Dear President-Elect Biden: It's Time to Actually Abolish Slavery in America

https://www.newsweek.com ^ | Michele Goodwin , Professor, University of California, Irvine School of Law 12/2/20 at 3:38 PM EST

[Red Badger]

Today, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), announced the Abolition Amendment, to end slavery once and for all in the United States. Legislation like this is long overdue at the state and federal levels.

Slavery was and continues to be a status-based condition in the United States. In its antebellum manifestation, slavery was largely imposed on people of color, despite the indentured servitude of Irish immigrants. Early on, Indigenous peoples suffered brutal conquests of their properties and bodies. In 1637 Pequot Indian boys and men were forcibly exiled into slavery, shipped to the West Indies in a trade for kidnapped and trafficked Black people.

The Pequot women were enslaved in colonies, put to domestic service and also raped. That would not be the last Native American account of enslavement in what is now the United States. However, when Indigenous peoples died off or suffered to the point of no longer being valuable to slavery's insatiable machines, Africans served as effective, expendable substitutes until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Or so people think.

Many people believe the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery for good in 1865, because that's the story Americans were taught to believe. However, this important amendment has a clever loophole. It permits slavery if a person is convicted of a crime. This was the amendment advocated by southern slaveholders and they won. In essence, they conditioned abolition on perpetuating slavery.

If there is any doubt about their intentions, consider the following. Immediately before ratification, legislatures in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and others filled their lawbooks with criminal laws specifically targeting Black people newly freed from bondage. Southern lawmakers made it a crime if more than a couple of Black people stood on a corner, creating laws of vagrancy.

[Red Badger]

Did you read the entire article at the link?.................

[Thank You Rush]

Now I understand but really - if they don’t want punishment, why can’t they behave themselves? That would make too much sense - and no room to complain or get attention.

“”That is, even while the cotton fields of old may no longer be populated by Black laborers from the damp dawn to sweaty dusk, other practices reinforcing slavery persist. The incarcerated “convicts” put out dangerous California wildfires for less than two dollars per hour and sew COVID-19 masks, which they are not provided.””

[Red Badger]

There are two constants in this world: Death and Taxes.

When you abolish the first one, the second one will be unnecessary..................

[Thank You Rush]

Yes but it still boils down to we’re putting too many people in prison and THEN we want them to WORK!! Slave wages while in prison? That’s horrible... Maybe but they could avoid prison, couldn’t they?

[Red Badger]

True, but would she be happy if they were locked up 23 hours a day with one hour for ‘exercise’, like Death Row inmates are, and rotting in their cells doing nothing for the rest of the time?....................

[TexasM1A]

Another nut job female professor, I wonder what her degree is in?
5 will get you 10 its a made up/created grievance industry degree that has no use outside of “academia”.

[silent majority rising]

Who is President-Elect? No one. Not until the Electoral College vote is in. Don’t let them make this an accepted thing.

[Red Badger]

https://www.law.uci.edu/news/faculty/goodwin_050316.html

[vpintheak]

I like the way you think. Exactly what I was thinking.

[SES1066]

Immediately before ratification, legislatures in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and others filled their lawbooks with criminal laws specifically targeting Black people newly freed from bondage. Southern lawmakers made it a crime if more than a couple of Black people stood on a corner, creating laws of vagrancy.

Talk about hysterical history, this is so idiotic as to be laughable! 13th Amendment timeline as follows;
=====
1) Passed by US Senate 8 April 1864, 38-6, All 6 Nays were Democrat Party. Civil War so no Confederate States / Senators.
2) US House passed after 2nd Effort, 31 January 1865, 119-56 with 8 Democrats abstaining.
3) Joint Resolution signed "Approved" by Lincoln on 1 February 1865.
4) Ratification: 36 States including Confederacy States, 27 required to pass 13th Amendment, OR ignoring CSA 11, 19 for ratification.
#1 Illinois 1 Feb 1865,
#7 West Virginia (Originally Virginia prior to 20 June 1863),
#12 Virginia (Reconstruction Government) 9 Feb 1865,
#16 Louisiana (Reconstruction Government) 17 Feb 1865,
#19 Vermont 9 Mar 1865.

