John,

Last week, Florida changed its school curriculum to require students be taught lies about Black history, including that enslaved people benefited from slavery. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis and Fox News hosts have defended this move, trying to argue that enslaved people learned useful skills.

Cori Bush responded on Twitter, stating:

“Chattel slavery wasn’t an innocent jobs program—it was a crime against humanity. Black people did not benefit from being owned, dehumanized, raped, beaten, terrorized, and killed for generations. You know who did benefit from these atrocities? The United States government.”

For centuries, the government condoned and profited off the enslavement of Black people. And our lawmakers are still tied to this horror.

A new Reuters examination found that “a fifth of the nation’s congressmen, living presidents, Supreme Court justices and governors are direct descendants of ancestors who enslaved Black people.” Most of these ancestors were among the richest 10% of Americans in 1860.^[1] Today’s powerful decision-makers have direct connections to slavery.

Please sign now if you agree: The United States has an obligation to teach the truth about our history and to repair the harm of enslaving Black people. That starts with Congress passing Cori’s Reparations Now Resolution.

The US economy was built on the backs of enslaved Africans who were forced to produce tobacco, sugar, rice, and cotton. But our government refuses to acknowledge the lasting harms of slavery and the unjust world it created for Black people.

We need to tell the truth, that slavery and discrimination have been integral to our country’s development. And we’re still living with the vestiges of slavery -- with a $14 trillion Black-white wealth gap, ongoing housing discrimination, outrageous healthcare disparities, and a so-called justice system that criminalizes and brutalizes Black people.

As the first activist from the movement for Black lives to be elected to Congress, Cori Bush advocates for the bold changes we deserve.

Her visionary Reparations Now Resolution argues why the federal government must provide reparations to descendants of enslaved Black people and people of African descent, and outlines the various forms those reparations should take.

Please sign now: We can’t let right-wing extremists whitewash slavery. Let’s support Cori Bush’s Reparations Now Resolution, which recognizes the federal government’s responsibility to fix the harms from centuries of enslaving stolen Africans who built this country’s wealth.

In solidarity,

- Team Cori

^{[1] Special Report: America's Family Secret}