Morning Edition

Today is Independence Day here in the USA. Today, so many people are up in arms and freaking out about slavery in the press and the Confederate Flag. Most people are not getting the point. If you want a better symbol of slavery and oppression, look elsewhere at another flag. Read American History. I mean read it.
Look up Indentured Servants, Look up the African slave trade, Look up how Aboriginal or Natives of this continent. Look up each Immigrant wave coming in from another part of the planet.
Another flag was the symbol of the rape and murder of millions of the Aboriginal or Natives of this continent. Another flag was flown when slavery was the norm. Another flag was flown when not just African slavery, but white slavery, and Indian slavery, and Oriental slavery, and Hispanic slavery, and Mexican slavery was the norm. Read up on all forms of slavery, please.
Our current flag is flown, and people are being “trafficked” as slaves today. In Sioux Falls, there are billboards about it. People are shipped into our country, and used as sex slaves. People born in our country, are kidnapped and sold. People born on our planet are forced into the sex trades. People, citizens of our planet, are underpaid, and I don’t mean the $15 that some workers I see in the news, I mean $2 per hour, if they are lucky, because they want to feed their children.
People on our planet, are slaves to drugs, to alcohol, to others, and no one is doing anything about it. Migrant workers, are getting paid pennies compared to those who work in fast food restaurants. The mentally ill, are paid maybe $1.25 an hour to clean hotels, work in factories and stock shelves. But no one does a damned thing because they are mentally ill. The handicapped get the same treatment. People are suffering and dying, but it doesn’t show up on the Internet. Enjoy your apple pie. Enjoy the fabric you wear imported from other continents. Enjoy your fruit salads. Slavery is here, every day. It’s just not popular on social media. People are slaves everyday on our planet and no one is doing anything about it. I say, a flag is a piece of fabric. It’s colors are whatever you want printed on them. Those colors gain meaning based on what meaning you put on them. Social media, of which I am an active part of, is the bane and blessing of human existence. It broad casts allot of information very quickly. Buyer beware, my friends, buyer beware.
That’s your business.
Happy Independence Day, those who are lucky enough to read this,
Louise Ann Benjamin