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The overwhelming support of New York City voters for Bill de Blasio is the latest sign of the shift towards a new populist left in America. De Blasio owes his unexpected tailwind to campaigning on issues considered by insiders to be too polarizing for winning politics.

One is De Blasio's promise to redress the "tale of two cities" inequalities among New Yorkers, an issue forced into mainstream discourse by the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement - not by New York Democrats aligned with Wall Street. The other is De Blasio's pledge to sharply curb police stop-and-frisk policies directed against young people of color - aggressive tactics favored by a majority of white voters and overwhelmingly criticized by African Americans, Latinos and Asian-American voters.

Despite its Democratic voter majority, New York in recent decades has been the political stronghold of the plutocratic Mayor Michael Bloomberg and, before him, the abrasive law-and-order Mayor Rudolph Giuliani - both Republicans with national, even global, reach. Democrats have lacked a progressive voice on the national stage of American politics often provided by the New York mayor's office - until now.

De Blasio will have a mandate for economic and social reform backed by a newly-elected 51-member city council, the most progressive in years. As Juan Gonzáles of Pacifica's DemocracyNow! put it:

    I can't think of a time like this when so many progressives have been elected at once.

With American politics polarized between the Obama center and the thriving Tea Party, the only opening for the left is through state and local federalism serving as "laboratories of reform", to paraphrase former Justice Louis Brandeis. After the Gilded Age and the Great Crash of the 1920s, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1934-47) and legislators like Robert Wagner created the first pillars of the New Deal before it become the national platform of the Democrats. They successfully fought not only Wall Street bankers, but a virulent and racist American right.

De Blasio is positioned to similarly shift the nation's dialogue, policies and priorities in a progressive direction - assuming he delivers on his campaign pledges. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the federal government has passed a loophole-ridden Dodd-Frank reform law, which failed even to regulate the trillions floating in the derivatives industry. Wall Street investors have been richly rewarded since then, while middle-class incomes stagnate and the numbers of poor Americans reach the highest in 50 years. A report last week from the respected American Community Survey noted:

    No other major American city has such income inequality when it comes to rich and poor when it comes to New York.

Among De Blasio's first challenges will be prodding Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature in Albany to permit local tax increases to fund universal pre-kindergarten in New York City. Cuomo and most pundits say the De Blasio proposal is going nowhere, but seasoned reporters like Gonzales are not so sure. "It's hard but doable. I'm not sure that Albany will resist the home rule message from a new mayor with a large mandate."

De Blasio has direct power over New York City's $70bn budget and re-zoning policies, which, under Bloomberg, showered favors on a real estate industry bent on competing with London and Hong Kong at the expense of residential neighborhoods. An early test for De Blasio will be the Midtown East re-zoning project left unfinished by Bloomberg, which would erect Empire State Building skyscrapers from the East River to downtown. De Blasio wants to "fix" the proposal, while community groups are 100% opposed, saying they would be left in permanent shadows.

De Blasio also can tackle income inequality by signing the living wage ordinance on city contracts, or by preventing Wall Street developers getting special city abatements - measures that Bloomberg vetoed. De Blasio didn't flinch on the issue when confronted in closed meetings with developers during the campaign.

When De Blasio first raised his opposition to the police stop-and-frisk policies, according to Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the candidate began rising in the polls against other contenders in the Democratic primary. The stop-and-frisk policy, a variation of racial profiling against black and brown young people, is generally supported by white and worried New Yorkers and overwhelmingly opposed by communities of color.

De Blasio and his African-American wife have a teenager, named Dante, whose Afro style even caught the attention of President Obama. As Dante leafleted with his father at subway turnstiles, emotional memories of the murdered Florida teenager Trayvon Martin were palpable, if rarely mentioned.

New York under Mayor Giuliani fanned then popular American policies of mass incarceration towards youngsters who resembled Dante de Blasio. From 2008 to 2012, the NYPD stopped nearly 2.9 million New Yorkers, a majority of them young, about 85% black or brown. On average, 88% of those stopped were completely innocent of any crime or misdemeanor.

When a federal appeals court halted a judicial order ordering detailed changes in the NYPD last week, De Blasio expressed "extreme disappointment" and pledged to move forward on police reform from day one. How he will do so is procedurally muddled for the moment, but there is little doubt that another staple of the Bloomberg era is ready for the dustbin.

