The Greenberg Brief: How San Francisco’s Pastor and Reparations Cheerleader Blew It

This week I was invited to speak on the San Francisco Reparations plan, being asked to appear live on local CBS affiliate KPIX TV. I promptly accepted; it’s crucial we get the word out to viewers in the Bay Area and dispel rumors, to bring clarity, to push back against those who make outlandish monetary demands (“Cut the Check!”), and to shine a very bright light on the unconstitutionality of the city’s entire Reparations plan itself.

My segment was via Zoom, in a point-counterpoint rebuttal format. Speaking for the pro-Reparations side was none other than esteemed Reverend Dr. Amos Brown, a decades-long controversial fixture of San Francisco’s spiritual and civil rights leadership.  Rev. Brown served on the Board of Supervisors from 1996 to 2001 and is current president of the local NAACP chapter. He’s also an appointed member of the San Francisco Reparations Plan Committee as well as the California Reparations Task Force.  He’s nearly 83 years old.

Rev. Brown spoke for 8 minutes chatting with news anchor Elizabeth Cook. He spoke slowly, (methodically?), peppered with long, very long, agonizingly long pauses – were they for dramatic effect? He spoke as proponents do when discussing the plan for reparations: he asserted a need for righting a wrong, then completely avoided the unconstitutionality of such plans’ proposals, ignoring the decades of US and California-state laws enacted to protect our civil rights which gives teeth to lawsuits holding unjust perpetrators accountable. He avoided the fact one entire group of people cannot transfer or assign a liability for a perceived collective wrongdoing of previous generations to a collective group of unrelated future generations decades later. Brown and his cohort members of the committee seek to be judge, jury and executioner entirely without establishment of any individual person’s guilt and legal responsibility. They apparently seek revenge against an entire populace in a most obvious, biased, racist and bigoted manner.

Amos Brown made a huge error in his KPIX presentation. During opening moments, in his attempt to condemn those who wronged San Francisco’s Black population decades ago, he stated, “In our system of laws and jurisprudence, when you commit a crime, you’re gonna pay for it.” He is asserting the city’s non-Blacks should collectively pay for the injustice.

Minutes later, nearing the end of his allotted speaking time, he pivots to rhetorically query “… when you look at the matter of this criminal justice system, … who has been disproportionately locked up and the keys almost thrown away? ….. it’s been the Black people… you’re talking thirty to forty percent. [of the jail population].”

Rev. Brown applies one set of criminal punishment and justice standards collectively to all who are not African-American and then laments current criminal prosecution of our city’s Black population.

Moreover, Brown is mixing the breaking of civil laws (then) versus criminal laws now. Violent, physical, jailable offenses today are not what previous decades of discrimination and racial bias are at issue for Reparations.

So, this is a preview of the Reparations Plan’s deranged provisions and ideology. In Rev. Brown’s eyes (he is member on the SF and California state Reparations committees, bear in mind), he seeks to excuse Black crime, Black credit card debt, Black student loans, and then impose a replacement Black-only credit score, Black loans, Black public school curriculum, Black healthcare and Black mortgage interest rates. He seeks establishment of a Black council independent of city government. Your hard-earned tax dollars would pay for all this and Black community’s condo association fees, repairs and monthly dues as well.

Exploitation is the operative rule. The Reparations committee, the San Francisco Mayor, the eleven-member Board of Supervisors (our city council), and activists seek votes and sympathy.

My time in rebuttal of Reverend Brown focused specifically on the U.S. and California Civil Rights Acts, the U.S. Constitution and how a tidal wave of lawsuits will ensue should the committee and our Board of Supervisors ultimately begin actual spending of money to establish an office of Reparations. For now, the plan is on hold; Mayor London Breed has just indicated city coffers have no money in the budget to spend on this.

Apartheid is the solution, according to the San Francisco Reparations Committee. Working nearly two years on the plan at a cost of over $250,000, the fourteen-member group appointed by the Board of Supervisors came up with segregation, creating an extraordinarily privileged and preferred class of our city’s Black population, all to be paid for by everyone not approved and entitled. That’s Apartheid. And 2024 must view the Reparations debacle as an Election Year issue. Candidates cannot let this one slide. Are you for the unconstitutional segregating and awarding of money and resources collectively by race to four percent of San Francisco’s population, or are you instead going to commit to uniting and lifting up all?

We’ll see you at the polls.