In the shadow of Amerikkka’s 250th birthday celebration, I ask myself what can bring this genocidal, enslaving war machine to an end? This country’s culture is shaped by its origin. This is a country built on top of genocide, slavery, war, exploitation and racism. The founders of this country were slave owners, who launched their “Revolutionary War” not for liberty, freedom and brotherhood but for the expansion of Slavery, the expulsion of Native peoples from their land, and to rob the land of its resources all in the name of profit. This country has never made amends for the terror it committed in the past because it uses the same tactics of terror to enslave, expunge, and extract today. One way that will bring an end to this vicious cycle, is Reparations.
The Rev. Dr. Robert Turner, of Empowerment Temple AME, is a champion in the fight for Reparations. As pastor of Vernon AME in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he led the fight for recognition of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. He personally was on the ground during this investigation, discovering mass graves and handling the remains of Black people who were forgotten to time due to racism. He has put his body on the line countless times in the name of Reparations.
He has marched every month for 40 months straight, ending on Feb. 16, 2026, a total of nearly 1,600 miles, spreading the demand for Reparations wherever he has been. He now aims to march in every state capital in order to organize a national push for the demand of Reparations. He has written a book, “Creating a Culture of Repair: Taking Action on the Road to Reparations,” that has a 100-step Reparations plan, with ways for individuals, communities, and institutions to be part of creating a culture of Repair for all the harm done to Black people throughout history.
Reparations for Black people is a crucial step in dismantling this terror machine. Reparations not just for Slavery, but for the more than 400 years of systemic racism, oppression and occupation. The Honorable Malcolm X said, “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, that’s not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even begun to pull the knife out, much less heal the wound. … They won’t even admit the knife is there.” U.S. colonialism and imperialism is the knife and it has been in the back of the Black population that lives in this country since this country was nothing more than 13 slave owning trading posts sitting on the Atlantic ocean. That knife is covered in the blood of Slavery, of Jim and Jane Crow, of racial terror and genocide, of mass incarceration, of the “War on Drugs,” of redlining and forced removal, of police brutality and of data centers destroying land inhabited by Black people.
Reparations is not just the removal of the knife, but also the healing of the wound. Reparations isn’t just a check worth some amount of money. Reparations are revolutionary. For Black people in this country to get Reparations by any means necessary, there would be a complete change in how this country exists and operates. There can be no implementation of Reparations for Black people here without an end to imperialist greed and war abroad, because those wars are fought with Black bodies. Reparations given to the descendants of slaves in Amerikkka have to include reparations to the places from where the men women and children were stolen from. For the wounds inflicted on Black people to be healed, that means an end to the expansion of AI, it means a mass release of Black prisoners, an end to redlining and gentrification, an end to police occupation of Black cities and towns. All in all Reparations means the end of the “Amerikkkan experiment” because that was built on the backs and tested on the blood of Black people. To see prosperous Black communities in the land known as the United States of Amerikkka, means an end to the destruction of communities overseas.
Reparations is the continuation of the struggle for Emancipation, the continuation of the struggle for Civil Rights and the struggle for Black Power. Amerikkka cannot exist as a bastion and home of empire if the people who built this country have control, and to use the words of George Jackson, if Revolution (in this case Reparations) means civil war – I accept, and the sooner begun the sooner done.
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