Establishing a Philadelphia Reparations Commission
N’COBRA PHL is petitioning the City of Philadelphia to establish a reparations commission to redress and recompense the descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States and those “Black” and “African American” descendants of Negro and Colored Americans in the United States of America the allodial return of their seized and stolen land, the capital of their seized and stolen property and assets, the value of their forced and coerced labor, and the repair of their peoplehood.
The share of people who represent this community have a poverty rate that is twice greater than their share among the general population. While they only represent 13.2% of the total population in the United States, they make up 23.8% of the population in poverty. In Philadelphia, which has the highest poverty rate of the 10 largest cities in the United States, more than 25% of the 1.579 million residents living in Philadelphia are living in poverty. Of the 40% of residents that represent the “Black” or “African-American” community, 30.8% of them live in poverty.
The school system, municipal services, medical treatment, political accountability, access and opportunity, and rites of passage that make whole a community have been compromised, as seen in the astronomical rates of violence the city has experiences. Herein lies the need for careful, yet urgent attention to the need for reparation.
Defining & Identifying the Redress Group
N’COBRA PHL understands peoplehood to be defined and developed by the people, for the people, and believes that true reparation supports succession, sovereignty and self-determination. Peoplehood, as defined by succession, sovereignty and self-determination substantiates the rights to liberty, independence, freedom, and emancipation, especially from a de facto jurisdiction, particularly from nations responsible for their enslavement and subjection to feudal laws under the pretense of de jure citizenship and democracy. This includes any and all colorable law pseudonyms and misnomers used to acknowledge them, and is why N’COBRA PHL uses the acronym DAEUS for Descendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States and accepts the terms Afro-Indigenous Americans, Native Black-American, and Descendants of U.S. Freedman as each of these identifiers deliniate from the redress group of “American Negro” ancestors and antecedents to whom this redress is warranted. N’COBRA PHL acknowledges the distinct ethnic quality of the often previously identified American Negro from other “Black” or African migrant groups, as the redress group’s antecedents have been in the Americas since before the Declarations of Independence and formation of the United States, and their ancestors have been in the United States since before the Emancipation Proclamation.
Since 1619 to 1865, more than 4,000,000 of their ancestors were enslaved in the United States and the colonies that became the United States of America from the continental mainlands and islands of Africa and the Americas, and have been preemptively misnomered and identified as “Negro,” “Colored,” “Black,” and “African-American,” having been subversively subjected to the laws pertaining to those titles and disconnected from their actual and pre-existing tribal and ethnic identities, nationalities and birthrights, subversively being nationalised as United States citizens to which they have been prisoners of war.
Commissioning Reparation
Reparation is legally defined as compensation for an injury, or redress for a wrong inflicted. The root word of reparation is repair, which means to restore something to its former condition, or, in some contracts, to operational soundness. Reparations in Philadelphia for the identified redress group is to the agency of their Indigenous Rights, Birthrights, Natural Rights, Natural Laws, Positive Laws, Legal Rights, Jus Sanguinis Rights, Jus Soli Rights, Blood Quantum Laws, Rights of Abode, Rights of Return, Unalienable Rights, and Autochthony. These rights recognize the specific condition of a people to preserve their land, language, culture, religion, heritage, and immigration as rights entitled by birth, independent of any human-made laws or customs.
N’COBRA PHL believes in the establishment of reparations commissions at the local, state, and federal level, yet understands that other entities and nations were also participants in the transatlantic “slave” trade and global crimes against the humanity of the identified redress group, and does not limit reparation to redress and recompenses solely from the United States. N’COBRA PHL furthermore understands that reparations to the redress group may socially and politically unite them with their diaspora in the continent of Africa, throughout the Americas, the West Indies, and the world.
N’COBRA PHL believes that in order to commission reparation from the legislature, reparations commissions may develop surveys and writs of elections for the redress group to determine the terms and conditions by which their commissioners may serve, and establish a legislature for themselves to engage in reciprocal zero-sum reparations negotiations. These commissions must be made up of experienced leaders, experts, professionals, practitioners, and general members of the public from each industry area to engage the process of developing those zero-sum reparations negotiations. N’COBRA PHL believes those reparations commissions must perform the following duties…
Develop departments, institutes, bureaus, and depositories to effectively arbitrate and administer their redress and recompenses.
Define and operate a budget based on proposed and accepted governmental budgets in the regions and jurisdictions those commissions may be established, where budgets may be determined, or, apportioned by the residential population and percentage of redress group members living there.
Identify, compile, and synthesize the relevant corpus of evidentiary documentation of the institution of slavery that existed within the United States Union and previous Confederate states and the colonies, with respect to its effects thereafter, including documentation and examination of the following facts:
The transatlantic slave trade of their ancestors and antecedents.
The transport of their ancestors and antecedents throughout the United States of America as prisoners of war and enslaved peoples, including their treatment during transport.
The sale and acquisition of their ancestors and antecedents as chattel property in interstate and intrastate commerce.
