A group of Evanston, Illinois, residents are suing their city government over a $20 million scheme to give away $25,000 each to Black residents as “reparations” for wrongs experienced by past generations.
The nonprofit public interest law firm Judicial Watch announced it “filed a class action lawsuit against Evanston, Illinois, on behalf of six individuals over the city’s use of race as an eligibility requirement for a reparations program which makes $25,000 payments to black residents and descendants of black residents who lived in Evanston between the years 1919 and 1969.” (RELATED: San Francisco Debates $5 Million Per Person Reparations Proposal)
“The Evanston, Illinois’ ‘reparations’ program is nothing more than a ploy to redistribute tax dollars to individuals based on race,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This scheme unconstitutionally discriminates against anyone who does not identify as Black or African American. This class action, civil rights lawsuit will be a historic defense of our color-blind Constitution.”
“Through a series of resolutions, the Evanston City Council created a program to provide $25,000 cash payments to residents who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969 and their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren,” JW reports, after filing a class action, civil rights lawsuit which challenges “on Equal Protection grounds Defendant City of Evanston’s use of race as an eligibility requirement for a program that makes $25,000 payments to residents and direct descendants of residents of the city five-plus decades if not more than a century ago. Plaintiffs seek a judgment declaring the Defendant’s use of race to be unconstitutional. Plaintiffs also seek an injunction enjoining Defendant from continuing to use race as a requirement for receiving payment under the program and request that the Court award them and all class members damages in the amount of $25,000 each.”
JW argues that “the program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because:”
Remedying societal discrimination is not a compelling governmental interest. Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 505 (1989); see also Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 307 ((1978) (opinion of Powell, J.) (describing “societal discrimination” as “an amorphous concept of injury that may be ageless in its reach into the past.”) Remedying discrimination from 55 to 105 years ago or remedying discrimination experienced at any time by an individual’s parents, grandparents, or great grandparents has not been recognized as a compelling governmental interest…
Defendant also has not and cannot demonstrate that its use of a race as an eligibility requirement is narrowly tailored. Among other shortcomings, Defendant’s use of race as a proxy for experiencing discrimination between 1919 and 1969 does not limit eligibility to persons who actually experienced discrimination during that relevant time period and therefore is overinclusive. Defendant also failed to consider race-neutral alternatives, such as requiring prospective recipients show that they or their parents, grandparents, or great grandparents actually experienced housing discrimination during the relevant time period because of an Evanston ordinance, policy, or procedure, as Defendant requires for the third group of prospective recipients. Nor did Defendant take into account race-neutral anti-discrimination remedies before adopting its race-based eligibility requirement.
According to JW, the program works as follows:
The first group of persons eligible for the $25,000 payments are current Evanston residents who identify as Black or African American and were at least 18 years of age between 1919 and 1969. Evanston refers to this group as “ancestors.”
The second group are individuals who identify as Black or African American who are at least 18 years of age and have at least one parent, grandparent, or great grandparent who identifies (or identified) as Black or African American, lived in Evanston for any period between 1919 and 1969, and was at least 18 at the time. Evanston refers to this group as “direct descendants.” A “direct descendant” is not required to be a current resident of Evanston to receive the payment.
“At no point in the application process are persons in the first and second groups required to present evidence that they or their ancestors experienced housing discrimination or otherwise suffered harm because of an unlawful Evanston ordinance, policy, or procedure or some other unlawful act or series of acts by Evanston between 1919 and 1969,” Judicial Watch states in the laws.” “In effect, Evanston is using race as a proxy for having experienced discrimination during this time period.” (RELATED: Squad Member Introduces Proposal For $14 Trillion In Reparations)
Judicial Watch states in the lawsuit that “the six plaintiffs satisfy all eligibility requirements for participating in the program as ‘direct descendants’ other that the race requirement (the actual number of individuals who are potential class members is in the tens of thousands).”
Christine Svenson of Chalmers, Adams, Backer & Kaufman, LLC is assisting Judicial Watch in the lawsuit.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk. It first appeared in American Liberty News.
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Apply to all Blue States aloine
The Democratic Party of today argues that all African Americans, (only SOME of whom are descended from slaves) deserve reparations. (Their ancestors being slaves is something we cannot whitewash or forget).
However, this “Reparations” idea has obvious problems, with some of the most salient, being that:
1. In the entire history of the world, there is practically no country, no race, or no people who have not either been slaves at one time, or slaveholders during another time, or both.
2. No one alive today in this country has ever been a slave and no one alive in this country has ever owned slaves. (Unless they are Muslims or Chinese, who are still holding slaves in the Middle East and Mainland China, even today, but you will never hear that from any Leftist sources.)
3. Slavery has existed in every civilization throughout history. The only question, therefore, isn’t who had slavery, but who was willing to fight and die to abolish it? ANSWER: White Americans!
4. This whole proposition is immoral for many reasons. But in calculating anything like a claim for recompense there should be some form of calculation of the damages and harm done by the “guilty” parties, yet not to harm those whose ancestors were innocent.
5. The Democrat’s ‘Jim Crow Laws’ STILL Exist When it Comes to Blacks Owning Guns in Some States!
6. Democrats want to steal money from people whose own ancestors fought, bled, suffered, and died to end slavery! 360,000 Union Soldiers, mainly White men suffered and died and paid “reparations” with their blood to free four million slaves.
