 Good afternoon everyone. So happy to see you here on this rainy and blustery afternoon. Thanks for making it out. We are here today for our panel discussion titled reparations now and are excited to hear from our esteemed guests on why reparations are needed and current efforts to help repair the harm done to black communities through the centuries. I'm Shauna Sherman, manager of the African American Center here at the main library. It's located on the third floor and it's a space dedicated to celebrating and promoting the culture and history of African Americans all year round. As today is the last day of Black History Month I wanted to mention that we will still be celebrating Black History because here we call it more than a month. If you haven't visited the space on the third floor please take time to do so tonight after our program or come back to the main library. We'd love to see you there. Before we get started I want to acknowledge that the library is located on in the area now known as San Francisco which is on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples of the San Francisco Peninsula. As original peoples of this land the Ramaytush Ohlone have never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place. We recognize that we benefit from living working and learning on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramaytush community. So we are grateful tonight to this afternoon to our partners for this afternoon's program which is the Africana Studies Department of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco University. Our moderator for tonight's program is Dr. Tiffany Caesar a professor there and before I hand the mic over to her I'm going to give you a brief introduction. Dr. Caesar calls herself a woman's black woman's archivist due to her ongoing research on the preservation of transnational black women leaders and engagement with public history. Queen Mother Moore, Margaret Walker and Phyllis Nantala. Dr. Caesar was a Mellon scholar at the Margaret Walker Center and a faculty fellow for the Institute for Social Justice and Race Relations at Jackson State University. In addition she has written successful grants for for the Queen Mother Moore Symposium and the 1973 Phyllis Wheatley Poetry Festival 50th anniversary prologue community dialogues on historical and literary methods and creative works for the Margaret Walker Center. In continued advocacy of black people's equality and civil rights she has also written a children's book called Where is Bobby? in response to police brutality in the United States. A recent publication is a co-authored piece entitled Mothering Dead Bodies Black Maternal Necropolitics which is in the fall 2022 Meridians, Feminism, Race and Transnational Journalism. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Tiffany Caesar. Greetings everyone. I kind of want to say good morning because I feel like my day is all smushed together but welcome welcome welcome. I am so excited for you all to be here for this very timely discussion and before I you know go into my my small presentation and the introduction of our wonderful panelists I want to shout out to my students from San Francisco State University who came today and so I will just go ahead and begin. All right so again as Ms. Shauna stated this is our kind of our cumulative event reparation now and this is a joint program with the African American Center at the San Francisco Public Library as well as the Africana Studies Department in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. I just want to do a few reminders as the movements for African American reparation builds across the nation. We discussed the reparation movements and hear from local leaders on how they are working toward solutions to repair the harm done to our black communities. The discussion provides various perspectives in order to provide the audience with an understanding of the different activities surrounding reparations. Our panelists are political figures, academics, artists, community organizers as well as mental health providers alike who are working at different intersections of the reparation movement. We ask that we keep in mind a spirit of unity and collaboration though ideals may vary from participants as well as audience members. I would like to remind you all we are here at the library and here we have so many books and I just wanted to name a few books on reparations that you can get here. One is from here to equality reparations for black Americans in the 21st century. The other one is Should America Pay Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations as well as our wonderful panelists have also written numerous articles as well as books on reparations as well as issues surrounding the black community. What is reparations? According to the United Nation reparation refers to measures to redress violations of human rights by providing a range of material and symbolic benefits to victims or their families as well as affected communities. Reparations must be adequate effective prompt and should be proportional to the gravity of the violation and the harm suffered. I use this definition aligned with the definition that was in the draft of San Francisco Reparation Plan and I do believe there is some copies of that plan available. You can also find the draft of the San Francisco Reparation Plan online as well. I wanted to briefly mention some of the legislation that has already occurred surrounding reparation. There was the HR40 bill. The HR40 bill establishes the commission to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans. The commission shall examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies in the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson is really a major advocate nationally promoting the HR40 bill. Recent moves towards reparations in the Bay. The San Francisco American African American Reparation Advisory Committee and San Francisco Human Rights Commission recently submitted a reparation plan that stated a one-time sum payment of five million dollars to be paid to each eligible person. Some of the qualifications include an individual who has identified as Black African American are on public document for at least 10 years, born in San Francisco between 1940 and 1996, descended of someone enslaved through U.S. chattel slavery before 1865 and these are just a few. There are several qualifications but I just wanted to point out a few of those. I wanted to mention that what's happening right now in San Francisco is happening globally and that this particular reparation movement or emergent and contemporary reparation movement is a part of a long history of the African American and or African descended people struggle and I wanted to talk just a little bit about one of the reparation leaders, Queen Mother Moore. In 1957, she went to the United Nation with her organization, the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women and she demanded 200 billion dollars to be paid to African descended people for the wrongs that have been done to them due to the transatlantic slave trade. Queen Mother Moore is born in New Iberia, Louisiana, July 27, 1898. She's a member of Marcus Garvey Universal Negro Improvement Association in New Orleans, Marcus Garvey is famous for his back to Africa and Africa for African slogans. She creates multiple organizations including the Republic of New Africa, the African American Cultural Foundation, President of the Federation of African People. She is one of the contemporary founders of the reparation movement and she's also an African liberation leader. So when we talk about reparation today we're going to be talking about it from a national, a local national and international perspective. Not only was she a political advocate and founder of this now reparation movement, she also has something to say about the psychological condition of black people due to the racial traumas of slavery. Queen Mother Moore, she created a phrase called psychosis neurosis and she said that it's a condition that led blacks to act against their interests and engender fidelity to their oppressors. It's a form of denaturalization, othering, acting outside of oneself. Queen Mother Moore described it as a tamed lion in a circus and throughout African American history we have numerous psychological description of racial trauma that people of color go through. One I think of immediately is Dr. Joy DeGru post-traumatic slave syndrome. Now what brings me here, I'm coming from Jackson, Mississippi. Before Jackson, Mississippi I was in Louisiana and I am, I feel like it's like the south meets the west, but I am a part of the Iberia African American Historical Society and we are currently preserving the legacy of Queen Mother Moore and that's where my entry of reparation comes in is to make sure that the people who are participant and who have created the history that we, we remember their names. So last year we did a celebration in her hometown of New Iberia. On July 27th it was the first time we honored her in her city and this summer we're going to do a marker so that when people come to New Iberia they know that it was her legacy that contributed towards the reparation movement and the African liberation movement overall. So I just want to show you all just a short video of what the people in the south are doing when it comes to reparation and and preservation. Good morning everyone. I am Dr. Tiffany Caesar and I have had the pleasure to work with the Iberia African American Historical Society on this wonderful event that we have today which is called the Queen Mother Moore Legacy, Some Coal Seal and Celebration. Thank you so much for this opportunity to be here to share this in the place where my grandmother was born. She wasn't kind of grandmother that baked cookies or took us to the zoo. I mean she took me to Africa at age 13. I'd like to say about Queen Mother Moore and talk about how I got to her is that I like to talk about her as kind of the spider web that holds the black freedom movement together. I had the opportunity to meet Queen Mother Moore when I was a young man 50 years ago now when I was 18 years old. Come on give it to her. I need that energy. As we all do, we definitely stand on the shoulders of a queen and it is for that reason that I felt no one can tell. So I'm here in the gardens where I like to spend a lot of time to relax to open up to connect with the earth to to actually be able to feed myself to feed my family to feed my community so this is an important aspect of the business. Just where the times that we're in right now is important to grow your food and learn the process of growing food and where it comes from to replenish the body. Thank you so much for allowing me to share just a little bit of how these