2 days Ago
The Dream , /PRNewswire/ -- Recent attacks on efforts to obtain reparations for Black communities undermine the work done by our ancestors to repair the long lasting and devastating injuries of slavery and its living vestiges. These attacks obstruct justice and the realization of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
's dream of repair and the creation of a true inclusive democracy. The movement for reparations is a movement for healing and reparatory justice for crimes done against Black communities. The backlash against community-led efforts for true justice and repair has appeared in the past couple of months in two different ways.
Both reflect the different ways in which Courts are used in an attempt to deny Black reparations. First, in its dismissal of the Oklahoma Supreme Court proclaims that judicial reparations are impossible, and relief can only come from local or state legislatures. The Court holds that Oklahoma Courts are the wrong forum to seek relief, even though the plaintiffs' claims—that the blight in the Greenwood District was caused by the actions during and after the 1921 Race Massacre—fall squarely within nuisance statute.
Second, Judicial Watch, a far-right special interest group, filed a class action complaint, in May 2024. That complaint seeks to undermine legislative reparations, arguing that a legislature cannot grant relief even if it recognizes that Black communities were specially victimized by historical discrimination. In this way, the plaintiffs seek t.
