This petition has already been sent to Barack Obama while he was still President.  Feel free to sign it to become part of the Reparations Labor Union's mailing list.

The battle has turned towards preventing further wrongs from being inflicted upon people of African descent.  Starting in America's blackest city, Detroit, the Reparations Labor Union is fighting for voting rights by investigating election fraud.  This fraud is being committed by City of Detroit elected officials using Detroit's blighted properties, some of which belong to the Detroit Land Bank, as addresses from which voters cast ballots in the 2013 Mayoral Election.  

Although reparations weren't part of Martin Luther King's 1963 speech, but neither was his 1964 prediction of America electing a black President.  Reparation was what Martin Luther King envisioned for black people before his tragic death in 1968.  This is the unfulfilled portion of his dream that awaits to come true, a dream that Barack Obama can make true as part of his Presidential legacy.

What follows below is a letter emailed to President Barack Obama on June 24, 2015.  The letter was penned by  NAARC (the National African American Reparations Commission). The letter has yet to be answered.

As a post-script to the letter, the Reparations Labor Union adds that voluntary reparations through a National Jubilee Lottery be enacted via executive order.

The Reparations Labor Union is posting the letter as a petition for an executive order from President Obama.  Petitions with a minimum of 100,000 signatures will be answered by the Obama White House.  Download a copy of the petition HERE and HERE to print and circulate among friends and family.  The petition may also be downloaded from the Reparations App, now available on Google Play Store and iTunes.  Let's get 100,000 signatures by January 10, 2017 at 9 am EST!

The Reparations Labor Union's

Petition for an Executive Order

Letter of June 24, 2015

Dear President Obama:

As you prepare to deliver the Eulogy at the home-going service for Rev. Clementa Pinckney on the occasion of the unspeakable tragedy of his murder and that of eight other members of the historic Emanuel AME Church, the National African American Reparations Commission strongly urges that you seize this moment to issue an Executive Order creating the John Hope Franklin Commission on Reparatory Justice. From Ferguson to Baltimore to Charleston this most recent period has revealed that white supremacy, in all of its individual, institutional and structural manifestations, is a deadly disease that remains deeply imbedded in the American psyche and the social, economic and political fabric of this society.

As you have related Mr. President, despite progress since the era of enslavement, Jim Crow and de facto discrimination/segregation, the “badges and indicia” of the longstanding exploitation and oppression of people of African descent are reflected in the devastating disparities in health, education, housing, employment, economic development, wealth and incarceration rates which harm large numbers of Black people each and every day in this land of enormous prosperity.

Despite these realities, polls and studies indicate that a substantial number of White Americans fail to see or are in denial about the stubborn persistence of racism and its effects on Black people. In fact, there is a tendency to blame Blacks for the conditions our people find themselves in and/or to express “racial resentment” of the perceived progress of Blacks, as being a function of encroaching on the success of Whites. Even among well meaning, sympathetic Whites, there is often a failure to recognize how implicit bias colors the countless decisions which constrain or kill the aspirations of Black people in this nation.

This year marks the beginning of the United Nation’s Decade for People of African Descent. We believe there can be no “more perfect union” in the United States until there is a thoughtful, frank, thorough and uncompromising examination of white supremacy as a malignancy which must be cured. The American nation cannot heal until it confronts and addresses the injustices of the past and those that are being perpetrated today against people of African descent as a consequence of systemic/structural bias that infects every area of life in this society. There can be no real peace until there is justice, repair and healing for Black people in this country.

Therefore, Mr. President, in the name of the esteemed Dr. John Hope Franklin, whose father Buck Franklin defended Black survivors of the horrific 1921Tulsa race riots that destroyed “Black Wall Street,” and who himself was the victim of racial insults and discrimination on numerous occasions, and in honor of Dr. Franklin’s 100th birthday, we call upon you to have the vision to create a Commission on Reparatory Justice in his name. This is only fitting as it also offers an opportunity to finish the unfinished work of President Clinton’s Commission on Race which Dr. John Hope Franklin chaired twenty-two years ago.

Please find appended to this letter the formal Declaration calling for the Commission and a list of the members of the National African American Reparations Commission.

Given the urgency of the crises confronting this nation as it relates to race/racism, we look forward to your prompt response and action on this request.

Respectfully,

Dr. Ron Daniels, President, Institute of the Black World 21st Century, Convener, National African American Reparations Commission 

Reparations Labor Union Amendment:  The undersigned hereby request that reparations to African Americans be immediately implemented, via an executive order, through a tax-free National Jubilee Lottery.  Similar to the multi-state Powerball and MegaMillions lotteries that raise money for education, infrastructure, or other state purposes, the National Jubilee Lottery would be a means by which funds would be raised to distribute reparations to African Americans.  Anyone, regardless of race, may win the lottery prize.  Corporations, particularly those that profited from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, would be asked to contribute the initial prize and operating expenses, in exchange for tax exemptions.  Both the prize and the reparations distributed would be tax-exempt, thus creating a win-win-win situation intended to foster racial reconciliation.  The undersigned therefore implore you, President Obama, to execute a reparations executive order that includes the National Jubilee Lottery, and thus leave a legacy that immediately expounds racial reconciliation in America.