Reparations

Banking On Slavery

March 24, 2015 Gilda Haas, www.drpop.org Educate! Finance and the Economy, History, Reparations, Slavery

The biggest “aha” for me after reading Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism is the extent to which financial speculation is baked into the American economy. From Baptist I learned that 185 years ago, the acquisition of slaves, like any other property, could be financed by mortgages; that bonds were sold to investors based on the value of those mortgages; and, that securities based on enslaved human beings produced a “slave asset bubble” not unlike that produced by the rampant speculation in home mortgage derivatives that helped cause the financial crisis of 2008. In his elegant Atlantic magazine article, The Case for Reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates works backwards from recent experiences in Chicago to the history that Baptist describes. I cannot recommend this article highly enough, because, as Coates and many others are deeply aware, it is impossible to make a case for reparations without bearing witness to our own shared history.

German Couple Pay Greece £630 ‘War Reparations’

March 22, 2015 Agency France-Presse, www.theguardian.com Create! Germany, Greece, Reparations, War crimes

A German couple visiting Greece walked into a town hall and handed over €875 (£630, approximately $1,000) in what they said were second world war reparations. Dimitris Kotsouros, the mayor of Nafplio, a seaport in the Peloponnese, said: “They came to my office yesterday morning, saying they wanted to make up for their government’s attitude. They made their calculations and said each German owed €875 for what Greece had to pay during world war two.” The mayor of the historic town where the tourists deposited their cheque said the money had since been donated to a local charity. The couple chose his town “because it was the first capital of Greece in the 19th century”, he added. Greek media reports named the pair as Ludwig Zacaro and Nina Lahge. They say Zacaro is retired and Lahge works a 30-hour week. They did not have enough money to pay for two, one paper said.

Greece: Memory & Debt

March 19, 2015 Conn Hallinan, www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com Educate! Debt, Germany, Greece, Reparations, Wars and Militarism

Memory is selective and therein lays an explanation for some of the deep animosity between Berlin and Athens in the current debt crisis that has shaken the European Union (EU) to its foundations. For German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, “memory” goes back to 2007 when Greece was caught up in the worldwide financial conflagration touched off by American and European speculators. Berlin was a major donor in the 240 billion Euro “bailout”—89 percent of which went to pay off the gambling debts of German, French, Dutch and British banks. Schauble wants that debt repaid. Millions of Greeks are concerned about unpaid debts as well, although their memories stretch back a little further. In July, 1943 Wehrmacht General Hubert Lanz, commander of the First Mountain Division, was annoyed because two of his officers had been threatened by civilians in the Western Greek town of Kommeno.

Greece Sours German Relations With Demand For War Reparations

March 14, 2015 Helena Smith, www.theguardian.com Educate! Europe, Germany, Greece, History, Reparations

Greece’s strained relations with Germany took a turn for the worse on Wednesday when Athens’ leftist-led government raised the spectre of seizing German assets for war reparations that it claimed Berlin has stubbornly refused to honour. In an address before the Greek parliament, Alexis Tspiras, the Greek prime minister, said Germany had “a moral obligation” to make amends for the atrocities wrought during three devastating years of Nazi occupation. Berlin, he said, had deliberately flouted its duty employing “legal tricks and delay”. “Germany has never properly paid reparations for the damage done to Greece by the Nazi occupation,” the premier told the house as deputies debated establishing a committee to seek war reparations, repayment of a forced loan and the return of plundered antiquities.

Rally Protests Chicago ‘Black Site’, Pushes For Reparations

March 4, 2015 Kevin Gosztola, www.dissenter.firedoglake.com Resist! Chicago, police brutality, Reparations, Torture

Young organizers in Chicago held a downtown rally on March 2 to communicate to Mayor Rahm Emanuel that the outcome of a recent primary was a message from marginalized communities in the city. That message involves dissatisfaction that Emanuel has failed to support a reparations ordinance for police torture survivors. But organizers also sought to connect the allegations of police abuse at Homan Square to the history of police brutality in Chicago. From 1972 to 1991, hundreds of people in Chicago, primarily people of color, were tortured by police under the command of Commander Jon Burge. No police officer was held accountable for torture because city officials failed to act before the statute of limitations expired. Survivors have received zero compensation for the brutality they endured.

