Tag: reparations

So-Called ‘Moderate’ San Francisco Mayor Signs Ludicrous Reparations Scheme That Could Award Each Black Resident $5 MILLION

The People’s Republic of San Francisco has decided to enshrine race-based reparations into law with the help of their alleged ‘moderate‘ mayor.

As the Daily Mail reported, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie gave black residents of his city an early Christmas gift by signing a reparations bill that could grant each one of them a whopping $5 MILLION in reparations. The legislation was signed on December 23.

Per The Daily Mail, here is how this scheme will unfold:

The ordinance establishes a reparations fund, as recommended by the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) in its 2023 report.

The legislation establishes the fund but does not allocate any money to it, setting up the framework for any future contributions, whether they be through the city or privately donated.

The AARAC is tasked with developing ‘recommendations for repairing harm in our black communities,’ according to its website. Per the 2023 report, every eligible African-American adult in San Francisco should be handed a $5 million lump sum to ‘compensate the affected population for the decades of harm that they have experienced.’

Approximately 50,000 black people live in San Francisco, and the qualifying requirements remain unclear.

This move also comes despite the city facing a whopping $1 billion budget deficit. But this did not deter Lurie in the slightest.

“For several years, communities across the city have been working with the government to acknowledge the decades of harm done to San Francisco’s black community,” Lurie wrote.

“While that process largely predates my administration, I am signing the legislation to create this fund in recognition of the work of so many San Franciscans and the unanimous support of the Board of Supervisors.”

Roughly a week before Lurie signed off on the plan, the city’s Board of Supervisors voted in favor of it.

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Somali Activists Who Can Barely Speak English DEMAND Reparations Over Trauma From ICE Raids in Minnesota

Somali Activists with Neighbors United demanded reparations after the recent ICE raids.

Neighbors United is a far-left organization started by the Somali community in Minnesota.

The Somali activists gathered together for a press conference on Friday to demand “relief from the damages of ICE terror.”

The Department of Homeland Security arrested more than 4,000 dangerous criminal aliens, including sex offenders, gang members and terrorists in Operation Metro Surge.

“Despite coordinated attacks of violence against our law enforcement, our officers have made more than 4,000 arrests of illegal aliens including murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and terrorists in Minnesota since Operation Metro Surge began,” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. 

“We need sanctuary politicians to cooperate with us by notifying us before releasing public safety threats back onto the streets to commit more crimes and create more victims. We will not back down from our mission to remove criminal illegal aliens from American neighborhoods,” she added. 

The Somalis spoke broken English as they made outrageous demands which included direct grants to immigrant, black and brown small businesses making less than $200,000 per year.

“We believe programs fit into our criteria. For Somali –small business owners, not those who make $200,000 and above,” the Somali said.

“We don’t make that much amount. We have been suffering since the crisis of ICE. We also demand an immediate help to evictions so families are not pushed to homelessness during the crisis,” she said.

“Our community deserves accountability. Our community deserves safety. We need also justice for those who lost their lives defending the community,” she said.

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San Francisco Reparations Fund Now Causing Infighting Among Various Groups in the City

San Francisco passed a resolution right before Christmas, creating a reparations fund that is supposed to pay a ridiculous amount of money to black residents, despite the fact that California never even had slavery.

Bear in mind that there is no money for this. The city has a massive deficit.

To make matters worse, the divisive policy is now driving infighting among various groups in the city. It seems like this was inevitable.

FOX News reports:

San Francisco residents band together to shut down reparations fund, claiming it’s ‘dividing’ the city

Richie Greenberg, one of the plaintiffs suing San Francisco over its reparations fund, claimed the measure is divisive because it solely favors Black residents.

“It is dividing the city rather than trying to unite. So, what we really need is to be focusing on how to uplift everybody rather than focusing on one group giving everything to that one group. And then everyone else is then responsible for paying for that one group,” Greenberg told Fox News Digital…

The city was sued over its reparations fund on grounds its taxpayer money is being “unlawfully” used for a policy that allegedly violates the equal protection clause.

According to the Pacific Legal Foundation, several San Francisco residents and Californians for Equal Rights Foundation sued San Francisco Thursday, challenging an ordinance that establishes a fund for Black residents.

The lawsuit alleges that the ordinance is discriminating on the basis of race because it allows taxpayer money to be funneled into the fund. The plaintiffs said a win would protect taxpayers from supporting a government-based racially motivated program and establish boundaries for other cities implementing similar policies.

“Acknowledging past injustice does not give the government license to spend public resources on programs that sort people by race and ancestry today,” said Andrew Quinio, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation.

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Illinois City Issues $25,000 in Cash to Black Residents for Reparations

More than a million dollars will soon be doled out to black residents of Evanston, Illinois, under the city’s reparations program.

Evanston’s Reparations Committee announced last week that 44 people will be getting $25,000 each, for a total of $1.1 million, according to the Chicago Tribune.

All 44 are descendants of individuals who qualify under the city’s program that pays out reparations to black residents who claimed they experienced housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969.

The payments are intended to be used for housing expenses, Cynthia Vargas, Evanston’s communications and community engagement manager, said.

