California Lawmakers Introduce A Big Number of Reparation Bills

There are more than a dozen bills about reparations that were proposed by the California Legislative Black Caucus on Wednesday, the day before Black History Month began.

The important set of laws came after the 500-page Reparations Task Force Report came out in June 2023. It had many suggestions for fixing the widespread harm done to Black Californians for generations, starting with slavery.

The Los Angeles Times stated that none of the 14 bills include giving cash to all Black residents, even though the state is expected to have a budget deficit of almost $40 billion.

California Reparation BillsPhoto byYahoo News

Many people in California do not agree with giving cash reparations, according to a 2023 poll hosted by the L.A. Times and the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Assemblywoman Lori D. Wilson (D) told the L.A. Times, "We started realizing that with the budget situation we were going to have to do more systemic policy change to address systemic racism versus big budget asks because there just wasn't the budget for it." "Changing policies or making opportunities were our top priorities."

The bills, which are called the 2024 CLBC Reparation Priority Bill Package as a whole, aim to make things better in jails, education, health care, business, and civil rights. The Associated Press says that some of the bills want to change California's Constitution, which may be hard for some politicians to agree with.

Some people don't like the deal because they think the bills don't go far enough. Not a single child who doesn't have a place to live will be off the street if those plans go through. "Not a single mom who is having a hard time and is a descendant will get help," Chris Lodgson, a worker with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, told The Associated Press. "The debt that's owed is not being paid back in any way."

News from the California Legislative Black Caucus says that these bills are the first step in a "multi-year effort to implement the legislative recommendations in the report."

"We will try to make up for the wrongs done to black communities by laws and policies that are meant to limit and isolate African Americans." In a news release on Wednesday, Assemblyman Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer Sr. said, "These atrocities can be found in education, access to homeownership, and access to capital for small business startups. All of these things have contributed to the denial of generational wealth over hundreds of years."

The source: huffpost