Diana’s Story: Why I Support Reparations in Saint Paul
Written by Diana, JCA and Mount Zion Tzedek Committee member - July 2023
Thanks to the urging of Tova Gorman-Baer at JCA, Tova and I attended a community meeting on the Saint Paul City Budget, hosted by Mayor Carter and folks from the mayor’s office. This was one of several meetings held at different sites around the city. I attended the May 23rd meeting at Highland Library.
I was not sure what to expect, having heard of volatile school board and council meetings across the cities and the state. The budget meeting turned out to be a positive experience. Mayor Carter addressed a small group of Saint Paul residents, presenting some of the challenges of budgeting—balancing the desire to invest in transformative programs, secure infrastructure, and paved roads, with the realities of a limited tax base.
Given the Spring season, potholes figured largely in the mayor’s presentation. After the mayor departed, members of his staff engaged those gathered in thoughtful discussion on how we should invest our limited funds in order to strengthen our city.
Community members were asked to prioritize how they would allocate limited funds. We used an app that allowed us to disperse mock funds to real St. Paul programs. This focused my attention on what I valued most in our city and what I feel are our most urgent needs. While the Mayor had focused on issues of yawning potholes and broken car axles, I realized that these were irritants but not the issues that kept me up at night.
What prevents me from sleeping are the gunshots that I can hear at night in my neighborhood and the knowledge that so many of our children do not have access to adequate nutrition, do not feel safe at our schools, and are not getting the supportive services they need to thrive and to prepare them for life-long learning, civic engagement, and a living wage. I realized that I would rather have a broken axle than a broken child. I wanted to invest in our Libraries and our Parks and Rec programs. These are sites where children gain access to activities, homework help, skill-building, sports, day camps and day care, and to food programs.
These are crucial aspects of our infrastructure and should not be compromised.
Tova had asked me to attend the budget meeting with the hopes that we could express our support for Saint Paul’s reparations initiative. At this meeting, I recognized that real efforts at repair for centuries of injustice will require multiple initiatives and, yes, investment of significant funds. How do we begin to address the violence and trauma of chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation, redlining, mass incarceration, and now a Supreme Court committed to replacing the realities of contemporary racial inequities with a fairy tale United States where race is suddenly irrelevant?
Racial categories are not benign place markers. They were created in order to construct a political and economic system that granted tremendous privilege to some Americans while stripping away humanity from others. Centuries of pernicious harm cannot be simply wished away. It may be too late for some of those in the highest seats of power to gain an adequate education, but we can focus on our children. We can start with support for housing, food security, and access to programs that invest in each and every child in our community.
Thanks to JCA for helping to galvanize community support for Saint Paul’s Reparations initiative. Let’s work in earnest to build the promise of inclusive democracy that I believe some of our founding ancestors had in mind when the Declaration of Independence was drafted.
The City’s budget hearings are over for this year, but there are still plenty of ways to demonstrate our support for reparations in St. Paul.
The Recovery Act Commission will soon begin meeting to determine how reparations will be distributed, and their meetings will be open to the public.
Email Tova at tova@jewishcommunityaction.org to learn more and join the movement of Jews standing in solidarity for reparations for Black Minnesotans.
