@ Brigand

I'll get to Dred Scott and why this case-along with some others-are relevant at another time when I finally post the issue that handles exsctly the subject related to your question, which I've alluded to in the spirituality forum but which noone picked up on-yet.

I do not mean 'fool' derogatively, but as a fact of being so gullible as to think that the name on your identification is actually your own name, who YOU are.

If , once again, you look at it closely, then write your name with your own haNd, it will be obvious that the former is NOT YOUR NAME, IS NOT WHO YOU YOU ARE.

I don't want to come write out and say it because I feel it important for people to think about what I'm saying, but the clue is right above. We all went to school and learned English Grammar, and then we see simple things like the name on our identification, every day, and don't see anything wrong.

In other words,

Is JOHN DOE your name

or

Is John Doe your name

If you agree that JOHN DOE, the name on your identification, is your name, then you are for all intent and purpose a fool and a slave, because you ought to know how proper nouns/names are spelled grammatically, and that a name in ALL CAPITAL LETTER is grammatically wrong.

JOHN DOE, therefore, does not exist. It is the name of an THING, not a living person.

And you are not a THING, such as is the case with how slaves are defined, as THINGS, OBJECTS OF POSSESSION, OR COMMERCIAL VALUE.

And theNAME on your driver's ID, on your certificate of birth, or on any billing you receive isNOT your name because it is not you-You only acknowledge thatthe name of the THING identifies you, the living person, when you endorse anysolicitation, presentment or discharge a debt IN THAT NAME.

Further, you do not own the name of the THING, and therefore identifying with it, does not give you any sovereignity or freedom. You are bound to it, as if by chains, and assuming responsibility for everything incurred by IT. You, the living person, are the vessel through which the THING operates.

The slavery that captures the mind and incarcerates the motivation, perception, aspiration, and identity in a web of anti-self images, generating a personal and collective self-destruction, is more cruel than the shackles on the wrists and ankles. The slavery that feeds on the psychology, invading the soul of man, destroying his loyalties to himself and establishing allegiance to forces which destroy him, is an even worse form of capture.

Na'im Akbar

Breadfruit,

For African-Americans, slavery ended in 1865. Though were not wearing the physical chains of it, some of us are wearing the mentalities of it. Of some of us aren't not moving on with our lives because of what the White man did to our ancestors, some of us are looking down our feelow man and what is the end result of it, Black on black destruction. In the past some slaves looked down on other slaves for being too dark. If they got a " better" position in the masters's kitchen, they thought that they was hot stuff. When you look at our people today opposed to the past, some of them are acting the same wayas someour ancestors. Slavery doesn't have to mean the being physically chained. If you're " chained" to negativity, then you're already a slave to society.

CeeCee wrote: [/quote]

Greetings breadfruit,

Good question. Free pretty much summed up part of the answer. In order for Black people to not be slaves they must get out of the mental slavery. We must be our own people and not be anybody elses. We cannot let our past become our present, we must not think of ourselves as being different from each other, but as a unified group, we must notdown each other's achievements we should praise each other continue to build on it. We must continue be strong and not surrender to the most negative piece of crap there is about us. Somebody on here( I forget who) mentioned about what the Jewish community do with their economics. We want it, but some of us are too busy being in our own affairs. If we want to what they do, we cannot make any excuses for it. Many Jewish people have multitasked lives, but when it comes to the people they make no excuses for Jewish( economic) empowerment. If we want it bad enough we would do it. The definintion of freedom: when we be our own people in every area of our lives. The definition of slavery: When cannot think and do for our ownselves.

[align=center][/align]
[align=center]So are we free??[/align]

@BF are we still slaves or worse than. Depends at what point of the slave making process and governance and control of such a group we are talking about. People are free then there is an attempt to transform them and control them and then there may be a point where there is little resistance and partial acceptance.

The majority of our ancesstors so called slaves were superior to us and the psychology which cripples us. My people did not accept slavery or white people and most things white, as did many of our peoples. So we insult them by comparing the defeated and vanquished with them who resisted to maintain who and what they were.

It's a bit like the angst of the Jew or too many of them whose guilt yams them, because they did not resist and complied with their attempted genocide and no want to go on like bad man of the world stage and act ruthless like terrorist to hide their shame and powerlessness.

So many of our ancestors were far superior in moral and cultural character than a whole heap of wasted and inferior black humanity who share the same blood.

Peace.

Very interesting topic. blkthumbsup

Don't think we can ever be free until wecan be free ofBabylons system.

In other words until we can go back to our homeland - Africaowerand live under our terms.

Unfortuantely Babylon has seemingly taken over the world.

Slavery Haunts America's Plantation Prisons
Thursday 28 August 2008
by: Maya Schenwar, t r u t h o u t | Report



On an expanse of 18,000 acres of farmland, 59 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, long rows of men, mostly African-American, till the fields under the hot Louisiana sun. The men pick cotton, wheat, soybeans and corn. They work for pennies, literally. Armed guards, mostly white, ride up and down the rows on horseback, keeping watch. At the end of a long workweek, a bad disciplinary report from a guard - whether true or false - could mean a weekend toiling in the fields. The farm is called Angola, after the homeland of the slaves who first worked its soil.

