Building Community Voices in the Reparations Process & Movement

• In Event: Integrating equity, Prioritizing Well-being: Application of Community-Engaged Methods to Work with Community Partners, Members, and Organizers

Abstract

Building Community Voices in the Reparations Process & Movement

Featured Presenter & Speaker: George (Chip) Greenidge, Jr.

This session explores practical and innovative strategies for centering authentic community voice in state and local reparations processes. Reparations work is strongest when it intentionally includes “proximate leaders” — community activists, grassroots organizers, researchers, neighborhood historians, artists, faith leaders, and directly impacted residents — whose lived experience and creative insight expand what policy solutions can look like.

George (Chip) Greenidge, Jr. will draw from his work with the City of Boston Reparations Task Force and the City of Cambridge American Freedmen Commission at the municipal level, Harvard University’s Legacy of Slavery Initiative at the university level, and national reparations networks advancing policy and narrative change across the country.

Participants will learn how community voice can be meaningfully embedded through:

Small grants programming that redistributes decision-making power

Local storytelling and oral history projects that surface overlooked data

Community convenings designed for dialogue, healing, and divergent thinking

Art, film, and video documentaries that expand the narrative imagination

Creative research models that accept multiple solutions to complex harm

By embracing divergent thinking and elevating proximate leadership, communities can move beyond symbolic gestures toward transformative, locally grounded reparations frameworks. This session offers tools, lessons learned, and replicable strategies to ensure that reparations processes are not only technically sound, but democratically rooted and community-driven.

Author

• George R. Greenidge, Georgia State University