Robinson Crusoe’s ethics are rooted in his inherent imperialism. Being the only representative of his race and culture for 27 of his 28 years upon the island, and considering both superior to all others, he not only endeavors—regardless if it is applicable, necessary, or even viable—to replicate the society from which he came but, through these means, to reign supreme over his environment. Crusoe is culpable because he acknowledges that he has been freed from socially-defined standards and, more importantly, that such standards might, in themselves, be questionable yet, after rationalizing the ethically justifiable course of action, he frequently opts for a more self-aggrandizing, convenient, or profitable avenue.

For example, he criticizes the Spanish Inquisition as being unjust yet forces a Caribbean native whom he has liberated from being cannibalized—not on moral grounds but in order to obtain a servant—to assimilate to his Anglo-Saxon lifestyle. Crusoe never bothers to ask the native’s given name. Instead, to commemorate the day upon which Crusoe acted so gallantly, “the creature” is nonchalantly dubbed “Friday.” Crusoe then demands that the native be clothed despite Friday being uncomfortable in such adornments and, moreover, the climate not requiring such. Furthermore, Crusoe rarely inquires into Friday’s perspectives, customs, or culture (the latter has to offer them), thus implying that Crusoe believes his ways to be implicitly superior as he proceeds to teach Friday to speak English and convert him to Christianity. It is worthy of note that, when Friday is rescued, he grovels at his liberator’s feet. Crusoe does not lift Friday up but permits him to remain in his subservient position so as to establish the desired hierarchy (he has Friday refer to him as “Master”) as well as to satiate his narcissism. Astoundingly, Crusoe allows this to occur not once but twice. (Similarly, prior to Crusoe’s discovery of humans upon the island, he revels in his “sovereignty” over the island’s fauna, as he observes that he has capricious control over whether it lives or dies.) The epitome of Crusoe’s moral myopia toward Friday resides in Crusoe’s lack of empathy after having once been enslaved himself. Most pointedly, being free of societal customs and beliefs, there is no alibi for why he continues to uphold the institution of slavery, especially considering that, for several years, Crusoe and Friday are the island’s only inhabitants. Granted, he does not literally bind Friday in shackles and chains, however, he treats him as an inferior and in a manner which, if back in Europe, he would by no means apply to a fellow Briton.

It is with such happenstance convenience that Crusoe reinforces his religious views before summarily dismissing them. For instance, after several languid gestures toward reverence, once Crusoe is born-again, he maintains a calendar and observes the Sabbath. Yet, when he loses track of the date, his devotion subsequently subsides. Additionally, when he notices that barley has sprouted near his “castle” (shelter), being unable to reconcile how it arrived there, he attributes its presence to God’s will. He then recalls that he’d discarded several husks which might have contained seeds and dismisses divine intervention as being the culprit. Obviously, Crusoe’s level of devotion is dependent upon need (such as illness or desperation) or occurrences which he cannot readily rationalize and his theological fervor abruptly diminishes once he no longer requires assistance or deduces a non-supernatural cause for previously inexplicable events. Not surprisingly, he considers abandoning his faith in favor of another once he is rescued because doing so would be more lucrative (Catholicism is the reigning religion in Brazil, which is where his tobacco plantation resides).

Even in the wake of society, Crusoe is unable to sever himself from his entrepreneurial tendencies and, however futile, desire for material and monetary possessions. Despite his conjectures that, like Jonah, he might have been cast out for his sins (Crusoe would have never found himself stranded had he not set out to sea to procure more slaves), he produces more food than he can consume only to watch it rot. He practices animal husbandry and agriculture after conceding that the island aptly provides for his needs without having to resort to such labor-intensive activities. He even goes so far as to craft a table and chair. As noted, he has a “castle,” but he also possesses another shelter-cum-estate as well, which he refers to as his “bower.” Even after admitting that money has no intrinsic value in a tender-free existence, Crusoe hordes every coin he finds. Lastly, toward the end of his “reign” upon the island, the self-described “king” begins cataloguing people as possessions: He refers to the island’s inhabitants as his “subjects,” prisoners as “my people,” and even perceives specific (and in his mind, civilized) individuals as being his own, i.e. “the Spaniard” quickly metamorphoses into “my Spaniard.”

Other instances of Crusoe’s moral hypocrisy and logistic incongruity include his consenting that cannibals might well be acting upon political or cultural principles and, as a result, it may not his place to pass judgment upon them. (Friday confirms this when he informs Crusoe that cannibalism is the consequence of warfare and is not a standard practice, as evidenced by 17 stranded Britons currently residing peacefully amongst Friday’s people.) Nevertheless, and despite his newfound religiosity, Crusoe—against his better judgment and moral conscious—proceeds to slaughter cannibals in the name of God. He never reconciles the paradox in his condemnation of the cannibals’ capital punishment and his own country’s like sentence for mutiny.

Not surprisingly, Crusoe hasn’t any friends. Rather, his associations are strictly limited to accomplices, acquaintances, or business partners. (After he is rescued, he does go on to marry but never cites his wife by name.) Every individual’s worth is based upon the person’s utilitarian value as Crusoe refuses to permit sentimentality to intervene in his decision-making. This is best evidenced in his selling of Xury, a Moorish youth who aided Crusoe in escaping enslavement, which Crusoe later regrets—not because he misses the boy (though he does)—but because he is in need of additional labor on his Brazilian plantation. Dauntingly, when he is rescued, Crusoe leaves the island to British criminals without attempting to notify those who have set off to sea in search for help—the aforementioned Spaniard and Friday’s father—that there are new, dangerous inhabitants awaiting them upon their return. These individuals are not even an afterthought in that, in lieu of the maritime risks involved atop the political tension between Spain and Britain, Crusoe never bothers to inform us of the rescue mission’s fate, even after returning to the island years later. This omission is all the more insulting given that the seafarers aided Crusoe in retaining control of the island after mutineers came ashore.

What perhaps best outlines the Crusoe’s Machiavellian nature is his reaction to a single footprint which mysteriously appears on the beach one day. Though, upon his initial appearance upon the island, he longed to be rescued, Crusoe gradually becomes apprehensive of any sign of human life, as seen in him automatically assuming the enigmatic mark to be the sign of a hostile presence. Crusoe’s paranoia stems from fear that his comfortable state of existence and omnipotence might be compromised whereas before, when he was unsure of his ability to survive, he longed for salvation. He fears, not only cannibalistic natives, but also Spaniards. Yet ironically, fellow Britons prove to be his greatest threat (thereby negating Crusoe’s ethnocentricity). His megalomania is exemplified by his inability and unwillingness to admit fault even after he has returned to Europe. Various dates in his calendar are blaringly incorrect and, though a simple pen stroke would eradicate the errors and the reader would be none the wiser (while saying nothing of the intellectual integrity that most authors would insist upon in acknowledging the mistakes so as to better represent the conditions under which they were operating), Crusoe chooses to ignore them.

Though he does possess a few redeeming qualities, such as resourcefulness and determination, Daniel Defoe’s character of Robinson Crusoe is by no means a hero or even an admirable human being. He is an unapologetic racist, imperialist, fickle theist, and megalomaniac par excellence. He continually shirks moral obligation in favor of activities wherein he will profit, be it financially or socially, or which will appease his narcissism. His lethargy is only superseded by potential harm or ennui. He displays little moral development in that he rewards those who were faithful to his financial interests while he was stranded—not out of respect or gratitude—but anxiety and vanity respectively: Fearing that the Inquisition may result in martyrdom, he sells his plantation and donates the proceeds, of which “The world will seldom be able to show the like of.” During his valediction, Crusoe declares that he has since cast off once again, thereby implying that—to our knowledge—he might have committed many of the same moral atrocities on his “new adventure.” And why not? What evidence do we have to the contrary that, after 28 years on a desert island, he is any the wiser since this ten-year voyage opens with his return to the island where (in true capitalistic spirit) he divides “his colony[’s]” land into plots before announcing to its populace that it is not permitted to leave?

We wrote that: “It is in the best interest of the United States to directly support Haitian democracy, good governance, development, self-reliance and self-sufficiency. This cannot be done if the Haitian government has to compete with foreign funded NGOs and charities who are not elected or accountable to the people of Haiti, but are predatory and promoting
dependency and their own organizations “interests for self-perpetuation in Haiti.”

All of these points, were replicas of the seven-points made in HLLN’s Haiti Policy Statement for the Obama Team, with added emphasis on demands, now that Clinton is the UN Special Envoy to Haiti that are already made in our FreeHaitiMovement Demands, particularly asking for the release of Haiti’s political prisoners, return of President Aristide and investigation of the Bush 2004 kidnapping and coup d’etat in Haiti.

Subsequent to Ezili’s HLLN issuing the 7-point statement on What Special UN Envoy Bill Clinton may do to help Haiti, we posted an article, from the Nouvelliste paper in Haiti, that reported that 600 checks being given out at the Ministry of Public Health in Haiti were given to folks who never worked there. We posted the article (which is in French) and noted that NO ARRESTS were made or being contemplated by the puppet Preval/Pierre Louis government.

These criminals are getting paid every day; these “zombi” employers get away scott-free with this crime. Meanwhile, our poor people are dying on the open seas, being eaten alive by sharks, rammed by Turk and Cacaos Coast Guards for just trying to find a better life elsewhere. Or, our 9 million are starving in Haiti in intense hunger where they are so hungry their stomachs burn as if they’ve swallowed Clorox or battery acid. Thus, the post pointed out how in Haiti the educated and well connected commit crimes with impunity and are not sent to jail.

We contrasted that, in particular, with the over 6,440 very poor Haitians in jails, many since 2004, most for no crimes at all, never, ever, seeing a judge or having a trial and pushed, again, for speedy trial and immediate release. We referred to our statement — The slavery in Haiti the mainstream press won’t expose — about how the rich get away with murder in Haiti while the poor suffer mercilessly, die and get imprisonment, setting forth the following example taken directly from the Free Haiti Demands’s resolution.

Release of all political prisoners

Many Haitians from poor neighborhoods were summarily rounded up into preventive or indefinite detention during the 2004 Bush/Bicentennial coup d’etat without ever being charged, tried or convicted of any crime. As of 2008, it is reported that there are 8,204 prisoners in Haiti and of this only 1,764 have been convicted of a crime. Before the 2004 coup d’etat, Haiti barely had 3,000 prisoners throughout the country. [During the coup, the military and their militias emptied the jails, killed police and guards to recruit members to bolster up their small ranks. So, most of the 3,000 were freed by the US-financed coupnappers and Boca Raton regime imposed on Haiti, first with US firepower then through this UN proxy military power for the Western powers].

Today in UN-occupied Haiti, more than 6,440 still await trial, remain in jail, some going on for five years of prolonged detention, without ever having been charged, tried or convicted of any crime. These prison population statistics come from the 2008 US State Department Human Rights Report on Haiti and do “not include the large number of persons held in police stations around the country in ‘preventive detention’ (without a hearing or filed charges).” Also, many Haitians were summarily disappeared post the 2004 coup d’etat. There must be a complete investigation of such disappearances and political kidnappings, including the disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine.

Release Haiti’s children

At end of 2008, approximately 88 percent of the country’s 316 incarcerated minors were in prolonged detention, not charged, or having seen a judge, or been tried or convicted on any crime, some “since 2005.” This figure does not account for children confined with adults or held in indefinite detention at police stations around the country. (See, State Department 2008 Human Rights Report: Haiti).”

We noted, as a preamble to the posting, our consternation. I wrote:

600 “zombi” checks and no arrest? But if this included some ti malere – poor guy or gal – from Site Soley, he/she would be vilified and the jail keys thrown away as so many are experiencing right now for never having committed a crime – just put in jail, post coup detat 2004, for being poor and suspected of having voted for Aristide. But the suited criminals ak kravat e bon rad – the “good,” literate, well-connected and (educated?) folks enjoy complete impunity as they fleece the poorest… and the beat goes on.

An HLLN reader sent us an email giving us more examples of such injustices, expounding more on the vile systemic corruption in Haiti supported by the UN occupation and US coup d’etat authorities and implemented by the “schooled” and suit-wearing bourgeois Haitian. The reader suggested we should have translated the piece I was referring to where 600 checks were being paid out to educated and connected folks who never worked at the Ministry of Health, yet no arrests. (See: 600 chèques ”zombi” récupérés, aucune arrestation.)

This detailed HLLN comment by one of our members (who prefers to remain anonymous out of fear of being marginalized, or worse) gives a good picture of the impunity raging in Haiti that is carried out just by the tiny few, emboldened by US policies favoring dictatorship and military rule. The majority are just turned into restaveks — servants — by the ruling Haitian oligarchy. That’s the real slavery in Haiti, and the mainstream won’t ever expose it!

But their time is ending. Haiti’s majority will, one day soon, be able to vote in a President who will not be ousted by the US because he looked out for the interests of the people of Haiti, not foreigners, not the oligarchy nor the corrupt and greedy charitable NGOs maintaining the status-quo. That time is at hand and we who help give voice to the voiceless in Haiti and denounce these injustices claim it for those who can’t.

The corruption of the ruling Haitian oligarchy, their UN/US/Euro military back-up and all of their rank greed, terror and tyranny simply reinforces our commitment to un-tethering the voiceless 9-million Blacks from the cruelties and greed of the 13 “white Haitian” families – Haiti’s ruling oligarchy and their sycophants and wannabees. The 600 Haitians who were fleecing the Ministry of Public Health ought to be arrested and tried. Money, power and profit ought not be the measure for guaranteeing liberty, health , shelter, freedom and justice to human beings. The lives of the materially poor, no matter their skin tone, are valuable.

The impoverished and imprisoned in Haiti, the more than 6,440 wasting in Haiti’s overcrowded jails, sleeping in shifts, being abused by guards, catching diseases that go untreated, starving to death, some in jail going on five years in UN/US-occupied Haiti, without ever being charged, tried or convicted of any crime, MUST BE RELEASED. Bill Clinton and Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, ought to stand for this and stop giving interviews and going to meetings with well-to-do Haitians, many uncaring about the plight of their brethrens, just talking about the “success” of the UN mission in Haiti.

Such Haitians are only interested in US/USAID/Clinton Global Initiative dollars that will maintain the status quo in Haiti. They do not care that the US kidnapped a Constitutionally elected president, presided over the anarchy and slaughter, and then sent in the UN to maintain their bicentennial “gains” in Haiti. They cringe at the mention of the name Aristide and want to forget the gross bicentennial injustice that took place on the 200th anniversary year of Haiti’s independence. They want US approval, US dollars, US invitations, not justice. They’ve settled for the path of least resistance and paternalism.

There’s hardly any mention in these pat-ourselves-on-our-own-backs feel-good sessions that only the very, very poor in Haiti and those who reject this vile global system of wealth distribution and voted against the ruling oligarchy and its agents end up in jail. None of those convicted thugs and drug dealers whom the US financed to help with the ouster of Haiti’s democratically elected government have spent time in jail. We won’t mention Louis Jodel Chanblain. Lame Timanchet, the Gran Ravine assassins and death squads still roam free in UN-occupied Haiti. It’s mostly folks who stood against the second unconstitutional ouster of the Aristide government who are in jail today, very poor Haitians.

In fact, US authorities keeps saying they are looking to arrest Guy Philippe, the military leader of the coup against president Aristide, for drug dealing. Yet Guy Philippe, accused by Human Rights Watch of being a death squad leader, roams free in UN-occupied Haiti, still at large, last seen, I’m told, a few weeks ago, being interviewed on CNN! I wouldn’t be surprised if this were true. I vividly remember, sitting in my dying mother’s hospital bed, during the 2004 coup d’etat rape and rampage, watching Wolf Blitzer interviewing this Special Forces’ trainee and Haiti assassin, calm as you please asking him if he planned to run for President!

It’s been a long, endless, bloody trek to here from then and the suffering and humiliation continues for us pro-democracy and justice Haitians.

The US and poverty pimping-”International friends of Haiti,” create the circumstances and allows thugs and drug dealers to roam free, prohibits President Aristide from returning from exile in South Africa, deports Haitians back to storm-ravaged and coup d’etat destabilized Haiti, presides over the UN occupation, saying nothing about the UN and foreign forces’ raping and molesting Haitians, trafficking in children, killing of civilians and the unfair imprisonments. President Preval chauffeurs Special UN Envoy Bill Clinton around, all smiles, as the people flee on rickety boats, die of starvation, curable diseases, or wrongful imprisonment. He never mentions the UN rapes, coup d’etat killings or indefinite detentions. In fact, the Haitian Parliament, in a rare moment, raised the minimum wage from 70 gourdes (or $1.75 per day) to 200 gourdes (about $5 a day or .63 cents per hour) for an eight-hour workday. President Preval, citing the US-HOPE II Act, vetoed it. The act allows for duty-free exports of clothing to the U.S.

Although labor costs are a tiny fraction of the prices of goods, it seems the President of Haiti is worried that if he raises the minimum wage to the equivalent of 0.63 cents an hour for desperately poor Haitian workers, US businesses would no longer be able to sell US consumers clothes and shoes produced in Haiti, but from somewhere else where labor is cheaper. Now, the proposed $5 raise still keeps Haiti at the lowest minimum wage in the Western Hemisphere, and less than half the industrial minimum wage in the neighboring Dominican Republic. But big business are outraged, OUTRAGED, by the very notion of paying Black Haitians the increase to about 0.63 cents per hour! They basically, as per usual, want to use the historically low Haitian wage to bargain with globally and further drive down wages or keep them from rising elsewhere. This private sector — enslavement sector — depends on Haiti’s impoverishment. That’s the truth of the matter.

In fact, President Jean Bertrand Aristide raising the minimum wage from 36 gourdes to 70 gourdes (about 0.22 U.S. cents an hour!) six-years ago was part of the reason the Bush Administration and Haitian oligarchy got angry enough to violently overthrow him in 2004, just as the Honduran elite with Washington have done, in part, to President Manuel Zelaya because he raised the Honduran minimum wage.

It seems clear that Wall Street can get angry not Main Street and that their profit interests are valued above human life, health and liberty.

So, if a Latin American president raises the minimum wage or some such no no that hinders Messrs.-Let’s-Hoard-It-All’s profit margins, it’s perfectly alright for the corporate, corrupt and greedy elites to get angry enough to turn to financing coup d’etat, war, indefinite detentions and torture.

Apparently a minimum wage of 0.63 cents per hour to desperately impoverished Haitians will hurt US consumers and big business, according to Haitian President Preval. But 0.38 cents per hour (or $3 per day) is enough according to Preval, although poor Haitians have to pay high US-prices to the mercenary families (Haitian oligarchy) for imported US goods in Haiti: rice, soap, oil, clothes, food, toothpaste, shampoo, all supplies, etc.

Here’s what a young Haitian from Site Soley, who is probably dead now or rotting in prison for his dissent to the ouster and occupation, had to say right before the 2004 coup d’etat in a demonstration to stop the ouster:

… it’s this tiny group of folks who want to continue monopolizing everything in Haiti. Because for 200 years everything has been in their hands. They sell us our food, what we drink, all that we must have to live. They are the ones selling it to us…” (Go to the transcript of the video, When Haiti Was Free — video evidence that media lies led to occupation not only in Iraq but in Haiti).

Ultimately, pressure from Preval and the Oligarchy serving foreign business interests in Haiti, pushed the Haitian parliament to rescind the $5 per day and vote in a mere $3.75 per day (47 cents per hour) minimum wage.

Last year, gasoline in Haiti was $6 U.S. dollars per gallon at the pumps. The monopoly families who control all imports, many times charge Haitians higher prices than goods and staples would cost to buy in the US. 70% of the population is unemployed. Many work in the informal sector (street vendors, market women, peasant farmers, et al) or depend only on Diaspora remittances. Only some 250,000 people of Haiti’s 9 million Blacks have jobs covered by the minimum salary law. But the 0.47 cent an hour won’t cover much more than food and transportation to work and is more about guaranteeing huge profits for foreign multi-national corporations such as Levi’s, Disney, Wal-Mart and Hanes.

Bill Clinton’s commitment to bringing more of such “investors” into Haiti isn’t investment and certainly not about raising Haitian standard of living or long term development. The majority’s access to health care, political freedom, food, clean water, schooling, social justice and security from arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention is worst than before the 2004 Bush coup d’etat and UN/US occupation. The UN mission makes more than $600million per year in Haiti, their soldiers live in hotels, have turned Haiti into a brothel, a penal colony and may be seen in their shorts at the beach on the weekends. With no living wage and the odds so stacked against them, it’s no wonder hopeless Haitians are fleeing to shark-infested waters on rickety, overcrowded boats.

And imagine the millions of dollars being siphoned out of Haiti by the schooled Haitians — the coup d’etat Haitians, who don’t pay taxes and whom this US-puppet government supports with UN/US firepower, diplomatic and media power, at the ready. In fact, the Oligarchy and foreigners are making so much money in Haiti, since the 2004 coup d’etat, Haiti is no longer the “poorest in the Western Hemisphere, Nicaragua is! (See also “Haiti’s Riches“).

Meanwhile human rights and advocacy networks, like Ezili’s HLLN, are marginalized by the International friends of Haiti, by Haiti’s ruling oligarchy and their wanabees, for urging justice be done in Haiti and for the poor and speaking against the indefinite incarceration of poor people without voices. The danger to us who denounce the reality and tell the truth that is hidden behind the headlines on Haiti is not imagined.

Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, one of ours, was disappeared in UN-occupied Haiti on August 12, 2007, not long after he gave an interview denouncing the coup d’etat, the UN and the Haitian oligarchy.

The US government must stay out of our affairs and let us run our country. Each time they organize a coup d’état in Haiti – we have already 35 or 36 coups d’état in our history – we have to start over. This US policy of wanting to control everything in Haiti is blocking development as well as political, social or sociopolitical progress… (–Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, from an interview entitled “Sovereignty and Justice in Haiti.”)

There has been no investigation into the disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine. Nothing. But it is par for the course and also very telling about the reprehensible Haitian economic elite’s and their wannabees’ mentality of wanting to be on the “winning team” no matter how criminal, unjust and stank that is!

Have these retards (bafyòti) ever heard of “Do the right thing” or, “Fight the Power-that-be!” Should we send them the soundtrack? Oh yeah, I forgot, Bill Clinton just told them yesterday at that Miami Conference “not to be hostile” when pointing out injustice and demanding justice and/or TPS! Yup, it’s that Louis Gates no, no. Can’t be Angry-While-Black thing! Besides, Clinton’s gonna bring foreign investments (Ndòki) to Haiti!

President Preval has outsourced the Haitian presidency to Bill Clinton to go begging for aid charity not justice and to bring more folks from the enslavement sector to Haiti. The plan for Haiti’s development is for Bill Clinton, per the dreams of Paul Collier/Ban Ki Moon, to entice more transnational companies, particularly big textile companies, perhaps like Coteminas from Brazil, to Haiti that shall feed off Haiti’s impoverishment and slave wages. (See also “Obama’s offered HOPE is sweatshop slavery“).

Uhmmm, the Haitians we know at HLLN wanna know, when is Santa Claus-Clinton and the US coup d’etat instigators going to respect the $2 billion REAL AND DIRECT INVESTMENT of Haitians from the Diaspora to Haiti that’s destroyed by the wannabees and Franco-PHONIES — moun ak kravat e bel ròb yo — and their corrupt Oligarchy in Haiti, and in the US.

Naturally, volumes have been written about John Brown, his life, dreams, anti-slavery escapades and the culmination of it all–the raid on Harper’s Ferry, his trial and execution for treason. From WEB DuBois’ biography to the fictionalized tome titled Cloudsplitter by US author Russel Banks, the number of words written about Brown rival those written about the man that history knighted to carry the war against slavery to its ultimate end, Abraham Lincoln. One of the best of these works is the recently republished The Old Man: John Brown at Harper’s Ferry by Truman Nelson. First published in 1973, when elements in the New Left had taken on Brown’s mantle in their attempt to end US imperialism and racism by setting off bombs in buildings and black liberation fighters were being hunted down by the federal government and its allied forces, Nelson’s work focuses solely on the raid in Harper’s Ferry and its aftermath.

It is a riveting story told in a captivating narrative that takes the reader into that small town in the West Virginia mountains. The physical details are here–the planning, recruiting, purchase and smuggling of arms, and the training. So is a discussion of the political philosophy behind Brown’s endeavor. It is a simple philosophy and one still worth striving for–a nation without slavery and with equal opportunity and choice for all. The Old Man describes a nation splitting apart. Anti-slavery legislators attacked in Congress by men whose very lives are bound to the practice of the bondage of other humans. Men who would never consider breaking a law tired of waiting for the political system to end slavery deciding to fund Brown’s insurrection. The Christian churches split between those who would use the Bible to justify slavery and those whose interpretation forces them to conclude that enslaving other humans is the work of Satan. Financial interests looking after their own interests who care little about the morals of slavery but only about the money that can be made by supporting it or ridding the nation of it.

