150-22 Resolution - Reparations Task Force Model.pdf

1 1 Obtained from 2021 United States Census Bureau. 150-22 June 14, 2022 A RESOLUTION ENDORSING THE ENACTMENT OF ASSEMBLY BILL A938/S386, THE "NEW JERSEY REPARATIONS TASK FORCE ACT" WHEREAS, this is a resolution endorsing the “New Jersey Reparations Task Force” act to conduct research and develop reparatory proposals and recommendations to address the generational harms caused by New Jersey’s role in America’s institution of slavery and its legacy of systemic racial discrimination; and, WHEREAS, the Township of West Orange is a multicultural and diverse Township which is home to approximately 12,8361 Black people who make up more than 26.6% of the Township's population; and, WHEREAS, over four hundred years ago, enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia as captives; and, WHEREAS, from 1619 to 1865, approximately 4,000,000 Africans and their descendants, under a practice that was constitutionally and statutorily sanctioned, were enslaved in the United States and the colonies that became the United States; and, WHEREAS, the system of slavery that flourished in the United States constituted an immoral, shameful, and inhumane deprivation of the life, liberty, humanity, citizenship, and cultural heritage of Africans and also denied them, among other things, the fruits of their own labor upon which this country, and its economy, was built; and, WHEREAS, an overwhelming body of scholarship, legal and community evidentiary documentation, and the modern day lived experiences of the descendants of enslaved Africans form the basis for inquiry into the ongoing effects of the institution of slavery and its legacy of persistent systemic structures of discrimination on living Black people and communities in the United States; and, WHEREAS, following the abolition of slavery, state actors at the federal, state, and local level continued to perpetuate, condone, and profit from practices that continued to brutalize and systemically disadvantage Black people, including sharecropping, convict leasing, Jim Crow laws, redlining, unequal education, and disproportionate treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system; and, WHEREAS, contrary to what many people believe, slavery was not just a Southern institution and took root very deeply in New Jersey. In the early 17th Century, the first enslaved African people arrived in New Netherland, a Dutch settlement

believe, slavery was not just a Southern institution and took root very deeply in New Jersey. In the early 17th Century, the first enslaved African people arrived in New Netherland, a Dutch settlement established in the Mid-Atlantic, which included portions of present-day New Jersey. As the demand for labor increased, the number of enslaved African people imported to New Jersey increased, with Bergen County becoming the largest slaveholding county in the Province of New Jersey. In 1704, the Province