Slavery in the Modern World

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

from the Guardian UK... via
http://ashevillian.blogspot.com/

It is not what you think of, at least what most people think of... http://bp3.blogger.com/_4jtJ-zJgyq0/ReWtBodiseI/AAAAAAAAABs/i8IqHsAUADU/s200/slavery+copy.jpg
This needs lots more awareness.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. boy, that sank fast

kick

[Christa]

2. No, it did not, NT.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

3. Kickin it again

once more

[bleedingheart]

4. Somehow like all evil things... slavery persists

I wish it would go away but where ever there is desparation, poverty and lack of education...it is far too easy for the powerful to take advantage of the poor and downtrodden.

Here in the US there are possibly millions of people who are enslaved.

Long ago, it was legal and the law was on the side of the slave owner.
Then it was illegal but the law was still on the side of the rich man getting rich off the cheap or forced labor of others.
Today it is still illegal but the law errors on the side of the poor, however that means the rich just figure out better ways of evading the law.

Whether it is a local farmer who has a group of Mexican men living in a run down shack on his property so that he doesn't have to pay a decent wage, or the office manager who takes advantage of the young woman, with three kids she can barely feed, and pays her so little but demands excessive hours or locks her in an office until her work is done...there is some form of enslavement.

Think about the people who lose their jobs if they get sick, or who have no sick time or vacation time. The kind of people who are hardworking and honest folks but who live at the bottom rung of society's laddder...Everything is set up to screw with them. They can't even open a bank account to try and get ahead because generally they don't have enough for the minimum deposit...and when they do put in their hard earned cash the bank will take half of it in fees because they aren't privileged enough to have the $500-5000 minimum required to avoid the fees...

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

5. You got it

I first got interested in this when I met a slave in person, on my street.

He cannot go back to El Salvador, his boss has his passport. He gets paid very irregularly, and his boss deducts "car fare" for picking him up and dropping him off.

He is afraid to go to the authorities, as he does not have a passport, they will think him illegal, even though he is not, and he does have a visa, but it is probably expired now.

His wife and children do get money from his boss, but he is not sure how much, and they told him someone threatened them if they complained.

Now, what is this guy supposed to do?

[bleedingheart]

6. it is a catch 22.

I worked for a factory and our one chemist was from China and the plant manager had his passport and visa in a safe...now that wasn't right and I knew it but that guy wanted that job so badly he put up with it.

Don't know what to tell someone in those cases, they are damned either way.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

7. I know. I am stumped. I asked my

Pastor what to do, he is not sure either. He is looking into some options.

I am really worried the shitheads that brought him up here will kill his family if something happens.

I don't need that on my head.

[bleedingheart]

8. and that sadly is the problem of the ages

my grandfather came from Croatia around 1908. He left the old country thinking the new country would be better.

Instead, he ended up being a serf here for a coal company, BUT..he decided that he would do something about it.

He struck for better wages, got kicked out into the cold with a wife and 6 kids and had to get by on next to nothing until he and the other men and women got their union. Luckily for him, there wasn't a deportation option like there is today. I know they did deport back then but it was rather rare.

In fact, I think that the fear of deportation is what keeps a lot of folks in their chains.

What pisses me off is that the bosses (like guy enslaving the guy you know)...are the folks who go to church and are held up as "model citizens" when in reality they are more like the devil.

[Jonathan50]

9. Prison blues

The per capita incarceration rate in the USA is six times that of Canada.

http://mediastudy.com/articles/incarceration.html


http://www.prisonblues.com/411.php

The Prison Blues® brand was established by Inside Oregon Enterprises, a division of the Oregon Department of Corrections. It was started with a federal government grant funded by drug money seizures, and as a plan to defray incarceration costs in the state of Oregon. The state conducted a thorough study determining that Oregon Manufacturers would not suffer from a Prison Garment Industry.

The Prison Blues® factory was created in 1989 to manufacture jeans, yard coats, and work shirts made by and for Oregon inmates. Marketing began to fuel interest in Prison Blues® products that translated into more work opportunities for more inmates to work in the factory making our authentic, prison-made blue jean brand.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

10. Yeah, that is another whole aspect of the

slavery thing.

How long before we have a peon system again where Sheriff's let inmates out to "employers" who take responsibility for their fines?

Welcome to the new dark ages.