the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 13, 2017
Hypocrites–we could call them that, except it’s too mild a term to describe these vile human specimens: all these famous and respected gentlemen whose sexual abuse of women, young girls or boys found its way into the light of day only because some of their victims finally accused them. Doctors for Olympic gymnasts, comedians, actors, politicians–including some who pretend to be defenders of women’s causes–media personalities, judges, Silicon Valley executives, district attorneys, educators, professors, CEOs of big companies, Hollywood producers. And of course, we shouldn’t forget presidents of the United States–current and former ones. And the list keeps growing.
Is anyone really astonished at how many of these predators have been “outed”?
Women aren’t surprised at all. We have had to live with such vile pieces of shit all our lives. How many of us–to “get ahead” or even just to keep a job and survive and put food in our children’s mouths–have endured the actions of men who believed they owned us just because we are women? How many of us risked our jobs because we told one of these vultures where to go? Or threw hot coffee in another’s face? And how many of us paid a price? How many women ended up in jail because they refused the advances of some cop or district attorney or judge?
Don’t bother counting it up, coming up with some “statistic” that will shock “polite society.” Suffice it to say, it’s every woman.
It’s the condition of being a woman in a class society.
Class society, by extension, means that the relationship between sexes is not equal. That doesn’t mean every man is a predator. But it does mean we all live in a society, whose norms and requirements serve the ruling class. And these norms determine indirectly the relations we form with each other.
For the ruling class, which passes its wealth and privileges down from one generation to the next, paternity counts. For any ruling class–and this is still true for today’s capitalist class–its continuing hold on power is determined by its ability to pass down its wealth intact. In other words, wealth and privilege pass from parents to their children. Donald Trump’s children all know who their own mother is, but what about their father? How do they know that Donald fathered them?
Today, we may have modern technology, which has given us the DNA tests that can tell us who the father is. But we still live in a society where social norms and habits are throwbacks to a much earlier stage of society–when paternity could be assured only because women were fenced in, their “virginity” enforced.
But that enforcement of virginity on some women had its mirror image in the belief that every other woman was “fair game.” It carries over today in the widespread belief that a woman who raises her children by herself is raising “illegitimate children”–what every class society from the beginning has called “bastards.”
Of course, for most people, there’s very little wealth, and no privileges at all to pass down. But the conditions of our lives are still formed by the class that dominates the society. And for that class–today the capitalist class–paternity still counts. This still relegates women to an inferior position.
This doesn’t mean that every woman has to accept being a victim. It is possible to stand up for one’s self, all the more so when other women take the same stand. It’s possible to call the predators what they are.
Not every man is a predator. It is possible for a man to function in a humane way that recognizes women as other human beings. But that requires effort, and the willpower to go against the weight of the crowd.
Even so, it’s not within class society that all of us could enjoy decent human relationships with every other member of society. That will require a society that is organized in a collective way, for the benefit of everyone.
The working class has no real wealth to pass down, it has no reason to defend privileges for some at the expense of everyone else. And it has the capacity–when it organizes itself and is acting consciously–to relegate capitalism and all of the trappings of class society to the garbage bin of history.
In other words, our class can construct communism, a society where all human beings can realize the human potential and build decent relations among each other.
Nov 13, 2017
When a Los Angeles cop came down with hepatitis A, police union officials asked the city to vaccinate 1,600 cops.
“Can’t do,” said city officials, “We have only 100 hepatitis A vaccines.”
One hundred vaccines? In the middle of an hepatitis A outbreak, when California has declared a state of emergency, the city of Los Angeles has only 100 vaccines available???
This alone shows that the public’s health is not an item near the top of the list of priorities of L.A.’s public officials, to say the least.
In fact, the public officials’ indifference to the well-being of the population has, at least partially, made this hepatitis A outbreak possible in the first place.
This outbreak in California, which began in San Diego County and spread to Los Angeles and Santa Cruz Counties, has been thriving mainly among homeless people, thanks to extremely unsanitary conditions.
Widespread homelessness has been spreading as companies cut jobs and pay. Home prices and rents have been skyrocketing–pushing many more into homelessness.