Will De Blasio adhere to his promises? He is, after all, a mainstream Democratic party operative and policy wonk who once managed Hillary Clinton's centrist campaign for the US Senate. Decades ago, he was deeply involved in the Nicaragua Solidarity Movement against Ronald Reagan's illegal contra war. De Blasio seemed nervous when this past association surfaced earlier in the campaign. But the Republicans could gain no traction on the issue.

It is reassuring that De Blasio has roots in past social movements instead of the usual pedigrees for a political career. If he has veered back to his lefty roots, it is enabled by a popular anger among voters. This anger was fanned by the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, reinforced by heavy-handed policing, in a city whose power brokers are addicted to opulence.

The media widely acknowledges that Occupy Wall Street "changed the conversation" in America. De Blasio won't represent the 99%, but a healthy majority will do. From Wednesday, Bill de Blasio will have the largest megaphone of any conversation-changer on the national scene....(Click title for more)

On Tuesday, Bill de Blasio won a landslide victory to become the mayor of New York City, voters in New Jersey and Seatac, Washington supported minimum wage hikes, and the Illinois legislature voted to legalize same-sex marriage. These are among the progressive victories that swept across the country.

Despite a few setbacks, progressives had much to cheer about, sensing that the tide is turning against the unholy alliance of big business, the Tea Party, and the religious right. Growing protests -- such as the "Moral Monday" movement in North Carolina, militant immigrant rights activism, battles to protect women's health clinics from state budget cuts, strikes by low-wage workers, civil disobedience actions to challenge voter suppression, and student campaigns against global energy corporations -- reflect a burgeoning progressive movement bubbling up from below the surface that is beginning to have an impact on elections.

By far the most impressive symbol of this rising tide is de Blasio's landslide win, which the New York Times called "a sharp leftward turn for the nation's largest metropolis." De Blasio campaigned on a bold progressive platform, promising to address the city's widening income inequality, gentrification, and hollowing out of the middle class. De Blasio, the city's public advocate, trounced Republican Joe Lhota (a transportation official and long-time advisor to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani) by a 73 to 24 percent margin. His victory represents a rejection of 20 years of business-oriented municipal policies under Giuliani and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

De Blasio pledged to end the city's racist "stop and frisk" police practices, to expand affordable housing, and to increase pre-kindergarten classes by raising taxes on residents earning over $500,000, subject to approval from the state legislature. After winning a come-from-behind victory in the Democratic primary, de Blasio built a powerful grassroots campaign that drew on unions, community organizations, and other progressives. On Election Day, more than 10,000 de Blasio volunteers were turning out voters.

In addition to this overwhelming mandate, the new mayor will have a more progressive City Council to work with. The 51-member Council will have at least 21 new members, many of them supported by unions and the Working Families Party, which also played a big role in de Blasio's victory. The council's Progressive Caucus is likely to double in size from 10 to 20. Council member Brad Lander, a former community organizer, cofounder of the Progressive Caucus, and key de Blasio ally, was re-elected by a wide margin in his Brooklyn district.

Americans' growing frustration with widening inequality, stagnant wages, and persistent poverty can be seen in the mounting momentum to raise wages. Even as New Jersey voters were giving conservative Republican Gov. Chris Christie a second term, they also overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to raise the state's minimum wage by a dollar to $8.25 an hour. The new law includes an automatic cost-of-living increase each year. Last year Christie vetoed a bill to raise the state's minimum wage to $8.50 an hour, so the Democrats in the state legislature pushed back by putting the question to the voters. On Tuesday, it passed with 60 percent of the vote despite opposition from business groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, and Christie, who said that raising the wage is "just an irresponsible thing to do."

Three thousand miles away, voters in the Seattle suburb of Seatac, Washington embraced the Good Jobs Initiative' to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for workers in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and at airport-related businesses, including hotels, car-rental agencies, and parking lots. At midnight, it was winning 54 to 46 percent, although many mail-in ballots had not yet been counted. The new law, sponsored by labor unions and other progressives, applies to more than 6,000 workers. Washington State's current minimum wage is $9.19, the highest in the nation. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and challenger Ed Murray (who beat McGinn on Tuesday) both supported the Seatac initiative and raised the possibility of doing the same thing in Washington's largest city.

