- Colorado middle-schooler kicked out of class for ‘Don’t tread on me’ patch that teacher claims originated with slavery New York Post
- 12-year-old boy booted from class over Gadsden flag patch on backpack: ‘Origins with slavery’ Fox News
- What is ‘Gadsden flag’? Colorado school removes child from class for carrying it Hindustan Times
- Opinion: Told to remove ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ patch, this Colorado kid took a stand Deseret News
- Democrat Colorado governor calls Gadsden flag ‘proud symbol’ of American Revolution in response to viral video Fox News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Slavery
‘Little Mermaid’ slammed by black activist for ‘erasing’ slavery: ‘Dangerous’ – New York Post
- ‘Little Mermaid’ slammed by black activist for ‘erasing’ slavery: ‘Dangerous’ New York Post
- Despite Getting Review Bombed In Some Places, The Little Mermaid Just Hit A Rotten Tomatoes Milestone Yahoo Entertainment
- The Little Mermaid: 10 Things You Missed Screen Rant
- Live-Action ‘The Little Mermaid’ Review: Welcome to That World, Halle Bailey Inside the Magic
- ‘The Little Mermaid’ Criticized By Prominent Diversity Advocate For Its “Dangerous” Erasure Of Slavery Yahoo Entertainment
- View Full Coverage on Google News
‘The Little Mermaid’ Criticized By Prominent Diversity Advocate For Its “Dangerous” Erasure Of Slavery – Deadline
- ‘The Little Mermaid’ Criticized By Prominent Diversity Advocate For Its “Dangerous” Erasure Of Slavery Deadline
- There’s Something Fishy About ‘The Little Mermaid’ Audience Review Scores — Update — The Critics Must Be Crazy Forbes
- 5 Ways The Little Mermaid Remake Improves On The Original Screen Rant
- Part of Our World: On the Mermaids of Walt Disney, Hans Christian Andersen, and W.B. Yeats Literary Hub
- Swimming now has a wave of diversity to drown out Little Mermaid protests The Guardian
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Ghislaine Maxwell claims Prince Andrew photo with Virginia Giuffre is ‘fake’
CNN
—
Convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has said a decades-old photograph of Prince Andrew with his sexual abuse accuser Virginia Giuffre is “fake,” in a series of interviews from prison.
The disgraced British socialite is currently serving a 20-year sentence in US federal prison for carrying out a years-long scheme with her longtime confidante Jeffrey Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
Speaking from a Florida jail to UK broadcaster TalkTV, which aired a special program on Monday night, the 61-year-old – who also appears in the photograph – said she doesn’t “believe it happened.”
“I don’t believe it is real for a second, in fact, I’m sure it’s not. There has never been an original. I don’t believe it happened and certainly, the way it’s described would have been impossible. I don’t have any memory of going to Tramp [nightclub],” Maxwell said.
Prince Andrew, who is one of King Charles III’s younger brothers, has strenuously denied Giuffre’s allegation that he was introduced to her at London’s Tramp nightclub in 2001 with Maxwell, before then-17-year-old Giuffre was allegedly forced to perform sex acts with the British royal.
Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit in a US court in 2021 against Andrew, who is also known as the Duke of York, alleging sexual abuses while she was a minor on multiple occasions. Andrew later settled out of court for an undisclosed figure without admitting any wrongdoing and the case was dismissed. Still, the allegations against the senior royal severely tarnished his reputation. He stepped back from royal duties in late 2019 and was stripped of his military titles and royal patronages last year.
Maxwell appeared to show little remorse to Epstein’s victims and offered no apology in the interviews broadcast Monday. Instead, she said the victims should “take their disappointment and upset out on the authorities who allowed” the billionaire pedophile to die in prison.
Maxwell also told TalkTV that she believes Epstein was murdered – a conspiracy theory for which she offered no evidence. Authorities ruled Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing underage girls.
Regarding the victims, Maxwell said, “I hope they have some closure via the judicial process that took place.”
Maxwell acknowledged during her sentencing hearing last year that she had been convicted in the sex trafficking scheme but stopped short of taking responsibility. She did not testify in her defense during the trial in late 2021, which ended with her conviction on five counts, including sex trafficking of a minor.
