Reparations

Five Principles For Making State And Local Reparations Plans Reparative

February 20, 2023 Kyle K. Moore, Economic Policy Institute. Create! Black America, Class Struggle, Reparations, Systemic Racism

We are still living in the aftermath of 2020’s overlapping crises of racial injustice, our nation’s polycrisis. Between the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ensuing economic recession, and the public police murder of George Floyd, we saw a harsh truth about the structure of American political economy: White supremacy has shaped our institutions such that their outcome is consistent Black precarity and premature death. This confluence of tragedies brought awareness of the Black American condition to a new generation. It also reinvigorated interest among academics and policymakers to finally do something about the problem of racial disparities (though activists and community organizers largely never lost interest in this).

Oil Companies Have Plundered Louisiana’s Coast

December 11, 2022 Courtney Naquin, In These Times. Strategize! Environment, Louisiana, Oil and Gas, Reparations

Louisiana - In a rare victory, Louisiana recently reached a $100 million settlement with the mining giant Freeport-McMoRan Inc., for contributing to the erosion rapidly devouring the state’s coast. And this is just the beginning. Recently, a federal court ordered a nine-year-old lawsuit to return to state court. The suit was filed against Chevron USA, Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co. and BP America. Over 40 similar legal challenges may follow against the oil and gas companies that have caused, and are causing, Louisiana’s wetlands to disappear at an alarming rate. These lawsuits could win billions of dollars in damages. The call for accountability against oil and gas companies is critical, but the dominant narrative misses an essential component: There’s no mention of financial reparations for Indigenous and historically Black communities in southern Louisiana who suffer the most loss and damages due to land loss and climate change and who are being actively displaced.

73% Of The World’s Population Did Not Call For Russian Reparations

November 24, 2022 Roger Stoll, Popular Resistance. Educate! Reparations, Russia, Ukraine, United Nations

By this measure, only 27% of the world’s population supported the resolution; 73% did not. This is a resounding defeat for US/NATO “soft power.” It can only be explained by global antipathy toward the US/NATO side in this war and sympathy for Russia. Consider that the US has long used bribes and threats to engineer UNGA votes; it controls the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; it imposes illegal unilateral coercive measures (“sanctions”) on a quarter of the world’s population; it is prolific and virtually alone in its constant coups and destabilization campaigns against uncooperative governments around the world. So it is not surprising that the US has mustered as many votes as it has for this and previous Ukraine/Russia resolutions. What is surprising is that it could not get more.

‘Loss And Damage’ Is Officially On The Agenda As Cop27 Kicks Off In Egypt

November 8, 2022 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. Create! climate crisis, COP27, Environment, Reparations

Over 45,000 people from 196 countries, including 120 heads of state, are gathering in the city of Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt as the 27th iteration of the Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP27, began on Sunday, November 6. “We are gathering this year at a time when global climate action is at a watershed moment,” stated Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister and COP27 President Sameh Shoukry, as the country took over leadership of the summit from the UK. “Multilateralism is being challenged by geopolitics, spiraling prices, and growing financial crises, while several countries battered by the pandemic have barely recovered, and severe and depleting climate change-induced disasters are becoming more frequent.”

There’s A Lot Of Jubilance And Healing In Reparations’

September 29, 2022 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Create! Kerner Commission, Media, Racism, Reparations

The 1968 Kerner Commission report didn’t just say that US journalists were mistelling the reality of recent civil unrest in Newark and Detroit and elsewhere. They declared that that coverage was only part of a broader media failure to “report adequately on the causes and consequences of civil disorders, and the underlying problems of race relations.” And the report linked that failure to the industry’s abysmal record in seeking out, hiring, training and promoting Black people. For those that remember Kerner, that’s where it seemed to end. But actually, the report didn’t say more Black journalists were the answer. It said that affirmative action was a necessary part of the process of de-centering US reporting’s white male view. It wasn’t just about making newsrooms look different. It was about changing the definition of news as being only, or primarily, about white men, and about doing that for the good of everybody.

