Webinar: The Present And Future Of Reparations

The Departments of Black Studies and History at Amherst College invites the public to a webinar panel discussion on November 4 about reparations for African Americans featuring leaders in local movements for reparations in Evanston, Illinois and Amherst, Massachusetts.  The panelists:

Robin Rue Simmons, Founder and Executive Director of FirstRepair, a new not-for-profit organization that informs local reparations, nationally.  She is Alderman for the fifth ward of Evanston Illinois, the first city in the nation to adopt reparations for black citizens.

Amilcar Shabazz, Professor in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and serves as the Faculty Advisor for Diversity & Excellence in the Office of the Chancellor. He teaches in the area of historical studies with an emphasis on the political economy of social and cultural movements, education, and public history. His book Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), received numerous honors including the T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award.. His newest book, co-edited with Celia R. Daileader and Rhoda E. Johnson, is Women & Others: Perspective on Race, Gender, and Empire (Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2007). Shabazz has also published The Forty Acres Documents, a sourcebook on reparations.

Mattea Kramer, a writer whose work has been published in The Guardian, The Nation, Mother Jones, Guernica, and The Washington Post. Tackling such topics as addiction, American exceptionalism, grief and empathy, and the voice in your head, she is a writer of incisive cultural commentary. A regular contributor to the political site TomDispatch, she has appeared on MSNBC and on radio stations across the country. Mattea holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Amherst College and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard.

During the panel discussion, Simmons will be discussing national reparations, Shabazz, the local effort in Amherst, and Kramer will speak about Amherst College’s effort. 

The webinar is scheduled for Thursday November 4 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. Attendees are asked to register in advance at:  Tinyurl.com/ReparationsPanel2021