A group of 12 survivors of police abuse or discrimination began receiving $1,000 payments this week as part of a first-in-the-nation programme providing a guaranteed income to victims of law enforcement racism.
The programme, which provides the group $1,000-a-month payments for a year, was founded via a $1m donation from Leroy and Gracie Close of South Carolina, who descend from a prominent member of the slave trade, whose family then established a large textile fortune.
“For 30 years, our great, great, great grandfather John Springs III would travel annually to Maryland or Virginia to purchase 40 human beings at a time, separating them from their families, and marching them South in chains and ropes,” the Closes wrote in a recent Newsweek op-ed about the project.
“For us, the benefits of slavery have not ended. They are a very real part of our day-to-day lives. The institution of slavery allows us to have high incomes without having to work. It allows us the luxury of feeling secure in our lives,” they added.
“In contrast, the descendants of the people owned by our ancestors have had the opposite experience. Many experience poverty, and all experience structural racism, especially those in the South.”
The initiative targets individuals who have personally experienced racist policing that descends from the deeper history of slavery in America, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, a partner in the project.
Grantees include multiple Louisiana women who received excessive treatment from the police.
One was improperly arrested in 2020 in Gretna, Lousiana, after complaining that attendees at a courthouse weren’t observing Covid guidelines.
Another woman in Jefferson Parish was searched and intimidated by police that same year by officers who did not have a warrant.
The guaranteed income project, which also comes with optional counselling, career support, and financial literacy courses, is a part of the Louisiana ACLU’s Truth and Reconciliation Project, a project studying ways to transfer wealth from descendants of enslavers to those oppressed by vestiges of slavery.
“The excitement around the program’s launch is truly infectious,” Melody Parker, Truth and Reconciliation project manager, said in a statement. “Witnessing the transformative power it holds and the resilience it ignites within participants to continue dreaming is not just inspiring, but a testament to the importance of initiatives like this one that address historical harm through the radical redistribution of resources.”
