Members of the National Assembly of American Slavery Descendants (NAASD) pose by a landmark sign for Bruce's Beach, which was stolen from Black landowners by California's government in 1924, but ordered returned to the family in 2021. NAASD engages in local advocacy for reparations and a black agenda. Photo: NAASD Los Angeles
Reparations have been talked about, proposed and argued over for centuries. In April, the House Judiciary Committee finally debated — after decades of proposals– the H.R. 40 reparations bill for the first time ever and held a markup during a live-streamed event.
There has been movement on the local level, with some cities and institutions addressing the need for reparations but despite continuous efforts, there has been no federal reparations plan approved. So the fight continues. One of the groups that is vocally leading the battle is the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS ). Evangelizing reparations over the last three years, ADOS has encouraged others to take up the cause.
Here are three reparations organizations Black Americans can join now.
The American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) Advocacy Foundation is a grassroots organization that gained wide recognition with the hashtag #ADOS.
Founded in 2016 by Yvette Carnell and lawyer Antonio Moore, ADOS calls for “a historic, targeted allotment of policy and protections that fulfills the promise of economic inclusion and integrates the descendants of chattel slavery into the drivers of wealth.” The group calls for reparations for Native Black Americans only.
ADOS held its second annual conference on Oct. 8 and Oct. 9, once again laying out its argument for reparations through such workshops as “Black Institutions & The Case of the ADOS Advocacy,” “Black Descendants of Tribal Freedmen Fight For Justice,” and “America’s Delinquent Promissory Note.”
The National Assembly of American Slavery Descendants (NAASD) is a conglomerate of member and affiliate organizations formed in 2019. It came out of ADOS when some members of ADOS left and started their own group.
The grassroots organization aims to end discriminatory hiring practices in all industries. According to the group, reparations are not a privilege but a right and a “long overdue” payment of the debt owed to Black American Descendants Of Chattel Slavery (BADOCS). NAASD promotes reparations at the local, state, and federal levels to push a restorative justice and reparations agenda.
“We believe reparative justice, in the form of cash payouts and comprehensive programs and policies, is a necessary component in fulfilling the promise of opportunity from which BADOCS people have been historically excluded,” according to its website.
“A lot of us are doing this work because there’s a window of opportunity that we recognize opened up over the last couple of years,” NAASD Co-Secretary Chris Lodgson told The Moguldom Nation. “We haven’t been this close to the passage of a reparations bill since the ending of the Civil War.”
This summer, NAASD released the initial phase of its comprehensive R.E.P.A.I.R. Act entitled “Priorities for Presidential Action,” which lays out a plan of action for reparations that President Joe Biden could adopt.
NASD has chapters in California, Ohio, New York, Illinois, Texas, Florida, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and Indiana. There is also a chapter pending in Nevada, among other states.
The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) was formed on Sept. 26, 1987, to increase support for reparations. It is a coalition of three organizations — the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the New Afrikan People’s Organization, and the Republic of New Afrika. A national board of directors leads N’COBRA. With chapters, members, affiliates, and supporters throughout the U. S. and in Africa, Europe, Central and South America, and the Caribbean, N’COBRA work is organized through nine national commissions:
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N’COBRA holds an annual national membership meeting and conference, usually the fourth weekend in June.
Unlike other reparations organizations, N’COBRA’s mission operations extend beyond the U.S. “to win full Reparations for Black African Descendants residing in the United States and its territories for the genocidal war against Africans that created the TransAtlantic Slave ‘Trade’ Chattel Slavery, Jim Crow and Chattel Slavery’s continuing vestiges (the Maafa).”
The organization says there are various forms of reparations. “The material forms of reparations include cash payments, land, economic development, and repatriation resources, particularly to those who are descendants of enslaved Africans,” N’COBRA Online reported.
Other forms of reparations for Black people of African descent, the group stated, could include “funds for scholarships and community development; creation of multi-media depictions of the history of Black people of African descent and textbooks for educational institutions that tell the story from the African descendants’ perspective; development of historical monuments and museums; the return of artifacts and art to appropriate people or institutions; exoneration of political prisoners; and, the elimination of laws and practices that maintain dual systems in the major areas of life including the punishment system, health, education, and the financial/economic system.”
Photo credit www.naasdla.org
