1. President "Barack Obama" 2014 "Reparations Act" for (Negro) African American "Slavery": By Louis Charles Hamilton II

Bonjour, United States of America "President" & "Commander in Chief" Namely "Barack Obama"

As (I) Stated to you fully on the "Wire" "January 20th 2014

"You" President Barack Obama, Change as "You" Mature in Becoming a Real Living Life History of The "Entire World",

Know to be The Very First (Negro) "African American President".

"Your" Presidential Time Has "Officially" came to pass This Very Day of "Martin Luther King Jr. Dream

For "You" President Barack Obama, to Increasing the "Efficiency" Of All of The (Negro) African American Race (People) to move "Forward and Understand" a "Gift of Real Value"

Awaits and shall "Forever" set their Slow (Negro) African Americans Flourishing Hearts on Fire for "Everlasting Real Peace"...

From the Pass Acts of The Modern Age of Slavery.......xoxooxox

And (I) have been "Holy" bless from "Heaven" above to now show you the Correct Way..!

See you so very soon with the detail's......

__________________________________________________ "Well" Mr. President Barack Obama as (I) already stated with "Full Proclaim Love" for my (Negro People) namely me "Louis Charles Hamilton II" herein

Fully describing The 2014 "Precise Directions" with "Exact", "Specific", "Definite", "Expert" and well founded gifted details for the "Complete 2014 Reparation Act"

For the "Wrongful Enforcement of Slavery" against the (Negro) "African American" Race to fully build the "New World" Known to be "United States of America"...!

This Complete "2014 Reparation Act" is fully On the behalf of all estimated 44.5 Million (Negro) African American (Alive) herein within "The United States of America" as of this undersigned date

Being fully Said such 44.5 Million (Negro) African American Population (Alive) either "alone or in combination" with one or more other races.......................!

1. President "Barack Obama" 2014 "Reparations Act" Part I "Brief Slavery History for Complete Understanding"

Reparations for slavery is a proposal that some type of compensation should be provided to the descendants of enslaved people in the United States,

In consideration of the coerced and uncompensated labor their ancestors performed over centuries.

This compensation has been proposed in a variety of forms, from individual monetary payments to land-based compensation schemes related to independence.

The idea remains highly controversial and no broad consensus exists as to how it could be implemented.

U.S. Historical Context

The arguments surrounding reparations are based on the formal discussion about many different reparations and

Actual land reparations received by African-Americans which were later taken away.

In 1865, after the Confederate States of America were defeated in the American Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15

to both "assure the harmony of action in the area of operations" and to solve problems caused by the masses of freed slaves,

a temporary plan granting each freed family forty acres of tillable land in the sea islands and

Around Charleston, South Carolina for the exclusive use of black people who had been enslaved.

The army also had a number of unneeded mules which were given to settlers.

Around 40,000 freed slaves were settled on 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) in Georgia and South Carolina.

However, President Andrew Johnson reversed the order after Lincoln was assassinated and the land was returned to its previous owners.

In 1867, Thaddeus Stevens sponsored a bill for the redistribution of land to African Americans, but it was not passed.

Reconstruction came to an end in 1877 without the issue of reparations having been addressed.

Thereafter, a deliberate movement of regression and oppression arose in southern states.

Jim Crow laws passed in some southeastern states to reinforce the existing inequality that slavery had produced.

In addition white extremist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan engaged in a massive campaign of intimidation throughout the Southeast

In order to keep African Americans in their prescribed social place.

For decades this assumed inequality and injustice was ruled on in court decisions and debated in public discourse.

Reparation for slavery in what is now the United States is a complicated issue or as The United States of America White Control Ruling Class Congress made it to

for their on lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure already benefit from such acts of "American Slavery"

Notwithstanding it has been claim fully in the past "Any proposal for reparations" must take into account the role of the, then relatively newly formed,

United States government in the importation and enslavement of Africans

And that of the older and established European countries that created the colonies in which slavery was legal; as well as their efforts to stop the trade in slaves.

It must also consider if and how much modern Americans have benefited from the importation and enslavement of Africans since the end of the slave trade in 1865.

Profit from slavery was not limited to a particular region: New England merchants profited from the importation of slaves,

While Southern planters profited from the continued enslavement of Africans.

In a 2007 column in The New York Times, historian Eric Foner writes:

[In] the Colonial era, Southern planters regularly purchased imported slaves, and merchants in New York and New England profited handsomely from the trade.

The American Revolution threw the slave trade and slavery itself into crisis. In the run-up to war,

Congress banned the importation of slaves as part of a broader nonimportation policy.

During the War of Independence, tens of thousands of slaves escaped to British lines. Many accompanied the British out of the country when peace arrived.

Inspired by the ideals of the Revolution, most of the newly independent American states banned the slave trade.

But importation resumed to South Carolina and Georgia, which had been occupied by the British during the war and lost the largest number of slaves.

The slave trade was a major source of disagreement at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

South Carolina’s delegates were determined to protect slavery, and they had a powerful impact on the final document.

They originated the three-fifths clause (giving the South extra representation in Congress by counting part of its slave population)

and threatened disunion if the slave trade were banned, as other states demanded.

The result was a compromise barring Congress from prohibiting the importation of slaves until 1808.

Some Anti-Federalists, as opponents of ratification were called,

Cited the slave trade clause as a reason why the Constitution should be rejected, claiming it

brought shame upon the new nation....

As slavery expanded into the Deep South, a flourishing internal slave trade replaced importation from Africa.

Between 1808 and 1860, the economies of older states like Virginia came increasingly to rely on the sale of slaves to the cotton fields of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

But demand far outstripped supply, and the price of slaves rose inexorably, placing ownership outside the reach of poorer Southerners.!

The (Old) Proposals for reparations..!

Some proposals have called for direct payments from the U.S. government.

One such proposal delivered in the McCormick Convention Center conference room for the first National Reparations Convention by Howshua Amariel,

A Chicago social activist, would require the federal government to make reparations to proven descendants of slaves.

In addition, Amariel stated "For those blacks who wish to remain in America, they should receive reparations in the form of free education,

Free medical, free legal and free financial aid for 50 years with no taxes levied,"

and "For those desiring to leave America, every black person would receive a million dollars or more, backed by gold, in reparation."

At the convention Amariel's proposal received approval from the 100 or so participants, nevertheless the question of who would receive such payments,

Who should pay them and in what amount, has remained highly controversial,

Since the United States Census does not track descent from slaves or slave owners and relies on self-reported racial categories.

Various estimates have been given if such payments were to be made.

Harper's Magazine has created an estimate that the total of reparations due is over 100 trillion dollars,

Based on 222,505,049 hours of forced labor between 1619 and 1865, with a compounded interest of 6%.

Should all or part of this amount be paid to the descendants of slaves in the United States, the current U.S. government would only pay a fraction of that cost,

over 40 trillion dollars, since it has been in existence only since 1789.

The Rev. M.J. Divine, better known as Father Divine, was one of the earliest leaders to argue clearly for "retroactive compensation"

And the message was spread via International Peace Mission publications.

On July 28, 1951, Father Divine issued a "peace stamp" bearing the text: "Peace! All nations and peoples who have suppressed and oppressed the under-privileged,

They will be obliged to pay the African slaves and their descendants for all uncompensated servitude and for all unjust compensation,

Whereby they have been unjustly deprived of compensation on the account of previous condition of servitude and the present condition of servitude.

This is to be accomplished in the defense of all other under-privileged subjects and must be paid retroactive up-to-date".

On July 30, 2008, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution apologizing for American slavery and subsequent discriminatory laws.

Some states have also apologized for slavery, including Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.

Duke University public policy professor William "Sandy" Darity said such apologies are a first step, but compensation is also necessary.

In April 2010, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates in a New York Times editorial advised reparations activists to consider

the African role in the slave trade in regards to who should shoulder the cost of reparations

Ex-colonial governments

The full cost of slavery reparations prior to 1776 would be borne by the governments of the European countries (Spain, the United Kingdom, and France)

Who governed North America at that time.

One additional problem is that the governments in power in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe are not still in power now.

France, for example, has gone through several forms of government since it was last a colonial power in North America.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to hold the current French government liable for the enslavement of Africans

That previous governments encouraged and benefited from between the 17th century up to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

1. President "Barack Obama" 2014 "Reparations Act" Part II Private "Institutions and Corporations were also involved in slavery.

On March 8, 2000, Reuters News Service reported that Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a law school graduate,

Initiated a one-woman campaign making a historic demand for restitution and apologies from modern companies that played a direct role in enslaving Africans.

Aetna Inc. was her first target because of their practice of writing life insurance policies on the lives of enslaved Africans with slave owners as the beneficiaries.

In response to Farmer-Paellmann's demand, Aetna Inc. issued a public apology, and the "corporate restitution movement" was born.

By 2002, nine lawsuits were filed around the country coordinated by Farmer-Paellmann and the Restitution Study Group—a New York non-profit.

The litigation included 20 plaintiffs demanding restitution from 20 companies from the banking, insurance, textile, railroad, and tobacco industries.

The cases were consolidated under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 to multidistrict litigation in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

The district court dismissed the lawsuits with prejudice, and the claimants appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

On December 13, 2006, that Court, in an opinion written by Judge Richard Posner, modified the district court's judgment to be a dismissal without prejudice,

affirmed the majority of the district court's judgment, and reversed the portion of the district court's judgment dismissing the plaintiffs' consumer protection claims,

Remanding the case for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.

Thus, the plaintiffs may bring the lawsuit again, but must clear considerable procedural and substantive hurdles first:

If one or more of the defendants violated a state law by transporting slaves in 1850, and the plaintiffs can establish standing to sue, prove the violation despite its antiquity,

Establish that the law was intended to provide a remedy (either directly or by providing the basis for a common law action for conspiracy, conversion, or restitution)

to lawfully enslaved persons or their descendants, identify their ancestors, quantify damages incurred, and persuade the court to toll the statute of limitations,

there would be no further obstacle to the grant of relief.

In October 2000, California passed a Slavery Era Disclosure Law requiring insurance companies doing business there to report on their role in slavery.

The disclosure legislation, introduced by Senator Tom Hayden, is the prototype for similar laws passed in 12 states around the United States.

The NAACP has called for more of such legislation at local and corporate levels. It quotes Dennis C. Hayes, CEO of the NAACP, as saying,

"Absolutely, we will be pursuing reparations from companies that have historical ties to slavery and engaging all parties to come to the table."

Brown University, whose namesake family was involved in the slave trade, has also established a committee to explore the issue of reparations.

In February 2007, Brown University announced a set of responses to its Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice.

While in 1995 the Southern Baptist Convention apologized for the "sins" of racism, including slavery.

In December 2005, a boycott was called by a coalition of reparations groups under the sponsorship of the Restitution Study Group.

The boycott targets the student loan products of banks deemed complicit in slavery—particularly those identified in the Farmer-Paellmann litigation.

As part of the boycott students are asked to choose from other banks to finance their student loans."

In 2005, JP Morgan Chase and Wachovia both apologized for their connections to slavery

Social services

A number of supporters for reparations advocate that compensation should be in the form of "Community Rehabilitation" and not payments to individual descendants.

