WEBVTT - Part One: The War On Vagrants 0:00:01.200 --> 0:00:07.240 What's not sending Sophie the script my Robert. This is 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:12.639 Behind the Bastards a podcast about anti authoritarianism, and as 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:17.720 an anti authoritarian, I reject the the hierarchy of Sophie 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.880 demanding my scripts before the end. Here's my question, hower 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:23.440 to the people, schools out for summer? Motherfuckers. 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:27.639 Okay, but here's my question. Here's my question. Would you 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:31.080 have survived the last five years without me? 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:35.600 No, that's not what it's about. This is about principle, Sophie. 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:40.559 This is about you know, a higher ethics, Daniel, I 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:42.640 would appreciate it if you would put in a clip 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:44.000 from the song schools Out. 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:49.440 No No, as the authority on this soe no, no, 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.919 what's summer? Okay, all right, we can have we can 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:54.160 have one SoundBite? 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:56.160 Thank you, thank you, Sophie. 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:59.280 Uh did you all listen to that song every summer? 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:00.800 Like on the bus home? 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:04.600 I think I listened to it every year because there 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:08.120 was always like some sort of TV special or whatever 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:14.679 that was summer themed that always had it it important. 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:17.800 Yeah, back to back to Can I have the script? Please? 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:22.200 No, Sophie, but yes, because I sent it? So Uh 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:26.240 Margaret kill Joy, how how how are we doing today. Good, 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:30.240 I'm doing great. How do you, uh, how do you 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:33.240 how do you feel about our nations escalating war on 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:38.000 the existence of people who don't have uh, you know, 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:43.240 the money to stay indoors? 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:48.400 Uh, well, someone's got it. I think I'm going to 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:48.960 join that war. 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:52.640 But on the other side, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's uh, 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:56.040 it's it's pretty like dark times right now in terms 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:58.600 of like right now we're kind of living through this 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:03.000 this intense scapegoating because the right has kind of gotten 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:05.400 there their ducks in a row and in terms of 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:11.359 how to like push insurgent camp like moral panic hatred campaigns, 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:15.200 and they've launched a few in a row, and one 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:17.920 of the ones that's really taken off in the last 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:21.200 really the last two years, has been this kind of 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:26.200 escalating war against the houseless. And kind of on one side, 0:02:26.320 --> 0:02:29.840 you've got this huge right wing media ecosystem that like 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:34.080 anytime there's like a homeless person who's set up near 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:37.720 a fancy building somewhere in the West Coast, or anytime 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:40.639 like some right winger sees poop on the street, or 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:43.799 anytime there's there's like a broken window anywhere, you get 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:49.440 these like like this whole fucking ecosystem of shitty websites 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:51.760 and sites like The Post being kind of the bigger 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.399 ones putting up these articles about how San Francisco's in chaos, 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.079 or you know, Portland is in chaos, or New York 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:02.240 City's in chaos, and kind of as a result. 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:04.160 And it's never because people have been kicked out of 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:06.919 their houses. It's always because there's people who haven't. 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:09.880 It's not so like rent has doubled in like the 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:12.880 last three or four years or anything like that, or 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:16.840 that like a bunch of the companies that are responsible 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:20.079 for making our food have seen record profits because they 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.160 used stories about inflation as an excuse to jack up 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:27.079 the cost of basic food stuffs. That made it untenable 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.520 for a lot of people to like continue surviving in 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:32.000 the same way that they had. No, we don't blame 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:34.079 any of that. We blame you know, the folks who 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:37.080 need to live in a tent because that's the only 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:41.720 thing they can afford. And kind of a surge of 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:45.280 fun new laws has come down the pipeline in the 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:48.600 very recent past. This kind of like moral panic has 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:53.120 sort of metastasized this year into a sweeping wave of 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:58.280 new laws to criminalize houselessness. In Missouri, a state law 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:01.080 recently took effect January of this year that makes it 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.960 a crime for any person to sleep on state property. 