Through Jan. 31, the city has received $276,588 for the Reparations Fund from its real estate transfer tax. The city’s Cannabis Retailers Occupation Tax, which by state edict does not share amounts, also kicks in to the fund.

No private donations have been reported to fund the program.

To keep the cash flowing, the city is debating putting a tax on Delta-8 THC products such as gummies or vapes.

Second Ward Councilmember Krissie Harris noted that the city is not holding back on cash to those who qualify, but it has to wait until it has the revenue to spend.

Evanston made history by being the first city to pass a reparations plan.

It set a goal of handing out $10 million over a decade to black residents, according to Fox News.

Judicial Watch has sued the city over the program, saying it violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In its lawsuit, Judicial Watch argued that the “program’s use of a race-based eligibility requirement is presumptively unconstitutional, and remedying societal discrimination is not a compelling government interest.”

“Nor has remedying discrimination from as many as 105 years ago or remedying intergenerational discrimination ever been recognized as a compelling government interest,” the lawsuit said.

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San Francisco mayor sneaks through reparations bill just before Christmas that could give each black resident $5MILLION

The mayor of San Francisco discreetly approved a bill to create a fund that may eventually grant each of the city’s eligible black residents $5 million in reparations. 

Mayor Daniel Lurie quietly signed the incredibly divisive Reparations Bill just two days before Christmas. 

The ordinance establishes a Reparations Fund, as recommended by the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) in its 2023 report. 

The legislation merely establishes the fund but does not allocate any money to it – setting up the framework for any future contributions, whether they be through the city or privately donated.

The AARAC is tasked with developing ‘recommendations for repairing harm in our black communities,’ according to its website. 

Per the 2023 report, every African American adult in San Francisco should be handed a $5 million lump sum to ‘compensate the affected population for the decades of harms that they have experienced.’

While this effort has captured the most attention – and sparked the most controversy – the AARAC rattled off more than 100 suggestions, including debt relief, guaranteed annual income of $97,000, debt forgiveness and city-funded homes for black people. 

In 2023, the conservative public policy think tank Hoover Institution said the plan would cost each non-African American household in the city about $600,000 in tax dollars. 

However, Lurie told the Daily Mail that this is not the case, citing the city’s struggling finances. 

‘For several years, communities across the city have been working with the government to acknowledge the decades of harm done to San Francisco’s black community,’ Lurie wrote. 

‘While that process largely predates my administration, I am signing the legislation to create this fund in recognition of the work of so many San Franciscans and the unanimous support of the Board of Supervisors.’

But Lurie said the city is bracing for a $1 billion budget deficit next year.

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Maryland to consider slavery reparations after Gov. Wes Moore’s veto is overridden

Maryland will create a commission to study potential reparations for slavery after lawmakers voted Tuesday to override a veto by Gov. Wes Moore — currently the nation’s only Black governor — that disappointed many fellow Democrats.

Moore said in his veto letter in May that it was a difficult decision to veto the bill, which was a priority of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland. But he wrote there has been enough study of the legacy of slavery, and it was now time to “focus on the work itself” to address it.

But Democrats who control both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly decided the commission was needed to better examine how to do that.

“This topic isn’t easy, but, again, without formal study, reparations risk being dismissed as symbolic or unconstitutional, regardless of moral merit,” said Sen. Charles Sydnor, a Democrat.

After his veto was overridden, Moore said that while he disagrees with the legislature’s decision, “I am eager to move forward in partnership on the work of repair that we all agree is an urgent and pressing need.”

“I believe the time for action is now — and we must continue moving forward with the work of repair immediately,” Moore said in a statement. “That mission is especially vital given the immediate and ongoing effects of this federal administration on our constituents, including communities that have been historically left behind.”

Potential reparations outlined in the bill include official statements of apology, monetary compensation, property tax rebates, social service assistance, as well as licensing and permit fee waivers and reimbursement. Reparations also could include assistance with making a down payment on a home, business incentives, childcare, debt forgiveness and tuition payment waivers for higher education.

Maryland’s Black population is about 30%, the highest percentage of any state outside of the Deep South.

Support for reparations gained momentum in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. However, the issue has been a difficult one, particularly for high-profile Democrats, and comes amid a broader conservative backlash over how race, history and inequality are handled in public institutions.

“At a time of growing attacks on diversity and equity, today’s action reaffirms our shared commitment to truth-telling, accountability, and meaningful progress for Black Marylanders,” the state’s Legislative Black Caucus said in a statement.

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Want Slavery Reparations? Go Ask Muslim Countries, Says Scholar

It’s arguable that the people who complain about slavery most actually may love it, in a perverse way. After all, it provides so many with excuses for failure, anti-Western talking points, and opportunities to extract hand-outs. Just consider “reparations,” which are now continually demanded (by people enslaved only by their own indoctrination). Why, California Governor Gavin Newsom, panderer-in-chief, just signed a bill Friday to create a reparations-administration agency. Never mind that California was never a slave state.

But to African-descent people who want reparations, a British-Bangladeshi scholar has a message: You’re barking up the wrong tree.

You need to seek your booty elsewhere — from Muslim countries.

