Politics
House Democrat To Introduce Trillion-Dollar Reparations Bill
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) is set to introduce a trillion-dollar reparations bill later this week, a move she is describing as a “moral and legal obligation” for the United States.
On Tuesday, Lee met with activists and lawmakers on Capitol Hill for an event titled, “Why We Can’t Wait: Advancing Reparative Justice in Our Lifetime.” During her speech, Lee announced plans to formally introduce the legislation this coming Thursday.
This is a moment in time where societies are shaped [and] new societies are built. We should be the ones who are shaping it,” the far-left lawmaker said.
“Their real intention is to build up whatever comes next in their image,” Lee told attendees in reference to the Trump Administration, adding, “and we better fight like hell to make sure that we’re building it in our image.”
The Pennsylvania Democrat described President Trump’s move to end DEI policies and associated race-based hiring practices as a racist act, noting that the move was made via executive order. “That’s why we recognize that the fight to restore Black folks has to be so much more substantive,” she added.
Lee’s resolution cites slavery, Jim Crow laws, and other long defunct racially discriminatory policies as the “moral and legal obligation” for the United States to pay out trillions of dollars in reparations to black Americans.
“We cannot achieve equity without reparations. Supporting reparations means not only passing the GI Restoration Act and H.R. 40 and S.40, not only embracing the Reparations Now Resolution, but also actively dismantling policies and narratives that seek to deny or distort the urgency of this work,” said Dreisen Heath, a “reparations researcher” and founder of the Why We Can’t Wait Coalition during Tuesday’s event.
Rep. Summer Lee speaks at a campaign event on October 19, 2021
Photo: Mark Dixon
Lee’s legislation comes just a few months after fellow “squad” Democrat Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) introduced her own bill calling for a federal commission to study U.S. slavery and reparation proposals.
“The wholesale, systemic harm done to black folk was not indiscriminate. It was very precise. The cruelty is the point, and the harm done to black folks has been codified in budgets, and it has been legislated,” the congresswoman ranted at the time, adding that Trump is trying to bring back a “Jim Crow America.”
“What is the antidote to anti-blackness? To be pro-black and pro-justice,” she said.