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:07.400 This doesn't just mean like you can't crash on the 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:09.560 steps of the Capitol building or whatever. It means like 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:11.880 if you're sleeping in a public park or under a highway, 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:14.640 you can face up to seven hundred and fifty dollars 0:04:14.640 --> 0:04:17.120 in fines and get up to fifteen days in prison. 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:20.880 The law went into effect right as Missouri cut funding 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:24.599 for homeless services, making incarceration the best funded option for 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:26.520 a lot of people living on the streets right now. 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:31.680 Last August, Los Angeles' city council banned homeless encampments within 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.320 five hundred feet of schools and daycares. This mirrored comments 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:38.360 made two days before we recorded this episode by San 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:41.800 Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, alongside a video that was just 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:44.839 like these dramatic shots of homeless camps and like parents 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:48.600 walking their kids to school and looking frightened. He made 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.000 this post quote, the encampments make it hard for kids 0:04:52.040 --> 0:04:54.200 walking to school. They are forced into the street to 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:57.279 get around them. Plus they're seeing things kids should never 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:04.760 see now. Yeah, definitely, it's bad for kids to realize that, 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:10.640 like our addiction to capitalism has human consequences. We should 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.039 be we should be putting those people in fucking camps 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:17.880 where where children won't have to realize that perhaps there 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:20.200 are injustices in the system they live under. 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:23.760 And none of those people in those camps are children, 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:25.039 so it's not a problem. 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:30.599 It is. James actually, just before we started recording this, 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:35.360 sent me a link to an article by Or sent 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.200 me a link to a post from the from Alliance 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:44.440 San Diego, which is a community organization organized around kind 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.880 of building collective power in San Diego and is trying 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:51.359 to fight back against this criminalization of homelessness that the 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.880 mayor is pushing for. And they had an interview with 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:58.400 a woman named Zuleima who is homeless alongside her six 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:00.839 year old son, and she's like, this means that my 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:02.720 six year old son won't be able to, like, we 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:04.960 won't be able to sleep near the school that he 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:09.160 goes to. It's cool stuff, anyway, this is all very 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.320 anti human and fucked up, and there's a shipload of 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:14.440 bastardry in all of this. 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:16.880 I mean Todd, Todd Gloria is a motherfucker. 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:19.080 But there's Todd Gloria is a piece of ship. 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:22.600 There's many Todd Gloria. Is that that Yeah. 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:23.719 Todd's Gloria. 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:27.480 I think the yeah Todd Gloria. 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:29.159 But yeah, yeah. 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.520 Also there's that wonderful thing where the thirteenth Amendment that abolished. 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:38.160 Oh yeah, that says in case we're we're heading Margaret. 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:42.080 That's uh, what this episode is actually about. Because I'm 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:46.719 not just complaining, yeah, mostly be me fetching about these 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:50.279 modern laws. This is kind of explaining the surprisingly deep 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:54.120 and surprising origins of our of our war on on 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:57.599 what have been most commonly called vagrants, and we will 0:06:57.600 --> 0:06:59.760 be using that term because that's the legal term that's 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:02.320 all used. I don't think being a vagrant is a 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:05.080 bad thing, very pro vagrant, but you know, it's it 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:08.719 is the legal term that for most of our nation's history, 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.200 and for most of like Western modern Western history, has 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:15.120 been used for people who like don't have a home 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:18.320 in the traditional sense of the word. I've been a 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:20.400 vagrant a little bit when I was younger, and then 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:23.240 my grandfather was a hobo in World War two or 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:25.680 not World War two, in the Great Depression, you know, 0:07:25.840 --> 0:07:28.040 road freight trains around looking for work. Oh that's the 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.000 oid line of yeah, yeah, no, I mean I think 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:32.920 it's interesting when you kind of bring up the Great 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:38.320 Depression generation because like that that generation gets lionized so much, 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:43.760 particularly by conservatives, and like a most many, if not most, 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:45.960 of like those people. 