Planet Money - DIY Reparations

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Some Vermonters were tired of waiting around for reparations. So they decided to take matters into their own hands. | This episode was produced with our friends at Invisibilia. Check out their new season here.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Planet Money from NPR. Quick warning, today's podcast contains explicit language. Moira Smith is a college student at the University of Vermont. I would describe myself as beautiful, brown. I'm 5'3 1⁄2". I have brown eyes. She grew up in Virginia, but came to Burlington in 2018. Moira is Black, and in Vermont, that seemed to matter more than it had before. It feels like being like a flamingo or, what is that animal? Like a peacock.

You know, everywhere you go, like, people stare at you. Then, two years after she got there, the pandemic hit. Classes were canceled. Moira lost all three of the jobs she had been using to support herself. The delicately balanced lives of the people around her began to tip towards poverty. Friends lost their jobs, too. One friend even had to move in with her. And then, Black people started getting killed in this very public way. The man was face down on the street, handcuffed. He repeatedly told the officer he could not breathe.

Protests tonight in several cities, including Denver, Columbus. It all hit Moira really hard. It just reminded me of Trayvon Martin. I was just like, why does this keep happening? And I was just so angry and so hurt and really distraught during a pandemic and then also dealing with racism. People in Vermont did respond to what was happening. After George Floyd was killed, there were protests in Burlington where Moira was. But something about those protests just felt off to Moira.

There was, like, so many white people there, but I just felt like they were there to be there. Like, they weren't, like, really active. Like there. Like they weren't like really active. Like they weren't really like passionate. They were just there because it was like the cool thing to do. For Moira, the protests weren't enough. She saw all these problems around her, not just the police violence, but also how Black people were being hit by COVID and unemployment. Plus, all the stuff that was happening long before 2020, centuries of economic oppression.

Moira thought, there has to be a bigger and better solution than just protests. Someone has to pay for what has been done, and someone has to pay for what's still going on. And I'm like, we deserve reparations. we deserve reparations. Reparations, by which Moira meant compensation to Black people for slavery and for all the harm and inequity that came after it all the way up to the present day. Usually when we talk about reparations,

we think of it as the government's responsibility. But Moira figured, who needs the government when you have a cell phone? I texted the people that I knew and I was like, is it okay? I'm going to create a reparations list. Is it okay if I put your information on there? Moira decided she was going to do it. She was going to bring reparations to Vermont. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Kia Miyakunatis.

And I'm Keith Romer. And Kia, you are one of the brand new hosts of the fantastic NPR podcast, Invisibilia. Welcome to Planet Money. Thanks for having me, Keith. Thank you for coming and giving us the show. And Kia, you are going to take it from here with a version of the story that you reported for Invisibilia. Yeah. Today on the show, the story of what happens when Moira and some of her friends try to collect reparations in Vermont. some of her friends try to collect reparations in Vermont. What starts as a simple text message evolves into a statewide social experiment involving lots of Vermonters,

lots of cash, and lots of uncomfortable feelings. When Moira sent around that text to her friends asking to start a reparations list, she got some quick responses. Fuck yeah, we have time for that, you know? That's Moira's friend, Jas. My name's Jas Wheeler. I'm fat. I'm trans. I'm from like a working poor background.

Together, Jas and Moira created a small list of the Black people they knew in Vermont with their cash apps and PayPal so people could send them money directly, and then opened it up to any Black person in the community so they could add their names to the list too. They decided to put it on Facebook and called it Wealth Redistribution for Black People in Vermont. Included with that post was a direct call to action from Jass's wife, Lucy. Lucy's letter to white people. If you are white and trying to understand how to be, in quotes, helpful, slash engaged,

supportive, not completely co-signing white supremacy in all areas of your life, one of the easiest, i.e. the bare fucking minimum, ways to support Black life, Black joy, Black safety, Black community is to give your money to Black people. Lucy is white. In the letter, she's trying to push people outside the box of comfortable charity giving and into thinking about the money they have in a totally different way. Sending $50 is fine, but I mean redistribute some wealth. I usually know I'm hitting somewhere closer to it because it feels uncomfortable. The impact is felt in my bank account and life. Sometimes I'm broke and the amount that does that to me is $50. Sometimes it's $500 or much beyond that. Find that number for yourself. This listen letter was asking white Vermonters to give money directly

to Black Vermonters, strangers, people they didn't know and wouldn't have to explain what they were going to do with the money. Maybe they didn't even need it. I mean, it wasn't a requirement. You just had to be Black and in Vermont. It felt like a long shot for sure, to be Black and in Vermont. It felt like a long shot for sure. But they posted it anyway. And when that Facebook post went live... Shit really got poppin'. And it, like, went from, like, oh my gosh, like, now we have 50.