1. President "Barack Obama" 2014 "Reparations Act" Part III past "Arguments for Reparations"

Accumulated wealth

In 2008 the American Humanist Association published an article which argued that if emancipated slaves had been allowed to possess and retain the profits of their labor,

Their descendants might now control a much larger share of American social and monetary wealth.

Not only did the freedmen and -women not receive a share of these profits, but they were stripped of the small amounts of compensation paid to some of them during Reconstruction.

The wealth of the United States, they say, was greatly enhanced by the exploitation of African American slave labor.

According to this view, reparations would be valuable primarily as a way of correcting modern economic imbalance.

Precedents

Under the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan,

The U.S. government apologized for Japanese American internment during World War II and provided reparations of $20,000 to each survivor, to compensate for loss of property and liberty during that period.

For many years, Native American tribes have received compensation for lands ceded to the United States by them in various treaties.

Other countries have also opted to pay reparations for past grievances, such as the German government making reparations to Jews and survivors and descendants of the Holocaust

1. President "Barack Obama" 2014 "Reparations Act" Part IV past "Arguments against Reparations"

The principal argument against reparations is that their cost would not be imposed upon the perpetrators of slavery who were a very small percentage of society with 4.8% of southern whites (only 1.4% of all whites in the country)

Nor confined to those who can be shown to be the specific indirect beneficiaries of slavery, but would simply be indiscriminately borne by taxpayers per se.

Those making this argument often add that the descendants of white abolitionists

And soldiers in the Union Army might be taxed to fund reparations despite the sacrifices their ancestors already made to end slavery.

In the case of Public Lands, European colonizers killed or forcibly relocated many Southeastern Native American tribes.

One argument against reparations is that in assigning public lands to African-Americans for the enslavement of their ancestors,

A greater and further wrong would be committed against the Southeastern Native Americans who have ancestral claims and treaty rights to that same land.

In addition, several historians, such as João C. Curto, have made important contributions to the global understanding of the African side of the Atlantic slave trade.

By arguing that African merchants determined the assemblage of trade goods accepted in exchange for slaves,

Many Historians argue for African agency and ultimately a shared responsibility for the slave trade

Identification of victims and of levels of victimization

Identification of actual descendants of slaves would be an enormous undertaking,

Because such descent is not simply identical with present racial self-identification.

And levels of actual victimization would be impossible to identify; had freed slaves been given their recoverable damages,

They may have followed different patterns of marriage and of reproduction,

And in some cases would not have made their offspring the sole or even principal heirs to their estates.

(Opponents of reparations refer to the lost wealth of slaves as “dissipated”, not in the sense

of simply having ceased to exist,

But in the sense of being untraceable and transmitted elsewhere.)

Comparative utility

It has been argued that reparations for slavery cannot be justified on the basis that slave descendants are subjectively worse off as a result of slavery,

Because it has been suggested that they are better off than they would have been in Africa if the slave trade had never happened.

The slave population in the US grew six-fold after the importation of slaves was ceased. In all other countries the slave population either did not increase or declined.

This was because the treatment of slaves in the US was generally very good - birth survival rates exceeded that of poor whites and was twice that of their native Africa.

In addition, each state had laws against the abuse of slaves and many religious groups rigorously enforced them

In Up From Slavery, former slave Booker T. Washington wrote,

I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race.

No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction... Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic,

It was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution.

Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that,

notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery,

The ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery,

Are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe....

This I say, not to justify slavery – on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons,

and not from a missionary motive –

But to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose.

When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions,

I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country,

I remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which, a good Providence has already led us.

Conservative commentator David Horowitz writes,

The claim for reparations is premised on the false assumption that only whites have benefited from slavery.

If slave labor created wealth for Americans, then obviously it has created wealth for black Americans as well, including the descendants of slaves.

The GNP of black America is so large that it makes the African-American community the 10th most prosperous "nation" in the world.

American blacks on average enjoy per capita incomes in the range of twenty to fifty times that of blacks living in any of the African nations from which they were taken

1. President "Barack Obama" 2014 "Reparations Act" Part V "Legal Argument against Reparations"

Many legal experts point to the fact that slavery was not illegal in the United States prior to the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified in 1865).

Thus, there is no legal foundation for compensating the descendants of slaves for the crime against their ancestors when,

In strictly legal terms, no crime was committed.

Chattel slavery is now considered by many in the United States to be highly immoral, though it was perfectly legal at the time.

However, opponents of this legal argument contend that such was the case in Nazi Germany, whereby the activities of the Nazis were legal under German law;

However, unlike slavery, the German activities were precedented by the Allied Powers following WWI,

Which could not rule against the German government then due to lack of precedent,

But could do so afterward following WWII on the basis of this established WWI precedent.

Other legal experts point to the fact that the current U.S. government did not exist prior to June 21, 1788 when the United States Constitution was ratified.

Therefore, they say the U.S. government inherited the institution of slavery,

and cannot be held legally liable for the enslavement of Africans by Europeans prior to that time.

Figuring out who was enslaved by whom in order to fairly apply reparations from the U.S. government only to those who were enslaved under U.S. laws, would be an impossible task.

Some areas of the South had communities of freedman, such as existed in Savannah, Charleston and New Orleans, while in the North,

for example, former slaves lived as freedman both before and after the creation of the United States in 1788.

For example, in 1667 Dutch colonists freed some of their slaves and gave them property in what is now Manhattan.

The descendants of Groote and Christina Manuell—two of those freed slaves—can trace their family's history as freedman back to the child of Groote and Christina,

Nicolas Manuell, whom they consider their family's first freeborn African-American.

In 1712, the British, then in control of New York, prohibited blacks from inheriting land, effectively ending property ownership for this family.

While this is only one example out of thousands of enslaved persons, it does mean that not all slavery reparations can be determined by racial self-identification alone;

Reparations would have to include a determination of the free or slave status of one's African-American ancestors,

as well as when and by whom they were enslaved and denied rights such as property ownership.

Because of slavery, the original African heritage has been blended with the American experience,

The same as it has been for generations of immigrants from other countries.

For this reason, determining a "fair share" of reparations would be an impossible task.

Another legal argument against reparations for slavery from a legal (as opposed to a moral standpoint)

is that the statute of limitations for filing lawsuits has long since passed.

*See LOUIS CHARLES HAMILTON, II, and Negro African American, suing on behalf of all other African American (Negroes) Americans in and for the United States of America Vs.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, President ANDREW JOHNSON,

And President RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

Appeal 12-40403

Case Number:1:2010cv00808

Filed:December 15, 2010

Court:Texas Eastern District Court

Office:Beaumont Office

County:Jefferson

Presiding Judge:Ron Clark

Referring Judge:Keith F. Giblin

Nature of Suit:Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations

Cause of Action:18:1964

Jury Demanded By:Plaintiff

Thus, courts are prohibited from granting relief. This has been used effectively in several suits, including

"In re African American Slave Descendants", which dismissed a high-profile suit against a number of businesses with ties to slavery.

Another argument against reparations (though this is not a legal argument) is that few African-Americans are of "pure"

African blood since the offspring of the original slaves were occasionally the progeny of Caucasian male masters

(and a variety of White males) by means of rape, concubinage or threat and forcibly slave-breeding of African female slaves

1. President "Barack Obama" 2014 "Reparations Act" Part VI "Reparations could cause increased racism"

Anti-reparations advocates argue reparations payments based on race alone would be perceived by nearly everyone as a monstrous injustice, embittering many,

And inevitably setting back race relations. In this view, apologetic feelings some whites may hold because of slavery and past civil rights injustices would,

to a significant extent, be replaced by anger.

The Libertarian Party, among other groups and individuals, has suggested that reparations would make racism worse:

A renewed demand by African-Americans for slavery reparations should be rejected because such payments would only increase racial hostility...

A leading work against reparations is David Horowitz, Uncivil Wars: The Controversy Over Reparations for Slavery (2002).

Other works that discuss problems with reparations, include John Torpey, Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics (2006),

Alfred Brophy, Reparations Pro and Con (2006), Nahshon Perez, Freedom from Past Injustices (Edinburgh University Press, 2012).

There is also a technical problem with identifying those who should be entitled to exemptions because of their ancestral opposition to Slavery.

In particular, there was a significant Anti-Slavery Resistance Movement among the German and Mexican Texans during the Civil War

Which effectively negated the gains from New Mexico by choking off supplies.

1. Group Demands that "President Barack Obama" form Task Force to Study Reparations for Slavery

A petition has been circulating to demand that President Obama and Congress take the lead on at least investigating reparations for slavery in the United States.

The movement is not a surprise, after Caribbean nations and other parts of the world have been demanding both official apologies for slavery, as well as financial compensation.

The petition was started by Jeff Savage, an activist who believes that it’s time that the United States address its past and the inequality which exists today as a result of past oppression.

“Let it be known, we are demanding that United States Congress hold Congressional Hearings and that a Task Force,

Or Commission, be formed for reparations for the descendants of Africans who were enslaved in the United States of America for centuries,” the petition begins.

The petition then goes on to state that the reparations are meant to “repair and to compensate, the people who were wronged.”

He points out that the United States, American corporations and millions of citizens alive today have benefited from hundreds of years of free labor.

Much of the wealth in the United States was created during a time when African Americans were not allowed to accumulate or keep their economic resources.

Had slavery never existed in the US, African Americans would have trillions of dollars more than they have today.

“Whereas, this dehumanizing practice enabled the United States to rise to global prominence, to accumulate massive amounts of wealth,

And to build the world’s most formidable military, among others achievements, to become

the world’s only Superpower,” the petition reads.

The petition also reaches for practical, tangible solutions to help obtain reparations.

It mentions US House Bill HR 40, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers in Michigan, which lays out ways that reparations can be paid.

Whereas, U.S. House Bill H.R. 40, as it was originally sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, D-MI, provides a viable outline that best suits this measure.

We further recognize reparations as the only way forward to move towards resolution of this human rights issue;

Whereas, the purpose and goal of this Task Force, or Commission, is to determine how reparations will be made to the descendants of the Africans enslaved in America.

Therefore, we acknowledge this as a human rights issue that demands the power and unconditional support of the President and the Congress of the United States of America

And that it can be established by Executive Order of the President of the United states; and,

Therefore, we sign this petition to demand that government of the United States of America immediately form a Task Force, or Commission,

Whose purpose is formulate how reparations will be made to the descendants of the Africans who were brutally enslaved in this country for centuries,

And who were further demoralized and oppressed for another 100+ years of Jim Crow.

Elaine Riddick · Follow · Top Commenter · Works at The Rebecca Project for Human Rights

I think that they should pay,wall street is still around,as well as the corporations that benefitted from slavery!

Reply · 13 · Like

· Follow Post · October 27, 2013 at 1:33pm

Kimber Leigh · Works at Akashic record

HELL YEAH. you can start with the CSX yard in downtown atlanta

Reply · 5 · Like

· October 27, 2013 at 1:48pm

Keith Jackson · Satelite academy

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reply · 2 · Like

· October 27, 2013 at 7:11pm.Mustafa Ansari · Follow · Dean at Self Employed and Loving It!

