The texts in this contribution were written as part of the exhibition D37 at the - Ricerca sull'intelligenza artificiale specializzata al MIT

The texts in this contribution were written as part of the exhibition D37 at the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, from October 14, 2018, to March 11,
2019. The accompanying images document the works included in the exhibition.

D37

CAMERON ROWLAND

“It has been through all the phases of decline and
is now thoroughly blighted. Subversive racial ele-
ments predominate; dilapidation and squalor are
everywhere in evidence. It is a slum area and one
of the city’s melting pots. There is a slum clearance
project under consideration but no definite steps
have as yet been taken. It is assigned the lowest of
‘low red’ grade.”

Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, Residential Security Map.
Location: Bunker Hill
Security Grade: 4th
Area No.: D37
Date: 2/27/39

Slaves were constructed as property. By withholding citizenship from people
who were enslaved, slavery in the United States did not violate constitutional
rights. As both person and property, the slave functioned as a source of labor,
chattel, and reproduction for the master as well as the greater economy. Saidiya
Hartman describes the efficacy of this dual status:

The protection of property (defined narrowly by work capacity and
the value of capital), the public good (the maintenance of black sub-
ordination), and the maintenance and reproduction of the institution
of slavery determined the restricted scope of personhood and the
terms of recognition. . . . In the case of motherhood, the reproduc-
tion and conveyance of property decided the balance between the
limited recognition of slave humanity and the owner’s rights of prop-
erty in favor with the latter.1

State governments considered slaves taxable property. Slave owners were taxed

1.
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), P. 98.

Saidiya V. Hartmann, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century

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112

OCTOBER

for each slave they owned. Every state which allowed slavery taxed the slaves.2
States relied on the slave economy to develop state government and infrastruc-
ture. These state tax codes formalized governmental involvement in the slave
economy. In the United States between 1776 E 1865, the definition of public
must be qualified to exclude the entirety of the slave population, and the defini-
tion of property must be understood to include the entirety of the slave popula-
zione. Under antebellum tax codes, slaves were recognized and recorded as equiv-
alent to cattle, pigs, clocks, carriages, and land. In 1860, slaves comprised 20% Di
all American wealth, including real estate.3

Immediately following emancipation, the legal status of former slaves
remained ambiguous. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to define their
legal status. Sezione 1 reads:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States
of America in Congress assembled, That all persons born in the United
States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not
taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; E
such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any previous
condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall have
the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, A
make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, A
inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal prop-
erty, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the
security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, E
shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none
other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the con-
trary notwithstanding.4

By conferring legal protection “as is enjoyed by white citizens,” the Civil Rights Act
Di 1866 uses “white citizens” as its benchmark for legal protection. Hartman writes,
“[T]he rejection of an explicit antidiscrimination clause in the Civil Rights Act of
1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment in favor of the language of equal protection
attests to the nebulous character of the equality conferred. The Civil Rights Act
both permitted discrimination in certain arenas and narrowly defined the scope of
civil rights.”5

2.
2006), P. 106.

Robin L. Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

Ibid., P. 214.

Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27–30, 39th Cong. (1866).

Hartmann, Scenes of Subjection, P. 181.

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D37

113

In 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson confirmed the constitutionality of racial segrega-
zione, maintaining that the doctrine of “separate but equal” did not violate the
Fourteenth Amendment. State laws stipulating the terms of segregation came to
be known as Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws were enforced by both police and white
citizens. Lynching secured the racial order of segregation. This order secured con-
trol of governments that were designed to serve white citizens at the federal, state,
and local levels and to protect property owned by white citizens. After emancipa-
zione, citizenship—as defined by the ability to make contracts and own property
equal to that of white citizens—remained reserved for white citizens.

