With Independence Day approaching on the heels of Juneteenth, we’re going to be hearing a lot about American freedom -- and we want to question the nature of that “freedom.” Who was considered “free” in 1776? What does “independence” mean today to people who are incarcerated, Indigenous, or whose ancestors were enslaved? The Fourth of July was a declaration of economic freedom and a testimony to capitalism, but that economic “freedom” of America was built with slavery. As the rest of the world in the eighteenth century was moving away from a slave economy, America was doubling down by breaking ties with Europe and tightening its grip on an economy based on treating human lives as property.
While Juneteenth reminds us that chattel slavery in the United States did eventually end, we must acknowledge the modern iteration of the slave economy: prison labor. The majority of incarcerated Americans are people of color being put to work making things like office furniture and military equipment for negligible pay. Indeed, some prisons themselves were former plantations.
The echoes of slavery do not end with the prison industrial complex. They reverberate across every element of our working reality. Perhaps you’re reading this email from your desk. Maybe you work for a multinational corporation that runs like a machine: you report to someone, and someone reports to you. Everything is tracked, recorded and analyzed. Data seems to hold sway over every operation. It feels like a cutting-edge approach to management, but many of these techniques that we now take for granted were developed by and for large plantations.
Lastly, let’s be mindful of the stolen land on which we celebrate American liberty. Stolen land that was farmed by stolen people in the name of freedom. This Independence Day, take time to reflect on the indigenous and enslaved people exploited by racial capitalism, people who deserve respect and reparations for what was taken from them in the name of American independence.
As we discussed last week, there are many ways we can support reparations efforts. Among other things, call your representatives to demand that HR40, to study proposals for reparations, be passed at the federal level.
And as always, see below for more ways to take action and show up in the coming days.
In solidarity,
SURJ NYC