Anti-slavery

Burn Down the Plantation

In this sedition we bring you an exclusive interview with prison inmate Melvin Ray, secretly filmed inside Holman Prison in Alabama. Melvin is a member of the Free Alabama Movement, a national organization against mass Incarceration and prison slavery. They have teamed up with the IWW’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, to organize the largest prison strike in history, set to kick off on September 9th.

ISIS as a Mirror

In part, the rapacious ugliness of ISIS is a reflection of the policies which formed it. We flinch at recognizing in ISIS atrocities the embodiment of the cruelty in NATO’s policies, the callousness of Madeleine Albright evaluating the lives of Iraqi children, the swagger and glee of Hilary Clinton at Gaddafi‘s murder, the effects on millions of insisting on regime change in someone else’s country and the Euro-American refusal to accept Syria’s democratically elected president.

Working-class History 101

A people’s history of the U.S. working class starts with the conflict between resistance and repression.
As income inequality widens in the U.S., the narrative that we need to “take back” our country, or return to an America where hardworking people are rewarded for playing by the rules, is everywhere. But is this really the history of the U.S.—or a fairy tale that obscures the U.S.’s path to industrial dominance?

The First Demand for Slave Reparations

This is written for those who argue against reparations for slavery on the grounds that slavery happened oh so very – too – long ago to be a rational idea; for those who contend that no living black people were slaves; who argue that no living white people were slave owners; for people who insist, therefore, that the time to ask for slavery reparations has long since passed. And, anyway, why didn’t the ex-slaves themselves demand reparations/compensation?

Educating because Our Lives and Futures Are in the Balance

Yes. I think that what is more important in Mexico is education. It’s for the children to be able to go to school. Of course, hunger is also a very big problem. But the one that really, really, really for me is very painful is education. And there’s very little money spent on education, on good teachers, on schools, on even rooms where children can go and work. And I think this is the worst problem in Mexico that has to be taken care of. And it has not been taken care of. I remember when I came to Mexico as a little girl, I loved my teacher, La Seño Velázquez.

Mass Media: Often Pandering to Bias and Ignorance

The Texas board of education didn’t find anything wrong with a world geography textbook that said slaves from Africa were workers, but that immigrants from northern Europe were indentured servants.
This is the same school board that five years ago demanded that textbooks emphasize that slavery was only a side issue to the cause of the civil war, and that Republican achievements be emphasized in political science and civics textbooks.

Back to the Future: The Legacy of Abraham Lincoln

A president of the United States would never operate outside the law, ignore the U.S. Constitution and the courts, shut down the presses, imprison his domestic adversaries or turn his guns on his own people. Well, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president did of all of that and, curiously, has been turned into a national hero for his troubles. Lincoln ignored his closest advisors and the temper of the times to engage in the bloodiest war in American history, a war that could easily have been avoided. Single handedly Lincoln terrorized the entire nation. So let us take notice.