Reparations Takes Center Stage in Houston

Posted on Sep 30, 2009 Posted by decolonize

Reparations for Africans and African Americans Houston Saturday marks the third annual National Day of Panhandling for Reparations. What started out as guerrilla theater has turned into a conversation starter on reparations for the enslavement and slave-labor of Africans and African Americans in the United States of America. African internationalist activism is growing in Houston, and reparations is a vital question in the movement.

by decolonize

Reparations and Black liberation discussions in Texas are becoming more prominent through the important local work of the Houston chapter of the National Black United Front, led by the national chair of NBUF, Houstonian Kofi Taharka. NBUF also allies with many speakers such as Omali Yeshitela, who comes to Houston soon.

This national day began in 2003 as a performance by artist Damali Ayo, who panhandled for reparations on the streets of various cities across the United States. Reparations has been an important organizing issue, with advocates holding a national Millions for Reparations match in 2002. The organizing kit for the October 10 national action states the following about its origins:

People all across the United States are taking an hour or two to sit in a range of locations in their communities: outside of businesses, libraries, museums, art galleries, or on busy street corners. We wear signs reminding passersby of the history of slavery in the United States. We collect reparations in the form of money from white Americans for the enslavement and free-labor of Africans and African Americans during the establishment and economic rise of this country. This money is immediately paid out to black passersby. Both parties are offered a receipt. We do this to offer a convenient opportunity for American citizens to acknowledge, apologize and compensate the unpaid labor of African Americans, the travesty of slavery, and the rightful due of reparations.

Ayo is also known for her performances on race in America; her most recent work includes Rent-A-Negro, where she offers to 'rent' herself as a 'Black friend.'

Visiting Houston this month, Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People's Socialist Party and leader of the Uhuru Movement (whose affiliated groups include the APSP, International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, African People's Education and Defense Foundation, African Socialist International, All African People's Development and Empowerment Project, African Peoples Solidarity Committee, Burning Spear Publications and others) has been a leading voice in the reparations movement. Omali Yeshitela will speak in Houston:

October 18th, 2009 • 6 p.m.
The Black Struggle in the Era of Barack Obama
SHAPE Community Center, 3815 Live Oak in Houston

Also featuring:
Kofi Taharka, National Chair, National Black United Front
Dr. Aisha Fields, Director of the All African People's Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP)

The APSP is part of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, which has called for a national rally Nov. 7 in Washington, DC to speak out on issues critical to the Black and Latino community. According to UhuruNews (online version of the African Peoples Socialist Party newspaper Burning Spear) the coalition's call to action includes the following:

Black and Brown people continue to suffer the brunt of un/under-employment and predatory loan scandal crises. Military spending under Obama has increased as have the warfare this nation continues to export to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Venezuela and Colombia. Mass incarceration, police brutality and political imprisonment remain rampant and the most negatively impacted by the levee breech in post-Katrina New Orleans continue to be without homes, jobs or health care assistance. And to that point, these are precisely the communities who nationally will be the most negatively affected by yet another myth of health care 'reform.'

The Kasama Project has spoken actively in the need for communists and other revolutionary elements to take a new approach to matters of race and the oppression of people of color. Mike Ely writes:

The Black nation (forged in the deep Southern slave states) has now been dispersing from those rural areas for over a hundred years. First the urbanization of African American people and then the repeal of legal segregation (and break down of some social segregation for some Black people) have shaped that dispersal. Many millions of Black people remain bitterly segregated (in someways more intensely within impoverished enclaves than before the 60s). African American people as a whole face racist oppression (as do other “non-white” nationalities in distinctive and interrelated ways). But, at the same time, there have been changes — including the development of new forms of multi-culturalism and “race mixing” (in places like Californian cities and NYC) that need to be much more deeply investigated and understood.

We need to look at this fresh — and not just at new conditions, but with a sharp critical eye at the slightly modified “classic Marxist-Leninist” approach to the national question (that always had a highly contradictory ability/inability to grasp the realities we are seeking to transform). The assumptions and instincts of 60s Black nationalism are exhausted in many ways. The issues of secession for the Black belt have only of the most tenuous relevance to any modern discussion. The U.S. has become a far more complexly multinational country because of the influx of Latin American and Asian immigrants — creating new conditions and new possibilities.

One thing I believe deeply: we need to draw out off all this a profoundly multinational revolutionary movement that is profoundly opposed to racial oppression. Both parts of that are crucial and difficult. And if it happens it will be a highly contradictory real-life process filled with different currents (including necessarily movements rooted in particular nationalities against their particular oppressions — including now with the demand for legality for the undocumented peoples.)

We need to understand what capitalism has been transforming, and what only socialist revolution can transform. And we have to break with old thinking and frozen theory to even start to consider these matters.

Those interested in organizing activities for Saturday's National Day of Panhandling for Reparations can download organizing materials here [PDF]. You can download materials for the Black is Back Coalition's rally in DC here.

Africans United For Sanity Now