Danny Glover, national activists converge on Evanston as city funds reparations with cannabis tax

Leaders of the reparations movement converged in Evanston Wednesday to commend legislation passed by the Evanston City Council, establishing a $10 million reparations fund for its African American community. Actor Danny Glover was among the speakers. | Maudlyne Ihejirika/Sun-Times

Actor Danny Glover told an Evanston town hall Wednesday night the Chicago suburb will go down in history as having led the way in the reparations movement with its groundbreaking legislation funding amends for African Americans with a cannabis sales tax.

On Nov. 25, the Evanston City Council passed a proposal by Ald. Robin Rue Simmons establishing a $10 million reparations fund making amends to its African American population for historic wrongs traced to racial inequities in the affluent north suburb.

“This is an extraordinary moment for us to celebrate, no doubt about that. Those who worked in support of this have stood in the fire to make this happen,” Glover told a standing-room-only crowd of over 500 gathered at Evanston’s First Church of God.

Glover, the U.N. Ambassador for the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent, testified earlier this year at a hearing on reparations on Capitol Hill.

Congress in June brought to discourse H.R. 40, the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.” First introduced in 1989, the bill that would study how America could best make amends for slavery hadn’t been called up in over 10 years, and the likes of Glover and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates had provided riveting testimony.

“This is an extraordinary moment for us to celebrate, no doubt about that,” Danny Glover, actor and U.N. Ambassador for the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent, told a standing-room only crowd of over 500 at a town hall Wednesday night. He was speaking on Evanston’s historic legislation passed Nov. 25, establishing a $10 million reparations fund for its African-American community.

“This is the most intense conversation I believe that we’re going to have in the 21st century, right here — reparations. This is a remarkable step. It is you who will go down in history, whose voices will be remembered, as they stood up in the face of condemnation, for not only their own humanity, but the humanity of all people,” Glover said.

Simmons’ proposal would redress racism’s impact on Evanston’s African American population, seen in redlining, predatory lending, the educational achievement gap, etc. — making the fund available to assist those residents via a framework yet to be determined.

It will be seeded by a 3% tax on cannabis sales after recreational marijuana becomes legal in Illinois Jan. 1, which made sense after studies found 71% of the town’s marijuana arrests had been in African American communities, Simmons said.

Meanwhile, Evanston’s African American population is on the decline, she said. At 22.5% in the 2000 census, it fell to 16.9% last year.

The fund, to be financed over 10 years, has drawn national attention, after Congress turned the spotlight to reparations, and cities across the nation — including Chicago — began debating whether and what type of amends are due for the sin of slavery.

“It’s that idea that my great-grandma, born in 1858, had. She didn’t know how to articulate it, but she dreamed it,” said Glover, who held the Congressional hearing rapt in June, speaking of his great-grandmother Mary Brown, a slave freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.

“This is the most intense conversation I believe that we’re going to have in the 21st century, right here — reparations,” Danny Glover, actor and U.N. Ambassador for the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent, told an audience from far and wide who traveled to Evanston for a town hall on historic legislation establishing a $10 million reparations fund for the suburb’s African-American community.

“It’s the idea of those who’ve come before, and spoke of liberation and freedom and end to slavery. It’s their idea that we step into and enlarge, taking into consideration not only their lives but the lives of their children and their children’s children. This narrative we’re talking about has to be our sole commitment,” Glover said Wednesday.

The late U.S. Rep. John Conyers first introduced the reparations bill and re-introduced it every Congressional session. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, (D.-Texas), is new sponsor of a bill to authorize $12 million to fund a 13-member commission, co-sponsored by 64 Democrats.

A companion bill by U.S. Sen. and presidential candidate Cory Booker (D-N.J.) — the first reparations legislation ever introduced in the U.S. Senate — languishes in committee. Booker, Glover, and Coates were among those testifying in June, and the hearing forced the issue into the Democratic presidential debates.

Leaders of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA), joined Danny Glover, actor and U.N. Ambassador for the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent, at an Evanston town hall Wednesday night. They commended historic legislation passed Nov. 25 by the Evanston City Council, establishing a $10 million reparations fund for its African-American community.

Leaders of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) joined Glover in Evanston, presenting Simmons with a national award.

“We understand the expansiveness of this idea. It’s about telling the truth. If we can not tell ourselves the truth about our past, we become trapped in it. We’ve been in conversations about reparations, but action is taking place right here,” said Glover.

“The world is going to see that. Not only are they going to see that, but they will know it is possible.”