Caribbean Activists Turn Up The Volume For Reparations

September 21, 2022 The Voice, Black Agenda Report. Resist! Britain, Caribbean, Reparations, Slavery

Demands for reparations are growing across the Caribbean, following the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. The British monarchy have come under heightened demands from several Caribbean countries to undergo the reparatory justice process and issue an apology for their part in the slave trade. It comes after Royal tours of the Caribbean earlier this year led by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, followed by Prince Edward and Sophie, the Countess of Wessex were bundled by photo-ops disaster and tone deaf gifts. Niambi Hall-Campbell, Chair of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee, said: “As the role of the monarchy changes, we expect this can be an opportunity to advance discussions of reparations for our region.”

Reimagining Reparations As America’s Marshall Plan And Not Just A Payday

September 15, 2022 Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. Create! Black America, Finance, Human Rights, Reparations, Systemic Racism

Congratulations Fam, I hear that you’ve finally secured the bag, otherwise known as reparations. A cool $800,000 to be paid in eight annual installments, the first $100,000 of which arrived in your bank account today. Well, maybe not quite $100k, but about $75,000 after taxes. Still some nice coin. So, how should we get the party started? You say you want to finally buy a house for you and your family? Seventy-five grand is not gonna get you that deluxe apartment on the upper East side, but it’s a nice downpayment on a three-bedroom condo in Teaneck or Tallahassee. All you have to do is pop into the bank and sign on the dotted line . . . but wait one cotton pickin’ minute; is that a subprime mortgage? Perhaps America’s worst- kept secret is that usurious, adjustable mortgages were not designed to help African Americans who don’t have money but to exploit those who do.

Reparations By Appeal To Conscience Or Demands From Position Of Strength?

September 7, 2022 Mark P. Fancher, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! Africa, Reparations, W.E.B. Du Bois

After W.E.B. Du Bois and others made polite requests to convene a Pan-African Congress in Paris in 1919, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau gave no immediate response, but ultimately told the organizers: “Don’t advertise it but go ahead.” Fifty-seven delegates representing nine African countries, the U.S. and the Caribbean attended in their finery, sat around long green tables, and with the objective of transferring control of Africa from colonizers to the League of Nations hammered out a series of resolutions. One that addressed the most critical of issues – land, stated in part: “[T]he land and its natural resources shall be held in trust for the natives and at all times they shall have effective ownership of as much land as they can profitably develop.”

The US Must Compensate Burn Pit Victims In Iraq Too

August 22, 2022 Carly A. Krakow, Aljazeera. Create! Iraq, Reparations, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

On August 10, United States President Joe Biden signed the PACT Act, aiding approximately 3.5 million American veterans with severe medical conditions linked to toxic exposure to burn pits during service, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Open air pits of military waste, sometimes as large as football fields, are burned to destroy munitions, chemicals, plastics, and medical and human waste, typically using jet fuel. Used widely until at least 2010, burn pits were still permitted at least as of last year, when waste management facilities were not available. Their impact, however, extends beyond the harm to those who were deployed and exposed to toxins in the short term. Fatal cancers. Birth defects that can cause infant death or lifelong disabilities. Malformations including a missing hand, cleft lip and paralysed club foot.

Reparations Are Being Discussed But Will Direct Payments Follow?

August 6, 2022 Ezekiel J. Walker, The Black Wall Street Times. Create! Education, Higher Education, Reparations, Systemic Racism

According to ABC News, during the colonial era the wealth of universities, in the form of endowments and benefactors, was inextricably tied to the slave trade, numerous university presidents owned enslaved people and famous alumni such as John C. Calhoun championed the cause of slavery. Enslaved people were owned by universities and worked on campuses until the abolition of slavery. Now, students at those institutions are organizing efforts to focus on erecting monuments, taxing endowments, PILOT programs, creating divestment campaigns and offering alternative campus tours that highlight the university’s history of slavery. Students are also pushing schools to identify and support descendants of people enslaved by the universities.