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:49.200 Had a hobo period. My grandpa when he was seventeen, 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:51.640 his dad was like, we can't feed you anymore, Garland, 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:53.960 and gave him like a pocket full of cornbread, and 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:57.000 he just like hiked two or three states down to Oklahoma, 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.400 where he found work. But like, how is that not 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:03.640 being a hobo? Like right, like he figured his shit 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:06.120 out and good for him, but like it's it's I 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:08.640 don't see a big difference between that and people who 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:10.920 are like, yeah, I couldn't make rent. You know, I 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:14.280 work a job. Most homeless people work a job. Like 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:15.920 this is just what's the open meaning? You know? 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.200 My granddad was my granddad was like greatest generation. He 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:22.360 went from being a hobo to being a torpedo in 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:25.840 the South Pacific and fighting in the one war that 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:27.640 the US can say, well that was good that we 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:28.000 did that. 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:31.400 Yeah, And it's a it's this is because I didn't 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:34.280 include as much of the Australia context, but like Australia 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:36.959 has a long history of anti vagrancy laws, but also 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:40.560 like one of their proudest songs about like World War One, 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:42.960 Waltzing Matilda, is about a guy who was like, yeah, 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:45.240 I used to just kind of wander around without like 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:46.600 like you know, a backpack and a shit. 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:46.920 Yeah. 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:48.760 Then I went and got my legs blown off by 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:54.760 the Turks at Gallipoli. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, uh, homelessness. The 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.400 this is this is a story kind of about our 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:03.640 Western civilizations war on people who, yeah, don't fall through 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:06.200 the cracks really, And it didn't start that way. This 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:10.400 episode started because there's a band that I listened to 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:12.640 a lot when I was younger called State Radio, and 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:15.559 they've got a song called The Story of Benjamin Darling 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:19.520 Part one, and it's based on the story of the 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:23.920 It's based on the largely apocryphal details about the life 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:27.160 of a very real guy. He's a was a freed 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:30.600 slave who established an island community for mixed race people 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.800 off the coast of Maine. And I wanted to tell 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:36.040 that story because there's a lot of bastardury and like 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:39.760 why the community stopped existing, And so I thought, just 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:42.200 kind of based on my surface level knowledge of the 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:44.560 story before I started digging in, I thought, Okay, this 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:46.040 is going to be like a story about like a 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:48.960 bunch of racists from cities and towns in Maine, you know, 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:51.560 just going after these these people who were kind of 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:54.120 like living off grid, doing their own thing. But the 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:56.120 more I dug into the story, the more I found 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:58.560 out that the evil in the story of like what 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:03.439 Happened to Benjamin Darling's Descendants is a story about vagrancy 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:07.280 and a story about the way our culture prosecutes these people. 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:10.319 So let's get into it, because I think this is 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.840 going to go some places you may not anticipate. The 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:17.280 concept of vagrancy was established in the West in the 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:19.800 early modern period, kind of the end of the medieval 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:24.400 early modern period. During most of the medieval era, most 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:28.400 poor people in kind of Western European countries were some 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:31.480 kind of like peasant or surf and in England, like 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:33.840 surfdom is kind of more of an Eastern thing, but 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:36.240 in England and a lot of Western Europe there was 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:40.280 this status called villainage. And it's not villains spelled the 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.160 way we spell it, it's v I L L E 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:46.960 I N. I don't know, maybe there's I should have 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:48.400 checked to see if that was the root of our 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:50.800 term villain. But I'm a hack and a fraud. But 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:56.440 a villain, like in the medieval context, was a kind 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:59.400 of surf. Basically, they're a person who's bound to a 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.040 parcel of life and got to occupy it and farm 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:04.880 it in return for laboring for