RE-situating
REPARATIONS
...an incomplete ATLAS
Welcome to the Resituating Reparations Atlas. This is a collection of research and reflections surrounding Evanston, Illinois’ historic movement to municipalize reparations for its African American residents. As an atlas, here you are invited explore a series of maps and diagrammatic illustrations of Evanston’s history, legislative process, and advocacy context concerning local reparations as a complex, multifaceted process. This collection features three main chapters, with a hearty appendix where you can find more reading and organizing materials for your own action-research.

ATTRIBUTION

This website is a project by Jason Brown, created in collaboration with community members as part of his MS in Design and Urban Ecologies, 2021.

SECTION I: Complex Legacy

Map: Community Honor

Question Destination: How might we…acknowledge and illustrate Evanston’s complex history worth both celebrating and grieving?
Check out the Honor Map.

Map: Community Harms

Question Destination: How might we…provide community members a deeper understanding of “why” reparations are being pursued?
Check out the Harms Map.

SECTION II: Community Knowledges

Folio: Central Processes

Question Destination: How might we…document and clarify the City of Evanston’s development of a specific reparations initiative?
The Process Page is currently under development.

Map: Local Definitions of “Local” Reparations

Question Destination: How might we…open a brave space for stakeholders to share and for community members to hear personal reflections on “how” reparations can be pursued?
Check out the Definitions Page.

SECTION III: Collective Action

Map: National Efforts

Question Destination: How might we…contextualize and honor the broader scale of reparations actions, advocacies, and histories within a national geography?
Check out the HR40 Map.

Folio: The Long, Wide Struggle

Question Destination: How might we…situate local reparations in a deeper narrative of campaigns with layered pasts and dynamic futures?
The Advocacy Page is currently under development.

An Incomplete Atlas…

Unlike collections of maps you may have seen before, this collection is admittedly under construction and definitively incomplete. And, it will remain that way for some time. Maybe for all time. But, as a series of spatialized questions, its main objective is to contribute to generative research and reflection, acknowledgment and advocacy.

…where questions are destinations.

Campaigns for reparations have been varied in scale and tactics, but have always pursued direct repair for the generationally accumulated injustices against America’s black citizens. This atlas can only pull back some of those layers, but hopefully it might empower your own respectful, responsive, regenerative demands for tangible justice for our black neighbors. Our black neighbors matter. Local reparations can help make those matters into material means.

Let’s move forward together. You are now part of this!

Please see the RESOURCES page for ways you can keep learning and join the action.