Where do state reparations bills actually stand heading into the 2026 midterms, not the headlines, the real bill counts? Host Mark Stevenson of It’s Culture Podcast brought on Chris Lodgson of California’s CJEC and Tamara Johnson-Shealey of Georgia’s Reparations Sunday to compare notes across states, and the numbers tell a…
Category: Policy & Legislation
Bills, commissions, and task forces at the federal, state, and local levels. Legislative progress and challenges.
Policy & Legislation
Dreisen Heath on the Real Reason Reparations Stalled
Why has federal reparations legislation stalled for nearly two decades despite having the votes to pass? Reparations strategist Dreisen Heath joined The Joy Reid Show to break down the reparations movement setbacks that have repeatedly derailed HR 40, and the organizing plan to revive it during Black August. The Apology…
Policy & Legislation
Washington Becomes First State Party to Back Reparations Implementation
The Washington State Democratic Party became the first state party in the country to formally back reparations implementation, not just study, when more than 1,000 delegates voted unanimously to adopt the language during the party’s statewide convention in Spokane over Juneteenth weekend. The updated platform states the party supports “both…
News
Alameda County Approves Reparations Action Plan
On Tuesday, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to accept a sweeping 170-page Reparations Action Plan and to establish a permanent standing committee to oversee its implementation. The plan does not include direct cash payments for most residents. Instead, it targets systemic inequities through 44 phased policy recommendations…
Illinois Reparations Commission
The DOJ Is Moving Against Evanston’s Reparations Program by using the 14th Amendment and the Fair Housing Act.
The first municipal reparations program in United States history is under legal challenge. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice — through its Civil Rights Division — has moved to intervene in a lawsuit challenging Evanston, Illinois’ Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program. The DOJ argues that directing housing assistance and…
Policy & Legislation
The Next 250 Years Cannot Look Like the Last. Equity Week on Capitol Hill Demands Repair.
During Equity Week on Capitol Hill, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) hosted a press conference calling on Congress to advance reparative justice legislation for communities of color who bear the disproportionate burden of this nation’s institutional social, racial, and economic inequities. Speakers included Congresswoman Summer Lee (PA-12), Dreisen Heath (reparations organizer),…
Books
My 111-Year-Old Client Will Be in Line: Damario Solomon-Simmons on the Tulsa Race Massacre, Reparations, and the 1776 Fund Precedent
Angela Rye’s latest SoloPod opens with two voting rights victories — federal courts rejecting racially gerrymandered maps in both Alabama and South Carolina — then pivots to a conversation with attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons, founder of Justice for Greenwood, legal counsel for the last living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre,…