Tag: reparations

SF district attorney withdraws charges against defendant in attack on Asian man

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin withdrew charges on Monday against one of two suspects in a disturbing attack on an Asian man in San Francisco’s Bayview that was captured on video and prompted outrage from city leaders, officials said.

The district attorney’s office will pursue a “restorative justice” model against 20-year-old Dwayne Grayson, who was booked last week on suspicion of robbery, elder abuse, a hate crime charge and probation violation following the Feb. 22 incident.

Police said Grayson recorded the attack and posted it to social media.

Boudin charged him with elder abuse last week, but pulled back the charges after having a conversation with the victim, said Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office. The victim has not been identified or spoken publicly about the incident.

“We’ve been in conversation with the victim who expressed interest in a restorative justice outcome in this case,” Bastian said. “Specifically, against the young person who videoed the incident. We respect victims and their desires, and we will explore a restorative justice outcome.”

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Democrats Ban White Farmers From Federal COVID Relief Program

Last week, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law. The bill, comprised of $1.9 trillion in the name of “COVID relief,” received no support from Republicans in the House or Senate, and it’s not hard to see why.

The legislation includes carveouts for dozens of leftist priorities, including a bridge in Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s New York and a tunnel in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Silicon Valley. These items clearly have nothing to do with pandemic relief for the millions of Americans out of work or the businesses shuttered by blue state governors’ harsh public health regulations. To the hardworking Americans everywhere, this bill should reek of the far-left’s desire to shove their ill-conceived policy priorities wherever they can stash them.

What most don’t know about this bill, however, is the small provision known as “Section 1005” that authorizes the secretary of agriculture to make payments of 100 to 120 percent of the “outstanding indebtedness of socially disadvantaged farmers.” Under this provision, those included in the socially disadvantaged category are American Indians, Alaskan Natives, Asians, Blacks, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics.

Putting aside all of the Washington jargon that makes little sense outside of a committee hearing room, this provision—specifically written into the American Rescue Plan by Democrats—pushes a blurred vision of so-called “social equity” by providing relief for farmers based on the color of their skin. Rather than offering much needed relief to all farmers, Sec. 1005 prioritizes race, just as it would ethnicity, sex, or any other factor.

It bears repeating: Sec. 1005 focuses debt relief on farmers based on their race, not based on how harshly the pandemic has affected them—the very reason for relief in the first place. Ironically, this racial discrimination is the very focus of what officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have worked so hard to combat.

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White farmers blast $5bn promised to minority farm-owners in Biden’s relief bill as discrimination and ‘racism’ with Sen. Lindsey Graham claiming it is a form of ‘reparations’

White farmers have voiced their frustration after President Joe Biden‘s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package this week awarded $5billion to minority farmers while not offering them the same aid.

The Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act was introduced to the relief package by Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock in early February to provide immediate financial relief to black, indigenous, and Hispanic farmers.

The bill provides $4billion in direct payments to farmers of color and has allocated $1 billion to address systemic racism at the U.S. Agriculture Department (USAD), providing legal assistance to farmers of color and grants and loans to improve land access for minorities.

The $4billion will provide direct payments of up to 120 percent of a ‘socially disadvantaged’ farmer or rancher’s outstanding debt as of January 1, 2021.

Yet white farmers believe the add-on to the relief package is discriminatory as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham blasts the money as ‘reparations’.

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Professor suspended for tweets criticizing reparations and bias training

The tweets that led to Manco’s suspension were posted on his pseudo account, “South Jersey Giants.” Someone figured out Manco was the owner of the account, took screenshots of some tweets, and posted them on Instagram.

In one of the tweets shared, Manco argued against slavery reparations, saying, they were like the great-great-grandchild of a murder victim asking the great-great-grandchild of a convicted murdered for compensation. “Now, get this racist reparation bullshit out of your head for good,” Manco added in the tweet.

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Obama: ‘White Resistance and Resentment’ Prevented Reparations Push

Former President Barack Obama says that “the politics of White resistance and resentment” kept him from pushing for financial reparations for Black Americans while he was in office.

In the second episode of his podcast with Bruce Springsteen, “Renegades: Born in the USA,” released on Monday, Obama said that he thinks reparations are “justified,” despite having opposed it during the 2008 election.

Obama said, “there’s not much question that the wealth … the power of this country was built in significant part — not exclusively, maybe not even the majority of it, but a large portion of it — was built on the backs of slaves.”

He added that a proposal for reparations failed during his presidency because of “the politics of White resistance and resentment.” 

The former president said, “And what I saw during my presidency was the politics of White resistance and resentment. The talk of ‘welfare queens’ and the talk of the ‘undeserving’ poor. And the backlash against affirmative action.”

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Reparations Don’t Buy Justice, Dignity or Freedom

The problem with the idea of reparations is it redirects attention away from exactly where attention is needed: on individuals’ personal responsibility for their own unique lives.CARTOONS | MICHAEL RAMIREZVIEW CARTOON

And it redirects attention in such a way to encourage individuals to believe that some abstract, collective entity from the past is the cause of all their individual problems in the present.

Compensation for damages is a basic legal principle.

