NOBODIES - Slavery in Contemporary America

[ Many Americans complain of feeling overworked and underpaid, but few realize that serious labor abuses and even outright slavery can still be found in the United States. Journalist John Bowe visited sites in Florida, Oklahoma and the U.S.-owned Pacific island of Saipan to record employees' appalling first-hand accounts in Nobodies, an eye-opening look at the most exploited workers in contemporary America. ]

John Bowe was on The Lenny Lopate Show this a.m. You can find the link here.

He made very clear the economic relationship there is between roll back of democracy and the pay for labor. The more slavery, the less democracy, the less work, and the less well-paid work for everyone else. No business that pays even minimum wage can compete with the owner who works with slave labor.

He is convinced as well that sexual slavery has always been with us, and that it is the labor slavery that is the real threat to democracy and -- 'our way of life.' Not sure I agree with him, but then I'm a woman and Bowe probably has never had to seriously, personally, consider sexual slavery from that perspective.

He also made clear why this nation has such a hard time understanding that slave labor is here, and growing in leaps and bounds. It doesn't look quite like it did in the antebellum times -- it's undocumented immigrants whose papers have been stolen and who aren't seen by the community -- locked up where they work.

There's another enormous difference between antebellum slavery that I never see anyone address: the added insult that most of the new slaves have actually PAID, and their families have PAID, to have them delivered into slavery. They have PAID to be made slaves! This is the perfect end to capitalism isn't it?