Daily Archives: April 25, 2022

Im a citizen in a country of grief.

I first heard this statement at a live poetry reading and interview for Ocean Vuongs new book, Time Is A Mother. I had never read Vuong before and went only because of my dear friend Virginias invitation and my eternal mantra: Ill try anything twice. So before the event, I listened to an NPR podcast episode interviewing him to give myself an idea of what to expect. According to Vuong, this poetry collection is a search for life after the death of his mother.

Listening to Vuong speak with such power and emotion when describing the unappreciated art his mother did as a nail technician deeply resonated with me. I thought about my mother, who works tirelessly to care for the elderly. I thought of my grandmother, who has dedicated and continues to dedicate her entire heart and soul to care for our family. I thought about all the other women in my life who give so much to a world that does not value them for what they are worth. Contrast this with the recent death of my absent father, who I know better in death than in life. When I think of him and our relationship, sometimes I grieve for what could have been. So I was excited yet hesitant to go to the Vuong event, knowing it would be eye-opening and soul-crushing all at once. But instead, I left with a profound urge to reflect on the ways grief has manifested in my own life, especially in my job working to abolish nuclear weapons.

A WOUND THAT WILL NEVER HEAL

Every day I am inundated with grief. Working to abolish nuclear weapons and learning about their sordid history, I am forced to reckon with the potential of annihilation every second of every day. I have to balance holding space for others mourning of love and hope and life lost while managing my existential anguish as I reckon with how we have made ourselves and other unwilling victims around the world citizens of grief by allowing these weapons to steal precious life.

While it remains heavy in my heart, I have learned to appreciate grief, to carry it with me as a reminder of the beauty of living and the importance of fighting for a life worth living. I use this grief to pour love into my abolition work.

It has been this way since I first started learning about the atrocity of nuclear weapons. When I read the Hibakusha testimony from the atomic bombings of Japan, I closed my eyes in a failed attempt to escape the horrors dancing in my mind. I was enraged when I learned about how the US assisted in the assassination of the first democratically elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, and then subjected the Congolese to decades of misery by propping up pro-Western dictator Mobutu Sese Seko all for access to a uranium mine. I am disgusted that the US government never bothered to tell Din (Navajo) uranium miners about the lethal dangers of radiation exposure, letting radiation contaminate every aspect of their lives, even to this day. My heart breaks for the Marshallese diaspora who await a return to a homeland that has been altered forever by severe radioactive contamination. I have cried in meetings with congressional staff as I listen to downwinders exposed to radiation due to US nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War. They recount stories of the children theyve lost, the diseases theyve survived, and the pain theyve endured. They plead for the US government to acknowledge its sins and fully support the citizens used as experiments without their consent through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which is set to expire in July of this year.

You cannot separate nuclear weapons from death, mourning, violence, and grief.

We have become so accustomed to grieving daily, whether its because of nuclear weapons, police brutality, climate change, war, etc. We are all citizens in a country of grief, struggling to survive in a world of grief.

I am a steadfast nuclear weapons abolitionist, but the emotional, mental, and spiritual toll it takes is too much to bear sometimes. From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, I am brutally aware that at any given moment, life and the world as we know it could cease to exist if these weapons were used. There have been days when I worried about how much longer I can allow this grief to pile up inside me; how long I can keep doing this work before it utterly consumes me. Sometimes I feel too overwhelmed to continue this work. Then comes an immense sense of guilt, knowing the existence of these weapons unceasingly steals and ruins peoples lives. So I usually swallow it and push on because what other choice is there? We have to accomplish this work before we run out of time, out of luck.

THE POWER OF GRIEF

Grief is perhaps the last and final translation of love.

I find myself returning to Vuongs NPR interview, contemplating his idea of grief as the last act of loving someone and how this is something that will always be with you. It has helped me transform my personal and professional relationship with grief. While it remains heavy in my heart, I have learned to appreciate grief, to carry it with me as a reminder of the beauty of living and the importance of fighting for a life worth living. I use this grief to pour love into my abolition work. To equip me with the strength I need to fight for those who can no longer fight for themselves and uplift those who continue to fight despite all they have lost. To give others a chance at a life worth living without the insidious horrors that will continue to ravage communities around the world until we abolish nuclear weapons.

