slavery updated

(let's add the legal consideration that Social Security is not among the enumerated powers of the Constition, per Supreme Court decision mentioned in Bork's pixalted idea of "original intent")

SLAVERY UPDATED

On February 26, 2003 there was a demonstration about reparations for slavery at the federal courthouse, prior to a hearing on the national, consolidated lawsuit against several corporations over benefitting from slavery. Several dozen people were there, from across the country, some holding a large banner demanding the millions owed black people. Conrad Worrill, Northestern Illinois University professor and local reparations organizer, was talking to some attorneys as I approached. I asked if he knew photo IDs were required to enter the building. Yes, he said, and I told him I was not allowed in the building the previous week because I did not have a photo ID. "We’ll give you a full report," he said, in front of the banner, He went on to tell the demonstrators at least twice to have photo IDs ready to get in the building.

I later gave one of the attorneys an affidavit about my exclusion and asked her to give it to one of the attorneys not there. Also, a copy of a conversation in the Reconstruction Congress, that white people could have been enslaved through unjust state convictions prior to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. I also told her and a colleague about the two South African blacks on the David Susskind show, who said that at age fifteen or sixteen they had to get a book at a government office, that they had to get it signed by both employers every time they changed jobs, and that all the information was duplicated in a computer in the capital. Put in a guy’s number and his life history spits out. That sounds a lot like Social Security to me, I said, also that I was fired from a job some years ago for not showing a Social Security card, and that you have to give an SS number to get a photo ID. You have to live, the colleague said later, as he headed into the courthouse, and I reminded him of the spiritual, before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.

If any of them were the least bit scandalized over this, it entirely escaped me. Heaven forbid this bunch should have to take advice from an essentially white movement, but "registration leads to confiscation," as the anti-gun control mantra goes. Isn’t there a bit too much "registration" by Social Security number as it is, without requiring it for entry into public buildings? In particular, for court proceedings, whose very nature requires them to be open? Heaven forbid again that anyone should defend bad, old-fashioned South African apartheid, but, beyond the sheer, utter hypocrisy of venting on its "influx control" passbook laws while tolerating this, there is the sheer, utter stupidity of blissfully, blithely allowing the same control mechanism to sneak up on us.

Heaven forbid likewise that anyone should defend white racism, but there is no point in acting out a stereotype and tempting it either. Is the reparations movement solely or primarily concerned with fabulous moola? In that case, how does it dispel the gibes that slavery ended a over century ago and that reparations are just more welfare?

If the primary concern is abuse of power the gibes discredit themselves. There are abuses of power continuing into this day and age not far removed from slavery, fully considered. Having taken two cases to the U. S. Supreme Court, both dismissed without the key arguments considered, I have a lawsuit over "badges and incidents" of slavery, outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Slaves were not allowed to sue, own property, make contracts, take part in public proceedings, etc. Does that ring a bell? Modern social security was instituted by Chancellor Bismarck in Germany for the explicit purpose of making people manageable. See Sheldon Richman, Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, 2001.

How many bells does that ring?

William F. Wendt, Jr