The 13th Amendment and El Salvador

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

The first time I taught a US History class, I had my students study the wording of the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution and debate whether or not slavery had actually been abolished or had it simply been reconstructed:

“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

By the time master filmmaker Ava DuVernay finished her documentary 13th, I was salivating with anticipation. She did not and never does disappoint. She traced the origins of that loophole in the 13th Amendment that allowed for servitude to be imposed for crimes well into the 21st century.

Slavery had/has gone away in some form. Yet, one of my favorite Black judges, the late New York Supreme Court Judge Bruce M. Wright noted the awful way Black and Brown defendants were treated. Wright earned the nickname “Turn ‘Em Loose Bruce” because he had witnessed one too many Black men and women end up in court because they stole something trying to feed their families only to be sentenced to anywhere from 10 to 20 years in prison. So, Wright gave them some minimal punishment, but he often turned them loose.

I remember his description of a case where a Black man had an extremely sick wife. Neither he nor his wife could afford her medicine. So, in desperation, the man stole a television set from the hotel where he worked. He pawned the television to purchase his wife’s medications. This man had never committed a crime before in his life, but he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Now here’s the next rub. For people old enough to remember, the only thing we knew for sure about prisoners when we were growing up was that prisoners pressed license plates. Well, folks that isn’t true anymore. Now American prisoners make…Clothing, Computers, Electronics, Furniture, and all that discounted stuff you find at Walmart and Target. US prisons generate anywhere from 2 to 5 billion a year in profit while prisoners who do the work never earn the standard minimum wage.

So, as you rightly fight for and ponder the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an American citizen who sits unlawfully in a jail in El Salvador, think about Felon 47 and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele giving each other a high-five and talking about not returning individuals who are wrongfully detained while they also discuss building more prisons in El Salvador. I’m going to leave it right there.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

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Revisiting “Ordinary Men”

Posted on March 30, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

This is not a full book review. I don’t have the strength to do that right now. Yet, when you are a historian there are certain books that stay with you because they are so provocative. One of them is “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” by Christopher R. Browning.

People often forget that the Holocaust in Nazi Germany didn’t just extinguish millions of Jews, but it also exterminated Afro-Germans, Gypsies, LGBTQIA, and people with disabilities. Anything or anyone that was viewed as defective was subject to be put to death. But that’s not exactly what I want to write about here.

The title of this book says it all. This battalion was charged with the duty of marching groups of Jews out to a ditch, having them lay in that ditch; then the battalion would shoot them to death.

The first time they carried out this heinous order, most of the men balked at having to carry out such an awful task. Several men vomited at the sight of the murders; others ran and went AWOL. Yet, most of the men stayed behind and followed their orders.

By the time I got to the end of this book, I was mortified. That same battalion that initially balked at killing Jews that were laid in a ditch now carried out the orders with precision and without blinking. They became professional killers doing a job, not men who once had some empathy, sympathy, and consciences.

We prefer to believe that most people cannot be manipulated and threatened in order to convert them into monsters under the appropriate circumstances. “Ordinary Men“ showed me that it was relatively easy to find and nurture the dark side of human beings.

Those of us who are fighting as hard as we can against the excesses and abuse of Felon 47 need to remember one thing—Felon 47 and the Muskrat are only TWO men. They cannot do what they are doing without willing accomplices.

Stay the course my Fellow Resisters. But watch the people around you and watch your back; and NEVER normalize or explain away bad behavior even when it’s yours.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

Dear Ontario: Turn the Lights Off If You Have To

Posted on March 12, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I was impressed when Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford towed a hardline with Felon 47 who wants to bully Canada into becoming a 51st state. Felon 47 hopes to do this with tariffs.

But here’s what Americans need to know about how ridiculous, mean-spirited and stupid Felon 47 actually is.

Canada is the world’s third largest supplier of energy. Only Saudi Arabia and Russia supply more energy. The United States consumes more energy than it produces.

Canada and the United States’ electrical grids have been integrated well over 100 years for the security of both nations. New England and many parts of the northeastern United States are heavily dependent on Canadian electricity.

Canada is the second largest supplier of hydroelectricity powered by moving water which generates nearly 60 percent of Canada’s electricity. Electricity Canada, which is based in Ontario, provides clean electricity to Canada and the United States.

(Ontario Premier Doug Ford, photo by Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)

So, here’s the deal. For now, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford has decided to hold off on raising tariffs by 25 percent on electricity exported to the US. He still could impose, however, those penalties where consumers in the northern USA see their electric bills go sky high or they could find themselves looking for candles.