Through it all, John Brown’s terrible swift sword remained true. He saw slavery as the abomination it was and understood the northern capitalists who did not align themselves with the abolitionists to be the opportunists they were. His vision of a post-slavery United States did not see the black man or woman as a lesser being but as a genuine equal. This was something that was even beyond the thought process of many abolitionists. Yet, it mattered not to Brown. Some called this madness, yet it was merely the single mindedness of a man with a just mission. Compromise rarely extended to Brown’s approach and never to his principles. Nelson tells us that he was not unreasonable, just certain of his reason for being on earth.

The raid on Harper’s Ferry was to be the first salvo in the fight to free the slaves. Indeed, in a harbinger of the coming War Between the States, it was future Confederate General Robert E. Lee whose unit was sent to quell the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. Despite the arrest of Brown and most of his co-conspirators and their hanging, that raid served its purpose. The foul institution of slavery was wiped from the United States. We continue to deal with its legacy. As the recent refusal by a federal appeals court in Georgia to commute Troy Davis’ death sentence and the ongoing mockery of justice known as the trial of the San Francisco 8 continues in California make clear, the bonds of slavery have been removed, but the forces that represent the slavers’ legacy have not disappeared. As for the meaning of John Brown’s armed attempt to free slaves in Harper’s Ferry, it continues to prove its meaning to the oppressed in the United States.

Abolition of slavery in 1865 did not put an end to racial discrimination. As a result, the U.S. Congress had to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to address this problem. However, the law was rarely enforced. What was worse was that the U.S. Supreme Court in 1883 actually declared the Act as unconstitutional on the plea that the Congress had no power to regulate the conduct of individuals and that the Fourteenth Amendment only prohibited discrimination by the State and not individuals. Furthermore, in yet another retrograde ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court on 18 May 1896 upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the doctrine of “separate but equal.” As fallout of this shocking ruling, in 1905 under the leadership of Dr.W.E.B.DuBois, a Harvard scholar, a group of 32 prominent African-Americans met to discuss the challenges facing “people of color” in the U.S. and to chalk out possible strategies and solutions. The group drew up a plan for forceful action demanding adult suffrage, equal economic and educational opportunities, full civil rights, and an end to segregation. Since the meeting was held at Niagara Falls, the initiative came to be known as the Niagara Movement.

The race riots that broke out in the summer of 1908 at Springfield, Illinois, the home of Abraham Lincoln, was a shocking reminder of racial divide that had pervaded even the Northern part of the United States. In a riot that raged for two days, a mob containing many of the town’s “best citizens,” killed and wounded scores of African-Americans, and drove thousands from the city. Reports about this incident brought together concerned citizens, who took initiative in founding the multi-racial National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on 12 February 1909, which coincided with the birth-centenary of President Abraham Lincoln. Those who took active interest in its formation include William English Walling, Mary Ovington, Ida Wells, Oswald Garrison Villard, Lillian Wald, and Moorfield Storey. The Niagara Movement merged with the NAACP.

In its early years, the NAACP concentrated on using the courts to attack “Jim Crow laws” and other disfranchising constitutional provisions. In 1913, the NAACP launched a public protest when President Woodrow Wilson officially introduced segregation into the Federal Government. In 1917, in Buchanan vs. Warley, the Supreme Court had to concede that States could not restrict and officially segregate African-Americans into residential districts. The organization also successfully challenged the notorious “White Primary” system in the South. Southern States had created White-only primaries as another way of barring African-Americans from the political process. Since Southern States were one-party States dominated by the Democratic Party, the primaries were the only competitive contests. In 1944, in Smith vs. Allwright, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the White Primary. 1915-1944 was also the period when the African-American population and the entire working class had to endure the wrath of the rejuvenated, and reportedly five million strong, Ku Klux Klan in its most aggressive phase. What was equally worse was that when McCarthyism ruled the roost in the U.S. from the second half of the 1940s to the mid-1950s, the proponents of McCarthyism chose to disregard the fact that apartheid was a legal institution in the U.S. at that time.

A crowning achievement was NAACP’s legal victory on 17 May 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education opposed segregation and rejected separate White and Colored school systems, which by implication overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine that had been legally sanctioned in 1896. (However, integration was easier said than done; bitter struggles had to waged for ending school segregation – the problem has not been eradicated to this day. (¹ ) A major change from mere legal action to a strategy of mass action took place in 1955 following the Rosa Parks incident. On 01 December 1955, Rosa Parks, who was Secretary of the Montgomery Chapter of NAACP, was arrested and fined for refusing to give up her seat to a White man on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The uproar that followed her arrest inspired the launching of the largest civil disobedience movement in the U.S. history spearheaded by NAACP and other civil rights organizations. It began with the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

At the initiative of Edgar Daniel Nixon, the President of the Montgomery Chapter of NAACP, a meeting of concerned people was held at which a decision was taken to set up an organization called “Montgomery Improvement Association” (MIA) to carry on the protest. The meeting also selected Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the charismatic 25-year old newly appointed minister in one of the local churches (and one of the few among the local clergy who was then willing to take up the cause) as President of MIA. At the call of the MIA, starting from 05 December 1955, the vast majority of the town’s 50,000 African-American population refused to travel on public buses as a protest against segregated seating. The organizers initially used taxies driven by African-American drivers, who charged merely bus fare to transport the protesters. However, after city officials forbade that practice, MIA organized a well-networked system of carpools and church station wagons that enabled the protesters to carry on their routine work without being forced to depend on the racially segregated public bus system.

The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama on 04 June 1956 ruled that segregation on Alabama’s public buses was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After the State authorities challenged the Order, the U.S. Supreme Court on 13 November 1956 upheld the lower court’s ruling. However, the successful boycott, which lasted 381 days, was withdrawn only after the Supreme Court’s official documents were received on 20 December 1956, which formally put an end to segregation of Blacks and Whites on public buses in Alabama. Strangely enough, the said Supreme Court order was applicable only to the State of Alabama. (It was the U.S. Supreme Court Order of 05 December 1960 in Boynton vs. Virginia under the Interstate Commerce Act that made segregation in public transportation illegal all over the U.S.)

Nevertheless, the Montgomery struggle sparked off major anti-segregation boycotts across Southern United States. Martin Luther King, who was subsequently catapulted as the principal national leader of the U.S. civil rights movement, also took the initiative in forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957 to unite the Black churches behind the civil rights movement. Other organizations that were active in the campaign for civil rights include the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Some of the notable civil rights actions of that period were: the sit-in at Greensboro, North Carolina in February 1960; the Freedom Rides of 1961; the March on Washington on 28 August 1963; the Selma to Montgomery March in March 1965; and the voter registration campaigns. Martin Luther King termed the struggle for civil rights the “Southern Freedom Movement” because the struggle was for more than civil rights under the law; it was also about fundamental issues of freedom, respect, dignity, and economic and social equality.

There was fierce resistance from the pro-segregationist Whites in the Southern states against the civil rights movement; the opposition was particularly violent against Black voter registration and voting. On the one hand, the conservative governments of the Southern states resorted to police repression and arrests of civil rights activists on trumped-up charges. On the other hand, illegal White supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) often resorted to terrorism, bombings, murders and brutality to prevent Blacks from voting. Simultaneously, the White Citizen Council (WCC), which was founded in 1954 as the legal front of the KKK, resorted to economic retaliation to achieve the same end. (WCC re-established itself as Council of Conservative Citizens in 1985.) However, mainstream media accounts of the daily humiliation heaped on Southern Blacks and the level of segregationist violence & harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, had a direct impact on generating public opinion through out the United States more in favour of the civil rights movement.

Voting Rights Act

The growing protests against the discriminatory and segregationist laws finally led to their banning in the Southern States with the enactment of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 on 02 July 1964, more than a year after it was introduced on 11 June 1963 in the U.S. Congress. The momentum created by this momentous achievement resulted in the signing into law the Voting Rights Act on 06 August 1965. According to Alexander Keysser:

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a milestone in American political history. A curious milestone, to be sure, since the essence of the act was simply to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment [enacted on 03 February 1870], which had been law for almost a century.

Keyssar further added that:

The Voting Rights Act did not suddenly put an end to racial discrimination in southern politics. To a considerable degree, the locus of conflict shifted from the right to vote to the value of the vote… but reports from the field made clear, to the Justice Department and the CCR [Commission on Civil Rights], that racial obstacles to enfranchisement per se also persisted long after 1965. As a result, the act was renewed three times after its initial passage, despite a political climate that grew more conservative with each passing decade. In 1970… the bill was renewed for five years, while the ban on literacy tests was extended to all states. In 1975, the act was extended for an additional seven years, and its reach enlarged to cover “language minorities”, including Hispanics, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Asian Americans; the “language minorities” formulation was, in effect, a means of redefining race to include other groups who had been victims of discrimination.”²

The temporary ban on literacy test was made permanent when President Gerald Ford signed the Voting Rights Amendment 1975 into law on 06 August 1975. The 1975 Amendment also required States to provide bilingual ballots and registration materials in areas with significant language minority populations. In 1982, the Voting Right Act’s core provisions were extended for an additional twenty-five years along with amendments including a clause establishing the right of a voter in need of assistance – due to blindness, disability or illiteracy – to receive such assistance from a person of his or her choice. On 27 July 2006, the U.S. Congress extended the Voting Rights Act by another twenty-five years. Meanwhile, through the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified on 07 July 1971, the voting age was lowered from 21 years to 18 years.

Lengthy durational residential requirement was another obstacle to enfranchisement. It was removed through the 1970 amendment to the Voting Rights Act that prohibited States from imposing more than thirty-day residency requirement for registration in presidential elections; at the same time it mandated that those who had relocated less than thirty days prior to an election could cast absentee ballots from their previous state of residence.

Absence of proper voter registration procedures was yet another major problem. Voter registration laws, which first emerged in Massachusetts as early as 1801, gradually spread to most other states between 1870 and 1914. However straightforward the principle of voter registration may have been, the precise specifications of registration laws were different from State to State and were often complex and difficult to navigate and, thus, open to manipulation. That is to say, while the objectives of such laws were to keep track of voters and to prevent frauds, they were also often used as a means of keeping primarily African-American, working-class, immigrant, and poor voters from the polls. What was also unique in the United States was that the burden of registration was on the individual and not on the State. Since complicated registration procedures also resulted in low turnouts, under pressure from concerned voluntary groups, the federal government began to consider the imposition of national voter registration standards. The first major proposals for national legislation came in the 1970s. The most important among them was the National Uniform Registration Act proposed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. However, the proposal fell through because of strong opposition from the conservative Democrats and almost all the Republicans, who had begun supporting conservative causes after the election of Richard Nixon as President in 1968. .

Despite the defeat of the proposal, a broad coalition of progressive and good government groups kept up their efforts to reform the voter registration process and they proposed the idea of utilizing the motor vehicle bureaus as an agency for the purpose. It was noticed that some 85 per cent of adult citizens in the U.S. had driver’s licenses that periodically had to be renewed and already served as identification papers. However, it was not until 1992, that the proponents of reform managed to wean away a few key Republicans to their side and ensured the passing of what came to be popularly known as the Motor Voter Bill. Although President George Bush Sr. vetoed the legislation, less than a year later, his successor, Bill Clinton, signed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which took effect on 01 January 1995. The NVR Act was, as Alexander Keyssar has pointed out:

a critical step in dismantling the multiple impediments to voting that had been erected between 1850s and World War I. By the end of the twentieth century, what had been a long historical swing toward contraction of the franchise had been decidedly reversed.³

The Act has made it easier for all U.S. citizens to register to vote and to maintain their registration, whereas earlier not only was the process of registration very cumbersome but also it had to be revived every two years. The significant changes in the U.S. electoral laws that were introduced between 1965 and 1995 had opened-up the possibility of universal franchise for the first time in U.S. history, i.e., 219 years after it was founded, by removing almost all obstacles in the way of the right to register to vote. However, since the onus of voter registration is not on the State but is still on the individual, it has considerable adverse impact on the total number of registrations. (In contrast, India had introduced universal franchise as early as 1950 and the onus of voter registration is primarily on the State; that there are serious loopholes in India’s electoral laws and electoral processes is another matter.)

Voter Apathy

Despite the enactment of the NVR Act, the fact that a sizable section of the eligible voters are not involved in the electoral process is a symptom of a greater malady in the U.S. political system. Alexander Keyssar has attempted to explain this malady as follows:

Although the formal right to vote is now nearly universal, few observers would characterize the United States as a vibrant democracy, as a nation where the equality of political rights offers release to a host of engaged and diverse political voices. The most telling symptom of the malady is the low level of popular participation in American elections: in recent years, only half of all eligible adults have voted in presidential elections, and fewer than 40 per cent generally cast their ballots in other contests…. In theory, of course, nonvoting could be a sign of contentment, of a satisfied electorate. But portraits of the nonvoting population make this rosy interpretation difficult to sustain: turnout is lowest among the poor, minorities and the less well-educated…. The people who are least likely to be content and complacent (and most likely to need government help) are those who are least likely to vote.⁴

In this regard, Keyssar has made two other pertinent observations:

(1) that: “… it is not a coincidence that nonvoters come disproportionately from the same social groups that in earlier decades were targets of restrictions on the franchise itself. Despite the Motor Voter bill [NVR Act], there remain procedural obstacles to registration that have a heavy impact on the poor and uneducated”; and

(2) that: “Perhaps more important, the political institutions and culture that evolved during the era of restricted suffrage spawned a political system that offers few attractive choices to the nation’s least well-off citizens. The two major political parties operate within a narrow, ideological spectrum; the programmatic differences between candidates often are difficult to discern; the core social and economic policies of both parties are shaped largely by the desire to foster economic growth and therefore to satisfy the business and financial communities. Ideas and proposals that might appeal to the poor … have been beyond the pale of modern American political discourse.”⁵

During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, for example, reportedly only about 169 million of the total 213 million eligible voters were registered voters with no less than 44 million eligible voters remaining unregistered. Out of the registered voters about 131 million, or approximately 61.6 per cent of the eligible voters, had finally cast their ballot. In other words, over 38 per cent or 82 million of the eligible voters remained outside the purview of the electoral process and this section belong, as Keyssar’s study shows, overwhelmingly to the working class and the poor. The truth is that a sizable section of the working people – the salaried and the wageworkers – remain un-enamoured by the State and National electoral process because they do not believe that they can bring about significant changes in the system. Even as late as 2008, just 12.4 per cent of the working class were in a position to exercise their democratic rights even in a limited way at their work place by being able to join a union.⁶ When the working people are prevented from exercising their democratic rights at their work place, they can hardly be expected to take active part in State and National level election processes especially when the prospect of benefiting from such participation is hardly evident.

The declining trend in union membership, which had at one time risen from 12.2 per cent in 1915 to a peak of 32.3 per cent in 1953, is a clear indication of the enormous pressure that is brought to bear on the U.S. working class to conform to norms set by their employers. According to a report that was published in Monthly Review (April 2005):

Unions have become noticeably weaker; in 2004 union workers comprised only 12.5 percent of employed workers. Just twenty-one years before, density was 20.1 percent. In the private sector, union density in 2004 was 7.9, its lowest level since the early 1900s…. Union workers make much higher wages and more and better fringe benefits than do nonunion workers…. In 2003, the union wage premium (the difference between union and nonunion wages after controlling for a variety of worker characteristics such as amount of schooling) was 15.5 percent (for black workers it was 20.9 percent and for Hispanics 23.2 percent)…. So as unions become less common, the wage gap between whites and minorities increases, as do those between blue- and white-collar workers, high school and college graduates, and low- and high-wage workers.⁷

As per the report of the U.S. Department of Labor, by 2008 the situation has worsened further for the bulk of the 138 million workforce: “In 2008, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $886 while those who were not represented by unions had median weekly earnings of $691.” The gap between the wage earnings of union and non-union workers is increasingly widening: the gap has widened from 15.5 per cent in 2003 to 22 per cent in 2008. It is clearly evident that while union membership was beneficial to unionised workers, denial of democratic rights to workers at the work place was immensely profitable to the employers.

Even the 12 per cent union membership is maintained with great difficulty since the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which is entrusted with the task of conducting union elections in the U.S., conducts them in a patently undemocratic manner. Dr.Gordon Lafer, Professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center, has revealed this in a study he had carried out in June 2005 for the ‘American Rights at Work’, an advocacy organisation that supports workers’ rights. According to the study titled “Free And Fair? How Labor Law Fails U.S. Democratic Standards”:

For a vote on unionization to be held, workers must first show the Board [NLRB] that they have the support of at least 30 percent of employees. Following that showing, the Board will set a date for an election and draw up a list of eligible voters…. Unfortunately, the secret ballot turns out to be the only point at which current union election procedures meet the standards of U.S. democracy…. There is, for instance, no right of free speech for voters in union elections. There is no equal access to media. Indeed, there is not even equal access to the names and contact information of eligible voters. There is no protection against partisan economic coercion of voters, virtually no regulation of campaign finance, and no separation between the “government” of a firm and the partisan behavior of anti-union managers. Finally, there is no guarantee that the will of the voters will be implemented on a reasonable schedule, and no meaningful enforcement for violators of electoral procedure.⁸

The report concluded that:

The analysis above points to an inescapable conclusion. The high hopes and bold words that accompanied the passage of the Wagner Act* have not been realized…. Indeed, from the point of view of the framers of the Constitution, of U.S. jurisprudence, and of state and federal statute, the current NLRB system is profoundly broken — and profoundly undemocratic. Whatever path labor law reform may take, it must begin with this understanding.⁹

[*The U.S. Senate Report on the NLRA (the National Labor Relations Act of 1935) explained that the legislation was motivated by the notion that “a worker in the field of industry, like a citizen in the field of government, ought to be free to form or join organizations, to designate representatives, and to engage in concerted activities.”¹⁰ ]

On 08 February 2007, Dr. Lafer submitted this report before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions during the hearing on the proposed Employee Free Choice Act. The conclusion that Dr. Lafer draws from his analysis of the working of the NLRB is very significant despite the exalted opinion he held about the framers of the U.S. Constitution. Large sections of the poor and less educated remain alienated from the electoral process precisely because the political system, which is guided by the U.S. Constitution, is designed to cater primarily to the interests of the wealthy class; it was so in 1787, it is so at the beginning of 2009. The broadening of franchise has so far had absolutely no impact on changing this basic character of the U.S. Constitution.

Nature of U.S. Constitution

As early as 1912, Prof. Charles Austin Beard of Columbia University, New York, a leading political scientist and historian of that period, in an essay titled “The Supreme Court and the Constitution” had shed light on the real character of the U.S. Constitution. Prof. Beard, who was later elected as President of the American Political Science Association (1926) and as President of the American Historical Association (1933), showed that the framers of the Constitution were less interested in furthering democratic principles than in protecting private property and the interests of the wealthy class. Prof. Beard’s assessment was that:

The makers of the Constitution represented the solid, conservative, commercial and financial interests of the country…. Indeed, every page of the laconic record of the proceedings of the convention, preserved to posterity by Mr. Madison, shows conclusively that the members of that assembly were not seeking to realize any fine notions about democracy and equality, but were striving with all the resources of political wisdom at their command to set up a system of government that would be stable and efficient, safeguarded on the one hand against the possibilities of despotism and on the other against the onslaught of majorities.¹¹

In a subsequent detailed study titled An Economic Interpretation of The Constitution of The United States (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1913), Prof. Beard noted as follows:

In an examination of the structure of American society in 1787, we first encounter four groups whose economic status had a definite legal expression: the slaves, the indented servants, the mass of men who could not qualify for voting under the property tests imposed by the state constitutions and laws, and women, disenfranchised and subjected to the discriminations of the common law. These groups were, therefore, not represented in the Convention which drafted the Constitution…¹²

Therefore, Prof. Beard posed the following questions:

…did the men who formulated the fundamental law of the land possess the kinds of property which were immediately and directly increased in value or made more secure by the results of their labours at Philadelphia?…. The purpose of such an inquiry is not, of course, to show that the Constitution was made for the personal benefit of the members of the Convention. Far from it…. The only point here considered is: Did they represent distinct groups whose economic interests they understood and felt in concrete, definite form through their own personal experience with identical property rights, or were they working merely under the guidance of abstract principles of political science?¹³

Prof. Beard then went on to give the following explanation:

It is difficult for the superficial student of the Constitution, who has read only the commentaries of the legists, to conceive of that instrument as an economic document. It places no property qualifications on voters or officers; it gives no outward recognition of any economic groups in society; it mentions no special privileges to be conferred upon any class. It betrays no feeling, such as vibrates through the French constitution of 1791; its language is cold, formal, and severe.

However, according to him:

The true inwardness of the Constitution is not revealed by an examination of its provisions as simple propositions of law; but by a long and careful study of the voluminous correspondence of the period*, contemporary newspapers and pamphlets, the records of the debates in the Convention at Philadelphia and in the several state conventions, and particularly, The Federalist, which was widely circulated during the struggle over ratification.¹⁴

[*A great deal of this valuable material has been printed in the Documentary History of the Constitution, Vols. IV and V; a considerable amount has been published in the letters and papers of the eminent men of the period; but an enormous mass still remains in manuscript form in the U.S. Library of Congress.]

That there were conflicting interests in society was admitted by none other than James Madison, who is considered the ‘Father of the Constitution’ and who went on to become the fourth President of the U.S. (1809-1817). According to Madison:

… the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes actuated by different sentiments and views.¹⁵

Therefore, in Prof. Beard’s opinion:

…to show that the concept of the Constitution as a piece of abstract legislation reflecting no group interests and recognizing no economic antagonisms is entirely false. It was an economic document drawn with superb skill by men whose property interests were immediately at stake; and as such it appealed directly and unerringly to identical interests in the country at large.¹⁶

Subsequently, on the basis of his detailed study, Prof. Beard drew the following conclusions:

(a) that “The movement for the Constitution of the United States was originated and carried through principally by four groups of personalty interests which had been adversely affected under the Articles of Confederation: money, public securities, manufactures, and trade and shipping;

(b) that “A large propertyless mass was, under the prevailing suffrage qualifications, excluded at the outset from participation (through representatives) in the work of framing the Constitution.”; and

(c) that “The Constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental private rights of property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.”¹⁷

None other than Dr. Russell Kirk, who has been described by President Ronald Regan as “the prophet of American conservatism”, has certified that the findings of Prof. Beard are absolutely correct. As the distinguished fellow of The Heritage Foundation, the premier conservative think-tank in the U.S., Dr.Kirk, in a lecture titled “The Constitution’s Conservative Character”, which was delivered on 14 July 1987, emphasised the need for “protecting private property.” According to him:

This intellectual and moral conservatism was paralleled among the Framers by their conservative attachment to private property and private enterprise. Most of them were men of some wealth, the times considered; many possessed large tracts of land or valuable commercial properties, and desired more. No economic levellers were to be encountered among them. As class, they were eighteenth century gentlemen, not demagogues. Charles Beard and other historians have sufficiently established the fact that the Framers generally sought to protect private property and to make possible greater economic prosperity for the nation–themselves included. What is surprising about that? What is reprehensible about it?

Thus, there appears to be little disagreement regarding the elitist nature of the U.S. Constitution!

Iniquitous Development

The iniquitous development that has taken place in the U.S. over the last two centuries or more testifies to the findings of Prof. Charles Beard regarding the elitist nature of the U.S. Constitution. The earliest available data regarding disparities in wealth has been brought out by Prof. Henry Laurens Call, who made a presentation on 27 December 1906 before the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Columbia College, New York. According to him, in the year 1900: “The… wealth of the United States, if equally divided, would give $1,318 to every individual in the land, including babes,—or about $5,000 to every family; as against $307 per capita, or $1,200 per family, in 1850.” [Based on U.S. Census data of 1850 & 1900.] Moreover, Prof. Call had estimated that the total wealth of the millionaires and half-millionaires in 1854 was about $100,000,000, which “gave to the rich men of the country, in 1854, just one-hundredth part, or one per cent, of the total aggregate wealth of the United States.”¹⁸

However, Prof. Call had noticed that by the beginning of the 20th century there was a dramatic rise in the degree of concentration of wealth. Prof. Call’s incisive observations have been reconfirmed a century later. According to recent trends in household wealth in the U.S., in 2004, the top 10 per cent of households, which would include all the millionaires and half-millionaires, owned 71.2 per cent of the total privately held wealth in the U.S. With the next 10 per cent of households owning another 13.4 per cent, the top 20 per cent of households thus owned 84.7 per cent of all privately held wealth in the U.S. On the other hand, the bottom 80 per cent of the households owned only 15.3 per cent of the total privately held wealth in the U.S.¹⁹ Another study has noted that the concentration of wealth among the top 25 per cent of the households has nearly doubled during the period 1995-2004. According to this study:

While aggregate household net wealth grew from $25.9 trillion in 1995 to $50.1 trillion in 2004 (both in 2004 dollars), nearly 90 percent of the net gains occurred only among the top quartile of households in the wealth distribution.

