Category Archives: Wage Slavery

The IWWD celebration in Boston, March 7.

The socialist origins of International Working Womens Day were celebrated March 7 by the Boston International Action Center and the local branch of Workers World Party. A powerful program saluted both the key role of student activists in the Sanders movement in the U.S. and the courageous women-led uprising in Shaheen Bagh, Delhi, India, against repression and anti-Muslim laws in that country.

Women freedom fighters, past and present

WWP youth activist and Team Solidarity singer Kristin Turgeon greeted the crowd with a trilogy of songs dedicated to women freedom fighters. She honored General Harriet Tubman, leader of the Underground Railroad, who struck countless blows against slavery and freed hundreds of enslaved African people; Puerto Rican Independence fighter Lolita Lebron who opposed U.S. colonialism and was imprisoned for 25 years for her actions; and all working-class women. Turgeon closed her set with a rousing rendition of the Union Maid refrain: Im sticking to the union until the day I die.

Turgeon then shared a brief history of IWWD, born through the life and death struggle of women garment workers in New York City in the early 1900s. She paid tribute to women in unions who are still militantly striking over a hundred years later for better pay, health care benefits, protection from sexual harassment and winning. She also saluted Indigenous women and Two-Spirited people on the front lines to protect their land, water and national sovereignty rights from murderous energy companies, polluters and perpetrators of violence.

Turgeon concluded: This is a period of change for the entire working class worldwide. What better time than now to fight for housing, food, jobs, quality education and universal health care for all? The revolutionary struggles of women from India to Palestine and Africa to Latin America and Asia will hasten the changes we are fighting for here in the U.S. Lets take this opportunity to build a strong and united socialist movement that can fight for the liberation of the entire working class and self-determination for all oppressed people!

From Sanders campaign into socialist action

Akilah DeCoteau, a student at Northeastern University and organizer with Huskies for Bernie, shared why she became involved in the Sanders campaign: I was attracted to Sanders message when he asked, Why do we spend more than the next seven countries combined on the military? Why are we the only industrialized country that doesnt guarantee health care to all its citizens? I wondered why, too!

Decoteau continued: Sanders stated it was time to get corporate influence out of politics, it was time for us to take on the military-industrial complex, the for-profit health care industry, and to start investing in people, instead of bailing out Wall Street. I couldnt have agreed more!

She continued, Today, there are tens of thousands of supporters like myself who have realized it is possible to rally, march and organize for the changes we need. Since the start of the campaign, Ive been organizing with local socialist groups for the first time, and I will continue mobilizing with these organizations to fight for these issues. This presidential campaign has exposed how the government and media have failed us. More people are losing trust in the two-party system and we will see an exponential growth in leftist organizations. No matter what happens with the Sanders campaign, this is just the beginning! We will seize the moment!

Shaheen Bagh: Women resist

Shaheen Bagh protest in India.

After a panel of young women spoke, Padma and Pratyush came forward members of the Boston Coalition whose goals are to work in solidarity with activists in South Asia on justice and peace. They gave a detailed account of events that birthed the Shaheen Bagh uprising in India, which has sparked mass resistance across the country and inspired women, working-class and justice-loving people everywhere.

The movement began on the evening of Dec. 15, 2019, when 15 to 20 women, many in hijabs, left their homes and took to the streets in their Muslim-majority neighborhood of Shaheen Bagh. They occupied a major highway that led north to Indias capital of New Delhi. Word quickly spread of their sit-down strike and more women joined. Many were mothers and grandmothers protesting for the first time.

What sparked their protest? News of a vicious attack by Indian police at the nearby Jamia Millia University, where students were beaten, tear-gassed and shot with live bullets. Scores were arrested and the school ransacked.

The students had been preparing for a march on the capital to protest repressive and discriminatory changes in Indias citizenship laws, specifically aimed at Muslims, passed by its Parliament on Dec. 11. The National Register of Citizens (NRC), the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Population Register (NPR) were laws sponsored by the right-wing, Hindu-fundamentalist government of President Narendra Modi.

The shocking violence inflicted on students, combined with the passage of discriminatory citizenship laws, was the spark that lit the fuse of the Shaheen Bagh womens righteous resistance.

Pratyush explained: In addition to targeting Muslims, these citizenship initiatives are a mechanism for persecuting poor landless peasants and migratory workers as well. There are several hundred million people in India, who as migrant workers especially Dalits [previously known as untouchables] and Indigenous have no documents and [would] become illegal and stateless. Thus, they can be forced into detention centers for super-exploitation.

Pratyush continued: The idea of citizenship has colonial roots now people living in South Asia for thousands of years are suddenly illegal. In the northeastern state of Assam in India, where the National Register of Citizens was first implemented, the problem started with the forced migration of people during the British colonial occupation. This is a project of genocide in language and deed, with parallels to the historical violence and murder of im/migrants, communists and Jewish people.

Padma opened her talk by thanking the IAC and WWP for their consistent anti-imperialist work and their many decades of solidarity with poor and oppressed peoples around the world. She went on to describe the difficult conditions faced by women in India where the maternal mortality rate is 174 women per 100,000 live births. Women are denied many basic rights, including access to maternity care and day care. A crime against women occurs every three minutes in India, with Dalit women facing even higher rates of violence. Living in a patriarchal country, most women have the added burden of no state or property papers in their own name.

Padma shared: In the Shaheen Bagh [protests], women of all ages, from 9 to 90, have come together to resist the Indian governments repressive citizenship laws. The majority of women are homemakers and seamstresses who do odd jobs to support their children and families. They have refused to go home, stating, We eat, sleep and live on the road.

Padma emphasized: Women are leading the fight to force the Modi government to repeal the CAA and NRC, which threaten the rights of the most vulnerable in society, including Muslims, poor women, oppressed castes and LGBTQ2+ people. People are now using the constitution and Indian flag to tell the fascists, Dont take away our rights given to us! People of Muslim faith who fought the British are refusing to be criminalized and marginalized. Popular chants at the Shaheen Bagh protests include: Speak up, we are all one! Inquilab zindabad! Long live revolution! Long live love!

