Marking
Garvey’s Birth, Black Americans Gather to Demand Reparations
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Blacks
demonstrating for reparations
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WASHINGTON,
August 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Thousands of black
Americans gathered on Washington's National Mall Saturday to mark the
115th anniversary of Marcus Garvey's birth, in a rally of support for
reparation payments to blacks whose ancestors were slaves and suffered
segregation in the United States, news agencies reported.
"We
are a few thousand. We are here to ask for reparations now!"
declared Stephanie Middler, one of the event's organizers, nonetheless
noting that she had hoped for a better turnout, reported Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
"It's
difficult to get white people to admit," added Middler, clad in a
T-shirt emblazoned with the word "UHUNU," or
"liberty" in Swahili and shielding herself from the August sun
with a wide-brimmed hat.
The
rally near the Capitol building assembled various organizations tied to
the black community, including the National Coalition of Blacks for
Reparations in America (N'COBRA), the Nation of Islam, led by Louis
Farrakhan and the New Black Panther Party.
"No
justice, no peace," the demonstrators chanted from behind a
security cordon. "Agitate, educate, organize, resist," the
crowd added, pumping their fists at the sky.
A
small group of white Americans joined in the rally. "Solidarity is
the word," shouted Ferrell Winfree, who traveled from Atlanta,
Georgia, for the event, said AFP.
Members
of the Black Panthers, sporting black berets, displayed photographs of
lynching, showing slaves hanged from tree branches or with their backs
lacerated from whip lashings.
"This
is the work of the devil. And the devil is the white man," declared
one of the demonstrators.
Garvey,
a Jamaican-born black nationalist leader in the United States, founded
the Universal Negro Improvement Association. His newspaper, Negro World,
advocated an independent black economy within the framework of white
capitalism.
Last
March, black Americans filed the first legal challenge against
businesses they said benefited from slavery. Plaintiffs are asking for
an independent panel of historians and seeking reimbursement and
damages.
The
suit estimated the worth of uncompensated labor at 1.4 trillion dollars,
in the first of what could be a barrage of lawsuits targeting insurance
giant Aetna, railroad CSX and financial services firm FleetBoston, in a
class action lawsuit.
Plaintiffs'
lawyers include Edward Fagan, who helped Holocaust survivors bring
highly-publicized suits against Swiss banks and German companies that
used forced and slave labor in World War II, said their case heralded
the start of a wave of lawsuits.
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Garvey,
a Jamaican-born black nationalist leader in the U.S., founded
the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914
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Similar
legal actions brought against the U.S. federal government in the past
have been unsuccessful.
One
of the groups behind the case is 'N'COBRA', which has been rallying African-
Americans to take action particularly in the southern parts of the
United States. The group says it may file the suit next year while
another organization – the Reparations Assessment Group (RAG) – has
spent 18 months preparing a class action suit.
According
to RAG plans, taxpayers and corporations could face "possible
multi-billion dollar settlements." The group includes Harvard
Professor Charles Ogletree, who has reportedly said: "We want full
recognition and a remedy of how slavery stigmatized, raped, murdered,
and exploited millions of Africans through no fault of their own."
"We
want a change in America,” he told journalists.
Reparations
campaigners say that whites today profit from slavery, while blacks
suffer from it as they are still rotating in a cycle of poverty. It
is often said that America was "built on the backs of slaves."
Although
there have been no “slaves: or “slaveholders” in America since
1865, many African Americans complain that they are still not being
fairly treated by “White” Americans and are still seen as inferior
to them.
On
July 17, A white U.S. policeman, caught on video beating a handcuffed
African American teenager in an incident that caused fury in
racially-charged Los Angeles, is to be tried for assault, his lawyer
said.
Officer
Jeremy Morse, who was seen in the amateur film slamming the 16-year-old
suspect down on a police car and punching him in the face during a July
6 arrest, was indicted for trial by a grand jury, the attorney said.
The
first African slaves arrived in what is now the United States in 1619,
and the practice broadened quickly, chiefly in the south, where the topography
favored plantation agriculture. Some eight million African slaves
were brought to the territory before slavery was abolished in 1865.
While
the institution of slavery tended in North America to reinforce feelings
of racial superiority on the part of the whites, some writers have
argued that the treatment of slaves there was more humane than it was in
the Catholic or Latin countries.
In
the late 20th century, the idea of compensating American blacks for their
enslavement through some form of reparations won widespread support from
African-American organizations and greater notice, although little support,
from the broader society.
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