This sharp increase in concentration of wealth within such a short period is an absolutely startling development! As Prof. Call said in 1906:

Surely it is worth our while to inquire how a power so vast…has been acquired. If these enormous fortunes have been honestly earned, and are the rightful property of their possessors, then must the world of toil beneath submit as best it can.… These millions tell, in fact, no honest tale…. when single individuals are found in possession of hundreds of millions, and even billions of dollars, the suspicion attaches that so much wealth could not have been honestly earned. The wage earner… cannot believe that a single individual in this land has actually “earned” a billion dollars in the course of a short generation; nor yet that there exists tens of thousands of other individuals in this republic, the average “earnings” of each of whom equal the combined possessions of a full hundred thousand of the sons of toil. But if these fortunes have not been earned, then the conclusion is irresistible that they have been… appropriated.²⁰

What kind of democratic system is that, which allows a tiny minority to corner the wealth of the nation through questionable means over a 150-year period; where the majority of people remain captive to the machinations of the said tiny minority; where poverty and want are allowed to co-exist in the midst of plenty? Several U.S. citizens have begun asking these questions and are expressing their concerns regarding what they term as the “subversion of democracy” in the U.S. For example, Gar Alperovitz, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, is of the opinion that the subversion of democracy is clearly visible in rampant inequities in the distribution of wealth and the immense power corporations and special interests wield in Washington. In the introductory chapter of his book titled America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty and Our Democracy (Wiley, New Jersey, 2004), Prof. Alperovitz states that:

Systemic change, above all, involves questions of how property is owned and controlled–i.e., the locus of real power in most systems…. At the heart of the new thinking is a different principle––that the ownership of wealth must benefit the vast majority directly.

In a subsequent publication titled Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It back (The New Press, New York, 2008), Prof. Alperovitz, along with Lew Daly, have tried to advance these arguments further. They are of the view that:

…if most of what we have today is attributable to advances we inherit in common … why, specifically, should this gift of our collective history not more generously and broadly benefit all members of society?”

However, the reality was different:

The richest 1 percent of households owns nearly half of all individually owned investment assets…. The bottom 90 percent of the population owns less than 15 percent; the bottom half of the population — 150 million Americans — own less than 1 percent.

Therefore, the question they have raised is:

“If America’s vast wealth is mainly a gift of our common past, how, specifically, can such disparities be justified?”

To confront the dangers that concentrated wealth and power increasingly engender, concerned U.S. citizens began coming together and in 2007 set up “The Working Group on Extreme Inequality.” Based at the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington, D.C.), the objective of the Working Group is to promote, through education, advocacy and mobilization, “support for public policies that can address the concentration of wealth and, at the same time, raise badly needed revenue for social investments that foster real economic opportunity.” Some of the findings of the Working Group regarding the growing inequality in the U.S. are very revealing. According to one of its reports that was released on 09 June 2008:

* “Between 1979 and 2006, the top five percent of American families saw their real incomes increase 87 percent. Over the same period, the lowest-income fifth saw zero increase in real income.”

* “In 1979, the average income of the top 5 percent of families was 11.4 times as large as the average income of the bottom 20 percent. In 2006, the ratio was 21.3 times.”

* “In 1962, the wealth of the richest one percent of U.S. households was roughly 125 times greater than that of the typical household. By 2004, the latest year for which figures are available, it was 190 times”

* “In 2006, CEOs of major U.S. companies collected as much money from one day on the job as average workers made over the entire year. These CEOs averaged $10.8 million in total compensation, the equivalent of over 364 times the pay of an average American worker.”²¹)

The co-existence of poverty in the midst of plenty is a distinguishing feature of the socio-economic set-up in the U.S. For example: “In 2007, 37.3 million people were in poverty, up from 36.5 million in 2006.” ²² The poverty rate among Black and Hispanic population were 24.5 and 21.5 per cent respectively as compared to the poverty rate of 12.5 per cent of the total population in 2007. These figures are based on “poverty thresholds on the economy food plan — the cheapest of four food plans developed by the Department of Agriculture”, as officially defined by the U.S. Government. In other words, in the year 2007, 37.3 million U.S. citizens or 12.5 per cent of the total U.S. population lived in absolute poverty, meaning that they did not have enough food to eat, let alone afford other basic necessities of life. Moreover, in the year 2007, 45.7 million people or 15.3 per cent of the total U.S. population also remained without health insurance.²³ (In their well-researched work titled Uninsured in America – Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity, which was published in April 2005, Susan Starr Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle have vividly described the tribulations and trauma faced by the medically uninsured in the U.S.)

The number of poverty-stricken and the uninsured in the U.S. far outnumber the total population of Iraq, which is only around 28 million. The U.S. Government can afford to spend 3 trillion U.S. Dollars for supposedly “Helping Iraqis Build Inclusive Democratic Institutions.” However, it cannot even contemplate spending a fraction of that amount to wipe out poverty from the “world’s oldest democracy” and provide medical insurance cover to 45 million needy U.S. citizens! [In their book titled The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, (W.W.Norton, New York, 2008), Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes have argued that: “The Iraq War will cost us $3 trillion, and much more.” The elitist nature of the U.S. state is writ large in the manner in which it has chosen to exhibit its skewed priorities! The fanciful claim that its objective is to promote the cause of “democracy” cannot hide the fact that USA’s adventurism in Iraq is mainly an attempt to grab Iraq’s oil wealth.

None other than Alan Greenspan has admitted this truth. According to The Sunday Times (London) dated 16 September 2007:

AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil…. ‘I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,’ he says.

Greenspan has disclosed this fact in his memoir The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (Penguin Books, New York, 2007). In fact, Australia’s Defence Minister Brendan Nelson had let the cat out of the bag a couple of months earlier on 05 July 2007 while being interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. According to The Daily Telegraph (London) dated 06 July 2007:

Australia was embroiled in an intense political brawl today after its defence minister said that access to Iraq’s oil was a key reason for keeping troops there…. Defence minister Brendan Nelson’s remarks will fuel worldwide suspicion among critics of the invasion that it was a grab for oil, rather than an attempt to destroy alleged weapons of mass destruction or an exercise in building democracy.

The purported claim of establishing “freedom” and “democracy” in Iraq offered the necessary excuse for pressing forward USA’s imperialistic designs in the region in the interests of USA’s wealthy class! There is sufficient historical evidence to prove the contention that material benefits were the motivating factor not only behind the war against Iraq but also behind almost every other U.S. military intervention worldwide, especially after WW-II.

1. According to a news report dated 14 January 2009: “Blacks and Hispanics are more separate from white students than at any time since the civil rights movement and many of the schools they attend are struggling, said the report by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California…. 39 percent of black students and 40 percent of students from the fast-growing Latino minority are increasingly isolated in schools in which there is little racial mixing, the report said…. The report also found that the average black and Latino student is now in a school that has nearly 60 percent of students from families who are near or below the poverty line.”
2. Alexander Keysser, The Right to Vote – The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Basic Books, New York, 2000, p. 265
3. Keyssar, p. 315.
4. Keyssar, p. 320.
5. Keyssar, p. 320-321.
6. Bureau of Labour Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, 28 January 2009.
7. Michael D. Yates, “A Statistical Portrait of the U.S. Working Class,” April 2005.
8. Gordon Lafer, “Free And Fair? How Labor Law Fails U.S. Democratic Standards,” p. 6-9.
9. Lafer, p. 27.
10. Lafer, p. 3.
11. Charles Austin Beard, “The Supreme Court and the Constitution, (1912).
12. Charles Austin Beard, An Economic Interpretation of The Constitution of The United States (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1913), p. 24.
13. Beard (1913), p. 73.
14. Beard (1913), p. 152.
15. Quoted in Beard (1913), p. 156-157.
16. Beard (1913), p. 188.
17. Beard (1913), p. 324.
18. Henry Laurens Call, The Concentration of Wealth, (Chndler Publishing, 1907), p. 1-3.
19. Edward N. Wolff, “Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising Debt and the Middle-Class Squeeze,” Levy Economics Institute, Table 2, p. 11.
20. Call, p. 15.
21. See: Report of the Working Group on Extreme Inequality titled “How Unequal Are We?.” (For more sources on poverty and inequality in the U.S., see: article titled “Extreme Inequality: A Nation Guide,” The Nation, 30 June 2008.
22. Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, & Jessica C. Smith”Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States,” US Census Bureau, August 2007, p. 12.
23. Carmen DeNavas-Walt, et al., p. 19.

The self-serving belief that the United States was divinely ordained to expand across the North American continent or what came to be known as Manifest Destiny was used by its advocates to justify territorial acquisitions as well as the genocide of the Native American populations, who were standing in the way of its believers and supporters.

As the population of the original 13 U.S. states grew with the ever-increasing inflow of immigrants from Europe, economic need and greed necessitated widespread expansion into the western frontiers. According to census data, the U.S. population grew from about 5 million in 1800 to more than 23 million by 1850. It is estimated that nearly 4 million settlers moved to western territories between 1820 and 1850 by displacing the America’s Original Peoples who were herded into designated reservations. For the colonists, appropriation of land represented potential wealth and opportunities for self-advancement.

By the 1840s, technological innovations such as steamboats and network of railroads and telegraphic lines ushered in the modern long distance transport and communication systems, which along with the aid of superior firearms had quickened the pace of conquest and occupation. Southerners anxious to enlarge the slave empire were among the most ardent champions of the crusade for more territory. New slave states were expected to enhance the South’s political power in the U.S. Congress and, equally important, serve as an opening for exploiting its growing slave population.

One of the important – but less-discussed – documents in American history is the Royal Proclamation of 1763 issued by Britain’s King George regarding the settlement line in North America. King George had divided his colonies in North American into three ethnically based enclaves: his English-speaking subjects in the thirteen colonies on lands east of the Appalachian Mountains, his French-speaking subjects in what is now part of Canada, and his American “Indian” subjects on lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. Para 12 of the Proclamation, which was issued on 07 October 1763, stated that:

And whereas it is just and reasonable, and essential to our Interest, and the Security of our Colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom We are connected, and who live under our Protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession of such Parts of Our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their Hunting Grounds…. any Lands whatever, which, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us as aforesaid, are reserved to the said Indians, or any of them.

Para 14 of the Proclamation also stated that:

And We do hereby strictly forbid, on Pain of our Displeasure, all our loving Subjects from making any Purchases or Settlements whatever, or taking Possession of any of the Lands above reserved, without our especial leave and Licence for that Purpose first obtained.

In effect, the Proclamation of 1763 introduced the idea of a geographical place called “Indian territory,” to mean the lands that Indian tribes occupied and held without disturbance or trespassing from outsiders. The King’s proclamation anticipated that the British could acquire lands from Indian Country but only by an agreement directly between a tribe and the King or his representative; it was illegal for individual Englishmen to buy lands directly from Indian Country. Furthermore, the way in which new states would be created out of the western lands and then admitted into the Union was instituted through the Northwest Ordinance that was promulgated on 13 July 1787. The U.S. Congress spelt out its Indian policy in Article 3 of the Ordinance, which was as follows:

The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity, shall from time to time be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.

Contrary to the flattering sentiments that were expressed about America’s Original Peoples in the Northwest Ordinance of 13 July 1787, the U.S. Constitution that was adopted just a month later on 17 September 1787 did not contain any such lofty notions. Instead,

the Constitution had only one direct and one oblique reference to the conduct of Indian affairs. The direct reference stated that Congress shall have the power to regulate trade with the Indian tribes. The indirect reference acknowledged that “Indians not taxed” were outside the American polity and presumably kept their own limited sovereignty within U.S. borders.¹

Therefore, it is apparent that, unlike the Northwest Ordinance, there was nothing in the U.S. Constitution to either protect the rights of the “American-Indians” or to prevent any wrongs being done to them; they were left completely at the mercy of the marauding settlers, who were intent on usurping the Indian territories.

In gross violation of the Proclamation of 1763, widespread European American population movement to the west of the Appalachian Mountains took place unabated. The advance of White settlers, with their reckless slaughter of the buffalo herds on which the Original Peoples depended for their livelihood and as well as dispossession of their traditional hunting grounds ultimately lead to the outbreak of bloody warfare between the Original Peoples and the English-speaking settlers. Wanton transgression of peace agreements by prospectors seeking valuable minerals in tribal lands was another major cause of disaffection among the Original Peoples.

The U.S. government pursued a policy of removing the indigenous population to reservations across West of the Mississippi River with such success that by 1860 the great majority of the America’s Original Peoples had been relocated. Hostilities between the U.S. Army and indigenous tribes reached its height between 1869 and 1878, when over 200 pitched battles were waged. Although the Original Peoples fought fiercely and courageously, the continuing flow of settlers to the West with advanced transport & communication systems, and sophisticated arms made their resistance ineffectual. After 1890, the vastly decimated tribes could hardly carry on the fight.

Civil War and After

As the United States expanded westward, the dispute over slavery intensified. The question of whether Missouri, which was part of the territory of Louisiana that was purchased by USA from France in 1803 and which sought statehood in 1819, would be admitted to the Union as a “slave” or “free” state set off a fierce debate between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the U.S. Congress. To end the controversy, a compromise called the “Missouri Compromise” was worked out in 1820. It was agreed that Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state while another state named Maine would be carved out of the State of Massachusetts and be admitted as a free state, thereby maintaining a balance of 12 “slave” and 12 “free” states. In addition, as per the compromise, the rest of the territory of Louisiana, which lay north of the 36 degree 30 minute north latitude, was to remain free of slavery. The balance was finally disrupted in 1850, when Southerners permitted California to enter as a free state in exchange for laws strengthening slavery such as the Fugitive Slave Law. This balance was further upset with the additions of free Minnesota (1858) and Oregon (1859).

The widening gap between “slave” and “free” states was also symbolic of the different economic systems in each region: while the South was devoted to an agrarian plantation economy, the North had embraced industrialization. Similarly, while in the South the growth in population was relatively slow, the Northern states were experiencing high birth rates and a large influx of European immigrants. This differential growth in population threatened the domination of the Southerners over the Union government and the election of a Northerner, and a potentially anti-slavery advocate, as president. In 1861, the population in the North was about 22 million (including 500,000 slaves) while in the South it was around 9 million (including more than 3.5 million slaves). Thus, the South’s white population was outnumbered by a ratio of more than four to one when compared with that of the North.

The conflict between the Northern states and the Southern states on the question of slavery was symbolic of the struggle between the pro-slavery landed gentry in the South and the pro free-labour industrial bourgeoisie from the North for political supremacy. With the growth of large-scale industry in the North, the Northern bourgeoisie were eager to clip the wings of the landed-gentry, who enjoyed power disproportionate to their real strength since under Article I, Section 2, Paragraph iii of the 1787 Constitution they had representation in proportion to the number of slaves that they owned. The opportunity came when the Fugitive Slave Law was enacted in 1850. To oppose the repugnant Law, a group of former members of the Democratic Party and some other smaller parties founded the Republican Party in Wisconsin in 1854. The Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln, who was opposed to expansion of slavery into new territories, as its candidate for the 1860 presidential election. Lincoln managed to narrowly beat his pro-slavery opponent at the polls. Lincoln’s victory symbolised the ascending power of the bourgeoisie.

Within three months of the election of Lincoln, when the landed-gentry found that power was slipping from their hands, seven slave-owning Southern states – South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas – seceded from the Union and founded the Confederate States of America on 08 February 1861. While, Lincoln took a conciliatory position and stated that he did not intend to abolish slavery where it already existed and that his aim was only to maintain the unity of the Union, the Confederate leadership tried to forcibly occupy the federal forts, which were situated in areas under their control. Attempts at such forcible occupation resulted in armed conflict, which broke out on 12 April 1961. On 15 April 1861, Lincoln directed the Northern states to provide militia to put down the insurrection. However, four more slave-owning states – Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee, which were until then part of the Union, spurned Lincoln’s directions and, instead, opted to join the Confederacy. Two other slave-owning states, Kentucky and Missouri, were also unwilling to supply men for the Union Army but chose to remain neutral in the conflict. The outbreak of war provided the opportunity for hundreds of thousands of slaves to escape to Union lines.

Among the army commanders leading the Union Army there were pro-slavery as well as anti-slavery generals. Pro-slavery generals were averse to taking decisive action against the Confederate Army because of the adverse impact such action would have had on the institution of slavery. On the other hand, the anti-slavery generals were intent on freeing the slaves and enlisting them into the Union Army to fight the war. Ultimately, the compromising attitude of the pro-slavery generals towards the Confederate Army compelled an unwilling Lincoln to act decisively. Not only did Lincoln remove such generals from their posts but, on 22 September 1862, he also issued his Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that all slaves would be declared free in those states that continued the rebellion against the United States after 01 January 1863. By implication, this proclamation did not apply to those Southern states that would be under occupation of the Union Army before 01 January 1863, which was a way of mollifying Lincoln’s conservative supporters. Nevertheless, thousands of slaves were freed by the operation of the Emancipation Proclamation as Union armies marched across the South.

By January 1863, it also became clear that the Northern states could not find enough volunteers to join the Union Army and, therefore, were forced to resort to conscription. The rich people were able to avoid the draft by paying a certain sum to hire a substitute, thereby, forcing the poor Whites alone to carry on the war. This questionable practice ultimately led to outbreak of “draft riots” in the northern cities, which targeted anti-slavery activists. Under pressure from his radical supporters, Lincoln finally agreed to enlist former slaves into the Union Army. As a result, no less than 190,000 Black soldiers and sailors served in the Union forces, a decision that had far reaching implications since it provided a big impetus towards the goal of abolition of slavery.

The bill to abolish slavery throughout the United States was reintroduced in the U.S. Congress on 14 December 1863 (after the unsuccessful attempt by Representative John Quincy Adams way back in 1839). The Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery on 08 April 1864 and the House of Representatives passed the same on 31 January 1865. President Lincoln signed the Joint Resolution on 01 February 1865 and submitted the amendment to the states for ratification. Soon afterwards, on 09 April 1865, the main Confederate Army was forced to surrender. Two days after this surrender, Lincoln, while addressing a gathering outside the White House, stated that he was of the opinion that voting rights should be granted to the Blacks. Lincoln’s would-be-assassin, who was present on the occasion, was infuriated by the suggestion. Three days later on 14 April 1865, Lincoln was shot, while watching a play, and he died the next day due to serious head injuries he had suffered in the attack. Lincoln paid dearly for a cause that he was initially reluctant to uphold.² There were strong indications that the pro-slavery forces had conspired to eliminate Lincoln, however, there was no way they could stem the momentum against abolition of slavery. Emancipation as a reality came to the remaining Southern slaves after the surrender of all Confederate troops.

Slavery was formally abolished in the whole of USA only after the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified by the various states on 06 December 1865. Section 1 of the amendment stated as follows: “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.”

Freedman’s Bureau

Soon after the U.S. House of Representatives had passed the Thirteenth Amendment for abolition of slavery on 31 January 1865, the U.S. Congress on 03 March 1865 established the “Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands”, popularly known as the “Freedmen’s Bureau” to assist the four million freed slaves in making the transition from slavery to freedom. The Bureau had also to take care of a large number of Whites in the South, who were uprooted and impoverished because of the devastation caused by the Civil War. The tasks of the Bureau were to provide food, medical care, support resettlement, administer justice, manage abandoned and confiscated property, regulate labour, and establish schools.

Although it was to function only for a year, the Republican controlled U.S. Congress managed to extend the term of the Bureau despite the attempted veto by the pro-slavery Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, who was elevated as the U.S. President following the assassination of Lincoln. Nonetheless, President Johnson worked actively to undermine the Bureau’s operation by appointing mainly racist White officers, although Major General Oliver Howard who headed it turned out to be a non-racist. While the Bureau was expected to play a major role in resettling the emancipated slaves, it could do little apart from its work in the field of education primarily because the U.S. Administration never provided the requisite funds for fulfilling its other missions.

The Bureau’s attempt to re-distribute the hundreds of thousands of acres of abandoned and confiscated land from the Confederates to freedmen too failed because President Johnson pardoned the Confederates and returned the land back to them. The Bureau also tried to find work for the freedmen on plantations, but it only resulted in oppressive sharecropping and tenancy arrangements. Although its operations were curtailed after 1869, the Bureau managed to remain active as an educational agency until 1872, when it was finally wound up. Since the Bureau could not satisfactorily fulfil any of the missions for which it was set up, the freedmen were left with the onerous task of fending for their needs without any resources of their own and without outside help (other than some charity) after being enslaved in the “world’s oldest democracy” for no less than ninety years.

The well-known abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) described the situation regarding the fate of the freedmen most poignantly. Douglass wrote that the freedman no longer had an individual master, but that he was

…the slave of society. He had neither money, property, nor friends. He was free from the old plantation, but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet. He was free from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave to the rains of summer and the frosts of winter. He was, in a world, literally turned loose naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky.

He further added:

History does not furnish an example of emancipation under conditions less friendly to the emancipated class, than this American example…. When the serfs of Russia were emancipated, they were given three acres of ground upon which they could live and make a living. But not so when our slaves were emancipated. They were sent away empty-handed without money, without friends, and without a foot of land upon which to stand.³

As the freedmen had attained “freedom” and “equality,” they were being treated on par with those who controlled all the resources!

Expansion of Franchise

Through a variety of treaties, purchases, predatory wars, and Acts of the U.S. Congress, by 1867 the territory of the United States had expanded by about eighteen times from what it was in 1776 to nearly its present-day size. Since there was no legal definition of the term “citizen of the United States” in the original U.S. Constitution, the Original Peoples, who inhabited North America for several millennia and whose entire lands were usurped by the White settlers through deceit and subterfuge over the years had been denied citizenship rights.⁴ A definition of citizenship was introduced in the U.S. Constitution only on 09 July 1868 through the Fourteenth Amendment, which stated that: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

However, strange as it may seem, despite the Fourteenth Amendment, most of the Original Peoples, African-Americans and women continued to be denied the right to vote. This was partly because, while the slaves were freed after the Civil War, it was claimed that there was no legal basis to recognize them as having any rights. Therefore, yet another change had to be brought about on 03 February 1870 through the Fifteenth Amendment, which stated that: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

The Fifteenth Amendment, in theory, provided succour to the adult male Black population at best; the rights of America’s Original Peoples and women were never addressed. Women, who constituted half the population in the “world’s oldest democracy,” were denied the right to vote as late as 1920. (On the other hand, in Russia, soon after the Revolution of February 1917, women were granted the right to vote.) Women in the U.S. had to wage a long and ardent struggle between 1848 and 1920 before they attained that right. Known as the Suffragette Movement, it was led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Fanny Garrison Villard, Ida Bell Wells, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and others. Women were enfranchised in the U.S. through the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on 26 August 1920, which stated that: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” In short, for all practical purposes, fifty per cent or more of the adult population in the “world’s oldest democracy” were legally denied the right of franchise well until 1920. Later, by virtue of the Indian Citizenship Act of 02 June 1924, which included the right to vote in federal elections, all American-Indians born in their homeland theoretically became citizens of USA. (However, while many States continued to deny them voting rights, among the Original Peoples, the issues of nationality and citizenship became matters of serious debate, which has not yet been resolved.⁵ ). This was the state of affairs during the first 148 years of U.S. history.