This is why I fight for nuclear abolition. I fight for a future where this grief no longer throbs in heavy, ever-consuming waves but rather a soft reminder of where we come from, who we fight for, and why this work is so important: to preserve, cherish, and celebrate life.

In grief, I have found hope. I hope you can too.

Jasmine Owens (she/her) is the Lead Organizer and Policy Coordinator for the Nuclear Weapons Abolition Program at Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her work and her passions focus on centering our collective humanity in the fight for a more just and equitable world, starting with the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Excerpt from:

Finding Hope in a World of Grief - Inkstick

bell hooks might not have described herself as an abolitionist. Others might not as well. I am not preoccupied with proving she was one. What I want to consider is how hookss thinking is relevant to abolition, as she grappled with addressing harm, violence, and trauma in non-punitive ways. Here I consider insights hooks offers abolition in her discussions of two topics: confessional writing and healing.

The political is not just the personal

hooks often told personal stories. She recounted in Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, When I first began writing feminist theory, I did not include personal confession. I began to use confessional anecdotes as a strategy to engage diverse readers. Coming from a black working-class background, I was especially concerned with the importance of creating liberatory feminist theory that would speak to as many folks as possible. Through lectures and conversations, I found that audiences across race and class were quite willing to engage complex theoretical issues if they were presented in ways that were accessible. Using an anecdotal story to illustrate an idea was one way to bridge the gap between feminist thinking emerging from university settings and the more common discourses of gender taking place in everyday life.

Examining how the confessional was debated in literary and feminist circles, hooks noted, within feminist circles, individuals began to critique and ridicule any emphasis on personal confession. Despite this criticism, hooks valued personal confession for creating space for women to be writers. More women than ever before could explore the terrain of writing. More voices could be heard. Many of us were inspired. Our confidence in ourselves was strengthened

Acknowledging the power of personal confession, hooks nevertheless remained vigilant about its uses. For example, in Teaching Critical Thinking, she considered the purpose of personal confessions in the classroom. While she pedagogically valued the sharing of personal stories (from students and herself), hooks nevertheless concluded students should be taught how to integrate and use personal confession as a means to learn more about assigned material. When this skill is lacking, personal confession can simply become a form of exhibitionism, or even a competition where students actively compete to be the one telling the best or most memorable story.

Whether in the classroom or in her writing, hooks considered personal confession as the beginning, not the end. In other words, we might confess, or articulate how we personally relate to an issue, but its not all about us. hooks wrote, I am most interested in confessional writing when it allows us to move into the personal as a way to go beyond it. In all my work I evoke the personal as a prelude. It functions as a welcoming gesture, offering the reader a sense of who I am, a sense of location.

This sense of location seemed less a fixed place but more an articulation of where hooks was coming from and where she hoped to go, interpersonally and politically. Thus, hooks distinguished between the act of personal confession from what was being expressed politically. As she stated in Remembered Rapture, Even though women from all backgrounds continued to tell their stories, eventually there was little or no critical recognition of the ways writers deployed the confessional narrative with diverse intentionality. Writers who valued confession narratives whose work was most linked to feminist politics and feminist theory could not count on critical readers, especially reviewers, to take note of issues of style, content, or purpose. Our confessions are not all saying the same thing and our intentions for telling personal stories can differ.

For hooks, the sharing of private life as exhibitionism and performance is not the same thing as a politicized strategic use of private information that seeks to subvert the politics of domination. hooks reminded us that while telling our truths can be powerful, our politics still matter. Or, as Adrienne Rich raised in a lecture interrogating personal narratives: With any personal history, what is to be done? What do we know when we know your story? With whom do you believe your lot is cast?

hookss critical analysis of confessional writing is relevant to abolition, as personal stories are often weaponized by the state to marshal support for criminalization and carceral punishment. Many politicians spotlight an individual with a harrowing story of being violently victimized to promote tough on crime measures as the resolution. That there is political debate among those who have been victimized regarding how to explain and address the harm or violence they experienced is often denied by those seeking a carceral form of justice. Those who tell stories of surviving violence but dont seek forms of accountability that bolster the carceral state are not as politically amplified, and at times are outright dismissed.

