6 January, 2009
The Blinded Leading the Blind
I used to teach courses in government and politics at a small college in South College in South Texas (and I mean south – 260 miles south of San Antonio). Though one might have assumed that an an institution of higher learning that there was to be some sort of check on the competence and baseline knowledge of the faculty, i.e. that they knew something about the subject matter in the courses that they taught, I quickly learned that my colleagues in the department of government were, to put it nicely, limited.
While two others even knew of Michael Parenti’s Democracy for the Few, most had never heard of an organization called the Project for a New American Century (whose members include Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Philip Zelikow, and Zalmay Khalilzad), no one else recognized the ubiquity and debilitating effects of depleted uranium, and all but one other thought that the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery in the United States. The last point was particularly troubling because my colleagues told all their students that the 13 Amendment had outlawed slavery in the United States and demanded that the students repeat that lie.
Trained Ignorance
The collective wisdom of the school’s administration and my colleagues had determined that the best way to evaluate if the instructors (we) were dispensing relevant information (much less teaching) anything apropos, was to employ a uniform set of test questions that we would give our students taking introductory classes in American and Texas government. The "test" was to work as a type of validity test whereby each instructor would collect data and report how many students got the “right” answers to various trivia questions on the topic of government and politics.
Though I protested the entire project, in theory the use of a uniform or department-wide test via a set of multiple choice test questions allows one to appreciate what topics are covered in a given course. However, as applied, the imposition of various trivia questions is the logical extension of the silly, if not criminal, project of standardized testing demanded through programs like No Child Left Behind. Included in this particular list of about 50 questions was “which amendment banned slavery in the United States?” While the non-reading, so-called, instructors claimed that the “correct answer” to the question was the 13th Amendment. As I knew, and had known for about 20 years after reading the Constitution without a filter (i.e. ignorant, yet licensed teacher), that the 13th Amendment did and does not outlaw slavery in the United States, I told my esteemed colleagues that that they were mistaken. I explained, by citing the text (a rare practice among the self-assured and arrogant), that the Amendment does not outlaw slavery at all, instead, the addition codifies when slavery is legal.
For those of you who care to read and (re)learn, please note that the 13th Amendment reads as follows:
Section 1. 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. (Italics added).
To put it more simply, in the United States, slavery and or involuntary servitude is legal, when compelled as punishment for a crime.
Though I demonstrated this plain language to my fellow legal scholars, and added that I thought that there was a need to demonstrate to our students both the political and legal ramifications of the 13th Amendment and how such is relevant today. While my lesson was lost on these professional enclcyopedias, my concern was met with criticism about my being too hard, trying to push esoteric knowledge or and being too ideological - after all we were supposed to teach facts, not thinking.
While I did not and do not mind others being in disagreement with me, the fact that these people are paid by the state to preach a lie is criminal. More importantly, because these elders are “teaching” youth, there are particular negative social ramifications for such pedagogy. What shall the victims of ignorance and mendacity, and nearly all these young people are Mexican-American, do or think when faced with a newspaper story of so-called immigrant labor shortages and the use of prison labor (including imprisoned immigrants) to harvest crops in Colorado? Without a recognition that slavery is legal, has been and is maintained throughout American history, how can our children make sense of small news story and see that the larger picture that touches on immigration law, labor rights, outsourcing, and racism?
Colorado Works Its Slaves
According to Nicholas Riccardi, because of state laws and crack downs on Mexican and Latino migrant laborers in Colorado, various farms there are facing a labor shortage – crops will be lost unless harvested.[1] And while economic theorists might see the resulting shortage of exploitable labor as a good thing for youth and underemployed Americans who might fill the void, Agribusiness and prison officials in Colorado have a better idea – prison labor.
Riccardi finds that the Colorado Department of Corrections is launching a pilot program, contracting with more than a dozen farms to provide inmates to pick melons, onions and peppers. (Note: the program is only new to Colorado, chain gangs and forced slave labor in agriculture is nothing new in America).
Though she and colleagues in the Colorado legislature empowered local police to engage in Nazi-style stop and “check for papers” harassment leading to the arrest of thousands of migrants, now Colorado Legislator Dorothy Butcher wants to force prisoners to pick peppers for pennies “to make sure the agricultural industry wouldn't go out of business.”
Ironically, under the Colorado prison-crop picker plan, farms will pay more for inmate labor than they pay for undocumented migrants. According to Riccardi, the prisoners will be paid [sic] (i.e. credited, apparently Mr. Riccardi has never been in prison) 60 cents a day. When migrant workers typically earn $15-20 a day or as much as $80[2], where is the excess going to the wardens? And it is unlikely that individual prisoners will refuse. First, while the program will employ perhaps as many as 700 prisoners, Colorado has over 22,000 prisoners with “agricultural experience.” Secondly and more importantly, prison overseers can use a combination of punishments and inducements to encourage their participation.
Where to begin? Given the federal government's reluctance, fewer than 1% of all farm laborers can obtain a work visa. Colorado arrests undocumented immigrant laborers – who cannot obtain necessary documents. Prisoners forced to work. “Prisoners” are paid more than migrant farm workers. Migrant field workers in Colorado earn less than 60 cents a day. The cost to hold someone in jail or prison costs the taxpayers anywhere from $30-75 per day! The prospect of prison wardens harvesting the labor of their inmates akin to Wal-Mart managers forcing “associates” to work off the clock or walk home.
All Politics are Local ... and National and International
Without any plan for his presidency, other than enrichment of his friends, murder of millions, and praying for Armageddon prior to November 2008, Bush is now turning attention from Iraq and Iran to the US-Mexican border. Once again, speaking with Bushisms and contradictions, W. announced a need for guest-worker programs all the while calling for security to “fight terrorism.”[3]
To quote Keith Olbermann, Bush’s words are lies. Rather than provide for the orderly and legal entry of thousands who come here to work, Bush orders or allows his deputies in the Nazi-like Department of Homeland Security (Hitler called it the Reichssicherheitshauptamt) to round up thousands, including women and children. These people who are denied legal admission to the U.S., are arrested at work and their children nabbed at school in the name of “a war on terror” or a policy of “law and order” that is simply insane (part of a White Supremacist megalomania), economically inefficient, and horribly cruel. How long will it be until thousands of detained immigrants are farmed out in slave-labor camps? That is how the Nazis took care of their inferior populations, didn’t they?
This week, as he has done for the past months, a Texan-Activist, Jay Johnson-Castro, will be walking from Austin to Taylor, Texas, to protest the imprisonment of hundreds of immigrants in a system of private prisons across the state. Bush could order the release of these people … but instead corporate interests in the private prison industry and the Christo-fascist wing of the Republic party demand militarization of the border and mass incarceration. The entire system is immoral, but legal – as international treaties and international laws to the contrary have no force inside the United States.
Millions of us are beginning to learn the truth about this system of slave labor and the immigration traps. How many of us need to act out to stop it?
John Calvin Jones(Top)
[2] John Feffer, Bringing a Living Wage to the Farm. AlterNet, July 12, 2006. http://www.alternet.org/story/38556/
[3] Daily News & Analysis. “Bush renews call for comprehensive immigration reforms.” Wednesday, April 11, 2007. http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1090197
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