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Temi F. Bennett
Temi F. Bennett
Temi Bennett, Esq. is co-CEO of if, A Foundation for Radical Possibility. She is a leader at the intersection of philanthropy, nonprofit management, racial justice, business development, and strategic communications.
Patrice Sulton
Patrice Sulton
Patrice Sulton is an attorney, criminal justice reform advocate, community organizer and law school professor who is powering a movement to fundamentally transform the criminal justice system in Washington D.C., which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country. She served on the District of Columbia’s Criminal Code Reform Commission (comprehensively rewriting D.C.’s criminal code), Police Reform Commission (recommending an overhaul D.C.’s approach to public safety), and Jails & Justice Task Force (publishing a plan to decarcerate by half and bring D.C.’s residents home to a safe environment).
She has represented clients in criminal and civil cases for 15 years, served on public commissions and worked alongside grassroots organizations in underestimated communities of color that are deeply impacted by over-policing, over-sentencing, and notoriously unsafe jails. These experiences inspired Patrice to launch DC Justice Lab, an innovative nonprofit that is driving a conversation about what constitutes public safety and reimagining public systems that ensure safety and justice for all. In creating a model for comprehensive change in Washington DC, she is laying the foundation for generating more effective and equitable systems everywhere.
Patrice earned a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her J.D. from the George Washington University Law School. Patrice’s career is devoted to fundamentally changing the way people think about who we punish, why we punish, and how we punish. A lifelong organizer, she believes the brilliant ideas we are looking for are in the brilliant people we overlook.
Giuliana Perrone
Giuliana Perrone
I am a historian of slavery and abolition in North America. I focus on American socio-legal history, the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the development of American political institutions. I am especially interested in the multiple approaches to studying slavery, the ways in which concepts of race shaped American political and legal identities over time, and the ways in which courts have operated and intervened during times of crisis and radical transition.
My current work explores an unappreciated history of reparations. I am researching the wills of enslavers who bequeathed items of significant value to bondspeople. The justification for the bequests, and the lives made possible by them, often share similarities with modern schemes for reparations. I consider the possibilities for using this archive to enhance and expand reparatory discourse, both historical and current. An article entitled “Rehearsals for Reparations” is forthcoming in RSF: The Russel Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.
Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark B. Brown is Professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Sacramento. He studied at UC Santa Cruz and the University of Göttingen, and he received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University. He is the author of Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation (MIT Press, 2009), and publications on political representation, deliberation, expertise, climate change, and the politics of racial identity, among other topics. From 2020 to 2022, he co-chaired an online research group on Critical Whiteness Studies for the Western Political Science Association. In Fall 2024, he will be part of the inaugural faculty of Sacramento State’s Black Honors College. His current research, supported by two campus grants, is on the California Reparations Task Force. Results so far include several presentations on the Task Force at conferences and workshops, an opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee, an interview with KQED radio, and an article manuscript about the Task Force for a peer-reviewed journal.
Rekai Rusinga
Rekai Rusinga
Rekai Rusinga is a PhD Student in the Department of Political Science at UC Davis and Graduate Researcher on the Department of African American & African Studies' Human Rights and Reparations project. Before coming to UC Davis, he studied and taught at the University of Zimbabwe; worked as a Programs Officer with Zimbabwe’s leading domestic election observer group, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network; and coordinated research on voter registration with the National Democratic Institute.
Erika Weissinger
Erika Weissinger
Erika is a co-director of The Black Reparations Project, a collaboration with Mills College at Northeastern University. The Black Reparations Project creates opportunities for students, faculty, and practitioners to come together to study, discuss, and contribute to policy analysis on Black reparations. Erika teaches:
Policy Analysis
Advanced Policy Analysis
Capstone
Race, Ethnicity, and Public Policy
Erika emphasizes root cause analysis and the importance of considering broader historical contexts when conducting policy analysis. Erika also brings industry experience from her time with Deloitte Consulting, where she helped the District of Columbia’s Child and Family Services Agency emerge from Court Receivership.
During her post-doctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley's School of Social Welfare, she led a collaboration to create a longitudinal qualitative database providing insights on the life course of children in foster care. Recently, she led a team of experts in producing a report for Riverside County's Human Services Agency. The report identified opportunities for enhancing safety and economic stability for children and families involved in the child welfare system.
Erika is on the Berkeley Unified School District Black Reparations task force where she has led community engagement efforts. She is a lead evaluator for Reparation Generation, a non-profit making reparative wealth transfers supporting Black homeownership in Detroit. Recently, Erika developed Reparations curriculum for Rising Communities, a community-based health care non-profit in East Los Angeles. Erika is an active member of research and reparations coalitions throughout California.
Kyle Mays
Kyle Mays
I am an Afro-Indigenous (Saginaw Chippewa) scholar of Afro-Indigenous history and urban studies. I am the author of four books, including An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States (2021) and City of Dispossessions: Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and the Creation of Modern Detroit (2022).
Marisa Raya
Marisa Raya
Marisa Raya, PhD student in the UC Davis Geography Graduate Group, researches land reparations and programs to increase equitable land access for people of color in the US, particularly opportunities created by emerging climate-related investments and markets. She has 16 years of public sector experience creating and implementing economic equity and sustainability goals, programs and accountability measures, including managing the City of Oakland’s Economic Recovery Advisory Council, Equitable Economic Recovery Plan, and Economic Development Strategy. As an economic development specialist, she led permitting and process reforms to reduce barriers for entrepreneurs and brokered partnerships, programs, new investments, and job placements to achieve racial wealth equity goals. Originally a planner, she facilitated the collective creation of anti-displacement measures and policies adopted by Bay Area cities and in the region’s first 40-year land use and transportation plan, Plan Bay Area.
In addition to coursework at Davis, Marisa teaches Urban, Rural and Regional Planning at Stanford University and works as a consultant on public sector accountability, equity planning and social metrics, as well as community-led real estate development. She earned a Masters degree in Spatial Planning from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, and an accelerated BA with honors on Anthropology and globalization from Columbia University.
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