Editorials
- Racism and the Crisis of Urban Education
- Statement on Reparations
- Native American Struggle: One Century into Another
- César Chávez: "Presente"
- Organizing and Voter Ed: Tough, Tedious, and Vital
Statement on Reparations
DSA joins in solidarity with the position expressed by the Black Radical Congress (April 17, 1999):
Reparations is a well-established principle of international law that should be applied in the US. Historically, the US has been both the recipient and disburser of reparations. As the descendants of enslaved Africans, we have the legal and moral right to receive just compensation for the oppression, systematic brutality and economic exploitation Black people have suffered historically and continue to experience today. Thus, we seek reparations from the US for its illegal assault on African peoples during the slave trade; its exploitation of Black labor during slavery; and its systematic and totalitarian physical, economic and cultural violence against people of African descent over the last four centuries.
DSA, as a socialist organization, rejects the proposition that corporate wealth and individual property are the same. The wealth that we plan to re-distribute is corporate wealth not personal private property.
The wealth of the US corporate class was developed from the exploitation of vast numbers of Africans and a great many indigenous peoples by slavery and the theft of indigenous wealth and land by the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the English-speaking peoples. The current wealth of the ruling elite and the poverty in African-American and Indigenous communities are direct consequences of this incorporation by force and terrorism of these and other dominated communities into the capitalist system.
And we, along with the Latino Commission of DSA, further call for reparations for the assaults and despoliation of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and their descendants, including Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and others, for the loss of their lands and the attempted destruction of their cultures and institutions. This includes supporting the land claims and other treaty-related social justice cases of the Native American tribal nations.
In pursuit of these reparations, we take the following steps:
1. DSA supports H.R. 40, introduced by Representative John Conyers, to study the issues related to slavery and to make recommendations to Congress.
2. We further recognize that reparations are fundamentally a social rather than an individual process. It is clear from a number of studies that the underdevelopment of communities of African Americans, Indigenous people, and their descendants continues to this date. We recognize that this underdevelopment is a direct result of the crimes of the past, and the forces subjugation of these people and their incorporation into a White Supremacist society based upon the unfair and inequitable extraction of labor and capital from the work, and death, of these people.
We, therefore, call for monetary reparations to be in the form of public ownership of utilities and means of production. And we call for the investment of compensatory funds into publicly owned institutions for the development of their communities. And, public funds shall be used to promote the general welfare, education, health care, public transportation and infrastructure targeted on those communities historically denied lack of access to capital and education by prior governmental and corporate actions.
3. DSA will conduct internal and public education around the issue of reparations.