Each month, a dozen Louisiana residents get $1,000 in guaranteed income, thanks in part to a $1m donation by Deacon Leroy “Buck” Close and Gracie Close of South Carolina, descendants of a family that made much of its generational wealth from the labor of enslaved people.
The payments are part of a highly unique program, which launched last December, to address the ongoing impacts of America’s racist past and the present-day inequalities of its criminal justice system. The intiative stands out from a growing number of similar pilots by blending the ideas of universal basic income and reparations .
Janell Landry , 40, who lives outside of New Orleans, is one of the participants in the program called Louisiana ACLU’s Truth and Reconciliation Project Guaranteed Monthly Income. She was held in prison in 2021 on flimsy obstruction of justice charges, after she protested the Kenner Police Department’s initially warrantless search of her home for evidence on a nearby shooting.
Landry called 911 on September 11, 2020, when one of the teen victims of the shooting staggered up to her house bleeding. When officers arrived, they noticed a bullet had ricocheted off her car and into her house. During routine questioning, as she went to retrieve the paperwork for a set of firearms she legally possessed, police barged into her bedroom and began digging through her belongings.