She continued: Today there is growing unity among the people across religious and caste lines, with Dalits helping Muslims, while Kashmir is viewed as the Palestine of India. Bold and beautiful murals dedicated to the women of Shaheen Bagh evoke the struggles of women in South Africa and Palestine fighting racist apartheid settlers and passbook laws. The Chilean feminist anthem, Un violador en tu camino/A rapist in your path, has been translated by women and LGBTQ2+ people in India who are performing the song at protests, making it clear that the patriarchy are the rapists and they are the people responsible for the extreme violence against women.

Fighting spirit of women

Padma also recognized the All India General Strike of 250 million workers on Jan. 8, the largest in world history, when workers pressed demands for increases in the minimum wage, unemployment and social security benefits. The strikers also demanded, Repeal the CAA Now!

On Feb. 23, as more and more women joined the protests, the Modi government orchestrated a bloody, anti-Muslim pogrom. Police, backed up by hundreds of armed men, entered Delhi, killing over 50 people and destroying thousands of homes, businesses, communal spaces and mosques.

Immediately after the violence, reminiscent of Kristallnacht (1938) and Nazi pograms against Jewish people in Germany, Modi met with visiting U.S. president Trump. As these fascistic leaders patted each other on the back, they also signed new military deals aimed at encircling China.

The panelists showed video clips of the Shaheen Bagh protests and marches led by women, LGBTQ2+ people and youth in cities from Kolkata and Mumbai to London and Toronto. Pratyush shared a poem dedicated to the workers of India and women of Shaheen Bagh. A lively discussion ensued, including about three recent city council resolutions passed in Seattle, Albany, N.Y., and Cambridge, Mass., demanding repeal of the NRC, CAA and NPR. Plans to pursue a similar resolution from the Boston City Council were discussed.

Padma closed the meeting: The many Shaheen Baghs in India are a testament to the fighting spirit of women largely of Muslim faith who have galvanized other communities to join them in demanding Modis government repeal the discriminatory CAA act. People from all walks of life who have joined these brave women are demanding the right to dignity, to security of life, and an end to caste-, gender- and religion-based violence. Long live the Shaheen Baghs! Long live workers unity! The struggle will continue!

On March 24, the government lockdown of New Delhi to check COVID-19 was used as an excuse for the Modi government to send police to shut down Shaheen Bagh in the dawn hours and clear the site of all those who had been protesting the discriminatory citizenship laws for over 100 days. (hindu.com)

(WWP photo: WWP Boston)

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Shaheen Baghs of India Women lead the struggle! - Workers World

The younger generation, already saddled with student debt and uncertain jobs, will pay a high price as the crisis unfolds.

Economist and economic historian Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT and author of The Vanishing Middle Class, has described America using a powerful dual economy model first created by West Indian economist and Nobel laureate W. Arthur Lewis. Common in developing countries, dual economies feature a splitting into two separate sectors where peoples lives are vastly different. As Temin sees it, the U.S. now features an affluent sector, about 20 percent of the population, where people have stable lives and good jobs and an increasingly separate, low-wage sector, roughly 80 percent, where people struggle to get by and find fewer and fewer ways to improve their lot. In a conversation with the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), Temin explains what the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about this system, who is most economically at risk, and what it will take to fix things.

Lynn Parramore: As the pandemic takes hold, whats your sense of who is most vulnerable? How does the crisis illustrate the changes brought about by a movement to a dual economy?

Peter Temin: Unfortunately, the current administration is not concerned about people in the low-wage sector, and under it, the rate at which the middle class is vanishing has been increasing rapidly. The rich have gotten richer: As economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have pointed out, our taxes have become regressive since the 2017 tax cut. And, of course, now Trump wants to aid his friends who are rich and so he wants to bail out the airlines.

Kids who are working in the gig economy are going to getsquashed down with fewer and fewer opportunities. A lot of them haveeducational debts. Trumps statements about helping them is really justgarbage. If he truly wanted to help, he could fire [Education Secretary] BetsyDeVos. Failing that, he ought to get her or the department to go after theprivate universities those who have tricked the young people trying to getahead and cancel those debts. Thats what the Obama people tried to do andthen it was reversed by Trump in his effort to get rid of everything that Obamaever did.

Young people are very vulnerable, especially those who have not been able to find a steady job and get ahead. Their education has been compromised because teachers have been ill-paid for many years.

Young people are very vulnerable, especially those whohave not been able to find a steady job and get ahead. Their education has beencompromised because teachers have been ill-paid for many years. Teachers workvery hard and are very dedicated I dont criticize the teachers themselves but the low pay makes many people who might be innovating and using recentknowledge to help kids learn often go off and become lawyers and other thingsnow. This sacrificing of the long-run aims of the country has been going onsince the 1970s. Education used to be our very strong suit but now werefalling behind other countries.

LP: The need for social distancing from COVID-19 is forcing many students across the U.S. into online learning. Some view the push for online learning in recent years as a scheme by political groups who dont support robust public education to devalue the teaching profession (as well as an opportunity for tech companies to cash in). Whats your take?

PT: The push towards more online learning is a really bad idea. The poorest people lack access, so it condemns them to staying poor. It doesnt provide any way out. Think of the economist Roland Fryer [the youngest African American to ever receive tenure at Harvard] who got rescued from poverty when he got a football scholarship to the University of Texas. Somebody recognized how bright he was, and he then went to Harvard and won the Clark medal for the best economist under 40, and so on.

The push towards more online learning is a really bad idea. The poorest people lack access, so it condemns them to staying poor.

If online learning becomes normalized, people like thatwont make it out. They wont ever get started. They wont be in a place wheresomebody can recognize their talent and can take them on. Learning takes placepartly by the psychological bonding of kids with teachers. Thats why teachersare so important. Very poor people have parents who dont have jobs andsometimes only one parent or no parent, so this kind of connection to an adultbecomes all the more essential. If you just look at a machine that asks howmuch is 2 + 2, check the box, that isnt anything compared to a teacher saying,have you thought of this or that? For kids with stable households and parents,it might work, but not for poor people. It jeopardizes the future of Americabecause we need to have all of our young people thinking about things andgetting into the world, able to pursue a good idea. People love to talk about theorigins of our very rich entrepreneurs. Those are the people who made it, butyou wouldnt have been able to predict that when they were four years old. Theonly way to catch the talent is to give everybody a chance. Not just the peopleyou know, but all sorts of people. Ability is distributed throughout thepopulation.

