Alan’s Plan for an American Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission
Alan was in South Africa in 1996, a year after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established. He has made many trips there over the last two decades to work with South African leaders to establish City Year South Africa, and learned how important it was to openly and honestly confront the truth about the country’s apartheid history.
On racial injustice, Martin Luther King warned ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never’ and to beware of the ‘paralysis of analysis.’ Police brutality does not demand yet another commission for waiting or engaging in paralyzing analysis but a National Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission to build the moral urgency and national will to end police brutality and confront racial injustice. With such a Commission, America can build the national as well as local will and urgency to enact sweeping and transformative change.
With George Floyd protests in 50 states, we will invest $50 million in congressional, state and local hearings to empower citizens to draft and support the very policies to transform American policing and address racial injustice in our health care, education, criminal justice and economic systems—under deadline.
ALAN'S ACTION PLAN
Alan strongly supports Rep. Barbara Lee’s Proposal for a United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation
Alan proposes that the American Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission be established by Congress and funded with $50 million. This commission would not be meant to delay the demands for change but rather to amplify, intensify and expedite the transformation of those demands into law, policy and cultural change.
The Commission will have members who represent a diverse group of leaders who have strong moral authority. That can include leaders from different faith traditions, those with diverse lived experiences, including and especially people living in poverty, those who have experienced the harshest effects of our racist, anti-Black criminal justice system and young people who are at the forefront of calling for change. It will bring together participants from all four sectors, public, private, non-profit and educational.
The Commission would be tasked with bringing to light the vast array of America’s anti-Black racist structures and their negative impacts. The Commission will hold public hearings across the country as well as in our nation’s capital. It will take testimony and receive evidence from a wide set of Americans from all backgrounds – rural and urban, North and South, professional, working class and low income. It will also hear from Academics and policy experts.
The Commission would be charged with delivering a set of sweeping recommendations for transformational change in our criminal justice system, in our education system, including how we pay for public education in America, in our health care and public health system, and in our economic system. A national commission could also inspire state and local commissions. We can learn from the experiences of the Kellogg Foundation and Greensboro TRC.
Alan hopes that a President Biden would make the establishment of the American Commission on Truth, Justice and Reconciliation a centerpiece of his Administration
We face a moment in our country’s history that could lead to real, lasting and transformative change. But to get there, we need to harness the energy of this extraordinary awakening and create an institutional mechanism that not only keeps the momentum going, but also establishes a pathway to uncover the truths of our racially unjust society, achieve meaningful racial reconciliation and recommend sweeping changes to address systemic racism.