The Portland City Council formally outlined plans to demand reparations for black Americans and Native Americans last week, escalating fringe calls that have become mainstream in the Democratic Party for restitution for slavery, which the United States eradicated more than 140 years ago.
Under its heading on “Racial Justice,” the city that was repeatedly ransacked by left-wing Antifa demonstrators for more than 100 consecutive days demanded that Washington “Establish federal reparations for Black and Indigenous communities.”
The proposal also demands that Congress establish “Juneteenth” as a national holiday on June 19th and create a “federal anti-displacement program” to provide funds for “households, businesses, and cultural institutions” prioritizing minorities. The 13th Amendment abolishing slavery should also be changed, Portland city leaders said, by striking the “Punishment Clause” to effectively ban prison labor.
While Portland hasn’t passed the widespread reparations for itself that it has demanded of the federal government, one North Carolina town passed reparations unanimously last summer amid 2020’s launch of the 21st-century woke revolution in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots.
“It is simply not enough to remove statues. Black people in this country are dealing with issues that are systemic in nature,” said Asheville City Councilman Keith Young, who was one of two black Americans on the council at the time.
Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee reintroduced a bill in the new Congress this month to establish a commission to study reparations for slavery, which one economist at Duke University estimated could cost the United States up to $12 trillion.
