'Reparations' Not Part Of Will County Board Resolution: Ventura

JOLIET, IL — Will County Board member Rachel Ventura and Joliet social justice advocate Ernest Crim were two of the key speakers at Tuesday's news conference calling for the use of Will County's taxes generated from legalized marijuana sales to be redistributed to the minority community.

Ventura and Crim joined about 20 fellow Will County residents outside the new Will County Courthouse to discuss efforts by Democrats on the Will County Board to enact the Will County Cannabis Tax Use Resolution, otherwise known as Repairing the Transgenerational Damage Done through Slavery, the Black Codes, the War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration in Will County, IL.

Ventura told everyone she represents District 9 on the Will County Board, which includes Lockport, Joliet, Crest Hill and all of Fairmont. "About a third of my district encompasses people of color and sadly my district is one of the poorest in Will County," Ventura said.

Ventura went on to say, "I want to be very clear that no amount of money can ever undo the harm we have caused in America's history, spanning from slavery to the black codes, to Jim Crow Era, to redlining, and more recently, the war on drugs, but we can take the first step in real equality by saying, 'I trust you.'

"This resolution is the first step in repairing some of that damage. By asking the community that has been harmed, 'How do we begin to make it better?' We take that first step."

Ventura stressed at Tuesday's news conference there are no plans by Will County's Board members, if the resolution gets adopted, to mail out checks to individual citizens who have been harmed by racism, discrimination or racial profiling.

She also told Joliet Patch that nowhere in the proposed county resolution is the word "reparations" used. She said that any type of reparations for slavery in America would need to passed by Congress, not local government entities.

Locally, the goal for the Will County Board is to create a fund from the legalized marijuana proceeds to help with economic development and community improvement projects in areas around Joliet, Fairmont and elsewhere that have been ravaged by systemic racism, which led to redlining and the war on drugs.

"This resolution starts the discussion," Ventura said. "I look forward to working with other county board members to see what changes can be made to earn their support."

As of Tuesday, Ventura said, Will County government has received less than $50,000 from the state's portion of the marijuana sales taxes and "we expect to see the county portion which began June 1 very soon, it is unlikely in the first year we will yield $75,000," Ventura noted.

For now, "this resolution is a transfer of power, not wealth," Ventura insisted. "It is empowering those we have harmed to help us repair the damage that we can do the most good. While some people will push back, I ask that you consider two questions. One, have we historically hurt the Black community over the years? And two, do you believe we need to right the wrongs of that damage? If you answered yes to both those questions, then it is pretty straight forward that this is the path we need to head."

(Joliet Patch article continues below this photo of Rachel Ventura.)

Besides being an educator, Crim is an author and a political activist who leads the Gatekeepers.

At Tuesday's news conference, Crim reminded everyone how Joliet raised all the downtown bridges in 1968 after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination "to prevent the subsequent uprising from carrying over to the white side of town to protect their assets while neglecting "the strategically created ghettos on the east side of town.

"As it has always been, we understand that this government operates under a system of benign neglect for foundational Black Americans and benign protect for white Americans. That changes today," Crim declared Tuesday in downtown Joliet.

Crim said that anybody who is against having a conversation and implementation of reallocating resources to repair "the intentional and strategic damage damage done to the Black community from slavery, to the Jim Crow Era, the ongoing war on drugs and perpetual economic and political malfeasance, then you are are in fact anti-Black and anti-American.

"Furthermore, you've revealed yourself to be a proponent of structural violence and are complicit in the continuous destruction of our country's core patriotic principles which declare that all men are created equal with a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," Crim said.

Crim also closed his remarks by reminding everyone that "our Japanese American brothers and sisters received a handback from Ronald Reagan and the U.S. government in the late 1980s, 40 years after the tragic internment camp episode.

"Then, surely foundational Black Americans can begin to receive the handbacks that they are owed as the generators of wealth for this country. The time for justice is now! Get it right Will County!" Crim exclaimed.

Ventura told Joliet Patch the earliest the resolution could appear before her full board for a vote is in late November. However, she anticipates the resolution may undergo fine-tuning and revisions in the coming weeks, therefore, it may not come before the county board for a full vote for several more weeks.