his liege lord, usually 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:07.200 working in the lord's fields, although I'm sure there were 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:11.679 other options and thus in the countryside. For most of 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:15.080 kind of this medieval period, anything approaching homelessness on a 0:11:15.160 --> 0:11:18.360 large scale was usually uncommon. You would have some people 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:20.480 who were, you know, kind of roving between. Some of 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:23.000 them would be like entertainers, some of them would be 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:26.080 you know, you know, merchants, some of them would be 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:28.560 kind of folks in a more desperate state. But there 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:31.880 usually weren't like huge numbers of folks like that because 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:33.800 it was kind of part of the system. Was like 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:37.040 people generally had like a place they were supposed to be, 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:42.040 and yeah, it was kind of when you sort of 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:44.800 got large numbers of people who were, you know, didn't 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:47.800 have a set place to occupy to live. It was 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:50.199 generally because like a war or something had swept through 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:51.920 their land, right and you'd have had like a bunch 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:56.560 of villages burnt down and people uprooted. But the growth 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:59.720 of cities kind of as the medieval period sort of 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:02.760 leads to early modernity, the sort of growth of cities 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:05.640 leads to larger and larger numbers of people who have 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:08.520 no real means of support. A lot of this was 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.120 the result of the increase increasing enclosure of common lands, 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:14.920 which forced people out of their rural lifestyles. That's where 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.439 there used to just kind of be land that was everyone, 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:19.360 so you could graze your sheep on it, you could 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:22.760 grow stuff on it, you know. And over time, like 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.520 that started becoming the property of like generally members of 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:31.199 the nobility, and so it was fenced off and separated 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:33.319 from the people who had been using it, which made 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:35.760 them unable to live the way that they had lived 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:40.839 and force them generally into cities. Cities are rancid pits 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:43.240 of disease in this period, So a lot of times 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:45.600 people would die and they'd leave their kids orphaned, or 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:48.160 like you know, a woman who'd had like you know, 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:50.520 a husband who was supporting her would suddenly have no 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:54.240 method of support, and this led to a growing vagrant class, 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:57.280 and a lot of vagrants, by the way, were former soldiers, right, 0:12:57.280 --> 0:12:59.680 because in this period, you go to war for the king, 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:03.719 your duke or whatever, and you lose an arm, good 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:07.280 luck to you. You're not getting like you're not getting 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:09.920 like a fucking disability payment, right, Like, there's not a 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.439 va Yeah, you know, there are some things that kind 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:16.880 of fill that gap, but not well, yeah, generally. Yeah. 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:19.760 I looked up the etymology of a villain and village 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:24.040 and they are the same, excellent hot and it comes 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:27.280 from and villain basically came from like a rustic. 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.360 Oh okay, cool satcha yeah, yeah, because that's that's kind 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:33.920 of the way people lived out, you know, in the countryside. 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:37.559 So there was always kind of a degree of sympathy 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.440 and acceptance of the need for sort of charity for like, 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:42.560 you know, some guy who's lost his arms, or some 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:44.599 woman who's got like a family but no one to 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:47.320 help raise them because you know, the husband died or whatever. 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:50.640 There was some degree of sympathy for that, but there 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:52.960 was a great deal and it kind of becomes this 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.840 growing moral panic, particularly in England, and like the sixteen 0:13:56.920 --> 0:14:00.439 late fifteen hundreds early sixteen hundreds, about people who were 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:03.920 in physically good shape but didn't have any means of support, 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:06.720 and the term that started being used for them was 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:11.400 sturdy beggars. This is a kind of slur, sturdy beggar. 