Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

Slavery was not invented in America in 1619, nor did it end Juneteenth 1865. Abolition was a unique new concept in the enlightened 18th century, considered radical and against nature. Slavery is as old as biology. Some species of animal enslave other species. When it appears in ancient text, like the Bible, it is mentioned as casually as any natural biological function. After all, All great fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bite em. The lesser fleas still lesser fleas, and so on infinitum. So it was with slavery, top to bottom. The lowest level of slave, or serf did the dirtiest work. In many cultures, there were not any really free people, they had different names for different levels of vassalage.

Slavery was not invented in America in 1619, nor did it end Juneteenth 1865. Abolition was a unique new concept in the enlightened 18th century, considered radical and against nature. Slavery is as old as biology. Some species of animal enslave other species. When it appears in ancient text, like the Bible, it is mentioned as casually as any natural biological function. After all, All great fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bite em. The lesser fleas still lesser fleas, and so on infinitum. So it was with slavery, top to bottom. The lowest level of slave, or serf did the dirtiest work. In many cultures, there were not any really free people, they had different names for different levels of vassalage.

In the book of genesis. Sarah gives her handmaid Hannah to Abraham for sex so he can have a son, no abortion option. Later, Joseph is sold into slavery by his envious brothers. The 10th Commandment lumps slaves along with other property. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors (goods) house or fields, nor his male or female slaves, nor his ox or ass, or anything that belongs to him. Deuteronomy 5:21.

Medieval Europe was governed by a system of vassalage. Each level was subservient to a higher level, roughly: pope, emperor, king, duke, earl, baron, knight, squire, yeoman, peasant, serf. The highest level, sovereign, aka, king. But the king reigned at the pleasure of an emperor, who himself was subservient to the church as represented by the pope: You might say just like business or possibly the military. A sovereign held absolute power over his vassals life, liberty and property. The vassal could be deprived of any on the kings whim. A noble could be deprived of his lands, which were then given to another. Various versions of this arrangement replaced tribalism through much of the parts of the world that call themselves civilization.

We mark the year 1215 where English barons banded together revolted and produced the Magna Carta (Great Charter) a declaration that the kings authority was not absolute. He had to obey the law and citizens had some rights. King John signed it, then he died. He may have been the despised Prince John of the Robin Hood legend. The concept was mostly ignored since kings still had armies.

Henry VIII 1509-47 known for his six successive disposable wives, if one displeased him, she was thrown out (or away). He treated his vassals, dukes, barons etc. as disposable, to serve him, die or rot in jail at his pleasure. He was in theory, king at the discretion of the pope, yet he rebelled and got away with it. Until that time the church, like todays communist party was an international force that preempted local or national control. The original definition of Catholic was united. Loyalty to the church then was paramount. To some today, their party has become the ultimate authority maybe above even God.

In the 18th century, some radicals came up with the idea that all men are created equal. After months of debate, they published the Declaration of Independence. That energized the train of events that diminished the influence of slavery and the hierarchy of subservience. Until 1776 nobody was truly free. The declaration of independence introduced the radical idea that all men (humans) are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This was the start of liberal (free) democracy replacing the age-old hierarchy of vassalage that preserved the order of warriors, assisted by priests to manipulate the masses so that the sovereign and first two estates (classes) could live opulently at the expense of the third.

In many countries slavery is illegal, but that does not mean it not still practiced. Passing a law against something does not make it cease to exist, it just creates work for law enforcement. Slavers bind people more subtly than with chains and whips: debts to the company pile up, drugs, money and other perquisites are offered then withheld, ships never make port, families are threatened, passports are confiscated. We have a way to go.

Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com

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As I See It: We have a way to go - West Hawaii Today

This past week, a structure being installed smack center in Columbus Park stopped pedestrians in their tracks, curious about what was going up. Shown in the photo above, as a work still in process, is Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds by Fred Wilson, an acclaimed artist whose work has exhibited in museums around the world. The stunning, thought-provoking sculpture will be completed by Tuesday, when More Artand theDowntown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fundwill host an opening reception on the plaza between Johnson and Montague Sts. The reception will feature a live music performance by Daniel Carter and Ayumi Ishito, along with opening remarks.