Land ownership in the United States is most commonly registered with a
deed, which also indicates restrictions or encumbrances on an owner’s use of the
land. In 1918, white landowners began to incorporate racially restrictive covenants
into their deeds. By 1940, 80% of property in Chicago and Los Angeles carried
racially restrictive covenants.6 As the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported in
1973, the typical language of racially restrictive covenants stipulated:

. . . hereafter no part of said property or any portion thereof shall be. . .
occupied by any person not of the Caucasian race, it being intended
hereby to restrict the use of said property. . . against the occupancy as
owners or tenants of any portion of said property for resident or other
purpose by people of the Negro or Mongolian race.7

Racially restrictive covenants were implemented on the basis of private contract,
but they were utilized collectively among groups of white neighbors. By prohibit-
ing nonwhite ownership, these covenants protected the value of individual homes
and maintained neighborhood and regional property values. Because restrictive
covenants “run with the land,” all subsequent owners of the property were
required to abide by the terms of the covenant.8 Although Shelley v. Kraemer ren-
dered these clauses unenforceable in 1948, the clauses remain as part of the deeds
they were written into.9

The racial restrictions imposed through private contract interlocked with fed-
eral policy to maintain segregation by instituting racially restrictive financing guide-
lines.10 In 1933, a mortgage company operating as part of the federal government—
called the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC)—was established to assist in
the refinancing of homes in foreclosure.11 “According to the 1940 Housing Census,

6.
(Washington, DC: NOI. Government Printing Office, 1973), P. 4.

Understanding Fair Housing, NOI. Commission on Civil Rights Clearinghouse Publication 42

Ibid.

8.
2018, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/restrictive_covenant.

“Restrictive covenant,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, accessed August 1,

10.

11.

Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 NOI. 1, 68 S. Ct. 836 (1948).

Understanding Fair Housing, P. 4.

Ibid.

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fewer than 25,000 of more than one million homes refinanced by HOLC went to
nonwhites.”12 Beginning in 1935, the HOLC surveyed the lending risks of all cities
that had a population over 40,000. These surveys were consolidated into Residential
Security Maps, which were to be used by lenders to rebuild the real estate market
that had been destabilized by the Great Depression. These 239 maps were divided
into distinct sections, and each section was given a rating: “Best” A (green), “Still
Desirable” B (blue), “Definitely Declining” C (yellow), and “Hazardous” D (red).13
Race, class, and ethnicity were explicit criteria for the determination of these grades,
as indicated in the rating reports. The maps directly influenced the mortgage lend-
ing of private banks, the Federal Housing Administration, and the Veterans
Administration.14 Areas rated A were deemed worthy of mortgage financing. Areas
rated D were described as “hazardous” and mortgage loans were restricted from
them. The restriction of financing on the basis of race became known as redlining.15
The Federal Housing Administration used and continued to update the maps, con-
tinued the HOLC’s use of race and the criteria of “inharmonious racial groups” in
their ratings, and recommended the use of racially restrictive covenants.16 Redlining
codified the use of racial discrimination to enhance real estate markets and formal-
ized segregation as federal policy. It also incepted redevelopment projects that
resulted in widespread displacement, dislocation, and dispossession. Like sharecrop-
ping, redlining systematically maintained racial-economic subordination to white cit-
izens, federally defining the terms of property ownership on the basis of race.

Law enforcement compounds racial definitions of property in its use of asset
forfeiture to fund its operations. Asset forfeiture takes numerous forms. Criminal
asset forfeiture describes the forfeiture of property from a person charged with a
crime. Administrative asset forfeiture describes the forfeiture of property as a result of
unpaid debt. Civil asset forfeiture describes the forfeiture of property involved with a
crime for which no person has been charged.

Civil asset forfeiture originated in the English Navigation Act of 1660.17 IL
Navigation Acts were established to maintain the English monopoly on the trian-
gular trade between England, West Africa, and the English colonies.18 As Eric

12.

Ibid.

13.
Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et al., “Mapping
Inequality,” in American Panorama, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers, accessed August 1, 2018,
https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=3/39.91/-121.64&opacity=0.8&text=bibliograph.

14.
Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Stampa dell'Università di Harvard, 1993), P. 52.

Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the

15.

16.

Ibid., pag. 51–52.

Ibid., P. 54.

17.
(Giugno 2016), https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/the-constitutionality-of-civil-forfeiture.

