Reparations

Book Review: “On The Judgment Of History”

October 3, 2020 Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed. Educate! Human Rights, Nuremberg Trials, Reparations, truth and reconciliation

The scene in Charlottesville, Va., three years ago -- the Confederate flags, the tiki-torch Nazis, the lethal use of a car against counterdemonstrators -- left Joan Wallach Scott feeling perplexity and horror, as she recounts in On the Judgment of History (Columbia University Press). It was not just the thuggish hatred on display, which was nothing new. Beyond that there was a kind of menacing shamelessness about all of it, even before the president gave his wink of approval: a defiance of the idea that slavery, white supremacy and fascism had been consigned to the dustbin of history.

Black-Led Resistance Movements Are Paving The Way For Reparations

September 4, 2020 Sarah Freeman-Woolpert, Waging Nonviolence. Create! Economic Justice, Reparations, Restorative Justice, Systemic Racism

Months after the police killing of George Floyd sparked racial justice protests around the world, Black Lives Matter activists are once again flooding the streets — this time in response to the recent police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Among the demands that continue to ring out is the call for reparations, or payment to people of African descent. Several African countries — including Namibia, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — have also joined the call, demanding reparations from European countries for the perpetration of genocide under colonialism.

Asheville Approves Reparations For Black Residents

July 16, 2020 Joel Burgess, Asheville Citizen Times. Create! North Carolina, Reparations, Slavery, Systemic Racism

Asheville, NC - In an extraordinary move, the City Council has apologized for the city's historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants. The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14. "Hundreds of years of black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today," said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body and the measure's chief proponent. "It is simply not enough to remove statues. Black people in this country are dealing with issues that are systemic in nature," Young said. The unanimously passed resolution does not mandate direct payments. Instead it will make investments in areas where Black residents face disparities.

Economic Justice Rally Pushes For City Level Reparations

July 9, 2020 Unicorn Riot. Create! Black America, Minnesota, Racial wealth divide, Reparations

St. Paul, MN – After weeks of intense protests following the murder of George Floyd by police, Minnesota organizers are pushing legislative changes to bring forth justice for the Black community. One of those items is a bill that would distribute reparations for descendants of slaves in Minnesota’s capital city of Saint Paul. The St. Paul Recovery Act, spearheaded by Minnesota Green Party spokesman Trahern Crews and Ward 7 city councilor Jane Prince, is what the pair call “economic justice“. The Recovery Act was created out of H.R. 40 which was passed in 2019 by Congress and commissioned research on discrimination against freed slaves, the role of the government in slavery and the development of proposals for reparations.

Reparations And The Palestinian Right Of Return

June 24, 2020 Miko Peled, Mintpress News. Educate! Black America, colonization, Palestinians, Reparations

The calls “Black Lives Matter” and “Free, Free Palestine,” serve to remind us that Palestine is not free and that if the lives of Black people mattered, there would be no need for the call. In both cases, people are in the grips of a cruel, racist system that refuses to let go. In both cases, people are being hunted down, caged, strangled, and shot to death, and the root cause of their suffering is rarely addressed. In Palestine, the return of refugees is the issue that has the capacity to completely alter the conversation and ultimately bring justice to Palestinians. However few are willing to bring it up, much less to discuss it seriously. In America, the issue of reparations to descendants of slaves is arguably the issue that will force an honest conversation and provide some semblance of justice to Black Americans, and yet it too is rarely discussed in public forums.

US Racism’s $13 Trillion Legacy Is Just The Start

June 20, 2020 Anna Szymanski, Reuters. Educate! Racial wealth divide, Reparations, Slavery, wealth inequality

New York - Around the time the United States formally abolished slavery in 1865, African Americans owned 0.5% of the United States’ wealth. Today they own under 3%, even though around 13% of the population is defined by the U.S. census as “black or African American.” This isn’t an accident of history – it’s a result of government policies and institutional bias. The interest keeps compounding. The value of income lost during slavery is staggering. The U.S. practice lasted for nearly 250 years – almost equivalent to the time from the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 until today. University of Connecticut Professor Thomas Craemer estimates the present value of unpaid wages for just the 89 years after independence to be nearly $20 trillion using a 3% interest rate.

Were Chicago’s Police Torture Reparations From 5 Years Ago Implemented?

May 24, 2020 Flint Taylor, Truthout. Organize! Chicago, Police abuse, Reparations, Torture

The Chicago reparations movement offers a shining example to movements across the country, and in the past few years, activists in other cities have pursued their own calls for reparations. In Little Rock, Arkansas, the family of Eugene Ellison, a man fatally shot by the police, together with the largest police violence settlement in Little Rock history, obtained an official apology from the city manager at a ceremony where a memorial bench was dedicated to Ellison. In New Orleans, the City settled 17 police violence cases that were representative of the official lawlessness that reigned before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced the $13.3 million settlement at a press conference after a prayer meeting with the victims and families.

