California Panel Takes Big Step Toward $800 Billion Reparation Payments to Black Residents, and Formal Apology

By Stacy M. Brown

NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

California’s reparations task panel approved recommendations to compensate and apologize to Black communities for centuries of discrimination.

At a meeting in Oakland, the nine-member committee, which first met nearly two years ago, approved a lengthy list of reparations recommendations for state lawmakers to examine.

At the meeting, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), called on states and the federal government to implement reparations legislation.

Lee said reparations are morally justified and could solve historical racial imbalances and inequality.

The panel’s first vote accepted a detailed assessment of Black Californian discrimination in voting, housing, education, disproportionate policing and incarceration, and others.

Other suggestions included creating a new organization to serve descendants of enslaved people and calculating what the state owes them.

“An apology and an admission of wrongdoing alone is not going to be satisfactory,” said Chris Lodgson, an organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, a reparations advocacy group.

The task force’s draft recommendation requires parliamentarians to “censure the gravest barbarities” on behalf of the state in their apologies.

The task force noted that California’s first elected governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, was a white supremacist who supported legislation excluding Black people from the state.

The draft report states that California, a “free” state since 1850, did not pass any laws guaranteeing freedom for all. Instead, the state Supreme Court enforced the federal Fugitive Slave Act for over a decade until freedom arrived in U.S. states.

“By participating in these horrors, California further perpetuated the harms African Americans faced, imbuing racial prejudice throughout society through segregation, public and private discrimination, and unequal state and federal funding,” the study authors wrote. The task team adopted a public apology, admitting the state’s past wrongs and committing not to repeat them.

It would be presented to the descendants of enslaved people.

California apologized for interning Japanese Americans and mistreating Native Americans.

The panel adopted the draft report’s “cash or its equivalent” restitution for qualified residents.

Oakland’s Mills College of Northeastern University hosted over 100 citizens and activists. All lamented the country’s “broken promise” to give emancipated slaves 40 acres and a mule.

Many claimed it was time for governments to fix the harms

Adidas to Start Selling Stockpile of Yeezy Sneakers

By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO

AP Retail Writer

NEW YORK (AP) – Adidas said Friday that it will begin selling its more than $1 billion worth of leftover Yeezy sneakers later this month, with the proceeds to be donated to various anti-racism groups.

The German sportswear brand said recipients will include the Anti-Defamation League, which fights antisemitism and other forms of discrimination, and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change, run by social justice advocate Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd.

“After careful consideration, we have decided to begin releasing some of the remaining Adidas Yeezy products,’’ said Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden in a statement. “Selling and donating was the preferred option among all organizations and stakeholders we spoke to. There is no place in sport or society for hate of any kind and we remain committed to fighting against it.”

Yeezy products have been unavailable to shoppers since Adidas terminated its partnership with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, in October 2022 following his antisemitic comments on social media and in interviews.

The items to be sold include existing designs as well as designs that were in the works in 2022 for sale this year, Adidas said.

At Adidas’ annual shareholders meeting earlier this month, Gulden said the company had spent months trying to find solutions before deciding against destroying the items and to rather sell them to benefit various charities that were harmed by what Ye said.

The company said Friday that the move has no immediate impact on the company’s current financial guidance for 2023.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Judge Finds Bathroom Graffiti Violated Civil Rights Act, Orders Teen to Write Essay

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) – A New Hampshire teenager has been ordered to write a 3, 000-word essay discussing “the impact of racism and racist speech on society” after a judge found that he violated the state’s civil rights act by carving graffiti inside a high school bathroom directed at a Black teen.

In the order filed Wednesday, the judge said the 17-year-old must also do 100 hours of community service to avoid a $3,500 fine. He also was forbidden from engaging in or threatening physical force or violence against the victim and his family, or anyone else, or damage or trespass on their property. His lawyer did not respond to a message seeking comment. Prosecutors had asked for a $5,000 fine, the maximum penalty.

Judge Amy Messer found that the teen carved “Blacks stand no chance,” and part of “KKK” on a bathroom stall at John Stark Regional High School in Weare in April 2022. There already was other racemotivated graffiti on the wall and the name of a Black student who was “purportedly’’ one of the defendant’s friends, she wrote.

An attorney for the teen, who had faced a separate charge on the matter in juvenile court, argued he wasn’t motivated by race because he thought it was a joke, and that two other friends had pressured him into writing the graffiti. The lawyer also argued the words themselves “are not egregious and are historically accurate and not racially motivated,” according to Messer.

Prosecutors said the words are “steeped in race.”

Messer said she was “not convinced that the defendant was motivated to make a reflection of historical fact about the plight of Blacks in America in a public high school bathroom where racially charged graffiti already existed.”

Reactions to the Death of Jim Brown

Reactions to the death of Jim Brown, former NFL star, actor and activist: that prevented African Americans from living without fear of being wrongly punished, maintaining property, and earning wealth.

California’s reparations task panel approved recommendations to compensate and apologize to Black communities for centuries of discrimination. At a meeting in Oakland, the nine-member committee, which first met nearly two years ago, approved a lengthy list of reparations recommendations for state lawmakers to examine.

Former Black Panther Party chairwoman Elaine Brown encouraged protests.

The task force meeting was viewed as a pivotal moment in the push for local, state, and federal agencies to apologize for African American discrimination.

“There’s no way in the world that many of these recommendations are going to get through because of the inflationary impact,” said University of San Diego School of Law professor and reparations specialist Roy L. Brooks.

Economists predict the state may owe Black residents $800 billion, or 2.5 times its yearly budget.

The newest task force draft report has a much lower figure.

In 2020, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a former Democratic assemblymember, authored legislation creating the task force to address the state’s historical culpability for African American harms, not as a substitute for federal reparations.

The task team initially limited reparations to descendants of 19th-century enslaved or free Black individuals.

As reparations for African Americans have had uneven success elsewhere, the group’s work has received national attention.

Black residents in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, recently received housing vouchers as reparations, but few reportedly used them.

A bill to acknowledge the inhumanity of slavery in New York and form a panel to investigate reparations proposals has cleared the Assembly but not the Senate.

A decades-old federal proposal to form a reparations panel for African Americans has stalled in Congress.

Oakland City Council member Kevin Jenkins called the California task group “a powerful example” of what can happen when people work together.

Jenkins stated, “I am confident that through our collective efforts, we can significantly advance reparations in our great state of California and, ultimately, the country.”

“We lost a hero today. Rest in Paradise to the legend Jim Brown. I hope every Black athlete takes the time to educate themselves about this incredible man and what he did to change all of our lives. We all stand on your shoulders Jim Brown. If you grew up in Northeast Ohio and were Black, Jim Brown was a God. As a kid who loved football, I really just thought of him as the greatest Cleveland Brown to ever play. Then I started my own journey as a professional athlete and realized what he did socially was his true greatness. When I choose to speak out, I always think about Jim Brown. I can only speak because Jim broke down those walls for me.” - NBA star LeBron James, on Instagram.

“I was too young to remember Jim Brown’s playing days, but I knew his legacy. One of the greatest football players ever, he was also an actor and activist - speaking out on civil rights, and pushing other Black athletes to do the same. Our thoughts are with Jim’s wife Monique, his children, and everyone who knew and admired him.” - Former President Barack Obama, on Twitter.