NY reparations panel members blame whites for climate change, blast Sen. Tim Scott and want to defund cops
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Two representatives appointed to a committee considering paying reparations claimed whites were responsible for climate change, slammed Israel and pushed to defund the police.
Ron Daniels and Lurie Daniel Favors — both appointed to New York’s commission on reparations and racial justice by state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) — made several fiery statements including Daniels slamming black US Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) as “Uncle Tim,” according to a review of their public statements.
“White Folks Messed Up the Weather = Black Folks Save the Planet,” Daniels, a longtime activist who ran for president on the Peace and Freedom Party in 1992, said in an Oct. 25, 2021, posting on X.
His also went after Scott, the upper chamber’s sole black Republican, with his “Uncle Tim” dig.
“‘Uncle Tim,’ Scott that is, Who Picked Cotton On the Plantation, Is ‘Still On the Plantation’ = Picked to Be the ‘Black Face’ To Suppress/Black Power/Black Freedom On Behalf of White Supremacy/White Power and That’s ‘The Cotton Picking Truth’ #BewareofUncleTim,” he wrote on May 3, 2021.
Daniels is founder and president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and served as administrator for the National African American Reparations Commission, a leading organization in the US and global reparations movements.
He has made several anti-Israel comments as well.
“With silence, comes complacency. No Homeland. No Peace. No Justice, No Peace in Israel,” Daniels said on Oct. 25 last year.
“There will never be peace in Israel until the Palestinians have a home. Military force will quench the thirst of the Palestinian people for justice. No Homeland, No Peace!”
Favors, executive director at the Center for Law and Social Justice at CUNY’s Medgar Evers College, said on July 7, 2019, “In the name of our ancestors who weep over our fractured communities; in the name of our families whose genealogy is at best a guess and a prayer; in the name of all that is holy & just:
F—K YOU & YOUR RACE APOLOGETICS. WE WILL NOT BE SILENT. WE WILL NOT MAKE YOU COMFORTABLE.”
Favors also said, “Police all across the country are literally proving *daily* why #DefundThePolice is necessary. I’m old enough to remember summa yall claiming activists were going too far.”
Nine appointees were recently selected to the panel studying reparations by Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Heastie. They appointed three members each.
State Conservative Party chairman Gerard Kassar blasted what he viewed as bigoted comments by the two panel members.
“The commission on reparations was ridiculous from the start. This proves it,” Kassar said.
“These sound like people who have preconceived notions of what they view as white privilege. Unbelievable. There’s no way these appointees should serve on the commission given their comments,” he added.
The study of reparations has already set off a fierce debate in the black community over who should get compensation or benefits to make up for the remnants of slavery and systemic racism and discrimination.
It will cost millions of dollars just to staff and run the reparations panel.
The state Senate recommended a $10 million budget for the commission, while the Assembly proposed $5 million.
A final figure will be hashed out in a final budget deal with Hochul.
“The reparations of slavery were paid with the blood and lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who fought to end slavery during the Civil War. This commission will stoke further division in New York and waste millions of taxpayer dollars that could be spent educating the public about our history and improving communities,” said state Senate Republican Minority Leader Robert Ortt (R-Niagara).
