I wanted to pull these comments, with permission, from Mahdi Ibn Ziyad who published them on Facebook in response to my post about the State of the City:

Why not call for special and separate public school governing authorities for black community, Latino, Asian communities and the increasing new white demographic caused by gentrification of the downtown Camden core? That way we can get beyond this traditional debate on how to deal with racism and racist and white ethnic group oriented state control of local of public school resources. A key part of this separate governing authority strategy would be to call thereby for direct funding of these authorities by the federal government and not the state of New Jersey or its monetary outlays for the schools as it now works, In other words cut out federalism where the states are constitutionally the main authority of the public schools within state boundaries. The special/separate governing authorities would be based on the non-federalist idea of a direct relation between the US government and individual citizens as regards matters of public education.

The governing authorities I am recommending could be seen as the educational part of a comprehensive national $$$ reparations strategy where black communities across the nation can fight for and, if passed by Congress and signed by the President, can receive compensational justice for the enslavement and Jim Crow era disabilities that still linger in our current situation. In fact this is one of the recommendations of black Congressman John Conyers current bill HR 40, The African American Reparations Study bill originally introduced in 1989 and re-introduced every new congressional session. The Camden United group should really go online and closely read the Conyer’s bill especially as it deals with compensatory ideas relative to black educational needs.

There is all kinds of progressive black educational literature that connects to the reparations issue, the role of the US government as the single payer and how black educational entities stand to benefit.

About such independent thinking about black education, Marcus Mosiah Garvey long ago said and later Bob Marley sang in his famous Redemption Song. “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind …”

I asked Mahdi for more information and permission to post, and he sent this: 

The issue of reparations compensation for harms to less powerful people carried out under the legal sanctions of perpetrator governments is both a national and global phenomena that has been on the public agenda since the aftermath of WWII, the Holocaust of millions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and others, Third World nations decolonization from Western European hegemony in the 1950’s and 60’s, the US Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, the reparations to Japanese Americans given to surviving concentration camp victims by the Reagan administration in 1980, the restitution of Native lands negotiations between the white Canadian government and its Native constituents, the various truth and reconciliation commissions and agreements crafted by Latin American, Rwandan and South African governments, the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s regional working groups and such. Lots of public info available discussing the pros and cons of this issue, including the latest salvo from 14 Caribbean nations who are preparing a huge law suit against Britain, the Netherlands and France for the enslavement of Africans and slavery’s aftermath in that region.

In January of 1998 the city council of Camden unanimously passed a resolution in support of HR 40 the African Americans Reparation Study bill sponsored by Congressman John Conyers. The Camden County Freeholders drew up an official congratulatory parchment recognizing the resolution of the City.

My African American Issues in Democracy advanced placement US history students at Camden High School were the named recipient’s of that glowing Camden City Council/County Freeholder resolution in favor or HR 40 back in 1998. Thus, a local Camden area educational and legislative ground has been initially laid for the heightening of social consciousness about the need for African Americans to pursue reparation compensation as a matter of the utmost import in ventures in real concrete and practical approaches to racial and economic justice.

Reparations would require more than conversation. The voters have to be educated to stop electing people who look like them but work against them. The racial divide is just that a divide. The divisional strategy keeps them in power as people tend to vote for those who look like them in the city. Much more could be done if VOTER EDUCATION becomes the top priority. Changing who is in charge is the first step of true change. The law makers have to be those proven to NOT be law breakers. Those selling their influence, splitting the vote, and being silent as to the atrocities must be removed. It is the only way programs, money, and labor become of use to the residents of Camden. Billions flow through the city and NONE of it touches the residents. One must become the law to enforce the law. Only through penalty does one respect authority. Because none of the government of Camden, it’s school board, or its program pimps have gone to jail that is the root of the problem. It is impossible to continue to have this discussion or any other without VOTER Education. Voters don’t even know if their votes are counted or if illegal absentee ballots have been submitted in their names. They don’t even know they have the right to check their own voting records. SO… to enforce the law, one must become the law. All conversations are mute if no attempt to bring all the citizens of Camden together as a single VOTING MACHINE to change out all the current officials and their puppets. That must be our focus. After that is accomplished, the residents can progress leaps and bounds with a government that consists of residents and those NOT OWNED by a master.

Self determination for a new African American consciousness devolves into many avenues. It will take mass community based, adult education to enlighten and organize people to understand that reparations is not a government handout like welfare, but some that’s owed our people for the slave labor, Jim Crow segregations and racial harm already done. Getting candidates up to run who have themselves been educated about and become absolutely committed to such legislation as HR 40 and its replication at the locale levels is a requisite must before we can depend upon them to actually fight for self determination and independence once elected.

