Reparations Statement:  
 Boston Pan African Forum
The Boston Pan African Forum (BPAF) supported the National Reparations Mobilization March, August 17, 2002 in Washington, D.C. in honor of the honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s birthday. BPAF believes that only through local, national and international unity – the coming together of African- Americans, African Caribbeans, African Latinos and continental Africans-- will the question of national and global reparations be adequately addressed and self-determination and real human development in Africa and the Diaspora be achieved. 
 We assert that the transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity and a foundation on which corporations and governments participated in the super- exploitation of African people, eventually leading to structural racism in the United States. This uneven level of human development of African descendents in the united states has led to the political, cultural, economic and psychological genocide of multi- generations of black people. This domestic colonialism has also led to major damage in survivors, producing a false sense of racial inferiority among Black people and a false sense of racial superiority among whites.
 It is in the form of Reparations-- through the political organization and mobilization of African people impacted by the horrors of slavery, and our continued oppression-- that this historic damage will begin to be properly addressed.
  The BPAF therefore calls for broad support and participation in this historic march for reparations, placing a demand for what we are owed.