Fred Wilson was on site during the weeks installation of his first public art work and shared, Its been a long time coming. Ive been interested in doing decorative ironwork and Ive also been thinking about what ironwork is intended for, which is for the containment of people and also for keeping people out. This is the perfect public space for it. This particular spot is great because people are relaxed and in the mood to take it all in. These are real New Yorkers who are asking questions, and are interested and curious. Im thrilled about this work being in Brooklyn, where so many people come from everywhere and are making it happen and making it work.

Artist Fred Wilson at Columbus Park

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The use of ornamental gates and fences serves as a metaphor for security and gated communities, insecurity, the incarceration of Black men, the detainment of illegal immigrants, policing, and William Blakes concept of Mind Forgd Manacles self-created barriers to personal and societal growth and freedom, built by fear, division and perceptions of difference. These gates, whether they are to keep others out or keep someone in, act as reflections on the separation of people, both physically and mentally.

Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, while not strictly site-specific, creates, connects and amplifies a conversation about the sculpture and the monuments and buildings around it that currently reside in Columbus Park. The viewer is encouraged to be site conscious when looking at the work and its location, as it is positioned between a sculpture of Henry Ward Beecher a 19th century Congregationalist clergyman known for his support of the abolition of slavery and the statue of Columbus, as well as the Kings County Supreme Court building exploring issues of justice, freedom, slavery and mass incarceration.

The sculpture will be on view through June 27, 2023. See more works by Fred Wilson on thePace Gallery website.

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Renowned Artist Fred Wilson's Sculpture Installed at Columbus Park, Opening Reception on Tuesday, June 28 at 6:00 pm - Brooklyn Heights Blog

SALEM, MA The Remond Family of Salem will be honored for its activism and efforts toward women's suffrage with a marker along the National Votes for Women Trail.

The marker will be unveiled at Hamilton Hall on Chestnut Street during a Thursday ceremony at 2 p.m. and become the second of five trail markers statewide this spring and summer.

The Remond Family was committed to the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage movement, and the desegregation of schools in Salem.

"The Remond Family made Hamilton Hall their home and place of business, a site where visionaries would flock to attend large events and where the Remond children would learn the principles of social justice," State Rep. Paul Tucker (D-Salem) said. "In the spirit of the Remond Family, let us all stand together against threats to civil liberties, and work together to ensure women's rights and voting rights for all citizens."

Parents John Remond, a lifelong member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and Nancy Lenox Remond served as caretakers of Hamilton Hall at the turn of the 19th century, where they also ran their catering business. Well-respected throughout Salem for their culinary skills, hospitality, business acumen, and social advocacy, they raised their eight children to fight for their rights and the rights of others.

Their son, Charles Lenox Remond, their eldest child, was among the first Black abolitionist lecturers and staunchly supportive of women's right to join the fight.

Charles Remond gave anti-slavery speeches throughout the U.S. and abroad, sometimes with his sister, Sarah. She was a stalwart member of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

"We're excited to celebrate the extraordinary legacy of the Remond Family at Hamilton Hall with this marker, which will also help educate the Salem community and visitors about the vital role they served in the progress of our country's history," said Michael Selbst, President of The Board of Directors for Hamilton Hall. "As advocates for human rights, the Remonds remind us all to stand up and raise our voices today for those experiencing discrimination."

The Remond Family marker is the second of five Massachusetts markers that will be unveiled: Maria Baldwin (Cambridge); Anne L. Page (Danvers); Remond Family (Salem); Sojourner Truth (Northampton); and Sarah E. Wall (Worcester).

"It is important to recognize that some white women's suffrage groups would not include Black members, and that after the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, discriminatory laws continued to restrict voting access for many Americans of color," State Sen. Joan Lovely (D-Salem) said. "The Remond Family had steadfast perseverance, pushing through layers of resistance so their message of social justice could be heard, and it's our duty to honor that legacy."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

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Salems Remond Family To Be Honored With Womens Suffrage Marker - Patch

The year before support for prison and police abolition exploded into the mainstream in the summer of 2020, the New York Times Magazine ran a profile of scholar-activist Ruth Wilson Gilmore titled: Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind. That is to say, Gilmore has been at the helm of the movement for abolitionand an authoritative critic of racial capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchal oppressionsince long before the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor spurred a global reckoning.

