In the spirit of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action of 2001, which declared the Atlantic Slave Trade and chattel slavery as crimes against humanity, to directly confront racism, we urge the Women’s March 8 mobilization to embrace the growing national and global movement for reparatory justice.
As a matter of principle, collective resistance means each aggrieved, affected and offended people must speak for themselves. On behalf of our African ancestors and succeeding generations who have fought for reparations, the National African American Reparations Commission wishes to extend our collective support and endorsement of the March 8 Strike.
We urge the mobilization to put systemic racism front and center by addressing the inequalities African Americans are still suffering resulting from the vestiges and ongoing wounds of slavery, racial discrimination and the economic issues at the root of many critical issues in the African-American community today, such as education, healthcare and criminal justice policy, including policing practices.
No amount of material resources or monetary compensation can ever be sufficient restitution for the holocaust of chattel slavery upon which the wealth of the nation is based. State-sanctioned chattelization involved not only our stolen labor and dehumanization but also practices of sexual exploitation such as rape and the breeding of Africans for slave labor, borne especially by African American women.
Followed by convict leasing, Jim Crow segregation, mass incarceration and ongoing economic disparities, each of these systems has brought their concomitant intergenerational spiritual, mental and cultural trauma and physical damages.
In keeping with the UN Decade for People of African Descent, we are resolved to educate, mobilize and organize African people and all people of conscience and goodwill to compel this nation to acknowledge and apologize for the wrongs of the past and to provide the massive resources required to begin the process of repair and healing.
