By Wendy Fry
(CALMATTERS) – The California Legislative Black Caucus is hitting the road on a statewide tour to promote its slate of 14 reparations bills, while the clock is ticking on getting those proposed laws to the governor’s desk before the legislative session ends Aug. 31. Last weekend, the campaign kicked off in San Diego. CalMatters’ Neil Chase, Denise Amos, Deborah Brennan, and I all got to attend the event at Crawford High School.
Deborah wrote a news report about a town-hall style discussion of the measures. There’s also a video of presentations made at the event, including those of Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber, Assemblymembers Akilah Weber, Corey Jackson, Mike Gipson, and State Sen. Steven Bradford. The legislators encouraged community members to read a 1,000-page report that outlines the reasons for reparations and gives more than 100 recommendations to make them happen.
California became the first state in the nation to form a reparations task force three years ago and the first to introduce a comprehensive reparations package.
The six-city tour is meant to urge the public to get involved in lobbying lawmakers to pass the new legislation. Their 14 reparations measures tackle education, business, criminal justice, health care, and civil rights and include two proposed constitutional amendments that lawmakers hope to place before voters in November.
One of the amendments, ACA 8, would ban one of the last vestiges of involuntary servitude: forced labor in jails and prisons. The other, ACA 7, would authorize the state to pay for programs designed to improve life expectancy and educational outcomes of “groups based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or marginalized genders, sexes, or sexual orientations.”
The bills to place the proposed amendments on the ballot must first pass the Senate Appropriations Committee by June 24 in order to meet a June 27 deadline to finalize ballot measures, Brennan reported.
There will be more State of Black California community listening sessions events in five additional cities over the next five months.