A short walk from the Mississippi River in New Orleans’ Bywater neighbourhood, there is a 30,000 square-foot cultural landmark called StudioBe. Larger than life murals by artist Brandan ‘BMike’ Odums line the space, honouring legends in the movement for Black liberation: Albert Woodfox, Fannie Lou Hamer, the New Orleans Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, and others.
A huge painting of Black men and women erecting an American flag hangs on the back wall. Beneath them, a question: “What do we build on the ashes of a nightmare?” Though in Louisiana, the nightmare remains ever-present. It has not yet turned to ash.
In January 2024, Jeff Landry was sworn in as Governor of Louisiana, and his first order of business was to call a special session on crime for the Louisiana Legislature. Within three months of his inauguration, 20 years-worth of hard-fought incremental reforms were rolled back, and then some.
The state legislature made it easier to send children to adult prisons, added gassing to the state’s execution methods, increased the amount of time served for most felony convictions, and eliminated parole for new offenses, ensuring unpaid prison labour remains a core pillar of Louisiana’s economy. To top it all off, last year they criminalised being within 25 feet of a policer officer under certain circumstances. This directly chills our right (under the First Amendment) to record police violence.
We are in a war against the state for our lives. From 2019 to the end of 2024, I worked for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana, part of a nationwide network that’s been fighting to advance people’s rights since 1920. The ACLU of Louisiana’s committed staff and supporters are working tirelessly to end mass incarceration and immigrant detention, protect voting rights, and hold police accountable for unconstitutional actions against Black and brown people.
But despite how dire the situation is, we must remember to occasionally step back from the fight and ask ourselves: what will we build on the ashes of this nightmare? This is our great challenge and our great opportunity. We can’t just react. We must also imagine and work towards a democracy that all our children deserve.
Last year, 12 people helped the ACLU Louisiana to imagine that world. These 12 people took part in the pilot guaranteed income programme, which provided $1,000 a month to survivors of racist and unconstitutional policing in Jefferson and Caddo Parishes over one year. The money itself has its origins in the slave trade. It has been donated by descendants of those traders as part of our truth and reconciliation programme.
We’ve seen that money, and the care that comes along with it, bring about extraordinary transformations. We hope this is just the beginning.
Transferring wealth to heal old harms
New Orleans was once home to the largest slave port in the country, where 135,000 men, women and children were bought and sold to labour to their deaths. The ships from Africa arrived at Algiers Point, a neighbourhood across the Mississippi River from New Orleans’ famed French Quarter. Those who had survived the hellish journey were held in pens, before crossing the river to be sold.
The siblings hoped to take steps towards reconciling past harms from their family’s participation in the institution of slavery
In mid-2023, Gracie and Leroy Close, white siblings in their late 60s and early 70s, spent the day with Leon Waters, a historian, and the ACLU Louisiana under the unrelenting summer sun. Waters took the siblings on a historical tour of these sites, sharing stories and information about Louisiana’s brutal history.
This wasn’t just history for the Closes, it was family history. Leroy and Gracie’s ancestors played a significant role in the South Carolina slave trade in the mid-1800s, and they continue to receive financial benefit from the profits of that trade to this day. Waters’ tour concluded the Closes’ 18-month effort to learn about that history. The journey they went on led them to fund our guaranteed income pilot programme.
Through their donation, the siblings hoped to take steps towards reconciling past harms from their family’s participation in the institution of slavery, and its legacy of institutionalised police violence.
The Closes’ donation and ACLU Louisiana’s truth and reconciliation pilot offer one response to the call for reparations that followed emancipation nearly 200 years ago. Reparations processes address contemporary inequalities through restitution (return of property, rights, and legal status) and compensation to a group for past harms. Under the United Nations’ framework, reparative justice encompasses rehabilitation, satisfaction (i.e. public acknowledgement), and the guarantee of non-repetition. The truth and reconciliation pilot was designed to apply these principles.
From despair to hope
Not too far from the old slave markets of the French Quarter, Hope Davis tends to her garden of okra, watermelon, corn, courgettes, peppers and tomatoes. This is the home she moved into after sleeping under a bridge in her car for 18 months. It’s also the base from which she organises residents of her former housing project to fight against the local housing authority, which chose to board up the building and displace the residents of its 200 units rather than fix the life-threatening mould inside.
Hope was one of the 12 people participating in ACLU Louisiana’s guaranteed income programme. Like the other recipients, she suffered abuse in an area where police misconduct against Black people has made national headlines for decades. Hope was arrested at Gretna’s municipal court after raising concerns about the lack of Covid-19 safety measures while waiting to enter. A police officer overheard her comments, ordered her to leave, and arrested her when she refused. She was taken to Jefferson Parish Correctional Center, where she was held for several hours in a cell where there was an active raw sewage leak and nowhere sanitary for her to sit.
For Hope, the guaranteed income programme offered more than simply money. “I really felt like I had a family member on my side and like somebody actually cared,” she said. The programme has offered Hope and the other participants access to free mental health counselling to address the severe post-traumatic stress disorder that nearly all of them have experienced. It also offered expungement services, support to pay off fines and fees, financial literacy courses and individual coaching through partnerships.
ACLU Louisiana launched this guaranteed income programme in December 2023. After just one month of receiving the income, participants reported a 20% increase in overall life satisfaction. By the end of the programme the percentage of participants who reported being able to cover household costs, such as appliances and phone bills, rose from 8% to 45%; the average number of days without stable housing fell by 85%; and the percentage of participants who could afford healthcare more than doubled, going from 16% to 36%.
Other, more difficult to quantify benefits have also flowed from this support.
Gayl Payton, an elderly woman who witnessed the police beating her daughter at her grandchildren’s home, finally got her driving license back. She spends more time with her grandchildren now that she can travel again. Phil Anthony, who became a first-time homeowner just before the programme launched, was able to continue to pay his mortgage after being unjustly fired from his job. And our participants have said they plan to vote in the next election, some of them for the first time.
The good news is clear: civic engagement and participation in our democracy can only be achieved when we care for and invest in our communities. ACLU Louisiana's programme of truth, reconciliation, wealth transfer and healing is a template for reparations and reparative justice that can and should be scaled up and replicated across the South. The fire may still be blazing, but we’re already sowing seeds for the future.
Explore the feature so far
- Why the US needs basic income as reparations for racial injustice
Nika Soon-Shiong - As we fight for our lives in the South, reparations offer hope
Maggy Baccinelli - Prison labour: the last stronghold of slavery in the US
Bianca Tylek - The US is built on stolen labour. It’s time to settle the debt
Richard Wallace - Reparations for racial injustice: Black fathers must be first in line
Kamm Howard - Why we’re giving incarcerated women cash relief
Andrea James
Maggy Baccinelli is the executive director of the Louisiana Alliance, focused on building a multiracial and multigenerational movement for civic engagement and voting in Louisiana. Prior to her new appointment, she worked at ACLU of Louisiana as director of philanthropy and community investment for five years, and led the organisation’s truth and reconciliation programme.