Petition signing unless it is a court petition filed in the Inter-American Court pursuant to the Convention on the Elimination of Racism and UN General Assembly Resolution 60/147 is just a waste of time. Non-lawyers and Domestic lawyers that are unaware that Reparative measures are proper for people who are the victims of "Crimes Against humanity" go nowhere.

A petition to Obama is useless because it was the Obama and the Bush Administration who both walked away from the Slavery negotiating table in the International forums. If African Americans like Savage were thoughtful they would work with an international attorney or attorneys , because REPARATIONS are the RULE OF LAW for injured people. Human Rights TV home page

Reply · 11 · Like

· Follow Post · October 27, 2013 at 6:37pm

Robert Antoine · Top Commenter · Kaplan University

Exactly Mr. Ansari. With a deficient of 17 trillion dollars. Who thinks for one minute the United States will even consider such as repreations.

Reply · 2 · Like

· October 27, 2013 at 8:57pm

Keith Davis · Center for Urban Theological Studies

Yours is a thoughtful response that warrants consideration as these efforts move forward. The condition of vast number of African Americans in the U.S. Is appalling - all due to economic deprevation.

Reply · 2 · Like

· October 28, 2013 at 7:52am

Arthur Robinson · Top Commenter · Hackettstown High School

You are correct. There is also a mitigating issue here that releases America from its reparations obligation in exchange for a compromise. That compromise was integration, rather then Separate But Equal Status, pursuant to the law, in exchange for a social experiment in violation of the law.

The Separate But Equal Doctrine placed the full weight of the United States Treasury and the Treasury of the States as a form of reparations. Denied under Brown and compromised Under the Civil Rights Act of 1963-1965. The Check due and owning that Dr. King made

mentioned to was sold as compromise position.

Reply · Like

· October 29, 2013 at 2:01pm

View 1 more.

Keke Mitchell · Works at Child Care

I fully stand with my people behind this petition. In Jesus' name.... it will come to pass.

Reply · 9 · Like

· Follow Post · October 27, 2013 at 2:15am

Ali Bey · Co Owner at Brothers & Sisters Entertainment LLC

All the United States needs to say is that it was the European Nations that enslaved the people here. At the time Slavery started, there was no United States. Further, they never took people from any African Nation or Tribe called "Blacks". There is no such nation of tribe that exists and the people who were enslaved were NOT Christians.

Reply · 3 · Like

· October 27, 2013 at 8:04am

Zev Goldman · Top Commenter · Missouri Southern State University

Native Americans were hunted down and killed for a bounty. When do we get to rip off American tax payers? If anyone should pay a penny for slavery it should be the Muslims of North Africa who to this day raid sub-Saharan Africa for slaves as they did during the 17th,18th and 19th centuries with their black African allies.

Reply · 3 · Like

· October 27, 2013 at 5:14pm.Randy Jones · Top Commenter

Ali Bey from 1776-1865 the United States was an existing country which imported and held in captivity African and African descendants. I'm sure if this ever goes up for discussion by Congress they will use every excuse they can to get around reparations. But that particular argument will not fly.Reply · 2 · Like

· October 27, 2013 at 6:08pm

View 4 more.

Deborah Nolan · Follow · Top Commenter

I don't care who the President is, the United States is never going to give any type of payment to African American's for slavery, they don't really feel they've done anything wrong, and our skin is still Black. This issue has been on the table before and it went away just as fast. They gone Hush it up again, #Watch!

Reply · 8 · Like

· Follow Post · October 27, 2013 at 3:00am

Ali Bey · Co Owner at Brothers & Sisters Entertainment LLC

It's gonna go away again because they keep going about it the same wrong way. Britain, Spain, Portugal & the Netherlands are the NATIONS that are responsible for going into the so called African continent and buying or taking people from the various NATIONS AND TRIBES there and bringing them to the Americas.

There was no United States. Reparations as it pertains to InterNational relations are payments made from one country or nation to another for damages sustained during war. So in truth, it should be the African Nations suing those responsible European Nations in the International Court of Justice on behalf of so called African Americans provided that African Americans can prove they actually are descendants of those who were "TAKEN" from Africa during that Slave Trade.

The one Fact that the so called Blacks who are pushing this have not considered is that all so called Blacks in the United States are NOT descendants of Slaves imported from Africa. This notion presupposes that our people were not seafarers who traveled to the Americas Long before Columbus arrived.

Reply · 4 · Like

· Edited · October 27, 2013 at 8:13am

Shalon Leonard · Top Commenter · Essex County College

Obama gave reparations to the "Japanese Americans" for them being put in concentration camps right here in america. Yet he says he dosent believe in reparations for AA.

Reply · 8 · Like

· October 27, 2013 at 11:55am

Basil Keilani · Top Commenter

Shalon Leonard The Japanese who were put in camps were still alive. WWII happened 70 years ago. Some of them are still alive. Who is alive from 200 years ago? When holocaust survivors were given reparations (the Jewish ones mainly, not the others) there were many holocaust survivors alive.

Reply · 4 · Like

· October 27, 2013 at 9:45pm

Tuck Jackson

We demand our 40 acres and the mule. For all the free labor that built this country.

Reply · 7 · Like

· Follow Post · October 27, 2013 at 4:45pm

Leontyne Clay Peck · Top Commenter

This nation must atone to the descendants of slaves for 400 years of slavery. Reparations are necessary for restoration.

Reply · 5 · Like

· Follow Post · October 27, 2013 at 10:41pm

Minister Jerald Gainous · Follow · Top Commenter · Christ Child of God at Under employed

I agree, everyone else is getting it, except the black skinned man. I'll tell you if you want to be fair then be fair with everybody. But then again who's trying to be fair? If it can be given to ones less mistreated, then we should be the real people to receive blood money!

Reply · 4 · Like

· Follow Post · October 27, 2013 at 6:19pm

Wayne Thorpe · Elizabeth Seton College, Yonkers, NY

WHY NOT REPARATION , IT WAS 500 OF FREE BLACK LABOR THAT MADE THIS COUNTRY RICH .

Reply · 3 · Like

· Follow Post · October 27, 2013 at 3:03pm

Wayne Thorpe · Elizabeth Seton College, Yonkers, NY

500 YEAR OF FREE LABOR

Reply · 2 · Like

· October 27, 2013 at 3:06pm

John CJ Tucker · Top Commenter · Cook to Chef at Food Service areas;1986 thru 2007

Impossible; Who do you compensate; the survivors from 1863 or the descendants of 2013? That is 6 generations removed. I as a African American would agree with this idea, except, the majority of wealth today, was generated since 1929, and the average billionaire today, have no direct relationship to slavery.

The only thing we would accomplish is a greater divisiveness between races. Any reparations would only come from tax payers. The results would require raising taxes considerably .I see no logical solution. Slaves where granted automatic citizenship in 1863,that is the legitimate point to claim punitive and compensatory damages, not 150 years later.

Reply · 1 · Like

· October 28, 2013 at 6:17pm

Robert Antoine · Top Commenter · Kaplan University

NEVER HAPPEN. BLACK PRESIDENT OR WHITE !

Reply · 2 · Like

· Follow Post · October 27, 2013 at 9:00pm

1. Group Demands that "President Barack Obama" form Task Force to Study Reparations for Slavery Part II

43 Responses to Group Demands that President Obama form Task Force to Study Reparations for Slavery

Big MO Reply

October 29, 2013 at 6:25 pm

No people in HUMAN history have gotten more because of the color of their skin than African Americans. They TAKE and they TAKE…and they TAKE. They remember nothing.

Every other racial group out works the lazy black man. The black man just sits back and WAITS… He waits for his opportunity to get something for nothing.

The worst thing the white man ever did was gift the black man integration rights.

What white people need to do is give the black race a chunk of land in America…and make the lazy black man do what he HATES to do: provide for his own people, his own children (NO WHITE TAX BASE FOR THAT BLACK MAN). White people MUST force this on the black man. The American black man is still a child.

He wants a nipple to suckle on. White people MUST make him leave…and provide for his own people. I long for that day i.e. prying the white man’s nipple out of his whining, loud mouth.

Teacher of Truth Reply

October 31, 2013 at 4:19 pm

If you give african american people land they will prosper just like they worked the land for white people they will work it for themselves. Your persepctive is only based on what you have seen from black people that have lost hope because of the ills of society in the last 20 years.

You are basing your statements on what you have observed from your limited experiences. You need to study and talk to working african american people . You summing up african americans from this perspective is like them summing up white people based on hill billies and KKKs.

You have a partial truth that generates your negative perspective. BTW please don’t say you watch tv and know all about african americans because tv is ran by those that only want to i*******e negativity toward african americans.

Auset Reply

October 31, 2013 at 5:48 pm

All white people do is TAKE, TAKE, TAKE. You murdered the Native American people to take the land, you took Africans that you enslaved to support your lazy azzes and build the US economy, you continue to take the lands and resources of peoples of color around the world to live off of. You murdered millions of people to do so. Your presence on this land is a testimony to your TAKING. Where are the Native American people? What the h**l are you doing on this land anyway?

You go into Africa and TAKE the resources to enrich yourselves at the expense of Africans. You go into the Middle East and TAKE the resources (oil) to enrich yourselves and killed millions to do it. Black Americans had Black Wall Streets in the US and you dropped bombs on them and wiped them off of the map because you couldn’t stand to see Black people be independent and WEALTHY! You are colonizers. You go into other people’s lands and murder the inhabitants to TAKE the land and resources to enrich yourselves.

You are colonizers and imperialists and you are the biggest TAKERS on the planet. Now, you’ve got the planet so filthy with your global warming that you are destroying it for everybody. Your population is on the decline and that is the best thing that could ever happen. Maybe then, the Native Americans, the Africans, and all of the other peoples on the planet that you colonized will be able to recover.

Auset Reply

October 31, 2013 at 6:29 pm

Also, African nations are demanding reparations from white people going into their land, killing and TAKING, the Caribbean nations are demanding reparations from white people TAKING! LOL! If it wasn’t for the Moors who went into Europe and taught your ancestors how to be civilized (or attempted to teach your ancestors how to be civilied because you still don’t have it right) and how to clean up your own filth that you was dying from, you would

not have survived –

just like how the Native Americans fed your behinds and you had a Thanksgiving over it. What did you do? You committed ******** on them and TOOK the land. Keeping you alive allowed you to come to power and the world would have been much better off if the Moors just let you drop. Billions of lives would have been saved, there would not have been an African Slave Trade, Native Americans would be alive and well, no colonization in Australia and Asia, the Tanzmanian people would still exist and the Earth would be doing well. You gotta pay for that shyt.

Rarejim Reply

October 29, 2013 at 12:00 am

Most of you simply want just want another check! You have been getting paid for the last 50 years.

Housing, food stamps, ADC, WIC, tax credits and a lot more, affirmative action, come on people we spend so much time with our hands out rather than our minds open, think about it, if each household was given $50k and all other welfare was stopped, the money would be gone by the weekend and 99 % would be worse off by Thanksgiving! We have received our share of the 15 Trillion dollars spent on the poor people who believe the government owe them something, rather than use their brain to make millions!

Your kids use Facebook instead of being the 19 year old who invented it! They play computer games instead of inventing them. 2500 of us dance, sing, play sports the rest talk a bad game! Just my opinion.

