Black slavery in Port Townsend. Not its practice, but its products. Cars using cobalt mined by Black African slaves, including child slaves, will drive over the “Black Lives Matter” section of Water Street. This is a stark reveal of the systemic racism of Port Townsend’s liberal, moneyed elites.
Electric vehicles and hybrids (EVs) need cobalt–large quantities of cobalt. Most of it comes from the Katanga Province of the Congo. The large quantities of cobalt needed for EVs cannot be supplied by Australia or other countries. Amnesty International and numerous media outlets from CBS News to the Washington Post have confirmed that cobalt is mined in Katanga by people living as slaves, including tens of thousands of children. They work in horribly unsafe conditions that regularly kill or maim them. 
One leading human rights researcher, Siddartha Kara of Harvard University, has concluded that the mines use the forced labor of as many as 35,000 Black children, and nearly a quarter of a million Black adults. UNICEF puts the number of children forced into mining at 40,000.
White liberals committed to a New Green Deal don’t seem to care about this 21st Century slavery. At least none of the liberal, left-leaning organizations and politicians we contacted. We asked the local Jefferson County EV Association, the City of Seattle’s green vehicle fleet director, Coltura–the state’s most powerful EV advocacy group, and Governor Inslee if it bothered them that the cobalt needed for the green technologies they were pushing depended on the suffering and deaths of hundreds of thousands of Black slaves. Most avoided the question. Not one expressed concern.
That article written two years ago was entitled “Do Black Lives Matter When It Comes to Green Cars?” As human rights activists point out, nothing has changed in the past two years. The response to the exposure of this modern day slavery has been window dressing by the European and Chinese middlemen and the industrial users of Black blood cobalt.
The stream of cobalt for those pricey electric cars still comes from the same mines and slave laborers. It is still bought and processed by Chinese and European middlemen. And it still goes to the same cars purchased almost exclusively by First World, affluent, mostly white consumers.
Metal rods replace crushed bones in a young miner’s legs.
Human rights activists have escalated the fight for justice. In December 2019 a landmark lawsuit was filed in Washington, D.C. by International Rights Advocates against some of the world’s largest high tech and EV companies. It alleges they have knowingly utilized forced Black child labor in the Congo to procure the cobalt needed for their products. The photographs for this article come from the complaint in that litigation. The two maimed boys are plaintiffs in the case.
Siddartha Kara worked with African human rights organizations to document the suffering and lay the groundwork for the lawsuit. He says:
The mining operations are protected by one of the most corrupt governments in the world. Local and national politicians are getting wealthy off the slave labor of fellow Black Africans. The military is used to chase away human rights researchers and terrorize workers asserting their rights. When tragedy strikes, the army covers it up. Kara saw this for himself:
This is what goes into those Teslas and BMWs, the Audis and Mercedes running on cobalt. This is the human suffering inside Chevy Bolts and Volts, and Toyota Priuses and hybrid Highlanders.
Tesla, the pacesetter for electric vehicles, made noises it was going to abandon cobalt. It was concerned about high prices, the security of supply and, last, the bad PR it was getting. Elon Musk announced that for his company cobalt would be a thing of the past. But just like other PR stunts from EV manufacturers trying to deflect criticism, Tesla’s promises were lies. It recently announced a long term contract for Katanga-mined cobalt, signaling that a supply chain that starts with slave labor would a major part of its business plan for years to come. 
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is demanding that companies buying Katanga cobalt do more to end forced child labor. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Glencore, the huge Swiss corporation, that next to the Chinese purchases and processes the most Katanga cobalt. This company is a direct descendant of the consortium that exported natural resources when Belgium ran the Congo as a slave colony. Britain is investigating another major mining corporation for promoting fraud and corruption in Congo’s cobalt mines.
White silence is violence, we are told by Black Lives Matters activists. Where are the white voices speaking against the Black slavery behind the EVs recharging outside the Co-op?
The push for a total conversion to electric vehicles is strong in this town, coming from the top down. We have a county climate action plan that targets all fossil fuels, and seeks drastic reductions in carbon emissions from transportation that are possible only if people stop driving or replace their existing vehicles with EVs, despite the cost in Black lives. 
Unlike the mining camps of the Congo, there is no Black slavery in the Dakota or Texas or Pennsylvania oilfields. Many Black blue-collar workers in the oil and gas industry regularly make six-figure salaries as roughnecks, equipment operators or truck drivers. The industry projects adding nearly 600,000 minority jobs over the 20 years, about a third being in management and professional fields. But the systemic racism behind the relentless drive to go green does not place the benefits for those Black and Brown lives on its scales, just as it does not count the broken Black slaves in Katanga’s hell holes.
Do Black African Lives Matter to Black Lives Matter?
We know that the area’s White liberals don’t care much about the suffering behind their slick EVs.
What does Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County think? Do they see anything objectionable about cars built with slave labor driving over the colorful “Black Lives Matter” lettering on Water Street? Do they think it makes a mockery of the message?
We asked. Like the white, liberal electric car activists we surveyed, they have nothing to say on the subject. Their silence, likewise, is violence.
For more information on the Black slavery behind green cars:
Jane Doe 1, John Doe 1, et al. v. Apple, Inc., et al., United States District Court for Washington, D.C. (text of complaint in lawsuit over forced child labor in cobalt mines
From Stone to Phone: Modern Day Cobalt Slavery in the Congo
Cobalt DRC Case: International Rights Associates
Child laborers as young as six dig for cobalt
Child labor in the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo
Jim Scarantino was the editor and founder of Port Townsend Free Press. He is happy in his new role as just a contributor writing on topics of concern to him. He spent the first 25 years of his professional life as a trial attorney, then launched an online investigative news website that broke several national stories. He is also the author of three crime novels. He resides in Jefferson County. See our “About” page for more information.
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