‘Astonishing’ Pompeii home of men freed from slavery reopens to public | Italy
An ornate house – containing a fresco featuring a huge phallus – that was owned by two freed men freed from slavery in the ancient city of Pompeii has reopened to the public.
The House of the Vettii was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 before being rediscovered in a largely preserved state during excavations in the late 19th century.
The home, believed to have been constructed in the second century BC, has reopened after years of complex restoration work.
Located in the ancient city’s wealthy quarter, the sprawling House of the Vettii was owned by Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus Vettius Conviva, who became rich by selling wine after being freed from slavery.
Theories in the past have suggested that the two men were brothers, but it is more likely that they met when enslaved and had the same master, whose name was Aulus Vettius, according to Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii archaeological park.
“If they were from the same family the first two names would have been different and they would have the same surname,” he said. “It was uncommon to have biological siblings who were slaves and then set free, because family ties were cut with slavery so it’s very unlikely they were brothers. It’s more likely that they were buddies during their time as slaves and then set free.”
Restitutus, meaning “to give back”, was a typical name given to a freed slave, Zuchtriegel said.
It was not unusual for people freed from slavery to thrive in ancient Pompeii, and the House of the Vettii was filled with elegant frescoes by the two wine traders, who also expanded the home to include a garden with statues and a fountain.
Among the most striking frescoes is one at the entrance of the home: this depicts Priapus, the god of fertility and abundance, with a large penis balancing on a scale next to a bag filled with money, thought to have symbolised the wealth accumulated by the men.
Inside the home is a 15cm-high frieze that runs along the wall of a room believed to have been a dining room, which features cupids engaged in activities such as making perfume or selling wine. It also depicts divine couples and gods including Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea.
A small room close to the kitchen, which contains erotic frescoes, was believed to have been used as a brothel. Next to Priapus at the entrance is a small inscription in Latin which refers to a woman with a Greek name, who is described as having “nice manners”, alongside an image of two Roman coins. The inscription is believed to have referred to the home’s small brothel.
Aulus Vettius Restitutus also joined the high-ranking Augustales, a college of priests who were in charge of a form of emperor worship.
Zuchtriegel said the abundance of treasures contained in the House of the Vettii is “absolutely astonishing” and if he was a visitor to Pompeii and had the opportunity to see just one home in the archaeological park, it would be this one.
“This is the house which tells the story of Roman society,” he said. “On the one hand you have the artwork, paintings and statues, and on the other you have the social story [of the freed slaves]. The house is one of the relatively few in Pompeii for which we have the names of the owners.”
Joe Rogan guest Siddharth Kara reveals dark side of cobalt
A Harvard visiting professor and modern slavery activist exposed the “appalling” cobalt mining industry in the Congo on a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that went viral. The video has already racked up over one million views and counting.
Siddharth Kara, author of “Cobalt Red: How The Blood of The Congo Powers Our Lives,” told podcast host Joe Rogan that there’s no such thing as “clean cobalt.”
“That’s all marketing,” Kara said.
Kara told Rogan that the level of “suffering” of the Congolese people working in cobalt mines was astounding.
When asked by Rogan if there was any cobalt mine in the Congo that did not rely on “child labor” or “slavery,” the Harvard visiting professor told him there were none.
“I’ve never seen one and I’ve been to almost all the major industrial cobalt mines” in the country, Kara said.
One reason for that is that the demand for cobalt is exceptionally high: “Cobalt is in every single lithium, rechargeable battery manufactured in the world today,” he explained.
As a result, it’s difficult to think of a piece of technology that does not rely on cobalt to function, Kara said. “Every smartphone, every tablet, every laptop and crucially, every electric vehicle” needs the mineral.
“We can’t function on a day-to-day basis without cobalt, and three-fourths of the supply is coming out of the Congo,” he added. “And it’s being mined in appalling, heart-wrenching, dangerous conditions.”
But “by and large the world doesn’t know what’s happening” in the Congo, Kara said.
“I don’t think people are aware of how horrible it is,” Rogan agreed.
The Biden administration recently entered into an agreement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia to bolster the green energy supply chain, despite the DRC’s documented issues with child labor.