Devon Reply

October 29, 2013 at 9:19 am

Thumbs up @ your post!

Auset Reply

October 29, 2013 at 2:51 pm

For the sake of arguement, if reparations were to be awarded, I don’t think it should come in the form of cash. I think it should come in a form of land, resources, etc.

When we had our Black Wall Streets, we had our industries. We were wealthy and employed our own people. White people destroyed our Black Wall Streets, murdered thousands of Blacks and destroyed our economic independence and impovershed millions of us.

What happens when people are made to be poor? They need assistance. Affirmative Action is a form of CORRECTIVE action because of the crimes and discrimination held against Black people. Affirmative Action is not a form of reparations. In fact, the civil rights movement is a form of corrective action because of the crimes and discrimination the federal, state, local governments and civilians committed against Black citizens. The existance of these laws bears testimony to human rights violations against Black people.

Colonialism, imperialism, the SYSTEM of racism/*************** (human rights violations) are

welfare systems created by white people for white people. What happened to Native Americans? How come they can’t exist on this land? Why do you think white people should be able to live off of the labor of our ancestors and inherit the bounty of our ancestor’s labor FOR FREE! Why should they get freebies? Why should they get to occupy stolen lands without paying THEIR way?

Not to mention the millions of people they murdered in the process of obtaining this wealth. I am tired of supporting THEM! And I am not worried about trying to keep the peace to not h**t the feelings of criminals.

W Lyons Reply

October 28, 2013 at 1:58 pm

Will these reparations claims also be filed against African nations?

African King Apologizes for Africa?s Role in Slavery | Your Black World

jack johnson Reply

October 28, 2013 at 1:09 pm

we do not need another polarizing issue that will go nowhere. one more problem to throw at the POTUS> I am both sad, frustrated and embarrassed by the plight of many of our black families. I am not going to lay down on this one and it needs to be said. I am saying this because I care and love all.

we need to stop looking to others to provide money or solutions. this is one more attempt to get a hand out for the price paid by our ancestors—not us! whats next money because our children speak slang ebonics, and not proper English. lets blame the school system and get some money.

Too many of us have squandered the opportunites avialable to all in this country, and in some cases more for us as blacks. yet many sit back and look for excuses and more hand outs, and more reasons to hate and blame white folks. many of us have become just as ugly as the whites once were and many still are in the deep south.

based on the per centage of population we still have the lowest in college grads (and trade schools); highest children borne out of wedlock; highest divorce; highest prison population; highest unemployment; highest welfare recepients, and when we don’t get our way we have tandrums and burn down our own city (how stupid).

Are these circumstances the result of our own indiviual choices?We have way too many successful black people to blame the bad on others. Our ancestors have a different story, but not you and me.

stop looking for others to provide money or solutions. now is the time to break the cycle of so many of our failurs. Get involved in your kids education and teach accountability. Stop teaching everybody to hate and blame others for what people do to themselves. Stop following celebrities as leaders. choose role modes carefully. Stop seeing everything in terms of color, as it creates your own obstacle.

I am ready for the hate respones. bring it.

Devon Reply

October 28, 2013 at 1:56 pm

Thank you Jack Johnson!!!!! You are the TRUE voice of reason and black empowerement!!

D!0NDR3 Reply

October 28, 2013 at 2:46 pm

Me and u have not agreed on many issues but this 1 I agree with u 100% we do need 2 stop begn , like our names are Keith Sweat. Plus it will never ever happened the closest that this has/will come 2 reality is the skit from The Chappelle Show.

Pres.Obama will not put a task force 2gether 4 something K.K.Krackuz are not concerned with, rule #1 in AmeriK.K.Ka if it DOES NOT concern or BENEFIT White AmeriK.K.Ka it is NEVER up 4 discussion. I am not racist but I am a realist.

Which is Y America has laws like the Amber Alert to protect the ambers, megans, and beckys of AmeriK.K.Ka U will never hear of a LAW called the Yolanda or LaKeisha alert. We do have the ever popular “3 strikes Law” just 4 us though.

Now I would like a task force on the senseless murder/killing of African American males among US and the K.K.Kops who are suppose 2 serve and protect but that will NEVER EVER happen, just being real about the SHYIT.

Karol Hamm Reply

October 28, 2013 at 11:59 am

No one is begging…pushing for a Human Rights Movement taking up where our Civil Rights fight left off. The 40 “somethings” are a dying breed and our generation should be the ones forging forward on this and I for one seem fit for the purpose.

Think what you may…signatures bind oneself to the Civil Action Suit.

We are not begging for signatures, either you will or will not. 40 million in the country alone…If you are of melanin, this entitles one to embrace the notion that others want to achieve a higher purpose, doubt is not allowed…for such a vision.

blacjk jones Reply

October 28, 2013 at 11:58 am

Black folk will probably never receive reparation partly because of the so-called lovingly employed—which has nothing to do with the real issue of human abuse and slavery but everything to do with POWER greed and selfishness—GIVE BLACK FOLK THEIR DUE RESPECT and let the chips fall where they may—-

WE can lovingly help each like we did in my day—LOVE YALL and PEACE—Hold your heads up— your richness is in the unseen—stop begging for what you already have—connect with your church and community and don’t believe the HYPE—GREATNESS IS IN ALL PEACE!!!!!

blacjk jones Reply

October 28, 2013 at 12:19 pm

correction: each other

Ghana Gharvey Reply

October 28, 2013 at 11:49 am

Africa Must Free Africa[ Deuteronomy 28:68 ]And the Lord shall bring Israel into Egypt again with ships and there Israel shall be sold to Israels enemies as slaves, and no man shall set Israel free; by the way of which I spoke to Israel , Israel shall see it no more.

Believe it or not, we Black African in the diaspora of countries like America, Brazil,The United Kingdom, the islands, even India (via The Islamic version of robbing Africa of its people), are descendants of the Israelites The Lord God said ( via his Prophet Moses ) we would suffer this fate; because of our stubbornest and refusal to stick with Lord God .

And speaking of those descendants, will we ever be free ? Recently & once again the World recognized Martin-Luther King Jr. . On April 3, 1968, hours before he was murdered, he said (talking strictly to his disenfranchised and scattered Africans ): .We as a People Will get to the Promised Land .

I believe that this was a prophecy of not only what would happen, but how it would happen. Going back to Deuteronomy 28:68 and adding it to MLK Jr.’s prophecy, here’s what I get:

a) No man shall set us free PLUS b) We As A People shall get to the Promised Land = [ We shall set ourselves free, when we choose to become whole again. ]And how do we become whole again? By reclaiming our missing parts. What is stopping Africa from reclaiming its stolen people ?

I believe that the times are approaching for Africa’s redemption from: Poverty, Oppression, and Depression.

[Daniel 11:14 ]And in those times there shall many nations come against the king of the south(Great Britain BABYLON ):ALSO the ROBBERS OF ISRAEL exalt themselves to establish the vision; BUT THE ROBBERS OF ISRAEL SHALL FALL !

Dewey Boyd Reply

October 28, 2013 at 11:37 am

Why Not Reparations….?!

W Lyons Reply

October 30, 2013 at 2:27 pm

No person alive today had anything to do with slavery in America, which is why few non-

Black Americans, and apparently even one Black President, believe America should pay reparations to living Americans who are, by and large, many generations away from the Africans and descendants of Africans who suffered under that terrible and inhuman institution.

However, since the 1960s the American government and many American churches and charities have put hundreds of billions of dollars into Black communities and created many racially-relevant laws. Corporate efforts to create a more inclusive workplace have given Black America more opportunity than ever to get a good job.

Has all evidence of racism been erased from the hearts of all men and women of all races – Black, White and Other? No, and that will not happen any time soon. Is the situation now where right-thinking people want it to be? No. But most Black Americans living in 1950s America would no doubt prefer to live in the America of the 21st century.

Significant improvement now depends at least as much on Black America as on the rest of America.

It’s time to move on from blaming slavery and racism for Black America’s ills. Black America needs to have a more encompassing conversation with itself and the rest of America to address why it is that too many Black Americans are so dysfunctional. Blaming slavery and racism are too easy, too much of a cliché to non-Black America.

So many Black Americans, many from difficult backgrounds and nearly all of whom can point to slave ancestors, have proven they are capable of achieving success in their lives, by whatever measure we could choose to define “success.” Most of the rest of America simply no longer believes the idea that Black America as a whole “will be much better off if you’ll just give us a lot more money.”

bishop omega Reply

October 28, 2013 at 3:02 am

The 1503 Petition for Reparations for African Americans was delivered to the UN in 1994. Although it was received, it was not heard nor was it responded to by the UN.

PREFACE

We, the African descendants of slaves, the so-called African-American, the so-called Black American, the so-called *****, have never tasted of the “freedom” that so many millions of other members of the human family enjoy, safeguard and treasure.

We are the only people on this planet that have had to endure over four humdred (400) years of the most b****l, dehumanizing slavery the world has ever known. We continue to suffer to this day from the scars of that slavery and from institutions of racism in the United States of America that deprive us of our “human rights.”

This historic Petition to the United Nations marks an end of one era and beginning of another. It marks the end of the struggle for liberty that many Black Americans have fought within the boundaries of the United States in an attempt to get our former slave masters to give us what we were born with, our human rights.

We, as a people, have survived the post-civil war when we were released from the physical chains and told to “go” with little or no assistance from the United States Government. We even survived the v*****t and frightening reign of terror of the Klu Klux **** and the White

Citizens Councils. During the years of the Great Depression, we suffered the most.

During World War II, Black soldiers were placed on the front lines to defend a nation that inflicted insults of the worst kind upon them, their families and loved ones who sought to exercise their human rights in places of public accommodations and in the work place.

We have had many great leaders during this era–leaders who begged and pleaded to the government and to the white majority Americans, to do what is right and just. Among those, to name a few, have been: Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, and Booker T. Washington.

The push for civil rights in the sixties brought us into a period wherein we experienced an even more cruel fate. We were led to believe that integration would be a “cure-all” for our woes. With integration we were to be able to experience life in these United States as do the majority of white Americans. Several decades into this system of “forced assimilation” reveals that the “glass ceiling” will continue to block the majority of us from ever truly “arriving.”

Our great leaders–Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy–proponents of integration, did not intend to dedicate their life’s works to a system that would still manage to keep us under control. But under control we still are.

We have had several great leaders with the wisdom to see that in order to be truly free, we must be able to exercise ALL of the rights that citizens of other nations exercise. We must have the right to self-determination which includes the right to: decide our own destiny, study and perpetuate our own history, culture and languages; have real political power in determining and electing officials that will be able to protect rights and needs peculiar to African-Americans; and even to return to Mother Africa, with substance, in order to undo the damages of slavery. Among these leaders were W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X.

We now are at the beginning of a new era wherein we now will take our struggle for true and complete freedom to the international community via the United Nations. Our leader in this areana is the Honorable Silis Muhammad, my husband, who has dedicated his life’s work in carrying out the mission of his leader and teacher,

the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He is working day and night to enable African-Americans to sit down as equals with officials of the government of the United States in a forum governed by the United Nations, so that this government will have to answer for its systematic and continuous gross violations of our human rights protected under international law.

