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Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election erupted in violence on January 6, 2021. But though white mobs made Trump out to be the victim, Trump ally and former N.Y.C. Mayor and U.S. Associate Attorney General Rudy Giuliani made mother-daughter duo Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss the subjects of election conspiracy and hate. Now, he's paying for it - literally.
Freeman and Moss were election workers in Georgia when Giuliani used video footage of them to suggest they illegally tampered with the election. They endured death threats and constant harassment. Freeman was forced to flee her home.
But this October, a judge ordered Giuliani to turn over his Manhattan apartment – along with its furniture, his watch collection, signed sports memorabilia, a Mercedes-Benz, and the cash in his checking accounts – to the Black women he defamed. And this poetic justice runs even deeper.
Known for implementing broken-windows policing and the R.I.C.O. statute, Giuliani has been prosecuted with conspiracy himself. He built a career off of dystopically disempowering Black Americans. And this news gives us a taste of what an empowering, abolitionist future could hold.
What could this country look like if we got our reparations by redistributing the wealth of crooked corporations, authorities, and politicians like Giuliani? That wealth was built off our labor, our subjugation, and our criminalization. We’re owed it anyway.