Theory and practice, education and action – we invite you on this journey with us. A year ago, two East Siders, Ward 7 City Councilperson Jane Prince and Co-Chair of the national Green Party Trahern Crews, asked ESFL to host a monthly Reparations reading and discussion group. Together, they had convened a “St. Paul Recovery Act” focus group, and they were looking to expand that group and deepen its participants’ understanding of the historical argument for reparations. We had no doubt that their request was aligned with ESFL’s mission to “inspire solidarity, work for justice, and advocate for equity for all,” and we said “Of course.”
An energetic, multiracial, intergenerational study group began meeting, first in person, then by Zoom. We focused on an historical examination of the development of institutional racism in the United States: the functioning of the slave labor system; the limits of Emancipation; the achievements and limits of Reconstruction; the rise of convict labor, sharecropping, and Jim Crow; disfranchisement; northward migration and the “Red Summer” of 1919; the achievements and limits of the New Deal and the new labor movement; the achievements and limits of the civil rights movement. The pandemic’s unequal impact on communities of color and the murder of George Floyd and the consequent emergence of a grassroots movement for racial justice gave added purpose to our work.
Councilperson Prince’s position on the City Council gave our work an important outlet, and in January of this year, she introduced a resolution “Committing to Racial Healing Through the Exploration of Reparations for American Descendants of Chattel Slavery Living in Saint Paul.” You can find the text here. It was passed unanimously by the City Council and signed by Mayor Carter. Jane and Trahern provided the rationale for this resolution in an op-ed in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. St. Paul is the largest city in the U.S. to have adopted such a resolution.
ESFL has been working for more than two years, via our East Side Housing Justice project, to incubate a movement for housing security for all East Siders. We have convened a Housing Justice Working Group involving a range of community organizations working on homelessness, evictions, rent stabilization, the home ownership gap, and the construction of affordable housing. We are convening a Community Advisory Committee reflecting the diverse backgrounds and experiences of East Siders.
Now a major development project – the transformation of the 112 acre Hillcrest Golf Course at the eastern border of St. Paul – is about to move from the city’s drawing board to its bulldozers. This project sits at the intersection of our concerns with housing justice and reparations, at the intersection of democracy and equity, and it is an opportunity for our communities – YOU! – to become informed, shape a vision for our shared future, and work to realize it. On March 9, ESFL hosted a presentation on the Hillcrest project’s history and the ways that a reparations lens might be applied to envisioning its materialization. On March 23, we will be convening a community conversation about how to move forward. Join us – and UNMUTE YOURSELF!
Love and Solidarity,
Beth Cleary and Peter Rachleff