Cambridge City Council Votes to Establish American Freedmen Commission to Evaluate Reparations

The Cambridge City Council unanimously voted to create the American Freedmen Commission, a new city department that will explore historic and ongoing harms to the descendants of enslaved people and determine appropriate reparations, during a Monday meeting.

“As a city that strives so often to be a model for other cities and towns across Massachusetts but also in the country, we are taking a bold step,” said Councilor E. Denise Simmons. The vote was met with applause from the public gallery.

The commission will work with the city manager and other city officials to assess “historical, systematic, and ongoing harms done to American Freedmen by the State.”

According to the ordinance, the commission must have a minimum of five members and may have up to fifteen, and at least 85 percent of the members must identify as “American Freedmen” — the descendants of individuals who were freed from enslavement in the U.S.

“This is the easy part because the hard work is yet to come, but I know we’re all up for it,” Simmons said.

The Council also voted 7-2 to adopt an order for submitting a home rule petition to the state to further increase fines on vehicles that are not moved for street cleaning days following a report from City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 on the 2023 Street Cleaning Pilot.

Under the pilot, launched in April, vehicles that are not moved for street cleaning are no longer towed and instead are ticketed $50 — an increase from the original $30 ticket. Councilor Burhan Azeem said in an April interview with NBC Boston that the objective of the change was to “reduce the financial burden on residents” by eliminating towing.

Councilors Simmons and Paul F. Toner voted against the order at the meeting.

Simmons said she supports increasing the rate of street cleaning. She also called for improving resident outreach about upcoming street cleaning days.

“All people know is they don’t get towed and I think it’s important to say why we stopped doing it, the importance of moving your car, and just really engage the community far more than we have,” she said.

In a 5-4 vote, the Council also passed a Building Energy Use Disclosure Ordinance amendment that would require new properties to achieve net zero emissions by 2030 — as opposed to an original goal of 2050 — to a second reading after a lengthy discussion.

BEUDO requires commercial buildings to report their water and energy usage. In July, the Council passed an amendment to BEUDO requiring large buildings to achieve net zero emissions by 2035 or pay a compliance fee.

When asked on his position, City Manager Yi-An Huang ’05 said he applauds “the good intentions of this amendment,” but said he believes “that ultimately, it’s not fantastic policy,”

“We’ve now spent months debating this amendment, which feels like it is incrementally more aggressive, but actually technically very difficult to implement,” Huang said. “And meanwhile, our internal team has had much less bandwidth to develop the ultimate regulations and implementation details to make BEUDO successful.”

In response to Huang, Councilor Quinton Y. Zondervan said it is “unacceptable from a climate science point of view” to give new buildings “a pass” until 2050.

The Council will reconvene Dec. 11 for their next meeting.

—Staff writer Jina H. Choe can be reached at jina.choe@thecrimson.com.