discussions are also happening in other places nationally and what other communities are doing just like San Francisco to preserve African American culture and to push for the political movement of reparations. Now I would like to introduce our wonderful guest and so I'm going to call their name and ask if they can just come up and have a seat and I'm going to read their bio. The first person that I would like to introduce is Bakery Alan Tungy. He is the West Regional Representative for the Uhuru Movement and the Vice Chair of Uhuru Foods and Pies in Oakland. He is a longtime member and leader of the African Socialist Party. He is a part of the National Central Committee, the political body that compromises the top leaders of the African People Socialist Party and I also hear that he sells some of the best pies in Oakland so can we give him a round of applause. The next person I would like to introduce is Brittany Chiquata. She serves as the Director of Economic Rights and the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. In this capacity she focuses on policy and programs to build economic equity and uplift economic opportunities to improve quality of life for the most marginalized in San Francisco. Brittany has worked as a policymaker over the last decade co-writing and co-leading successful campaigns with tangible impact locally and nationally. Can we give her a round of applause. Thank you. The next person I would like to introduce is Dr. Michael Odom. He's a professor at San Diego State University. His scholarship and community works around the upliftment of the black community through political organizing and education. He facilitates a podcast called Black Power Talks that profile contemporary social activists, scholars and artists who are making a revolutionary impact in Africa and the African diaspora. He is a proud father and husband who centers his family as an important part of his life. Can we give him a round of applause. Thank you. The next person we have is Reverend Arnold Townsend. He's a leading advocate for the preservation of black communities in San Francisco. He has served as a government and community relations consultant, president board of directors at the San Francisco Economic Opportunity Council, commissioner at the San Francisco Election Commission. He also was a member of the Black Student Union and participant in the 1968 student strike at San Francisco State University that led to the current Africana studies as well as the College of Ethnic Studies. Last but not least we have Ross Inanga who came here with his beautiful daughter and he is an African center mental health and community worker who focuses on developing community spaces for black mental wellness. Ross is the founder of Inanga Consulting LLC as well as intersections of being a life coaching. Ross has worked within the Black Bay Area community as a clinician, advocate and community builder for over 15 years. Today Ross partners with multiple black owned and operated organizations committed to the improved wellness and health of the black community in the Oakland Bay Area region. Can we give him a round of applause? All right you all let's talk reparations. Hello can you all hear me? Okay good. All right so since we are in San Francisco the Bay Area the first question I have for Brittany who helped to create the San Francisco Reparation Draft Plan and the question is the San Francisco Reparation African American Reparation Advisory Committee just submitted a proposal for reparations. Brittany can you highlight the key points and the current process in San Francisco? Sure first thank you so much for the invitation and for moderating today and thank you to the San Francisco Public Library for putting on this discussion. I think it's a really wonderful use of public space and public resources so I'm grateful to Director Lambert and all of the amazing staff here and also just want to say thank you for uplifting Queen Mothermore and just like the leadership of black women in this long history in the site for reparations because one of the first legal battles that was won was by Belinda Little who sued for a pension but it was essentially reparations after her enslaver died and she won and so you know we have over 40 documented legal instances when people have sued whether it's their enslaver or whether it's a government body for reparations right so this is not novel what we're talking about in San Francisco I think it's really important to contextualize it in an ongoing history of black freedom fighting because a lot of times when we talk about reparations or when we talk about redress which I love and appreciate that you included that word it's really about accountability it's not a handout it's not a payday this is you took a mortgage out on my back on my ancestors and as a descendant I am here claiming what is due to me and what was due actually to my ancestors and so I think it's just important that we name that this is not you know some fallacy there are examples from women who were involuntarily sterilized in North Carolina to communities in Florida that were devastated by white terrorist mobs to Japanese who were forcefully and involuntarily interned including here out of San Francisco of times when the government has paid reparations this is not a new conversation and so the role of the Human Rights Commission and the staff that I work with we so we didn't we didn't write we didn't you know lead the report we really are support staff to the committee members so there is a 15 member body that was legislated by supervisor Shaman Walton to create recommendations and a San Francisco reparations plan and so there are 111 recommendations that were submitted to the board of supervisors to the mayor's office and to the Human Rights Commission's commissioners December 23rd 2022 and the only thing that has gotten a lot of viral press is the one salacious recommendation for a lump sum payment of five million dollars to eligible participant and I think you know we want to emphasize that yes financial compensation is absolutely and rightfully a demand of both the committee and the community members who have been participating in this process for over 18 months and it is enhanced by a broad contextual statement about the legacy of disinvestment from the city targeting black communities particularly through urban renewal the legacy of disenfranchisement when it comes to voting which it comes to education when it comes to housing opportunities and just the many ways that the city is on the record saying when are they going home after we were solicited after tickets were bought to lure black people here during world war two for jobs that we formerly weren't allowed to apply for but once those were vacated by white men who'd gone off to the war then they needed bodies and black people came to San Francisco so I think that the committee is doing the very important work of naming and contextual contextualizing the San Francisco damages that are due to black people in their descendant who have helped to build the city who have been invisibleized over time and who now you know don't feel welcome in a city that they help to create culturally artistically musically politically the first black studies department in San Francisco San Francisco state and so many freedom fighting movements and so many historic eras led by black people who have now been erased from that history and from that legacy thank you so much I truly appreciate that all the confiscating response and just this emphasis on the idea that this is it's not just about the money right it's deeper it's a it's a long history that we need to compensate for so thank you the next question is it's for everybody it's um when we're talking about reparations we talk about there's there's different feelings about what reparation is so I kind of want to just go down the line and have you all kind of personalized like what is reparation to you thank you so much Dr. Caesar for this presentation and thank you so much for Shana for having us here at this library such a beautiful place here and I really appreciate what Brittany just said to open things up that you know I feel reparations is a revolutionary demand it's not just about a monetary value because how can we quantify in in monetary value the lives of African people who've been lost the millions of African people who lost their lives on the boat ride over here the ones who have been worked to death to build the economy that we are presently part of now and so we cannot quantify that but that's not to say that we don't deserve a repair that we don't deserve reparations which we do but what I feel reparations is is a revolutionary demand is one that we have to raise and win the people too to be a part of a revolutionary movement to not just get redressed but to overturn a parasitic social system that was founded on the suck in the blood of the resources of people of the world which it is maintained off of today and until that relationship is overturned it's going to be the same old thing so for me reparations is about overturning this social system and to being able for African people to feed how then clothe ourselves and get back to a place of being self-determined that we had prior to the colonial advent adventure that was put on African people so I just wanted to that's what it means to me I think that reparations is about accountability truth reconciliation redress and restitution I think that if we were to take you know as some try I think that some people won't understand reparations unless you take just like the humanity out of it and if we were just coldly looking at it from a legal perspective it's about damages and you know when a person sues in a court of law and they prove up and down all the ways that they were targeted for discrimination that they were harmed by the actions of someone else how someone else made money off of their labor how someone else continues to eat high on the hog while they do not then not only do I get paid for that missed wage at work but I also get pain and suffering and so as this brother says you can never make someone completely whole for all of the ways that we have been violated collectively psychologically emotionally financially but it's about putting something behind that apology and putting more into it both in the community sense a collective community investment as well as damages to the individual descendants of that legacy of exploitation yeah I like to appreciate everybody um uh I want to say something that might be provocative but reverence is about a handout but it's not about a handout to African people it's about understanding that 600 years ago when Africa was assaulted uh and ever since then a handout was given to Europe and European people that every