Nicaragua’s Remarks At Reparations International Conference

August 6, 2022 Kawsachun News. Create! Africa, Nicaragua, Reparations, Slavery

The Transatlantic Trade of Enslaved Africans was a perverse industry fueled by the cruel ambitions of governments, companies and individuals, who for the most part, still refuse to make reparations for the terrible damage inflicted upon the African Continent, on more than 20 million human beings, who for more than 400 years were victims of this scourge, as well as upon all of us, the more than 200 million Afrodescendants, who currently live in the Americas. This blatant crime against humanity was an industry, given its motivation were supply and demand, profit maximization and cost efficiency. Slavery constitutes the most brutal version of capitalism, dehumanizing human beings, legally modifying the status of an individual, to categorize him or her as an object and property of another individual or group of individuals.

The International Decade For People Of African Descent

August 4, 2022 Mireille Fanon Mendes France, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Africa, Black America, Racism, Reparations, United Nations

The International Decade for People of African Descent (IDPAD) is coming to an end on December 31, 2024; there are 2.5 years left to bring it out of the invisibility in which those who decided to organize it have kept it. This invisibility can be seen by consulting the website of the decade . Each entry occupies barely a page in the 7.5 years of its existence. The way it has been treated is a symptom of a structural racism that refuses to tell its name; for this reason, it has not been able to go beyond the boundaries imposed by the international community, some of whose members have shown real opposition to it, on the pretext that their state is free of racism, even if they concede some racial discrimination, but that is where it ends.

Education Reparation: UC Tuition Scholarships For Natives Are Just

June 13, 2022 Randall Akee, Indian Country Today. Create! Education, Indigenous Rights, Reparations, University of California

The University of California system is one of the largest and most prestigious post-secondary educational institutions in the country. Its beginnings 170 years ago were as fraught as they were humble. The Morrill Act enabled the creation of land-grant colleges, which were resourced by the sale of federal lands. These lands were, in many cases, stewarded by tribes, and they ended up in the hands of the federal government sometimes by treaty and often through seizure. Although a critical driving force behind California’s continued economic and technological successes, UC has not been sufficiently accessible to the very people whose dispossession was core to its founding. In a monumental move, the State of California is looking to correct historical injustice and promote greater inclusiveness of Native Americans, a group that to this day encounters numerous systemic barriers to post-secondary education.

Landmark California Task Force Calls For ‘Comprehensive Reparations’

June 7, 2022 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. Create! Black America, California, Reparations, Slavery

California is the first state in the U.S. to establish a reparations task force for Black Americans. On June 1, the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans issued a 500-page document that traces the history of white supremacy from slavery to Jim Crow through the present. It calls for “comprehensive reparations” for Black people harmed by a historical system of state-sanctioned oppression. “Segregation, racial terror, harmful racist neglect, and other atrocities in nearly every sector of civil society have inflicted harms, which cascade over a lifetime and compound over generations,” the report says. “The California Reparations Commission’s first report is historic,” Chris Lodgson, Lead Organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, told Truthout.

Caribbean Asks For Reparations

May 19, 2022 Colonialism Reparation. Create! Caribbean, Indigenous Peoples, Reparations, Slavery

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic on September 26, 2020 during the General Debate of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves said that [...] the international campaign for reparatory justice, widely promoted by governments across our Caribbean Community and by social activists within the industrialized metropoles, must form part of any serious efforts to achieve the sustainable development agenda […]. On November 3, 2020 during the "Peacebuilding and sustaining peace" debate organized by the United Nations Security Council the President of the "CARICOM Reparations Commission" Hilary Beckles [...] called on the Council to acknowledge the global reparatory movement, adding that while most crimes against humanity were committed in past, the current century will be one of peace and justice […].

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