Full Text of HR0906 101st General Assembly
HR0906 101ST GENERAL ASSEMBLY |
| | HR0906 | | LRB101 22200 MST 73230 r |
|
| 1 | | HOUSE RESOLUTION
| 2 | | WHEREAS, The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of | 3 | | the Crime of Genocide was unanimously adopted by the United | 4 | | Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948; and
| 5 | | WHEREAS, Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and | 6 | | Punishment of the Crime of Genocide confirms that genocide, | 7 | | whether committed during peacetime or in war, is a crime under
| 8 | | international law which the Contracting Parties undertake to | 9 | | prevent and to punish; and
| 10 | | WHEREAS, Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and | 11 | | Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines
genocide as any of | 12 | | the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in | 13 | | whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious | 14 | | group, as such (a) killing members of the group, (b) causing | 15 | | serious
bodily or mental harm to members of the group, (c) | 16 | | deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
| 17 | | calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or | 18 | | in part, (d) imposing measures intended to
prevent births | 19 | | within the group, and (e) forcibly transferring children of the | 20 | | group to another group"; and | 21 | | WHEREAS, Article 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and | 22 | | Punishment of the Crime of Genocide verifies
the following acts |
| | | HR0906 | - 2 - | LRB101 22200 MST 73230 r |
|
| 1 | | punishable: (a) genocide, (b) conspiracy to commit genocide, | 2 | | (c) direct and public
incitement to commit genocide, (d) | 3 | | attempt to commit genocide, and (e) complicit in genocide; and | 4 | | WHEREAS, The United States and its sub-governmental units | 5 | | are responsible for policies and practices against the Black | 6 | | population that conform to Article II's definition of genocide | 7 | | and Article III's specification punishable crimes of the | 8 | | Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of | 9 | | Genocide; and | 10 | | WHEREAS, The World Conference Against Racism, Racial | 11 | | Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related
Intolerance has | 12 | | declared "slavery and the slave trade are a crime against | 13 | | humanity"; Africans forcibly
imported into the 13 British | 14 | | colonies that became the United States of America were legally | 15 | | chattel for
246 years, 170 under the United States, played a | 16 | | significant role in the slave trade; the last slave
ship, the | 17 | | Coltilda, arrived in Mobile, Alabama in July of 1860, just | 18 | | seven months before the Civil War; and | 19 | | WHEREAS, Of the nearly 11 million enslaved Africans, | 20 | | approximately 300,000 were brought to what would
become the | 21 | | United States of America; laborers were subjected to | 22 | | brutalization, mutilation, rape, torture,
suppression of | 23 | | cultural practices, and routine humiliation, including the |
| | | HR0906 | - 3 - | LRB101 22200 MST 73230 r |
|
| 1 | | breaking up of families, and
were denied access to education | 2 | | and a nutritious diet; their inhumane, unpaid working | 3 | | conditions produced
severe illnesses; additionally, because | 4 | | slavers scrimped on food and shelter, malnourishment, | 5 | | diarrhea,
dysentery, worms, whooping cough, and respiratory | 6 | | diseases were rampant; these conditions pushed the
infant and | 7 | | early childhood death rate of slaves to twice that of White | 8 | | infants and children; half of all
African American enslaved | 9 | | infants died in their first year; African American children | 10 | | continue to be plagued by these problems; for the period 2013 | 11 | | to 2016, African
American children experienced a death rate | 12 | | from SIDS of 74.4 per thousand compared to White
children's 39 | 13 | | per 1000; African American infants die at a rate of 171.1 per | 14 | | thousand compared to the death rate of 85.0 for White
infants; | 15 | | and | 16 | | WHEREAS, African American history is replete with horrific | 17 | | atrocities, terrorist lynchings, racial pogroms
and massacres, | 18 | | and, in the contemporary moment, heinous hate crimes and | 19 | | murders by police; the Equal Justice
Initiative has documented | 20 | | 4000 lynchings; Black people are the only U.S. racial or ethnic | 21 | | group who are
killed by police at a rate greater than their | 22 | | percentage of the population; between 2016 and 2018, the
number | 23 | | of murders by White supremacists more than doubled, with 2017 | 24 | | being the fifth deadliest year on
record for extremist violence | 25 | | against Blacks since 1970; and |
| | | HR0906 | - 4 - | LRB101 22200 MST 73230 r |
|
| 1 | | WHEREAS, African Americans are disproportionately killed | 2 | | by police; although they comprise only
13.4 percent of the U.S. | 3 | | population, from 2015 to 2019 they accounted for 26.4 percent | 4 | | of individuals killed
by police; Whites make up 50 percent of | 5 | | police killings but compose 61 percent of the population; | 6 | | Latinx
people comprise 18% of both police killings and the U.S. | 7 | | population; Asians constitute 2 percent of
police killings and | 8 | | 5 percent of the population; and | 9 | | WHEREAS, Economic genocide is defined as "deliberately | 10 | | inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring | 11 | | about its destruction in whole or in part"; from emancipation | 12 | | into the 1960s, African American
