SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WSBT) — The City of South Bend is exploring ways to make reparations for the city’s black and brown communities.
The Reparatory Justice Commission meeting to discuss its progress since being formed just a couple of months ago.
Since then the 14 member commission has been investigating areas for reparations and finding equity for the city’s black community.
Those areas consist of seven sub committees including, housing, education, healthcare, mental health, employment, wage gap and policing.
“The end goal of what our task is to make recommendations to the common council for reparatory justice, the end goal is to actually repair the harm that has been done and to put together the structures and mechanisms so that those harms don’t continue into the future,” Darryl Heller, the Reparatory Justice Commission’s chairperson said.
About a dozen people showed up to the meeting.
One telling me that she was there to learn about the issues but hoped to see more people attending to collaborate on the topic of reparations.
“I would like to see more people come out you know and get together, and pull together and put their thoughts together to make it better for everybody,” Beverly Perkins said.
Heller says it’s important that everyone in the commission comes from a different background and is able to provide their unique perspective but they also need to hear from the public.
“We are working to develop a process for community input so beginning in January we will begin having community forums and community speak outs and story telling sessions so that we can get the voices of those directly experiencing the harms that we are trying to repair,” Heller said.
The next meeting is December 19th where the commission will continue to dive into its research to develop its recommendations to Common Council