Instead of treating homelessness as a social problem and providing support for the homeless, public officials criminalize the homeless and try to push them away from wealthy neighborhoods. That’s how, for example, it’s possible that on L.A.’s skid row there are only nine toilets available to the 1,800 people who sleep there! Many homeless people have to defecate in the street–and the hepatitis A virus gets transferred to other people. Being unable to wash hands spreads the contamination further.
Once there is an outbreak like hepatitis A, the capitalist system also causes it to spread faster. The hepatitis A vaccine is so expensive. The companies that make it (pharma giants Merck and GlaxoSmithKline) set the price high to increase their profit, not to make it affordable.
Hepatitis A is often called a “third-world disease,” because it spreads due to a severe lack of sanitation, combined with poverty. But precisely those conditions have been existing–and spreading–in wealthy Southern California. Like the poverty of the “third world” itself, the avoidable rise of hepatitis A in supposedly “first-world” California is a direct product of the capitalist system.
Nov 13, 2017
Two black men, Keith Cooper and Christopher Parish, spent almost a decade in an Indiana prison for a shooting and robbery they did not commit. Parish’s conviction was reversed in 2006 after new evidence proved he was innocent. Cooper was released that same year, but was only pardoned earlier this year by the governor of Indiana. Now Cooper is suing cops in Elkhart, Indiana for restitution.
Cooper and Parish went to prison in 1996 because they were framed by police. In addition to a faked photo-identification, a big part of the case against them rested on a statement from another prisoner, Debery Coleman. Then-officer Ed Windbigler introduced this statement, claiming that Cooper had talked about the crime in jail. But Coleman refused to testify at trial and later retracted his statement, saying that he had made it up using details fed him by the police because he was promised a deal on his own charges.
While Cooper and Parish were rotting in prison on this trumped-up charge, the officer who helped frame them, Ed Windbigler, was rising through the ranks. He is now Elkhart police chief.
Can anyone be surprised that a cop who framed innocent black people rose to the top? This is just one more proof that framing people is just a normal way of functioning for the police.
Nov 13, 2017
On October 30, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office indicted Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates on 12 counts, including money laundering, making false statements, and conspiracy against the United States.
On the same day, George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign, pled guilty to the charge of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials while he was with the Trump campaign.
With these indictments and guilty pleas, Mueller is signaling that he’s going after Trump himself. It’s clear that these are just the beginning. It’s also clear that these indictments and guilty pleas are meant to be first steps in “working up the chain of command,” to the very top if necessary.
The charges against Manafort and Gates include activities that go all the way back to at least 2006, when they began working as highly paid lobbyists for a Ukrainian government with connections to Russia–without revealing that connection or those millions of dollars in payments. Commentators have noted that Manafort probably could have continued to make a killing as an agent of a foreign government for years into the future–if only he hadn’t gotten mixed up in the Trump campaign.
Trump himself appears to have financial connections to Russian mobsters, who very conveniently bought floors in Trump Tower and paid to construct buildings with his name on them–starting 20 years ago, after he declared bankruptcy.
And again, he probably could continue to have shady connections to Russian mobsters for another 20 years–if only he hadn’t become president, and if only he weren’t so arrogant.
Because Trump’s biggest crime, as far as the Feds are concerned, is that he picked a fight with the wrong people–the state apparatus itself. Starting when he asked James Comey, the FBI director, to stop investigating Michael Flynn, and then fired Comey when he didn’t, and continuing with every tweet attacking the investigation itself, he has just compounded his problems.
Trump and all his appointees have caused problems for the State Department, the military, and the FBI and Justice Department–all the big apparatuses that the U.S. ruling class uses to push its interests here and around the globe. And every time they send him a message that he’d better knock it off, he demonstrates that he’s uncontrollable. And so they ramp up the investigations even further.
They’d rather just bring him to heel. But if removing the president is the only way to keep their apparatus running smoothly, they’ll do it.
Trump’s big mistake has been that he thinks he’s bigger than the bourgeois state itself. He’s finding out that the state apparatus is not the new “Apprentice”–he can’t just dismiss it with a tweet.
Nov 13, 2017
On November 2, the Trump administration and Republicans in the House of Representatives released some of the details of their new tax plan, called "The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act." This plan aims to cut the corporate tax rates to 20%, reduce or eliminate the federal estate tax, and eliminate the alternative minimum tax. Only the filthy rich would benefit. They would get richer by $1.5 trillion over 10 years from these tax cuts, according to Fortune magazine. This is "the Tax Cuts" part of the bill.