men working the same job as | 13 | | White men earned only two-thirds of their wages; the | 14 | | Black-White wage
gap expanded with rising wage inequality from | 15 | | 1979 to 2018; consequently, African American women
and men | 16 | | reside at the bottom of the wage scale and disproportionately | 17 | | comprise unskilled, non-union,
service sector labor; due to | 18 | | ethnic cleansing forcing them out of towns, destroying or | 19 | | stealing their
property, African American homeowners and | 20 | | business owners have had to start over two or more times; since | 21 | | the late 19th Century, most African Americans have been | 22 | | restricted to apartheid neighborhoods with
substandard housing | 23 | | stock and poor municipal services; according to United for a | 24 | | Fair Economy, 55
percent of all housing loans to African |
| | | HR0906 | - 5 - | LRB101 22200 MST 73230 r |
|
| 1 | | Americans between 1994 and 2006 were subprime, thus when the
| 2 | | housing market crashed in 2007, Black people lost between $71.5 | 3 | | and $92.9 billion dollars in wealth; and
| 4 | | WHEREAS, Since the 2000 Presidential Election, suppressing | 5 | | the Black vote has been the dominant electoral
strategy of the | 6 | | Republican Party; it includes gerrymandering to limit | 7 | | predominantly Black-populated
areas from influencing elections | 8 | | and referendums, requiring voter IDs, using Reconstruction-era | 9 | | laws to
purge voter rolls, gutting Section 5 of the 1965 Voting | 10 | | Rights Act, the pre-clearance clause, and cutting the
number of | 11 | | polling places in African American neighborhoods and the hours | 12 | | they are open; also, the mass incarceration
of African American | 13 | | males eliminates their right to vote and therefore proves a | 14 | | direct link between
racialized policies and the suppression of | 15 | | African American voices in the political process of the United
| 16 | | States; and
| 17 | | WHEREAS, Even with its record of anti-Black racial | 18 | | violence, the lynchings of William "Froggie" James on November | 19 | | 11, 1909 in Cairo, of Jesse Washington on May 16, 1911 in Waco, | 20 | | Texas, and of Laura and
L.D. Nelson on May 25, 1911 near | 21 | | Okemah, Okfuskee County, Oklahoma stand out; the massacres in | 22 | | Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898, in East Louis, Illinois in | 23 | | 1917, in Elaine, Arkansas in 1919, and in Tulsa, Oklahoma in | 24 | | 1921 are remembered for their barbarity; in modern times, the |
| | | HR0906 | - 6 - | LRB101 22200 MST 73230 r |
|
| 1 | | savage 1955 lynching of
Emmett Till, the atrocious rape of Mary | 2 | | Ruth Reed in Monroe North Carolina in 1959, the monstrous
| 3 | | murders of James Byrd Jr. in 1998 in Jasper, Texas, and the | 4 | | Charleston Massacre (North Carolina) in 2015
continue to | 5 | | resonate with the public; the current wave of protests was | 6 | | ignited by the callous police
murder of George Floyd; his | 7 | | execution was preceded by several despicable police murders, | 8 | | including
Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Breonna Taylor and the | 9 | | contemporary lynching of Ahmaud Aubrey; and
| 10 | | WHEREAS, As quoted by the statement by certain Special | 11 | | Procedures at HRC urgent debate on police
violence against | 12 | | people of African descent and peaceful protesters, | 13 | | "[African-Americans] in the United
States, the domestic legal | 14 | | system has utterly failed to acknowledge and confront racial | 15 | | injustice and
discrimination. This injustice and | 16 | | discrimination is so deeply entrenched in law enforcement that | 17 | | even
during this period of uprising, reports continue of | 18 | | extrajudicial killings of Black people by the police. This
| 19 | | injustice and discrimination also affects other racial and | 20 | | ethnic minorities. Despite several decades of
policing reform, | 21 | | executive intervention, and judicial oversight, this violence | 22 | | and racial injustice persists."; therefore, be it
| 23 | | RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE | 24 | | HUNDRED FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that |
| | | HR0906 | - 7 - | LRB101 22200 MST 73230 r |
|
| 1 | | the situation in the United States requires an international | 2 | | response that can help ensure that people of African descent in | 3 | | this country are no longer subject to the routine but egregious | 4 | | violations; and be it further | 5 | | RESOLVED, That we urge the
United Nations Human Rights | 6 | | Council to pass a resolution denouncing and charging the United | 7 | | States
with the crime of genocide against its Black population; | 8 | | and be it further | 9 | | RESOLVED, That we call upon the U.N. General Assembly under | 10 | | the Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of | 11 | | Genocide "to assure the safety of the 42 million Black
people | 12 | | in the U.S."; and be it further
| 13 | | RESOLVED, That suitable copies be delivered to the member | 14 | | states of the
United Nations Human Rights Council, the | 15 | | President and
Vice President of the United States, the Speaker | 16 | | of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Majority
Leader of | 17 | | the U.S. Senate, and to each Senator and Representative in the | 18 | | United States Congress.
|
|