In October, CJJ-Triangle Member-Leader Diane Bellamy - along with Mary Thompson, a member of the Raleigh Human Rights Commission, and John Shuford of the Raleigh Quaker Community-Meeting - met with Raleigh City Council members as organizers of the Proposal for Reparations to the Raleigh African American community. 

After discussing the history of the proposal and the actions that have been taken to date, the team was advised to “have a staff member funded specifically to the Reparative Justice Commission as stated in the original Proposal allocated in the budget” in order for the Commission to be established. 

Though the budget has already been approved, we continue to encourage you to to reach out to City leaders, emails below, in support of the Proposal for Reparations to the Raleigh African American community and:

1. Establish Reparative Justice Commission/Taskforce, comprised of organizations and individuals with expertise in anti-racism practices, to meet regularly with the City Manager and The Raleigh Office of Equity and Inclusion to develop short, medium, and long-term recommendations to remediate the harms to the African-American community, through actions such as increasing African-American home ownership, expanding access to other affordable housing, increasing minority business ownership and career opportunities, developing strategies to grow equity and generational wealth, closing the gaps in health care, education, employment, wages, neighborhood safety and equity within the criminal justice system;

2. Call on the City Manager to produce a report for the City Council with preliminary recommendations within 180 days of the passage of this resolution;

3. Establish a formal bi-annual review process to review and assess the progress of work pursuant to this resolution, including engaging the public in feedback on these reviews.

Subject Line: Raleigh Reparative Justice Commission

[email protected] - Raleigh City Council

[email protected] - Raleigh Mayor

[email protected] - City Manager

You can read more about these efforts at this link. If you have any questions, contact Diane Bellamy at [email protected]  Thank you very much for your support!