For all these reasons, the education part of this is justterribly important. Each time theres a financial crisis, the support for statecolleges goes down. Most of them are now state universities in name only, withjust around 15% of their budget coming from the state. When we think aboutonline learning we may think of grade-school kids, but it makes it difficultfor them to go further, too. With online learning, you never see a book. Youmay just see shorter piece, ten-page essays and so on. You dont get that deepunderstanding that comes from reading books.

LP: This pandemic is also shining a light on Americas incarceration practices, which youve cited as a driver of the dual economy. Could the crisis help us come to terms with how out of step we are with the rest of the world in locking up so many people? Especially vulnerable populations?

PT: Americas incarceration practices are different because we had slavery. [Economics reporter] Eduardo Porter has a book coming out on this, and Im writing about it, too. This is a very hard thing, and were going to have to fix mass incarceration in order to fix urban education, which is education for the poor. But the federal government is not interested in this at all. Trump is not interested. There are district attorneys who are refusing to prosecute for non-violent offenses and reform the bail system and all the things that have built up over the course of the last half century. But whats happened is that there are a lot of vested interests, like private prisons, that want more, not fewer prisoners. So, you have to combat that. Privatization is a problem with incarceration. Youll notice in the present crisis, Trump went to private suppliers to get tests for the virus. Has he gotten them? No. He didnt go to them because they were efficient or had a secret. He wants to privatize everything.

Weve gotten ourselves into a very bad position in the U.S. and its really punishing us right now. A dual economy makes it much harder to deal with a crisis like the coronavirus.

The problem we face in confronting mass incarceration isthat we are a very diverse country. Things look very different in differentparts of the country. Areas in the South that have Evangelicals are differentfrom areas in the northeast, for example. They want to criminalize abortion,and put more, not fewer, people in prison. San Francisco may not be arrestingas many people during the pandemic, but that doesnt mean that youll see the sametrend everywhere. Prisoners are actually included in the census where theprison is, so having that tends to emphasize the votes of rural people. Thatssimilar to the old three-fifths rule in the South [counting three out of everyfive slaves as people in apportioning representatives, etc.] which emphasizedthe votes of slave-owning people before the Civil War.

LP: What kinds of responses to the COVID-19 crisis would help us move beyond the dual economy structure and create more unity between the affluent and low-wage sectors?

PT: It is critical to send money, one way or another, to the low-wage and poor people who need the money to live on and will spend it. That will get things going. We also need to increase funding for early education. Thats what the New York City superintendent has been trying to do. And that brings us back to teachers because early education cant be done on the computer.

Fundamentally, we will also have to change the tax structure. Weve gotten ourselves into a very bad position in the U.S. and its really punishing us right now. A dual economy makes it much harder to deal with a crisis like the coronavirus. People in the upper part need to pay for things for the low-wage part to recover, and of course the government needs to be involved, but there are these pro-austerity people who dont want the government to do anything. They want it all to be the private sector, and that misses the fact that very young kids dont get noticed when you leave everything to the private sector because young children dont buy things. They get lost. Then they end up in prison. The cycle repeats itself over and over. The more diverse the incomes are, the harder it is to make the changes you need. Just as the kids need good teachers, we need to have some leaders who will think about these things. Trump is all concerned with how things go on the evening news, the short-time horizon. What we need is somebody who can look ahead, to ask where are we going? What are we going to be in 20 years, 40 years, 60 years? On the current path, we are becoming Argentina, a place which is very nice for the people who live in the cities and have a lot of money, and pretty terrible for everybody else.

Lynn Parramore is Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

This article was first published on the blog of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, a nonprofit that seeks to promote changes to our current economic system and support new paradigms in the understanding of economic processes.

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MIT Economist on Coronavirus: Young People Going to Get Squashed - The MIT Press Reader

By a correspondent 23 March 2020

A correspondent in China sent the following notes on the rising political and class tensions in that country produced by the worsening global COVID-19 pandemic and the repressive response of the Beijing regime.

1. Chinas authoritarian government has blocked every city and even every street by brutal means. Every aspect of peoples lives has been affected. Not only are there travel restrictions. Daily supplies have suffered shortages, and the economy has been greatly affected. While emergency measures were needed to combat the pandemic, they were applied repressively, to defend the interests of the capitalists. Dissatisfaction is growing among the masses.

To curb this dissatisfaction, the Chinese bureaucrats strengthened social controls and waged war on public opinion. The newly-issued Internet Information Governance Regulations came into effect in March. They strengthened the governments control over the media and the internet, and further suppressed the revolution of public opinion. They clearly stipulate that network information content producers must not produce, copy or publish content containing illegal information, including opposing basic principles of the Constitution, endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting state power and harming national interests.

2. At the same time, Wuhan bureaucrats demanded that people express their gratitude for the governments response to the epidemic and even forced various institutions and schools to implement grateful education. This was met with popular opposition and dissatisfaction. An article circulated on the internet: If you have a conscience, you will not ask the frightened Wuhan people to be grateful at this time.(). In this article, the author wrote: You are the public servant of the people, and your job is to serve the people. Now the peoples family you serve is ruined, the dead have just passed away and the tears of the living have not been wiped out. Sick people are unhealed and some of their dissatisfaction is completely reasonable. You should reflect and be ashamed because you and your team are not working properly, rather than accuse the people you serve in Wuhan of not being grateful. This article has now been restricted from spreading on the internet.

3. A nursery rhyme has been criticized and resisted by people. The song, Mobile cabin hospitals are so amazing(), is considered a tribute to the government, ignoring the suffering caused by the plague and government failure. Some people described this as dancing at a funeral and some netizens commented: I cant agree with such publicity, the epidemic is not over, the responsibility has not been identified and there is nothing to praise. Mobile cabin hospitals are medical isolation units set up by requisitioning existing facilities due to the coronavirus outbreaks and insufficient medical resources.

4. During the closure of the cities the government arrested those with different opinions. Three citizen journalists lost contact. The Chinese government did not announce their whereabouts, but a video uploaded by one of the citizen journalists showed him being arrested by police. These bloggers expose the real situation of the epidemic and the real living conditions of the people by uploading videos they have taken. This is not the first time they have said they have been threatened by the government and police:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np8ZOQATLGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWrMZH9Xu6k

5. Due to the impact of the epidemic and the governments city closure policy, economic activities have been greatly impacted and small businesses and shops are under great pressure. Because of Chinas economic failure in recent years and the sudden outbreak of the epidemic, protests by shop owners asking for rent reductions have been held in many cities:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1240918014234513408

https://twitter.com/i/status/1240427844955668481

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6. The Chinese government regarded the two hospitals built in the short term during the outbreak as government achievements, but the workers who built the two hospitals encountered difficulties. There are news reports that during the outbreak, workers were overloaded, but wage arrears and wage deductions often occurred. At the same time, after the completion of the construction, due to the closure of the city, the workers were not allowed to return home. The high cost of living and lost source of income put the workers in trouble, but companies and the Wuhan government were unwilling to assist with the workers living problems.

