DETROIT (TND) — Two members of Detroit’s reparations task force are resigning their positions less than a year after being appointed to them, The Detroit News reported.
The task force was launched in April with 13 members devoted to combating institutional racism in the city. It has no legislative power, but is required to submit a report with recommendations and findings to the Detroit City Council in 18 months or sooner.
Just ten of the original members now remain with the group after another passed away in July.
Lauren Hood and Maurice Weeks cited the task force’s alleged lack of “strategic vision” as a determining factor in their decision.
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, according to The Detroit News. “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.”
Hood also mentioned the group struggled to make progress after not holding a meeting in over three months.
“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?”
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The council will seek to appoint new members to fill the vacancies, task force co-chair Keith Williams told The Detroit News. It anticipates having a report ready for the council in November 2024.
In September, California residents vehemently opposed issuing reparation payments to descendants of slaves. Liberal respondents had mixed reactions to the idea, while conservatives nearly unanimously opposed to it.