"Wept Tears of Hopeless Anguish"
by Black Kos Editor, Justice Putnam
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, though born a free woman in the time of slavery, was nonetheless, a fierce advocate for abolition and equal rights. Part of the Free Produce Movement, a boycott of goods made with slave labor, Harper insisted what she owned was truly from, Free Labor. "Free" meant, "not enlsaved" and "Produce" was any good or crop made or harvested by human effort. Some have argued how effective the movement truly was, given that slavery existed for almost a century from the movement's inception. But whether a boycott is against "Blood Diamonds", or "Sweat Shop Fabric", an individual stand, indeed, carries great power. It brings about irrevocable change, like waves wearing away rock along the coast line.
When asked by the landed gentry of the times, why she would boycott goods made by her "people", she insisted that what she owned was Free, that it was manufactured by men and women of their own Free Will, who were paid an honest wage for an honest day's work. She insisted that what she owned was not extracted by the whip and the lash, by the tearing apart of families, the flailing of flesh and the murder of the Soul.
But when confronted with the assault on liberty today, a free people making goods freely for a free people is sure to be judged as woke, and the chief executing officer will make sure we suffer for it. After all, the King did issue an edict to ban anything that puts white America in a bad light.
I wear an easy garment,
O’er it no toiling slave
Wept tears of hopeless anguish,
In his passage to the grave.
And from its ample folds
Shall rise no cry to God,
Upon its warp and woof shall be
No stain of tears and blood.
Oh, lightly shall it press my form,
Unladen with a sigh,
I shall not ‘mid its rustling hear,
Some sad despairing cry.
This fabric is too light to bear
The weight of bondsmen’s tears,
I shall not in its texture trace
The agony of years.
Too light to bear a smother’d sigh,
From some lorn woman’s heart,
Whose only wreath of household love
Is rudely torn apart.
Then lightly shall it press my form,
Unburden’d by a sigh;
And from its seams and folds shall rise,
No voice to pierce the sky,
And witness at the throne of God,
In language deep and strong,
That I have nerv’d Oppression’s hand,
For deeds of guilt and wrong.
- Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
"Free Labor"
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Political analyst Michael Podhorzer discusses why the Republican candidates in New Jersey and Virginia came nowhere near matching Trump’s 2024 support among voters of color and young voters. The New Republic: The Young Voters and Minorities Who Backed Trump in 2024 Hate Him Now
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Voters under age 30, Black voters, and Latinos were much more supportive of President Trump in 2024 than they were of past Republican presidential candidates. But exit polls conducted last week of the races in New Jersey and Virginia show that Republican candidates didn’t match Trump’s performance. The GOP lost overwhelmingly among all three voting blocs. Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO and now a prominent writer on Substack, argues that the idea that Trump had built some kind of durable multiracial working-class coalition was always overstated. He says both the 2024 and 2025 elections can be attributed to backlash against the incumbent president. Podhorzer and Perry also discuss the election results in New York City, which showed that Zohran Mamdani’s base isn’t really working-class voters but self-identified liberals and those under 30. He won more than 70 percent of those two blocs, while running about evenly with Andrew Cuomo among voters without college degrees and those with less than $50,000 in family income.
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Two areas are thrust together under a new map Missouri Republicans passed to give the GOP another winnable seat ahead of next year's elections. The Grio: Different needs but similar fears arise in communities on both ends of Missouri’s redistricting
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To grasp the effects of the rush to redraw America’s congressional districts before the 2026 elections, consider one historically Black neighborhood in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and the small town of Boonville, population 7,800.
The 18th and Vine community is known for a museum telling the story of segregated professional baseball in the decades before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier. Its leaders are talking about expanding the city’s streetcar line to lure more visitors to its cultural and historical attractions.
About 100 miles (161 kilometers) east, Boonville leaders want federal help restoring an old railroad bridge to give cyclists a more direct route on a popular cross-state bike trail near the mostly white farming community.
The two areas are thrust together under a new map Missouri Republicans passed in September in response to President Donald Trump’s push to give the GOP another winnable seat ahead of next year’s elections. Texas answered Trump’s call first, tilting five seats toward Republicans, but lawmakers in both major political parties are fighting a mid-decade, state-by-state battle to squeeze extra territory out of states they control. In California, voters approved a new House map to boost Democrats.
Missouri Republicans targeted Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, shaving off portions of his Kansas City district and stretching it into Republican-heavy rural areas.
Congressional districts often mix rural and urban areas, but redoing boundaries can alter priorities and change which federal projects representatives pursue and how they pursue things like health care, housing and education funding. When Congress debates a farm bill, is protecting food assistance benefits more important than preserving crop insurance? It often depends on who’s being represented.
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Mapi Gloricien lies in his mother’s arms in a hospital in Kinshasa, among the fastest-growing cities on Earth. Just days old, he’s one of an estimated 4.5 million children expected to be born in the Democratic Republic of Congo this year — a generation that should power economic growth for decades to come.
He’s part of one of the most significant demographic changes on earth. Africa’s population has doubled in three decades and it’s now home to about 1.5 billion people, a figure that’s predicted to grow to 4 billion by the turn of the century. This growth has been driven by improved access to medical care, plummeting infant mortality since 1990, and persistently high birth rates. Already about 60% of people south of the Sahara desert are younger than 25, compared with one- third in the US, according to the United Nations.
The expected number of annual births in Congo is more than 800,000 greater than across the US or the European Union’s 27 member states. So while the developed world worries about getting old, Africa is getting younger.
Paul Morland, a demographer and author of No One Left: Why the World Needs More Children, says Africa’s population surge has the potential to transform global politics, international relations, economics, culture and ecology, a view echoed by other analysts and economists. “It comes when humanity is far advanced in technology compared with previous population explosions elsewhere,” says Morland, “so we should be better able to cope.”
Success will depend on both shrinking the existing rate of population increase, and also creating the economic opportunities — jobs are a key driver of growth in the early stages of development — for young people entering the labor market. Getting it wrong could fuel poverty, trigger more conflict and potentially spark mass emigration.
A pivotal metric will be the ratio of the working-age population — defined as those aged 15 to 64 — to dependents, children and the elderly, which stands at 1.3:1 today. As this ratio increases, sub- Saharan Africa will begin to reap the benefits of the so-called demographic dividend — the boost to growth that comes when workers outnumber dependents, creating a window for faster development.
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