Coronavirus Is Making The Case For Black Reparations Clearer Than Ever

May 15, 2020 By William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, Black Agenda Report. Create! Black America, COVID-19, Racial inequality, Reparations, wealth inequality

Mounting statistics confirm disturbing evidence of racial disparities in reported coronavirus deaths. In Wisconsin, perhaps the state with the most extreme ratio of black morbidity, black people represent 6 percent of the population and 40 percent of the deaths. Those African American deaths have occurred at a rate 700 percent higher than black people's share of the state's population. In our home state of North Carolina, black people account for 22 percent of the population but close to 40 percent of the deaths. So what explains these disproportionately large numbers of black people dying of the coronavirus? Black people are overrepresented in jobs designated as socially essential but paying low wages in transportation, food and health services, as well as child and elder care.

Evanston Will Use Recreational Marijuana Sales Tax Proceeds To Fund Local Reparations Program

November 29, 2019 By Genevieve Bookwalter, Chicagotribune.com Create! Marijuana Legalization, Reparations, Taxes

Evanston aldermen on Monday approved directing all sales tax revenue collected from recreational marijuana purchases to a fund that will establish a local reparations program. Officials say the program will help the city’s black population stay in Evanston while also providing training for jobs and other benefits. “We can implement funding to directly invest in black Evanston,” said Ald. Robin Rue Simmons, 5th Ward, who proposed the reparations bill.

Reparations For Development And Justice For The Caribbean

October 25, 2019 Prime Minister Gaston Browne, Blackagendareport.com Create! Caribbean, Reparations, Uneven Development

I bring no special expertise or unique perspective to the issue of reparations. However, I am here primarily to signify my personal commitment to the fight to achieve reparatory justice. Approximately five years ago, on October 14, 2014, at the second regional conference on reparations, held at the Multipurpose Cultural Centre, a mere four months of becoming Prime Minister, the Hon PJ Patterson, who was the featured speaker said to me: “As one who belongs to the older generation of Caribbean leaders, I am here today to present that torch to a leader of the younger generation and to say: Never let that torch be extinguished.”

America’s Last Slave Ship Could Offer A Case For Reparations

October 10, 2019 Jay Reeves, Apnews.com Educate! History, Racism, Reparations, Slavery

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — Alabama steamship owner Timothy Meaher financed the last slave vessel that brought African captives to the United States, and he came out of the Civil War a wealthy man. His descendants, with land worth millions, are still part of Mobile society’s upper crust. The people whom Meaher enslaved, however, emerged from the war with freedom but little else. Census forms that documented Meaher’s postwar riches list them as laborers, housewives and farmers with nothing of value. Many of their descendants today hold working-class jobs.

The Plan For A National Homes Guarantee

September 8, 2019 The Next System Project. Create! Homelessness, Housing, New Economy, Reparations

Everyone living in the United States should have safe, accessible, sustainable, and permanently affordable housing: a Homes Guarantee. People’s Action, with the assistance of Democracy Collaborative policy associate Peter Gowan, has published a 20-page report outlining a bold plan to address the nation’s housing crisis. Right now, our country falls woefully short of delivering on this promise. The federal government has not made a large scale investment to address affordable housing shortages since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which created public housing for civilians. Now, we need action beyond that scale. The country’s housing crisis is untenable, and it must end. We need a Homes Guarantee that will...

Reparations And The Student Debt Wars

August 7, 2019 By John O'Kane, Counterpunch.org Strategize! Higher Education, Reparations, Student Debt

The public college and university system in California was tuition-free during the sixties and into the seventies when the baby boomers were attending college in record numbers. Favorable budgets helped stoke the demand and new campuses were built to accommodate this explosion, propelled by an inclusive ethos special to this left-liberal era where a different breed of Democrats governed. This trend, also evident nationwide, revived the spirit of the free school movement popular in the early 19th century that encouraged the creation of literate citizens for a more vital democracy.

On Reparations, The Question Isn’t If, But When And How

June 25, 2019 Zenobia Jeffries Warfield, Yesmagazine.org Create! History, Racism, Reparations, Slavery

For nearly 250 years, enslaved Africans and their descendants toiled on the land and in the homes of White enslavers in the United States. They planted, fed, weeded, mowed, and harvested crops that were not theirs; cared for and fed children they did not birth; and cleaned homes and tended lands they did not own. We’re all familiar with this uncomfortable but sanitized image of U.S. slavery. The harsh reality is that too many of the more than 300,000 African men, women, and children who were brought to this land for the sole purpose of providing free labor...

Will Chicago Get A Memorial To Honor The Survivors Of Police Torture?

June 17, 2019 Vaidya Gullapalli, Theappeal.org Create! Chicago, police brutality, Reparations

In 2015, the Chicago City Council passed a reparations ordinance. That ordinance, the first of its kind in the country, was the city’s official acknowledgment that Jon Burge, a Chicago police commander, and detectives under his command, “systematically engaged in acts of torture, physical abuse and coercion of African American men and women at Area 2 and 3 Police Headquarters from 1972 through 1991.” The ordinance spelled out the gruesome nature of that torture—electric shock boxes or cattle prods to genitals, lips, and ears; suffocation with plastic bags; mock executions with guns; beatings with telephone books and rubber hoses...

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