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Illinois

Ta-Nehisi Coates

As Reform Jews, we must consider reparations for American slavery

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By Jonah Pesner, Chicago Tribune — Americans in general and faith groups in particular increasingly find ourselves reckoning with our nation’s bigoted history and struggling with how to dismantle the racist systems and structures that persist to this day. As the largest Jewish denomination in the United States, it’s time for the Reform movement to join this conversation. It’s time for us to talk reparations. When I first read Ta-Nehisi…

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Robin Rue Simmons

Aldermen establish historic fund for local reparations in Evanston, Illinois

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By The Daily Northwestern — Evanston City Council passed a historic resolution Monday to establish a $10 million fund for local reparations, including revenue from the recreational cannabis retailers tax. Starting on Jan. 1, 2020, all of the city’s recreational cannabis retailers tax will be transferred to the reparations fund until the fund has reached $10 million in revenue from this source. The reparations subcommittee is currently discussing how money…

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Robin Rue Simmons

As Evanston’s black population continues to drop, city officials will study reparations initiatives

By News & Current Affairs, Reparations

By Jennifer Fisher, Chicago Tribune — Over the last two decades, the black population of Evanston has been shrinking. In 2000, 22.5% of residents identified themselves as black, according to U.S. Census data. The percentage declined to 18.1% in the 2010 Census. The number has continued to fall to an estimated 16.9% in 2017, per the latest American Community Survey estimate. “Black residents are moving because of lack of affordability…

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Obama reminded his audience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that the current troubles “did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause.

In Illinois, Obama Hits the Midterm Campaign Trail—and Trump

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker — One hazard of the trolling that the United States has been subjected to from the White House for the past twenty months is that even the most alarming patterns can be hard to discern, and the most prominent dots impossible to connect. Yet a seemingly different pattern preceded the speech that Barack Obama delivered on Friday, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in which he…

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