As individuals, we exist socially, in relation to each other and the world we want to either maintain or build, which means were going to have to sort things out politically. We must grapple with our personal feelings when determining the policies we call for because policies impact everyone. Abolitionist worldmaking challenges us to hold whatever we feelincluding, possibly, hatred and a thirst for revengewhile not promoting carceral systems. As Mariame Kaba and Rachel Herzing provocatively state, Abolitionism is not a politics mediated by emotional responsesabolition is not about your fucking feelings. Of course, everything involves feelings, but celebrating anyones incarceration is counter to PIC abolition.

Healing without creating more harm

hooks made it clear she was searching for healing and refuge from harm. Her 1991 article Theory as Liberatory Practice opens with, Let me begin by saying that I came to theory because I was hurtingthe pain within me was so intense that I could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehendto grasp what was happening around and within me. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw in theory then a location for healing. Later, on the same page, hooks revealed that experiences in her home were some of her earliest sources of pain.

Her quest for healing informed her writing about love, which, she reported, had people saying, bell hooks is turning soft cause shes focusing on love. And I think, Oh, no, not the love Im talking aboutbecause Im really talking about a love thats grounded in a vision of mutuality and communion and sharing; to me that is so deeply related to feminism, because I feel like as long as we have gender inequality and inequity and sexism and patriarchy, we cant have mutuality. What we have is a constant paradigm of domination, a constant sense that in the world, theres always a top and bottom in our relationships, theres always a subordinated person and a person who is dominant.

For hooks, love and healing were simultaneously deeply personal and social processes that could have political implications. As Joy James recently wrote of hooks, With a firm hand on the wheel, she wrote to safeguard the personal and therapeutic from disintegrating into fetish.

Relevant to abolition, hooks, throughout her life and career, did not shy away from addressing how harm and violence can be enacted by anybody, including those who claim to love us. While attending to where we are socially positioned in hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, and economic status, hooks underscored we can all enact domination in some form or another. Some might consider this a flaw in her analysis, a version of all sides-ism. Yet it is an important point to consider in terms of abolition, as too many oppose criminalization and caging for only people they deem innocent or unfairly charged with a crime, while those they think are guilty can rot in hell. As suggested by hooks, healing is less about sorting out the innocent from the non-innocent; it is about actively working against the pervasive desire for dominance, and not equating healing with violent retribution. In this sense she was grappling with what Ruth Wilson Gilmore (2017) discusses as the problem of innocence.

I am not as invested in love as hooks seemed to be. Nor do I consider love a necessary condition for doing politics or being in political struggle with others. But I find hookss meditations on healing and love useful for grappling with questions Gilmore notes are explored by abolitionists: So one question that we abolitionists ask ourselves is: What are the conditions under which it is more likely that people will resort to using violence and harm to solve problems? This is a question we ask ourselves. What can we do about it so that there is less harm?

This is not to suggest that healing means no accountability. hooks explored accountability a lot, but in many cases differentiated it from harsh punishment. hooks also understood, as pointed out by Toni Morrison (whose first two novels she wrote her dissertation on), There is a difference between vengeance and justice. But justice itself has some unpleasant consequences. We have to assume that if we want justice for some bad activity by a bad person, we want punishment, we want restraint, we dont want rehabilitation. And that assumes that there is something called the other, theres a stranger, thats your neighbor or the criminal or the so-called criminal, is some other thing, is an other.

In a 1998 conversation with Maya Angelou, hooks examined how to hold someone accountable without othering them: I think this is a difficult question, how we deal with the question of forgiveness. For me forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed? hooks recognized that figuring this out is not easy.

Years later, in a conversation with George Brosi on Martin Luther King Jr.s beloved community, hooks considered what it means to have healing and accountability without creating more harm. In response to Brosis statement, Central to the notion of beloved community is the idea that there can be reconciliation as opposed to victory, hooks replied, Exactly, and so we accept both of those concepts of restorative justice and reconciliation, because restorative justice does take away a notion of blame and replace it with an accountability vision means that we can be mutually accountable for healing even though there might be a person who is a victim.

