120 Years ago real close by, the poor set the tortured convicts free

Tsiyu

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Sat Mar-05-11 12:34 AM
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120 Years ago real close by, the poor set the tortured convicts free

Edited on Sat Mar-05-11 12:45 AM by Tsiyu

You won't read about Coal Creek or Oliver Springs much or about the 2,000 scrappy men who took up arms against a brutal employer in the 1890's. But the offspring of those scrappy men are the reason I can suffer this little haven in the South. These people don't take any shit.

300 of the poorest of the poor, hungry and suffering themselves, took up arms and freed the forced convict laborers at the Briceville stockade of the Tennessee Coal Mining Company, and put them on a train to Knoxville. They would do this repeatedly, eventually even clothing them and feeding them before wishing them a safe journey and just letting them run, no train journey at all. There was a bounty on each convict of $85, so most were eventually caught, but none of those armed local men or their families would breath a word to give the freed convicts away.

Those armed locals could tell you about hearing the convicts' bloodcurdling screams as they were whipped for not doing their tasks correctly in the mines and at the coke ovens, and about seeing the leg bones of the ones who died from overwork, illness and abuse sticking out of shallow graves.

They could also tell you how, when the convicts were first brought in by train (eery, i know), the convicts' first task was to burn down the homes of the same local men who now freed them. The same local men whose jobs they were brought to replace.

The armed local men freed the convicts and burned the stockades that held them because the local men were hungry, and angry, and outraged, out of self interest but also out of pity for the convict labor that came and replaced their jobs.

They got mad. And they did it repeatedly until they got the attention of the Governor, though they were outmanned eventually.

But the progressive voters were on their side, and the next chance they got, outraged by the conditions these convicts and workers endured, the voters replaced the governor and the General Assembly revoked the convict labor leases.

But it took the threat of large scale violence before there was change.

Is this what we are waiting for now? Or can we do something besides wait for desperate people to do desperate things?

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So recently a poll indicated that 81% of Americans favored eliminating the profane tax cuts for the wealthiest, yet the House, through HR1, has absolutely ignored the will of the People.

81% of us want the wealthy to help this economy.

Why? Their tax increases will be a mere drip from a bottomless bucket for the affluent, a small sum which will in no way cause them to be without shelter, heat, food or access to education.

In fact, they will continue to be economically free to carry on their most nefarious endeavors, tax cut or not, but at least poor women can also continue to receive prenatal care and regular health screens. (And please don't whine about that one lost job floating around out there that a tax increase on the wealthy will destroy. That job is as imaginary as Gumby, unfortunately. That claim has always been.... well....bullshit. No offense to Gumby. )

In fact, at the rate the top % of hoarders are amassing $$$$ , they will never be without - even if we raised their taxes exorbitantly. But we don't even have to do that to make up this $61 billion the Republicans are bragging about.

And yet the people sit meekly in their homes even though the very weakest among us - the ones who WILL be denied heat and education and community health centers and senior services and the very essentials of life - are the ones being asked to give because the House is heartless, Dickensian, sadistic.

The "least of these" cannot give anymore. If we are truly compassionate people, we speak up for them, imagining our own mothers, our own children, our own kids trying to get through college or get some job training. They cannot give any more. Let me repeat: They cannot give any more.

We can all succeed and make our communities better when we have enough to eat and when kids have warm, safe places to sleep and seniors have decent health care. Communities flourish when people have education and jobs.

It's a trickle up world.

And it's time for the House to do the will of the American people rather than spending their time trying to derail Obama. Their games are going to cost people their lives.

Our House is playing games with people's lives, when the American people have clearly indicated this is not what they want.

The House is ignoring the will of 81% of the American people.

What are you going to do about it?

Do we wait til the poorest get so desperate they arm themselves and go against the corporations, or do we remind the House just whom the hell they were constitutionally elected to serve?

(CCRFN!!!!!!!!) ;)