Daily Archives: June 24, 2022

No slavery. no exceptions.

Slavery is an evil that has loomed over our nation since its founding. Its racist legacy carried through Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, and police brutality continues to threaten the lives of Black people, and other people of color.

Passed in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is celebrated for abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude. However, to the surprise of many, the Thirteenth Amendment includes an exception clause that has been understood throughout history to allow slavery and involuntary servitude to be used as punishment for crime. During Reconstruction, this understanding encouraged the criminalization, incarceration, and re-enslavement of Black people.

Still today, more than 150 years later, people who are incarcerated and detained across our country are disproportionately Black and brown and forced to work for little to no pay under the threat of additional punitive measures, such as the loss of family visits and solitary confinement.

Its time to unequivocally make the evils of slavery and involuntary servitude history, once and for all. We must pass the Abolition Amendment introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley (OR) and Representative Nikema Williams (GA-05) to end the exception!

See more here:

#EndTheException

Institution for those unable to support themselves

In Britain, a workhouse (Welsh: tloty[1]) was a total institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term workhouse is from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon reporting that "we have erected wthn [sic] our borough a workhouse to set poorer people to work".[2]

The origins of the workhouse can be traced to the Statute of Cambridge 1388, which attempted to address the labour shortages following the Black Death in England by restricting the movement of labourers, and ultimately led to the state becoming responsible for the support of the poor. However, mass unemployment following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the introduction of new technology to replace agricultural workers in particular, and a series of bad harvests, meant that by the early 1830s the established system of poor relief was proving to be unsustainable. The New Poor Law of 1834 attempted to reverse the economic trend by discouraging the provision of relief to anyone who refused to enter a workhouse. Some Poor Law authorities hoped to run workhouses at a profit by utilising the free labour of their inmates. Most were employed on tasks such as breaking stones, crushing bones to produce fertiliser, or picking oakum using a large metal nail known as a spike.

As the 19th century wore on, workhouses increasingly became refuges for the elderly, infirm, and sick rather than the able-bodied poor, and in 1929 legislation was passed to allow local authorities to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals. Although workhouses were formally abolished by the same legislation in 1930, many continued under their new appellation of Public Assistance Institutions under the control of local authorities. It was not until the introduction of the National Assistance Act 1948 that the last vestiges of the Poor Law finally disappeared, and with them the workhouses.

The Statute of Cambridge 1388 was an attempt to address the labour shortage caused by the Black Death, a devastating pandemic that killed about one-third of England's population. The new law fixed wages and restricted the movement of labourers, as it was anticipated that if they were allowed to leave their parishes for higher-paid work elsewhere then wages would inevitably rise. According to historian Derek Fraser, the fear of social disorder following the plague ultimately resulted in the state, and not a "personal Christian charity", becoming responsible for the support of the poor. The resulting laws against vagrancy were the origins of state-funded relief for the poor. From the 16th century onwards a distinction was legally enshrined between those who were willing to work but could not, and those who were able to work but would not: between "the genuinely unemployed and the idler". Supporting the destitute was a problem exacerbated by King Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, which began in 1536. They had been a significant source of charitable relief, and provided a good deal of direct and indirect employment. The Poor Relief Act of 1576 went on to establish the principle that if the able-bodied poor needed support, they had to work for it.

The Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601 made parishes legally responsible for the care of those within their boundaries who, through age or infirmity, were unable to work. The Act essentially classified the poor into one of three groups. It proposed that the able-bodied be offered work in a house of correction (the precursor of the workhouse), where the "persistent idler" was to be punished. It also proposed the construction of housing for the impotent poor, the old and the infirm, although most assistance was granted through a form of poor relief known as outdoor relief money, food, or other necessities given to those living in their own homes, funded by a local tax on the property of the wealthiest in the parish.[2]

The workhouse system evolved in the 17th century, allowing parishes to reduce the cost to ratepayers of providing poor relief. The first authoritative figure for numbers of workhouses comes in the next century from The Abstract of Returns made by the Overseers of the Poor, which was drawn up following a government survey in 1776. It put the number of parish workhouses in England and Wales at more than 1800 (about one parish in seven), with a total capacity of more than 90,000 places.[7] This growth in the number of workhouses was prompted by the Workhouse Test Act 1723; by obliging anyone seeking poor relief to enter a workhouse and undertake a set amount of work, usually for no pay (a system called indoor relief), the Act helped prevent irresponsible claims on a parish's poor rate.

The growth was also bolstered by the Relief of the Poor Act 1782, proposed by Thomas Gilbert. Gilbert's Act was intended to allow parishes to share the cost of poor relief by joining together to form unions, known as Gilbert Unions, to build and maintain even larger workhouses to accommodate the elderly and infirm. The able-bodied poor were instead either given outdoor relief or found employment locally. Relatively few Gilbert Unions were set up, but the supplementing of inadequate wages under the Speenhamland system did become established towards the end of the 18th century. So keen were some Poor Law authorities to cut costs wherever possible that cases were reported of husbands being forced to sell their wives, to avoid them becoming a financial burden on the parish. In one such case in 1814 the wife and child of Henry Cook, who were living in Effingham workhouse, were sold at Croydon market for one shilling (5p); the parish paid for the cost of the journey and a "wedding dinner".

By the 1830s most parishes had at least one workhouse, but many were badly managed. In his 1797 work, The State of the Poor, Sir Frederick Eden, wrote:

The workhouse is an inconvenient building, with small windows, low rooms and dark staircases. It is surrounded by a high wall, that gives it the appearance of a prison, and prevents free circulation of air. There are 8 or 10 beds in each room, chiefly of flocks, and consequently retentive of all scents and very productive of vermin. The passages are in great want of whitewashing. No regular account is kept of births and deaths, but when smallpox, measles or malignant fevers make their appearance in the house, the mortality is very great. Of 131 inmates in the house, 60 are children.

Instead of a workhouse, some sparsely populated parishes placed homeless paupers into rented accommodation, and provided others with relief in their own homes. Those entering a workhouse might join anywhere from a handful to several hundred other inmates; for instance, between 1782 and 1794 Liverpool's workhouse accommodated 9001200 indigent men, women and children. The larger workhouses such as the Gressenhall House of Industry generally served a number of communities, in Gressenhall's case 50 parishes. Writing in 1854, Poor Law commissioner George Nicholls viewed many of them as little more than factories:

These workhouses were established, and mainly conducted, with a view to deriving profit from the labour of the inmates, and not as being the safest means of affording relief by at the same time testing the reality of their destitution. The workhouse was in truth at that time a kind of manufactory, carried on at the risk and cost of the poor-rate, employing the worst description of the people, and helping to pauperise the best.

By 1832 the amount spent on poor relief nationally had risen to 7million a year, more than 10shillings (0.50) per head of population, up from 2million in 1784.[a] The large number of those seeking assistance was pushing the system to "the verge of collapse".[b] The economic downturn following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century resulted in increasing numbers of unemployed. Coupled with developments in agriculture that meant less labour was needed on the land,[20] along with three successive bad harvests beginning in 1828 and the Swing Riots of 1830, reform was inevitable.

Many suspected that the system of poor relief was being widely abused. In 1832 the government established a Royal Commission to investigate and recommend how relief could best be given to the poor.[20] The result was the establishment of a centralised Poor Law Commission in England and Wales under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, also known as the New Poor Law, which discouraged the allocation of outdoor relief to the able-bodied; "all cases were to be 'offered the house', and nothing else". Individual parishes were grouped into Poor Law Unions, each of which was to have a union workhouse. More than 500 of these were built during the next 50 years, two-thirds of them by 1840. In certain parts of the country there was a good deal of resistance to these new buildings, some of it violent, particularly in the industrial north. Many workers lost their jobs during the major economic depression of 1837, and there was a strong feeling that what the unemployed needed was not the workhouse but short-term relief to tide them over. By 1838, 573 Poor Law Unions had been formed in England and Wales, incorporating 13,427parishes, but it was not until 1868 that unions were established across the entire country: the same year that the New Poor Law was applied to the Gilbert Unions.

Despite the intentions behind the 1834 Act, relief of the poor remained the responsibility of local taxpayers, and there was thus a powerful economic incentive to use loopholes such as sickness in the family to continue with outdoor relief; the weekly cost per person was about half that of providing workhouse accommodation.[c] Outdoor relief was further restricted by the terms of the 1844 Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, which aimed to end it altogether for the able-bodied poor. In 1846, of 1.33million paupers only 199,000 were maintained in workhouses, of whom 82,000 were considered to be able-bodied, leaving an estimated 375,000 of the able-bodied on outdoor relief. Excluding periods of extreme economic distress, it has been estimated that about 6.5% of the British population may have been accommodated in workhouses at any given time.[d]

The New Poor Law Commissioners were very critical of existing workhouses, and generally insisted that they be replaced. They complained in particular that "in by far the greater number of cases, it is a large almshouse, in which the young are trained in idleness, ignorance, and vice; the able-bodied maintained in sluggish sensual indolence; the aged and more respectable exposed to all the misery that is incident to dwelling in such a society".

