For All of Us to Live Free, Capitalism–Not Just ICE–Must Die
Black History Month: “The Dirty Business of Slavery.”
“The Dirty Business of MAGA”
“The Dirty Business of Tech Fascism”
The Dirty Business of Billionaires”
“The Dirty Business of Axis of Evil: Israel/USA”
“The Dirty Business of ICE’s Slave Patrol Roots”
“The Dirty Business of Israelization of the World”
The phrase “our American Israel” comes from a Puritan expression of colonial American exceptionalism. In 1799, Abiel Abbot, a Massachusetts minister, preached a Thanksgiving sermon titled “Traits of Resemblance in the People of the United States of America to Ancient Israel.” The sermon starts by noting common usage at the time: “It has been often remarked that the people of the United States come nearer to a parallel with Ancient Israel, than any other nation upon the globe. Hence, ‘our american israel,’ is a term frequently used; and common consent allows it apt and proper.” This parallel with biblical Israel conferred an exceptional identity on the United States right from the start.
After World War II, similar parallels again made the modern state of Israel appear exceptional in American eyes. The phrase “our American Israel” originally used the biblical nation metaphorically to refer to the United States, yet the possessive construction also expresses how Americans have made Israel their own. This process in the twentieth century involved projection—of desires, fears, fantasies—onto the modern state of Israel. It also entailed concrete exchanges and intimate interactions fueled by the circulation of individuals and institutions between the two countries. This combination of identifcation, projection, and possession has contributed abundantly to ideas of American national identity, and to support for Israel as well.
Abbot’s eighteenth-century sermon grounded the unstable identity of the new American nation-state in the known typology of the biblical Israel. The sermon helped to constitute the new nation as an “imagined community.”8 The word “our” conveyed a sense of national belonging to the community of white Protestant settlers, now citizens of the new nation, in part by excluding outsiders from the circle of possession. It not only distinguished the United States from “any other nation on the globe” but also effaced the memory of the Native communities that had been exterminated by warfare, disease, commerce, and agriculture to make way for the divinely chosen nation.
“The Dirty Business of Capitalism”
Rather than dismissing Trump and his crew as “evil,” “wrong,” or “stupid,” Du Bois’s careful delineation of the motives of both sides of capital in the Reconstruction struggle encourages us to think about what this political moment says about the dead-end crisis of capitalism as a whole. Like then, the politicians of the two-party system, with different tactics, have one goal in mind — the preservation of the system of capitalism.
Despite broad public opposition, on Jan. 22 National Park Service (NPS) workers carried out orders from President Donald Trump to remove over a dozen display panels about the history of enslavement in the U.S.
Ahh, Black History Month:
Last May, all 433 National Park Service installations and other Interior Department holdings were given a mid-September 2025 deadline to “rid exhibits, signs, films and bookstores of statements and literature” that Trump and Burgum determined unduly focused on “how bad slavery was.” (New York Times, Aug. 19, 2025)
But covering up the U.S. racist history was not their only goal.
[Trump’s racist, white supremacist executive order called for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to “ensure” that content which “inappropriately disparages” U.S. individuals past or living ceases to exist at national parks, including Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. In 2026, this park will be at the center of the celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary.]
In California, at Muir Woods National Monument, they ordered a plaque removed that described the beneficial relationship of the planet’s tallest trees in slowing down global warming. They ordered the Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts to stop showing films about the women and immigrants exploited in that city’s textile mills.
Native News Online noted Sept. 8 that the National Museum of the American Indian — with locations in New York City and Washington, D.C. — was one of eight Smithsonian institutions under audit with Trump’s order. The goal was to sugarcoat history while glorifying the crimes of white European settler colonialists.
The Indigenous news service reported that at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., in early September, U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) gave voice to a far-right, settler-colonial false narrative that “America was founded by and intended for Europeans.”
Alluding to the Manifest Destiny doctrine, Schmitt claimed: “We’re a nation of settlers, explorers and pioneers — born on the ocean waters that carried the first ships to our shores and forged in the crucible of a wild frontier. Our people tamed a continent, built a civilization from the wilderness and wrote our nation’s name in history.”
But the true history that Trump, Schmitt and other neo fascists want to wipe away is the genocidal attacks that these settler colonialists carried out against Indigenous peoples, equating Indigenous resistance to “barbarism,” much like Israel does today with the Palestinian Resistance.
As horrific as the public executions of white Minnesotans Renee Good and Alex Pretti are, they were preceded by the murders of Keith Porter, Jr, Brayan Garzón-Rayom, Marie Ange Blaise, Jesus Molina-Veya, and dozens more under the latest regime’s immigration policies. That the deaths of white people spurred the demands for accountability and even abolition among a larger portion of the population, after the deaths of more than 30 non-white people were not responded to in the same way if at all, is also a by-product of the racial bias inherent in this country’s history that has been ingrained in the psyche of its people. Even the good white people who do want change do not realize how they have been conditioned to not care about the repression of “the other,” and only respond when that repression shows up on their door or the door of someone they can personally identify with. — Continuity of Social Control From Slave Patrols To Policing To ICE Jacqueline Luqman
Go to the bottom of the article and watch the slide show: Thousands in Tucson join national anti-ICE protests
Try ten years ago:
To Be Published in the Local Rag Sometime in Feb. 2026 (without all the graphics and asides : White Guy Paulo Kirk writing yet another Black History essay for the local rag:
*****
Black History is American History
by Paul Haeder
The 2026 National Black History Month theme, designated by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), is “A Century of Black History Commemorations.” This theme marks the 100th anniversary of the first Negro History Week, established in 1926 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson.