In the conversation, hooks referenced many eastern martial arts and underscored that they dont involve wanting to hurt your opponent, but involve wanting to get into balance with your opponent so that youre learning how to protect yourself without causing someone else harm. She treated as legitimate the desire to avoid harm, what some might call safety. Yet hooks did so consistent with Kabas point that safety is not something we can possess, Because I dont think safety is a thing. I think safety is a relation. hooks approached safety in a manner that, as Gilmore conceptualizes abolition geography, involves making lives better but not at the expense of other vulnerable people, places, or things and reveals the possibility of how radical consciousness in action resolves into liberated life-ways, however provisional, present and past.

Visit link:

Understanding abolition through bell hooks The New Inquiry - The New Inquiry

Three years ago, then-City Councilor Michelle Wu put out a manifesto arguing for the abolition of the Boston Planning & Development Agency.

After winning the mayorship, apparently losing control of her old AbolishtheBPDA.com domain name to a foreign blogger and recently naming her own city planning chief, Wu says the goal is still to junk the controversial agency.

This will be a years-long process, Wu told reporters on Friday, answering with a quick affirmative yeah when asked if she does still plan to abolish the BPDA, as shes previously advocated for. This will be a complex organizational project thats happening alongside day-to-day changes, she said.

Earlier this week, Wu named James Arthur Jemison, a Boston-native veteran of local, state and federal planning work, as her new chief of planning, a resuscitated position that didnt exist under former Mayor Marty Walsh. Wu has said shes going to seek to have Jemison wear a second hat as BPDA director, too, pending approval by the quasi-city agencys board as current longtime Director Brian Golden heads for the door.

With that change and other simultaneous shuffling atop the BPDA, the city will dramatically rethink how business is done, Wu told reporters. She said the leadership of the agency, which operates semi-independently from the city though Walsh made Golden a cabinet member, too will be charged with keeping the projects currently in the pipeline moving while also making organizational transformation happen.

The BPDA announced Goldens upcoming departure last week and then Jemisons appointment earlier this week. Wu had been vague on whether or not it was still her intention to abolish the organization which would require council and state approval and presumably replace it with something else.

Back in the halcyon pre-pandemic era of fall 2019, Wu, already generating buzz about a likely mayoral run two years later, put out a 54-page report calling to Abolish the BPDA, a slogan that her office mocked up on posters.

The document, called Fixing Bostons Broken Development Process: Why & How to Abolish the BPDA, also lived online at AbolishtheBPDA.com but youre not going to be able to find it there anymore, as it appears Team Wu didnt keep control of the domain. Now its Arabic-language blog posts about current events and travel in the Middle East, according to the Google Translated version of the site.

The BPDA has been a Boston bogeyman for decades, ever since its neighborhood-raising days of the 50s and 60s, when it was known as the Boston Redevelopment Authority, or BRA. Every election cycle, it seems, some mayoral candidate or another is vowing to do away with the agency, going back to former mayors Kevin White and Ray Flynn. Walsh himself ran against the BRA, and then he and Golden oversaw the rebranding away from that older name of ill repute.

Under Golden, the agency modernized significantly, but critics still say its too opaque and not responsive enough.

Originally posted here:

Michelle Wu says she still intends to abolish the BPDA - Boston Herald

Building Safety Bill

Last month, the government made the surprise announcement that it was scrapping the role of building safety manager, as part of a series of amendments to the Building Safety Bill. We hear from fire industry professionals to gauge the reaction of the sector to the move.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State

The decision to remove the role of building safety manager comes in response to complaints from leaseholder groups about the potential costs of employing a building safety manager, complaints which have found a sympathetic hearing from Secretary of State Michael Gove, who has taken up the cause of leaseholder costs since taking over the Department of Levelling-Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) in September 2021. Announcing the scrapping of the role, Mr Gove said:

No leaseholder should pay the price for shoddy development and we have listened to their concerns, removing the requirement for a separate building safety charge and scrapping compulsory building safety managers, to help avoid unnecessary costs.

So it is probably safe to assume that the decision to scrap the role was made through the prism of reducing leaseholder costs rather than the finer points of building safety. While at first sight the decision might be seen as an arbitrary weakening of the building safety regime set out in the Bill, closer examination reveals there are subtleties to be taken into account before rushing to condemn the abolition.

Reaction from the fire safety industry and commentators to the move has therefore been nuanced. Steve Davies, CEO of the Association for Specialist Fire Protection, said the move is an interesting step.

