For four hours Thursday afternoon, Boston’s reparations task force, and the public officials overseeing it, fielded questions from a panel of concerned city councilors amid growing pressure from some residents who say there has been a lack of progress and transparency from the appointed body that one participant called “a national joke.”
“There are a lot of questions that no one seems to be able to answer directly,” Dorchester resident Reggie Stewart told the mix of Cabinet members, task force members, and city councilors, adding, “This is the most callous, irresponsible, and dismissive process that I’ve seen on any subject.”
In late March, District 7 Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson requested this week’s hours-long hearing, saying that such a session could provide more clarity on the body’s day-to-day work and rebuild trust with community members who have unanswered questions about how the appointees are building a roadmap for righting past wrongs.
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“A transparent process is the only way that decades of harm, centuries of harm, can begin to be repaired in the Black community,” Fernandes Anderson said.
The task force’s first public appearance as a group in three months laid bare what many describe as a chaotic process. During that time, tensions between the Michelle Wu administration and the group have grown over how the work should continue, as city councilors worry the task force has strayed away from the original legislation. It’s also tested the waning patience of residents who hope for reparations in the near future.
“It hasn’t been as strong as the administration has wanted it to be and we own that,” said Mariangely Solis Cervera, the city’s chief of equity and inclusion. But with “the work that we’re doing right now, the hope is that we build a foundation so the task force not only feels like, but is able to, lead the rest of the phases.”
In the meantime, task force members Damani Williams and Denilson Fanfan, two recent Jeremiah E. Burke High School graduates, are stepping down to focus on college. The city plans on hiring a full-time staffer to help with the task force’s operations in the next fiscal year, which starts in July.
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The task force canceled what would have been its first meeting in three months on Monday, and said in a letter posted on the city’s website that it will “come back to the public” with a written timeline that includes a meeting schedule, action items, and concrete ways to engage the community.
Through a slideshow presented at the hearing, the task force said the two teams it selected earlier this year to research slavery’s legacy in Boston are slated to provide updates in September, and have until the end of the year to finish their report. From there, the task force plans on gathering community reactions to the research in February 2025.
“The real point for engagement is once we have a baseline,” said Joe Feaster Jr., chair of the reparations task force, “we can have a nice conversation, but I’m not sure to what extent that would be informative for us.”
There have been some engagement efforts. Earlier this month, the task force launched a partnership initiative that would provide grantees up to $2,500 each from the city budget to help gather research, record oral histories, and host informational and community listening sessions to supplement the consultants’ findings. The announcement for first-round grantees was released on June 7, and the task force plans on announcing recipients from the 30-person applicant pool in the upcoming weeks.
But task force member George “Chip” Greenidge Jr. said that city staffers have taken the reins of the reparations process, to the point where “my requests have been overlooked and not even heard.” He said that he proposed the grant initiative that allows community members to contribute to the city’s reparations framework in May 2023; it wasn’t approved until last month, and rolled out with a six-day application window a few weeks ago.
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“At times, I feel that it’s not autonomous, at all,” Greenidge said.
Solis Cervera said the group has a $350,000 budget for the current fiscal year, and that it has not received the resources and support needed to execute projects outside of the ordinance-mandated research.
On top of some task force members’ concerns, there are neighborhood residents, such as Edwin Sumpter of the independent Boston People’s Reparations Commission, who said the city’s efforts have not been as inclusive as they should be.
“Why does the Black community of Boston get left out of an issue that’s about us, for us?” Sumpter said.
At-large City Councilor Julia Mejia, who introduced the measure to form a city reparations task force in 2022, said the original document intended that descendants of enslaved people lead the reparations process. She said she has heard resident concerns that Mike Firestone, the city’s chief of policy and strategic planning, led the efforts to draft the task force’s request for research consultants.
“A white man has no business dictating [the reparations process], they’re doing Black people’s work,” said Mejia, referring to Firestone. “That undermines the integrity of what we set out to do.”
Solis Cervera said that Firestone put in “maybe 10 hours” toward the reparations work, and that a diverse coalition of staff have been doing most of the grunt work.
“It feels a little [expletive] — and I’m sorry I’m using the word — when there are many staff members who are actually working really, really hard on this project,” Solis Cervera said.
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Mejia said it was important to lay such details out in a public forum “because that has not been the perception.”
“I’m glad you are here because there is an appetite for the members of the task force to step into that power, and really dictate, direct, and engage in a more meaningful way,” she added.
Tiana Woodard can be reached at tiana.woodard@globe.com. Follow her @tianarochon.