Caleb Nelson, “The Constitutionality of Civil Forfeiture,” The Yale Law Journal 125, NO. 8

18.
1944), P. 57.

Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

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D37

115

Williams writes, “Negroes, the most important export of Africa, and sugar, IL
most important export of the West Indies, were the principal commodities enu-
merated by the Navigation Laws.”19 The Navigation Acts stipulated that only
English ships were to dock in English ports in both England and the colonies. If
this law was violated, in lieu of pursuing a criminal proceeding, the ship and all
property on board were subject to forfeiture.20

The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970
allowed police to seize drugs and any property used in their production or trans-
portation.21 The 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act designated all forfeiture
profits at the federal level to be used for law enforcement purposes.22 Forfeiture
laws passed on the state level have created similar provisions.23 These laws effec-
tively constitute a financial incentive to practice asset forfeiture.

UN 1995 report by the Government Accountability Office expressed concern
for law enforcement agencies “becoming overzealous in their use of the asset for-
feiture laws or too dependent on the funds derived from such seizures.”24 Federal
and state laws have consistently expanded the violations that can result in forfei-
ture. In a 2001 study of 1,400 municipal and county law enforcement agencies,
60% reported that forfeiture profits were a necessary part of their budget. Forty
states have forfeiture statutes that allow law enforcement to keep 45% A 100% Di
forfeiture proceeds.25 Through the Department of the Treasury Equitable Sharing
Programma, local and state police departments can seize property under federal
authority, transfer the property to the Treasury Forfeiture Fund, and receive up to
80% of the proceeds from its auction.26

Civil asset forfeiture is treated as an in rem proceeding. Rather than charging
the owner with a crime, the property itself is charged. As such, forfeiture is now
simply based on “whether a law enforcement agency has probable cause to believe
that the property is connected to illegal activity.”27 In many states, assets may be
forfeited without a conviction.28 “[B]ecause the civil forfeiture is deemed an in rem

19.

20.

Ibid.

Navigation Act, 12 Car. II, c.18 (1660).

21.
Southern Poverty Law Center, Civil Asset Forfeiture: Unfair, Undemocratic and Un-American,
ottobre 2017, https://www.splcenter.org/20171030/civil-asset-forfeiture-unfair-undemocratic-and-un-
american.

22.

23.

Ibid.

24.
(Washington, DC: NOI. General Accounting Office, 1995), pag. 27–28.

United States General Accounting Office, Asset Forfeiture Programs (GAO/HR-95-7)

25.
Review 10, NO. 69 (2017), P. 92.

Vanita Saleema Snow, “From the Dark Tower: Unbridled Civil Asset Forfeiture,” Drexel Law

26.

27.

Ibid., P. 94.

Ibid., P. 76.

28.
“[E]vidence is mounting that a significant percentage of civil asset forfeitures involve
seizures that cannot even pass reduced evidentiary standards. Per esempio, in an in-depth investigative

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action, the government conducts warrantless seizures based on probable cause,
and unless the forfeiture involves a residential home, claimants are not entitled to
pre-deprivation notice or hearing.”29 Former owners of forfeited property are con-
sidered third parties to in rem proceedings and are not entitled to public defense.
In 2015, the average cash seizure in Philadelphia was $192.30 Low-value for- feitures are less likely to be contested, given that the costs of litigation would out- weigh the value of the property in question, and low-income owners are less likely to contest the forfeiture of their property.31 This creates an incentive for police to target low-income people to seize low-value property, given that it has a higher likelihood of being retained.32 In Philadelphia between 2011 E 2013, civil asset forfeiture disproportion- ately targeted black people, who made up 44% of the population, 63% of all for- feitures, E 71% of forfeitures without conviction.33 In California in 2013 E 2014, 86% E 85% of all payments, rispettivamente, went to police agencies in major- ity minority communities.34 A survey of forfeitures in Oklahoma between 2010 E 2015 found that nearly two-thirds of forfeitures from traffic stops came from black and Hispanic drivers.35 Civil asset forfeiture is also a practice and source of funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 included the creation of three new agencies: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which processes applica- tions for citizenship, residency, and asylum; Customs and Border Protection report by the Washington Post examining nearly 62,000 cash seizures, only a small fraction of the seizures were challenged, likely due to the lack of access to counsel. In over 41% (4,455) of cases where challenges were raised, Tuttavia, the government agreed to give back all or a portion of the cash or property, often in exchange for an agreement not to sue regarding the circumstances surrounding its seizure by law enforcement.” Beth A. Colgan, “Fines, Fees, and Forfeitures,” in Reforming Criminal Justice, Volume 4: Punishment, Incarceration, and Release (Phoenix: Arizona State University, 2017), P. 222. 29. Snow, “From the Dark Tower,” p. 80. 30. American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, Guilty Property: How Law Enforcement Takes $1
Million in Cash from Innocent Philadelphians Every Year—and Gets Away with It, Giugno 2015,
http://www.aclupa.org/files/3214/3326/0426/Guilty_Property_Report_-_FINAL.pdf.