We understand that the UK Government is keen to ensure that leaseholders do not experience an increased financial burden through the appointment of this role, especially as we currently face a cost of living crisis, said Mr Davies. It is conceivable that an over-zealous building safety manager could cause escalating costs, especially as the construction andrelated insurance industries are becoming increasingly risk averse. However, the role of building safety manager played an important function in coordinating fire safety within a building, throughout its construction, commissioning and use.

The interactions between the Building Safety Bills building safety manager, CDM duty-holders, and [the Fire Safety Orders] responsible person were always a source of complexity, which the ASFP felt was unnecessary.These roles need a level of simplificationto ensure clarity exists and effective safety management results, whilst not diluting the tasks, functions and responsibilities that are stillnecessary.

A similar view comes from the Fire Industry Association. CEO Ian Moore told IFSEC Global:

It was never fully made clear within the Building Safety Bill how the role of the building safety manager would work with the responsible person for the building, as defined in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. The first draft of the bill appeared to show a lot of overlap and duplication between the responsible person and the building safety manager. It looks like the government have identified the duplication in responsibilities, and, in an effort to reduce the burden on leaseholders, have scrapped the building safety manager.

The removal of the building safety manager does not mean buildings will be less safe, as the responsible person for the building has ultimate responsibility for fire safety of the building.

But what will the scrapping of the role mean in practical and legal terms? Adrian Mansbridge, Legal Director at Addleshaw Goddard LLP, notes the move follows a backlash from leaseholder groups due to the risk of costs being imposed through the building safety charge.

The practical implications are to accountable persons implementing the necessary arrangements in order to meet their new obligations. Guidance will be published by the building safety regulator in due course.

This late change and prolonged uncertainty are not helpful for a sector already facing seismic regulatory changes, compounding existing skills and knowledge gaps which require long term investment to rectify.Inevitably, many will turn to managing agents to assist, whose appetite to assume the role of BSM was (we understand) limited. It is unclear whether this change will now incentivise them to invest in the necessary upskilling to monitor compliance.

The governments case is that the change will provide a more proportionate and flexible approach that will enable accountable persons (usually the building owner) to meet their obligations in a way that is most effective for their buildings and residents. It will be the responsibility of accountable persons to ensure they have the necessary arrangements in place to manage and maintain building safety risks in their buildings.

What is clear is that a key layer of the regulatory system in the Building Safety Bill has been taken out. The building safety manager was to have planned, managed and monitored fire and structural safety of buildings in scope, and would have needed relevant skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours to carry out that role. Indeed PAS 8673 which may need to be repurposed as a result of the scrapping of the building safety manager role provided that building safety managers need to understand the following:

The scope of PAS 8673 also includes leadership, communication and planning skills, and personal commitment to ethics, behaviour and professional standards. It describes different grades of competence and sets out how they relate to the competence necessary to manage buildings of differing types and complexities.

Whether the new guidance promised by DLUHC, to help accountable persons understand and meet their obligations without a mandated building safety manager, will adequately fill the gap created remains to be seen. We can only hope that the sterling work done by the stakeholders involved in producing PAS 8673 will not be wasted, and will be taken up in the new guidance to ensure that whomever the accountable person employs, they will have the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours necessary to keep buildings safe throughout their lifetime.

Download the Fire Safety in 2021 eBook, as IFSEC Global and FIREX International keep you up to date with the biggest stories of the year, including new legislation, a round-up of the biggest news stories, and articles on third-party certification and the role of digital information software in meeting golden thread principles.

The eBook also features an exclusive foreword from the Fire Industry Association's Ian Moore, and a look at how the sector embraces systemic change in attitudes to risk and safety.

Fire industry reacts to the abolition of building safety manager roleLast month, the government made the surprise announcement that it was scrapping the role of building safety manager, as part []

James Moore

ASFP launches new website aiming to enhance visitor experience

ASFP announces Passive Fire Protection Awards 2021 winners

ASFP announces 2021 Passive Fire Protection Awards shortlist

Excerpt from:

Fire industry reacts to the abolition of building safety manager role - IFSEC Global

This is the second of a three-part commentary by Terry Meyers, a Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, at the College of William & Mary. Much of the material here is drawn from his essays on William & Mary and slavery. His pieces will appear leading up to the universitys dedication of Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved on May 7.

