No Question That Reparations Are Owed
After coming into the Parish Hall for Wellspring Wednesday on January 31, 2024, and saying hey to a few people, I took a spot at the front in one of the only seats left for the panel discussion, “The Process of Politics and Reparations in Saint Paul,” sponsored by the Unity Racial and Restorative Justice Team. Unity member Russel Balenger spoke about being a descendent of enslaved people, and about growing up in Rondo before being displaced. In a brief film, we heard Bridgett Floyd, sister of George Floyd, speak about the enslaved ancestors who managed to acquire several hundred acres of farmland in the South after emancipation only to have it stolen from them.
 
Our country and our state of Minnesota were built on stolen land and free labor. Reparations are not an abstract idea relating to people over 100 years ago. The action is personal to Russel and Bridgett and every descendent of an enslaved family member. And it is about the continuing legacy of slavery: trauma, lost generational wealth, health care issues, housing discrimination, disproportional imprisonment, the destruction of the Rondo neighborhood, and more. We learned that Minnesota has the third-largest racial wealth gap in the country. It should be personal to all of us.
 
Jane Prince has worked on reparations for years and is now fresh off the City Council and a Unity Church member. She said, “Reparations [are] a federal debt.” The work in St. Paul is a start, as are the 116 other proposals to do with reparations that have passed around the country.

Reparative Work by the St. Paul City Council
To bring us up to date, Trahern Crews, a Black Lives Matter Minnesota leader and one of the conveners of St Paul’s Reparations Advisory Committee, walked us through the years of study and work completed by himself, Balenger, Prince, and many others that led to successful reparations work in St. Paul.

Highlights include:

• An apology and first action: Resolution 21-77, passed January 13, 2021, included an apology for “the City’s role in the instructional and structural racism experienced by its residents.” It also called for a Legislative Advisory Committee (LAC) to plan for a permanent commission; keyword, “permanent.”
• Work gets underway: Resolution 21-866, passed in June 2021, established the Saint Paul City Council Legislative Advisory Committee on Reparations to advise on a permanent commission to address reparations long-term.
• Established: A permanent commission under the St. Paul City Council, the Saint Paul Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission, passed on January 4, 2023, and took effect on February 13, 2023. But the eleven-member commission has not been seated yet; other than some controversy last summer over a staff hire, the panel did not know why.

​Independent of the City Council, Mayor Melvin Carter established the Rondo Inheritance Fund to help displaced Rondo families purchase housing. And while information on the Inheritance Fund is on the city website under “City Council Reparations Efforts,” it is not related to the commission. Due to a large number of applicants, the city is no longer taking applications for this fund.
 
What You Can Do Right Now
The history so far is important, but to hear direct-experience testimony is to witness the pain and hopefully, to become allies in the work of reparations. Thus, the call to immediate action. Here’s what you can do:

• Call your St. Paul City Council representative and ask, “When is the Saint Paul Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission going to be seated?” Ask to be contacted with follow-up information. Find your City Council rep and their contact information on the city website.
• Support the Minnesota Migration Act, introduced in the Senate–SF 3950 and in the House– HF 3850. If it gets out of committee and passes, it would establish a state-level commission to study how to provide reparations in MN. Find your Senate and House elected officials on the Legislative Coordinating Commission site.
• At Unity Church, follow the use of the Currier Fund for Racial Justice, an endowment left to us by Helener Currier in 2021, some of which will be used for reparations. Board of Trustees Chair Louise Livesay-Al said that the Board is starting a conversation on the use of and a process for distributing the funds this spring.
• Register for and attend the National Reparations Convention Midwest Focus, organized by Black Lives Matter Minnesota; Thursday, February 22, 2024, through Saturday, February 24, at the Hilton Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. Register for the FREE convention.
• Learn more about reparations from these sources recommended by the panel:
  • African-American Redress Network
  • Saint Paul Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission, sign up to receive news.
  • “Reparations Now,” by Jane Prince, Beloved Community News, 4/1/2021.
  • United Nations resolution on the right to remedy and reparation.
  • The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks by Randall Robinson (on order for the Anderson Library).
  • Anti-Racism Institutional Audit, Unity Church

​Questions for Further Thought

• What do you think of reparations for chattel slavery? For Indigenous genocide and land theft?
• How should Unity determine the use of reparations funds from the Currier Fund?
• What actions are you inspired to take regarding reparations?