Cobalt initially “took off because it was used in lithium-ion batteries to maximize their charge and stability,” Kara explained. “And it just so happened that the Congo is sitting on more cobalt than the rest of the planet combined,” he added.
As a result, the Congo, a country of roughly 90 million people, became the center of a geopolitical conflict over valuable minerals. “Before anyone knew what was happening, [the] Chinese government [and] Chinese mining companies took control of almost all the big mines and the local population has been displaced,” Kara said. Subsequently, the Congolese are “under duress.”
He continued: “They dig in absolutely subhuman, gut-wrenching conditions for a dollar a day, feeding cobalt up the supply chain into all the phones, all the tablets, and especially electric cars.”
British rapper Zuby recommended that his nearly one million followers watch the interview.
“This latest Joe Rogan Experience podcast is heavy,” he wrote. “If you have a smartphone or electric vehicle (that’s 100% of you) then I strongly recommend listening to it.”
Some, if not all, of the famous tech and energy companies in the world are implicated in the humanitarian crisis, Kara said.
“This is the bottom of the supply chain of your iPhone, of your Tesla, of your Samsung,” he asserted.
Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.
Slavery, involuntary servitude rejected by 4 states’ voters
Voters in four states have approved ballot measures that will change their state constitutions to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime, while those in a fifth state rejected a flawed version of the question.
The measures approved Tuesday could curtail the use of prison labor in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont.
In Louisiana, a former slave-holding state and one of a handful that sentences convicted felons to hard labor, lawmakers trying to get rid of forced prisoner labor ended up torpedoing their own measure. They told voters to reject it because the ballot measure included ambiguous language that did not prohibit involuntary servitude in the criminal justice system.
Despite the setback in Louisiana, Max Parthas, campaigns coordinator for the Abolish Slavery National Network, called Tuesday’s vote on anti-slavery measures historic.
“I believed that the people would choose freedom over slavery, if we gave them the opportunity, by taking the slavery question away from the legislators and putting it into the hands of the people. And they proved us right,” he said.
The four approved initiatives won’t force immediate changes in the states’ prisons, but they may invite legal challenges over the practice of coercing prisoners to work under threat of sanctions or loss of privileges if they refuse the work.
Vermont’s constitutional amendment removes what supporters say is ambiguous language and makes clear that slavery and indentured servitude are prohibited in the state.
While Vermont’s legislature was the first state to abolish adult slavery in 1777, its constitution stated that no person 21 or older should serve as a slave unless bound by their own consent or “by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.” The amendment removes that language and adds that slavery and indentured servitude in any form are banned.
“We think it shows how forward thinking and good-natured Vermonters are and we’re looking forward to using it as a springboard to do a lot of work on dismantling systemic racism going forward,” said Debbie Ingram, executive director of Vermont Interfaith Action and a former state senator who sponsored the proposal.
The results were celebrated widely among anti-slavery advocates, including those pushing to further amend the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits enslavement and involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. More than 150 years after enslaved Africans and their descendants were released from bondage through ratification of the 13th Amendment, the slavery exception continues to permit the exploitation of labor by incarcerated individuals.
“Voters in Oregon and other states have come together across party lines to say that this stain must be removed from state constitutions,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, told The Associated Press.
“Now, it is time for all Americans to come together and say that it must be struck from the U.S. Constitution. There should be no exceptions to a ban on slavery,” he said.
Coinciding with the creation of the Juneteenth federal holiday last year, Merkley and Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Georgia, reintroduced legislation to revise the 13th Amendment to end the slavery exception. If it wins approval in Congress, the constitutional amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of U.S. states.
After Tuesday’s vote, more than a dozen states still have constitutions that include language permitting slavery and involuntary servitude for prisoners. Several other states have no constitutional language for or against the use of forced prison labor.
Voters in Colorado became the first to approve removal of slavery exception language from the state constitution in 2018, followed by Nebraska and Utah two years later.
Parthas said he and other advocates in his network worked with 15 states on anti-slavery legislation in 2022, although only five made it to the ballot. In 2023, the network plans to work with two dozen states.
“We’ll keep doing it as many times as necessary,” until the U.S. reaches the threshold of 38 states needed to revise the 13th Amendment, Parthas said.