The two minimum wage victories come on the heels of growing activism by low-wage workers around the country, including strikes and other protests by employees at fast-food restaurant chains and Wal-Marts. A year ago, voters in Albuquerque, N.M., and Long Beach, California, raised local minimum wages, adding to the more than 150 cities that have adopted living wage laws. Last month, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation raising the state's minimum wage from $8 to $10 an hour - a bill he had vetoed a year earlier. Activists in Idaho, South Dakota, and Alaska are gathering signatures to put minimum wage hikes on the ballot next year. Their counterparts in Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Hawaii are pushing state legislators to raise the minimum wages in their states, too.

The momentum at the local and state levels is likely to have ripple effects in the nation's capitol, where President Obama has proposed raising the federal wage threshold to $9 an hour and liberal Democrats in Congress have embraced hiking it to over $10 an hour, including an annual cost-of-living adjustment. Unions and other progressives will be using the issue to target Congressional Republicans facing tough re-election campaigns next year, hoping to pressure them to support a minimum wage hike or face the wrath of angry voters. Public opinion polls show that the vast majority of Americans believe that people who work full-time should not earn poverty-level wages.

A majority of Americans now also embrace another progressive idea - same-sex marriage. In the past, conservatives tried to increase Republican voter turnout by putting anti-gay marriage measures on state ballots, but that strategy no longer works as public opinion has dramatically shifted in the past few years. On Tuesday, the Illinois state legislature passed a measure to legalize same-sex marriage. Under the legislation, which Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn has pledged to sign, gay couples could start marrying in June. Illinois will become the fifteenth state to legalize same-sex marriage, a number that is certain to grow rapidly now that the Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

And it is certainly no accident that this week the Senate cleared the way to vote in favor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) to ban discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation and gender identity. On Monday, the Senate voted 61-30 to circumvent a filibuster of the bill, which has been introduced repeatedly since 1994. Reflecting the nation's changing mood, seven Republicans -- Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Dean Heller of Nevada, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Rob Portman of Ohio, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania -- joined 54 Democrats in voting to invoke cloture in order to advance the bill. Two Senators who support ENDA -- Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) -- were absent. The Senate is likely to vote on final passage this week. The bill will face higher hurdles in the House, where Speaker John Boehner has reiterated his opposition to ENDA on the absurd ground that it will "cost American jobs, especially small business jobs," but the growing number of Republicans who are now embracing LGBT rights may eventually force Boehner - or his successor - to revise his stance.

In another milestone Tuesday for the gay rights movement, Seattle became the second largest city in the country to elect an openly gay mayor. State Sen. Ed Murray, a gay Democratic state legislator, appeared to be headed for victory in Seattle's mayoral race. With 40 percent of the votes reported, Murray had a large lead -- 56-43 percent -- over incumbent Mayor Mike McGinn. Last year Murray sponsored and led the successful Referendum 74 campaign which legalized same-sex marriage in the state. Both Murray and McGinn are liberals who hold similar views on most issues. Both favor more public transit and universal kindergarten, and both embraced the campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in neighboring Seatac. McGinn, a one-time Sierra Club activist, was the first big-city mayor to push for divesting Seattle's pension fund money from energy companies that contribute to global warming, a cause that is gaining momentum on many college campuses. Annise Parker, a lesbian, was elected mayor of Houston (America's fourth largest city)) in 2009. Other large cities that have elected gay and lesbian mayors include Providence, Rhode Island and Portland, Oregon.

In Boston, State Rep. Marty Walsh edged City Council member John Connolly to become the city's next mayor. A long-time labor leader, Walsh gained the support from unions and key community and minority activists to win with 52 percent of the vote. As in Seattle, Walsh and Connolly - both liberal Democrats -- agreed on many issues. Walsh 's background as a working class union leader who won his personal struggle to overcome alcoholism helped catapult him to victory. National unions contributed heavily to help elect Walsh, who will become one of the few labor leaders to lead a major city. (Antonio Villaraigosa, a former union organizer, ended his two terms as Los Angeles' mayor earlier this year due to term limits). Walsh will replace Tom Menino, a moderate Democrat who served as Boston's mayor for 20 years but declined to seek a sixth term for health reasons.

