On January 10, 2004 UNESCO Director-General Koïïchiro Matsuura officially launched the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition in Cape Coast (Ghana), one of the slave trade's most active centers and today a World Heritage site.

Remember it was the UN World Conference Against Racism that brought the issue of the crime of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade to the forefront. We're convinced that this is the year to push as broadly as humanly possible the demand for reparations.

Indeed in the international arena the demand for reparations has taken hold. Haiti has filed a law suit against France for restitution of the 90 million gold francs paid to France. Jamaica has filed a suit against the Queen of England. In Namibia the Herero people have filed against Germany. In South Africa victims of apartheid have filed suit against corporations that profited during the apartheid regime. And in the U S the law suits against the nineteen corporations are still pending in the Federal District Court in Chicago, Illinois.

Reparations Now!
They Owe Us!

Click to see full-size image

Spirited Family Demonstration Demanding Reparations from Wachovia Bank on July 4, 2005 by December 12th Movement.
Reparations Now

The December 12th Movement Celebrates the
Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey
on the 119th Anniversary of his birth

Thursday, August 17, 2006
at
Sistas' Place
456 Nostrand Avenue (enter on Jefferson)
Brooklyn, NY 11216
718.398.1766

Also commemorating the First National Reparations Rally

Remember to fly the Red, Black & Green!

Sunday, June 11th 
3pm
City Hall
Lower Manhattan

Press Conference called by Councilman Charles Barron around the issues raised by the article and the response to it 

The New York Times recently published an article surveying jazz in Brooklyn. As usual, the Times declares something "hip" and newsworthy when white, middle-class institutions (in this case jazz clubs) and musicians join the scene. Black artists, activists, and entrepreneurs have been working mightily since 1999 and the formation of the Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium to spawn the recent huge, grassroots, predominantly Black, working class renaissance of jazz in Brooklyn.

How dare the Times highlight white individuals and clubs while ignoring the much longer, community-based, larger predominantly Black jazz scene? Mobilize, learn more about the ongoing struggle to promote community-based jazz and celebrate our "Music of the Soul."

Learn more, read Robin DG Kelley's excellent article, Brooklyn's Jazz Renaissance (2004).

In the News

Black Workers Wield Power! The historically militant Transport Workers Union Local 100 (TWU) has given the working class people in the New York City a renewed sense of power. Global market-driven politics of the 21st century demand labor resistance with a concrete political and economic force. The TWU strike in the international hub of New York City challenged the vice-like grip of corporate economic rule and government collusion on both administrative and judicial levels. Black workers took the lead and shut it down. Read article by Amadi Ajamu.

On May 2, 2005 the New Jersey State Police and FBI publicized a $1,000,000 bounty on the head of beloved sister and political prisoner in exile, Assata Shakur. The government is trying to lure racist killers in murdering her. We have always defended our sister and now increase our efforts. Read and distribute incisive Assata's statement (6 pages). More information on Assata.
Also, a shorter statement by Mos Def.

Raymond A. Winbush, Morgan State University, speaks about the many cases where the United States paid reparations for crimes against humanity committed against its own citizens. He also addresses the common argument against reparations: "But I wasn't alive and had nothing to do with slavery." Be informed. Read more.

Malcolm X on reparations: "If you are the son of a man who had a wealthy estate and you inherit your father's estate, you have to pay off the debts that your father incurred before he died. The only reason that the present generation of white Americans are in a position of economic strength...is because their fathers worked our fathers for over 400 years with no pay...We were sold from plantation to plantation like you sell a horse, or a cow, or a chicken, or a bushel of wheat...All that money...is what gives the present generation of American whites the ability to walk around the earth with their chest out...like they have some kind of economic ingenuity. Your father isn't here to pay. My father isn't here to collect. But I'm here to collect and you're here to pay."

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X); November 23, 1964, Paris, France; [Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970, p123]

Millions for Reparations and December 12th Movement Forum present

Tues. October 24, 2006
6:30pm
Reparations Program
The Tea Room
724 St. Nicholas Ave. (bet. 146-47)

Join us for a program on reparations with an update on the reparations law suit by Roger Wareham and presentations on proposed laws forcing corporations which want to do business with NYC to disclose their ties to slavery by Bill Perkins and Charles Barron.

For more info call (718) 398-1766.

December 12th Movement Revolutionary Book Club

What Happens to a Race Deferred
By Jason DeParle
The New York Times
Sunday 04 September 2005

The white people got out. Most of them, anyway. If television and newspaper images can be deemed a statistical sample, it was mostly black people who were left behind. Poor black people, growing more hungry, sick and frightened by the hour as faraway officials counseled patience and warned that rescues take time.

What a shocked world saw exposed in New Orleans last week wasn't just a broken levee. It was a cleavage of race and class, at once familiar and startlingly new, laid bare in a setting where they suddenly amounted to matters of life and death. Read more.

After months of foot dragging, the New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS) has finally admitted that at least 465 HIV positive children in foster care were used to test highly toxic and lethal experimental AIDS drugs during the 1980's and 1990's.  These were Phase I & II trials -- these weren't drugs to help these children, they were experimental trials, a number of whom were never approved for use in the manner they were given to the children. A principal facility used in the experiments was the Incarnation Children's Center in Washington Heights.  Some children who refused to take the drugs due to side effects had tubes put in their stomachs! Some foster parents that objected to the "treatment" -- one a nurse at ICC -- had their children removed!

"The issue of health care in our community is a matter of life and death. Reparations are due and we must demand them. We must save our children and build our own institutions," said Viola Plummer, national chairperson of the Millions for Reparations campaign. "Everyone must get involved. They are murdering our children," she said.

Call (718) 398-1766 for info. Download and post flyer.

Rally for Children against their abuse at Incarnation Children's Center
- Defend Our Children from their Tormentors
- Close This Slaughterhouse!
- No More "Tuskegee Experiments"

Click for a lot more info.

They Stole Us,
They Sold Us,
They Owe Us!
Reparations Now

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