Massachusetts and Boston were at the beginning of the Underground Railroad, outlawed slavery before civil war but we need to be first with reparations. This city is gone, and never coming back.

https://whdh.com/news/commissi...-proposed-in-boston/

Is this for the witches they hanged in Mass?

If they are going to take that direction then I think their are a few native American tribes that should step in front of that.....

quote:

Originally posted by Blume9mm:
If they are going to take that direction then I think their are a few native American tribes that should step in front of that.....

I agree. Blacks took part in the oppression of native tribes and should pay reparations too.

Damn they need to embrace the philosophical ideas of Stoicism so badly. It would 100% fix this “problem” and they might even find some joy in their life.

Collect from the British royal family first. Those who trafficked in slaves to work in the colonies and directly profited from the slave triangle are ancestors of the royals……who are conspicuously quiet about reparations.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Is this for the witches they hanged in Mass?

Somebody needs to attend a council meeting and ask just that after noting the Underground Railroad thing.

The Witch Trials were in Salem, even in the 1600’s and 1700’s a separate city and county from Boston, but given how woke the Salem Mayor is she’ll glance right over it in the “Witch City.”

I hope someone pays "reparations" or at least some benefits to the families of the 400,000 Union soldiers -- many from Massachusetts -- in the Civil War. There was no VA at the time, and death and dismemberment benefits from the states were miniscule. Yet it is through those soldiers' sacrifices that the Confederacy was defeated and slavery abolished. A very real case can be made that their families lost not just loved ones, but breadwinners, wage earners, and there were real economic loses. For the sake of equity, the families need to be compensated for the losses that we know came down through the generations from the 1860's.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RoverSig,

The very namesake of this State comes from an indigenous tribe that was wiped out initially by English settlers and disease - with the survivors later being segregated and stripped of lands after the Revolution.

In shocking news, Kalifornia is also planning to pay reparations.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...parations/ar-AAToAZA

Will California become the first state to pay Black people reparations?

Orlando Mayorquin, USA TODAY - 4h ago

Supporters of a federal effort to study reparations for Black Americans are closely watching an ongoing debate in California over how to address the wrongs of history and dismantle racist structures.

California is the first state in the nation to seriously consider some form of reparations for Black Americans. The California Reparations Task Force is made up of academics, lawyers, civil rights leaders, lawmakers and other experts convened by Gov. Gavin Newsom and is tasked with studying the state’s role in perpetuating the legacy of slavery. The task force is expected to recommend proposals to the Legislature by next year.

Last week, task force members listened to experts give testimony on the exclusion of Black people in tech and public health, and the effects of discrimination on African Americans' mental and physical health. It was the group’s sixth meeting since it began its work last summer.

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

“We need to lead on this. We need to show the nation what reparations truly can look like,” said California State Sen. Steven Bradford, who is one of two lawmakers appointed to the task force. “It’s often said, ‘so goes California, so goes the nation.’”

The redress proposals will be expansive, including everything from direct payments, housing and business grants, to recommendations for ending policies that the task force identifies as discriminatory, according to task force members.

Theopia Jackson, a professor of psychology at Saybrook University in Pasadena, California, testified before the commission Friday on the psychological toll of discrimination on Black Americans, and encouraged the task force to do more than just consider financial redress. She suggested members come up with solutions to “target the systems that continue to do harm to our people from a psychological, emotional and spiritual place.”

The task force was proposed by former assembly member and current California Secretary of State Shirley Weber in February 2020 and was signed into law by Newsom in September 2020 amid a national reckoning on racism after the death of George Floyd.

The California effort has resonated with activists who want reparations for all Black Americans, with many seeing California as a test case for national and other state and local reparations programs. They hope to see Congress seriously consider HR 40, a reparations study bill that has been introduced in Congress for 33 consecutive years without a floor vote.

Cash reparations are largely unpopular with white Americans and widely backed by Black Americans, according to a 2019 Gallup poll. Numerous studies show stubborn gaps persist between white and Black Americans when it comes to economic and educational gains, as well as health care.

Chris Lodgson, the lead organizer with the Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, hopes to see direct cash payments as part of a larger package of remedies.

“The path forward is going to have to, in addition to that, create specific types of reparations that target helping our people here in California become not just more powerful consumers, but also help us to become better producers,” Lodgson said. “So that must go hand in hand with direct cash payments and that means endowing us with business grants, endowing us with industrial grants.”

California, which joined the union as a free state in 1850 but enforced fugitive slave laws, wouldn’t be the first government to carry out a reparations program for Black residents.

In 2019, Evanston, Illinois, became the first city in the United States to approve financial reparations for Black Americans when it approved a $10 million reparations fund for its Black residents and for people whose Black ancestors lived in the city. It rolled out its first initiative last month, selecting the first round of participants to receive $25,000 housing grants.

