Creating Equality, Step One: End Slavery

All “great” nations rely on slavery. Egypt did. Rome did. Ours do.

“But slavery was abolished in 1865!”

Broken chains are easily replaced.

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I saw a picture our modern slavery when I woke up today.

A white man, sitting atop a white horse, holds a dangling key in an outstretched hand. A black woman, standing below, reaches up for it — trying to seize that which will truly free her from her bondage.

The key is a foot from her hand.

“Reach the key and your life is yours!” the man says cheerily, his voice full of mock benevolence; honey laced with arsenic. For all its sweetness, the poison beneath is plainly heard.

She pulls herself forward. Her strength is enormous, but her progress is halted. The tethers bound to her snap as they’re drawn fully taut. A boulder tied to the other end, built of debt and pressing expenses, holds her in place.

She digs in, and with a strength the man has never known himself (sitting lazily atop his horse), she drags herself and boulder forward once more.

Raising an eyebrow, the man kicks his horse and moves another foot forward, pursued by the grimly determined woman below.

He can’t let her catch him. He needs her too much.

As she drags her boulder over rough and jagged earth, she flattens it. In the wake of her efforts are smooth roads, more easily travelled by he and his family, and fertile land for their continued prosperity.

Her toils enable his luxury.

As she continues to gain ground, the man scans the hills around him, searching for one of the failsafes he and his companions have built.

A hundred yards away a man is bounding forward, ignoring the key he’s meant to follow and the man he’s meant to serve. Suddenly his feet tangle in a snare buried in the ground, and he falls out of sight, as if the ground opened around him and swallowed him whole.

His boulder is tossed down after him. He will be led forward once again as he digs tunnels for the horse-riding men’s infrastructure. In the dark he’ll labour, searching for sun and key alike.

If he does make it back to open air, his boulder will be swollen from the dirt it gathered in the tunnels.

“All you must do is work harder,” the chorus goes, sung by men who’ve never stepped down from their horse; never walked the hard path; never ploughed a field. The work of those below would break them.

The men atop their horses lie. The woman knows this, but she marches on. She does her job as well and honest as she can. She faces an unjust and uphill battle; her freedom always just out of reach; her burden always heavy; but she marches on.

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There is so much wrong with this picture: men on horses pretending they’re doing honest work; key-holders receiving greater rewards for keeping labourers in check than the labourers who do the work; the insurmountable burdens of debt and immediate survival-related expenses; the traps put in place for those bucking against the ridiculous game.

If we want to end slavery, so much needs to be fixed.

First: destroy the boulders. The tethers that perpetually bind those who work harder than anyone else have to be severed. People need the chance to move forward without the anchors they’ve been saddled with.

So, now more than ever: debts must be forgiven. As rent-deferral programs lapse and millions of people are faced with unpayable dues, their burden will be made heavier than ever. Millions of families will take out new loans to retain shelter, plunging further into insurmountable debt than ever before

This lockdown provides an opportunity to lock in new slaves with no hope of liberation in the foreseeable future. If they’re bound to these new debts, generations will be stuck in chains.

Second: expose and remove unjust traps. Get rid of the pitfalls in place supposedly to “maintain order and peace,” but really serve to double the burden of the lower class.

Decriminalize drugs. Decriminalize sex work. Decriminalize poverty. Decriminalize mental health issues. Expunge the records of those thrown into holes without cause, who remain tainted by their time in the tunnels.

Finally, see what slaves can do with horses of their own. Provide resources in the form of financial assets and access to training and higher education. Give them shares in businesses whose stock price is built entirely on the value created by labourers at the “bottom.” Empower them to direct their tireless efforts in more creative and high-value outlets. Let them play their hand at the same table.

If we want to create a better, more inclusive and equal world, we must start by ending slavery in all its modern forms. We cannot continue to build a society on the backs of those who toil under insurmountable odds. We must liberate those who enable our luxuries.

We must end slavery — now.