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:13.440 It's meant to imply both that a person is like 0:14:13.520 --> 0:14:17.199 healthy and can work and chooses not to. And the 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.240 common idea was that, like, these people are con men. 0:14:20.480 --> 0:14:22.360 Right if like you're able to work and you don't 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.200 have some sort of job, you're a con man. In 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.600 townshend cities started keeping lists of sturdy beggars and their 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:31.480 supposed crimes. And if you are looking to make some 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.800 D and D characters this weekend, are these are pretty 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:37.360 good places. So I'm just gonna read one from the 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:41.440 sixteen hundreds. But the guy the guys like crime was 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:44.800 pretending to be insane and like following people until they 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.800 gave him money to go away. And his nickname, his 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:55.360 nickname was tom O Bedlam, which is fucking hell. I 0:14:55.400 --> 0:15:01.000 do love tom O Bedlam. Fucking cool name, guys. So 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:05.400 in fifteen forty seven, furious British elites pushed through the 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:09.920 First Vagrancy Act, which declared that any able bodied person 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:14.000 who lacked employment should be branded with a V, so 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.200 should be like branded with a V and sold into 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:23.600 slavery for two years. It's pretty pretty bad. There were 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.440 no sort of like there was no like separation between 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:29.600 like if this happens like a dude in his thirties 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:32.240 or like a six year old, and in fact, child 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:35.080 vagabonds were regularly forced into labor. It was thought to 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.600 be good for them. Laws agin teach them some life 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:41.920 skill exactly. And these kind of these laws spread from 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:44.040 the UK to other parts of Western year or to 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:48.000 parts of Western Europe. Some of the laws are not 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:51.680 it's not always like you get branded and sold into slavery. 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:54.200 Laws in other places would demand that vagrants be whipped 0:15:54.240 --> 0:15:57.040 and then returned to their birthplaces. The idea was like, well, 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.360 their people will like make them work, right, you know. 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:05.680 Throughout the sixteen hundreds, while kind of this this sort 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:07.680 of war on vagrancy, that's when it really starts. Kind 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:10.080 of the late fifteen hundreds you get these very first laws, 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:12.920 and then the sixteen hundreds it kind of it becomes 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:16.320 the norm that it will be criminalized to be out 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:19.440 and about in cities and towns without a visible means 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:23.280 of support. Right now, while this is going on throughout 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:26.000 the early sixteen hundreds, a couple of other big things 0:16:26.040 --> 0:16:28.760 are happening. One of those big things is the Atlantic 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:32.160 slave trade, right, that's really starting to cook in the 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:35.920 sixteen hundreds. And another thing that's really starting to cook 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:39.280 in the sixteen hundreds is the British colonies in the 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.560 New World, right in the northeast coast of North America. 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:46.520 And kind of while both of these things are happening, 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:49.480 everyone has one of those like Reese's Pieces Peanut butter 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.120 Cup moments where they're like, well, if we mix slavery 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:56.880 and qualities to get a govna and you know, that's 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.920 a you know that story, right, Like everybody's aware of 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:01.120 kind of where that goes. 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:04.919 It didn't go well, I mean no, it does not 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:07.879 go well. Morally, No, morally, it did not go well. Yeah, 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:12.560 morally it's a fucking nightmare. But yeah, to the economic 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:14.280 power of empire, it did good. 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:16.760 Yeah. For the Yeah, they make a lot of money 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:20.280 off of it. So this that starts cooking, and you know, 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:22.480 fast forward like one hundred and sixty hundred and seventy 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:26.560 years something like that, and you know, you start to 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:30.520 get I mean, I'm flattening out a lot of things. 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:32.359 But it takes, you know, one hundred and sixty hundred 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:36.560 seventy years before kind of the crusade for abolition which 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:39.080 had always existed from as soon as like people were 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:42.840 doing the African slave trade, people were like, that's bad. 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:47.040 But it really abolitionism starts to really pick up legal 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:49.240 momentum kind of one hundred and sixty hundred and seventy 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:53.919 years later, in the late seventeen hundreds. Popular summaries of 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:57.119 the battle to abolish slavery tend to focus on the 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:01.560 first electoral successes of state abolitionist movements, which started when 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:05.480 slavery was made illegal by Massachusetts in seventeen eighty three. 