Gilmore, a professor and director of City University of New Yorks Center for Place, Culture, and Politics, learned about organizing and struggle from her parents as a child. It was those early lessons, as well as her education and formal training as a geographer, that have informed her activism, teaching, and the numerous books shes authored or contributed to on building a world beyond prisons, policing, and neoliberal exploitation. Her latest offering? Abolition Geography, a scathing exploration of global systems of oppression through a lens of geography, in which she asserts that freedom and liberation are a physical, tangible placetheyre material conditions, not platitudes and niceties from ultra-rich politicians. The age-old question, of course, is how we get to that physical place.

Freedom is a place means we combine resources, ingenuity, and commitment to produce the conditions in which life is precious for all, Gilmore told Jezebel over Zoom. So, no matter the struggle, freedom is happening somewhere. Through different forces and relations to power, the people are constantly figuring out how to shift, how to build, how to consolidate the capacity for people to flourish, to mobilize our communities, and stay in motion until satisfied.

In a conversation with Jezebel about her new book, Gilmore maps out what a path forward rooted in abolition looks like, and how to get to that physical place of freedom. In the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, shooting and the police failure that enabled it; ahead of a Supreme Court decision expected to reverse Roe v. Wade; and following the chilling backlash against sexual assault survivors we witnessed in the recent Amber Heard-Johnny Depp defamation trial, Gilmore also explains how each of these devastating political moments could be addressed by abolitionist principlesthe place of liberation we collectively build must be safe and nurturing for all.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ahead of the Supreme Courts looming abortion rights decision, how is the decimation of reproductive rights conjoined with the movement for abolition?

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So, lets stop and think for a second about physical reality, that in our embodiment as living beings, we are space and timeI am, you are, whoever is reading this interview is space and time. Thats a givenwe are not an abstract theory. This dreadful example about Roe is grounded in what that fact consists of socially, spiritually, politically, and viscerally all of those ways. So as Dr. Angela Yvonne Davis teaches us, freedom is a constant struggle, and abolition in that struggle is reproductive justice. These arent separable movements. The capacity to flourish inter-generationallywhether that means to bear children, or not to have children, makes no differencereproductive justice is abolition.

You write about the systematic ways that oppressive systems and institutions are shortening peoples life spans, killing them across lines of race, class, and identity. What can we take away about whose lives are and arent valued in this country? How would abolition address this?

I think the principal takeaway we have right now is that in the U.S., the forces of organized violence, principally the police, are better organized to seize any moment. Police can count on people expecting them to be the solution, and to always be able to demand more resources to fulfill that expectation. And this is the problem. The defund [the police] movement seeks to address this as part of the greater abolition movement, and more broadly, we know about group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.

What we see is that for certain powerful forces in society, some lives dont matter. But most people are not those powerful forces, and their lives matter to themselves and each other, as a starting point.

Whenever it seems like were moving toward liberation on issues of sexual violence, backlash like the Heard and Depp defamation trial throws us back to what feels like square one. Survivors are often used as a counter-argument against abolition. How does abolition build toward a safe place for survivors of sexual violence?

Abolition is a practical program of transitional goals, putting those goals into motion. For example, a storytelling organizing project that Mimi Kim and her comrades developed over the years learned from people around the world how we can interrupt interpersonal violence, especially in intimate relations, without dialing up the police. Another resource similar to that is the work that Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie have been putting together, for their project Interrupting Criminalization. So abolition not only says [criminalization] isnt helping us, but what abolition does is also take seriously transitional goals and being present, to find examples of what ordinary people do on their own behalf, to see if more ordinary people can copy those things in their own lives.

The successes of the various stories from these projects, from organizations like INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, is that there are solutions that everyday people can achieve without police if we make the determination to try. And the flip side of that is, the resolution that policing seems to present to people to dial one number, get one result, has not resulted in what it is people want, which is to be free from harm and violencethey make that call after the harm already happened, for people who perpetrated the harm or participated in it to be punished better. That doesnt make us freer.

