SPANGE said
Rebel flag in your schools,

Rebel flag in your Parks,

Rebel flag in your court rooms,

Rebel flag in your hearts

Rebel flag stood for slavery

Rebel flag stood for war

Rebel flag stood for hatred but just go a head and hang your flag up some more!

All of these are true for the American flag as well.

krunkazphuk said
Fun fact for all the slavery haters: "Estimates of the number of slaves today range from around 21 million^[1] to 46 million,^[2][3] depending on the method used to form the estimate and the definition of slavery being used.^["

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century

Instead of bashing scary cloth rectangles & cartoon frogs, perhaps consider WTF is happening NOW?

    

There are a lot of slaves IN the US itself.

The practices of slavery and human trafficking are still prevalent in modern America with estimated 17,500 foreign nationals and 400,000 Americans being trafficked into and within the United States ^[2] every year with 80% of those being women and children.^[3] Human trafficking in the United States can be divided into the two major categories of labor and sex trafficking, with sex trafficking accounting for a majority of cases.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_slavery_in_the_United_States

Nearly half a million Americans are being trafficked inside the U.S.

Most of them are prostitutes.

I used to be supportive of the legalization of prostitution. But it seems that when it is legal, trafficking goes up as well.

Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows.

Source:https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/

I think prostitution should be decriminalized, but the pimps and johns should still be prosecuted.

Or (and I'm serious) make it a government job with government benefits. Health insurance, Pension, decent pay, all of it. And illegal in all other instances.

The tread is being derailed, but does anyone have any ideas for how to end modern slavery and human trafficking, at least within the United States?

A couple of things:

South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union.

The primary reason South Carolina secede was the fact that many northern states did not want to honor the Fugitive Slave Act and refused to return runaway slaves to the southern, pro-slavery states.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations[...].

Doesn't sound very pro-state's rights to me. 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Immediate_Causes_Which_Induce_and_Justify_the_Secession_of_South_Carolina_from_the_Federal_Union

Here's Mississippi's:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.

[...]

[Hostility to slavery] has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

Source: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp

Here's Texas:

[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association.

[...]

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

Source: https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.html

The protection of slavery on a federal level (not on a state by state basis) was literally written into the constitution of the Confederacy.

 In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.

No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs,. or to whom such service or labor may be due.

Source: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp

So yeah, maybe it was about "States' Rights". States' rights to own slaves.