Public Comments to the City Council of Philadelphia regarding Resolution №210144

February 25, 2021

Nina Ahmad, Ph.D., Philadelphia National Organization for Women (NOW)

Good Morning. I would like to thank the Honorable Council President Darrell Clarke and City Council Members for the opportunity to provide Public comments in support of Resolution 210144 calling on Congress to pass the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.

My name is Dr. Nina Ahmad, and I am representing the Philadelphia chapter of the National Organization for Women -NOW. As the grassroots arm of the women’s movement, NOW is dedicated to its multi-issue and multi-strategy approach to women’s rights and is the largest organization of feminist grassroots activists in the United States.

I thank Council Member Kenyatta Johnson and all the co-sponsors for introducing this much needed resolution. NOW condemns the racism that inflicts a double burden of race and sex discrimination on women of color. Seeing human rights as indivisible, we are committed to identifying and fighting against those barriers to equality and justice that are imposed by racism.

A necessary step to permanently dismantling systemic racism is to acknowledge the promise of “40 acres and a Mule” that was never honored. Imagine how profoundly different the history of race relations in the United States would have been had this policy been implemented and enforced; had the formerly enslaved actually had access to the ownership of land, of property; if they had had a chance to build, accrue and pass on wealth. Today the barriers to wealth building still exist and as H.R. 40 states: “Following a year where racial injustice was at the forefront of national conversation, continued actions need to be taken in order for the federal government to begin to make amends for the historic state-sponsored oppression and violence against Black people, and the decades of systemic, institutional racial discrimination that followed”.

We also want to underscore a woman’s rights in this matter of reparations because there are some parts of slavery that Black women bore alone. The lack of significant data pertaining to the practice of exploiting the sexual vulnerability and reproductive capacity of enslaved women have led to African American women to yet to acquire a coherent legal doctrine with which to address the modern manifestations of the enslaved woman’s sexual and reproductive abuse (Note 1). We are requesting that analysis of the effects of enslaved women’s sexual and reproductive abuse be studied and there be an incorporation of reproductive oppression into the modern reparations for slavery movement in the United States. Philadelphia NOW held a Town Hall on Reparations on December 6, 2020 to discuss Reparations and support H.R. 40. We can make a recording available if requested.

We are requesting Council to pass this resolution. I thank you all for your attention.

(Note 1) Bridgewater, P. (2005). Ain’t I a Slave: Slavery Reproductive Abuse, and Reparations. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6vt8x3jj