Abolition Geography offers powerful lines on the limits of representation: [O]ne Black man in the White House and a million Black men in the Big House; two people of color serving life terms on the Supreme Court, and 100,000 serving life terms in federal and state prisons. What do you see as the limits of representation of marginalized people in inherently harmful institutions of powerfor example, Judge Ketanji Brown Jacksons confirmation to the Supreme Court? Can representation be part of a roadmap to liberation, or is it keeping us at a standstill?

For a short time in history, the Supreme Court was slightly open as an arena for realizing certain indisputable opportunities for liberation. In the 20th century, Brown and Roe are two of the major openings. But the Supreme Court, again, is closed to us for now. The success of cases like Brown may not be happening in the upper atmosphere thats the Supreme Court right now, but all of that organizing and power-building is still happening on the ground.All of the organizing that made those particular decisions possible, if not inevitable, is still happening.

If we can study anything from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or the wages for housework campaign, or my mentor, [activist] Margaret Prescod, or the student movements more generally around the worldwe see how people put themselves forward, their energy, and organizational persistence over time, to change everything. There are so many examples of real, on-the-ground change, rather than institutional change, that come to mind. And we live in a period now where people turning their attention to the real is absolutely essential.

The chapters in Abolition Geography that discuss academia, the managerial class, theory, and walk vs. talk in organizing are an important call-in for people with privilege. What does it look like for people with privilege to actively work toward building inclusive spaces, and tear down the institutional structures that have benefited them?

This is my advice for everybody I encounter in academia: I counsel people who work in academia to participate in committees that make decisions, not in committees that produce reports; to form unions, democratize the unions from within; check the conditions of admissions, employment costs, and debtI could talk a hole in your head about how it took less than half a century for post-secondary education in the U.S. to be effectively free, even at expensive elite schools, to becoming the cause of the devastating student debt crisis.

This was a transition. Elite universities used to be practically free, because of laws and other rules governing the nature of scholarships and support that students with needs got. People dont believe that, but it was once like that, and it can be again.

Youve emphasized how hope is extremely valuable currency in the movement toward abolition, which exponentially grew in 2020, but, in the mainstream, has waned in the last two years. As a geographer and abolitionist, if you were charting out a map forward for this movement in the U.S. and around the world, what would it look like?

I certainly know that without optimism of the will, theres no point in botheringechoing the late great Antonio Gramsci. Just lately, of course, the mainstream media in the U.S. has characterized San Francisco prosecutor Chesa Boudins recall as a final blow to the defund movement. But, first of all, they leave out the dismally low voter turnout in San Francisco County, which is indicative of something that probably speaks more to the deepening inequalities of that county than anything else.

Meanwhile, go down south in Los Angeles County, and Eunisses Hernandez is, as of the latest vote count, beating three-term incumbent to City Council District 1 seatthe district in which she was born and raised. Eunisses is an abolitionist, who was a key person in a long, long fight to cancel a multi-billion dollar new jail in LA County, to persuade the LA County Board of Supervisors to set aside significant funds for social services, housing, community improvements. Meanwhile, in the middle of the state of California, in Kings County, which is burdened by two current prisons, the district attorney who had been on a rampage criminalizing women who were struggling with reproductive issues and other vulnerabilities, was run out of office. These things tell us that what were doing is a very long game, with ups and downs. Some of these fights started when Eunisses was in elementary school. It tells us that the spatial, the conditions of struggle, will change, and we must maintain our collective solidarity.

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Ruth Wilson Gilmore Says Freedom Is a Physical PlaceBut Can We Find It? - Jezebel

I was 16 years old, I was white, and I was drunk in the back of a police car. The radio squawked. But I was silent.

I had spent the rainy day with a couple buddies drinking beer and that afternoon, when the car in front of me stopped at a yellow light, my car didn't, and I crashed into it.

The driver of that car was an elderly Black man. He didn't seem to be hurt, but my old Volkswagen bug was wrapped around his bumper, and the sheriff's deputy knew I had been drinking. I was in big trouble.