After 1835 many workhouses were constructed with the central buildings surrounded by work and exercise yards enclosed behind brick walls, so-called "pauper bastilles". The commission proposed that all new workhouses should allow for the segregation of paupers into at least four distinct groups, each to be housed separately: the aged and impotent, children, able-bodied males, and able-bodied females. A common layout resembled Jeremy Bentham's prison panopticon, a radial design with four three-storey buildings at its centre set within a rectangular courtyard, the perimeter of which was defined by a three-storey entrance block and single-storey outbuildings, all enclosed by a wall. That basic layout, one of two designed by the architect Sampson Kempthorne (his other design was octagonal with a segmented interior, sometimes known as the Kempthorne star), allowed for four separate work and exercise yards, one for each class of inmate. Separating the inmates was intended to serve three purposes: to direct treatment to those who most needed it; to deter others from pauperism; and as a physical barrier against illness, physical and mental.The commissioners argued that buildings based on Kempthorne's plans would be symbolic of the recent changes to the provision of poor relief; one assistant commissioner expressed the view that they would be something "the pauper would feel it was utterly impossible to contend against", and "give confidence to the Poor Law Guardians". Another assistant commissioner claimed the new design was intended as a "terror to the able-bodied population", but the architect George Gilbert Scott was critical of what he called "a set of ready-made designs of the meanest possible character". Some critics of the new Poor Law noted the similarities between Kempthorne's plans and model prisons, and doubted that they were merely coincidental - Richard Oastler went as far as referring to the institutions as 'prisons for the poor'.[35] Augustus Pugin compared Kempthorne's octagonal plan with the "antient poor hoyse", in what Felix Driver calls a "romantic, conservative critique" of the "degeneration of English moral and aesthetic values".

By the 1840s some of the enthusiasm for Kempthorne's designs had waned. With limited space in built-up areas, and concerns over the ventilation of buildings, some unions moved away from panopticon designs. Between 1840 and 1870 about 150 workhouses with separate blocks designed for specific functions were built. Typically the entrance building contained offices, while the main workhouse building housed the various wards and workrooms, all linked by long corridors designed to improve ventilation and lighting. Where possible, each building was separated by an exercise yard, for the use of a specific category of pauper.

Each Poor Law Union employed one or more relieving officers, whose job it was to visit those applying for assistance and assess what relief, if any, they should be given. Any applicants considered to be in need of immediate assistance could be issued with a note admitting them directly to the workhouse. Alternatively they might be offered any necessary money or goods to tide them over until the next meeting of the guardians, who would decide on the appropriate level of support and whether or not the applicants should be assigned to the workhouse.

Workhouses were designed with only a single entrance guarded by a porter, through which inmates and visitors alike had to pass. Near to the entrance were the casual wards for tramps and vagrants[e] and the relieving rooms, where paupers were housed until they had been examined by a medical officer. After being assessed the paupers were separated and allocated to the appropriate ward for their category: boys under 14, able-bodied men between 14 and 60, men over 60, girls under 14, able-bodied women between 14 and 60, and women over 60.[f] Children under the age of two were allowed to remain with their mothers, but by entering a workhouse paupers were considered to have forfeited responsibility for their families. Clothing and personal possessions were taken from them and stored, to be returned on their discharge. After bathing, they were issued with a distinctive uniform:[g] for men it might be a striped cotton shirt, jacket and trousers, and a cloth cap, and for women a blue-and-white striped dress worn underneath a smock. Shoes were also provided. In some establishments certain categories of inmate were marked out by their clothing; for example, at Bristol Incorporation workhouse, prostitutes were required to wear a yellow dress and pregnant single women a red dress; such practices were deprecated by the Poor Law Commission in a directive issued in 1839 entitled "Ignominious Dress for Unchaste Women in Workhouses", but they continued until at least 1866. Some workhouses had a separate "foul" or "itch" ward, where inmates diagnosed with skin diseases such as scabies could be detained before entering the workhouse proper. Also not to be overlooked were unfortunate destitute sufferers of mental health disorders, who would be ordered to enter the workhouse by the parish doctor. The Lunacy Act 1853 did promote the asylum as the institution of choice for patients afflicted with all forms of mental illness. However, in reality, destitute people suffering from mental illness would be housed in their local workhouse.[45]

Conditions in the casual wards were worse than in the relieving rooms, and deliberately designed to discourage vagrants, who were considered potential troublemakers and probably disease-ridden. Vagrants who presented themselves at the door of a workhouse were at the mercy of the porter, whose decision it was whether or not to allocate them a bed for the night in the casual ward. Those refused entry risked being sentenced to two weeks of hard labour if they were found begging or sleeping in the open and prosecuted for an offence under the Vagrancy Act 1824.

A typical early 19th-century casual ward was a single large room furnished with some kind of bedding and perhaps a bucket in the middle of the floor for sanitation. The bedding on offer could be very basic: the Poor Law authorities in Richmond in London in the mid-1840s provided only straw and rags, although beds were available for the sick. In return for their night's accommodation vagrants might be expected to undertake a certain amount of work before leaving the next day; for instance at Guisborough men were required to break stones for three hours and women to pick oakum, two hours before breakfast and one after.[49] Until the passage of the Casual Poor Act 1882 vagrants could discharge themselves before 11 am on the day following their admission, but from 1883 onwards they were required to be detained until 9 am on the second day. Those who were admitted to the workhouse again within one month were required to be detained until the fourth day after their admission.

Inmates were free to leave whenever they wished after giving reasonable notice, generally considered to be three hours, but if a parent discharged him- or herself then the children were also discharged, to prevent them from being abandoned. The comic actor Charlie Chaplin, who spent some time with his mother in Lambeth workhouse, records in his autobiography that when he and his half-brother returned to the workhouse after having been sent to a school in Hanwell, he was met at the gate by his mother Hannah, dressed in her own clothes. Desperate to see them again she had discharged herself and the children; they spent the day together playing in Kennington Park and visiting a coffee shop, after which she readmitted them all to the workhouse.

Available data surrounding death rates within the workhouse system is minimal; however, in the Wall to Wall documentary Secrets from the Workhouse, it's estimated that 10% of those admitted to the workhouse after the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act died within the system.[53]

Some Poor Law authorities hoped that payment for the work undertaken by the inmates would produce a profit for their workhouses, or at least allow them to be self-supporting, but whatever small income could be produced never matched the running costs. In the 18th century, inmates were poorly managed, and lacked either the inclination or the skills to compete effectively with free market industries such as spinning and weaving. Some workhouses operated not as places of employment, but as houses of correction, a role similar to that trialled by Buckinghamshire magistrate Matthew Marryott. Between 1714 and 1722 he experimented with using the workhouse as a test of poverty rather than a source of profit, leading to the establishment of a large number of workhouses for that purpose. Nevertheless, local people became concerned about the competition to their businesses from cheap workhouse labour. As late as 1888, for instance, the Firewood Cutters Protection Association was complaining that the livelihood of its members was being threatened by the cheap firewood on offer from the workhouses in the East End of London.

Many inmates were allocated tasks in the workhouse such as caring for the sick or teaching that were beyond their capabilities, but most were employed on "generally pointless" work, such as breaking stones or removing the hemp from telegraph wires. Others picked oakum using a large metal nail known as a spike, which may be the source of the workhouse's nickname. Bone-crushing, useful in the creation of fertiliser, was a task most inmates could perform, until a government inquiry into conditions in the Andover workhouse in 1845 found that starving paupers were reduced to fighting over the rotting bones they were supposed to be grinding, to suck out the marrow. The resulting scandal led to the withdrawal of bone-crushing as an employment in workhouses and the replacement of the Poor Law Commission by the Poor Law Board in 1847. Conditions were thereafter regulated by a list of rules contained in the 1847 Consolidated General Order, which included guidance on issues such as diet, staff duties, dress, education, discipline, and redress of grievances.

Some Poor Law Unions opted to send destitute children to the British colonies, in particular to Canada and Australia, where it was hoped the fruits of their labour would contribute to the defence of the empire and enable the colonies to buy more British exports. Known as Home Children, the Philanthropic Farm school alone sent more than 1000 boys to the colonies between 1850 and 1871, many of them taken from workhouses. In 1869 Maria Rye and Annie Macpherson, "two spinster ladies of strong resolve", began taking groups of orphans and children from workhouses to Canada, most of whom were taken in by farming families in Ontario. The Canadian government paid a small fee to the ladies for each child delivered, but most of the cost was met by charities or the Poor Law Unions.

As far as possible, elderly inmates were expected to undertake the same kind of work as the younger men and women, although concessions were made to their relative frailty. Or they might be required to chop firewood, clean the wards, or carry out other domestic tasks. In 1882 Lady Brabazon, later the Countess of Meath, set up a project to provide alternative occupation for non-able-bodied inmates, known as the Brabazon scheme. Volunteers provided training in crafts such as knitting, embroidery and lace making, all costs initially being borne by Lady Brabazon herself. Although slow to take off, when workhouses discovered that the goods being produced were saleable and could make the enterprise self-financing, the scheme gradually spread across the country, and by 1897 there were more than 100 branches.

In 1836 the Poor Law Commission distributed six diets for workhouse inmates, one of which was to be chosen by each Poor Law Union depending on its local circumstances. Although dreary, the food was generally nutritionally adequate,[64] and according to contemporary records was prepared with great care. Issues such as training staff to serve and weigh portions were well understood.[64] The diets included general guidance, as well as schedules for each class of inmate. They were laid out on a weekly rotation, the various meals selected on a daily basis, from a list of foodstuffs. For instance, a breakfast of bread and gruel was followed by dinner, which might consist of cooked meats, pickled pork or bacon with vegetables, potatoes, yeast dumpling, soup and suet, or rice pudding. Supper was normally bread, cheese and broth, and sometimes butter or potatoes.

The larger workhouses had separate dining rooms for males and females; workhouses without separate dining rooms would stagger the meal times to avoid any contact between the sexes.

