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Demands for reparations could be heard from a group of Black organizers sporting orange shirts bearing the words “Reparations Now! We are far past 40 acres and a mule” as they marched down California Avenue toward the United Center, where the Democratic National Convention (DNC) is taking place this week.
“What do we want? Reparations! When do we want them? Now!” is the call-and-response chant from demonstrators on Wednesday morning.
Gregory Mann serves as the hype man of the action. Mann is the minister of organizing for the West Side-based nonprofit Equity and Transformation (EAT), which is led by formerly incarcerated people. The organization leads the “Keep it 1000 Campaign,” a demand for reparations for Black Americans during the third day of the DNC.
Mann guides participants from the group’s West Side Center to a spot near the United Center, specifically with the goal of commanding President Joe Biden to create a federal Reparations Commission before leaving office. According to the EAT’s news release, a federal commission “would develop proposals for how the U.S. government will deliver full reparations for Black Americans.” The action also is a call to push action on the H.R. 40 Bill, the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act,” that has stalled in the House of Representatives for years.
The call is a continuation of others who have demanded the U.S. government repair the wrongs for not only chattel slavery but for discriminatory practices against Black people including redlining and mass incarceration. Early this summer, Mayor Brandon Johnson signed a new executive order which establishes a Reparations Task Force to create a Black reparations agenda in Chicago.
Getting to Wednesday’s march took lots of manpower. EAT began canvassing in February, knocking on people’s doors as they aimed to get at least 1,000 people out during the action, EAT founder Richard Wallace told The TRiiBE.
“We had to make 5,000 contacts in order to try to get a 1,000-person turnout. For the last four months, our members have been canvassing the West Side Community, educating people on the fact that the DNC was coming and what the DNC was,” Wallace said.
“We strongly believe in getting consent from local residents. This is an organizing effort that engages the local community,” organizer and 2019 Chicago mayoral candidate Amara Enyia said during the Aug. 21 march.
As part of the lead-up to the “Keep it 1000 Campaign,” Wallace said they had a goal of getting 10% of participants involved in active roles during the protest. EAT organized a two-day training at Sankofa Cultural Arts & Business Center in Austin from Aug. 19-20 to help participants be prepared for each aspect of the action. The TRiiBE shadowed the first day of training.
Hosting the training at Sankofa was symbolic for Wallace who grew up going to the center, “It’s just one of those locations on the West Side that has always been like a maroon space for Black folks, Black thoughts and Black leadership,” he said.
Sankofa is also a mythical bird of Ghanaian origins, featuring the logo of a bird with its head turned backward and its feet facing forward while carrying a precious egg in its mouth.
“So it’s literally a bird with his feet planted forward, looking back on his past and saying, ‘This is what I’ve been through. This is what I’ve seen, but I’m always moving forward,'” Corey Mason, a volunteer for the “Keep it 1000 Campaign,” said on how the bird is significant for the cause of reparations as the group builds on the calls of their ancestors.
During the Aug. 19 training, volunteers learned details of their specific duties for the protest. Nothing was left to chance as volunteers were broken into teams: the communications team, which helps participants understand the message and how to properly communicate to the press; the medical team, led by the community health responders Ujimaa Medics to provide care if needed; the registration team, which is responsible for getting protestors signed up and checked in; and the team with the most demanding of duties, the security team, whose job it is to spot out agitators and de-escalate hostile situations.
“Proper preparation prevents poor performance,” Mann said during the training. Mann demonstrated different techniques to the security team on how to talk folks down and protect them from possible police interference.
“For a lot of our members, this is the first mass action that they’ve participated in. For us, it was super important to get really granulated, talk about the unique aspects of a mass movement and how folks can plug in with their own skills like self identify where you feel like you want to fit into this puzzle,” Wallace said.
A major theme of the training is community providing for community. As Mann shouted through a microphone during day one of the training, “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe!” It was a reflection of the work being done as each team leans on one another for support, a point that is stressed through organizations such as EAT.
Mason, who is a member of the security team, takes his job duties seriously and wants to show visitors of Chicago that residents of the city can put on an action with care.
“We got a [march] route from our start base at the West Side Center. We have a pretty good perimeter to show folks that people do care about the cause and messages, but also to show people around the West Side, around this area safely,” Mason said.
Part of the care also includes having attorney partners. Sheila Bedi, a clinical law professor at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, also provided information to participants, which included knowing their rights and informing them of what law enforcement officers could and could not do. She also advised that legal observers would be on the scene of the march to document the police activity.
Preparation for the “Keep it 1000 Campaign” was also done in conjunction with the Illinois Reparations Commission and the Movement for Black Lives, which includes various Black organizations across the nation. The organization team also included organizations such as Impact for Equity, the Cannabis Equity Illinois Coalition and Reparations United.
Wallace explained his thoughts on organizers applying for protest permits and why they didn’t opt-in to getting one, saying that it is basically telling “the opps” what you are going to do and puts people at unnecessary risk.
“We felt like we had enough protection from the First Amendment,” Wallace explained.
There was no online promotion done for the campaign, intentionally, to not only keep outside agitators at a minimum but to be genuinely representative of Black communities in Chicago.
“We wanted it to be authentically West Side Chicago and South Side folks leading this,” Wallace said. “Oftentimes, we go to rallies, and it’s a bunch of folks who don’t necessarily live there. And so we wanted this to be centered around West Side residents. We wanted this to be centered around the Black community and how they feel about the current climate and what is their demand.”
Shirley McLaurine, a South Side business owner attending Wednesday’s rally, said reparations touches every facet of the Black experience harmed by systemic racism: from healthcare to taxes and more.
McLaurine said she’s been participating in all actions pertaining to reparations, and believes creating unity between organizers is what’s best to get answers to the cause.
EAT organizer Eddie Eagle said the call for reparations is essential with all of the hardships Black people have endured in America. He is grateful to be part of a historic action during the DNC and believes the call will soon be answered.
“This organization is an organization that has a love and a passion for being able to help people,” Eagle said. “It’s giving them an opportunity to fight for something that they can be able to tell their grandchildren or their children’s children, that we fought for, that we were part of the groundbreaking to make this happen.”
