Eleven US mayors — from Los Angeles to tiny Tullahassee, Oklahoma — have pledged to pay reparations for slavery to a small group of black residents in their cities, saying their aim is to set an example for the federal government on how a nationwide program could work.
The mayors had no details on how much it would cost, who would pay for it or how people would be chosen.
All of those details would be worked out with the help of local commissions comprised of representatives from black-led organizations set up to advise the mayor of each city.
However, the mayors said they are committed to paying reparations instead of just talking about them.
“Black Americans don’t need another study that sits on a shelf,” said St Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, the city’s first black female mayor and a member of the group. “We need decisive action to address the racial wealth gap holding communities back across our country.”
The effort comes as Juneteenth, which marks the end of slavery in the US, has become a federal holiday. US President Joe Biden signed a bill on Thursday that was passed by the US Congress to set aside Juneteenth, or June 19, as a holiday.
Slavery officially ended in the US in 1865 with the adoption of the 13th amendment to the US constitution.
However, it has never passed.
Friday’s announcement marks the largest city-led effort at paying reparations to date, but it is not the first. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors in March voted to appoint a 15-member African American Reparations Advisory Committee.
The group of mayors, dubbed Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity, is led by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock.
Their stated goal is for these reparations programs to “serve as high-profile demonstrations for how the country can more quickly move from conversation to action on reparations for Black Americans,” according to the group’s Web site.
“Let me be clear: Cities will never have the funds to pay for reparations on our own,” Garcetti told a news conference on Friday to announce the group. “When we have the laboratories of cities show that there is much more to embrace than to fear, we know that we can inspire national action as well.”
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
RSS