Reparations advocate tells CNN she doesn't know how city will pay $5M to Black residents
Reparations advocate Robin Rue Simmons told CNN that she doesn't know how San Francisco will pay their qualifying Black residents $5 million each in reparations.
Reparations advocate Robin Rue Simmons told CNN that she does not know how San Francisco will pay Black residents $5 million each in reparations after successfully awarding reparations to approved residents in Evanston, Illinois.
CNN's Adrienne Broaddus asked Simmons during an interview about how the city of San Francisco will pay Black residents $5 million.
"I don’t know. And so those are the challenges that we all have as municipalities," Simmons said.
As a former alderwoman turned activist, Simmons pushed for reparations in Evanston, which became the first city to award such restitution to Black residents who qualify.
Robin Rue Simmons, a reparations advocate, tells CNN she doesn't know how San Francisco will pay $5 million in reparations to each of their qualifying Black residents. (Screenshot / CNN This Morning)
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Those who qualified were awarded grants up to $25,000 for a down payment on a new home, home renovations or mortgage assistance, according to CNN. However, the Evanston City Council voted to approve a cash option on Monday.
Illinois' approval of recreational marijuana, which went into effect in 2022, funded Evanston's reparations, CNN reported.
"It is one thing to identify a harm and prescribe a remedy," Simmons told the outlet. "In the case of Evanston … we have been led to understand and appreciate that home-rule taxes are our most viable way to fund reparations, being that they’re within our purview."
Romona Burton, who is one of 14 who received a reparations grant in Evanston, told Broaddus that she used the money for windows, her roof and the chimney on her home.
A view of San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge. (Stephen Lam / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images / File)
San Francisco's reparations committee proposed paying each Black resident of the community $5 million, and the board of supervisors is considering the proposal.
The committee's chair, consultant Eric McDonnell, said that the $5 million number came as a result of a "journey" and not a "math formula."
"There wasn’t a math formula," McDonnell told the Washington Post in February. "It was a journey for the committee towards what could represent a significant enough investment in families to put them on this path to economic well-being, growth and vitality that chattel slavery and all the policies that flowed from it destroyed."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (Dai Sugano / MediaNews Group / East Bay Times via Getty Images / File)
Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., has not taken a public stance on the possibility of reparations.
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The California Reparations Task Force, which was created by state legislation signed by Newsom in 2020, is considering a proposal to give nearly $360,000 per person to approximately 1.8 million Black Californians who had an ancestor enslaved in the U.S., putting the total cost of the program at about $640 billion.
Fox News Digital's Aaron Kliegman contributed to this report.