Comment by anonsivalley652 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonsivalley652 | Hacker News Reader

anonsivalley652

Consider:

- Lincoln was not an Abolitionist hero as popularly lionized, but a status quo "moderate,' reluctant to rock the boat. Even though he knew it to be wrong, he did nothing in the affirmative until Secession. That's not moral courage, that's political expedience.

- 13th Amendment, Section 1 giant slavery loophole:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

- for-profit prisons

- elected district attorneys eager to make large numbers of convictions for reelection stats

- politicians at all levels (e.g., municipal, county, state and federal) $upported by the prison lobby

- mandatory minimums

- the highest incarceration rate (per-capita) on the planet except Seychelles

- and corporations eager to exploit cheap labor (most belong to ALEC)

and what do you get?

Slavery never ended, it just hides in a slightly different form, out-of-sight in the prison-industrial complex that most people never think about. And that doesn't even include the matters of discrimination and segregation like Jim Crow laws like poll taxes, red lining, property requirements and voter ID laws.

Here's just a few of the corporations that exploit prison (slave) labor:

- Allstate Insurance

- American Express

- AT&T

- Bank of America

- BP America

- ExxonMobil

- Fruit of the Loom

- GEICO

- Johnson & Johnson

- J.P. Morgan

- Mary Kay Cosmetics

- McDonalds

- Microsoft

- Procter & Gamble

- Quaker Oats

- Sara Lee

- Sprint

- Verizon

- United Airlines

- Wal-Mart

- Wendy’s

Source: http://affinitymagazine.us/2017/06/29/heres-a-list-of-corpor...

Lincoln was not an Abolitionist hero as popularly lionized, but a status quo "moderate,' reluctant to rock the boat. Even though he knew it to be wrong, he did nothing in the affirmative until Secession.

Lincoln's election triggered secession by the south. Maybe the Southerner's had a better sense of Lincoln's abolitionist credentials than you?

Secession started after Lincoln was elected, but before he took office, what actions could he have taken? His abolitionist rhetoric was enough to trigger a civil war. That's a pretty big boat rock.

> Lincoln's election triggered secession by the south. Maybe the Southerner's had a better sense of Lincoln's abolitionist credentials than you?

Abolition was clearly in the Republican platform but he was chosen as a moderate candidate in the convention vs some more firebrand candidates, in the hope that he would forestall war. This is not controversial -- you can read accounts of the convention in old newspapers.

The famous quote from Lincoln shows where his priorities lay: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." https://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/24/archives/a-letter-from-pr...

In addition he didn’t address slavery until relatively late in the war; when he did it was as a (failed) tactic to flip rebelling states and excepted slave states like Maryland and Delaware that remained in the union.

This is flat wrong. The Emancipation Proclamation was drafted in late 1862, the second year of the war when things were very much in doubt. Lincoln issued it in the wake of the major battle at Antietam, which was a brutal "tie" and the deadliest day in American history. The tactical purpose of the Proclamation to try to recapture the momentum and make it clear that the North was now on a path of total war with the South.

I apologize: “relatively late” draws a misleading conclusion. I really meant that it wasn’t a precipitating or contemporary part of the beginning of the war, the primary objective of which (from his policy — obviously many supported it for other reasons) was the preservation of the union.

The rest of your comment speaks to my point: it was a tactical effort to try to split the confederacy but as far as I can tell failed in that effort. It only had “force” in the parts of the country not controlled by the federal government.

Fortunately actual emancipation was ultimately extended throughout the union, at least in theory.

Here’s what the national archive has to say on the subject; in particular the second paragraph speaks to the limited scope of the directive: https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancip...

It should be said that he urged compensated emancipation in the states not seceded. He did justify this by comparing the cost of that emancipation to the cost of the war. But in his statements in general he was very clear that he thought slavery wrong.

> Lincoln's election triggered secession by the south.

Strictly speaking, it was positions on the expansion of slavery that caused the war. New slave states meant more states voting with the south and an ability to keep up with the north and its higher population. Blocking new slave states would mean the north takes over the senate.

> Secession started after Lincoln was elected, but before he took office, what actions could he have taken? His abolitionist rhetoric was enough to trigger a civil war. That's a pretty big boat rock.

