reparations

January 1, 20244min readThe wealthy countries that are most responsible for greenhouse gas pollution must compensate the poorer nations that bear the greatest burdenBy The Editors The U.S. got a powerful reminder last summer that pollution doesn't care about borders. Smoke from wildfires blazing across Canada billowed hundreds of miles south, painting skies from New York City to Chicago and beyond a hazy orange and damaging air quality to the point that health officials were warning people not to go outside.Greenhouse…

Tens of thousands of negotiators, activists, and corporate execs have descended upon Dubai to wrangle over the future of fossil fuels. Namely, should they even have a future? Can governments broker a deal to phase out the oil, coal, and gas causing climate change? Countries have already suffered deep losses as a result of the fires, floods, and other disasters intensifying with climate change. They want the biggest, heaviest-polluting nations to do something about it. And they’ll be making their case at a conference…

SACRAMENTO —  California’s Reparations Task Force on Thursday released its final report, marking a milestone in the state’s historic effort to consider remedies for slavery. The task force has spent the last two years hearing testimony from academics, economists and other experts to gather evidence of the effects of slavery and to prove the ways in which government sanctioned policies continued to discriminate against Black people long after slavery was abolished. The movement now heads back to the state Capitol, where…

After two years of deliberations, California’s Reparations Task Force on Thursday is sending its final report and recommendations to the state Capitol, where Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers will ultimately decide how the state should atone for slavery.“We must remind each and every one of us that the final report is not the end of the work. It’s really just the beginning,” said Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena), who served on the task force, during its final meeting. “It is now up to the Legislature, which I’m part of,…

Doughboy is the most heartbreaking character in Boyz N the Hood. I find your performance so raw and authentic. What informed it? HappyEnoughI actually grew up not too far from where we shot that movie, so I knew guys like Tre who didn’t wanna gang bang, just wanted to live his life and be happy. I knew cats like Doughboy that was dead set on gaining respect in the neighbourhood. When Laurence Fishburne played Tre’s father in the movie, he told me to not act and to just be Doughboy. That made me relax and do what I knew…

California’s Reparations Task Force voted on Saturday to recommend that the state issue a formal apology for slavery and potentially provide billions of dollars in cash payments, moving forward a historic effort to enact remedies and compensation for descendants of African Americans who were enslaved in the U.S. The vote at a public meeting in Oakland marks the beginning of the end of the nine-member panel’s two-year process to craft a report recommending reparations for slavery, which is due to the state Legislature by…

At first, Joe Abner would come home from school and find a single house on fire. A vacant house, toppled by a bulldozer and set ablaze by Palm Springs city firemen.Then two houses would be burning. ”Then it got to the point when you saw smoke, you were pretty well freaked out because you didn’t know if it was your house or one of your neighbors’ houses,” Abner said. “They were tearing houses down right in front of your face.”Now 72, Abner was 13 when his family fled Section 14 in Palm Springs, leaving the home his father…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Detroiters' perceptions of the racial wealth gap, the legacy of slavery and other forms of racial inequity are strongly connected to their support for reparations and policies that address racial inequity. Overall, 63% of Detroit residents support some form of reparations, and 70% say addressing racial…

When Erika Alexander (Living Single, John Lewis: Good Trouble) and Whitney Dow (Two Towns of Jasper, Whiteness Project) first set out to creat a prjct about reparations, they expected to make a thesis film about the debate surrounding H.R. 40, a 30-year-old Congressional bill that would establish a commission to study slavery and consider reparations for Black Americans. Plans shifted upon meeting Alderman Robin Rue Simmons and learning of her pursuit to pass the first government-funded reparations program in…

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Wednesday, Dec. 14. I’m Ryan Fonseca. You may have read that an effort is underway in the Golden State to determine what reparations could like for Californians who are descendants of enslaved Africans. But you may not know what the work looks like or where it stands.A 2020 state bill created California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans and the nine-member panel held its first meeting in June 2021. Though the…