A bill to establish a pilot program to have community-based organizations serve as first responders instead of the police awaits only Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature.
The “reparations” bill calls for the creation of a task force to study and propose ideas for how African Americans in California can be compensated for slavery and its “after lives,” as the author of the legislation, Dr. Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), describes the Jim Crow laws and other forms of injustice and state-sanctioned discrimination that have existed in the United States from 1865 until now.