Asheville, North Carolina’s Community Reparations Commission (CRC) finally released a list of recommendations it wants leaders to pursue, including a guaranteed income program and the establishment of a reparations accountability council.
The Asheville Community Reparations Commission is comprised of 25 members who were chosen more than two years ago, in March 2022. According to the city, the commission is tasked with making “short-, medium-, and long-term recommendations that will make significant progress toward repairing the damage caused by public and private systemic racism.”
The commission recently released its list of recommendations in four specific categories, one of which is a guaranteed income program. According to a document detailing the recommendation, this program would be used “as a way to ensure basic needs are met for individuals with low-incomes and assets” in the form of monthly cash payments with “no strings attached” and “no work requirements.”
“A guaranteed income is meant to supplement, rather than replace, the existing social safety net and can be a tool for racial and gender equity,” the commission wrote, adding that the reparations accountability entity, along with the city and county, “should determine the parameters of a program, which will benefit individuals who have been harmed by historic, systemic, and ongoing wage and employment discrimination.”
The council concluded that “Black People have been consistently and widely impoverished by discriminatory wages paid in every sector of the local economy regardless of credentials and experience” and have “experienced disproportionate unemployment rates and reduced opportunities to fully participate in the local job market.”
Further, the council accused the city and county of participating in urban renewal, which it claims “destroyed many homes and businesses owned by Black families and greatly harmed many traditional minority neighborhoods, displacing many individuals to public housing and taking opportunities to build generational wealth.”
The council is also recommending additional support to existing neighborhoods to “empower historically African-American communities” in the form of grants. Minimum funds should be, according to the council, at least $250,000 per community. The council believes this will “address the harm imposed by redlining.”
Further, the council believes there should be the establishment of an Economic Development Center for black Asheville residents as well as the establishment of a Reparations Accountability Council, which would “oversee all CRC recommendations implemented by the city and county and their contractors.”
According to ABC 13, this is just the beginning of recommendations of the council, as more are expected to come.
This is not the only push for such programs in the U.S., as Democrats in California, for example, are pursuing reparations bills. This comes despite the fact that California formally joined the Union in 1850 as a free state.
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