So great is his love for his people that he has placed his life on the line in order to ensure that African-Americans are afforded the right to self-determination, and to receive justice in the form of reparations. I, along with countless others, pledge, my love and loyalty to him in this great and historic endeavor! Those of us in this spiritual battle are warriors, and are reminded of the sayings of the prophet Isaiah:

“For every battle of the warrior is with

Confused noise and garments rolled in b***d;

But this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.

The Bible, Isaiah,

Chapter 9, Verse 5

Misshaki Muhammad

Attorney General of the

Lost-Found Nation of Islam

Atlanta, Georgia

Reparations Petition for United Nations assistance under

Resolution 1503 on behalf of African-Americans in the United States of America

Ref. N. G/SO 215/1 USA (266)

Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Secretary-General of the United Nations

Palais des Nations

United Nations

CH-1211 Geneva

Switzerland

Re: The past and present gross violations of the human rights of the African-American people to self determination by means of official U.S. policies of slavery, segregation, and forced assimilation, and the refusal of the U.S. government to apologize and offer any compensation, or reparations for these violations.

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world;

Whereas both the fundamental rights of members of minorities to exist in equal status with the majority, as well as the historical oppression and resulting present inequality and circumstances of the African-Americans (descendants of the formerly enslaved Africans in the U.S.) are well known;

Keeping in mind that Articles 1 and 55 of the U.N. Charter specifically refer to the principle of self-determination; that one of the basic purposes of the U.N., according to Article 1(2) is to,…develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples …;”

that Article 55 explicitly ties the principle of self-determination to respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all or part of its people; that the principle of self-determination is implicated in chapters XI, XII and XIII of the Charter, that in the years since 1945, the principle has found its way into both the International Covenants, the Declaration of the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, the Declaration of Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations,

the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the decisions of the International

Court of Justice in its advisory opinions in the Namibia and Western Sahara cases, just as it has been upheld by the U.N. General Assembly in relation to numerous recently emerging eastern European nations; and that, although long applied only in the colonial context, it has increasingly been appealed to in the post-colonial age by minorities and secessionist movements to the extent that today legal scholars–even (as before suggested) the U.N. itself–have generally agreed that the principle of self-determination may well apply outside of the colonial context, though within strict limits;

Keeping in mind that Articles 1 and 55 of the Charter commit the U.N. to the promotion of universal respect for human rights and basic freedoms, while Article 56 gives member nations an obligation to act, jointly or separately, to achieve the purposes set out in Article 55–that is, Article 56 creates a duty to act to promote respect for rights and freedoms,; and that when the core human rights rooted in the principle of autonomy are grossly, systematically and persistently violated, U.N. intervention to end that violation is morally and legally permissible, since the principle of autonomy implies that government is only justifiable if the government and its policies are an expression of the self-determination of peoples;

Realizing that today there can be little doubt that nations which practice, encourage or condone activities such as ********, ethnocide, ****************, forced assimilation, systematic racial discrimination, etc, are in violation of international law;

Recognizing that of such violations, only those that are (1) persistent and (2) systematic will be sufficiently severe or gross as to justify U. N. involvement; and that violations are systematic if they are a part of a consistent pattern, or a matter of state policy (systematic violations include both overt governmental actions or covert but institutionalized practices, the effect of which is to regularly prevent the exercise of core rights, and are more than occasional, or of short duration (e.g., U.S.slavery, segregation, systemic racial discrimination);

Understanding that to be a people, a group of persons must not only subjectively see themselves as a single people, but also objectively be seen, through speech and action, to be participating or be able to participate in the creation or recreation of their own distinct social world.

Recognizing that the legal acceptability of self-determination outside of the colonial context also means making a distinction between external and internal self-determination; that is, limiting self-determination to minority rights as it has been interpreted under Article 27 of the ICCPR, and evolved in customary international law;

Recognizing that just as a gross systemic and persistent denial of human rights is a violation of international law, calling forth the right to international assistance, the violation of the human right to internal self-determination and reparations as permitted in minority rights–that is the concentration of all the power of a multi-national state in the hands of a single group within it which acts to prevent other constituent peoples from realizing their own social, historical and cultural space–is equally a violation of international law, calling forth the right to receive U.N. assistance.

Any government or the agents and institutions of the government that, in principle, prevent the exercise of a people’s right to self-determination, and compensation for past and present gross violations, or any other minority rights, may be regarded as illegitimate in the eyes of that people, and by international law in its application to that people, insofar as U.N. efforts to give a voice to the people is called for in principle.

Further recognizing, in regard to reparations for past gross violations, that the right to a

remedy for victims of gross violation of human rights is well-established, and involves reparations, which include compensation, restitution or restoration. Concerning this fundamental international legal principle, the Permanent Court of International Justice ruled in the Chorzow Factory (indemnity) Case:

It is a principle of international law, and even a general conception of law, that any breach of an agreement invokes an obligation to make reparation…. reparation is the indispensable complement of a failure to apply a convention, and there is no necessity for this to be stated in the convention itself.

Drawing attention to the pertinence of a number of both universal and regional human rights instruments containing express provisions relating to the right to an “effective remedy” by competent national tribunals for acts violating human rights ( see Article 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Right).

The notion of an “effective remedy” is also included in Article 2(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in Article 6 of the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Some human rights instruments refer to a more particular “rights to be compensated in accordance with the law” or the “right to an adequate compensation.”

Even more specific are the provisions of Article 9(5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and of Article 5(5) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which refer to the “enforceable right to compensation.” Similarly, the Convention Against t*****e and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment contains a provision providing for the t*****e victim a redress and “an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation, including the means for as full rehabilitation as possible.”

In some instruments, a specific provision is contained indicating that compensation is due in accordance with law or with national law. Equally, provisions relating to “reparation” or “satisfaction” of damages are contained in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Article 6, which provides for the right to seek “just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for any damage suffered.” The ILO Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries also refers to “fair compensation for damages,” to “compensation in money” and “under appropriate guarantees.”

And all to full compensation “for any loss or injury.” The American Convention on Human Rights, to which the U.S. is a party, speaks of “compensatory damages” (Article 68) and provides that the consequences of the measure or situation that constituted the breach of the right or freedom “be remedied” and the “fair compensation be paid to the injured party.”

The Convention on the Rights of the Child contains a provision to the effect that states Parties shall take all appropriate measures to promote “physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim…” In short, numerous human rights instruments provide strong evidence that the right to remedy is an established obligation where states’ action or failure to act result in damages.

Bearing in mind, concerning the issue as to whether the internationally accepted obligation to remedy is applicable to damages suffered by minorities due to past gross violation of human rights, that Sub-Commission resolution 1989/14 provides our first useful guidance as to victims rights to reparation. The resolution mentions in its first preambular paragraph “individuals, groups and communities”. This supports our assumption that the right to

remedy deals with minorities as well as individuals.

That minorities are included is also confirmed in Sub-Commission resolution 1988/11 of 1 September 1988 which, in its first operative paragraph, refers to “victims”, either individually or collectively.” Another indication regarding the categories of victims is the repeated reference in Sub-Commission resolution 1989/14 to “gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Under most international legal instruments dealing with individual rights, the violation of any one provision may entail a right to an appropriate remedy, while instruments concerned with the rights of minorities to Compensation focus on gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Drawing particular attention to the fact that according to the domestic law of the U.S. itself (Third Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United State), a state violates international law if, as a matter of State policy, it practices, encourages or condones:

(a) ********

(b) slavery or slave trade

(c) the murder or causing the disappearance of individuals

(d) t*****e or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

(e) prolonged arbitrary detention

(f) systematize racial discrimination, or

(g) a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.

Affirming the general recognition that victims who are entitled to compensation–and this may also include their descendants or survivors–have suffered substantial damages and harm. This interpretation is reflected in the first preambular paragraph of Sub-Commission resolution 1989/14 which refers to “substantial damages and acute sufferings.” In this regard the notion of “victims” spelled out in paragraph 18 of the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, should be taken into account. The paragraphs reads in part:

“Victims means persons who individually or collectively, have suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss or substantial impairment of their fundamental rights, through acts or omissions that …constitute violations… of internationally recognized norms relating to human rights.)

And further recognizing that for the many African-Americans whose ancestors were victims of gross violations, passage of time has no attenuating effect, but on the contrary has increased post-traumatic stress, deteriorated social, material, etc., conditions requiring all necessary special rights as well as compensation and rehabilitation measures.

We may conclude that as long as the effects of past gross violation and resulting damage can be demonstrated as the cause of present developmental problems, it would be difficult to produce an acceptable argument for statutory limitations since that would amount to the denial of the fundamental human right to a remedy for past injustices. Therefore, in concern for future generations and our search for an end to war and violence, we must uphold human rights for African-Americans, because in this era of scattered low-intensity v*****t conflicts, only justice can effectively supersede war.

Remembering that the Permanent Court of International Justice establishes the basic principles governing remedy for breaches of international obligation, stating:

The essential principle contained in the actual notion of an illegal act–a principle which seems to be established by international practice and in particular by the decisions of arbitral tribunals–is that reparation must, as far as possible, wipe out all consequences of the illegal act and reestablish the situation which would, in all probability, have existed, if that act had not been committed.

Restitution in kind or, if this is not possible, payment of sum corresponding to the value which a restitution in kind would bear, the award, if need be, of damages for loss sustained which would not be covered by restitution in kind or payment in place of it–such are the principles which should serve to determine the amount of compensation due for an act contrary to international law.

In full consideration of all of the above, we believe that the African-American people suffer from gross, systematic and persistent violation of their human rights, particularly their right to self-determination and right to remedy for past and ongoing gross human rights violation, and therefore the following petition is prepared by The Lost-Found Nation of Islam, on behalf of African-Americans, to call forth the assistance of the U.N. and the international community:

Dear Mr. Boutros-Boutros Ghali and Members of the Sub-Commission:

(Fatma Zahra, Farida Alouaze, Ahmed Khalifa, Ahmed Khalil, Fisseha Yirner, Hailma Embarek Wazazi, Judith Sell Attah, El Hadji Guisse’, Said Maceur Ramadhane, Tofazzol Hassain Khan, Jin Tian, Muksum-Ul-Hakim, Ribat Hatano, Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh, Ioan Maxim, Stanislav Valentinovich Chernnichenko, Volodymyr Boutkevitch, Leandro Despouy, Giberto Vergre Saboia, Clemencai Forero Ucros, Miguel Alfonso Martinez, Claude Heller, Marc Bossuyt, Louis Joint, Erica-Irene A. Daes, Asbjorn Eide, Claire Palley, and Linda Chavez)

The Lost-Found Nation of Islam (hereinafter referred to as The Nation of Islam), under the leadership and guidance of the Honorable Silis Muhammad, on behalf of its members and all other descendants of enslaved Africans in America, takes this opportunity to congratulate and thank the Working Group of the Sub-Commission and those members who voted to accept for consideration the IHRAAM Petition of 30 April 1992 concerning Los Angeles motorist Rodney King,

In the context of past and present gross violations of human rights of African-Americans in the U.S. Although the petition was narrowly defeated in the Sub-Commission, the Nation of Islam was delighted to see that, so shortly after the show of international concern by the Working Group and many members of the Sub-Commission, the U.S. saw fit to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to bring a new black Ambassador to the U.N., to find new legal grounds to retry the police involved in the cruel and callous beating of the African-American motorist, Rodney King, and to effectively prosecute the Detroit police (See Appendix A) for the murder of an African American, Malice Green.