It was wild. Like, nonstop notifications. Black Vermonters were signing up to join the list left and right. This is not a joke. This is real. This is really happening. It was like $200, $400, $500, $1,000. Like somebody deposited like $500 in my

cash app. And I'm like, what? There were these massive deposits getting dropped into Black Vermonters' accounts from strangers they had no connection to. And on the other side of that transaction were white Vermonters trying to figure out just how much money they were willing to part with. I remember this email specifically saying,

you need to feel the pain of this donation. This has to impact you directly. Well, I was just like, well, fuck. This is Jamie Lent and his wife, Allie. Jamie's a mechanical engineer and Allie's getting her PhD from the University of Vermont. Allie read Lucy's letter after a colleague sent it to her and a couple of other people. When I received their email request, not request, but like urge, call to action, essentially for reparations, I was like, oh, I can give like 50 bucks, no big. And then I read the line about if you can give 500 and you give 50, that sucks.

This is a number that you need to feel. Allie sat there for a minute and let that feeling sink into her. And then she went over to Jamie and read it out loud to him. After she finished, she grabbed his phone and went into his Venmo account. And I said, I'm going to do this. Here it is. I pressed the button. But when asked about just how much money they were sending, Allie and Jamie weren't certain they were ready to share. I just, I think the reason I'm hesitant about talking about amounts,

why are we hesitant about talking amounts? What happens if people find out how much? I'm like just thinking this through. I don't know. I think... Americans hate talking about what's what happens if people find out how much i'm like just thinking this through i don't know i i think americans hate talking about money yeah i hate talking about money but but here we are anyways and that's why you handle it so we gave away we started venmoing and we were venmoing like by we i mean i a thousand dollars to like multiple different random people so that was weird like here Like, here you go. Here's $1,000. They dropped like $1,000 each into the accounts of four people on the wealth redistribution lists. But then Jamie began to wonder, several thousand dollars. Do I even feel that? Does that rise to the level of what Lucy's letter is asking? And so a tug of war began. On their morning walks, Jamie and Allie would debate this question.

How much? Okay, so if $1,000 doesn't impact us, does $2,000? Does $20,000? Does $200,000? And, you know, as you do these numbers, they all feel uncomfortable. We were walking by Redstone Lofts. I, like, remember I had coffee in my hand. You're like, why couldn't we give $20,000, $30 30,000? I'm like, cause. We kept challenging each other. Could it be more?

Could we get rid of more? Jamie and Allie ultimately decided to give 10% of their life savings away, but to a racial justice nonprofit that was not on the list. Remember, the point of the list was for white people to give money directly to Black people, strangers, and to do it on a regular basis. And to Jazz, one of the main organizers of the list, that was a big hurdle that even their wife Lucy's letter couldn't overcome. It was interesting here to read, like like the words that Lucy knew that she had to write for other white people about discomfort. Actually, like reading this as like coaching other white people on how to give money and how to give generously, specifically to black people, you know, because that's the last group of people that white people want to give money to generously. Give it to like the animal rescue, give it to their church, but to give generously to Black people that they do not know in their community

is not something that they can intuitively do. The list's challenge to white Vermonters was to break away from the charity system and just give money away to the people on the list, minus the middle man. Not everyone was willing to go that far, but some were. Some did give consistently to the list. One person, who works part-time contract jobs jobs said they were redistributing so much that in the future they'd have trouble paying their own bills, which seems extreme. But there seemed to be a trend in how different people who gave to the list were thinking about money. Many had stopped thinking of it as their own and started thinking of it as something shared. And if they had more

than they needed, they should redistribute it more equally. Some people really wanted to engage with the list, but some had unique challenges that they brought to jazz. My family is wealthy and I want to get their money to some of the people on this list, but I don't know how to because they're never going to give to like an individual, right? These were the white parents that needed receipts, proof of what was going to be done with the money with a side dish of tax deduction. So, Jass wrote out additional directions for using the list with an unexpected solution. If your family supports you and is rich and racist and greedy, you can say that you need cash for a car, an airline ticket, rent, groceries, et cetera, and give that away.

It may sound like a joke, but Jass was serious in a way. Wanting to challenge people to like just figure out ways to just get the money from their parents and like give it away because it does feel possible to me, at least. Of course, a lot of people didn't agree with Jass' suggestion. Even Black folks, many of whom replied to Jass with their criticism. You're encouraging people lying to their family. You're telling people to steal. Plus the classic.