In Minneapolis, community organizer and Occupy Homes activist Ty Moore was in a close race for a seat on the City Council. Moore was running as a Socialist Alternative candidate against Democrat Farm Labor Party candidate Alondra Cano, who would be the first Mexican-American to serve on the council. Moore, whose campaign earned the support of SEIU and the Green Party, co-founded the local Occupy Homes movement, which staged sit-ins to prevent banks from seizing foreclosed houses. His campaign focused heavily on stopping foreclosures and raising the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour. By early Wednesday morning, neither Moore nor Cano had reached the required threshold of votes to be declared a winner. Minneapolis uses a ranked-choice voting method, which processes ballots through a series of rounds, in which the lowest ranked candidate (or candidates) is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed to the next-ranked candidate on those ballots. The final outcome should be announced later this week.

Nobody would call Terry McAuliffe a bold progressive, but progressives and liberals are nevertheless embracing his victory in the Virginia governor's race on Tuesday as one more nail in the Tea Party coffin. The former head of the Democratic National Committee and a close ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, McAuliffe defeated state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, an ultra- right Republican embraced by the Tea Party. Virginia is swing state. Since 1977, it has elected governors from the opposing party of the sitting president. Although Obama won Virginia in both 2008 and 2012, the lower turnout in this year's off-year election was expected to favor Cuccinelli, who had already won statewide office and was a well-known figure. But McAuliffe's campaign was successful in winning over younger (under 45) voters, a majority of women, and moderates, many of whom viewed Cuccinelli as too conservative, according to polls. Cuccinelli was hurt by his extreme right-wing views on birth control, abortion, and divorce, and by the recent Republican-led shutdown of the federal government, which particularly affected the many Virginians who live in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. Even so, McAuliffe barely squeaked by, winning by a 47 to 46 percent margin.

Liberals and progressives have reason to breathe a sigh of relief over McAuliffe's slim victory. Had Cuccinelli won, he would have followed the playbook of Republican governors who have refused to implement the Obamacare program, supported anti-union legislation and cuts to the social safety net, and embraced severe limits on women's reproductive health care, including abortion. In fact, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, along with Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla) - all Tea Party favorites - campaigns for Cuccinelli. Although McAuliffe, who made his fortunate in banking and real estate, was often criticized by progressive for his close ties to business in his role as a Democratic Party fundraiser, he seemed to shift somewhat to the left during the campaign. In a state with a large number of gun owners and where the National Rifle Association has its headquarters (in suburban Fairfax, outside Washington, D.C), McAuliffe came out for strong gun controls and even boasted of his "F" rating from NRA.

McAullife's narrow victory was not the solid defeat for the crackpot Tea Party wing of the Republican Party that Democrats had hoped for. But other races on Tuesday suggest that there's a growing divide within the Republican Party between its business wing and its Tea Party wing, which may soon be gasping for breath in most parts of the country....(Click title for more)

Nov 5, 2013 - Nearly 500 progressive activists gathered Monday night at the Sheraton Station Square across the Monongahela River from downtown Pittsburgh where climate change activist Bill McKibben was presented with the Envronmental Award from the Thomas Merton Center.

The Pittsburgh Councilmember Bill Peduto, who was elected mayor the following day, greeted the group and noted that Pittsburgh was the first city on the globe to ban fracking. He read a Pittsburgh City Council resolution declaring November 4, 2013 "Bill McKibben Day."

McKibben was welcomed with a short speech by Dr. Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee against Housing Demolitions (ICAHD). Halper connected the struggle for the human right to a home in Palestine to the human right to a sustainable environment.

McKibben stopped in Pittsburgh on the way home from a six day six city organizing trip in Europe. He said the global movement to stop climate change is mushrooming. His organization 350.org has coordinated over 2,000 demonstrations across the globe involving millions. He emphasized that Americans are key to stopping global warming since we have the leverage.

He traced the arc of his climate activism to the present confrontation with the carbon based extraction industry and its financiers. He emphasized that confrontation with global energy corporations is the order of the day. The key link is the financial underpinning of their activity through investment. He said that when Mandela visited the US after his liberation he first went to California to thank the activists on campuses who had forced the university system to divest from businesses in South Africa. He urged Pittsburgh to join the rapidly growing divestment movement in the US. As this Pittsburgh Post Gazette article on the event points out divestment organization is active at 380 universities, several religious denominations, and more than a dozen cities. McKibben said the divestment movement will weaken the "rogue" energy companies.

