Season One begins. Who gets repair?

Good morning! 

I’m Otis R. Taylor Jr., your host. Thank you to everyone who signed up, shared The Repair or sent a kind word about this week’s launch of A Declaration of Repair. We’re glad you’re here. Today, Season One begins. 

There’s so much happening in the world of reparations. Walk with me for a few minutes.

Hayward and Alameda County apologized for destroying Russell City. Now there’s money on the table: up to $25,000 per eligible household. The first payments are reserved for surviving homeowners, leaving residents who didn’t own their home with no clear path to a payment. In our debut episode, Paula Sibulo follows the money and asks who gets to decide what repair looks like.

Follow this link to read, listen and watch.

Season One presenting sponsor

Liberation Ventures, which funds and strengthens the movement for Black reparations, is the presenting sponsor of our debut season. Click the logo above to tap into more information.

Six years ago, California gave people reason to celebrate.

On Sept. 30, 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill that created the nation’s first state reparations task force. After generations of demands, California would investigate the harms of slavery and recommend how to repair them.

On Sept. 30, 2026 — exactly six years later — he signed another bill: Assemblymember Isaac Bryan’s Truth in Disclosure Act, requiring certain large companies operating in California to investigate and disclose their ties to enslavement. Wendy Fry, who has expertly documented the state’s reparations effort, referred to it as the first law of its kind nationally, in her CalMatters report.

That matters in this moment. The clown carnival of an administration has ordered federal racial equity programs dismantled and sought to restrict how public institutions tell the story of American racism. California is moving to make corporations open their ledgers on the wealth built through enslavement. Even in the face of the current administration, things are happening.

The corporate disclosure law presents another test. It covers businesses with more than $100 million in annual worldwide gross receipts, provided they or a predecessor existed by Dec. 31, 1964. They must search their records and submit sworn disclosures. The Civil Rights Department will collect them and make the records public.

When? That is less clear than the signing suggests. For covered companies already operating in California as of Jan. 1, 2028, the deadline is Jan. 15, 2029 — or later if development of the public database pushes it back. Implementation depends on the Legislature appropriating money. Newsom’s signature alone does not start the machinery.

The affidavits carry the penalty of perjury. The law also adds disclosure compliance certification for covered state contracts and preserves the attorney general’s existing enforcement powers. But who will check the searches? Who will pursue companies that fail to file? And what happens after a company acknowledges that it profited from enslavement? Disclosure does not itself require compensation.

As Newsom prepares to leave office, his reparations record deserves the same scrutiny. Will he be remembered for opening a door — or for how far California walked through it? If he runs for president, could that record become a political liability, attacked by opponents for going too far and by supporters for delivering too little?

I hope that debate follows him. Reparations belongs in the public square.

Announcements aren’t outcomes. Neither are agreements. Declaration will follow the funding and the deadlines, asking what changes for the people harmed.

Season One brings together reporters, photographers, filmmakers, artists and strategists with curiosity and a willingness to try something new. We’re especially interested in early- and midcareer journalists who approach the work creatively, people who think deeply about how a story can reach an audience. Our collaborators bring different skills and experiences to a shared task: following the promises of repair and making journalism people want to spend time with.

Here’s the weekly roundup of developments in reparations and repair. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe.)

New York City puts researchers to work on reparations. The Black Education Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, is helping lead a year-long study funded by the city’s Commission on Racial Equity to examine slavery’s legacy and historical and contemporary racial inequities. Findings and policy recommendations are expected in summer 2027, with a city “Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation” process scheduled to begin in 2028. Why it matters: The next test is how researchers connect documented harms to specific remedies.

Black farmers: Who qualifies for repair, and where should the money go? Two separate cases put those questions before the courts. On Oct. 5, the Supreme Court declined to hear Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association v. Rollins, leaving in place a ruling that excludes claims under the USDA’s Discrimination Financial Assistance Program for farmers who died before an application was filed on their behalf. The Sixth Circuit ruled last year that Congress authorized assistance to living farmers, rather than compensation to estates. The Supreme Court did not decide the merits itself. Meanwhile, a Sept. 23 court order said about $8 million remained from the 2011 Black Farmers Discrimination Litigation settlement, which had distributed approximately $1.1 billion to class members. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman scheduled an Oct. 6 hearing over where the remaining money should go. Lawyers for the class want it directed through the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund to the Southern Farmers Financial Association. John Boyd Jr. and the National Black Farmers Association and the National Black Farmers Association proposed a different distribution. The federal government opposes both. Why it matters: If discriminatory lending drove a farmer off the land, does repair stop when that farmer dies, even when descendants inherited the loss? This federal assistance program leaves those legacy claims outside its reach. The settlement raises another question: What should the money left over build?