Felon 47 has decided to withhold imposing a 25 percent increase in tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel for now. Yet, he is discovering that his role as a bully is being met by leaders who have better sense and materials the United States is dependent on.

Here’s one thing everyone better understand. Canada can survive and thrive even if it cuts its diplomatic and regional ties to the United States. It has already been established that with some adjustments to its economy, Canada can continue to thrive. It is not clear whether the same can be said of the United States.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

The Reckoning

Posted on March 6, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I remember back when Arthur Herman Bremer shot former Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972. Wallace ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He had been an avowed segregationist for most of his life.

He became a humanitarian after he was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. To his credit, he did assist Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm with passing legislation that aided workers and farmers. Their alliance, brought on by his tragedy, was unique in the annals of American political history.

Wallace assumed he was invincible. Yet, no matter how much power you have or think you have, you cannot hold that power forever.

No matter how many times you kiss the ring of those in power, and swallow your pride and principles for the approval of those in power, you too will eventually be sacrificed with neither your dignity nor principles to hold your legacy together.

The Muskrat and Felon 47 will die, just like all of us will. History will record them as monsters because that is exactly what they are. The politicians who shy away from questioning the rationale of their policies will be recorded as the cowards they are.

Shutterstock photo of depressed man/New Africa

As activist Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.” In the end when the folks upon whose altar you have sacrificed all of your principles are done with you, you will be no more than the rest of us. All you will ever be is mortal.

Power does not transfer to the grave. Your progeny will live long enough after your death to be vilified and hated while struggling to figure out what it is that they have done. History will answer them the same way it has answered all others in perpetuity, “Your crime is your having been born unto monsters.”

©️Leslye Joy Allen

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

Zelensky, Strategic Minerals, and the US Economy Redux

Posted on March 2, 2025 by Leslye Joy Allen (Ayọ)

I originally wrote about this on Christmas Eve, 2024:

The United States imports most of its strategic minerals. China is our largest supplier. Polysilicon, Geranium, Palladium are vital to semiconductors. Magnesium metals, and etcetera all come from China.

We also import critical minerals from Australia, South Africa, Chile, Brazil and Peru.

Out of the 35 critical minerals that are absolutely essential to our economy and to the efficacy of our military, we only produce 4 of those necessary minerals. The other 31 are imported.

While folks in Canada and Greenland and Panama are naturally and rightfully insulted and concerned about Felon 47’s bluster about invading their countries to bring them under the US umbrella; it’s not likely to happen. It is the USA that better be concerned.

(Photo by Martin Konopka, EyeEm/Getty Images)

The only thing that would need to happen is for the United States to be isolated by both its enemies and its friends where no nation sells us any critical minerals anymore. With a weakened economy and weakened military we are ripe for the pickings.

China has already banned the sale of critical minerals to the United States. That’s what all that early “let’s ban Tiktok” mess from the U. S. Congress was about. Congress already knows that China can thumb its nose at the USA. Elon and his demented minion Trumpolini can fool around and they will find out.

Today on March 2, 2025, I had a great exchange with one of the best young minds out there challenging us to think. His name is Kahlil Greene—look him up. He waxed poetically and flawlessly about this past week’s fiasco of a talk between Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky and our bully-in-chief that I personally refer to as Felon 47. Greene brought up the striking contrast between Biden and Felon 47.

After I brought up the USA’s ongoing need for strategic minerals, he reiterated that US dependence on these strategic minerals had serious repercussions for our natural environment and for our indigenous Native American nations.

Here’s another age-related reminder that I wrote to him:

“Kahlil, you may be too young to remember these protests: But back in the late 1980s when we were clamoring and protesting to get universities, companies, and etcetera to divest from the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, the response from Washington was often ‘South Africa supplies many of our strategic minerals that support our military.’

At the time, I was quite young and did not know what a strategic mineral was, but I started paying attention.

Ukraine is about as mineral rich as any country you can find on earth. Without certain minerals, the USA cannot be militarily secure and we cannot build semiconductors that support our electronics industries. You made a damned good point about the environment and what this could mean for our First Nation brothers and Sisters. I am going to leave this discussion right here.”

Pay Attention Folks and inform yourselves please:

Critical and Strategic Minerals Importance to the US Economy

Seven Recommendations for the New Administration and Congress: Building U.S. Critical Minerals Security

Tech wars: Why has China banned exports of rare minerals to US?

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp.

Leslye Joy Allen

Social Commentary, History, Theatre, Jazz, and the Environment

Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Dear Ontario: Turn the Lights Off If You Have To

Zelensky, Strategic Minerals, and the US Economy Redux