Then, the driver's window of the sheriff's car darkened with the shadow of someone standing there, rapping against the glass. It was my grandfather, who asked for a moment alone with the deputy, whom he knew. A few minutes later, the deputy said he would write up the accident as driving too fast for conditions.

My grandfather was not unique in possessing the power he had as a wealthy, white man in Greenville, South Carolina. We called it the Good Ole Boy System, but it was, in fact, a web of white men looking out for each other. Nor was that system unique to Greenville. Though my family had nowhere near as much money or power as the Murdough family in Beaufort County, SC, the viral unraveling of the impunity surrounding that family's viral saga makes it clear how smoothly the system functioned up to a certain point in other times and places.

In that moment, I didn't think of myself as a racist. I wasn't actively trying to harm the Black driver. I held no personal animus against him and yet I was participating in white supremacy. All it required was my silence and my feigned ignorance and I was happy to oblige. I didn't like talking about my whiteness but I was happy to partake of its privileges. But that moment stuck with me, because I couldn't help but realize that race played a significant role in the way an encounter played out.

* * *

I didn't like talking about my whiteness but I was happy to partake of its privileges.

From the earliest days of the Carolina colony until well after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, white South Carolinians openly espoused white supremacy and obsessed over their whiteness and the privileges attendant upon it. Even into the 1960s when my parents were teenagers, every public door they walked through was labeled "white."

The apartheid segregation of the South ended after the upheavals following the passage of the Civil Rights Act, but a new strategy of whiteness emerged. In order to preserve as much white power as possible, white people essentially agreed not to talk about whiteness anymore.

RELATED:White America's "hidden wound" threatens to destroy the country and not for the first time

Lee Atwater, a South Carolina native and Republican strategist, explained in a 1981 interview, how open discussions of white power got coded into more abstract, systemic principles.

"'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than" chanting the N-word, he said.

In other words, if you didn't talk about whiteness the privileges that had been amassed for white people over centuries could not be criticized or dismantled and could continue to exercise its racial hierarchy, unremarked upon.

I was born in the 1970s and for most of my life, the primary experience of whiteness was not having to think about race at all.

* * *

Numerous scholars, including Nell Irvin Painter and Ibram X. Kendi, have shown that there is no idea of whiteness without white supremacy. Whiteness was a conspiracy to value European descent, codified in part by skin color, but also according to the stringent "one drop" rule which even the Nazis found extreme, into a system of power and subjugation.

Of the British colonies that later became the United States, Carolina was at the forefront of crafting and legislating this hierarchy. By 1708 a short time after some of my ancestors first arrived there the colony was majority African and the Anglo minority set up increasingly stringent definitions of the "races" and their duties, freedoms, and responsibilities.

For most of my life, the primary experience of whiteness was not having to think about race at all.

The Negro Code of 1740, which was passed into law after a rebellion of enslaved Africans around Stono Creek, solidified and exported to the rest of the slave states the fabricated hierarchy based on race, with an even more rigidly totalitarian system where the small minority used extreme violence to extract absolute value and exert absolute control over the majority population.

The Negro Code was also a white code, legislating the way that white men must act in relation to those they enslaved, fining whites for "failing to whip unruly slaves," as scholar Peter Wood puts it in his book Black Majority.

Similarly, the colony fined any plantation that did not have at least one white for every ten enslaved people--and used the fines to strengthen the slave patrols, to which many have traced the origins of our modern police forces. From the very creation of whiteness, whites have been worried about some "great replacement," which could justify extreme violence.

In effect, the "slave codes" of South Carolina created a system of law which, to borrow a phrase from Frank Wilhoit, was intended to bind Black people without protecting them and protect white people without binding them (except when they threatened white rule as a whole).

RELATED:The Black Codes never went away they just became the "Black Tax"

Despite some advances in the way the culture views the plight of those enslaved on the concentration camp plantation sites in recent years, white people have done very little to ask what living amidst such horror did to our ancestors on a moral and psychological level--and how much of that they passed on to us.

The grandfather who got me out of my bind was not the product of slavers. He grew up poor in a mill village on the outskirts of town for which he was derided as a "linthead," as the mill-workers were derogatorily called. Nevertheless, he had been white in a Jim Crow regime during America's post-war boom and he had made the most of it. The deed to the house he bought in 1947 contained a racial covenant.

