Detroit, Michigan - The Detroit Reparations Task Force has released its report and recommendations to address past and present harms targeting the city's Black residents.

The report documents historical atrocities against people of African descent since before the founding of the city through the present day.

"We have been guided as a Task Force by our understanding that the wealth and imperialist power of the United States may be attributed directly to profits generated by the enslavement of our ancestors – through the slave trade, chattel slavery, peonage, and prison labor," the report states.

"In colonial America and the United States, extraction of Black labor and the violence with which this extraction was conducted, ensured the accumulation of wealth by whites, so that their heirs today continue to enjoy economic security and prosperity."

"For African Americans, these systems imposed unrelenting physical and social harms, unshakeable poverty, and the underdevelopment of our communities throughout the US and here in our City."

The municipal government was complicit in the dehumanization and dispossession of Black people through laws and policies such as redlining, racially restrictive zoning, urban renewal, highway construction, predatory tax foreclosure, and racist policing.

At the same time, the task force reiterated the need for federal, state, and private sector action to address the damage wrought by systemic racism.

The Detroit City Council passed a resolution in 2022 authorizing creation of the Reparations Task Force to document harms and develop remedies for Black residents after voters approved the step via ballot measure the previous year.

The 13-member body held a number of public input sessions and an online survey allowing people to rank their top policy priorities.

The task force's resulting recommendations include, among others:

• Providing financial assistance of up to $40,000 for the purchase of a home in Detroit or up to $30,000 for home repairs to people impacted by discriminatory housing policies
  
• Constructing at least 1,000 new affordable housing units for African Americans
  
• Establishing a grant program providing $100,000 to businesses displaced by urban renewal projects
  
• Demilitarizing the Detroit police and paying restitution to individuals or heirs for injury or death due to police abuses
• Offering free community college tuition to all DPSCD high school graduates
  
• Creating a Detroit Food Sovereignty and Nutrition Equity Fund
  
• Designating Environmental Reparations Zones eligible for enhanced monitoring, remediation, and community-controlled redevelopment
• Launching a city office of African American Cultural Programs

The Detroit City Council is also urged to create a Reparations Administrative Office to oversee reparations programs, including direct cash payment compensation for certain harms.

To be eligible for reparations, the task force says a person must be a descendant of an African enslaved in the US or in the diaspora, at least 21 years old, and a current resident of Detroit for at least 20 years.