The landmark restorative-justice agreement between the city of Palm Springs and the Palm Springs Section 14 Survivors Group announced in November garnered headlines across the country.
Many included the dollar figures, like the $5.9 million in direct payments that will be made to survivors and descendants of those displaced in the city-authorized razing of working-class, Black and Brown neighborhoods on tribal land in the 1950s and 1960s.
But Areva Martin, who served as lead attorney for the survivors’ group, said the settlement push was about more than money. It came down to acknowledging a grave historical injustice and amplifying the voices of those who were wronged.
“To talk about racial trauma and give them permission to remember their stories—to say them out loud, and to feel OK wanting to organize—that’s what made this so incredible,” Martin said.
Beyond the $5.9 million settlement, which the city says will go to more than 1,200 people, Palm Springs has also committed to spending $20 million on affordable housing initiatives over the next 10 years, including a community land trust. The commitment also includes $1 million for small-business development through the Caravanserai Project that will be aimed at assisting survivors and their descendants. The city has said it would explore renaming a community park and a public monument to honor the legacy of Section 14 residents, and support the creation of a racial healing center.
The agreement puts Palm Springs on a small but growing list of U.S. communities that have launched restorative-justice efforts over racist pasts and historic injustices. Evanston, Ill., in 2019 initiated a reparations program over decades of housing discrimination. In Oklahoma, the city of Tulsa’s Beyond Apology Commission is looking to restore economic mobility and address the loss of intergenerational wealth for survivors and descendants of the 1921 Race Massacre. In California, the Bruce family fought to retrieve oceanfront property that had been seized decades ago, then sold the property back to Los Angeles County for $20 million.
These efforts required years of legal maneuvering, advocating for policies and sustained grassroots activism—often against a backdrop of painful memories. In Palm Springs, the effort raised questions about who was ultimately responsible for the displacement and how residents were treated; a years-long controversy regarding a statue of Mayor Frank Bogert, who presided over the city during the displacements; and numerous city actions like resolutions and requests for proposals.
While the settlement in no way changes the past, Martin said it still represents a large step. She credits the deep work the survivors did to share their stories with the wider community, providing a powerful example for other communities grappling with similar histories.
“This wasn’t just a fight; it was a David and Goliath fight,” Martin said. “This is a very wealthy and predominantly white enclave that has stepped up and entered a restorative-justice agreement with a group of Black and Brown, working-class, middle-class and even impoverished individuals.”
Respecting the Feelings of the Survivors
When Martin first started working with the Palm Springs Section 14 Survivors Group, she anticipated that the effort might be led by children and grandchildren of the descendants. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, young activists across the country were getting more involved with such movements.
But she soon realized it was many of the survivors themselves leading this effort—folks well into their 70s and 80s. They had memories of being forcibly displaced from their downtown neighborhoods in a city-approved land takeover in the 1950s and 1960s. While their stories and memories would become a central part of gaining visibility and securing the agreement, it took time for them to get there.
“We had to do healing work—heart work, soul work—before they could feel empowered enough to act.”
Areva Martin, on the Section 14 survivors
Martin said the early days of organizing the survivors involved significant healing work. Discussing the displacement opened old wounds and brought up repressed memories from those involved. The survivors had been told their neighborhoods were a slum and a blight on the city. They were told they had no rights, and no voice to speak up.
“We had to do healing work—heart work, soul work—before they could feel empowered enough to act,” Martin said.
Martin said the stories of the survivors, told time and time again to the city and community at large, helped move the needle. This required survivors like Margaret Godina-Genera to talk about what happened to them when they were pushed out of their homes and saw them burned to the ground.
Many of these stories led to the “Know Before You Go” campaign that included billboards put up during peak season in late 2023. This generated public awareness not only with people coming into the city, but locals who weren’t familiar with the history or current efforts.
Martin said one story that stood out to her was from a survivor whose mother was a domestic worker at a local doctor’s home. One day when she went to get lunch money from her mother, she knocked on the front door—only to be scolded by her mother to never do that again.
“This was in the 1960s. This is Palm Springs, California—a Black domestic worker scolding her child about the racial hierarchy,” Martin said. “You can’t help but be touched by those stories.”
Building Relationships
The survivors group’s success also relied on a lesson straight out of Organizing 101, Martin said: building coalitions, alliances and partnerships. In Palm Springs, that meant forging new relationships with organizations and communities that hadn’t necessarily worked together before.
This required bridging generational divides and addressing existing biases or stereotypes that more conservative, religious members of the community may have had. Martin said the group reached out to and spoke with organizations like the Stonewall Democrats, Brothers of the Desert, and the Episcopalian community of St. Paul in the Desert church to help move their cause forward.
“Aligning with powerful groups in the community made a difference,” she said.
The effort also received support from politicians and organizations beyond Palm Springs, including U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler, the National Urban League, the California League of United Latin American Citizens, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Human Rights Campaign, Equality California, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Looking ahead, Martin said the lessons from Palm Springs can help inform communities elsewhere in the country. It’s especially critical for advocates to learn from each other in a moment when even academic conversations around race and justice can be met with hostility, and marginalized communities are concerned about possible actions by the incoming Trump administration.
“There’s a lot of fear about the future of this work, especially in today’s climate,” Martin said.
But that doesn’t mean the work won’t continue.
Reparation money when will it be received by survivors is it going to be a drawn-out thing or can we expect reparations soon