Education was provided for the children, but workhouse teachers were a particular problem. Poorly paid, without any formal training, and facing large classes of unruly children with little or no interest in their lessons, few stayed in the job for more than a few months. In an effort to force workhouses to offer at least a basic level of education, legislation was passed in 1845 requiring that all pauper apprentices should be able to read and sign their own indenture papers. A training college for workhouse teachers was set up at Kneller Hall in Twickenham during the 1840s, but it closed in the following decade.

Some children were trained in skills valuable to the area. In Shrewsbury, the boys were placed in the workhouse's workshop, while girls were tasked with spinning, making gloves and other jobs "suited to their sex, their ages and abilities". At St Martin in the Fields, children were trained in spinning flax, picking hair and carding wool, before being placed as apprentices. Workhouses also had links with local industry; in Nottingham, children employed in a cotton mill earned about 60 a year for the workhouse. Some parishes advertised for apprenticeships, and were willing to pay any employer prepared to offer them. Such agreements were preferable to supporting children in the workhouse: apprenticed children were not subject to inspection by justices, thereby lowering the chance of punishment for neglect; and apprenticeships were viewed as a better long-term method of teaching skills to children who might otherwise be uninterested in work. Supporting an apprenticed child was also considerably cheaper than the workhouse or outdoor relief. Children often had no say in the matter, which could be arranged without the permission or knowledge of their parents. The supply of labour from workhouse to factory, which remained popular until the 1830s, was sometimes viewed as a form of transportation. While getting parish apprentices from Clerkenwell, Samuel Oldknow's agent reported how some parents came "crying to beg they may have their Children out again". Historian Arthur Redford suggests that the poor may have once shunned factories as "an insidious sort of workhouse".

From the Jewish point of view... was the virtual impossibility of complying with the Jewish ritual requirements; the dietary laws could have been followed, if at all, only by virtual restriction to bread and water, and the observance of the Sabbath and Festivities was impossible.

Religion played an important part in workhouse life: prayers were read to the paupers before breakfast and after supper each day. Each Poor Law Union was required to appoint a chaplain to look after the spiritual needs of the workhouse inmates, and he was invariably expected to be from the established Church of England. Religious services were generally held in the dining hall, as few early workhouses had a separate chapel. But in some parts of the country, notably Cornwall and northern England,[74] there were more dissenters than members of the established church; as section 19 of the 1834 Poor Law specifically forbade any regulation forcing an inmate to attend church services "in a Mode contrary to [their] Religious Principles", the commissioners were reluctantly forced to allow non-Anglicans to leave the workhouse on Sundays to attend services elsewhere, so long as they were able to provide a certificate of attendance signed by the officiating minister on their return.[74]

As the 19th century wore on non-conformist ministers increasingly began to conduct services within the workhouse, but Catholic priests were rarely welcomed.[74] A variety of legislation had been introduced during the 17th century to limit the civil rights of Catholics, beginning with the Popish Recusants Act 1605 in the wake of the failed Gunpowder Plot that year. Though almost all restrictions on Catholics in England and Ireland were removed by the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, a great deal of anti-Catholic feeling remained. Even in areas with large Catholic populations, such as Liverpool, the appointment of a Catholic chaplain was unthinkable.[74] Some guardians went so far as to refuse Catholic priests entry to the workhouse.

Discipline was strictly enforced in the workhouse; for minor offences such as swearing or feigning sickness the "disorderly" could have their diet restricted for up to 48hours. For more serious offences such as insubordination or violent behaviour the "refractory" could be confined for up to 24hours, and might also have their diet restricted. Girls were punished in the same way as adults but sometimes in older cases girls were also beaten or slapped, but boys under the age of 14 could be beaten with "a rod or other instrument, such as may have been approved of by the Guardians". The persistently refractory, or anyone bringing "spirituous or fermented liquor" into the workhouse, could be taken before a Justice of the Peace and even jailed.[77] All punishments handed out were recorded in a punishment book, which was examined regularly by the workhouse guardians, locally elected representatives of the participating parishes with overall responsibility for the running of the workhouse.

Although the commissioners were responsible for the regulatory framework within which the Poor Law Unions operated, each union was run by a locally elected board of guardians, comprising representatives from each of the participating parishes, assisted by six ex officio members.[79] The guardians were usually farmers or tradesmen, and as one of their roles was the contracting out of the supply of goods to the workhouse, the position could prove lucrative for them and their friends. Simon Fowler has commented that "it is clear that this [the awarding of contracts] involved much petty corruption, and it was indeed endemic throughout the Poor Law system".

Although the 1834 Act allowed for women to become workhouse guardians provided they met the property requirement, the first female was not elected until 1875. Working class guardians were not appointed until 1892, when the property requirement was dropped in favour of occupying rented premises worth 5 a year.

Every workhouse had a complement of full-time staff, often referred to as the indoor staff. At their head was the governor or master, who was appointed by the board of guardians. His duties were laid out in a series of orders issued by the Poor Law Commissioners. As well as the overall administration of the workhouse, masters were required to discipline the paupers as necessary and to visit each ward twice daily, at 11 am and 9 pm. Female inmates and children under seven were the responsibility of the matron, as was the general housekeeping. The master and the matron were usually a married couple, charged with running the workhouse "at the minimum cost and maximum efficiency for the lowest possible wages".

A large workhouse such as Whitechapel, accommodating several thousand paupers, employed a staff of almost 200; the smallest may only have had a porter and perhaps an assistant nurse in addition to the master and matron. A typical workhouse accommodating 225 inmates had a staff of five, which included a part-time chaplain and a part-time medical officer. The low pay meant that many medical officers were young and inexperienced. To add to their difficulties, in most unions they were obliged to pay out of their own pockets for any drugs, dressings or other medical supplies needed to treat their patients.

A second major wave of workhouse construction began in the mid-1860s, the result of a damning report by the Poor Law inspectors on the conditions found in infirmaries in London and the provinces. Of one workhouse in Southwark, London, an inspector observed bluntly that "The workhouse does not meet the requirements of medical science, nor am I able to suggest any arrangements which would in the least enable it to do so". By the middle of the 19th century there was a growing realisation that the purpose of the workhouse was no longer solely or even chiefly to act as a deterrent to the able-bodied poor, and the first generation of buildings was widely considered to be inadequate. About 150 new workhouses were built mainly in London, Lancashire and Yorkshire between 1840 and 1875, in architectural styles that began to adopt Italianate or Elizabethan features, to better fit into their surroundings and present a less intimidating face. One surviving example is the gateway at Ripon, designed somewhat in the style of a medieval almshouse. A major feature of this new generation of buildings is the long corridors with separate wards leading off for men, women and children.

By 1870 the architectural fashion had moved away from the corridor design in favour of a pavilion style based on the military hospitals built during and after the Crimean War, providing light and well-ventilated accommodation. Opened in 1878, the Manchester Union's infirmary comprised seven parallel three-storey pavilions separated by 80-foot-wide (24m) "airing yards"; each pavilion had space for 31beds, a day room, a nurse's kitchen and toilets. By the start of the 20th century new workhouses were often fitted out to an "impressive standard". Opened in 1903, the workhouse at Hunslet in West Riding of Yorkshire had two steam boilers with automatic stokers supplying heating and hot water throughout the building, a generator to provide electricity for the institution's 1,130 electric lamps, and electric lifts in the infirmary pavilion.

As early as 1841 the Poor Law Commissioners were aware of an "insoluble dilemma" posed by the ideology behind the New Poor Law:

If the pauper is always promptly attended by a skilful and well qualified medical practitioner... if the patient be furnished with all the cordials and stimulants which may promote his recovery: it cannot be denied that his condition in these respects is better than that of the needy and industrious ratepayer who has neither the money nor the influence to secure prompt and careful attendance.

The education of children presented a similar dilemma. It was provided free in the workhouse but had to be paid for by the "merely poor"; free primary education for all children was not provided in the UK until 1918. Instead of being "less eligible", conditions for those living in the workhouse were in certain respects "more eligible" than for those living in poverty outside.

Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top,When you grow old, your wages will stop,When you have spent the little you madeFirst to the Poorhouse and then to the grave

Anonymous verse from Yorkshire

By the late 1840s most workhouses outside London and the larger provincial towns housed only "the incapable, elderly and sick". By the end of the century only about 20 per cent of those admitted to workhouses were unemployed or destitute, but about 30 per cent of the population over 70 were in workhouses. The introduction of pensions for those aged over 70 in 1908 did not reduce the number of elderly housed in workhouses, but it did reduce the number of those on outdoor relief by 25 per cent.

Responsibility for administration of the Poor Law passed to the Local Government Board in 1871, and the emphasis soon shifted from the workhouse as "a receptacle for the helpless poor" to its role in the care of the sick and helpless. The Diseases Prevention Act of 1883 allowed workhouse infirmaries to offer treatment to non-paupers as well as inmates, and by the beginning of the 20th century some infirmaries were even able to operate as private hospitals.

A Royal Commission of 1905 reported that workhouses were unsuited to deal with the different categories of resident they had traditionally housed, and recommended that specialised institutions for each class of pauper should be established, in which they could be treated appropriately by properly trained staff. The "deterrent" workhouses were in future to be reserved for "incorrigibles such as drunkards, idlers and tramps". On 24 January 1918 the Daily Telegraph reported that the Local Government Committee on the Poor Law had presented to the Ministry of Reconstruction a report recommending abolition of the workhouses and transferring their duties to other organizations.[95]

The Local Government Act 1929 gave local authorities the power to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals, although outside London few did so.The workhouse system was abolished in the UK by the same Act on 1 April 1930, but many workhouses, renamed Public Assistance Institutions, continued under the control of local county councils. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 almost 100,000 people were accommodated in the former workhouses, 5,629 of whom were children.