Dr. Rakib Ehsan, a commentator and author of the book Beyond Grievance, mentions the Ottoman Empire in particular. Now the nation of Turkey, chattel slavery was a major part of its economy and society for more than six centuries, Ehsan points out. He elaborates at The Telegraph:

Millions were enslaved — including Slavs, Eastern Europeans, Africans, and people in the western Mediterranean.

The Ottoman Empire captured and utilised “white slaves” — primarily European Christians — through various methods such as raids into European territories and the Black Sea slave trade originating from the Balkans and Caucasus.

Under the “Devshirme” system, Christian boys were conscripted and forced to convert to Islam, trained to serve as slave soldiers (the Janissaries). The gradual rolling back of Ottoman imperial slavery was ultimately the result of Western pressure.

Note here that white slavery, in a de facto sense, wasn’t unknown in the early United States, either. According to the 2007 book White Cargo, in fact, more than 300,000 white de facto slaves were sent from Europe to the United States over two centuries. And among some groups within this number, the mortality rate was 25-50 percent.

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Gavin Newsom approves slavery reparations agency

Gavin Newsom on Friday approved a new state agency to administer restitution for descendants of slaves — a victory for Black lawmakers and advocates despite stopping short of providing cash reparations.

The Democratic governor signed the legislation, SB 518, five years after forming a task force in the wake of George Floyd’s murder to study the legacy of slavery in California and how the state could implement reparations policies — and more than two years after the panel released its extensive recommendations.

Newsom mentioned the bill during a conversation about racism on the podcast “Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay.”

“I signed a bill two days ago with the Black Caucus as it relates to creating a new office to address these systemic issues,” he said during an episode released Friday morning.

Pushing reparations proposals across the finish line has proved challenging — especially as the post-pandemic political climate shifted rightward and the state confronted multibillion-dollar budget deficits. Newsom himself threw cold water on the notion of writing checks to descendants of slaves when he said in 2023, “Dealing with the legacy of slavery is about much more than cash payments.”

Last year, late amendments sought by Newsom, combined with caucus in-fighting, sank the effort to stand up a new reparations agency. The governor later vetoed a bill that would have provided redress for victims of racially-motivated eminent domain, noting the state lacked an agency to administer the program.

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California Passes Reparations in College Admissions, Despite Prop 209

The California legislature passed a bill last week that would provide reparations to descendants of slaves in the form of college admissions — despite Proposition 209, which forbids the use of race in college admissions.

The bill, AB 7, provides that California State University, the University of California, independent institutions of higher education … and private postsecondary educational institutions … may consider providing a preference in admissions to an applicant who is a descendant of slavery.” It applies to anyone “who can establish direct lineage to a person who, before 1900, was subjected to American chattel slavery.”

Proposition 209, passed in 1996 and reaffirmed by California voters in 2020, bans the use of race in college admissions and for other public purposes. Supporters of AB 7 say that “descendant of slavery” is race-neutral.

The Los Angeles Times reports that AB 7 is only one of several reparations bills passed by the legislature:

Earlier this week, the Democratic-led Legislature also passed Senate Bill 518, which would create a new office called the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery. That bureau would create a process to determine whether someone is the descendant of a slave and to certify someone’s claim to help them access benefits.

The legislature also approved Assembly Bill 57, by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Hawthorne), which would help descendants of slavery build generational wealth by becoming homeowners.

…

The Legislature also passed McKinnor’s AB 67, which sets up a process for people who said they or their families lost property to the government through “racially motivated eminent domain” to seek to have the property returned or to be paid.

Newsom will now consider the bills. He signed a formal apology for slavery last year, after declining to back bills that would have provided cash reparations.

California entered the Union as a Free State in 1850.

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Africa joins campaign to claim reparations from Britain for ‘historic crimes’

Africa has officially joined the push to demand reparations from Britain and other former colonial powers for ‘historic crimes’, including slavery and imperialism.

The African Union, which represents all 55 nations on the continent, has called for ‘meaningful reparations’ from European powers for exploiting Africa’s people, land and resources and blamed colonialism for ongoing ‘systemic injustice’ across the region.

At a joint summit in Addis Ababa with Caribbean leaders, the bloc said it would team up with countries across the Atlantic to seek compensation and what it called ‘reparatory justice’.

Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, the Djiboutian politician heading up the African Union Commission, said the two regions would now work together to ‘honour our ancestors, to uplift our descendants and reclaim our shared destiny in freedom, justice and unity’.

It comes as Caribbean nations – under the Caricom alliance of 15 states – have already demanded trillions in compensation for slavery. Now African leaders are expected to draw up their own list of demands.

Britain, which at the height of its empire controlled a quarter of Africa, could find itself facing fresh claims – not just for its involvement in the slave trade, but for the broader impact of colonialism and what has been described as ongoing ‘structural and systemic injustice’.

Reparations are now being framed more broadly, not only in terms of slavery, but also the return of cultural artefacts, reforms to global economic systems, and compensation for climate change impacts. 

Leaders argue that the industrialised nations of the ‘Global North’ bear historical responsibility for environmental degradation.

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