First step is to determine who here locally is interested in connecting black educational strategies to reparations and the actual national legislation (HR 40 … the 40 stands for the 1865 promise to ex-slaves of 40 acres of land without the necessary mule) we already have?

I believe that serious movements for change start with the people themselves getting some amount of clarity about the specifics of each aspect of struggle. Politicians may be enlisted to assist in those parts of the struggle that call for their involvement but they must not lead a particular aspect of struggle unless and until they have been thoroughly vetted as committed the people’s business. To date we have not had independent black nationalist politicians, especially at the local level. Conventional and neo-liberal black politicians are ideologically unprepared either part of the Democratic Oary machine or are ideologically unprepared to move beyond the small favors doled out by the Democratic Party machine. The local black Republicans may be out of sync with the brutish racism of state and national Republicans but they offer no real alternate ideological program that will break black people out their captivity to local white business elites and that elites dogged control over the fortunes of a weak black political presence, no matter which of the two monopoly parties manage to rule the roost.

Alternate third parties are the bet for black independent political empowerment. A third party black presence in Camden could be the catalyst for new black inspired adventures in social change that would not be under the ideological stranglehold of the white monopoly two party system. The idea of non-partisan elected officials is a joke because non-party candidates and their programs end up being made subservient to monopoly party platforms even though “independents” may act like they disagree with the monopoly party position on any given issue. Individual black so-called “independent candidates” for office do not have a real, concretely identified black constituency of followers who are organized. A progressive democratic approach that’s critical of the regular Democratic Party is ideologically okay, but as a practical matter untenable when faced off against a well oiled machine politics funded and managed by white suburban elites. A progressive, independent minded third party black presence would not be handicapped in what it could say about the white run Democratic machine in Camden and Camden county locales or the white run Republican establishment statewide and nationally.

What a local black third party could do best is to offer alternative political positions, policies and programs that do no violence to black sensibilities and are not afraid to push a thoroughly black nationalist oriented agenda that at some points may or may not agree with black conventional black politicians who advocate a mainly unconscious neo-liberal line that ends in selling out comprehensive black interests for small political favors, (like powerless and often meaningless political and office titles, mid-level supervisory employment at some educational, social service, health related or criminal justice bureaucracy, name recognition, career promotions, business and economic incentives, scholarships for family members, get out of jail passes, tickets to sports and entertainment events and such) from the usual set of white bosses who normally seek to control black destinies — but let black people, led by conventional black politicians, think they are being self-determinative.

This is what Congressman John Conyers has to say about his legislation HR 40 Commission to Study Reparations for African American Act: In January of 1989, 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.

One of the biggest challenges in discussing the issue of reparations in a political context is deciding how to have a national discussion without allowing the issue to polarize our party or our nation. The approach that I have advocated for over a decade has been for the federal government to undertake an official study of the impact of slavery on the social, political and economic life of our nation.

Over 4 million Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and its colonies from 1619 to 1865, and as a result, the United States was able to begin its grand place as the most prosperous country in the free world.

It is un-controverted that African slaves were not compensated for their labor. More unclear however, is what the effects and remnants of this relationship have had on African-Americans and our nation from the time of emancipation through today.

I chose the number of the bill, 40, as a symbol of the forty acres and a mule that the United States initially promised freed slaves. This unfulfilled promise and the serious devastation that slavery had on African-American lives has never been officially recognized by the United States Government.

My bill does four things:

1. It acknowledges the fundamental injustice and inhumanity of slavery
2. It establishes a commission to study slavery, its subsequent racial and economic discrimination against freed slaves;
3. It studies the impact of those forces on today’s living African Americans; and
4. The commission would then make recommendations to Congress on appropriate remedies to redress the harm inflicted on living African Americans.

Many of the most pressing issues, which have heretofore not been broached on any broad scale, would be addressed. Issues such as the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery, whether an apology is owed, whether compensation is warranted and, if so, in what form and who should eligible would also be delved into.

H.R. 40 has strong grass roots support within the African American community, including major civil rights organizations, religious organizations, academic and civic groups from across the country. This support is very similar to the strong grassroots support that proceeded another legislative initiative: the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday bill. It took a full 15 years from the time I first introduced it on April 5, 1968 to its passage in the fall of 1983. Through most of those 15 years, the idea of a federal holiday honoring an African American civil rights leader was considered a radical idea.