With Vermont, it could be argued that the 13th had passed the 17 ratifications required by 'Union' States! However, contemporary politics is what this current idiocy is about, the 'slavery clause in this Amendment! "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."

So, this whole clause was there originally, like the Emancipation Proclamation, to remove slavery justifications in the CSA State Constitutions. What was now being worked on as 'Realpolitik' is the need to avoid the legal challenges to the 1863 Executive Order by President Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, which was the only extant anti-slavery law working and that was only for "... any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States." So with the end of the CW, these states were no longer in 'rebellion', making that EO very iffy! So what is being cited in the article about "Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and others" passing new laws is former rebellious CSA governments trying an end-around this 13th!

#27 Georgia ratified on 6 December 1865 and the final ratifier of the 36 US States was Mississippi 16 March 1995!!!

Note the wording from this ahistorical rabble-rouser who continues this cancel culture erasure of history! She cites 'South' and 'Southern' when it should be 'CSA Democrats' but that does not suit THEIR AGENDA, so it is a screed not history! Publicity, not history at work here!

[Wuli]

OMG!!!

Californians, please never send your child to learn law from this idiot at UC Irvine!!!!

[PIF]

Dear President-Elect Biden: It’s Time to Actually Abolish Slavery in America

—
What? That goes contrary everything President XI told him he must do!

[hanamizu]

“This was the amendment advocated by southern slaveholders and they won.”

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Southern slave owners had virtually no influence on national politics in 1865 when the 13th was ratified. It was passed in the House in January 1865. Very few slave holders or people championing the slave holders’ cause in the House in 1865. The law professor at UCI should know her history better.

Punishment at hard labor was hardly confined to the Southern States. Someone had to break those rocks, why not prisoners? This is not to say that Southern states didn’t impose labor on convicts and that many were black.

This is just another attempt to stir up grievance in the black community. “The 13th Amendment didn’t free all the slaves—there’s still legal slavery in the U.S.!” Such B.S.

And Prof. Goodwin, UCI should be aware that neither Presidents no “President-Elects” play no role in passage and ratification of Constitutional Amendments.

[Red Badger]

Civics 101 is never part of a liberals education.

As for ‘history’, that began at breakfast this morning................

[asformeandformyhouse]

And let’s end wearing those powdered wigs too.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***Indigenous peoples suffered brutal conquests of their properties and bodies.***

Then there is this. The Cherokee slave rebellion.

https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SL002

And in the 1880s the US almost provoked an Indian war when it was decided the tribes needed to obey the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Lots of slaves, mostly Hispanics and other tribesmen were freed.

[TexasM1A]

Yep, a made up degree.

[lepton]

The incarcerated “convicts” put out dangerous California wildfires for less than two dollars per hour

---

Are those not volunteer? Most ‘prison jobs’ are subject to intense competition to get into them, especially ones which allow them to get outside, or out of the prison itself.

[Red Badger]

As I’ve read many times on FR, The white Europeans didn’t do anything to the Indians that they weren’t doing to each other for a thousand years....................

[Thank You Rush]

It’s enough to just know she’s a professor at UCI. Lived in Irvine for 20 years - the plastic city - or probably more apt “Stepford” type people. Nothing real about most of them - a few normal people here and there. Student body was no different from the city’s residents - a large foreign component!

There was a mayor who I believe teaches at UCI and he ran for mayor over and over and over and WON each time and even threw his hat in the ring a couple of times for president - Larry Agran - a real doozie! And this gal “reproductive justice clinic”?????? That ought to be a whale of a course!

“”Professor Goodwin teaches Biotechnology and the Law, Women and the Rule of Law, Health Law, and the Reproductive Justice Clinic at UC Irvine School of Law. She is also the founder and director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy and its acclaimed Reproductive Justice Initiative at UC Irvine. Professor Goodwin has been an avid supporter of LSRJ over the years, and currently serves as faculty advisor to the Irvine chapter.

Current student and Irvine LSRJ chapter leader Ali Chabot says, “Professor Goodwin is the most intelligent, passionate, and caring person I have ever met.””

Doesn’t that sound like the spiel in the movie “Manchurian Candidate” - “Raymond was the nicest, most intelligent, passionate and caring”..... Have no idea what LSRJ stands for and probably that’s just as well.