NAACP San Francisco criticizes city’s plan for reparations

The NAACP says it wants more information about San Francisco’s reparation plan.

The organization’s San Francisco branch held a press conference Saturday at Third Baptist Church.

Led by Rev. Amos Brown, president of the SF NAACP and pastor of the Third Baptist Church, said the organization supported the effort but criticized the city’s handling of the draft plan. According to the SF NAACP, the much-discussed one-time payment of $5 million is unlikely to be realized by the city and therefore gives black San Francisco residents false hope.

“Not a single member of this board has said, ‘We support reparations with cash payments.’ And with a clear plan on how to do it. And a timeline of how to do it,” Brown said.

A draft of that plan, presented by the African American Reparations Advisory Committee in December, now contains more than 100 recommendations on how San Francisco can deal with the city’s legacy of systemic racism. Some of the most notable are a one-time $5 million payment for eligible adults, a guaranteed annual income of at least $97,000, and $1 homes for African-American families.

The organization added that it supports cash payments, but called the $5 million “an arbitrary number” in a press release. It stated that “payments must have a public justification for the dollar amount and the method of distributing the money.”

The Supervisory Board accepted the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Reparations on Tuesday, although this does not mean that all recommendations will be implemented. The Board may vote to approve, reject or change any or all of them.

The Reparations Advisory Committee plans to submit its full report in June.