In June, 11 mayors from around the country, including the mayors of Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles formed a group pledging to bring about reparations in each of their cities.

Reparations advocacy groups organizing at the national level say these state and local initiatives will prove integral not just in pushing HR 40 over the hump, but in helping create the infrastructure for a federal reparations program.

“Local operations are going to help identify patterns and where resources are most needed in areas across the country,” said Kamm Howard, co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, a leading group that helped HR 40 get off the ground in 1989. “The local initiatives provide the federal government with ‘shovel ready’ projects that have been tested and proven to be successful, and that need to be expanded on a federal scale.”

The federal government has issued reparations to victims of racial abuse before. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which issued $20,000 checks as redress to Japanese Americans who were forced into internment camps during World War II.

Kathy Masaoka, chair of the Nikkei for Redress and Civil Rights, a group based in Los Angeles that fought for redress in the 1980s, said the Japanese American community felt strengthened after winning a battle many doubted they would win. But Masaoka said she hopes reparations for African Americans will include something she feels was missing from the Civil Liberties Act: a public education campaign about the harm done.

“If a country is really serious about correcting wrongs, a country would do like what Germany did, which is to educate their whole population," she said.

In California, the reparations task force’s sole non-Black member is Donald Tamaki, a Japanese American who prominently worked on a Supreme Court case to overturn the conviction of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American who resisted internment during World War II. The case played a key part in Japanese Americans’ winning reparations.

One of the biggest questions facing the task force is who exactly would be eligible for reparations, a topic it hopes to tackle during its February meeting. Lodgson, Weber and Bradford expect the eligibility to be narrowed to residents who can trace their lineage to Black people who were enslaved.

A report of the task force’s initial findings is set to be released in June, but the committee has until summer 2023 to deliver a report with remedy proposals to California lawmakers.

Then comes the hard part.

“My biggest fear, after the work we’ve done with this task force, will be the Legislature,” Bradford said. “I’m hoping that they have the courage to do the right thing and support the legislation that clearly defines what reparations looks like in California.

“If we can’t do it in liberal California, it surely won’t get done in any of the conservative red states in the South.”

“ The California effort has resonated with activists who want reparations for all Black Americans, with many seeing California as a test case for national and other state and local reparations programs.”

Hahahaha! If commiefornia is leading the way, as it were, then it won’t last long. Those democRAT thieves will siphon off every dime they can and the program will turn to shit.

I’m just trying to get ahead and save by doing the math on what I would owe for reparations. In 1899 my earliest relative on my father’s side came here and in 1902 on my mothers side. I’m the first generation born here on my Dad’s side and second on my moms. Slavery ended in the 1860’s at that time period my ancestors were in Sicily, Naples and Calabria. When they all arrived here in the U.S. they lived in Little Italy and Brooklyn and worked in factories for pennies an hour. I’m to a moral degree of certainty they didn’t employ servants in the one or two room tenement the eight or so lived in. Figuring that I’m curious what and why I should be paying reparations.

They're begging for trouble, and they're going to get it.

My grandparents on my Dad's side came over from northern Italy around 1908 and entered through Ellis Island (I have a copy of the manifest page where he signed in, thanks to the work of the Ellis Island Foundation). My grandfather found a job in Milton, Massachusetts (just south of Boston) as caretaker for a family's estate, eventually got enough money to buy a house, and he and my grandmother raised a family. Oh, and he got drafted by the U.S. Army during World War I and got sent overseas to fight.

My Mom's side came from Iowa, which in the Civil War fought for the North last time I checked.

Since none of my ancestors appear to have had any connection to slavery, how is my guilt in dollars going to be calculated?

I wonder if the job description for the commission will include, "No Irish Need Apply".

Seriously, when do these reparations end?
Evanston shells out 16 million. Is that it? In say 50 years will the city payouts be done?

Then who qualifies for reparations? Do we revert to the”one drop rule” where any link qualifies one for reparations?

My grandparents were immigrants from Europe. Does that not count? Likely the reply would ramble along CRT thinking and claim they “benefited” and share blame.
It’s a mess

quote:

Originally posted by k5blazer:

quote:

Originally posted by Blume9mm:
If they are going to take that direction then I think their are a few native American tribes that should step in front of that.....

I agree. Blacks took part in the oppression of native tribes and should pay reparations too.

This statement is not entirely accurate; my reply is an attempt to be historically objective with no political drive behind it.

I have been unable to locate evidence in any corpus of literature that any organized group of formerly-enslaved Africans oppressed indigenous peoples. Rather, indigenous people were generally enslaved before Africans ever arrived in the colonies.

This argument that enslaved Africans somehow oppressed indigenous people in Massachusetts can be easily refuted by a quick analysis of King Philip's War, when the Wampanoag refused to be pacified and fought (unsuccessfully) against the British and their allies (including the Pequot) in King Philip's War. They were enslaved, and then other former British allies were enslaved.

