A modest proposal for reparative action

A modest proposal for reparative action: That predominantly white congregations across the US would unexempt themselves from property taxes, setting aside what they would owe annually, dispersing the funds to Black and Indigenous led organizations.

Why reparative action?  In her book Dear White Christians, Jennifer Harvey illustrates how the reconciliation model of confronting racism has failed to address power inequities and repair harms.  She proposes a reparative model, challenging white people to investigate our history and actively repair injustices borne by communities of color.        

Why religious congregations?  People of faith are believers that a better way of being human is possible.  We are grounded in rich traditions of moral vision that compel us to right injustice, to love our neighbors near and far.  We often fall far short of this.  An example: In 1969 James Forman interrupted Sunday worship at Riverside Church in New York to proclaim the Black Manifesto.  He called on white congregations across the country to pay reparations for persistent injustices endured by Black Americans, a call that was never heeded anywhere near the scale required.  This current proposal is a hope-filled contemporary response to the spirit of the Black Manifesto.

Why property taxes?  Non-profit organizations in the US are exempt from property taxes.  Such taxes support organizations that provide vital services to local communities such as schools, children’s services, drug and alcohol treatment, and libraries.  The property taxes we owe, or would owe, are also bound together with our complicated and racialized histories of land acquisition, neighborhood segregation, and wealth accumulation.  By unexempting ourselves from property taxes we are unexempting our minds and hearts from learning the troubling stories of our land and communities.  We are releasing our claim to these funds and committing them to our Black and Indigenous neighbors to do with as they see fit for the good of their people.  There will never be any amount of money capable of repairing racial terror.  Unexempting from property tax provides an annual measure that is neither arbitrary nor out of reach.        

Why Black and Indigenous led organizations?  The story of our nation cannot be told without recounting the violent conquest of Indigenous land and exploitation of Black labor.  If white people of faith are committed to monetary reparative action it is incumbent that we not only release our claim to these funds, but release power over how the funds are spent.  Giving to Black and Indigenous led organizations, with no strings attached, empowers these leaders to pursue the mission to which they are accountable within their own communities.  

How do we get from where we are to there?* 

A study group or religious education class can be an important beginning.  Read and discuss Dear White Christians, the Black Manifesto, or other related writings.  Study your state, local, and family histories with attention to how Indigenous and Black communities were impacted by policies that created opportunity for white Americans. 

Bring the idea of this proposal to your church board and encourage them to bring it before the congregation for consideration.

If the congregation is ready to make the commitment, consider a period of several years to scale up to reaching your annual property tax amount.  If your total will be $20,000 per year, perhaps begin with $5000 and add that same amount over the course of four years.  Because this likely involves extra giving, encourage individual members to think of their additional contributions as voluntary additions to their own property taxes or rent, making the connection to property and land as personal as possible.  The lack of ability to reach the full property tax equivalent should not preclude starting somewhere.     

Appoint a committee to research organizations toward which to direct the funds.  While you will naturally want to choose organizations whose values match your own, care must be given to release these funds without expectations or demands placed on the receiving organizations.

Continue to study, pray, and creatively engage in reparative action, including advocating for HR 40, the bill that will establish a commission to study and develop reparation proposals on the federal level.            

*These are the steps our congregation, Columbus Mennonite Church, has found helpful in our own process

Relief, grief, a gift, and a meeting

Relief

I was driving to Eve’s softball game yesterday when the verdict was pronounced for former officer Derek Chauvin.  While I never rejoice at anyone going to prison, it was a relief that he, and perhaps the system he served, was held accountable for the murder of George Floyd.  But I don’t think it would have happened without the people, or that bystander video.

Grief

When I arrived at the game I had a series of texts from a group of clergy and organizers noting that, right around the time of the verdict, a Black girl had been shot and killed by a Columbus police officer.  In between the extremes of doing nothing and responding with deadly violence are a whole host of options we seem blind to as a society.  I am increasingly sickened by this.

A Gift

Today I received a link to a brand new online curriculum produced by Mennonite Church USA called Defund the Police: An Abolition Curriculum.  It centers the voices of Black and queer persons and, I believe, represents the best of what our tradition has to offer to this work.  It can be used for personal, family, or adult or youth Sunday school purposes.  It is a gift that helps frame these matters in Anabaptist theology.      

A Meeting

Tomorrow I’ll be part of a meeting that Faith in Public Life has set up with Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin to discuss divesting some funds from Columbus Police and investing in resources that better serve public safety.  Below is a draft of what I plan to say as a part of the opening to that meeting.  Let’s continue to pray, act, and learn together for the common good of our community.

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I want to highlight that we are having this conversation on Earth Day.  This is a time each year when we acknowledge the increasing urgency of reimagining our relationship with this planet, our one home we share with plants and creatures and our fellow humans. 

