The shared revenue bill just signed into law in Wisconsin follows a scary trend of state governments undermining the authority and independence of local governments across the country. Not only does this stripping of power silence the voices of the politicians and leaders closest to the communities most impacted by local government, but these attacks have also almost exclusively targeted cities with high populations of communities of color and queer people.

2023 Wisconsin Act 12 would remove many decision-making powers from Milwaukee’s decision-makers. After the majority white state legislature debated stripping Milwaukee’s leaders of their authority over the past few months, it’s important to note that for the first time in state history, four of the most influential decision-makers in Milwaukee’s City and County government come from Black and Brown communities. More importantly, this bill will force local governments to hand over their power to politicians in Madison, allowing them to impose their will on Milwaukee and override the discretion of elected officials at the city level. All throughout the negotiations, leaders in the state legislature demonstrated that they were trying to hold Milwaukee hostage. They would only give Milwaukee the resources it needed to survive if the city handed power over to them. 

Restrictions on local governments across the country

What’s happening in Milwaukee isn’t unique. Houston, St. Louis, Jackson, and other cities this year have either had their local authority stripped or attacked by their state legislature in 2023. The Texas legislature recently passed a bill preventing cities and counties from passing or enforcing any local policy that exceeds the minimum requirements set by state laws. Previously under Texas Law, the  “Home Rule Amendment: gave large, diverse cities like Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio the power to self-govern as long as their local laws didn’t conflict with state law. The new bill will undermine the previous local control of Texas’s most diverse cities. More blatantly racist, The Texas Education Agency will also take control of the Houston Independent School District, undemocratically ousting the elected Black, Latinx, and women leaders of the district with a population of nearly 90 percent students of color.

St. Louis, like Houston, had its local control attacked this year when the primarily white Missouri State Legislature attempted to place the St. Louis Police Department under state control. This would’ve removed local communities and elected officials' power to hold their local police department accountable and maintain control of it. 

A similar situation happened in Jackson, Mississippi, the state’s capital city, where Black people make up more than 82% of the population. The Mississippi State Legislature passed a bill to establish a separate court system for parts of Jackson, with judges appointed by the state chief justice and the area under the system’s jurisdiction patrolled by a state-run police force. These attacks on local criminal justice system control are highly undemocratic and racist. Purposefully or not, removing the power of communities and their elected officials in cities that are disproportionately Black and other communities of color is racist. 

Attacks on Milwaukee

State lawmakers from across the state should not have the power to impose their policy views on cities made up of communities of Black and Brown people. Allowing state lawmakers and voters from other districts across the state to influence the local matters of a city they do not live in strips the power of the communities inside the city to govern themselves. 

Why should lawmakers who never set foot in Milwaukee have more influence than local leaders who live, work, raise a family and serve the city daily? Limiting a city’s ability to govern itself suppresses residents' voices and makes political representation at the local level less meaningful. In cities like Milwaukee, this results in silencing Black and Brown residents, whose concerns are often overlooked. Milwaukee is the economic engine of the state of Wisconsin, and it is in everyone’s best interest to protect the stability, autonomy, and growth of the city. Part of that is allowing the communities that know and live in Milwaukee to lead it.

Once dismissed by many as impractical, the quest for reparations for the descendants of African people enslaved in the United States is now being embraced as a legitimate concept to be taken seriously. The remedy is not only being sought to address harms from the enslavement era, but also for lingering impacts which manifest today. The illegal kidnapping, cultural assault, and nearly 300 years of forced free labor, followed by 100 years of convict leased labor, Black codes, sharecropping, the peonage system, lynchings, mass murders, systemic racism, Jim Crow, gerrymandering, redlining, educational inequities, health disparities and mass incarceration, still reverberate within the collective genes of Black people in this country.

These harms were multi-faceted; thus, remedies must be as well. Indeed, reparations can be fashioned in as many ways as necessary to equitably address the countless manifestations of injustice emanating from America’s original sin.

Credit:

Bryan Dozier/Shutterstock

Talk of reparations is no longer fringe, but now front and center. There are multitudes of faith organizations, sororities and fraternities, professional and social justice groups and civil and human rights organizations working to advance reparations. Support for federal reparations legislation is escalating under the leadership of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who has generated more co-sponsors to H.R. 40 than ever in history. President Biden must take heed and expeditiously bring its objectives into existence via executive order.

