David Comissiong, July 2018 —
1. Acquire and inculcate in ourselves, our people, our institutions, and our Governments a deep knowledge of our history.
2. Formulate the demand for Reparations as a demand for a fundamental transformation of the currently existing inequitable and exploitative economic and power relations that exist in our domestic societies and in the international arena, and for the creation of the “Just Society” : and apply this “principle” to all and sundry including our own Caribbean and African Governments that have demanded Reparations from Europe and North America, and who we must make to understand — through our dynamic citizen activism– that implicit in their demand for Reparations must be a commitment to themselves deliver justice to their own people.
3. Systematically identify, expose, and root out all still existing structural and institutional discriminatory practices and built-in obstacles to the advancement of Black or African people in our nations and in the international arena.
4. Engage in “Self Repair” at the individual, communal and national levels by taking measures to identify all vestiges of notions of white superiority / black inferiority in our culture and psyches, and to remove them.
5. Uphold and insist upon the application of the principle that we Black or African people came across the Middle Passage as an undifferentiated dispossessed mass of people in the bottom of the hold of a slave ship, and that — in this contemporary era — we are committed to NOT leaving any of our brothers or sisters behind in slavery-like conditions of poverty and powerlessness.
6. Facilitate our people in carrying out — at the mass level — a reevaluation of their history and of themselves, in order to perceive the gravity of the injustice done to them and to feel the tragic historical loss they have suffered– all in an effort to generate mass support for the Reparations cause.
7. Systematically reach out to and challenge all of our relevant local and national organizations to put support for Reparations on their agenda and to include it in their programmes and Manifestos — political parties, trade unions, youth organizations, churches, women’s organizations, educational institutions, and the list goes on.
8. Engage in Governmental diplomacy campaigns (utilizing our Ministries of Foreign Affairs and embassies) and other outreach efforts designed to explain our history and our interlinked Reparations cause to the world, in order to bring fellow black or African nations on board the Reparations campaign and to generally win allies for the cause.
9. Engage in popular Groundings with our people in order that they might deliberate on and generate a popular consensus on the vital questions of Reparations, namely : an estimation of the damage done to us as a people ; a calculation of the appropriate reparative measures (inclusive of developmental programmes and a Repatriation scheme) and capital transfers ; and a design of the appropriate structures and procedures for administering Reparations funds and other resources.
10. Build our “Reparations Infrastructure” by creating Reparations research institutions and by establishing national, regional, and international interlinked networks of Reparations organizations and activists.
11. At the level of our Pan-Africanist civil society :– prepare, file, and prosecute Reparations law cases against relevant European and North American companies and institutions.
12. At the level of our Governments : — carry out the preparatory work for a final and decisive historical, moral, and legal multilateral “Reparations Reckoning” with the Governments of the relevant European and North American countries.