We on this call feel a similar urgency for reimagining relationships in our home of Columbus around public safety and the common good.  We greatly appreciate City Council’s naming racism as a public health crisis, tracing this sickness in our body politic all the way back to our national origins.  History shows that policing in our country is also part of this persistent sickness.  Which means that the violent and deadly police actions which disproportionately target communities of color and the poor are not a sign that the system is malfunctioning, but a sign that it continues to function as it was designed to function. 

To draw from an analogy from the natural world which Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount: “You shall know a tree by its fruit.”  While much of the conversation around policing focuses on whether individual police are good or bad apples, we are convinced that the tree itself is ill, producing a harvest of trauma and distrust.

Meanwhile we keep asking more and more of an overburdened police department that is even less equipped to deal constructively with situations involving mental illness or the unhoused. 

And like our troubled relationship with the air, soil, and water, we are convinced this is not a time for small changes or incremental reform when it comes to policing.  Merely having better training or better technology or better hiring practices is like dumping more and more fertilizer on a tree.  It does a good job of making the tree grow bigger, but it doesn’t change the kind of fruit it produces.

When we use the language of divesting from the police, we are talking about investing that fertilizer (money, staffing, material resources) in different trees that will produce different fruit.  Trees that will produce the shade of public safety, help detoxify the soil of systemic racism, and lead to a harvest of trust and restorative practices. 

In light of all this, we believe our asks today — about the Mobile Crisis Response program, housing for the houseless, a mental health living facility, and education — to be modest, and well within the realm of the possible.  We’re not asking you to come up with more fertilizer.  We’re asking that the right trees get fertilized with the nutrient-rich, organic materials we already have in our community.  We seek your leadership on these matters, Council President Hardin, we offer you our prayers, and we are ready to support these efforts with our time and influence.   

Land and learning in South Carolina

During our trip last week to be with family in South Carolina I got to spend a day in Beaufort/Port Royal, about an hour and a half down the coast from Charleston.  It is home to one of the deepest  natural harbors on the East Coast and was a strategic base for the Union army which captured the port in 1861 and held it throughout the Civil War.  The wealthy confederate planters fled the area, leaving behind their homes, their cotton fields, and the 10-12,000 persons they had enslaved.  The Union needed money and men.  The formerly enslaved needed a sustainable freedom.  Thus began the Port Royal Experiment. 

As the war raged, these formerly enslaved folks were paid (low) wages to work the cotton fields of their former owners.  The Union benefited from the sale of the cotton, also taking possession of the land and homes since the planters had ceased paying their property taxes.  A portion of this land was then offered for sale to the formerly enslaved, who bought it at $1.25/acre.  They could have bought more had wealthy speculators from the North not been allowed to swallow up much of the land.    

In 1862 the first school for freed slaves was established here, in Beaufort County, led by three women from the north, two White, one Black.  It was just a few miles from the school that the Emancipation Proclamation was first read January 1, 1863, declaring that those who had been enslaved in states that were in open rebellion against the United States were now free (assuming the Union gained control of those areas).  This made official what the people of Beaufort were already experiencing.

The school came to be called Penn Center (since two of the women were from Pennsylvania), established on land donated by Hasting Gantt, a freedman who had recently purchased the land with the dream of farming.  Beyond basic education, the school became a center for training in agricultural, industrial, and homesteading skills.  Given the right to vote, the people of Beaufort would go on to elect Gantt to the state legislature.  Another son of Beaufort, Robert Smalls, born a slave, eventually bought the home of his former owner, and went on to serve five terms as a US Congressman.  His story is fascinating and too long to tell here. 

The Port Royal Experiment is a window into what would have been possible had the promises of post-Civil War Reconstruction been pursued.  As Reconstruction crumbled in the 1870s, and White terrorism sought to re-instate the pre-war power hierarchy, the Black folks of the Beaufort area were largely spared the worst effects.  In the middle of the 20^th century, Penn Center was transformed into a hub of Civil Rights activism, with Dr. King and other leaders visiting several times, one of the few places in the South considered safe for Whites and Blacks to plan together.  He rehearsed his “I Have a Dream” speech at a local church.  The community continues to have a strong Black population who celebrate their Gullah culture.

In 2017, under the Obama Administration, the first National Park dedicated to the Reconstruction Era was dedicated in Beaufort. 

I didn’t know a thing about any of this until a couple months ago when I was looking up what else to see around the Charleston area. 

All this is not unrelated to our congregational conversation this coming Sunday during the 11:00 hour about our CMC funds for reparations.  The discussion will include a presentation from the committee that has been working on this, including questioning whether “reparations” is the right language for this commitment. 

And if you’re ever in South Carolina, I highly recommend visiting one of our newest National Parks, in Beaufort.

Joel