cawacko
Well-known member
This is just so fascinating. Most people are familiar with San Francisco. This City voted well over 80% for Joe Biden. The last Republican Mayor left office in 1964. I couldn't even tell you the last time a single Republican held any position in the City. Republicans don't even run for office here, let alone win. Everyone who runs here is a Democrat, and an occasional Green Party member. Democrats, who would all be considered progressives nationally, are broken down into 'moderates' and progressives and basically if you don't think market rate housing is evil then you are a moderate locally.
Polls clearly show not all Democrats favor reparations. Rev Brown says not doing so is evil and the City only supports black people to a point. If one of the most liberal cities in the country isn't willing to do it that's probably not a good sign for the rest of the country. In our tribal/partisan battles we love to label the other 'side' but turn away focus from ourselves. We've seen plenty of people say Republicans don't recognize racism but is this Democratic racism in not supporting reparations?
In Valentine's Day rally for S.F. reparations, Black leaders say city doesn't love its Black population
Rev. Amos Brown convened a town hall meeting Tuesday to employ Valentine’s Day in an appeal for the city to embrace reparations, as recommended in a recent study by a civic committee.
“On this Valentine’s Day, a day that symbolizes love, compassion, care and concern, I submit that this city has not loved its African Americans enough,” Brown announced to a gathering of the media at Third Baptist church. “Any person who does not think African Americans are worthy of reparations is the personification of evil.”
The African American Reparation Advisory Committee, a 15-member board that advises Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors, recently submitted a 60-page report that traces systemic racism in the city going back to slavery up through discriminatory housing covenants in residential subdivisions. The report calls for $5 million to each eligible African American who can establish long-time residency in the city. Release of the report has brought a backlash, said Brown.
“Five million is not that much,” he said, when you consider “246 years of slavery. I can’t overstate the importance of reparations,” he said. “It isn’t enough to apologize. Somewhere there has to be reparations.”
At the Town Hall, Brown was flanked by civil rights attorney John Burris on one side, and April Green, the aunt of Keita O’Neil, who was killed by San Francisco Police in 2017, on the other.
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins last week announced she will overturn a decision by her predecessor, Chesa Boudin, to prosecute the rookie officer who shot O’Neil. He was shot and killed as he ran from police who had stopped his vehicle. In the aftermath, the officer, Christopher Samayoa was fired and his family paid $2.5 million by the city.
“The facts themselves justify prosecution,” said Burris, who had represented the family of the victim but is no longer on the case. He described the incident as “an unconscionable act, cruel in nature,” and the decision by the DA to drop the charges “insulting to the people whose lives have been lost.
The politicization of the murder case is another example in a lifetime of them cited by Brown and Burris, all of which has conspired to diminish the city’s Black population to 4%. Brown blamed much of this exodus on what he called “cotton candy liberalism,” in which the city’s longstanding progressive establishment supports Black causes up until it actually comes to financial investment.
Brown said these reparations could come in the form of health care for the Black population, in the form of improved educational support in the public school system, including the hiring of more Black teachers, and most prominently in the form of affordable housing, the primary reason why the Black population has dwindled.
“In this city and county, it is a shame that African Americans are not getting fair housing,” he said, noting that Black people amount to 4% of the population but 40% of the homeless population.
“We offered reparations to the Japanese and now the Japanese have Japantown,” he said, describing the redevelopment of the Fillmore District, a formerly Black neighborhood. That scattered the Black population to supportive housing projects scattered across the south side of the city, and out of the city altogether.One way to rectify this would be for the city to turn over 1300 Fillmore Street, a vacant city-owned building at the corner of Eddy, as a center for Black business enterprises, Brown said.
“We must have a watering hole,” he said. “We need to have a place to meet and celebrate our culture. “We don’t have it.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/san-francisco-reparations-town-hall-17783943.php
Polls clearly show not all Democrats favor reparations. Rev Brown says not doing so is evil and the City only supports black people to a point. If one of the most liberal cities in the country isn't willing to do it that's probably not a good sign for the rest of the country. In our tribal/partisan battles we love to label the other 'side' but turn away focus from ourselves. We've seen plenty of people say Republicans don't recognize racism but is this Democratic racism in not supporting reparations?
In Valentine's Day rally for S.F. reparations, Black leaders say city doesn't love its Black population
Rev. Amos Brown convened a town hall meeting Tuesday to employ Valentine’s Day in an appeal for the city to embrace reparations, as recommended in a recent study by a civic committee.
“On this Valentine’s Day, a day that symbolizes love, compassion, care and concern, I submit that this city has not loved its African Americans enough,” Brown announced to a gathering of the media at Third Baptist church. “Any person who does not think African Americans are worthy of reparations is the personification of evil.”
The African American Reparation Advisory Committee, a 15-member board that advises Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors, recently submitted a 60-page report that traces systemic racism in the city going back to slavery up through discriminatory housing covenants in residential subdivisions. The report calls for $5 million to each eligible African American who can establish long-time residency in the city. Release of the report has brought a backlash, said Brown.
“Five million is not that much,” he said, when you consider “246 years of slavery. I can’t overstate the importance of reparations,” he said. “It isn’t enough to apologize. Somewhere there has to be reparations.”
At the Town Hall, Brown was flanked by civil rights attorney John Burris on one side, and April Green, the aunt of Keita O’Neil, who was killed by San Francisco Police in 2017, on the other.
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins last week announced she will overturn a decision by her predecessor, Chesa Boudin, to prosecute the rookie officer who shot O’Neil. He was shot and killed as he ran from police who had stopped his vehicle. In the aftermath, the officer, Christopher Samayoa was fired and his family paid $2.5 million by the city.
“The facts themselves justify prosecution,” said Burris, who had represented the family of the victim but is no longer on the case. He described the incident as “an unconscionable act, cruel in nature,” and the decision by the DA to drop the charges “insulting to the people whose lives have been lost.
The politicization of the murder case is another example in a lifetime of them cited by Brown and Burris, all of which has conspired to diminish the city’s Black population to 4%. Brown blamed much of this exodus on what he called “cotton candy liberalism,” in which the city’s longstanding progressive establishment supports Black causes up until it actually comes to financial investment.
Brown said these reparations could come in the form of health care for the Black population, in the form of improved educational support in the public school system, including the hiring of more Black teachers, and most prominently in the form of affordable housing, the primary reason why the Black population has dwindled.
“In this city and county, it is a shame that African Americans are not getting fair housing,” he said, noting that Black people amount to 4% of the population but 40% of the homeless population.
“We offered reparations to the Japanese and now the Japanese have Japantown,” he said, describing the redevelopment of the Fillmore District, a formerly Black neighborhood. That scattered the Black population to supportive housing projects scattered across the south side of the city, and out of the city altogether.One way to rectify this would be for the city to turn over 1300 Fillmore Street, a vacant city-owned building at the corner of Eddy, as a center for Black business enterprises, Brown said.
“We must have a watering hole,” he said. “We need to have a place to meet and celebrate our culture. “We don’t have it.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/san-francisco-reparations-town-hall-17783943.php