single thing European people have all European people that was built on the backs of African other colonized people so reparations is about just economic compensation to uh for to African people for the stolen labor the stolen land that we have it's about the understanding that every single thing this place has is built on the stolen labor of African people the stolen land of indigenous people every I'm from San Diego every time I come up to northern California or whatever I drive and I see this beautiful place and and it actually makes me sad to see this beautiful place because the indigenous people that've been separated by genocidal border indigenous people that speak Spanish then they call the Mexicans of indigenous people that don't speak Spanish and they call them Native Americans and the African people brought over here built this well right so so that's what for me the reparations is about it's about beginning a process through which we reverse the 600 years of colonial salt against African people history history is important as well because when we produce life labor and value we're also producing history so what has happened is African people have been robbed of our history even forced to produce history life labor and value for European people even to the extent that they want to convince you that African history is American history or something like that but I don't want to share the same history as Thomas Jefferson but every single but but I also recognize the fact that there's a lot of African people walking around there's probably more Africans named Thomas Jefferson right now than white people named Thomas Jefferson and that is because of the history of colonial capitalism and it's assaults against African people and we need to take that back and that's what reparations is about so five million dollars ain't enough but so I say you know put some zeros on it um let me just say uh you know it's hard to build off of everything that everyone has already said um there's so many different angles that you could come at this with right uh five million dollars is what they might pay to one family for a police officer of all shooting for an unarmed black person right but now imagine that they shot your cousin and then they raped your mom and then they brutalized your uncle and then they uh lynched your grandfather right and then you keep going you keep going and you keep going so like five million dollars is like you know it ain't really like changing something right um one of the uh terms that um I've kind of started using and I think Dr. Joy DeGru would also agree with it is that we don't deal with generational trauma we we deal with sustained trauma sustained trauma meaning that since the moment we engaged with Europeans within this transatlantic slave trade which is still going on today in different ways in many different ways uh we have never stopped being traumatized we have never stopped being traumatized and what's interesting in the field of psychology uh there's this um really sad uh experiment that they did with this with this dog in a cage and they basically put it on two different panels and what they would do is they would shock one panel and observe how it behaved and then they would move to the other side of the cage and they would shock that side and they would up the shock to higher and higher levels and then they got to a point where they would shock both sides and see what it did some of you might think the dog went crazy and just wigged out it didn't it froze and it stayed still and it just took the pain and they would keep amplifying and amplifying and amplifying and it just took it now when you understand that the field of psychology was actually heavily funded by the United States government in the early 1900s to understand how they can socially control masses of people coming from different cultures and ways of being some of the things that they learned from was how do they impact our minds to the point where we freeze we become more docile and susceptible to influence and being told what to do and so much of what we experienced today is a continuation of the early research like it's hard to believe that our country researched how to oppress us more right invested heavily into understanding how to oppress us and then carries it out every single day there's a reason why when things start to go a certain way in the United States they begin to publicize police officer involved shootings right it's not accidental because it's been happening and it continues to happen and it'll happen more and more but the reason why they publicize it is to shock you because they remember that as much as they continue to shock you the more they can keep you docile and frozen as much as you're looking at the person who is harming you the less you're looking at how to thrive and how to grow and how to create something where you don't have to deal with that anymore all right so it keeps you in place all right and so when we think about what we've experienced and then you look at five million all right five million the moment you give me that money I still got to deal with all the embedded frameworks of how to spend money and and and what I should have from a devalued in this society as a black person and and then all these other different things that you've already set in place to take my money in the first place all right and then there's no plan that's actually given me to actually find healing and actually restoration once you give me that money so basically just goes back into this capitalist cycle all right so five million dollars it's not changing our education systems not changing housing it's not eliminating police violence or mass incarceration right so so we still have so much to do even with a drop in a bucket that they might give us and so we think about about reparations it's a moment where our government has to acknowledge it right and the only way that our government actually does acknowledge if things are right and wrong which is monetarily because it's a capitalist system it's not humanitarian it's not about being all you can be it's about maximizing profit and when it has to pay out this sets a precedent that says if we do this then this and from that it gives us a level of freedom it gives us a level of power and agency within this system and so reparations is how we're engaging with the government but there's still a large conversation of what do we do next what do we do next right so yeah I think that's probably well enough for that thank you and Dr. Caesar thank you for having us and or at least for inviting me already feeling like the least esteemed but you need to hear from us too so it's all right let me say a couple of things just in way of perspective is that number one do you all have any idea how many white families in America have access to five million dollars and that wealth that exists would not exist without 250 years of free labor so not to be difficult but if somebody want to call it a payday I don't have a problem because for 250 years we ain't getting no paydays not as old folks say not now so consequently we're overdue number one number two if you think about the labor that built this country and what it did to this nation while it was competing with Britain and France and all Germany and all the other nations in the world they were paying somebody for their labor even if it wasn't much and this country was competing with free labor and the reality is they haven't gotten over yet because corporate America don't want to pay you nothing out I mean if one thinks of what you've learned just from this rail incident that happened in Palestine they called it Palestine Ohio and what they did to first of all we just had almost a major shutdown of the government because the railroad don't want to give their workers one days paid sickly in 2023 that's really a vestige of slavery where they just have never incorporated having to pay people decently for the work they do for corporate wealth so I don't have a problem with that with us receiving it I don't have a problem with the number of five million because how do you put a price on 250 years 250 years and it didn't end there they just started calling it something different after 250 years and still today we still suffer from that I just finished a term on the chairing the redistricted committee and I brought up in our first meeting that my concern was that the african-american community because you know in San Francisco yeah because of what y'all call gentrification and I call modern-day manifest destiny uh that because of that we we're we're losing in San Francisco and how do we strengthen our voting so folk will hear us and even by our allies all they told me is that if you keep on bringing race up we're gonna sue you now get this the reason I brought it up we are the only population in San Francisco that is losing numbers every year every other ethnicity is growing that's a vestige of slavery that we still are last in everything that was done and and most importantly I don't have any problem saying it's obvious that if we are going to survive as a nation and we've got to face the racism question and we cannot face it we cannot face it until we come to grips with slavery because until we come to grips with slavery we can't come to grips with racism and what that looks like and how insidious and how it's in every institution almost every action that we take every day as I'm reluctant to you as US citizens I'm reluctant to use America because people in South America and Canada are Americans too and and Mexico and you know they're Americans too and so I don't want to I have reluctance to draft that name just for us but that's the one we use which shows a certain level of arrogance right there but I just want us to understand that until we come to grips with it and Americans are never going to come to grips with it with it until they cost them some money because see when we want to say it's not about the money yes it is we were brought here about the money they wouldn't have gotten on slavery excuse me and ooh let me keep I get on young people for that all the time they did not go to Africa and get slaves they went to Africa got a human being and made them slave and and we we have to start correcting that and you see I just slip back into it but the reality is they wouldn't have gone over there it wasn't about the money and then if you now that you've done it and you don't want to treat us right to to uh quote a dear friend of mine this should be that slander if y'all didn't want to treat us right you should have picked your own goddamn cotton excuse the preacher for that but uh uh uh and and so finally uh we have to come to grips with it we have to face it discuss it and why people got to quit faking that they so