Mayor Adams expressed support Thursday for an effort in Albany to lay the groundwork for Black New Yorkers to receive reparations for slavery — saying specific attention should be paid to still-existing companies that benefitted from slave labor.
“We need to zero in on some of those corporations and companies that the foundation of their wealth came from slavery,” Adams said, without naming names. “This is long overdue and something I supported for many years.”
Adams’ comments come amid a renewed push for legislation that would create a reparations study commission in the Empire State, similar to a statewide panel established in California in 2020.
The California Reparations Task Force is currently working with a team of economic consultants on possible monetary figures associated with the impact of slavery as well as past housing discrimination practices, mass incarceration and other harms done to Black residents.
A similar measure that would have created an 11-member committee to study potential reparations for Black New Yorkers stalled in the state Senate after being passed by the Assembly last year.
Adams said Albany lawmakers should make the renewed push a priority.
“This country was built on free labor and we are who we are because of that free labor,” Adams said. “That free labor destroyed the foundation of African Americans that worked on plantations, made cotton king, the tobacco industry, many of the banking industries — a lot of these industries are where they are because of it.
“The government has an obligation to deal with it, and I’m 100% supportive of what they’re doing,” he added.
Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages (D-Nassau), who chairs the New York Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, welcomed the mayor’s backing.
“To have a Black man, someone in such an important leadership role as mayor of the City of New York I thank him and encourage other colleagues to get behind the commission to take a look at reparations,” Solages told the Daily News.
The assemblywoman has been working with experts from across the country and monitoring similar measures in other states as she prepares to reintroduce the revamped legislation.
“We’re currently in the process of fine tweaking it but when we submit it we believe it will be a bill that passes the Legislature and we’ll be able to convene and talk about reparations,” Solages said.
Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-Brooklyn) said Adams is on the right path highlighting the role still-existing companies played in the slave trade, noting that banks used slaves as collateral and insurance companies wrote policies insuring slave owners against the loss or death of their “property.”
“I think it says something to the wide range of support when someone as conservative as the mayor is also supporting a bill like this that will uplift the community so I’m grateful for everyone who comes out in support of the bill,” Brisport added.
©2022 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Need to give them all a one-way ticket out of here.
I.A.W. U.S. Census & FBI (Table 43a)
Black males make up about 7% of the U.S. population but every year commit ~56% of all the murders and ~64% of all robberies in the U.S… Every year in the U.S. there are ~6,000 African-Americans men, women and children killed and 92% of them were killed by fellow African-Americans.
Are the White people also the blame for these murders?
“Black people make up 23% of New York’s population, but they commit 75% of all shootings. …
Whites are 33% of the New York city’s population, but they commit fewer than 2% of all shootings…
“These disparities mean that 75% of the time that police in New York are called out after a shooting, they are being summoned into minority neighborhoods looking for minority suspects.”
So not only are the taxpayers forced to support a very large percentage of Blacks from cradle to grave.
Now the woke socialist Democrat Bidenites want to force taxpayers to support all Negroes, because they might be a relative of a slave.
STARTING with the turnips in office!
go away you disgrace of a public servant.
you are just another in a long line of grifters who rape and pillage america with your sick policies and love for evil.
i can tell you one thing i do not owe your race any thing period dot end of story.
Another barely literate black politician pushing for freebies for people too lazy to make something of their life. If it hadn’t been for the awfulness of slavery the whiners wouldn’t even be in this country. Any reparations they think are due have long ago been paid by the hundreds of thousands of white people who gave their lives fighting to eliminate slavery
When Adams ran for mayor, I reminded people that he was always a racist. He long bragged about kicking crackers’ butts every day. He should have been swapped for Brittney Griner.