By the time this is published, many will have missed an insightful guy’s talk on York, Feb. 9 at the Edgefield in Gresham: Zachary Stocks, executive director of Oregon Black Pioneers, who has been both in Yachats and in Waldport.
York was an enslaved man who took part in the Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1803-1806. But what is known about York besides his participation in this journey? Zachary Stocks of Oregon Black Pioneers will present a detailed biography of York which reveals his experiences during the expedition, his life before and after, and his place within national African American history.
Zachary Stocks is the executive director of Oregon Black Pioneers, a public historian and interpreter. He previously served as program director of Grays Harbor Historical Seaport and visitor services manager of the Northwest African American Museum. Zachary is a former intern of Colonial Williamsburg and Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and a former park ranger at Lewis & Clark National Historical Park. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the College of William & Mary with a certificate in public history from the National Institute for American History and Democracy, and a master’s degree in museology from the University of Washington.
I’ve had him on my radio show.
In Waldport, Stocks was here to dedicate the bronze statue of this community’s best kept secret: Louis Southworth
Louis came to Oregon in 1853. Slavery was not legal in Oregon, but African Americans had been prohibited from settling in Oregon. The Oregon State Constitution, passed in 1859, contained an exclusion clause making it illegal for African Americans to live in Oregon (the clause was not repealed until 1926, and the population of African Americans in Oregon did not surpass one percent until 1960).
Southworth was born into slavery in Tennessee on July 4, 1829. His owner, James Southworth, brought him to Oregon. James deemed Louis to be his property. He and his brother William Southworth petitioned the Oregon territorial government to protect slave property.
James Southworth caught gold fever, so he, his family and Louis went to California. Louis Southworth made money playing his violin for dance schools, and by 1858, he had raised $1,000 (equivalent today to $39,527.07).
He purchased his freedom.
“In 1879, Louis Southworth and his family homesteaded in the Alsea Valley. He cleared ten to twelve acres per year over a six-year period, using animal power and a wooden plow, hunted with a homemade rifle, and fished to supply food for the family. He also built a sawmill and ferried people up the Alsea River. Southworth was an active member of the community. He donated land for a school, taught his horse tricks for a show at the Oregon State Fair, and played his fiddle for dances in Waldport.”
Now, Zachary and Oregon Black Pioneers have a new talking-visual tour: York, an enslaved man, who took part in the Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1803-1806.
Black History month isn’t good enough to erase the outright ignorance and blatant racism of this country, especially under Racist in Chief Trump.
How many teachers know that York was crucial to Lewis and Clark’s success? He was a skilled hunter, successfully negotiated with Native Americans, and cared for ill soldiers. Few know that York was a naturalist who helped describe new plants and animals. However, York has never been formally acknowledged for his contributions to natural history. No plants or animals bear York’s name like those of Clark and Lewis.
Fast forward now, with the Department of War (Crimes) and Cap’n Crunch Hegseth’s racism. Hegseth has insisted that, instead of letting the military evolve like it usually does, to reimpose old policies that will adversely affect Black service members more than any other group.
Hegseth wants to kick people out because they get razor bumps. One thing that I noticed and my 32-year military veteran father observed starting in boot camp is that many Black service members have issues with shaving every day. Disposable razors cause nasty ingrown hairs, and Black men will suffer more than the rest of us from shaving every day. Pseudofolliculitis barbae is the medical term.
We are in this Anti-Black Everyday Celebration under conservatives: Hegseth has found a way to rename bases back to Confederate generals by using non-Confederate heroes’ names, and to rename ships and scrub Jackie Robinson from DoD. Accused rapist Hegseth has removed programs for women service members that Trump had enacted. He’s disrespected the Navajo code talkers.
[Also wiped in the purge — albeit temporarily — were the Navajo Code Talkers, as many as 420 enlisted Marine Corps men who transmitted encrypted messages during World War II by using a code based on their Diné language.
While the Pentagon blamed artificial intelligence for scrubbing websites that have since been restored, the agency’s actions still lingerthroughout the Navajo Code Talker community.]
I’ve heard Professor Gerald Horne talk and I am attempting to get him on my KYAQ show.
Here’s what I heard him open up with — “The thesis of my talk this evening is simple: black lives do not matter and have not historically because the settler colonialism that formed the basis for the resultant U.S.A. was structured this way,” said Horne, the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
In Lincoln County, for this paper’s readership, learning curves are steep. It is not just MLK Junior road signs.
[There are at least 955 streets named after Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States. These thoroughfares are located in 41 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Beyond the U.S., there are more than 1,000 streets named after King worldwide, including locations in Italy, Israel, Haiti, and South Africa.]
Dang, a whole lot of history you have to catch up on: Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Fred Hampton, Assata Shakur, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Robert F. Williams, W.E.B. Du Bois, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, George Jackson.
There are thousands of Black, African and African-American thinkers and activists, scholars and artists. But Gerald Horne sets down a cornerstone for all of us to consider:
“If black lives are to matter in the United States, we’re going to have to engage in an agonizing reappraisal of our present plight, critique the path that has brought us to the precipice of fiasco in recent decades and embark on a new path.”
Here are three pieces of advice for white teachers who want to become accountable allies:
a.) Examine your relationships with Black colleagues and parents;
b.) Avoid performative allyship;
c.) Do more than pay lip service to a culturally sensitive curriculum.
“My advice to those colleagues, and to other white teachers who care about equity and justice, is to look inward as critically and intentionally as you look outward, and commit to tangible change within yourselves. If there is an unwillingness among our white colleagues to interrogate their complicity in white supremacy, our culture is not and will never be a fit. Education is the praxis of freedom. Our fight requires individuals who are willing to go the marathon distance; sprinters are not needed,” says LaTrina Johnson, assistant principal of curriculum and instruction at RePublic High School in Nashville, Tennessee.
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