damn sensitive that we can have you ever seen those pictures of nine-year-old ruby bridges trying to go to school on our first day after brown boy and she got to have secret service and fbi in everybody a national guard out there walking her in the classroom and nine years old if she can do that then these white kids can learn about it we must face up to it it's not going to change until we face it and see and and and and we have to pay for it because i'm a christian preacher i'm i'm a christian preacher but let me just say this but what i've learned in my tradition is all sin must be paid for thank you so much i appreciate it i i mean so much great just commentary on just the the varied views you know in the core of reparation i would like to ask Dr. Odom he wanted to respond and then also just one more thing if i just want to add to what you're going to say i'm just gonna throw that question in is um if you can also talk about who do you think should get reparations in addition to your comment okay so first off um i want to say that also reparations is a way for white people to really re-enter into humanity and to overturn that so he used the the the the religious aspects so i'm pretty sure that there are some religious ways to talk about that as well atonement and penance and things like that but i think that's sort of over and an overturning of that relationship right and i do think you know all these problems happening are the result of a social system that is in crisis and and the way through which things were it's not going back to that so you see them you can't study black history and all this other stuff all that is sort of a social system in crisis and you're correct whenever that stuff comes up and they get told who they are then they start playing a victim this this there's a historical basis to that um so but but so i think that reparations therefore isn't just about us versus the government it's a it's not a single statistic in which african people and white people in the united states share the same life outcome not a single statistic and you gotta gotta ask yourself why in a city like san francisco can a white man who drops out of high school make more money than a black woman who graduates from college right and that's that legacy of of of not just slavery but slavery institute what we call a colonial mode of production and that mode of production sustained itself after 1865 to produce the lives that people have but all africans deserve deserve reparations no matter when they came here or anything like that i just say this my partner is my mother-in-law is from barbanteca and barbuda one of the largest slave limitations in barbuda was owned by people the people who started the harvard law school and the seal itself for the harvard law school was the seal for this plantation and over and over again like this is the story all throughout the caribbean so you're telling me that um so if those slave masters was united internationally and in their attack against african then african people need to be united internationally in rica and was our so so so every single african is here they got here yesterday or they found me being here since before 1865 deserve reparations thank you thank you so that's what what's called best african internationalist perspective of it because i know that there's going to be another question about them you got 12 questions i know this is this is man man we're not going to make him mom i have to choose do anybody else want to comment on who gets reparations before i go to the next question because that has been something that's also has been debated on um you know african americans african descendant people uh anybody want to comment on that well i think personally it's just about being african um you know that african hyphen american that hyphen is a chain that was put there and uh when we were taken from africa we were africans when we were dropped off at plemer's rock we were africans then and we were africans then we're africans now uh when someone else determines that your african american is to their benefit but we're africans in we're africans now so african people ourselves represent a whole nation and we're all over the planet in every time zone uh we may not identify itself as africans but that's who we are you know so the reality is every single african on the planet deserves reparations just like every white person is responsible um uh for uh the reparations because they have benefited for hundreds of years when i drive across this bridge from oakland and come to san francisco i see all this wealth and i think about it this is stolen resources if it was not for the african slave trade it would be no san francisco as we know it this is the land of the aloni indians right now and i don't know what they would have built uh but i do know what is built here and i know why it was built here i know whose expense it came after so the reality is every african on the planet is due reparations and it's just reparations at that you're talking about repair you're talking about repayment and the thing is this system here this parasitic social system called capitalism which is a colonial concoction has to go it cannot co-deslave and the slave master cannot peacefully coexist and that is why the slave themselves must organize to overturn a vicious foul social system that cannot justify itself in the eyes of real people in the real world in real time so thank you so much i do want to just let the audience know that we will have time for question and answers so if you have a question if you think of a question please hold it we're gonna have you speak as well so um bakary thank you so much for this explanation that reparations for all people who are african um i wanted to kind of get into oakland because we are in san francisco but we do have some representatives from oakland and so my question is um can you talk about the assassination of the black panther member bobby hudton and how that and other activities led to the bobby hudton free clinic how do we include the actions of the black panthers and other revolutionary organizations into the reparations discussion thank you that's in a question um bobby hudton was a 14-year-old young african who joined the black panther party at that age um it was three years later on april 6 1968 two days after martin with the king was murdered in memphis tennessee uh that bobby hudton was murdered in oakland california uh by uh the u.s. government and it was part of the cointail pro with a counterintelligence program that some of you may know of and it was direct attack on the african liberation movement then uh and this was not an aberrancy in the history of african people fighting for freedom uh the same fbi was first integrated in the 1920s 100 years ago to infiltrate the organization of marcus garvey the united negro improvement association they integrated the fbi which was an all-white organization brought the first negro into the fbi to infiltrate marcus garvey organization and there's a long history of united states government intervention into uh trying to overturn genuine struggles for self-determination not just of african people but colonized peoples around the world but just getting back to the question of that so bobby hudton was murdered uh on april 6 1968 and um we know the history of the black panther party they literally did not exist but for a few years on the ground in oakland unlike the uhuru movement that i remember of the african people socialist party we've been on the ground in oakland for 40 or more years building economic development fighting for social justice for the african community but the panthers have a legacy that we've taken on um huy newton who was one of the founders of the black panther party was at the ohuru house and stated himself you may not have the black panther newspaper but you have the bernie spear you may not have the black panther party but you have the ohuru movement and ohuru means freedom that's why healy so they haven't done anything by destroying one organization and what we've done in in oakland uh we built the bobby hudton african people's freedom clinic we named it after bobby hudton we had a 27 foot uh motor vehicle that we converted into a health clinic i was a nurse who worked at highland hospital and i was one of the workers on that vehicle well we went into six nine village in east oakland we went into west oakland into the uh communities there the poor impoverished community we offered free health care services we were doing fantastic work before the uh city government of oakland shut us down and then they put their own red white and blue uh uh flag waving health care after they shut ours down did it for a few months and then shut it down all together so the reality is we have to recognize uh hu who bobby hudton was and bobby hudton was a freedom fighter bobby hudton belonged to a revolutionary organization he was the youngest member of the black panther party at the time he joined and he was one of the first members of the black panther party murdered about a brutal military assault by the u.s. government and it happened right over here across the bay in many places across this country and we carry on that legacy through the african people's socialist party and the ohuru movement to continue to work that bobby hudton did to continue to work that uh uh hui newton and the black panther party did we have a newspaper where we have a 14 point platform similar to what the black panther party had when they had their 10 point platform and it was about self-determination it was about feeding housing and clothing ourselves and not being dependent on the system that has been sucking our blood for so long so i know i've over talked there but i just want to hopefully i answer it was perfect thank you thank you i don't know if anybody else wanted to comment on that go ahead i just want to say that um i think it's important that we understand that the movement and the struggle for liberation uh it never started and began with just one person but acknowledging each individual actually uh takes us into communities and spaces where the struggle continues today right um in jackson mississippi i believe there's um about the jackson planet yeah uh where they're doing some phenomenal work and the statement that the revolution will never be televised right uh is still true to this day there is so much work going on and i would encourage especially students who are kind of beginning life right choosing what you want to learn what you want to do with your skills and your talents and your abilities to really start thinking about what do you want to create with the legacy of your work because whatever you become you have a choice of where you want to place your talent right uh the gentleman