Comparing today to 1850s
Heather Cox Richardson is a historian. She writes an entry (almost) everyday, recounting the day's big news from her perspective. Today's entry is less about today's happenings, and instead takes the readers back to the 1850s.
I know people are on edge, and there is maybe one last thing I can offer before this election. Every place I stopped, worried people asked me how I have maintained a sense of hope through the past fraught years. The answer—inevitably for me, I suppose—is in our history.
If you had been alive in 1853, you would have thought the elite enslavers had become America's rulers. They were only a small minority of the U.S. population, but by controlling the Democratic Party, they had managed to take control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They used that power to stop the northerners who wanted the government to clear the rivers and harbors of snags, for example, or to fund public colleges for ordinary people, from getting any such legislation through Congress. But at least they could not use the government to spread their system of human enslavement across the country, because the much larger population in the North held control of the House of Representatives.
Then in 1854, with the help of Democratic president Franklin Pierce, elite enslavers pushed the Kansas-Nebraska Act through the House. That law overturned the Missouri Compromise that had kept Black enslavement out of the American West since 1820. Because the Constitution guarantees the protection of property—and enslaved Americans were considered property—the expansion of slavery into those territories would mean the new states there would become slave states. Their representatives would work together with those of the southern slave states to outvote the northern free labor advocates in Congress. Together, they would make enslavement national.
But this is not how the story turned out, she explores what happened as a reminder for his week and what it might portend.
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Dan Rather discusses Florida's 'Stop WOKE Act'
Dan Rather discusses Florida's horrible decision to sanitize the nightmares that was America's history regarding slavery:
As much as we wish American history were different, tragedy is part of our reality. We do a grave disservice to future generations if we sanitize the truth. People can behave horribly. Societies that profess noble values can countenance violent bigotry. We can either look back from whence we have come with clarity, or we can try to muddy the roots of the present and weaken ourselves in the process.
This week, the Florida State Board of Education reworked its standards for teaching Black history. The changes come in response to the state’s so-called “Stop W.O.K.E. Act.” Passed last year, it limits training and education around issues of race, sex, and other criteria for systemic injustice. At its heart is a core belief that has animated right-wing culture warriors: that people alive today should not be made to feel bad or even uncomfortable by the sins of the past. The thinking goes, that was a long time ago.
But of course it really wasn’t. And the legacies of the past live on. And if we don’t learn from history, we are bound to repeat it.
George Takei also had a thought regarding this stupidity:
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A shorth thread about York, the sole black slave in the Lewis & Clark expedition
Everyone knows Lewis & Clark, but did you know that there was a black man who was also part of the expedition?
As he was enslaved by William Clark, he participated as a full member of the expedition & was present when the expedition reached the Pacific Ocean.
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Netherlands apologizes for role in African slave trade
Prime Minister Mark Rutte has formally apologised on behalf of the Dutch state for its historical role in slavery, and for consequences that he acknowledged continue into the present day.
"Today I apologise," Rutte said on Monday, speaking at a nationally televised speech at the Dutch National Archives.
"For centuries, the Dutch state and its representatives have enabled and stimulated slavery and have profited from it.
"It is true that nobody alive today bears any personal guilt for slavery … [however] the Dutch state bears responsibility for the immense suffering that has been done to those that were enslaved and their descendants."
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Qatar says 400-500 workers died for the World Cup
Disgusting. I'm so sad and angry that this happened and that the repercussions will be minimal, if any.
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UN estimates 1 in 150,000 people is currently enslaved
When I become a multibillonaire with the ability to devote large sums of money in the name of fighting wrongs in this world, slavery is going to be my target. I am always appalled at hearing it exists and to hear the latest UN estimates makes me incredibly angry.
This article on TheConversation.com delves into that number, highlighting that the underlying data used to come to that number is unavailable so people have to trust the UN's methodology.
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Chinese Cyber-Scam Companies Keep Slaves in Cambodia
Just incredible to hear about.
Here's a news article about it from March:
Thirty-five civil society groups said reports indicated that thousands of people, mostly foreign nationals, had found themselves trapped in large compounds and forced to work after being kidnapped, sold, trafficked, or tricked into accepting jobs in Cambodia.
Most of the alleged victims were put to work in online scamming operations, targeting foreign nationals who live outside the country, primarily based from here in the southern port town of Sihanoukville, which has a long held a reputation as a notorious haven for criminals who operate with impunity.
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