With the issue of reparations en
tering the mainstream discourse for the upcoming presidential elections in 2020, it is important to hear from those who have been in the trenches and at the forefront of the struggle for reparations. Brothers and Sisters have been mobilizing around this issue for decades, and a body of work and research has been initiated on a global scale. We must not allow political party hacks to hijack this movement, or the discussion around reparations in any way. And while hashtags can be useful in blazing ideas across social media, they are not a substitute for a movement and the struggle for reparations cannot be reduced to a meme or a hashtag. Although we must fight for reparations locally, depending upon where our ancestors were dispersed, this struggle is a global one. The Transatlantic trade of human beings happened to Africa! And the effects from that and the ruthless capitalist system that it spawned, has far reaching consequences to the continent, and the Africans who were dispersed throughout the world. Just as the trade in Africans happened on a global scale, so it is that we must stand united on a global scale in the demand for reparatory justice for African people.
Below is a video of Kamm Howard, from the 2018 Black Is Back Electoral school. Kamm Howard is the chair of the Reparations Committee of the Black Is Back Coalition, the Male National Co-Chair of NCOBRA (National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations), and a member of the Amos T. Wilson Institute. In this clip he is gives powerful information regarding how the Black community should set the reparations agenda for electoral politics. He also gives an update on the bill, HR 40, currently referred to as the Reparations Remedy Bill, which has languished in Congress since 1989 (although initially introduced by Representative John Conyers in 1987, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee reintroduced the bill .in January of this year). Kamm will again be presenting at the 2019 Black Is Back Electoral School, April 6 and 7, in St Petersburg, Florida, where strategizing around reparations in the upcoming elections will be one of the central themes of the school.
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