here he was a nurse right and decided to place his talent back into his community and said i can stay at highland hospital i can go over to kaiser i can do some other things or i can create something that will create change for my community so i think it's very important to remember the individuals who spark moves and who spark change thank you so much um i i'm holding my comments um because of what bachery said about this idea of um self-determination and um people within oakland creating spaces for black people right self sustaining self-sustaining spaces right but also this legacy within american history in which when black people create organizations and institutions they are destroyed right and or whole cities um are destroyed so one of my students um asked this question and i felt like it was relevant just due to the comments that you all said um can reparations truly be a part of integration in this land of democracy and i want to start with revan toutson uh that's a really interesting question only because we've been talking about uh reparations um and i am convinced that reparate what reparations can i i just said you know people will make their own decisions but if reparations is only going to um facilitate folk by and blame number one that's their business of what they do with their money it's our job to educate them on what they ought to do but i would think that the most important thing that for lack of a better term the white folk have done for themselves and their control is the destruction of our communities and the economic destruction of our community i i i started life in an all black town in oklahoma there were 28 in all all black towns at one time i grew up in los angeles and i tell young folk here you've never been on the street where you got 30 40 50 black owned businesses like when i was a boy and we'd go on central avenue and later on uh western avenue was waved before we got to krenshaw one of the dangers for us is that if you looked at our community what has been destroyed through urban renewal and these kinds of things are what i call watering holes amen uh animals come to the watering hole in the morning not just to get water but to get caught up on the gossip just as you know in the uh in the bible women went to the water women went to the well and they talked as well as getting prepared for their duties doing the daytime and we don't see revolution isn't created because you call the meat and they have a revolution revolution is created because people communicate with each other and find out they have like problems and like needs go okay you want okay who put the mic up oh i'm sorry they have like for you know i'm used to hollering so i had kids i got good at hollering but uh you know people have like needs and you find out uh me and this brother is sitting in nate firman's old restaurant because things used to happen around their restaurant bar and i started talking about my landlord doing me such and such and you said man you too and then brother is over there sister's over there and they hear hustling you know and they said wait a minute my landlord doing the same way we got something going here and now we start discussing it then we start discussing it then we might take it to the next place or to church and if you notice all those places and our community are being destroyed so what reparations can do i told somebody if you've gone by bringing if you're going by a new car just make sure you buy them from a brother or sister that's all i ain't mad at that because we've got to rebuild our communities and then too and and and you know i'm gonna say this and i'm gonna my my dream excuse me and maybe i'm the only one but my dream would be we got the reparations and all of us started getting us some boat and airplane tickets to africa and go home and set up shop and i want to tell you if we all went back if enough of us went back in two years you wouldn't even remember this place because everything here that we like we'd rebuild and everything here we wouldn't have to take with us i was in cuba 1978 i was there about 18 days world youth festival uh 66 000 people 144 nations greatest party i've been to in my life when i was walking out the street by myself and we were staying at a school with the canadiens and it was almost lunchtime and i noticed all the different colored people sitting on the grass talking and i stopped in my track because i realized that for the first time in eight days i had thought about being black and i ain't got no problem with being black i love it but not a day goes by that it doesn't come up to you here it's not always unpleasant but it's always there but for eight days i had been arnold towns in african america white people don't think about being white every day but i have to because when i leave my house in the morning i have to leave my house armored ready to deal with whatever is outside my dope you got to be prepared to deal with that and and and and and and reparations can begin to change that dynamic of how we think about being black in america and it will also pre us that we don't even have to be in america and once we have an option on leaving they'll be treating you look at it so we don't want that money to get out here so i want to answer that question in the center about reparations being a tool for integration well it's covered everything first off i'd like to say y'all this only reason why i think people can even see integration as progress is because uh uh uh that you've been fooled to think that african is doing for themselves is what they call separatism separatism straight up slander that's just a slander because in 1776 when thomas jeffson and the rest of the slaveholders got together and said that they wanted to be to be independent from britain they didn't call that the declaration of separatism what did they call it independence independence so the real question is is of independence and to know that african independence is is is is is the is is um is the opposite of of of integration so that's the important thing that vans the question is can reparations advance our cause for independence so the next thing i'll say is that remember this is a the social system is in crisis right first thing happens when socialism is crisis the ruling class can't rule in the same old way like they used to so so y'all have to understand that so what happens when the social system is in crisis is the ruling class is going to try to solve the problem for itself as well so in that situation yes they might try to use reparations to solve the problem of the ruling class and allowing certain elements of our group to integrate into their society but that is the against independence right that is that is to take us off the track of independence the goal here is to is to utilize the struggle for reparations as well as other democratic rights that we that we must have as african people to push forward our cause for independence that in itself is the difference between reparations as a tactic in the overall strategy of winning african liberation or just the end goal if reparations is just your end goal then then to be honest you'll do anything to get the reparations even sacrifice your own freedom and that is called opportunism but but but but if it's not if it's if it's a way through which you're pushing for your own freedom and so the so what the reverend is saying is that my family first came from partially from from from from oklahoma louisiana stuff like that to south los angeles as well living in jordan in jordan downs and and and and what i'm from long beach and what um what he's talking about is i people talk about black businesses what we need to talk about is liberated territory right so the thing is the the resources that you gain can be used to create liberated territory and that liberated territory can be another big word a form of dual and contending power so that's what bakary represents bakary represents the organization that is dual and contending power to whorehouse been there for 40 plus years on macarthur boulevard and oakland from a struggle against local powers right so so so so so so that is liberated territory organized and gained through struggle um and and sustain in some ways through the seizing of reparations um if i can jump in i really like what you're saying the words that jumped out to me are power and independence and so what i would challenge this student to take a step back from is you know when i hear the word integration i i bristle because that to me is overlaying a white standard of civilized and oftentimes when we're talking about integration it's integrating into a white standard and it's dishonoring the fact that black people along with every other racial identity have different standards of care of interaction of love of conversation and you know every other social um indicator or future that you could come up with from white people and other non-black people and that's okay that's how we communicate that's how we dance that's how we get down that's how we moisturize in the morning and i think that when we dishonor that the white standard or that that black standards are just as valid as a white standard as a japanese standard as a latin x standard latin a standard that we are inherently saying you are uncivilized so now we're moving this barrier and you can come to this side and so i would challenge that student to take a step back when they use that word integration what am i integrating into because what was it thank you i'm not integrating into a burning house and so when we talk about reparations what we're talking about is power building for black people and independence from these systems that apply a standard that don't always fit it's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole so let me get into my hole and you get into yours and we'll meet where we meet and that's great or we won't and that has to be okay too when it comes to economics and education integration the worst thing ever happened to us i would also say um take a step back and actually ask yourself if you trust who you're trying to integrate with like ask yourself like and not from an intellectual capacity but like in your body do you trust a community that you're trying to integrate with when you look at all the systems in place that have been uh undermining your success and that of your family from generations hundreds of years having to fight for equal rights having to fight for stopping police violence having to fight for ending mass incarceration having to fight for access to education having to fight having to fight having to fight having to fight and all of a sudden they say the door is open come on and integrate do you trust who you're walking through that door with and i think that that's something that we really