This scene is not a glimpse of plantation days long gone by. It's the present-day reality of thousands of prisoners at the maximum security Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola. The block of land on which the prison sits is a composite of several slave plantations, bought up in the decades following the Civil War. Acre-wise, it is the largest prison in the United States. Eighty percent of its prisoners are African-American.

"Angola is disturbing every time I go there," Tory Pegram, who coordinates the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, told Truthout. "It's not even really a metaphor for slavery. Slavery is what's going on."

Mwalimu Johnson, who spent 15 years as a prisoner at the penitentiary and now works as executive secretary of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, concurred.

"I would truthfully say that Angola prison is a sophisticated plantation," Johnson told Truthout. "'Cotton is King' still applies when it come to Angola."

Angola is not alone. Sixteen percent of Louisiana prisoners are compelled to perform farm labor, as are 17 percent of Texas prisoners and a full 40 percent of Arkansas prisoners, according to the 2002 Corrections Yearbook, compiled by the Criminal Justice Institute. They are paid little to nothing for planting and picking the same crops harvested by slaves 150 years ago.

Many prison farms, Angola included, have gruesome post-bellum histories. In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, Angola made news with a host of assaults - and killings - of inmates by guards. In 1952, a group of Angola prisoners found their work conditions so oppressive that they resorted to cutting their Achilles' tendons in protest. At Mississippi's Parchman Farm, another plantation-to-prison convert, prisoners were routinely subjected to near-death whippings and even shootings for the first half of the 20th century. Cummins Farm, in Arkansas, sported a "prison hospital" that doubled as a torture chamber until a federal investigation exposed it in 1970. And Texas's Jester State Prison Farm, formerly Harlem Prison Farm, garnered its claim to fame from eight prisoners who suffocated to death after being sealed into a tiny cell and abandoned by guards.

Since a wave of activism forced prison farm brutalities into the spotlight in the 1970s, some reforms have taken place: At Angola, for example, prison violence has been significantly reduced. But to a large extent, the official stories have been repackaged. State correctional departments now portray prison farm labor as educational or vocational opportunities, as opposed to involuntary servitude. The Alabama Department of Corrections web site, for example, states that its "Agriculture Program" "allows inmates to be trained in work habits and allows them to develop marketable skills in the areas of: Farming, Animal Husbandry, Vegetable, meat, and milk processing."

According to Angola's web site, "massive reform" has transformed the prison into a "stable, safe and constitutional" environment. A host of new faith-based programs at Angola have gotten a lot of media play, including features in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor.

Cathy Fontenot, Angola's assistant warden, told Truthout that the penitentiary is now widely known as an "innovative and progressive prison."

"The warden says it takes good food, good medicine, good prayin' and good playin' to have a good prison," Fontenot said, referring to the head warden, Burl Cain. "Angola has all these."

However, the makeover has been markedly incomplete, according to prisoners and their advocates.

"Most of the changes are cosmetic," said Johnson, who was released from Angola in 1992 and, in his new capacity as a prison rights advocate, stays in contact with Angola prisoners. "In the conventional plantations, slaves were given just enough food, clothing and shelter to be a financial asset to the owner. The same is true for the Louisiana prison system."

Wages for agricultural and industrial prison labor are still almost nonexistent compared with the federal minimum wage. Angola prisoners are paid anywhere from four to twenty cents per hour, according to Fontenot. Agricultural laborers fall on the lowest end of the pay scale.

What's more, prisoners may keep only half the money they make, according to Johnson, who notes that the other half is placed in an account for prisoners to use to "set themselves up" after they're released.

Besides the fact that two cents an hour may not accumulate much of a start-up fund, there is one glaring peculiarity about this arrangement: due to some of the harshest sentencing practices in the country, most Angola prisoners are never released. Ninety-seven percent will die in prison, according to Fontenot.

(Ironically, the "progressive" label may well apply to Angola, relative to some locations: In Texas, Arkansas and Georgia, most prison farms pay nothing at all.)

Angola prisoners technically work eight-hour days. However, since extra work can be mandated as a punishment for "bad behavior," hours may pile up well over that limit, former prisoner Robert King told Truthout.

"Prisoners worked out in the field, sometimes 17 hours straight, rain or shine," remembered King, who spent 29 years in solitary confinement at Angola, until he was released in 2001 after proving his innocence of the crime for which he was incarcerated.

It's common for Angola prisoners to work 65 hours a week after disciplinary reports have been filed, according to Johnson. Yet, those reports don't necessarily indicate that a prisoner has violated any rules. Johnson describes guards writing out reports well before the weekend, fabricating incident citations, then filling in prisoners' names on Friday, sometimes at random. Those prisoners would then spend their weekend in the cotton fields.

Although mechanical cotton pickers are almost universally used on modern-day farms, Angola prisoners must harvest by hand, echoing the exact ritual that characterized the plantation before emancipation.

Continues.............................