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Of that notion very quickly. Yeah. That was one of the most surprising things. Like, oh, yeah. This is not there are there's an army of brown people here. Yes. But but they are not necessarily Panamanian. That was really surprising. Yeah. I mean, of the reports vary, but 50,000 people who were on the, like, workforce at the canal. 357 were Panamanian. Wow. Right? I was talking, like, less than a person. Like, a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny. Yeah. Yeah. Like, minuscule. And I was like, well so this begged the question for me of, like, why, first of all. Mhmm. Right? Some of it was a feeling that Panamanians were indolent, lazy. Mhmm. There's a quote from a US congressman who's unidentified, but it's in a report from William Sands, who was a diplomat, and he the quote is, these people are of no more use than mosquitoes and buzzards. They ought all to be exterminated altogether. Woah. Yeah. I mean, so the feeling toward Panamanians was not one that was very positive. Then there's also reports, oh, well, there weren't enough people in Panama. They didn't have actually enough of a population to draw from, which was also true. And they didn't speak English, which was also true in many cases. So if the United States were the gonna be the ones who were the foremans running the show, they needed people under them who could understand when they were giving orders in English. Right. Okay. So fine. Now I understood Panamanians didn't work on the canal, but I also still just wanted to understand this is happening in their country. It's the Panama Canal. So what is it like to live through a time when your country's being actually, you know, like, cut in half? Mhmm. And there was not a lot of material on that. And I found myself in a position where I was just basically forced
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In one of Douglass' letters published in an abolitionist newspaper, he recapped the speech, writing He said with an earnestness which I shall never forget, I have been assailed for attacking the American institution as it is called Negro slavery. I am not ashamed of that attack. I do not shrink from it. I am the friend of liberty in every clime, class, and color. My sympathy with distress is not confined within the narrow bounds of my own green island. No. It extends itself to every corner of the Earth. Douglass wrote a lot about how impressed he was with O'Connell speaking. I have heard many speakers within the last 4 years, but I confess, I have never heard one by whom I was more completely captivated than by mister O'Connell. According to his letter, he wasn't planning on introducing himself. But while he was lingering around hoping to get closer, Douglas' friend got him an introduction. And that was the one night the 2 men met. Douglas was 27 and O'Connell was 70. Though O'Connell died 2 years after, and even though they only met in person once, O'Connell had already shifted Douglas's worldview. Okay. But how so? Well, Douglass was there at the start of the Great Famine, which lasted from 1845 to 1852. So I guess we should probably give an explanatory comma here. This is what a lot of us know in the States as the potato famine. When about a 1000000 people in Ireland died of starvation or disease. And that kicked off a half century wave of Irish folks immigrating to the United States by the millions. And the famine wasn't just about crop failure. It was the result of oppressive colonial policies. Irish folk were still growing crops. But since the British controlled the farmland and housing, the Irish couldn't feed them.
Cuts when they get married. Those are the single wage earner households, where one spouse works in the paid labor market, and the other spouse stays at home. We don't tax the value of the stay at home services. We just tax the wages of the paid labor spouse. Those are the married people who get a tax break from marriage. When you have 2 spouses working and contributing roughly equal amounts, their tax bill goes up. They'd be better off living together, as the right would say, in sin and paying less taxes and building wealth. And so there's a point in the middle of 20th century in which married white women start entering the workforce, too, right? And so you would think that this penalty that married double income partners are facing would hit white people, too, right? Like Oh, you nailed it. When I first started doing this research, there was always a category of married white couples who looked like married Black couples in terms of their spouses, contribute roughly equal amounts. Mhmm. That number was small in the beginning and then grew over time. And in fact, I believe the reason that the Trump tax cuts minimized or eliminated the marriage penalty for significant percentages of married couples is because white folks started facing what black folks faced decades ago. So what the 2017 tax cuts did was eliminate the marriage penalty for married couples who make less than 5 or $600,000 that I believe it was because a significant percentage of white couples started experiencing marriage the way my parents were. So they started experiencing marriage the way your parents were in in the sense that white women were making? Roughly equal amounts to their Yes. Spouses. And no offense, doc, but
In our culture. It's too long in language revitalization. Our people have been removed from from our language. It's constantly tried to be separated. That last voice is Ray taken alive. Right. We heard him right before the break, And it sounded like he was not that thrilled about what the Lakota Language Consortium is doing. He is not a fan. And you heard a little about why from his lawyer. Here's how Ray explains it. So they're always talking about the language. The language is dying. The language, we need to say the language. But those kinds of conversations, we forget the people, the people who speak the languages. So trying to separate the language from the people, you can use that to scare people, to diagnose someone with the disease, and then you can sell them the cure. Hello? Hey, Ray. Ray and I talked multiple times, so some of his tape might sound a little different. How's it going? Good. How are you? What are you up to today? I'm doing good. We're gonna head out in the river today later on when it warms up. Ray is a Standing Rock citizen. He teaches Lakota language at the McLaughlin Public School in McLaughlin, South Dakota. He's also the Lakota language and culture coordinator for his school, which means he helps make curriculum. That was that was my dream to work in the school. And Ray comes from a long line of teachers. Like Dolores. Yeah. Which is one reason why he's passionate about helping young Lakota people learn to speak Lakota as part of their everyday lives. I believe that, our culture and our language is is life giving. I want to give them the tools to dream and do whatever they wanna do. And Ray has spent the past 3 years fighting the Lakota Language Consortium. Wait, Christina. This sounds like