While it cannot be directly linked, some African-American organizations, such as those represented by The Nation of Islam or cooperating actively with The Nation of Islam feel that the concern shown by the Sub-Commission may have been instrumental in securing a fair verdict in the King and Green trials, which thus discouraged new rounds of violence, loss of life, and property damage. If this is true, the U.S. government and all Americans should be thankful to the Sub-Commission for showing the degree of concern it did.

However, while it is likely that national and international opinion probably encouraged the jury conviction of the officers in the King trial, the minimal sentence of 30 months that Judge Davies imposed upon them, his refusal to impose any fines (where $250,000.00 in fines had been pending), and his assignment of part of the blame to the victim, Mr. King, for the treatment that he endured, all indicate that the historic difficulty of African-Americans in obtaining justice through U.S. courts persists.

(See Derrick Bell for a listing of major cases in which African-American interest was surrendered to that of the Anglo-American majority, Appendix B; also see Aviam Soifer and Kathleen M. Sullivan for restrictions placed upon justiciable discrimination by recent rulings in U.S. Courts, Appendix C).

Dear Members of the Sub-Commission,

In situations of historical gross violations of human rights without reparations or compensation, the individual cases are only single manifestations of the larger phenomenon of general disrespect for the human rights of a formerly enslaved, powerless, dominated and exploited minority. As you know, the history of Africans in America began with the capture and forced emigration of African populations. During the “middle voyage” to America and the enslavement which awaited survivors, millions met their deaths.

While scholars estimate that some 15 million Africans were landed alive on North America, estimates of the numbers lost or killed in the slave trade have ranged as high as 100 million souls. The social fabric of an entire civilization was rent and destroyed in the process. The African population did not ask to come to America–their arrival was purely involuntary and against their will, and for the purpose of exploitation of their labor (See The African Slave Trade, Appendix D).

In order to justify the enormity of this crime against humanity, the Anglo-American government, slave masters, and majority population were forced to attempt to regard the African population as mere property and less than human. This entailed a refusal to admit their cultures, and effort to destroy their social habits and the long and rich traditions which they carried with them from the land of their birth, by labeling these barbaric and heathen.

For example, any African caught practicing Islam was mercilessly t******d, killed, or forced to go into hiding. The use of African names and African languages was widely prohibited. The official U.S. policy of forced assimilation (referred to in the U.S. as “integration,” despite its incongruousness with customary usage of that term) actually began during the enslavement period with the concerted efforts to stamp out any use or recognition of the African cultural heritage in America. This aspect of official policy was to be sufficiently successful in the areas of language and religion as to produce, from the many African cultures, a new one: African-Americans.

Subsequent to the Civil War, American citizenship was conferred upon the descendants of the enslaved Africans without any pretense of democratic consultation. While the government of Abraham Lincoln made numerous promises in order to secure the effective African-American support against the forces of the southern Confederacy, these promises were only briefly instituted in the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. Shortly thereafter, African-Americans were forced into a system of “separate” but equal segregation, which they rejected insofar as the “separate’ was not self-administered, and the “equal” was not equally resourced.

In short, “separate” meant political, cultural and economic domination with segregation. During this period, they struggled against discriminatory Jim Crow laws, which limited their participation in society at every conceivable level, including use of public lavatories, and

seating in public transportation. Ironically, it was during this period of segregation that the recognition of African-American ethnic difference formed a theoretical cornerstone of the Anglo-American government’s justification of the policy of apartheid, even though the government had no intention of providing minority rights, or the right to be different, in any egalitarian sense.

The official policy of “separate but equal” in reality was intended to serve a societal opiate to contain African-American revolt, and secure co-operation; it did not provide for any significant economic or political equality or autonomy. However, the separate but equal period, like the period preceding it, permitted, or was unable to prevent, the welding of separate African traditions into what became a distinct and recognizable African-American culture, demonstrable in lifestyle, music, cuisine, dress, language, dance, religious practice, socio-political organization, and a wide range of distinct cultural attributes which distinguish the African-American people from the majority population–even though the eventual commercialization and distortion of much of African-Americans’ cultural products did much to disguise the unique nature of the culture.

The policy of forced assimilation moved toward a final stage in the 1960′s, following the massive struggle by the African-American community against a system of “separate but equal” which they realized was, in practice, a system of subordination and oppression. This system, which had permitted some degrees of institutionalization of a range of educational and socio-cultural activity within the African-American community, was swept away by the popular demand for “freedom” and “equality”, without any analysis of exactly what these concepts should mean, in terms of politico-legal and social institutions (e.g., a range of constitutional-legal options which might have permitted the African-American minority varying degrees of self-administration under terms of political and socio-economic equality).

The abolition of separate legal systems pertaining to African-Americans and their replacement by official policies of equality before the law–the same rights for all, regardless, and non-discrimination–was never presented to the African-American people in terms of the possibility of other options apart from forced assimilation.

Their recent widespread self-designation as “African-Americans,” and the pervasive efforts to recover and promote the African attributes underpinning their culture, demonstrates that, far from wishing to assimilate, African-Americans are continuing to engage in the last aspect required for full retrieval of their full humanity: the right to a collective identity.

This struggle has been a long one, representing over 400 years of resistance and uprisings (See Appendix E) against a long toll of repression, t*****e, duplicity, lynching and murder (See Appendix F) political intimidation, harassment and disruption (See Appendix G), and forced cultural assimilation (ethnocide), with neither apology or compensation. That this struggle is finally reaching its culminating stages is evidenced by the submission of this Petition to the United Nations,

Which constitutes the African-American demand for international inquiry into its long history of gross human rights violations, and remedy in the form of self-determination, reparations, and institution of minority rights, which given the historical precedents, may require significant degree of (internal) self-determination.

1. Group Demands that "President Barack Obama" form Task Force to Study Reparations for Slavery Part III

Mr. Secretary-General and Members of the Sub-Commission,

The effects of the long history of gross violation of human rights endured by African-Americans as a result of official U.S. policies of enslavement, segregation and forced assimilation is fully demonstrated by the malaise in which the African-American community exists today–in its disproportionately negative standing in all indicators of social well-being (See Appendix H). a few examples here will suffice:

* “The U.S. Imprisons Black Men at 4 Times S. Africa’s Rate” (headline, L.A. Times, Jan. 5, 1991)

* “White Families Wealth Put at 10 Times Blacks” (headline, L.A. Times, Jan. 11, 1991)

* “If the United States were divided into three countries based on race, the white population would rank No. 1, ahead of Japan, while black Americans would fall to 31st spot, alongside Trinidad and Tobago.” U.N. 1993 Human Development Report cited in The Globe and Mail, May 18, 1993.

* The Environmental Protection Agency of the federal government, probing bias in placement of toxic waster, cites black communities (Alabama, Mississippi, Los Angeles) allegations that toxic waste dumps and industrial waste dumps are placed in African-American communities in a discriminating manner (Jet, December 20, 1993, p. 37).

* Bill Cosby’s attack on the constant portrayal of blacks in the major TV and movie media as comics (CNN, November 19, 1993), etc.

Individual manifestations of the general phenomenon will continue as confirmation of the general disrespect for the human rights of the formerly enslaved minority, until the phenomenon itself can be eliminated or neutralized–which cannot occur, The Nation of Islam feels and historical evidence substantiates (see Appendix H), until African-Americans are able to exercise their right to self-determination and receive reparations for past and on-going gross human rights violations.

The Nation of Islam and most African-Americans believe that this will require third party intervention, such as the U.N. Sub-Commission’s willingness to provide the political, legal and conceptual leverage, the fora and the legal framework required by the oppressed formerly enslaved minority to convince the U.S. government to open a sincere dialogue on the inalienable human rights of the minority to lawfully demand self-determination with reparations for past and on-going gross human rights violations–chiefly, the receipt of compensation for past and on-going gross violation to the full extent necessary to achieve self-determination and minority rights as provided by Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. has ratified.

Mr. Secretary-General and Members of the Sub-Commission:

The U.S. government, in line with the U.S. Courts, continues to promote forced assimilation through the concept that all minority needs and rights can be subsumed within the concept of non-discrimination and equality (or sameness) before the law–this despite the fact that historical evidence strongly contradicts such a notion, and that judicial enforcement of non-discrimination in the U.S. has become formal and de-contextualized, disallowing appropriate consideration for historical injustices and present special needs. The courts further restrict satisfaction by requiring “intent to discriminate,” and refusing consideration to those who are not “immediate victims” (See Soifer and Sullivan, Appendix 3)

The rectification of profound damages caused by past and present U.S. systemic discrimination against and gross violation of the human rights of African-Americans cannot occur until African-Americans are able to exercise their minority rights. All statistical

evidence (Appendix H) indicates that a policy of non-discrimination alone is insufficient to permit the African-American minority to achieve equal status with the majority, but rather, under the guise of aiding them, serves to continue their victimization.

While a multi-national state may argue that treating all people (majority as well as formerly enslaved minority) the same, legally and institutionally, regardless of their different histories and circumstances, somehow leads to a new society in which oppressed or formerly enslaved minorities, at some time in the future, will achieve equal-status, sameness or equality with the majority, this line of reasoning more frequently serves merely to justify or mask majority domination, and often exploitation, of national minorities.

Even the most superficial analysis reveals that treating such minorities as if they were the same as the majority in a majority-ruled multi-national society does not permit minority needs to be legitimately known or expressed, let alone addressed. Practically every multi-national society since the dawn of written history tried some version of this notion without succeeding, usually with the implicit intention of maintaining the domination of the minority group.

That is why every U.N. study on minorities, such as those of Cruz, Capotorit, Eide, Calley, Daes, etc., discovered that non-discrimination may not be enough, and special measures or special rights are often required by Article 2:2 in conjunction with Article 27 of the ICCPR to achieve equal status for national minorities. These special rights often include various forms of autonomy (self-determination) such as that requested during a thirty-five (35) year period for African Americans by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam.

In relation to this issue, Karel Vasak suggested in the International Dimension of Human Rights that without self-determination, (internal and external) all other rights become meaningless. Similarly, unless African-Americans are accorded appropriate forms of internal self-determination, it may not be possible for them to experience their human rights. Further, without appropriate enablement (reparations) provided over time to financially facilitate the development required to exercise self-determination, to facilitate the establishment of minority policies and institutions, the right to experience human rights will not be achieved.

Mr. Secretary-General and Sub-Commission Members,

The United States has refused to respond adequately to its obligation to provide African-Americans with either minority rights (which may require varying degrees of internal self-determination) or compensation for past gross human rights violations.

