On March 15, CRRJ hosted the virtual panel, Building the Record for Reparations. The event was organized by the Racial Redress and Reparations Lab at CRRJ, in partnership with the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy, the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, and the Black Reparations Project at Mills College at Northeastern. Panelists included Jennifer Llewellyn, Professor of Law and Director of the Restorative Lab at  Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada,  Keith Stokes, Vice President of the 1696 Heritage Group in Providence, RI, and Don Tamaki, senior counsel at Minami Tamaki LLP and one of the nine members of the California Reparations Task Force. 

The panelists addressed the importance of understanding and building a historical record to support the development of reparative responses to historical harms. Panelists presented their reparations projects, including the Restorative Inquiry for the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children; the truth-telling, reconciliation, and reparations process in Providence, Rhode Island; and the California Reparations Task Force. The experts and attendees explored themes such how to build an inclusive reparative justice project that welcomes a broad range of actors and institutions, how to execute truth-telling reporting that leads to specific policy and program recommendations and, ultimately, to sustainable change.  

 This event was the second in a series of panels on the historical and legal frameworks surrounding reparations. The first panel, held in November 2022, was on the topic of Reparations: The Constitutional Law Landscape.  A recording of that event can be accessed  here.