We should all get jobs. Jass wrote them back. If you feel like you are not in a place of wanting to receive money, then you don't have to be, right? And also don't shit on people who are, because at the end of the day, it's our money. We deserve this money. Jazz got a lot of angry emails. And there was even one white guy in Rhode Island who, instead of giving money to the Black people on the list, he sent them requests for payment. That was just one of the problems with the list.

Another was, surprise surprise, inequality. Remember, white people were supposed to pay money randomly to people on the list. But instead, they often gave to the names they knew, like prominent organizers or people who spoke at the protests. Consequently, many Black folks on the list ended up sharing the money they got with other people who didn't get any. But the biggest issue existed in the minds of the people who participated. Especially for the people receiving the money, they were left with a lot of questions. Reparations is supposed to repair something. So how were they supposed to feel?

What did getting this money actually mean? After the break, Black people in Vermont try to figure out what money from strangers can and can't repair. By the fall of 2020, there are more than 300 Black people on the wealth redistribution list. Many of them are under 40, a lot of them queer or college students, some immigrants. And the group of people who gather to help Jess and Moira manage it, they estimate that about $65,000 has been redistributed. It might even be more. There's no real way of knowing since this money went directly to individuals. For a lot of the people who got money from the lists, the only thing more important than how much money they received was what it all meant.

The money was great, but receiving it in this way left a bigger impact on them than just paying a bill. Elena Littlebug put her name on the list early on and was pretty happy that it didn't require her to beg. I've, like, looked people directly in the eye and asked them for money. Literally just asking for money. Elena shares a home with her kid and her partner in Montpelier. But years ago, when she had first come out as trans and was living in Los Angeles, she was homeless. I think that when you're in that kind of position, your dignity isn't a question. Your dignity is only what you make of it and what you can keep of it and what you can kind of like go through while hanging on to it.

Elena was surprised. Turns out, people gave more money than she expected. I'd like open up my Cash App or Venmo or something like that and just be like, oh my God, I don't have to worry about like utilities this month. Just like I was just more liquid. She got nearly $1,000. And the best part? She didn't have to perform the dance of receiving charity. It wasn't one of those things where it's like I felt like I had to be like groveling. I am genuinely grateful. But at the same time, like, you know, there was no pump

and circumstance to it. Nobody has the opportunity to say kind of like, oh, look at what I did. You know what I mean? And make this big deal out of it at the expense of your dignity. But for other people on the list who received cash, their dignity still felt in question. I'm going to assume that I'm not the only person that had some of those thoughts come up of like, what will people think? That's Wayne Miller. He's in his early 30s and lives in the Upper Valley region of Vermont with his partner and two kids. The list came into his life when

he had just lost his job, but still, he had his reservations. People will lose respect for me, or then you can bring gender dynamics in of like, oh, I guess I'm not, you know, enough of a man that I'm just taking care of my family. And then there were people like Julian Hackney. Julian's pretty well known in some corners of Vermont. He's in a punk band with his brothers. It's called Rough Francis. He lives in Burlington with his family. And when he heard about the list...

I was actually taken aback by my own reaction to it. For Julian, the question wasn't about what people would think of him. The question was whether what was happening with the list was the right way to solve this problem. I had my own, like, hang-ups about it. It was like, whoa, like, I don't want to, like, take money from people. Julian thought reparations were important, but he also thought reparations

weren't supposed to come from his neighbors. They were supposed to come from the government, a national problem that deserved a national solution. But he thought about it a bit more and decided that even if this wasn't reparations, it was maybe a step in that direction. I guess I thought that if we're going to get to a place where it's a normal conversation that we're having and it's a continuing, you know, progression. Like I wanted to be a part of it. He put his name on the list and got about $400 in total. He saved most of it. I still, I still struggle with it, but it's something that I'm, I feel it breaking down within myself. And it actually feels more like reparations than I, than I guess I expected it to.

But Wayne, the guy who was worried about gender stereotypes, he had an experience that shows this other aspect of reparations, the part that's supposed to feel reparative. Unlike most people who got around $200 to $400 from being on the list, Wayne got nearly $10,000. He ended up using the bulk of the money he got to start a nonprofit to mentor Black youth. In some ways reminds me of the ending to It's a Wonderful Life when they all just show up with the money. You know, the Christmas movie where the guardian angel shows George Bailey what his town would look like without his good deeds. Just like George, Wayne was in a rough place.

