A member of California’s Reparations Task Force predicts the group will come up with “stunning proposals” and end up with an even higher price tag than the predicted $640 billion.
In 2020, California became the first state to form a reparations task force and is still struggling to put a price on the debt.
Lisa Holder, a member of the California Reparations Task Force and president of the Equal Justice Society, now suggests that when the final plan is announced, numbers could be above the proposed $360,000 per eligible claimant, already down from the original $223,329 have shot up.
“With concrete and tangible redress initiatives, California is on the brink of an historic and earthquake-splitting turning point to finally bring justice to black Americans. The task force’s recommendations will be stunning. You don’t have to be anything less,” she wrote.
Reparations for slavery is an issue of growing political importance and controversial debate as a number of cities and states pursue their own proposals on the issue.
Lisa Holder (pictured), a member of the California Reparations Task Force and president of the Equal Justice Society, predicts the group will make “stunning proposals” and end up with an even higher price than predicted
It wasn’t until George Floyd, a black man, was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 that reparations movements across the country gained traction.
The latest proposal to be released suggested it would cost the Golden State over $640 billion, according to the Washington Examiner.
“It’s important that Californians understand that to meet the magnitude of America’s greatest injustice, we must be prepared for remedial action on a scale that approaches the programs of the Great Society of Medicare and Medicaid,” Holder said in one Commentary for Cal Matters.
Despite the state’s projected budget deficit of $22.5 billion, Holder believes this project needs to shake up a system she believes has left blacks behind.
“Reparations will include programs that disrupt racism in our key institutions. These programs are offered in the areas of housing, criminal justice systems, education, health and medicine, and infrastructure for financial prosperity and wealth creation. Resolving systemic racism and rehabilitating institutions will require major shifts in these sectors,” she wrote.
She argued that monetary compensation could be granted and that entitlement could extend beyond the descendants of slaves.
Holder also noted that California’s incorporation into the United States as a free state, not a slave state, was irrelevant, citing an interim report by the task force that claimed the state was “in practice a pro-slavery state, a Jim.” -Crow state and a post -apartheid state of civil rights.’
The task force’s final report and recommendation will be presented on July 1 before the proposals are voted on by the legislature, in which 94 of the 120 members are Democrats.
Protesters gathered at the CNN Center in Atlanta for a march to demand redress for systematic injustices inflicted on black people in July 2020
The task force has already released an interim report (pictured) ahead of the final release on July 1
The bill would then fall on the desk of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom formed the task force in 2020.
Meanwhile, individual California cities and towns across the country have begun their own proposals.
San Francisco’s proposals are by far the most far-reaching, after a city-appointed redress committee issued more than 100 recommendations that were enthusiastically received at a hearing earlier this month.
The proposals include payments of $5 million to every eligible Black adult, elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, guaranteed annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years, and homes in San Francisco for just $1 per family.
The Board of Directors, having heard the proposals, may vote to accept some or all of the recommendations. There is no deadline for the decision, but the board will next consider the issue at a meeting in September.
Demonstrators from the Reparationist Collective gather at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC to demand slavery reparations in February 2021
A crowd listens to speakers at a reparations rally outside San Francisco City Hall at a reparations hearing earlier this month
The San Francisco draft reparations plan, released in December, is unmatched nationally for its specificity and breadth.
The committee did not analyze the cost of the proposals, but critics have called the plan financially ruinous and politically impossible.
A conservative estimate by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution says it would cost every non-black family in the city at least $600,000.
John Dennis, leader of the Republican Party in San Francisco, criticized the proposal as irresponsible because it could not be funded.
“It’s completely frivolous and apart from being a massive waste of time, it’s also a total distraction,” he told AFP. “The city’s (annual) budget is $14 billion. They’re talking about spending $50 billion. It’s absurd.’
But Amos Brown of the NAACP, a group that advocates for racial justice, said headlines aren’t helpful.
“It is wrong and dishonest to reduce this issue to a $5 million fight,” he told AFP.
“It doesn’t show all the terror and pain that we endured. My position is that for everything we’ve been through, it’s about $5 million plus specific programs to boost economic development, housing, health care and education, he said.
Supervisor Shamann Walton, center left, speaks during a special Board of Supervisors hearing on reparations March 14 in San Francisco
Several supervisors said they were surprised to hear backlash even from politically liberal San Franciscans.
“For those of my constituents who have gone insane over this proposal, we are not doing that, and we wouldn’t do that for anyone else,” Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, whose district includes the heavily LGBTQ neighborhood of Castro, said at the hearing this month.
“It’s something we would do for our future, for everyone’s collective future,” he added.
A number of cities are also exploring possible reparations strategies, including Boston; St Louis; St Paul, Minnesota; Asheville, North Carolina and Providence, Rhode Island.
Meanwhile, the Illinois city of Evanston has been helping residents who have suffered from historic racist housing policies. Its grants have paid off some mortgages but also fueled divisions between winners and losers.