This lie - that Western civilization is predicated on values such as respect for human rights and the rule of law - is one the Palestinians, and all those in the Global South, as well as native and black and brown Americans, have known for centuries.
Chris Hedges, A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine
What's at stake isn't hitting everyone on the planet in equal proportions. Democracy is an experiment that needs to be actualized. Here in the US, I can stand right next to someone who has no clue about the impact of removing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies. No clue about why Affirmative Action was important. That individual, usually white, and feeling free in a democracy, won't understand, if I tried to explain, how I feel as if I'm being stripped naked.
My rights as a human being are threatened as is the history of black people existing 400 years in this country. My ancestors were property. The women, objects for breeding. No matter what my ancestors Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman did, no matter what Medger Evers, Malcolm X, Ella Baker, and Dr. Martin L. King did, democracy was never intended to include them or me or those who look like me.
So I had my doubts about writing a piece on Jeffrey Epstein. I've been back and forth with the Epstein case. To someone like me, it almost seems like old news. Wealthy and powerful white men devising ways to avoid accountability when it comes to how they treat females. I know this story. Ive been studying it. Taught it for years.
The legacy of kidnapping young girls and women from Africa, forcing them to remain in caves, until it was time to set sail for the Americas. Then grooming them to be permanently breast feeders to the mistresses' white children. grooming them to pick tobacco and cotton in the fields. Grooming them to accept the white man in their cabins at night, demanding more than a massage. Slave breeding involved the selection of prime stock to breed, regardless of the will of the participants, with the aim of producing superior children for purposes of sale or labor, Africa into the Americas: Slavery and Women, the Family and the Gender Division of Labor.
It sounds like the young teenagers abused by Epstein and his wealthy friends met the groomer first. The charming and smooth talking Ghislaine Maxwell would have assured the girls they would have money, plenty of money, and independence in a new land. Just a little favor for Epstein. A massage. Any maybe for his friends, too.
In the world of these powerful men, money is procured and exchanged for their sexual pleasure. The girls, in turn, like my black ancestors before them, aren't seen as human. Half the population of no value as human beings, just as sex objects for important men. It's business. And whenever wealthy, white men engage in business on a global scale, they don't have time to think about values. At least not the kind that respects the rights of young girls or young women.
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