Two members of Detroit’s Reparations Task Force — including one of the co-chairs — stepped down last weekend, citing their growing frustration over the “lack of progress” and a missing “broad strategic vision” less than a year after the group was formed.
Co-chair Lauren Hood said she and task force member Maurice Weeks had been thinking about stepping down for months as the group lobbied Detroit’s City Council for help, The Detroit News reported. Both Hood and Weeks resigned during the task force’s meeting on Saturday, which was the group’s first public meeting since August.
“I think, collectively, that group of people has different ideas about what reparations is fundamentally and we didn’t get to a place where we had a broad strategic vision,” Hood said. “I’m happy that we’re now getting things done. We’ve got some partners who can help us organize existing information that will help make decisions, but we also still desperately need a strategy for how we engage the public around this work.”
The Reparations Task Force was launched in April of last year and is assigned with formulating housing and economic development recommendations that address “historical discrimination” against Detroit’s black community, according to the city. Hood said that she was frustrated with the lack of meetings and opportunities for the public to hear about the task force’s work.
“We haven’t had a public meeting in a few months so the impetus was there just because we had a public opportunity to let folks know what was happening,” Hood said. “We had some concerns at the last meeting that we had and nothing really changed. So it’s just like, how long do you stay the course when you don’t see anything changing?”
Cities across the country, and even the state of California, put together task forces in a renewed push for reparations which came in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and the ensuing demonstrations and riots in 2020. California lawmakers are expected to look into recommendations from the state’s Reparations Task Force after it approved a plan that suggested paying up to $1.2 million to black residents who descended from slaves or free African Americans who lived in the U.S. before 1900.
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As for Detroit, voters who overwhelmingly approved the Reparations Task Force two years ago will have to wait to see if the group comes up with any plan. The task force was given a $350,000 budget and has 18 months to submit a written report to the city council on its findings and recommendations, according to The Detroit News. The once-13-member board is now down to 10 members following Hood and Week’s departure and the death of Rev. JoAnn Watson in July.
“The work we do on ourselves, the work we do with each other as humans first is part of the process of repair internally that needs to happen before we try to design this thing, externally and citywide,” said Hood. “And it just didn’t seem like everybody was on the same page about that.”