The 1948 National Assistance Act abolished the last vestiges of the Poor Law, and with it the workhouses. Many of the workhouse buildings were converted into retirement homes run by the local authorities; slightly more than half of local authority accommodation for the elderly was provided in former workhouses in 1960. Camberwell workhouse (in Peckham, South London) continued until 1985 as a homeless shelter for more than 1,000 men, operated by the Department of Health and Social Security and renamed a resettlement centre.[101] Southwell Workhouse, now a museum, was used to provide temporary accommodation for mothers and children until the early 1990s.

It is beyond the omnipotence of Parliament to meet the conflicting claims of justice to the community; severity to the idle and viscious and mercy to those stricken down into penury by the vicissitudes of God... There is grinding want among the honest poor; there is starvation, squalor, misery beyond description, children lack food and mothers work their eyes dim and their bodies to emaciation in the vain attempt to find the bare necessities of life, but the Poor Law authorities have no record of these struggles.

Philanthropist William Rathbone, 1850

The Poor Law was not designed to address the issue of poverty, which was considered to be the inevitable lot for most people; rather it was concerned with pauperism, "the inability of an individual to support himself". Writing in 1806 Patrick Colquhoun commented that:

Poverty... is a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilisation. It is the lot of man it is the source of wealth, since without poverty there would be no labour, and without labour there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.

Historian Simon Fowler has argued that workhouses were "largely designed for a pool of able-bodied idlers and shirkers... However this group hardly existed outside the imagination of a generation of political economists". Workhouse life was intended to be harsh, to deter the able-bodied poor and to ensure that only the truly destitute would apply, a principle known as less eligibility.Friedrich Engels, however, described what he imagined the motives of the authors of the 1834 New Poor Law to be, "to force the poor into the Procrustean bed of their preconceived notions. To do this they treated the poor with incredible savagery."

The purpose of workhouse labour was never clear according to historian M. A. Crowther. In the early days of workhouses it was either a punishment or a source of income for the parish, but during the 19thcentury the idea of work as punishment became increasingly unfashionable. The idea took hold that work should rehabilitate the workhouse inmates for their eventual independence, and that it should therefore be rewarded with no more than the workers' maintenance, otherwise there would be no incentive for them to seek work elsewhere.

As of 1997, around 10% of the British population had a genealogical connection to the workhouse system.[108]

The "dramatic possibilities" of the workhouse provided the inspiration for several artists including Charles West Cope, whose Board Day Application for Bread (1841), depicting a young widow pleading for bread for her four children, was painted following his visit to a meeting of the Staines Board of Guardians. The "quintessential workhouse yarn" is Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens, which contains the well-known request from Oliver to the master of the workhouse: "Please, sir, I want some more". Another popular piece of workhouse literature was the dramatic monologue In the Workhouse Christmas Day (1877) by George Robert Sims, with its first line of "It is Christmas Day in the workhouse". In chapter XXVII of his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), George Orwell gives a brief but vivid account of his stay in a London workhouse when he roamed the streets as a tramp. In 1931 an early version of this account had been published as an essay "The Spike" in an issue of The New Adelphi.

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Workhouse - Wikipedia

By Workers World Houston bureau

To understand the systemic cruelty and deep inequalities that persist in the criminal injustice system in the U.S., one need look no further than the death penalty.

2011 Texas march to end the death penalty

The death penalty evolved from the rope to the chair to the needle. On this continent, it evolved directly from Indigenous genocide and enslavement of African people on stolen Indigenous lands. The death penalty persists, despite not deterring crime and despite the racist legal system getting fatal verdicts wrong so often. In practice, it is racist and anti-poor. Those without the capital, get the capital punishment.

The state of Texas has executed more people in the modern era than the next six U.S. states combined. The state has lynched 574 people since 1982.

The state that has executed the second largest number of people in the modern era is Virginia, with 113 executions. In 2020 Virginia was the first former Confederate state to abolish the death penalty, which is a big deal, as legal lynchings have historically been concentrated in the South, coinciding with a history of enslavement and genocide at the hands of colonizers.

Currently, there are 23 states with no death penalty, three with governor-imposed moratoriums and 24 states that have the death penalty. Public support for capital punishment is down, thanks in great part to activists all over the world, collectively fighting its inhumanity for decades.

Positive movement against the death penalty

Despite the SCOTUS ruling on May 17 denying two Arizona death row prisoners, David Ramirez and Barry Jones, the right to appeal ineffective counsel in federal court there is still quite a bit of positive movement against the death penalty, particularly in Texas.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center: [I]n Harris County, prosecutors are challenging Houston Judge Natalia Cornelios refusal to schedule an execution date for death row prisoner Arthur Brown in order to provide a new lawyer in time to investigate whether he is ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. In Nueces County, the Texas Attorney Generals Office has intervened in county proceedings to oppose District Attorney Mark Gonzalezs motion to withdraw a death warrant scheduling the execution of John Henry Ramirez for October 5, 2022. . . .

Gonzalez, a former defense attorney, was elected in 2016 on a platform of criminal justice reform. In response to an application filed by his office, the Nueces County District Court issued an order on April 12, 2022, setting an execution date for Ramirez. Two days later, citing his firm belief that the death penalty is unethical and should not be imposed on Mr. Ramirez or any other person while he is Nueces County District Attorney, Gonzalez filed a motion to withdraw the death warrant. (Deathpenaltyinfo.org, May 27)

Delia Perez Meyer, who has a brother on Texas death row, said at a rally in Harlingen, Texas, to free death row prisoner Melissa Lucio: This system is so flawed. Theres tampering of evidence; theres withholding of evidence; theres collusion. A lot of terrible things go on in death row cases. Executions are wrong and archaic. It doesnt matter if a person is innocent or guilty, no one should be executed. (Workers World, Feb. 9, 2022)

In reference to Lucios case, state representative Jeff Leach staunch Republican supporter of the death penalty recently said he supported a moratorium on capital punishment, due to his faith in the system carrying out these executions fairly being shaky. This is unheard of in the world of Texas politics and indicative of the changing tide of public faith in the so-called justice system on our way to abolition. (Inside Texas Politics, wfaa.com, April 29)

On the way to abolition

The death penalty itself is part of the legacy of enslavement we contend with abolishing. From the rope to the chair to the needle and methods such as death by lethal injection, firing squad and the gas chamber, still legal to use in places like South Carolina and Arizona the capitalist state has many methods with which to kill the poor and oppressed.

Much like in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, there are hundreds of thousands of human beings imprisoned in the U.S. serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Mumia calls this slow death row, because unsanitary conditions and extreme medical neglect behind bars often prove to be as lethal as an official execution date just slower.

Before Americas era of mass incarceration took hold in the early 1970s, the number of individuals in prison was less than 200,000. Today, its 1.4 million; and more than 200,000 people are serving life sentences one out of every seven in prison. More people are sentenced to life in prison in America than there were people in prison serving any sentence in 1970. (sentencingproject.org, Feb. 17, 2021, tinyurl.com/y3ehjbfu)

If we include the number of all members of the working class being held captive in prisons, jails and detention centers, that would bring the total number under carceral control to 1.9 million people in the U.S. (prisonpolicy.org, March 14)

In tandem with capitalist cages, we live in a country where over a million people have perished from a deadly respiratory virus, many dying within prisons. We live in a world where capitalist legislators are comfortable with massacres through gun violence against children in school, against people of color shopping for groceries or at worship. We live in a world where the U.S. spends billions of dollars for war in Ukraine but has no plan to feed a populace struggling in a new era of mass poverty.

We live in a world where the minimum federal wage is only double the price of a gallon of gas, and where many cannot afford to even drive to work if they dont live nearby. We live in a world where as Angela Davis says we have the freedom to starve rather than have our human needs met.

Capitalism, as it has been for so many members of the working class throughout history, is much like a death sentence. Capitalism is racist, anti-poor and ableist in the way it operates and is an enemy of all the oppressed. As we work to abolish the death penalty, the abolition of capitalism is next on the horizon.

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Abolishing the death penalty and capitalism WW commentary - Workers World

Copaganda is tired and played. Far too often journalists rely on police, sheriffs, prison officials, and prosecutors as credible sources without scrutiny or even a basic fact-check. These uncritical and unprofessional behaviors lead to an overwhelming amount of traditional news that simply spreads biased police propaganda and stirs up unfounded fears, stifling the public imagination to see beyond the blue.

We need more popular medianews, television, movies, podcasts, music, fiction, and poetry alikethat does the opposite, that not only questions the logic behind our overreliance on police but outright rejects the need for their existence altogether.

Good news, content like that already exists.

Below we've compiled a list of books, music, articles, and media clips that clearly present the harms of the carceral system and are already dreaming of creative alternatives. If some of our recommendations seem surprising to you, try engaging them through an abolitionist lens: How is this artist imagining a future where our collective needs can be met? How might the language or images they're using advocate for increased liberation?

As always we want to hear from you. Tag us on social media with your favorite abolitionist recommendations.

"The Uvalde shooting is just the latest example of why we need abolition" by Mon M in Prism

"Ruth Wilson Gilmore Talks About Abolition Geography and Liberation" by Lexi McMenamin in Teen Vogue

"Say it Again: Abolish the Police" by Jack Mirkinson in Discourse Blog

"You can come up with a million academic arguments about why police are such a worthless part of American life, but none of them would be nearly as compelling as the scandal that has unfolded in Uvalde in the past couple of days. The police response to this week's school massacre has been so pathetic, so callous, so cruel, so selfish and arrogant and stupid, and so undeniably inhumane that it has proven beyond a doubt that this is not an institution worth protecting."

