Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been running their #ReparationsNow campaign to push H.R.40, a bill that would establish a federal commission to study the impacts of slavery and propose recommendations on reparations, however the bill remains stalled in legislative gridlock.
So this year we directed our message to Joe Biden, calling on him to sign an executive order on H.R.40, by planting the Pan-African flag on the doorstep of the White House. Alongside the 7,500-square-foot flower garden were banners with stark messaging containing our explicit demands and exposing the Biden Administration’s broken promises.
Combining elements of a marketing stunt and an art installation, we took a more non-traditional activist approach, transforming the lawn of The Ellipse to deliver our message to the White House on the weekend of Juneteenth.
The garden was built in a day, largely by volunteers and returning citizens, and led by Kehmari Norman, the owner of Black Flower Market (BLK FLWR MRKT) in Washington D.C.
The football field-size garden featured nearly 2,000 plants, which were distributed to the community and local organizations in D.C. following the installation.
Our messaging went through multiple iterations before we landed on pairing the garden with large-scale signage that confronted the Biden Administration and included a QR code that directed them to HRW’s #ReparationsNow landing page.
Members of the Why We Can’t Wait coalition, which includes Human Rights Watch, Color Of Change, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), and the Reparations Education Project held a press conference on the site of the installation, restating the demands of the letter the coalition sent to House Leadership earlier this year.