have to take a step back and think about because as the brother was saying going to africa getting outside of this country's walls i went four days without seeing a white person four days not one it changed my life and when i realized i could walk around as a human being and not have to fight not have to see a police car drive by and wonder if they're going to stop and look my way right i could walk into a store and they're not looking at me and thinking suspiciously having to read body language and faces i can go into a school and i have to worry about a curriculum that's erasing my history there's options and i'd recommend definitely speaking to the students if you're in your undergrad do study abroad immediately go to Ghana go to Ethiopia go to one of um brazil definitely study abroad get out of here for three and a half months go to another country and your mind literally and psychology will learn physiologically your mind goes into hyperdrive right but it will expand how you see this world and so when you start thinking about what you want to fight for here you have to ask yourself well where do you want to put the resources of your energy time and talent do you want to spend and how many years do you want to spend fighting for something that you could have for free someplace else and so i kind of want to throw that out there study abroad and really think about where you want to put your talent and energy thank you i'm going to call my comments because i have a panel i would like to ask britney this question and also as for the panelists to also comment if you would like due to your your background on on gender issues and advocating for women issues i wanted to know how how can reparations help black women's economic sovereignty black mothers health care and accessibility to equitable job and leadership opportunities thank you so before i was at the san francisco human rights commission i worked as a legislative aide and then supervisor melia cohen's office who is now our first black state controller and during my time there it's like working out a startup for policies when you're at the board of supervisors and working as a legislative aide and one thing that i have a strong passion for is black maternal health and women black women's reproductive security because since we black women have come to this country we have not had autonomy over our body the things that we celebrate as far as the successes and gynecology these were practices that were born on the bodies of black women without anesthesia even though anesthesia was available to try and determine the best way to solve different clinical gynecological gynecological experiments that still hold hold strong today and how black women receive treatment in hospital settings so you know i've worked to help secure funding for different doula projects here in san francisco as well as serving as a board member and a policy advisor for the abundant birth project and expecting justice which is the first in the nation guaranteed income program that provides a monthly stipend to black women in pacific islander women here in san francisco from three months of pregnancy through one year postpartum and for black women in particular here in san francisco we only are four percent of the births but for the last 10 years we have been 50 percent of the maternal mortality and we know why that is it's because explicitly of anti black racism and stress in our bodies because of anti black racism yes there are employment disparities economic disparities but the qualifying factor across income for black women it doesn't matter as you were saying whether or not you have a college master's phd jd or no degree um black women have the same outcomes across income level so um the ways that i see reparations being an opportunity for uh having an impact for gender justice and and women's economic sovereignty is one looking at a lot i mean i think that we were very innovative during covid right so we increased the working families um stipend tax stipends that families were getting we looked at um how at least in san francisco we looked at how single parent households were accessing internet was it the children at home who were sharing one computer while the parent was at work and they were taking care of one another and we tried to like be really flexible and secure and nimble in how we distributed funding um we also paid for hotel stipends for women experiencing domestic violence so that they could have extended stays and not be sheltering in place with their abusers and so i think that reparations is one way to look at some of those more immediate lessons but then again like we were saying at the top of it looking at like the way that black women have led throughout whether we're not talking whether we're talking about the black panther party or in the fourteen fifteen hundreds to challenge white supremacy in this country to fight for an elbow our space um elbow for our space in this conversation so i think you know the decolonization or survival programs at the black panther party provided great example of one way that women were really at the forefront feeding children walking them across the street to ensure that they weren't being hit by cars and then using education as one tool to decolonize you know this internalized racism one of the most powerful things i think of the black panther party was just the social shift even if you weren't a member of the party you stopped perving your hair you started dressing differently and you had like a different pride that you were able to articulate and so i think that that mental decolonization and marrying that with you know some of that economic independence and economic sovereignty would be one way thank you so much yeah i just really appreciate uh britney's statement and i'm really impressed by her command of what she said around the um work of you know doulas and it's a very powerful self-determination aspect that african people had always had it's been taken from us and i'm happy to hear the conversation about being able to bring the birth of our own children into our lives as i said i was a nurse and before then i was an ambulance driver and i know what it's like to walk into a house and someone's in the neighborhood and you like their have to deal with the situation and it's real so i can say as a member of the african people socialist party and of the world movement we are um right now have a project on the ground in st louis missouri and it's called black power blueprint you can look it up for yourself and right now we have a doula program where we train 14 african women to uh be able to take that on and it just happens be the same day that we were uh training them the fbi attacked our headquarters there in st louis missouri on july 29th last year we have a hands-off or who are hands-off africa campaign now i have hopefully at the end of the day people can sign that petition to push back the government but i'm saying all that to say is that we actually are in the process of building a women's health care center there on the ground we built a community center and a rural house in st louis after mike brown was murdered and after the uprising the african people there we on the ground right now we have in a rural foods and pies national commercial kitchen we're building out and all of this is what we talked about earlier dual and contending power the thing is we fight for power we fight for that ability to not be dependent on the very system that sucks our blood there's a dialectical relationship you can't understand what's up until you know what down is and we have to know who we are in order to know who they are to be able to overturn the system and i just really appreciate the fact that um we have to have our doula programs we have to have the ability for african women to take the lead in this revolutionary struggle and it has to be there because the righteous place for african women is as equals at the table african people and not at home fixing dinner and things of the sort like that but to be as leadership right professor uh caesar is raised part of her life in missouri and it's important to note that in missouri is where the african people socialist party was attacked on the day that they had the african doula program in st louis missouri uh so many black children die every single year from that they could fill 15 kindergarten classrooms um that's how many black babies die every single year so what this means is that the attack against african women uh and uh is central to the attack against african people um we talk about the theft of life labor and value right the reason i mentioned uh st louis as well is because of um uh there it was dred scott and herod scott you know st louis gave away that gave them to uh the federal government right so st louis has a long and all these cities have a long history in collaborating this is why san francisco owes reparations because these cities collaborate you got to remember san francisco one it was right here in san francisco that it was a base for the confederacy y'all know that right you know so everyone think markham say anybody live below canna live in the south san francisco was a confederate town i could travel to the confederate base i know this stuff i'm a historian so so right so so so the thing is that um there was a name cilia slave go look this up because not a single case in which african women uh the rape of african women everyone punished not a single case but there's a case named cilia slave she was outside of st louis and and and for over 10 years she had been raped by her her slave master she killed the slave master they put her to death so the only cases you can find that have to do with any attack against african women was when african women stood up and fought in their own defense that's why we say african women must lead right that's absolutely important and african women leaked from callie house to the other sister you mentioned to queen mother moore all the way to the african women on this panel to a woman named onus in a yeshitella onus in a yeshitella leads the economic work of the ahura movement had drones and and and beans pointed at her head and then they're gonna say the russians made them do it every time africans want to do something when they own the russians made them do ain't a single african walk around this country united states with russian names but how many of y'all walk us walking around with slave master names but to that point about about our names you know and the colonization of black bodies and black women's bodies in particular the united states changed british law and what was customary to make it such that your lineage was not about your paternity it was about whether or not your matrilineal yeah so exactly so so before