7. Residents have protested across Hubei province that the cost of living and food prices have become unacceptable. A reporter exposed that the food donated to Hubei from various places was put in a warehouse and rotted and was not sent to the residents homes. There are also news reports that the local government uses garbage trucks to deliver food to residents:

8. On March 17, about a thousand Foxconn workers who had returned to work started protesting and striking because they could not get the promised subsidy. These workers are reportedly dispatch workers at Foxconn. The labour dispatching system is a common method of undermining labour rights in Chinese companies. Many workers dub it the slavery dispatch system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CqhUrWlk3Q

This is just a typical example of recent strikes by Chinese workers to defend their rights. Similar incidents have occurred in many cities. Although the Chinese government claims that they have basically controlled the corona virus outbreak, conflicts have gradually erupted as workers return to work.

The economic failure caused during the epidemic will prompt the bourgeoisie to intensify its exploitation of the working class. The working class has made huge sacrifices in the fight against the epidemic. The epidemic has increased the pressure on their lives, and made workers want a more resolute voice for labour rights. Therefore, when workers return to work, the backlog of dissatisfaction will push workers to fight the bourgeoisie and inequality. Already we can see that when the city lockdown policy was gradually cancelled, the workers movement began to reappear in various cities.

https://maps.clb.org.hk/?i18n_language=en_US&map=1&startDate=2020-03&endDate=2020-03&eventId=2020032016151780093

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Chinese worker writes on the coronavirus pandemic: Disaffection is growing among the masses - World Socialist Web Site

Virginia lawmakers finalized passage of legislation Friday that repeals minimum wage exemptions for domestic workers such as maids and nannies.

The advocacy group Care in Action, which advocates nationally for the workers, said Virginia is the first state in the South to adopt such protections.

Weve been waiting for this victory for 400 years, Alexsis Rodgers, the groups state director, said in a statement. Due to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow era laws, domestic workers were left unprotected and seen as less than compared to other workers. Today, we let Virginia and the rest of the country know that domestic workers are valued workers and must be treated as such.

Domestic workers are already covered by federal minimum wage laws, which mandates workers be paid $7.25 an hour, but the law means the workers will be able to file unpaid wage complaints at the state level.

It also guarantees the workers will be included in any legislation raising the minimum wage at the state level, which lawmakers are still negotiating. Thats one of the reasons Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, said she proposed the legislation as a standalone bill.

We wanted to be sure at a minimum the domestic worker exemption went away, she said.

The legislation does not include au pairs, who are foreign workers who come to the country through a program regulated by the federal government.

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Lawmakers vote to repeal minimum wage exemption for nannies and maids - Virginia Mercury

When American kids learn about slavery if they learn anything at all about slavery, they do not learn about the resistance and fight against slavery by those who were enslaved. Captured human beings did in fact wage many uprisings against the slave republic that was the southern United States. Although it took the Civil War to overthrow state sponsored slavery, we want to give a shout to those who fought and died to destroy the regime plantation by plantation. Let us at least attempt to put to rest the myth of the docile slave. A review of slavery uprisings, reveal that our ancestors captured from their homeland and enslaved in a foreign land were anything but docile they were fighters who watched their captors, and when the opportunity presented itself they fought or died trying.

5. Stono Rebellion

Stono Rebellion was a slave uprising that began in the then British colony of South Carolina in September 1739. It was the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies with approximately 25 white slave owners killed. Led by a man named Cato, who with 60 other slaves who may have been soldiers in the Kingdom of Kongo headed south to Florida to secure their freedom. At the time the Spanish offered freedom to those enslaved in Florida. Although they were ultimately defeated by a militia, their uprising created great fear in South Carolina which at the time had a larger slave population than free. This led to the Negro Act of 1740 which among many things prohibited the assembly of enslaved Africans, and prohibited learning to write, earn money, and raise food.

4. Igbo Landing

In May 1803 75 captured Igbo from modern day Nigeria upon arrival to the U.S. captured and killed their enslavers, causing the grounding of the slave ship. Instead of submitting to slavery, the Igbo turned around and marched back to Africa. These ancestors chose to drown in the marsh over a life of slavery. Igbo landing is now a historic site in the sand and marshes of Dunbar Creek in St. Simons Island, Georgia.

3. 1811 German Coast Slave Uprising

The countrys largest slave revolt had been largely omitted by the history books. In January 1811 slaves from what was known as the German coast of Louisiana organized and set out to march to New Orleans and end slavery. Upwards of 500 slaves participated in two day twenty mile march, killing captors, burning plantations and crops along the way. Although, the uprising was ultimately defeated by an army militia. The silence of this history is the legacy of this uprising. It so threatened the slave-ocracy it was the Voldemort of slave rebellions, it could not be spoken of again. On November 8-9, 2019, this uprising was reenacted, bringing again to life the history and recognition who gave their life to end slavery.

2. Poison and Arson

Often not mention in the history of slavery is to the extent to which captives being held as slaves chose the weapons of poison and arson to free themselves.

Poison

Poison was at times used as the weapon of choice in eliminating slave masters. In 1751 South Carolina enacted a law providing the death penalty without benefit of clergy for slaves found guilty of poisoning white people. Georgia passed a similar law in 1770 citing the frequency of poisoning slave masters.

Arson

Arson also posed a huge threat to the slave-ocracy including the remaining remnants in the North. For instance, although New York was on its way to outlawing slavery, For people being held in captivity in Albany, things were not moving fast enough enough. So in November 1793 they burned half the city of Albany down. In March and April of 1814 the city of Norfolk, Virginia was plagued by fires several times a day creating a panic in the city.

Arson was more frequent than poison and according to some scholars represented the greatest danger to Southern society.

