Given that the billionaire Charles Koch has poured millions of dollars into eliminating the minimum wage and paid sick leave for workers, and that in 2015 he had the gall to compare his ultra-conservative mission to the anti-slavery movement, he’s probably the last person you’d want educating young people about slavery.
Another thing to keep in mind was the 13th Amendment which included this clause.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Note the exception wherein slavery was allowed to exist in the US Penal system. An example of how this was used post Civil War with this suggesting another of those “devils bargains” made.
Angola Prison in Louisiana was once one of the largest Plantations in that State. Thousands of Slaves worked the lands both bred to work in breeding programs and bought and sold like cattle to do that labor. After the Civil war the Angola Plantation was converted into a Prison. The same housing used to house slaves was used to house Prisoners.
The state would then arrest Blacks en masse for things like loitering or being a public nuisance or entering white only Establishments and were inacerated in Angola Prison. They then would be forced to work those same lands.
thank you, adam sanchez for such an informative and much needed analysis! last week common dreams posted a heartfelt article from a west virginia teacher that left me with that empty feeling—something important was missing. although i do agree that teachers deserve a living wage and healthcare. all of us deserve no less. what bothered me about that piece is that every paragraph was about the capitalist’s favorite subject; “money!” finally, in the closing paragraph, the author mentioned the fact that teachers aren’t greedy but choose a career in education because we care about the students.
i do admire, so much, the work of all in the howard zinn project who realize that TRUTH is the responsibility of our education system. the koch brothers, as well as other corporate interests see “education” as an opportunity to indoctrinate. and that’s why i feel that a small raise for teachers is only a cosmetic measure. teacher are trained to “teach to the test” and the teacher is forbidden from even viewing the questions. as a professional educator she/he should select the material and create the lesson plans.
education is a responsibility and sacred gift from one generation to the next. education is given in love. education excites the imagination, encourages introspection and helps each student develop her/his unique talents. as we speak many public schools cannot refer to zinn’s “a people’s history___” or his version especially for young people. we must do the right thing by our kids! if we wish for a better society, the entire system must be revised.
Included should to the other forms of slavery that are also reflected in this history. They are debt bondage, sexual slavery, forced labor and chattel slavery.
What the Koch brothers are doing is nothing new. The US’s written history is full of twisted half truths and outright lies. The sad part is, other than a few exceptions, our young adults are taught these lies, with little if any counter instruction on the subject. Racism and slavery are always downplayed.
There is indeed more revionist histiory than factual histiry, just as there is more fake news than real news.
During the past four decades the ascension of the GOP, their faux news network and birther leader Trump have originated more revisionist history and fake news than all other sources combined.
What is it with Americans and slavery? Most countries, including the US abolished slavery in the 1800s. The US is the only one where people are still whining and wringing their hands about it. Get over it already, it was a bad thing to do, you did the right thing and abolished it. Teach about it and get over it. It’s been more than 150 years.
In Europe people been killing each other for centuries, last time less than 100 year ago and now they have economic union.
The Zinn foundation that sponsored this piece reflects the academic chops of Howard Zinn who wrote a history book about the US from first settlers to the present. The right wing just hates that book because, among many other things, it makes no pretense that the US really cares about equality, and worst of all, it is extensively documented. There is just no way the right wing can refute it. All they can do is make laws censoring its use and removing it from libraries.
Charles Koch is unquestionably the mastermind behind the precipitous decline of our society from the mid-1970’s until now. His subterfuge via the Kochtopus has led to this current vast wealth and income inequality, the decimation of the social safety net, the rise in college tuition and student debt, the neutering of union power, the rise of voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering, etc. Had it not been for his money and messianic proclivities, we would likely have single payer healthcare, free public higher education, a living wage, strong environmental protections, etc, all paid for by higher taxes on those who can easily afford to pay them, We would be living in a thriving social democracy, instead of in this two tiered society where the majority barely survive. May Charles Koch and his genocidal ilk rot in hell.
The point is, it was not abolished. Read and understand SuspiraDeProfundis post above. This clause is still used today.
Then we still have the mindset that slavery and the degradation of people of color is righteous in many pockets of our society. This mindset is handed down from one generation to another. Until this is overcome (with education and co-mingling of different races), we will never “get over it” as you put it.
The Koch brothers are evil and un-American pigs who are hell bent upon making all working people into their slaves. Read Democracy in Chains. Like Adolf Hitler, they are perverting history and our education system with lies, perverting the Christian religion, and infiltrating our government in every way possible.
Trump is a puppet of the Koch brothers and their fellow oliogharch Putin. The goal of the Koch brothers is to take over all media, schools, government, religion, education and universities, and the chambers of commerce, and every institution of our society in sneaky and devious Machiavellian ways in order to remake our society and rewrite our Constitution so that there is permanent minority rule by far right wing Ayn Rand libertarians. All they need to do this is get two more republican governorships! This is why all the republican gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and overly strict voter ID laws, so they can commit election fraud. They are getting away with it! They want to create a massively bigoted fascist phony heretical dominionist Christian theocratic oliogharchic totalitarian dictatorship and force it upon us, where they will be free to plunder the world’s fossil fuels and minerals without any regard for the environment or the health or safety of ordinary people who will be their slaves, at the mercy of men without mercy.