McKibben noted that the civil disobedience against the Keystone XL pipeline was the biggest in many decades. He noted that protest had delayed the Obama administration's decision on the pipeline and that if the pipeline is vetoed it would be an important step to reopening global talks on climate change.

McKibben emphasized that shutting down Keystone alone is too little too late and that more vigorous action is needed. The one degree rise in Earth's temperature has resulted in near destruction of the Arctic ice cap, a 30% increase in ocean acidity and a 2% increase in atmospheric moisture content. These changes are already having serious effects on weather, population stability, and plant and animal extinction. At this point, even with drastic action starting immediately an additional one degree warming cannot be avoided. The consequences will be increasingly severe.

Action on divestment needs to broaden and deepen quickly in order to prevent exceeding the additional one degree warming that is already inevitable. McKibben pointed out that globally, the climate movement is overwhelmingly people of color under the age of 21. In the US the movement must stop the energy corporations from searching for carbon, digging it up, and burning it. The current reserves that are immediately available for burning will raise the Earth's temperature by another estimated four to five degrees centigrade, an unthinkable occurrence. Activists at universities, churches, unions, pension funds need to join the divestment movement....(Click title for more)

By Jin Bei

Oct 28, 2013 - Some scholars have recently argued that "China has surpassed the United States and become the top industrialized country". However, this claim is not supported by objective assessments of significant facts. By certain criteria, China has exceeded the United States in the scale of manufacturing. In terms of competitiveness, however, China is still far behind.

Measured by "place of origin" or GDP, China may have become the largest manufacturer in the world. However, measured by GNP, China's gross industrial output becomes much smaller. As a result of economic globalization and the relocation of manufacturing, the United States' GDP is smaller than its GNP whereas China's GDP is greater than its GNP. This may be a major reason why some scholars claim China's manufacturing scale has surpassed the United States'. Yet, in reality, the United States still surpasses China in terms of GDP, GNP and manufacturing scale.

Put in another way, there are more US firms in China than there are Chinese firms in the United States. If we exclude foreign firms' contribution to the output value of the host country, China may not be the largest manufacturer in the world. In fact, many goods that are "made-in-China" may not actually be "made by China".

Strictly judged by accepted standards, China is not even an industrialized country yet. As the largest manufacturer in the world, China remains a developing country or an emerging economy. China's key industries are far from reaching the level of advanced industrial countries. For instance, most of China's indigenous industries - especially in the high-tech sector - although competitive, still rely on the import of key components.

According to a study conducted by the Institute of Industrial Economics of The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China has a long way to go before it acquires any technological advantage and Chinese goods are behind internationally advanced levels in many respects. In one sense, a lack of patience has become a major obstacle, as an increasing number of entrepreneurs in China's manufacturing sector change their roles to investors and abandon their commitment to manufacturing industry.

Invention and originality are the backbone of a country's manufacturing industry. Despite China's great efforts and growing number of patents, the United States still maintains a major influence in key pioneering areas. China continues to have important barriers to overcome in terms of overall industrial performance, innovation, and the social and cultural environment for innovation. Furthermore, the United States continues to attract talented individuals due to its more tolerant business environment and advanced educational and financial systems.

Nevertheless, as a vibrant new economy, China has achieved considerable success over the past three decades. With multiple comparative advantages, China is swiftly catching up with advanced industrial countries such as the United States. As a result, for China, becoming the top industrialized country is a dream that can come true.

The Guardian, UK

Nov 4 2013 - Center-right governments in Britain and Germany do it. So do the center-left governments in France and Italy. Obama and the Republicans do it, too. They all impose "austerity" programs on their economies as necessary to exit the crisis afflicting them all since 2007. Politicians and economists impose austerity now much as doctors once stuck mustard plasters on the skins of the sick.

Austerity policies presume that the chief economic problems today are government budget deficits that increase national debts. Austerity policies solve those problems mainly by cutting government spending, and secondarily, by limited tax increases. Reducing expenditures while raising revenues does cut governments' deficits and their needs to borrow.

