Washington DC - Representative Summer Lee has reintroduced a historic reparations resolution in the 119th Congress amid mounting demands for justice.

"We're here to say there's no more waiting, no more watering down, no more putting justice on layaway. Black folks are owed more than thoughts and prayers, and we're owed repair, we're owed restitution, and we're owed justice," Lee said during a Thursday news conference.

The Reparations Now resolution calls on the US government finally to fulfill its obligations toward Black Americans via a comprehensive program addressing the legacies of chattel slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and ongoing racial discrimination.

The newly reintroduced resolution demands a formal apology for state-sanctioned abuses and an investment of at least $14 trillion in financial compensation to rectify past and present harms.

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Lee's move comes as the reparations movement continues to make historic gains at the state and local levels in spite of Republicans' heightened efforts to cut diversity and equity programs, eliminate Black history and representation in education, and implement other regressive policies.

"Where the government has created a harm it has a duty to repair, so let's make it clear: there is a debt that does exist," Lee said. "This country has taken so much from Black folks and has a debt it owes because for over 400 years and to this very day, this country has stolen Black labor, Black lives, and Black futures."

In addition to closing the US' staggering racial wealth gap, the resolution urges government action to eliminate gross disparities in a range of other areas, including but not limited to housing, health, education, environmental conditions, policing, and legal outcomes.

The resolution further calls for passage of key reparations and racial justice legislation, notably HR 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. The latter bill and its Senate companion were reintroduced this session by Representative Ayanna Pressley and Senator Cory Booker.

Last but not least, the measure honors the legacies of all those whose lives were stolen through the trafficking, enslavement, and abuse of African people and their descendants in the US.

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First introduced in May 2023 by former Representative Cori Bush, the Reparations Now resolution garnered 14 additional co-sponsors during the 118th Congress.

"Today, we stand here in the shadow of centuries of injustice and in the light of our ancestors' unbreakable spirit," Bush said back on Capitol Hill on Thursday. "Today we say what too many are afraid to say: reparations now."

"And we say to the rest of America, if you are truly committed to justice as you try to say you are, you cannot look away. You cannot turn your back on the demand for reparations because until there is repair, there will be no justice, and where there is no justice, we will continue to fight. We're not going anywhere. We are awake, we are organized, and we will win."

The legislation's reintroduction comes ahead of a major national rally in support of reparations in Washington DC on May 17 – an action which will also commemorate the 100-year anniversary of Malcolm X's birth this month.