Finally, the California Reparations Task Force will release its final report Thursday, with a blueprint for how Gov. Gavin Newsom and the legislature could compensate black people for the lasting damage of slavery and the ongoing humiliations of systemic racism.

By most indications, it will land on the Capitol in Sacramento with the detonation of a politically radioactive bomb.

Recent polls conducted by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that only 43% of people in the state liked the idea of ​​the existing task force. This is true, even though according to the same poll, 80% of residents agreed that racism is a problem in the US, with 42% saying it is a “major” problem and about 70% believing it contributes to economic inequality.

Nationally, public opinion is more against reparations.

Only one major poll, from UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, which has worked closely with the task force, has produced a contrary view. It found that a majority of Californians agree that black people owe “some form” of compensation. Predictably, however, anything that smacks of cash will receive much less support.

And given that the prospect of cash payments to the tune of potentially billions of dollars

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a time of deep budget deficit has dominated public discourse on reparations, it’s no wonder so many politicians are adopting a strategy of avoidance.

That’s why I suspect that Senator Steven Bradford, the Gardena Democrat, who is one of only two state legislators on the nine-member task force, has floated a crazy or maybe crazy idea.

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prepared to become fodder in our never-ending partisan culture wars, yet also so logical and mutually beneficial to Californians that it might convince politicians who don’t want to talk or even think about reparations to finally do so.

I doubt Bradford’s idea will be included in the task force’s final report. But he floated it during one

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panel discussion by invitation only earlier this month in West Adams.

“The conversation I had with the governor’s office a few weeks ago was that we’re closing prisons across the state of California,” he said. “What do we do with that land? Why don’t we give that land over to blacks who have never owned property in the state of California? Why don’t we give it over to developers and build houses on it?”

The dozens of mostly black, middle-aged men and women in the room, all clustered around round tables, sipping coffee and water with lemon, suddenly burst into raucous applause.

But not me. My jaw dropped with shock at the thought of the perspective of black people, who are disproportionately incarcerated due to bias in the criminal justice system, essentially colonizing the rural, often predominantly white and sometimes conservative cities where most state prisons are located.

Bradford kept running, my mind spinning.

“A lot of people say, ‘Where’s my check?'” he added, referring to the frequent absences of task force meeting participants over the past two years. “Reparations were never about a check. It’s about land.”

I quickly pulled Bradford to the side after he ran away

phase.

“Were you serious?” I asked unbelievably.

Hey nodded. “They were glowing with interest,” he said of Newsom’s staff, particularly his chief of staff, Dana Williamson.

Unsurprisingly, Newsom’s office was a little more cautious when I inquired

their conversation

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“Successfully interpreting Dana’s bright poker face remains elusive to even her closest colleagues and friends,” a spokesperson told me via email. “The governor looks forward to reviewing the final report.

However, Bradford seems unwilling to let this go.

“Why can’t we [let] African Americans setting up businesses and building homes there? Do you do agricultural projects, whatever the case, and then let it be owned by blacks, controlled by blacks?’ he told me.

In some ways, this makes perfect sense.

California has been closing prisons for years. And the state will likely continue to do so for years to come as the number of people behind bars continues to decline and complaints of vermin, infrastructure problems and often deadly conditions continue to pile up about where the remaining inmates are held.

During his time as governor, Newsom has ordered the closure of several prison yards and three jails, including the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, the Chuck

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Walla Valley State Prison in Blythe and the California Correctional Center in Susanville.

It’s the last of the

group that was perhaps the most controversial. Defenses for the California Correctional Center, or CCC, sued the state, prompting a judge in rural Lassen County to issue a temporary restraining order that halted the closure.

Susanville officials were adamant about not losing 1,000 prison jobs, saying it would lead to economic ruin. That set off the narrative of a mostly white, conservative, already dying Northern California town, arguing that its survival depends on the incarceration of black and Latino men from Southern California.

The court decides whether a form of slavery, a form of cruelty, will continue based on the personal financial benefits of the people around the prison, Shakeer Rahman, a Los Angeles-based attorney who represented inmates who signed the amicus brief, told The Times. At every turn, the judge and the city have silenced our clients’ voices to continue with this decision making that treats them as a source of income.

A provision put into last year’s state budget eventually settled the case, forcing Susanville to accept that the CCC will indeed close and with the deadline at the end of this month, it’s mostly closed.

But the racist narrative of what happened lives on. So in some ways reparations could be seen as poetic justice in giving black people the land where the prison once functioned. It can also be seen as a gift of trauma.

Bradford readily admits that state prisons are not usually located in “the most desirable areas” in California. But it is still land that is not being used and that can be economically controlled by black people, be it industrial buildings or growing cannabis.

“They do not have a plan for it now,” he said of state officials. “That’s why I gave them a suggestion of what they could do.”

This silence from state officials is one of Mallory Crecelius’s greatest fears. The interim city manager of Blythe, a shrinking Riverside County town along the Colorado River, told me she hasn’t heard anything about Chuck’s possible redevelopment

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Walla Valley State Prison.

“As far as we know, the state has no plans to do anything with the site, which would be the worst

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case,” she told me. “We lose the prison, and then we lose any ability to use it again.”

While many have focused on preventing the prison from closing in 2025, others are trying to figure out what can be done. The location is remote, some 20 miles in the desert from downtown Blythe, and is right next to another state prison.

So reparations? An influx of black people?

“We’re open to ideas,” Crecelius said, “because we really need to find a way to replace the jobs that are being lost.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Susanville Mayor Quincy McCourt had similar things to say when I asked him about reparations.

“I’m 100% open

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fancy something. We, as a community, are 100% open to anything, whatever the idea,” he told me. stakeholders in Lassen County and Susanville. We need to be in those discussions.”

So Bradford is crazy or just plain crazy

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Like it

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fox? Should reparations only include high-profile things like free tuition, housing assistance, interest-free business loans, and, yes, cash payments? Or is there room for new and creative ideas that could solve many of California’s problems all at once?

Time will tell.

“We’re going to set up a working group after the final report comes out,” Bradford told me, “and we’re going to try to come up with a legislative package that we can hopefully deliver to the governor’s office.”