A Chicago suburb on Monday became the first city in the United States to pass a reparations program for black residents.
The city council of Evanston, Illinois, approved a plan that will cost $10 million dollars over the next decade and be funded by cannabis taxes.
The first part of the plan, approved by an 8-1 vote on Monday, will make $400,000 available in $25,000 homeownership and improvement grants to black residents who can show they have directly descended from someone who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969. The council, which voted in 2019 to create the Reparations Fund, already apportioned $10 million overall for creating programs to combat structural racism caused by past discriminatory policies.
HOUSE DEMOCRATS PUSH SLAVERY REPARATIONS BILL DESPITE STRONG PUBLIC OPPOSITION AND HIGH PRICE TAG
More than 60 people spoke before the vote took place, with some arguing that the measure wasn’t a legitimate form of reparations, according to the Washington Post.
“It’s a first tangible step,” said Alderwoman Robin Rue Simmons, who represents the city’s Fifth Ward, which is largely black. “It is alone not enough. It is not full repair alone in this one initiative. But we all know that the road to repair injustice in the black community will be a generation of work … I’m excited to know more voices will come to the process.”
“We’re very excited to see the first national direct benefit from some of the harms we’ve had to experience from the past,” Kamm Howard, co-chairman of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, told CBS MoneyWatch. “The more local initiatives occur, the more impetus there is on the federal government to act.”
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H.R. 40, a bill in the U.S. House, would create a commission to study possibilities for reparations in the United States as a whole. President Biden has voiced support for such a move, and a House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing on the matter last month.