7. Many Civil War Veterans were maimed for life, by the loss of arms, legs, vision, or suffered war-related illnesses.
8. Many Blacks fought for either the North or the South during the Civil War.
9. The progeny of the White Conductors on the Underground Railroad who risked their lives if they were caught, should not be held responsible for Reparations.
10. White People in the 1960s died to give Blacks their Civil Rights!
Internet Search term: “The Onion Field”
11. Over one thousand Free-Blacks (28% of all Blacks) in the South OWNED Slaves too, so how is it that their progeny deserves any reparations?
12. According to the 1860 Census only 1.4% of all White Americans owned slaves.
13. Many Chinese who came here to work the gold fields and railroads were treated almost as slaves, and they produced millions of children. How are they to be held responsible?
14. Many Whites and people of other races were immigrants who came to the USA, AFTER the Civil War and they produced millions of children! How are they to be held responsible?
15. Many millions of African Blacks got off the boat, AFTER the Civil War until today, and they produced many millions of children!
16. “By the 1980s more Black Africans had come to America voluntarily as immigrants seeking Freedom and Opportunity than ever came as slaves.” —Dennis Prager
How are any of them owed Slavery reparations?
17. Not all “Blacks” come from Africa, not all “Africans” are “Black”.
18. “If America is systemically racist against Black people, if every White American is a racist, why have more than four million Black people emigrated from Africa and the Caribbean to the United States since the 1960s? Tens of millions more would if they could. Are they all fools? Is there any other example of a vast number of people immigrating to a country that hates them? Why would anyone move to a country that is systemically bigoted against them? Did any Jews immigrate to Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933?” —Dennis Prager
19. Yet, Southern Democrats whose own ancestors OWNED the slaves would pay an equal “share”!
20. Many Blacks are Mixed Race, some going back generations, what kind of financial gymnastics is that called for? There would need to be Nazi-like ‘inquiries’ into the claimant’s racial background, to determine their share. Or would fake “Blacks” like Rachel Dolezal collect?
21. Many people, both “Whites” and “Blacks”, are of mixed ancestry with all the races and nations on the earth.
22. A Black man named Anthony Johnson was the very FIRST person to own Black slaves, in the USA, he came here to make more money raising tobacco by the use of slavery, because slavery was the most lucrative business (and it still is in Africa and the Middle East, they are STILL selling their people into slavery.) He had four White and one Black indentured servant. The Black indentured servant, John Casor demanded that Johnson release him after his allotted seven years of indenture. The court ruled in Johnson’s favor and made Casor a slave for LIFE. (It’s not clear if Anthony Johnson also kept his White indentured servants as slaves for Life)
23. (The very first slaves in the US were Irish children, shipped here by the British, arrived four months before the first Black slaves arrived… Irish adults came later… most of them died before they made much of an impact on US history and are mainly forgotten. Most were FORCEFULLY DEPORTED FROM IRELAND AND SOLD INTO INDENTURED SERVITUDE. Whereas the normal indenture is a voluntary contract for a certain number of years to work without compensation and to pay off an earlier debt.
Internet Search term: “The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten White Slaves”
24. Muslim slave traders from Africa and Arabia sold MORE Whites into slavery by raiding Europe than they did by raiding the Black African people.
25. Black African Tribes such as the Ashanti captured and sold other Blacks to both Muslim and White Slavers. However, sometimes the Slave Trading Tribes later became the hunted.
26. It was the Ashanti’s own Kente Cloth that the Democrats wore in the halls of Congress when they ‘took a knee’ for the career criminal George Floyd.
Internet Search term: “Black African tribes that sold others into slavery.”
27. Democrats claim that “DACA” kids should not have to pay for their own parents’ crimes. However, those very same Dems believe that ALL White people are still responsible for the actions of pre-Mid-19th Century Democrat Slave Owners!
28. Vice President Kamala Harris, when asked about her family’s history of owning slaves in Jamaica, says “That was in the past and has nothing to do with me”. This throws ice water on the whole “Reparations” argument!
29. Can you say: “Equal application of the law”?
IN CONCLUSION: Unless Nazi-style ‘inquiries’ into the claimant’s racial background are performed then all “Blacks” no matter that those who only have the proverbial “One Drop” of Black Blood or have come to the USA after the Civil War, or have Black ancestors who owned slaves or that they fought for the South will all receive equal Shares.
All Whites no matter how innocent their ancestors were, never owned slaves, or that they fought for the North, or by running the Underground Railroad, or came to the USA after the Civil War, as well as those whose ancestors owned slaves will pay an equal “share”.
WHO SHOULD PAY THEN?
Southern Democrats primarily, then all other Democrats because they are the ones who owned the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crowe Laws, Racial Segregation, and Black Voter Suppression… We must also INCLUDE BLACK Democrats because many Free-Blacks in the South OWNED Slaves and fought for the South too!
So, the Black Dems get to “Pay” themselves… after the usual obligatory Governmental “Slight Charge for Shipping and Handling”!
Bottom line: don’t let the Democrats change America for the worse. Remember November!
I identify as black and love soul music too. Please mail the check quickly!