Abolition Week 2022: If you haven't read the stories from Day 1: Law & Disorder or Day 2: Reality TV, check them out now.

Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World by Dorothy Roberts

Becoming Abolitionists by Derecka Purnell

"Initially, the notion of 'police abolition' repulsed me. The idea seemed like it was created by white activists who did not know the violence that I knew, that I have felt. At the time, I considered abolition to be, pejoratively, 'utopic.' I'd seen too much sexual violence and had buried too many friends to consider getting rid of the police in St. Louis, let alone across the nation"

"But over time, I came to realize that, in reality, the police were a placebo. Calling them felt like something, as the legal scholar Michelle Alexander explains, and something feels like everything when your other option is nothing. Police couldn't do what we really needed. They could not heal relationships or provide jobs. They did not interrupt violence; they escalated it."

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis

Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation by Ruth Gilmore Wilson

Diaries of a Terrorist by Christopher Soto

A.B.O. Comix, by a collective of creators and activists who work to amplify the voices of LGBTQ prisoners through art.

Formation, music by Beyonc, directed by Melina Matsoukas

Just this week, Beyonc dropped new music with "Break My Soul," a song that has all of us asking: "Does the queen want us to quit our jobs?" When "Formation" was released in 2016, imagery of a cop cruiser sinking in a flooded New Orleans neighborhood and a young Black boy dancing in front of police in riot gear somehow had abolitionists and police alike thinking Beyonc was calling them to formation. She set the record straight in an interview with Elle: "I am against police brutality and injustice." Still, she said she wasn't (yet) anti-cop. Bey did, however, launch "Boycott Beyonc" merch to troll law-enforcement entities that vowed not to do security for her stadium tour after she performed Formation at the SuperBowl.

Industry Baby, music by Lil Nas X, directed by Christian Breslauer

Watch for the burning prison at the end. What world is Lil Nas asking us to imagine?

Press, music by Cardi B, directed by Jora Frantzis and Cardi B

This video debuted around the time Cardi faced felony charges for assault, stemming from a fight at a strip club. It's both about Cardi fighting the press and the pressure of the criminal-legal system as she testifies in court, and ultimately lands in an orange jumpsuit after angry white witnesses end up with bullet wounds, lying in a pool of their own blood when the lights flicker during Cardi's music-video trial.

San Quentin, by Johnny Cash, Live at San Quentin Prison in 1969

Most people don't associate country artists as being anything other than overly patriotic cop lovers, but in this recording, Johnny Cash was making the second of three albums he recorded livein prisons. As someone who felt like he'd been given a lot of second chances for his mistakes, Cash said he felt compassion for people who were incarcerated for their mistakes. From these lyrics, he didn't see the value of prison, either:

San Quentin, I hate every inch of youYou've cut me and have scarred me through and throughAnd I'll walk out a wiser weaker manMister Congressman, you can't understand

San Quentin, what good do you think you do?Do you think I'll be different when you're through?You bent my heart and mind and you warp my soulAnd your stone walls turn my blood a little cold

Dirty Computer: an emotion picture by Janelle Mone

When it comes to Black queer folks, the surveillance and policing of identity happensboth at the hands of the state and of broader society. Here, Janelle Monae usesAfro-futurist motifs throughout the 48-minute film to visualize more liberated futures.

The Equalizer

Quietly abolitionist? Queen Latifah has this line: "I'm who you call when you can't call 911."

Spiderhead, directed by Joseph Kosinski

See if you can spot the use of police as a plot device and a means of projecting prisons into the future.

Time, directed by Garret Bradley

13th, directed by Ava DuVernay

Angela Davis' first television appearance in 1972

Derecka Purnell making the case for abolition on The Daily Show

Alysia Nicole Harris performing her poem "Baby Boy" with musician Tina Coln Williams

Teleway 411, a podcast from A.B.O comix featuring longform interviews with incarcerated queer and trans artists, with special guests. Check out today's review of Season 1:

Teleway 411 offers stories of queer and trans folks navigating love, identity, fear, mental illness, grief, and self-acceptance on the inside.

Abolition X on Spotify

Hosts Vic Mensa, Indigo Mateo, and Richie Reseda discuss how abolition isn't just about dismantling the prison industrial complex, but also about imagining a world based on community, accountability, and healing.

pop justice Live! A 6/16 Scalawag Twitter space with Da'Shaun Harrison, Jewel Wicker, Ko Bragg, and Tre'vell Anderson

Outer Space by Big KRIT

All the stars and the planets, and I'm worried 'bout a cop That might shoot down the drop 'cause I took off in the lotI remember all I ever wanted was a jetpackSo I could go farther in the hood that I would live at'Stead of playing cops and robbers, probably should've astronauted

Anybody by Young Thug, the song being used in the RICO case against him and his rap group, YSL.

I never killed anybodyBut I got something to do with that bodyI got the streets on my backCarry it like I'm moving a bodyI told them to shoot a hundred roundsLike he trying to movie the bodyIt was, like, 11 in the morningSkipping schoolthat's a truancy body.I made me some racks in the morning.

Die Jim Crow record label: The first record label in the U.S. for systems-impacted musicians.

Orignal rap by Lil Mobb:

"can't get on B.S. cause I'm tryna go home, but ain't nobody talking bout that"

Come to our event tonight at 7 p.m. EST to talk more about the insidiousness of cops in media from CoComelon to SVU

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Sign up for our new pop justice newsletter

Follow our abolition list on Twitter

Download our guidebook on working with incarcerated writers

Support abolitionist fights for transwomen, like the #FreeAshleyNow campaign

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What to read about abolition - scalawagmagazine.org

OKINAWA Governor Denny Tamaki called for Japans government to block construction of a new US military base and for the abolition of nuclear weapons as he marked the 77th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa today.

The US amphibious assault on Okinawa lasted from April 1 to June 23 1945 and was among the second world wars bloodiest battles, killing around 300,000 people including 150,000 civilians, around half the islands population at the time.

Mr Tamaki said Okinawans thoughts turned to the suffering of Ukrainians facing Russian invasion as they remembered the victims of the huge ground battle, saying Japan should work to abolish nuclear weapons worldwide and renounce war so it would never again become a battlefield.

The pointed remarks were aimed at Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who attended the official ceremony, placing chrysanthemums for the war dead.

Mr Tamaki opposes the central governments attempts to revise the Peace Constitution which prohibits the deployment of Japanese troops abroad.

He was elected on a pledge to prevent the relocation of a US military base to Henoko Bay, where environmentalists say it will cause the local extinction of rare marine life including dugongs. Mr Tamaki wants the current Futenma base shut down rather than moved.

A majority of the 50,000 US soldiers stationedin Japan are on Okinawa, where their presence is widely resented.

Mr Tamaki stressed today that the US military caused noise pollution, accidents and crime on the island and ultimately placed it in danger of being embroiled in wider US wars.

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Okinawa governor calls for US troops to leave and for abolition of nuclear weapons on anniversary of brutal battle for the island - Morning Star...

Casper: So since you've come home, I think you've seen a few different therapists. What has that been like for you?

Sirbrian: Not that good. In the beginning, I was doing exposure therapy. I suppose the therapy is it was not good. They put me in a padded cell. They said keep it all to myself, but no, I wanted to tell A.B.O. Comix anyway. They put me in a padded cell. They didn't know how serious my personality disorder was because each personality disorder is distinctive. So they put me in a padded cell and they was saying things to me to see what triggers me.

I gave them a list of things that trigger me. Okay. So they know that crosses trigger me, churches, Jehovah's witnesses, people talking about a religion, Muslims, things like that trigger me. Irons, because my mom burned me with an iron on my chest. I have a big iron mark on my chest. That right there triggers me, irons, needles. Because my mom used to stick me with needles, pieces of glass, broken pieces of glasses, stuff like that trigger me.

So they were real brutal. I think it was really disrespectful, but it is what it is. And when I got triggered, Devon switched over and then I left and then you have to talk to Devon about that. Cause I don't know what happened with Devon.

Casper: Does the therapist explain to you what the purpose of exposure therapy is and what the intended outcome is supposed to be?

Sirbrian: Yes. They wanted to see what coping strategies, coping skills that they can use, and grounding techniques where they can use in the circumstances that I'm in. If I'm outside, and I'm being triggered, they told me to count the bricks on the building, find your favorite color.

And things to ground me. If I'm outside, if there was a bakery coming by, smell the bakery. But you didn't bake no cakes. So somebody else must've baked those cakes, so that lets you know that you're grounding yourself.

So they would say, okay, what does this smell like? It smells like chocolate. When you walk down a certain street, you hear buses, okay. Now you're not driving those buses. So that lets you know that you're bringing yourself back into reality, that's what they say. Reality. My reality is little bit different to other people's, but they said that's how you've bring back in reality.

So that's how they trying to work. It's hard because I had memory loss real bad because when I switched back and forth, if I don't have my diary, I'm going to forget. So that's what they do to me. They're trying to find ways of: If I'm around a church, what else is around that church?

If you walk past a church, think about all the stuff that's around it, around a church around your neighborhood. And then when I remember those things was around our church, then it brings me back to reality. That's what they taught me.

Casper: Do you feel like those sorts of grounding techniques have helped you?

Sirbrian: Sometimes, it depends on if I have too much on my plate.

If I'm showed transphobic abuse or homophobic abuse at the time, and I'm being triggered at the same time, they know it's not going to work because it's too much on my plate. Once Devon takes over, I don't know what happens after that. So I can't speak for Devon.

