“What they don’t realize is that the rest of the community was still watching and a number of people have been dissuaded from the toxic nature.

“It doesn’t matter what the argument was about, it was not the place to have it,” she said. More than a few people were offended by Saturday’s confrontation and left, Grills said. The emotions behind the many testimonials have worked the other way, too. Sharing their intense feelings in a public forum can be emotional as well, she said. Grills said many who speak at the public hearings bottled up their perspectives on racism and reparations and the harms of slavery - on themselves and the Black population at large - for years. You don’t go there mad, but I’m not surprised when you get mad because you’re talking all day about the bad stuff that happened to your people.” They’re talking about jobs and prisons and communities and land and feeling displaced. You think you have a great point and you sit there for an hour and you keep hearing all these sort of desperate pleas or cries.

“I went to one in Sacramento, too, and it’s the same thing: Black people upset about what slavery has done to us in this country. “It’s a lot, I’ll tell you that,” said Tony Allen, an Oakland native who attended the public hearing on Saturday. There’s a final public hearing in Sacramento scheduled for June 26. The task force will present its recommendations for reparations in the state by July 1.

Some have broken the rules and spoken in person and then called in to speak a second time. Some have tried to go beyond the allotted two minutes to speak. Public hearings on the issue of reparations have not gotten into fisticuffs, but they have been highlighted by Black people stepping to the podium or calling in by phone to express the depths of their emotions about how slavery has impacted them generations later, how important reparations are, and in what form they should come.

When i get where im going