A local resident told the Tampa City Council Thursday that the cost of reparations in the city should be “$3 million per person.”
“All this nonsense, homelessness and all this other garbage you all talk about. Police violence and all this stuff — don’t nobody care about that,” the man said.
“We care about our reparations. And we have to put White people on notice that we want our reparations. Our foreparents and us didn’t work for free and [get] underpaid and all this nonsense and the White folks get away with it,” the man added,” while “they talk about the great city they’re building.”
“No. We want our reparations. $3 million per person. $3 million per person right here in this city. That’s the only [thing] Black people have to care about. All this other little nonsense… we do not care about.”
The clip trended Friday morning on Twitter.
Beyond local government, left-wing lawmakers are pushing for reparations on a national level.
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., held a press conference on Wednesday unveiling her Reparations Now resolution, which declares “that the United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its massive harm on the lives of millions.”
She suggested the total amount would be at least $14 trillion, which she described as the gap in wealth between Black and Whites.
She spoke alongside fellow Squad members Reps. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., as well as Senate candidate Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and freshman Rep. Summer Lee., D-Pa., as well as a host of activists from around the country.
“Black people in our country cannot wait any longer for our government to begin addressing… all of the harm it has caused since the founding, that it continues to perpetuate each and every day all across our communities, all across this country,” Bush said.
“Let us speak this truth, uncomfortable as it may be: Our country was not founded on the principle that all people are created equal. It was founded at the expense of the lives, freedom and well-being of Black people, African folks who they stole.”
Other states like California have also various forms of reparations, from direct cash payments to housing aid. A task force in San Francisco recommended $5 million payments to eligible residents.
