“The Verdict Is In: Reparations Now!” is a collection of personal and empirical testimonies delivered at the first World Tribunal on Reparations for African People, held in 1982 in Brooklyn, New York.
A panel of international judges heard two days of testimony from the likes of Dr. Leonard Jeffries, then-Chairman of the Black Studies Department at City College of the City University of New York; Job Mashariki, then-President of Black Veterans for Social Justice; Afeni Shakur, member of the Panther 21 and mother of Tupac Shakur; Ebun Adelona, noted health care advocate; Eric Adams, present-day mayor of NYC; Kwame Braithwaite, acclaimed photojournalist; and Mafundi Lake, Alabama political prisoner.
Basing their findings on U.N. charters, the judges concluded that the United States government owed Black people $4.1 trillion in reparations for 400 years of stolen labor.
In indicting the U.S., the judges of the Tribunal agreed that “irrefutable evidence has been brought before this Tribunal to indict the U.S. government without a shadow of a doubt.” And that in addition to the monetary amount owed, the “United States’ treatment of Africans in the U.S. represents a serious enough breach of the United Nations’ Human Rights Charter to justify eviction of the United States from the United Nations.”
Never before in recorded history has the U.S. government been on trial, let alone found in violation of the Human Rights Charter when it comes to its historical and current conduct with Black people.
For the next 40+ years, the Reparations Tribunal convenors, led by African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela have incorporated the reparations demand into Black community struggles against police violence, unjust imprisonment, denial of decent housing and healthcare, poor education and for Black Power around the world.
Today, the results of that effort can be seen in state and municipal reparations bills and programs throughout the U.S. as well as new reparations studies and demands from African activists and heads of state internationally.
At the same time, the 1982 Reparations Tribunal’s People’s Advocate and editor of “The Verdict Is In,” Chairman Omali Yeshitela, has been indicted by the U.S. government in 2023 on widely-denounced federal charges of acting as a Russian agent for his work advocating for Black reparations.
“The Verdict Is In: Reparations Now!” sheds light on an early effort to investigate and document the legitimacy and legal basis for the reparations demand, while exposing the fallacy of the U.S. government’s charges of a Russian influence as instigator of the movement for Black reparations.
According to the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), “Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the Uhuru Movement are major contributors to developing the national and international Black Reparations Movement.”
“The Verdict Is In: Reparations Now!” is now available at TheBurningSpear.store or at Amazon.com.
