By MICHELLE SELLERS
Strong words and the urgent call for local African Americans to get
involved in the movement for reparations for slavery touched down in Southeast Queens at a
meeting of local activists and legal experts held in Jamaica last week.
Attorney Jomo Sanga Thomas
presents the legal perspective for seeking reparations.
PRESS Photo by Michelle Sellers
Graphic picture found on literature to raise awareness of reparations.
|
Event host and member of the Queens Chapter of the group Millions
For Reparations (MFR) Erica Ford said at the meeting "It would take a bomb scare to
wake up Queens, " about getting involved with the reparations movement.
That’s why Ford, a community activist who came up short in a bid
for City Council last year, and her group’s 60 members have been sending letters,
making phone calls, selling posters, and seeking donations.
And the purpose of the this latest meeting was to bring home a
"grass-roots" campaign aimed at heightening awareness of the "legal bearing
to demand reparations."
Addressing
The ‘Struggle’ |
"Reparations is not an easy struggle, but I believe it is
one we can win," said attorney Jomo Sanga Thomas, to resounding applause from the
audience of approximately 200 people inside I.S. 8’s auditorium at the Jan. 26 forum.
Thomas, an attorney with a Brooklyn law firm and MFR organizer, was
there to spread the word about the story behind the upcoming Millions For Reparations
March on Washington D.C. planned for this summer.
"The fundamental reason for reparations is African people who came
over were forced to labor for 209 years, built the foundation" and continue to build
under the "prison industry," Thomas said.
From "1619 to 1863," slave labor caused
"unjust enrichment," which has " no remedy in law," Thomas explained.
According to literature being distributed at the Southeast Queens
meeting by members of the MFR organizing committee," The economic exploitation of
African people in this country has taken many forms through the years. The centuries of
chattel slavery laid the foundation of our relationship to America. From the share
cropping fields to the factories, African labor built the ‘super power’ that is
the United States.
"In return we have received the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan,
systematic lynching, chain gangs, plantation prisons, police brutality and murder,
poverty, mis-education inadequate housing unemployment, welfare."
For these reasons "they owe us!" the literature stated.
Thomas said MFR chapters nationwide are working to bring forth a
"well-grounded case," to collect money to ‘repair’ or ‘make
whole’ the lives of descendants of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Previous cases have been brought before the U.S. Senate, said Thomas
sighting a bill introduced in 1896 that asked for "compensation to black
people."
"I believe Frederick Douglass said, ‘Power concedes nothing
without demand. This is not begging- it is deserved, " Thomas said.
A Legacy Of Legal Oppression |
According to St. Albans resident Malik Callendar, a
member of the human rights advocacy group known as the December 12 Movement, codes
established in 1865 and practiced by southern states disenfranchised Black people by not
allowing them self-sufficiency.
Callender explained that after the enactment of the Emancipation
Proclamation which gave freedom to former slaves "Louisiana freed men had to get
permission from an employer to enter a town to state the nature and length of visit, while
if unemployed risked the potential of being arrested and charged with vagrancy."
There is no redress or repair for those crimes, Calendar said.
"Affirmative Action can not begin to repair what happened through that process and
hundreds of years of stolen labor."
The December 12 Movement has taken the stance that a follow-up
demonstration to a World Conference on Racism held in Durban, South Africa, last summer is
needed in the United States.
"The United Nations walked out of the world conference in South
Africa when the question of reparations came," Ford said.
During that conference, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was declared a
crime against humanity, an action that some attorneys are saying are legal grounds for a
lawsuit.
Going After The Government |
Legal panelist at the Jamaica meeting, attorney Gilda
Sherrod-Ali, said that she plans to prosecute the United States government with "at
least 41 counts" for crimes against humanity during slavery, after the August 2002
demonstration.
Sherrod-Ali, a lawyer with the Washington, D.C. law office Capitol
Legal Group, said she wishes to hand down an indictment against the government on crimes
including but not limited to "rape," "apartheid," "forced
pregnancy," and "other acts."
According to Sherrod-Ali, since the 1863 signing of Emancipation
Proclamation doctrine by former President Abraham Lincoln that freed slaves, "Jim
Crow Laws and black codes," gave "impunity for lynching," and allows
"police brutality to continue until this day."
That will be count one in her indictment, she said.
Other acts including the "destruction of Black Wall Street,
Rosewood, Florida and Mood Housing Complex in Philadelphia in 1985," will be among
those listed in Sherrod-Ali’s indictment which has no "statue of
limitations," under international law, according to the attorney.
A "Millions for Reparations" march on
Washington D.C. has been scheduled for Aug. 17 2002 in commemoration of the 115th birthday
of civil rights proponent Marcus Garvey.
The national effort hopes to bring 1 million people to the
Nation’s capital to demand that "remedies be instituted for the crime against
humanity," according to organizers, and the repairing of African countries affected
by the slave trade.
The planning stages for "buses to transport at least 5,000,"
to Washington, D.C. will be discussed at a meeting scheduled on February 5 at 7 p.m. at
I.S. 8 located at 108-35 167th Street in Jamaica, Ford said.
Many of the members of the Queens organizing committee
for MFR are also involved in the December 12 Movement.
The December 12 movement got started in 1982 after guards at a prison
in New York State’s Orange County donned Ku Klux Klan uniforms and drenched inmates
with water from hoses and performed other torturous acts, according to Queens Coordinator
for MFR, Amadi Ajamu.
"Since that incident and the Tawana Brawley incident during the
same time, we took on the date," and have since "organized on human rights
issues," like the 1998 Million Youth March in Manhattan, Ajamu said.
National Leaders for Millions for Reparations, Conrad Worrill, Viola
Plummer and Sunny Carson have been a part of the Black Liberation Movement for 30 years or
more and have cooperatively joined with groups like N’ COBRA, the Nation of Islam,
the NAACP, Al Sharpton and others to "bring the issue to the forefront," Ajamu
told the PRESS.
The Queens chapter of Millions For Reparations can be
reached at (917) 495-6979.
For more information about the Millions For Reparations March, call 398-1766.
Reparations On The Web:
African American Reparations: Relevant Websites
Africa Reparations Movement [the.arc.co.uk/arm/]
African Holocaust [members.aol.com/jahpaint/newhol.htm]
African Reparations [ar-africare.com]
Africanite Network [africanite.net]
Black Speak [Blackspeak.com]
Gateway to African American History charter.uchicago.edu/AAH/recent.htm
Justice Talking [Justicetalking.org/season_two_shows/reparations.html]
National Black United Front [Nbufront.org]
National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America
[Ncobra.com]
New Panther Vanguard Movement [Globalpanther.com/rep.shtml]
PlebisPsyche Study Group [plebispsyche.com]
Poverty and Race Research Action Council [Prrac.org/]
The Self Determination Committee [Directblackaction.com]
Slavery Reparations [//racerelations.about.com/newissues/racerelations/
library/weekly/aa051200a.htm]
TransAfrica [Transafricaforum.org]