“Even our ancestors were unable to get this far,” he said.
The movement to end or regulate the use of prison labor has existed for decades, since the time when former Confederate states sought ways to maintain the use of chattel slavery after the Civil War. Southern states used racist laws, referred to as “Black codes,” to criminalize, imprison and re-enslave Black Americans over benign behavior.
Today, prison labor is a multibillion-dollar practice. By comparison, workers can make pennies on the dollar. And prisoners who refuse to work can be denied privileges such as phone calls and visits with family, as well as face solitary confinement, all punishments that are eerily similar to those used during antebellum slavery.
“The 13th Amendment didn’t actually abolish slavery — what it did was make it invisible,” Bianca Tylek, an anti-slavery advocate and the executive director of the criminal justice advocacy group Worth Rises, told the AP in an interview ahead of Election Day.
She said passage of the ballot initiatives, especially in red states like Alabama, “is a great signal for what’s possible at the federal level.”
“There is a big opportunity here, in this moment,” Tylek said.
____
AP writer Lisa Rathke in Montpelier, Vermont, contributed.
____
Aaron Morrison is a New York City-based member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play.
United Nations report: ‘modern slavery’ on the rise with 50 million people worldwide in forced labor, marriage
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
A United Nations report released Monday revealed that some 50 million people worldwide were living in “modern slavery” at the end of 2021, marking a significant setback in progress.
The figures were a 25% jump from the previous report in 2017 on people who were either in forced labor or marriages.
A domestic laborer as spotlighted by the United Nations.
(United Nations)
“It is shocking that the situation of modern slavery is not improving,” said International Labor Organization Director-General Guy Ryder in a statement. “Nothing can justify the persistence of this fundamental abuse of human rights.”
The ILO and partners point to worrying trends such as “commercial sexual exploitation” affecting nearly one in four people who are subject to forced labor – with the poor, women and children being disproportionately vulnerable.
ILO, along with the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration and the Walk Free foundation – a rights group that focuses on modern slavery – reported that 28 million people were in forced labor and 22 in forced marriages at the end of 2021.
The report released Monday said such figures marked an increase of 10 million people living in modern slavery since the last such report was published in 2017, based on figures a year earlier. Two-thirds of the increase pertained to forced marriages alone, it said.
UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL WEIGHS ACCUSING CHINA OF ‘CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY’
Based on available data, ILO and partners found increases in child and forced marriages in countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Congo, Egypt, India, Uganda and Yemen. But the report said wealthier countries were “not immune” to the problem, with nearly one-in-four forced marriages taking place in high or upper middle-income countries.
Crises including the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and armed conflict have underpinned rises in extreme poverty, unsafe migration, and gender-based violence in recent years, raising the risk of all forms of modern slavery, it said.
Another domestic worker featured on the UN website.
(United Nations)
All told, more than 2/3 of all forced marriages were found in the Asia-Pacific region – the world’s most populous region – but the highest number per capita came in Arab countries where nearly 5 in 1,000 people were in forced marriages.
Forced marriage, the report said, is closely tied to “long-established patriarchal attitudes and practices” – while 85% of cases were driven by “family pressure.” Regarding forced labor, about one in eight of those affected were children and half of those in commercial sexual exploitation.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Director-General Guy Rider of the U.N labor agency, which brings together workers, businesses, and governments, called for “an all-hands-on-deck approach” and said, “trade unions, employers’ groups, civil society and ordinary people all have critical roles to play.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Texas Board of Education got proposal to call slavery ‘involuntary relocation’
Minutes of a June 15 meeting in Austin, which lasted over 13 hours, said committee members got an update on the social studies review before giving their feedback.
“The committee provided the following guidance to the work group completing recommendations for kindergarten-grade 8: … For K-2, carefully examine the language used to describe events, specifically the term ‘involuntary relocation.’ ”
Aicha Davis, a Democratic board member representing Dallas and Fort Worth, raised the wording during the meeting, which was first reported by the Texas Tribune.
She told The Washington Post on Friday that when looking through a hefty package of recommendations, she saw the proposed language the group wanted to suggest, and “I immediately questioned it.”
