In The Price of Racial Reconciliation, Dr. Ronald Walters writes “the power of history is not only its description of events, but also its relation to the identity of those who shape it, and those “who suffer from such shaping. As such, “history” comprises events that groups select as a resource to derive identity and meaning from the past, and to inform present understanding or action. The selectively of such events politicizes history, for the powerful can determine an understanding of historical events consistent with a narrative they wish to advance” (2). Dr. Walters goes on to suggest that a “step toward dismantling systems of oppression in which one cultural group dominates another, reparations are more than simply “payment” for past injury. They are a national question” (3). It is here the myths that support a tenuous national identity crumble with the realities of the systems, conditions and institutions that were constructed to maintain a social order that supports an economic system—in this case racial capitalism. We do not have time to go into the long history of the movement, but highlighting its continuities throughout the world is essential in this period of planetary crisis that are disproportionately impacting the African world. On one level, the essential question of reparations is rooted in the fact that slavery was unjust because it refused to recognize and compensate the labor of those subjected to slavery. In a capitalist society built upon plantation economies, the idea of unpaid labor is in fact a violation of the fundamental principles of the so-called free-market exchange that regulates the notion of supply and demand the establishes the value of both labor and what this labor produces (From Slavery to Genocide: The Fallacy of Debt in Reparations Discourse:109). On another level, the clear morality and legal violations are brought to fore. It is not a question of either, or, but a question of both/and. We will hear Professor Sir Hilary Beckles (older lecture Kingstown, SVG) expand upon reparations. Professor Sir Hilary Beckles is Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies. He is a distinguished university administrator, economic historian, and specialist in higher education and development thinking and practice; and an internationally reputed historian. Sir Hilary has published and lectured extensively in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. His work includes: Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados and the Caribbean (Rutgers University Press/Zed Book, 1989); Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Societies (James Currey Press/Randle Publishers, 1999; White Servitude and Black Slavery: white indentured servitude in the Caribbean, 1627-1715 (Tennessee University Press, 1989); The First Black Slave Society: Britain’s Barbados, 1627-1876; Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Slavery and Native Genocide in the Caribbean, (UWI Press, 2015). He is Chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Commission on Reparation and Social Justice. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!