CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCIA) — The Champaign-Urbana Reparations Coalition is hoping to be the next in the state to secure reparations for African-Americans. But they are focusing on more than just the potential monetary benefits of the move.
Organizers are following Evanston’s successful footsteps with a plan to educate, acknowledge historical harms and take actual steps toward repair. The group is specifically looking at the impacts of historic red-lining in the Champaign-Urbana area, how this led to what we now see as concentrated areas of African-American people, and what the health, financial, and educational circumstances are for people living there.
“It’s a direct link between those negative experiences and our current condition,” said Jeffery Trask, a leader with the Champaign-Urbana Reparations Coalition. “So if you believe in fairness, if you believe in justice, if you believe that when the wrong is committed that something should come out of that in terms of redress and justice for that wrong — then we’re all on the same page.”
He said then it becomes a question of how it can be done together, because the benefits of reparations would be felt throughout the community.
Trask encourages those who would like to learn more to attend the meeting held every third Thursday of the month at New Covenant Fellowship in Champaign.