31.
“[IO]n cities like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., it appears that police may be going so
far as to seize small amounts of cash—in many cases less than $20—during stop-and-frisk incidents.” Colgan, “Fines, Fees, and Forfeitures,” p. 211. “Many forfeitures are unchallenged because the property value is too low to justify hiring an 32. attorney. . . . In definitiva, the lack of counsel and the inferential threat of prosecution may deter claimants from challenging police action.” Snow, “From the Dark Tower,” p. 88. 33. American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, Guilty Property. American Civil Liberties Union of California, Civil Asset Forfeiture: Profiting from California’s 34. Most Vulnerable, May 2016, https://www.aclusandiego.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ACLU-Civil- Asset-Forfeiture-Report-1.pdf. 35. Clifton Adcock, Ben Fenwick, and Joey Stipek, “Most Police Seizures of Cash Come from Blacks, Hispanics,” Oklahoma Watch, ottobre 7, 2015, http://oklahomawatch.org/2015/10/07/most- police-seizures-of-cash-come-from-blacks-hispanics/. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / / e d u o c t o a r t i c e – p d l f / d o i / . / / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o c t o _ a _ 0 0 3 5 2 1 7 5 4 3 0 7 o c t o _ a _ 0 0 3 5 2 p d . / f b y g u e s t t o n 0 9 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 D37 117 (CBP), which enforces law at the border and includes the Border Patrol agents formerly part of Immigration and Natural Services (INS); and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is charged with immigration and customs law enforcement within the border. ICE and CBP frequently overlap in their jurisdic- tions and functionality. Both can delegate powers to local law enforcement agents. CBP is the largest single law enforcement agency in the country, with approxi- mately 60,000 employees. The Treasury Forfeiture Fund also receives assets from federal enforcement agencies through the Equitable Sharing Program and distrib- utes up to 80% to the seizing agency. Between 2003 E 2013, DHS contributed 53% of the total revenues collected in the Treasury Forfeiture Fund.36 In 2013, ICE contributed $1 billion in seized property to the Treasury Forfeiture Fund,
almost twice that of all non-DHS agencies.37

No More Deaths describes the forfeiture practices of ICE, CBP, and Border
Patrol as part of the “cycle of dispossession” of people who are undocumented,
carried out by

private employers who engage in illegal and exploitative labor prac-
tices in the United States; local police and towing companies that
seize private vehicles and charge exorbitant daily storage rates; deten-
tion bonds and related fees associated with the immigration court sys-
tem; government officials in Mexico and the United States who solicit
bribes or otherwise directly rob migrants of their belongings; private
prison companies whose exploitative labor practices fail to follow
basic standards established in the Fair Labor Standards Act; E
phone, commissary and credit card companies that contract with pris-
ons and extract exorbitant fees for the provision of basic services.38

