Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Bob Stannard, a Manchester resident and a lobbyist for Citizens Action Network, an environmental group that opposes the relicensure of Vermont Yankee. Stannard’s commentary first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
Those who helped others to help create this great country did so for free. Not completely for free, as they were provided food and shelter, but they were not paid for their hard work. They were, after all, slaves.
The workers who built this great country had one distinct advantage over those who live here today. They knew they were slaves. They knew that they had no freedom. The workers of today think they have freedom, but do they?”
They toiled in the hot fields doing the work that needed to be done so that their owners could become wealthy and live a life of great freedom and luxury. Should they take ill, they died. There were no benefits. They were sold on the open market. Their families were torn apart. Their owners couldn’t have cared less.
Roughly a dozen of the framers of our Constitution owned slaves. They were well educated and financed, which afforded them the opportunity to be where they were in their day. Some of the founders of this nation did wince at the idea of slavery (long after they had accumulated great wealth) and some freed their slaves after the signing of the Constitution. As we know, the issue of whether or not one man could own another in this country was settled after our Civil War.
However, it has been off the backs of cheap labor that many have benefited since the end of the Civil War. From digitalhistory.com:
“Many former slaves believed that their years of unrequited labor gave them a claim to land; ‘forty acres and a mule’ became their rallying cry. White reluctance to sell to blacks, and the federal government’s decision not to redistribute land in the South, meant that only a small percentage of the freed people became landowners. Most rented land or worked for wages on white-owned plantations.
Out of the conflicts on the plantations, new systems of labor slowly emerged to take the place of slavery. Sharecropping dominated the cotton and tobacco South, while wage labor was the rule on sugar plantations.
Increasingly, both white and black farmers came to depend on local merchants for credit. A cycle of debt often ensued, and year by year the promise of economic independence faded.”
And thus came the redistribution of wealth right along with debt; two of America’s favorite pastimes.
The Industrial Age ushered in a new realm of labor exploitation, which led to the formation of unions. The workers believed that those they were helping to make rich should give back some of that wealth in the form of better pay and benefits. The results would be a better standard of living and a more secure life for the average Joe. Although not well received (sharing wealth is a tough thing for some to do) the nation hummed along pretty well through the next few wars.
Then in 1993 came NAFTA and FTAA; Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. Catchy titles and they sounded great. Allowing free trade investments in other countries was sure to be a good deal for the American worker.
We now see how that worked out. America’s trade deficits are way out of whack along with our national debt. These imbalances can be attributed to the lost jobs here in America. We have successfully shifted the work force for products that we are dependent upon to other countries where labor is cheap and exploitable. That’s what any good businessman will do if allowed to do so and we have allowed them to do so.
Thanks to a Supreme Court that has decided to legislate from the bench, corporations are now considered to be individuals; arguably one of the worst decisions ever made. From Wiki.answers:
“When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country’s founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.”
The workers who built this great country had one distinct advantage over those who live here today. They knew they were slaves. They knew that they had no freedom.
The workers of today think they have freedom, but do they? When the Supreme Court allowed a corporation to have the same standing as an individual, something feared by those who founded this great country that is the day we handed over our freedom.
That is the day we gave up control of our destiny. We have now granted corporations, an entity that can’t love or feel; won’t sacrifice itself to save the life of a stranger and cares not about forms of government and human rights but only of profits, to be equal to you and me.
The people of yesterday knew that they could be bought and sold like cattle. The people of today are in denial that they, too, are disposable. We are being discarded for cheaper labor by corporations that we have now legally defined as individuals with the same rights as you and me.
Is this really what we want America to be?
