanic/Latinx. The report also reveals that a mere 3.2% of the companys leadership roles are filled by PoCs. Further statistics suggest that white males dominate the companys makeup; as women only account for 32.9% of the workforce.

With the exposure of these stats, Snap has also announced that its setting some goals to raise these numbers; by 2023, Snap is committing to doubling the number of women in tech positions and doubling the number of underrepresented races and ethnic minorities by 2025. Snap aims to reach these goals by executing initiatives, including expanding its mentorship programs and preventing bias through machine learning tools.

Accompanying the diversity report is Snaps 50-page CitizenSnap report, which details the companys work in both social and environmental issues; including their move to provide a robust living wage of $70,000 (to be adjusted based on location) for its employees who work within their Santa Monica headquarters.

But the numbers only solidify what many already assumed; just last month, Snapchat released a filter for Juneteenth, and while Snapchat creators may have thought they were celebrating the US emancipation of slavery, it was doing something quite different. The filter, an augmented reality lens, displayed chains breaking once the user offered up a smilea pretty distasteful way to commemorate the end of slavery. Snap found themselves apologizing, yet again, for another offensive filter.

Hopefully this long-awaited transparency will be Snaps effort to be held accountable by the public and to take greater action in becoming a more inclusive and diverse environment.

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After Years of Resisting, Snapchat Finally Released its Diversity Report and The Numbers are Telling - Grit Daily

One hundred and fifty-five years after Confederate troops surrendered at Appomattox and Bennett Place, their battle flag has finally come down in Mississippi and their statues are retreating from courthouse squares and university quads. As the children of generations of Black southerners who fought against the lies of the Lost Cause, we celebrate this most recent surrender and look forward to walking down streets that are not shadowed by monuments to men who claimed to own our ancestors. But we cannot understand why these monuments lasted so long without challenging the inequities they were erected to justify. In fact, many who support flags and statues coming down today also advocate voter suppression, attack healthcare and re-segregate our schools. We must attend to both the systems of injustice and the monuments that have justified them if we are to realize liberty and justice for all.

If you examine the bases of statues that are being hauled away, most bear a date between the 1890s and 1920s. These monuments did not rise in defiance of the federal troops who were sent by Congress and Ulysses S Grant to enforce Reconstruction and guarantee political power to the new Black citizens of the south in the 1860s and 1870s. If a statue of Robert E Lee or Jefferson Davis had been proposed during Reconstruction, the very suggestion would have sparked a riot. But after the compromise of 1876, when Rutherford B Hayes agreed to remove federal troops from the south, newly established Black and white political alliances were subjected to the violence of white terrorist organizations and the propaganda of white supremacy campaigns.

As Martin Luther King Jr taught on the steps of the Alabama state house in 1965: To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. Black people were driven from public life and blamed for the troubles of a society that had invested its resources in treasonous rebellion against the United States. Jim Crow laws went on the books to offer a legal structure for the caste system that had built plantation wealth with enslaved labor. If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow, King said. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man.

George White, the last Black congressman from the south during Reconstruction, finished his term representing North Carolinas second congressional district in 1902. Five years later, the United Daughters of the Confederacy petitioned the University of North Carolina to erect a memorial to alumni who had fought for the Confederacy. With Jim Crow established, their cause was no longer lost. In the Jim Crow south, these veterans and their descendants celebrated the sacrifices their fathers and grandfathers had made to defend white supremacy. Before a cheering crowd of more than 1,000 people who gathered to dedicate their new Confederate Monument, Julian Carr recalled how 100 yards from where we stand, less than 90 days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a Negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 federal soldiers. Like Confederate monuments in almost every southern community, this one was erected to celebrate that no federal authority was willing to challenge white supremacy.

After the Brown v Board of Education decision rendered Jim Crow unconstitutional in 1954, Black and white people in the civil rights movement worked tirelessly to demand federal enforcement of Reconstruction-era promises: Black citizenship, equal protection under the law and the right to vote. As in the moral struggle of the civil war, our parents and their colleagues risked their lives in non-violent struggle to make the promise of America real for all of her citizens. As Coretta Scott King said: Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.

While the gains of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act transformed the horizon of possibility for millions of Americans, the Second Reconstructions work of establishing a genuine multiethnic democracy was not completed before calls for law and order, traditional values and a tax revolt rallied a Confederate resistance once again. By uniting white voters in the suburbs, the sun belt, and the south, the Southern Strategy promised white people political power in an increasingly diverse America for the next 50 years.

While the divisive politics of Trumpism may be the last gasp of the Southern Strategy, the question of whether America can do the work of becoming a genuine democracy still remains. Removing monuments to the lie of white supremacy is an important step, but a shared future depends on redistributing power and resources so that every American, no matter their race, income, geography or immigration status, has access to healthcare, public education, affordable housing, a living wage, clean water and a livable planet.

In this moment when millions of Americans are suffering from a triple crisis of poverty, Covid-19 and police brutality, we need more than a conversation about monuments. We need concrete action to address the incredible disparities in death rates among Black, brown and poor people. This pivotal moment for our nation and our world is beckoning us to dismantle injustice and rebuild with love as the foundation. We can build a more just, humane, equitable and peaceful world. But, as King so prophetically admonished us: The hour is late. And the clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now before it is too late. We must act now, America.

Bishop William J Barber, II is president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. He is author of We Are Called to Be a Movement

Dr Bernice A King, the youngest child of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and Coretta Scott King, is a global thought leader, orator, peace advocate and CEO of the King Center, which was founded by her mother

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Removing monuments is the easy part. We must make America a real democracy - The Guardian