DANNY WICENTOWSKI
Prospective members of the reparations commission will have to apply to join, with the mayor choosing the final nine appointees.
Mayor Tishaura Jones signed an executive order on Wednesday creating a volunteer reparations commission to explore rectifying racial injustice in St. Louis.
The nine-member commission will research how St. Louis’ turbulent racial history has led to race-based harms for city residents and create a manifesto of such harms. Eventually, under no clear timeline, the commission will propose potential monetary repairs to the harms St. Louis’ racial history has inflicted on the oppressed.
“The people closest to the problems are closest to the solution,” Jones said in a statement Thursday. “I look forward to reviewing this commission’s work to chart a course that restores the vitality of Black communities in our city after decades of disinvestment. We cannot succeed as a city if one half is allowed to fail.”
Prospective members of the reparations commission will have to apply to join, with the mayor choosing the final nine appointees.
Six of the nine members must already have certain roles: One member, for example, must be a licensed attorney, another an ordained faith leader.
The remaining three members must be residents of St. Louis and have experience in social justice initiatives or “facilitating public dialogue,” among other qualifications.
Jones’ signing of Executive Order 74 comes over a year after the mayor joined 11 mayors nationwide to pledge reparations to generational victims of slavery. The mayors had no details on how to execute their promise when they announced it in June.
Jones has since approved a bill allowing residents and businesses to donate to a reparations fund, calling it “a first step” for something that needed “deliberate, studied implementation.”
At an event in October, the mayor promised to sign an executive order to establish a reparations commission such as the one on the horizon today.
Those interested in applying can do so on the city’s website.
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