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🪞The Man or Woman in the MirrorđźŽ
The Man or Woman in the Mirror: a Detroit eviction, two judges, and a federal TRO/Solomon decision — a reflection on power, self-correction, and reparations.
Anita Belle
7/27/20265 min read
🏠The story so far
On July 22, 2026, an eviction order was signed against my family home in Detroit — the same home my late father, Hugh Belle, one of the last Buffalo Soldier veterans and a Mississippi NAACP chapter leader, secured for our family. My mother Thelma, a member of the United Auto Workers, (UAW), protected the house further with a Lady Bird Deed naming my sister Karen and me as its rightful heirs. Both our parents passed years before a Sheriff's Sale was ever conducted against them. Nearly four years before.
The judge who signed that eviction order is Judge Monique A. Sharpe of Detroit's 36th District Court — a judge named as a defendant in my federal civil rights case, in a case that argues, among other things, that she should never have been the one presiding over this matter at all.
I'll add one more thing I witnessed myself, because I think it belongs in this record: on July 17, 2026, the 36th District Court closed. The Chief Judge's order explaining the closure was posted on the court's website — but the only notice on the courthouse door itself was handwritten in red marker. If a courthouse can close with that little formality on public display, I don't think it's out of line to ask whether the same building's processes deserved more scrutiny, not less, in my family's case five days later.
I am not going to relitigate the whole case in a newsletter. That's what the federal court is for. A copy of the amended federal complaint appears on reparationsworld.com. But I want to tell you about two judges, and one choice, because I think it's a davar Torah — a word of Torah — for anyone doing justice and reparations work right now.
⚖️Two rulings, side by side
Last month, in a different 36th District courtroom, Judge Ruth Ann Garrett was asked to reconsider a default judgment she'd entered against a woman named Savannah Williams — a judgment issued without a contract ever being produced. When the record showed the error, Judge Garrett set the default judgment aside. She looked at the record, recognized the harm a wrong ruling would cause garnishment, and corrected course.
That is what a judge is supposed to do when the facts show doubt: pause, reflect, and correct or repair. (And yes — I'm borrowing "Black Lady Courtroom" as a wink to A Black Lady Sketch Show on HBO. If you know, you know.)
In my case, the record shows a title dispute — a Lady Bird Deed versus a Sheriff's Sale — that Michigan law says belongs in circuit court, not the 36th District Court. It shows a chain of deaths recorded years before the sale that triggered the deed's protections. It shows real, documented doubt. An adjournment, pending the outcome of the appeal already filed, was the available and reasonable path. Instead, Judge Sharpe signed the order of eviction.
I'm not going to tell you this is about race, because it isn't. It's about two rulings. Judge Garrett self-corrected in the face of doubt. Judge Sharpe didn't.
đź“ś Now it's Judge Goldsmith's turn to choose
My federal case — Anita Belle and Karen Muntu v. Wayne County et al. — is in front of Judge Mark A. Goldsmith in the Eastern District of Michigan, with an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction pending right now.
In the Exodus to Mars universe I've spent years building, every chapter turns on the same test: when someone with power sees an injustice happening in real time, what do they do with their power? Do they look away, turning a blind eye or a blind Third Eye to Evil Eyes, or do they become a hero in the moment they've been given?
Judge Goldsmith didn't create this conflict. He didn't sign the eviction order — Judge Sharpe did. But he is the one person in this story right now who can pause it — who can look at the same doubt Judge Garrett once looked at, and choose the same thing: pause, reflect, get it right before something irreversible happens to a family.
That's not a demand. It's not an accusation. It's an invitation into the story at the exact moment the story needs a hero to show up. Every Exodus to Mars chapter has one. This one is real, and it's still being written.
🪞🖼️The deeper teaching
Part of what I keep coming back to, in my own tradition and in the world I'm building through this reparations work, is a single guardrail: don't become what oppressed you by oppressing someone else. That guardrail is really a mirror. It asks every person who holds power, at every level, the same question: when you see yourself doing what was once done to you, do you correct course on your own — or does it take someone else forcing you to correct you? The truth will make you free. Lying to yourself is volunteering for slavery.
In the interest of full disclosure, I aggrieved FOUR 36th District Court judges to Michigan's Judicial Tenure Commission to help advance their internal self-reflection.
Judge Garrett looked in that mirror and corrected herself. That's the better outcome, but it's not the outcome anyone should have to count on. Power without self-reflection and self-correction is how injustice reproduces itself, generation after generation, courtroom after courtroom — and that's really just another way of saying what's been known for centuries: absolute power corrupts absolutely. The fix was never to hope the person holding power looks in the mirror and has an epiphany. The fix is making sure the power was never absolute or centralized in the first place — so that when self-correction doesn't come from within, correction from external forces still can.
That's the choice in front of Judge Goldsmith. Even if Michigan's Judicial Tenure Commission takes away Judge Sharpe's job for wrongfully taking my house, her job or career loss doesn't shelter me from homelessness or hunger. That's the choice that was in front of the eviction court. My federal motion for a temporary restraining order empowers Judge Goldsmith to right Judge Sharpe's wrong in her Black Lady Courtroom.
On the melanin level, I respectfully asked Judge Sharpe to correct herself so a white man wouldn't. She refused. For black people, black sellouts who oppress us as if they are white is a grief that we must correct, repair, and vote out.
🚀You can be a hero in this story too
Not every hero in Exodus to Mars, or any other Promised Land, wears a robe or a cape. Some just choose to show up. If this story moved you, there are two ways to stand with the work in real terms: a direct contribution at givebutter.com/reparations, or holding a piece of the Global Reparations DAO itself through the IME Blueprint NFT (Ethereum, via Manifold) — a way to literally hold a stake in reparations infrastructure as it's being built, not just read about it.
A cornerstone of Judaism is “tikkum ha-olam” or repair the world. Chosen people choose to repair the world. The root word of reparations is “repair”. That’s my Heru/Hebrew/Ark of the Covenant heritage.
Shabbat Shalom. I'll keep you posted on what the court decides. Preferably, that update will come from my house in Detroit and not from asylum elsewhere on Earth. Am I safe in this country?
Swing low.
Sincerely,
Anita Belle
President, Reparations Labor Union | Female Co-Chair, NCOBRA-Detroit
Disclaimer
The Reparations Labor Union is not yet recognized as a 501(c)(5) labor organization. Participation does not constitute legal representation, legal advice, or formal collective bargaining under U.S. labor law.