But, the Government plans to pay for the $1.5 trillion cut for the rich by raising taxes for workers. For example, the Trump tax plan would end the deductions for state and local income and sales taxes for workers. But, if you are a business owner, or pretend to be a business owner, you would still be able to deduct those state and city taxes as business expense. This is the so-called "Jobs Act" part of the bill; the pretense that money in a capitalist’s hands means more jobs. What a joke!
Nov 13, 2017
Cuts to 401(k) Tax Deferral–Deferred?
According to Donald Trump, the proposal to limit several tax-deferral provisions for 401(k)’s into the future is “off the table.”
But members of the House Ways and Means Committee are retaining the possibility of reintroducing it later this year if they can’t come up with more tax dollars to plug deficits caused by giveaways to the corporations and the wealthy.
Attacks on the Elderly
A new attack was added to the tax bill which penalizes the elderly and especially those with crushing nursing home debt. Today’s tax provisions allow some deductions of medical expenses for elders who spend 10 percent of their income on health care costs.
Because it is only available to those who itemize, the deduction is not claimed by large sections of the population. But 3/4 of those using it are 50 or older and 70 percent have incomes below $75,000. It is one of the only protections against the astronomical cost of long term care.
Nov 13, 2017
The following article concludes our series on the Russian Revolution.
The Second Congress of Soviets opened the day after the October insurrection, on October 25th (November 7th by our calendar). The Soviets had taken power into their hands. The following is the account that Trotsky gives in his History of the Russian Revolution:
“In Smolny on the 25th of October, the most democratic of all parliaments in the world’s history was to meet.…
From the active army it was almost exclusively rank-and-file soldiers who had run the blockade of army committees and headquarters and come here as delegates. A majority of them had begun to live a political life with the revolution. They had been formed by an experience of eight months. They knew little, but knew it well. The outward appearance of the Congress proclaimed its make-up. The officers’ chevrons, the eye-glasses and neckties of intellectuals to be seen at the first Congress had almost completely disappeared.… The trench delegates were by no means a pretty picture: long unshaven, in old torn trench-coats … The plebeian nation had for the first time sent up an honest representation made in its own image and not retouched.…
At the moment of opening, there were 650 delegates with votes: 390 fell to the lot of the Bolsheviks–by no means all members of the party, but they were of the flesh and blood of the masses … Many of the delegates who had brought doubts with them were maturing fast in the red-hot atmosphere of Petrograd.…
Lunacharsky at last got a chance to read a proclamation addressed to the workers, soldiers, and peasants. But this was not merely a proclamation. By its mere exposition of what had happened and what was proposed, this hastily written document laid down the foundations of a new state structure. ‘The authority of the compromiser Central Executive Committee is at an end. The Provisional Government is deposed. The Congress assumes the power.’ The Soviet Government proposes immediate peace. It will transfer the land to the peasants, democratize the army, establish control over production, promptly summon the Constituent Assembly, guarantee the right of the nations of Russia to self-determination. ‘The Congress resolves: That all power in the localities goes over to the Soviets.’…
Lenin, whom the Congress has not yet seen, is given the floor for a report on peace. His appearance in the tribune evokes a tumultuous greeting. The trench delegates gaze with all their eyes at this mysterious being whom they had been taught to hate and whom they have learned without seeing him to love. Now Lenin, gripping the edges of the reading-stand, let little winking eyes travel over the crowd as he stood there waiting, apparently oblivious to the long-rolling ovation, which lasted several minutes. When it finished, he said simply, ‘We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order.’…
Listen, nations! The revolution offers you peace. It will be accused of violating treaties. But of this it is proud. To break up the leagues of bloody predation is the greatest historic service. The Bolsheviks have dared to do it. They alone have dared. Pride surges up of its own accord. Eyes shine.… ‘Suddenly, by common impulse,’–the story will soon be told by John Reed, observer and participant, chronicler and poet of the insurrection–‘we found ourselves on our feet, mumbling together into the smooth lifting unison of the Internationale. A grizzled old soldier was sobbing like a child. Alexandra Kollontai rapidly winked the tears back. The immense sound rolled through the hall, burst windows and doors and soared into the quiet sky.’
