Reparations
By David Swanson
30 July, 2007
Afterdowningstreet.org
When
a Member of Congress wants to push an agenda forward, even one supported
by very few other Congress Members, he or she will introduce or sign
onto a bill and urge others to do the same. Almost every Congress Member
is willing to do this sort of thing, often on very controversial issues.
But when a Member of Congress wants to oppose an agenda without explaining
why, he or she will tell you "I can't sign onto that because we
don't have the votes." In addition to the inconsistency, another
problem with this excuse is that there are many examples of Congress
finding the necessary votes as a result of a small group of Congress
Members pushing an agenda forward.
"In January of 1989,"
Congressman John Conyers writes on his website, "I first introduced
the bill H.R. 40, Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African
Americans Act. I have re-introduced HR 40 every Congress since 1989,
and will continue to do so until it's passed into law." This is
the appropriate position and behavior for Conyers or any other Congress
Member to take on this or any other important matter of social justice.
One day, Conyers and others may succeed. And by putting their names
on a bill, they make clear to citizens which other congress members
are failing to take the same position.
On the question of impeaching
Vice President Dick Cheney, however, Conyers takes a very different
tack. He has published a book documenting the crimes of Cheney and Bush,
but when it comes to supporting a bill, Conyers offers the "we
don't have the votes" excuse.
This would be aggravating
enough on its own. The aggravation is added to when some badly confused
individuals denounce those lobbying Conyers on this issue (or at least
those doing so who are white) precisely on the grounds that Conyers
supports reparations for slavery. Of course he does! Conyers supports
single-payer health care. Conyers supports the right to organize a union.
Conyers supports all sorts of good things. But none of those things
qualify him to take the wrong position on impeachment and not be criticized
or protested for it.
Of those who protested Conyers
at his office last week, most if not every single individual –
including the white ones – support reparations for slavery. I've
publicly supported and written about that project for years. For years
I had a big link on my website to an activist campaign for reparations.
In January 2005, I wrote an obituary for James Forman [ http://davidswanson.org/node/242
] in which I said:
"In 1969 he carried
impoliteness so far as to disrupt a service at Riverside Church in New
York to demand that white churches pay $500 million in reparations to
African-Americans. If the movement for reparations ever succeeds, Forman
may be honored as one of its pioneers. Until then, he's known - where
he's known at all - as someone who pushed for a change that has not
yet come (and must therefore be ridiculed or attacked). We forget how
many things he pushed for that are now taken for granted."
My point was not just that efforts like those made by John Conyers year
after year may someday cease to be mocked and instead be honored. The
larger point I was making was that Forman was willing to challenge even
his allies when they were wrong, and to do so in ways that were deemed
impolite and inappropriate. Why go to a liberal bunch of pro-integration
church-goers, some of whom were no doubt funding and participating in
important work, and disrupt their religious service to propose a project
for which everyone knew we did not "have the votes"? The answer,
of course, is that justice is more important than decorum, damaged lives
more significant than hurt feelings.
In April 2007 I gave a speech
in Portland, Maine, [ http://davidswanson.org/node/803
] in which I said: "I spoke earlier today … at Faneuil Hall,
where men like Wendell Phillips led a movement to abolish slavery, something
the wise and knowing of that day said could not be done. Those abolitionists
made their movement a fight for freedom of the press. And make no mistake:
our struggle is the same."
The struggle for the impeachment
of Cheney and Bush is not in opposition to the struggle for justice
from slavery. It is inspired and informed by the anti-slavery movement.
Reparations for the horrors of slavery must come, no matter how many
years later.
So too, must reparation for
the crimes of today. We have killed nearly a million Iraqis, driven
another 2 million from their homes, and caused yet another 2 million
to flee their country all together. We have severely damaged the lives
of every resident of that nation. At the same time, we have abandoned
the people of New Orleans, many to their deaths. And, worldwide, our
nation's policies are leading the exacerbation of global warming, resulting
already in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The time for reparations
for today's crimes will come. Those crimes include the use of slave
labor in the construction of the US embassy in Baghdad. Now is the time
to end those crimes, to put a stop to the suffering they are causing.
There is an urgent moral
demand to put a halt to the destruction. Then the cleanup can begin.
And it must include the establishment of new standards for future behavior,
a whole new direction for our nation based on setting right our past
abuses. The abuses we set straight must include the slaughter of the
Native Americans, and must above all include slavery.
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