Opinion: Why Reparations Must Be A Priority Issue in the NYC Mayoral Election

Will the next mayor treat reparations as the moral and economic necessity that it is or let this moment pass despite the will of the people Racial equity decree on the mayor s desk at City Hall in Michael Appleton Mayoral Photography Office In Tulsa Oklahoma something historic happened this spring The city s mayor Monroe Nichols unveiled a bold million plan for reparations to the survivors and descendants of the Tulsa Race Massacre Here in New York City we also face a defining question will the next mayor treat reparations as the moral and economic necessity that it is or let this moment pass despite the will of the people Reparations in New York are not a fringe idea as numerous media and political elites would have you believe The latest survey conducted by New Yorkers for Reparations and Liberation Ventures shows that percent of New Yorkers backing reparations and percent would patronage or consider a candidate who champions them This growing inhabitants consensus mirrors what advocates have long known reparations are not only viable they are inevitable New York is leading the way in advancing reparations and reparative justice in plenty of methods The New York State Area Commission on Reparations Remedies formed after years of advocacy from grassroots organizers has been working over the past year to gather district input through community hearings The New York City Council through the Commission on Racial Equity CORE is evolving its own reparations process Nationally Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Summer Lee are advancing HR- provision that would establish a national reparations commission Their leadership reflects the moral clarity needed in this moment The groundwork has been laid now we need the political leadership to act Which is why we hosted a Mayoral Forum on Reparations directly across from Seneca Village now known as Central Park which was once a thriving Black society that was taken via eminent domain There four candidates Michael Blake Zellnor Myrie Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander each declared their encouragement for reparations They didn t mince words Closing the racial wealth gap is not just a better deal for Black New Yorkers it s a better deal for all New Yorkers -Brad Lander We as a city have to ensure that we are connecting the wrongs of the past Zellnor Myrie New York City actively participated in the slave transaction it should reconcile and repair this legacy Zohran Mamdani We have to address economic injustice at the forefront it s completely too expensive to live in New York because of historical injustice Michael Blake To understand why reparations are urgently needed we must begin with a simple truth Black wealth in this city was not lost but taken Two hundred years ago on the land that is now Central Park a thriving predominantly Black locality called Seneca Village stood By it was home to percent of all Black property owners in the state and in the state decided to take it through the power of eminent domain and by the entirety of Seneca Village was erased not by mob as Elie Mystal explained but by design by law This pattern of dispossession evolved into policies across the city and state that robbed Black New Yorkers of their wealth redlining racial covenants urban renewal underfunded schools segregated hospitals discriminatory hiring and unequal wages The impact is a staggering Black-white wealth gap with the median wealth for white New Yorkers is for Black New Yorkers it s just That is not a gap as our coalition member and long-time reparations leader Nkechi Taifa reminds us it is a chasm New York City is not absent from the legacy of American slavery far from it In the city became home to its first slave trading post at the intersection of Pearl Street and Wall Street the very heart of what would become America s financial district Long before Seneca Village there was The Land of the Blacks also referred to as the Negro Frontier a documented Black presence in New York dating back to the early s who would also eventually be displaced This rich history was nearly erased until the rediscovery of the African Burial Ground near Chambers Street at the foot of City Hall Park The very name New York along with the state capital Albany comes from James Stuart the Duke of York and Albany He along with his brother King Charles II co-founded the Royal African Company a powerful enterprise that dominated the transatlantic slave agreement exchanging enslaved Africans for goods as part of the triangular pact As a major port city New York positioned itself at the center of this global system helping to build the wealth of the English Crown New York s merchant class and Southern plantation economies The city s industrial processing and shipping infrastructure directly fueled and profited from slavery until New York legally abolished slavery in Given this history New York should be leading the national call for reparations in truth strategy and wealth redistribution The institution of slavery as we know it would not have thrived without New York s central role in financing processing and profiting from Black bondage New York has invariably been a city of ambition It s time we match that ambition with justice Nicole Carty is a Brooklyn resident New Yorkers for Reparations coalition member and executive cirector of Get Free Rashid Littlejohn is a Staten Island resident New Yorkers for Reparations coalition member and vice president of the Anti-Negro Defamation League The post Opinion Why Reparations Must Be A Priority Issue in the NYC Mayoral Electoral contest appeared first on City Limits