IslandMix - Soca, Reggae, Zouk and Caribbean Entertainment

What do you guys think about the Judge's decision? Do you think that there is a clear argument for reparations? Share your thoughts.


Judge says no to reparations
July 7, 2005
BY NATASHA KORECKI AND FRAN SPIELMAN Staff Reporters
A federal judge Wednesday served a blow to the modern slavery reparations movement by tossing out a lawsuit asking corporations that reaped profits from slave labor to pay up.
In a 104-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle said slavery has caused "tremendous suffering and ineliminable scars," but an attempt by slave descendants to seek reparations "more than a century after the end of the Civil War and the formal abolition of slavery fails."
Norgle's decision, the second legal defeat since last year, slams the door on the case in District Court. Plaintiffs can appeal to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

The lawsuit, filed in 2002, sought to hold 17 corporations -- including JP Morgan Chase, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Loews, among others -- liable for benefits reaped from slave labor during the pre- and post-Civil War era.
Lionel Jean-Baptiste, local lead counsel to the plaintiffs, said he was bitterly disappointed and promised an appeal.
"This is only the beginning for African-American descendants of slaves who for 200 years had been forced to give their lives, their labor, their children, their culture, their religion and their traditions," Jean-Baptiste said. "There will not be any slowing down of the efforts to get these corporations to pay back what they have amassed on the backs of millions of Africans."
Lawsuit too late
But Norgle said plaintiffs in the case had to prove they were personally injured by slavery, adding that a genealogical tie to slaves is not enough to show that injury. He also ruled the lawsuit was brought too late and, citing long-standing legal doctrine, Norgle argued that a decision over reparations isn't proper for the courts. It's an issue that should be decided by the president or Congress, he said.
"Claims asserting harms against groups of long-dead victims, perpetrated by groups of long-dead wrongdoers, are particularly difficult to bring in modern American courts of law," he wrote.
Norgle said the plaintiffs failed to show that they had experienced any "concrete and particular" suffering that wasn't true of African Americans in general. He also said those suing failed to allege any conduct by the 17 defendants that personally affected any of the plaintiffs.
Conrad Worrill, chairman of the National Black United Front, denounced the ruling as the product of "conservative, right-wing, judicial, political decision-making."

Maybe they went about the suit in the wrong way. It sounds like they attempted to get personal reparations... when they should have been trying to get these companies to pay reparations to African Americans as a whole. Clearly they could not prove that they themselves have personalyy suffered from slavery... but it shouldn't be too hard to prove that African Americans in general have suffered.

yeah i agree that a reperations effort would work out better if it was done through something like innercity funding, or something else that works on a massive level affecting and supporting black communities and black community development. (community both in the sense of a physical location of a more black area, and in the sense of black unity regardless of in an innercity or not)

Well as far out who to pay it out it's should be done via Taxes since we build this b*tch!

Proof that it's affected Africans in the US simple . Look at all the broken homes we grew up in because you've destroy African culture by taking away there fathers, mothers constantly seperating us! Over the years Black families have been destroyed and we are just know starting to piece it back together!

SOMEBODY!!!!!

Get the GODDAMN Keys-------to the US Treasury:
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documen...l/mansion.html

I hear that!!

White Ruling Class MUST PAY Reparations:
http://www.inpdum.org/campaigns/tribunal/guilty.htm

I find it so ridiculous that nothing has been done about this before. I really gets me upset when they hunt down and get the jews back dey money. But now we have to prove that slavery had a lasting effect on us.

Its funny... cause in any other setting, say a murder charge, no matter how long ago the crime, if the person or persons who were responsible or part responsible can still be identified they would pay the price.

We all know why reparations won't happen. This country would be broke by the time they paid out money to millions of ancestors. They'll never go for that.They didn't give the 40 acres and a mule nearless to give some form of financial reparations.

"back to africa, thats not feasible,that's why we gotta make englan reasonable" from a tune by BLACK RADICAL.