Each of these practices relies on the absence of protections for those rendered
as noncitizens. This absence creates vested financial interests in both the labor
exploitation of people who are undocumented as well as the enforcement of
their “legal status.” These seemingly conflicting interests form a productive dou-
ble bind that maintains the status of noncitizens. These methods of disposses-
sion have developed to closely resemble the nexus of fines, fees, and forfeitures
imposed on those who are incarcerated.39 Criminal charges eliminate basic pro-
tections and incept dispossession through cash bail; public defender fees; court
fees; pay-to-stay jail and prison fees; overpriced and monopolized prison commis-

36.
United States Government Accountability Office, DHS Asset Forfeiture: Additional Actions Could
Help Strengthen Controls over Equitable Sharing (GAO-14-318) (Washington, DC: NOI. Government
Accountability Office, 2014), https://www.gao.gov/assets/670/662076.pdf.

37.

Ibid.

38.
2014, http://nomoredeaths.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Shakedown-withcover.pdf.

No More Deaths, Shakedown: How Deportation Robs Immigrants of Their Money and Belongings,

39.

Colgan, “Fines, Fees, and Forfeitures,” pp. 206–07.

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sary, phone, and internet services; administrative forfeiture; criminal forfeiture;
and private probation, among other means. Citizenship is explicitly withheld
from people who are incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and undocumented; Esso
is implicitly withheld from those who don’t meet the standard for white citizen-
ship. The withholding of citizenship continues to structure the racial terms of
dispossession.

42 USC § 1981, “Equal rights under the law,” last updated in 1991, maintains

white citizenship as the standard for legal protection in current U.S. statute law:

(UN)Statement of equal rights.

All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the
same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce con-
tracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal ben-
efit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and proper-
ty as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punish-
ment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind,
and to no other.40

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40.

Equal Rights Under the Law, 42 U.S.C. § 1981.

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120

OCTOBER

Cameron Rowland
2015 MOCA REAL ESTATE ACQUISITION, 2018
Donor plaque

The redlining map of Los Angeles drawn by the Home Owners’ Loan
Corporation in 1939 gave Bunker Hill, block D37, the lowest possible rating. D37
extended from West 4th Street to West Temple Street, and from Figueroa Street to
South Hill Street. The report indicated that residents were “low-income level” and
were predominantly “Mexicans and Orientals.” The HOLC’s Residential Security
Map report for Bunker Hill states:

It has been through all the phases of decline and is now thoroughly
blighted. Subversive racial elements predominate; dilapidation and
squalor are everywhere in evidence. It is a slum area and one of the
city’s melting pots. There is a slum clearance project under considera-
tion but no definite steps have as yet been taken. It is assigned the low-
est of “low red” grade.

The Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles was
formed in 1948 under the California Community Redevelopment Act of 1945, In
conjunction with the 1937 E 1949 federal Housing Acts, which authorized its
“slum removal.” The CRA was granted powers of eminent domain to be used in
the redevelopment of “blighted” areas. A primary purpose for the CRA’s redevel-
opment projects was to increase tax revenue for the city. One of the first redevel-
opment projects proposed by the CRA was in Bunker Hill, on the basis that the
neighborhood spent more tax dollars on police, firefighting, and healthcare than
it generated. A CRA pamphlet promoting the project stated, “Blight is a liability,
Blight is malignant, Blight is a social peril.” The CRA’s “slum clearance” project in
Bunker Hill was adopted in 1959. Through seizure and through sales under the
threat of eminent domain, Tutto 7,310 residential units were demolished and their
residents were forcibly removed. The CRA’s slum clearance in Bunker Hill was
one of the first redevelopment projects to rely on tax increment financing.

In 1980, the CRA issued a request for proposals for a project called
California Plaza. Proposals were required to include an outdoor pedestrian plaza,
a parking structure, and a modern art museum. The winning group of architects
called themselves Bunker Hill Associates. The museum outlined in this proposal
became The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 1983, the CRA
offered MOCA a lease on the land located at 250 South Grand Avenue for a nine-
ty-nine- year term at no rent.

In October 2015, the CRA sold the land at 250 South Grand Avenue to
MOCA for $100,000. One month later, in November 2015, a tax assessment trig- gered by the sale recorded the value of the land at $8,500,000.