National debts grow less or drop depending on how much each government's expenditures decrease and its taxes increase. Obama's austerity policies during 2013 started 1 January, when he raised payroll taxes on everyone's annual incomes up to $113,700. Then, on 1 March, the "sequester" lowered federal expenditures. Thus, 2013's US deficit will drop sharply from 2012's.

Obama will likely impose more austerity: cutting social security and Medicare benefits to compromise with Republicans. Similarly, European governments maintain their "austerity" programs. Even France's government, officially "anti-austerity" and "socialist", has a new budget with typical austerity cuts in social expenditures.

The accumulated evidence shows that austerity programs usually make economic downturns worse. Why, then, do they remain the preferred policy for most capitalist governments?

When capitalist economies crash, most capitalists request - and governments provide - credit market bailouts and economic stimuli. However, corporations and the rich oppose new taxes on them to pay for stimulus and bailout programs. They insist, instead, that governments should borrow the necessary funds. Since 2007, capitalist governments everywhere borrowed massively for those costly programs. They thus ran large budget deficits and their national debts soared.

Heavy borrowing was thus capitalists' preferred first policy to deal with their system's latest crisis. It served them well.

Borrowing paid for government rescues of banks, other financial companies, and selected other major corporations. Borrowing enabled stimulus expenditures that revived demand for goods and services. Borrowing enabled government outlays on unemployment compensation, food stamps, and other offsets to crisis-induced suffering.

In these ways, borrowing helped reduce the criticism, resentment, anger, and anti-system tendencies among those fired from jobs, evicted from homes, deprived of job security and benefits, etc. Government borrowing had these positive results for capitalists - while saving them from paying taxes to get those results.

Nor is that all. Corporations and the rich used the money they saved by keeping governments from taxing them to provide the huge loans governments therefore needed. Middle- and lower-income people could lend little if anything to their governments. Corporations and the rich, in effect, substituted loans to the government instead of paying more in taxes. For those loans, governments must pay interest and eventually repay them.

Government borrowing rewards corporations and the rich quite nicely. It amounts to a very sweet deal for capitalists.

Yet, that sweet deal raises a new problem....(Click title for more)

Nov 4, 2013 - Women did not exist at the dawn of colonial America. That is to say, from a legal perspective, they had no existence apart from their husbands'. They mostly couldn't own property. They couldn't inherit. Their babies did not belong to them, and neither did their bodies. They were chattel, much like a cow or a utensil.

Some of the first white women to set foot in Virginia were placed on auction blocks and sold for tobacco. Men paid the London Company for these "tobacco brides [3]" and walked away with a combination sexual partner/farm worker. Other colonial women -as many as 75 percent of the early Chesapeake white female population - came to America (sometimes through kidnapping) as indentured servants who performed rough work for masters who might prefer to see them die rather than pay them at the end of servitude. Indentured women could not marry, and were subject to sexual exploitation.

Some colonial women, particularly in New England [4], were executed as witches, while others were tortured through public whippings or even the "scold's bridle [5]," an iron mask developed during medieval times which featured a spike that prevented the wearer from speaking (it was later incorporated into slavery). Native American women, whom white men perceived to be sexually available, were accordingly targeted for molestation and violence. In any conflict, rape was a strong possibility: During the Revolution, the Philadelphia City Council warned [6] of British soldiers bent on raping wives and daughters.

The worst oppression of all was reserved for African women brought to the colonies on slave ships, where many suffered rape by sailors long before their arrival. On top of the gender and class biases already directed against women, they got hit with developing racial prejudice. The year 1662 turned their fate bitter for centuries to come when colonial slave law broke from English precedent and set forth that all children born to enslaved mothers would follow the condition of their mother regardless of paternity. This made the paternity of the women's child legally irrelevant. Slavery could now pass from one generation to the next, and the de-emphasis on paternity threw open the door to rape. Breeding programs [7] may have forced women to become pregnant by enslaved men, overseers, or slave owners.

As a country, we have not yet reckoned fully with this trauma. The experience of enslaved women has not drawn as much attention in the box office as that of their male counterparts, an exception being Beloved, based on Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which reveals the harrowing experience of motherhood under slavery.

The brutal separation of mothers from their children was something abolitionists could easily use to prick the consciences of Americans. But there were other horrors, just as ghastly, that could only be whispered about. 12 Years a Slave,a new film based on the narrative of Solomon Northup, a free black abducted into slavery in 1841, gives us a glimpse of them.

