Burlington, Vermont’s City Council unanimously passed a #reparations resolution this week. The slavery #reparations task force will begin its work in October. Important move as it acknowledges non-slave states benefitted from the institution of slavery. https://t.co/u9vvK0j9VN
— Dreisen Heath (@dreisenheath) August 14, 2020

City council members in Burlington, Vermont, voted unanimously to pass a reparations resolution last week, joining cities like Asheville, North Carolina, and Providence, Rhode Island, in approving measures this year to address the enduring harms of slavery. Burlington, Vermont’s most populous city, will convene a reparations task force starting in October to study the role that Vermont played in chattel slavery and come up with recommendations for reparations.

Although Vermont wasn’t a slave state, Burlington officials and community members contend that the state benefited from slavery.

“As Black labor was extracted through the institution of slavery in the south, wealth flowed into the hands of the northern elite,” Rep. Brian Cina, a Vermont state legislator, told WCAX.

WCAX reports that the task force’s study will determine what reparations should look like, which differentiates it from Asheville’s reparations resolution, which calls for community investments rather than direct payments.

Tyeastia Green, Burlington’s director of racial equity, weighed in on the possibilities.

Green says while there's no limit on what reparations could look like, she believes they will be substantial. "I don't think it's appropriate to put a value on what it cost Black people in this country to be enslaved, what it cost them to lose heritage, to lose culture, what it cost them now to not be allowed in white spaces, still, now in 2020," Green said.

Prior to the passage of the resolution, the City of Burlington and the University of Vermont Medical Center last month declared racism a public health emergency.