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There is only one political prisoner in the United States who openly identifies as a feminist and ecosocialist. His name is Russell Maroon Shoatz. He was a member of the Black Unity Council and the Black Panthers. He has been in prison for the past 40 years and for the last 20 he has been in solitary confinement in Pennsylvania's State Correctional Institution.
Marx did not support the North because he believed that its victory would directly lead to socialism. Rather, he saw in South and North two species of capitalism — one allowing slavery, the other not. The then existing regime of American society and economy embraced the enslavement of four million people whose enforced toil produced the republic’s most valuable export, cotton, as well as much tobacco, sugar, rice, and turpentine. Defeating the slave power was going to be difficult. The wealth and pride of the 300,000 slaveholders (there were actually 395,000 slave owners, according to the 1860 Census, but at the time Marx was writing this had not yet been published) was at stake.
White Slavery: The Irish Slaves that Time Forgot - by John Martin
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31436.htm
"...The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white..."
Obama's mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that "the land of the free" has finally made good on its promise of equality. There's an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.
A few years ago a group of us went on a visit to "Ile de Gorée" -- the island was a sunlit 20-minute ferry ride off the coast of Dakar, Senegal. When reaching the shore, my first impression was that we had reached a tropical oasis: brightly coloured pink, brown and yellow buildings, children running along the dock, and vendors selling carved, rotund, wooden hippos. Within a 15-minute walk we came to a church and the guide informed us in elegant French, "In 1992 Pope John Paul II came here and asked for forgiveness."
Chloe Cooley was a young black woman who was enslaved in Upper Canada during the late 1700s. She was enslaved by a white farmer named William Vrooman, a loyalist who had fled to Canada after the American Revolution. In 1793, Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe put forth a complicated piece of legislation.
Toronto Pig Save (TPS) is holding a series of protests at what we dub "The Un-Royal Agricultural Winter Fair" because of its treatment of enslaved mammals, aka "livestock."
Specifically, TPS will protest the five animal slave auctions and barbaric rodeo taking place at this year's Un-Royal Winter Fair.
Artworks by Caitlin Black and our special handout for the Un-Royal Fair appear on our homepage at www.torontopigsave.org
This week we will be protesting at the following times and locations:
* Friday, Nov 4th: Protest 2-5 pm at Lakeshore & Strachan then enter the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair and bear witness to the pig auction from 5pm - 6pm, followed by a cow auction at 6:30 pm. We will also be in front of the Princess Gates.
When they were too impoverished to raise their families, ancient Sumerians sold their children into bondage. Slave women in Rome faced never-ending household drudgery. The ninth-century Zanj were transported from East Africa to work the salt marshes of Iraq. Cotton pickers worked under terrible duress in the American South.
Ancient history? Tragically, no. In our time, slavery wears many faces. James Kofi Annan's parents in Ghana sold him because they could not feed him. Beatrice Fernando had to work almost around the clock in Lebanon. Julia Gabriel was trafficked from Arizona to the cucumber fields of South Carolina.