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:09.920 By the early eighteen hundreds, the legal Atlantic slave trade 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:12.919 had been ended, although that did not mean that people 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:15.840 stopped doing that sort of shit. It just meant that, 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:20.760 like they could get in trouble for it. And yeah, 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:22.880 it's interesting to me that like kind of when we 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:25.640 talk about, at least when I think about my education 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:28.520 on sort of the history of slavery and abolitionism, it's 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:32.600 sort of portrayed fairly quickly in this period sweeping over 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:36.240 the North. And so there's this very quickly we have 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:38.119 our good guys and our bad guys. Right, you've got 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:39.840 the free States and the slave States, and that all 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.080 builds up to the Civil War. That cuts out the 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:46.679 fairly long period in which slavery was real popular in 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:51.080 New England. And yeah, I think that's probably a mistake. 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:54.240 And since our story involved slavery in New England today, 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:56.879 I want to talk a little bit about that. So 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:00.000 here's a quote from an article on slavery in Maine 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:04.560 in the Portland Press Herald. Quote, slavery in New England 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:07.840 look much different than those large southern plantations. In New England, 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:10.679 enslaved men, women and children were owned by prominent and 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:13.719 wealthy merchants, but also by families of less prominence who 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:15.800 used slaves to do the manual labor they had once 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:19.240 done themselves. Northern slave owners were more likely to own 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:22.520 one or two slaves than hundreds. The enslaved people became 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:25.560 the foundation that moves those early household economies to a 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.440 market economy because of the labor that the slave owner 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:31.960 was previously was responsible for. Once he has the enslaved person, 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:33.760 it frees him up to begin to build his own 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:37.240 economic base, said author Patricia Wall, who researches and writes 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:39.879 about slavery and Maine. Well, there weren't hundreds and thousands 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:41.680 the way there were in the South. You can see 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:43.480 that the enslaved people were at the base of the 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:46.920 economy and these small communities in Maine and throughout New England. 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:49.679 So a lot of what becomes kind of the upper 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.760 class in these in these colonies, particularly these more rural areas, 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:57.520 are families who start out with a couple of slaves 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:00.399 to help them with, like you know, they're cooking food, 0:20:00.480 --> 0:20:03.240 they're cleaning, doing the laundry and stuff, and that frees 0:20:03.359 --> 0:20:06.960 up the free people to like make money which generate 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:08.960 you know, in a lot of cases, when you're looking 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:10.320 at a place like mad and the people who have 0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:13.800 like nice houses and money now two hundred years later, 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:17.480 it's because you know, their ancestors enslaved somebody and it 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:18.680 let him get a leg up. 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:23.199 No, and that's so important for people to realize. I 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:25.439 hadn't known as much about New England slavery, but that 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:27.359 makes so much sense that basically, like all of the 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:30.879 aristocracy of the United States comes from this. 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:33.960 Yeah, it's cool to look into the people who are 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.360 doing stuff like funding the Daily Wire now and see 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:42.000 where they're their ancestors, what they were getting up to. Ah, Margaret, 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:45.720 this is an awkward thing we recorded later for me 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:47.840 to throw to ads because I forgot to do it 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:48.800 when I was supposed to. 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:50.720 Yay. 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:52.399 I love being good at my job. 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:55.560 If only somebody was messaging you to do them. 0:20:55.920 --> 0:21:07.080 I never read messages, Sophie, I just just vibes. We're back. 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:11.640 So yeah, since Maine had no giant plantations, most enslaved 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.199 people are used as personal servants or laborers, and industries 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:19.560 often like shipbuilding and fishing. So the state you know 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:22.800 this because Maine is part of the Massachusetts colony, right, 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:26.800 So in Massachusetts, the new state makes slavery illegal in 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:30.160 seventeen eighty three or whatever like that applies to Maine 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:32.679 as well. You're not supposed to be, you know, buying 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:36.400 those slaves or bringing them in and stuff. But that 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:40.080 does not mean that, like after that point, Maine stops 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:42.320 playing a role in the spread of slavery. For one thing, 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:45.480 Maine has the second highest percentage of registered seamen in 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:49.280