Another city is commissioning a reparations committee and report.
St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones is appointing a reparations commission that will “recommend a proposal to begin repairing the harms that have been inflicted” by slavery, segregation and racism
abcnews.go.com
ST. LOUIS -- St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones is appointing a reparations commission that will “recommend a proposal to begin repairing the harms that have been inflicted” by slavery, segregation and racism.
St. Louis joins a growing list of places trying to determine how to make amends for past practices that have harmed Black Americans. The new commission will hold open monthly meetings. There is no stated deadline for recommendations.
St. Louis has long been among the nation's most segregated cities. Nearly half of its 300,000 residents are Black and many of them live in north St. Louis, where rates of crime and poverty are high. The median household income for white St. Louisans is $55,000, nearly twice the median income for Black households, $28,000. Racial justice advocates blame decades of racism.
Concerns about racial discrimination in the St. Louis area were amplified in 2014 when Michael Brown, a Black teenager, was shot to death by a white officer in the St. Louis County town of
Ferguson, Missouri. Though the officer was not charged, investigations showed how Blacks in the region were more likely to be pulled over for traffic stops and victimized by debilitating fines and court fees.
Jones, a Democrat, on Wednesday signed an executive order establishing a volunteer commission that will ultimately recommend how the city should make reparations. The nine-member commission will include a civil rights advocate, clergy member, attorney, academic, public
health professional and a youth, the mayor's office said.
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Secretly, we are living in historical times for Black American politics.
While other motherfuckers was focused on Black Lives Matters, Black Capitalism, Obama being President, and Donald Trump.
The reparations movement has been building for years without any institutional support. Motherfuckers like me saw the writing on the wall 10 years ago when I saw the wealth gap numbers and realized there's only two ways to prevent Black people from being a permanent underclass:
1. Reparations.
2. Revolution.
And motherfuckers out here ain't ready to die to prevent their children's children children from being a permanent underclass, so reparations it is.
Getting people to take reparations seriously was a matter of laying out the case of why. Nobody marched. Nobody had to be "the leader". The mainstream media accused reparations advocates of being Russian disinfo agents, there was no mainstream support.
All it took was persistent discipline and dedication to one cause. You don't need a million people to cause change, everyone always want their cause to be a mass movement and refuse to do the work.