1. Im out. Runaway is rebellion.

Americans for the most part know that many people held as slaves escaped, risking life and the life of the family they left behind in leaving the brutal conditions of slavery. But as a culture we fail to connect these acts in their totality. They were not mere individual acts, these acts of defiance when seen as a collective tell a different story. There were networks for escaped people who were held as slaves, and there were heroes like the great Harriet Tubman who led many to freedom. Consider the words of the great historian John Hope Franklin, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Few contemporaries would deny the cruel and brutal treatment accorded to those who defied the system. Slaves escaped with the mark of the whip on their backs irons on their ankles, brands on their cheeks and foreheads, and missing fingers and toes. Joe, Bill, and Isaac left the Richard Terell farm in Roanoke County, Virginia, with Irons around their necks.

Escaping the horrors of slavery was too an act of defiance thats due recognition as such.

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Five Slave Rebellions and Acts of Resistance They Forgot To Mention - Black State

The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.

Editors note: Black students are more likely than their peers to borrow money for college, struggle with repayment and default on student loans. With the debt problem for black students in particular reaching urgent levels, The Education Trust and The Hechinger Report have partnered on a series of op-eds to amplify the voices of people studying solutions to the black student debt crisis.

Here are some examples of why, after more than a decade of research into their involvement with slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, a handful of universities are beginning to consider reparations:

The first slave recorded in Massachusetts was owned by Harvards school master.

The first nine presidents of Princeton University owned slaves.

The personal physician of Dartmouth Colleges president boiled the body of a Black man named Cato to furnish a skeleton for anatomical study, and his skin was turned to leather at the campus tannery and fashioned into a medical instrument case.

One can still stroll upon sidewalks and past buildings built with bricks made by enslaved laborers at the University of Virginia.

It is well past time that colleges and universities begin to heal wounds, both old and new, and the black student loan-debt crisis may be one of the most efficient uses of their reparatory funds.

African Americans heavily rely upon higher education as the gateway to upward mobility. The combination of the wealth gap, rising tuition costs and reliance upon student loans, however, is now saddling black students with disproportionate amounts of debt.

Meanwhile, the black student loan-debt crisis needs urgent remedies.

For many, attempting to climb the economic ladder means trading one form of economic distress for another. For colleges interested in giving financial weight to their declarations of forgiveness and justice, reparations should not be restricted to direct descendants of those enslaved by universities because universities profited from countless slaves owned by others as well.

Like other institutions, dozens of U.S. colleges and universities have uncovered an overabundance of records documenting their culpability in slavery, Americas gravest sin.

Reparations offer a solution because simply providing preferential admissions to the direct descendants of the enslaved workers who built and maintained these institutions ignores the historical context in which universities benefited from chattel slavery. Universities benefited from what I refer to as an Atlantic plantation complex, where they profited from an intercontinental trade centered around slaves, the products they produced and the bequests bestowed by their owners who dotted that complex.

Many of the nations oldest and most prestigious colleges are coming to grips with the fact that enslavement generated the capital that led to their creation.

To fully grasp the extent of institutions liabilities, though, we must look beyond slavery because universities participation in racial injustice extended well beyond abolition.

Related: To pay for college, more students are offering a piece of their future to investors

For instance, universities in the Jim Crow era both in the North and the South excluded black students while taking in their tax dollars. College students and staff undoubtedly were participants in lynch law. The esteemed faculty of these institutions pumped out the bunk scientific racism that buttressed Jim Crow, cemented Social Darwinism and unleashed the scourge of eugenics. The consumption of, and participation in, blackface minstrelsy on and around campuses was almost a rite of passage for decades, and it lives on today through social media and frat parties.

Neither the abolition of slavery nor the end of segregation nor the election of President Barack Obama has stopped these institutions from engaging in, or tolerating, acts of racial aggression. Despite continued resistance by student activists, universities across the nation too often seem unable or unwilling to doggedly police acts of psychological or physical violence against minority students.

While colleges obviously have little control over the private actions of their students, they could do more to rein in university police officers who engage in racially biased behavior similar to that of non-university police forces. Officers working for some universities disproportionately stop and arrest black people, both students and non-students alike. Some university police officers are not averse to deploying unnecessary violent force against people of color, as demonstrated by filmed encounters involving police from Yale University, Barnard College, the University of Chicagoand Rice University. Worst of all, however, are the actions of Portland State and University of Cincinnati police officers, who have used lethal force against non-student black men.

The all-too-frequent interactions between university police forces and non-student African Americans are one symptom of the continued practice of urban campuses devouring working-class minority neighborhoods. With the help of university police and municipal tax breaks, colleges continue to gentrify these spaces in their attempts to attract and comfort wealthier (white) students, and in the process displace black residents through rising rents.

Universities should devote their reparation funds toward making higher education more affordable for black students.

Programs must consider past and future students alike.

For black former students, universities could refinance outstanding loan balances at zero percent interest. For future students, a combination of grants and reduced tuition would help to reduce the racial wealth gap and could eliminate the black-white student loan-debt gap as it stands approximately $4,000-$7,000.

The universities with the largest endowments often the same institutions with the longest legacies of racial exploitation should form partnerships with HBCUs to strengthen their financial footing and establish programs aimed at eliminating hiring and wage discrimination in the workplace.

Related:Debt without degree: The human cost of college debt that becomes purgatory

Institutions should not rely upon financial reserves alone to fund these initiatives. Universities should consider adopting a system similar to the one devised and approved by Georgetown student-activists and slave descendants: adding a small fee to students annual bills to defray a portion of the reparatory spending. Such measures would go a lot further in uplifting black students and achieving social justice than more spending on studies and conferences.

Removing racist imagery and changing the names of buildings are welcome gestures, but they do little to even the balance. Someone must take the lead in addressing the black student loan-debt crisis head on, and universities should use their financial and social capital to attempt to make amends through reparations.

This story about reparations and student loans was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in partnership with The Education Trust. Sign up here for Hechingers newsletter.

Luke Frederick is a doctoral student at Georgetown University, where his research focuses on the policing and incarceration of free blacks and enslaved workers in antebellum America, and research director for the Ohio Student Association.

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OPINION: The crisis in student loan debt offers a chance for reparations - The Hechinger Report

Support Warren

I have worked in politics and on campaigns off and on for 20 years, since I was 19, constantly in search of a candidate who is inspirational, wise, thoughtful, brilliant, authentic, idealistic yet realistic, visionary yet practical, tough yet compassionate, a leader of honesty and integrity, a president who is a strong leader yet also one of the people.

