The California Black Power Network (CBPN), Equal Justice Society (EJS), and six former members of the California Reparations Task Force – Dr. Cheryl Grills, Lisa Holder, Dr. Jovan Scott Lewis, Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, Senator Steven Bradford, and Donald Tamaki – announced the formation of a new collaboration called the Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation, and Truth.
The Alliance’s mission is to educate the public about reparations; amplify the California Reparations Task Force’s report and its recommendations; achieve broad-based, multi-racial public support of reparations; and grow the base of multi-racial and multi-sector allies who support reparations in California.
In addition to CBPN and EJS, the Alliance includes a growing list of Black-led and non-Black ally organizations such as Black Equity Collective, Catalyst California, AAPIFORCE, PICO California, Nikkei Progressives, and Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress (NCRR).
The historic report (https://oag.ca.gov/ab3121/report) by the California Reparations Task Force draws a throughline from the harm of 246 years of enslavement, 90 years of Jim Crow and racial terror, and decades more of continuing discrimination, resulting in today’s grossly disparate outcomes for Black Californians. The report includes 115-plus policy recommendations to the California State Legislature to stop the harm from continuing and to determine a feasible long-term approach to address the harms that were centuries in the making.
A May 2023 poll from UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies found strong support in California for a range of reparations measures for Black Americans, particularly those focused on systemic reforms and investments in communities.
Both of the Alliance’s nonprofit partners have been deeply engaged in the reparations movement. California Black Power Network (CBPN), a permanent coalition of nearly 40 organizations, led a year-long community engagement campaign and submitted nearly 5,000 letters from community members to the task force.
Holder, President of the Equal Justice Society, and a former member of the task force, worked with Grills and Tamaki to organize philanthropic support for repairing the harm and to obtain endorsements from more than 470 organizations and businesses listed on https://supportreparations.org supporting the report or the study of reparations in California. They expect to achieve 1,000 endorsements by the end of 2023.
Leaders representing the Alliance met with the California Legislative Black Caucus and extended an invitation to work together on coordinating organizing and outreach efforts with any legislation sponsored by the Black Caucus related to the task force report recommendations.
The Alliance may also explore approaches based on the task force report recommendations at the international, federal, regional, and municipal levels.
Sign up to receive updates on the Alliance at https://alliancefor.org.