Reparations: A Pandemic Jubilee

Why debt forgiveness of biblical proportions would be a game-changer.

Historically, a jubilee erased the debts of the poor, restored property to its rightful owners, and freed the enslaved. 2019 marked the 400th year since the first enslaved Africans were brought to America. Reparations were a topic in the 2019/2020 US Presidential primary cycle. 2020 marks the first global pandemic resulting in wartime casualty levels and Depression Era unemployment and poverty. This is the right moment to consider:

• Debt forgiveness at all levels of the global economy (personal, institutional, and national)
• Restoration of liberties and rights for the currently incarcerated (Look to the humanity of the German penal system or consider the abolition of prisons. Stay with me. Crisis conditions call for radical action. Retribution bias blocks us from experiencing “criminals” as equally human.)
• Re-enfranchisement for those whose freedom is limited by felony records after their debt to society has been paid.

The disparate impact of the Coronavirus alone should be enough for systems to offer immediate relief in the form of debt cancellation for developing nations and the most economically disadvantaged people around the world. Yet the reality of contemporary life is…