Black members of Congress and advocates convened on Capitol Hill on Tuesday for what they say is an urgent call for reparations, even as Donald Trump’s White House uses the power of the presidency to dismantle decades-long work to achieve equity and justice for Black communities harmed by U.S. government-sanctioned chattel slavery and racial discrimination.
The “Why We Can’t Wait: Advancing Reparative Justice in Our Lifetime” congressional briefing brought together dozens of reparations advocates, community leaders, and policymakers to discuss the state of racism in America and several legislative bills that have been or will be introduced to seek reparative justice for Black communities, including the descendants of the formerly enslaved, the survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre and Black veterans denied federal benefits.
“We cannot achieve equity without reparations. Supporting reparations means not only passing the GI Restoration Act and H.R. 40 and S.40, not only embracing the Reparations Now Resolution, but also actively dismantling policies and narratives that seek to deny or distort the urgency of this work,” said Dreisen Heath, a reparations researcher and founder of the Why We Can’t Wait Coalition.
Heath was joined by other reparations advocates, such as Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter, author of “Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation,” and Dr. David J. Johns, CEO and executive director of the National Black Justice Collective.
While reparations for Black Americans continue to be controversial for some, Heath dismissed arguments that question their “feasibility and constitutionality.”
“We don’t question that for victims of the Holocaust, victims of 9/11, or victims of U.S. military action as we proceed,” she argued.
The coalition of elected officials and advocates acknowledged the jarring juxtaposition of seeking reparations at a time of Trump’s dominance in Washington, D.C. The president’s anti-DEI agenda, which has included the dismantling of equity and civil rights federal programs, has threatened to collapse the foundation of the movement for reparations, which has been years in the making.
However, leaders at Tuesday’s convening argued that Trump’s return to the White House and his cudgel to all things racial equity marks no better time to advocate for varying forms of reparations.
“It took nothing but a stroke of a pen, and that’s why we recognize that the fight to restore Black folks has to be so much more substantive,” said U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., who will introduce the Reparations Now Resolution on Thursday. The resolution endorses a “moral and legal obligation” for reparations and calls for trillions of dollars for Black descendants to undo the harms of U.S. slavery, Jim Crow laws, and other racially discriminatory laws and policies.
speaks during a roundtable discussion. (Photo by Duane Prokop/Getty Images for Climate Power)
Democratic lawmakers decried President Trump’s many executive orders targeting civil rights protections and targeting historical and cultural institutions like the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“This is a moment in time where societies are shaped [and] new societies are built…we should be the ones who are shaping it,” said Lee. “Their real intention is to build up whatever comes next in their image, and we better fight like hell to make sure that we’re building it in our image.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., who in February reintroduced H.R. 40, a 36-year-old bill that would create a federal commission to study U.S. slavery and reparation proposals, said Trump’s policies are “nothing but anti-Blackness on steroids.”
The congresswoman lambasted the Trump administration for trying to “make America Jim Crow again,” arguing that actions like proposing funding cuts to Medicaid and education, eliminating enforcement of fair housing laws, equal employment, and the firing of tens of thousands of federal government workers are “an attack on Black people.”
“The wholesale, systemic harm done to Black folk was not indiscriminate. It was very precise. The cruelty is the point, and the harm done to Black folks has been codified in budgets, and it has been legislated,” she explained. “What is the antidote to anti-Blackness? To be pro-Black and pro-justice.”
U.S. Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J., who reintroduced S. 40, the Senate companion to Pressley’s H.R. 40, said the Trump administration is “declaring war on truth-telling” in America and “cheapening the truth and greatness of our nation” through its attempts to sanitize Black history, as evidenced by the removal or altering of federal webpages about historical figures and events like Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.
Booker, along with Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, will soon reintroduce the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Commission Act. The resolution calls for the creation of a commission that would “acknowledge and memorialize the arrival of the first slave ship in the United States and the injustices suffered by people of color throughout history.”
The New Jersey senator said there’s an “urgency” in America to confront the truth of racism and inequality, adding, “especially under a president who seems to want to Disney-ify American history.” He added that Trump “cheapens us as a whole” and “undermines our strength.”
Reflecting on the state of America, Booker recited a quote from famed writer James Baldwin: “I love America more than any other nation. That’s why I insist upon the right to criticize her perpetually.”
“Love is, if anything, first and fundamentally telling the truth and understanding that even when mistakes are made, that we still are a land of redemption and healing and unlimited possibility,” said Booker. “If we start with the truth, as our ancestors have said, the truth will set you free.”
