New York Reparations Activists Call On Governor To Back Reparations Legislation

Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons NEW YORK, NY — Get Free, a GenZ & Millennial-led organization building a nationwide movement to repair past harms, remove ongoing barriers to equality, and realize freedom for all, are calling on New York Governor Kathy Hochul to back Reparations legislation for Black New Yorkers, and to back the return Maple Bay to the Onondaga Nation by July 4th. The group is also hosting a rally on Wall Street on Monday, March 23rd at 9am titled “Hochul: New York’s Future Demands Repair” where they and allied organizations will call on her to “make Wall Street pay and return what they stole.” In 2023, the youth civil rights organization successfully pressured Gov Hochul to enact a statewide Reparations commission. Now they are calling on her to move New York State towards a future of healing, freedom, and prosperity for all by: (1) using every tool at their disposal to block, delay, and reject all MAGA regime attacks on our fundamental freedoms and civil rights, (2) championing policies that create real equality by rectifying historical discrimination, repairing ongoing inequalities, and making Wall Street pay and return what they stole, (3) backing the return of Maple Bay to the Onondaga Nation, the home of the first democracy on our continent and inspiration for the US Constitution, (4) honoring the treaties, including the Two Row and Canandaigua treaties, and the Nation to Nation relationship, (5) confirming my commitment to bring reparations legislation in line with the repair mandate to a vote after the NYS commission on reparations remedies for Black New Yorkers has completed its recommendations. You can read the whole pledge they are asking Hochul to sign here. The group also got now Mayor Zohran Mamdani to sign on the pledge backing reparations in New York City (which can be viewed in full here). Polling shows a plurality of voters across New York State would be more likely to support pro-reparations candidates. Maple Bay in upstate New York is one of the most polluted sites in the country, and was the center of the continent’s first democracy before the United States seized it from the Haudenosaunee confederacy. “What we fail to repair, we repeat. We see it in ICE acting as a modern-day slave patrol, see it in the ongoing segregation and exploitation of our communities, and see it in the many Black, brown, and Indigenous lives and dreams cut short. Our failure to undo the legacies of enslavement and genocide has allowed unequal hierarchies to still govern our lives, control our destinies, and fuel a race to the bottom for all of us.,” said JJ Briscoe, a member of Get Free and resident of Brooklyn. “We need to fix inequality, not allow the MAGA regime and the wealthy, white few to lock them into place,” said Nazrin Nahar, a member of Get Free and resident of Queens. “We demand leaders who will reckon with our history and make Wall St pay and return what they stole from Black, brown, and Indigenous New Yorkers. We’re calling on Hochul to pledge to introduce reparations legislation for Black New Yorkers and to back the return of Maple Bay to the Onondaga Nation, the home of the first democracy on our continent and inspiration for the US Constitution.” “This year, our country will turn 250 years old. It’s a major point in our national history where we acknowledge who we’ve been, who we are, and who we want to become. But the MAGA regime is whitewashing our 250th anniversary and our country’s history to fit their white supremacist views. New Yorkers need our current and next Governor to stand with the future by carrying out our repair mandate and stand up to the MAGA regime’s agenda to re-segregate our society and destroy generations of progress toward equality,” said Anthony Vidal Torres, an organizer with Get Free originally from Long Island.