By Robert J. Hansen | OBSERVER Staff Writer
Sacramento has taken the first steps toward pursuing reparations for descendants of slaves at the local level by passing a citywide resolution at the Dec. 3 City Council meeting.
Aimée Zenzele Barnes, manager of the city’s Office of Equity and Diversity, emphasized that this resolution simply paves the way toward establishing a reparations program, but that it is years away. “There is a lot of work to do. It’s not like we’re cutting checks next year,” Barnes said.
The Coalition For A Just and Equitable California — a Sacramento-based organization — has played a key role in creating statewide reparations legislation.
“We are owed reparations. It is a debt that’s owed,” lead organizer Chris Lodgson told the council in support of the resolution. “It’s not a handout, it’s not a gift. We are owed it.”
Lodgson explained that the resolution means the responsibility of reparations lies with the entire City Council, not just the mayor’s office, and that the city is one step closer to a decision on whether to create a Sacramento reparations commission or task force.
What happens next is to continue the community outreach efforts that started this year so that as many Sacramento residents as possible can weigh in on the question of reparations, Lodgson told The OBSERVER. “I expect we will have a decision on a local reparations commission next year if all goes well,” he said.
The City Council in June 2021 unanimously recognized the historic passage of California Assembly Bill 3121, which established a task force to study and develop reparation proposals for African American descendants of U.S. slavery.
That same month, Mayor Darrell Steinberg became a member of the Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity Coalition. According to the city, the MORE Coalition “stands on the belief that cities can – and should – act as laboratories for bold ideas that can be transformative for racial and economic justice on a larger scale and demonstrate for the country how to pursue and improve initiatives that take a reparatory approach to confronting and dismantling structural and institutional racism.”
Over the past three years, Mayor Steinberg’s office has met and worked with local community members, leaders, and organizations as well as national organizations and other cities working within the reparations space to develop a baseline framework of information and resources for Sacramento’s effort.
Mayor Steinberg supports the reparations movement and asserted that if the government stands for anything, it should stand for investing in communities and people who have been the victims of discrimination and disenfranchisement for far too long.
“Government at all levels, throughout history and today, played a key role in the discrimination, disparity, disenfranchisement, and disparagement of our African American community,” Steinberg said in statements throughout the process of creating the resolution. “We as government officials and representatives must take a long overdue and active role in working to acknowledge and fully repair these harms.”
Steinberg, who presided over his final City Council meeting Tuesday, added that what is happening with reparations in California and in cities across the country is just a start: “We cannot make up for hundreds of years of discrimination with one city, one state task force, one bill, or one legislative session.”