A current example of refusal of the U.S. government to address these two related issues is the case of Lani Guinier, who was nominated as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights with the support of the African-American community. Ms. Guinier’s modest proposal of “modified at-large voting,” described by some as “an eloquent plea against electoral quotas,” nonetheless created a furor in the business community, which vilified it as representing a form of affirmative action (See Appendix I). Ms. Guinier’s nomination was then rescinded by President Bill Clinton, despite the pertinence of the following issues:

1) The right of African-Americans to effective participation in the democratic process is provided for in Articles 2:2, 2:3 and 5 of the U. N. Declaration on the Rights of National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, which is widely viewed as a further elaboration of the rights of minorities provided for in Article 27 of the International covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The American electoral system is so structured as to prevent African-Americans from having anything to say about their elected leadership. Under this system, they are discouraged from democratically electing the leadership of their community.

They must always leave the election of their community leaders in the control of the Anglo-American majority. The principle of majority rule is used on the federal and state levels, rather than any of a number of systems of proportional representation, widely recognized for their capacity to reelect minority interest. On the municipal level, the “at large” voting system which has largely replaced the Ward system in American cities has been employed to effectively reduce African-American electoral influence. There are no special institutionalized procedures for democratic determination or effective exercise of African-American opinion.

2) The right to affirmative action (special measures) was provided for explicitly by Article 2:2 and implicitly by Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), as well as by Articles 1:4 and 2:2 of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and 4:2 of the Declaration on Minorities. In addition to its ratification of the ICCPR, the U. S. is also guided by the Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the U. S., which details it obligations to observe treaty and customary international law.

The willingness of the highest executive authority in the United States, President Clinton, to respond to putative fears of affirmative action rather than uphold it in accordance with his international-legal obligations under the ICCPR constitutes yet another indication of U.S. policymakers’ historic tendency to block initiatives arising from the African-American community to address their political and socio-economic interest, in favor of the interest of powerful sectors of the dominant majority (See Y.N. Kly, International Law and the Black Minority in the U.S., 1985).

Indeed, it is a refusal to permit African-Americans to experience a democratic process in the choice of their leaders and/or their community policies, if these leaders or policies do not accord with the interest of the Anglo-American majority–even if the majority’s interest involves enslavement or apartheid (segregation) for the African-American, as it admittedly has in the past, or absorption into the American “underclass” through the processes of forced assimilation, which is primarily the U.S. policy regarding African-Americans in the present. Following this historical pattern, certainly the day after tomorrow for African-Americans will be the same as the day before yesterday.

Mr. Secretary-General and Members of the Sub-Commission,

American jurisprudence, like that of most states, recognizes the right of victims to remedy. It has generally acknowledged that individuals may be entitled to compensation for the effects of actions wrongfully undertaken even before those harmed were born.

Furthermore, such acknowledgement has occurred not only on an individual basis, but on a collective basis. When the U. S. Congress has exercised its authority under Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment–Amendments whose original intent was for the protection of formerly enslaved African-Americans–it has done so to protect groups or classes of persons, not to serve individual interests. The Congress is addressing the institution and legacy of slavery as an ancient wrong and redressing grievances of those presently affected by establishing modern rights.

U. S. Recognition of the collective right to remedy is reflected in the U.S. payment of reparations to the Sioux of South Dakota (1985), the Seminoles of Florida (1985), the Ottawas of Michigan (1986) and Japanese Americans (1990).

A similar recognition exists in the international community, where we note the payment of reparations to the Jewish people by Germany in 1952, to Japanese Canadians by Canada in

1988, and to Holocaust survivors by Austria in 1990.

Concerning the right to reparations for gross human rights violations of African-Americans, the Nation of Islam challenges the hypocritical manipulation of affirmative action by the U.S. government which:

a) seeks to represent those affirmative action programs which it instituted subsequent to the African-American insurrections of the 1960′s as compensation for past gross human rights violations of African-Americans through official policies of enslavement and segregation, while at the same time failing to officially admit to and apologize for such policies;

b) purports to be the sole determinant of what such compensations should be–i.e., to offer compensation for grievances without any consultation or negotiation with the descendants of the African-American victims, whose communities continue to suffer from the malaise engendered by such policies, as to their preferred mode of compensation.

c) having decided to compensate the African-Americans without officially consulting them, apologizing or admitting wrong-doing, the U.S. majority’s institutions then proceed to unilaterally rescind and dismantle affirmative action, the very mode of reparations that the U.S. credits itself for having offered as a remedy.

Mr. Secretary-General and Sub-Commission Members,

The above demonstrates a callous and grotesque disregard for the inherent human rights and human dignity of African-Americans. In terms of the exhaustion of domestic remedy, President Bill Clinton’s withdrawal of Lani Guiniers’s nomination as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights represents yet one more instance of the U.S. government’s refusal to respond to continuing efforts on the part of African-Americans to achieve redress for past and on-going gross violations of human rights (see list of attempts, Appendix J). Concurrent with and responding to the failure of domestic efforts, African-Americans have addressed their grievances to the international community for decades (see list of precious initiatives, Appendix K).

The forwarding of the April 30, 1992 IHRAAM Petition to the U.N. Sub-Commission by its Working Group, marked the first successful attempt to achieve U.N. acceptance and consideration of such a communication addressing the question of past and on-going gross violations of African-Americans rights.

That the U.S., in that instance, missed U.N. condemnation by only one vote, provides an indication of the high measure of agreement felt by the international community with regard to the arguments and charges expressed therein. However, U.N. consideration of the IHRAAM Petition is not enough. The Nation of Islam puts forward this Petition as a demand for action on African-American grievances by the Sub-Commission. Its failure to act appropriately will give the wrong message to the African-Americans, to the U.S. and to the world.

The U.S. government should not be given the tacit approval of the U.N. to continue to ignore past gross violations without compensation, nor to continue present gross violations against its national minorities. Surely, Members of the Sub-Commission, it is not your position nor that of the U.N., while situated in New York and surrounded by more than one million oppressed national minority members, to ignore their desperate plight, and at the same time assist U.S. human rights efforts in other countries.

Surely, Mr. Secretary General and Sub-Commission Members, your position and that of the U.N. cannot be that in the U.S. only “white Americans” have internationally protected human

rights, and that what is done to African-Americans does not count. The Nation of Islam is sure that this is not your position, nor that of the U.N.

Therefore:

In the name of African-American people, who are in full possession of their inherent human rights, the Nation of Islam calls upon the U.N. to intervene in favor of a sincere dialogue on the issues of reparations and self determination, and to act as a third party in setting up the situation wherein such a dialogue can occur.

The African-American people do not believe that an honest, truly useful and equitable solution can be achieved without a significant degree of U. N. assistance. African-American history is filled with attempts at trying to achieve a sincere dialogue with the majority Government. All attempts to achieve domestic remedies have failed.

In 400 years, African-Americans have not even come close to achieving equal-status relations with the Anglo-American majority ethnarchy which controls and runs the U.S. government as it sees fit, claims and distributes socio-economic resources as it sees fit, and ignores the human rights of African-Americans when it sees fit, etc.

Now African-Americans want their human rights, demands for equal status, self determination, and compensation for past and on-going gross violations to be heard and redressed, and are requesting U.N. assistance. This can be accomplished by observers being sent to the U.S., by an investigtive committee, by a special rapporteur’s investigation, by the opening of a forum at the U.N. wherein any and all sectors of the African-American community

and the U.S. government will be able, without fear of retaliation, to express their grievances on the issues of self-determination and reparation for past and on-going gross violations of their human rights, and seek U. N. assistance in defining and resolving the crisis in this relation which has proved so destructive, not just to African-Americans, but to America as a whole. In this endeavor, the U.N. can expect the full coopertion and assistance of the Nation of Islam, and the vast majority of other African-American groups and individuals.

Members of the Sub-Commission:

African-Americans demand only those remedies that have been afforded to all other peoples or minorities, including the the indigenous peoples and minorities of most developed countries. If the U.S. government is sincere about dealing honestly and candidly with human rights problems of its African-American population, then it should not object to this time-honored process of third party (U.N.) assistance, mediation, conciliation or arbitration.

The Nation of Islam recalls:

At the beginning of their history in America, the enslaved Africans brought to America were defined in the same terms as the cattle belonging to the Anglo-American rulers. Thus, they were educated and socialized to accept that only the Anglo-American government could deal with their oppression. However convenient it was for the U.S. rulers, that time is now passe’. The African-American national minority is now emerging from the period of political domestification.

It is only normal that it now begins, in addition to looking towards the majority government, to look towards the U.N. and the international community for technical, political and economic assistance. The U.N. cannot continue to ignore the oppression of national minorities in its host country, and still maintain it’s human rights credibility in the World.

The Nation of Islam salutes you, Mr. Secretary-General and Members of the Sub-Commission, and looks forward to a prompt reply. The African-American people continue to suffer as they have over the past 400 years of their unending struggle in the U.S. (See Appendix E) against gross human rights violations.

The Nation of Islam request U.N. attention to this on-going problem of gross violations of the human rights of African-Americans without apology and compensation and in particular, to the present flagrant violation of the rights of African-Americans to special measures or affirmative action, which is viewed with such fear and rejection in the U.S. as to occasion the withdrawal of the nomination of Lani Guinier as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

The Nation of Islam recommends the opening of a forum (perhaps under the auspices of the Sub-Commission), similar to the one opened for Aboriginal peoples in Geneva so that African-American human rights grievances that form the basis of the present petition can be expressed, systematically and officially recorded, evaluated and remedied.

To achieve this hearing, the Nation of Islam looks forward to cooperation with the U.N. and the U.S. goernment to facilitate the success of an appropriate forum.

Sincerely,

__________________________________

Silis Muhammad

Chief Executive Officer of

The Lost-Found Nation of Islam

LIST OF APPENDICES

APPENDIX A: Detroit d***h of a black motorist

“Detroit’s b****l Lessons,” Newsweek, November 30, 1992

“Cops on Trial,” Time, November 30, 1982

“Ex-Officers in Detroit Guilty in Beating d***h of Motorist,” New York Times, August 24th, 1992

APPENDIX B: Historical Judicial Bias in U.S. Courts

Excerpts from Y. N. Kly, The Anti-Social Contract, Clarity Press, Atlanta, 1989

APPENDIX C: Contemporary Status of Civil Rights/Non-Discrimination in U. S. Courts

“The Court, Still Haggling Over Rights, “New York Times, June 14, 1989

“A Changed Court Revises Rules on Civil Rights,” New York Times, June 18, 1989

Excerpts from “On Being Overly Discreet and Insular: Involuntary Groups and the Anglo-American Judicial Tradition,” by Aviam Soifer, Dean of Law, Boston College, in The Protection of Minorities and Human Rights, ed. Yoram Dinstein and Mala Tabory, 1992

Excerpts from “Sins of Discrimination: Last Term’s Affirmative Action Cases”, by Kathleen M. Sullivan, Assistant Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, in Harvard Law Review; Vol. 100, No 1, Nov. 86

APPENDIX D: History of Slavery

“The African Slave Trade,” National Geographic, September, 1992

APPENDIX E: African-American Resistance

“Chronology of U. S. Slave Rebellions and Conspiracies, 1663-1863,” The ***** Almanac: A Reference Work on the African-American, 5th Edition. Compiled edited by Perry A. Plooskie and James Williams, Gale Research Inc., Detroit, 1989