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By the 1980s, he seemed to know every cop, judge, and lawyer in town. He was always helping friends and family members "fix" a ticket or get into somewhere free. In many ways, his greatest joy came in the demonstration of his white male privilege. It formed his idea of his place in the world and that place went back to the "slave codes."

If we want to deal with racism, we need to deal with whiteness.

The logic established by those laws have informed the ways white people move about the world. When I crashed my car, the deputy, my grandfather, and I were all ensuring that the law protected me without binding me, while it bound the Black driver without protecting him. Just as our skin is the place where our body intersects with the world, our whiteness is where our experience of the world is shaped by power. That power is now mostly invisible, but when it is thwarted, it erupts as violence.

RELATED:Mitch McConnell's moment of truth: For many whites, Black people aren't real "Americans"

In 2015 a young white man who had been radicalized by white supremacist websites, drove to Charleston, which had been the heart of the totalitarian slave regime that dominated South Carolina for centuries, and murdered nine parishioners in a church at the heart of the city's Black community, in the name of whiteness.

When I read about these murders, I felt like I could finally see how whiteness worked. Everything I had repressed, the shame and ignominy, the miasma of whiteness had returned in the form of fury. In that moment, I realized that whiteness was something that must be reckoned with.

If we want to deal with racism, we need to deal with whiteness.

* * *

Whiteness only exists as a way to exercise power. It is part of America's conspiratorial agreement on what matters and what counts as success, including the color of our skin. And like most conspiracies, it contains elements of both silence and violence, which work together and feed into each other.

We can't be "colorblind" or "post-racial" and simply ignore the power structures we have inherited without participating in the conspiracy. We have to dismantle them.

The backlash against "CRT" and the 1619 Project have shown how powerful it can be simply to name whiteness and outline the way it uses power. The fact that so many prominent white people are scared of discussions of whiteness shows the value of the conversations.

White people are not being replaced. But whiteness needs to be abolished.

We can't legislate the conversation away. Anti-CRT laws and bills banning books will push the discussions of whiteness back underground where kids like Dylann Roof or Payton Gendron, who allegedly killed 10 Black shoppers at a grocery store in Buffalo last month, will find hundreds of sites ready to play on their confusion and turn them from silence to violence.

We can't pretend to be perfect, condemning others as if racism hasn't affected our thinking. We need to be open about our own mistakes, we need to seek to repair, we need to address and confront the horrors that have created our history and our psyches.

RELATED:White men as victims: America's most dangerous fantasy

White people are not being replaced. But whiteness needs to be abolished. In the same way that prison abolition involves a grand reconsideration of categories and priorities, the abolition of whiteness will not happen overnight. But we need to work toward it, even though we will sometimes be wrong. We need to acknowledge what whiteness does and what it has done in our own lives; we need to begin the process of reparations; and we need to fight against our own power, as white people.

This should feel liberatory. We can struggle to be free from a system of brutality that relies on our complicity. It is not about feeling guilty for the past, but rather eradicating its effects on our own actions.

I know that part of my character was formed in my acquiescence to an obvious injustice on the day of the crash and I know that I am worse off for it. And though I have no way to find the driver I crashed into and though that is far from the worst thing I've done I know that I didn't have to personally be around in "slavery times," as I've heard my family call it, to owe some reparations.

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We need to talk about whiteness and then we need to dismantle it - Salon

The first meeting of parties to the U.N. nuclear weapons ban treaty held in Vienna has closed after adopting a statement aimed at achieving the abolition of nuclear arms. In the declaration, the parties expressed strong concern over nuclear powers and those under the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" continuing their dependence on nuclear deterrence and failing to work on reducing that dependence. The nuclear-armed states and Japan must take this seriously.

The meeting was held amid Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. With Russian President Vladimir Putin's hint that he may use nuclear arms in mind, the declaration stated that the parties "condemn unequivocally any and all nuclear threats."

Of the 65 parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, 49 countries and regions participated in their first meeting. Another 34 states took part as observers. The nine countries with nuclear weapons including the United States, Russia and China have not joined the treaty, and some even asked their allies not to participate in the meeting as observers.