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124

OCTOBER

Cameron Rowland
Assessment, 2018
Late eighteenth-century English grandfather clock acquired from Paul Dalton
Plantation, Yemassee, South Carolina; 1848 tax receipt from Mississippi; 1852 tax
receipt from Mississippi; 1860 tax receipt from Virginia
92 X 135 X 12 inches (233.68 × 342.90 × 30.48 cm)

In the United States, property taxes on slaves were collected by slaveholding
stati. By 1860, slaves constituted 20 percent of all American wealth.1 Tax collec-
tion practices varied from state to state, but taxable assets typically included slaves,
land, horses, cattle, carriages, and clocks.

Plantation owners adopted clock time during the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, further regulating the labor of slaves in an effort to supply
the increasing demand of industrializing Britain. The overseer would echo the
chime of the housebound clock by sounding a horn or a bell. “Simultaneously
tyrannical, modern, and profit-oriented, the nineteenth-century clock and its
attendant ability to rationalize and order the behavior of human beings became
the planters’ weapon of choice in their ongoing battle with their chattel.”2

Property taxes collected on slaves were used to develop the slaveholding state

governments. These governments remain intact.

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1.
2006), P. 214.

Robin L. Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

2.
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), P. 5.

Mark M. Smith, Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South (Chapel

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130

OCTOBER

Cameron Rowland
Passport and Social Security Card, 2018
Unregistered IDs
2 3/16 X 3 7/16 E 2 3/16 X 3 7/16 inches (5.55 × 8.73 cm and 5.55 × 8.73 cm)

Unregistered citizenship documents are used to evade enforcement of
“legal status.” These documents are illegal and operate in resistance to the exclu-
sionary definitions of national citizenship. Citizenship documents that have not
been issued by a national government disrupt the registration of citizenship.

42 USC § 1981, “Equal rights under the law,” last updated in 1991, maintains

white citizenship as the standard for legal protection in current U.S. statute law:

(UN) Statement of equal rights.

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Equal Rights Under the Law, 42 U.S.C. § 1981.

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132

OCTOBER

Cameron Rowland
Equitable Sharing, 2018
2017 Equitable Sharing payments by state
Reprints $10 each The Department of the Treasury Equitable Sharing Program allows law enforcement agencies to contribute cash and assets to the Federal Treasury Forfeiture Fund. The primary purpose of the Treasury Forfeiture Fund is to administer federal auctions of these assets and distribute the proceeds from the auctions. Participating agencies receive up to 80% of the cash and the proceeds from the sale of assets they contribute. In states that restrict the forfeiture revenue directed to the seizing agency, police departments are incentivized to participate in the federal program. IL 2017 average revenue from sales proceeds from property seized and auc- tioned for each participating agency was $57,967.

IL 2017 average revenue from cash forfeiture for each participating agency

era $71,959. Through the widespread targeting of low-value assets, the Equitable Sharing Program generated a total of $84,283,266 in sales proceeds and $211,277,289 in cash seizures for police. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / / e d u o c t o a r t i c e – p d l f / d o i / . / / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o c t o _ a _ 0 0 3 5 2 1 7 5 4 3 0 7 o c t o _ a _ 0 0 3 5 2 p d . / f b y g u e s t t o n 0 9 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / / e d u o c t o a r t i c e – p d l f / d o i / . / / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o c t o _ a _ 0 0 3 5 2 1 7 5 4 3 0 7 o c t o _ a _ 0 0 3 5 2 p d . / f b y g u e s t t o n 0 9 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 134 OCTOBER Cameron Rowland Tanaka Hedge Trimmer – Item: 0628-002770, 2018 Tanaka Hedge Trimmer sold for $87.09
10 X 35 X 10 inches (25.40 × 88.90 × 25.40 cm)
Rental at cost

Stihl Gas Backpack Blower – Item: 0628-002765, 2018
Stihl Gas Backpack Blower sold for $206 18 X 25 X 43 inches (45.72 × 63.50 × 109.22 cm) Rental at cost Stihl Backpack Blower – Item: 0514-005983, 2018 Stihl Backpack Blower sold for $59
21 X 35 X 19 inches (53.34 × 88.90 × 48.26 cm)
Rental at cost

In the United States, property seized by the police is sold at police auction.