Their treatment today and treatment of their ancestors and antecedents, including the deprivation of their freedom, exploitation of their labor, and destruction of their culture, language, religion, and families.
The extensive sexual abuse, denial of humanity, and chattelization of them and their ancestors and antecedents.
The federal and state laws that discriminated against them and their ancestors and antecedents, and other forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against those free and freed who were deemed 14th amendment citizens of the United States from 1868 to the present including redlining, educational funding discrepancies, and predatory financial practices.
The lingering negative effects of the institutions of colonialism and the matters described in this section have on they and their ancestors’ and antecedents’ societies in America.
Educate and inform the public of its findings, engaging hyperlocal, domestic and international news and media outlets and channels.
Recommend appropriate legislative remedies in consideration of its findings on the matters described in this section, addressing, among other issues:
How the recommendations comport with international standards of remedy for wrongs and injuries caused by the state, that include full reparations and special measures, as understood by various relevant international protocols, laws, and findings.
How the state should offer a formal apology for its participation and practice in its human rights violations and crimes against humanity.
How city, state and federal laws and policies continue to disproportionately and negatively affect people as a group and perpetuate the lingering material and psychosocial effects of colonialism can be eliminated.
How the injuries resulting from matters described in this subdivision can be reversed and how to provide appropriate policies, programs and additional recommendations for the purpose of reversing the injuries.
How, in consideration of the commission’s findings, any form of recompensement may be calculated.
What form of recompenses should be awarded, through what instrumentalities, and how the aforementioned receive such redress.
How, in consideration of the centre’s findings, any other forms of rehabilitation or restitution to the aforementioned is warranted and what form and scope those measures should take.
Liaise the United States and the redress community in the adoption and implementation of legislative and administrative measures that may affect them.
Establish the necessary institutions, organizations, and institutional change to restore their heritage across industries, disciplines, fields, and sectors – including schools, hospitals, banks, and markets to improve the overall ecology of the community.
Work with members of industry, domestic and international units of government, and the general public to participate in the research, recompenses, and redress activities of the commission to:
Understand the root causes of various problems facing the redress community across sectors,
Research and explore solutions, convening and counseling the larger community to co-develop and implement solutions, and collectivize resources necessary to implement those solutions.
Return stolen or unlawfully seized land, property, and assets in principle and value.
Commission various national studies that support recommendations this redress based on its findings.
Provide public apologies and statutes inscribed and recognized through monuments, memorials, statues, and commemorations.
Legally and lawfully carry out their provisions by:
Holding hearings and testifying in domestic and foreign legislatures as appropriate;
Requesting the attendance and testimony of witnesses;
Requesting the production of books, records, correspondence, memoranda, papers, and documents;
Seeking orders from superior courts requesting testimony or compliance with subpoenas.
Acquiring, directly from the head of any agency, useful information available in the discharge of its duties with the full cooperation of United States units of government, and may furnish relevant information requested by the DAEUS/Afro-Indigenous American legislature to the extent permitted by the legally established agreements between them, and, keep confidential information received from an agency that is confidential or exempt from the public records as articulated in the legally established agreements between them.
Call on other organizations, institutions, companies, corporations that have participated, advanced, and/or benefited from the institution of slavery, and institutionalization of systemic racial and ethnic oppression, to join and participate in redress programs that comprehensively address and resolve the transgressions of these systems.
Recognize the participating members of the redress group as an Indigenous ethnic group in North America America, including but not limited to, expanding categories for their identification the U.S. Census and other U.S. identification forms;
Their antecedents have been in the Americas since before 1776, before the Declaration of Independence and formation of the United States.
Their ancestors have been in the United States since before 1865, before the Emancipation Proclamation;
Their ethnicities and socio-political circumstances of identities differ from other racially “Black” or ethnically African emigrant groups.
Improve regional, domestic, and international relations with the world, particularly their diaspora.
Develop a municipally administered telecommunication service that provides telephone, cellular and internet services to the redress group at a low cost premium while fortifying their independently owned and operated networks and platforms with investment into broadband, cable, streaming and other telecommunications capacities to develop and diversify their media access and opportunity.
Repatriate members of the descendant group upon request.
Rehabilitate, including exonerating and expunging the records pertaining to the subject hereof, those within this community who have been affected and effected by the epidemic of substance abuse, particularly the opioids heroin, cocaine and crack-cocaine, manufactured, managed and militarized through the United States’ “War on Drugs” to which enforced unequal and unjust racial and class based sentences thereafter;
Support the rehabilitation and exoneration of those affected in this community, including record expungement specifically in relation to the subject of imprisonment, for the commercial use and/or consumption of cannabis or “marijuana” with direct reparations apportioned to those now returning to society, including the expungement of their records;
Rehabilitate the people and communities affected and effected by the alcoholism that liquor-lining, fortified by the red-lining of communities, that targeted their neighborhoods and:
Created high densities of liquor stores in neighborhoods with no deference to the proximity to schools, parks and recreational spaces in the communities,
Drove businesses including retailers and markets from those communities, decimating the local economy and creating local food deserts to which contributed to deepened poverty and degradation in those communities’ health and wellness;
Created high densities of liquor stores within close proximity to homes, disrupting the family unit and functionality as alcoholism, coupled with the “War on Drugs” is, in large, a chronological consequence of poverty and joblessness, to which liquor-lining, and red-lining, directly influenced.
