Meet some of the controversial individuals behind San Francisco's $5M reparations push: 'America, you owe us'

Multiple San Francisco reparations board members are involved with left-wing activism in California and have made controversial statements that include blaming the United States for September 11 while also cozying up to a pastor who repeatedly praised antisemite Louis Farrakhan. Others have supported defunding the police and said they had "love" for an individual involved in a bank robbery that resulted in multiple murders.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering recommendations from the city's African American Reparations Advisory Committee to make amends for slavery, including paying qualifying Black residents a one-time lump sum of $5 million, the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, and guaranteeing annual incomes of at least $97,000 for 250 years. 

The 14-person reparations committee feeding proposals to the board is supervisors is chock-full of left-wing activists and individuals who have condemned America.

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Rev. Dr. Amos Brown

One controversial member of the San Francisco reparations board is Rev. Amos Brown of Third Baptist Church, the president of the San Francisco NAACP, and a member of the NAACP’s National Board of Directors. Last year, he hosted an event at his church called "Solidarity for Reparations," which included a pastor who has repeatedly praised antisemite Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

During the event, Brown introduced Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III as a "son of Third Baptist" and the "right man to come and to inspire us, inform us, and make sure that we have the map to implement in all that we might make reparations a reality not in the sweet by-and-by, but right down here in the here and now."

"America, you owe us. What you done to us has been immoral. It’s been evil. It’s been unjust. It’s been downright wrong and the only way to bring salvation to America - you gotta pay us what you owe us," Haynes said.

Haynes, who has campaigned with Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and other Democrats, has repeatedly praised Farrakhan. In 2017, he tweeted a picture with Farrakhan following a commencement address he delivered at Grambling State University, saying his "gracious and generous compliments touched my heart! A wonderful and great man!" He also called him a "prophetic leader for our time," despite his decades-long history of making disparaging comments about Jews and comparing them to "termites."

Brown has also received criticism for comments he reportedly made during a memorial service for victims of September 11th, days after the terrorist attack, which drew a rebuke from Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. 

"America, America, what did you do -- either intentionally or unintentionally -- in the world order, in Central America, in Africa where bombs are still blasting?" Brown said. "America, what did you do in the global warming conference when you did not embrace the smaller nations? America, what did you do two weeks ago when I stood at the world conference on racism, when you wouldn't show up?"

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Pelosi was the only Democrat on stage who chided Brown by saying, "The act of terrorism on Sept. 11 put those people outside the order of civilized behavior, and we will not take responsibility for that." Paul Holm, who was at the memorial service to represent the family of his deceased former partner, Mark Bingham, walked out of the memorial service and said, "I thought this was a day of remembrance and not a political event."

"These were innocent people, a number of whom gave their lives for the country and to save other innocent people," he continued, referring to Bingham, who was credited with helping take down United Airlines Flight 93 into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Brown previously told the San Francisco Chronicle that "America is a racist country."

Tinisch Hollins 

Tinisch Hollins, the reparations committee's vice chair, is the executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, a criminal justice reform group that is a project of the Alliance for Safety and Justice. The Alliance for Safety and Justice is part of the billion-dollar Tides dark money nexus.

Californians for Safety and Justice does not have to submit tax forms to the Internal Revenue Service due to its arrangement, but it has received support from the likes of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and George Soros' Foundation to Promote Open Society in the past.

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Hollins' group is part of a broader criminal justice reform push from Golden State left-wing activists that have garnered many critics. Her group works to "replace prison and justice system waste with common sense solutions that create safe neighborhoods," according to its website. They partner with dozens of other organizations on the efforts.

Last September, Hollins thanked Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for making California the "first state in US history to allow almost ALL old convictions on a person's criminal record to be permanently sealed, even if they have been to state prison" in a Facebook post.

Eric McDonnell

The reparations committee chair, Eric McDonnell, is involved with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training at Peacock Partnerships LLC, whose website is no longer live and last captured in January. 

However, California business records show that the company is still active, and its registered agent is McDonnell.

According to a cached version of the group's website, McDonnell describes himself as a "People First Advocate, Strategist, Diversity Trainer, Executive Coach, and Keynote Speaker."

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McDonnell has said that white Americans still benefit from slavery.

'This country has been complicit since its creation, and not just in the act of chattel slavery. I believe the harms that have been perpetuated on and against black Americans have both historical as well as present impacts," McDonnell previously said, according to Daily Mail.

'When white Americans say I didn't do it, that may be factually true, but it doesn't speak to whether they benefited or not, because they are benefiting. And because they have benefited, there is a moral obligation [to] be willing to invest in this."

Gloria Berry

Gloria Berry, another member of the reparations committee, has called for defunding the police on her Twitter account and repeatedly praised San Francisco's ousted DA Chesa Boudin for holding police accountable.

"Thank you for being a gift to San Francisco. Thank you for bucking the system. Thank you for waking people up by not going with the status quo and showing us all what happens when you don’t go along with the system. Thank you for all those years you went in those prison visiting rooms and turning your pain to power," Berry wrote in a August 2022 Facebook post praising Boudin. "Thank you for seeing all those Black and Brown kids visiting, their parent inside with longer sentences than others and taking on the responsibility to do something about disparity and mass incarceration. Thank you for Gilbert."

Near the end of the post, she thanked Boudin for his dad, David Gilbert, a former Weather Underground radical that was granted parole in 2021 after serving 40 years for his role in a deadly 1981 Brink's robbery that resulted in the killings of a guard and two police officers. Gilbert, 76, became eligible for parole after his 75 years-to-life sentence was shortened by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in August 2021, hours before he left office. 

In another Facebook post from 2022, she included a picture of her with Boudin and holding Gilbert's hand and writing, "Love this family."

Fox News contributor Leo Terrell has slammed the reparations push, saying he'd be the first lawyer to fight against it. 

"It's not ever going to get implemented. I'll be the first lawyer to fight against this," Terrell said." "This is outrageous. It's unlawful. It's unconstitutional. It's racist. But it's not surprising it came from California on the day of MLK's birthday."

"We're talking about a racist program to benefit individuals who happen to be Black- five million dollars. California was a free state. Who's going to pay for it? Why should they get $5 million? Because of skin color? It's insulting," he added.

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Former California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder has echoed similar sentiments, saying reparations are the "extraction of money from people who were never slave owners to be given to people who were never slaves."

Chairman of the San Francisco Republican Party, John Dennis, has also blasted the proposal as unrealistic and lacking precise analysis to back up the $5 million figure. 

"This is just a bunch of like-minded people who got in the room and came up with a number," he said. "You'll notice in that report, there was no justification for the number, no analysis provided. This was an opportunity to do some serious work and they blew it." 

The reparations committee did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment by the time of publication. 

Fox News Digital's Ashley Carnahan, Edmund DeMarche, and Jessica Chasmar contributed reporting.