Like the King Holiday bill, we have seen the support for this bill increase each year. Today we have over 40 co-sponsors, more than at any time in the past. What is also encouraging is the dramatic increase in the number of supporters for the bill among Members of Congress who are not members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Just this past month my Colleague Tony Hall, from Ohio introduced a bill calling for an apology as well as the creation of a reparations commission. So now, for the first time we now have two bills in Congress that call for the creation of a commission.

We are also encouraged by the support of city councils and other local jurisdiction that have supported our bill. Already the city councils in Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Atlanta have passed bills supporting H.R. 40. And just this past month a councilman in Los Angeles, the site of our 2000 convention has introduced a bill with the strong support of the Los Angeles community. Also, there are presently two bills in the Michigan State House of Representatives addressing the issue of reparations.

It is a fact that slavery flourished in the United States and constituted an immoral and inhumane deprivation of African slaves’ lives, liberty and cultural heritage. As a result, millions of African Americans today continue to suffer great injustices.

But reparation is a national and a global issue, which should be addressed in America and in the world. It is not limited to Black Americans in the US but is an issue for the many countries and villages in Africa, which were pilfered, and the many countries, which participated in the institution of slavery.

Another reason that this bill has garnered so much resistance is because many people want to leave slavery in the past – they contend that slavery happened so long ago that it is hurtful and divisive to bring it up now. It’s too painful. But the concept of reparations is not a foreign idea to either the U.S. government or governments throughout the world.

Though there is historical cognition for reparations and it is a term that is fairly well known in the international body politic, the question of reparations for African Americans remains unresolved. And so, just as we’ve discussed the Holocaust and Japanese internment camps, and to some extent the devastation that the colonists inflicted upon the Indians, we must talk about slavery and its continued effects.

Last year the Democratic Party included this issue in the platform it asks that country engage in a discussion at the federal legislative level would send an important signal to the African American community and other people of goodwill.

The great Southern white man of letters and 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, William Faulkner once famously noted, in his musings on Southern white history that: “the past is not dead and gone; it isn’t even past”. Faulkner’s view is pertinent to all people, not just Southern white people and their nostalgic love affair with the antebellum, pre-Civil War period of history where glorification of all things white even dirt poor whites living in the backwoods was the order of the day. A period markedly different from but eerily similar to today’s post-Civil Rights era of “Black Lives Don’t Matter”. Black people in America must thereby also grasp the concrete manifestation of why a corrected Afrocentric understanding of black history is important. Not merely because it is nice to know who achieved what against all manner of racist odds (this is the normal gist of black history month’s listings of famous Colored/Negro/Black firsts), but the deeper meaning of our people’s struggles for political liberation to establish black sovereign spaces, psychological, spiritual and cultural self-determination and economic freedom from the captivity to white capitalist economic overlords who have consistently exploited (in the South, North and other regions) and used racially subjugated black labor to accumulate white wealth. We need to deal with recorded history not just for knowledge sake — but to seek practical, concrete economic development funds that get beyond welfare dependency and reliance on the system of capitalism that keeps must of us at the lower to lowest rungs of the economic hierarchy, as menials, as the under-employed or the unemployed or homeless. Reparations is an economic development and economic justice arrangements for the heavy the heavy debt owed black people by the US government, as the historic and legal representative of the white ruling political majority — of whatever white dominated political party or political persuasion — since the founding of the republic.

NAACP Supports Slavery Reparations Study Legislation, H.R. 40, Now Pending In The 113th Congress

Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) has again re-introduced H.R. 40; the formal title of this bill is to establish a “Commission to Study the Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act”. Specifically, this legislation, also known as the “Reparations Act” would establish a federal commission to review the institution of slavery, the resulting racial and economic discrimination against African Americans, and the impact of these forces on African Americans who are living today. The bill would also acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 colonies between 1619 and 1865 and make recommendations to help correct the residual effects of these acts.

The call for reparations received a boost earlier this year when an article appeared in the May 21, 2014, edition of the Atlantic written by Ta-Nehisi Coates entitled, “The Case for Reparations.” This article made an extremely effective case in support of reparations legislation.

While this legislation has consistently been a priority of the NAACP, it was, unfortunately, not acted upon by the 112th Congress (which ended in December, 2012). Not to be deterred, however, Congressman Conyers reintroduced H.R. 40 (he asks for, and is given, the same number every Congress) on January 3, 2013, the first day of the 113th Congress.

In our continuing effort to advocate for this legislation, the NAACP Washington Bureau is currently working with a few key members of the United States Senate to see a companion bill introduced in the Senate. If we are successful, this would be the first time reparations legislation has been introduced in the Senate and would represent a major step forward in our struggle to help pass this important legislation and for recognition and equality.