REPARATIONS TASK FORCE MISSION & VISION
Democrats Abroad is now committed to meeting the rising challenges facing Black Americans through a collective push for acknowledgement and redress for systemic Black trauma in the United States and, ultimately, closure for our nation.
Since July 10th 2021, the Democrats Abroad Reparations Task Force has been working with local, state, and federal U.S. reparative justice advocates on the ground stateside and around the world. Our mission is to build a multi-ethnic, multi-generational, interfaith coalition that knows reparative justice means moral, racial, and social justice for all. As Americans abroad, we exist as the only Reparations Task Force with a global purview on U.S. Reparations legislation. It’s time to leverage this strength to finally end structural racism and the trauma it has wrought.
Do this we must, for our time is short.
Modern anti-Black trauma currently exists in the form of racial disparities. These disparities are the result of historic slavery, Jim Crow policies, and their continued impacts on the lived realities of Black Americans in the realms of education, employment, finance, law, healthcare, cultural memory, property ownership, civic engagement, and voting rights. Far from existing in a vacuum, these disparities draw a direct continuum to past federal, state, and local governmental policies. Americans of all backgrounds working together, however, can begin reversing these disparities through reparative justice and legislation. We can and must join this fight, as freedom can no longer wait. Black lives can no longer wait. Our democracy can no longer wait.
BLACK VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT THREATENS DEMOCRACY
We live in an era of hyper-focused politics, where scores of local, state, midterm, and national elections are now decided by razor-thin margins. These narrow margins are reduced further by a powerful, tech-savvy structural racism—reinforced by a reluctance to address legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and modern white supremacy.
Structural racism has persisted in such an environment and adapted to the times, creating a modern racial wealth gap. This gap, in turn, has both led to and enabled today’s triple inequality of predatory policing, mass incarceration, and Black voter suppression.
Heeding the call for real action, the Democrats Abroad Reparations Task Force supports the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act—known as H.R. 40. This bill would enact a commission to begin researching how Black Americans have suffered under racial terror and political suppression and would then make recommendations for redress.
OUR GOALS
As a State Party Reparations Task Force, our first goal is to create ties with, and provide support for, existing task forces and advocacy groups, share data, and work together to create greater awareness and demand for reparatory justice legislation for Black Americans. In support of such legislation, the RTF seeks to advocate and educate for the measures called for in the 10-Point Reparations Plan of the National African-American Reparations Commission. Please see the 10-Point Plan here.
As a global-level task force, our ultimate goals are to:
- Coordinate interdependent relationships with all global and country-level DA caucuses;
- Engage with stateside local, state, and federal Reparations Task Forces and Initiatives through exchange of data and statistics;
- Utilize the unique and global reach of DA to produce data-driven papers examining political support and activism of Americans abroad for reparations;
- Submit research papers to stateside pro-Reparations congresspeople concerning the political leanings and attitudes of Americans abroad on reparations;
- Coordinate educational initiatives on topics of significance for Black cultural heritage and collective memory, voter mobilization, and activist campaigns behind municipal, state, and federal reparation policies, programs, and political candidates.
The RTF is looking for Democrats Abroad members who are motivated to jump into the fight for full reparative justice for Black Americans. We are looking for volunteers who wish to support H.R. 40 and all other American reparative legislation at the local, state, and national levels.