-- It's time nuclear-weapon states learn to compromise

The nuclear weapons ban treaty came about in the first place against the backdrop of sluggish disarmament progress by the nuclear powers. While the Conference on Disarmament headquartered in Geneva and led by nuclear-weapon states has fulfilled its role in creating the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), it hasn't produced obvious results in recent years.

Meanwhile, the NPT framework has been fraying at the edges for years, and the parties failed to adopt a final declaration during the 2015 review conference. The CTBT, on the other hand, hasn't even taken effect because the U.S. and other countries have failed to ratify it.

With China's rise, nuclear disarmament negotiations between the U.S. and Russia have stalled, resulting in the expiration of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The five nuclear powers -- the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K. and France -- need to reflect on how they have neglected their arms reduction responsibilities while enjoying their privileged positions, and should meet non-nuclear states halfway.

The deterrence theory held by the nuclear-armed states is premised on the logic that if one party tries to use a nuclear weapon, it must expect a nuclear attack by the other party, and so each party holds back.

However, as the U.S. and Russia are developing more "useable" low-yield nuclear warheads and the possibility of terrorist groups getting their hands on nuclear technology is increasing, the true efficacy of nuclear deterrence is in question.

Furthermore, the International Court of Justice has ruled that any threat to use nuclear weapons violates international humanitarian law. The deterrence theory cannot serve as an excuse to turn one's back on the nuclear weapons ban treaty.

The position taken by Japan, the only country in the world to have been attacked with nuclear bombs in war, was also called into question. The country did not join the Vienna meeting as an observer despite calls from signatories and peace organizations. Japan maintains that any framework without nuclear-weapon states' participation is ineffective.

On the contrary, NATO member states Germany, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands that are also, just like Japan, under the U.S. nuclear umbrella took part in the meeting. While delegates from Germany and the Netherlands explained their positions, with the former saying that the treaty "would collide with our membership in NATO," these countries' presence showed that they believe ties with non-nuclear states are important.

-- Japan abandoned its role as a "bridge"

Nuclear abolition is Japan's goal, too. At the same time, the country, surrounded by nuclear-armed states China, Russia and North Korea, is faced with a severe security environment, and it has no choice but to rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

It is precisely because Japan is under these circumstances that many hoped Tokyo would bridge the divide between nuclear and non-nuclear states. Japan's choice to opt out of the Vienna meeting was nothing short of an abandonment of this role, and it is extremely regrettable.

Meanwhile, efforts to set up an intermediary role for discussions with nuclear powers were agreed upon during the nuclear weapons ban treaty meeting, and the establishment of officers in charge of seeking cooperation with the NPT signatories was included in its action plan.

It is true that if the NPT -- signed by most countries including nuclear powers -- does not function properly, nuclear disarmament will not progress. Rather than seeing the nuclear weapons ban treaty as a rival framework, nuclear states must have the wisdom to use it for arms reduction.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is scheduled to attend the NPT review conference in August, and has also decided to hold next year's Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima. The next nuclear weapons ban treaty meeting is slated for November-December 2023. If Kishida is serious about working on nuclear arms issues, he has a responsibility to have Japan participate in next year's treaty meeting as an observer.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and others coauthored a 2008 article in an American newspaper describing a path towards a world without nuclear weapons. In it they wrote: "... the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is like the top of a very tall mountain. From the vantage point of our troubled world today, we can't even see the top of the mountain ... We must chart a course to higher ground where the mountaintop becomes more visible."

The nuclear weapons ban treaty should be developed as one of the hiking paths to that higher ground, and used as an opportunity for the international community to work together towards the mountain's peak: nuclear abolition.

Continued here:

Editorial: Nuclear ban treaty a chance for world to strive for disarmament - The Mainichi - The Mainichi

Civil and reproductive rights groups say the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is yet another attack on communities of color which will leave millions of Black and brown women without access to abortion care.

Since the ruling became public Friday, leaders of Black, Latino, Asian American and Native American groups have condemned the court's decision. Their communities would be among the hardest hit by abortion restrictions, leaders say, due to myriad issues, including existing health care access disparities, financial hardship and a long history of criminalization.