Disfranchising Laws

With the growth of industrialization, the ranks of the working class had begun to swell with millions of immigrants arriving from Ireland, Southern & Eastern Europe and Asia to work in the expanding network of factories, mines, railroads, roads and cities. As mentioned earlier, the male White immigrants – a sizable section of whom were from the working class, had managed to acquire voting rights in the antebellum era. Granting citizenship rights and voting rights to the African-Americans in 1868 and 1870 respectively turned out to be yet another radical step when African-Americans in some of the Southern states not only began to get elected to office but also they became a significant force in many electoral contests elsewhere. While in the Northern states, labour unions were in a position to exert sufficient influence to promote pro-labour political parties and pro-labour legislations. However, this liberal atmosphere resulting from the power of enfranchisement of the working people and poor people did not last long. According to Alexander Keyssar, the growing political clout of the working class and the peasantry (including the former slaves) had:

…spawned a significant reaction against democracy and universal franchise in certain strata of American society. Southern white leaders came to believe, with good reason, that they could not control their region if the black population remained enfranchised…. The buoyant optimism about popular participation, so visible in the 1830s and 1840s, gave way to apprehension and fear by the late 1870s and 1880s…. The result was a long period, stretching into the second decade of the twentieth century, marked less by the exuberant forward march of democracy than by often mean-spirited battles and skirmishes over suffrage: while various social groups and political factions supporting them fought to broaden the franchise, others struggled, sometimes frantically, and often with success, to block the road to the polls.⁶

The broad set of strategies for denying the Blacks voting right was introduced in roughly three overlapping phases. During 1868-1888, patently illegal means were adopted as the principal techniques of disenfranchisement. The attempt to enfranchise the African-Americans was strongly resisted by various terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the Knights of the White Camellia, etc., which were founded in the mid-1860s by veterans of the Confederate Army, who lamented the loss of White supremacy following the formal abolition of slavery. Through violence, intimidation and ultimately by resorting to massive fraud in the vote counting process, they were intent on preventing the Fifteenth Amendment, which was enacted in 1870 to grant voting rights to Black men, from being enforced. The enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, did help to check the menace of the KKK to some extent but not entirely. New mutations of KKK emerged in the form of White League and Red Shirts in 1874 and 1875 respectively and functioned openly as the “military arm of the Democratic Party” with the specific goal of overthrowing the Reconstruction Government headed by the Republican Party.

The next phase began in 1877, when the State of Georgia decided to pass the cumulative Poll Tax as a statutory method of disenfranchisement. Georgia, which had initiated the Poll Tax in 1871, made it cumulative in 1877 (requiring citizens to pay all back taxes before being permitted to vote). Finally, between 1889 and 1910, the Southern states, where the bulk of the African-Americans were located, amended their constitutions and enacted a series of laws intended to re-establish and entrench White political supremacy. Apart from the Poll Tax, these disfranchising laws typically included “literacy test,” “property ownership” criterion, vouchers of “good character,” and disqualification for “crimes of moral turpitude.” These disfranchising laws were collectively nicknamed Jim Crow Laws after a comic character called Jim Crow, who was the butt of racist jokes in the 1850s.

The introduction of the disfranchising laws was a masterstroke of perverted ingenuity. “Poll Tax” was a special tax levied equally on every member of a community. Citizens who failed to pay were deemed ineligible to vote. Although this tax of $1-$2 per annum may seem small, it was then beyond the reach of most poor Black and White sharecroppers who rarely dealt in cash. Since the imposition of these requirements had an adverse affect on the number of poor Whites voting, Southern legislatures included a Grandfather Clause in 1895 that allowed any adult male whose father or grandfather had voted prior to 1867 to vote without paying the tax. The amendment was solely intended to benefit the Whites who had immigrated to the U.S. before 1867 since almost all fathers and grandfathers of African-Americans were not even considered citizens of USA prior to 1868. Similarly, poor Whites who immigrated to the U.S. after 1867 also could not benefit from the Grandfather Clause. Thus, the imposition of the Poll Tax effectively prevented a sizable section of U.S citizens – especially the bulk of working people and poor people – from exercising their franchise.

In 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Grandfather Clause unconstitutional because it violated equal voting rights guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment. However, it may be noted that, while the said Supreme Court ruling effectively withdrew the concession granted to the pre-1867 poor Whites, the striking down of the Grandfather Clause in no way benefited the African-Americans or the post-1867 poor Whites because they still had to pay the Poll Tax. The U.S. Congress, by adopting the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on 27 August 1962, formally prohibited the States from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a Poll Tax or other types of taxes. The States ratified the amendment on 23 January 1964. However, the matter was finally settled only through a 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Harper vs. Virginia Board of Elections. On 24 March 1966, the Court ruled that all state poll taxes (for both state and federal elections) were unconstitutional, because they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The 1960’s also witnessed abolition of another economic restriction on suffrage: the disfranchisement of paupers. The Harper decision apparently had far wider repercussions: it had also made it clear that pauper exclusion laws could no longer withstand judicial scrutiny. Consequently, necessary changes were incorporated by the various states into the legal codes and constitutions to meet this requirement. Thus, economic restrictions on voting were abolished in all general elections in the “world’s oldest democracy” almost two centuries after USA was founded.

Literacy Test

South Carolina is reportedly the first state to introduce the implicit literacy test in 1882 through the infamous “eight-box” ballot system. Voters had to cast their ballots for separate offices by inserting the ballot papers in separate boxes. A ballot for the Governor’s race inserted in the box for the senate seat would have invalidated the vote. The stratagem was to continuously shuffle the order of the boxes so that literate people could not assist illiterate voters by arranging their ballots in the proper order. Another implicit literacy test was the adoption of the secret ballot system since it prohibited anyone from assisting an illiterate voter in casting his vote for the candidate of his choice, whose name is printed on the ballot paper without (unlike, for example, in India) a symbol against the name that an illiterate voter could recognize.

Explicit literacy tests to disenfranchise potential voters began to be adopted by the Southern states in 1890. Such tests had a definite differential racial impact since at least 57% of Blacks were illiterate as compared to 30% of Whites in the Southern states as per the 1890 census. To placate poor, illiterate Whites who opposed the tests realizing that they too would be disenfranchised, Southern states adopted an Understanding Clause or a Grandfather Clause, which would potentially benefit primarily the Whites. The Understanding Clause entitled a voter who could not pass the literacy test to vote provided he could demonstrate his understanding of the meaning of a passage in the U.S. Constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar. The Grandfather Clause, like in the case of the Poll Tax, entitled every illiterate voter, who had descended from someone eligible to vote in 1867 – the year before the former slaves attained the franchise, the automatic right to cast his vote. By definition, those who would benefit from this waiver were almost exclusively Whites, who were born in or had migrated to the U.S. before 1867.

Similarly, racially biased administrators would always ensure that African-Americans were never able to take advantage of the Understanding Clause. They would invariably declare that the African-American applicant, whose perception skill was being assessed, could not demonstrate his understanding of the passage in the U.S. Constitution that was read out to him by the administrator conducting the test. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the Grandfather Clause in 1915 on the grounds that it violated the Fifteenth Amendment, the State of Oklahoma quickly found a way to circumvent it by passing yet another law, which again unduly favoured the Whites. The new law required all those who had not voted in the 1914 election (when the Grandfather Clause was still in effect) to register to vote within 11 days, or forfeit the franchise forever.

This new law effectively protected all the Whites who were earlier covered by the Grandfather Clause, while ensuring that all the unregistered African-Americans applicants would be effectively prevented from registering within the stipulated time. Although in 1939 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated this arrangement as well, it was only in 1949 that it struck down discriminatory administration of a literacy test. However, far from placing any bar on the States from conducting literacy tests, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1959 actually went to the extent of upholding the constitutionality of literacy tests despite their differential racial impact. This ruling in effect meant that while the tests would be equally applicable to illiterate Whites as well, the actual impact of the tests would be far greater on the African-American population since the level of illiteracy among them was considerably higher.

Read Part 1.

1. Jon Parmenter: “American-Indians: British Policies”, in Paul Finkelman, ed., Encyclopedia of the New American Nation (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 2007).
2. Of the first fifteen presidents of the United States until Abraham Lincoln took office, eight owned slaves during their presidency. They include well-known names such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. The rest, barring John Adams and John Quincy Adams, were supporters of slavery. It may be added that both Washington and Jefferson were, reportedly, opposed to slavery; however, they could do nothing to abolish slavery during their lifetime and had opted to remain prisoners of their circumstances. It may also be noted that while the initiative for abolishing slavery was taken during Lincoln’s presidency, Lincoln, who was known to be a moderate Republican, was initially neither a champion of racial equality nor was he averse to the idea of sending the African-Americans back to Africa. The credit for pioneering the cause of abolition of slavery in USA must primarily go to the Quakers, who began to oppose slavery as early as 1688 and who took the initiative in founding in 1775 what later became the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery with Thomas Paine as one of the founder-members. A host of others, including Benjamin Franklin – a slave owner turned abolitionist – also made significant contribution to the cause. The final phase of the movement began with the establishment of The American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833 led by William Lloyd Garrison and later joined by Frederick Douglass, Susan Anthony and others. David Walker, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas and William Still are just few of the African-Americans who led the road to freedom. Other important people in U.S. history who were Abolitionists include Henry David Thoreau, Thaddeus Stevens, Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown.
3. Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (De Wolfe & Fiske Co, Boston, 1892) at http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/dougl92/dougl92.html (pp.458-459 & p.613).
4. One of the most controversial issues regarding colonization of the Americas is about population estimates. Ronald Wright, in his well-acclaimed book “Stolen Continents”, states that: “It is impossible to say exactly how many people were living in what is now the United States and Canada in 1492. But it’s clear that the old guess of around 1 million is absurdly low-a guess cherished for so long because it reinforced the myth of the empty land and hid the enormity of Native America’s depopulation. Good modern estimates range between 7 and 18 million.” The Original Peoples of the U.S., whose population was drastically decimated by foreign diseases and conquest, were deprived of almost their entire land by the 1870s and were confined to desolate reservations totalling less than 0.4% of the continental United States. According to the 2000 census, they constituted 2.5 million (less than 1%) of the total U.S. population of 281 million: about one-fifth of them were in the reservations and the rest elsewhere in the U.S. Another 1.6 million of them are of mixed-dissent. Even the 0.4% of the land, which is theoretically in their possession, is not free of disputes.
5. See, e.g., Republic of Lakotah.
6. Alexander Keysser, The Right to Vote – The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Basic Books, New York, 2000, pp.78-79

Contrary to popular beliefs, the landed-gentry and the bourgeoisie, who led the independence struggle and drafted the U.S. Constitution, did not gift freedom and democratic rights to others. Even the poor White men had to wage a determined struggle between 1790 and 1856 to slowly attain those rights. (However, again from 1871 till 1964, voting rights of these poor Whites were restricted in several states through imposition of “Poll Tax” until the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution finally prohibited such taxes.) The rest of the population of the U.S. – especially African-Americans, women and post-1867 immigrants – wrested those rights through hard fought anti-slavery (abolitionist) movement, the suffragette movement, the working-class movement and the civil rights movement.

In short, since it’s founding in 1776, it has taken well over 200 years of bitter struggle for the people in the U.S. as a whole to get an opportunity to exercise their democratic rights. And, when it did appear that they would begin to do so, the enactment of the PATRIOT Act following the 9/11 attack (and a series of similar draconian laws that followed), ensured that such high hopes of unfettered and universal exercise of democratic rights would continue to remain a distant dream! In fact, there was increasing concern that the U.S. was fast turning into a police state. Moreover, far from being the “world’s oldest”, universal franchise has still not been instituted de jure in the U.S., i.e., till date, the right of suffrage is not guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, whereas in India, for example, Article 326 of the Constitution guarantees the right to vote to all adult citizens. Although by 1995, the voter registration process was simplified and potentially all adult citizens could register to vote, the electoral process in the U.S. is still overshadowed by the role of money power and a highly partisan and corporate controlled media that primarily projects the interests of the wealthy class.

The U.S. establishment’s self-congratulatory campaign conceals several other uncomfortable truths as well: that the “world’s oldest democracy” had no qualms about perpetuating its self interest through imperialist conquests; by supporting despotic regimes or by overthrowing democratically elected governments! That the “world’s oldest democracy”, which can afford to spend 3 trillion dollars to teach 28 million Iraqis the rudiments of “democracy”, has little concern for the basic democratic rights of 45 million poverty-stricken U.S. citizens! That the top 20 per cent U.S. households own nearly 85 per cent of the total privately held wealth! That even in 2008 just 12.4 per cent of the workforce in the “world’s oldest democracy” could join unions and exercise their democratic rights at their work place; the union membership remaining at the same level as it existed a century ago! That 40 to 60 per cent of the eligible voters never participate in the electoral process! These staggering facts are pointers to the real nature of “democracy” that is prevalent in the U.S. today. It, thus, brings forth the question as to whose interests was the U.S. Constitution actually designed to serve.

A Notable Incident

On 03 March 2006, during a public address to the people of India, President George W. Bush began his speech at the Purana Qila (Old Fort) in New Delhi by saying that he was “honored to bring the good wishes and the respect of the world’s oldest democracy to the world’s largest democracy.”¹ President Bush tried his best to use the occasion to rave about the vibrant traditions of “freedom” and “democracy” in the U.S. (and in “our two great democracies”) in order to impress Indians about what is often passed off as the 200-plus-year old “American Creed.”²

During President Bush’s visit, a few Indians also had the misfortune of learning the true essence of “freedom,” about which Mr. Bush was waxing eloquent, through a small incident that took place on 02 March. It so happened that the U.S. First Lady, Laura Bush, who had accompanied her husband to India, chose to pay a visit to Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity orphanage situated near a South Delhi residential colony in order to shower compassion on orphaned children. Using the opportunity to register indignation at the dismal plight of children in Iraq, one of the residents of the colony, Bela Malik, and her friends hung a banner at her residence that read “Laura Bush, How About A Photo-Op With the Orphaned, Maimed, Dead Children of Iraq.”

According to The Hindu (which apparently was the only newspaper that chose not to ignore the incident), well before Laura Bush’s motorcade arrived there, the neighbourhood was virtually taken over by U.S. secret service agents, sniffer dogs and Delhi Police personnel. The report stated that, Bela Malik had noticed that the Delhi Police were taking orders from the U.S. personnel and that the local residents were not being allowed to leave their homes. Soon, on the pretext of a routine security check, an Inspector from the Delhi Police along with a sub-inspector entered Bela Malik’s residence, where a constable had already been stationed on the balcony. Quoting Bela Malik, the report said: “The inspector asked me not to shout any slogans. We assured him that we did not want to shout any slogans or hamper Ms. Bush’s visit in any way. We just wanted our banner to be displayed.”³

Despite Bela Malik’s assurance, the Inspector ordered the constable and the sub-inspector to remove the banner. Outraged by the highhanded behavior of the security personnel, Bela Malik told The Hindu:

“We objected and said that this was a violation of individual rights because the banner was within my premises. But they confiscated the banner. When we objected, they began questioning the occupants in a threatening manner.” She further added: “In our own country, in my own residence, I am denied the right to speak the truth in a peaceful, non-aggressive manner. A white banner was security threat to the Bush establishment!”³

Thankfully, the Delhi Police did not go to the extent of slapping criminal charges on Bela Malik on some pretext. One wonders if this type of jittery reaction from the security personnel is any different from the way in which despotic regimes reportedly behave!

This incident cannot be dismissed merely as an act of over-zealousness on the part of the Delhi Police in a bid to please the U.S. establishment since it happened under the very directions of the U.S. security personnel. In the name of security concerns, muzzling of anti U.S.-establishment protest actions are not perceived as attacks on democratic rights! However, the same U.S.-establishment has been making tall claims about its commitment to promoting freedom of speech and expression! Just three months earlier, on 09 December 2005, in a proclamation issued during the Human Rights Week, President Bush had proudly stated:

“We are promoting democracies that respect freedom of speech …and freedom of the press …We are standing with dissidents and exiles against oppressive regimes and tyranny…. As we observe Human Rights Day, Bill of Rights Day, and Human Rights Week, we renew our commitment to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law and where all people can enjoy freedom and dignity.”⁴

Contrary to the said laudatory precepts, Bela Malik and her friends had the bitter experience of knowing exactly how dedicated the U.S. Administration was in promoting freedom of speech and just how tolerant it was of dissent!

Hollow Claim

Even earlier, on 20 January 2005, during his Inaugural Speech at the time of assuming office for the second time, President George Bush had reiterated that human rights

are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed. In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty…. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you…. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof.George W. Bush, “Second Inaugural Address,” delivered 20 January 2005.

The words “freedom” and “democracy” appear incessantly – at least thirty to forty times – in each of President Bush’s major speeches, including his speech in Delhi. At the same time, one cannot help noticing that almost every speech of President Bush was replete with disparaging remarks about the lack of “freedom” and “democracy” in nations, which he considered were not part of the pro-U.S. camp. In the light of the above-mentioned gagging incident at Delhi, the hollowness of the U.S. establishment’s claim of being the flag-bearer of “freedom” and “democracy” in the world, thereby, stands completely exposed. In fact, after the enactment of the PATRIOT Act in 2001, and through similar laws that were enacted subsequently to curtail civil rights within the U.S., there was no way that the U.S. establishment could even pretend that it was the guardian of such lofty ideals! However, these retrograde steps have not prevented the U.S. establishment from indulging in doublespeak.

The myth that the U.S. is the “world’s oldest democracy” was reiterated yet again recently by the U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, at the time of signing the Indo-US Nuclear Deal in Washington, DC, on 10 October 2008.⁵ However, the grave irony is that it was a person of Ms. Rice’s background, who has had first-hand experience of the ground realities that legally prevailed in the United States as late as 1995, who has repeated this tall claim. The truth was, in her childhood, Ms. Rice has had the ignominy of suffering the worst aspects of the apartheid system that was prevalent in her home town of Birmingham in Alabama, which was one of the notorious Southern states of the United States infamous for its racist prejudices. According to a news report: “A childhood friend [of Ms. Rice], 11-year-old Denise McNair, was one of the four young girls killed in the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963 [by a racist group].”⁶

Despite this personal tragedy, Ms. Rice never chose to get involved with the civil rights movement at any time although she had enough political acumen to subsequently become the U.S. Secretary of State. The same Ms. Rice, who has been totally indifferent to the racially discriminatory social conditions in her neighborhood, now unabashedly claims that the U.S. was the “world’s oldest democracy”! President Bush repeated this claim again on 29 November 2008 in the context of the terrorist attack on Mumbai when he stated that: “And as the people of the world’s largest democracy recover from these attacks, they can count on the world’s oldest democracy to stand by their side.”⁷

It is in this background that an attempt is being made here to examine, with the aid of historical records, the veracity of Mr. Bush’s and Ms. Rice’s claims. Unfortunately for them and their ilk, the history of USA is rather well documented and the records are carefully conserved in numerous archives and libraries; several scholars have also carried out painstaking research and have placed a lot of that material in this regard in the public domain including on the Internet as well.

Apparently, even Senator Barak Obama, in the midst of his campaign for presidential nomination, made the politically correct statement that: “The world’s oldest democracy [USA] and the world’s largest democracy [India] are natural partners, sharing important interests and fundamental democratic values.” Senator Obama stated this in an article that he wrote for India Abroad (a magazine published in North America) on 29 February 2008. Senator Obama, a mulatto born in 1961, had spent his childhood in Hawaii and Java and had grown up in the White household of his maternal grandparents in Hawaii. Yet, from 1971 onward he did experience racial prejudices and understood what it meant to be an African-American. After his graduation, he chose to become a civil-rights activist and, therefore, is seemingly well versed in U.S. history, especially about the civil-rights movement. Under the circumstances, Senator Obama’s claim that the U.S. is the “world’s oldest democracy” does not gel with the realities on the ground as is described below. (The state of the “world’s largest democracy” will be discussed separately.)

Early Phase of “Democracy” in the U.S.

The history of USA is not that old since immigrants from Europe had founded it only in 1776. These immigrants had started settling along the east coast of North America from the beginning of the 17th century after forcibly driving away its earlier inhabitants – the Native American-Indians – further west. The original country consisted of thirteen former British colonies, which was bound on the north by the then British Canada, on the south by the then Spanish Florida, on the west by the Appalachian Mountains, and on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and covered an area that was less than six per cent of what it is today.

By the latter half of the eighteenth century, the economic structure of the British colonies in North America was composed of slave and free labour, of pre-capitalist and capitalist forms and forces of production, which was largely controlled by the landed gentry and the emerging bourgeoisie. In 1764, in an attempt to offset Britain’s war debt brought on by its war against the French and American-Indians and to help pay for the expenses of running its newly acquired territories, Britain began to levy additional taxes on its American subjects and increase duties on British goods imported to America. Britain’s decision to raise additional revenue by such methods was highly resented by the colonists, who found it an opportune movement to oppose British domination. Thus began the successful decade-long movement for independence. The Declaration of Independence on 04 July 1776 was followed by the adoption of the U.S. Constitution on 17 September 1787, and the ratification of the Bill of Rights on 15 December 1791. These steps supposedly signalled the establishment of freedom and democracy in USA. If that was so, the terms “freedom” and “democracy” had totally different connotations then than what they have assumed at present because at that time only a tiny minority of its then 2.5 million population directly benefited from such laudatory precepts.

The Declaration of Independence had proclaimed that: “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Indeed, all men and women are created equal! However, the astonishing fact, which has gone largely unnoticed, was that for over 200 years after the U.S. Constitution was adopted neither were all men nor all women ever treated as equals in the United States. As far as Native American-Indians and African-Americans were concerned, throughout this period the bulk of them had a hard time trying to ensure their very survival and to fend off threats to their personal safety. Under constant life-threatening situations, the question of exercising “unalienable Rights” such as “Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” had remained a rather far-fetched dream for most of them. The utter incongruousness between laudatory precepts on which the United States was founded and actual practice since it’s founding is what is sought to be unravelled in this essay.

It is apparent that most of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. “democratic” system were more anxious about safeguarding the interests of the big landowners (the Patroons, the Manor lords) and the bourgeoisie and less bothered about addressing the concerns of the vast majority of the people within the United States then. In the initial period following independence, a mixture of property and residency requirements had drastically restricted suffrage rights. When the first presidential election was held in 1789, the electorate that elected George Washington as President were mostly landlords or bourgeoisie, who were exclusively White males. (Reportedly, only about 38,818 adult White males voted in the 1789 election, which apparently constituted about 1.6 percent of the then total adult population of those states casting electoral votes.⁸ ) Between 1790 and 1856, these restrictions were slowly relaxed, and the electorate expanded to include nearly all the long-residing adult White males. However, it was only after poor sections of adult White males launched agitations that they managed to secure their voting rights. In addition, these restrictions were relaxed not because of altruistic motives; it was more out of compulsion and for safeguarding the self-interest of the elites.

According to U.S. historian, Alexander Keysser:

Between 1790 and 1835, from Southeast to Michigan, voteless [White] men petitioned legislatures and constitutional conventions to broaden suffrage requirements. Maryland’s early decision to drop property qualifications was hastened by years of agitation by propertyless residents (including many “mechanics”) of politically dominant Baltimore; in the 1840s, men who could not meet North Carolina’s sensational freehold requirements held mass meeting to demand the right to vote in all elections, while German and Irish aliens petitioned for their own enfranchisement in Milwaukee.⁹)

Ultimately, pure self-interest was a major factor. With the growing threat of slave rebellion, under the guise of White solidarity, enfranchising all White Southerners was a safe way of ensuring that the poor Whites would serve in the militia to protect the slave owners. Economic interest also played a role in expansion of franchise. As newly acquired territories began to organize themselves into States, inhabitants of those sparsely populated regions opted for White adult franchise in order to attract new settlers, a move that would potentially raise land value, encourage economic development and increase tax revenues. Male immigrants from Europe, who came in large number, were enfranchised in this process (until their suffrage right was again restricted through the introduction of the “poll tax” in 1871.) However, according to Keyssar:

…to the extent to which the working class was indeed enfranchised during the antebellum era [pre-Civil War period] (and one should not ignore that women, free blacks, and recent immigrants constituted a large portion of the working class), such enfranchisement was largely an unintended consequence of the changes in the suffrage laws. The Constitutional conventions that removed property and even taxpaying requirements did not deliberately intend to enfranchise the hundreds of thousands of factory operatives, day laborers, and unskilled workers who became such a prominent and disturbing feature of the economic landscape by the mid-1850s…. Indeed, the broadening of franchise in antebellum America transpired before the industrial revolution had proceeded very far and before its social consequences were clearly or widely visible.¹⁰

Women, American-Indians, African-Americans, Hispanics and those of Asian origin continued to be denied the right of franchise.

