EXCERPT:
CdeBACA: “That’s one way to give back in the business form fashion. I think when we talk about resources being returned, this is where consumer-owned or municipally owned resources are important because we are locked out of owning or control over our basic needs like water or utilities or any of those things. There is a way for us to change that structure and put black and brown people in ownership positions over our basic needs. I also really want to point out that the basic income project could be, if we were focused, an important way to return a check to an individual in an ongoing fashion, but in its current format it's not reparations or not close to reparations. One, it doesn't focus on black and brown people. Two, what they are experimenting with is unhoused people, and it's not a livable or prosperous wage, it is a welfare wage. We know how that has worked. Those types of checks have not served us well and we need to go far beyond welfare wages and go to prosperous wages because we don't want to just survive anymore. And reparations goal should not be survival, it should be repairing the harm, which is this entire economy."