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Black pastors and activists want Central District land as reparations

TurdBomberTurdBomber Member Posts: 19,887 Standard Supporter
As Black Lives Matter protests continue, leaders say Seattle should give the community back land they say is owed to them.

https://crosscut.com/equity/2020/07/black-pastors-and-activists-want-central-district-land-reparations

“We need reparations for our Black and brown communities,” said Pastor Angela Ying of Bethany United Church of Christ one sunny morning in June in front of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in the historically Black Central District neighborhood. “Isn’t it bad enough that the land was stolen from the Duwamish people?”

“Get your knee off our necks and build houses for us,” Ying said. She was referring to the way Floyd died in police custody and her demand that a big business tax fund the building of hundreds of homes in the neighborhood, some of it on church property and other land people living in the Central District were forced to relinquish years ago.

Overall, the Black population in Seattle is at its lowest point in 50 years, though it has increased in the rest of King County, where the cost of living can be lower. Activists see access to land as one way to build the wealth denied to them by systemic racism and to begin to even the playing field.

“I think it is important that the Black Lives Matter movement is tying those historic wrongs to what's happening right now, which is a deeply economically and racially unequal society under capitalism,” Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, a longtime supporter of a business tax, said in a recent interview.

Sawant said she has helped champion the pastors’ goals in an attempt to prevent deepening poverty, citing the likelihood of a pandemic-related recession hurting Seattle. “The only way that we can prevent this, the burden of this recession from landing on the shoulders of working class people in general, but most acutely on working class communities of color, is to do the exact opposite, which is invest in the community,” she said, adding that would include both new housing and construction jobs for the community.

“For me, it's relatively simple,” said Isaac Joy of King County Equity Now. “The entire wealth of this country really was built on the Black backs of the enslaved.”

From the Minn Star Tribune Article posted earlier today: "A fourth dimension is “strategic racism.” Haney Lopez defines strategic racism as “purposeful efforts to use racial animus as leverage to gain material wealth, political power or heightened social standing.”

Michael: We're Bigger than U.S. Steel.

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