Pre-eminence of Slavery

Another notable feature was that the Founding Fathers were totally indifferent to the fate of the slaves, who were imported from Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries (and early 19th century as well) and who constituted 19 per cent of the total settler population of about 4 million at the time of the first U.S. census in 1790. In the prevailing “democratic spirit” of the times, slavery was legally permitted in the “world’s oldest democracy” under various provisions of the U.S. Constitution, clearly demonstrating the extent of influence wielded by the slave-owners in framing that Constitution. However, it is interesting to note that the Founding Fathers were too embarrassed to use the word “slave” or “slavery” in their debates or in the Constitution itself. Instead, they opted to use euphemisms such as “other persons” and “persons held to service or labor”, which clearly revealed the duplicity of the Founding Fathers in this regard. Explicit reference to slavery was first incorporated into the U.S. Constitution only on 06 December 1865 through the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

The initial convoluted reference to slavery appeared in the 1787 U.S. Constitution in Article I, Section 2, Paragraph iii, which afforded states seats in the House of Representatives according to population, with each slave being counted as “three-fifths of a person.” Not only did this arrangement allow slavery to continue, but it also meant that slaveholders would have disproportionate influence. While the slaves themselves were denied all democratic rights, effectively one slave-owner who owned 100 slaves enjoyed the same degree of representation in the U.S. Congress as 60 non-slave-owning citizens did. Since most of the slaves were confined to the big plantations in the South, the Southern states wielded far more clout in the decision-making process than the Northern states despite the majority of the U.S. citizens then – bulk of whom were non-slave-holders – being residents of the North.

The next allusion to the institution of slavery was in Article I, Section 9, Paragraph I, which stipulated that:

The Migration and Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

This clause prohibited the U.S. Congress from banning the import of slaves into USA before the year 1808 with the proviso that even if a tax or duty is imposed on such importation, it should not exceed ten dollars for each slave. Thus, not only did the U.S. Constitution completely protect slave trade, it also explicitly barred the U.S. Congress from attempting to substantially raise the import duty on slaves as a way of discouraging and ending the slave trade before the year 1808.¹¹

The last indirect reference to slavery is found in the 1787 U.S. Constitution in Article IV, Section 2, Paragraph iii. This was essentially the “fugitive-slave” clause that ordained that:

No Person held to Service or Labor in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labor, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom Service or Labor may be due.

That is to say, even if a slave escapes to a free state with laws prohibiting slavery, he/she still must be returned to his/her rightful owner to whom he/she owes his/her services in the slave state. He/she was still a slave no matter where he/she was, as long as he/she belonged to his/her master. It is very much obvious that specific clauses for protection of slavery were ingrained into the original U.S. Constitution without ever using the words “slave” or “slavery”!

Vermont, which broke away from New York to form a separate state in 1777, became the first State in the U.S. to constitutionally abolish the institution of slavery within its borders, with the State of Pennsylvania soon following its lead in 1780. (The only state to abolish slavery before independence was Rhode Island in 1774.) Although all other Northern states took similar steps by 1804, the gradual emancipation laws prolonged the actual process of abolition of slavery even in most of the Northern states well into the 1850s.

Unmindful of the developments in the Northern states, the U.S. Congress decided to toughen the disguised “fugitive slave” clause in the original U.S. Constitution. On 12 February 1793, it adopted the Fugitive Slave Act, 1793 that not only made it a federal offence to assist an escaping slave but also created a legal mechanism by which escaped slaves could be seized and returned to their masters. Under the Act every escaped slave was made a fugitive-for-life, liable to recapture at any time anywhere within the territory of the United States. Soon slave-catching developed into an organised industry in the “world’s oldest democracy” with hardly any mechanism even to restrain unscrupulous slave-catchers from unlawfully seizing free Blacks and selling them into slavery. The terrifying impact that the Act had on the daily lives of the African-American population all over the United States may well be imagined.

Fifty-seven years later, the pro-slavery laws in the “world’s oldest democracy” was further reinforced when the Fugitive Slave Act, 1850 was adopted by the U.S. Congress on 18 September 1850 to make any law-enforcement official who fails to execute an arrest warrant issued for the arrest of an alleged runaway slave liable to a fine of $1,000. Officials everywhere in the United States were now duty-bound to arrest anyone suspected of being a runaway slave on the basis of nothing more than a claimant’s sworn testimony of ownership. The person suspected of being a fugitive slave was left with no means of self-defence, since Section 6 of the Act had clearly stated that: “In no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence.” In addition, any person – whether Black or White – aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was to be subjected to six months’ imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. On the other hand, officers capturing a fugitive slave were entitled to monetary benefits in the form of a fee for their work. Ultimately, the sheer brutality with which the despicable witch-hunt was conducted all over USA impelled the abolitionists to redouble their quest for speedy abolition of slavery.

Impact of Slave Revolts

Although for a long time, the potential threat from slave insurrections were underplayed and given little attention, fear of insurrection was ultimately an important motivating factor behind the opposition to slavery. According to U.S. historian Herbert Aptheker’s study titled American Negro Slave Revolts (1943), there were at least 250 recorded cases of slave revolts in the U.S. Notable slave insurrections such as the ones led by Gabriel Prosser in Virginia (1800), Denmark Vesey in South Carolina (1822), and by Nat Turner in Virginia (1831) instilled fear into the slave-owners, who tried to tackle the problem by intensifying repressive measures. In addition, the freedoms of all “free” Black people in the Southern states were not only severely curtailed but also an official policy was instituted that forbade questioning the slave system on the grounds that any discussion might encourage similar slave revolts. Since Turner was literate and had claimed he had got his inspiration from the Bible, all literate slaves were perceived as potential insurgents. Thus, the Nat Turner rebellion also became a convenient excuse for passing anti-literacy laws.

That growth of literacy among slaves posed a potent threat to the institution of slavery was exemplified by the writings of David Walker (1785-1830), who was born free, of a free mother and a slave father in North Carolina, one of the Southern states. He was fortunate enough to learn to read and write and to have had the opportunity of studying a variety of subjects. Around 1815, he left the South to settle in the Northern State of Massachusetts, where slavery had been effectively abolished in 1783. In 1829, Walker published a pamphlet titled “Walker’s Appeal”, which bitterly denounced the institution of slavery along with all those who profited by it and all those who tolerated it.

In the said “Appeal,” for instance, Walker made apt references to the Declaration of Independence to expose the hypocrisy of the U.S. establishment in defending the institution of slavery. He argued:

See your Declaration Americans!!! Do you understand your own language? Hear your languages, proclaimed to the world, [on] July 4th, 1776 — “We hold these truths to be self evident – that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL!! that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!!” — Compare your own language above, extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers and on us — men who have never given your fathers or you the least provocation!!!!!!”¹²

The slave-owners were dumbfounded by Walker’s many such simple and straightforward but devastating arguments. They responded in a typically authoritarian-fashion by imposing a ban on the spread of literacy among the Black population. The legislatures in the Southern states actually went to the extent of passing legislations that made it a crime to teach Blacks – whether free or slave – how to read and write! These legislatures also offered a reward for Walker’s capture, $10,000 alive and $1,000 dead. As a result, Walker, when he was only 45 years old, was found dead at his home in Boston on 28 June 1830, under mysterious circumstances. Yet, Walker and those like him had made their contribution to the revolutionary task of abolishing slavery, which was finally achieved by force of arms in the ensuing Civil War that broke out some 30 years later.

Anti-Literacy Laws

Before their legal emancipation in 1865, most African-Americans were denied basic human rights, including the right to education. Even as late as 1860, less than 05 per cent of the slave population, which grew from 700,000 in 1790 to 4 million in 1860, was literate. It may appear incredible that in the sixteen Southern states and in some other states such as California of the “world’s oldest democracy”, anti-literacy laws were enacted and strictly enforced well until 1865. All those who were guilty of defying these laws by daring to give instruction to Blacks or Mulattos (progenies of mixed African/European parentage) were severely punished with hefty fines and/or brutal whipping. For example, Article 6, Section 10 of the Laws of the State of Alabama in force in 1833 had unambiguously stated that:

Any person or persons who shall attempt to teach any free person of color, or slave, shall upon conviction thereof by indictment be fined in a sum not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars.

Likewise, Article I, Section II of the Law of the State of Georgia, which was in force in 1848, had decreed that punishment for teaching slaves or free persons of color to read and write would be as follows:

If any slave, Negro, or free person of color, or any white person, shall teach any other slave, Negro, or free person of color, to read or write either written or printed characters, the said free person of color or slave shall be punished by fine and whipping, or fine or whipping, at the discretion of the court.

It was as though these abhorrent laws were taken straight out of the code of laws in Ancient India, the Manu Smriti or Manu’s Code of Laws, which included bigoted edicts that prohibited the acquisition of knowledge by the shudra (untouchable castes). Due to the anti-literacy laws and the intimidation and terror that ensued, there was a sharp decline in the literacy rate among slaves, which as per the census data fell from 15 per cent in 1830 to just 5 percent in 1860. By the 1850s, teachers from the Northern states, who were suspected of harbouring abolitionist views, were expelled from the Southern states and a ban was imposed on abolitionist literature there.

End of Part 1.

1. Special Address by The Hon’ble President of the United States of America, March 3, 2006, New Delhi, India, FICCI.
2. According to ‘The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor,’ which is a section under the U.S. Department of State: “The values captured in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in other global and regional commitments are consistent with the values upon which the United States was founded centuries ago.” In addition, in his Independence Day Radio Address to the Nation on 05 July 2008, President Bush defined the concept of “American Creed” as follows: “Two hundred and thirty-two years ago, our Founding Fathers came together in Philadelphia to proclaim that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…. This creed of freedom and equality has lifted the lives of millions of Americans, whether citizens by birth or citizens by choice…. Today, that light shines as brightly as it did in 1776.”
3. Staff Reporter, “Jangpura bats for Iraq,” The Hindu.
4. ”Bush Proclaims December 10 Human Rights Day,” America.gov, 9 December 2005.
5. “Full text: Condoleezza Rice’s speech,” NDTV Correspondent, 11 October 2008.
6. ”Condoleezza Rice,” NNDB.
7. Deb Riechmann, “Bush pledges U.S. support to India,” Washington Post, 29 November 2008.
8. US President – National Vote
9. Alexander Keysser, The Right to Vote – The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, Basic Books, New York, 2000, p.35. (The book won the 2001 annual award instituted by the American History Association for the best book on the history of the United States.
10. Keyssar, pp.68-69.
11. As per the constitutional provisions, the U.S. Congress waited until 01 January 1808 before it imposed a formal ban on the importation of slaves into the U.S. One important contributory factor that led to the ban was the success of the 1791 slave revolt in the French colony of Haiti (then known as Saint-Domingue) and the declaration of independence by it on 01 January 1804. The developments in Haiti and its reverberations elsewhere in the Caribbean and in USA did induce fears of rebellion into the slave-owners, who became extremely weary of importing new “wild” slaves through the Caribbean. However, illegal importation of slaves into the U.S. went on for much longer.
12. Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829: Electronic Edition. Walker, David, 1785-1830.

– prostitution and sex services – 46%;

– domestic service – 27%;

– agriculture – 10%;

– sweatshops or factories – 5%;

– restaurant and hotel work – 4%; with the remainder coming from:

– sexual exploitation of children, entertainment, and mail-order brides.

It persists for lack of regulation, work condition monitoring, and a growing demand for cheap labor enabling unscrupulous employers and criminal networks to exploit powerless workers for profit.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines forced labor as:

“…all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which said person has not offered himself voluntarily.”

Forced child labor is:

“(a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;”

“(b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;”

“(c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;” and

“(d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.”

The Free the Slaves.net’s definition is being “forced to work without pay under threat of violence and unable to walk away.” It reports:

– an estimated 27 million people are enslaved globally, more than at any other time previously;

– thousands annually trafficked in America in over 90 cities; around 17,000 by some estimates and up to 50,000 according to the CIA, either from abroad or affecting US citizens or residents as forced labor or sexual servitude;

– the global market value is over $9.5 billion annually, according to Mark Taylor, senior coordinator for the State Department’s Office to Monitor;

– victims are often women and children;

– the majority are in India and African countries;

– slavery is illegal but happens “everywhere;”

– slaves work in agriculture, homes, mines, restaurants, brothels, or wherever traffickers can employ them; they’re cheap, plentiful, disposable, and replaceable;

– “$90 is the average cost of a human slave around the world” compared to the 1850 $40,000 equivalent in today’s dollars;

– common terminology includes debt bondage, bonded labor, attached labor, restavec (or de facto bondage for Haitian children sent to households of strangers), forced labor, indentured servitude, and human trafficking;

– explosive population growth, mostly to urban centers without safety net or job security protections, facilitates the practice; and

– government corruption, lack of monitoring, and indifference does as well.

American Anti-Trafficking Efforts

US laws prohibit all forms of human trafficking through statutes created or strengthened by the 2000 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) with imprisonment for up to 20 years or longer as well as other penalties.

In April 2003, the Protect Act was passed (Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act). The law protects children and severely punishes offenders when enforced. It’s to prosecute American citizens and legal permanent residents who travel abroad for purposes of sexually trafficking minors without having to prove prior intent to commit the crime.

The 2000 law (reauthorized in 2005) provides tools to combat trafficking offenders worldwide. It also establishes the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) and the President’s Interagency Task Force to help coordinate anti-trafficking efforts. The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) also is for victim protection. In addition, various other US agencies are involved, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through its Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking public awareness campaign and by identifying victims.

The Department of Justice handles prosecutions, and along with DHS and the State Department, addresses various trafficking issues through the interagency Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center. Still, enforcement is often is lax or absent, at both federal and state levels, because offenders are powerful and those harmed are the “wretched of the earth,” mostly poor blacks, Latinos and Asians. As a result, the practice is rampant and growing. Below are examples of its forms.

Farmworker Slavery

In a March 2004 report, Oxfam America highlighted the growing problem in a report titled “Like Machines in the Fields: Workers without Rights in American Agriculture.” It’s a shocking account of how “Behind the shiny, happy images promoted by the fast-food industry with its never-ending commercials, there is another reality:”

– nearly two million overworked farmworkers living in “sub-poverty misery, without benefits, without the right to overtime,” a living wage, or other job protections, including for children;

– in Florida, it’s not uncommon to find instances of workers chained to poles, locked in trucks, physically beaten, and cheated out of pay; it’s pervasive enough for a federal prosecutor to have called the state “ground zero for modern-day slavery” in a New Yorker magazine article;

– John Bowe, author of “Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy,” calls Florida agriculture “an unsavory world” where workers like Adan Ortiz fear talking about their bosses because he has nightmares that they might “come after me with machetes and stuff;”

– basic US labor laws exclude farmworkers, including the right to organize; laws like the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRB) and 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA); also OSHA protections are lacking; the 1983 Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (AWPA or MSPA) provided modest but inadequate relief and none at all when it isn’t enforced; Oxfam reported that, except in California to a modest degree, “state laws perpetuate inequality,” especially in Florida and North Carolina;

– overall, enforcement at both federal and state levels is lax and has weakened in recent years; most notable are the lack of investigations, prosecutions, and resources allocated for either; in the case of undocumented workers, nothing in the law protects them;

– many serve as forced labor against their will in a modern-day version of slavery: terrorized by violent employers, watched by armed guards under conditions of near-incarceration, living overcrowded in “severely inadequate” barracks or trailers, often plagued with rust, mildew, filth, broken appliances, sagging or leaky roofs, non-working showers, and multiple occupants being over-charged up to $200 a week by unscrupulous employers; yet workers put up with it because in the words of one: “If we don’t work, we don’t eat;”

– the commercial power of giant buyers and retailers like Wal-Mart (selling 19% of US groceries) and Yum Brands (the world’s largest fast-food company) squeeze growers and suppliers for the lowest prices;

– increased competition from imports have had a similar effect, especially in winter months;

– yet while wages and prices to producers are squeezed, profits are passed up the distribution chain to corporate giants at the top.

Farmworkers have been punished as a result and are perhaps the poorest and most abused laborers in America. Around half of them earn less than $7500 annually. Lucky ones earn up to $10,000, in either case it’s far below the federal poverty threshold, and their wages have been stagnant since the 1970s.

Doing some of the worst and most dangerous jobs in America (from exposure to toxic chemicals and workplace accidents), poverty has forced them into sub-standing housing, temporary jobs, increased migrancy, and family separation.

Besides sub-poverty wages, around 95% get no Social Security, disability, or medical insurance benefits (let alone vacations or pensions) for themselves or their families. Women farmworkers face other abuses like male dominance, sexual harassment, or worse, while at the same time remain primary family caregivers.

Crop and livestock agricultural jobs exist throughout the country, but over half are concentrated in California, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Washington. Most farmworkers are young (between 18 – 44 or younger), male (about 80%), and Latino. They have little education, and many are recent undocumented immigrants (mostly from Mexico) forced north because of destructive trade laws like NAFTA.

Organizing efforts have won important victories but not enough to increase workers’ bargaining power under a fundamentally unfair system. So while achievements of organizations like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida (with over 2000 members) are impressive, they’re no match against agribusiness giants or Wal-Mart.

Nor can they ameliorate conditions in one of the country’s most hazardous occupations. Farmworker disability rates are three times than for the greater population. Around 300,000 laborers suffer pesticide poisoning annually, and many others endure accidents, musculoskeletal, and other type injuries (some chronic).

A 1990 North Carolina study found only 4% of workers had access to drinking water, hand-washing, and toilet facilities, a particularly dangerous situation for children and pregnant women.

Oxfam calls farmworker conditions today the equivalent of a “19th century plantation-style” model relying on field hands, rudimentary equipment, long hours, little pay, no benefits, under a basically “inhumane, anachronistic (system crying) out for reform.” But how when all levels of government turn a blind eye to the worst of abuses, and for the undocumented blame them for their own plight.

Domestic Servitude in America

Each year, many thousands, mostly women, arrive in America with temporary visas to work as live-in domestic workers – for the wealthy, foreign diplomats, or other domestic or foreign officials. They come to escape poverty or to earn money to send home to families. Often they’re exploited or victimized by unscrupulous traffickers who hold them in forced servitude, work them up to 19 hours a day, keep them practically incarcerated, pay them $100 or less a month, and often subject them to sexual abuse.

Undocumented workers have no protection, but even legal entrants have few. Because visas are employment-based, they’re obliged to one employer no matter how abusive, and if leave they lose their immigration status and are deported. As a result, few do or file complaints. Some who do are rarely protected because government agencies are lax in their monitoring and enforcement.

Live-in domestic workers are also excluded from labor law protections with regard to overtime pay and right to organize, strike, and bargain collectively. In addition, they’re unprotected by OSHA and against sexual harassment under Title VII workplace safeguards as it applies only to employers with 15 or more workers. In cases of foreign employers, they enjoy diplomatic immunity, even from criminal, civil, or administrative prosecutions.

As a result, special visa domestics endure human rights violations. Employers are immunized while workers are powerless to stop abuses like:

– assault and battery, including physical beatings and threats of serious harm;

– limited freedom of movement, including arbitrary and enforced loss of liberty by use of locks, bars, confiscation of passports and travel documents, chains, and threats of retaliation against other family members;

– health and safety issues, including unhealthy sleeping situations in basements, utility rooms, or other unsatisfactory places; unsafe working conditions endangering health; denial of food or proper nutrition; and refusal to provide medical care and having to work when ill;

– wage and amount of work concerns – US labor laws afford no protections so long hours, little rest, and low pay are common;

– privacy invasions – the UN General Assembly’s December 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that “(n)o one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence;” it applies to everyone, even live-in domestics on visas; nonetheless violations of ICCPR are common and migrants get no redress;

– psychological abuse – often highlighting employer superiority and worker inferiority to enforce control and render employees powerless; other abuses include insults, food restrictions, denying proper clothing, and various other demeaning practices; and

– servitude, forced labor, and trafficking – ICCPR and other international laws and instruments prohibit it, yet don’t effectively define “servitude” as distinguished from slavery; as a result, abusive labor relationships are inevitable; trafficking is specifically prohibited under the UN’s Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the (UN-adopted 2000) Convention against Transnational Organized Crime; nonetheless, the practice is rampant and growing; in the case of migrant domestic workers, abuse is widespread and greatly underreported.

Sex Slavery in America

It’s the largest category of forced labor in America and with good reason:

– it’s tied to organized crime and highly profitable;

– the demand for sex services, including from children, is high and growing; and

– the lack of safe and legal migration facilitates it.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) states that the average entry prostitution age is between 12 – 14. Shared Hope International documents modern-day sex trafficking and examines conditions under which it exists. It confirms that most victims are underage girls. A congressional finding estimated that between 100,000 – 300,000 children are at risk at any time. A DOJ assessment was that pimps control at least 75% of exploited minors by targeting vulnerable children using violence and psychological intimidation to hold them.

The Internet is a frequent recruitment tool. Other vulnerable victims are shelter and street youths, including runaways. An estimated 2.8 million children live on city streets, a third of whom are lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home. Familial prostitution is also common and involves the selling of a family member for drugs, shelter, and/or money.

The market includes prostitution, including with children, pornography, striptease, erotic dancing, and peep shows, often controlled by organized crime. The combination of legal and illegal sex generally is part of a larger portfolio of products and services that include drugs and drugs trafficking.

Sex traffickers usually recruit victims of their own nationality or ethnicity, and migrant smuggling facilitates it. In addition, state and federal laws too often conflict enough to withhold victim status from the abused, impede prosecutions, and result in too lenient sentences when they occur. Also, rarely are prostitution purchasers (including from children) arrested or prosecuted, and overall, law enforcement agencies face legal and systemic challenges that interfere with their ability or inclination to go after buyers. Society provides few protections for victims, including custodial shelters for young children, and as a result, sex services in America thrive.

Sweatshops and Factories

According to the Union of Needle Trades and Industrial Textile Employees, 75% of New York garment factories are sweatshops. The US Department of Labor says over 50% of all US-based ones are, the majority in the apparel centers of New York, California, Dallas, Miami, and Atlanta but others located offshore as well in American territories like Saipan, Guam and American Samoa where merchandise produced is labeled “Made in the USA.”

Competing with low-wage offshore producers pressures US producers to cut labor costs to a minimum, even by breaking the law, sometimes egregiously through forced labor. Like agriculture and domestic service, the sector is especially vulnerable as it often operates within the informal economy where regulatory enforcement is lax or absent. As a result, worker exploitation persists. Wages are sub-poverty. Overtime compensation is the exception, and work environments generally are poor to hazardous. Workers who complain or try to organize usually are fired and replaced by more amenable ones.

Starvation wages, long hours, unsafe working conditions, and no protections are standard practice in an industry long known for its labor abuses.

In 1995, two major scandals made headlines, one at home, the other offshore. On August 2, police raided an El Monte, California apartment complex in which 72 undocumented Thai immigrants were kept in forced bondage behind razor wire and a chain link fence. They’d been there for up to 17 years sewing clothes for some of the nation’s top manufacturers and retailers.

They were housed in crowded, squalid quarters. Armed guards imposed discipline, pressuring and intimidating them to work every day, around 84 hours a week for 70 cents an hour. Workers were forced to work, eat, sleep, and live in captivity. No unmonitored phone calls or uncensored letters were allowed, and everything bought came only from their captors at highly inflated prices. Seven operators were arrested and later convicted of conspiracy, kidnapping, involuntary servitude, smuggling, and harboring illegal immigrants.

Also in 1995, National Labor Committee investigators found teenage women, as young as 13, sewing clothing for Kathy Lee Gifford’s Global Fashion plant in Honduras. Pay was from 9 – 16 cents an hour under oppressive working conditions. Forced overtime was imposed to meet deadlines. Only two daily bathroom visits were allowed. Supervisors and armed guards applied pressure and intimidation to work faster on machines that were rust laden and prone to accidents. Attempts by the women to demand their legal rights were thwarted. Merchandise produced was for major US retailers like Wal-Mart.

American restaurant and hotel workers also work under onerous conditions and are underpaid. In hotels, nearly all housekeepers are women who are required to clean 15 or more rooms a day. Often they must skip meals and rest periods, work off the clock to meet quotas, and have a 40% higher injury rate than service workers overall as a result. According to US Department of Labor figures, they earn an average $8.67 an hour or about $17, 340 annually provided they work full-time.

Immigrants, mainly women, are especially vulnerable in hotels and restaurants. A June 2005 ACLU press release highlighted one example among many pertaining to a law suit brought by two immigrant waitresses against a New Jersey Chinese restaurant charging sex discrimination and labor exploitation.

Filed in June 2003, Mei Ying Liu and Shu Fang Chen charged that from May 2000 – November 2001 they were completely controlled by their employers, forced to work an average 80 hours a week, paid no wages or overtime, had to pay a kickback from tips received, faced gender and ethnic discrimination, were housed in an overcrowded, vermin-filled apartment, and were threatened with death when stopped working at the restaurant.