It took the enslavement of several tribes to galvanize other tribes to (effective) armed resistance. Only then, with the Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee posing a significant military threat to the British government (and the later United States, all the way through 1813), transportation and enslavement of Africans (rather than continued enslavement of indigenous people) became the norm.

(It is unlikely that the effort of transportation and enslavement of Africans would have occurred without the continued enslavement of indigenous people.)

On a broader scale, when Gullah and freedmen/runaway slaves (maroons) encountered tribes, formerly-enslaved Africans generally fought WITH the tribes as allies rather than AGAINST the tribes as oppressors. The best known example can be found among the Seminole Indians in Florida, when Gullah and maroons fought with them against the United States during all /three/ Seminole Wars. It can be argued that Gullah and maroons were at least partly responsible for the preservation of tribal sovereignty (the Seminole are still technically at war and only some Seminole removed). Gullah, freedmen, maroons et al were later removed to Indian Territory (with some groups of Seminole) where the Cherokee (along with the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Muscogee [Creek] Nation owned slaves (See generally https://www.smithsonianmag.com...arrative-180968339/).

Slave revolts against slave-owning Indian tribes in present-day Oklahoma (See generally https://www.okhistory.org/publ...ntry.php?entry=SL002) are the only known examples I am aware of where formerly enslaved Africans fought /against/ rather than /with/ tribes. Tribes like the Cherokee actively fought on the side of Confederacy to keep their slaves (See generally "A Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled them to Unite with Those of the Confederate State of America", 1861) until 1863, when they broke off from the Confederacy and made a treaty with the United States in 1866 to free slaves to avoid occupation and further reduction of land holdings. Following the 1866 treaty, the CN forbid freedmen to vote in a tribal election or hold public office. In 1983, the CN actively stripped Freedmen of /any/ CN citizenship rights and it took until 2018 before the CN recognized equal protection for freedmen.

(It's more reasonable to argue that Indians oppressed enslaved Africans than the other way around.)

quote:

Originally posted by Icabod:
Seriously, when do these reparations end?
Evanston shells out 16 million. Is that it? In say 50 years will the city payouts be done?

Then who qualifies for reparations? Do we revert to the”one drop rule” where any link qualifies one for reparations?

My grandparents were immigrants from Europe. Does that not count? Likely the reply would ramble along CRT thinking and claim they “benefited” and share blame.
It’s a mess

Reparations (often reserved for atrocities like Holocaust [Shoah], under terms like Luxemburger Abkommen/Heskem HaShillumim [הסכם השילומים]) make it possible for a nation to heal by a process of (1) identification of affected persons and their descendants, (2) a finite end to reparations, and (3) a nation-to-nation administration of reparations that generally result in programs designed to place affected persons back into society on equitable footing with those persons who were not affected.

The United States' has a past history of nation-to-nation reparations with federally-recognized Indian tribes by treaty (see generally Treaty of Fort Laramie, Treaty of New Echota) or settlement (See generally https://www.pbs.org/newshour/a...c11-blackhills_08-23) and by statutes like the Indian Self Determination and Education Act of 1974 that affirm tribal sovereignty, which greatly reduced violent clashes between the United States and tribal members that were common before the passage of the Act. (See generally https://www.history.com/this-d...wounded-knee-begins.)

It's /possible/ to model reparations using the American example of the Dawes Roll and the German Luxemburger Abkommen, but extremely difficult to administer (as the Department of Interior and SCOTUS will readily concede in the case of US treaty obligations to federally-recognized tribes).

(n.b. What I'm about to say must be read as clinical, because the examples I will use demonstrate great efficiency but were used for abhorrent and morally bankrupt purposes. The only good that comes from them is identifying injured persons.)

In a very twisted way, the treatment of humans as property facilitates the administration of reparations. Slaves were sold as property by literate persons and generally good recordkeeping (See generally https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...ave-descendants.html) and thus the ability to trace lineal descendency. A similar system was used for nearly every treaty obligation to tribal members following the Dawes Act; tribal members still use the rolls to demonstrate eligibility for federal programs. Lastly, the West German government used the very detailed records of the Third Reich to identify descendants of people murdered during Shoah or holders of property confiscated by the Nazi party and compensate them on a pro-rata basis, much like a class action lawsuit.

Theoretically, you could use similar documentation to identify a class of persons injured, demonstrate that there was an identifiable harm for which the United States assumes responsibility (even if it does not assume proximate cause of liability), set a ceiling for compensation by legislation, and appropriate funding until (1) the purpose of reparations has been met, or; (2) there are no longer any beneficiaries remaining.

It's difficult, but not impossible, to do.

Reparations: the idea that people who were never slave owners should repay people who were never slaves. The time window for such reparations ran out around 1900.