Chicago’s Evanston, Illinois suburb became the first U.S. city to approve a reparations program for its black residents on Monday night, after an 8-to-1 vote on the city council.
“It is, alone, not enough,” Ald. Robin Rue Simmons, who first proposed the initiative, said. “We all know that the path to redress and justice in the black community will be a generation of work. There will be many programs and initiatives, and more funding. “
The reparations program aims to target those harmed by racist housing policies adopted by the city in the early 20th century – and will be financed by a tax on recreational marijuana, which is legal in the state.
Specifically, it will make $ 400,000 available to black residents in the form of $ 25,000 grants to promote homeownership and retirement – and it will also provide mortgage assistance to black residents who can prove they are descendants of residents who faced housing discrimination years ago.
“Right now, the whole world is looking at Evanston, Illinois. This is a moment like no other we have ever seen, and it is a good time, ”Ron Daniels, chairman of the National African American Reparations Commission, told The Washington Post.
The policies were also met with criticism from many of the more than 60 speakers at Monday’s city council meeting, including city councilwoman Cicely Fleming, who opposed the idea of housing subsidies and was the only “no” vote against the program.
“True repairs must respect the autonomy of blacks and allow them to determine how the repair will be administered,” Fleming told CBS News.
“They are being denied in this proposal, which gives money directly to banks or contractors on their behalf.”
The national reparations movement was reinvigorated last year after a wave of protests against George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police in Minneapolis.
A proposed federal law, HR 40, would create a national commission to study reparations from the federal government.
At the local level, other cities have launched initiatives to study repairs, including Chicago, Providence, Rhode Island, Burlington, Vermont, Asheville, North Carolina and Amherst, Massachusetts.
Organizers hope to use the Evanston program as an example for other local initiatives in the future.
“This does not mean that each city will do exactly as Evanston did, but there is a plan there,” Daniels told CBS MoneyWatch.