San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has revived a benefit program once lauded as a step toward “reparations” for black San Franciscans. Known as the Dream Keeper Initiative, the relaunched program will grant $36 million to “community-serving organizations,” including some that have offered “Afri-centric” mental-health services, African ancestry DNA testing, and free doulas for “African American birthing people.”
Supporters say the initiative will deliver racial “equity”; a civil rights lawyer says the program may violate federal law.
The Dream Keeper Initiative was founded by former San Francisco Mayor London Breed in 2021, fulfilling her promise to redirect police funding to “the African American community” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. In February 2021, Breed announced that the city would divert $120 million from its law-enforcement budgets to fund the program, which would in turn funnel money to a web of left-wing nonprofits. The Board of Supervisors president hailed the initiative as the “first step towards true reparations for the Black community here in San Francisco.”…