Excerpts from the presentation of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement before an African-American Community Hearing on Human Rights Violations, June 7-10, 1990

APPENDIX F: Evidence of Murder, t*****e and Violence Against African-Americans

Chapter titled “The Evidence,” from We Charge ********, 1960

Excerpts from Communication to the U. N. Commission on Human Rights titled “Human Rights Violations by the Police Against Blacks in the U. S. A.”, submitted by A. Ray McCoy, June 10, 1982 and June 29, 1983. Document prepared by the Coalition Against Police Abuse, Los Angeles

APPENDIX G: Documentation of U. S. Government’s Political Intimidation and harrassment of African-American Leadership and Population

“Well, Not So Extraordinary: Spy Networks II,” The Nation, May 3, 1993

Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC-46, Zbigniew Brezinski, Carter Administration, 1978

“Amnesty Int’l target racist use of d***h penalty”, Workers World, April 26, 1987

Letter re Operation Weed and Seed, American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, March 26, 1992

APPENDIX H: Indices of African-American Inequality

“U. S. Imprisons Black Men at 4 times S. Africa’s Rate”, L. A. Times, January 5, 1991

“Anger Over Racism is Seen as a Cause of Blacks High b***d Pressure”, New York Times, April 24, 1990

“White Families’ Wealth Put at 10 Times Blacks”, L. A. Times, January 11, 1991

“The d***h Gap: Life expectancy for blacks decreases to 69.2 but stands at 75.6 for whites”

Disproportionality of African-American Involvement in the Criminal Justice System

Statistical and other citations, The ***** Almanac: A Reference Work on the African-American, 5th Edition. Compiled and edited by Perry A. Plooskie and James Williams, Gale Research Inc., Detroit, 1989, (67 pages)

APPENDIX I: The Guinier Nomination

NAACP Bulletin, July 30, 1993

Compilation of articles from The New York Times

“Getting Guinier”, The Nation, May 31, 1993

“The Voting Rights Act: A Troubled Past,” Newsweek, June 14, 1993

“Withdraw Guinier,” The New Republic, June 14, 1993

“The Turning”, The New Republic, June 28, 1993

“Clinton’s Drift Left on Civil Rights has Business Edgy,” Business Week; May 31, 1993

APPENDIX J: African-American Efforts to Achieve Domestic Remedy

APPENDIX K: African-American Initiatives to the International Community

SP00KYM0NKEY Reply

October 28, 2013 at 3:17 am

whats all that Nl663R babble ?

jj Reply

October 28, 2013 at 1:13 pm

sombody please tell the good bishop this is a blog site where brevity is the goal.

jj Reply

October 28, 2013 at 8:15 pm

Dear sir, Islam is not a nation. one of your many false claims. Do you think we would have more equal opportunities in an Islamic country? of course you are a proponent of this reparations as you are with anything to polarize and cause conflict to destroy our country.

shield Reply

October 28, 2013 at 1:20 am

The POTUS has no power the people that funded him does so guess what? reparations is not going down. Why you ask or better yet why the Japanese got theirs? because they are not the part of the tribes that the most high made his covenant with. That is the reason why every single time we turn around there is some type of attack on our people, and yes that includes some of our people that has sold out.

shield Reply

October 28, 2013 at 1:16 am

Isaiah 14:21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, posses the land nor fill the face of the world with cites. This is clear the reason for the anger of coontube is the fact white america is falling from their economic stronghold. They are becoming impoverish, tough times are becoming them, and they do not know how to react, case in point coontube. They thought they would not be held accountable for their foreparents transgressions.

This is what happens when you allow the powers that is to destroy a people, now they have everything they need and now the Caucasians are being sacrifice as well. All praises to the most high for the wars in the earth that are releasing our people.

Devon Reply

October 27, 2013 at 11:36 pm

Wake up black people there won’t be any reparations for us! Stop begging, please! We weren’t slaves and worked in cotton fields, our ancestors are long gone, so forget it. Better yourselves get an education, get married, raise your kids in two parent household and make sure you save money for your kids’ education.

W Lyons Reply

October 28, 2013 at 2:06 pm

That is the only way forward.

Harold Reply

October 27, 2013 at 8:30 pm

I have looked at both sides of this argument and ended with two questions. What was the law at the time? Was the law violated? We have to keep in mind that we were not viewed as humans. So, the only payment I see as owed under the law is the value of 40 acres and a mule. That was promised and served as a verbal contract.

John Jerry Reply

October 27, 2013 at 5:50 pm

Will we get our money back from the African kings and leaders who sold us the slaves?

raye Reply

October 27, 2013 at 5:31 pm

Surely those who fought and died to maintain slavery, specifically liberal/confederate/democrats will indeed agree that they should pay. r

W Lyons Reply

October 28, 2013 at 2:07 pm

But those people are no longer alive.

Rev. George Brooks Reply

October 27, 2013 at 5:03 pm

What on earth is Ali Bey and some of the others talking about on this issue??? I’m 75 and my great-grnd-parents were SLAVES right here in Tennessee, and this racist whites were NOT in Europe. And I don’t give a hoot where they came from, or when or where slavery started,

FOR MY father and mother’s fathers and mother, great uncles, aunts, great-great just going back to the early 1800s WERE SLAVES, right here. So what kind of thinking is this? Or is this simply some crackers pertaining that they are some of these “fake black Muslims” in this country, whom the REAL Muslims of the Middle East laugh at.

And I won’t go too deep into this, because I have many of whom I respect and are close to OUT IN CALIFORNIA, where I use to live. But I will say this, that even Brother Elijah Muhammad was not followed by one or two of his sons, because he was following a fake Muslim from Detroit that they even called MASTER. Remember? Which I detest, but still respect all of them, but don’t mess with my reparations, Brother Ali Bey. So don’t you apply, but don’t try to influence us with your stuff that you are talking about. There were plenty slaves in America, and it matter not where the **********s came from who enslaved and made money off of. The descendants of those enslaved need to be the recipients of REPARATIONS. — Rev. George Brooks

Goosebumps Reply

October 27, 2013 at 4:48 pm

Preach, Ronald! All the food stamps, ebt cards, housing, section 8 and other things Ali Bey mentioned, only scrapes the tip of the iceberg, compared to hundreds years of free labor to this country by millions of black slaves. What about their medical bills? Dental? They are included as well.

So this so called pay back didn’t really start until late into the 1900. So he need to re-due his math, because it’s kind of fuzzy if you ask me. (George Bush) Is he not taking his medication…once again. Not only that, white people get the same thing as black people of today. I don’t recall any of them being enslaved.

Goosebumps

Ty Gray-EL Reply

October 27, 2013 at 4:44 pm

It is a terribly tangled web that’s been weaved and will take a great deal of untangling to figure things out. But the petitioner is right, America does owe it’s wealth and prosperity to the descendants of African who were enslaved by the European nations who formed these United States.

America could not enjoy the prosperity it does today without the free labor of those enslaved. I understand that there are a lot of issues with respect to nationality; who, what and how would reparations be implemented. Just because there are complications does not mean we should give up on the procedure. There are complications associated with repairing those suffering from cancer but that doesn’t stop us from seeking ways to make those reparations.

If this Christian nation would do the right thing and, If a servant is worthy of his hire, as it is written in 1 Timothy 5:18 then America should find a way to make REPARATIONS.

Goosebumps Reply

October 27, 2013 at 4:29 pm

@COONtube…I can tell that you are trailer trash hiding somewhere in the mountains. NEWS FLASH: There are more white people on welfare than any other race! You can check it out by goggling it, that’s if your outdated computer can get a signal.

Ronald Reply

October 27, 2013 at 4:03 pm

I don’t know what that Bey guy is trying to be so intelligent about in this matter,the ****,Germany’s,Koreans & every race on the face of this planet has received reparations from the US, I worked for Soviet **** that joked about the payments they received,America didn’t do anything with to the ****, ****** did & before people get on here talking about stupid undocumented c**p they should do their research. Black people against their will came here & built this country & were persecuted to the fullest extent,It’s idiots like this guy that keep us from advancing in the future, to many “*****PEANS”.

Facts Check Reply

October 27, 2013 at 3:22 pm

Ali Bey,

You make a good point, however, it doesn’t matter whether indigenous Africans were on Amexem (American) soil, prior to slavery. They got r****d, land stolen and ********d by the millions( alongside the so called Indians). Most importantly, many of them got thrown into slavery because of the color of their skin!

It doesn’t matter how it is tossed like a salad….DISENFRANCHISEMENT is DISENFRANCHISEMENT…which we all know continues today!

Lastly, I don’t think WHITEBAMA will change his mind! He already said he is against affirmative action, and reparations. Furthermore, he had the nerve to go to an HBCU’S in June and include in his speech: to GRADUATES MIND YOU; STOP WHINING! TAKE OFF YOUR BEDROOM SHOES, AND GET DOWN TO HARD WORK,

Really ??? Didn’t these graduates just achieve something, without bedroom slippers,

whining?

AMAZING GRACE Reply

October 27, 2013 at 7:06 pm

That’s a fact. Obama certainly did say that to the graduates. And his administration has c*t funding to HBCU’!!!! So with all this information we had bet not hold our breathe, for he’s incapable of garnering reparations for African-American survivors of slavery.

Catlover Reply

October 27, 2013 at 8:28 pm

@ Facts Check – Yes. It doesn’t matter whether the Black people enslaved were indigenous to this land or brought over on ships. I am a descendent of both and the US and all associated criminals need to pay for their crimes, theft and ********. Indigenous Blacks to this land also need to charge the United States with colonialism along with ******** because they colonized and continue to occupy our lands. This is a human rights violation as well. We need to put it before the World Court. Their presence here needs to be questioned and challenged!

C00Ntube Reply

October 27, 2013 at 9:37 am

more m0nkey whine.as if yo lazy azzes dont collect enuf ebt and welfare already.now go peel a banana boy.

you aint gettin S*!t

elrancho2 Reply

October 27, 2013 at 2:08 pm

I’m white and it’s people like you make us all look ignorant and evil. Just go play on a ***************** site where you can pretend that you are better than other people, when in fact, you have less value than a sewer rat.

Auset Reply

October 27, 2013 at 8:12 pm

A colonizer like you is in no position to call anybody lazy. You invaded this land and continue to live off of it. Your ancestors murdered the indigenous peoples here, stole the wealth, enslaved people because they were too lazy to do their own work and continue to this day to reap the benefits of the labor, murder and rape of my ancestors.

You are a colonizer on this land and that means you are a criminal. You are trespassing. Colonialism is the white man’s welfare system. Go do your own work and live off of the fruits of your own labor instead of the labor, lands and resources of other people, Neanderthal parasite.

SP00KYM0NKEY Reply

October 28, 2013 at 3:19 am

you truly are a du.mb azz.grow a brain Nl663R , you have no clue what ur talking about about.@auset

Auset Reply

October 28, 2013 at 4:53 pm

If the words are too big for you to understand, then get a dictionary. If you can’t handle that, put your thinking cap on, ask a first grade teacher to help you learn how to use a dictionary and help you with the big words.

Candee Reply

October 27, 2013 at 8:02 am

Obama will NEVER touch this one!!! (Ha ha) .................................................. .............!

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