PRESS ROOM: Reparations United’s Defense of Evanston’s Restorative Housing Program

On May 23rd, the organization Judicial Watch filed a class action lawsuit against Evanston, Illinois, on behalf of six non-Black individuals over the city’s use of race as an eligibility requirement for a reparations program. The lawsuit suggests that Evanston’s Restorative Housing Program – ERHP is a race-based claim to address “societal discrimination” that happened 5 decades ago. As such, it is unconstitutional. Reparations United holds that not only is this untrue, but also holds the lawsuit should be dismissed outright. In 2001, coming out of the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, WCAR was held in Durban, South Africa. We moved into a new era of reparations activism.

The participating nations at WCAR concluded that the Transatlantic Slave Trade, slavery (enslavement), apartheid (euphemistically referred to as Jim Crow segregation in America), and colonialism were crimes against humanity. This shift now allows us to base our reparations claims on the internationally recognized crimes of enslavement, apartheid, and colonialism. Reparations United holds that the Evanston Restorative Housing Program is a crime-based claim for apartheid housing policies, and as crimes against humanity, with demonstrated continued impact, the City of Evanston is proper to redress those crimes and impact with the Restorative Housing Program.

With crimes against humanity, three categories are examined: 1) Category of crimes – genocide, enslavement, apartheid, torture, systematic rape, displacement, etc. 2) Category of perpetrators/offenders – governments, soldiers, leaders, corporations, institutions, etc. And 3) Category of victims – civilians, women and children, ethnicities, prisoners of war, territorial victims, etc. The Restorative Housing Program rests firmly on the crime of apartheid housing policies. The Restorative Housing Program recognizes the City of Evanston as the offending party. The Restorative Housing Program named those eligible as territorial victims – residents of a particular area of the City of Evanston from 1919 to 1969 and their descendants.

The City of Evanston created a zone of victimization – a demarcated area, red-lined on city maps, with their apartheid housing policies. That zone was in the 5th ward. The fact that a particular ethnic group lived there, and that they moved others of that same ethnicity to the red-lined zone of criminality was a criterion of choice of the City of Evanston. For the ERHP, victimization of the crime and continued impact of the crime is the basis of the redress (not race) and thus it is victimization that determines eligibility. Those who were not housed in the red-lined zone have no eligibility for redress – not because they are not of the same ethnicity as the lawsuit suggests, but because their ancestors did not reside in the designated area. No victimization, no eligibility.

Also, Judicial Watch argues that the City of Evanston did not show that there was a violation of a law that existed at the time. This is another way of saying that apartheid laws were legal at the time. I would suggest three forms of thought that counter this argument: ongoing and continuing character, dynamic interpretation, and flawed law. Evanston’s apartheid housing policy, although ended in 1969, must be seen as a “continuing act, having a “continuing character,” i.e., continuing impact upon current Evanstonians and/or their descendants who were the victims of those policies. Still today, housing values are lower in the 5th Ward, mortgages are more difficult to obtain, interest rates are usually higher, credit scores are lower, insurance and other related housing services are more costly, wealth was not passed equally to heirs, etc., not because of race but because of the historic location of the zone of criminality.

Another area of thought is that of “dynamic interpretation.” That is laws must be interpreted following the current understanding of the relevant terms, “especially if these terms were general whose meaning has evolved.” Jim Crow was not just a system of social segregation or simply “societal discrimination” or “an amorphous concept of injury,” as named in the lawsuit, but apartheid criminal system of terror, murder, plunder, labor theft, wealth extraction, wealth prevention, dignity crushing, knowledge depriving, and other social, economic, and political limiting and debilitating practices backed by life and liberty-threatening force of the state – in this case the City of Evanston.

The “flawed law” concept also comes into play when enslavement and apartheid acts are said to have been legal at the time. Flawed laws “qualify as non-laws.” Law, for it to be law, must have been “established to serve justice.” The laws of enslavement and apartheid were, on the contrary, established to create an unjust, violent, and terror-backed social, economic, and political order, in conjunction with, denying justice to those it victimized. Apartheid red-lining laws must be seen as flawed laws and thus, non-law. In any event, until this is argued in the court, or dismissed outright, we must all counter the false assertion that we are pursuing race-based claims for reparations. Because we are not. Evanston did not.

Evanston has, and we are, continuing to pursue crime-based remedies for the egregious crimes (enslavement and apartheid) committed against our ancestors, as well as ongoing neo-apartheid crimes that continue to negatively impact us today. The lawsuit should be thrown out on its face! As well as those who wrote it!

About the Author:

Kamm Howard is a national and international reparations scholar and activist working for over 20 years building grassroots movements to obtain reparations for African descendants in the United States.

*Author’s Note. I do not represent myself as a lawyer or someone legally defending or working with anyone legally defending the City of Evanston. I consider myself a reparations expert/scholar/activist/organizer with extensive praxis regarding reparations and international law.

CONTACT:

Reparations United Phone: 773-985-2990

Email: kamm@reparationsunited.org Website: https://reparationsunited.org/