This year at Community Renewal Society’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Faith in Action Assembly, we launched our work centered on reparations. We invited our member congregations and all joining us to sign on to our CRS Reparations Pledge. More than six dozen congregations and community members signed on, sharing in our commitment! We are inspired by the interest and commitment to such vital work. 

Why reparations now? Racism and poverty systemically create inequitable disparities that cause generational harm. We seek to educate and eradicate those disparities. We are proud that the issue of reparations was adopted as part of the CRS Just Economy and Community Development platform through a membership vote in October 2020 during our Annual Membership Assembly. 

“African Americans contributed between one and five trillion dollars to the white economy before 1860. We never got paid for any of that labor,” Marvin Slaughter, Interim Director of the African American Leadership Policy Institute shared during the MLK Faith in Action Assembly. Further, Slaughter added, “We were basically the startup capital for these United States of America. We were the collateral for the stock market. We built so much of the infrastructure of this country [and] never got an opportunity to partake in the wealth that we created… Without reparations, Black Americans will never have the opportunity to have power in this country.” 

Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, Senior Pastor with Trinity United Church of Christ, a CRS member congregation, served as our featured Keynote Speaker. In his sermon, “Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul”, a nod to founding architect of the American Hip Hop movement Gil Scott-Heron, Moss asserts reparations will not only help Black Americans, but the entire country. “If America is to become the nation that it claims to be, then America should face its painful past. Not so that people can hang their heads, but to say that there is some good, there is some bad, and there is some serious ugly with our history. If we are willing to face that history, we can fix our future because nothing can be fixed if it’s not faced,” Moss preached. If we seek to understand systemic and systematic formations of poverty in our society, we must examine socio-economic disinheritance and the deeply rooted reality of racism and capitalism in America. 

Community Renewal Society’s Economic Justice Issue Team will lead dialogue, advocacy and action around reparations alongside residents across Illinois. Our work will aim to help foster a re-imagination of what reparations must look like in order to break the cycles of racial and economic inequality and cultural disinheritance. We invite you to join our calls-to-action to advance reparatory policies and restitution.