A Message In Motion: Reparations Now!

February 23, 2015 KH from Transformative Spaces, www.transformativespaces.org Resist! Chicago, Racial Justice, Reparations

Last night, a group of activists and alliestook to the subway in Chicago to make some noise about this week’s election and the much discussed reparations ordinance. The ordinance, which would provide care and compensation to individuals tortured by Chicago police under Jon Burge, will not be on the ballot, but the man who has prevented it from getting a hearing before the City Council will be: Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The majority of the City Council supports the ordinance, but in Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago, such details aren’t really relevant. Emanuel has never seen police torture victims, or other victims of police violence, as a political priority. Given this mayor’s overall treatment of communities of color – shuttering dozens of schools and clinics in black communities – his failure to prioritize the safety and dignity of those most affected by police violence is unsurprising.

$554 Million Landmark Settlement With Navajo Tribe

September 26, 2014 Steve Gorman, www.reuters.com Organize! Colonialism, Indigenous Rights, Reparations, US

The Obama administration has agreed to pay the Navajo Nation a record $554 million to settle longstanding claims by America's largest Indian tribe that its funds and natural resources were mishandled for decades by the U.S. government. The accord, resolving claims that date back as far as 50 years and marking the biggest U.S. legal settlement with a single tribe, will be formally signed at a ceremony on Friday in Window Rock, Arizona, the capital of the sprawling Navajo reservation. The deal stems from litigation accusing the government of mismanaging Navajo trust accounts and resources on more than 14 million acres (5.7 million hectares) of land held in trust for the tribe and leased for such purposes as farming, energy development, logging and mining.

The Case For Reparations

June 6, 2014 Ta-Nehisi Coates, www.theatlantic.com Educate! Civil Rights, History, Reparations, Slavery

Clyde Ross was born in 1923, the seventh of 13 children, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the home of the blues. Ross’s parents owned and farmed a 40-acre tract of land, flush with cows, hogs, and mules. Ross’s mother would drive to Clarksdale to do her shopping in a horse and buggy, in which she invested all the pride one might place in a Cadillac. The family owned another horse, with a red coat, which they gave to Clyde. The Ross family wanted for little, save that which all black families in the Deep South then desperately desired—the protection of the law. In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy. The majority of the people in the state were perpetually robbed of the vote—a hijacking engineered through the trickery of the poll tax and the muscle of the lynch mob. Between 1882 and 1968, more black people were lynched in Mississippi than in any other state. “You and I know what’s the best way to keep the nigger from voting,” blustered Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi senator and a proud Klansman. “You do it the night before the election.”

Caribbean Reparations Initiative Inspires Revitalization In US

May 27, 2014 Don Rojas, www.truth-out.org Create! Caribbean, Reparations, Slavery

Picture this scene. It was almost surreal, improbable just a few years ago: a room filled with presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers from the 15-nation Caribbean Community (CARICOM), all listening with rapt attention, several nodding in agreement, as one of the region's most distinguished academics, and perhaps the Caribbean's most prominent public intellectual, gave a riveting report on the recent work of CARICOM's Reparations Commission. Yes, "reparations," as in compensation for the crimes of slavery and indigenous genocide at the hands of former European colonizers - reparations, as in reparatory justice for the horrific consequences of two of the greatest crimes against humanity in the history of this planet - the 400 years of the African Slave Trade and the systematic and calculated extermination of the indigenous peoples of the Americas - reparations, as in fundamental and comprehensive social, economic and political justice, indeed, historical justice for the descendants of African slaves and native American peoples. This scene played out in the conference room of the beautiful Buccament Resort on the Eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent on March 10, 2014; the occasion - the 25th Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community.

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