Casper: So right now you are looking for a therapist sorta for the long haul. Is there a specific need that you would like to speak about with a therapist or any asks for anybody who might be listening, who might be familiar with personality disorder and could maybe provide a resource or a name of somebody?

Sirbrian: That's real good.

Okay. I graduated from a program but it wasn't long. It was only like what, five months. That's not enough time for me. This is not a game. Like you can't just do that and leave me out there to try, especially when I have a routine.

I used to have a therapist. She'd call me every morning to see where my mind is, and depending on who has the body, they would ground the person. Devon has the body, they would say something to Devon because they know Devon pretty well. I don't know what they say to Devon. I can't really speak for Devon, but whatever they say to Devon, it brings Devon comfortable enough to feel like I'm safe to give me back the body.

So that's what happens. So I'm looking for a therapist who's willing to work with me full time, but it seems like everybody's turning me down because I have Medicaid and they said that everybody that I'm going to, they're trying to say, "You are a full-time project so you can't afford our services." They felt like they were in danger for me to be there. They said, "I'm sorry, we can't have you here because we just got to know you. And this is a mental health and drug treatment." And then we don't have time to like, be focused on hoping that somebody doesn't say the wrong thing. So that's what gets to me, I feel like I'm being painted into a corner. That everybody's saying the same thing to me. And I'm looking for a group where everybody has what I have.

So then it won't be like, have I switched over? No one will be afraid because they understand what personality disorder is. And I can't help what Devon does. People don't understand that I can't speak for Devon, people don't understand it. And I switch back and forth, I altered back and forth at the program. They was like, look, this is too much. And then one therapist got afraid of me and told everybody else, and then that made me feel like I was in the corner. And I feel like right now that actually right now to this day, I just graduated.

And guess what? I have no therapist. I have no therapy because I can't find no therapist who is willing to take me on full time, who does personality disorder. So I'm trying to send my book out here to get people to understand what personality disorder is. It's not my fault. And I feel like giving up because it's like, all I got is my book.

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The abolition podcast you need to listen to - scalawagmagazine.org

In his triptych, Ellapsium: master & Helm (2016), Jared Owens, a formerly incarcerated artist based in New York, superimposes the 1788 diagram of the Brookes slave ship what art historian Cheryl Finley calls the slave ship icon over the blueprint of Fairton Federal Correctional Institution in New Jersey, where he served time. In this blended image, the slave ships hold merges with prison cells, juxtaposing and visually linking the blueprints of the transatlantic slave trade with the architecture of contemporary prisons.

While the image of the slave ship invokes hundreds of years of history, by bringing it into our present, Owens reminds us that slavery did not end with the Thirteenth Amendment it exists today in prisons where hundreds of thousands of people are forced to work for little or no pay under threat of punishment.

Jared Owens, Ellapsium: master & Helm (2016). Courtesy of the artist.

As an academic and a curator, I have spent decades exploring the visual culture of prisons and mass incarceration through the work of currently and formerly incarcerated artists. To the researcher, archivist, or casual observer, the extent to which slavery permeates prison art is striking. Prison art debunks the myth that slavery was abolished and makes the reality abundantly clear: slavery persists in the U.S. through the forced captivity and labor of incarcerated people.

On Juneteenth, we commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S. Not the actual date the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, on January 1, 1863, but two and a half years later, when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to enforce it on June 19, 1865.

The holiday is therefore a fitting reminder of our countrys contradictions. But those contradictions continue today because the Thirteenth Amendment, which most believe abolished slavery, includes an exception that allows for slavery as punishment for a crime.

Thats the political backdrop for the role that slavery plays today in prison art its the reality of the incarcerated artist. The forced labor extracted from incarcerated bodies should cause alarm, but instead most of American society seems not to care that slavery is embedded into the criminal legal system.

The normalization of forced labor practices in prison, and the various entities that profit from incarceration, are scrutinized in James Yaya Houghs watercolor paintings, How Big House Products Make Boxer Shorts (2018) and I am the Economy (2018). The works were winning entries in an art competition for incarcerated artists hosted by the New York-based non-profit Worth Rises.

James Yaya Hough, How Big House Products Make Boxer Shorts (2018). Courtesy of the artist.

In both paintings, Hough shows the image of an unclothed Black man being fed into a machine by a white correctional officer in uniform. In How Big House Products Make Boxer Shorts, the man-fed machine produces underwear with an affixed label that reads: Big House Products. Made by Inmates. Despite being manufactured by people earning pennies an hour, the garments are then sold back to the incarcerated population at exploitative prices. In I am the Economy, the machine simply produces dollar bills, a more general criticism of the brutally extractive prison industry.

While Owens Ellapsium captures the architectural continuity of slaverythe warehousing of Black bodiesHoughs paintings offer a shocking and minimalist depiction of modern day slavery. Prison art forces us to confront the persistence of enslavement enshrined in the Thirteenth Amendment, not merely as an abstract legal concept, but as a reality today.

This Juneteenth, formerly incarcerated artists are working with organizations like the Philadelphia Mural Arts Project to help end the exception in the Thirteenth Amendment. Theyre using art to organize around the Abolition Amendment, a federal bill that would truly abolish slavery for all. Its time we address the reality conveyed in prison art: slavery is still very real.

Nicole Fleetwood is an author, curator, and professor at New York University.

The rest is here:

While the U.S. Celebrates the End of Slavery on Juneteenth, Incarcerated Artists Depict the Harsh Reality That Forced Labor Persists in Prison -...

On June 14, Prime Minister Narendra Modi directed recruitment of 10 lakh people in mission mode over the next one-and-a-half years across various government departments and ministries. The hiring of 10 lakh people will not only help the government meet its stated targets but also strengthen the march towards a fully Atmanirbhar Bharat. The announcement is a continuation of the Modi government to make India a global powerhouse by tapping its full potential.

Over the last eight years, the government under Modi has worked to create employment opportunities in the formal and the informal sectors. Schemes such as MUDRA Yojana, Svanidhi Yojana, Garib Kalyan Rozgar Abhiyaan and MGNREGA 2.0 are aimed at harnessing the potential of the working population.

While employment opportunities have been created on the one hand to keep Indias growth momentum on, efforts are on, on the other hand, to ensure the growth is human-centric and so the government decided to address the long pending demand for labour reforms.

The subject of Indias labour market reforms has acquired new vigour and significance as many States have undertaken substantive legislative and administrative reforms in their respective labour and industrial relations arena. The objectives of these reforms, as envisioned by PM Modi, have been to progressively deregulate the labour market as it is widely perceived that Indias labour regulatory framework has been rigid and hindered the growth of output, investment and employment expansion. From workers perspective, the reforms were meant to improve ease of living and to reap the demographic dividend by promoting inclusive growth and social protection coverage.

Some of the legislative reforms undertaken by a few States in the last few years include increase in the threshold of workers from 100 to 300 under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947; from 10 to 20 workers (with power) and 20 to 40 (without power) under the Factories Act, 1948; from 20 to 50 workers under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, and introduction of Fixed Term Employment (as widely prevalent in many developed and emerging economies) in sectors like textile and apparel, etc.

Similarly, to ease the administrative regulations and delays, single-window clearance, self-certification of compliance by enterprises, online filing for Registration and Returns, transparent inspection system, etc., have also been undertaken by some States.

The topic of labour reform measures, especially the legislative ones aimed at promoting flexibility, has often been a subject of discussion. The researchers supporting reforms say the existing labour regulations are complex, cumbersome and restrain enterprises from successfully operating in a competitive business environment. The Economic Survey(2018-19), which studied the impact of labour reforms undertaken by Rajasthan, showed that the post-reform period saw higher growth rate in the number of factories employing more than 100 employees, increase in the average number of workers per factory, increase in the total output and output per factory, and increase in the total wages and wages per factory, increase in the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) compared to the pre-reform years.

Some, however, doubt the rationale of the labour reforms and question the methodology and findings of such studies and reform outcomes.

A study by the VV Giri National Labour Institute recently to understand the effect of labour reforms undertaken by some States on economic and labour market parameters based on secondary household datasets of NSSO-EUS and PLFS and annual enterprise survey of ASI showed that deregulation of labour markets have had a positive impact on the overall growth and employment. Some of the key findings are as follows:

There hasbeen a shift in employment pattern from the traditional agricultural and allied sector to the more lucrative services sector including construction. This has significant implications in improving the wages and income of the workers through formalisation, apart from enhancing enterprise productivity and competitiveness. The shift towards regular salaried work in the non-agricultural sector has been observed with an increase of 31.5 million between 2011-12 and 2018-19 compared with 19.22 million between 2004-05 and 2011-12.

On theorganised manufacturing front, the employment increased at a faster pace (1.7 million) in the post-reform period (between 2014-15 and 2017-18) compared to the pre-reform period (between 2010-11 and 2014-15), where it increased by one million.

The averageplant size in the organised manufacturing sector has increased over time. In the case of some States like Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the increase in the share of employment in the plant size comprising 300 or more employees during 2010-11 to 2017-18 has been more than the national average of 5.2 per cent.

The increase in Rajasthan has been a significant 10.3 per cent from 40.9 per cent in 2010-11 to 51.2 per cent in 2017-18, followed by Tamil Nadu (8 percentage point increase) and Andhra Pradesh (7.1 percentage point increase).

As of 2017-18, over 50 per cent of the employment in the manufacturing sector in all the States was in plants with 300 or more employees. This indicates that the firms are moving towards achieving economies of scale, thus making the enterprises and products competitive. Some States like Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have attracted a significant number of new firms after the reforms.