Guest Worker Trafficking on US Military Bases

Besides Halliburton’s exploited army of tens of thousands of foreign nationals in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the National Labor Committee (NLC) reported last July that “hundreds of thousands of foreign guest workers – among them 240,000 Bangladeshis – have been trafficked to Kuwait (under false promises of well-paid jobs, and) forced to work seven days a week (11 hours a day) at a US military base” under horrific conditions.

Stripped of their passports on arrival, they’re housed in overcrowded, squalid dorms with eight workers sharing small 10 x 10 rooms, paid 14 – 36 cents an hour, beaten and threatened with arrest when they complained, forced to use most of their wages for high-priced food, and the case of “Mr. Sabur” is typical. Hired by the Kuwait Waste Collection and Recycling Company to work at the Pentagon’s Camp Arifjan, his job was to clean the base – everything from offices and living spaces to tanks, rocket launchers and missiles.

He worked an 11-hour shift seven days a week and got a one-hour midnight break for supper. For this, he earned $34.72 a week, far less than he was promised, and he had to pay a Bangladesh employment agency 185,000 taka ($2697) for his three-year contracted job. His family sold everything possible for the money, still came up short, and had to borrow the rest from a neighbor.

On the job, the Kuwaiti company illegally withheld his first three months wages, forcing him to borrow money to survive. When he asked to be paid, he was beaten, and after an 80,000 worker strike, he was arrested, incarcerated for five days, beaten in prison, then deported to Bangladesh still wearing his torn, blood-stained clothing.

He was owed but never paid thousands of promised dollars in back wages, and he’s typical. NLC estimates that all 240,000 Bangladeshis have been cheated out of $1.2 billion, and the Pentagon is complicit in the crime. These same abuses are common on US bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, and likely other offshore locations as well. In the words of one Sri Lankan laborer for a Halliburton subcontractor in Iraq: “They promised us the moon and stars,” but instead gave us dirty work, low pay, long hours, bad food, and for the first three months held us in windowless warehouses near Baghdad’s airport with no money, and for some of them afterwards in tents even worse than the warehouses.

A Final Comment

This is the plight of America’s vulnerable and those we exploit abroad, whether in restaurants, hotels, agriculture, domestic work, the sex trade, or on US offshore military bases, and seldom do courts provide justice. It’s America’s dark side along with an appalling record of crimes and abuses, including imperial wars, torture, and looting the national wealth for criminal bankers and the rich at the expense of growing millions in need left wanting at the most perilous economic time in our history. America’s long and disturbing legacy, not at all one to be proud of.

As a legal analyst, I’ve observed the legal processes in depth over the years, and watched those with money, resources and networks receive justice within a system allegedly designed to serve all. I’ve observed the poor and unknowledgeable suffer, as finances, resources, and networks are very limited or void!

It is our right under the Constitution to petition our courts for justice. What does this say for a Nation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — Inalienable Rights?

Slavery Is Alive and Flourishing In America

Poor people are enslaved in America’s Prison Industrial Complex. Indigent legal representation unfolds as inexperienced, underpaid and overworked lawyers provide inadequate representation to the poor – resulting in wrongful convictions; thus, enslavement to the prison industrial complex increases. The use of felonious, unethical, and often, illiterate witnesses is an increasing vehicle for wrongful convictions. The financially disempowered are the burden barriers for society’s ills, but those with money and corporate networks never experience this enslavement.

As the poor suffer, prosecutors and law enforcement officers are becoming even more corrupt in their policies. America incarcerates more individuals, especially minorities, than any other nation in the world. Wrongful convictions are on the rise and corruption is escalating. Slavery is alive and flourishing in America. In my years of service to the community, I’ve come across two distinct cases that yield inconsistencies from the onset.

The case of Ali Khalid Abdullah is one of them. Ali Khalid Abdullah was released from prison on August 1, 2008 and has had multitudes of problems dealing with a new society, ever since. Ali describes his experience as “being freed from Prison but not free.” Ali served 19 years in prison for taking action against a drug dealer who had molested an 11-year old. How does a government release prisoners with no assistance, financial or social, and expect positive results? My opinion is, they do not. They expect and hope for recidivism as it is the key to maintaining The Prison Industrial Complex.

The other case is that of two sisters, Jamie and Gladys Scott. In 1994, Jamie and Gladys Scott were wrongfully convicted in the state of Mississippi. A corrupt sheriff used coercion, threats, and harassment to convict the Scott Sisters of armed robbery. The case of the Scott sisters is an intriguing one, with transcripts stating that perhaps 9, 10, or 11 dollars was stolen, at most. It’s important to note that no one was murdered or injured. One of the state’s witnesses, a 14 year old, testified that he did not have an attorney present when signing a statement prepared by the sheriff. Jamie and Gladys Scott have served 14 years of double-life sentences, thus far. That’s Double Life Each! The absurdity of their sentencing reaches new heights with the reality that neither of the Scott sisters had prior convictions. Sadly, the cases of Mr. Abdullah and the Scott sisters are becoming an accepted phenomenon in our society.

The Prison Industrial Complex is the 21st century slave master in the minority community, and unless we are made aware and trained to take action, the enslavement will continue to fester more and more rapidly in years to come.

Don’t Wait Until It Happens To You!

For more on the case, see Jamie & Gladys Scott and Black Commentator.

Insect Dreams by Marc Estrin — A clever and funny tale about Kafka’s beetle Gregor Samsa and the world of the 20th century. This latter subject ultimately turns the humor in this story into tragedy, which transforms it from just a good work of fiction into a classic one.

Subterranean Fire by Sharon Smith — This history of labor’s struggle for economic justice in the United States is a necessary and hopeful read for those who earn a wage in these times of economic uncertainty.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak — Nominally a work written for the young adult market, this work unveils the emotional horrors of war and oppression while simultaneously celebrating the everyday beauty found in human existence. It is about the casualties that the masters of war ignore.

The Scar of David by Susan Abulhawa — The beauty in this story is not in its few moments of joy and happiness or its even rarer moments of hope. No, the beauty lies in the stories of a people determined not to die. In a young girl’s belief in family and friends. This story is a story of Palestine. The writing here echoes the finest couplets of Gibran and Rumi.

People’s History of Sports in the United States — Dave Zirin has composed a wonderfully written, well-researched, and very readable story of US sport and its meaning to the oppressed and those who fight with them against the rulers. Like any sports book, there are stories of glory and prowess. This book is about the playing field and its role in the struggle for freedom and equal rights. It is about the rulers attempts to keep sport safely in the realm of nationalism and the status quo and the struggle of some athletes to make their efforts much more than that. Zirin makes it clear that it is a also a history that continues to be written.

Where the Wind Blew by Bob Sommer — Sommers’ novel is an emotionally taut tale. Like the strings on his old girlfriend’s cello, the story is tuned perfectly. One twist of the pegs to the left or right would make the story less than what it is–either too flat or mere melodrama. Where the Wind Blew is an intelligent and sensitive treatment of a time when the apocalypse was always just around the corner.

Born Under a Bad Sky by Jeffrey St. Clair — Most of the book is made up of hard-hitting articles regrading the destruction of the environment and exposes of those determined to continue that destruction. The jewel of the book lies in the last 116 pages of narrative. Titled “The Beautiful and the Damned,” this section is St. Clair’s beautifully rendered tale of a trip down some of the US West’s best known rivers. Seemingly inspired by Hunter S. Thompson, Aldo Leopold and the sheer beauty of the natural surroundings it describes, “The Beautiful and the Damned” does more than end Born Under a Bad Sky with a flourish, it conveys it into the genuinely sublime.

War Without End by Michael Schwartz — This is the best book on the US war in Iraq published in English to this date. It is comprehensive in its breath, revealing in its detail, and relentlessly radical in its critique. Michael Schwartz explains not only what the US has done to that country and its people, but why it is still there. Furthermore, it explains why there is a good chance that US troops will be there forever unless massive public protests are mounted against that presence.

The Duel — by Tariq Ali This is an important book. There has been very little published in English about Pakistan that doesn’t merely parrot the positions of the Pakistan government, the US desires for that government, or some combination of the two. It is written in an engaging and accessible style. As the US widens its war against those who would defy its designs into Pakistan, it becomes essential reading for anyone who refuses to accept the Orientalist narrative spewed by the policy makers in Washington, DC. Ali has written a history that explains and interprets the reality of Pakistan that is free of western prejudices and self-serving assumptions conceived in the foreign policy bureaucracies of DC and London.

The Trip Into Milky Way by Gary Corcoran — Trip Into the Milky Way (Coldtree Press 2007) is a novel of flight and it’s a story of love. A beautifully told tale of one man’s journey from the military draft and toward himself during the US war on Vietnam, this occasionally humorous, often heart-wrenching novel is a tale of a generation that serves as a metaphor for a nation that lost its way. The story is a story of wandering. Sometimes the wanderer is lost and sometimes he is just wandering.

GB84 by David Peace — GB84 is nothing short of stunning. It is a novel about the savagery of capitalism. Jackboots and legalized police beatings of unarmed strikers. Secret hit squads and government/corporate-sponsored organizations of police pretending to be miners whose job is to convince the strikers to scab. Democratic forms and fascist realities. The war of the super rich against the workers. This is David Peace at his best

The Lightning Thief Series by Rick Riordan — This is a delightful series set in modern times that features modern children of the gods and humans battling it out for the future of the Earth. It is also published for the youth market, but its appeal transcend the industry’s intentions. An introduction to Greek mythology that makes it all seem very alive.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by MT Anderson — One more set of books supposedly for the Young Adult market that transcends its intended market. The story of an American slave sold into a house of Enlightenment scientists in Boston who are attempting to discern the differences between Europeans and Africans, this two-volume set is a look at the role the slavers played in the American colonists’ war for independence and how the aspirations of the African-Americans of their times were manipulated by both sides in the conflict. It is also a unique telling of a young man’s intellectual and emotional growth into adulthood and a paean to the joys of classicism — musical and literary.

I also believe a mention of my 2007 novel Short Order Frame Up should appear here. Here are some comments from readers and reviewers regarding that novel.

“Ron Jacobs has created a working-class brew of language and music, a quasi-bitter, semi-sweet world of weed and sport, of love and violence, of not-so-innocent innocence up against the walls of racism and power. A compelling story, alas, and an underlying reality of life in America.” -Marc Estrin, author of Insect Dreams

“With Short Order, Ron Jacobs delivers something I haven’t come across since the works of James Baldwin: a great anti-racist novel. Powerful and political without being preachy. Poignant without being treacly. It’s stunning.” – Dave Zirin

and one more…..

Finally a novel about social and racial justice wrapped in the digestible genre of a murder mystery and set in Baltimore, a town that divides the north from the south and embodies the hopes and prejudices of post-60s America. Short-Order Frame Up is charged by its keen eye for historical detail and social conscience. But the devotion to context never interferes with the relentless pull of the story. A finely written but disturbing novel that probes the lingering bruises on the American psyche. –Jeffrey St. Clair

Here’s how The Sierra Club begins its discussion of mountaintop removal mining: “In places like Appalachia, mining companies blow the tops off mountains to reach a thin seam of coal and then, to minimize waste disposal costs, dump millions of tons of waste rock into the valleys below, causing permanent damage to the ecosystem and landscape.” That is a valley fill.

Then comes word—on October 18, 2008—that the Interior Department has “advanced a proposal that would ease restrictions on dumping mountaintop mining waste near rivers and streams, modifying protections that have been in place, though often circumvented, for a quarter-century.” This from a New York Times article, which continues: “The department’s Office of Surface Mining issued a final environmental analysis Friday on the proposed rule change, which has been under consideration for four years. It has been a priority of the surface mining industry … The proposed rule would rewrite a regulation enacted in 1983 that bars mining companies from dumping huge waste piles, known as “valley fills,” within 100 feet of any intermittent or perennial stream if the disposal affects water quality or quantity.”

Like any good American, after subconsciously blocking out the faint sounds of slave chains clinking and bull whips cracking, Uncle Sam’s first chore of the day is to check e-mail. No time for him to contemplate e-waste, now is there?

E-waste (discarded electronics and electrical products) has some potential in supplying secondary raw materials to keep the entire system afloat, when not properly treated properly it becomes a major source of carcinogens and toxins.

“A whole bouquet of heavy metals, semimetals and other chemical compounds lurk inside your seemingly innocent laptop or TV,” adds Jessika Toothman at HowStuffWorks.com. “E-waste dangers stem from ingredients such as lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, copper, beryllium, barium, chromium, nickel, zinc, silver and gold. Many of these elements are used in circuit boards and comprise electrical parts such as computer chips, monitors, and wiring.”

According to the EPA, in 2005, “used or unwanted electronics amounted to approximately 1.9 to 2.2 million tons. Of that, about 1.5 to 1.9 million tons were primarily discarded in landfills, and only 345,000 to 379,000 tons were recycled.”

Uncle Sam decides he wants eggs for breakfast and what Uncle Sam wants, Uncle Sam gets. Not even the din of doomed chickens can slow down this hungry man.

Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns has written a narrative of what a battery hen might say if it could speak human language. The narrative begins: “I am battery hen. I live in a cage so small I cannot stretch my wings. I am forced to stand night and day on a sloping wire mesh floor that painfully cuts into my feet. The cage walls tear my feathers, forming blood blisters that never heal. The air is so full of ammonia that my lungs hurt and my eyes burn and I think I am going blind. As soon as I was born, a man grabbed me and sheared off part of my beak with a hot iron, and my little brothers were thrown into trash bags as useless alive.”

Battery hens produce the vast majority of eggs you’ll find in your market.

With food now in his stomach, Uncle Sam joins the vast majority of Americans who take at least one form of pharmaceutical drug each day. Choosing to ignore the agonized screams of tortured animals, Uncle Sam gulps down his pills.

Aysha Z Akhtar, M.D., M.P.H., is a senior medical advisor and Jarrod Bailey, Ph.D., is a senior research consultant for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. “The more we study the relevance of animal tests, the more apparent their shortcomings become,” Akhtar and Bailey state in a Feb. 9, 2007 letter published in the British Medical Journal. “Even subtle physiological differences between humans and animals can manifest as profound differences in disease physiology and treatment effectiveness and safety. For example, numerous differences in spinal cord physiology and reaction to injury exist between species and even strains within a species. These differences likely contribute to the repeated failure of spinal cord treatments that have tested safe and effective in animals to translate into human benefit.”

“Results from animal tests are not transferable between species, and therefore cannot guarantee product safety for humans,” agrees Herbert Gundersheimer, M.D. “A major shift in our research paradigm is long overdue,” declare Akhtar and Bailey. “The move away from animal experiments toward more accurate methods of studying disease and intervention is scientifically superior and more ethical for humanity, as well as for animals.”

“Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: ’Because the animals are like us,’” writes Professor Charles R. Magel. “Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: ’Because the animals are not like us.’ Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.”

Uncle Sam’s medicine is washed down thanks to store-bought water. As he packs his water bottle in his work bag, he could swear a cruise missile has soared past his house but instead nods his head in disbelief.

“Americans buy 30 billion single-use water bottles every year, the majority of which end up in landfills,” writes Dominic Muren at TreeHugger.com. “In fact, 845 bottles end up in the land fill every second. All these water bottles are made from petroleum, and require petroleum to be shipped around the world. All that, and there’s no evidence that bottled water is any cleaner than tap-water.”

Catherine Clarke Fox of National Geographic adds: “But all those plastic bottles use a lot of fossil fuels and pollute the environment. In fact, Americans buy more bottled water than any other nation in the world, adding 29 billion water bottles a year to the problem. In order to make all these bottles, manufacturers use 17 million barrels of crude oil. That’s enough oil to keep a million cars going for twelve months. Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That’s about how much oil was needed to produce the bottle.”

Tired of getting animal blood on his socks, Uncle Sam reaches for his leather shoes…courtesy of the $1.5-billion-and-100-million-animal-skins-per-year U.S. industry.

“Leather is not simply a slaughterhouse byproduct,” says animal issues columnist Carla Bennett. “It’s a booming industry and an important part of the slaughter trade, since skin accounts for approximately 50 percent of the total byproduct value of cattle.” Leather is also made from slaughtered horses, sheep, lambs, goats, and pigs. “When dairy cows’ production declines, for example, their skin is made into leather; the hides of their offspring, ‘veal’ calves, are made into high-priced calfskin,” adds Bennett. “Thus, the economic success of the slaughterhouse (and the factory farm) is directly linked to the sale of leather goods.”

Another tactic for procuring animal skins is hunting. Species such as zebras, bison, water buffaloes, boars, deer, kangaroos, elephants, eels, sharks, dolphins, seals, walruses, frogs, crocodiles, lizards, and snakes are murdered solely for their hides. These animals are often endangered or illegally poached—and death is rarely swift or painless. Alligators are clubbed with axes and hammers and may suffer for hours. Reptiles are skinned alive to achieve suppleness in the leather and may take days to die. Kid goats are boiled alive.

A clever diversionary tactic of leather makers is to label their products “biodegradable” while pointing out that synthetic versions are usually petroleum-based. However, says Sally Clinton in Vegetarian Journal, the tanning process acts to “stabilize the collagen or protein fibers so that they are no longer biodegradable.” In turn, the Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology explains, “On the basis of quantity of energy consumed per unit of product produced, the leather-manufacturing industry would be categorized with the aluminum, paper, steel, cement, and petroleum-manufacturing industries as a gross consumer of energy.” The primary reason for this is that over 95 percent of U.S. leather is chrome tanned. “All wastes containing chromium are considered hazardous by the EPA,” writes Clinton. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the incidence of leukemia among residents in an area surrounding one tannery in Kentucky was five times the national average. According to a study released by the New York State Department of Health, more than half of all testicular cancer victims work in tanneries.

Uncle Sam heads for his beloved SUV, trying his best to not only find his cell phone but also to avoid stepping on the thousands of dying frogs that litter his driveway.

The South American tree frogs’ population is declining and biologists are blaming global warming. These frogs, it seems, have the very un-froglike habit of basking in the hot sun (most frogs normally avoid prolonged exposure to light due to the risk of overheating and dehydration). According to a research team at the University of Manchester, “global warming is leading to more cloud cover in the frogs’ natural habitat. This, in turn, is denying them the opportunity to ’sunbathe’ and kill off fatal Chytrid fungal infections, leading to many species dying out.”

Andrew Gray, Curator of Herpetology at the Manchester Museum, says: “With a third of the world’s amphibians currently under threat it’s vitally important we do our utmost to investigate the reasons why they are dying out at such an alarming rate.”

Uncle Sam starts up the engine and plugs in his cell phone headset, ready for a drive’s worth of important, essential, and utterly crucial business calls…but how can he hear over the sorrowful primate calls echoing off the SUV’s interior?

Here’s how the United Nations describes it: “Columbite-tantalite—coltan for short—is a dull metallic ore found in major quantities in the eastern areas of Congo. When refined, coltan becomes metallic tantalum, a heat-resistant powder that can hold a high electrical charge.” Tantalum from coltan is used in consumer electronics products such as cell phones.

Why would the UN be involved in describing a component of your cell phone? Well, coltan is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an African nation besieged by a brutal civil war. The mining and sale of coltan is used by both sides in the conflict to fund their military mayhem. In addition, the UN explains: “In order to mine for coltan, rebels have overrun Congo’s national parks, clearing out large chunks of the area’s lush forests. In addition, the poverty and starvation caused by the war have driven some miners and rebels to hunt the parks’ endangered elephants and gorillas for food.” Within the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the number of eastern lowland gorillas has declined by 90% over the past 5 years, and only 3,000 now remain.

Uncle Sam (on the phone): “Yeah, I’m on my way. (pause) I’m fine. Just got a headache. So much damn background noise lately. (pause) Ah, stop your worrying. It’s all gonna be fine. What could possibly go wrong now that Obama is in charge?”

(To be continued?)

One of the good things about everything being so fucked up—about the culture being so ubiquitously destructive—is that no matter where you look—no matter what your gifts, no matter where your heart lies—there’s good and desperately important work to be done.

– Derrick Jensen

In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed and both Northerners and Southerners were now legally required to turn in runaway slaves. One year later, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin (or Life Among the Lowly) as a serial in an antislavery paper, The National Era. In 1852, the Boston publishing company Jewett published it as a book and, as they are wont to say, the rest is history.

Widely considered to be the first social protest novel published in the United States (and the first major novel to have a black hero), Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold more copies—with the exception of The Bible—than any book had ever sold in America until that point with sales reaching 300,000 copies in the first year.

Stowe’s graphic depiction of slave life—based on true stories—personalized the issue, reclaiming it from the sanitized domain of courtroom legalese. Her story outraged some and inspired many others. To her critics, she answered with A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1853 to provide documentation that every incident in her book had actually happened. Upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862, Abraham Lincoln remarked: “So you’re the little woman that wrote the book that made this great war.”

There was a time when slavery was believed too deeply entrenched in American culture to ever be abolished. The movement to end this “peculiar institution” was made up of individuals willing to recognize that some things in life are bigger than any of us. Whether they literally risked their lives by rescuing slaves and running the Underground Railroad or they did their part by sewing clothes or blankets for escaped slaves or, yes, writing books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the movement needed every single one of these brave humans doing their part—small or large.

What seems impossible and irreversible today can be addressed if we’re willing to wake up and do the hard work. If we’re willing to stop making excuses for the reprehensible leaders (sic)—both political and corporate—who profit from our complacency.

So, the next time you’re deciding between watching a Will & Grace re-run or updating your Facebook book, step up instead. Take a good, long look into heart and an even longer look at the choices you make all day, every day—not from place of guilt and shame but with a sense of revelation. Accept the challenge to be better human being, a more responsible earthling. It takes courage to perform self-examination. It takes courage to accept everything you know just might be wrong. It takes far more courage to do this than to volunteer to wage illegal and immoral wars.

Let’s face it: Things sucked under George W. Bush. Things will suck under Barack Obama. Things have sucked under every president. Nothing will change until we change our minds. We can’t be as indifferent as those before us. They didn’t think enough about future generations so now we have to work twice as hard. It sucks, I know, but this not an issue of fairness. It’s about survival.

Some things in life are bigger than any of us. The anti-slavery movement recognized this. Today, the entire planet is enslaved…to profit-seeking corporations and the corrupt politicians they own (yes, including the Pope of Hope). Are this generation’s abolitionists ready to step up and create change? Not ask for change, create change.

Why not embrace your outrage and frustration and let it challenge you, inspire you, and motivate you? Instead of channeling your ambitions toward climbing a mountain, running a marathon, or striving to make your first million before you’re 30, what greater goal could any of us ever aim for than to leave the planet much better off than how we found it?

You have nothing to lose but your chains…

The good news is that a majority of American voters are walking away from the John McCain-Sarah Palin freak show. Even David Letterman is grilling McCain.

In recent days, McCain even added the word “socialist” to Barack Obama’s supposed list of sins. “You see, [Obama] believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that help us all make more of it,” said McCain. “At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives. They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Senator Obama.”

Just this once, I find myself wishing that something McCain says were true. Yet any serious look at Obama’s record and platform signal that he intends to govern well within the mainstream of American politics.

To begin with, there are his stated policies. He wants to keep at least 50,000 troops in Iraq to “fight terrorism” indefinitely, and he wants to send those who are withdrawn from Iraq to fight in Afghanistan. He agrees with John McCain that the size and budget of the American military must be increased, he stridently supports Israel’s suppression of the Palestinian people, and he has said “me too” to reasserting American military might in Latin America, being especially hostile to Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

Obama would be the first to repudiate the idea that he is any sort of anti-militarist or anti-imperialist–and we should take him at his word.

Domestically, Obama recognizes, unlike McCain, that the era of reckless deregulation and neoliberal supremacy has run its course. His policies will aim to re-establish order between the “hostile band of brothers,” as Marx called competing capitalists.

Yet no serious look at Obama’s policies indicates a plan to fundamentally reshape the American class system. As Malcolm X once said, “You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you’re making progress.”

Obama may support some modest economic band-aids–extending unemployment benefits, for example. He’ll most likely make some reasonable policy shifts, undoing the craziest of the Republican excesses–especially those that don’t cost much. For instance, he’ll appoint centrists to the Supreme Court if he gets the chance (although the justices most likely to retire are liberals or centrists anyway).

Obama will also end George Bush’s ban on stem cell research, and he’ll take modest steps to deal with global warming. He might even reduce the number of anti-immigrant raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

But even if Obama has his way at every point, by the end of his first term in 2012, the schools will remain underfunded, the prisons overcrowded, and the gap between the rich and the working class more or less unchanged.