I finally found my candidate: Elizabeth Warren.

I have been through a lot these past few years, battling tragedy, loss, illness, just as our country has been through a lot. Warren inspires me, she lifts me up, and she can do that for this whole country.

We need a president who inspires us to believe that great things are still possible, that big dreams are attainable, that hard work pays

off, that no one is left behind, a president who will work to help make these truths, dreams, ideas and ideals a reality for all Americans.

If my mom were still living, she and I would vote for Elizabeth Warren together. I trust Warren to be by the side of all when she is president.

President Elizabeth Warren. Gosh, that sounds awesome! Lets make history, South Carolina. Lets dream big and work hard together.

MICHELLE LINDSEY

Farr Street

Daniel Island

Reflecting on Bernie Sanders recent laudatory comments on the Castro regime in Cuba, I am wondering what good he might find in the Chavez/Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela.

NEWTON KLEMENTS

Confederate Circle

Charleston

I would like to make some comments regarding the Feb. 24 Post and Courier letter to the editor regarding Bernie Sanders for president. I am 70 years old. I am not an attorney, but I have been a CEO or president of several financial companies in my lifetime. Here are my concerns:

Geographic cost of living differences do not support one standard $15-an-hour wage because earners will be impacted differently. Do not forget any rise in wage expense will result in higher prices for goods and services, or lower company profits, which Sanders wants to tax at higher rates to pay for his agenda.

My fathers example to me was to make sacrifices to pay for his childrens education. My first job out of college paid me $500 a month and I saved to ultimately pay for my daughters college education. I am sure millions of other parents did, and do, the same thing. Why is that no longer acceptable?

I depend on Medicare. I have a deductible, have a supplement to help cover the costs Medicare does not cover, have a drug policy to cover what Medicare does not cover. My deductible and premiums went up this year. Dont be fooled: Medicare is not free. Watch what happens when hospitals and doctors have to accept Medicare-approved billing limits when there are no longer private insurers paying the larger charges.

There are not enough billionaires to cover all of what Sanders plans to give us for free.

DOUG MILLER

Old Tavern Court

Mount Pleasant

The next president of the United States will be the commander in chief of our military.

There are only two people running for president that have served in the military. All the others turned their back on this country, but now they want the country to support them.

How can you be commander of something that you know nothing about?

The two people who served are Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Buttigieg, both in combat zones.

If you are a veteran or serving in the military, then you need to vote for one of them. I am giving my vote to Tulsi Gabbard. She seems to be a Christian. So if you are Christian, vote for Ms. Gabbard.

Vote for what is best for this country. Some of the men running for office claim a woman cant be president. If you are a woman, prove them wrong, vote for a woman. I do not know Ms. Gabbard and have never spoken to her.

I just want what is best for my country. Again, forget party this one time.

LARRY BAILEY

Linwood Lane

Summerville

I see The Post and Courier is very interested in S.C. Congressman Jim Clyburns 2020 presidential endorsement.

That is curious, considering the congressmans comments to the media last week when he had the audacity to say that African Americans unemployment during slavery was better than today because, in his words, they were fully employed during slavery.

With many of his voters and constituents forebearers, indeed, being slaves, Clyburn was incredibly insensitive to the district he represents and to the entire nation.

Instead of eagerly awaiting Clyburns endorsement, all candidates should be running from it.

In fact, it seems to me that our congressman is so out of touch with his constituents and the history of slavery that he should not run for reelection himself.

JOHN KUHN

Former state senator

Water Street

Charleston

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Letters to the Editor: Readers weigh in on Democratic candidates - Charleston Post Courier

Over the past few years reports by BuzzFeed News and American Affairs described how some businesses try to hire low-wage immigrants over Americans. They post job ads, as required by the H-2 guest worker program, but in towns far from the job site. They ask for Spanish-speaking workers although the work is in a non-Hispanic area. They set strict requirements that only Americans must meet. Some flat-out say they never hire U.S. workers.

These practices have resulted in multiple complaints from Legal Aid, legal briefs filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and at least one instance of federal imprisonment.

Derrick Green was a casualty of these practices. In 2012 the father of six was fired by Hamilton Growers after just three weeks of picking squash. Greens quick dismissal reflected a pattern. According to the EEOC, in 2009 Hamilton Growers fired or pushed out the overwhelming majority of Americans while few Mexican guest workers met that fate.

Something similar happened in 2010 and 2011. The next farm Green worked for also preferred guest workers over Americans, and he was fired after a few days.

Farms and other low-wage employers often argue they need low-wage immigrants to keep costs down. That argument, however, must be weighed against the fact that mass low-wage immigration hurts American workers, especially poorer ones. Research supports this idea.

A 2016 National Academy of Sciences report stated that a high degree of consensus exists thatspecific groups are more vulnerable than others to inflows of new immigrants. The NAS report identifies nine studies that show harms to Americans with low levels of education.

Given Americas racial politics, it makes sense that the left tends to ignore the racial dimensions of low-wage immigration. You see, Green, and most of the workers fired by Hamilton Growers, are black. Two-dozen black people also brought a lawsuit against J&R Baker Farms. A former employee said they got rid of their black workers in 2010. A supervisor at Hamilton Growers once allegedly said: all you black American people, f you alljust go to the office and pick up your check.

Since blacks are disproportionately represented among poorly educated Americans, they bear the brunt of low-wage immigration. The left, which claims to be both pro-black Americans and pro-low-wage immigration, of course downplays this tension.

Conservatives also downplay this tension. We dont highlight enough how much low-wage immigration harms poor African-Americans. This omission is political malpractice.Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini showed that speaking to working-class minorities70 percent of whom dont have a college degreeis the best way for Republicans to adapt a diversifying America. Simply put, we must become the party of the entire working class, not just the white working class.

To get from here to there, conservatives should recognize that as long as it doesnt cannibalize other ways of understanding our country, and that Americas worst moments dont define us, theres nothing intrinsically wrong with using a racial lens. The fact that the left overuses this analysis does not mean we should underuse it.

Unfortunately, decades of missteps have made us inept at discussing race. Since were going to have to start doing so more, and to learn along the way, we should choose our battles carefully. When doing something new, you must crawl before you walk. We should thus engage on issues that play to our strengths and on which voters already trust us.