Did it go altogether into the sky? Did it not go also to the autumn trenches, that hatch-work upon unhappy, crucified Europe, to her devastated cities and villages, to her mothers and wives in mourning? ‘Arise ye prisoners of starvation! Arise ye wretched of the earth!’ The words of the song were freed of all qualifications. They fused with the decree of the government, and hence resounded with the force of a direct act. Everyone felt greater and more important in that hour. The heart of the revolution enlarged to the width of the whole world.”
Nov 13, 2017
The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and a group of other major international news outlets released what they’re calling the “Paradise Papers.” It is a trove of over 13 million leaked computer files showing how some of the world’s largest corporations and wealthiest individuals avoid paying taxes by hiding money in tax havens around the world. Some of the companies included are Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Disney, Uber, Nike, Walmart, Allianz, Siemens, McDonald’s, Yahoo, and Allergan, the manufacturer of Botox. Individuals mentioned include Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, cabinet members, advisors, and donors to Donald Trump, including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Steve Bannon, celebrities like Harvey Weinstein, Shakira, Bono and Madonna, and other wealthy people like Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and a close friend of Trump.
Together with previous leaks, like the 2015 Swiss leaks and 2016 Panama Papers, the latest leaks give a clearer picture of the ways the corporations and wealthy individuals hide what they do with their money.
One economist, Gabriel Zucman from the University of California, Berkeley, estimates the U.S. government loses 70 billion dollars every year in taxes due to the corporations shifting profits to tax havens. That amounts to 20 per cent of the corporate taxes it does collect. It would be enough to cover the entire amount the U.S. government spends each year on food stamps.
Extremely wealthy households hold 8.7 trillion dollars in offshore tax shelters, most of which they never report on their taxes.
It’s hidden away in a long list of low or zero-tax countries that include obscure places like the Cayman Islands, the island of Jersey and the Isle of Man in the English Channel, and Bermuda, to less obscure places like Switzerland, the Netherlands, Singapore and Ireland.
And it’s not all off-shore. States like Delaware, Nevada and South Dakota also have tax laws that allow for corporate secrecy.
It’s money that could be spent on fixing the roads, building schools and funding education, or providing healthcare to every individual.
All this financial secrecy is not only a way for the corporations and the wealthy to avoid paying taxes. Who knows where the money that’s hidden in these accounts comes from, whether it’s from selling iPhones, or laundered money from selling drugs, or human trafficking?
It may seem ironic that people supposedly in positions of responsibility like the Queen of England and U.S. Commerce Secretary Ross use such methods to hide their financial doings. But it’s a mark of capitalist society, particularly in its period of decay, that huge corporations and very wealthy people move their money to wherever they can make profits, rather than investing that wealth in production that could provide things that humanity needs. Politicians pay lip service to “closing tax loopholes” but then turn around and act as enablers for corporations and the wealthy to continue their financial maneuvering. When their financial wheelings and dealings get exposed, corporations like Apple and people like the Queen of England simply respond that they are just doing what the law allows.
The result is that the rest of us pay 40 per cent of our income in taxes to make up for some hugely profitable corporations and wealthy individuals who pay practically nothing, however much they like to pretend otherwise.
The working class cannot wait for politicians, bought and sold by these same corporations and individuals, to put a stop to it. They’ve been pushed back before, but only in the face of social movements that threatened to bring down their crooked system.
Nov 13, 2017
The following article was translated from Lutte Ouvrière, the newspaper of the French revolutionary workers’ group of that name.
As in Catalonia, other regions of Europe have political currents pushing for greater autonomy or even independence. From Scotland, to Belgium, to Italy, these currents have seen important electoral successes. While there are many differences among these different situations, these movements express a common demand: to have control over their regions’ financial resources and hand over as little as possible to the central government.
Catalonia is the richest region in Spain and pays more in taxes than it receives. A big part of the push for independence is the idea that Catalonia shouldn’t pay for the rest of Spain and that the population would benefit if its resources were controlled by a local power.
The heads of Lombardy and Venezia, two of the richest regions in Italy, initiated a referendum for October 22 which had just one question: “Venetian money must stay in Venezia,” as the governor of the region declared. The governors of these two regions are leaders of the League of the North, an anti-immigrant party that has in the past declared its objective to be the independence of the “Padanie,” the region of the plain of the Po river, in the north of the peninsula. While it has today abandoned this demand because this clique of politicians has designs on the central power, it maintains its regionalist demagogy since this is what provided it an electorate.
