Category Archives: Reparations

NETWORK's reparation vigil featured Reverend Traci Blackmon

NETWORK’s Reparations Vigil in Cleveland Featured Revered Traci Blackmon

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NETWORK’s Reparations Vigil in Cleveland Featured Reverend Traci Blackmon

Elissa Hackerson
June 17, 2022

NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice hosted Repair and Redress: A Vigil for Reparations (In-Person) on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at St. Aloysius – St. Agatha Parish in Cleveland, OH. People in the parish church and school community, sisters, the Cleveland NETWORK Advocates Team, justice-seekers, and NETWORK staff made a powerful stand for reparations for Black Americans and called for an H.R.40-style reparations commission by Juneteenth. NETWORK’s reparations vigil in Cleveland featured Reverend Traci Blackmon, Associate General Minister, Justice and Local Church Ministries (United Church of Christ). The United Church of Christ shared a condensed video presentation of her remarks.

Rev. Blackmon’s stirring and powerful remarks spoke to the theological call to repair a society broken by the sin of chattel slavery and the racism that has followed in its wake and addressed society’s need to atone and provide redress.  Rev. Blackmon declared that it is time to end government charity for Black people (giving fish) and deliver justice (equitable access to the lake).

The reason we have not reckoned with racism in this country–decision makers have decided that God cannot be Black, that God cannot be Brown. That God indeed must be white and therefore we have created a fractured and disabled society.Rev. Traci D. Blackmon

A classically trained violinist from Venezuela added music to the vigil.

NETWORK’s Build Anew agenda calls for a society where we all share equally in God’s abundance. For this to happen, our country’s laws, policies, and norms must:

  • Dismantle Systemic Racism
  • Cultivate Inclusive Community
  • Root Our Economy in Solidarity
  • Transform Our Politics

As Rev. Blackmon stated so clearly in her vigil remarks, “Reparations is about the church and the people and the society moving from charity to justice. Moving from hand out to hand up. Moving from simply offering to give someone a fish to giving them access to the lake so they can fish for themselves.”


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Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis Delivers Keynote Speech at H.R.40 Policy Update _share_credit Beatrice De Gea

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis Delivers Keynote Speech at H.R.40 Policy Update

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Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis Delivers Keynote Speech at H.R.40 Policy Update

Elissa Hackerson
June 8, 2022

On June 1, 2022, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice hosted a webinar to educate and mobilize advocates about an H.R.40-style federal reparations committee to study the impact of slavery — and the racist policies and laws that were created in its wake. NETWORK Staff was joined by Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister for Public Theology and Transformation at Middle Collegiate Church in New York City. Rev. Lewis delivered a keynote speech that positioned reparations in a scriptural, theological framework for over 300 webinar attendees.

Rev. Lewis’s reflection zoomed in on human history with examples of humans capturing and conquering God’s people. And she challenged the ideology that some people deserve access to freedom and liberty more than others. She asserted that the ideology of whiteness has broken Black people, baptized the Holocaust, and broke Indigenous people. Reparations will bring healing, and we who have followed a Jewish rabbi into a world of faith seek repair.

Repairers of the Breach

Rev. Lewis began her remarks with scripture as a frame, choosing a beautiful call to the kind of worship, fasting and feast that God wants in Isaiah 58.  “A call to be different kinds of faithful people. A call to Israel then, and to us now, to fix what’s broken in the world…to heal the world. When we do this, God says our names will be changed. We will be called repairers of the breach, restorers of streets to live in.”

Why Reparations?

“Because we have participated, friends, in the breaking of the covenant with God. In the breaking of God’s design, in the dismantling of God’s hope and dream for us. And, I’m not talking about what happened in the Garden [of Eden] where Adam and Eve disobey and eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

Sacrifice Honors God’s Creation

Rev. Lewis goes on to share that from our Biblical origin story until today, our human desire to be like God, to make a world with God, has been corrupted along the way. White supremacists have imposed their worldview and ideology in a biased way, subduing God’s people.

We are to fast, worship, welcome the outsider, feed the hungry, clothe the naked…not hold onto ideology and a sense of supremacy. This connection to repair and connection to God is the healing and reparations required to “restore the created order” and realize that everyone has enough in “God’s economy.”