Editor
Atlanta Journal and Consitution

In Re: http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/metro/legislature/0314child.html

After reading the March 14th article entitled "State may be on verge of child support clash - Lawmaker spearheading system reform," by Jim Tharpe, I couldn't help but think of a man's recent story about his treatment by the child support system in Gwinnett County. The man's name is Ken, and he is a carpenter who is in his early 40's.

My name is Adrian Banks. I was a candidate for Congress in South Carolina District 3 in the year 2000 elections. I am also a carpenter and was the only candidate willing to squarely address the slavery questions that face us today.

It was Abraham Lincoln who described slavery as "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it." Justice Curtis, in his dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott decision (1856 term) said that "the status of slavery embraces every condition, from that in which the slave is known to the law simply as a chattel, with no civil rights, to that in which he is recognized as a person for all purposes, save the compulsory power of directing and receiving the fruits of his labor."

But back to Ken's treatment by the child support enforcement system of Gwinnett County. His ordeal began around 7 years ago after he went through his separation and divorce. Today, his "support obligation" is $150/week. He is a carpenter who makes $12.50/hour. Do the math. According to the Census Bureau, all forms of taxation take around half his labor, so you might as well say his real pay is $6.25/hour. This leaves Ken around $100/week to try and live on assuming he can work 40 hour workweeks, which is not always possible due to weather. He is behind and has to appear in Family Court again soon.

Around seven years ago Ken was injured on the job. He was unable to work for a time and accumulated an arrearage of $1500. He was summonsed to Family Court. He was thrown in jail without the right to a jury trial because he could not pay the ransom the court demanded. He was in jail for 6 months and the child support continued to be charged against him while incarcerated. This is absurd and creates a debt from which there is no escape. It is as absurd as buying slaves and throwing them in jail after you purchase them. How can the slave pick any cotton if he is sitting in jail? The master has gone insane. He was then offered the option of "work release" rather than sitting in jail.

If you "volunteer" for work release you get your head shaven. This makes the person stand out in public like the armband did with the Jews under the Nazis. The principle is the same. There is a $125 charge for entering the program which comes out of your first week's pay and a $84/week charge for rent for your room at the jail. This is in addition to the state (taxpayer) subsidy that is received for each inmate. Ken was not allowed to work as a carpenter, but had to take a job cleaning windows for a certain business that used a lot of people like Ken for work. The pay was a little over $5/hour - less than half what he could have made as a carpenter. Ken's masters did allow him to wear normal work clothes while on the job. All other times he wore his jail suit. The first two weeks of Ken's pay went to the child support enforcement people. Ken received nothing and, of course, the child support continued to be charged against him. He did receive his pay the third week after threatening the woman who owned the company with violence. The slave had had enough. He rebelled against his master.

How many more thousands of people there are like Ken across this Nation, I do not know. But what happened to him has nothing to do with acting "in the best interest of the child," but everything to do with acquiring slaves without having to purchase them. The 13th amendment to the Constitution is clear on the due process necessary to enslave someone, and it is completely lacking in Ken's case and thousands of others.

Ken estimates that 4 of the last 7 years have been jail time and work release time - all of this with no criminal charges or the right to a trial by jury; and people like Ken have become legion in our society. Is there any wonder then why around 300,000 people have committed suicide over the last 10 years? The majority of these suicides are men who have been victimized by the family court/child support enforcement system. The more oppressive and cruel the enslavement, the more suicides there will be among the enslaved classes. This truth can be seen in its greatest rankness by studying the enslavement of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis, and now we see it in our own country.

We should thank Rep. Ehrhart for his courageous stand against this new Slave Oligarchy, but I fear that the enormous sums of money that flow though an ever expanding system will overpower his efforts. He will therefore, in Jewish terms, be reduced to a shtadlan, for the non-custodial slaves of the family court system have already entered shtadlanut (see explanation below).

Respectfully submitted this 20th day of March, 2002.

Adrian C. Banks
507 Wellington St.
Anderson, S.C. 29624
864-296-6510

restoreliberty@aol.com

Note: Shtadlanut becomes necessary when Jewish rights are not safeguarded by law, where Jews are unable to claim proper political representation and cannot engage in an active political struggle. Shtadlanut is based on negotiations between an individual, who is agile of tongue and quick to act and knows how to behave with tyrants, and a ruler, who has the power to order matters at will and under whose patronage the Jews live. In return for the concession he requests, the shtadlan offers the rulers material benefits and unrestricted loyalty. Emancipation and civil equality eliminated the shtanlan from Jewish life, but the Nazis recreated him and made intercession the only possible form of contact between the Jews and the authorities. [Source: Adam Czerniakow - The Man and his Diary, The Catastrophe of European Jewry; Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976, pp.466]

An interesting quote from Czerniakow's July 8, 1941 Diary entry states: "When Galileo invented the telescope some monk would not look at the skies lest he catch sight of some star not foreseen by the Holy Scriptures. The same is true of the wage voucher of 2.80 zlotys. It is asserted that there is no such thing as inflation, only high prices. Nobody wants to consider the fact that the worker cannot survive on 2.80 zlotys."

Adrian Banks