“There is no path that does not include reparations.” Edgar Villanueva says, referring to America’s growing racial wealth gap.
Villanueva, who founded the non-profit Decolonizing Wealth Project, spoke with ESSENCE about a month after the “Alight, Align, Arise” reparations conference and reflected on encouraging updates in the aftermath of the Atlanta gathering, which was hosted by his organization.
“There was something spiritual and healing about being together,” Villanueva shares. “We feel really good that we left there with folks building momentum and [that there’s] huge visibility that we’re witnessing around the issue.”
Hundreds of advocates participated in the invite-only conference, and based on surveys received after the event, there was a consistent message of unity.
“The data that we have so far, one of the questions we asked was ‘do you feel more of a sense of unity as a result of this conference.’ And 100% of the respondents so far said yeah. So many of the comments spoke to the opportunity…to connect and meet and build relationships and trust in-person.”
The event was held shortly before the country celebrated Juneteenth. While the holiday serves as a remembrance, advocates and researchers around the country have also been discussing concrete plans to financially repair the damage of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
There hasn’t ever been any breathing room for black people. It’s just been compounded trauma.
– Kendrick Sampson
Bookended by award-winning journalists Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the three-day convening also included a panel on the role of media and Hollywood in shaping the conversation.
Actors Kendrick Sampson and Erika Alexander, who participated in the panel, both spoke to ESSENCE about the necessity of reparations.
“There’s been no accountability,” Sampson says. “If there was accountability, somebody would have been held accountable for owning and torturing people, somebody would have been held accountable for genocide. There hasn’t ever been any breathing room for black people. It’s just been compounded trauma,” he adds.
That trauma, Sampson shares, lasts for generations because “no generation has had time to heal. There is no price tag to the healing, it’s true. [But] services have been rendered already. The invoice has been sent, you’re overdue, you’re now in collections.”
“The price tag is not going lower, because the harm is still being compounded,” Sampson urges.
As Erika Alexander asserts, “the story needs to change. They think they’re getting reparations for us. And I say, ‘no, reparations are for you.’ It’s what Rev. [William] Barber calls a moral revival for the nation. You must revive and restore and repair the people that you’ve done harm to.”
Beyond her beloved role as Living Single’s Maxine Shaw, Alexander has co-directed the documentary The Big Payback, which premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and highlights the reparations movement in one Illinois town.
As co-director Whitney Dow shared, “why focus on the past when there’s history in the making? This is the story that we should follow,” referencing the decision to examine a first-of-its-kind city law to allocate funds for Black Evanston residents.
“This is an example of when someone says, we, us as a people, are taking our lives into our own hands….We are not waiting on anyone to decide what we deserve,” Alexander told ESSENCE upon its release.
As the movement gains momentum, those words continue to ring true.