“Reparations means grounding”: The Repair Campaign’s Renee Campbell talks about her vision for repair in Grenada
The Repair Campaign spoke with one of our advocates, Grenadian-Jamaican Renee Campbell about her work in reparatory justice.
Who are you and what is your work with repair?
My name is Renee Campbell, I’m Grenadian Jamaican, a project manager for child protection authority, consulting with the Ministry of Labour & Consumer Affairs, National Youth Ambassador, and engaged with several community groups. To me, reparations means liberation, freedom and vindication. For many of us we’ve been walking the walk [for repair] for generations, back in our bloodline for how many years. Although we are now several generations on from slavery, there are so many ways we still enslaved. Correct reparations means balancing the scales or resetting the clock. It is one thing for oour culture and community to have something so horrific and detrimental be a part of our history even now. Reparations could be a clean sword, so we can look back and not still be living in the ramifications of this.
What do reparations mean to you particularly with regards to Grenadian communities and lands?
Reparations means grounding. Grenada is such a unique island, we have a huge development boom now, decades later in comparison to other Caribbean islands, but we still have such disparity, such as classism issues that have a lot to do with policy but policy is influenced by histories of slavery. The Repair Campaign’s work will be able to contribute to right a lot of wrongs: reparations will make that clean detachment but reinvest into our sources. It allows us to connect the dots and enable a more comprehensive society.
What are you looking forward to in the ongoing movement for reparations in the Caribbean?
My main hope is for educational reform and the types of conversation that will follow. Because we Caribbean people are known to hold discourse, and I’m excited about the general conversation we could have, about reparations being spoken about in common spaces. It’ll be even more pressing and important once people are more invested. Once reparations are a common conversation topic, that means it has made the mark, that how repair matters has trickled down. And the way that The Repair Campaign is planning on contributing to how we tackle reparations means relevant bodies and organisations will have access to resources, especially at the grassroots level. We already have the talent and skills, we just need to signpost repair to relevant opportunities and persons.
And a final thing! Calling out for persons to sign and support reparations, and read through the CARICOM Ten Point Plan, because there’s plenty confusion and misinformation around repair when people have personalised the definition. We all need to understand why need to get behind reparations.