Advocates for slavery reparations from corporations are applauding victories amounting to $20 million. The effort, referred to as the "corporate restitution movement," has grown from a one-woman campaign to include legislation, landmark reparations lawsuits, and a student loan boycott.

"We are encouraged by the momentum in the movement. The $20 million paid is a good start, but these are trillion dollar companies that owe their existence to enslaved African laborers. They must pay much more," said Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, pioneer of the corporate restitution movement and Executive Director of the Restitution Study Group. In 2000, she single-handedly initiated the effort exposing corporations complicit in slavery. Her first targets were Aetna Inc. and Chase Manhattan Bank. In response, California State Senator Tom Hayden introduced the first slavery era disclosure law. It requires insurance companies to report on any slave policies they wrote.

Over 12 slavery era disclosure laws have been passed around the country since the Hayden law. In addition, lawsuits filed in 2002 by Farmer-Paellmann and her legal team are working their way through a Federal Appeals court in Chicago.

Most recently, a coalition of student groups, reparations organizations, social justice advocates, and elected officials launched a student loan boycott against banks complicit in slavery like JP Morgan Chase Manhattan Bank, Bank of America, Fleetbank, Bank One, and Wachovia. "We are asking students to avoid the tainted banks and choose from hundreds of other student loan providers," said Divine Shabazz, a graduate student at Southern Connecticut State University.

Following the boycott announcement, JP Morgan Chase began an aggressive direct mail and television advertising campaign promoting their student loan products. "I got two mailings about their student loans this summer and I'm not even in college yet, said Krystal Edmonds, a 20-year-old African American woman from New Jersey.

Last week, the Restitution Study Group released a PSA supporting the student loan boycott. Written and Directed by Untold Legacy Productions and Produced by Black Waxx Recordings, it features multicultural youths demanding justice from JP Morgan Chase and other tainted banks. The PSA can be viewed online at: http://www.onestudent.us.

Advocates in the corporate restitution movement are encouraged by their successes and have created the Queen Mother Moore Trust Fund in Harlem, New York in honor of the late mother of the slavery reparations movement, Queen Mother Audley Moore. The Trust Fund will finance land purchase, affordable housing, economic development, educational opportunities, and health care for descendants of enslaved Africans.

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