If the Boston People’s Reparations Committee gets its way, the taxpayers of Boston will lighten their wallets by $15 billion to pay for a crime they didn’t commit.
The committee expects the city to cough up reparations for slavery, and a group of the city’s ministers expects the city’s churches to back their demand and drop some loot into the collection plate.
Of course, the plea for the undeserved handout was gussied up as one made with “Christian love.”
Chances of being paid anytime soon: Not good. The city is flat broke.
The Claims
What measure of “Christian love” demands that people who never owned slaves pay off people who never were slaves was left unsaid. But that unimportant fact aside, the coalition of black and white “ministers” who pleaded for whites to “invest” in the “black community” assured the worthies gathered at a news conference that they — the coalition of black and white ministers — were indeed “sincere.”
As if anyone doubted it.
“We call sincerely and with a heart filled with faith and Christian love for our white churches to join us and not be silent around this issue of racism and slavery and commit to reparations,” said the Rev. Kevin Peterson, a minister who is known for his push to rename Faneuil Hall because of its namesake’s ties to the slave trade during the 18th century.
“We point to them in Christian love to publicly atone for the sins of slavery and we ask them to publicly commit to a process of reparations where they will extend their great wealth — tens of millions of dollars among some of those churches — into the Black community,” said Peterson.
It was the first time, the Globe reported, that clergymen and women of different faiths demanded the free money.
Sixteen of the clergy, Peterson said, signed an open letter to churches that “lists ways the churches could provide reparations, including cash payments, creating affordable housing, and helping to back new ‘financial and economic institutions in Black Boston,’” the Globe reported. The shakedown demand went to four churches: Trinity, Arlington Street, and Old South churches, along with King’s Chapel downtown.
Continued the Globe:
The Rev. John E. Gibbons of Arlington Street Church said at the news conference that a number of churches have begun to research their history and discuss reparations.
“That is not enough,” said Gibbons, who has collaborated with Peterson on the push to rename Faneuil Hall. “Somehow we need to move with some urgency toward action and so part of what we’re doing is to prod and encourage white churches to go beyond what they have done thus far.”
The Rev. Joy Fallon, senior minister at King’s Chapel, said the congregation is creating a memorial to enslaved persons and is working on establishing a charitable fund to support social justice and reconciliation. Research paid for by the church has identified at least 219 people who were owned by ministers and congregation members over hundreds of years, the Globe reported last year.
“Our first focus has been on history because we’re located on the Freedom Trail and have an unusual ability to tell visitors about Boston’s Colonial connection to slavery including our church’s,” Fallon said in a phone interview.
The Old South Church “is committed to learning the truth about our history and making repair — the God who loves justice demands nothing less,” senior minister John Edgerton wrote in an email, the Globe reported, and the Trinity Church welcomes “the important work of repair.”
The group didn’t leave out the Catholic Church, either. It “unfortunately assisted in sustaining institutionalized racism across the city,” Peterson averred. “Not only are we looking at the period of slavery, we’re looking at three centuries of institutionalized anti-Black racism and the Catholic Church is inclusive of the churches we want to engage.”
Of course, the archdiocese groveled, the Globe continued:
On Saturday, an archdiocesan spokesperson issued a statement, saying the “suffering of the black community is constantly with us in the Commonwealth and nationally.”
“As we have entered Holy Week with Palm Sunday Mass, we will certainly review what they have proposed in the days ahead,” the statement said.
In 2020, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, archbishop of Boston, wrote on his blog about the failure of the US government to deliver on its promise to provide formerly enslaved people with “40 acres and a mule” following the Civil War.
“Any American who is asked if they are opposed to slavery would strenuously affirm their absolute opposition to this terrible institution,” O’Malley wrote. “Today, however, we must unite in our opposition to the consequences that this immoral practice has visited on our nation.”
Time for Payback … From a City With No Money
A Baptist minister “who grew up in Trinidad and Tobago” channeled O’Malley and also “invoked the failed promise of ‘40 acres and a mule,’ at the news conference,” the Globe reported.
Leo Edward claimed that the acres were “prisons” and that “the mules are the prisoners.” How many crimes were committed to get that acreage behind bars he didn’t say.
Another voice of reason was one Danielle Williams, the headmistress of something called Prophetic Resistance Boston, which bills itself as “a group of Black and Latino pastors and congregation members who have moved from within the four walls of the church to engage communities of color in Boston.”
She claimed her great-great-grandmother “was enslaved in Africa and brought to North Carolina.”
Said Williams:
Black people, the descendants of slavery have been washing the feet of our oppressors for well over 400 years. Now it’s time for you to wash our feet. The descendants of slavery, we want our reparations. We want it now.
How long Peterson, Williams and their shakedown gang must wait for the $15 billion is unknown. But the city won’t likely stroke a check any time soon. It doesn’t have the money.
In its 2024 Financial State of the Cities report, the Truth in Accounting website gave Boston a D rating because it cannot pay its bills.
As of 2022, the city’s ledgers show, its assets were about $5.23 billion. Liabilities were about $7.23 billion. Each taxpayer would have to pay $7,800 to cover the $2 billion deficit.
The website gives any city with a per capita taxpayer burden of $5,000 to $20,000 a D.
