AMHERST — Amherst is another step closer to ensuring that those residents whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States and who continue to be impacted by the harms caused by slavery and post-reconstruction discrimination will benefit from a stabilization fund for reparations.

On Monday, the Town Council, following several months of study by the Governance, Organization and Legislation Committee, approved a charge for the Amherst Black Reparations Committee, meaning recruiting for the seven-member panel can soon take place.

Within a year of convening the committee, recommendations will come forward for using up to $100,000 annually to address harms perpetrated against residents of African heritage, with an anticipated focus on youth programming, affordable housing, business grants and entrepreneurial training. Those were areas recommended in the African Heritage Reparation Assembly’s final report, issued Sept. 26, 2023.

Cannabis tax revenues are the intended source of the funds, though it appears they will not be sufficient to cover the whole amount.

“The committee that is before you will have a lot of work to do,” said District 5 Councilor Ana Devlin Gauthier, who chairs the council committee. “They are beginning by continuing the work of the AHRA and creating a process and system for distribution of funds.”

The vote on the charge states that the committee’s “mission is to make recommendations to the Town Council on the priority areas for and expenditure of the Reparations Stabilization Fund for reparations of harms caused by support of slavery and post-reconstruction discrimination by the town, residents, businesses and other Amherst-associated entities.”

Devlin Gauthier explained that the committee will likely use a process similar to the way in which both the Community Preservation Act and Community Development Block Grant committees review proposals, and could make payouts annually or over time.

The Black Business Association of Amherst Area released statements Wednesday in support of the committee being formed and called on Town Manager Paul Bockelman to find the right people to serve on it.

Pat Ononibaku, president of the organization, said the committee comes after some Black-owned businesses were denied American Rescue Plan Act funds coming out of the pandemic.

“The need for reparations is not just based on harm from decades or centuries ago. It is contemporary, reality, daily, institutionalized and systemic,” Ononibaku said. “I hope the town manager will make his seven appointments and the work to disburse reparation funds be done judiciously and expeditiously and our members have access to these funds without arbitrary hurdles and roadblocks.”

The organization’s treasurer, Amilcar Shabazz, said he hopes to see results before 2025 ends.

“Business grants and entrepreneurial training constituted one of the three priority areas for reparations funding the AHRA identified and should be a starting point for immediate action,” Shabazz said.

The vote to approve came with endorsements from some community members who spoke to councilors at the beginning of the meeting.

Michele Miller, a former member of the Town Council who was among those initiating the reparations effort five years ago, said it’s been nearly two years since a report was issued by the African Heritage Reparation Assembly.

Miller said a lot is already happening with limited funding, such as the new Ancestral Bridges cultural center where residents can confront the erasures of Black presence in the town’s shared history, the work of the Black Business Association of Amherst Area to promote Black-owned businesses, and the recent Liberatory Visioning Project, led by the town’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion department, to create a more inclusive and welcoming community for all residents, which partnered with Barbara J. Love, a local author, speaker and consultant on liberation and transformation

“Can you imagine what they could do with the intentional support and aligned partnership of the reparations fund?” Miller said. “That’s the opportunity before us: to match moral commitment with material backing, guided by shared values and clear purpose.”

Miller said reparations also remain a necessary and grounded response to real harm, observing that Black families continue to have far less wealth than their white counterparts, that Black women are more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than those of other races, and Black workers with equal education to white workers earn only 80 cents on the dollar.

Town Council’s adoption of the committee charge, said Mattea Kramer of East Pleasant Street, provides a beacon of hope, also coming at a time when many of the protections for racial minorities and efforts to promote equity are being rolled back at the federal level.

“May we all look back on this era in our nation’s history with the knowledge that Amherst moved forward with reparatory justice,” Kramer said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.