Community Engagement: Reaching People, Sharing Decisions

Nearly every commission describes itself as community-led. What that meant in practice varied a lot from place to place. This brief covers four questions: how many people each process actually reached, how they reached them, how much say the community had in decisions, and how testimony was gathered without doing more harm.

How many people these processes actually reached

• California: 17 listening sessions with an average of 51 participants each. In total, 867 people took part,^[1] out of 2.6 million Black Californians.^[2] Partway through, the task force publicly overhauled how it communicated with the public.^[1] The record suggests the lesson is to hire communications staff from the beginning.
• Detroit: before writing recommendations, the task force worked with the University of Michigan ("Crafting Democratic Futures") on a survey of 2,339 residents, chosen so the results would reflect the city as a whole.^[3] 63% supported reparations,^[3] and 75% named housing assistance as the top remedy.^[4] When the task force's own meetings got rocky,^[5] those numbers gave its recommendations standing that the meetings alone could not.
• Amherst: a survey of all residents, run by UMass, found that 78.4% of Black respondents reported experiencing discrimination in town. The results set the fund's priorities directly.^[6]
• Chicago (2026): "Repair Chicago" paired a citywide survey with bus tours, town halls, and formal hearings, so the listening happened before the remedies were designed.^[7]

Two things held across these cities. People showed up when the invitation came from organizations they already trusted, more than when it came from the government. And survey results that reflected the whole community carried more weight with officials than comments gathered at open-microphone meetings. Both approaches cost money.

Ways to reach people

1. Pay trusted organizations to do the outreach. California funded seven Black-led organizations to run engagement in their own networks, and those organizations kept advocating after the task force ended.^[1]
2. Use the NPU system. Atlanta has 25 chartered Neighborhood Planning Units that already meet every month in every part of the city.^[8] A commission liaison and a regular ten-minute agenda item in each one would reach organized audiences citywide. Most cities would have to build something like this from scratch.
3. Work through churches and faith communities, some of the most trusted networks in the city. The North Georgia United Methodist Church already runs its own reparations task force.^[9]
4. Reach young people through schools. Chicago requires every 8th and 10th grader to study the Burge case through its "Reparations Won" curriculum, and Berkeley's school district ran its own task force.^[10][11] A partnership with Atlanta Public Schools, plus a youth council, would be one way to answer the survey's question about the next generation.
5. Use arts and culture. Athens's Linnentown work led to a musical, a mosaic, and a memoir.^[12] Tulsa created an annual observance day.^[13] Atlanta's arts institutions can carry this history to people who might never attend a town hall.
6. Go where people already are: barbershops, salons, MARTA stations, front doors. Some people might never fill out a survey, and this is how they get connected.
7. This site: a survey with the research attached, producing results the Commission can cite because residents supplied them.

How much say the community gets

The real differences between engagement approaches show up when what the community wants and what the commission wants are different. Cities have given the community four levels of say:

• Input only. Hearings and surveys inform the decision, and commissioners decide. Most commissions work this way. It is the cheapest and fastest option, and it is also why many residents come away feeling asked-but-ignored.
• Residents draft, the commission ratifies. Community working groups write the proposals and vote on priorities, and the commission either adopts them or explains why it won't. Los Angeles's REPAIR program went furthest here, letting residents of formerly redlined neighborhoods decide directly how to spend $8.5M of city budget.^[14]
• Voting seats. Asheville reserved commission seats for residents of neighborhoods harmed by urban renewal. Athens seated five Linnentown elders and descendants on the body that designed their own redress.^[15]
• Sign-off. The strongest form: the harmed families themselves must approve the plan before it proceeds. The Chattahoochee Brick Descendants Coalition is the closest the city has come to organized descendant influence, and its organizing helped stop a fuel terminal on the site, but it is a partner in the memorial process rather than an approving authority.^[16][17]

Evanston is a good case to study on this question. The community asked for cash. The program offered housing benefits instead, and it took two years of Black women showing up to every monthly committee meeting before a direct cash option was added.^[18] How much power a community really holds shows in whether the program matches what people asked for the first time.

Paying people to participate

St. Paul pays its commissioners $50 a meeting.^[19] California paid the organizations that ran its outreach.^[1] Chicago pays all 40 of its task-force members,^[24] and several truth processes have paid stipends to people who testified. The argument, made by people who run these processes: when participation is unpaid, the only people who can afford to keep showing up are the ones with time and money to spare, which tends to exclude the people most harmed. Paying for participation is how a commission keeps that from happening.