Low-wage immigration is perfect in this regard. We almost have no choice but to double down on the issue. Opposition to low-wage immigration will define conservatives for the indefinite future. So we may as well use it to reach black votersthe minority group we should prioritize outreach to.

Further, low-wage immigration is an issue we know how to discuss. When we engage with black Americans, we will be able to reframe a message were already good at delivering.

Conservatives also have well-fleshed out policies to address low-wage immigration. For all the intra-right disagreements, there is a conservative approach to immigration that can rely on decades of right-leaning policy research.

The political calculus is also simpler. Both the left and right agree that many blacks oppose low-wage immigration. So not only does this topic keep our coalition intact, it raises tension within the Democratic one. Especially since Democrats have gone all-in on open borders, blacks who care about this issue have only one viable option, unlike on issues such as lowering crime sentences.

Leftists act as if black politics consists only of police brutality, Civil War statues, and reparations. But low-wage immigration deeply affects blacks and should also be a black issue. Its our job to make the connection.

Consider the liberal trope that American institutions are racist and were designed to hurt blacks. On hearing these arguments, conservatives usually just protest. Although protest may be necessary, it doesnt have to end there. It would be smarter to concede that general point then pivot to immigration.

We should not be afraid of this concession. American slavery was uniquely evil, and its legacy has clearly shaped many American institutions. Although specific liberal arguments can be overwrought, this point is uncontroversial.

If all American institutions are rooted in slavery and discriminate against black people, that includes all institutions, including immigration policy. We should force liberals to explain why they have ignored this, and highlight that people who look like Green are the main victims of our anti-black immigration system.

We must stress how much African-Americans need policies like border security and e-Verify. More than any other group, they need a tight low-wage labor market, and will benefit from conservative immigration policies. Leftist immigration policies have a profound disparate impact against blacks, something we should repeat mercilessly.

We can we also use immigration to expand the debates about reparations. African-Americans themselves dont agree on what it means, and its often viewed as much more than cutting a check. Both scholars and activists argue that reparations must address underlying structures.

That is why social policies as diverse as voting rights, health care, housing policy, student debt, and small business loans have all been framed as reparations. Immigration is always missing from this sort of analysis. But if housing policy and health care can be viewed as reparations, then so can e-Verify. The RAISE Act is a much better reparations bill than anything Democrats have offered.

Centering black outreach on immigration is not just smart politics. Making these arguments will allow us to engage with race in America on our own terms. Instead of running away from the topic, we would broaden our national conversation. America would no longer able to reduce black people to the issues that leftists choose.

Black Americans have always debated how to best achieve economic progress. Many reasonably believe that fighting racism must lead this struggle. But other prefer to focus on socioeconomics directly. Perhaps nothing better illustrates this intra-black tension than the official name of Martin Luther King Jr.s famous 1963 gathering: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

The point here is not to settle this dispute, but to highlight that African-Americans themselves disagree on whether fighting white racism is more important than fighting for black jobs. Democrats have chosen the first path. Until now we have chosen neither, which helps explain why we lose black voters by such a staggering margin.

But there is a sizable black market for the other path, and we should try to reach them. Nationalism and opposition to low-wage immigration will help. At its core, these positions are about valuing all Americans and their jobs before others. This message will resonate with many black Americans.

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Why The Right Should Make Immigration A Race IssueAnd How - The Federalist

SEATTLE, WA - FEBRUARY 26: A shopper enters Amazon Go Grocery on February 26, 2020 in Seattle, ... [+] Washington. The store in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood is Amazon's first large retail grocery location that uses the cashier-free model. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

Amazon has unveiled its Amazon Go Grocery in Seattle, expanding the initial concept of a store without tills, evolving from a simple convenience store selling a few products to a practically complete supermarket with sections of various types, including fresh products.

This is the next phase of Amazons Just walk out technology and its application to more complex shopping contexts, ridiculing the skeptics lightweight arguments against it. The value proposition here is clear: as you take the items off the shelves, you place them in your trolley in the same bags you will use to take them home. Go in, take what you want, and walk out the door, without standing in line. It couldnt be simpler.

Whats more, the lower costs involved mean Amazon can offer its customers better prices than its rivals. But what Amazon really wants to do is to offer its customers a better experience, one that requires taking full advantage of the new technological environment. The complaints of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which has criticized the company for jeopardizing millions of quality jobs and has threatened to make this a campaign issue in the November 2020 elections, ignore the fact that Amazon is actually the company that has created the most jobs in the United States in recent years, more than half a million, and also tends to pay its employees, even at the lowest levels, significantly above the industry average.

When the company launched its first store in beta mode exclusively for employees, I noted that there are more than three and a half million supermarket cashiers in the United States who are paid an average of $10.78 an hour (the minimum wage at Amazon is $15 an hour), with no formal education requirement, and with an estimated decline of -4% for the decade from 2018 to 2028. These forecasts do not seem to take into account the effects of the development and possible generalization of a technology such as Amazons, as well as the need for other competitors in the distribution field to incorporate similar technologies if they do not want to go out of business.

The future of distribution does not include workers on tills doing a job that, while it may seem reasonably dignified today, makes no sense. When, in a few decades, we tell our grandchildren that people used to work as cashiers in supermarkets and describes what they did in their day-to-day life, those youngsters will see that as a kind of slavery.

Eliminating jobs makes sense when they impose repetitive and dehumanizing routines on us and because they result in lower productivity and more errors than a machine produces. Ultimately, a technology like this does not seek to eliminate jobs, but to put humans where they really add value, rather than by carrying out meaningless mechanical tasks.

Amazons scaling up from small shops to large supermarkets is just another step in a process that, whether some like it or not, is called progress. This is what has led to the disappearance of many jobs that seemed normal in previous centuries and today we would consider meaningless. And there will be many more to come. How is the world economy going to accommodate the disappearance of more and more jobs? Are we going to console ourselves by thinking that a similar or greater number of other types of jobs will be magically created in the future?

In this race for efficient automation, supermarket cashiers will soon be joined by drivers, brokers, assembly line workers and an ever-increasing range of jobs, while society will have to deal with the paradox that greater wealth generation through machine work may result in widespread impoverishment. To prevent this we need to redefine the social contract. Until we understand this, we will continue to try to measure the economy with the wrong indicators, criticizing interesting initiatives, reverting to religious approaches such as in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, and repeating the mistakes of the past.

