{"id":179742,"date":"2021-06-30T17:19:34","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T00:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eugeneweekly.com\/?p=182719"},"modified":"2021-06-30T17:19:34","modified_gmt":"2021-07-01T00:19:34","slug":"eugene-city-council-talks-reparations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/30\/eugene-city-council-talks-reparations\/","title":{"rendered":"Eugene City Council Talks Reparations"},"content":{"rendered":"

One year after Black Lives Matter protests swept the country, the city of Eugene is beginning discussions about reparations \u2014 or making amends by paying or otherwise supporting people who have been harmed, often by systemic discrimination.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Councilor Greg Evans, who put the issue forward to the City Council, said he did so following national conversations about reparation efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The council held its first discussion about reparations at its June 23 work session.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I’m looking for is something that is going to be reasonable,\u201d Evans said. \u201cIt is going to reflect the values of the community. I’m looking for a way for us to begin to move forward from a not-so-distant past where there were sundown laws here.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Evans is the only Black Eugene city councilor. Pointing to <\/span>Eugene\u2019s history of excluding Black people from owning homes within the city limits<\/span><\/a>, he said \u201cthe idea was to \u2014 legally, physically and everything else \u2014 keep us out of the community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The meeting began with a presentation on reparations work across the country, looking at HR 40 in the U.S. House of Representatives, the resolution in the state Legislature known as Oregon Senate Joint Memorial 4 and cities across the country that have implemented their own local reparations efforts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason Dedrick, a policy analyst for the Eugene City Manager\u2019s Office, said the presentation was intended to provide councilors with \u201ca place to start from\u201d in conversations about reparations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re finding through our work is that the more tailored an approach is to the local context and the history of the community and where the community conversation is, the better chance there is for success,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dedrick highlighted reparations efforts in five cities across the country as potential frameworks for Eugene to draw on. These included Evanston, Illinois, whose reparation efforts focus largely on housing, and Providence, Rhode Island, which is taking a three-step approach to reparations on a statewide scale.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the following discussion, Councilors Randy Groves, Emily Semple, Claire Syrett, Jennifer Yehand and Alan Zelenka said they supported models similar to Providence \u2014 which focuses on a truthful retelling of history, reconciliation via community conversations and reparations based on those earlier steps.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Syrett said she wants to look at reparations for various BIPOC communities who have been targeted in Eugene, with the acknowledgement that Black people have different experiences from Native American individuals or immigrant communities. In doing that, Yeh said she wants to hear from BIPOC Eugeneans and advocate for the reparations that they would like to see.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although Councilor Mike Clark initially proposed a plan to focus on housing loans, he said he agreed with the rest of the council\u2019s general consensus. \u201cThe reason that I spoke and used my first round to talk about a specific idea I had was to illustrate my seriousness for this,\u201d Clark said, \u201cand how important it is to me that we do something meaningful for people locally and that I\u2019ve been thinking about this for quite a while.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The council alluded to further meetings about reparations, although they did not set a specific date for future conversations. Councilors did not discuss the financial impacts of reparations measures.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One year after Black Lives Matter protests swept the country, the city of Eugene is beginning discussions about reparations \u2014 or making amends by paying \u2026 Continue reading\u00a0\u2192<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,101,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-ew-extra","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extra.eugeneweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}