But his community showed up for him. And they could have just let him go to jail, right? They could have just let them haul him away, but everybody scraped whatever they had together, and they barely had money to give themselves, but they gave it. Things you do do make a difference. I know that last little bit from Wayne might make you think that what happened in Vermont was some sort of community story.

Maybe it is, but it's hard to understand exactly what happened with this experiment. The list started out as a call to white Vermonters to give money directly to Black Vermonters in the name of reparations. And people did give and receive. People on both sides of that exchange felt all kinds of different ways about what happened and what it meant.

But in the end, was it reparations? To me, it sounds like performance art. Robin D.G. Kelly is a history professor at UCLA who studied lots of different Black liberation movements. I would call it in some ways a kind of an interesting provocation in the name of reparations. And in some ways, that's fine. Gives people a laugh and it puts some money in some Black people's pockets, which is good. I'm not against that at all. And it puts some money in some Black people's pockets, which is good. I'm not against that at all. But if we stop there, then what will happen is that once every white person pays something, they're going to say, shut up. You can't talk anymore. Reparations should not be about guilt. It should be about justice. And that's different. Justice is not guilt.

Now, Richard America is an economist, and he has an economist perspective on reparations. Or restitution, as I prefer. He's published a lot of work on the topic. Racism is primarily about money. It's got lots of other dimensions, but fundamentally, slavery was a business operation, and segregation and just about every form of discrimination likewise takes money by force, by fraud, by many kinds of manipulation, and enriches whites as a class at the expense of Blacks as a class. Richard's solution is pretty obvious. Tax the rich and redistribute that income back to Black people. It is a zero-sum game. We're not sugarcoating that or tap dancing around that. Yes, we want the top 30 percent of the income distribution to be poorer than they would have been because they should not have had what they have in the first place.

Richard's idea is just one of many. I've heard others that wouldn't involve taxes at all. Those people say the money could come from the Federal Reserve. But he does not support just giving money to people. No personal checks or direct deposits in Richard America's plan. He prefers what he calls life-changing grants to do things like buy a house or go to college. A hundred years from now, this will not be controversial. People say, well, of course, we will correct historic injustices this way. Yeah. I mean, it'll be, this will be standard. I'm not saying that it'll take that long to get the payments.

The point I'm saying that this will have become normalized. And maybe we're starting to see the beginning of that normalization. There's a bill in Congress that would form a commission to study reparations. But the vote for that bill hasn't been scheduled yet. And in the meantime, grassroots efforts like Vermont continue to spring up, standing in the very large gap that exists in reparations absence. To Jess and Moira, the ones who started that reparations list in Vermont, a national effort would be great, but they're not going to wait. For Moira, there does not need to

be a commission because the case for reparations is so obvious. I want you to understand like why you should be paying reparations and also why your family has wealth. It's not like, you know, it's not hard work. It's racism. To Jazz, the solution is something anyone could do right now. I mean, not to just die on this hill, but just give your money away to Black people. If you're not Black, give your money away to Black people every week. And if you're thinking about it, and if it makes you feel uncomfortable, if it makes you feel angry, like I promise that the balm to that feeling is to give your money away. Is there a local version of reparations happening where you live? Let us know. You can email us at planetmoney at npr.org. You can also find us on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram at Planet Money. Also, go listen to Invisibilia.

Right now, immediately. Stop listening and go to Invisibilia. Kia, you are one of Invisibilia's two new hosts, along with Yo-Ai Shaw. You guys are in the middle of a great new season. And tomorrow, the second part of your three-part series publishes The Chaos Machine. Yeah, we're in the middle of a really interesting story about misinformation and political scandal and all-around news chaos in Stockton, California. Invisibilia, please subscribe.

Go subscribe. Please subscribe. Go subscribe. Invisibilia is produced by me, Andrew Mambo, Yo-Ai Shaw, and Abby Wendell. Senior editor for this season is Deborah George. Nicole Beamster-Boer is supervising senior producer. Podcast manager is Liana Simstrom. Additional reporting by Abby Wendell. We had help on this story from Derek Arthur, Sophia Charles, David Goodhertz, Carolyn McCusker, Justine Yan, and Liza Yeager.

Fact-checking by Natalie Mead and Greta Pittenger. Invisibilia's technical director is Andy Huther. Music for this episode provided by Connor Lafitte, William Cashin, Solixis, and Connor Moore from Seymour Sound. Today's episode was produced for Planet Money by Andrew Mambo. Thanks, Andrew. I'm Kia Miyakamitis. And I'm Keith Romer. This is NPR. Thanks for listening. And a special thanks to our funder, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, for helping to support this podcast.

And a special thanks to our funder, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, for helping to support this podcast.