Reparations United’s Defense of Evanston’s Restorative Housing Program

by Kamm Howard, Executive Director

On May 23rd, the organization Judicial Watch “filed a class action lawsuit against Evanston, Illinois, on behalf of six [non-Black] individuals over the city’s use of race as an eligibility requirement for a reparations program…” 

The lawsuit suggests that Evanston’s Restorative Housing Program – ERHP is a race-based claim to address “societal discrimination” that happened 5 decades ago. And as such, it is unconstitutional. 

Reparations United holds that not only is this untrue, but also holds the lawsuit  should be dismissed outright. 

Many movement regulars know that every chance I get, I stress that we moved into a new era of reparations activism globally – the era of reparations enforcement – coming out of the  2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, WCAR, held in Durban, South Africa.

The participating nations at WCAR concluded in their outcome document  – the Durban Declaration and Program of Action DDPA, that the Transatlantic Slave Trade, slavery (enslavement), apartheid (euphemistically referred to as Jim Crow segregation in America) and colonialism were crimes against humanity.

As a global shift in the movement, now our reparations claims would be based on the internationally recognized crimes of enslavement,  apartheid, and colonialism. 

Reparations United holds that the Evanston Restorative Housing Program is a crime-based claim for apartheid housing policies,  and as these acts were crimes against humanity, and, as there is demonstrated continued impact of  these crimes, the City of Evanston is proper to redress those crimes and its continued impact with the Restorative Housing Program.

With crimes against humanity, three categories are examined: 1) Category of crimes – genocide, enslavement, apartheid, torture, systematic rape, displacement, etc. 2) Category of perpetrators/offenders – governments, soldiers, leaders, corporations, institutions, etc. And 3) Category of victims – civilians, women and children, ethnicities, prisoners of war, territorial victims, etc.

The Restorative Housing Program rests firmly on the crime of apartheid housing policies. 

The Restorative Housing Program recognizes the City of Evanston as the offending party. 

The Restorative Housing Program named those eligible as territorial victims – residents of a particular area of  the City of Evanston from 1919-1969 and their descendants.  

The City of Evanston created a zone of victimization – a clearly demarcated area, red-lined on city maps, where-by they’d engage their  apartheid housing crimes. That zone was in the 5th ward. The fact that a particular ethnic group lived there, and that they moved others of that same ethnicity to the red-lined zone of criminality was a criterion of choice of the City of Evanston.

For the ERHP, victimization of the crime and continued impact of the crime is the basis of the redress (not race) and thus it is victimization that automatically and specifically determines eligibility. Those who were not housed in the red-lined zone have no eligibility for redress – not because they are not of the same ethnicity as the lawsuit suggests, but because their ancestors  did not reside nor were forcefully moved to the City of Evanston’s designated area of apartheid housing policies.  No victimization, no eligibility.

Also, Judicial Watch argues that the City of Evanston did not show that there was a violation of a law that existed at the time. This is another way of saying the apartheid laws were legal at the time.  I would suggest three forms of  thought that counter this argument: ongoing and continuing character, dynamic interpretation, and flawed law. 

Evanston’s apartheid housing policy, although ended in 1969, must be seen as a “continuing act, having a “continuing character,” i.e., continuing impact upon current Evanstonians and/or their descendants who were the victims of those policies. 

Still today, housing values are lower in the 5th Ward, mortgages are more difficult to obtain, interest rates are usually higher, credit scores lower, insurance and other related housing services are more costly, wealth was not passed equally to heirs, etc.,  not because of race but because of the historic location of the zone of criminality. 

Another area of thought is that of “dynamic interpretation.” That is that laws have to be interpreted in accordance with current understanding  of the relevant terms, “especially if these terms were general whose meaning has evolved over time.” 

Jim Crow was not just a system of social segregation  or simply “societal discrimination” or “an amorphous concept of injury,” as named in the lawsuit, but apartheid –a criminal system of terror, murder, plunder, labor theft, wealth extraction, wealth prevention, dignity crushing, knowledge depriving, and other social, economic, and political limiting and debilitating practices backed by life and liberty-threatening force of the state – in this case the City of Evanston.

The “flawed law’ concept also comes into play when enslavement and apartheid acts are said to have been legal at the time. Flawed laws “ qualify as non-laws.” Law, for it to be law, must have been “established to serve justice.” 

