Finally, California’s Reparations Task Force is set to release its final report on Thursday, calling out Gov. Gavin Newsom and Congress to condemn black people to the ongoing humiliation of slavery’s lasting toll and systemic racism. We plan to provide a blueprint on how to compensate for

According to most indications, it will land on the Capitol in Sacramento with the thud of a political radio bomb.

Recent polls from independents Discovered by the California Institute of Public Policy Only 43% of the state’s residents liked the existence of the task force. The same poll found that 80% of residents agree that racism is a problem in the United States, 42% say racism is a “big” problem, and about 70% say racism is a problem. This is true despite the belief that discrimination contributes to economic inequality.

Nationally, public opinion tends to be against reparations.

There is only one major poll by UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunch Center for African American Studies, which has worked closely with the task force. provided a contrarian perspective. The survey found that a majority of Californians agree that black people are obligated to pay reparations “in some way.” But, as expected, those that hinted at cash payments were far less popular.

And given that the prospect of cash payments dominates the public debate over reparations amid deep budget deficits, it is no wonder so many politicians are deploying avoidance strategies. do not have.

That’s why State Senator Stephen Bradford (Gardena Democrat), one of only two state representatives on the nine-member task force, has come up with a crazy or fox-crazy idea. I doubt you are proposing.

For one, the politics of not wanting to discuss or even think about reparations because they’re ready to fall prey to endless partisan culture wars and at the same time so logical and mutually beneficial to Californians. It is possible to persuade the house and eventually persuade them to do so.

It is unlikely that Mr. Bradford’s ideas will make it into the task force’s final report. But he addressed the issue earlier this month during an invitation-only panel at West Adams.

“A conversation I had with the governor’s office a few weeks ago stated that we prison closure in California,” he said. “What are we going to do with the land? What if we give it to a black man who has never owned a property in California? Why don’t we let a developer build a house on it?”

Dozens of mostly middle-aged black men and women in the room gathered around a circular table, sipping coffee and lemon water, and burst into a sudden burst of applause.

But I am not. of blacks disproportionately imprisoned because of the prejudices of the criminal justice system, essentially colonizing rural, often white and sometimes conservative towns where most state prisons are located Just thinking about the perspective made my mouth open in shock.

Bradford kept firing while my mind kept spinning.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘Where’s my check?’,” he said, noting that he had been frequently absent from task force meetings over the past two years. “Reparations were never about the check. It was about the land.”

After Bradford left the stage, I immediately pulled him to the side.

“Are you serious?” I asked in disbelief.

he nodded. “They showed interest,” he said of Newsom staff, particularly Chief of Staff Dana Williamson.

Unsurprisingly, Newsom’s office was a little more cautious when I asked about their conversation.

“It remains difficult even for her close colleagues and friends to successfully interpret Dana’s bright poker face,” a spokeswoman told me via email. “The governor looks forward to considering the final report.”

But Bradford doesn’t seem to want to let this go.

“Why can’t you?” [let] Will African Americans set up businesses and build homes there? Are agricultural projects always black-owned and black-controlled? ‘ he told me. “Because, again, intergenerational wealth is not brought about by money, but by land.”

In a way this makes perfect sense.

California has closed its prisons for years. And as the number of people incarcerated in prisons continues to decline and complaints of pests, infrastructure problems, and often fatal conditions about where the rest of the inmates are held continue to grow, the same The state will likely continue that trend for years to come.

During his governorship, Newsom ordered the closure of several prisons and three prisons, including the Dewell Vocational Training Institute in Tracy, the Chukkawalla Valley State Penitentiary in Bryce, and the California Correctional Center in Susanville.

Perhaps the most controversial part is the last part. Defenders of the California Correctional Center (CCC) sued the state, and a judge in rural Lassen County issued a temporary injunction to stop the closure.

Susanville officials said they were determined not to lose 1,000 prison jobs, which they said would lead to economic ruin. It set the narrative of a mostly white, conservative, and already dying Northern California town that claimed its survival depended on the imprisonment of Southern California’s black and Latino men.

“Courts decide whether certain types of bondage, certain types of cruelty continue, based on the personal financial interests of those around the prison,” said a representative of the inmate who signed the court agreement. Shaker Rahman, a Los Angeles-based attorney who serves as succinctly told The Times. “Judges and the city have silenced the voices of our clients at every turn in order to continue to advance this decision that treats them as a source of income.”

A provision in last year’s state budget finally settled the case and forced Susanville to accept that the CCC would indeed be closed. And with the deadline at the end of this month, CCC has all but closed.

But the racist narrative about what happened lives on. So, in a way, giving blacks the land on which prisons once operated as reparations could be seen as poetic justice. It could also be a result of trauma.

Bradford bluntly admitted that state prisons are generally not in California’s “most desirable areas.” But it is still underutilized land that blacks can economically control, whether it be industrial buildings or cannabis cultivation.

“They are not There are no plans for that at the moment,” he said of state officials. “That’s why I suggested what they could do.”

The state official’s silence is one of Mallory Cresselius’ biggest concerns. Interim City Manager of Bryce, A Shrinking Town in Riverside County She, who lives along the Colorado River, told me she hadn’t heard anything about a possible redevelopment of the Chukkawalla Valley State Penitentiary.

“As far as we know, the state has no plans to do anything about this location. It’s a worst-case scenario,” she told me. “When we lose prisons, we lose the ability to reuse them.”

While many are focused on not closing prisons in 2025, others are trying to figure out what they can do. The site is located in a desert area about 20 miles from downtown Bryce, right next to another state prison.

So compensation? Influx of blacks?

“We welcome ideas because we need to find ways to replace jobs that would be lost,” Cresselius said.

Somewhat surprisingly, Susanville Mayor Quincy McCourt said something similar when I asked about compensation.

“I’m 100% open-minded about anything. We as a community are 100% open-minded about any idea,” he told me. “And if the state is arguing over what to do with either the facility or the land, we can all benefit from involving key stakeholders in Lassen County and Susanville. We need to participate in those discussions.”

So is Bradford mad, or just mad as a fox? Should reparations only include much-debated items like free college tuition, housing assistance, interest-free business loans, and, of course, cash payments? Or is there room for new and creative ideas that could solve many of California’s problems at once?

only time will tell.

Mr. Bradford told me, “We will set up a working group when the final report is out, and hopefully come up with a bill that can be delivered to the governor’s desk.”