Walter Scott during his service in the U.S. Coast Guard in the mid-1980s
If you’ve never wondered: how does a cop shoot a man in the back, plant a gun on the dead man, then claim his life was in danger—you might not be aware of the fact the the police evolved from slave catching patrols in the United States.
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You might be under the misapprehension that the 13th Amendment, which was ratified on this day in 1865, outlawed slavery—when in fact it legalized slavery in the case of incarceration.
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You may not be aware that 97% of people who are arrested never get their day in court, as so-called “public defenders” arrange plea bargains to channel millions of men and women into modern-day plantations where companies like Microsoft, McDonalds, and Starbucks use slave labor (simultaneously taking jobs away the American workforce).
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And if folks dare to demand their rights, they are treated like Kalief Browder, may he and his mother rest in peace.
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Today, more people are enslaved in the United States than in 1850. In fact, it is such a lucrative system that the U.S. holds 25% of the world’s prison population. Why would the government hold itself accountable for its crimes, when, for 151 years, people have told themselves, sold themselves a blatant lie?
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It is evident that cognitive dissonance is not only a logical fallacy, it is a disease of the soul—but what it does not change are the facts. The past never ended; it is playing out every day with every false arrest, every extrajudicial killing, every hate crime that goes unprosecuted—and in the case of the man who murdered Eric Garner and got a raise in salary, it is rewarded.
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Ava DuVernay provided a basic tutorial to bring folks up to speed about the so-called American legal system with her documentary film, 13TH, currently streaming on Netflix—making it all too clear, in the United States, there is no greater patriot that the abolitionist.