The laws of enslavement and apartheid were, on the contrary, established to create an unjust, violent and terror- backed social, economic, and political order, in conjunction with, denying justice to those it victimized. Thus, all the “slave” codes, Black codes, court decisions, (Plessey Vs. Ferguson) congressional acts (Fugitive Slave Act), and yes red-lining laws, etc., must be seen as flawed law and thus, non-law. 

The Restorative Housing Program, in effect, asserts that crimes against humanity – apartheid housing policies, were committed, there is continued impact of those crimes, and thus, reparations or remedial action is obligatory.

In any event, until this is argued in the court, or dismissed outright, we must all counter the false assertion that we are pursuing race-based claims for reparations. Because, in fact, we are not. Evanston did not.  

We must  forcefully declare, as the international community did in Durban, Evanston has, and we are, continuing to pursue crime-based remedy for the egregious crimes (enslavement and apartheid) committed against our ancestors, as well as ongoing neo-apartheid crimes that continue to negatively impact us today. The lawsuit should be thrown out on its face! As well as those who wrote it! 

*Author’s Note. I do not represent myself as a lawyer or someone legally defending or working with any one legally defending the City of Evanston. I consider myself a reparations expert/scholar/activist/organizer with extensive praxis regarding reparations and international law. 

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1 www.judicialwatch.org/reparations/
2 Reparations is a Human Right; The 21 st Century Reparations Paradigm. A paper I delivered at the 8 th Pan African
Congress held in Johannesburg, South Africa. 2014
3 193 other nations voted in favor. Four did not. The United States and Israel walked out, and Cananda and Australia
abstained.
4 Bassiouni, M Cherif. Crimes Against Humanity. 2011. Cambridge University Pesss. New York. “Crimes against
humanity are the most egregious crimes a government can commit against a civilian population.”
Crimes against humanity have no statute of limitation, meaning that the offending  parties, if they still exist, can be
brought to justice at any time, even if the crimes were committed centuries ago. Judicial Watch repeatedly calls
attention to the 50-100 year claim in the Evanston Restorative Housing Program.
5 Ibid,. Bassiouni, M Cherif.
6 In Laying the Foundation for Local Reparations, the chapter entitled, Framing the Demand for Local Reparations –
Genocide, Plunder, and Apartheid, I indicated that all local reparations efforts should and could use these
international terms to base their demand and exactly express the extreme nature of the crimes and continued impact
of those crimes facing the Black community.
7 Henning Grosse Ruse -. Envisioning Reparations: Historical and Comparative Approaches: Applying past laws to
ongoing wrongs? An analysis of the limits of inter-temporality. 28-30 September 2022 Khan Faculty of Law, Cambridge
University
8 Ibid. Henning Gross Ruse
9 Ibid. Henning Gross Ruse.
10 Continuing impact is a main element in securing redress. In making our demands, we must be clear in expressing
continued impact from the crimes of enslavement, apartheid and neo-apartheid.
11 Many books now detail the continued harmful impact of government apartheid housing policies. Color of Law,
Redline Culture, Thick Red Line, and Race For Profit are just a few.
12 Ibid. Henning Gross Ruse
13 Ibid. Henning Gross Ruse
14 Ibid. Henning Gross Ruse It is well-settle law, statuary and customary, that there is a both a moral and legal
obligation to redress crimes against humanity,
15 Robertson. Geoffrey. Crimes Against Humanity. 1999. The New Press., New York “ the widespread and systematic
commission of the most severe atrocities … a crime so heinous that it is deemed to be committed not just against its
victims but against all humanity, then all of humanity has an interest – indeed, a duty – to see it remedied.
16 Neo-apartheid is a term coined by this author to represent the post-1968 period of Black life in America This is a
period of continued acts of systemic terror, violence, plunder, and gross inequity in resources allocation, rights and
privileges experienced by Black Americans. Wide disparities are the experienced result of this separate development,
which are the evidence of apartheid. Because it is not the de jure apartheid of pre-1968, but as brilliantly expressed by
Tom Burrell, “Blacks are on the bottom of every good list in America, and on the top of every bad list,” it is said to be
a new form of apartheid – neo-apartheid. Existing disparities have widened and new ones developed post- 1968.