In Scotland, a new referendum on independence has been proposed for 2019 after the defeat of the last one in September, 2014. This may even be delayed further, but in the meantime the Scottish Nationalist Party has been in power since 2007 and its leaders have acted just like other bourgeois politicians, with the same sorts of cronyism and the same policies to defend the interests of the capitalists, whether Scottish or not.
Whether they demand independence or just greater autonomy, these movements don’t fight national or cultural oppression. They express the aspirations of powerful people and of the bourgeoisie large and small to profit from their local resources without having to share them with the ruling class of the rest of the country. This desire has grown as the economic crisis and austerity policies have exacerbated the fights among different groups for their share of the spoils. At the same time, defending regional egoism against poorer regions provides a political wedge to build an electoral base among the middle class and workers.
The workers have no interest in these autonomist or nationalist demands, or in the social demagogy which goes along with them. They have nothing to gain from breaking up the countries where they live, nor from creating new borders that will not protect them from exploitation but which will isolate them a bit more from the workers in the neighboring countries. Nationalism can only divide the workers and set them against each other.
Just the opposite: the workers’ struggle must be international. To reprise Marx’s formula: “the workers have no country, they have nothing to lose but their chains.” Whatever their origins or nationality, they have the same interests to defend and a common fight to wage in order to defend those interests and ultimately to create a world free from borders and exploitation.
Nov 13, 2017
Appalachian coal miners tested for black lung disease have been showing alarmingly higher rates of the disease since the early 2000s, local doctors warn.
Clinics in four states alone, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, reported nearly 1,000 cases so far this decade, twice as many as a federal agency counted over the last four decades. The doctors say long-time miners today are twice as likely to become diseased as long-time miners were in the 1990’s.
Black lung disease is caused when coal and rock dust breathed by miners gets in their lungs and causes scarring, which builds up and makes breathing harder. According to the doctors, miners are getting more dust in their lungs because they are working more very long shifts with longer weeks and with fewer breaks than before. The more dust they inhale, the more likely they are to get lung scarring.
The doctors also say the miners’ black lung today is made worse by breathing a higher proportion of rock dust than before, since now the companies have them cut through more feet of rock to reach narrower veins of coal.
The mining companies in their frenzy for profits from coal are pushing the growth of this incurable disease.
Nov 13, 2017
On December 24th of last year, the collapse of a big sewer pipe caused a 100-foot-wide, 250-feet- long giant sinkhole in the city of Fraser, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The sinkhole forced the closure of a major road in the city, one home was partially destroyed, and 22 residences were forced to evacuate. A gas main, a water main, and a sanitary sewer tank were all affected by the sinkhole, so utilities were also shut off in the area.
Now, nearly a year later, the battle is on as to who should pay the 70 million dollars in repair costs. County officials argue that the taxpayers of the individual cities served by the pipeline should pay. City officials argue that the taxpayers of the whole of the county should pay.
But both groups of officials are passing the buck, intent on placing the burden on the laboring population for paying the costs for massive repairs that could have been prevented, IF regular key inspections and repairs and replacements had been done all along. If tax money were used for what it should be used for: roads, bridges, pipe lines, power lines–for the whole infrastructure.
Enough is enough. The population has paid enough. Ordinary people shouldn’t have to foot the bill for infrastructure repairs that should have been happening all along. Let all those government officials, past and present, foot the bill!
Nov 13, 2017
Almost a year ago, there was a riot in one of the state prisons in the Upper Peninsula. One of the major factors involved the problems with food.
The state privatized the prison food service a few years ago, and there have been problems ever since. The state changed companies, but it hasn’t helped. Maggots, mold and dirt were found in the food at a prison near Jackson, Michigan in three separate recent incidents.
The latest news is that the newest company–Trinity–has figured out a way to profit even more. If they serve bad food, the prisoners will be forced to buy food from the prison store–AND–the company that runs the prison store is now part of that same Trinity company serving the regular “meals.” What a racket!
Nov 13, 2017
Since Trump declared he was a candidate for president in June of 2015, he has commented on 10 mass shootings in the U.S. that have occurred since that time. His pattern in these comments cements his role as Racist-in-Chief, dehumanizing whole groups of people, while excusing others.
