Today in Labor History March 21, 1937: Palm Sunday, cops killed 19 unarmed men, women and children marching in a protest in Ponce, Puerto Rico. They injured another 200 civilians. The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party organized the march to commemorate the abolition of slavery in 1873 and to protest the imprisonment of the party’s leaders by the U.S. The police used Thompson submachine guns, rifles and pistols, shooting marchers in the back, during the Ponce Massacre. A commission placed the blame for the massacre on the U.S. appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Blanton Winship. However, no one, including Winship, nor any of the shooters, were ever prosecuted or punished.
International Labour Organization report says profits have risen to £184bn a year, with 27m people globally trapped in modern slavery. Sex traffickers are making an average of £21,000 a year from each of their victims as profits from forced labour around the world soar, according to new estimates from the International Labour...
Today in Labor History March 13, 1848: The German revolutions of 1848-1849 began in Vienna. Middle class participants were committed to liberal principles, while working class revolutionaries fought for radical changes to their working and living conditions. The split between the classes facilitated their violent defeat by the aristocracy. Many fled Germany. Those who came to the U.S. were known as Forty-Eighters. Many of them became militant abolitionists and soldiers in the Union Army when the Civil War began.
Mar 10: On this date in 1913, Harriet Tubman died at the age of 90 or 91. She orchestrated the rescue of enslaved people using a network of antislavery activists known as the Underground Railroad, served as a spy and military advisor to Union troops during the Civil War, and was an activist for social justice in the post-war period.
Today in Labor History March 9, 1841: The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that freed the remaining 35 survivors of the Amistad mutiny. In 1839, Portuguese slave traders had illegally transported 52 Mende people from west Africa to Cuba, on the Amistad, in violation of European treaties against the slave trade. Joseph Cinque led his fellow captive Africans in a mutiny, killing the cook and captain, and forcing the remaining crew to return them to Africa. The crew tricked them and sailed up the Atlantic coast, presuming they would be intercepted by the U.S. Navy, which captured the ship near Montauk, Long Island. President Martin Van Buren wanted to send the prisoners back to Spanish authorities in Cuba to stand trial for mutiny. However, the Court recognized the mutineers’ rights as free citizens. Abolitionists raised funds for the mutineers’ defense. Former President John Quincy Adams, who opposed slavery, represented them in court.
Today in Labor History March 6, 1857: The Dred Scott decision by the U.S. Supreme Court opened up federal territories to slavery and denied citizenship to blacks. Dred Scott had sued for his family’s freedom, arguing that they had lived four years in the north, where slavery was illegal. The Court ruled 7-2 that people of African descent weren’t U.S. citizens and thus had no standing before the court.
In Episode 23, Bill shares the story of a Moms for Liberty Charter School opening and their use of the 1776 Project curriculum. When then watch a PragerU cartoon where Christopher Columbus shrugs his shoulders at slavery.
"The reality is that self-immolation registers the near-total impotence of protest—and even public opinion as such—in the face of a military apparatus completely insulated from external accountability. It the rawest testament to the absence of effective courses of action. When war consists primarily of unelected men in undisclosed locations pouring fire on the heads of people we will never know on the other side of the world, there is very little that ordinary people can do to arrest its progress. But we still have our bodies, and it is in the nature of fire to refuse containment."
💛 “Frederick Douglass: An American in Ireland” (Part II)
Frederick Douglass lectured on anti-slavery, temperance, women’s rights, racism, and social justice for all. He also edited and owned newspapers.
—Sylvia Wohlfarth
💛 “Frederick Douglass: An American in Ireland” (Part I)
The most celebrated Black man of his era, Frederick Douglass was also the most photographed American of any race in the 19th century.
—Sylvia Wohlfarth
If the cost of 950 investigations was $8 million, that means that the maximum risk exposure (magnitude of cost wrt probability of occurrence) of a company across the industry is $8421/child at the worst. If they're catching 1% (I'd be shocked if they investigated more than that.), that means it effectively costs $84.21 to use a child for illegal labor.
When you compare the cost savings of using slave labor (like forced prison labor) over legal labor, it quickly becomes clear why abolition is the only sane route.
Enforcement is 0 by definition (government-run by UNICOR), therefore no amount of fines, and even a $0.01 savings is an incentive to force people into the prison system.
Sexual exploitation drives 37% rise in profits from forced labour, UN International Labour Organization says (www.theguardian.com)
International Labour Organization report says profits have risen to £184bn a year, with 27m people globally trapped in modern slavery. Sex traffickers are making an average of £21,000 a year from each of their victims as profits from forced labour around the world soar, according to new estimates from the International Labour...