Auction proceeds are used to fund the police.

Civil asset forfeiture originated in the English Navigation Act of 1660.1 IL
Navigation Acts were established to maintain the English monopoly on the trian-
gular trade between England, West Africa, and the English colonies.2 As Eric
Williams writes, “Negroes, the most important export of Africa, and sugar, IL
most important export of the West Indies, were the principal commodities enu-
merated by the Navigation Laws.”3 During the seventeenth century, the auction
was standardized as a primary component of the triangle trade to sell slaves, goods
produced by slaves, and eventually luxury goods. The auction remains widely used
as a means to efficiently distribute goods for the best price.4

Police, ICE, and CBP may retain from 80% A 100% of the revenue generat-

ed from the auction of seized property.

Rental at cost: Artworks indicated as “Rental at cost” are not sold. Each of these

artworks may be rented for 5 years for the total price realized at police auction.

1.
(Giugno 2016), https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/the-constitutionality-of-civil-forfeiture.

Caleb Nelson, “The Constitutionality of Civil Forfeiture,” The Yale Law Journal 125, NO. 8

2.
pag. 56–57.

Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944),

Ibid., P. 57.

Brian Learmount, A History of the Auction (London: Barnard and Learmount, 1985), pag. 30–31.

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136

OCTOBER

Cameron Rowland
Summer 3d One Stroller – Item: 6781-005030, 2018
Summer 3d One Stroller sold for $1.00 42 X 20 X 33 inches (106.68 × 50.80 × 83.82 cm) Rental at cost In the United States, property seized by the police is sold at police auction. Auction proceeds are used to fund the police. Civil asset forfeiture originated in the English Navigation Act of 1660.1 The Navigation Acts were established to maintain the English monopoly on the trian- gular trade between England, West Africa, and the English colonies.2 As Eric Williams writes, “Negroes, the most important export of Africa, and sugar, the most important export of the West Indies, were the principal commodities enu- merated by the Navigation Laws.”3 During the seventeenth century, the auction was standardized as a primary component of the triangle trade to sell slaves, goods produced by slaves, and eventually luxury goods. The auction remains widely used as a means to efficiently distribute goods for the best price.4 Police, ICE, and CBP may retain from 80% A 100% of the revenue generat- ed from the auction of seized property. Rental at cost: Artworks indicated as “Rental at cost” are not sold. Each of these artworks may be rented for 5 years for the total price realized at police auction. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / / e d u o c t o a r t i c e – p d l f / d o i / / / . 1 0 1 1 6 2 o c t o _ a _ 0 0 3 5 2 1 7 5 4 3 0 7 o c t o _ a _ 0 0 3 5 2 p d . / f b y g u e s t t o n 0 9 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 1. (Giugno 2016), https:// www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/the-constitutionality-of-civil-forfeiture. Caleb Nelson, “The Constitutionality of Civil Forfeiture,” The Yale Law Journal 125, NO. 8 2. pag. 56–57. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), 3. 4. Ibid., P. 57. Brian Learmount, A History of the Auction (London: Barnard and Learmount, 1985), pag. 30–31. l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / / e d u o c t o a r t i c e – p d l f / d o i / . / / 1 0 1 1 6 2 o c t o _ a _ 0 0 3 5 2 1 7 5 4 3 0 7 o c t o _ a _ 0 0 3 5 2 p d . / f b y g u e s t t o n 0 9 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 138 OCTOBER Cameron Rowland Group of 11 Used Bikes – Item: 0281-007089, 2018 Group of 11 Used Bikes sold for $287
45 X 130 X 54 inches (114.30 × 330.20 × 137.16 cm)
Rental at cost

In the United States, property seized by the police is sold at police auction.

Auction proceeds are used to fund the police.

Police, ICE, and CBP may retain from 80% A 100% of the revenue generat-

ed from the auction of seized property.