Service the neurological, cerebral, psychological, and spiritual rehabilitation of the community from the various traumatizations against their metaphysical well-being.
Develop and reform their K-12 and post-secondary education curriculum standards to comport with the academic requirements they determine will advance their posterity.
Restore, reserve, preserve, and advance the ecospheres, natural resources, natural reserves, clean energy creation, and reduced energy consumption to protect natural systems of environmental ecology, especially where this community is or has been subjected to environmental degradation.
Commission the study for equity, ecology, and economics to preserve and progress American ecospheres, natural resources, natural reserves, energy creation, and energy consumption to protect natural systems of ecology and the environment of people inhabiting communities.
Support innovative environmentally sustainable systems and new infrastructures to create and advance new equitable and innovative business practices that advance environmental ecology.
Restore, reserve, preserve, and advance their history, culture, traditions and heritage.
Maintain the confidence of the redress group’s intellectual property and identify their claims of collective intellectual property rights to protect their cultural knowledge, including cultural property such as historical sites, artifacts, designs, languages, ceremonies, performing arts, artwork, literature, technologies, tools, techniques, midwifery, ethnobotany, ecological science, traditional medicine, celestial navigation, craft skills, ethnoastronomy, climate, culture, and other life systems.
Support the the redress group’s right to rebuild and govern their societies as self-determined peoples, including but not limited to, the expertise of sociologists, economists, ecologists, legal experts, educators, psychologists, and more to superintending their own:
Support the allodial return of their seized and stolen land, with accurate research and reward, and protect their territorial sovereignty for their land and real-estate to remain their organic inheritance by birthright, including their historical landmarks, estates, and institutions; thus qualifying them as World Heritage Sites owned and operated by their principal proprietorship to those landmarks, estates, and institutions, and furthermore prohibiting the purchase or acquisition of their lands without full credence from their self-determined legislature.
Research and review the capital, funds, records, data, information, history, and necessary documentation concerning the lineage, lives, living, and livelihood of the redress group members to appropriately provide for their redress and recompensement.
Ensure that no irregular or unofficial permissions shall be granted to people, persons, individuals, or entities claiming membership to descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States between 1619 and 1865, Afro-Indigenous Americans, Native Black-Americans, “Black” descendents of enslaved Americans and “Black” descendants of U.S. Freedmen who do not share the pedigree of blood quantum lineage to this redress.
Recompense the capital of seized and stolen property and assets, and the value of forced and coerced labor to the redress group.
Counsel the United States and the participating members of the redress group whom succeed from the United States on the impunities they retain from policy officers or armed forces personnel with the proper governance and due process of international laws and agreements established between them; including sustaining the freedoms of the redress group from any foreign government having military activities take place in and on their lands or territories without the will of their public interest, formal and official agreement, or request.
Advise and council the relationship between the United States and the redress populace to prosecute parties when in violation of any international laws.
Co-create the trust relationship and trust doctrines between the United States and the redress group to ensure and insure that these units governments have a duty to respect the ecology and affairs of each others’ citizens and members, with further respect to the rights and protections afforded to peoples and persons under foreign, domestic, and international declarations and laws.
Support the redress group’s right of return, guaranteeing their right of voluntary return to, or re-entry to, their country of origin or of citizenship, and, the right of abode, their individual freedom from immigration control on their homeland and ability to live and work freely without restriction, removal, or deportation from the United States government.
Arbitrate the functions of distinction that the redress group’s lands, territories and resources yield where they may not be not acknowledged in the land titles or legal doctrines of the United States. Liaise the United States and the redress community in the adoption and implementation of legislative and administrative measures that may affect them.
Consult and cooperate in good faith with the United States and the redress group concerning the ecology of the lands, territories and resources used or utilized, particularly those systems that appear naturally in nature, on the utilization or exploitation of any and all mineral, water or other resources to protect the environmental, economic, social, cultural and spiritual integrity of the redress group. This includes the assurances that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of the redress group without their free, prior and informed consent.
Procure the mutual relationship between the United States’ and the redress group to develop, utilize, and engage the municipal and general government services afforded to all Americans cooperatively, equitably, and appropriately, with respect to their distinctions of jurisdiction, jurisprudence, and codependency on shared and adjacent lands and corresponding ecologies.
Ensure that these American’s municipal services are safe and secure, supporting:
Clean and sustainable environments and environmental ecologies of land, air, and water;
Functional trash, waste, recycling and composting systems;
Public schools with competent educators and proper funding, services, and resources;
Medical centers and medical treatment;
Adequate training and funding for local fire engines;
Law enforcement officers are properly trained, supervised, and disciplined;
Bolster, fortify, and insure the redress groups’ economies and ecologies, provided that they have access to their needs during and beyond times of crisis.