Why We Can’t Wait Coalition Urges Biden to Create Federal Reparations Commission by Juneteenth

Hon. Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
President of america
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500

RE: Making a federal fee by government order by Juneteenth to review and develop reparations proposals for African People

Pricey President Biden,

Now greater than ever, we all know that most of the racial disparities that weigh this nation down, and divide individuals within the US from one another, are pointless and might be eradicated if we deal with the continuing legacy of enslavement. By righting our wrongs, we will ensure that all households within the US get a good probability to amass land, to purchase a house, to take pleasure in good well being, and to stay with out worry about tomorrow. That’s the reason we write to request that you just create by Juneteenth an professional fee like that which might be established by a invoice in Congress, H.R. 40, the Fee to Examine and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-People Act.[1]

As 365 civil rights, human rights, and faith-based organizations and dozens of activists, leaders and celebrities that help H.R. 40 identified in a letter on February 4,[2] addressing pervasive anti-Black racism and offering reparations, lengthy overdue, can not wait one other day, 12 months, or decade. We’re in a once-in-a-lifetime second that we can not let slip away if we’re to start the method of restore.

You’ve seen first-hand the dire want and ardent demand for restore. Final June, you visited Tulsa and hung out with the three remaining survivors of the race bloodbath that decimated Black Wall Avenue. Your historic journey fastened a highlight on 107-year-old Viola Ford Fletcher, 107-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle, and 101-year-old Hughes Van Ellis, on bloodbath descendants, and on the Black Tulsa neighborhood that continues to reel from the consequences of white supremacy. Requires federal motion on reparations had been loud and ubiquitous throughout your keep, coming from bloodbath descendants,[3] rights organizations, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus.[4]

This week, practically a 12 months after your go to, a number of of this letter’s authors met once more with the three identified bloodbath survivors in Tulsa and bloodbath descendants, the place in a courtroom they made their case for justice.  As they race in opposition to the clock to safe reparations from the Metropolis of Tulsa, we implore you to grab on H.R. 40’s historic momentum by making a federal reparations fee whereas the window remains to be open.

We hope that you’ll take this chance to make good on the promise that you just and Vice President Kamala Harris made to Black voters outlined within the Lift Every Voice: The Biden Plan for Black America.[5] On this marketing campaign plan, you pledged to deal with systemic racism and the persevering with impacts of slavery by “supporting a research of reparations.” White Home press secretary Jen Psaki is quoted as saying you help a research of reparations and White Home senior advisor Cedric Richmond mentioned that you just help H.R. 40 particularly.[6] You will need to seize this opportunity to point out up for many who wealth have for too lengthy weathered discrimination, abuse, and neglect of their tireless efforts to make this nation into what it could actually and have to be.  

The US Congress made historical past when, on April 14, 2021, the Home Judiciary Committee voted to maneuver H.R. 40 to the Home flooring for full consideration, the primary time within the invoice’s 32-year historical past. The invoice now has a document stage of help with 215 members of Congress dedicated to voting “sure” when the invoice involves the Home flooring. That is way over the invoice has ever had and it ought to move within the Home if voted on. As well as, on March 12, 2022, the Democratic Nationwide Committee (DNC) handed a decision of help for reparations and H.R. 40.[7] However contemplating US Senate dynamics and timing—there are only a few months left earlier than the tip of this 117th Congressional session in January 2023—we’re calling on you to work with supporting organizations and Home sponsors of H.R. 40 to arrange the identical fee by government order by Juneteenth this 12 months.

Juneteenth presents you with an necessary alternative to commemorate the tip of enslavement whereas additionally recognizing way more nonetheless must be executed to create fairness and actual alternative for African People within the US past declaring a nationwide vacation. The Black to white racial wealth hole stays huge, with white households having a median of $188,200, 7.8 instances that of Black households at $24,100,[8] a vestige of the legacy of enslavement—which may discover its roots in redlining, the Homestead Act, and denying Black individuals entry to federally backed residence mortgages—and the failure to handle the exploitation, segregation, and violence unleashed on Black those that adopted. Furthermore, the continuing impacts of enslavement have resulted in deep psychological harms, together with by the use of pressured separation and collective trauma, which require complete treatment. The Covid-19 pandemic has solely widened the inequality. It is usually necessary that this fee be established by Juneteenth in order that it could actually begin working and problem suggestions earlier than the following presidential elections.

H.R.40 would set up an professional fee to review the legacy of enslavement and the way the failure to handle harms stemming from it have resulted in big racial disparities between white and Black individuals in: the power to build up wealth and to entry well being care, schooling, housing and employment alternatives; environmental outcomes; and policing, amongst different issues. The fee would additionally advocate proposals for learn how to present restore for what the research reveals. This invoice doesn’t authorize funds or any particular treatment. It merely creates a fee to review the issue, collect related data, extensively contain and seek the advice of with impacted communities, and advocate options. Just like the federal fee that investigated the pressured relocation and wrongful incarceration of Japanese People throughout World Warfare II, an H.R. 40-style fee will help pave the best way for a important and truthful reckoning and accounting for previous harms and the current harms that circulation from them.

As states, cities, and different establishments, together with the state of California; Wilmington, Delaware; Windfall, Rhode Island; Burlington, Vermont; Tullahassee, Oklahoma; Greenbelt, Maryland; Detroit, Michigan; Evanston, Illinois; Georgetown College; the Jesuits; and others pursue reparations at an accelerated tempo,[9] it will be sheer irony for the federal authorities, which sanctioned the kidnapping and trafficking in human beings that slavery entailed, and maintained subsequent anti-Black legal guidelines and establishments, to proceed to lag behind and circumvent actual progress on reparations.

It’s in Tulsa the place you so powerfully and unequivocally acknowledged: “the one method to construct a standard floor is to really restore and to rebuild.”[10] Because the a hundred and first anniversary of the bloodbath approaches, and racial disparities proceed to maintain communities throughout the US divided, we couldn’t agree extra.

For the above causes, and people acknowledged in our February 4, 2022, letter referenced above, we hope that we will rely on you to take this significant first step towards attaining racial justice and realizing reparations for hundreds of years of ongoing hurt. We ask that you just create a federal fee to review and develop reparations proposals for African People just like that of H.R. 40 by Juneteenth this 12 months. We stand able to work with you to make sure this occurs and kindly request a gathering as quickly as potential to debate the small print. Thanks on your consideration.

Sincerely,

Nationwide Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA)
Shade of Change 
Reparation Training Mission
Nationwide Motion Community 
Rainbow PUSH Coalition 
Religion for Black Lives
Black Church PAC 
Black Voters Matter Fund  
Samuel Dewitt Proctor Convention 
Church World Service 
NETWORK Foyer for Catholic Social Justice
The Union for Reform Judaism
Associates Committee on Nationwide Laws
Presbyterian Church U.S.A. 
Nationwide Shoppers League
Batrice & Associates 
Reparations 4 Slavery
Make it Plain
Reside Free USA 
Till Freedom
Nikkei Progressives 
Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress  
Japanese American Residents League
San Jose Nikkei Resisters 
Nationwide Nikkei Reparations Coalition 
Terence Crutcher Basis 
Human Rights Watch 
United Church of Christ, Justice and Native Church Ministries 

Cc: Vice President Kamala Harris, Ambassador Susan Rice, and Senior Advisor Cedric Richmond