WATCH: https://vimeo.com/936065797/8357802a57
Equal Justice Society President Lisa Holder delivered powerful remarks last week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent held April 16-19, 2024, in Geneva, Switzerland.
Lisa is a former member of the California Reparations Task Force and one of the leaders of the Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation, and Truth (ARRT). Dr. Cheryl Grills, a former member of the task force and a leader of ARRT, also attended. Dr. Grills is an EJS Champion of Justice 2023 award recipient.
Watch the video of LIsa’s remarks here. The transcript of her remarks are below. Read Dr. Grills’s comment entered into the record.
The Permanent Forum also operates as an advisory body to the UN Human Rights Council, in line with the program of activities for the implementation of the International Decade for People of African Descent and in coordination with existing UN mechanisms promoting action to combat racism against people of African descent.
REMARKS BY LISA HOLDER AS DELIVERED
Bonjour. It is an honor to be in community with brothers and sisters across the globe, addressing this august body. I am Lisa holder, a California-based civil rights lawyer, a commissioner on the California Reparations Task Force, the President of the Equal Justice Society, and I am the co-lead convener of the Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation and Truth (“ARRT”), a multiracial coalition of over 30 civil society groups advancing California reparations.
My goal is to give you a thumbnail sketch of the landscape of reparations in the United States and to recommend immediate action items that this forum can undertake to help us sustain our momentum. Anti-Black racism in the U.S. is institutional and systemic, and its eradication requires systemic fixes at the level of the Great Society programs undertaken to end the Great Depression in the 1930s.
California was the first U.S. state to convene a reparations task force. After two years of research and 30 public hearings, the task force delivered, number one, a 1,100-page book of truth that documents past and continuing harm of anti-Black discrimination in every facet of American life and on every sector of California civil society.
Number two, the irrefutable legal case for reparations that can and will withstand judicial scrutiny, and number three, 115 legislative bills and policy proposals for retooling every California social and economic system so that California institutions that, by design, underserve Black people are transformed to serve and where necessary center Black health, wealth and well-being.
Like the CARICOM program just outlined by the esteemed Barbados ambassador, our California vision of reparations goes way beyond a check in the mail and demands total systems change.
Momentum for reparations in the U.S. is growing at a feverish pitch. Three years ago, when we convened the California task force, we were the only state to accomplish this. Today, several other states have appointed similar commissions. And locally, in just three years, the number of reparations municipal commissions has grown from single digits to several hundred.
The United Nations reparations – standards, restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition – were the touchstone of the California task force reparations report and its 150 policy proposals, and are the prism through which we define our advocacy and messaging at ARRT.
International human rights norms have a direct influence on the American legal system and high courts in the U.S. invoke the evolving standards of decency articulated in United Nations discourse.
The Alliance of Reparations, Reconciliation, and Truth solicits UN PFPAD actions in two areas, general and specific. Number one, undertake concrete steps to support local reparations efforts, recognizing that local reparations initiatives are more likely to succeed with the imprimatur and stamp of the approval of this body, and number two, endorse the California reparations task force report at www.supportreparations.org.
Thank you.