Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 12/6/2022
NORTHAMPTON – A cadre of Northampton residents are calling upon the mayor and City Council to establish a citywide reparations commission that would investigate the historical and current effects of enslavement and racism against Black people in Northampton.
A petition started by the Northampton Reparations Committee is currently circulating, asking city leaders to consider exploring an avenue for reparations in Northampton.
According to Sarah Patterson, a Northampton resident and assistant professor within the University of Massachusetts English Department, the committee formed in 2021 after two of its founding members, Western New England University professor Sarah Weinberger and author/former teacher Tom Weiner, wanted to launch an effort that could bring people together around the question of how to address the systematic harms found throughout Northampton’s history and current reality.
Over the past year, the committee, which consists of seven members all together, researched and studied the history of Northampton, Massachusetts, as well as the general history of systematic racism throughout the United States.
According to Patterson, Sarah Lennox, a board member of Historic Northampton’s slavery research project, was also instrumental in reviewing material for this initiative.
“We built relationships with local social justice franchises that could not only share with us their knowledge and observations about this issue, but that we could also build a united front across the city,” said Patterson, in an interview with Reminder Publishing.
“I felt the need to do this, along with Sarah Weinberger because of total injustice in America over the last 400 years,” Weiner told Reminder Publishing. “There are injustices that have happened historically and continue to happen in our communities that are not being apologized for or stopped.”
According to the petition website, the committee is calling on the mayor and City Council to establish a reparations commission that will eventually make recommendations for reparative actions in Northampton as a response to issues apparent in housing, employment, policing, schools, healthcare and transportation.
The committee is also calling upon the mayor and City Council to issue a formal apology to past and present Black residents of Northampton for “historic harm that has occurred and the current harm that continues to occur.”
Additionally, the committee would like the mayor and City Council to fund the commission’s research and publish its findings.
“There are both ceremonial and practical things that we can do to take action to bring social justice into reality,” said Patterson. “A ceremonial thing is to just say sorry…to allow the city to properly address the complicit history we have with slavery.”
According to Patterson, history shows that there were at least 50 enslaved people at the time of Northampton’s founding.
“The second part is you need practical efforts to facilitate racial reconciliation and redress, which is what reparations intends to do,” said Patterson. “The commission will provide the structure to study and make recommendations for how a fund might be used to redress the harms in systematic racism that are evident in our history.”
Patterson told Reminder Publishing that the city has been “open-minded” so far when it comes to this process. “They have shown themselves to be very supportive and social justice-minded people,” said Patterson. “They’ve been working to find a path to have the commission come into being.”
On Aug. 20, 2020, the Northampton City Council passed a resolution declaring racism as a public health crisis following the widespread protests nationwide against racial injustice in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
The council also cut a blanket 10 percent from the Northampton Police Department budget and created a commission to review policing practices. The commission eventually recommended the creation of the Department of Community Care, which is now part of the city’s Department of Human Health Services and aims to take on some responsibility typically carried out by police, especially calls involving mental health crises.
Despite these progressive policies, there is still work to be done in Northampton from an inequity standpoint. According to the petition website, Black residents only account for 2.1 percent or approximately 915 members of the 29,571 total population in Northampton. Despite this homogeneity, 21.9 percent of Black residents have annual earnings below the poverty line. In comparison, 11.9 percent of white residents in Northampton live below the poverty line.
If Northampton decides to form this commission, they will join Amherst, Evanston, IL, Asheville, NC and Providence, RI in the effort to take certain reparation measures.
Amherst formed the African Heritage Reparations Assembly (AHRA), and this past July, Reminder Publishing reported that they had established a stabilization fund that will provide the AHRA with $2 million to disperse for reparative justice. While this is an inspiration, Patterson made it clear that the committee’s mission is also unique to Northampton.
“We have been very invested in local history and understanding how we can build a culture here in Northampton,” said Patterson. “While we have appreciated the other efforts that are happening in other cities, we have premised everything on our local history and local understanding.”
The petition as of press time has garnered over 600 signatures but the committee hopes to reach the milestone of 1,000 so there is a better chance of the commission being presented at a future municipal meeting.
Weiner said he is confident that the resolution they worked on with City Councilors Garrick Perry and Jamila Gore will be introduced on Jan. 17 for first reading, especially since Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra and most of the council have expressed interest in forming this commission. A Zoom event is also scheduled on Jan. 24 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. for a panel discussion on the matter. “The support that we’ve accrued has been dynamic and so exciting,” said Patterson.
That support, according to Patterson, has been funneled into educational and community events that can allow the committee to talk about the history of Black people in Northampton.
Specifically, they have partnered with Forbes Library to develop community and educational events to talk about this history as the resolution begins to make its way through municipal process.
“The idea is to make sure that the young people here have an opportunity to learn here and learn about the dynamic of the world,” said Patterson. “I think a local initiative for reparations will add to the ways that we are setting a positive example for the young people.”