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Amazon Go Grocery: This Is The Future Of Shopping, Whether We Like It Or Not - Forbes

Moderate Democrats missed a rhetorical opportunity to hit Bernie Sanders on the failures of socialism Tuesday night.

At the South Carolina debate, Sanders defended himself for having pointed out the few policy successes of socialist and communist dictatorships. That is different than saying that governments occasionally do things that are good, he said.

Hundreds of millions of people have been allowed to rise out of poverty in China, since Reform & Opening, and the literacy rate did increase in Cuba. Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, competing to stop Sanders and grab ahold of the moderate mantle, continued to hit the self-proclaimed socialist, suggesting that he is soft on left-wing human rights abusers.

Sanders was right, however, on the essential factual points he made. His opponents attacked him instead on the optics. This is not about what coups were happening in the 1970s or '80s, this is about the future, Buttigieg said. (Similarly, no one disputed his claims that the Soviet Unions Moscow had a properly functioning subway system. And if you think public transportation isnt important, ask people how they get to work if they live 21 miles away and there areno buses running.)

But the moderate Democrats missed a key opportunity to hit him on how Marxist socialism failed in the countries he was referencing, particularly China. His claim that China lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty only applies starting after 1978, when Deng Xiaoping took over as leader and began the series of reforms that would push China in a more free-market-oriented direction. If anything, rather than attempting to dismiss the point, emphasizing the success of Chinas post-1978 economy could point to the success of the market economy.

China reversed its communization of farmland. Farmers, individually managing plots of land under post-Mao reforms, were able to keep their surplus, incentivizing them to produce more efficiently. During the old communist era, everyone was supposed to work the same land, eat in the canteen, and eat similar meals no matter how productive they had been. Naturally, most people didnt work hard.

Although there were some efforts to grade peoples effort, trying to grade work would have been very difficult even if it were done without bias, which it was not. (Marx advocated for the idea of labor vouchers in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, and the Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China both had to each according to his contribution written into their original constitutions.)

Distributing land use rights to individual farmers vastly increased output. Deng also began the arduous process of ending the iron rice bowlfiring tens of millions of people employed by hulking, unproductive state-controlled factories and enterprises for life.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders advocates a federal jobs guarantee to guarantee everyone a stable job that pays a living wage. That is going in the direction of Chinas failed iron rice bowl and in the opposite direction from its successful anti-poverty program. It would be enormously expensive and likely inefficient.

If someone did want to draw a comparison between Sanders and socialism, they could start there. However, if you look at the rest of his agenda, he does not advocate taking over businesses. He does not advocate nationalizing oil or creating a dictatorship of the proletariat. (Trumps plan to take the oil is actually more communist in some ways than Bernies plans.)

In fact, the countries Bernie always cites as models for his agendaSweden, Norway, Denmark, etcare all prosperous capitalist countries. The UK and Canada, with their socialized healthcare systems, are actually more economically free than the U.S., according to the Heritage Foundations Index of Economic Freedom.

So Sanders really isnt much of a socialist. His positions are very close to those of Elizabeth Warren, who explicitly calls herself a capitalist. Sanders, too, advocates for maintaining a capitalist systemjust reforming it. That is what Marx derisively called bourgeois socialism.

Another lesson from China, then: A planned economy is not equivalent to socialism, because there is planning under capitalism too; a market economy is not capitalism, because there are markets under socialism too. Planning and market forces are both means of controlling economic activity, Deng said during his Southern Tour in 1992.

The great social welfare states of Scandinavia Sanders lauds are only possible because they have dynamic economies, built on market capitalism, which create the wealth necessary to afford generous benefits.

If we (and this includes Sanders himself) must insist that Sanders is a socialist, then we have to admit that this kind of socialism is not inconsistent with capitalism. People from left-wing and right-wing persuasion have tried for too long to simplistically define policies into one of the two boxes.

Now the progressive left, including Sanders, has been trying to appropriate socialism, by calling Medicare, Social Security, and FDRs New Deal programs socialist. Inadvertently, they adopt the language of the John Birch Society and the Tea Party.

What has happened is that after social welfare programs have been called socialist for so long, the term has lost or redefined its meaning. If Obamacare is going to be smeared as socialism, and if any proposal to expand social welfare or provide greater protections to consumers and workers is going to be so vilified, then young left-leaning kids think, Maybe socialism isnt so bad.

It is dangerous if one wants to prevent actual leftist policies and even revolution, to constantly block all proposed reforms of the bourgeois system at a time when income inequality is perceived as being at historic levels, when even the Republican Party felt a need to emphasize the plight of the working class in the 2016 election. If grievances go unaddressed and people begin to lose faith in the democratic system, then they might look elsewhere.

Now we get back to what Sanders said about Cuba and Communist China. Well, maybe if dictator Batista didnt abuse the Cuban people so much, neglect their educations, and pay more attention to serving the United States interests than that of his country, then there would not have been so much motivation among the Cuban people to get rid of him?

China, during the Kuomintang reign, was relatively impoverished, if growing in spurts, but what growth did come did not find its way to the peasants, who were largely abused under the semi-feudal system in which landlords ran politics at the local levels. Some landlords were better than others. Others would sell the children of debtors into slavery. But even with the nicest landlord, the system itself was such that peasants were still bound to the land. It is not surprising at all that the peasants embraced revolutionaries who promised to liberate them and redistribute the land.

Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang had not succeeded, lacking the capacity and the will, to do land reform on mainland China, sealing their fates. Then when Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan, he did redistribute the land.

The U.S., during its administration of post-WWII South Korea, began the process of land reform. Right-wing authoritarian Park Geun-hye, staring down communism in the North, established national healthcare. It was not just because they thought it was the right policy, which they did, but also because they did not want to create the conditions that would bring about communism.

Now if the Democratic moderates and the moderate Republicans who fear Sanders more than Trump do not want something worse than Sanders to come about in the future, they must do more than dismiss everything. They must address the grievances that led to Sanders.

Currently based in China, Mitchell Blatt is a former editorial assistant at the National Interest, Chinese-English translator, and lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong. He has been published in USA Today, The Daily Beast, The Korea Times, Silkwinds magazine, and Areo Magazine, among other outlets. Follow him on Facebook at@MitchBlattWriter.

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The Only Way to Stop Bernie Sanders - The National Interest Online