Through his story, we meet Patsey, a favorite on the Louisiana plantation of Edwin Epps who is petted and rewarded with delicacies for her high spirits and pleasing personality. The proud, ebony-skinned girl grows up into a strong and agile young woman, preternaturally skilled in picking cotton.

But everything goes wrong for Patsey, through no fault of her own. She attracts the lustful eye of her master, and with it, the jealous rage of her mistress. Between the two of them, they torment the girl to the point where she becomes a living shadow. In Northup's biography, she sinks into depression, plagued with nightmares. In the film, her depression is dramatized as a desire for Pratt to end her life and thus her misery.

Pratt was the name given to Solomon Northup after he was lured from New York to Washington and then taken by kidnappers to Louisiana, possibly the most brutal scene of slavery in America. There, between innumerable whippings and near-fatal run-ins with his masters, he cut cane and picked cotton for a decade until he was rescued. 12 Years a Slave, a harrowing and unflinching look at life on a bayou plantation, is based on Northup's account [8] of the experience, written down David Wilson, a lawyer and New York state legislator.

The original narrative is a page-turner and presents Northup as an astute man who appreciates the complexity of human beings and the system that negatively impacted everyone involved, degrading the lives of the enslaved and the master alike. In Northup's view, slavery contorted the characters of otherwise admirable human beings and fueled the harmful qualities of the worst. As Wilson interpreted his oral account, "There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones-there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one."

In the film version of 12 Years a Slave, the plantation mistress Mary Epps is bile and hatred incarnate. But Northup's own narrative offers a more charitable - and psychologically nuanced - view of her, explaining that she was a woman of many excellent qualities who was unfortunately married to an abusive lout who could not, or would not, control his lewd instincts in the presence of a young black woman whom he viewed as his property. Unable to convince her husband either to cease his sexual pursuit of Patsey or sell her, Mary turns her anger upon her former favorite. Northup's account shows how her anger turned to blinding rage:

    "Mistress Epps was not naturally such an evil woman, after all. She was possessed of the devil, jealousy, it is true, but aside from that, there was much in her character to admire...She had been well educated at some institution this side the Mississippi; was beautiful, accomplished, and usually good-humored. She was kind to all of us but Patsey-frequently, in the absence of her husband, sending out to us some little dainty from her own table. In other situations-in a different society from that which exists on the shores of Bayou Boeuf, she would have been pronounced an elegant and fascinating woman. An ill wind it was that blew her into the arms of Epps."

If it was an ill wind that blew Mary into the arms of Epps, it was a diabolical one that forced Patsey there. Aware of her value as a skilled worker and addicted to her sexually, Epps will never consent to give Patsey up, but his guilt and desire to please his wife causes him to alternate caresses with beatings.

In Northup's account, Mary and Edwin Epps eventually became bonded in an "infernal jubilee over the girl's miseries," including an incident where, after a visit to a neighboring plantation where Epps suspects her of sexual involvement with the owner, Patsey is tied up naked and subjected to a near-fatal whipping, which Northup himself is forced to conduct. The depiction of this scene is among the most moving in the film: Northup is nearly torn apart by the tension between his compassion for the young woman and his knowledge that he must carry out his master's orders.

Our last glimpse of Patsey in the film is a shot of her standing forlornly in the dust of the wagon that would carry Northup to freedom. There would be no freedom for her.

Narratives are tricky. There are sentimental-sounding passages in Northup's account as rendered by Wilson that mirror other slave narratives of the time. Hollywood has its own exigencies, which include broad commercial appeal which can flatten nuance and add layers of unreality, like a scene in which a man en route to slavery with Northup is casually murdered and tossed overboard (the murder does not happen in Northup's biography, and the economic value of the captive seems to make such a situation unlikely). ...(Click title for more)

Become a CCDS member today!

The time is long past for 'Lone Rangers'. Being a socialist by your self is no fun and doesn't help much. Join CCDS today--$36 regular, $48 household and $18 youth.

Better yet, beome a sustainer at $20 per month, and we'll send you a copy of Jack O'Dell's new book, 'Climbing Jacobs Ladder,' drawing on the lessons of the movement in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.

Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS