We wrote here and elsewhere about San Francisco’s plan for reparations. Drafted by the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee, it contemplated payments of $5 million per black recipient, along with total forgiveness of debt, exemptions from business taxes, refinanced mortgages, subsidized housing, and a wide array of government programs. And you didn’t need to be a resident of San Francisco to qualify.
That obviously was never going to happen, and San Francisco’s reparations plan has died, not with a bang but a whimper. As productive citizens have fled the city to avoid filth and crime, San Francisco’s budget is in crisis. Something had to go:
San Francisco’s first-ever Office of Reparations is among the programs gutted by Mayor London Breed’s budget cuts.
Funding for the office, which was set to launch this year, was erased as part of Breed’s $75 million cuts to the The City budget in preparation for a major deficit in 2024.
Though it’s just one of several planned programs that will no longer be funded, the Office of Reparations is noteworthy because its establishment came after a widely followed, yearslong process that ended in accepting a reparations plan.
If they can’t afford the office, they certainly can’t afford the reparations. But activists hoping for the big bucks haven’t given up:
“I understand the importance of no cuts to existing programs, but the Black community will continue to pursue justice and equity through reparations here in San Francisco,” [Supervisor Shamann] Walton said. “My hope is that the city’s deficit is eliminated quickly so that we can fund the Office of Reparations and fulfill the commitment made to address the historical injustices and inequities that have persisted for generations for Black San Franciscans.”
Dream on. More likely, in San Francisco and elsewhere, the idea of reparations, having served its political purpose for the Democratic Party, will be allowed to die quietly.
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