white books came to the united states um your inheritance and your status was related to your paternity your paternal side but in order to uphold slavery in the united states they changed the rules so if your mother was enslaved then you were enslaved and you were not entitled to any inheritance so not only did that um make the status of all children born to black women uh mean that they were enslaved but it essentially allowed and endorsed the raping and assault of black women and when we talk about midwifery black midwives were brought to the united states to help give birth to the nation to ensure that people that that black babies survived initially and then in the 70s they flipped the switch and essentially bastardized midwifery as a practice but particularly attacked black midwifery and said that you know you're working with outdated or uncivilized strategies you can't be doing this it's unsafe it's unhealthy even though their outcomes and rate of life you know infant mortality were much lower than what was happening in the hospitals that we were just allowed to give birth in right because when my grandmother was born in outside outside of Greenville she wasn't born in in a hospital not necessarily because my grandmother didn't want to but because she wasn't allowed to so the the line is ever moving right when it when it's fitting essentially a capitalist end that's also because law is so law is just merely the opinion of the ruling class that's what we have to understand uh um uh nat turner uh was was put to death cilia were put to death for what was right but that's because the killing and the rape and enslavement of African people was illegal right so so i think that's what you said so so so law is merely the opinion of the ruling class yes that's correct so and breaking away from slave was illegal exactly exactly and i think one of the most significant things we have to be aware of and and this is real important because it leads to you know you all are always putting stuff on social media about carons the idea of carons when especially when it applies to black people is historical because number one first thing white folks won't tell you is my folks never owned slaves well that may be true but every white person had complete authority over every black person and if i'm walking down the boardwalk and this muddy off the boardwalk and i see a white person coming towards me i've been not stopping to ask them if they owned slaves i better get down in that mud and let them walk in the boardwalk that's number one number two after about 1854 when they passed a fugitive slave act they used to escape you was free but after millard philmore which i always find significant because the philmore district here in san francisco when millard philmore was the president they passed a fugitive slave act and that's when they put all the white folk in it because now if you saw a black person and you either knew or should know that they could be an escaped slave you were supposed to call the police which the first police in this country was was was was there to hire was slave catchers because crime and and and all law by law by and all that was done by constables and sheriffs and marshals not by police police just went out and called slave so to treat us the way they do is in their uh professional dna so but what happened after the fugitive slave act was passed you had to turn slaves in or you could go to jail if you so therefore and frequently there was a reward so that helped but so therefore understanding where we've come to now and everybody is in on it so quit trying to uh one one the most dangerous thing the white folk do and i'm through is that they keep trying to make to say they wasn't a part of it or it wasn't that bad and i'm only saying this because i think y'all to find it funny somebody had on my twitter thing was it this morning no last night they had was said to me was every slave owner mean and vicious what about the kind ones and my response was when you attach slave owner to your name kindness is kind of out the window after that you can't talk about being a kind slave owner of George washington had a cook George who was the who was the best cook ever all the heads of state of europe the parade always cooking and they treated him good as a slave and one day all the white folk had to go somewhere so they left George in charge called George was cool they treated George and uh they all left they still looking for George when they left George left and they treated him they couldn't believe because because self-determination independence should control your every thought and your every action young folk young folk if it ain't about you and us well i love that um i also try to think of it in like a very real kind of circumstance like George left the comfort of a home that he could depend upon a roof over his head right clothes food he was treated well within the house right he had to give up something he had he had to give up the trappings of what maintained his uh subservience right and his oppression and there is a cost to trying to be free right um and so i want to i want to leave that especially for the young people because there is a real cost there is a real hey i just graduated and i got a job offer from this predominantly white corporation organization who's trying to get some diversity and i'm going to be the token black person but they're going to pay me probably about 20 000 more and trying to work within my community right there is a cost to it um it what is it worth to you uh and something i will say in regards to reparations is it might be the first and only real divestment from oppression this country has ever made if it if it chooses to make it um ending slavery then in slavery just transition into mass incarceration right it it transitioned to something else and it'll keep transitioning it'll keep transitioning everything that they started doing when we first got here they continue to do just with a different flavor a different color a different way and it's maintained the same thing today there's more black people incarcerated and there were uh in in in chattel slavery at the point of emancipation right they continue to do the same thing because it is extremely profitable and i think when people say that america is in crisis well if you are black in america it is a crisis if you're white in america it is a damn good investment right you are privileged you are given every access point you are given every chance you are given the benefit of the doubt as a matter of fact just in case it takes time for you to work it out we got some other people who are going to pay the price of you trying to figure it out so that you can have every opportunity that you need it's a great damn investment for white people it is crisis if you are black right and until we start really understanding this dichotomy that it is not something that's going badly for everybody america is not going wrong for everybody right when you go to minnow atherton if you haven't been there take a drop if you've ever seen the fresh prince of bel-air the the original show right and they drive you see that big old mansion right huge house the entire block right and you drive over to minnow atherton it's like oh this is a neighborhood oh this is the whole damn city here wait hold on how much money is out here it is a damn good investment for a lot of people and so when we start having this argument we have to understand like when we're talking to somebody especially who doesn't look like us and we're saying hey we've got to change this we've got to change this understand that your reality is not everybody's reality and that is why you have to understand the importance of acknowledging your uniqueness your blackness right your experience your history self-education right self-empowerment and understanding that it is not about integration right it's about liberation it's about independence it's about freedom all right thank you so much can we give our panelists a round of applause i just feel like they just made my job really easy because they really just opened the conversation now uh mishana sherman has the mic and we would love to give the audience a time to answer to ask questions to our our wonderful panelists so it has a lot and what i'm concerned about is in that reparations report two it says there have been other reports and basically they sit on the shelf and um what i get frustrated with is we have to ask permission for money and that's how this reparations is going to happen is we have to get money from somewhere and i'm tired of asking permission for money um i i i worked i want to speak to the students here i worked in a corporation and about five years about three years ago uh the corporation started to give money to develop schools to help schools with low income and i told that the one of the high level senior vice presidents i'm tired of waiting but i said this this is this is for you know kindergarten we got to make changes now i well now i remember 30 years ago it was the same thing we're gonna invest and it just doesn't i guess what i'm saying is i i want to make things happen quicker but i don't know how and and and how are we gonna fund this wonderful reparations report well the difference is it has to be be uh that report has to be attached to a mass movement right in 1982 the african people social party held something called the first world tribunal for reparations to african people in the us this is in brooklyn new york for 12 consecutive years they held uh these tribunals and then they hit the most recent one was like in like the early 2000s as well queen mother more was a member of the organization they created to take reparations out into the world which is called the african national reparations organization and wrote queen mother more was a part of that so the thing is but that reparations tribunal was was was done with the express interest of making it a popular demand taking it out to the people no longer simply being a legal judicial legislative thing hr 40 all that stuff cool but the thing is once because once it grips the masses it becomes a material force right so so it's gotta be the forums like this has to be held all around the city even going to the white community you got to let the people know look if you don't like what's going on this is your way to get behind the right side of history so it's got to be taken out into the people so the african people social party created something called the african people solidarity committee when all the back in 1970s whenever it was the grateful dead they follow the grateful dead and sell cookies all over the country exactly and and bring that money back for development in the african community white people or working behind the the lines this is