It had been almost twenty years since I had lived in Canada when I returned in 2019. In my absence, a new territory had been created, Nunavut (official language is Inuit), and what were once called the Queen Charlotte Islands had formally been renamed Haida Gwaii, in recognition of the Haida people who live there (official language is Haida). Special holidays had been created and awareness of native history, culture and tradition was growing. Land acknowledgement statements were commonplace at the beginning of any kind of public gathering. 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2008 to 2015) brought about some major changes in laws, policies, and public awareness pertaining to Indigenous rights, equity, and inclusion. In 2014, the Canadian Unitarian Council (CUC) and Unitarian Universalist Ministers of Canada (UUMOC) issued a statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In it is a commitment to assemble and promote educational materials for congregations on the history and impact of the Indian residential school system, and to uphold the recommendations of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

General public awareness about racism and oppression seemed to be on the rise, especially as immigrant communities from African and Asian nations grew, as did racially-motivated violent crime. 

Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, the CUC issued a statement mourning the deaths of people of color, and hosted a series of conversations, workshops and roundtables to discuss and begin work to address systemic racism. A Dismantling Racism Study Group was formed, tasked with interviewing, assessing, and making recommendations to the CUC. We were all immersed in learning about the long history of anti-black racism and discrimination in Canada. Recommendations from the group are being implemented, including investment of resources at the national and congregational level, and creating/assembling antiracism material for education and worship for congregations.

Then, in May 2021, the horrific discovery of the remains of 215 children buried in unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia shocked the nation. My heart broke wide open and joined with Indigenous communities as the news rolled through in a firestorm of grieving. This was just the beginning of a series of similar discoveries from other sites of some of the 140 Indian Residential Schools which operated across Canada from 1831 into the closing decades of the 20th Century. 

I was, at the time, serving as interim minister in Vancouver, British Columbia. There are three distinct tribes who have lived on the land where the city of Vancouver sprawls along the coast: the Musqueam, Squamish and Tseil-Watuth First Nations. Every worship service began with an acknowledgment of being uninvited residents on their land and of our responsibility to work to dismantle the ongoing impact of settler colonialism. Following the discovery, the acknowledgment went deeper to lift up the generational trauma of the victims and families of survivors of the residential school system, and the work of the congregation to be in good relationship with the areas native communities also deepened. 

Each year, September 30 marks the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, an important step in reconciliation, and Orange Shirt Day, an Indigenous-led public commemoration of the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools. Approximately 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families, placed in residential schools, stripped of their culture, language and identities, their names changed, and hair shorn. They were forbidden to speak their own languages, suffered horrific abuses and poor conditions, and several thousand died. I was never taught a single thing about residential schools when I was in school. 
​
In the wake of this upswell of awareness, engagement, and response to the tireless work of leaders across Canada, on Saturday, November 27, 2021, 95% of the 104 Canadian Unitarian Universalist delegates to a special meeting of the CUC voted in favor of the motion to approve adding an 8th Principle to the current Seven Principles (bit.ly/cuc7prin) with language modified to the Canadian context. It reads: 

Truth, healing and reconciliation, dismantling racism and oppressive systems of colonial and white supremacy is a long and deeply spiritual process of self-awareness and relationship-building. I am committed to the work of dismantling racism and systemic barriers to full inclusion in myself, in our congregations and in society at large. May we all continue to learn, grow heal, and live into the dream of beloved community. ​

The Antiracism Literacy Partners (ALP) program is a group spiritual practice that seeks to embody the values, mission, and ends of Unity Church; and specifically, this ends statement: Create brave space for racial healing and dismantling dominant culture. Learn more about the Antiracism Literacy Partners program, and the five resources offered in the January session. Contact ALP Team Leader Becky Gonzalez-Campoy with questions: [email protected]. ​