Today is Juneteenth, the day we celebrate the end of the Civil War and the smashing of slavery, one of the most brutally oppressive systems the world has ever known. American capitalism was built on the exploitation of enslaved Black people and the genocide of indigenous peoples. The horrors of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the ongoing exploitation of Black working people have provided unimaginable wealth for a tiny elite, while impoverishing generations of Black Americans and their communities.
The end of slavery was not won by the voices of “moderation,” who at the time argued for a kinder, gentler form of slavery and for a process of gradual change, and who derided abolitionists as divisive and uncouth people. This victory did not belong to those who attached themselves to the two parties of American capitalism, at that time the Whig Party and the Democratic Party, both of which defended the system of slavery. It did not belong to the Uncle Toms of the day. Instead, it belonged to the Black, brown and white troops who courageously fought and defeated the slave-owning class on the battlefields. And yes, it was a multi-racial struggle that succeeded in crushing the white slaveholders.
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