Trump called the 5 of these shootings carried out by Muslim or black men “terrorism” and called for the shooters to be put to death, if they weren’t dead already.
In the 5 shootings carried out by white Christian men, Trump declared that the shooters had “mental problems” or he simply supported calls for “forgiveness”. He sounded sympathetic to them, even when their shootings were clearly acts of terrorism–like an attack on people at a Planned Parenthood clinic or at a bible class at a black church.
Trump’s comments consistently promote racist and anti-immigrant attitudes. In his view, white Christians who carry out mass shootings should be treated humanely, while immigrants, Muslims and black men should be considered to be criminals and put to death.
He’s clearly sending the message that one group of people in the country “deserves” more humane treatment–and has more humanity–than others. And as the president, his statements carry “official” weight.
This petty tyrant is skillful at further dividing an already divided working class. His racist rhetoric has to be exposed for what it is–an attack against the whole working class and a throwback to slavery.
Nov 13, 2017
Roy Moore, Alabama’s Republican U.S. Senate nominee, made sexual advances toward four teenage girls when he was in his 30s, according to The Washington Post.
In early 1979, Moore approached 14-year-old Leigh Corfman, eventually kissing her, undressing her, touching her over her bra and underpants, and guiding her hand to touch him over his underwear. “I wanted it over with–I wanted out,” Corfman remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.”
This 14-year-old was sexually assaulted by a then-district attorney who later became Chief Justice on the Alabama Supreme Court. A powerful man, representing the very legal authority she would have to appeal to. It is no surprise she–and other women–have waited so long to tell their stories.
Ed Henry, an Alabama state representative, had the nerve to say that these women who came forward should be subject to legal action for waiting so long! “If they believe this man is predatory, they are guilty of allowing him to exist for 40 years,” Henry said. “I think someone should prosecute and go after them. You can’t be a victim 40 years later, in my opinion.”
Henry isn’t the only Alabama official defending Moore. Several others are also rushing to his defense in the vilest ways possible. Alabama’s state auditor, Jim Ziegler, told The Washington Examiner that the women’s claims were “much ado about nothing” and further said that Moore had done nothing “immoral or illegal.” Seeking to justify Moore’s reprehensible actions, Ziegler said, “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became the parents of Jesus.”
These are outrageous statements in defense of someone who holds the law in his hands. Why? So the Republicans won’t lose a Senate seat? These cynical men are actually counting Senate seats in the face of a 14-year-old girl’s traumatic assault!
Nov 13, 2017
This new book, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar reads more like a thriller than a typical history book. Ona Judge, a slave, ran away from one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the country–George Washington, who was President of the United States at the time she fled.
Ona Judge was born on George Washington’s tobacco plantation in Mt. Vernon, Virginia. By the age of sixteen she had become Martha Washington’s most prized domestic slave. She did Martha’s hair, helped her get dressed, and did her personal laundry. She was excused from cooking and household cleaning. In the eyes of the Washingtons, she lived in luxury.
Ona Judge put up a happy front for the Washingtons–as she was required to do. But behind the scenes she secretly built bonds with free black laborers and got in contact with Philadelphia’s abolition movement. She escaped and lived in free black communities in New Hampshire. She learned to read. She became a domestic worker–doing all the things she had been "excused from" while enslaved.
President George Washington, so-called “Father of Our Country,” had signed the country’s first Fugitive Slave Act in 1793. The law made it a federal crime to give shelter, or in any way assist fugitive slaves.
As a slave-owner, Washington used every means he had to find Judge, his personal property: runaway slave advertisements in newspapers, spies and slave catchers and threats against her family who were still enslaved.
Eventually Ona Judge would be found. But George Washington was still in the public eye and wanted her back quietly. An agent of Washington’s offered her a compromise: Return “voluntarily” to enslavement, face no punishment, and be freed upon Washington’s death. She pretended to go along with the scheme. When she got word that she was about to be taken by force, she slipped out of town in the middle of the night–starting over, yet again in a new town.
Ona Judge lived into her seventies. She was never caught. Towards the end of her life, she granted interviews that were published in two different abolitionist newspapers.
Through her eyes we see how slaves built this country–and how they resisted building it–from the very moment this country was founded.