California Reparations Task Force Member Tells Taxpayers to Pay Up Their ‘Sin Bill’

A California reparations task force leader has ordered taxpayers to pay their ‘sin bill’ and fork out because of ‘what has been done to black people’.

Dr Amos Brown, the vice-chair of California’s reparations task force, said people need to ‘chill out’ about the group’s radical proposals, which includes handing cash payments to black residents of up to $1.2 million.

‘You cannot put a dollar sign on what has been done to black people,’ he added to Fox News. ‘Our sin bill in this nation has been so high, and because of the long years of doing nothing, the interest has grown.’

Brown’s comments come weeks after his task force sent its recommendations for reparations to state lawmakers, however California Governor Gavin Newsom has so far refused to say if he will support them.

Amos, a civil rights activist who also sits on the San Francisco reparations task force, said the huge payouts are necessary as a ‘sin bill of enslavement. Of discrimination. Of intimidation. Of terrorizing black people’.

His San Francisco task force previously released its own recommendations of $5 million paydays, a guaranteed income of $97,000, and the eradication of all debt.

While admitting the titanic sums mean the state should pay what it ‘can afford’, the activist insisted officials could even look to follow a similar payment scheme to Germany’s in the aftermath of World War Two.

‘If you can’t pay all of that, say what you can pay. That’s the point,’ he continued. ‘If we can’t pay it now, we do it like the Germans did – pay for it over installments.’

California’s push for reparations payments has been met with fierce criticism over a lack of clarity over how it would be funded, with some critics also noting that it was never a slave owning state when the practice plagued the nation.

However, Amos argued that the state still has a ‘debt’ to pay its black residents.

‘Unfortunately, that evil group called the Ku Klux Klan in California was founded here in San Francisco,’ he added.

‘So, San Francisco’s hands are not clean. They have been complicit in this evil system… We need to stop making excuses and come to a reasonable plan that shows that we have good intentions.’

Amos’ tirade comes weeks after California’s reparations task force approved radical recommendations that could give black residents up to $1.2 million each.

If signed into law, the maximum sum would be available for residents who have lived in the state until the age of 71. Its final report is to be sent to lawmakers before July 1 where it will forecast compensation estimates calculated by several economists the group is working with.

The amount these reparations would cost the state were not outlined in the report but previous calculations from economists predicted it could cost around $800billion- more than twice California’s approximate $300 billion annual budget.

The cost breakdown was made by evaluating the harm of different forms of discrimination over the years, including $2,352 lost per person per year for the over-policing and mass incarceration of black communities.

Residents who lived in the state between 1933 and 1977 could also receive $3,366 per person per year for ‘discriminatory lending and zoning.’

And $13,619 could be paid per person per year of residence in California for ‘injustices and discrimination in health’, alongside $77,000 per person for black-owned business losses and devaluations.

Despite the huge sums being floated by officials, some residents have voiced their anger at the committee after feeling the potential windfall is not enough.

At a meeting earlier this month following the task force’s recommendations, Reverend Tony Pierce was filmed hitting out at the proposal. He argued the number should be in the region of $200 million due to America’s ‘broken promise’ of 40 acres and a mule to newly freed slaves.

He said: ‘You know that the numbers should be equivocal to what an acre was back then. We were given 40, OK? We were given 40 acres.

‘You know what that number is. You keep trying to talk about now, yet you research back to slavery and you say nothing about slavery, nothing.

‘So, the equivocal number from the 1860s for 40 acres to today is $200 million for each and every African-American.’

He then hit out at the panel for not being ambitious enough with the reparations plan.

‘You’re not supposed to be afraid,’ he added. ‘You’re just supposed to tell the truth. You’re not supposed to be the gatekeepers. You’re supposed to say what the people want and hear from the people.’

The recommendation of $5 million to residents in San Francisco was also noted during the contentious hearing, with one local demanding the fortune be handed to residents across the state.

‘$1.2million is nowhere near enough. It should be starting at least $5million like San Francisco,’ they said.

‘We want direct cash payments just like how the stimulus [checks] were sent out. It’s our inheritance, and we can handle it.’

And another resident added: ‘This million dollars we’re hearing on the news is just inadequate and a further injustice if that’s what this task force is going to recommend for Black Americans for 400-plus years and continuing of slavery and injustice that we have been forced to endure.

‘To even throw a million dollars at us is just an injustice.’