Canceled:
Reparations Task Force Meeting

Dear Boston residents and organizations,

The next meeting of the Reparations Task Force, scheduled for Monday, June 24th, has been canceled. We want to apologize not only for canceling this meeting, but also for canceling prior meetings without offering a clear explanation. We have heard concerns from the broader community that the functioning of the Task Force is not as tight as it needs to be. As a result, we have done the following things:

1. Invited two additional members to the Task Force: Representative Byron Rushing, who has started his tenure, and Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, who has agreed to join in August.

2. Held two retreats of the Task Force members and the City staff to talk about how we communicate and function more effectively to achieve the important work with which we are charged.

3. Advocated for and received authorization to hire a full-time person to support the work of the Task Force so that both the members and the larger public has a person who is helping to coordinate the logistics of this work. The job will be posted in July, with the start of the new fiscal year.

4. Released a grassroots mini-grants and partnerships program to support the engagement of the larger community in the work of the Task Force (awardees will be announced very soon).

We will come back to the public with a document that lays out the full timeline for the process, including key deliverables, meeting dates, and on-ramps for engagement. We believe that the best way to honor the time of our community is to have our next meeting once there is full alignment of the Task Force on this document, so that we can honor folks' time, address concerns that have been raised about our process to date, and proceed with transparency and accountability.

Again, we apologize for canceling and hope that you will come to our next meeting to receive updates and share feedback as we work together to advance this important work. If you have any questions or concerns, please share them over email with reparations@boston.gov.

Sincerely,

The Boston Reparations Task Force