OAKLAND, Calif. — Baraka Davis traveled from Texas to deliver her message to California’s Reparations Task Force Wednesday.
“Texas is watching each and every one of you,” she said.
Davis, 43, was one of several people who came to Oakland City Hall for the first of the committee’s two-day December meeting. Their presence reflected the historic stakes of the group’s state-sponsored effort to study and develop reparations for the generational harms of anti-Black racism.
In California, they see an opportunity for overdue redress, after centuries of disappointment.
Davis said in an interview later she is involved in grassroots reparations work in Texas, where there is no state-supported project. She was reluctant to share many personal details, but was clearly invested in seeing reparations take hold in California.
“Whatever California’s doing, the rest of the country follows suit,” she said.
In June, the task force released a nearly 500-page report documenting the grievous harm committed against Black people across the country, but also specifically in California. Starting Wednesday, committee members began discussing initial ideas for how to rectify those wrongs.
Reggie Romain, from Temecula, about 50 miles north of San Diego, told the panel that the trauma of racism persists in 2022.
In an interview, the 56-year-old barber and salon owner called the group’s work “a blessing” but said there was more to do.
Romain grew up in Los Angeles and described his frustration with the decades of little progress on restitution. He lamented that his mother and brother didn’t receive any compensation before they died.
“The marathon continues until we get a check,” he said.
Romain said he wasn’t even aware of the California task force until after it held its September meeting in Los Angeles. Customers at his salon also don’t know about the group, he said. He felt the panel should do more to get out the word of its existence.
“We need to know about this,” Romain said.
That was also on the mind of committee members Wednesday. Shawna Charles, a communications consultant, presented a plan for getting information out through news outlets, social media and other platforms.
Morris Griffin, 72, traveled overnight Tuesday in a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles to pass along his idea: That people should receive checks until they die as a form of atonement.
Griffin said later he felt it was crucial he shared those thoughts Wednesday. He said he works for Los Angeles County and called himself a community activist and a problem solver.
“I would like to see equity because our ancestors made this the richest country in the world,” Griffin said
After speaking, he sat through part of the meeting holding up a sign that called for reparations “NOW!”
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” Griffin said. “I’m tired.”
Task force member Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, D-South Los Angeles, called out to him during a midday break.
“Thank you for coming,” Jones-Sawyer said. “All the way from LA.”
But Griffin’s time in Oakland was brief. Shortly after, he strode away from the meeting room with the sign stuffed into his backpack.
He had to get back to Los Angeles.
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