Black activists in the California Legislature threatened a “direct impact” on Vice President Harris' presidential campaign after the state's Democratic lawmakers blocked two bills that would have greenlighted slavery reparations.
Last week, the California Legislature approved proposals to return land or compensate families whose property was unjustly seized by the government, and issued formal apologies for laws and practices that have harmed Black people. But none of these bills would provide widespread direct payments to African Americans. After hours of heated debate and protest on Saturday, state lawmakers abandoned two bills — Senate Bills 1403 and 1331 — that would have created a fund and an agency to oversee reparations measures.
“The speaker needs to get the bills done now, now, now. These are their bills. Their names are on the bills. They’re killing their own bills because they’re afraid of the governor,” a Black man who is a member of the Just and Equitable California Coalition said in the Rotunda on Saturday, the last day of the legislative year. “Now listen, they’ll see this, and they’ll be mad at us. They’re killing their own bills, and then they’ll be mad at us. They’re killing their own bills because they’re afraid of the governor. We don’t care. Get the Goddamn bills done now, now, now.”
“We need to send a message to the governor,” a Black woman in the group said, according to a video shared on X. “The governor needs to understand that the world is watching California and this is going to have a direct impact on your friend Kamala Harris who is running for president. This is going to have a direct impact, so pull the bills now, vote on them and sign them. We've been waiting for over 400 years.”
The man added, “We have the votes.”
State Senator Steven Bradford, who authored the measures, said the bills could not advance out of fear that California’s Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, would veto them.
“We are in the final steps, and we, as the Black Caucus, owe it to Black Californians and the descendants of Black Americans to move this legislation forward,” Bradford said, according to the Associated Press. He urged his colleagues to reconsider Saturday afternoon.
“We're indebted to our ancestors. And I feel like we've kind of let them down,” Bradford said, according to the Sacramento Bee.
Assemblymember Lori Wilson, chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, said Saturday that the Black Caucus had withdrawn the bill, and said more work was needed on the proposals.
“We knew from the beginning that this was going to be an uphill battle … and we also knew it was going to be a multi-year effort,” Wilson told reporters.
Newsom has not given his opinion on most of the bills, but he did sign a $297.9 billion budget in June that included up to $12 million for reparations legislation. However, the budget did not specify which proposals the money would be used for, and his administration has signaled opposition to some of them. Newsom has until Sept. 30 to decide whether to sign the passed bills.
Democratic Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who is Black, called his bill to issue a formal apology for discrimination a “labor of love.” His uncle was part of a group of Black students who were escorted by federal troops from an angry white mob at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1950s, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation at school was unconstitutional. The students became known as the “Little Rock Nine.”
“I think my grandmother, my grandfather, would be very proud of what we’re about to do today,” Jones-Sawyer said before the vote on the legislation that passed. “Because that’s why they fought in 1957, so that I — and we — could move our people forward.”
Newsom in 2020 approved a law that created the first-in-the-nation task force to study reparations proposals. New York and Illinois have since enacted similar laws. The California group released a final report last year with more than 100 recommendations for lawmakers.
Newsom signed a law earlier this summer that requires school districts that receive state funding for career education programs to collect data on the performance of participating students by race and gender. The law, part of a reparations package backed by the California Legislative Black Caucus, is intended to help address gaps in student outcomes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