Compared to the last eight years of Bush, any change will be seen as a good thing. Obama’s modest reforms will most likely earn him a honeymoon for a longer or shorter period of time. He also has the advantage that the Republican Party finds itself deeply divided, and those divisions will only increase if McCain loses badly.

But the modest changes Obama has promised fall far short of what is needed. Ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and economic crisis will form the backdrop to Obama’s first term. This calls for far more radical measures than Obama has contemplated, even in the most generous reading of his intentions.

This reality requires a serious political discussion about how to build a working-class movement that can change the rules of the game–and it’s in this context that the question of whether those who want to work for social change should vote for Obama must be discussed.

First, some historical perspective is needed. If the opinion poll trends hold up, McCain’s racist strategy will lose, and Obama will be elected the first African American president. In a nation built on slavery, this will be an historic accomplishment and a cause to celebrate for every genuine opponent of racism and bigotry of all kinds.

This point deserves emphasis. America’s economic wealth was literally extracted from the backs and minds of more than 10 generations of Black slaves. This wealth wasn’t incidental to the nation’s fortunes. Without slavery, there would have been no riches for Northern merchants and bankers, and no boom in Northern industry. It took a ferocious Civil War to abolish slavery–a conflict that demonstrated the tenacity of the slave owner’s defense of the system.

The freed slaves achieved a 10-year period of partial democracy and reform in the South during Reconstruction. Defended by heavily armed troops, they elected hundreds of African Americans to state legislatures and Congress.

This Southern revolution was drowned in blood, as the KKK lynched its way into power, leading to 80 years of apartheid-like legal segregation. The heroic and bloody struggles of the civil rights movement finally broke Jim Crow’s back, paving the way to voting rights, affirmative action in education and jobs, the creation of a Black middle class, and the possibility of Barak Obama’s campaign.

All this is often dismissed as ancient history. Yet it is worth remembering that when Barak Obama was born in 1961, millions of African Americans were still legally barred from voting in the South.

Even when the history is acknowledged, it is often asserted that the wrongs have been righted, and Black people should stop “complaining.” As if the racist taunts shouted out at McCain rallies aren’t buttressed by a powerful system of institutional racism which guarantees that African Americans disproportionately go to the poorest schools, suffer the highest unemployment rate and account for 50 percent of the nation’s 2 million prisoners, although they constitute just 13 percent of the population.

Obama’s election will raise the hopes of millions of Black workers across the country. Those who have suffered the brunt of American capitalism–and its most important tool, racism–will have a justifiable sense of pride at Obama’s rise.

And for those who believe that the white working class can be won over to the fight against racism in the interest of class-based solidarity, Election Day will show that, even when offered the chance to vote along racial lines (first by Hillary Clinton and then by John McCain), tens of millions of white workers from all parts of the country will vote for Barack Obama instead.

None of this ends racism, but it certainly demonstrates the potential for interracial unity in the working class.

Historically, the American left has faced this dilemma: try to transform the Democratic Party or try to build an alternative to its left. During the last Great Depression, this choice was posed in particularly stark terms–and although history never repeats itself, there are some important lessons to be learned from what happened then.

The stock market crash in October 1929 led to bank failures, factory closures and skyrocketing unemployment, as well as a rising level of working-class anger–and, eventually, strikes, protests, union drives and all kinds of social protests.

The 1932 election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt has important parallels to Obama’s campaign. He won in a landslide, replacing an unpopular and out-of-touch Republican administration, by promising a New Deal.

However, like Obama’s call for “change,” the content of that New Deal was meager when Roosevelt promised it on the campaign trail. It was mostly designed to shore up the banks and business, while offering small reforms for workers and the poor.

Yet the combination of anger and hope proved electric. Between 1934 and 1937, millions of workers went on strike and created the most powerful unions in U.S. history. In that struggle, the American Communist Party grew from 7,000 members in 1929 to 80,000 by 1938.

At first, it seemed like the working-class movement and Roosevelt were headed in the same direction. As workers got more radical and organized, Roosevelt was forced to deliver more reforms (Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, the Works Progress Administration jobs program, unemployment insurance, etc.).

In fact, it seemed so obvious to many political radicals that Roosevelt and the working class were headed in the same direction that when the Communist Party dropped its opposition to the Democratic Party (on orders from Moscow) and became Roosevelt’s biggest champion in 1935-36, very few complained.

But as the unions and Communist Party came to see defending Roosevelt from the Republicans as the central priority, they began to oppose the kinds of strikes and street actions necessary to continue the process of winning ever-more radical reforms for fear of “scaring the center.”

Once this dynamic became dominant, the movement began to fall apart. The abandonment of this independence destroyed the possibilities of building an independent labor party, one that could stand for workers’ rights, consistently fight racism and oppose U.S. wars abroad.

And when Roosevelt, the Democratic Party and big funders who really ran the party felt threatened by the demands of the unions, Roosevelt pre-emptively turned against the movement. On Memorial Day 1937–just months after Roosevelt won re-election with the overwhelming support of organized labor–police shot and killed 10 striking steelworkers in Chicago. It was then that FDR issued his infamous “a plague on both your houses” remark about the strike, which gave the green light to the bosses to use violence against the union movement.

By 1938, the New Deal economic policies had utterly failed to end the Depression. Instead, there was a dramatic worsening of the economy. At this point, Roosevelt turned towards building a massive war machine to fight the Second World War. This would include developing and dropping the atomic bomb in the interest of spreading the American empire to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

The Democrats, having sidetracked the possibility of breaking the two-party cycle in the 1930s, then helped launch the anticommunist McCarthyite crusade, a war in Korea, the Cold War with the USSR and, eventually, the war in Vietnam.

No one has a crystal ball, but it appears that global capitalism is entering a historic period of crisis. The question of how to use the opportunities this will open up so that we don’t repeat the mistakes the left made in the 1930s will be crucial if we want a different outcome this time.

I believe that voting and giving political support to Barack Obama and the Democratic Party will weaken the fight for a fundamentally different kind of world, a socialist world.

Arguing against a vote for Obama and the Democrats is not political abstention, however. It is part of a larger strategy that argues positively to continue building a socialist movement, based on the independence of the working class from the two mainstream parties.

There are many dedicated activists who will disagree with this point of view. They look forward, above all, to seeing the Republicans defeated after eight long years of George Bush. But can they make a positive case that Obama and the Democrats will take us closer to breaking the domination of the rich over the working class in this country?

The fact that millions of American workers look set to elect the first Black president is a good barometer of what could be. But it’s no substitute for systematic political debate and the patient building of social movements, socialist organization and practical action.

Strangely, there was nothing in McConnell’s script about the time Jesse Helms, in an elevator with fellow senators — including Carole Moseley-Braun just after she’d spoken in the Senate, denouncing slavery and the Confederate flag — turned to his friend Orin Hatch and said, “I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries.” Or the times he called civil rights activists “Communists and sex perverts,” and accused “Negroes and whites” on a march from Selma to Montgomery of participating in “sex orgies of the rawest sort.” Or when he described gay men and lesbians as “weak, morally sick wretches” who engage in “offensive and revolting conduct.”

Then there is Jesse’s deeply kind Senate record. FOR: tobacco companies. AGAINST: the Civil Rights Act; school desegregation; affirmative action; sanctions against Apartheid South Africa; commemorating the birthday of Martin Luther King; HIV-positive people entering the country; funding for “indecent” art; funding for AIDS research…

Verily, Jesse Helms’s brand of kindness makes Jesus look like a commie fag. That is why we — the Theater of Morally Sick Negro and White Wretched Communist Perverts — wish to salute Jesse Helms in a powerful piece of government-funded, rightwing performance art! Since most of us can’t remember our lines, we’ve decided to rip off Marcel Marceau’s loveable little character, “Bip,” and present this play in pantomime. Observe.

A lonely horizon in liberal America. Bleak. Desolate. Depraved. Enter Bleep, the sad, heterosexual mime. A teardrop glistens on Bleep’s whitened face; the ends of Bleep’s mouth dip downward; even the stripes on Bleep’s little shirt droop dejectedly. Bleep suffers because the world is full of MORALLY SICK NEGRO AND WHITE WRETCHED COMMUNIST PERVERTS. (Since this is one of those cutting-edge, didactic opuses, disgusting slides of lunch-counter sit-ins, ACT-UP demonstrations, women’s peace groups, Nelson Mandela walking out of prison, etc., are flashed onto a scrim, so we can see what the real problem is.)

Bleep dejectedly whistles “Dixie” as he mimes packing his wee lunch, picking up his briefcase, and setting off for work. Pressing a make-believe button, he steps unsuspectingly into an invisible elevator. Suddenly, horrible rap music blares, as Satan — played by Carol Moseley-Braun — enters and pantomimes slapping Bleep silly. She tries to strangle Bleep with a kente cloth, then dances luridly away, inadvertently dropping her handbag.

Alone in the elevator, Bleep kneels in prayer. He vows to lead a more decent life and fight MORALLY SICK NEGRO AND WHITE WRETCHED COMMUNIST PERVERTS. Then, from Above, a spotlight falls and caves in Bleep’s head. We laugh until our sides ache, in keeping with government standards of decency.

Bleep, now wearing a neck brace and a cross, is ready to fight the good fight! He picks up Satan’s handbag and begins walking with it through a park, toward FBI headquarters, where he plans to become an agent. As Bleep walks, he tips his hat in a wholesome way to unseen nannies pushing strollers. He pauses to pet imaginary kitties and sniff phantom daisies. Naturally, you can tell exactly what is happening because Mime is the universal language!

Suddenly from nowhere, a gang of MORALLY SICK NEGRO AND WHITE WRETCHED COMMUNIST PERVERTS sees Bleep’s purse and decides he is “coming on” to them. Overcome with sexual lust they cannot control, due to their inferior genomes, they pile on top of Bleep and participate in a sex orgy of the rawest sort!

Boxer shorts, bras, condoms fly tragically across a maroon-tinted backdrop. A witch cackles. Somebody gets an abortion. A couple of extras, dressed as the HIV virus, recite marriage vows. But because only criminals have rights in this society, Bleep is the one who ends up in the police station.

A farmhouse. Bleak. Desolate. Foreclosed. Because of his whiteface privilege, the cops have released Bleep with a warning. Enter Bleep, distraught and bitter. Big Government has failed him. Bleep has decided to “Kill them all and let God sort them out.” As he waits for his sheets to come out of the dryer, Bleep smears his body with Semtex and sprinkles dynamite on the floor. Then he rolls around in an arty, yet Pro-Life, fashion.

A knock at the door. Pete Seeger has just wrecked his boat, the Clearwater, about a mile downstream. Will Bleep let him use the phone so Pete can continue to clean up the Hudson? Covered in explosives, Bleep seethes with rage at this final communist insult. Opting to become the first ever right-wing Christian suicide bomber, Bleep hurls his little body at the interloper, blowing up the entire theater and everyone in it.

Which only goes to show how evil MORALLY SICK NEGRO AND WHITE WRETCHED COMMUNIST PERVERTS really are.

The End. Maybe.

I don’t care who owns the factories in the U.S. I don’t worry the U.S. heartland is being infiltrated by foreign interests. And certainly, I don’t consider Budweiser a national treasure. The truth is that it’s almost undrinkable.

But my ears perked up when I read how Budweiser’s maker, Anheuser-Bush had roots in St. Louis that went back before the Civil War. Ah, my friends, THERE is a story worth telling. And I’m going to sit back in the damp heat of this Chicago evening, sip on a couple of Fat Tires, and tell it to you, just because I hate patriotic bullshit and because I love revolution.

First, there is nothing American about beer making in St. Louis.

St. Louis in the 1850s was a raw river town situated where the Missouri River and the broad Mississippi met. It was a frontier town in many ways and the jumping off point. It was the “end of the line” for civilization. But it was also one of the first American industrial cities, with one of the heaviest concentration of of factory workers in the country. And these workers were not native-born Americans.

A great many of them came straight from Germany — and formed part of a very large German speaking population that then dominated both the urban and rural landscape from St. Louis to Chicago, to Cincinnati and far into the farmlands of Pennsylvania. And these immigrant workers were a very rowdy and radical bunch. Many were veterans of Europe’s great revolutionary battles of 1848 — the first upheavals when working class and communist revolution emerged as a living threat to the world’s ruling classes.

And, at the same time, surrounding this heavily leftwing, working-class, German-speaking city was a countryside filled with some of the most ugly, racist, pro-slavery forces in the U.S. The Missouri River stretched west from St. Louis, and its shores were lined with slave plantations producing raw materials for twine — a product that shipped downriver to bind the cotton bales of the Mississippi Delta.

The slave owners of Missouri were quite militant. They produced the political gangs called “border ruffians” who crossed the western Missouri border into nearby Kansas territory, where they engaged in armed struggle with abolitionists like John Brown over whether Bloody Kansas would be a slave state or free.

So you can imagine that there was a tension growing through the 1850s between the pro-slavery farmers of the Missouri floodplains and the anti-slavery and often communist workers of St. Louis.

There was a parallel, and little known cultural clash going on at the same time: the German workers arrived as beer drinkers and quite a few of them were first class brewers. There were some Irish among the workers, and they too were fans of the Germans’ sudsy “liquid bread.”

Before long St. Louis was peppered with huge German beer halls, where the often lonely immigrants found community and a feeling of home. For reasons I haven’t yet uncovered, the reactionary political forces of Missouri territory were anti-beer. Maybe they didn’t want this foreign culture to take root. Perhaps they had some early religious prohibitionist logic. But in any case, there was an early political clash when a major push was made to ban beer in St. Louis, and (needless to say) the German workers pushed back.

Here is an irony worth thinking about: In the Mississippi river valley, this important historical clash started between beer lovers and hemp growers. And, believe it or not, revolutionary sympathies go with the beer drinkers.

At a time when social organization among immigrants was primitive, the fight over beer helped spur a sense of common identity among the workers, and gave rise to a number of political newspapers. And the movement that emerged from these circles were increasingly active in the fight over slavery. I have on my bookshelf a rare little book that gathers articles and histories from these German immigrant newspapers — and it is clear how they started to articulate deeply revolutionary views that spoke for a highly conscious and engaged working class population.

You may have studied the civil war a little… I know I have always been fascinated by this first, truly revolutionary war on U.S. soil. And one thing to keep in mind was that the so-called “border states” were a key battle ground as the civil war broke out. There was a strip of these states (from Maryland through West Virginia, Kentucky, to Missouri) that had sizable populations of slave owners and slaves but a general political mood that was divided over the issues of secession and war.

And in this fight over the border states, Maryland had a particular importance because it surrounded the Union capital, so that if it joined the slavery confederation, Washington DC would be harder to defend. And the mood was so bad that Abraham Lincoln was almost killed in Baltimore as he traveled from Illinois to DC to assume the presidency. At the other end of the country, St. Louis has a major strategic importance for the war: It was the major anti-slavery center on the Mississippi. (The next river city, Memphis, was a creature of the Mississippi Delta. It was one of the urban nerve centers of the slave empire — filled with slave markets and holding pens.)

And so, as war broke out, all sides prepared to seize St. Louis by force. And if it had fallen to the slavocracy, it would have been quite hard for the Union’s armies to gain a foothold on the Mississippi, and it would have been that much harder to defeat the South.

On the surface, the politics of St. Louis did not look promising. After 1860, the new governor Claiborne Fox Jackson was clearly a pro-slavery diehard, and the bastard was scheming to secede from the Union and pull the state into slavery’s confederacy.

Step by step the tensions mounted, and started to go from political to military preparations. One focus of preparations was the state armory, the largest warehouse of weapons on the frontier. Whoever controlled those guns would be better able to crush their enemies.

Here again beer enters the story. Because the German workers started to prepare for battle. Led by veterans of the 1848 Revolutions, they started to secretly train themselves in discipline and military tactics. Their plan: to rise up against the state government in armed insurrection, to seize the armory, and defeat the governor’s army.

Where did they do their drills? In the cavernous beer halls of St. Louis. At a given time, they would gather. The doors would be sealed and put under vigilant guard. The tables would be cleared away. And cartloads of sawdust would be scattered deep on the beerhall floors.

And with the sawdust muffling the tramp, tramp, tramp of their feet, the workers prepared themselves for war — learning the unit movements so central to the warfare of that day. Outside, on the streets, the many spies of the governor could not hear what was going on within.

I won’t go into great detail about the heroic and fascinating ways that violence erupted. Led by fearless army officer Nathaniel Lyons the anti-slavery forces struck, and struck hard. They seized St. Louis and the armory. And they shattered the schemes of the slave owners. They routed the Governor’s troops in the early battles. And they bottled up the slaveowners of the Missouri River — cutting them off from the Confederacy.

What followed was one of the most bitter civil wars I have ever studied: Missouri was criss-crossed by vicious pro-slavery death squads that carried out horrific murders and mutilations. Their raiders came dressed in a cloud of human scalps sewn into their clothes and bridles — as they spread terror among those who opposed the sale of human beings. If you have ever wondered where the frontier killer Jesse James got trained, it was as a triggerman for one of the most notorious death squads of the slavocracy.

Hemp made its appearance here too, right in the midst of the fighting: in several key battles the Confederate forces build protective breast works out of the hemp bales pulled from their slave plantations, piling up the bundled hemp harvest to protect themselves from Union bullets.

Fighting against the slavocrats were a complex array of forces, and at their core were new Union army units led by radical Republican John Charles Fremont, recruited heavily from among the German workers of St. Louis. The first known actions of communists in the U.S. was the revolutionary armed struggle of these largely German-speaking forces, led in part by Colonel Joseph Weydemeyer, an energetic communist co-thinker of Karl Marx.

These units militantly emancipated many slaves that fell into their hands. This was in direct contradiction with the policy of President Lincoln who, afraid to offend the leading forces of other border states, insisted in the early days of the civil war that slaves should not be freed, but should be treated as “contraband property.” In this dispute, Fremont was removed from the command of the Missouri armies, and these revolutionary working class forces were dispersed into larger armies in order to better control them.

There are, in my opinion, many lessons and insights within this story. And more in the parts I have left untold.

But I tell this story now just to make a single point:

Anyone who thinks that Budweiser and the beer industry of St. Louis is a story of patriotism, Americanism, of all-American “national treasures,” of a whiteman’s “heartland” of traditional values and conservative xenophobia… Anyone who runs that story just doesn’t know.

The story of beer in St. Louis is a story of communist immigrant workers who didn’t speak English, who hated the mistreatment of kidnapped Africans in the United States, who had little love for America’s institutions, and who were willing to die (and kill!) to end the horrific practices of human slavery.

Deal with it. Pass it on.

Hans Bennett: What does “prison abolitionist” mean?

Rose Braz: CR seeks to abolish the prison industrial complex: the use of prisons, policing and the larger system of the prison industrial complex as an “answer” to what are social, political and economic problems, not just prisons.

Abolition defines both the goal we seek and the way we do our work today. Abolition means a world where we do not use prisons, policing and the larger system of the prison industrial complex as an “answer” to what are social, political and economic problems. Abolition means that instead we put in place the things that would reduce incidents of harm at the front end and address harm in a non-punitive manner when harm does occur. Abolition means that harm will occur far less often and, that when harm does occur, we address the causes of that harm rather than rely on the failed solutions of punishment. Thus, abolition is taking a harm reductionist approach to our society’s problems.

Abolition means creating sustainable, healthy communities empowered to create safety and rooted in accountability, instead of relying on policing, courts, and imprisonment which are not creating safe communities.

HB: How has prison changed in 10 years?

RB: One recent shift is that our denunciation of conditions inside has been twisted into justifications for expanding the system, particularly through what are sometimes called “boutique prisons”.

For example, there is fairly uniform agreement that California’s now $10 billion-per-year prison system holds too many people, provides horrendous health and mental health care, underfunds and cuts programming and services, and consistently fails to deliver on its promise of public safety. Nonetheless, California’s answer to this disaster has been to make it even bigger, building more prisons and in particular specialized prisons — for women, for elderly prisoners, for the sick, etc.

What’s new and more insidious about this expansion is that it has not been couched in ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric that politicians usually employ to justify expansion. Rather, in response to growing anti-prison public sentiment, these plans have been grounded on the rhetoric of “prison reform” and in regard to people in women’s prisons: “gender responsiveness.”

One current challenge is to continue to debunk the myth that bricks and mortar are an answer to these problems and to make common sense that the only real answer to California’s prison crisis is to reduce the number of people in prison and number of prisons toward the goal of abolition.

HB: How has the anti-prison movement evolved in the last 10 years?

RB: In the last decade, I think the movement has become more coordinated, is growing and has shifted the debate from one about reform to one that includes abolition.

In 1998, while there were numerous people and organizations working around conditions of confinement, the death penalty, etc., and in particular using litigation and research strategies; grassroots organizing challenging the PIC was at a low following the crackdown on the movement in the 1970’s and 80’s. We believe that a grassroots movement is a necessary prerequisite to change. CR is bringing people together through our conferences, campaigns, and projects toward the goal of helping to build that movement.

I also believe the debate has shifted and unlike a decade ago, abolition is on the table. A prerequisite to seeking any social change is the naming of it. In other words, even though the goal we seek may be far away, unless we name it and fight for it today, it will never come.

HB: What distinctions do you make between “political prisoners,” and others, including non-violent and violent offenders?

RB: CR focuses on how the PIC is used as a purported “answer” to social, economic and political challenges, and clearly a big part of the build up of the PIC followed directly on the political uprisings of the ’60s and ’70’s. CR seeks to abolish the PIC in its entirety, for us that means fundamentally challenging the PIC as an institution. This means that just as we fight for Mumia to not be locked in a cage, we also fight for people convicted of offenses classified as “violent” or “nonviolent” by the state to also not be locked in cages. While acknowledging that people are put in prison for different reasons, we do not make the distinction between people in for “violent” or “nonviolent” offenses because the PIC is not an answer to either.

HB: Anything else to add?

RB: One day, I believe those who fought for abolition will be seen as visionaries. Historian Adam Hochschild notes that there are numerous institutions in history that appeared unchangeable and moreover, small numbers of people have sparked extraordinary change.

Until the late 18th century, when the British slavery abolitionist movement began, the idea of eliminating one of the fundamental aspects of the British Empire’s economy was unimaginable. Yet, 12 individuals who first met in a London printing shop in 1787 managed to create enough social turbulence that 51 years later, the slave ships stopped sailing in Britain.

In the US, the first slavery abolitionists were represented as extremists and it took almost a century to abolish slavery. Similarly, many who lived under Jim Crow could not envision a legal system without segregation.

As Hochschild wrote, “The fact that the battle against slavery was won must give us pause when considering great modern injustices, such as the gap between rich and poor, nuclear proliferation and war” and I would add the Prison Industrial Complex. “None of these problems will be solved overnight, or perhaps even in the fifty years it took to end British slavery, but they will not be solved at all unless people see them as both outrageous and solvable.”

When traveling abroad, the state of distress becomes abundantly apparent upon return to the states: you can see the stress and discomfort steaming off of people. They are worried about everything from their job security to avoiding foreclosure on their house to paying to get to work as gas prices rise closer to the international norm. They are distressed because they are forced to live in a world of savage competition, wherein their well-being brutally hinges on the success of the market.

They look and look for work and finally find some gig where an intermediary hires them for a “trial period” that can last up to a full year, after which they might get lucky and obtain health care and start accruing some measly vacation time. Then they are told to contact “human resources” if they have any questions.

It’s amazing how the self-confidence of individuals is destroyed when they are treated as a mere object, rewarded for a year of good behavior with health care: generally considered a human right throughout the civilized world.

So I can understand the stressed and moody nature of Americans: this is quite expected from people seen as little more than a number in the extremely mechanistic economy that has been constructed since the dawn of Reaganism.

But this barely scratches the surface of the problem.

People are afraid to dissent even in the most mundane manner. What passes for the left of the American spectrum is anyone who awakens to the idea that indiscriminate bombing of millions of people in all corners of the globe might be morally problematic. This is the “send in a check” crowd: their big idea for how to fight the man is by joining a bureaucratic non-profit. They don’t realize that all they’re doing with said donation is adding their name to a list so that they will continue to be solicited in the future.

Sure it’s become a la mode to hate on the president! But rarely does anyone launch anything resembling a complete criticism of the overarching problem: the violence of Americana.

By Americana, I mean the culture of manifest destiny and American exceptional-ism: the idea that the globe is ours to rule, and that violence is an acceptable means of doing it.

In the end, this violence has been our biggest problem.

It was the problem on September 11th, 2001 when 3,000 people were indiscriminately killed by religious zealots.