This is the ultimate Anti-Christ agenda. They are in bed with the phony Religious Right who support Zionist Jews in their desire for a Holy War with Islam in the name of their god, which is really Mammon. These Jews want a war with Islam so that they can destroy the mosque on the Temple Mount and rebuild the Temple of Solomon where the end times will come once something called the abomination of desolation is put into the Temple. These heretical fake Christians who say that they are working for God, are really the agents of the Anti-Christ, but they think that when they cause the end of the world, or when it happens by itself, that God will rapture THEM up to heaven and leave everyone else to suffer the tribulation!
They are so arrogant and entitled that they just don’t get who God really is. They think that they are blessed because they are rich and physically healthy and that the poor and sick are being punished by God for their sins while they are the godly ones! Satan has deceived them! They use lies, greed, cruelty, deception, war, and theivery to accomplish their ends. They really ought to read the real Gospel of Jesus Christ and pay attention and even take notes if they are having trouble getting it, because that is not what Christ says at all. They are liars, hypocrites and Pharisees that were the enemies of Christ. Christ called them the sons of hell and the brood of vipers, and that is who they really are!
These multimillionaire Koch brothers have hundreds of billions of dollars. Much more than the oft demonized Soros that they always talk about. There are other billionaires involved in this group also, like Sheldon Adelson, and the Mercers, Eric Prince, Betsy DeVos, and others. This plot to take over America by an internal coup makes these people the most severe internal enemies of everything that America stands for. Their evil seditious plot is to permanently destroy our democratic republic to give themselves absolute power and minority rule, with themselves being that minority. A similiar plot happened in Chile under Pinochet, and now, even though Pinochet is long gone, the Chilean people still cannot get back their democracy or restore majority rule because their vile Constitution, written by a mentor of Charles Koch, has put their Democracy in Chains permanently!
The enemy is not outside America. It is here, in our own country. This internal enemy is the greatest threat to our freedom and democracy in our history and we must stop them any way we can. If it were up to me, I would either execute them for treason, or deport them permanently to Russia. Don’t let them fool you. It is not terrorists, nor Islamic people, or blacks, or women, or gays, or immigrants, or any other group, except these people and those aligned with them, like the KKK, Nazis, and white supremacists, who are the real enemies of America and the real threat to our safety and freedom. I will fight them any way I can until the day I die!
Profundis: Yes, and this clause is still being used today in our for profit prisons, who are a growth industry on the stock market! They need more and more prisoners, so justice in America is now a sick joke, especially for the poor of any race! See a recent article of how prisoners are being put into phony for profit drug rehabs where there is no rehab, but instead they are forced to work in unsafe chicken processing factories in Oklahoma, as slave laborers today in 2018! This is all part of the Koch brothers and their allies in factory farming’s plot to enslave the American people in an unjust system of criminal criminal injustice and vile exploitation. Whenever one of these slave prisoners is injured, they have even found a way to steal their Social Security disability money! It is unbelievable!
Not enough people care after forty years where being a caring person makes you socially unacceptable. Ordinary Americans don’t care about prisoners anyway because they wrongly assume that prisoners are really guilty and deserve their “punishment”. This is how they are getting away with terrible injustice. These thugs start with marginalized groups first, then move on to other groups, until every ordinary person is persecuted. No one pays attention until it is too late. This is exactly how it happened in Nazi Germany! This is why everyone needs to care about injustice even when it is not about themselves personally. We are all at risk as long as anyone suffers from injustice! Injustice affects us all!
It is past time for change. The wind is finally changing. Greed and selfishness has not worked out as the right wing elites and corporate democrats said it would. It is time for all good Americans to roll up our sleeves and rise up and take back control of our country and our government and make democracy work for us again and put the billionaire oliogharchs back in their place or deport them all to Russia!
Chloe1: Yes, I agree! We should round him up and deport both the Koch brothers and all of their co-conspirators to Russia for treason! They are the worst enemies of our democracy and freedom we have ever had. Have you read Democracy in Chains? These men are the internal enemies that all American patriots are supposed to defend our country against. I am not much of a freedom fighter. I am sixty years old today and disabled and in chronic pain, but I will fight these guys any way that I can as long as I live! The Koch brothers and their ilk are the enemies of God, Jesus Christ, and our country and our democratic republic! That makes them my arch enemies as well!
Welcome to 1984 and double speak. I would equate the koch brothers with the nationalist socialist party of germany = Nazis in the house. Rewriting history is the first step in brainwashing a populace. Evil people seek out to mandate an agenda that buries truth in favor of control. How different is this than the vile history of communism? Subduction and submission are the outcome. If ever there was a threat to America it is this slimmy side tracking to control our young. Really truth is not that hard to handle if your honest and have integrity. CHRISTIANS listen up. You looking for idolatry in all the wrong places. Money and its quest is no different than many old testament stories of long ago. Oh, by the way it ended badly for the Jewish Nation.
Racism has roots that predate the slave trade in this country. In a strange loop of logic, when we white Americans talk about slavery, we can avoid addressing racism, because slavery has been abolished. Although slavery has been mostly abolished, racism has never been addressed, and has been allowed to flourish. It remains deeply embedded in our institutions and has created two very different American experiences. The issue isn’t as much slavery, a murderous by-product of racism, as it is racism itself: black, brown, yellow, white and in between. Throw a little religion in there, it becomes the perfect recipe to keep Americans divided and create openings for malignant cancers like the Kochs to kill the promise of equality, equity and self-governance.
