By: Meyer Wolfsheim

New York City taxpayers are on the hook for more than $200,000 so a collection of ideologically driven community groups can hold meetings, draft reports, and “collect truth testimony” about reparations — more than a century and a half after the Civil War ended, as the New York Post first reported.

The money will be distributed by the NYC Commission on Racial Equity (CORE), which announced it will fund selected nonprofits and advocacy organizations to help develop recommendations tied to a city-sponsored reparations study. According to CORE’s own materials, the groups will work to define “repair,” gather testimony from residents, and collaborate with researchers examining reparations in New York City, the New York Post first reported.

CORE Chair and Executive Director Linda Tigani celebrated the initiative Thursday, calling it “another major step in the fight for reparations here in New York City.” Tigani insisted that community groups must be “at the table” and supplied with public funds to ensure the process is “community-informed,” according to the Post.

Under CORE’s solicitation, up to 13 organizations are expected to receive grants of as much as $17,500 each — totaling $227,500. Yet CORE’s own press release suggested individual awards could reach $20,000, pushing the total closer to $260,000, as the New York Post first reported. The commission declined to explain the discrepancy when questioned.

Beginning as early as next month, the funded groups will begin wrestling with abstract questions about healing, reconciliation, and how descendants of slavery, Jim Crow, and related historical injustices define “repair” in modern-day New York City.

Critics blasted the plan as historically illiterate and fiscally irresponsible. As the New York Post first reported, New York abolished slavery in 1827 — decades before the Civil War — and sent more than 50,000 residents to die fighting to end slavery nationwide, more than any other state.

“To now tell today’s taxpayers they owe reparations is not just wrong, it’s offensive,” critics argue, particularly as the city struggles with crime, housing shortages, and ballooning budgets.

City Council Minority Leader David Carr (R-Staten Island) didn’t mince words. “The creation of this commission was already insulting enough to New Yorkers who had nothing to do with slavery,” Carr said, according to the Post. “Now it looks like a taxpayer-funded boondoggle for activists and special interest groups.”

Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) raised basic questions that the commission appears unwilling — or unable — to answer. How will eligibility be defined? Who qualifies? And where does it end?

“New York banned slavery in 1827,” Ariola said, as the New York Post first reported. “Are we running genealogy searches? Are we paying descendants of anyone enslaved anywhere at any time? This is absurd political theater and a total waste of taxpayer money.”

The reparations push traces back to a 2022 referendum that created CORE, placed on the ballot at the request of a Racial Justice Commission appointed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio.