Half a mil to put their thumbs up their asses instead of just literally giving that money directly as reparations 
Edit: I want to clarify, I fully support reparations, I’m just extremely frustrated knowing that, under liberal/bourgeoisie democracy, these types of efforts tend to get bogged down with means testing, and sometimes outright turn into thinly-veiled handouts to private corporations. All while the police budget is still increasing YOY.
That said, Evanston (city on Chicago’s northern border) did actually manage to distribute “…$25,000 in no-strings-attached direct cash payments for those eligible. Black residents who lived in Evanston during a 50-year period of discriminatory zoning laws and their direct descendants receive priority for eligibility.” So I don’t want to encourage further reactionary criticisms such as mine towards this specific subcommittee if they are able to achieve at least some form of direct payments similar to Evanston’s program.
It’s $500K. As someone else pointed out, salary and benefits for a small team will burn through that in short order. Evanston is making $25K restitution payments; this program is likely looking at something similar.
If there’s an already established and working program why spend $500k on anything other than sticking it in that fund and expanding it.
Can I have half a million dollars to sit in on a meeting and go “yea we should do this too”.
500k isn’t a lot if it’s actually being paid to somebody with good intentions, if it’s going to three people to set up filters to figure out who doesn’t qualify it’s bullshit.
And historically thenoverwhelming majority of instances of this have been that latter.
The program isn’t in Chicago, it’s in Evanston.