Between2004-05 and 2018-19, the total number of self-employed declined by 8.6 million and casual workers, by 14.8 million. Over the same period, the total number of regular wage salaried workers increased by 50.3 million. Out of the 50.3 million, 32 million increase happened during 2011-12 to 2018-19. This increase in the regular salaried work, which is considered a better form of employment, as it offers a stable income both in absolute and relative terms apart from access to some of the social security benefits, can be seen as a positive development.

The fourbig employers associations Assocham, CII, FICCI and PHDCCI reported that manufacturing and its various sub-sectors like garments, apparel, logistics, electronics, food and beverages, machinery and equipment metal products benefited the most from the reform measures related to increase in thresholds under IDA and FA including the plantation and construction sectors.

They also said that the introduction of Fixed Term Employment has led to the creation of new employment opportunities and formalisation of the workforce, thus negating the popular narrative that its introduction will result in more informality. The industry also feels that FTE has improved productivity, competitiveness and sustainability of enterprises by attracting niche skills for the required time period thus enabling them to complete even the stalled projects, with strict timelines and budget

The industrysays that the self-certification scheme has led to increased trust between the employers and labour administration/government machinery. The introduction of the Shram Suvidha portal of transparent inspection system, reducing the human biases/interference and the online filing of registration, licence and returns, has been hailed by the industry associations.

This proves that reforms in the labour legislative and administrative architecture can have significant positive impact on growth of enterprises and the welfare of workers in the country.

To bring about labour reforms which will benefit both the workers and the employers, the Ministry of Labour and Employment had successfully undertaken the task of simplifying, rationalising and amalgamating the existing 29 labour laws into four Codes the Code on Wages, 2019; the Code on Industrial Relations, 2020; the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions, 2020 and the Code on Social Security, 2020 after extensive consultations with all stakeholders and social partners.

The related rules have also been published and circulated to the States to undertake a similar exercise. Implementation of the labour codes and rules has the potential to accelerate Indias journey to lead the worlds strongest economies. It promises to provide the new and old workers of India a safe, secure and enabling work environment.

The writer is Union Minister for Labour & Employment; and Environment, Forest and Climate Change

Published onJune 23, 2022

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Labour reforms and the rise of jobs - BusinessLine

Along with a number of other changes to the private rented sector including the scrapping of section 21 notices, the Government has announced that a new ground for possession will be available for landlords who wish to evict their tenants if they intend to sell their property. At the moment, there are various ways in which a landlord can obtain possession of their property through the existing Section 8 and Section 21 notice procedures. Where a landlord wants to serve a section 8 notice they must demonstrate that one of the grounds for possession applies. Currently, there is no specific ground for obtaining possession in relation to a sale of a property.

Current Procedure to recover possession

At the moment, landlords who intend to sell their properties can serve a section 21 notice on their tenants. Some landlords may wish to inform their tenants of their intentions to sell a property so that a notice seeking possession does not come as a surprise to the tenant, but when giving a section 21 notice the landlord does not need to give any reason to their tenant.

However, this process can be complicated. There are various requirements that a landlord has to satisfy before serving a valid section 21 notice on the tenant, including the need to ensure that a valid gas safety certificate, Energy Performance Certificates and How to Rent Guides were served on the tenant and if a deposit was acquired, it was protected by the landlord or their agent with a Government-backed deposit protection scheme.

This can often make it difficult for landlords or cause substantial delay in obtaining possession of a property particularly if any of the prescribed requirements have not been complied with prior to the service of a section 21 notice. It is therefore anticipated that the proposed new ground will remove any difficulties associated with the current section 21 possession procedure where the landlord wishes to sell their property.

The Governments Proposals

Some details about how this new ground might work were published last week. The Governments response to a consultation on the abolition of section 21 notices provides a summary of how the new ground would work. The ground would be a mandatory ground meaning if it applies, the court dealing with a landlords possession claim must order the tenants to leave the property. The amount of notice landlords have to give would be two months, and in almost all circumstances, notice could not be given in the first 6 months of a new tenancy. To prevent misuse of the ground, the response says: We will prevent the original landlord marketing and reletting the property for 3 months following the use of this ground.

What evidence is required and is there a possibility that landlords may misuse this process?

It is not clear what evidence will be required to prove a sale of the property. The White Paper makes reference to the landlord intending to sell a property and it could be that a landlord may only have to demonstrate their intentions by showing that the property has been marketed for sale by an estate agent. However, this could potentially lead to a misuse of the new ground some landlords might regard this ground to be the easier option in getting possession and falsely serve a notice citing this ground, but they may then take their properties off the market once a possession order is made.

The White Paper does state that misuse of the system or any attempt to find loopholes will not be tolerated and the Government will look to extend the power for councils to issue Civil Penalties Notices for offences relating to the new tenancy system. Therefore, it is likely that the Government will introduce additional penalties or strengthen existing penalties for landlords who abuse this procedure. Landlords will still be subject to the rules relating to contempt of court where they have commenced a court claim for possession but dishonestly signed a statement of truth.

Conclusion

This details of this proposed new ground for possession will become clear when the draft text of the Renters Reform Bill has been published and it is interesting to see how the drafters of the Bill attempt to prevent abuse of this ground. We also wait to see what restrictions will be imposed on landlords when relying on this ground and the extent of evidence required to bring a successful claim.

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Recovering possession to sell properties after section 21 notices are abolished for private landlords - Lexology

The local farmers marketSanta Monica, California

Its late Spring in Santa Monica, and that means its cherry season at the farmers market. Whether you like a dark red Brooks or the bright pop of an Early Glen, theyre all here.

Cherry lover Mitchell Kraus has been coming to the Santa Monica Farmers Market for at least a couple of decades.

I harass all the farmers every year: Where are my cherries, where are my cherries, where are my cherries? all year long, he says.

Kraus and I met while waiting in line for the first great week of the season. Hes what you might call a cherry aficionado, taste-testing varietals and buying mixed cases in pursuit of sampling a little bit of every different cherry he can. He says theres one particular cherry that towers above them all.

The day I found the Black Republicans, I said, OK, this is what a cherry is, perfected. I just love how deep their flavor is; they have a great crunch; my hands are sort of blood-purple afterwards, he says. [As] somebody who eats a couple pounds of cherries a day this time of year, those are by far my favorite.

Of all the unusual names for cherries, few have raised as many questions as the Black Republican. But the story behind it is as rich and complex as the flavor itself, beginning with one family in Iowa and swelling to include the Underground Railroad, the Oregon Trail, and the birth of the Pacific fruit industry.

My own journey with Black Republican cherries began in a moment of serendipity stemming from a case of the munchies. My father-in-law Peter Kagan runs a gourmet shop in Topanga Canyon. One night at his house, my fiance Michael, his brother Benji, and I raided the kitchen fridge. The first thing we saw were several gallon-size bags of fresh cherries.

We poured each variety into individual bowls and indulged in them like we were tasting wine. Each one had a fascinating ratio of tart-to-sweet. The Rainiers tasted like candy; the Bings had that classic sweet composition. But the standout of the bunch was the deeply rich and intensely complex flavor of the Black Republican.

Of course, being a Black woman, that name instantly piqued my interest. I knew there had to be more to the name than its dark flesh. So I jumped down the rabbit hole to chase the cherries.

Black Republican cherries are usually harvested and sold mid-to-late June.Black Republican cherries are usually harvested and sold mid-to-late June, but vary from year to year. With climate change increasing the temperatures in the Santa Clara Valley, the timing of the Black Republican cherry has become more unpredictable.

The story of the Black Republican cherry begins with Henderson Lewelling, the eldest son of a Quaker family who ran a successful nursery in Iowa in the late 1830s. Their stock included 35 varieties of small fruits like apples, pears, peaches, plums, and cherries.

Today, his house in Salem is preserved as the Lewelling Quaker Museum. Its also a federally recognized landmark, though not for its fruit trees the Lewelling house was once a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Following the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which deemed Maine is a free state and Missouri a slave state, the Missouri-Iowa border became a locus of increasing tension, beginning in the 1830s through the Civil War. Located just 20 miles from the Missouri border, Salem was a Quaker settlement where runaway slaves were welcomed. And Henderson Lewelling was a big part of that.

The whole Lewelling family were activists, says David Helman, President of the Lewelling Quaker Museum. The family was quite remarkable in their adventurism, their creativity, their business acumen, their fascination with grafting trees, and their intense abolitionist bit. They were fire-breathers here, when it comes to the issue of abolition, when not everyone was.

The Lewellings descended from Welsh immigrants who gradually made their way west. In the mid 1600s, about 5,000 Welsh families came to the United States, most into southeastern Pennsylvania, where William Penn Quaker owned land. With them came the process of growing and grafting fruit trees. Tell of rich soil in North Carolina drew them to settle in the state, where they grew their trees before expanding further west towards more rich soil in Indianas Cumberland Gap.

Young Henderson was only about 15 when he came. He married at age 21, a young, 15-year-old girl, Elizabeth, Helman says. And they farmed, they had four children. And then they heard about more rich soil. And that was Iowa. And Henderson and one brother came here, settled the town of Salem, and prospered with the grafting of the trees.

Lewelling and his brother were hardly the only abolitionists in Iowa. But Lewelling took his convictions one step further than most: he built them into the literal fabric of his house.

The Lewelling house in Salem, Iowa was atypically built from stone to include hiding places for freedom seekers escaping bondage. Photo courtesy of the Lewelling Quaker Museum.