It’s about personal responsibility. Individual A sues individual B for damages caused. Exactly what the damages were and exactly how B injured A must be shown in a court of law.

Today, only a small fraction of our population has ancestors who were around before 1865 when slavery was legal. The idea of collective guilt, with no specific individual identified as causing the damage and no specific individual showing how he or she was damaged, doesn’t fly.

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Journal Publishes Scientifically Flawed Study Claiming Reparations Would Save Black People From Coronavirus

A new “scientific” study has been published that claims that reparations to black Americans would save them from the coronavirus.

The study, entitled “Reparations for American Descendants of Persons Enslaved in the U.S. and their Potential Impact on SARS-CoV-2 Transmission” was published in the “Social Science and Medicine” Journal online at the start of the month.

Put together by academics from Harvard, Duke, UC San Francisco, Stanford, among other universities and organisations, claimed that if only the US had given black Americans reparations for slavery, then coronavirus transmissions would drop in the community by anywhere between 31%-68%.

The study compares the transmission rates at the start of the pandemic between Louisiana, and South Korea, and claimed that the R-rate in Louisiana would have dropped by the given percentages if each black American in the state was given $250,000 in reparations, or $800,000 per household.

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BLM Activist Sasha Johnson Calls For ‘Race Offenders’ Register’ For Microagressors

Radical ‘Black Panther’ Sasha Johnson has called for the creation of a “race offenders’ register” that would block people from securing work if they have been found to have made “microaggressions” and demanded that black people in the UK receive “Holocaust-style” reparations.

The radical activist first rose to prominence in July after a Breitbart London viral video showed Sahsa Johnson proclaiming that British police are “no different than the KKK” and calling for the establishment of a “Black Militia” to fight racism in Britain.

Since then, Johnson has joined the executive leadership committee of “the first black-led political party in the UK”, though she now claims it is merely “black founded” — the Taking The Initiative Party (TTIP).

Outlining the new party’s manifesto, Ms Johnson called for the creation of a “race offenders’ register” that would list those ‘guilty’ of microaggressions (the indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalised group) and would bar them from “certain fields” of employment and even possibly ban the ‘offender’ from living near racial minorities.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Johnson said: “It’s similar to the sex offenders register. If you were to be racially abusive to someone, [the register] would question whether someone is fit enough to hold a particular job where their bias could influence another person’s life.”

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NYU prof: What if White Americans’ taxes were investigated for ties to slavery?

A New York University professor suggested that White people should be forced to submit their taxes to be checked for ties to slavery.

On Nov. 18, the University of California-Berkeley hosted a panel titled “The Future of Freedom: Reparations after 400 Years.” The goal of the panel was to “consider what the question of reparations means for this freedom’s fulfillment and what kind of future could follow for African-Americans beyond 400,” according to the video description. 

The panel consisted of professors Bertrall Ross and Jovan Scott Lewis, both of UC-Berkeley; Katherine Franke of Columbia Law School, and Michael Ralph of New York University.

Each professor provided past examples of reparations given to marginalized people, and said these could be examples of how to pay reparations to African Americans for 400 years of “systemic and violent racism.” 

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Real headline, folks: The Votes of Black Americans Should Count Twice

Black votes in this country are worth less than white votes. Joe Biden won the Electoral College because Black voters in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia turned out in significant numbers. But even with overwhelming Black support—94 percent of Detroit voted for Biden!—the outcomes in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were worryingly close.

The Argument is a column where writers and thinkers propose a provocative idea that may not be politically realizable in the short term but that pushes one to think broader about a pressing issue of public importance.

One core problem is the Electoral College. Wyoming, which has just 580,000 residents and is 93 percent white, gets three electors because of its two senators and one representative in the House. By comparison, Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District—which includes Atlanta, has 710,000 residents, and is 58 percent Black—has no dedicated electors or senators and can only occasionally overcome the mostly white and conservative votes from elsewhere in the state. This devaluation of Black votes allows our political system to ignore Black lives, and the consequences are devastating. Unequal representation has led to unequal health care outcomes, which the Covid-19 pandemic has only worsened. Without sufficient voting power, Black communities receive substandard education, and politicians are free to appoint judges who sanction mass incarceration, abusive policing, and electoral disenfranchisement.

This is all by design. The Constitution’s framers set up the Electoral College to protect the interests of slave states. Along with the Senate, the Electoral College was critical in the endurance of slavery and its continuation by other means. Abolishing this system would mean that ballots cast by Black voters—or any voters, for that matter—would count the same.

But there’s another way to undo the damage of the Electoral College and other structurally racist political institutions: We can implement vote reparations by double-counting ballots cast by all Black residents. The poisonous legacy of slavery applies to Black people regardless of when we or our ancestors arrived in this country. Vote reparations should also extend to Native Americans. Slavery is rightly called America’s original sin, but so too was the United States’ genocidal seizure of land from its original inhabitants. Various legal forms of disenfranchisement have applied to them. It wasn’t until 1962 that all Native Americans were allowed to vote, and even then they faced—and still face—electoral obstacles. These are not the only examples of American oppression; we should include in vote reparations others who have suffered similar disenfranchisement.

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