There was no risk of abolishing slavery at the moment. And pro-slavery side scored series or political victories prior war, partly due to own increasingly heated rhetorics.

Real question about whether slavery or not was limited to new territories. And that was primary about long term risks - new territory means new state to vote.

> Here's just a few of the corporations that exploit prison (slave) labor:

> (list)

> Source: http://affinitymagazine.us/2017/06/29/heres-a-list-of-corpor....

That article is an absolute joke. Its underlying sources too. So incredibly lacking in evidence or data to support such a huge accusation.

At a glance the underlying source list seems quite thorough and well research, it's available here (below) and every company points to a document that proves it. It's regularly updated.

Can you expand on your complaint?

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Corporations

Because they are two entirely different things. It is 100% complete and total bullshit to say that a corporation who has some, often extremely tenuous, relationship with ALEC "profits from prison labor". There's plenty of real bad stuff going on that needs revealing without resorting to lying.

Ok, so your saying this article is misusing it's source list, not that the underlying source list is an absolute joke like the original throwaway I replied to is?

The underlying source is an absolute joke as well. Whether ALEC somehow benefits from prison labor or not, just because these companies may have a relationship with ALEC doesn't mean they benefit.

The source we are talking about says nothing about benefiting from prison labor, either for ALEC or the corporations that have a relationship with ALEC, so I don't understand your complaint.

Yes, that's the point. I should have been more clear. It is a joke to use it as a reference to support the claim about benefitting from prison labor since it doesn't have any information on it. It may well be an accurate list of companies that have some relationship with ALEC.

I really, sincerely hope you will consider educating yourself on what ALEC is about.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/hidden-history-ale...

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/alecs-horror-show-is-comin...

I'm not defending ALEC, but ALEC supporting something isn't evidence that Walmart benefits from it. You have to show me Walmart is using prison labor directly or indirectly. What specific products and vendors.

You may not like the ALEC list but in some form most of the major US corporations that have existed for sometime have benefited from slavery.

It’s a fact that a number of American and European institutions benefited both directly and indirectly from former and present day slavery. Some have even admitted as much.

If you don’t want to read, here’s another short list: AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Brooks Brothers, Aetna, Lehman Brothers, Domino Sugar, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Princeton University, Columbia, Harvard, Brown, Georgetown,

- https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=154386... - https://time.com/5013728/slavery-universities-america/ - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247

This is about prison labor, not historical slavery.

The two are very related. You may want to read up on the period of Reconstruction. The southern states moved to use of prisons and sharecropping/terrorism to maintain their hold on cheap labor.

There’s too many studies and books on this topic so I won’t post them. Instead, I’d recommend reading more about the parts of American history not called out in your standard high school text books.

>>Here's just a few of the corporations that exploit prison (slave) labor

Apples and mangoes:

Would it be better if prisoners didn't work at all or is $1 a day better for them?

Is this forced labor?

Did these companies set the salaries or did the Government?

If you have one group who wants $20 an hour and other group who would work for $1 a day you have an initiative to enlarge the second group.

As for Goverment setting the salaries - it becomes much more complicated through lobbying and etc. If you go high enough I believe companies and governments are no longer on different poles.

> you have an initiative to enlarge the second group.

Only if the efficiency and quality is worth it. Which, having had the pleasure of meeting some of our local incarcerated, its vanishingly unlikely.

Thank you for that list.

This needs much more visibility and attention. Thank-you for posting this.

It is a bullshit citationless list.

It has citations in the form of hyperlinks, which in turn have detailed citations.

Which say something completely different than what the post says they do.

When people ask for citations they generally expect the citation to actually support the argument you are making.

Ok, great, that sounds like the start of a valid argument.

Having bad citations or mispresenting what they say is completely different from being citationless. When some throwaway claims one and means the other I (quite reasonably in my opinion) assume they are simply mistaken rather than being more informed than me.

I responded to another comment but your list is total bullshit, as evidenced by your own link. Those are companies that have had some, often extremely tenuous, relationship with ALEC, and a quick glance at the actual source shows that many of those companies cut ties with ALEC nearly 10 years ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com