In 2019, Boyce and members of the Conrad Worrill Community Reparations Commission (CWCRC) introduced the first reparations resolution to the Chicago City Council, which also called for the formation of a Reparations Commission and $1 million in funding for the body over ten years.

At the time, Mayor Lori Lightfoot revised the resolution, removing funding language from it, and formed a subcommittee, according to Boyce. The resolution was later approved by the City Council in 2020, but the subcommittee only met twice. 

Since 2020, Boyce and other reparations advocates, including Ald. Stephanie Coleman (16th Ward and former 6th Ward alder Roderick Sawyer, pushed for funding a commission and a comprehensive study. 

All 40 members of the Task Force will be paid for the time; Task Force member Pilar Audain said they haven’t received information on payment details yet. Their first meeting is Thursday, but it’s not open to the public, she added.

The TRiiBE caught up with Boyce, Audain, a racial healing practitioner and Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) interim executive director, and Allen Linton II, a DEI director. We discussed their ideas around what reparations look like, what excites them most about leading this work and how they stay motivated in spite of a volatile political landscape that is rolling back inclusivity efforts and attempting to erase Black history.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The TRiiBE: How have your lived experiences as a Black person shaped your ideas around reparations?

Vetress Boyce: Where we lived growing up in Chicago in West Garfield Park, most of our yards were not filled with grass, it was filled with dirt. So the experiences that I have personally had in my life, and being a Black child raised in Chicago and on the West Side of Chicago, were pretty devastating. Watching the deplorable conditions of communities, the blocks that I lived on, and still seeing those same conditions today is devastating.

I’ve experienced several moments of being racially profiled growing up in the city, watching the devastation and then just seeing the blightedness, and it seemed like to me, and it has been proven, that it was intentional. It was intentional that white America kept their knee on the neck of Black people to keep thriving in the city of Chicago and other parts of the world.