Though many whites took a rosy view of slavery, not all did, of course.

Even in the deeply racist Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Thomas Jefferson saw the evil of slavery and its corruption of all involved. He called the whole commerce between master and slave a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal ... The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.

And George Wythe ruled as a judge that Virginias Declaration of Rights ... included African Americans among the all men born free and equally independent. They should, he said, be considered free until proven otherwise.

The English writer Thomas Day in 1776 described what appears to be a slave auction in Yorktown or Williamsburg in the 1750s or 1760s. Day likely drew some details from what he learned in talking with his mentor, William Small, who had taught at the College from 1758 to 1764. Day noted how the enslaved are brought into the market, naked, weeping, and in chains; how one man dares to examine his fellow creatures as he would do beasts, and bargain for their persons; how all the most sacred duties, affections, and feelings of the human heart, are violated and insulted.

Day further evokes slavery in the southern colonies in terms that are surely informed by what Small saw in and near Williamsburg: Black men and women, he wrote, were forced to labour naked in the sun to the music of whips and chains, being robbed of every thing which is now dear to your [whites] indolence, or necessary to your pleasures, goaded to every species of servile drudgery, and punished for whites amusement and caprice, their youth exhausted in servitude and finally abandoned in age to wretchedness and disease.

In a letter in 1762, Robert Carter Nicholas, a member of the House of Burgesses from York County, wrote of the enslaved in Williamsburg and nearby that they are treated by too many of their Owners as so many Beasts of Burden, so little do they [the owners] consider them as entitled to any of the privileges of human Nature.

And though St. George Tucker settled into easy comfort among those he enslaved, seeing them as members of his extended family (some of whom he willingly sold), he did see the incongruity between slavery and Americas values as professed in the Declaration of Independence. He did offer in A Dissertation on [the Gradual Abolition] of Slavery (1796) an impossible (and wholly ignored) scheme for abolishing it in Virginia. In Dissertation, Tucker calls America the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa. Even as Americans were offering up vows at the shrine of Liberty, they were, he wrote, imposing upon our fellow men, who differ in complexion from us, a slavery, ten thousand times more cruel than the utmost extremity of those grievances and oppressions of which we complained.

In an essay on Benevolence and Slavery, Tucker recounted the harshness of local slavery:

But he [a slave owner near Williamsburg] always makes it a point of having, what is called, a smart Overseer, whose duty it is to keep them [the enslaved] tightly to their work. That is, the negroes are to be in the fields at the first dawn, of the day, and at their work, as soon as they can see to do any thing, in dark nights, when there is no moonshine; but, when the moon shines the latter part of the night, they must be at work before three O Clock, in summer, and before four in winter. And when the moon shines in the Evening, they are to continue at work until nine a-Clock, except in the Tobacco-season, when they are not dismissed until eleven ... By the bye, this class of men [overseers] are generally very unfeeling.

Philip Fithian in 1773 had described slavery not too far from here by quoting an overseer on how he disciplined the enslaved:

He said that whipping of any kind does them no good, for they will laugh at your greatest Severity; But he told us he had invented two things, and by several experiments had proved their success. For Sulleness, Obstinacy, or Idleness, says he, Take a Negro, strip him, tie him fast to a post; take then a sharp Curry-Comb, & curry him severely til he is well scrapd; & call a Boy with some dry Hay, and make the Boy rub him down for several Minutes, then salt him, & unlose him. He will attend to his Business, (said the inhuman Infidel) afterwards! But savage Cruelty does not exceed His next diabolical Invention To get a Secret from a Negro, says he, take the following Method Lay upon your Floor a large thick plank, having a peg about eighteen Inches long, of hard wood, & very Sharp, on the upper end, fixed fast in the plank then strip the Negro, tie the Cord to a staple in the Ceiling, so as that his foot may just rest on the sharpened Peg, then turn him briskly round, and you would laugh (said our informer) at the Dexterity of the Negro, while he was releiving his Feet on the sharpend Peg! I need say nothing of these seeing there is a righteous God, who will take vengeance on such Inventions!

Next: It is no wonder then that local Blacks right up until the 1940s celebrated Emancipation Day, January 1, with parades and festivities.

Originally posted here:

The 'Peculiar Institution' in and near Williamsburg - Daily Press