Gathering testimony with care

Testimony is evidence, and giving it can mean reliving the worst thing that happened to your family, in public. The processes in Greensboro and Maryland, and the Equal Justice Initiative's remembrance work, settled on similar standards for doing this without losing the community's trust: train the people who take statements; hold sessions in places survivors choose, which usually means churches rather than council chambers; offer private and anonymous options alongside public hearings; have counselors in the room and follow-up care afterward; let each person decide how their story may be used, from sealed archive to public telling; and treat ceremony (collecting soil from lynching sites, placing markers, annual observances) as part of the repair itself.^[20][21]

Maryland's lynching commission shows where that care can lead: a 630-page final report with 84 recommendations, including material compensation to victims' families.^[22] And Atlanta would start with experienced partners. The Fulton County Remembrance Coalition has already carried the Equal Justice Initiative's remembrance work through this county: research and soil collection for the documented lynchings, with historical markers placed at several sites and more under way.^[23]

References

1. California Reparations Task Force / California Department of Justice, "California Reparations Task Force Communications — Status Update" (January 2023 meeting materials), oag.ca.gov. Accessed July 2026.
2. CalMatters, "Task force: California reparations for slavery descendants only," calmatters.org. Accessed July 2026.
3. University of Michigan Poverty Solutions, "Detroiters' views on reparations connected to perception of racial wealth gap, other inequality," poverty.umich.edu. Accessed July 2026.
4. BridgeDetroit, "This reparations program helps Black metro Detroiters purchase homes," bridgedetroit.com. Accessed July 2026.
5. BridgeDetroit, "Detroit reparations task force 'in order'," bridgedetroit.com. Accessed July 2026.
6. The Amherst Student, "Town Reparations Assembly Releases Final Report After Two Years of Discussion," amherststudent.com. Accessed July 2026.
7. City of Chicago, "Mayor Brandon Johnson Launches Repair Chicago Engagement Series and Survey to Inform City's Reparations Study," chicago.gov. Accessed July 2026.
8. City of Atlanta Department of City Planning, NPU Division, "About and History," npuatlanta.org. Accessed July 2026.
9. North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church, "Reparations Task Force," ngumc.org. Accessed July 2026.
10. Chicago City Council, "Reparations for Burge Torture Victims — Substitute Resolution" (adopted May 6, 2015), chicago.gov. Accessed July 2026.
11. Berkeley Unified School District Reparations Task Force, "Final Report and Recommendations" (June 2024), berkeleyschools.net. Accessed July 2026.
12. Hattie Thomas Whitehead, Giving Voice to Linnentown (2021).
13. City of Tulsa, "Mayor Nichols Presents Road to Repair to Address Systemic Impacts from 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre," cityoftulsa.org. Accessed July 2026.
14. City of Los Angeles Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department, "L.A. REPAIR Participatory Budgeting," repair.lacity.gov. Accessed July 2026.
15. Athens-Clarke County Unified Government, "Athens Justice and Memory Project," accgov.com. Accessed July 2026.
16. The Atlanta Voice, "Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, David Banner support Chattahoochee Brick Company Descendant Coalition for the second annual Sacred Ceremony celebration," theatlantavoice.com. Accessed July 2026.
17. City of Atlanta, "Chattahoochee Brick Co. Site & Atlanta RiverLands — Site History," chattbrickriverlands.atlantaga.gov. Accessed July 2026.
18. Evanston RoundTable, "Reparations Committee backs cash payments for ancestors," evanstonroundtable.com. Accessed July 2026.
19. City of Saint Paul, "Saint Paul Recovery Act Community Reparations Commission," stpaul.gov. Accessed July 2026.
20. Equal Justice Initiative, "Community Remembrance Project," eji.org. Accessed July 2026.
21. Maryland State Archives, "Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission," msa.maryland.gov. Accessed July 2026.
22. AFRO American Newspapers, "Report highlights Maryland's lynching legacy and calls for justice," afro.com. Accessed July 2026.
23. Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, fultonremembrance.org. Accessed July 2026.
24. The TRiiBE, "Chicago's first reparations task force is examining what reparative measures look like for Black Chicagoans" (July 2025: "All 40 members of the Task Force will be paid"), thetriibe.com. Accessed July 2026.