"We are not surprised. The courts have never served our communities," said Lupe M. Rodrguez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice. "Once again, the Supreme Court has gone against the will of the people."

Their comments came as protests erupted across the country and several states prepared to quickly implement their abortion "trigger" laws, created to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade fell.

In many states, Black and Latino women receive abortions at higher rates than White women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which collects data from state health agencies.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade underscores the economic hardships and maternal health crisis Black and brown women face, with many advocates saying forced pregnancies would only worsen their outcomes. For example, Black women are three times more likely than White women to die of pregnancy-related complications. Abortion rights leaders also worry poor Black and Latino women will not have the money to travel out of state for an abortion.

Poor women of all races are impacted

The Guttmacher Institute, a research group supporting abortion rights, says poor or low-income woman represent 75% of abortion patients.

CNN senior political analyst Nia-Malika Henderson said one of the main reasons why women choose to get an abortion is because they cannot support a child financially.

As abortion rights are determined by each state, the question is whether state officials will expand the social safety net for women who are forced to carry their babies to term.

"They will have to get all sorts of medical care. Will there be paid family leave at these jobs? We know this is going to fall disproportionately on women who are poor of all races; White, Black, Latino, Asian," Henderson said. "They can't afford to go to another state where they can get an abortion."

Isra Pananon Weeks, interim executive director and chief of staff of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, said many Asian American and Pacific Islander women work in low-wage, front-line service jobs with no health insurance or paid medical leave.

Abortion care is "riddled with language barriers, cultural stigmas, and low rates of insurance coverage among our most vulnerable community members" and traveling and getting an abortion was already "difficult if not impossible," Weeks said.

"Gutting Roe cuts off access to abortion care and puts the well-being and financial stability for millions of AAPI women and families at tremendous risk," Weeks said.

'We need to fight back'

Black-led social justice groups said the gutting of Roe v. Wade is just the latest example of lawmakers stripping their rights.

The NAACP released a statement with one leader saying the Supreme Court decision sets the country back to a "dangerous era where basic constitutional rights only exist for a select few."

Portia White, policy and legislative affairs vice president for the NAACP, likened the abortion ruling to lawmakers suppressing the Black vote.

"They've stripped away our right to vote, and now women have lost their right to their own body. What's next?" White said. "We cannot allow our future to rest in the hands of those determined to crush every bit of it. We need to fight back."

White said the NAACP will be mobilizing voters for the "most critical midterm election America has ever faced" in November.

Movement for Black Lives leaders said the Supreme Court move is "another affront to Black lives in this country with those in power continuously proving that they do not care about the health and well-being of Black people."

"As a Black liberation movement guided by Black feminist values and a commitment to abolition, we see the fall of Roe for what it is: another avenue for the state to criminalize, surveil and harm the most vulnerable among us," the group said in a statement.

Reproductive rights advocates from the Latino community also rejected the decision.

UnidosUS president Janet Murgua said the Latino community already knows what it feels like to have their rights taken away and have ordinary activity criminalized. Murgua said advocates are concerned abortion bans will make poor women and women of color more vulnerable to being prosecuted and penalized.

"As a civil rights organization, we believe we must side with protecting women's rights, and not with a process thateviscerates them," she said. "A majority of women -- and a majority of Latinas -- want the freedom to make their own decisions regarding their health and well-being, and believe these decisions should be a private matter betweenthemand their health care provider."

The Native American community will also suffer without abortion access, advocates say.

Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and executive director of IllumiNative, said Native American women and girls will face an increase in violence because they may be forced to stay in a bad relationship with an abusive partner or trafficker if they are pregnant.

"Reproductive rights and systemic violence are intrinsically linked, and Black, Indigenous, and people of color women, transgender, nonbinary and Two-Spirit persons already face some of the highest rates of sexual violence and maternal death," Echo Hawk said. "Access to abortion and reproductive care is foundational to safety and well-being. This is a matter of life or death for many in Native communities."

Original post:

'We are not surprised': Women of color say the courts have never served their communities - The Philadelphia Tribune

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