“I am not going to support anything that describes the slave trade as ‘involuntary relocation,’ ” she said. “I’m not gonna support anything that diminishes that journey.”
Part of the proposed draft standards for the curriculum directed students to “compare journeys to America, including voluntary Irish immigration and involuntary relocation of African people during colonial times,” the Texas Tribune Texas reported and Davis confirmed to The Post.
She said that such comparisons were “absolutely” not fair. “The journey for the Irish folk is totally different from the journey of Africans,” she said, adding that any comparisons “will distort a lot of things in a young child’s mind.”
The chair of the State Board of Education, Keven Ellis, told The Washington Post in a statement that the board “voted unanimously to send the language back to be reworked.” Adding, “this board is committed to the truth, which includes accurate descriptions of historical events.” He said there had been no attempt to “hide the truth from Texas second graders about slavery.”
The work group behind the recommendation included teachers, social studies specialists, instructional coaches and a university professor, according to a list on the education agency’s website.
In a statement posted on Twitter on Thursday, the Texas Education Agency responded to the backlash the proposal had created.
“As documented in the meeting minutes, the SBOE provided feedback in the meeting indicating that the working group needed to change the language related to ‘involuntary relocation,’ ” it said.
“Any assertion that the SBOE is considering downplaying the role of slavery in American history is completely inaccurate.”
The State Board of Education mandates policies and standards for Texas public schools, setting curriculum rules, reviewing and adopting instructional materials and overseeing some funding. It will have a final vote on the curriculum at the end of the year, according to board member Davis, who said it had a responsibility to adopt truthful information to prepare students for their futures.
Next year, the board will also select textbooks to match the standards they eventually adopt, she added. “We have some work to do.”
The incident has sparked anger on social media. Former Austin and Houston police chief Art Acevedo called it “whitewashing history” and said “slavery deniers are just as dangerous as Holocaust deniers.”
One user wrote: “Involuntary relocation is what happens when you lose your home in a hurricane. Not what happened during slavery.”
“Involuntary relocation” for chattel slavery? Human bondage? The selling and buying of human beings from Africa or descended from Africans? Do people understand that for millions of u, this is family history? That for the country this represents a civil war? https://t.co/JLnS12l8p4
— Maya Wiley (@mayawiley) July 1, 2022
Texas’s education system has been the subject of much recent controversy amid a culture war over how historical and current events should be taught.
Recent policies have led to books on sexual orientation being banned, as well as those that “contain material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress.”
Last year, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill prohibiting K-12 public schools from teaching “critical race theory” — an academic framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic, not limited to individual prejudices, that conservatives have used as a label for any discussion of race in schools.
More recently, a north Texas school district was forced to apologize after an administrator advised teachers that if they have books about the Holocaust in their classrooms, they should also include reading materials that have “opposing” perspectives.
Some Texas schools may call slavery ‘involuntary relocation’
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Public schools in Texas would describe slavery to second graders as “involuntary relocation” under new social studies standards proposed to the state’s education board.
A group of nine educators submitted the idea to the State Board of Education as part of Texas’ efforts to develop new social studies curriculum, according to the Texas Tribune. The once-a-decade process updates what children learn in the state’s nearly 8,900 public schools.
The board is considering curriculum changes one year after Texas passed a law to eliminate topics from schools that make students “feel discomfort.”
Board member Aicha Davis, a Democrat who represents Dallas and Fort Worth, raised concerns during a June 15 meeting that the term wasn’t a fair representation of the slave trade. The board sent the draft back for revision, urging the educator group to “carefully examine the language used to describe events.”
“I can’t say what their intention was, but that’s not going to be acceptable,” Davis told The Texas Tribune on Thursday.
Part of the proposed draft standards obtained by The Texas Tribune say students should “compare journeys to America, including voluntary Irish immigration and involuntary relocation of African people during colonial times.”
Texas’ public education system has become heavily politicized in recent years, with lawmakers passing legislation to dictate how race and slavery should be taught in schools and conservative groups pouring large amounts of money into school board races.
Texas drew attention for a similar situation in 2015, when a student noticed wording in a textbook that referred to slaves who were brought to America as “ workers.” The book’s publisher apologized and promised to increase the number of textbook reviewers is uses.