Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti wants more. Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity (MORE) is attempting to promote reparations nationwide under the leadership of Garcetti and other Democrat mayors. MORE has announced the start of a pilot reparations program to start the redistribution of property from white to black Americans, and Garcetti stresses that his local efforts are meant to spur federal legislation.
Democrats demand redistribution
Democrats like Mayor Garcetti have been quickly moving towards establishing reparations, and not just in liberal strongholds like Los Angeles.
The form that the reparations could take has always been debated among leftists, but the fundamental principle is always understood to involve money being in some form taken from white Americans and given to black Americans.
In some way or another, tax payers are to pay monetary compensation for an institution which ended more than 150 years ago in the United States.
While the proposal sounds radical, reparations have been proposed under less formal approaches by both Republicans and Democrats.
President Trump in late 2020 proposed a $500 billion “Platinum Plan” devoted exclusively to black owned businesses. The plan was generally criticized for not going far enough.
Many would argue that a number of affirmative action and welfare programs have for decades been effectively reparations in all but name.
Reparations campaign gains ground
Mayor Garcetti is not alone in feeling that now would be the right time to implement an explicit agenda for reparations nationally.
The House Judiciary Committee voted in April to approve a bill which takes the first steps towards establishing race based wealth redistribution on a federal level.
The bill is likely to face no serious challenges in firmly Democrat controlled House of Representatives, but the fate of the legislation in the closely contested Senate is more uncertain.
While Republicans have widely criticized the costs which would be associated with a national program of reparations, opposition to the idea itself appears to be somewhat more muted.
Senator Mitch McConnell last year responded to nationwide riots by stating that America is still paying the price for the “original sin” of racism and slavery.
Senate Republicans unanimously approved another BLM proposal recently in the establishment of “Juneteenth” as a federal holiday. While reparations will be a more complicated fight, attitudes towards the BLM agenda are apparently softening in Congress as a whole.
