Conference focuses on civil rights solutions

About 100 students, faculty, staff and community members discussed reparations and other possible solutions to civil rights issues at the Civil Rights Conference on Saturday.

The conference had two goals. "Our first goal was to promote discussion about slavery and reparations," said Stephanie Mash '04, Captain of the Reconciliation and Conference Chair. "The second goal was to give instructions on how to be socially active" she said.

The event, sponsored by the Princeton Justice Project's Reconciliation Committee, featured speakers and workshops throughout the day. The conference aimed to raise social awareness about civil issues and to empower participants to enact social justice, said Connie Lewin '05, a member of the Reconciliation Committee.

The conference kicked off with a panel titled "Civil Rights Today," featuring Beth Jamieson, Deadria Paellman, Amaju Sankofa, religion professors Cornel West GS '80 and Howard Taylor. Other speakers included activist Lawrence Hamm '78, Sasa Montano, State Assemblyman Craig Stanley, and a book signing by Randall Robinson. The conference also emphasized dialogue and promoted action through small interactive workshops.

"Instead of just talking about the issues," Lewin said, "the workshops helped participants learn how they could implement solutions." After the speeches, the participants broke into smaller groups to draft resolutions to solve a number of civil rights issues. The resolutions were directed toward the grassroots level.

"Instead of focusing on the national level we wanted to cover the community first." Lewin said. From there, the group hoped to eventually enact changes on a state and then national level.

The groups were directed to focus on certain issues and tailor solutions for specific communities. Each proposal was modeled after the reparations resolutions template from the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA). While they were drafting their proposals, task force members considered issues such as how to mobilize people in the community.

At the conclusion of the conference, the individual resolutions were presented to the body. The next step for the Reconciliation Committee is meeting next week when it will revise and merge the proposals into a final resolution.

"This meeting will determine the direction that the Reconciliation Committee will take," Mash said. After evaluating the resolutions, the Committee hopes to create a course of action to achieve its goals in the community, Lewin added.

Using this resolution as a plan of action, the committee will work towards fulfilling its goals in the community through concrete actions, Lewin said.

"It was a wonderful success," Mash said. "People were inspired by the speakers and appreciated that we were not supporting a specific direction for reparations but enabled a factual exchange." The signs of success were further evident in the workshops where ideas were exchanged between students, community leaders and the faculty. "The discussions were intimate and helped the participants really discuss and internalize the issues at hand," Mash added.

The combination of speeches and workshops made it successful. "We were not just sitting down and taking notes," Mash said. "I heard from several people that they are going to start implementing the ideas formed in the workshops."

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The Reconciliation Committee was created "about a year ago because the issue of reparations was in the news and received a lot of coverage." Lewin said. "The committee works towards figuring out how to clear hurdles to achieve reparation in the United States."