'Racial Justice' Advocates Demand $15 Billion In Reparations From Boston, 'White Churches'
A group of religious leaders in Boston have demanded that both the city and “white churches” give more than $15 billion in reparations payments to the city’s black community. Far-left Boston Mayor Michelle Wu issued an official apology on behalf of the city for its “involvement in the Atlantic slave trade” in 2022, while the city has also commissioned a study on reparations.
Activist clergy members made the demands at the Resurrection Lutheran Church during an event organized by the Boston People’s Reparations Commission. One of the speakers was Reverend Kevin Peterson, who called on “white churches” to join with the group in demanding $15 billion in payments. “We call on the white church in Boston to join us in supporting a black reparations movement,” he said.
Demanding cash from “white churches” was a common theme throughout the event. “Today we call upon this city, its financiers, and its white churches to stop the shirking, stop the lying, tell the truth and pay what he is owed,” declared Reverend John Gibbons, drawing applause from other speakers.
“And we are coming, as Dr. King said, to get our check,” said another speaker.
Elsewhere in the press conference, Peterson outlined how the $15 billion in demanded payments would be used. “$5 billion as initial payment around cash payouts, $5 billion around strengthening our financial institutions, creating a new black bank, five billion dollars in terms of addressing issues of the education achievement gap between blacks and whites,” he said.
A letter signed by 16 activist clergymen was sent to individual churches demanding that they participate in paying the city’s black residents to “atone for slavery.” The churches named in the latter were King’s Chapel, Arlington Street Church, Trinity Church, and Old South Church.
These places of worship, the group argued, owed hundreds of slaves and have been called on to produce either cash payments, or by creating affordable housing “or financial institutions and economic institutions in black Boston.”
“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,” said Reverend Gibbons.
Peterson also singled out the Catholic Church, even though it was banned in Massachusetts when the state’s constitution was written in 1780. “‘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,” he said.
The City of Boston created the Task Force on Reparations in 2022 to write a report on how the city can deliver reparations payments to its black residents.