Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is interested in funding a national reparations project for descendants of black slaves, according to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
A new coalition of 11 mayors, headed by Garcetti, has founded Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equality, with the goal of expanding the movement throughout the United States and pressuring Congress to create a commission to study the matter.
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Garcetti admitted that reparations will be expensive and cannot be borne by taxpayers alone, so Soros has stepped up as an interested donor, according to the Los Angeles Times. The leftist founder of the Open Society Foundations has already donated $15 million to repatriate items stolen from African nations during the colonial era.
Los Angeles had dedicated $500,000 to an advisory panel that would create a funding framework.
On a Friday livestream to coincide with Juneteenth, Garcetti announced the creation of MORE and introduced several partners, including Austin Mayor Steve Adler and St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter.
“We’ve been listening to the demands and demonstrations, the urgent calls of justice from young people who have seen far too much, and Americans who have waited for far too long, families who have borne too steep a share of economic suffering,” Garcetti said. “While America is a land of opportunity for some, it remains a place of injustice, inequality, and indignity for too many of our black brothers and sisters.”
Adler spoke about how Austin created a “Negro district” in 1928 where blacks were supposed to live and anyone “finding themselves on the wrong side of town” were to be punished.
“We need to atone for that past,” he said, “and beyond atoning for that past … we have to make good on the debt that was created.”
Carter stated that “every aspect of our American economy” is built on slavery, and “that is a legacy that must be recognized, and it’s a debt that must be paid.”
Reparations will help bring the standard of living for blacks more in line with whites, Garcetti said, noting that the wealth gap between the two races in Los Angeles is 100-to-1. Nationwide, the gap is slightly better, at 13%, according to a 2019 Federal Reserve survey of consumer finances.
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The House has yet to vote on H.R. 40, a bill that would create a study commission on reparations.