If you look at the early maps of the farms in Iowa, every one of them had an orchard. So this was their business. But how does Lewelling build his home, fairly substantial for the time? Most homes were log with dirt floors, Helman says. He built one made of stone, cut from a quarry. And he built in that home at least two hiding places that were used in the process of assisting those freedom seekers escaping bondage in Missouri as they made their way north.

The trip was rough.

When one or two or three of the slaves were found in the woods and brought to Salem, it could be a husband, a wife, or a mother and a child or a man and a child. Older people never made this trip. It was just too harsh. They stayed on the plantation, Helman says. But the women inside them would prepare clothing, they would try to package food so they could be put in backpacks and make the way work north. They knew sometimes there were sick children and they would care for the children. And so it was a little cottage industry of caring for people who were coming to them in pretty bad shape. They had a strong will, but they would have been tired, exhausted, and afraid..

These views were common of the Quaker faith.

They were pacifists, they weren't going to take up arms, he says. But they were able to help. The Underground Railroad afforded an opportunity for them to do something important.

In the late 1840s, the Lewellings left Salem and followed the Oregon Trail out west after a string of particularly harsh Iowa winters had taken a toll on the orchards. In the winter of 1847, Lewelling and his neighbors about 20 people and family built a large wagon pulled by six oxen. They packed it with 700 seedlings, about six to 18 inches tall, and made their way westward. By then, Henderson and Elizabeth had eight children, and Elizabeth was pregnant with a ninth.

The story told by some of the children is quite remarkable, Helman says. There are accounts written by one daughter in a journal that says the Native American chiefs came into camp, had a meal with Elizabeth preparing the meal. They were fascinated by the wagonload of trees going across the prairie. They'd never seen such a thing. And to them a tree in a forest is a sacred object in a sacred place. So this man was doing the right thing. He was caring for trees, he must be a good man. To many in the Native American culture, the Great Spirit lives in the forest. So this guy must be a friend of the Great Spirit. So they made it safely.

The USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection is one of the most unique collections in the Rare and Special Collections of the National Agricultural Library. Here is the Republican Cherry.

Elizabeth Lewelling walked to Oregon, expecting a child.

She would later say that when you're pregnant, it's easier to walk to Oregon to ride a horse, Helman recounts. She would give birth to the ninth child. His name was Oregon Columbia Lewelling. He went by OC his whole life. My wife says the Underground Railroad and western migration would not have worked if it weren't for the women. The men were adventurers, but the women did the work.

The Lewelling wagon train traveled close to 2,000 miles with 700 fruit trees, eventually settling in Milwaukie, Oregon, south of Portland. About half of the trees survived, living to produce many of the fruit varieties we enjoy today on the West Coast. Today, Henderson Lewelling is often called the Father of the Pacific Fruit Industry. In 1852, he could sell a box of apples for as much as $75. Four bushels shipped to the California gold mines brought $500.

In 1853, Lewelling left the nursery in the care of his younger brother Seth and headed south to a new community they called Fruitvale, better known today as Oakland.

Things got really interesting for Lewelling in the Golden State. In 1859, he experienced a spiritual awakening and sold his Fruitvale property. He abandoned his wife and shipped off to Honduras to establish a Utopian community he called the Harmonial Brotherhood, who spoke about free love a hundred years before the rest of California. But by the time they arrived in Central America, most of them were starving. As they ventured further into the tropics of Honduras, many fell prey to tropical diseases like malaria and yellow fever.

Eventually, Lewellings followers abandoned him. After realizingthe fantasy of the Harmonial Brotherhood would never come to fruition, he sailed back to Northern California and his fruit trees.

Henderson Lewelling died in 1878, doing what he loved best: He suffered a heart attack while planting a new orchard.

Bing cherries take their name from Ah Bing, a Chinese employee of Seth Lewelling. Photo by Seth Van Matre.

Back in Milwaukie, Oregon, Hendersons younger brother Seth, considered a master grafter, propagated three famous cherry cultivars: the Royal Anne, our heroine the Black Republican, and the combination child of the two cherries the Bing. Today, the Bing is the most produced variety of sweet cherry in the United States.

He named that cherry after his Chinese worker, a man who had worked with him in his orchards for several years named Ah Bing. So that's how you got your Bing cherry, Helman says. Ah Bing would later return to China, to his family with goals of coming back here. But by then the nation had the Chinese Exclusion Act so Ah Bing there never returned to California.

Like his older brothers, Seth was a staunch abolitionist and an admirer of Abraham Lincoln. He stood against the enslavement of African peoples and the pro-slavery majority in the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party, of course, was the party of Abraham Lincoln and became the the abolitionist or anti slavery party, as most folks know. And it was actually the Southern Democrats who were the pro-slavery, political bent. And they resented the Republicans, that they would care for these Black people when they're merely property, Helman explains. And they actually used the term in an aggressive, intimidating way, a degrading term Well, you're just another Black Republican, calling the Republicans Black just like the Negroes are black. We think that Seth may have taken that as a badge of honor. He may have said, Okay, I'm a Black Republican. I'm gonna name a cherry after the Black Republicans.

That's only a theory.

We can't find anything where he wrote that down, Helman says. We don't know for sure. But it certainly seems like something he would do as a subtle act of rebellion against the Southerners who were, of course, by that time, and after that time, reacting by opposing abolition."

Andy Mariani is the farmer behind Andys Orchard in the Santa Clara Valley.

[Lewelling] wanted to make his fellow farmers or neighbors just drool over this new cherry that was so good. And they had to name it and call it Black Republicans. And the story I had heard was that they even tried to change the name to Lewelling, so that it was named after the originator of the variety. But it didnt stick. And I think they even tried another alternative, which was Black Oregon. The name that did stick was Black Republican, Mariani says.

Andys Orchard are sole distributors of Black Republican cherries in Southern California.

A lot of farmers, agricultural people, orchardists are conservative, he says. And its just because theyre kind of old-fashioned. When they grow something, they want to keep everything the same. Its a credit to the Lewellings. They had a great perspective. The Lewellings were at the forefront of liberalizing things.

Seth Lewellings name is painted in the Senate chamber of the Oregon State Capitol.

His legacy lives on in the Milwaukie neighborhood of Lewelling and at Seth Lewelling Elementary School.

In the late 1860s, the Lewellings brother John, who suffered from severe asthma, moved to Napa Valley with his two sons for the better air. Their first crop of grapes and almonds didnt work out, but they had much better luck with olives, apples, citrus fruits, and, of course, cherries.

In the 1970s, Johns descendents replanted his grape vines and founded Lewelling Vineyards, a winery specializing in Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.

Black Republicans acquire an even more intense flavor: a raisiny, dark-chocolatey flavor. Theyre also used for ice cream. Because theyre so dark, they make a fantastic ice cream, says David Karp of Andys Orchards.

Back at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, farmhands unload crate after crate of fresh-picked cherries. Pouring over them is pomologist, writer, and self-proclaimed fruit detective David Karp, also of Andys Orchard. He says the Black Republicans longevity and demand all comes down to a concept known as high flavor.

What do you need for high flavor? High sugar, high acidity, and richness or complexity of flavor. The Black Republican has that in spades, Karp says. People demand them when theyre almost at the raisin state, because at that point Black Republicans acquire an even more intense flavor: a raisiny, dark-chocolatey flavor. Theyre also used for ice cream. Because theyre so dark, they make a fantastic ice cream, and I know some of our buyers at the Santa Monica market do that.

The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity recognizes the Black Republican in its Ark of Taste, a global seed bank of endangered foods that share an extraordinary heritage.

To lose the Black Republican cherry would be a tragedy, the Foundation states. Both from a historical perspective and a gastronomical one. It is a connoisseurs cherry that has a rich, concentrated flavor, despite its small size.

Andy Mariani has watched the Black Republicans reputation change in real time.

The problem that [used to] condemn the Black Republican for widespread commercial success is the fact that its relatively small in size, he says. Sometimes we couldnt sell it, because we didnt have the market we have now. Now its a variety thats been put on the Ark of Taste. And now we sell every one that we can grow."

In Milwaukie, Seth Lewelling propagated three famous cherry cultivars: the Royal Anne, the Black Republican (pictured), and the combination child of the two cherries the Bing. Photoby David Karp.

Mariani believes that the modern retail system is fundamentally out of step with the demand for a fruit like the Black Republican.

Commercial growers are going in a completely opposite direction to the point where, when you go to the grocery store, say youre looking at plums. They dont have names for the plums; they just have yellow plum, red plum, black plum. And they dont care about the stories behind how they were developed. They dont really care much about the flavor. They care about shelf life and appearance and maybe size, Mariani explains. So theyre using different criteria to judge commercial cultivars, as opposed to some of these old heirlooms and some of the things that are so interesting. Yet theres a commercial motive there that lacks that kind of perspective.

But the work of people like Karp and Mariani carries on the Lewellings legacy by growing, studying, and preserving specialty fruit.

We like the fruit, and we like the story behind it. And I think David and I have dedicated our efforts towards emphasizing that, Mariani says. We even developed some of our own varieties, and weve got names behind it and little stories behind it. Because they have personalities. And certainly the Black Republican has a personality. And it also has the quality to back it up.

Normally, this month would mark primetime for sampling Black Republicans at the farmers market. Unfortunately, for farmers like Mariani and others, theyre no longer available this season due to climate change. But while youre waiting for the next crop, or savoring one of its sweet Bing descendants, think about the Lewellings their abolitionism, their horticulture, their cherries and their shared belief that an open mind can bear sweet fruit.

Excerpt from:

Tart and sweet: The abolitionist history of the Black Republican Cherry - KCRW