By Edward Henderson, California Black Media  

The Equal Justice Society (EJS) aims to transform the nation’s consciousness on race through law, social science, and the arts. Their legal strategy aims to broaden conceptions of present-day discrimination to include unconscious and structural bias by using social science, structural analysis, and real-life experience.

Currently, the Oakland-based nonprofit focuses its advocacy efforts on school discipline, special education, the school-to-prison pipeline, race-conscious remedies, and inequities in the criminal justice system.

California Black Media spoke with Keith Kamisugi, Director of Communications at EJS, on the organization’s successes, disappointments and plans moving forward to the new year.

Looking back at 2024, what stands out to you as your most important achievement and why? 

The Equal Justice Society’s most important achievement so far in 2024 is the substantive advancement of reparations in California as one of the leaders of ARRT (the Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation and Truth) with eight reparations measures passing the State Legislature and signed by the Governor and one ballot measure presented to the voters in the general election, (Prop. 6).

On the international front, EJS President Lisa Holder delivered remarks in April 2024 at the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent in Geneva, Switzerland.

How did your leadership and investments contribute to improving the lives of Black Californians? 

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EJS has directly impacted Black school children and Black women through our lawsuits against several California school districts and against manufacturers of hair relaxers, which caused women to develop uterine and ovarian cancers. In September 2024, EJS’s clients, the Black Parallel School Board (BPSB) and individual families, finalized a five-year plan that improves policies to ensure that students with disabilities, and particularly Black students with disabilities, are no longer subjected to unnecessary exclusion from integrated environments. 

What frustrated you the most over the last year? 

We have been troubled by the misinformation resulting from some media outlets about reparations developments, such as wrongly equating reparations solely with financial compensation and characterizing stalled reparations legislation as structural defeats.

What inspired you the most over the last year? 

EJS was inspired by the 630-plus organizations and businesses – majority non-Black – that endorsed the California Reparations Task Force final report. These endorsements exemplify the broad-based support for the reparations movement from entities that recognize the social imperative to repair the harm caused by 400 years of White supremacy and who seek to support reparations in all its forms — compensation, apology, satisfaction, rehabilitation and guarantees of non-repetition.

What is one lesson you learned in 2024 that will inform your decision-making next year? 

We re-learned in 2024 the incredible lengths to which the Right Wing will devote resources towards destroying race-conscious remedies and truthful narratives that seek to simply level the playing field, afford equal opportunity, provide a factual historical accounting, and repair the harm of four centuries of terror and oppression.

In a word, what is the biggest challenge Black Californians face?  

Racism.

What is the goal you want to achieve most in 2025?  

We want to establish reparations and harm repair as the dominant American civil rights issue for the next 25 years.  Also, we would like to draw national attention to healthcare inequality, especially for Black women.

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