[Jamaal Bowman\Reparations]
Bowman: “Begin the process of healing and reparations, repairing what we have harmed or allowed to continue to harm the country overall, but particularly Black and brown communities.”
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Jamaal Bowman says Congress needs to start “the process of healing and reparations.”
Jamaal Bowman hopes America is on the verge of a third period of reconstruction.
It’s been only a week since Bowman beat Rep. Eliot Engel, the powerful chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in the Democratic primary. But Bowman already has big plans for his time in Congress, including — as he calls it — a “third-time’s-the-charm sort of approach to reconstruction.”
“We tried it after the Civil War, but it was stopped by Klansmen and white supremacists really targeting and terrorizing black communities,” the middle-school principal and now likely presumptive member of Congress for New York’s 16th Congressional District told Vox in a recent interview. “We tried it again after the civil rights movement, but that was followed by mass incarceration.”
In Bowman’s vision of a third attempt, Congress wouldn’t just study slavery reparations for Black Americans; it would actually pay them out. And Congress would also hold a series of hearings specifically on slavery’s legacy in the US and everything that has followed it: the militarism of police and institutional racism that pervades multiple aspects of American society, from housing to education to health care.
“Begin the process of healing and reparations, repairing what we have harmed or allowed to continue to harm the country overall, but particularly Black and brown communities,” Bowman said.
For the rest of this Vox story log on to: https://www.vox.com/2020/7/1/21306710/jamaal-bowman-engel-congress-reparations-institutional-racism