The zealotry continued and the violence escalated as the United States wasted no time in responding by indiscriminately bombing men, women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Violence continued to be the problem as the American imperial media machine launched a full frontal assault against reason, diplomacy and democracy: shutting out anyone dissenting against the American fetish for violence.

Let us not forget history!

Violence has always been the problem.

Violence was the problem when over 50,000 Americans died while our armed forces murdered over 1,000,000 Vietnamese in the Great Holy War against “Communism.”

Violence was the problem when greater than 200,000 Japanese civilians were instantly incinerated by the Great Bomb, despite the fact that Japanese forces were in full retreat. The Americans felt the need to show off their toy to scare the Communists, and two cities on the globe was a small price to pay to attain that great Freudian glory.

And let us not forget that the nation was founded upon the concept of violence. The Puritans, no longer fit to live in an increasingly Enlightened Europe, had to find somewhere to rest their heads at night. Of course, the native inhabitants of the New World wanted nothing to do with them, but they were never asked their opinion. They were just terrorized, moved and killed.

The same went for the laborers, stolen from Africa and not remunerated for providing nearly all of the wealth in the New World. The violence of the whip and rifle was brought upon these people in order that the white man could live as comfortably, nay more comfortably, than they did in their native country.

The great genocide of the native peoples of the Americas and the African slaves imported to work the land stands as the single greatest crime against humanity over the last 500 years. And it was upon this brutal crime that Americana was founded. It was this violence that started the cycle that continues unabated today.

You can see this violence in American cities, which are often on par with the least developed regions of the world for the utter despair inside of them. Offered little incentive for success, citizens of the urban ghetto are forced to fail: the only hope they see is via the brotherhood of gang warfare.

My boyhood home, Chicago, saw over 30 students killed on public school property during the last calendar year, 24 of them as a result of gunfire. While the murder rate has gone down throughout the city, it has gone up amongst the young, who have rapidly become the most marginalized sector of American society. The old are still clinging onto the paltry social safety net that once existed, from social security to decent pensions and the occasional medical care for good measure.

The young, meanwhile, understand that they are done. What do people my age (27) and under have to look forward to? – A rapidly declining currency and stock market, a vanishing social security system, the greatest stagnation of wages since the 1930’s, and the fantastic implosion of the oil empire that has maintained American well-being since the end of the 2nd world war.

The young are done, put a fork in them, because they can’t find a job that pays anything unless they have a degree, and then they have a job that can’t pay off their enormous student debt. And the college degree, after all, is nothing but proof that they have been socialized into perfect subservient citizens, as few Americans are capable of pulling off a truly liberal arts education.

But many, when faced with the choice between debt and a free ride, will choose a tour in the American armed forces. They will choose the route of violence rather than the route of hope. They will choose the route of Hollywood with its guns and explosions, only to find out that Hollywood had them good and duped. They will find that there is no glory in violence, especially when it’s violence for the benefit of a small elite portion of society.

This is why it is time to declare our independence from the violence of Americana.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

These rights are not unique to Americans, but belong to all members of the human family. And yet we continue to bring our epidemic of violence onto humans all over the world, from Latin America to the Balkans to the Middle East.

And obviously these rights are meant to extend to all Americans, and not be limited by race, religion and income. And yet the United States continues to dwarf the prison population of the remainder of the developed world: exposing huge portions of its minority population to a state violence that turns them into professional criminals rather than productive members of society. The Puritan roots have quite predictably developed into a surveillance society, where anything outside of the white, prudish norm is considered unacceptable.

And yet those outside of the white, prudish norm are in the majority! So let us declare our independence!

Let us declare our independence once and for all from the wretched rule of the Puritan business elite. Let us declare our independence from the violence of Americana, and put an end to her internal and external violence.

Let us ignore Barack Obama and listen to his preacher when he says “God Damn America.” Those words were not meant to divide but rather to unite. The vast majority of the population can come together beneath the words “God Damn America!,” because what has the violence of the American empire done for us?? What has being the most powerful nation on earth done for your average American?? What has all this bullying of innocent people throughout the world and in our own country done for anybody??

Doodley Squat!

And so now is the time to declare our independence!

A true patriot knows the teaching of Thomas Jefferson, that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

We know that recent history, especially under the autocratic control of the current King George, has been one of repeated abuses and usurpations. “Let facts be submitted to a candid world:

1) “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

2) He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

3) He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

4) He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

5) He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

6) He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.

7) For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury.

8) He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.”

We cannot endure any longer the horrific nightmare of our current state. People from all walks of life agree, and I know this because the Internet has brought us together. Any time I publish an article of dissent, I am joined in a chorus of support of people from all regions and all backgrounds. I know that we have the capacity to defeat the violence of Americana in favor of a peaceful land of plenty.

It will not be easy and it will not be quick, but we can take some pleasure in making the first step. And this step is appropriately done on the fourth of July; it is the step taken by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin in 1776. We have to begin by declaring our independence. We have to begin by saying “America! We don’t need you anymore! You have not been good to us, and for my health and security, we must divorce!” You wouldn’t stay with an abusive spouse and so you shouldn’t stay with a violent nation.

As the Empire falls along with its currency and its respect in the civilized world, so should its government. The dusk of the American empire should be a joyous moment for Americans, for at last we can declare our independence from the violence of Americana.

Recent congressional attention has again brought Angola into the media limelight. The focus this time is on the prison’s practice of keeping some inmates in solitary confinement for decades, especially two of Angola’s most well-known residents – Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. Woodfox and Wallace are the remaining members of the Angola Three, political activists widely seen as having been interned in solitary confinement as punishment for their political activism.

Modern Plantation

Norris Henderson, co-director of Safe Streets/Strong Communities, a grassroots criminal justice organization in New Orleans, spent twenty years at Angola — a relatively short time in a prison where 85 percent of its 5,100 prisoners are expected to die behind its walls. “Six hundred folks been there over 25 years,” he explains. “Lots of these guys been there over 35 years. Think about that: a population that’s been there since the 1970s. Once you’re in this place, it’s almost like you ain’t going nowhere, that barring some miracle, you’re going to die there.”

Prisoners at Angola still do the same work that enslaved Africans did there when it was a slave plantation. “Angola is a plantation,” Henderson explains. “Eighteen-thousand acres of choice farmland. Even to this day, you could have machinery that can do all that work, but you still have prisoners doing it instead.” Not only do prisoners at Angola toil at the same work as enslaved Africans hundreds of years ago, but many of the white guards come from families that have lived on the grounds since the plantation days.

Nathaniel Anderson, a current inmate at Angola who has served nearly thirty years of a lifetime sentence, agrees. “People on the outside should know that Angola is still a plantation with every type and kind of slave conceivable,” he says.

Prison Organizing

In 1971, the Black Panther Party was seen as a threat to this country’s power structure – not only in the inner cities, but even in the prisons. At Orleans Parish Prison, the New Orleans city jail, the entire jail population refused to cooperate for one day in solidarity with New Orleans Panthers who were on trial. “I was in the jail at the time of their trial,” Henderson tells me. “The power that came from those guys in the jail, the camaraderie…Word went out through the jail, because no one thought the Panthers were going to get a fair trial. We decided to do something. We said, ‘The least we can do is to say the day they are going to court, no one is going to court.’”

The action was successful, and inspired prisoners to do more. “People saw what happened and said, ‘We shut down the whole system that day,’” he remembers. “That taught the guys that if we stick together we can accomplish a whole lot of things.”

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were inmates who had recently become members of the Black Panther Party, and as activists, they were seen as threats to the established order of the prison. They were organizing among the other prisoners, conducting political education, and mobilizing for civil disobedience to improve conditions.

Robert King Wilkerson, like many inmates, joined the Black Panther Party while already imprisoned at Orleans Parish Prison. He was transferred to Angola, and immediately placed in solitary confinement (known at Angola as Closed Cell Restriction or CCR) — confined alone in his cell with no human contact for 23 hours a day. He later found out he had been transferred to solitary because he was accused of an attack he could not have committed — it had happened at Angola before he had been moved there.

In March of 1972, not long after they began organizing for reform from within Angola, Wallace and Woodfox were accused of killing a correctional officer. They were also moved to solitary, where they remained for nearly 36 years, until March of this year, when they were moved out four days after a congressional delegation led by Congressman John Conyers arranged a visit to the prison. Legal experts have said this is the longest time anyone in the US has spent in solitary. Amnesty International recently declared, “the prisoners’ prolonged isolation breached international treaties which the US has ratified, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture.”

Wilkerson, Wallace, and Woodfox became known internationally as the Angola Three – Black Panthers held in solitary confinement because of their political activism. Wilkerson remained in solitary for nearly 29 years, until he was exonerated and released from prison in 2001. Since his release, Wilkerson has been a tireless advocate for his friends still incarcerated. “I’m free of Angola,” he often says, “but Angola will never be free of me.”

This history of struggle and resistance brings a special urgency to the case of the Angola Three. Kgalema Motlante, a leader of the African National Congress, said in 2003 that the case of the Angola Three “has the potential of laying bare, exposing the shortcomings, in the entire US system.”

Purchasing Testimony

Wallace and Woodfox have the facts on their side. Bloody fingerprints at the scene of the crime do not match their prints. Witnesses against them have recanted, while witnesses with nothing to gain have testified that they were nowhere near the crime. There is evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, such as purchasing inmate testimony and not disclosing it to the defense. Even the widow of the slain guard has spoken out on their behalf. Most recently, their case has received attention from Representative Conyers, head of the House Judiciary Committee, and Cedric Richmond, chair of the Louisiana House Judiciary Committee, who has scheduled hearings on the issue to begin this month.

But this is more than the story of innocent men railroaded by a system. The story of the Panthers at Angola is both inspiring and shocking. It is a struggle for justice while in the hardest of situations.

“They swam against the current in Blood Alley,” says Nathaniel Anderson, a current inmate at Angola who has been inspired by Wallace and Woodfox’s legacy. “For men to actually have the audacity to organize for the protection of young brothers who were being victimized ruthlessly was an extreme act of rebellion.”

Like many prisoners during that time, Norris Henderson was introduced to organizing by Black Panthers in prison, and later became a leader of prison activism during his time at Angola. The efforts of Wilkerson, Woodfox, Wallace, and other Panthers in prison were vital to bringing improvements in conditions, stopping sexual assault, and building alliances among different groups of prisoners. “They were part of the Panther Movement,” Henderson tells me. “This was at the height of the Black power movement, we were understanding that we all got each other. In the night-time there would be open talk, guys in the jail talking, giving history lessons, discussing why we find ourselves in the situation we find ourselves. They started educating folks around how we could treat each other. The Nation of Islam was growing in the prison at the same time. You had these different folk bringing knowledge. You had folks who were hustlers that then were listening and learning. Everybody was coming into consciousness.”

Insatiable Machine

The US has the largest incarcerated population in the world — twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners are here. If Louisiana, which has the largest percentage imprisoned of any US state, were a country, it would have by far the world’s largest percentage of its population locked up, at one out of every 45 people. Nationwide, more than seven million people are in US jails, on probation, or on parole, and African Americans are incarcerated at nearly ten times the rate of whites. Our criminal justice system has become an insatiable machine — even when crime rates go down, the prison population keeps rising.

The efforts of the Angola Three and other politically conscious prisoners represented a fundamental challenge to this system. The organizing of Wallace, Woodfox, and Wilkerson, though cut short by their move to solitary, had an effect that continues to this day.

Prison activism, and outside support for activists behind bars, can be tremendously powerful, says Henderson. “In the early 1970s people started realizing we’re all in this situation together. First, at Angola, we pushed for a reform to get a law library. That was one of the first conditions to change. Then, we got the library; guys became aware of what their rights were. We started to push to improve the quality of food, and to get better medical care. Once they started pushing the envelope, a whole bunch of things started to change. Angola was real violent then, you had inmate violence and rape. The people running the prison system benefit from people being ignorant. But we educated ourselves. Eventually, you had guys in prison proposing legislation.”

This was a time of reforms and grassroots struggles happening in prisons across the US. Uprisings such as the Attica Rebellion were resulting in real change. Today, many of the gains from those victories have been overturned, and prisoners have even less recourse to change than ever before. “Another major difference,” Henderson explains, is that “you had federal oversight over the prisons at that time, someone you could complain to, and say my rights are being violated. Today, we’ve lost that right.”

Working for criminal justice is work that benefits us all, says Henderson. “Most folks in prison are going to come out of prison,” he states. “We should invest in the quality of that person. We should start investing in the redemption of people.”

After decades of efforts by their lawyers and by activists, Wallace and Woodfox have been released from solitary, but the struggle continues. Wallace and Woodfox remain behind bars, punished for standing up against a system that has grown even larger and more deadly. And the abuse does not end there. “There are hundreds more guys who have been in [solitary] a long time too,” Henderson adds. “This is like the first step in a thousand-mile journey.”

Now her silence is complete. This week the Burmese junta renewed her house arrest, beginning the thirteenth year. As far as I know, a doctor has not been allowed to visit her since January, and her house was badly damaged in the cyclone. And yet the secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, could not bring himself to utter her name on his recent, groveling tour of Burma. It is as if her fate and that of her courageous supporters, who on Tuesday beckoned torture and worse merely by unfurling the banners of her National League for Democracy, have become an embarrassment for those who claim to represent the “international community.” Why?

Where are the voices of those in governments and their related institutions who know how to help Burma? Where are the honest brokers who once eased the oppressed away from their shadows, the true and talented peacemakers who see societies not in terms of their usefulness to “interests” but as victims of it? Where are the Dennis Hallidays and Hans von Sponecks who rose to assistant secretary-general of the UN by the sheer moral force of their international public service?

The answer is simple. They are all but extinguished by a virus called the “war on terror”. Where once men and women of good heart and good intellect and good faith stood in parliaments and world bodies in defense of the human rights of others, there is now cowardice. Think of the parliament at Westminster, which cannot even cajole itself into holding an inquiry into the criminal invasion of Iraq, let alone to condemn it and speak up for its victims. Last year, 100 eminent British doctors pleaded with the minister for international development, then Hillary Benn for emergency medical aid to be sent to Iraqi children’s hospitals: “Babies are dying for want of a 95 pence oxygen mask,” they wrote. The minister turned them down flat.

I mention that because medical aid for children is exactly the kind of assistance the British government now insists the Burmese junta should accept without delay. “There are people suffering in Burma,” said an indignant Gordon Brown, “there are children going without food … it is utterly unacceptable that when international aid is offered, the regime will try to prevent that getting in.” David Miliband chimed in with “malign neglect.” Say that to the children of Iraq and Afghanistan and Gaza, where Britain’s role is as neglectful and malign as any. As scores of children in Shia areas of Baghdad are blown to bits by America and what the BBC calls Iraq’s “democratic government,” the British are silent, as ever. “We” say nothing while Israel torments and starves the children of Gaza, ignoring every attempt to bring a ceasefire with Hamas, all in the name of a crusade that dares not say its name. What might have been a new day for humanity in the post- cold war years, even a renewal of the spirit of the Declaration of Human Rights, of “never again” from Palestine to Burma, was cancelled by the ambitions of a sole rapacious power that has cowed all it. The “war on terror” allows Australia and Israel to train Burma’s internal security thugs. It consumes most humanitarian aid indirectly and the very internationalism capable of bringing the “clever” pressure on Burma, about which Aung San Suu Kyi once spoke. Dismissing the idiocy of a military intervention in her country, she asked, “What about all those who trade with the generals, who give them many millions of dollars that keep them going?” She was referring to the huge oil and gas companies, Total and Chevron, which effectively hand the regime $2.7 billion a year, and the Halliburton company (former CEO Vice President Cheney) that backed the construction of the Yadana pipeline, and the many British travel companies that send tourists across bridges and roads built with forced labor. Audley Travel promotes its Burma holidays in the Guardian. The BBC, in contravention of its charter, has just bought 75 per cent of Lonely Planet travel guides, a truculent defender of “our” right to be tourists in Burma regardless of slave-labor, or cyclones, or the woman beyond the trip wire. Shame.

This is but the tip of the iceberg. In what can only be termed circumstances similar to those of foreign workers hired by US and British companies to work on the ill-fated reconstruction of Iraq, the litany of abuses against those—both US-born and foreign—hired by various corporations to work in the reconstruction of New Orleans and the rest of the US southern coast hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A recently released report by the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition is an ongoing litany of corporate corruption, worker abuse and outright illegal and immoral violation of human rights.

Also in Mississippi, beginning July 1st, 2008 it will become a felony for an undocumented worker to hold a job. Anyone caught working without papers “shall be subject to imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections for not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years, a fine of not less than one thousand dollars ($1000) nor more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or both.” Furthermore, anyone charged with the crime of working without papers will not be eligible for bail. In Iowa, federal ICE agents arrested hundreds of workers at the Agriprocessors, Inc. meat packing plant. The reason given by law enforcement was that the workers were using false social security numbers. Of course, the facts are that people can’t work without a social security number and cannot get one unless they have been given some kind of legal status by the government—a status becoming more difficult to acquire by the day. This is but one more Catch-22 in the life of an immigrant in the US.

Meanwhile, in Danbury, CT a court upheld the use of undercover police acting as day-labor employers to arrest men and women looking for work in that city. The workers were then deported. In San Diego County, plans are underway to build two large detention centers that will hold immigrants without papers for indeterminate amounts of time. Haliburton hopes to get the contract. In South Carolina, Georgia and some other states, legislators have introduced laws forbidding the use of any language but English in the workplace.

Take a moment and imagine a country where some residents have more rights than others. These residents can hold almost any job they desire. They live in neighborhoods away from those of darker skin and lesser means. The latter cannot hold any job they desire. Part of the reason for this is because of the law and part of the reason is because of the nature of their education and social status. Everyone must have identification that also signifies their social status, even though that status is primarily determined by the color of one’s skin. If one does not have such identification (especially if they are not white), they are arrested. If they or their relatives can not produce identification, the arrestees once released are doomed to a life living in the shadows, always wondering if they will be turned in by their employer or enemies.

The country I am talking about was apartheid South Africa. Now, since the advent of NAFTA and other so-called free trade agreements, the national boundaries between North and South America have been economically erased. If one stretches their imagination just a bit, it is possible to perceive the southern lands of Mexico and Central America as the equivalent of bantustans with the United States as their Capetown. Furthermore, the identification legal immigrants to the United States are required to carry can be compared to the passes blacks in South Africa needed to get into different parts of the white-ruled South Africa. If those passes were not in order or nonexistent, blacks were subject to arrest. Likewise, if the various documents that the US government requires immigrants to carry and produce at will are not in order or nonexistent, those immigrants will be arrested. Those immigrants without papers must live their lives in the shadows, always wondering if they will be turned in by their employer or enemies. If they live in some parts of the United States, the discovery of their lack of documents might occur as the result of a roadblock set up by police to check people’s identification.

Of course, there are a multitude of ways that these historical instances are not similar, but it is the underlying consciousness of fear is distressingly similar. It is questionable whether or not most US citizens agree with the efforts listed above that target immigrants. However, the lack of outcry by those who disagree with these attempts to dehumanize undocumented immigrants provides those invested in destroying immigrants’ lives with a voice hopefully well beyond their numbers. So does the willingness of the US public to ignore the family-shattering raids and imprisonment of thousands of immigrants for no other reason than not having the approved documents. Implicit in this willingness is a sense that those being picked up and thrown in detention centers are not as human as “real Americans.” If the lessons of authoritarian states have taught us anything, they should have taught us that we should be wary of those who would define a human being in ever-narrowing terms.

The broader context of years of heartless U.S. policies toward Haiti and the ongoing UN military presence in the island nation were missing from most coverage.

MINUSTAH, the UN mission in Haiti, was put in place to defend the U.S.-backed coup regime which ousted the democratically-elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. After the coup, thousands of pro-Aristide dissidents were killed, raped or forced into exile, thousands more jailed without charge.

Last August, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon visited the sprawling seaside slum of Cite Soleil and boasted, “In an operation lasting six weeks, amid fierce firefights, UN forces took control of the slum.” He told reporters, “I am convinced that Haiti is at a turning point. Long the poorest country in the western hemisphere, seemingly forever mired in political turmoil, it at long last has a golden chance to begin to rebuild itself. With the help of the international community — and the UN in particular — it can.” Ban Ki Moon went on to warn against the UN leaving “too soon” and pushed for a renewed mandate for MINUSTAH.

But Brazilian soldier Tailon Ruppenthal is less starry eyed about MINUSTAH. In a recent memoir of his tour of duty, Rupenthal writes, “After a few months even getting out of bed is hard. You remember that you will cross paths with all those people who are starving but there’s nothing you can do.” The Brazilian, who now suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, concludes, “we are losing the real war: against poverty … Only the fight against poverty will bring peace. When will they see that?”

“We are hungry and have given up on the UN and the Preval government to help us,” Sonia Jeanty, 32, told the Haiti Information Project in early April. “After all the money they have spent here most of us are eating only one meal a day. It’s unacceptable especially as we hear the UN trying to tell us everyday on the radio that things have gotten better. It’s a lie!” Rene Preval was elected president in 2006 with broad popular support, but observers note that most ministries in his government remain dominated by coup figures installed with U.S. backing. Those pro-coup officials were approved by a parliament also dominated by pro-coup individuals. Repression and illegal imprisonment kept progressives who might have been elected to parliament from effectively running.

The Haiti Information Project also reports that information officer with the 1000-strong Chinese force in Haiti Zhang Jin said in 2007, “We have the firepower and technology to control any situation that may arise here. What we gain from this experience is a real life situation where we can practice strategic and tactical deployment. That is invaluable to any fighting force.”

Mark Schuller, an anthropologist at Vassar College who writes about the political economy of Haiti, told me that “Washington consensus” economics are at the root of the current situation in Haiti. He points out that the country has “the greatest inequality in the hemisphere, with more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the Caribbean.” Schuller referred to anthropologist and medical doctor Paul Farmer’s writings about “structural violence” – long-standing foreign control and underdevelopment – which has kept the majority of Haitians in misery, and notes that the “interim” coup government of Gerard Latortue promoted local and multinational capitalist interest at the expense of the poor majority. Schuller points to the three year tax holiday which Latortue gave large companies, while doling out millions in “back pay” to the notoriously brutal former military (which Aristide had disbanded), all of which contributed to an increase in the cost of living for the poor.

Schuller told me, “It behooves us not to think of it as a ‘failed state.’ Rather, it is best understood as a successfully failed state. As of last estimate, 65% of Haiti’s government revenue comes from international agencies, 84% of its rice grown abroad. This is because of U.S. and other Northern countries’ economic policies wherein Haiti’s ability to feed itself with domestic rice production was wiped out by Washington-subsidized imports that U.S. agribusiness has profited from. At Ronald Reagan’s behest, Haiti initiated a series of neoliberal measures in the 1980s, including trade liberalization, privatization and decreasing investment in agriculture, that led to the disappearance of Haiti’s cotton and sugar export industries. During the 1990s, the U.S. conditioned its food aid – sent to alleviate a hunger crisis – with demands that Haiti lower its tariffs and open its markets to U.S. imports. This subsidized U.S. rice was much cheaper than Haitian rice, forcing local farmers out of business. Over the same period, Haiti became increasingly more reliant on the International Financial Institutions, which imposed more neoliberal conditions on its help. Since 1980, when Haiti started receiving the Banks’ help in earnest, its per capita Gross Domestic Product has shrunk by 38.3%. Haiti is left with a 1.4 billion dollar multinational debt, with a debt service next year of almost 80 million. In addition to draining resources from needed sectors – such as health, education, or developing national production, this debt has served as leverage for the IMF and World Bank to impose even more neoliberal measures.”

In an email to me earlier this week, Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, a popular liberation theologian who works closely with Aristide’s Lavalas movement, wrote, “Some Haitians and foreigners are swimming in wealth while the poor ones are down deep in the pit of misery. A near famine situation reduces many people in skin and bone. As thousands of needy ones could not take it anymore they took the streets and let out their anger. I wish the wealthy ones in Haiti could accept to share and stop looking down at the lowly ones. We are all God’s children. Exclusion of a majority in dire need is not the answer. A policy of inclusion and sharing is the answer.”

There is some good news. The Jubilee USA Network-backed Jubilee Act, which advances debt cancellation for Haiti and extends it to 23 other poor countries, passed in the House of Representatives on April 16 by a vote of 285 – 132. Additionally, Rep. Alcee Hastings’ (D-FL) amendment to the bill, calling for complete and immediate cancellation of Haiti’s debts to all IFIs, passed unanimously by voice vote.

The Jubilee Act now moves to the Senate. Voters in the U.S. still have time to urge their Senators to help give Haiti a long-overdue break.