Dutch royal study documents colonial enrichment. A three-year study commissioned by King Willem-Alexander concluded that the House of Orange-Nassau was deeply involved in Dutch colonial exploitation and shared responsibility for the persistence of slavery and the slave trade. According to Reuters, researchers estimated the royal family’s 19th-century colonial profits at roughly $650 million in modern terms, primarily from trade in the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch government apologized for slavery in 2022. The government ruled out reparations and instead established a fund for social initiatives. The Dutch government has apologized for slavery and previously established a social-initiatives fund, but has resisted direct reparations. Why it matters: A royal institution commissioned the work and received the findings. I’m interested to see if the knowledge alters what the institution or government believes it owes.

A Baltimore pastor walked 40 miles in Maine demanding reparations. The Rev. Robert Turner set out Tuesday, Oct. 6, from Brunswick toward Augusta as part of a national campaign built around the broken post-Civil War promise of “40 acres and a mule.” The roughly 38-mile trek marked the 185th anniversary of Maine’s first Colored Convention. Turner also called attention to the state’s 1912 forced eviction of the mixed-race community on Malaga Island. Why it matters: Turner is taking a national reparations demand into individual states and attaching it to each state’s own history of Black dispossession.

What would happen if the census stopped asking about race? On Oct. 5, the Census Bureau extended the public-comment deadline to Nov. 2 for proposed 2030 Census rules that would prohibit questions about race, ethnicity or sexual orientation on questionnaires used to count the population. The proposal would still allow those questions on the American Community Survey and other surveys not used for that count. This remains a proposal. Why it matters: Racial data helps document discrimination, quantify disparities and assess whether a remedy worked. What becomes harder to prove when the government stops asking about race in its most comprehensive population count?

In other California news: An apology, a funding mechanism and a report still to come. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 1073 on Sept. 30, creating a voluntary income-tax contribution fund for construction and maintenance in South Los Angeles’ Black Cultural District. Californians will be able to designate contributions on their state income-tax returns from amounts paid above their tax liability. The mechanism matters: How much money it delivers depends on taxpayers choosing to contribute. Days earlier, Newsom signed AB 2115 and AB 2507. AB 2115 formalizes an apology from California’s Legislature and courts to California Native Americans and recognizes the state’s responsibility for harms and atrocities. AB 2507 makes the Governor’s Office of Tribal Affairs permanent, establishes a Tribal Advisory Committee and sets clearer standards for consultation across state agencies.

The state also said it has worked with tribal governments to support the return of more than 100,000 acres. A separate statewide goal calls for expanding tribal stewardship over at least 7.5 million acres of land and coastal waters. Stewardship does not necessarily mean ownership. And there’s a timeline to watch. In September 2025, the state said the Truth & Healing Council’s final report would arrive in summer 2026. The governor’s Sept. 25 announcement says “this fall.” Why it matters: These are different efforts with questions worth following: Who is being asked to pay? How much authority changes hands? And when does the promised accounting arrive? An apology is a beginning.

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Twenty-nine summers ago, Wanda Lloyd saw something in me and opened the door to my first newsroom. Now I’m building A Declaration of Repair and making room for journalists like Paula Sibulo to grow. In this week’s editor’s note, I reflect on the people who invested in me and why good journalism requires giving reporters the time, training and support to get better.

Read the column.

Reparations are being debated, designed, funded, challenged and carried out right now. A Declaration of Repair is following what happens after the announcement, when the work of repair actually begins. Watch to see what we’re building and why we believe this moment demands a newsroom with memory.

Thank you for being on this journey. We’re always looking for feedback, which is why we created this intake form for organizations. We want to talk to people. We want to tell stories. We want to hear from you. Send us feedback.

And if you’re a student journalist or an early- to mid-career journalist, we’re down to collaborate. We’re accepting pitches for Season Two, and we’ve assembled a wonderful group of Season One collaborators. We can’t wait to introduce them next Thursday.

And if you’d like to leave a voicemail, by all means, give us a call at 704-504-9427. 

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Welcome to the repair.

“When a government apologizes for destroying a community, what should happen next?” Tell us what meaningful repair would look like — and why.

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How this newsletter is made: Humans write, edit and make every editorial decision in The Repair. We use large language models, including ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, as research tools. Using our methodology for tracking reparations and repair, these tools help us find, organize and synthesize source material. Every source is verified, and every link, fact and word undergoes two rounds of human editing before publication. Read our AI policy.