what Malcolm X said and oh my lord should tell her the leader of the african people social party put this into into work with african people solidarity people white people fighting for reparations right so the thing is not just in that black community here because if it's just in the black community it's gonna fail right everybody gotta see how they freedom is tied into african people getting free that's what it is and and and so you got to take it back you got to win your whole community to it that's how it's going to be real get in it man get out i can say this that we we all know america has never expressed a love for black folks that they should have but and i'm very convinced that during the time i was at san francisco state during the student strike i went to jail three times and i believe there's two reasons they didn't kill us out there because they sure wanted to we fought the police every day number one the community came out the black community the mothers them saints like mary helen rogers uh uh elwes westbrook the uh carmen johnson these are names that in in philmore and baby we know because they were saints to us they came out even ron delam's and cecil williams and dr carvin they came out and got arrested number one number two white students who supported us formed a white strike support committee and they were on the picket line and fighting the police because the statue of limitations passed my friend that used to own the sweet water over in mill valley some of y'all know that uh some of you older people might and uh a club over in mill valley first day i ever saw in my life he had a little police hung up and was wearing him out so we became friends i think he was a good guy to make friends point i'm saying because people get involved things happen and and and and here's what right thinking white people have to understand reparations is your fight to bring in charity and help to this country is the only thing that's going to save the country because i'm a i'm a i'm a firm believer it ain't gonna go on like this forever the world will not stand for it so thank you for one for reading the report and i just wanted to back up and i i noted that i was remiss in not thinking shawna earlier thank you so much shawna for your amazing organization really appreciate you and thank you also i want to shout out niomy jugs for her work here at the library as a racial equity manager um so one thank you for reading the report because we can't say that everyone who is um giving an opinion on on the san francisco reparations plan has read the report so three things come to mind one um we currently have something called the free minds initiative which is uh free mental health opportunities for black san franciscans and this is culturally congruent care and this is related to both reparations and to decades-long advocacy from black community members about the problems with our current mental health offerings and what community members want to see so whether that's support for you and your newborn whether that's bodywork somatic um or psychotherapy we are funding that and so i would invite everyone to visit the san francisco human rights commission's page and if you are black sign up for that um free minds initiative uh two i personally believe that policy is really important because it removes the discretion um from otherwise biased decision makers so as much as you can manage the people in charge through policy and you set guardrails and standards around that then i think that organizing has to be coupled with policy i think that our legal system for better or worse is what we have to work through and so to me it's it's one tool in a toolbox it's not a silver bullet by any means um but to that end we are having conversation at the board of supervisors that the reparations committee is leading so march 14th i invite everyone to please come out and give public comment because they will be voting on the draft of the san francisco reparations plan march third march 14th and that's at 3 p.m and then lastly on the point of organizing it is about engaging uh communities who this is it's about public education for communities who this isn't second nature to who don't understand the why or who don't support the why um and so we're having a number of listening sessions the reparations committee is across the city if you have an apple i invite you to pull your phone out and i will airdrop you the flyer for this thursday at usf six to eight p.m and from hall will be having um professor taylor who's a member of the committee uh as well as a professor at usf tanish holland's who is the co-founder of sf black wall street and to rika lewis who is the first black woman first woman to join the black panthers in san francisco um talking about cultural spaces and spatial justice and really about why black people need land back particularly here in san francisco hi my name is nick uh thank you want to say thank you for sharing your understanding and expressing it um and following through with it um i want to ask about uh what's the what's the mechanisms for us to continue um your work or the work around reparations uh what's the toolkits you know we talk about what people can do or how they can be involved but literally like um how do we put this in other people's hands so they don't forget um how do they know that they can participate where do they send money to um how do they support um where do you show up um or how can they continue to do um you know the brick and more of the things that need to help uh as far as like you know reparations moving forward um and then dr ceso and the s is what too like we're about the uh the ethereal aspect of uh uh uh of uh the reparations movement like um your recent muses or like you know somebody who is coming from the spiritual perspective about how this is affected us for hundreds of years and like you know where are we going after this you know how this is going to take us to a place where we are healing continuing to heal and healing the planet um as we deal with like you know our environment and our social impact is had on us um so i can ask the second question i know the first question was a toolkit and i think someone wanted to mention about the toolkits and how do we get it to the hands of the the community um but as far as like the the spiritual aspect of reparations i i look at it as um a beginning um it's it's it's i don't look at it as the only aspect right there are things that you know we are doing currently right within our black communities and communities at large that are sustaining black people like we have people representing different organizations for example um the uhuru movement um oakland um advocacies um like create the space so i feel like if we as a community or as people connect with organizations that are feeding positively positively into the community then that will impact us spiritually because we need people we can't create this movement without connecting to people and the spirit is the energy that we have in pushing the movement forward i just wanted to echo that it's uh it's tied to the people of what was said earlier um concretely we have an uhuru house in east oakland uh what we have black powers sunday rallies every second and fourth sundays and that is one place to connect we have an uhuru furniture and collectibles institution an economic institution in oakland has been there 30 plus years on grand avenue in oakland we have uh the grand lake farmers market where we have a market booth there every Saturday it's about economic development because we have to have our own underpinning economically and is what um i smell that said earlier it's about dual and contending state power the thing that we fight for as african people is for have power over our lives uh when everything else said and done it's power that is what we fight for is to have power over our lives and not be dependent on those who have the power over us and we know how they got the power what we must do is find ways to build that power and we cannot do it without going to the masses of our people and that is connecting with them at the community center at the economic institutions or wherever people are if we go to people's knocking on doors to get them to join the organization or support the organization we have to connect with real people on the ground and that's the thing that's going to make change it's power and that is why in this economy a handful of people control 90 percent of the media and they want to keep you deaf and dumb in terms of every news source everything you hear about is Ukraine Ukraine support for Ukraine but you don't hear the other side of the story so the reality is we have to go to the people and we have to connect to the people and i just want to end one thing i just had to say as the african people socialist party the question of reparations is real we have on our 2011 of our 14 point platform i just want to read briefly we want the u.s and the international european ruling class and states to pay africa and african people for the centuries of genocide oppression and enslavement of our people we believe that the u.s and european civilization were born from and are presently maintained by the horrendous death of human and material resources is responsible for the present underpopulation and underdevelopment of africa her people and the political servitude and impoverishment the cultural discontinuity and disintegration of african people throughout the world we believe that africa and african people are due reparations just economic compensation billions of dollars which must be paid to the organization of african unity or any legitimate international organization of african people for equitable distribution for the development of africa we also believe that reparations must be distributed to the various independent african states dispersed throughout the world and to the legitimate representatives of african people forcibly dispersed throughout the world who have not yet won liberation and that's going to come to organization and it's going to come to understanding this system is in its last days and we got to put it out as misery through organization thank you so much can we give our panelists another round of applause i really would like to extend the conversation but we are under a time constraint so please follow up with all of our speakers on what to do next right and just look up different things online and follow up on the things that we kind of threw at you all doing this panel i would like to give the mic to miss shawna sherman to close the program thank you everybody for coming just really quick you can follow what's happening in san francisco at sfreparations.org and want to give one more hand to our panelists what and thank you for coming