The full petition
To the President, the Members of Congress, and every candidate who wants our vote in 2028
For more than 400 years, we have suffered under the hands of government cruelty. Enslaved Africans and their descendants built the wealth of this nation without pay, without freedom and without recognition of their humanity. When slavery ended, the promise of 40 acres and a mule was broken within months, and the harm continued through sharecropping, segregation, redlining and discrimination that still shape our lives today.
In 2027, the new representatives who will be sworn into office have promised to listen and serve the people, not big money or special interest groups. I feel the shifting of time and an opportunity to make reparations an issue every candidate must answer for in 2028. If they want our vote, they give us a voice. Join with me, so repairing the harm can finally happen.
We, the undersigned, call on you to:
- 1Formally acknowledge the federal government's role in slavery and in the discrimination that followed it.
- 2Establish a federal reparations commission, with descendants of the enslaved, scholars and legal experts at the table, to build a full plan for repair.
- 3Provide direct financial compensation to the descendants of people enslaved in the United States.
- 4Invest in education, homeownership, business and health care in the communities harmed most.
- 5Strengthen and enforce civil rights protections so this harm is never repeated.
This is not charity. It is a debt. Cut the check.