Rep. Cori Bush has also recently introduced a comprehensive Reparations NOW resolution that addresses issues of systemic inequality. California passed legislation establishing a state-wide commission to study and develop reparations proposals, and has issued a comprehensive report for consideration. Cities across the country are establishing commissions and task forces, looking into abuses in their own backyards.

Leaders across the country are taking notice: The U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Players Coalition of professional athletes, coaches and owners across leagues, Amalgamated Bank, and many more have picked up the banner to endorse reparations. White allied groups are also committed to truth-telling. Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream has issued a call to corporations to collectively use their power and privilege to reckon with the past.

The Virginia and Princeton theological seminaries are addressing reparations, and dioceses of the Episcopal Church in several jurisdictions have committed financial restitution as a moral acknowledgment of the church’s historic complicity. The financial backers of many of the country’s top universities were wealthy slave owners, an ugly truth that can no longer be pushed aside. Georgetown University, which stands today because of the sale of Black people owned by its founding Jesuits, has announced a $100 million commitment towards a foundation for descendants of those that saved the university from bankruptcy. Harvard University has dedicated $100 million to begin to atone for its extensive ties to enslavement and perpetuation of racial inequality. And in Virginia, a reparations bill was passed by the state legislature in 2021 that targets five schools with ties to slavery, including the University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary, all of whom owe their foundational success to the forced labor of enslaved human beings who helped build and run the institutions in their early days.

Caskets are opening across the country, revealing burgeoning evidence of racial atrocities, lynchings, and massacres. Past damages are being uncovered and redressed: In California, the state has acknowledged the governmental theft of the lucrative Black-owned Bruce’s Beach property, and passed legislation to return it to its rightful owners. There are current efforts for redress from Ocoee, Florida’s 1920 election day bloodbath, and the 1919 terrorism that ravaged Elaine, Arkansas’ Black community.

The land housing the unimaginable horrors of Atlanta’s Chattahoochee Brick Company, which perpetuated slavery through convict leasing, is being reclaimed by the people, and displaced families in Palm Springs, California are seeking compensation and atonement for the callous razing and eviction of an entire community.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, renewed litigation is underway to achieve reparatory justice for the violent massacre of Black Wall Street. Recommendations from the commission formed in 2000 and charged with investigating the 1898 racial insurrection and coup d’état in Wilmington, North Carolina still await passage by the legislature. In 2019, remnants from the slave ship Clotilda were discovered, which in 1860 illegally transported Africans to Mobile Bay, Alabama — more than 50 years after the slave trade was abolished. Today, their descendants are exploring amends.

The role that federal, state, and local governments; corporations, industries, religious institutions, educational institutions, private estates, and other entities played in supporting the institution of slavery and its living legacies can no longer be ignored, dismissed, or swept under the rug. It’s a new day, with new energy and new possibilities. The fruit that we see today emanated from historic seeds that were planted and watered for generations. Reparations is no longer a stretch of the imagination or an unattainable goal but, very likely, a reality, and achievable in our lifetime.

The Supreme Court issued a landmark victory for tribal sovereignty by rejecting all the constitutional challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in Brackeen v. Haaland, requiring state courts to make active efforts to protect Native children and keep Native families together. Congress passed ICWA in 1978 to address the nationwide crisis of state child welfare agencies tearing Native children from their families and placing them in non-Native homes, in an attempt to force Native children to assimilate and adopt white cultural norms.

Since 1978, 14 states have passed their own state ICWA laws to strengthen the implementation of all aspects of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Now that the Supreme Court has reaffirmed ICWA, it is time for states to take action and pass their own state laws building on the protections in the federal law. The map below shows where states have already enacted such state laws.

Fighting to Keep Native Families Together
Wisconsin enacted a state ICWA in 2009 to protect Native children and recognize placement preferences created by tribal governments. Residents of states without an ICWA law on the books can email your state representatives and urge them to pass or update their state ICWAs.

Along with essential procedural protections, the federal ICWA created a placement preference to promote the stability and security of Native American tribes and families. For any adoption of a Native child under state law, preference must be given to placements with: (1) a member of the child’s extended family; (2) other members of the Native child’s tribe; or (3) families from other Native American tribes. The majority of state ICWA laws incorporate identical or near-identical placement preference language as the federal ICWA, with a few exceptions. For example, some states prioritize placements with families of other Native American tribes that are of similar cultures to the Native child, while other states create a fourth preference for non-Native families that are committed to maintaining the child’s connection to their tribe and culture.