Let’s learn about the Industrial Revolution. You may know it as the radical change in technological innovations allowing us to make goods and materials faster leading to the major shift in economic growth for the United States of America. And sure, it’s partially that. But what was the nucleus for that radical change?…slavery. Yes slavery. The US changing from being a colonial, agricultural economy to now being the largest industrial power in the world is because of slavery. The modern, efficient, and dynamic descriptions of economic growth that we often are told about the Industrial Revolution are the same way many folks described slavery in its time. It’s modern, it’s efficient, and dynamic for economic growth. Get outta here. The mindset that leads to an Industrial Revolution is the same mindset that expands west and massacres the Native people in the name of God. The Industrial Revolution comes from greed and an insatiable appetite for more with little to no consideration for anything other than the acquirement of more. The Industrial Revolution legitimizes and makes the academic argument for greed. It really is misguided patriotism at best, and internalized racism at worst to view it as an economic boom. Which it was…an economic boom. Again, get outta here. More than half of the nation’s exports in the first six decades of the 19th century consisted of raw cotton, almost all of it grown by slaves. Cotton was the No. 1 export from the US, which was largely an export-driven economy as it was modernizing and shifting into industrialization. And the slavery economy of the US South was deeply tied financially to the North, to Britain, to the point that we can say that people who were buying financial products in these other places were in effect owning slaves and were certainly extracting money from the labor of enslaved people. Forced labor created the cornerstone commodity that supplied Northern textile mills and fueled America's early commercial, financial, and manufacturing dominance. Slavery was the first big business in America y’all. The fact that is a factual sentence is proof of the lack of conscious and surplus of greed in the name of economic growth. Slavery was the first big business in America. Remember, how things starts are inevitably how they end, but we know that this thing is rooted in more. We are STILL living in the Industrial Revolution. There’s been one, two, three Industrial Revolutions. The tools, the technology, the players have changed, but the mentality hasn’t. It hasn’t ended, and so, the cruelty continues. In more recent history and now, it’s the digital revolution. Our electronic production is doing them so dirty in Vietnam, in Ghana, in Nigeria. The workplaces that again, were built off slavery were dangerous for the workers. They were hazardous. Child labor was cheaper and thus deemed acceptable. Burning coal, burning fossil fuels causing air pollution. Climate change as early as 1830 came as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Have you heard of the Prison Industrial Complex? Incarcerated workers in the U.S. generate at least $11 billion annually in goods and services. However, they are typically paid an average of just $0.13 to $0.52 per hour, with some states (like Texas, Florida, and Georgia) paying nothing at all for regular prison maintenance and field labor. Who is disproportionately incarcerated? Black people. Latino people too. So, when you think of the Industrial Revolution think more, bigger, and better for the economy. Artificial Intelligence is depleting the earth’s supply of water…