Rental at cost: Artworks indicated as “Rental at cost” are not sold. Each of these

artworks may be rented for 5 years for the total price realized at police auction.

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1.
(Giugno 2016), https:// www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/the-constitutionality-of-civil-forfeiture.

Caleb Nelson, “The Constitutionality of Civil Forfeiture,” The Yale Law Journal 125, NO. 8

2.
pag. 56–57.

Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944),

Ibid., P. 57.

Brian Learmount, A History of the Auction (London: Barnard and Learmount, 1985), pag. 30–31.

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140

OCTOBER

Cameron Rowland
Depreciation, 2018
Restrictive covenant; 1 acre on Edisto Island, South Carolina

Forty acres and a mule as reparations for slavery originates in General William
Tecumseh Sherman’s Field Order 15, issued on January 16, 1865. Sherman’s Field
Order 15 was issued out of concern for a potential uprising of the thousands of ex-
slaves who were following his army by the time it arrived in Savannah.1

The field order stipulated that “The islands from Charleston south, the aban-
doned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the coun-
try bordering the Saint Johns River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the set-
tlement of the negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of
the President of the United States. Each family shall have a plot of not more than
forty acres of tillable ground.”2

This was followed by the formation of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen,
and Abandoned Lands in March 1865. In the months immediately following the
issue of the field orders, approximately 40,000 former slaves settled in the area
designated by Sherman on the basis of possessory title.3 Ten thousand of these for-
mer slaves were settled on Edisto Island, South Carolina.4

In 1866, following Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson effec-
tively rescinded Field Order 15 by ordering these lands be returned to their previ-
ous Confederate owners.

Former slaves were given the option to work for their former masters as
sharecroppers or be evicted. If evicted, former slaves could be arrested for home-
lessness under vagrancy clauses of the Black Codes. Those who refused to leave
and refused to sign sharecrop contracts were threatened with arrest.

Although restoration of the land to the previous Confederate owners was
slowed in some cases by court challenges filed by ex-slaves, nearly all the land set-
tled was returned by the 1870s. As Eric Foner writes, “Johnson had in effect abro-
gated the Confiscation Act and unilaterally amended the law creating the
[Freedmen’s] Bureau. The idea of a Freedmen’s Bureau actively promoting black
landownership had come to an abrupt end.”5 The Freedmen’s Bureau agents
became primary proponents of labor contracts inducting former slaves into the
sharecropping system.6

1.
Harper & Row, 1988; New York: HarperCollins, 2014), P. 71.

Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, updated ed. (New York:

Headquarters Military Division of the Mississippi, Special Field Orders No. 15 (1865).

Foner, Reconstruction, P. 71.

4.
History Press, 2008), P. 87.

Charles Spencer, Edisto Island, 1861 A 2006: Ruin, Recovery and Rebirth (Charleston, SC: IL

Foner, Reconstruction, P. 161.

Ibid.

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D37

141

Among the lands that were repossessed in 1866 by former Confederate own-
ers was the Maxcy Place plantation. “A group of freed people were at Maxcy Place
in January 1866. . . . The people contracted to work for the proprietor, but no con-
tract or list of names has been found.”7

The one-acre piece of land at 8060 Maxie Road, Edisto Island, South
Carolina, was part of the Maxcy Place plantation. This land was purchased at mar-
ket value on August 6, 2018, by 8060 Maxie Road, Inc., a nonprofit company
formed for the sole purpose of buying this land and recording a restrictive
covenant on its use. This covenant has as its explicit purpose the restriction of all
development and use of the property by the owner.

The property is now appraised at $0. By rendering it legally unusable, Questo
restrictive covenant eliminates the market value of the land. These restrictions run
with the land, regardless of the owner. As such, they will last indefinitely.

As reparation, this covenant asks how land might exist outside of the legal-
economic regime of property that was instituted by slavery and colonization.
Rather than redistributing the property, the restriction imposed on 8060 Maxie
Road’s status as valuable and transactable real estate asserts antagonism to the
regime of property as a means of reparation.

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